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Part VII : Osho initiates His Father into Sannyas
In October 1975 Osho's father visits, and asks Osho to initiate
him. His new name is Swami Devateerth Bharti.
My father took sannyas four years after my mother became a sannyasin.
He started feeling bad that he was not courageous enough; but
he started meditating, started coming to the meditation camps.
And finally, one day, there were two things: the breakdown of
the personality and the breakthrough into a new existence, into
a new life. dless11
My own father cannot sleep after three. He goes to sleep near
about eleven, so he has three, four hours sleep at the most. My
mother has always been worried, but I told my father to sit in
meditation. So he sits from three, and that has become his door
to the divine. For years now he has sat from three to seven…and
he almost becomes like a statue; he forgets the body.
Now that has been the most precious experience of his life;
no sleep can give it. He is fresh by three; that's how his mechanism,
his body, is functioning. In the beginning he used to try to go
to sleep. It was a misery because the sleep wouldn't come and
he would get tired trying to sleep, and frustrated; by the morning
he would be frustrated. Three or four hours of struggles to sleep
every night and it doesn't come; how can you remain unfrustrated?
But since I have given him meditation, all frustration has disappeared,
and those have become his most valuable moments. Now he longs
for them: for twenty-four hours he thinks about them, because
those are the most peaceful. He has used it rightly. losers23
He was almost childlike as he went deeper into meditation. And
he took sannyas only when he had touched the rock bottom of meditation,
not before it. People take sannyas to enter into meditation; he
waited. My mother took sannyas, my uncles took sannyas, but he
waited.
Everybody was asking me, "Why don't you tell your father?"
My uncle was saying it, my mother was saying it.
I said, "He has never told anything to me, never forced me
to do anything. Now this would be absolutely unfair on my part
to tell him to do something and particularly to take sannyas.
Whenever he wants, he will say. I am not going to tell him. And
I know he is waiting"—because he was continuously reporting
about his meditation to me: how he was going, what he experienced,
for how many seconds his thoughts disappeared and what kind of
thoughts came when they came.
Whenever he came to me he was mentioning his meditation—and
that was a clear indication that he was waiting; until he had
touched rock bottom he would not say anything about sannyas. And
he knew perfectly well that I was not going to say anything.
One day, in the morning…he used to meditate from three
o'clock in the night up to six—three hours. So just nearabout
six, Laxmi came running and said, "Your father wants you
immediately, and he also says, 'Bring a mala and the sannyas form.'
I don't know what has happened to him." He had been sitting
for three hours; he was staying in the room where afterwards Laxmi
stayed, in Lao Tzu house in Poona, the same room. He had just
come for a few days, so Laxmi had moved out and he was staying
there. I went into the room. He said, "Now the time has come:
give me sannyas." misery01
Knowing my notoriety, knowing perfectly well all the condemnation
being thrown at me from all the so-called respectable places,
he became my disciple. That is courage, immense courage. Even
I was surprised when he touched my feet for the first time. I
wept…in my room of course, so nobody could see it. I feel
those tears still in my eyes. When he asked to be initiated I
could not believe it. At that moment I was just silent. I could
not say yes or no, I was simply silent, shocked, surprised. Yes,
you have the right expression in your language: "taken by
surprise," and taken so powerfully. books08
And when he became a sannyasin, I reminded him. I told him,
"Look. Now you are going to be a disciple of somebody who
is good for nothing. And all that I can do for you is to make
you also good for nothing."* bond32
*Note: As a child Osho was called 'good for nothing'. 'Nothing'
also describes nirvana or enlightenment.
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