Why did Gautam Buddha have to choose a negative term?

It is significant to understand – for your own spiritual growth, not for any philosophical reasons. I do not speak for philosophical reasons. I speak only when I see there is some existential relevance.

The idea of fullness, the idea of God, the idea of perfection, the idea of the absolute, the ultimate – all are positive terms. And Gautam Buddha was amazed to see the cunningness of the human mind.

The innocent mystics have simply used the positive words because that was their experience. Why bother about the misery which is no more? Why not say something about that which is now? The innocent mystics have spoken out of their isness. But throughout the centuries the cunning minds of people around the world have taken advantage of it.

To the cunning mind, the idea of fullness and the positive terms indicating it became an ego trip: “I have to become God. I have to attain the absolute, the brahma; I have to achieve the ultimate liberation.” The I became the center of all our assertions.

And the trouble is that you cannot make the ultimate experience a goal for the ego.

Ego is the barrier; it cannot become the bridge.

So, all the positive terms have been misused. Rather than destroying the ego, they have become decorations for the ego. God has become a goal; you have to achieve the goal. You become greater than God.

Remember, you cannot be greater than the goal. The achiever cannot be greater than the achieved. It’s a very simple fact to understand.

And all the religions have fallen because of this simple innocence of the mystics.

Gautam Buddha was the most cultured and the most educated, the most sophisticated person ever to become a mystic. There is no comparison in the whole of history. He could see where the innocent mystics had unknowingly given chances for cunning minds to take advantage. He decided not to use any positive terms for the ultimate goal, to destroy your ego and any possibility of your ego taking any advantage.

He called the ultimate, nothingness, emptiness, shunyata, zero. Now, how can the ego make zero the goal? God can be made the goal, but not zero.

Who wants to become zero? – that is the fear. Everybody is avoiding all possibilities of becoming zero, and Buddha made it an expression for the ultimate.

His word is nirvana.He chose a tremendously beautiful word, but he shocked all the thinkers and philosophers by choosing the word ‘nirvana’ as the most significant expression for the ultimate experience.

Nirvana means blowing out the candle.

The other mystics have said that you are filled with enormous light, as if thousands of suns together have suddenly risen inside you, as if the whole sky full of stars has descended within your heart.

These ideas appeal to the ego.

The ego would like to have all the stars, if not inside the chest then at least hanging on the coat outside the chest. ”Enormous light”… the ego is very willing.

To cut the very roots, Buddha says the experience is as if you were to blow out a candle. There was a small flame on the candle giving a small light – even that is gone, and you are surrounded with absolute darkness, abysmal darkness.

People used to come to ask him, “If you go on teaching such things, nobody is going to follow you. Who wants darkness, enormous darkness? You are crazy. You say that the ultimate experience is ultimate death. People want eternal life, and you are talking about ultimate death.”

But he was a very consistent man, and you can see that for forty-two years he hammered on the genius of the East without ever compromising with the ego. He also knows that what he is calling darkness is too much light; that’s why it looks like darkness. If one thousand suns rise in you, what do you think? – that you will feel enormous light?  You will feel immense darkness, it will be too dazzling. Just look at one sun for a few seconds – and you will feel your eyes are going blind. If one thousand suns are within you, inside the mind, the experience will be of darkness, not of light.

It will take a long time for you to get accustomed, for your eyes to become strong enough to see – slowly slowly - darkness turning into light, death turning into life, emptiness turning into fullness.

But he never talked about those things. He never said that darkness would ever turn into light.

And he never said that death would become a resurrection at some later point, because he knows how cunning your ego is. If that is said, the ego will say, “Then there is no problem. Our aim remains the same; it is just that we will have to pass through a little dark night of the soul. But finally, we will have enormous light, thousands of suns.”

Gautam Buddha had to deny that God existed – not that he was against God, a man like Gautam Buddha cannot be against God. And if Gautam Buddha is against God, then it is of no use for anybody to be in favour of God. His decision is decisive for the whole of humanity, he represents our very soul. But he was not against God. He was against your ego, and he was constantly careful not to give your ego any support to remain. If God can become a support, then there is no God.

One thing becomes very clear: although he used, for the first time, all negative terms, yet the man must have had tremendous charismatic qualities. He influenced millions of people.

His philosophy is such that anyone listening to him would freak out. What is the point of all the meditations and all the austerities, renouncing the world, eating one time a day … and ultimately you achieve nothingness, you become zero! We are already better – we may be miserable zeroes, but we are at least.

Certainly, when you are completely a zero there cannot be any misery; zeroes are not known to be miserable – but what is the gain?

But he convinced people – not through his philosophy, but through his individuality, through his presence. He gave people the experience itself, so that they could understand: it is emptiness as far as the world is concerned; it is emptiness for the ego. And it is fullness for the being.

There are many reasons for the disappearance of Buddha’s thoughts from India, but this is one of the most significant. All other Indian mystics, philosophers, and seers have used positive terms.

And for centuries before Buddha, the whole of India was accustomed to thinking only in the positive; the negative was something unheard of. Under the influence of Gautam Buddha they followed him, but when he died his following started disappearing – because the following was not intellectually convinced; it was convinced because of his presence.

Because of the eyes of Gautam Buddha they could see:”This man – if he is living in nothingness then there is no fear, we would love to be nothing. If this is where zeroness leads, if by being nothing such lotuses bloom in the eyes and such grace flows, then we are ready to go with this man. The man has a magic.”

But his philosophy alone will not convince you, because it has no appeal for the ego.

And Buddhism survived in China, in Ceylon, in Burma, in Japan, in Korea, in Indochina, in Indonesia – in the whole of Asia except India – because the Buddhists who reached there dropped negative terms. They started speaking in positive terms. Then the ultimate, the absolute, the perfect – the old terms returned. This was the compromise.

So as far as I am concerned, Buddhism died with Gautam Buddha.

Whatever exists now as Buddhism has nothing to do with Buddha because it has dropped his basic contribution, and that was his negative approach.

I am aware of both traditions. I am certainly in a better position than Gautam Buddha was. Gautam Buddha was aware of only one thing – that the ego can use the positive. And it is his great contribution, his courageous contribution, that he dropped the positive and insisted on the negative, emphasized the negative – knowing perfectly well that people were not going to follow this because it had no appeal for the ego.

To me, now both traditions are available. I know what happened to the positive – the ego exploited it. I know what happened to the negative. After the death of Gautam Buddha, the disciples had to compromise, compromise with the same thing which Gautam Buddha was revolting against.

So I am trying to explain to you both approaches together – emptiness as far as the world is concerned and fullness, wholeness as far as the inner experience is concerned. And this is a total approach, it takes note of both: that which has to be left behind, and that which is to be gained.

I call my approach the only holy approach.

All other approaches up to now have been half-half. Mahavira, Shankara, Moses, Mohammed, all used the positive. Gautam Buddha used the negative. I use both, and I don’t see any contradiction.

Half of your life is part of the mundane world, the other half is part of the sacred. And it is unfortunate, but there is no other way –  we have to use the same language for both the mundane and the sacred.

So one has to be very alert. To choose the mundane will be missing. If you think of the mundane, you will find the sacred life empty. If you think of the sacred, you will find it overflowingly full.

Osho -  Beyond Enlightenment

www.osho.com

Android Jones

I say unto you that Christianity is one of the most untruthful religions in the world.

Christianity is a fiction.

It is a disease, a sickness, a pathology, a poison.

It has not been helpful to humanity in finding the truth in any sense.

It has been trying to propagate lies so continuously that they have almost become truth.

Jesus had never even heard the name Christianity. It has been imposed on him, he was not the founder of Christianity.

His life was written eighty years after his death, by people who had not directly known him.

Now even Christian scholars have come to the conclusion that the Christian gospels were not written by the apostles but were written by somebody else, because the mountains described are not in the same place where they are described in the gospels. The rivers described are not in the same place where they are described in the gospels.

Everything was written by people who had not known Jesus Christ, and neither had they lived with Jesus Christ.

Who exactly was the founder of Christianity?

One thing is certain, Jesus was not. He never thought about founding a religion, he was simply telling the Jews, “I am your last prophet.”

He died on the cross as a Jew.

You can find Buddhism in the teachings of Gautam Buddha; he was the founder. You can find in the teachings of Mahavira that he was the founder of Jainism. You can find in the teachings of Lao Tzu that he was the founder of Taoism. But it is a very strange thing about Christianity: Jesus had no idea at all, was not interested in creating a new religion.

Then who founded Christianity?

The man who founded it – you will not believe it – was the Emperor Constantine. The church knows it, but does not allow the public to know it.

The Baptism of Constantine

Emperor Constantine of Rome, who headed the Council of Nicea, died as a Christian, but he was baptized only on his deathbed. His whole life he was the high priest of the Sun God religion, which was why he changed the sabbath from Saturday, which was Jesus’ sabbath day, to Sunday. Jews still have their sabbath on Saturday, and Jesus also had lived his whole life believing in the sabbath on Saturday. How did it become Sunday?

It was Constantine, who was a worshipper of the Sun God. Sunday represents the sun; the followers of the sun have always believed that Sunday is a holy day.

It was Constantine who was actually the founder of Christianity. He was the decisive factor in the Council of Nicea. It was under his pressure – because he was the emperor of Rome – that the priests voted for the divine personality of Jesus. He made Jesus a divine person. It was his creation, his invention.

Constantine saw Jesus as a failed messiah, with himself as the real messiah – and his view was ratified by the famous Christian bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, who said, “It is as if the religion of Abraham is at last fulfilled, not in Jesus, but in Constantine.”

He also changed Jesus’ birthday from January sixth to December twenty-fifth, the day of the solar rebirth. The twenty-fifth of December, which is celebrated all over the world, is not Jesus’ birthday. The whole idea of their Christmas is bogus – and the church knows it perfectly well but won’t allow people to know about it.

Jesus was born on January sixth, but under Constantine’s influence and power, it was changed to December twenty-fifth, the day of the solar rebirth. It is thought by the sun worshippers that the sun was born on the twenty-fifth of December.

The whole of Christianity is living in utter darkness.

Constantine, killed ten thousand people in a single day. He just called an assembly of all those who were not Catholics in a great auditorium in Rome, and ordered the army to kill everybody: “We don’t want anybody other than Christians in Rome.” He forced the whole of Italy to become Christian… just at the point of a sword.

The whole history of Christianity is of wars and nothing else – killing and violence.

Constantine imposed himself as the real last prophet for whom the Jews had been waiting. Of course, the Jews could not crucify the emperor of Rome. And the Christians wanted some royal support; otherwise they were being crucified everywhere. They found a shelter in Constantine, but it was a bargain, purely business. They accepted that Jesus was a failed messiah, and that Constantine was the real messiah.

But this is not told to the public! Christians are not aware of it. All these scriptures are hidden under the Vatican.

They have been talking about truth, but they have been hiding immensely important things.

They have changed all the gospels, they have edited everything that was going to be difficult for them to argue for, to defend.

The whole of Christianity lives in a paranoia that if anybody finds some truth, then what is going to happen to their lies that they go on propagating?

The Vatican has an underground library of thousands of scriptures which they have burned, saving only one copy.

Nobody is allowed to enter, except the pope and the cardinals, to see all the evidence, all the proofs which go against Christianity.

The public is not allowed to know what the truth is.

It should open the underground library in the Vatican to all the scholars who want to study there, and Christianity will evaporate without leaving a single trace on the human consciousness.

Religions teach faith because they cannot help you to find the truth.

They themselves don’t know where truth is.

Perhaps, in the whole history of the popes, only one pope was honest.

This pope was Pope Leo the Tenth in the sixteenth century.

He is reported to have said, “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.”

Osho – Christianity: the deadliest poison and Zen: the antidote to all poisons.

Android Jones

The fifth gospel of Thomas was written in India.

It has not been included in the Bible, it was not available to Constantine, who was compiling, and who was deciding what was to be included and what was not to be included. It was because of him that all these ideas and mythologies and fictions have been added to the life of Jesus.

Jesus sent Thomas to south India.

Thomas, is the disciple closest to Jesus. But his sayings are not included in the Bible, because the real Jesus and his closest disciples have to be excluded – they are too dangerous.

Jesus was trained in one of the oldest secret schools.

They have a little record of his childhood, and they have a record after his thirtieth year up to the thirty-third, when he was crucified – they know a few things.

But a phenomenon like Jesus is not an accident; it is a long preparation, it cannot happen just any moment.

Jesus was continuously being prepared during these thirty years.

He was first sent to Egypt and then he came to India.

In Egypt he learned one of the oldest traditions of secret methods, then in India he came to know about the teachings of Buddha, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and he passed through a long preparation.

Those days are not known because Jesus worked in these schools as an unknown disciple.

And Christians have knowingly dropped those records, because they would not like the son of God to also be a disciple of somebody else.

They would not like the very idea that he was prepared, taught, trained – that looks humiliating.

They think the son of God comes absolutely ready.

Nobody comes absolutely ready…

JESUS SAID: THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER IS LIKE A MAN, A MERCHANT, WHO POSSESSED MERCHANDISE AND FOUND A PEARL.

THE MERCHANT WAS PRUDENT. HE SOLD THE MERCHANDISE AND BOUGHT THE ONE PEARL FOR HIMSELF.

DO YOU ALSO SEEK FOR THE TREASURE WHICH FAILS NOT, WHICH ENDURES, WHERE NO MOTH COMES NEAR TO DEVOUR AND WHERE NO WORM DESTROYS.

If you look without, the world of the many exists; if you look within, then the world is one.

If you go outside you may achieve much, but you will miss the one.

The pearl is symbolic of the one, the inner.

And that one is your very center; if you miss it you have missed all.

You may attain much but that much will not count much in the end, because unless one attains to oneself nothing is attained.

If you are a stranger to yourself, even the whole world will not fulfill you.

If you have not got into your own being, then all the riches will make you even poorer.

The truth is so clear, but still we go on missing.

Man, if he lives with the mind, can never be innocent — and only in innocence does the divine descend, or do you ascend to the divine.

Innocence is the door.

Mind is cunning, calculating, it is clever, and because of this cleverness you miss – you miss the reality of life.

If you are not awake, you are not here, you simply believe that you are.

This belief won’t help.

You are not alert, you are not awake: you simply think that you are awake and alert.

Your sleep continues from birth to death.

If somebody came to Jesus to ask what he should do to change, Jesus would say:

You cannot do anything to change unless you become awake.

What can you do?

What can a man who is fast asleep do to change his dreams?

The deepest urge in man is to be totally free.

Freedom from mind, is the goal.

Jesus calls it the kingdom of God…

Android Jones

You were thinking that religiousness is something extraordinary, very special, is attained by very special people. It was not your thinking; this has been told to you for centuries. This is the way the whole of humanity has been deceived for thousands of years: religiousness is something so extraordinary, it happens only to special people, prophets, messiahs, saviors, incarnations of God. It is not for the ordinary and the common people. And you have accepted that conditioning. That conditioning is acceptable to the mind because it gives mind an immense scope to ask for more. It gives mind the opportunity never to be satisfied; there must be more.

My whole approach is that religiousness is just like freedom, just like your heartbeat. It is nothing special, it is nothing extraordinary; it is not something to be achieved – there is no question of excitement. Mind is not needed at all. If you are going to achieve something, then mind is needed, then mind’s support is needed; then mind has to think of ways and means of how to achieve it.

But religiousness is your nature. You are born religious. Every child is born religious; it is the society that makes him irreligious, it is the society that corrupts him. It is your religious leaders who are responsible for making the whole of humanity irreligious.

Your religious leaders, your popes, your shankaracharyas, imams… They are destroying the innocence of the child, which is the very center of religiousness. They are destroying the pure humanity of the child by making him a Jew, a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist. They are putting masks on the child, conditionings on his mind; and they are giving you this desire that you have to achieve religiousness – which is a rare adventure.

You have been befooled for centuries.

And mind is in absolute cooperation with the cheaters, exploiters, because if religion is something like a goal far away, and only special and extraordinary people achieve it, then mind is very happy. That is its desire – to be special, to be somebody extraordinary, higher than others, holier than others, a saint, a prophet, a messiah. The mind is not happy with being just an ordinary and normal human being; it is ready to sacrifice everything to become extraordinary.

But whatever it does it can never become religious, because religion is not there, far away, as a goal.

Religion is your source.

It is your very being.

You are not to achieve it, you are simply to remember it. So when I say to you, you are religious, you have only forgotten it… you have been made to forget it. Your innocence has been covered with all kinds of ugly, stupid theologies; you have been given all kinds of faces. But your original face has been lost in these artificial faces.

Your original face is the face of the religious man. You brought it into the world; you came into the world absolutely natural, pure, innocent, loving. You came into the world playful, non-serious, enjoying the small things of the world – collecting seashells on the beach, running after butterflies, collecting flowers, colored stones – and you were so happy, as if you had found the world’s greatest treasure.

You had unprejudiced eyes, you had an unpolluted heart.

Hence I say again: Religiousness is only a question of remembering what has been forgotten. It is an ordinary human phenomenon. Your mind is cheating you, deceiving you still. Although you are feeling serene, you are feeling peaceful, you are feeling happy, the mind goes on saying to you, “There must be something more.” It will go on saying the same to you even if you meet God – who does not exist…

You cannot satisfy yourself if you listen to the mind; if you don’t listen to the mind, right this very moment, contentment is yours. You can choose between the misery of the mind… because mind will always remain miserable, asking for more and more; that desire is unending…

I will tell you an ancient parable…

Damien Hirst, 2007 – Diamond Encrusted Skull

A beggar knocked on the doors of the palace. By chance the king was just coming out for his morning walk in the garden, so he himself opened the door. The beggar said, “It seems to be a fortunate day for you.”

The king said, “For me or for you?”

The beggar said, “By the end of the day it will be decided. I am a beggar and I ask only one thing. I have got this begging bowl; can you fill it up – with anything you like?”

The beggar looked a little strange. His eyes were those of a mystic; his speaking was not that of a beggar but of an emperor. His whole aura was of tremendous authority. The king ordered his prime minister to fill the beggar’s bowl with gold coins, so that he would remember that he had knocked on the door of a king, and that he was fortunate. The beggar laughed.

The king said, “What is the matter?”

He said, “By the evening everything will be decided.” His behavior was strange but very attractive too. He was a beautiful man.

And then the trouble started. As the prime minister brought a bag of gold coins to fill the bowl, they all disappeared, and the bowl remained empty. More coins, more coins… all the coins that were in the treasury were brought, and they all disappeared. The whole town gathered there and the news spread like wildfire.

The king said, “Whatever the case, bring all the diamonds, rubies, emeralds, but fill the beggar’s bowl.” But everything disappeared in it and the bowl remained as empty as ever.

Finally the king lost everything. It was evening. The whole day there had been great excitement all over the capital. The king was stubborn – but now there was no point, he had nothing else to give. He fell at the feet of the beggar and asked him the secret of the bowl. “Is it a magic bowl? It is evening and you have been telling me again and again, `By the evening, by sunset, everything will be decided.’ Now it is time. And in a way everything is decided, I have been defeated by a beggar. But you are not an ordinary beggar. All I want to know is, what is the secret of this begging bowl?”

Salvador Dali, with photograph by Phillipe Halsman (1906-1979)
Near Voluptuous Death, 1951.

The beggar said, “It is not a secret, it is something everybody knows. Just look closely at the begging bowl. It is made of the skull of a man.”

The king said, “I don’t understand.”

The beggar said, “Nobody understands. Inside the skull of man is his mind. You go on pouring everything in it and everything disappears. It is always asking for more; it is always empty. It is always a beggar, you cannot change it. You can only understand it and get rid of it…

Osho  -  Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries

#28 Peace or Mind

www.osho.com

photo by kamakshi

When you start a project, how do you get into it?

In that moment, the moment expands, because there is no time. We just give value to time, but for everyone it’s different. We have already found that in Physics through Einstein. You expand the moment, you make it large; and in that expansion, everything starts to take form, more and more. Its like a photograph, you can make it larger. Everything we know now is because of the moment that we expand. With technology like microscopes, we can see the cells of the body, and in the space between the bodies that make the cell there is fluid. In this fluid there is information and that’s what makes the cell. It’s till the point which we make anything larger, because it’s the creative mind that does that, it creates this expansion of the moment. You take the moment and you make it bigger, how much ever you want. And in this expansion, everything is there, you find out the sense of it all. And then automatically everything takes shape, by itself. You are just there in this process, you choose to be in this process. And for everybody and everything, it’s the same – only we don’t find out, we don’t think about it. In cooking also, it’s in the way how you lose yourself in that moment; you cook in that way, in that way you do everything. Because otherwise everything is just work – which means repetition of an act.

What’s your favourite material to work with?

It changes compared to the need. The material water is, because there is the need of water. The material air is, because there is the need of air. Everything changes as compared to the need; and we are there in between, and we fuse it, and things come out – like Nature does. Nature is mixing all this, and changing it from this to that. We are just following that, everything that we belong to is a synthesis of, we are a synthesis of… we exist only because of that.

I have heard that there’s a poet from Ireland, who comes every year to see the Shiva sculpture you’ve made, on a pilgrimage…

Yeah?

Yes, I saw it on the net. He says that he always finds inspiration from it.  Do you use three dimensions to create a deeper dimension? And is this intentional?

Anything that we are feeling – it’s a state of mind. We feel angry, it’s a state of mind. We feel happy, it’s just a state of mind – that’s all. They are just states of mind, we are made of that. A state of mind belongs to you. When you are in front of something and it makes you feel like that, it is because it’s opening you, your total body. And it is your body not only now, in this life, but your body in the whole; you connect with all the rest that is there. It belongs to you, but you are separate. You become united with everything, and this opens the door. And in this moment, you just feel inside you and then you know that what is possible. You know yourself and what is possible which before you were not thinking about. Feeling this, that you can find yourself, and being open in a point that you can receive – this is what art brings you, it brings you in that state of mind. You need to create, or find out how it is possible to be in that.

There is not an analyzed border around us, that when we reach the border, then we follow the wall (Laughs) like the ants do to find the way to go out, they just get attached to some border…dug, dug, dug… When they see that, then they go, no?  But if this border is closed around you, automatically (Laughs) you turn around. This is the dimension. The dimension is one track. When we speak about three dimensions, it’s already something better, I mean, already there are three. Three dimensions, it means there is not a track of just one dimension – there is also the second and the third. The Chinese say, after the first comes the second. After the second comes the third. And after the third, a thousand things are coming – this is Lao Tzu. It means there are no borders. A thousand dimensions – there are. For now we are already on this point.

Even in art, you can see very well, that it was not possible for them to make the face. It was not possible. Only the profile was possible to make. The face has so many contours, goes in and out at every point. In the dark, the face is just… you don’t see anything, you know. (Laughs) And men took thousands of years to reach more dimensions than the only one. Everything was just reduced to one dimension. Where is the depth, the concept of depth? It looks simple now, but till the Middle Ages they were thinking that this line was a straight line (Gestures to the horizon) that this was just a disc. Now we see very well that it is a sphere, we cannot mistake it. Even if we watch somebody disappearing over the horizon, within a few kilometers already he disappears. But we see that he comes back, it means that he did not fall down. This is something that is taken for granted just in the last 200 years. Now our vision is one vision. See the sphere of the planet? Me, I see the sphere of the planet, just like it is, very easy. Just watch the moon, you don’t see that it is a disc, come on, even the shadow on it is really a curved shadow, and it’s spherical. Its good news for us that we understand now, only now, not before; but now we understand that the different dimensions – they are there. Now we can really see and explore.

Einstein had said that there are 256 realities happening at the same time  and that we will discover them.

He was thinking this through Physics, automatically you reach there. But in any science you can reach this point. Even in art, you reach this point. You feel it, without the information through Physics, already you reach.

As an artist, did you teach yourself, or were you trained? Has creativity always come naturally to you?

I was painting, I was doing something, creating something, always. And then I stopped using the brush for painting or for colouring. Apart from that, actually for me, there is no separation between brush and clay and stone. There is no separation, everything goes together. Here is a moment of painting, and there is moment of doing something else. You need to create this, and then on that you can even paint, you know. They are passages – there is painting, there is building, there is carving, the creating depends on the material that you are using. If you carve a crystal, you think to put a crystal, you think to put a certain colour of metal around - already you are into colour without using a brush. Combining the colour of the stones together, or fusing metals, or creating shapes using certain colours in the metals, already you go into painting. When I am working with mud… first of all, I like the colour of mud, and depending on the colour of what I am carving or modeling, which colour is coming to me automatically. That gives me the condition so that I can do this, or that, or its coming out this, and I can choose… I can know what I have to do, just because the colour is there – it is inspiring me, automatically. The blue is inspiring how the blue can inspire, the red… I carve a lot of crystals, I have experience in carving crystals and working with crystals. I mean, its materials, its not… (Laughs) And so you learn – doing things, you learn. You learn because each material has its properties, its hardness, and this and that, and you learn. The more you do, the more you use that material, the more you know about that material – how you can use only that material and not another. So this becomes a big thing; there are branches, and then you can go completely into specialized things because the material wants that.

And what I was saying before, that I was using the brush, painting with the brush, mixing colours with the brush, and then I stopped. I reached where I reached in that moment with the brush and then I stopped to paint. I was working only with clay or other materials. I touched the brush one time after two years, or even three years, and you know, I started from the point that I left three years ago. I had to go back to take some things and it was not possible for me three years after. I needed a little time to start to mix again in the way that I used to, to come to the point where I left and to continue. Ce, I want to tell you what that means. You need to do, otherwise you stop exactly there.

Do you feel when you come back to it after a couple of years that it has gone deeper? Is it different?

You mean the last time compared to the time before. Yeah, let’s say we know that we live in the moment. We have to always be conscious of this. Otherwise we can lose ourselves into an imaginary world. It is not an imaginary world. The world does not exist, it’s just not imaginary. Imaginary is just a conditioning. Nothing is really, really existing. It is just very relative. (Breaks into laughter)

Do you predetermine meaning in your work? What is your vision?

My vision is…  What comes is really the thing that must be. To ‘let’s see what comes’ is very difficult, because the mind is much faster than you somehow. When it catches you, this is the point when it’s better to do nothing because it’s a lost point. It means it’s a moment you don’t have the feeling to do, because the moment is really decided. I can translate it into one word – feeling.  The meaning is exactly the meaning of the now. It does not belong to you, because the now is the now. That’s why you can create and you can not create, in the same action that you are doing. Its not that you can always create, it’s just that you go for it. But going for it does not mean that you are doing creation. It’s just that you are going for it because you like it, because it’s your history, and you go for it. And in your work, you know how to be in this wave. But it does not belong to you. It’s all of your life coming into this question of the need of the moment. You open yourself to the whole, you contact the beginning, the beginning of life. You contact really yourself deep, deep. And you need to let the hands go, because only like that they can… (Laughs)…know. This is really incredible, it’s really practical, it’s becoming practical in working, you know. You need this state of mind, and then for sure in that state of mind the feeling is there, everything is there… It’s made for it, that you can work, that you can… But in all that, there is also ‘not work’. There is the opposite inside. Its not that okay, you are the artist. You are the artist only when you are working.

How do you put meaning in your work?

I express myself because we are made to express ourselves, it’s not because I wanted to express myself – and everything belongs to that. We exist, and we express ourselves. Everyone is expressing themselves doing something, for everyone there is the particular way that belongs to your connection to life, and through that… You can find incredible people everywhere, in many situations, all groups of people – this is the story also. We are open because we don’t know where it is… (Laughs)…everything is. It’s because of ourselves that we cannot see anything else. We need to be open to the fact that everything has value, we have to give value to everything. You don’t know where it is, but you know that it’s there. Then what do you do? You are not looking in between people; you don’t need to, because you know already that inside each one is something incredible. Don’t think that it’s only this or only that – it’s in everything. We cannot make discrimination on the basis of simply that. There is no discrimination, we are the same. We are one. I cannot decide, I cannot think that everything I’m doing has to have a meaning. The meaning is already in the society where I am, where I live, in which way I am, really. And then what’s coming is really out of me. I let go a little bit, I am not involved in it, because I know that something is coming only if I’m really doing something. And I’m very sorry… (Laughs) …actually I would like that things are just known. You find inner energy, in that meaning you can understand, because you have the energy to do. And in the moment that you are, then you are doing. You can only do certain things if you are lucky, then you can realize them. Sometimes there is the potential, but you cannot do it… And this is really the one point which is very important because many people die before, I mean, many artists that died at 30 years old, or 20 years old,  just worked for 2-3 years. Okay, there are other artists like Dali; he really worked, no?  Picasso was working  hundreds of years, I mean, it’s a long time… (Laughs)

Really prolific…

You understand. They were so busy, like Michelangelo. You see Michelangelo, my God, he was working till 90 years old and more… This is what made Michelangelo… to have this possibility, also. That’s why if an artist has the possibility to do work, normally it must be had. This is the sensibility of the moment to understand that it belongs to the human being; it’s a process that is not easy, after all it’s the creative process, which can help 1000 years more of maintaining something culturally, or like Michelangelo, you know, he’s the proof. If he hadn’t been there, we would still be really in the Middle Ages… (Laughter)

Yeah,  he was the Renaissance Revolution…

Yes, he was lucky because he entered in something that was giving… people were giving him the possibility to create, because they understood that it’s for us, it’s not for him. And this is in the way how you help artists, artists in general. All the artists, they are most of them in this problem.

Business…

Business and also surviving; I know many friends of mine that were really very enthusiastic about their work when they were young. Now they do completely different work, because society gets in the way of your sensibility… Society is skinning you, you know, its skinning you. Its difficult to maintain – makes no sense.

Internet and Art – as an artist, how do you see this medium?

The difference between man and anything else on this planet is just because we use tools and nobody else uses tools. We know that the first tool, the stone, was broken in a way to be sharp enough to use for animal skins or whatever, for the need of the moment. We started with that, but you see very well that now nobody is making this tool anymore because we don’t need it anymore, we have improved. Now we use metals, we have other tools – the internet is a tool. It’s a tool of the now, its one tool of the now; I could also use it as television. Its in the music, you see, now with techno, the sound itself really got a boost, its incredible how much sound is there, we never had this possibility before, how you can manipulate each sound and do things. Now the music does not belong to, I don’t know how many instruments – tools. It’s the same word, its just tools for the sound.  Some people don’t like the idea because they are still stuck, they want to always listen to the same thing (Laughs) and okay, it’s no problem. Me, I like to listen to what was nice from before also, but it’s past. I see it like this, I can say this – this is past, I accept this very well. I like the Egyptian Pyramids so much, but it’s the past, you know. Now, if you imagine that everyone, because now everyone is a king, now everyone should make a pyramid for only to die. I mean, you know, it’s not possible. It was possible for them, they were few. Now all the deserts of this world would be full of pyramids. (Laughs) It’s really interesting when you watch how we are now, its incredible. When we read something from before, if you read some poetry from, I don’t know when, ”Oh, your legs, like the legs of the giraffe….” (Laughter) Ce, now if you say this to some girl she will look at you like you are, really, you know…

She’ll slap you… Also it depends on what part of the world you are in, because in Africa if you are big – they will love you, and if you are not – they will not love you.  It depends where you are, or like you were saying which time period you are living in…

Yes, yes, in which time you are. And this time is always there because you, so intelligent you, if there is a possibility that you are on an island, and you don’t contact anybody, and you have only what you have there, you will be the same like your ancestors 10,000 years ago. You will act the same and you will think the same, it’s incredible. Why? Because these guys and us, in brain content – we are the same. Okay, we memorize, we exercise, and we keep in memory what we are doing, because without memory it was not possible for anything to exist here-now. If I didn’t learn Newton’s formula in school,  which can be passed on to the next one, I cannot be a Physicist of now. Its just because of memory, otherwise I don’t have the time to recreate all the experiences again that made us reach to this point. We have the same brain content, our ancestors and us, our species; it’s not that now we know more because our brain is more… No, no, no, no, it’s the same. Then tomorrow, if nobody teaches you something, you will forget everything, you can really fall into the Dark Ages seriously. Nobody is thinking about this – that how can a certain mind that was existing thousands of years ago, exist now? It’s incredible, no? And it’s a very serious story, because that mind is acting with the tools of now. They don’t have a stone in the hand – every mind can use the tools that are here on this planet now. It’s not a question of society or system, its question of each person has this mind.

Its like you were saying, it’s the conflict and the fusion, because it’s different Ages at the same time…

We are creative, and we exist on the planet doing creative things in this moment. We start from what we have now, and we go on. For example with the laws that society has now, we have reached till this point where we are. But it’s possible also to have other laws, we see in history over the years, always that laws have changed. They make other laws, they make them more particular, and society is becoming more and more sophisticated, before it was a very simple society. It means that many mistakes done by people were not so dangerous compared to the society that we live in now.

We are on the point now, especially after the 2^nd world war that we have started to consider that the world is one, everybody is connected with somebody else, and then it started to become more and more a planetary affair, more than separate nations. The nation now is nothing if it’s not in the organization of the world. At this point, it’s not enough to be just a nation; because you need to import, to export, you have materials to sell. And now there is a global law which has a limit, because each law has a limit. And the limit is in what is really happening in the world - the limit of the law itself. Because if there is a law that if you kill somebody, you go in prison. Automatically, the prisons are full of people that have killed somebody. Its not that the law stops somebody to kill, you understand? If you make more restrictions, another law, automatically you will have the prison full again, by the law that restricts that. You create the people who afterwards occupy this prison. Society is creating this automatically, no? Then you can think about it and say, okay, but this law is a law that is creating the killer. The law against the killing is creating the killer, the law against stealing is creating the robber. Automatically, each law that they make is to create something as compared to the law. Then once this law is there, there will be the guy who is in the prison for doing that. That means that we are really in a mess. What I want to say is it’s a world where human beings are very much into the revenge trip of the child… still. It means that we have not reached the point of really, really being a society – we are still wild. Each one of us is still a wild animal, controlled by the law. Otherwise if the law wasn’t there, it would really be chaos. But now because this law is there, it’s filling all the prisons. But it means that really if we don’t have the control of somebody, we are not free enough to know that we don’t have to kill, we are not free enough to know that we don’t have to steal. This freedom inside, in this mind, on this planet, is in a very few people that exist, that is, the people of the present. All the rest are still living in the past, using the power for corruption, it means you are still in the past but you use the tools of the present for your personal story. You imagine how much the human being is still a wild animal, you cannot control. If there is a blackout in a city for 2-3 days, it’s finished. All the shops are looted, try to understand, the wild in us is coming out. In the moment that I see a girl coming in the dark, and we are two-three, we go to rape, automatically. You imagine, even if they put the law, it shows me that really we are animals; but wild, wild animals completely.

So, evolution hasn’t happened yet…

Yeah, because each one of us is following, I don’t know what belief. They think that now through this I will be saved, I will save my soul, or I will reach Nirvana, or whatever.

What has been the biggest challenge in your work?

I only hope that I will have the possibility to work. I have really to struggle to be in the moment, to be in this state of mind, you know, I have to work for it. When I am in that point of creation, it means really that I was fighting to reach this point. Not fighting in the sense like fighting somebody, but trying to really enter into this possibility. Then it’s always a challenge somehow, it’s not easy. It means if you enter in a system how they want, for example, a painter should do exhibitions here and there if he wants to be a painter. You must follow certain rules to do something. If you don’t follow the rules, you are somehow an outsider, and you will be recognized only after death, you understand, you risk going into this category of people. That’s why if it’s possible that you work, that means it’s a good point. I am very happy for that, you know (Laughs)

That’s the joy in your life…

Yes, the joy is because, you know, the personal life of each one goes incredibly up and down, especially if you are in this story, it becomes more complicated. Otherwise, what do you do? Okay, you are in some city, but I don’t find the reason, no? Reason is there everywhere in the world where it’s possible that somebody can do something. All I want to say is – don’t be so complicated, trust it, give. There must be a possibility. It’s a kind of operation of sensibilisation, how do you say?

Sensitisation, sensitivity… Isn’t sensitivity, sensibility in Italian?

Sensibilisation, it means working to grow in sensibility. To have the sensibility of becoming a human being, become more fine.  Then many, many things drop, this jealousy and everything, it’s because we are rough, no? And we need to refine ourselves a little bit. This is what Art is for actually. Because it comes from the ambient, and it gives to the ambient; from a lower level of human being to a higher level of human being. Art is very important for people in society because it gives this higher relation with people, it does not remain a very basic, rough relationship. Many things will disappear by themselves like violence, automatically. Not everybody is like that guy who was passing by and he got a moment of inspiration – Art is made for this. That is why people go to the museums; it’s not only to look . Also mathematics became more evolved, it became higher mathematics – this is the point. The challenge is this actually – be sensible. (Laughs) We open up ourselves – this is it. Open up ourselves, no fear, nothing.

When we came to India in the beginning, most of the people were like: you are you, and they are the others; the tribe is the tribe, this concept of tribal, that somebody else is a foreigner. How the world is now, this mind cannot be, you understand, it cannot be. We are one on this planet, completely, here. This planet belongs to us, each one follows what he wants. And you and you, you are the same. Only you decide to be this, and he decided to be that. But there is no difference. We are one on this planet; we work for us, for the planet. Now soon all the ice will melt, the planet will be… the tsunami goes anywhere, it does not look what place is this. We have to face all this together, no? All this is now the planet’s story, it’s no more this nation and that nation. Me, I belong to the world, I don’t belong to one nation. I don’t really feel I belong to Italy, because when I close my eyes, I cannot see Italy. I mean, its there, but where?

You are a multi-dimensional artist, from the Shiva sculpture to… Would you like to talk about your different projects, or your art?

Its not only one project, it is your life itself. This is the project of your life; there are not two, three, four projects. Dimensions there can be, even thousands… (Laughs) This is the project – to maintain the sense of creating. It’s not the exhibition of somebody in some gallery, that is only for business -  I don’t give value to that. There can be, but I don’t give value to that, I never believed in that, actually. I never thought that is art, you know. Trying to work, and maintaining this, that this feeling is there – that’s all.  All the rest comes together in the next project, which can be anywhere on this planet. Its there already, already there are projects, but they are closed in a box, in the sense, who knows that what we are creating is something that can have the impact, or can have the message, and only then you create… Much of my work got lost, and much of my work, I saw, remained unfinished. I started many projects that are just projects, but no realization happened. I don’t speak only for me, I know that for many people it’s like this also, especially creative people. They think a lot of artists are not under control, and so lets throw this away, and because we need to maintain the art, so what do we do? So we fix that art now is this – its already a society story, it does not belong anymore to art. Much of it goes afterwards into parallel branches that can be in fashion, or architecture, or interior decoration, or exterior decoration, or landscaping. It can go into anything, it is parallel, goes into different things. We see very well with Picasso, he took African art… Okay, now, if I can go in one tribe, where I see all this art full on, I would go crazy, you know. Picasso took this and he put it in his art, and sometimes it made it more horrible because there was no meaning why he was doing this. At least with the tribe, there was meaning around the art, on the clay surface with the white or relief of mud. And then Picasso took it, and we discovered African art through him, through Picasso, somehow.

Ah, really?

Yes, because otherwise the concept till the end of the century was this, that these are primitive people. The watching of certain things is of the new mind. When the Spanish arrived in South America, all that was there from the Incas and Mayans, all this incredible work – they fused everything, they melted it down. What they have now, is just because by mistake it remained buried under ground, and then they found these through archaeological expeditions  Otherwise all that they were robbing in that moment was becoming just a piece of cold gold.

It’s strange how they always come and destroy beautiful art, like Khajuraho, and now the Bamiyan Buddhas…

That’s why I say, it’s now that we start to open the mind to others. But not all the time, because much of the time, still it’s in the old, trying to still maintain the old story. Like how much an issue there was in America about Barack Obama being white or black or… Try to imagine, for a long time in America, half of the Americans are black, and still you have issues like this, stories like this, whether he is white or not… This is the Middle Ages, and it is the mind of the people. Try to understand, to think about it, that the colour of the skin can make the difference…for me its really incredible, it’s too much. (Laughs) That’s what I was saying, take care that we are wild animals. I mean, be aware of it, that’s what I have to say  (Laughs)

At least you should be aware…

Kazo! Be aware of it, how easy it is for you is to go into jealousy, to flip out when you see your wife… and you can go to kill, its easy. You can be the top doctor in some hospital, its not important who you are, try to understand, this is sensibility. The sensibility about everything, reaching one point and evolving into a higher man, a higher level. This does not belong to religion, it doesn’t belong to anything. And now it’s clear because we know about time, more than before. It’s very easy to go out. It’s very clear, and people can understand. That’s why now we have this mass movement of people, before this kind of thing did not exist, the pattern of the now, this thing of the now, before it was not possible to be. And many people, we are enjoying the moment.

As an artist, how do you promote yourself? How do people get to hear about you?

I don’t know nothing about it, I don’t know how… Okay, for the now, I am here.

How do people get to hear about you?

Its like I was saying before, we belong to a moment and things happen in the moment. And automatically like me, there are others. I mean, we live in contact with the present time vision. If somebody is feeling that he’s living really in the present, he’s there with us. Because you can see, its here and now, it means that somebody must be there, to be now, to be here. Then it means that you are not alone on an island, you are on this planet, you don’t need to know somebody else, its enough that you know that there are people of the present occupying the space of the present, because each time is a space, because its connected  –  space and time. There is actually one entity that is space-time, there is no space, there is no time. It’s this entity – space-time. The space of the present is occupied only by people living in the present. All the rest does not exist, because it does not occupy the space, it exists in another space. Then if I go in the 11th century, I will see the people who are occupying the 11th century space. The space on this planet is compared to time. Each one has the space of the time that he’s living in. It’s not only a question about time, because you see, we finally come to understand why time is there, and its relation also with space.

What do you love most about your work?

I love the part that when I do something, I lose myself on the way. Then when I am in the point that really there is full confusion there, there is a kind of ecstasy there. You are in the chaos, then you are completely lost. From that moment you start to come out of it, you come out of this chaos that you were creating. So, in the creation the chaos is there. This is very connected – creation and chaos. When you are in chaos, you are already half-way (Laughs) This is what I know. And then from that chaos, I come out slowly, slowly, I come out till one point that I can say, okay, something has come out. I love this, I love this ‘losing yourself’ in this. I know myself since I was very small that I was working, I recognized the sensation…

That space…

Exactly, for that actually I have to say I sacrificed, it’s not to say, but I sacrificed much for that to be…

What’s your story with India, how did she find you?

Traveling is expanding, one of the ways that you expand your memory. Just being in a place like India, it was coming in a flash where even the smell reminds me. In India they have a civilization; it means already they know first of all how to wash themselves, how to take care of themselves, just the basic things like cleaning the teeth, and all this. In Europe only just now all this is coming, you understand, it didn’t exist before. Who was washing teeth in their life, somewhere in England, for example, for thousands of years, or somewhere in France…who? Nobody. You were coming after a certain age with green teeth. This cleaning was not existing, the sense of cleaning – this came later with civilization. In India, you can see in the real things how civilization really started here, and after that spread; in the sense of knowledge of things, how to take care of your self, basics of medicine, how to survive. I mean, there was nothing anywhere. You see how people here are maintaining the simple life in nature,  how they can have the possibility to be in nature. It’s an old civilization, and we don’t have this civilization, you know. Before in Europe,  people were dying from epidemics every 10 years, the last epidemic was very, very strong – killed half of Europe in just the last century, half of Europe disappeared. I mean, even the concept of going to the toilet – the toilet was something just there, and then throwing it out on the road, not even looking if someone is down there.

Yeah?

Yes, yes, yes. They were throwing their shit just on the road, try to understand. If somebody was there just under – boom. There was no concept, and automatically it was full of epidemics and disease. It was really a problem, the cities full polluted.  And then slowly, slowly they started to do the whole story.

And apart from that, you see that religion started in India. Not possible to be anywhere else. Everywhere else was only shamanism and tribal belief. Religion started to be religion for the first time in India. And religion, what is it? It is human being that started to evolve, that is really the first stage of religion – to be human. Before that religion was really, completely, animal, cannibal, there was no love between people. Then started to come religion – to give love.

What’s your story with India…?

Yes, when I was around 16, India was in fashion with the new generation of students, first time in Europe, because we were the first students, or children of the new era. Before this didn’t exist, my father was not obliged to go to school, only the rich went to school, it was not for everybody. All the rest were workers, working hard, without knowing how to read and write. And then with the 2^nd world war, with the Republic, everybody had to go to school. In the 60’s mass schooling started for everybody, it became obligatory to go to school. Then automatically, we were the first generation of students, everybody… (Laughs) Ce, I must say, we were all of us students, no? It was something that you started to read, you started to know, you started to contact other people. Before this, it was not possible. You contacted only your neighbour, where you are working. And then many people contacted each other, and the information was spreading already, and we were thirsty for information, because we didn’t know anything, because we didn’t how know to read or write. This mass schooling was creating everything, it opened the mind. Imagine, when I was like in the second year or third year of schooling, 8-10 years old, my professor used to say, ”Ah, in India, they are starving because they refuse to eat the cows which are plenty.” For them, it really was something for laughing, because they didn’t understand that in India why they are starving, having so many cows to eat… (Laughs) Ce, my professor, capito?   What I want to say, a new thing, a thing that never was before, was happening. Nothing was routine, everything was for the first time. Really, in the way how we are together, in the way how we act, which relations we have in between ourselves, you know, start to share things, breaking certain taboo about this and that… And slowly, slowly we came out of it. Society before was really blind. In the school, we started for the first time to fight against professors who were beating  children, before there were the rules of the old school mentality, they used to beat students. To beat children in school was normal, punishing them, you know.

Somehow with children or somebody who is more vulnerable, people tend to crush them more… its strange.

Incredible, it’s incredible. But we did this, we did the change, we fought for it, you understand? It was changed completely. Now in the schools, there are groups of students who have the right themselves to talk about how is the story of the school, now they have power – the students. It changed, but we started all that, this I want to say. It was not like this before, many things were for the first time. That’s why I am very wild in work, you know, I am very wild. I discovered myself many systems for work, to use materials that before were not existing. In the way I use the marble, nobody was using the marble like this before, I find this for myself, and you don’t learn this in school.

Interview of Jungle, The Artist and Visionary

by Kamakshi

It is possible to be a rebel without being enlightened. It is also possible to be enlightened without being a rebel. But both will be half-hearted; something will be missing, something which is very essential. It will be almost like a corpse – the soul is missing.

A rebel who is not enlightened is living in blindness, unconsciousness, darkness. He does not know what is right and what is not right – he has no clarity of vision. He cannot open up other people’s hearts for the birth of a new humanity – he himself is not born yet. His rebelliousness is nothing but a kind of thinking in his mind.

He is a revolutionary thinker, he is a philosopher, but he does not know exactly what will end this night, and how we are going to bring the dawn; how the sun will rise, how the birds will sing again and the flowers will open. But he can dream, he can think.

In the past there have been many philosophers who have been accepted as rebels, great rebels, but nothing has come out of them except some beautiful fragments of thoughts – unconnected, unscientific, non-pragmatic, impossible to be transformed into reality.

You must have heard the definition of a philosopher: a blind man, on a dark night, in an unlit house, searching for a black cat which is not there. But the trouble does not end here – there are many who have found it! They gave descriptions of the black cat, and because nobody else has seen it, you cannot refute them either. They don’t have any evidence – but neither have you! So whatever these blind philosophers go on saying is accepted without being refuted.

It is not refuted on other accounts either – because the establishment is not worried about these rebels and their rebellious thinking. They know perfectly well that their thoughts are nothing but soap bubbles; in their deep sleep, they have been chattering.

A rebel who is not enlightened is a rebel who is blind – not only blind, but also drunk – and his rebelliousness is a kind of reaction. That is the original meaning of the word `rebel’ – fighting against something, fighting back. He can see that something is wrong, something has to be destroyed. His life is not free, so there must be chains on his feet, handcuffs on his hands, and they must be broken; he has to free himself. But these are all assumptions.

One thing is certain: he knows misery, he knows suffering. He knows that his humanity has been reduced to almost the same level as animals; that his pride has been destroyed, his dignity has been completely erased. He is aware at least of what has been taken away from him and he starts fighting against it. His rebelliousness is a reaction, negative. It is fighting against something, not fighting for something.

I would like to add to the meaning of `rebel’ a positive side too, which is not there in the dictionaries. The dictionaries are all, without exception, giving only one meaning: fighting back, fighting against. But what is the use of fighting back and fighting against, if you don’t have a clear perception – for what? If you don’t have a vision of the future, and a better future with more rejoicing, then there is no point in unnecessarily fighting. But the rebel who is not enlightened will remain negative in his approach; hence he will remain half.

The enlightened man who is not a rebel is, in the same way, also half. He knows what has to be achieved, he knows the potential of man, he knows the faraway distant glories possible to humanity. But he is not ready to fight against the existing society, the existing slavery, all the obstacles and hindrances that are between the future and the present, between the old man and the new man. This kind of enlightened man has existed, and he was worshipped – worshipped by the old people, traditional and orthodox, conventional and rooted in the ancient heritage.

This enlightened man has a vision of a better future, of a better man. But he has not the guts to fight for it – to fight against the traditional, conventional structure of society and the old mind, which is conditioned and rotten – because he lives on their charity, he lives on their respect, honor and worship. He is not courageous enough to renounce all the respectability that they are bestowing upon him; to forget being called a saint and a sage by the rotten old past. He cannot just be a nobody, condemned, perhaps crucified, but fighting against what is wrong, fighting for that which is right and will be a blessing to all.

So both have been there: the unenlightened rebel and the wise man, enlightened but not rebellious. I want you to understand it very clearly that unless a man is both enlightened and rebellious simultaneously, he is not whole. He is incomplete, he is not entire; something is missing. He is not rich, not as rich as he could have been if there were nothing missing in him.

My conception of the enlightened man is that of a rebellious, totally rebellious man. To me rebelliousness and enlightenment have become almost a simultaneous phenomenon, a harmonious unity, an organic whole. Hence I say unto you that I am bringing into the world a new man – a new rebel and a new enlightened being both together in a single person, in each individual. This synthesis has become absolutely necessary.

The past has seen a Gautam Buddha, utterly enlightened but not rebellious. That’s why he was not crucified but worshipped, even by kings, emperors, learned people of his century. There was no fear in the establishment of those days that Gautam Buddha was a danger to them.

I have talked about Bakunin, Bukharin, Camus. All these are rebellious thinkers, but unenlightened. The society has not crucified them either. Society knows that their words are impotent, that they cannot ignite a wildfire in the hearts of humanity. People will read their books as entertainment; more than that is not possible as far as their writings are concerned. Hence, the society has not only tolerated them but respected them, rewarded them with great prizes.

My rebel will be not only a philosopher, he will be an experienced, awakened being.

His very presence will threaten all the establishments of the world.

His presence will be a challenge to all that enslaves man and destroys his spirit.

His presence will become a great fear in all those who are immensely powerful, but know perfectly well that their power depends on the exploitation of men, on keeping man retarded, on destroying man’s intelligence, on not allowing man to have his own individuality, his own original face.

Just a few rebellious enlightened people around the world and all the thrones of power will start shaking…

Osho – The Rebel

www.osho.com

Every child is born with an innate search for truth. It is not something learned or adopted later on in life. Truth simply means, “I am, but I do not know who I am.” And the question is natural – “I must know the reality of my being.” It is not a curiosity.

Man is capable by birth to inquire who he is. So it is not a question of learning, cultivation, education; you bring the quest with yourself. You are the quest.

Your society destroys you. It has very sophisticated ways and means to destroy your quest, to remove the question from your being, or at least cover it up. And the method it uses is this; before the child has even asked who he is, the answer is given. And any answer that has been given before the question has been asked is futile; it is going to be just a burden.

He is told that he is a soul, that he is a spirit, that he is not a body, that he is not material. Or, in communist countries, he is told that he is a body, just material, and that only in the old days, out of fear and ignorance, did people believe that they have souls – that that is just a superstition. But in both cases, the child is being given an answer for which he has not asked. And his mind is delicate, pure… and he trusts his mother, his father – there is no reason for him not to trust.

He starts a journey of belief, and belief kills the quest. He becomes more and more knowledgeable. Then education is there, religious education is there, and there is no end to collecting knowledge. But all this knowledge is futile – not only futile, but poisonous, because the first step has gone wrong. The question was not asked, and the answer has been implanted in his mind, and since then he has been collecting more and more answers. He has completely forgotten, that any answer that is not the finding of a question, is meaningless.

So the only quality of a seeker of truth is that he does not believe, that he is not a believer, that he is ready to be ignorant rather than to be knowledgeable, because ignorance is at least natural, simple, innocent. And out of ignorance there is a possibility, almost a certainty, that the question will arise, that the journey will begin. But through knowledge you are lost in a jungle of words, theories, doctrines, dogmas. And there are so many, and they are so contradictory to each other, that soon you will find yourself, more and more knowledgeable, more and more confused.

As far as I am concerned the basic quality of a seeker of truth is to cut himself away from all belief systems, from all borrowed knowledge – in other words, to have the courage to be ignorant rather than to have borrowed knowledge. Ignorance has a beauty; it is at least yours, authentic, sincere.

It has come with you. It is your blood, it is in your bones, it is your marrow.

Knowledgeability is ugly, absolute rubbish. It has been poured upon you by others, and you are carrying the load of it. And the load is such that it will not give you any opportunity to inquire on your own what truth is. Your collection of knowledge will answer immediately that this is truth.

If you are filled with The Holy Bible, then the question will be answered by The Holy Bible. If you are filled with the Vedas, then the question will come out of the Vedas. But it will come from some source outside yourself; it will not be your discovery. And that which is not your discovery is not yours.

Truth brings freedom because it is your discovery. It makes you fully into a man; otherwise you remain on the level of the animals; you are, but you don’t know who you are. The search for truth is really the search for the reality of your being.

Once you have entered your being, you have entered into the being of the whole, because we are different on the periphery but at the center we meet – we are one. You can draw many lines from the periphery of a circle towards the center; those lines on the periphery have a certain distance from each other. But as they come closer to the center, the distance goes on becoming less. And when they reach to the center the distance disappears.

At the center we are one.

At the periphery of existence we appear to be separate.

And to know the truth of your being is to know the truth of the whole.

There is just one quality, one courage – not to be afraid of being ignorant. On that point there can be no compromise, no cheap borrowed knowledge to decorate yourself with as a wise man. That’s enough! Just be pure and natural, and out of that purity, naturalness, ignorance, the quest is bound to born.

Every human being would be a seeker of truth if the society were not interfering with children.

The class of children is the most harmed, oppressed, exploited, distorted class of all classes – and the most helpless. And you are taking advantage of the helplessness of small children. But you are also not responsible. The same has been done to you. It is difficult to find out who was responsible in the beginning. But as long as we can look back, this has been the situation: every generation corrupts the new generation, and anybody who wants to prevent this corruption is condemned as corrupting the youth.

The Death of Socrates

Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth. and all that he was doing was the simple process of removing borrowed knowledge and helping his disciples to be themselves and then ‘to know thyself’. If anybody has served truth the most sincerely it was Socrates. But he was condemned by the court, by the law, by the people who were in power, for corruption, for corrupting young minds.

Why are they afraid? They know perfectly well that they have no foundation. So if anybody shows the young people that there knowledge is unfounded, that all their answers are bogus because they don’t even have questions, that they are only repeating things parrot – like, but they don’t have any understanding of what they are saying… then anybody who has a little intelligence will be able to understand it immediately.

Is this corruption of the youth?

To bring people to the quest of the the truth – is this corruption?

It seems it is the greatest crime in the world in which – unfortunately – we are living…

Osho: Beyond Psychology

www.osho.com

Meditation, needs no technique at all. But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation. So it has to be understood very clearly: meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness. Neither alertness is a technique, nor awareness is a technique.

But on the way to being alert, there are so many obstacles. For centuries man has been gathering those obstacles, they need to be removed. Meditation itself cannot remove them, certain techniques are needed to remove them. So the work of the techniques is just to prepare the ground, is just to prepare the way, the passage. The techniques in themselves are not meditation. If you stop at the technique, you have missed the point.

J. Krishnamurti was insisting his whole life that there is no technique for meditation. And the total result was not that millions of people attained to meditation; the total result was that millions of people became convinced that no technique is needed for meditation. But they forgot all about what they were going to do with the obstructions, the hindrances. So they remained intellectually convinced that no technique is needed. I have met many followers of J. Krishnamurti, very intimate ones, and I have asked them, “No technique is needed, I agree absolutely. But has meditation happened to you or to anyone else who has been listening to J. Krishnamurti?”

Although what he is saying is essentially true, he is saying only the positive side of the experience. There is a negative side also. And for that negative side all kinds of techniques are needed, are absolutely needed, because unless the ground is well prepared, and all the weeds and wild roots are taken away from the ground, you cannot grow roses and other beautiful flowers.

Is it possible to meditate without any technique?

It is not only possible, it is the only possibility. No technique is needed at all, as far as meditation is concerned. But what are you going to do with your mind? Your mind will create a thousand and one difficulties. Those techniques are needed to remove the mind from the way, to create a space in which the mind becomes quiet, silent, almost absent. Then meditation happens on its own accord. It is not a question of technique. You don’t have to do anything.

Meditation is something natural, something that is already hidden inside you and is trying to find its way to reach to the open sky, to the sun, to the air. But mind is surrounding it from all sides; all doors are closed, all windows are closed. The techniques are needed to open the windows, to open the doors. And immediately the whole sky is available to you, with all its stars, with all its beauty, with all its sunsets, with all its sunrises.

Meditation is simply awareness without any effort, an effortless alertness; it does not need any technique. But your mind is so full of thoughts, so full of dreams, so much of the past, so much of the future, it is not herenow, and awareness has to be herenow..

“These are extra strong pills, Mr. Cohen,” the doctor advised him. “Take one on Monday, skip Tuesday, one Wednesday, skip Thursday, and so on. I will come round next week to see you.”

When the doctor calls, he is met by a weeping Mrs. Cohen. “He’s dead,” she tells him.

“What!” said the doctor in surprise. “There was very little wrong with him. The pills should have cleared it up.”

“It was not the pills,” wailed Mrs. Cohen. “It was the skipping.”

Osho: The Rebel

www.osho.com

In the Middle Ages, Christianity came to face a danger.

There were thousands of women who were far wiser than the bishops and the cardinals and the pope.

They knew the art of transforming people’s lives.

The word `witch‘; was one of the most respected words, as respected as `mystic’ a wise man. It simply meant a wise woman, the parallel to a wise man.

Their whole philosophy was based on love and transformation of sexual energy, and a woman can do that more easily than a man. After all, she is a mother and she is always a mother.

The quality of motherliness is not something connected with age, it is part of womanhood.

And the transformation needs a very loving atmosphere, a very motherly transfer of energies.

To Christianity, it was a competitor. Christianity has nothing to offer in comparison to it, but Christianity was in power.

It was a man’s world up to then; and they decided to destroy all witches.

But how to destroy them? It was not a question of killing one woman but thousands of women. So a special court was created for enquiry, to find out who was a witch.

Any woman said by Christians to have had an influence on people and who people respected was caught and tortured, so much so, that she had to confess. They wouldn’t stop torturing her until she confessed that she was a witch.

And according to the Christian mind, to Christian theology, the meaning of witch was changed: a witch is one who is having a sexual
relationship with the devil.

You don’t hear any more of any devil having a relationship with any woman. Either the devil has become a Christian monk, a celibate, or… what has happened to the devil? Who was it that was having sexual relationships with thousands of women? And these women were mostly old women. It doesn’t seem to be rational.

When young and beautiful women were available, why should the devil go to the old, the very old women?

But to become a witch, it was a long training, a long discipline, a long experience. So by the time a woman was a witch – a wise woman – she was old; she had sacrificed everything to attain that wisdom, that alchemy.

They forced these poor old women into saying that they were having sexual intercourse with the devil. Many of them tried hard… but the torture was too much.

They tortured these women in many ugly ways, just for one thing: they should confess. The women continued to try to say that they had nothing to do with the devil, that there was nothing to confess. But nobody listened to them; they went on torturing them.

You can make anybody confess anything if you go on torturing her. A point comes when she feels it is better to confess rather than to unnecessarily suffer the same torture every day. And it would have continued for her whole life.

Once a woman confessed that she was a witch and was having a sexual relationship with the devil, her torture was stopped and then she was presented before a court, a special court made by the pope, and before the court she was to now confess. And once she confessed before the court, the court was able to punish her, because it is the greatest crime in the eyes of Christianity.

The only punishment was to be burned alive so that no other woman dared to be a witch again. On what authority was Christianity burning these women?

They destroyed thousands of women and completely removed a very significant part of humanity. And all the wisdom that those women contained – their books, their methods, their techniques of transforming man, transforming man’s energy….

They were carrying the older and more ancient tradition of the days when the world was pagan.

They were nature worshippers.

And for Catholicism that is the worst crime, because that means there is no need of a God, nature is enough. There is no need of a Jesus Christ as a savior, because nobody is drowning. And there is no need for the Catholic priests and their confessionals, because nature knows nothing as sin.

It is strange how blind humanity is. And yet these people go on speaking beautiful words.

But this is not new. This has been going on since the crucifixion of Jesus.

If that poor carpenter’s son had known that this is what was going to be the ultimate result of his teachings, Jews would not have been needed to crucify him; he would have committed suicide himself!.

For two thousand years Christianity has been killing people in the name of religion, in the name of God, in the name of Christ.

Osho: Transmission of the lamp

www.osho.com

There is the famous statement of an English philosopher:”Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I do not agree with him. My analysis is totally different. Everybody is full of knowledge, greed, anger, passion, but has no power. To be voilent you need to be powerful. To fulfill your greed you need to be powerful. To satisfy your passions you need to be powerful.

So when power happens in your hands, all your sleeping dogs start barking. Power becomes a nourishment to you, an opportunity. It is not that power corrupts, you are corrupted. Power only brings your corruption in to the open. You wanted to kill somebody, but you had not the power to kill; but if you have the power, you will kill.

It is not power that corrupts you, corruption you carry within yourself; power simply gives you the opportunity to do what ever you want to do.

Power in the hands of a man like Gautam Buddha will not corrupt; on the contrary it will help humanity to raise its consciousness. Power in the hands of Genghis Khan destroys people, rapes women, burns people alive. Whole villages are burnt, people are not allowed to get out. It is not power… this man Genghis Khan must have been carrying all these desires in him.

It is almost like when rain comes, differrent plants start growing; but different plants have different flowers. Whatever is hidden in your seeds, what ever is your potentiality, power gives you a chance, because most human beings are living so unconsciously that when they come to power all their unconscious instincts have a chance to be fulfilled. Then they don’t care whether it kills people, whether it poisons people…

We waste almost one third of life in educating our children. In that one third of life some time should be given to cleanse their unconscious; so by the time they graduate from their university, and they have some power somewhere – somebody will become a police commissionor, somebody will become a governor, somebody will become a prime minister – if they do not have anything in their unconscious that is poisonous, destructive, then power can not be misused. Who is going to misuse it? Power is neutral.

These people are not corrupted by power. These people are corrupted; power simply brings their corruption into action.

Power in itself is neutral, In a good mans hand it will be a blessing. In an unconscious mans hand it is going to be a curse.

For thousands of years we have condemned power, without thinking power has not to be condemned; people have to be cleaned of all the ugly instincts that are hiding within, because everybody is going to have some power or the other.
It does not have to be great power. You may be just sitting in a railway station selling tickets, but that to gives you power. You are standing at the window, and the man does not even look at you. He goes on turning his file, and you can see that he is not concerned with the file, he simply wants to show you your place. Even the peon sitting outside the collectors office behaves as if he is the president of the country, so it is not a question of where you are. Wherever you are , you will have some kind of power.

Even parents use power. Teachers use power, husbands use power, wives use power. It does not matter where you are.

If mankind comes to understand the deep psychological roots, and changes man’s unconscious so that there are no seeds, power can go on raining but there will be no flowers of corruption. Otherwise power is going to be misused always. And you can not take power from peoples hands; somebody must be a mother, somebody must be a father, somebody must be a teacher.

The only way is, to cleanse peoples unconscious with meditation, fill their inner being with light. It is only meditation that gives gives you a clean heart, which cannot be corrupted. Then power can never be misused, then power can be a blessing, it is going to be creative. Then you are going to do something to make life more lovable, more livable, to make existence a little more beautiful. But that great day has not yet arrived…

Osho: The Razors Edge

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One-pointedness, concentration and meditation are not related to each other at all. This is one of the confusions prevalent all over the world.

One-pointedness is another name for concentration, but meditation is just the opposite of concentration. But in most of the books, in most of the dictionaries, and by the so-called teachers, they are used as if they are synonymous.

Concentration simply means one-pointedness. It is something of the mind. Mind can be a chaos, a crowd. Mind can be many voices, many directions. Mind can be a crossroads. Ordinarily, that’s what mind is, a crowd.

But if the mind is a chaos, you cannot think rationally, you cannot think scientifically. To think rationally and scientifically, you have to be concentrated on the object of your study. Whatever the object is, the one thing necessary is that you are pouring your whole mental energy onto that object. Only with this much force is there a possibility to know the objective truth; hence, concentration is the method of all sciences.

But meditation is totally different. First, meditation is not of the mind. It is neither one-pointed mind nor many-pointed mind; it is simply not mind. Meditation is going beyond, beyond mind and its boundaries. They cannot be related; they are opposite to each other.

Concentration is mind and meditation is no-mind.

The West, particularly, has not known meditation. It has remained confined to concentration — hence all scientific progress, technology — but it has not known the inner science of silence, peace, of being a light unto oneself.

One-pointedness can reveal the secrets of the outside world. Meditation reveals the secrets of your own subjectivity. It can be said, concentration is objective and meditation is subjective. Concentration moves outwards; meditation moves inwards. Concentration is going far away from yourself. Meditation is coming home to your innermost center. Mind, reason, logic, all point towards the outer — to them, the inner does not exist at all.

But this is a fundamental law of the inner reality that nothing is ever accomplished in the inner world by a reasonable man. It is an irrational, or better to say suprarational approach — to know oneself you don’t need mind, you need utter silence. Mind is always concerned with some thing or many things. There are thoughts and thoughts, ripples upon ripples — the lake of the mind is never ripple-less.

Your inner being can be reflected only in a mirror without any ripples. No mind — absolute silence of all thoughts, absence of the mind completely — becomes the mirror without any ripples, without even a single fluttering of thought. And suddenly, the explosion: you have become aware for the first time of your own being.

Up to now, you have known things of the world; now you know the knower. That’s exactly what Socrates means when he says: Know thyself. Because without knowing thyself — I want to add to the Socratic advice — you cannot be yourself. Knowing thyself is a step to being thyself, and unless you are yourself, you can never feel at ease. You can never feel contented; you can never feel fulfilled; you can never feel at home in existence.

Some discomfort, some misery… you are not exactly aware what, but a constant feeling that something essential is missing; that you have everything and yet something which can make everything meaningful is absent. Your palace is full of all the treasures of the world but you are empty. Your kingdom is big but you are absent. This is the situation of the modern man; hence, the constant feeling of meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, angst.

Modern mind is the most troubled mind that has ever existed for the simple reason that man has come of age. A buffalo is not disturbed about the meaning of life — the grass is his meaning of life; more than that all is useless. The trees are not interested in the meaning of life; just a good shower and a rich soil and a beautiful sun and life is a tremendous joy. No tree is an atheist; no tree ever doubts. Except for man, doubt does not exist in existence. Except for man, nobody looks worried. Even donkeys are not worried. They look so relaxed, so philosophically at ease. They have no fear of death, no fear of the unknown, no concern for the tomorrow.

It is only man and his intelligence that has given him a very difficult life, a constant torture. You try to forget it in a thousand and one ways, but it goes on coming back again and again. And this will continue until your last breath unless you know something of meditation, unless you know how to turn inwards, how to have a look at your own interiority.

And suddenly, all meaninglessness disappears.

On a very high level, you are again as at ease as the trees. At a very high consciousness, you are as relaxed as the whole of existence. But your relaxation has a beauty to it — it is conscious, it is alert. It knows that it is. It knows that while the whole of existence is asleep, it is awake.

What is the point of a beautiful sunrise if you are asleep? What is the beauty of a rose if you are asleep? Mind is your sleep, concentrated or not. Meditation is your awakening. The moment you awake, sleep disappears and with it all the dreams, all the projections, all expectations, all desires. Suddenly you are in a state of desirelessness, non-ambition, unfathomable silence. And only in this silence, blossoms flower in your being. Only in this silence the lotuses open their petals.

Remember that any teacher who says to you that concentration is meditation is committing a great crime. Not knowing that he is misleading you, and misleading you on such a fundamental subject, he is far more dangerous than somebody who can kill you. He is killing you far more significantly and deeply. He is destroying your consciousness; he is destroying your very possibility to open the doors of all the mysteries that you are.

Albert Camus has one beautiful statement to remember: “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.” Naturally, when mind is not there, no-mind cannot be a rational concept. It is absurd. It cannot say anything reasonably — where it is, what it is, what it signifies. It can only indicate mystically — hence all the parables of the world. The mystics could not say in a logical way what they have experienced. They went around telling stories, parables, which can be understood on two levels: one of the mind and one of the no-mind.

That is the beauty of a parable. You can understand it just like any other story, but it was not meant to be just another story; it was meant to give you some hint, some hidden hint towards that for which mind is absolutely inadequate. I will give you a few examples.

A blind man is brought to Gautam Buddha. The blind man is not an ordinary man, he is a great logician. And his whole village is tired of his logic. They are very annoyed and irritated by the blind man, because he refuses to believe that light exists. And he requires of the whole village that if they say light exists, they have to give him proof: “I can touch things; let me touch your light. I can taste things; let me taste your light. I can smell things; at least let me smell your light. I can hear things; beat the light so I can hear the sound. Do something. These are the only four senses I have.”

Light is neither available to the nose nor to the ears; neither to the mouth, nor to the hands. Unless you have eyes, there is no way to prove that light exists.

Gautam Buddha said to the people, “You have brought him to a wrong man. You have all given all kinds of proofs, and you have not been successful. What can I do? Take him to my personal physician. He is just sitting behind me. He is the greatest physician of our time; perhaps he can cure the blind man’s eyes. He does not need any argument, he needs treatment. He does not need any evidence, logical proof about light; he simply needs eyes. Then there will not be any question or any doubt or any asking for evidence.”

He was given to the physician. It took six months for him to cure that man from his blindness. The day he saw light he cried and went from house to house in the village to offer an apology, “Forgive me. Although I was being rational and logical I had no idea that unless you have eyes, you cannot be given any proof that cannot be rejected by you, argued against.” Although the whole world knows that light exists, the whole world cannot make a single blind man convinced of it.

Your consciousness is not available to the mind. Your mind is not the right vehicle to know yourself. Unless you have a new eye — what in the East we have called the third eye, symbolically…. These two eyes open outwards. Just as a symbol, the third eye opens inwards. The two eyes are for the duality of the world, the one eye is for the singleness of your being.

As you start looking inwards, you are amazed: you were ignoring yourself, and that was the trouble. That was why you were in misery, anxiety, suffering. You were trying everything to remove the misery, but it was caused by your unawareness, by your unconsciousness, by your ignorance of your own being. That was the cause. And unless that cause is removed, you will never have a taste of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of immortality, of the divineness of existence.

Go beyond the mind — and the way beyond the mind is very simple — just become a watcher of the mind, because watching immediately separates you from the thing you watch. You are watching a movie; one thing is certain, you are not an actor in the movie. Watching the road and the crowd passing by, one thing is certain; you are standing by the side, you are not on the road in the crowd.

Whatever you watch, you are not.

The moment you start watching the mind, a tremendous experience happens — a recognition that you are not the mind. Just this small recognition that “I am not the mind” is the beginning of no-mind. You have transcended the crowd, the voices, the chaos of the mind; you have moved into the silences of the heart.

Deva Premal and Miten – Gayatri Mantra

Here is your home, your eternal being.

Here is your deathless, essential existence.

Knowing this has never been transcended by anything more blissful, more ecstatic.

You may have heard about Segal’s Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

Mind is not only two, it is many. A man with mind is not sure of anything. He is doubtful about everything; he is unsure about everything. And a life of doubt and unsureness is not a life; you don’t have any roots anywhere. And without roots you cannot have flowers, and you cannot become fruitful. Your life will remain barren, a desert where nothing grows…

Osho – The Invitation

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To be religious is an experience, just like love. It is an encounter with the totality of existence.

It is an oceanic experience, the dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean. You can say either the dewdrop has become the ocean, or you can say the ocean has become the dewdrop.

It is the greatest experience there is.

But to belong to a religion is not an experience, it is just a belief system in which you have been brought up. It is all borrowed.

And remember that truth cannot be borrowed. Either it is yours, or it is not there.

Religion, is not in the holy scriptures but in the holiness of existence.

It is a prayer without words. It is a song without sound. It is pure silence. And in that silence, existence speaks to you.

In that silence, you speak to existence, there is a dialogue, there is a transfer of energy.

But to be a part of an organized religion is to be not really alive, not really in search of truth, not in love with existence. It is a kind of death – although you go on breathing, you go on eating. But all your breathing and all your eating drive you only towards the graveyard. You don’t grow up, you only grow old.

The organized religions are all dead; the churches, the temples, the mosques, the synagogues… they are all graveyards of the past. And the sooner we convert them into museums the better, otherwise they are going to kill the whole of humanity, they have already killed too much in every man. They have crippled everybody, poisoned everybody; their destruction is uncountable.

The rebellious man cannot accept any of this idiocy. His religion is his intelligence.

His religion is his consciousness.

His religion is his awareness.

And out of his awareness, he starts living for the first time, and he knows that life is the only God there is - there is no other God.

The true religion has no name, it cannot have any name. Buddha lived it, Jesus lived it – but remember, Jesus was not a Christian and Buddha was not a Buddhist, he had never heard of the word.

The truly religious people have been simply religious, they have not been dogmatic…

It is strange – so strange that it is almost unbelievable – that there are three hundred religions in the world and there is no peace, no joy, no celebration, no holiness, no divineness anywhere – this is such an absurdity!

If truth is one, how can there be three hundred religions? If science, which is concerned with the objective truth is one, then religion is also one, because it is concerned with the subjective truth, the other side of the truth…

Osho: The Rebel

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The rebel by his very nature cannot belong to any existent categories; he is a new category. He introduces a new man into the world. He is a herald of a new dawn, a new beginning. No category of the past can contain him; all the categories that have existed up to now have proved either failures, or insufficient to change the whole of humanity.

The rebel is the seed for the transformation of all.

There have been great people in the world, but even the greatest of them are very small in comparison to the authentic rebel I am talking about, because they all, in some way or other, compromise with the establishment. And that’s where the rebel differs from them all.

They were wise, they were creative artists, they were musicians, dancers, all kinds of people, the past has produced many luminous figures; but something is missing in them. One basic thing missing is: they all lived in a compromise with the vested interests. None of them was total in his rebelliousness. Yes, partial rebels have existed, but a partial rebel is not enough. Man needs total rebels to change the destiny of mankind from going into a graveyard, to turn its direction towards the Garden of Eden.

The rebel will have to create a category for himself by his own living, by his own responses. He will become absolutely discontinuous with the past through his own creativity, his love and his own non-compromising approach. The rebel will not have any past, any history. He will have only the present and a vast future which is open, not dominated by the dead past, because there is no past for the rebel.

The rebel means absolute freedom, absolute love, absolute creativity. He is a totally new kind of man who has been dreamed of by a few people in the past, by a few poets, by a few philosophers, by a few mystics. But it has remained a dream, so much so, that people started calling these poets and mystics “utopians.”

The word `utopia’ means, in its roots, “that which never comes.” You can dream about it, but your dream is an exercise in utter futility; it is utopian, it is not going to come, ever. It is a hopeless hope. It is an opium to keep people dreaming and hallucinating, so that they can tolerate the suffering and misery in the present.

The rebel is not a dream, the rebel is a reality. He is not a utopia, he is an actual realization of man’s potential; he is a promise fulfilled, a dream realized. Naturally he cannot belong to any existent category. He will have to create his own category.

It will be created by the very fact that many, many intelligent people, youthful, alive, are ready to take the challenge of an unknown future. Slowly slowly, a category will form by itself.

There are barriers for the rebel-to-come. The most important barrier is that he has to go against the crowd, and the crowd has all the power. The rebel is very vulnerable, as vulnerable as a roseflower. You can destroy it very easily; you can crucify a rebel without any difficulty.

But I am now feeling a tremendous certainty that the rebel is going to be born, perhaps he is already born. It will just take people a little time to recognize him; he is so new, he does not fit in any category. Hence, some time gap is needed to create a category and to recognize him.

Why am I so certain? I am so certain because man has come to a crisis which he has never encountered before. He has to choose either for a new man or for committing global suicide, and I don’t think that people are going to choose global suicide. That is my guarantee, that is my hope that the new man is bound to arise.

The days of the old man are over. He has lived too long, almost posthumously. He should have been dead long ago, but he has been dragging his corpse. Now his time is finished. He himself has created the situation in which only the new man, the rebellious man, rebelling against all religions, governments, establishments and vested interests, can survive. He will rebel against all that has been keeping man blind, holding him a prisoner, forcing him to live in dark tunnels, never allowing him to know the beauties of life.

The old man has created such a situation, which was bound to happen; it was coming by and by…. Each war was becoming more and more dangerous.

Albert Einstein was asked, “Do you have something to say about the third world war?”

He said, “I am sorry. I cannot say anything about the third world war, but if you want to know about the fourth, I can say something.”

The man who had asked the question simply could not believe it. If he could not say anything about the third, what could he say about the fourth?

He asked him, unbelievingly, “Okay, what can you say about the fourth?”

And Albert Einstein said, “The fourth will never happen, that much can be said about the fourth! About the third, nothing can be said.”

All your great warriors, all your historical figures, all your so-called great men have brought death so close that now man has to choose. There is no other alternative than a new man. The old man has erased himself out of existence.

The rebel will have a new morality, not according to any commandments, but according to his consciousness. He will have a new religiousness; he will not belong to any religion, because that is absolutely stupid. Religiousness is a private and personal phenomenon. It is just like love, it cannot be organized. The moment you organize truth or love, you kill them. Organization functions almost like poison.

William Blake:1808

The new man will not be a Christian or a Hindu, a Mohammedan or a Buddhist. He will simply be religious. Religiousness will be taken not as a belief, but as a way of life. A graceful, beautiful, responsible way, a way full of consciousness and full of love, full of sharing and friendliness; and a way of creating one world without any boundaries.

No armies are needed, no weapons are needed, no nations are needed, no religions are needed. All that is needed is a little meditativeness, a little silence, a little love, a little more humanity… just a little more, and existence will become fragrant with something so totally unique and new that you will have to find a new category for it.

All those who are lovers of life are going to create the right atmosphere to welcome the rebellious spirit of man, because there is no other alternative.

My certainty about the rebel as the savior of man and this planet is absolute, categorically absolute. The rebel just has to be unafraid of public opinion, unafraid of the crowd, unafraid of masks, attitudes…

The masses are in the grip of the religious leaders, of the political leaders. And these people don’t want any change to happen because every change means a danger to the status quo, a danger to the establishment. Any change is going to bring other changes, and they will have to adjust to those changes. Who knows, are those adjustments going to be favorable to them, or unfavorable? Life for those leaders of the establishment is so comfortable and so luxurious it is better that everything remains the same.

But now the situation is totally different. The establishment itself has brought the situation of an ultimate change, either life or death. And the choice is such that I don’t think anybody is going to choose death.

If people choose life, they will have to choose life values. Then the old renunciation of religions will become out-of-date; saintliness will have to find new dimensions. Then poets and painters, singers and dancers will be the saints. Then meditators, the enlightened people, the more conscious and awakened people will be the sages.

Android Jones

We are coming close to a tremendous transformation, and we are going to see it in our own lives, something so rare and unique which has never happened before, and will never happen again.

You should feel fortunate, blessed, to see the great transformation of all the old values, of all the old ideals; to see the birth of new values, new ideals, new categories of honor and respectability.

The rebellious spirit is basically the experience of one’s own individuality, absolutely free from any kind of psychological slavery…

Osho: The Rebel

www.osho.com

Create fractals – www.podcollective.com

There is no need for any war, there is no need for any nations…

One thing is absolutely certain: The days of the politicians are over. They have done too well their job of being destructive, violent. Nothing is favorable to the politician; and as each day passes his death comes closer. He himself is responsible. He improved the weapons, which can bring death to the whole world, to such a point that there is no way to going back. Either there will be ultimate war — which means death to all and everything — or a total change of the whole structure in the human society. I am calling that change “meritocracy”.

One thing — we have to drop the idea that every man, just because he is twenty-one, is capable of choosing who is the right person to decide the fate of nations. Age cannot be a decisive factor. We have to change the decisive factor, that is changing the very foundation.

My suggestion is that only a person who is at least a matriculate, a high school graduate, will be able to vote.

The president should have at least two Ph.D.s and one honorary D.Litt. or LL.D; and the same for the vice-president because he can become president any day.

In this way mobocracy is destroyed.

Then just because your are twenty-one it does not mean you are capable of choosing the government. Choosing the government should be very skillful, intelligent job. Just by being twenty-one you may be able to reproduce children — it needs no skill, no education, biology sends you well prepared. But to choose the government, to choose people who are going to have all the powers over you and everybody, and who are going to decide the destiny of the country and the world, just to be twenty- one is certainly not enough . . . the way we have been choosing them is simply idiotic.

I would like all the universities — within each state — to call a convention of all the Vice chancellors and the eminent professors; of the eminent intelligentsia who may not be part of the university: painters, artists, poets, writers, novelists, dancers, actors, musicians. It would include all dimensions of talents, all kinds of people who have shown their caliber — excluding politicians completely.

All the Nobel Prize winners should be invited — excluding the politicians again, because within these past few years a few politicians have been given Nobel Prizes, and this has degraded the value the Nobel Prize.

So from each state a delegation should be chosen for the national convention, which goes into details of how the meritocracy can work.

From the national candidates there should be an international convention of all the universities of the world and the intelligentsia. This would be the first of its kind because never has whole intelligentsia of the world come together to decide the fate of humanity.

They should write the first constitution of the world. It will not be American, it will not be Indian, it will not be Chinese — it is going to be simply be constitution of the whole of humanity. There is no need for different kinds of laws. There is no need – all human beings need the same kind of laws.

And a world constitution will be a declaration that nations are no longer significant. They can exist as functional units but they are no longer independent powers. And if the whole intelligentsia of the world is behind this convention it will not be very difficult to convince the generals of the world to move away from the politicians.

And what power do politicians have? All the power that they have we have given to them. We can take it back. It is not their power, it is our power. We just have to find a way to take it back — because giving is very easy, taking is little difficult. They will not be so simple and innocent when you take the power back as they were when they were asking it from you. It is our power, but they will go on having it if the mob remains there to give it to them; the mob can be convinced about anything.

It is the function of the intelligentsia . . . I would like to say that now, if anything happens to humanity, the whole condemnation will go to the intelligentsia: “What were you doing? If those idiots were ready to kill humanity, what were you doing? You simply went on grumbling, being grumpy, but you did nothing else”.

And the time is running short. Once we decide that the voting power is not the birthright of every human being but is a right which you will have to earn by your intelligence . . . You have to see the distinction: Everybody is given the opportunity to earn it, there is equal opportunity for all to earn it, but it is nothing birth-given; you have to prove it.

Once we move the power from the mob into the hands of intelligent people, people who know what they are doing, we can create something beautiful.

If a man who has devoted his whole life to think about education and its problems, has done all that was possible to do to find out every detail, every fundamental of education, all the possible philosophies of education — if he becomes an education minister, there is a possibility that he will do something.

I suggest to shift completely from the mob to the chosen few.

I am not against the people. In fact, in the hands of these politicians, the people are against themselves. I am all for the people, and what I am saying can be said to be exactly what has been said about democracy: for the people, by the people, of the people — just “by the people”. I will have to change. This intelligentsia will be for the people, of the people. It will be serving the masses.

It is so simple a thing. You don’t elect a doctor, and just anybody can stand, because it is a birthright and people can vote . . . to persons fighting to be the doctor or to be the surgeon. What is wrong in it? The people choose for themselves: for the people, by the people, of the people. They choose one person — to be surgeon — because he speaks better, he looks good on the television and he makes great promises.

But he is not even a butcher, and he is going to become a surgeon! A butcher would have been better; at least he would known how to cut — but you don’t choose a surgeon by election.

How can you choose a president by election? How can choose a governor by election? For one post so many people are hankering, desiring. Those who are more sick with ambitiousness will fight the most, they will kill — they will do anything.

You are giving so much power to power-hungry people; with your own hands is you are helping them to hang you!

This is not democracy.

In name of democracy these people have been exploiting the masses.

So politicians and priests both have to be dropped out of their long, long-standing establishment, and a totally new kind of management has to be developed.

Just to make distinction I am calling my system “meritocracy.” But merit for what? The merit is to serve and share. And once you have decided to shift the power from the politicians to the intelligentsia, everything is possible — everything becomes simple.

Meritocracy is a whole program of transforming the structure of society, the structure of the government, the structure of education.

It is a difficult job, arduous but not impossible — particularly in such a situation when death is the only alternative.

OSHO

Osho – The Greatest Challenge:The Golden Future

Android Jones

The East and the West have gone so far away from each other, that there is always misunderstanding: neither the East understands the West, nor the West understands the East. But in the final reckoning the West is the loser.

For ten thousand years the East has chosen a path which is not of the mind – which is not intellectual, which is not rational, which is not logical, which is not scientific. And the West has chosen the opposite.

The West is still far away from reaching the final heights of rational flight. And perhaps it will never be able to reach the end, because its enquiry is about the objects outside you. There is an infinity of universe, and the deeper science goes, the more it finds that it knows nothing. Its knowledge only helps it to know, that much more is to be known, and there seems to be no end in view.

On the other hand, the East has reached its goal: it has attained to the ultimate consciousness. In a certain way, it has reached inner perfection. This creates new difficulties of misunderstanding, because the East speaks from the heights of final realization, and the West can understand only relative truths, which are changing every day.

They have also chosen to speak in different ways. The East speaks in poetic metaphors; the West speaks in terms of mathematics. The East speaks intuitively; the West, only intellectually.

It is one of the greatest problems to be solved – how East and West can come together. Their meeting is absolutely necessary; otherwise, whatever has been attained in the East, or in the West, will all disappear into nuclear smoke.

The West has never developed any meditation – it is poor in that way, very poor. It knows only prayer, which is not even a far away echo of meditation. Even the so called prophets and saviors and messiahs, have never been able to go beyond prayer – prayer is the last thing, because God is the ultimate goal.

Meditation is a revolution in religion. It simply drops God, without even arguing against it. It is not even worthy of that, because it is a hypothesis – unproved, unexperienced; it does not deserve to be considered.

I had a friend, Professor Wilson, who was teaching in a theological college in Jabalpur. He could not understand that there could be a religion, which has no God, which has no prayer.

The West, for the last four or five centuries, has not conceived religion is possible without God, without prayer. In fact it is only possible without them. They are the disturbances, obstructions on the way to religious revolution.

They are the enemies.

The devil has not done any wrong in the world – he does not exist. God also does not exist, but he has done immense harm. God has kept man’s mind focused on something outside, and when you are focused on the outside, you remain in the mind. Meditation cannot be focused outside; only mind has the capacity to be focused outside. Mind cannot be focused inside; only meditation can do that. So meditation and mind go diametrically opposite ways.

It is not without reason that people of meditation have called their path the path of no-mind. But with the mind being dropped, gods, all kinds of theologies, devils, heaven and hell and their details, the ideas of sin and virtue – they are all dropped, because they are all part of the mind. And the West remains mind – obsessed – as if you are only mind and nothing more, your existence consists of body-mind, and that’s all.

In the East for thousands of years, disciples have been sitting by the side of the master, just doing nothing. It looks strange to the Western mind: what is the point of sitting there? If you go to a Sufi gathering, the master is sitting in the middle, and all around his disciples are sitting silently – nothing is happening, the master is not even saying anything. hours pass…

But something transpires – they all feel a fulfilment. When they come out, they are radiant. The master has not done anything; neither have they done anything. They just fall in tune, because both were not doing anything, both were silent.

The East has to be understood in its own ways. If somebody tries to interpret it intellectually, he has missed the point from the very beginning…

Osho: The Path of the Mystic

www.osho.com

Luke Brown

In conversation with Fredo and Kamakshi

Kamakshi: How did you find Anjuna? Were you the first one that came here?

Eddie: I had a house before in ’63, ’64, ’65, at Colva beach. Anybody could stay, there was food there, you didn’t have to pay for the food, you didn’t have to work. If you wanted you could stay, if you didn’t want you didn’t have to… And then the house became Vince’s bar, it was right at the end of Colva beach. So I had to look for another place, there were no houses around there, so I couldn’t have a house like this where everybody could stay, you know. Jack and all these people said to me, “Eddie, Eddie, we have all stayed in your house last year, this year you can stay in all our houses.” We were then in Baga, I was staying at one house one day, another house the next day, and another next. That’s how I had met this Japanese girl who said, “I was in Anjuna beach, and it’s beautiful!” I said, “Are there any houses there?” “Oh yes, there’s houses,” she said. “Jack, I heard there are houses over there, go and see if you can find one,” I said. That night he came home with the key to a house near Jo Banana’s.

I was 40 already when I came here. I was born in ’24. All the freaks were 20 years old. laughs They thought I was enlightened because I was old. I thought, “Man, I’m just old. I’ve more experience than you, that’s all. I’m not enlightened.” I didn’t even know what enlightenment was. I said what the fuck is it anyhow… They tell me this and this and this; and I think some of it sounds like me, but I’m not sure. But a year later I found out that I was definitely not enlightened. laughs I used to dance to Indian music, by sitting down; I’d just move my arms. Then I’d dance to rock and roll standing up, and moving with the body and stuff. But one day my body started to move by itself. I couldn’t believe it! So much energy… I was making no effort. My arms are going around, and I’m looking around, “What’s going on here?” I didn’t know what the hell was going on. And then, my spine was moving like a snake. Wow… And then there was a light, in my room – a light! And I’m beginning to see the light. You don’t begin to see the light. The light is there, or its not there. Here it was – a light, man! A light like the sun – in my room. I didn’t close my eyes, because if I closed my eyes it was there, if I opened my eyes it was there.

Fredo: But everybody is, everything is made out of particles of light. So when there is light coming, all of a sudden the light comes through the wall, because even the colors and the whole vision, the whole perception is made out of light

Eddie: This light is inside you and outside you. So you can’t say inside me, outside me – its all the same. Man, this is the source of all life; this is where all life comes from. And if its in me, then it has to be in everybody else. So I’m no better than anybody, and nobody is better than me. We are all the same. Some people are closer to the light than other people, but that doesn’t matter, we are all the same. So from here, down here, until the right rib, I felt a rope, an invisible rope pulling me into the sun, and the sun is pulling me in like a fish. Now I can say, ”I’m not afraid to die.” I can say, “I’m not afraid of going insane”, but my mind is saying, “Man, if I go in there, I might not come out.” But its aaahh… the light is power, man, power; not bliss and this and that…its power! If I go in there, I might burn my brain out, I’ll become insane. Like you see a lot of insane people around ashrams, you know, they’ve blown their minds out. Then I used to think to myself, “Man, this is it, you know. This is my chance. But why does this happen to me now when my life is becoming interesting…” Pow! The light goes out, just like that. Life’s interesting, huh? laughs See, you’ve got to be finished with everything before you can get enlightened. You’ve got to be finished with love, you’ve got to be finished with girlfriends and boyfriends, you’ve got to be finished with family; you’ve got to be completely hopeless. And was I completely hopeless? Uhh…Well I didn’t have any hope in anything, because I didn’t believe in anything. See, I was older than all you guys, huh. So I felt like a dirty old man to have sex with 20 year old girls when I’m 40. So I decided, “Fuck the sex thing, you know. But the drugs, I put the drugs away. So I had nothing to hold me back. But when this thing happened, I was completely free to go. You see other things like love and family and this and that will keep you from getting enlightened. You will choose family, or you will choose love before you will choose enlightenment. Enlightenment means you have to die, physically. You have to die, and then some of you can come back. But you can’t decide that. If you die, you have no choice, either you get sent back, or you stay. So, I didn’t care. I had my chance, I blew it. I had an interest in being around, to see what was happening. And it didn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Its good enough, the way it is.

Kamakshi: What is enlightenment?

Eddie: Enlightenment is when you die… you have to be dead before you can get enlightened

Fredo: You come to the source…

Eddie: Yeah, you have nothing to tell you, you have no allegiance to anything or anybody. You are alone. That’s one thing I realized too, its scary in a way. You alone, in the whole fucking universe, you’re alone with the light. You can’t lie, you can’t say, “I’m not afraid” But you are… There’s no lying, there’s no way to get around it, it’s a moment of truth. Cannot fool the light, man, you can just fool yourself. You are the light, you are light, you are the light – everybody is the light. Only sometimes I feel separate, sometimes I feel – the light’s there, why can’t I join the light? To join the light, you have to be dead. Dead to all those things that people like.

Fredo: You are ready, you don’t need your body anymore…

Eddie: You don’t need anything. You don’t need anybody else, because every man, every woman, has an opposite sex inside them. You are not only man or woman – you are both. So when you join the light, the male meets the female – and they’re joined. They call this the marriage inside. You don’t need anyone outside yourself. Same with everybody, within both women and men. Ladies have male… if a woman doesn’t have any idea what maleness is, she is a very dangerous woman. If a man doesn’t have any idea of what a female is, he is nowhere. We all have some knowledge of what the other sex is.

Fredo: Basically we are like female energy and male energy at the same time.

Eddie: Yeah we are both, if we didn’t have both, we’d be monsters. If you were only male, you’d be a fucking monster. If you’d be only female, you’d be a female monster.

Kamakshi: Did you ever go to Koregaon Park, Poona, meet Osho?

Eddie: I was there for 3-4 months in ’76. Surati took me there. I was going to stay in Goa, and she said “Eddie, you don’t want to stay here. Come to my place, I have a nice place”

Fredo: Laxmi Vilas – I lived there also…

Eddie: Surati though wanted to take me to the ashram, I said I’m not going to the ashram. “Oh, you don’t have to go to the ashram…” So I stayed in Laxmi Vilas for about three months, four months. It was a good scene in those days; the whole place was full of freaks.

Kamakshi: And did you go to the ashram?

Eddie: No.

Kamakshi: Not attracted at all?

Eddie: I liked him, as a person. He knew what he was doing, you know. Yeah, yeah, I knew people who knew him in the very beginning when they used to go to Juhu beach and do this “Hoo, hoo…” and all this stuff.

Kamakshi: Dynamic meditation.

Eddie: Yeah, that was a good time because you could talk to him. You could talk to him as you could talk to me, as anybody, but then he became big, big, big. Then you couldn’t talk to him anymore.

Fredo: But it was very strong. In Poona it was very strong. In the beginning when I came there, I wasn’t really sure, you know. I said how could one man be like, like that, you know. It took me ten years to understand that he was actually very simple. Lot of people didn’t look at the simple side of it, you know.

Kamakshi: He did a huge experiment with people, consciousness… He was too ahead of his time; nobody could understand what he was talking about…

Fredo: He was on a different level, you know. Now whatever he said is actually normal.

Eddie: Oh yeah. He was a well read man. He knew everything, I used to see these blobs coming from Germany or someplace. And man, after a little bit staying there and beating each other up… laughter And – Rowr!

Kamakshi: Something came out…

Eddie: Yeah, yeah, something came out. No, they became something

Fredo: Encounter groups. People got into…

Eddie: They used to have encounter. Encounter, where you beat each other up.

Fredo: Sometimes people were heavy and they were fighting…

Eddie: Broken arms, everyday man! Ambulance was coming and taking people to the hospital. Broken legs, broken arms, and the toughest people were the girls, the women. You know if there was something they didn’t like, all of a sudden, they got into the other stuff. The guys are trying to be spiritual, “Come on baby lets…” And the girls are going… laughs Everything was reversed.

Fredo: It’s not like that anymore, Then it was very alive, the spirit was alive, people got into meditation; maybe let’s try that, you know. And people were into that, something new, you know, it was like a total difference.

Kamakshi: You used to run a kitchen where everybody was welcome to come and eat…

Eddie: Yeah, That house is where Jo Banana’s is now (well-known Anjuna restaurant). We used to go there to get our fruits and vegetables. In the morning we’d make fruit salad and some kind of cereal – wheat or something, and eat the two together. Late afternoon, we’d eat vegetables and rice, and sometimes I’d make sweet rice too. We were doing all the cooking, so we didn’t need restaurants or anything. We just did shopping, and I would cook, and then we would eat.

Fredo: Then you would send Jo out to get bananas…

Eddie: Yeah, that’s how we got his name! One morning Spotty Dick… Remember Spotty Dick? Anyway, he said, “I’m going to go get the fruits for the breakfast. I’m going to Jo Banana’s. That’s how he got the name – Jo Banana’s.

Fredo: You used to make food for a hundred people…

Eddie: Well 40, 50, 60…You never knew how many, but it didn’t matter. If too many people came, so we got less…

Kamakshi: You also started the flea market in Anjuna…

Eddie: In ’75.

Kamakshi: How did that come about?

Eddie: Some people came to me and said “Hey Eddie, how come there is no flea market here?” I said, “What’s a flea market?” laughter And they told me, so I went to see the boys at the house. I said, “Do you think we should have a flea market here?” They said, “Yeah that’s a good idea.” I said, ”Giuliano, Giuliano, make a sign – ‘Flea Market’. The next Lover’s day, what’s that called? Valentine’s Day, we had a flea market – that was the first one in ’75. There were some t-shirts, people were wearing them ‘Anjuna Flea Market 1975′

Kamakshi: So it started just like that…

Eddie: Yeah, just like that. Only freaks came to the first few flea markets, it wasn’t a regular thing. Then we’d make another one on some other auspicious day. People gave things away, or it was only free…it was like a party.

Fredo: And there were parties already? In that time parties had started?

Eddie: Yeah, yeah. Not on that scale, not on that big scale that we had later…Yeah, it was usually like dramas, and bongos, people playing guitars, people dancing around a big fire…

Fredo: And then ’76 came and it was like everybody was here. Big music scene…

Eddie: Oh yeah, it grew fast then.

Fredo: We had a stage on Anjuna beach in ’76-’77…

Eddie: That was before any Indian people came, there were no Indians making food in the flea market. No, nothing. There were only freaks.

Fredo: The chai shops…

Eddie: Maybe the one chai shop or something, some neighbour decided to make some tea…

Kamakshi: There’s something about Anjuna, isn’t it? It’s very intense. Some people say it’s the high iron content in the earth here. What is going on?

Eddie: Here? I don’t know what’s going on… laughs… whatever it is; it’s good – for me. I don’t know if it’s good for everybody, but for me its good. If I could think of a better place, I would go there. I can’t think of a better place. It’s not like it used to be, its not as free as it used to be…

Anjuna Beach Bums 1975 Goa

www.goagil.com

Fredo: But before there was no law, everything was…

Eddie: See that’s the thing. There’s no boss here, there’s nobody who says you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that. Man, its so free – you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to do anything unless you want to do it, you know. Nobody telling you have to brush the floor, you got to do this, you got to…aaaahh. That’s the good thing. And community… You know, if you get hurt or something, there are so many people here who will take care of you, they’ll go out of their way to take you to the hospital or whatever, you know. That’s great. That’s what’s missing in the West in many places, there’s no communal feeling; the neighbours, they don’t dig each other, nobody even knows who their neighbours are, nobody trusts their neighbours. And its nice to have some place where you can trust somebody, you know. And if you can’t trust them, okay, so you find out you were wrong. But so what, you know. There are so many other people around. That’s the communal feeling, that’s why people keep coming back. They want to get out of that living in a room, in a flat, with a lock on the door, blah, blah, blah.

Fredo: In the beginning when we came here, all the doors were open, you could go into any house, there were friends, there were no walls around the houses… No bars on the windows… You would come here and people would say hello to you. “Hello, what’s your name?” And then you were accepted. And then there was this big music scene starting also. And Eddie, he would come to every party, he comes early morning, dancing, and you are in the middle of the party… Everybody, lots of people were living in huts, the beaches were like a village of huts….

Eddie: Yeah, nobody was paying rent or anything like that…

Fredo: Nobody was paying rent, you just buy yourself some bamboo sticks, you had some guys building for you; they did it all for you with coconut rope and palm leaves, you know, everybody found himself a place. Not many people in the houses in the beginning. Vagator was also totally like that. It was like this in ’77 when I came. Everybody, lots of people were living in huts, we were in huts, the beaches were like a village of huts…

Eddie: When people started living in houses, it became a bourgeois scene. It became bourgeois.

Kamakshi: Also trance has flowered in Goa…that’s Anjuna again. It always attracts a lot of creative beautiful revolutionary people…

Fredo: Techno came in the middle of the ’80′s – you had New Wave, you had Punk, and then came Trance. I was organizing many parties. First the parties were all live music, and then all of a sudden at the end of the 70′s there was a big drug scene. We were all smoking, and everything was open, and then people came with cocaine and chillums and joints and after people did too much coke, so they came down on heroin. So in the end, people were tired of looking at musicians on stage nodding out, you know. People wanted to dance. And then started the new era…

Eddie: Acid can be too much for most people, so coke was easier, you could handle coke better than acid.

Fredo: In the beginning was acid…

Eddie: I know, acid; but too many tough trips for some people…

Fredo: You go to the beach, and everybody was on acid, there were 5000 people on acid and people were giving you acid for free.

Eddie: Oh yeah, open your mouth, take some…

Fredo: Everybody was giving to everybody, whatever you want.

Eddie: They didn’t realize what a pernicious drug smack is. Much of what’s in there, once its got its claws on you, man, its hard to get out, you know. They didn’t realize, they said, “Ah, another drug…” Now they are all gone, most of them are dead now. See I knew it from 20 years before, all the jazz musicians were taking smack. Charlie Parker was the big thing, Smack King, so everybody who was into jazz, into Charlie Parker, they went into smack. Got to take smack to be like Charlie Parker, but nobody was like Charlie Parker…

Fredo: There was a book that came out, ‘Junkie’ by Bill Burroughs. So everybody was kind of fascinated by that… And then in ’81, Goa Gil sold his equipment, and we took the P.A. system and the speakers and we started to do disco parties in the beginning. The beginning of techno…

Eddie: Laurent was here, everybody’s favourite DJ was Laurent. He used to make the music go up, you know. Everybody loved Laurent, but then too much sand, too much dust got into his lungs, he couldn’t do it anymore.

Fredo: It was the beginning of techno, we still had Yellow and Blondie and Pat Benaton… Then all of sudden Rajaram came around the end of the 80′s. And then people started to make the music. In the beginning we were just collecting, you know the DJ’s collected the nice music, we moved to different beaches, to Vagator, all over, started to make parties…

Eddie: We were making our own tracks too…

Fredo: That was with Rajaram, when Rajaram came here…

Eddie: No, before Rajaram. We would take the dub track, you know the rhythm track, and then add voices and music on top of it. And that’s how we started making Goa music.

Fredo: No, in the beginning was Rajaram, and then you had these groups like…

Eddie: No, no, no. Rajaram came later…

Fredo: No, he was the first one when we start to make the music, when people start to make the music. Then we had Juno Reactor, we had Total Eclipse, and after that Rajaram, the Infinity Project, and then Bansi and Riktam came here…

Kamakshi: Eddie, You have also been a musician?

Eddie: Yeah, bass player, yeah… dug dug, dug, dug, when bass was like this, not like this. I quit in 1950, I stopped playing…

Fredo: You were in the jazz scene, no?

Eddie: Yeah, before you were born.

Fredo: No, I was born in ’47.

Fredo: What was that place in Denmark?

Eddie: Yeah, yeah outside Copenhagen…

Fredo: What was the name of that place? We were just talking about it the other day. It became quite well known after I left. It was not a big thing when I was there. You mean that place where all the freaks could stay? First was jazz, then became Rock and Roll, then we had New Wave, Punk, and then slowly we got into trance. Actually trance was not really made here. But here in Goa, people were playing the nice kind of tracks, you know… What they had was industrial techno…

Eddie: Yeah, Frontline Assembly…

Fredo: They were from Belgium, Front 2 For 2. Yeah, but they were very tough, like boom, boom, boom. Then all of a sudden people started to mellow out and began to play Goa Trance. The people started to make this music here…

Eddie: Now everybody makes it in their home…People can make any kind of music they want in their home…

Kamakshi: It’s interesting, you know, where I live in Poona, there’s a village not so far away, and every time at weddings and festivals they play trance, its gone into the …

Fredo: …into the locals here. Yeah, In Bombay, for Ganesh festival where you have trance DJ’s playing on these big trucks, and everybody is dancing. An Indian friend of mine just came, and he said listen to this. Sounded like a trance group. He said it was a Bollywood singer, about 45 years old standing there in a sari, with the music just like perfect trance, you know. But you know something, even on television, people talk about trance, that it’s destructive and this and that, but then on the commercials many times boom, they have this music. Its something subliminal, you know, it works on your heartbeat…

Eddie: Oh the speed’s too slow, unless you have the heartbeat of a child though, while he’s asleep or something…

Kamakshi: Do you feel the Goa Spirit will survive the commercialization? Also the authorities have such a problem with so many of the things here, they harass the tourists, they try to stop the parties, the markets… Do you feel it will survive, become more resolute?

Eddie: Anything that makes money survives. The market survives, yeah?

Fredo: It became an industry – the techno, the clothes – Trance Fashion

Kamakshi: Yeah, its actually an organic part of the Goa experience. I get surprised that they want to crush what people come here for. You could go just about anywhere if you want to just go to clubs, but this kind of clobbering…the authorities seem to have such a problem…

Eddie: But some things like we were talking about, you can’t buy with money. You can’t buy neighbours, good neighbours with money you know. You can’t buy nice scenes with money; you have to have people who think like you do. Like when some people ask, “Who’s your family? Where’s your family?” I say, “My family is in Goa.” I mean, my brothers and sisters, they wouldn’t understand what I’m doing. “What are you doing? You’re not making any money. You’re living in India like a bum.” But people who are in India already, they know what I’m doing, because they’re doing what I’m doing. So its more my family than my blood family.

Fredo: The Goa family…

Eddie: Yeah. Okay, sometimes there are bad people, I understand, rip offs and all that, but… Rip off Harry – this was one of my favourites – but he never ripped me off. laughs

Kamakshi: What have been some of the defining moments in your life?

Eddie: What’s that?

Kamakshi: What have been some of the defining moments in your life? You’ve done so many things; you’ve pioneered Anjuna in some way…

Eddie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to read my autobiography laughter

Fredo: Its about your life? Every detail in your life…

Eddie: Yeah, but you have to read my book, it’s on the Internet. I would never go to an analyst, I would never go to a Guru, never go to anybody. If I was insane, I’d just keep it to myself, and see it through, see it through, see it through. Or write a story about it. So, some of my insane trips are in the book too. I didn’t like to follow anybody. But everyone’s got 10 fingers – who am I gonna follow? Where would I be without this hand? Ten finger Eddie? laughs

Fredo: Trumpet Steve used to call me Fast Finger Freddie…

Eddie: See, a lot of people don’t like to meet other people, I like to meet a lot of people, you know. People walk into a restaurant, if every table is taken by people that they don’t know – they will leave. They won’t sit at a table with people they don’t know. Me, I’ll sit with anybody, I’ll talk to anybody. That’s why we are here, to meet other people.

Fredo: Ah really?

Kamakshi: You still do this show every year?

Eddie: I do three times a year, sometimes more. But this year, something screwed up and right now its too cold to do a show. I don’t like to do a show with the whole audience sitting there freezing, you know, because I do them outside. Or even if I do them at Xavier’s, its still outside – there’s no walls or anything. I like to do the shows; some of the shows that were recorded are on the website – www.8fingereddie.com One of my best shows was, you know children are very sexual before the age of 5, they are very sexual. One of my shows is about my early experiences, my sexual experiences before I was the age of 5. That was a good one, everybody was so quiet, they were listening. I thought man, this is falling down, but they were quiet because they were remembering things they did when they were three, four five, you know…

Kamakshi: But that’s natural, no? First it’s by yourself, and then it’s with other kids, and then the opposite sex…

Eddie: See, we didn’t go to school till we were 6 or 7, so we were alone; you’re pretty cool when you’re alone. So I started inspecting my body. You find out, oh this feels good when you press over here, or this feels good, or it feels good when you @!$%#. So you make all kinds of discoveries, sexual too. People don’t talk about @!$%# like that; I was talking about it in the show. One woman here, she’s an entertainer too. She was saying, ‘Oh I wish I could do what you do, just talk about anything I feel like talking about, but I can’t do that, I’m a woman, you know. And she does shows; she makes a lot of money, in Holland, in Europe.

Kamakshi: You like telling stories, isn’t it?

Eddie: Yeah that was the thing… laughter I like to tell stories, that’s why I didn’t want to do an interview… laughs

Kamakshi: Tell us a story…

Eddie: You are recording all this…

Kamakshi: I am, of course

Eddie: It’s too much to remember… (singing) No, I was so shy when I was a kid, I used to walk down the street, I never looked at anybody. Even my friends from school – if I see them coming, I’d be like I didn’t see them. But on stage, I like to be on stage. Not shy on stage, just shy in life. To me, being on stage is really living. This is not so much…On stage you’re in another world, a world you make up…

Fredo: Tell us a story, a funny story…

Eddie: I don’t have any…

Fredo: Do us the one man show, for 5 minutes…

Eddie: There are all kinds of stories in the autobiography…

Fredo: But you would just stand on stage, and then something came to your head, you said whatever came to your head, you just expressed it.

Eddie: You see, I never believed in love – romantic love. Never believed in it, never will…because where does it go? When it’s gone, where does it go? It was here, and now she doesn’t love me anymore. Where the @!$%# is it, where is it anyhow? It’s all an illusion; it’s all in my mind. I like that feeling too, you know. I’ve invested all the noble feeling into her, you know, she is this and she is that, and she is wonderful, she is sweet. And she’s doing the same thing, making up illusions about me, ”Oh Eddie is such a nice guy, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.” It’s all illusion though. And then of course it gets broken in the end, it’s popped. But that’s the way it is, nothing lasts forever. But I never got into much. I used to hate it as a kid, you know. I used to like cowboy movies. And here’s this cowboy, man, beating up everybody, he’s a fucking hero, man. At the end of the film, there’s this girl there – da da da… Oh no, man, he can’t overcome the girl. He beat up every guy, but he can’t overcome one fucking girl. I hated it, what bullshit, man.

Kamakshi: So, you’ve had your heart broken, many times…

Eddie: No, never.

Kamakshi: Never?

Eddie: I’m heartless. No, you have to believe in something to have your heart broken.

Kamakshi: But it could be real, even if it’s momentary… Even friendships change, sometimes you hang out with somebody, and then you change, they change; and then you go your own way…

Eddie: Well, I like that feeling, you know, you’re both walking on air. This being in love, being in love, but not love… But being In Love… (sings) It’s a nice feeling, yeah, its nice, as long as it lasts… I used to like it, but now I’m too old for that kind of shit. I love myself, so anyone else who loves me is a rival… laughter You can’t love me like I love me. Who do you think you are? You know the thing is, they say they love you, but if you do something they don’t want you to do… They love me, but I can’t go with another girl. “I want to go with the other girl” “Waaaah…” Man, I don’t want to hear this shit, so…

When you are young, sometimes you have heroes, sports heroes or movies star heroes or something like that. Movie stars, I never liked movie stars. Sports stars, yeah, I wanted to be a baseball player. You know baseball? With the bat and the ball…I used to like any kind of a sport or any kind of a thing where people admired you from a distance. They’re sitting in the stand and going, “Isn’t he Jimmy Fox…” But they don’t come too close, don’t touch me. One day I was waiting for the game to start, and I had the radio on, and I was looking around my room. In my room I had a lamp, it sat on my table, there was a bulb in it, there was a thing over the bulb, and there was a statue of a girl like that. I said, “Wow, that’s mine!” Mine, but what does that mean? It belongs to me, what can I do? What can I do with it? I can hold it, but it’s still separate. If I squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, I might break it, but it’s still not me. What is it, mine? What does it mean, mine? What does it mean what this guy does in the baseball game – these heroes? Jimmy Fox, and this one and that one, Ted Williams… What do I care what they do? Boston Red Sox, if the Boston Red Sox win or lose, what do I care? What does it have to do with me? No one I know is from Boston. And even if they were, what does it have to do with me? NOTHING. The only thing that matters to me is what I do, how I play baseball, not what they do when they play baseball. The only thing that matters is what you do, what I do, what you do…Want to hear any more depressing news? laughs

Kamakshi: Was this depressing?

Eddie: Ah no. When you get down to it sometimes, you know, it sounds depressing when you are getting rid of all your dreams…

Kamakshi: And where do you sell your book from? Where is your book available? Do you sell it?

Eddie: It’s on the net. I don’t want to fuck with publishers and all that, you know. Right now I can just write what I want to write and not have to… “You can’t do it this way, you see, because it won’t sell so good” (in a nasal American twang) I don’t care about selling anything.

Kamakshi: You must have met so many amazing people over the years. Would you like to share some story?

Fredo: Alejandro? Who was Alejandro?

Eddie: Yeah, yeah. I met him before Goa. I met him in a houseboat in Varanasi. I was dancing to the Indian music on the radio, and he said, “Ho ho, you are like my father. My father used to conduct orchestra, he used to put on the music and he would conduct orchestra…” (in a deep gruff voice)

Fredo: He was the king of Goa, no?

Eddie: He had a tough time, too much coke, coka coka. “I love my paranoia” he used to say (in a deep gruff voice) “I looove my paranoia” laughter He used to get paranoia. Oh yeah, there were a lot of original people in those days, huh.

Fredo: Trumpet Steve, Goa Gil… Everybody had kind of a nickname in that time.

Eddie: Yeah, yeah. Me too, my name’s not even Eddie… laughter

Kamakshi: Then what is it?

Eddie: If I say it, you’ll forget it.

Kamakshi: Oh, I don’t forget.

Eddie: What’s your name?

Kamakshi: Kamakshi

Eddie: Are you happy to be alive? Is there anything missing in your life?

Kamakshi: Yeah. But there’s also a lot more than I would have dreamed of ever… Especially here in Anjuna.. I feel more balanced here. I live in Poona, it’s a very special place, it used to be very lovely, but its become so congested with traffic and people. You come here, and its so relaxed, its really easy…

Eddie: Nobody wants to come here; nobody wants to come here… (in a crying sort of voice)

Fredo: Things are changing fast. Before when we came here, it was like everybody had dropped out, now the whole new generation is the opposite, nobody wants to drop out.

FULLMOON PARTY ANJUNA 1977

Eddie: That didn’t last long actually, dropping out. Enough people wanted to get rich. Stay in there and make that bread, man. That was acid, when the acid first hit. “I’m happy; I don’t have to go to work anymore… ” (singing) People were glad to meet me – when they were 20 years old and I was 40. They said “Look, look Eddie. He’s such freak at the age of 40, we don’t have to stop being freaks, man.” They thought by the time you are turning 30, you have to put on a suit and tie and get a job and become straight. They never realized there are other possibilities, you can become a bum, you know.

Fredo: Now people come by planes, before people were hitchhiking and going overland. Now the whole world got more covered, its more easy even in the working atmosphere.

Eddie: Yeah, they were willing to take chances, they were willing to go to India without any money, hitchhike to Delhi – from somewhere in Europe to Delhi, with no money in their pocket, come to India and beg.

Fredo: There was more sharing in that time…

Eddie: Nobody comes overland anymore. You can tell the difference between people who came overland and people who just flew in. Because if you come overland, you had to go through many countries before you get here. You had to get used to Turks, you had to get used to Afghans, you had to get used to Pakistanis, before you get used to North Indians, before you got to South India – a complete different experience. Coming overland then, you met people, and they invited you to their homes, or you had dinner with them, or you did this and you did that, more understanding of what’s going on here, you see. Just flying in, flying out, you don’t see much. In fact, Mrs. Gandhi at that time said, “We have two types of visitors in our country. There are these people who come and they stay, they rent a houseboat, they have binoculars, and they look at everything. And then we have other people, who come here, and they just have sneakers on their feet, and they walk around and meet people. We would like that second type, much better.”

Kamakshi: Wow, she said that…

Eddie: Following year she said one of the three major problems of India was the hippie problem laughs

Kamakshi: So much for that…

Eddie: The hippie problem… Though there were lots of hippies coming with no money, and lots of thefts, stealing, getting by…

Fredo: And drugs…

Kamakshi: But also a change in people, change of their perspective, and in their life…

Fredo: Yeah life is changing, it’s not staying the same

Eddie: There were not many couples when we first came…

Kamakshi: Oh yeah?

Eddie: Everybody was on their own; then couples came in, and it became kind of bourgeois (in a nasal whiny voice), “Ah you can’t do like this, you can’t feed all those people, you’re feeding thieves.” I fed everybody, anybody who came, I didn’t care. You steal, I don’t care. It’s your business, you steal, you murder, you do this or that. You need food, you take it. But other people, “You’re feeding all these people, you’re keeping them here, blah, blah, blah..” It became more and more bourgeois; I couldn’t do it any more.

Fredo: People were sharing, in the beginning of the hippie story, everybody was sharing. You just went to people with long hair, even when you traveled in Europe, in the beginning; people were hitchhiking to the North, to the South, to meet other people with long hair, and they took you home, you stayed with them…

Eddie: But there are these other types too, they didn’t like to take something, because they thought if I take something I will have to pay it back. So there would be food, or things to take, I’d say, “Come on, eat, man, eat.” They were afraid to take something, they didn’t want to reciprocate. I didn’t want anything back. But after a while after they stayed for a while, they got into it, because I didn’t have enough money to feed everybody, I was just full out there. I guess people were suspicious, “Why is he doing this? What’s the ulterior motive? What is he getting out of this? Ah he’s an old man, he’s afraid to be alone. And blah, blah, blah…” You know, things like that.

Fredo: In the beginning you had many people, around you…

Eddie: Yeah, yeah. When I would go to town to get a shave, all these people would be like, “Hey, hey Eddie, where are you going?” I’d say that I’m going to the barber’s shop. All the guys were coming because all the girls were at my place, the girls were coming because the guys were there, so…

Fredo: But there were many mothers and kids, and everybody was taking care of each other, very friendly vibration…

Eddie: Ah yeah. See that hand; I was born with that hand. No cuts. This should have been two fingers, and this should have been two fingers. See how much bigger this finger is than this, its two fingers. It should have been split up while I was in my mother’s womb, I guess, but it didn’t happen. I think the strength of five fingers is in three, so strong, this hand…

Fredo: I found a kid in Poona, we have a cobbler in one corner, always a very nice guy, I take him my shoes. You go to other cobblers; they tell you 100-150 rupees. And this guy, the opposite – 10 rupees, 15 rupees, very nice guy. He sits on the corner and he does all this. And I really like the guy, so whenever he says 10 rupees, I give him 20 rupees. And then one day, he says this is my kid. A nice kid, about 8-10 years old, and he says he has a problem. He has his fingers like this, grown together. Then we started to ask some friends, are there any organizations that takes care of this, some NGO. Then one day one friend of mine said you just go to Google, go to NGO Poona. And we saw one in the neighbourhood, in Hadapsar. I phoned and talked to a few people and they said, yeah, we do this kind of thing. They said who’s the guy? I said the guy he’s a cobbler, he’s poor. For these people they do it special. So we got this guy connected, and the people came to see; and now they are going to do the operation. First the kid has to go to school, finish his exams and things like that and next month they’re gonna operate him. But did you have somebody in the family, maybe which had that also?

Eddie: I have four brothers and sisters, they all have ten fingers, I used to keep my hands in my pockets so people wouldn’t notice. ”Why do you only have two fingers on your hand?” (in an old crone’s voice ) I would say, “Why do you have five?”

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You have devoted yourself to working with thousands of people, giving sessions, trainings, inspiring them. What does ‘Ayurveda’ mean to you?

Ayurveda is a vast science; it’s an age old science. You know, Yoga, Ayurveda, the Sanskrit language – they go back 5-6000 years. What I’m sharing with my students, you can say, is just one branch of Ayurveda. I don’t want to say that I know many things, because I focused only on the therapy side of the work.
According to Ayurveda, zero stress in the body is the healthiest body. And what does it means – zero stress? It means that you take a little bit of care with your diet, your exercises, drink lots of water, try to be happy, laugh quite a lot… (laughs) And the most important thing is – be aware of your breathing. But in modern times, we are running with the time: it is 1 o ‘clock – I have to do this; it is 2 o’clock – I have to do that. You understand what I mean? If you keep a little time for yourself, then you will face very few problems with your body – this is the healthiest body.

Where did you learn about zero stress and the body?

One yoga friend of mine was not keeping too well, she wanted to know about some massage, any additional thing to help her. My mother said why you don’t take her to Mr. Limaye. He was very well known in this area. When I met him he was already 82 years old. He used to start his work at 6 in the morning to treat the patients with different problems – knee problems, joint problems, back problems, stomach problems… I explained to my friend that he wants to help you out, can you come in the morning at 6. And then he looked at me and said “What about you – where do you stay, what is your name?” He was a giant with his profound knowledge of the body and all that. So I introduced myself, that I had just finished my graduation in the Arts, that I was studying in Fergusson College, and that I lived with my mother, and that I had unfortunately lost my father a few years ago. And he said, “Okay I’ve heard everything, are you interested to learn this?” I said, “Oh, but I don’t know anything about anatomy, about anything…” He said “Please tell me – yes or no” I said, “Yes…” I was literally shaking. And he said “Okay then, come with your friend tomorrow” That’s how I started. I used to call him Ajoba, which means grandfather. For more than one year I couldn’t dare to ask him a single question. I used to go there, sit in one corner, and watch his work – like that. One day, all of a sudden he said to me “Come forward!” I said “Okay” One woman was having some problem, and he said “Start working on her” I said “But Ajoba, I don’t know anything…” And he said “You were wasting your time, your energy, my time, my energy…? You are coming for more than one year, sitting in the corner, and looking at the wall or something? You have to start. Start working on her, I am looking at you.” I told that woman “Please, if I do something not right, immediately let me know” This is my story, literally this is my story. And then he was happy. Unfortunately after that he fell ill. The last time that I went to see him, he said, “I’m very happy with what you have learned and I am sure you will flourish in this art” Like that. And then he started sending me some local people, “Go to Kusum, go to Kusum”

Doesn’t Ayurvedic Yoga Massage have a lot of yoga stretches? Someone else is doing all the work for you – the lazy man’s yoga, the ultimate. If I could get that everyday I would be very happy…

You cannot just relax, lie down; and I start working on you. It is not like that. You should be aware and only then will you feel that something is changing in your body. Then after the first one or two sessions, which is our learning process – to see where you are holding the problem, the tightness, the tension. Then we know how to go forward. After warming up of your back, maybe I find somewhere in the thoracic spine, the upper spine; that I feel that the gaps are a little less – you may have to come for several sessions to feel the difference. Then I will definitely ask you to go through a little pain, and give you little bit more pressure to open the gaps. The vertebrae are nothing but the bony structure, and when the two bones start pressing each other – the friction starts. And when the friction starts, your pain starts; because we are all getting old no? Everyday we are heading towards our last breath. Every five minutes I am telling my patient that be aware of your breathing, keep your eyes open, please go through a little bit of pain; then you will come to me and say, “Oh you gave me a little bit of pain, but I feel a little better” It is not a lazy man’s work.

You are actually increasing their awareness…

The person who takes the work and the person who is doing the work – they are both fully aware of what they are doing and what they are receiving. For me, I’m sorry, please don’t feel I am exaggerating, but for me this work is nothing but meditation. The moment I touch your body, this is completely empty. (gestures to her head) The moment I enter in the room, to teach or share with my students, this is completely empty. (gestures to her head again) So for me, this is the best way of meditation.

You have spent 20 years with Shri B.K.S. Iyengar, how has that enriched you?

My health was not good, I had a lot of physical problems, I was a very weak girl, my spine was like this, my breathing was bad, and my immune system was very weak. I had tried many different things, but nothing helped. Then I thought one last thing I would like to try to do – that is Yoga. So I enrolled myself in the Ramamani Iyengar Yoga Institute, I owe quite a lot to my respected Guruji B.K.S. Iyengar for what I am having today. I am not teaching Yoga or anything, that is not my field. I just do it for my good health. When I started going to the Institute – once, twice a week; slowly, slowly I started getting healthier. I could feel it, my posture was becoming good, and my appetite and breathing started getting much better. Now you have the example in front of you. I am a 69 years old woman…

And you look great…

Thank you.

How did you begin to incorporate yoga with massage?

For example, someone comes with a severe back problem, and then I would say, maybe I will try to use my foot to do a little bit more pressure, maybe I would like to try this stretch to see how she feels, or he feels with that. And the next time when the patient comes, the client, they said “Oh I feel a little better with what you did. When you were doing the work I went through a little bit of pain, but I feel a little better after that.” Then I felt that this is a good stretch for this, this is a good pressure for that. Like that I’ve developed this work. The work that I’m sharing with all my students – nobody taught me. All my clients are my books. I hate to study, to read books, and this and that. I always say they are my books, with them I learned many, many things. Since I’ve started working, I’ve never looked back.

Why do you use stretching and breath work?

Because when we are trying to do the stretching, it is more intense work for you; and if you hold the breath, instead of opening the body – you try to resist my work. So you have to be fully aware with your breathing, to help me. For example, you are doing the stretch with fear or with tension, not knowing what is happening with your body; then if I hold my breath, instead of having good results, you will get bad results from me; because I feel suffocating sensations in my lungs. So, breathing is the most important thing; especially when we are doing deep work. When they come after a few sessions, they say, “I don’t have the desire to smoke anymore, I don’t have the desire to drink” Because when your body is healthy, your mind is healthy – your life is happier; so you don’t have the desire to go through the side ways, to do all these things.

What are the three humours, Kapha, Vata, and Pitta, how do you work with them?

Kapha, vata, pitta are the elements we are all having, and according to my understanding, if one goes down, your energy goes down, then you feel the tension, then you feel the pain. So with our complete bodywork, with the stimulation of the organs, the body, the joints, the muscles, we are trying to balance everything. You may come with a back problem, but we don’t concentrate only on your back; because you should feel the complete body work. Then only it helps you. And we always keep the problem in our mind. Because everybody has some different problems, so we keep that problem in our mind, and first start to work on the spine, because the spine is the foundation of our work. If you come with a knee problem, I will never start with the knee, or my students will never start with the knee. We first have to warm up your spine, later on we concentrate on the knee. The session starts with the spine and ends with the eyes. Back as well as front. We never work only with the problem area.

Traditional Ayurvedic Yoga Massage – is this a term you have coined or was it there? How does your system differ from traditional massage?

Because we are using a lot of stretches for the body, no? That comes from Yoga. If you go to Kerala, they do with a lot of oil, and just the bodywork. But my experience is that after warming up your body, when we are trying to do little stretches – the progress is easier. That is why we are calling this Traditional Ayurvedic Yoga Massage. Until today, whoever wants to come to me to learn this art, I am open for that. But I never do any kind of publicity, because I believe that word of mouth is a much better way

Is the massage according to the individual?

Yes, of course. If the patient is very chronic you cannot do a lot of the hard work for the first one or two session. Let them get feeling of some opening, let them get the feeling of their breathing, and then later on you can proceed further.

Do you mix oils with powder? What is the powder? What oils do you use?

We use pure oil, whatever oil is available, that is, sesame oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, almond oil; olive oil is also very good. We never use coconut oil for the body massage because it is not good for the skin; it is only good for the hair. And the powder we are using is called ‘vaikhand’, in English it’s called ‘calamus’, it is a root and it is very good for blood circulation, it brings out the toxins from the body, it stimulates the blood and it is antiseptic. You can get it in ayurvedic shops, the root of calamus.

Hari Om(Raga Malkauns) – ‘Baiju Bawra

I was doing a Google search on ‘Kusum’, ‘Ayurvedic Yoga Massage’, and you are attributed on so many people’s sites and blogs as their Guru in this art. There is absolutely no information about you, but you are everywhere…

That’s what I said; I’m a very low key person. Even from the ashram, many therapists learned this work from me, many of them. One of my students Taruna, is giving groups and sessions in the ashram. She learned from me 4-5 years ago. A few doctors also learned this from me. The ashram story is also very interesting. I had been going to the Yoga Institute for something like twenty years. When Osho came back from the States, a friend from Yoga was at a party in Koregaon Park; and he was talking about me to some of his friends. One German lady who was listening to him, said she would like to try some work with this person you are talking about, who is she? And he said it’s my Yoga friend, Kusum, who is doing some body work, and it’s very strong work; but it helps tremendously to do yoga more easily, and makes you more aware of the physical body also. She asked for my number, but at the time I didn’t have a telephone, nothing. So he gave her my address. And one day she came. My mamma said, “Someone is looking for you.” She came in and said “I’ve heard about you, I would like to try your work. And then like that one, three, five, twenty came…just like that. According to me, your Master Osho is the man of the century, I respect him a lot, I like his understanding; I like everything.

What do you feel of the new ways in society, where people are less and less in touch with their bodies?

If you tell an Indian college-going girl, that I don’t have a dining table; you have to sit down on the floor and eat; like in the olden days, what we used to do. She will say, “Oh, I have difficulty sitting down…” which is a very disturbing thought. I don’t want to say that everything modern is bad, and everything ancient was good. But we try to take the middle path; we try to make the balance in between that. We have to accept some new things, and we have to accept some old things also. Why don’t you listen to your own mind? Why don’t you listen to your own feeling? Most of the time, we are following the society. Many people ask me, “You are feeling comfortable with the sari? You are giving massage with the sari? You are teaching this work with your sari?” I feel very comfortable with my sari, I am very happy. I am a very traditional woman, and I am very happy – this is the way I am. I must say that living in India, not getting married, doing this work with men and women; all the credit goes to my Mamma, because she was a pillar behind me. (tears flow down as her voice falters) Otherwise I would not have been able to do all this. She never forced me to get married, she never ever, not even once; did she ask me what work I am doing, whether I am comfortable like this. So all the credit goes to her, she was a very firm strong pillar behind me. I miss her quite a lot.

I have heard that your work is very structured; it covers every part of the body systematically. That once you’ve had this kind of a massage; with another style you feel the difference, you have shared something amazing with all your students, who are taking it all around the world…

I feel very happy and contented that my students are flourishing. I’m just doing one drop of the work, but I feel very happy with what I’ve developed a little bit. And to be very honest with you, now at this age, I’ve done a lot of work, individual sessions also. Now at this stage, I would like to pass on as much as I can. From the olden days there were still so many hidden secrets which we don’t know about. It carries on just within the family. You are my son, you are my daughter; and I pass it on only to you, not to the others. So many hidden secrets are still hidden. But my thinking is the other way around. Till today, if I feel that this might be a good thing, I feel very uneasy till I can pass it on to my students, because maybe the next time won’t come. You get my point? That’s why I always wanted to pass it on. That is why all my friends, my senior students, say that not a single workshop of yours is the same, it is not monotonous. Every time something comes, I pass it on…

How did you arrive in India?

Yashu: My mother started coming here in ’72, she was looking for Yogis. She started to do Yoga as she had some problems with her back. She met Osho on her first trip, and when she came back to Spain, she was talking about him all the time – this Guru. And then all my curiosity started with India – the smell when she opened the suitcase, the incense, the perfumes, the clothes and all that. Wow, it was like another world… And in ’75 I started coming to see India, to travel around. It was very shocking then because it was a very different world. I came later to Poona in ’78

When did the two of you first meet?

Yashu: We met in Spain. He was playing in this band and I was a friend of the band. I was a groupie, so I was there. This was 35 years ago. And afterwards we played together in the same band, we got involved, and then we came to Poona.

Harida: We came to Osho together, it was very much about sannyas for both of us. I have been involved with music in most aspects of my life, everything has been connected with music. I was very lucky, I even dropped school when I was very young because I was playing music. I went to Italy to finish my studies in classical music. It was very helpful, I was fully opened with music. Then I was in a very successful band in Spain, and it was there that I met Yashu. We played together for a long time until we came to India, to Osho, the commune… And then everything was like – no way out! laughter I tried one time, I went back to Europe. But it was very difficult, because you change…

What instruments do you play?

Harida: I play all percussions – western, eastern… Originally I used to play the western drum kit, then I went through many styles, jazz, rock… And I ended up playing the santoor because of my interest for harmony and melody. In the western schools we have all of these things mixed up – rhythm, harmony, melody. In the eastern schools – melody and rhythm have nothing to do with harmony. Actually this instrument is also the base of Koto, a tradtional Japanese stringed instrument. You find the santoor everywhere, in different forms. It was a forgotten instrument from the mountains, it was not part of the Indian classical scene until Shiv Kumar Sharma introduced it. It is Persian originally but it came to India, to Kashmir.

You have learned western classical flute, where did you train?

Yashu: In Barcelona, Spain, with one of the best of the classical flute players there - Salvador Gratacos. He plays in the orchestra of the city, a very good man, and he was also a good teacher. He was from the school of Rampal, very good technique. But it took me years to get out of that conditioning because it makes you very silly in a way, ‘toot toot toot’, I don’t like it – its very structured. I like improvising more, I don’t like to play classical. Its many years that I don’t play like that, I cannot even read music anymore. I was kind of, how you say, deprogrammed to the max! But I think it was very useful for learning the technique, because you need technique, then afterwards you can flow. I played with singers, with jazz rock, with salsa, also with flamenco for 10 years, also with Harida, and at that time he used to play tabla.

When we came to Osho, there were only two guys playing for the whole commune – Chaitanya Hari and Govinda. And we came making a lot of noise and bringing all these instruments… And then many people played for him, we kind of opened the door and then many styles of different music came.

Harida: Everyday there would be different musicians..

Yashu: Yeah, it was great, because it was very rich. We would practice only 3-4 hours on the day the band was supposed to play, so it was very fresh. We had all kinds of styles – jazz from the north of Europe, African music, Indian music, folk, flamenco, anything, whatever was available there – very nice, very sweet, very intense. And in the night we had these sessions – energy darshans. Osho was using the music for that also, and that really blew my mind, and I think his too… (Harida’s laughter) Yeah, because we’d go from zero sound and energy to max – big sound and energy. And he was telling you when to start, when to stop, it was fantastic! Fantastic! You had to be there!

Harida: You had to be there, fully there, because you wouldn’t know who is going to play the next 5 minutes, 10 minutes… Because there is a bunch of musicians sitting, everybody is in meditation with him, and he would just look. He would look at you like, ‘you play!’ Many times the one sitting next to me would turn also, because, aaahhhh…. its exciting, no? But normally, he would look…

And how was that for you – playing for Osho? What did that do for you?

Yashu: For me it was great because I learned to use music for all purposes, rather than only the concept situation. So for me, it was not music as itself, it was an energy phenomenon. You can use music as a medium, to share energy. And then I also saw the richness of the music by itself – you can make people cry, you can make people laugh, you connect them with the heart. All this I learned playing for Osho. When we played around sannyas, you would see only thousands of backs, you wouldn’t see any faces, but you see the Master’s face – totally different set up. You use music more as a divine thing.

Tell us about Nazca – your record label?

Harida: A few years ago, my girlfriend Nartan and I decided to create a record label – to record the music we love, the styles of music that we love. The label is ‘Nazca’, which was the name of an ancient civilization in the mountains south of Peru about 3000-5000 years ago, much before the Incas, which was the last civilization in the southern regions of South America. They left all these huge signs on the ground, and I used one of these signs for my logo, which is the monkey. This monkey is 78 meters tall. Just think – you are standing right there but you don’t see it because it’s so big, you only see it from above.
I have my studio in a beautiful location in the south of Portugal, we live in a very alternative way, we are not too much connected to all this show business, so we have our own water coming out of the mountains, we use solar energy, the only cable coming in is telephone, because you need to be connected.
We also started meditation camps last year, to show people meditations. Many Osho books are being sold in Portugal, you find them everywhere, any little library, petrol station, anywhere… So people are reading them but they don’t know any further what this is. They come and say, “I know Osho, I read a book…” Aha, you read a book, fantastic, it’s a good step. So we show them meditations, we do meditation camps and we are hoping to soon start music events – music with meditation. It become this connected thing you know – music and meditation. Music brings you to a meditative feeling, to a meditative space. And the interest is there for meditation, for our master, to know about all these things…and we have the music, we have the experience of being there with him – people love to hear the stories, they see the website, they come and do all the meditations. I am lucky to have some of the old videos – the life of Osho, the lectures, the old tapes, the Osho before the hat – its fantastic. Wow! Ayayayay…

What inspires you?

Yashu: I don’t know, sometimes I feel full, sometimes empty. And its just life, no? I think its like this – sometimes you are full, and you have to put it out. And sometimes not, pero, after having the inspiration of him – that was the best inspiration. Then he is gone, so the inspiration…sometimes its there, sometimes its not there.

Any other influences in your life?

Yashu: I don’t feel like a musician, not anymore anyway. I love music, I love to play. But I don’t have the discipline – the 6, 7, 8 hours of practising everyday. I don’t have it, I’m lazy. I like to have one more tool in my life, a way of expression is there… Bas!

Yesterday we were talking to these guys about gigs, and Poona-Bombay. I was like – no way, I cannot do it anymore. I did all this when I was younger, I did a lot, I was on the road, here and there. Now I have other priorities.

The music last night at ‘Bean Me Up’ was so beautiful.. You should play together more often…

Harida: We used to play a lot, because we played so well together, almost any style, it just flows… If Madam will be willing to… laughter

Yashu: Claro, if you do here in Goa, its easy to do anything … Yesterday was more energy darshan situation.. laughs

Yes, you come into that same space… And you also play Trance music?

Harida: I got a bit more in the trance scene because I did some things with Bansi, my son, who is now a DJ, and they do more of electronic music. I was playing live percussion with them – beautiful. And I was inspired to do this thing, but its different, its more trance, its more full on.
We have many cd’s, also a lot of shanti music…

Do you have a special memory, a moment with Osho, something you remember?

Harida: Wow… I could say there was one every day. Very intense time, no matter when, anytime when he was in the body, because the space – it was something immense. Some experiences were more intense than others like playing music for satsangs, darshans, or whatever – wow! But mostly, just being there was incredible! Beautiful…

Yashu: It is what he says, because there are many moments, there are a lot… I have some very nice ones, some wow, many things. And its between you and the Master, you cannot share this, you cannot explain this, because once you say it, it sounds, um… I don’t know how to explain it, it was a gift – bliss, light, getting lost, something like this. When you are alone, sometimes its harder to get into that one. With him, it was a help, it was a push…

Harida: You could get lost, no problem, and you were safe…

Yashu: Very easy, you can go in and disappear, easy… and high energy… I started to play in these energy darshans only when Chaitanya was sick. I remember the first time I was going to play there – I would take this bicycle rickshaw, and he would wait for me outside the ashram and take me home. I used to live in Yerwada those days, across the bridge. I was looking at the sky, and I could see the sky red, but red, red, red! I go wow! And I knew it was not red, I was just full of energy. I was very young so I even didn’t even know what was going on, you know? There were many such things with him. I also feel he kicked my ass, really fast too.

After the second World Celebration I left the commune, and I never saw him again… When I came back to Poona, it was three months after he had left the body, and I found all these things which were new for me like the white robe. But when they put down the screen for the video, then I really cried, because I could see that he was gone. And then the lecture finished and the gibberish started, and I didn’t know what it was – the gibberish, and I went huh? I was like what’s going on here, what is this, what is this? And I had got a white robe that was so big, I had bought the wrong size, I had bought this big baba size, so I looked like a clown – I had these big white sleeves, you know kind of Ku Klux Klan, it was different, no, all this white situation.. laughs

But afterwards, I even got fanatic about it and I really enjoyed it, to sit there in meditation, or in darshan – doesn’t matter.

And once in the States, he took me for a ride in his car, and he drove very bad, you know, like an Indian driver, but a bad one, eh? And kind of terrorist driving – very fast, taking over the cars from the right, from the left, whatever, you know, like zoom zoom zoom… And I am very scared of cars, so with him, even if he is my Guru, I was shitting in my pants, because I don’t like this at all… laughs He was really bad, and in the end he stopped when I said, “Police”. And then you had to see the face of that policeman looking at Osho, with his hat – he couldn’t believe it. Osho was holding the wheel like this. He looked at his driving license, and then looked at him. His license was a paper, and the guy was looking – what is this!? He said I can give you many tickets, you did many things wrong. But he got only one for too much speed. I was very happy – finally lets see if the guy gets some control, no? laughs No, no way – we came back the same way.

When we got back, then you could open his door, it was the gift of going in the car with him. So I came out of the car and I opened the door for him. And he said, “Now I will always remember you, I got my first ticket with you” laughter So its many little things, but that was a funny one.

How has it been bringing up your children in India, in Goa, around Osho?

Yashu: With Osho it was no problem, he used to love kids. When he was in the body, it was very good for the kids. I am very happy to bring up my daughter with the understanding that I got from sannyas. She grew up in the commune because she was born in Poona. I see sannyasin kids, and I love them, its like a family with them, all the Koh Hsuan kids…

In Goa, its different because this was freak land, the hippies freak land. They used to look at the sannyasins here in Goa, and they were doing ‘Kundalini’ on the beach with all the orange clothes. “Oh the orange people are coming” – it was this hippies kind of reaction. Now there are more sannyasins around, more families, so lets see what happens. But it was not an open door for sannyasins in Goa, because they were like, what are these orange people doing here in Goa. Now with time they can see we are sane, we are human beings like everyone, you know. laughs

So, some people are very nice, some are pain in the ass, what to do – its the same. Osho used to tell us this is a marketplace. So people have to realize we are like them, we are not different. Some quality is there, I don’t know if others see it…

I love my kids, I have only one, but I have many kids, they are a part of my family, no? And I think they are very nice, very special and very beautiful.

So its been a beautiful environment for them…

Yashu: Yeah. Yeah, I see some guys here that I also really like, like this young baba, he is the son of freaks, he’s twenty something, he grew up in this hippie commune in Japan, and there were 200 people living there in the mountains, they had their own thing. You see some of these jewels around also, like wow, what a beautiful guy. He is really relaxed and loving and more developed – not monkey style. I think they are special, they should be the famous New Men, no? Lets see, I gonna see, I gonna see..

I think we have covered everything…

Yashu: Yeah, I am flying…

GMS – Yashu

www.nazcamusic.com

What ever the driving force behind Bean Me Up, it is an ever growing phenomenon in India.

Once upon a time in a little village called Anjuna, in the state of Goa, nearly 2 decades ago, a wide eyed, teenage American girl landed on the beach, with a handful of other western “hippies”, as the locals call us to this very day.

For the sake of this short story we will refer to our teenager as Little Lisa Bean.

Lisa decided upon arrival in India, and the influence of family and friends to become a vegetarian, and because it is a country full of Vegetarians ,she thought it must be OK.

One day, while on a higher plane of consciousness, she watched the ever changing colors, and writhering of a slab of meat on a plate at one of the local restaurants.

The very next day, she learned how to make Tofu and Tempeh, as it seemed like a good idea to enhance her protein intake. It seems, so did most of the other westerners!

Before she knew it quite a few people wanted to have some fresh hot tofu of their own.

Before Lisa knew it, she was scalding her hands over the hot pots trying to make as much tofu as she could for all the nice “hippies” in the village.

Then she decided to invest the rupees she made from selling soya burgers in the Flee Market in machines to do the hot work! E Wallah! The beginning of the enterprise. Now, present day, There exists a Bean Me Up Soya Station Salad Bar in Anjuna, and

not only for the western people, but……..

She also has a franchise in Hyderabad!!! Yes, Indian people too have opened to the Soya alternative and want to eat healthy, and organic when possible.

There is rapid growth in the number of people WORLWIDE practicing meatless, vegetarian diets, and would welcome the opportunity to have such fresh soya products available to them.

Soya is regarded by the Yogi’s in India as one of the 5 sacred grains.

Lisa believes that it will be one of the key protein sources for the future on the planet earth.

The time of Hunters and Gatherers are over. There are too many people on the planet to continue this inhumane treatment of animals and the violent nature of having to kill for our personal cravings.

Lets leave that to the politicians….. on second thought…. Let’s not!

That subject will be in the next article.

Back to the jungle.

Please ask yourself, are you a soulless predatory creature roaming the land in search of fresh meat?

Or, are you a sensitive intelligent human being with a conscience?

“Shamanicumpari”

If you are the latter, as I hope you are, then it’s easy to understand that everything, everywhere that everyone does is interconnected.

A matter of cause and effect. KARMA…

Maybe that’s the reason Little Red Riding Hood had to fear the Big Bad Wolf , but Little Lisa Bean doesn’t have to fear the lion, tiger or Bear! Oh My!

The reality of Bean Me Up, Soya Station, Salad Bar has come so far and with so much love and appreciation, it’s almost a fairy tale,

Thanks to all who cherish life!

Lisa

Bean Me Up
1639 Deulvaddo,
Anjuna-Vagator,Goa
(near the petrol pump)
403-509
Tel: 0832-227-3479

Listed by Time magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Yogacharya is a living legend who has taught Yoga in a unique way to all his students. Through his practical search and regular practice, he finds meaning in the Yoga sutras of Patanjali and has helped all to experience this wisdom. With nearly 400 Yoga Institutes around the world, and Iyengar Yoga

Associations in America, England, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. His style of teaching Yoga is called “Iyengar Yoga” which is now being taught, by certified teachers across the world.

Interview with BKS.Iyengar by Kamakshi

With all the noise outside, how is it possible to find peace on the inside?

BKS.Iyengar – It all depends upon the inner growth of an individual. It all depends upon the eyes and ears; these are the windows where the growth of the evolution of human beings is to see the world. So the same eyes and ears which are meant to appreciate the beauty of the external world are also meant to appreciate the inner beauty of the world, to listen to the sound of the body and its various motions, movements, actions. So that’s how the ears are developed. And once ears are developed, because of the sound factor, naturally the eyes are also drawn in. So the brain is cut off from the external world. Because where the eyes and ears move, the brain follows. It is pure cultivation.

So it just takes time?

BKS.Iyengar – According to modern science, they can culture the cell from the outside, not from inside. But I found out in my subject; that one can culture the inner cells, the subjective cells, not in a laboratory, but in their own bodies. That is known as cultivation, culturing the ears, the eyes, the muscles of the body, the breathing, the fibers of the body, and joints of the body. So many things are involved. Man is finite and infinite. Both finite and infinite are within him. We only know about the finite. We don’t know the infinite, in the finite. So we have to trace the infinite in the finite. But you cannot move into the depth of the body, because the depth is immeasurable. So one can learn, that’s my method, to penetrate and to unite the outer body to the inner body; inner body to inner mind; inner mind to consciousness, intelligence to consciousness. That is how my practice reaches from the peripheral body to the core. And that is why I have experienced the core because I can take my senses of perception deep inside. That is why the outer sound does not affect me at all.

Living in Yoga for nearly all of your life, what is Yoga for you in this moment?

BKS.Iyengar – My dear friend, for a person who has sunk in this subject, when there is no duality between my practice and myself, how can I say what it has done to me? If it was an object and I as a subject would have practiced, then I would have said that I am practicing yoga for this, for that. Well, in the beginning, I did. There was a difference. There was a distance between myself and the practice. I was suffering from tuberculosis, from malaria, from influenza. Destiny took away my health. So I took to Yoga, today I am a bhakta in the asanas. How can you ask a bhakta…

What is bhakti?

BKS.Iyengar – (Laughs…) Yes. My life is like that. I am a devotee of what I practice. So naturally the asana and myself have become one. The asana is me, I am in the asana. That’s all I can say.

You must have had a lot of determination and will when you were not well and…..

BKS.Iyengar – Yes, It is there. I don’t deny that. It demanded tremendous discipline, tremendous will power, I am not speaking of Yoga of today. But in the early days, even in India, Yoga was treated like a dustbin. And to lift that subject to this level is not a joke. So I had to work, to find out, how to get my health back. When I got it back, I thought let me see what the art can teach me, so I reversed my mental clock the other way to observe what comes from the practice. Today what people call feedback system, I think I was born to learn this, to read my practice of what it gives, and what it is not giving. So that gave me a lot of knowledge. For me, Yoga is the union of my body with my mind, and my mind with the soul. Remember the definition. Though it is said that union of the individual with the universal is Yoga. I say how to unite the outer body to the inner body, outer mind to the inner mind, how it should reach the intelligence, and how to observe while practicing. So like the banks of the river, I use my outer body as one bank and the interior as another bank, and I had to measure the length and stretch of the body along with the length of the intelligence, whether the intelligence also has the same stretch. This didn’t come from other teachers, it came from within, study your intelligence, study your mind, where the mind is! If the mind existed when I was working on the chest, why is it not existing on my knee, so how to bring the mind on the knee as well as the chest, as well as in the aura. So like that I went on connecting the various parts of the body, and came to the conclusion that all asanas can be done with one aim of connecting from the skin to the self, and the self to the skin as a single river.

Did you find that your intuition developed?

BKS.Iyengar – It has come to me now. Intuitive knowledge came to me after 40-50 years of practice, not before.

You are known for your precision…

BKS.Iyengar – That I learned myself. What happened was when I was young… When I learned yoga, I was forced to teach. Yoga was not my choice, Yoga was a chance. A chance I had to take. My brother- in-law, Krishnamacharya, who is well known modern yogi and who is also responsible for Yoga to be established in the world, knowing well that from my birth I was suffering from ill health, never advised me to take to Yoga. Only at the age 16, he said why don’t you do some asanas to gain health. It took him 16 years to tell me this! So I started learning Yoga in 1934, and since 1936 I am teaching. So I was determined in myself to work and find the means of presenting each asana attractively, at that time there were very few books on Yoga. Then I thought, let me work on alignment, aligning the body, the mind, the fibers, the joints, the muscles. So I worked on the external level only, to align the visible body. Then from alignment, I went to the mind, how the mind can be aligned with the movement. Then I went a step further, why not all of the intelligence to be of the same equal length to the stretch of the body. Then when the intelligence started functioning; consciousness was moving everywhere. So that’s how I developed intuition.

So it’s a natural process if you really devote yourself to Yoga?

BKS.Iyengar – I started from my body.

It’s a scientific method…

BKS.Iyengar – It’s a revelation which came to me later. No doubt it’s a science, but revelation came to me how I should practice. That came from within. Try, try, try.. ..Try this way, try that way, I was discontented with all my practice. Nothing was coming to the surface, establishing, I had to repeat the same over and over again. If I felt here, why I did not feel anywhere else, how can I say I got this pose! Then I had to redo it, if I felt here why I am not feeling here? With the body distance, when I was practicing, I can say the distance was between Bombay to New York. (chuckles) So to bring that close, it led me to alignment; it let me to align each and every part. That led me to enlightenment, so actually alignment led me to enlightenment. The body is a treacherous friend. It is a friend if the mind knows how to use it. If the mind does not know, the body drags the mind, then it remains treacherous. So one has to be very careful. That’s how I learned, let my body be a friend to my body, and let my mind be a friend to my body.

What is disease and how to avoid it in life?

BKS.Iyengar – Disease means discomfort. Ease means comfort. So any infinitesimal disturbance in the body affects the mind. That is why we are called psychosomatic animals. But we have to know that there are somatic diseases, psychiatric diseases, and psychosomatic disease. Which comes on account of our way of living, or it may be destiny. What is destiny is today’s DNA test. Nothing new, modern terminology is DNA test. But people who are uneducated like us say it is destiny. We have to see what destiny has enforced on us.
The entire Patanjali book does not mention anywhere about disease, that Yoga is meant to get rid of discomfort to get rid of disease. It’s very interesting, and you will not hear about this from other people. Patanjali has only said what are the obstacles which come in the way of your sadhana. He does not define what they are, therefore, he guides people that we are made up of five bhootas (elements) – prithvi, tej, aptu, vayu and akash. (Earth, fire, water, air and ether) So five bhootas correspond to five koshas (sheaths) in the body and the first two elements, earth and water are gross elements. Similarly anatomical and physiological bodies are the gross structures in the human body. Then comes the element of fire, we call it tejas tattva, it is nothing but the power of your mind, the mind is in the center, the other two light elements, subtle elements, air and ether are on the other side. Yoga is meant to balance, with mind at the center as the needle of the scale of justice, so these two heavy elements are balanced equally with these two light elements. That is the meaning of ease, till then there is disease, because there is a difference between the gross elements and the subtle elements, so it is the mind which has to be trained to see how these two can be balanced. Psychotic diseases – depression, dejection, sorrows, all this comes not from soma, but from the psyche. This differentiation also has not been given by anybody else.
Somatic diseases come from the elements; psychotic diseases come from the weakness of the mind. Psychosomatic diseases come when the mind as well as the bhootas gets mingled together.
Patanjali says divide everything, know each and every part. When you know each and every part, then you know how to balance the five elements evenly, and that is ease. And that is health according to modern technology. This is what Yoga teaches, how to develop. So health is nothing but awareness. Keeping fit is not health, awareness is health. So that’s why I say health is not just physical fitness, but total attentive sensitivity in each and every cell of your body. And that is health. Your energy should be flowing in each and every cell. Like running water. It is an energy which is flowing, forward, not backward. If it flows forward it is health, if it flows backward, it is death. (chuckles) That is how practice of Yoga is taught to balance pancha bhootas, five elements; pancha koshas, five sheaths, so that man can live in a balanced state throughout life from birth to death. That is what Yoga has taught me. I practiced on account of disease, because I had disease. Now I am easy in every way.

While teaching Yoga, do you use intuition to guide people individually or is there a system?

BKS.Iyengar – I told you before that intuition did not come to me soon. I had the knack of observing more than teaching. When I was a young boy, I was not knowing much about yoga, I was not knowing much about the philosophy of the subject, so when I was called to teach at the age of 17 to Pune, you should know, I had not gone to school because of my ill health, I was a failed matriculate, and I had come from a poor family, so naturally I had to think what to do in life. So I said what little I know on Yoga, let me give a demonstration. So that’s how my life began. (chuckles) So when I came here, I was to teach the college students, when I had not even finished the school! And you know how college students are! So, I learned to see their weaknesses in their presentation, and make them do the pose according to their weaknesses. Observation made me a good teacher, not intuition. I learned by seeing the weaknesses of the human body. I used to imitate those weaknesses. That was the homework which I used to do; because I had no other knowledge. From that I went on learning, and learning and even today if I see from a distance, I can spot any weakness.

You have said that Yoga is a long and arduous path to realization. Could the process be quickened?

BKS.Iyengar – My friend, it’s a very impertinent question. Today yoga has become like a cheap thing in the market…. Dancers, how much they have to struggle to learn. Musicians, how much they have to work to get the quality, the sensitivity of presentation of resonance. Do you mean to say in Yoga there is no resonance? We use the body as an instrument, the fibers inside are the strings. So we have to tune those strings to the sound…. the element of ether which is nothing but sound. So we have to get the fine tuning of each fiber. Can you make that in a day or two? Ordinary intelligence only scratches the surface, so you have to sharpen your intelligence to go deep inside the body; this is where I devoted my time, that’s why I said I am a devotee. I respected my body; I got the knowledge from the body. I tapped the body for me to develop this knowledge. I did not behave like others that the body has no value. I used the body as a friend, it has got factual knowledge. The mind is just moving here and there, it has no foundation. Body intelligence has foundation. That’s what I learned, how the factual intelligence, analytical intelligence are balanced when we are learning the asana. So I had to balance these two, that’s why it’s a long process.

Ustad Allah Rakha, the tabla maestro, used to say to some students, “You think this is tabla? This is Yoga!” Would you say that the traditional Indian systems of dance and music…..

BKS.Iyengar – The base for all Indian arts was Yoga. The start is Yogika, Mallika, Dhanushya, Natya, Sangitika, Vyavharika. These are the six arts, with sub-arts from that. So the base is Yogika. Music is the universal oneness of sound. Yoga is also the universal oneness of the individual with the self. That is why it is Yoga. Yoga is everywhere.

I have heard, when people learn classical dance and music, to make the whole body balanced, you have to go through that same sort of agony and labour as in yoga……

BKS.Iyengar – Yes, as I said, the last element is Earth. Its character is expansion-contraction. Earth gives space, you have to move in Space, we have to create the subtlest element being, Akasha, that is the element of Ether, and that is Annamaya Kosha. The inside space is one with the outside space. So each asana has to be done with Chittakasha. Chitta means consciousness or Self. And Akasha means space. Oneness of the inner space with the outer space; and the outer space with the inner space is the definition of asana.

That means when you disappear, the inner and outer are one. The asana is so perfect, that you are not there.

BKS.Iyengar – Yes. That is the contact. That‘s why with Vigyanmaya Kosha, through touch you understand, whether your outer body is in contact with mahattatva. And consciousness is in contact with akasha. So union of these two, chittakasha and mahattakasha is the union of Yoga. That’s why when they speak of tabla, the sound, its whether they can catch the subtlest of the subtle sound. And sound is the characterstic of ether.

With Yoga and Ayurveda becoming so popular in the world, and through that people are getting introduced to India, Eastern religions and meditation. In the 21st century what else does India have to offer?

BKS.Iyengar – If you ask me, there are plenty of things to offer. India offered the Zero. Today Yoga is there, music has been appreciated by people. And later even the sanskriti of our Indian culture, the heritage, the behavioral pattern of way of living, will be the next one that the 21st century will catch on to. I will tell you how. If you go to any of my institutions in the western countries, you cannot go in with your shoes on. Why? We don’t want the germs that may come with the shoes. So is that not a new thing for them? Once I told them, be in contact with Mother Earth, why are you doing Yoga with socks. Why are you creating a difference with Mother Earth, on which our lives are dependent? This is how they learn. These are the things which are going to come. One thing is definite that Yoga has caught people more in the West, rather than music or dance. You can find thousands of people practicing yoga, but you won’t find even hundreds saying they are a musician. Because they have understood. Yoga is a subjective art. It gives health, it gives happiness, it gives contentment. It gives joy, to live the life for that. And the worthiness of life. All these things are taught in Yoga, but without theory.

I also feel it relaxes the nervous system which for the modern man is extremely useful…

BKS.Iyengar – Correct. Yoga is definitely… You know how I would answer that question? People when they are stressed they go to Mahabaleshwar. They go to Manali, right? They say they have gone for relaxation. What is the meaning of that relaxation? Change of atmosphere. So here you do the asana, the atmosphere of your mind changes immediately. Why go there? You can change your atmosphere in two minutes. (Chuckles) I’m speaking about mental weather. (Chuckles) Mental weather changes in yoga very fast. I spoke to you about the elements. Earth element is the foundation. Energy has to be distributed, by the element of ether, production is done by the element of Earth. In between are three elements of air, water and fire. So the neurological system, respiratory system, circulatory system, belongs to these elements which Ayurveda calls vata, pitta and sleshama. If there is a deviation in vata, pitta or sleshama, they are called diseases. Patanjali is the only person who says if it is mixed with gunas, (guna is a state of mind–an attitude) it is psychosomatic disease, that is rajas, tamas and sattva. If gunas does not work, it is somatic disease. If gunas work, it is psychosomatic disease. That’s the science of Yoga. How to balance all these things. So that’s how the Yogis gave this thought for us to build up from the outer body, the temple, so that you can go to the sanctum santorum, inside, which is the core of the being.

How and why did you start using props?

BKS.Iyengar – In the early days I used to teach using my body. I was going house to house teaching, then when the institution came, I thought how to get each individual to practise in a group. I started experimenting, people with paralysis and strokes were coming. Suppose it happens to me… Then on my 60th birthday, I had two scooter accidents simultaneously. One hit from one side, and one from the other. Yoga is equanimity, so my pain was also equal to me. I could not even lift my hand. It took me 15-20 years to get my spine back staight. So that is the tenacity that the art gave me, that I should not become a victim. I lost all movements, I was a raw beginner, then again I built up, I said I will not cut my hair, people should not recognize me, that I am Iyengar, such a desperate state had come. I said I will only go back to my original haircut if I get the entire control back, and it took me 25 years to get it back. At that time I tried props because I could not take the load on my hands, I could not take the load on my spine. Then I started creating. I said suppose I lose my hand, what have I to do? Suppose I lose my leg, what have I to do? So like that I built up props, and then I started practicing. Now I don’t use them. I prepared props in such a way, that no person can do wrong posture. Even today, the most difficult pose, kapyan pose, I can teach even the beginners on the props, because they can do with confidence. So confidence and will power is built up by these props.

So you are personally responsible for spreading Yoga around the world in a big way…

BKS.Iyengar – All this credit of becoming popular, I give to my friend Yehudi Menuhin, the world famous violinist, he had some problems, he could not even hold the violin, it was so painful. By chance he saw a book on Yoga at the airport in New Zealand. While he was reading, he said this is what I want to learn. Then it so happened that Jawaharlal Nehru invited him to play some free concerts in India for Famine Relief Fund. So he came and played. At that time, he wanted to meet as many yogis as he could to take lessons. When I met him in 1954, I was given two minutes to meet him. I refused to go. I said who will go all the way, that time it was a five hour journey. Ten hour journey, five to go and five back, and to meet him for two minutes. I said nonsense! I will not go. Then Mehli Mehta, Zubin Metha’s father, and all his friends insisted, Mr. Iyengar, you have to come. It’s in your hands. So, it happened that he invited me. I went there, he was in Raj Bhavan. I said, ”You have asked me here to know about Yoga, you want to know practiucally what Yoga is or you want to know theoretically?” He laughed, and he said, “I want to know practically”. Then I gave a demonstration which took me 45 minutes, and he was very much impressed. So two minutes into 45 minutes… Then I told him “Sir, you’ve seen me. But I read in the morning papers that you did a head balance in front of Nehru. So why don’t you show me?” The moment he did it, he was gasping for breath. Then what I did was, I said, “Please come down, I will correct your head balance and see how you feel then” When I readjusted the head balance, he said, “I have not enjoyed this type of quietness though I was practiisng Sirsasana”, I told him,” just now you’ve got up from bed, but still you are not relaxed, I will take you into Savasana, I will manipulate your nerves”, so I took my hands like this, we call it Shanmukhimudra. I brought his ears and his eyes close to each other with finger manipulation. They went inside, and he went to sleep, for 50 minutes, I could not remove my fingers, they were stuck to his eyes, like gum, and 50 minutes is not a joke. So naturally, if I move, he wakes up. I wanted him to wake up naturally, not artificially. Even the Governor said, lots of people are waiting, you are wasting time. Please, leave him. Several times they came, disturbing me. Even Homi Bhabha was there on that day. Then his eyes opened, I got up, and said, “Thank you very much. Lots of people are waiting for you, I am going.” He said, “I have not even said one word to you, how can you go?” Then he called me, “Can you come and teach me?” So I agreed, I taught him for four days in Bombay. His concert was in Regal Theater, in 1954, it was a success. Then he went to Madras, Delhi, and Calcutta – failure. Nowhere did he play well. On his return there was another concert in Bombay. He called me, please come. So I went, again the concert was a grand success. Then he said your teaching has something to do with it, can you please come to Switzerland and teach me. So all the credit goes to him, a wizard in the field of music, and a highly intellectual man, he introduced me to the cream of the world. But I told him, “Sir, I have not come here to teach the cream of the world, I want to go to the poor people”, so I started conducting classes for poor people, and that’s how Yoga became popular in the world. So I give credit to him.

BKS.Iyengar – 1938 (Silent)

I liked what you said somewhere, that every asana has its own religiosity. Could you talk about that?

BKS.Iyengar – Each asana has its own beauty. Each asana has something to give for the living cells. You know, the bees go in search of a flower to take the flavour of the flower to form the honey. So similarly, you should know, you have to taste the honey of each asana, totally, completely. Then only will they know the nectar of the asana, Asana does not come to you, you have to go to the asana. So it does not come in two days or three days, sometimes some flowers have no flavour at all. The bees try here and there…So similarly, the way you do the asana, if you do like that, the nectar does not come, so people leave Yoga. But me, I cannot leave, something new is coming.

Yoga being the perfect science of health are there any simple methods for quick relief from common problems like…

BKS.Iyengar – Quick relief will definitely come, but you have to eradicate from the source, so that it does not recur again. That’s why continuity is needed. Yoga also treats symptoms in the beginning. But one has to go deep in order to eradicate the root. I was in America a few years ago and my lungs were examined. I told you I was suffering from tuberculosis. And I took to Yoga. At that time I was 75 old years. The doctors said that even an Olympic champion will not have this type of lungs,. They said your lungs are so tender, like a baby’s. That means I have maintained my body still at that state. Though I’m 88, as you can see my body is still young. That’s why I’m happy. I’m not dependent at all. And that’s my job. So if people ask me, have you led a spiritual life? I say I don’t care if I led a spiritual life or not. I am leading a happy, contented life. What more could I want?

www.bksiyengar.com

Portraits of BKS.Iyengar by Kamakshi

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

Ma Faiza was born in Africa and is of Indian origin. She evolved as a DJ in London. She is an Artist, Producer and Head of A & R for Masti Music, India. She DJ’s internationally, travelling around the world, playing at some of the biggest parties and festivals on the planet! Her djing has taken her from
London to India, Germany to Israel, Greece to Turkey, Ibiza to
Portugal….Dubai to Austria…and the journey has only just begun! She participates in some of the most cutting-edge concepts in sound, vision and experience. Welcome to her page!!!!!

www.myspace.com/mafaiza
A BRIEF HISTORY..

The area of Goa, situated approximately half-way down the western coastline of the southern part of India, has had a colourful history of occupation. From the tenth century until early in the sixteenth century it vacillated between Hindu and Muslim rule. In 1510 it was taken by the Portuguese whose presence lasted, except for a few short periods of occupation by the British from 1797-98 and 1802-13, until 1961. In that year the Indian Army took possession. The presence of the Portuguese for 450 years had a strong effect on the cultural life of Goa, clearly evident in the present era by the many Catholic churches and monasteries and other characteristic architecture, but also reflected in the cuisine and the arts.

The multicultural history of Goa is an important background to the development of the Goa beach party scene in the early 1960s. Goa is an unique part of India with a “special vibe” related to the Portuguese background. The hippies who flocked to Goa could be seen as the “new colonists”, and the locals as being as tolerant of their occupation as they were of the Portuguese. The general attraction of India for the hippies and other misfits was both to its spirituality and to its hashish, (which was legal up to the mid 1970s, at which time the laws were changed with pressure from the U.S).

The available documentation of the early history of the Goa beach parties is scant, but generally most people agree that the hippies descended on Goa in 1968, they met beautiful warm friendly villagers…and a paradise-like haven in which they could…with the utmost freedom…enjoy a life free from all distractions…these people started to have “parties” on the beaches or in the jungles…eating psychedelics and dancing to the music of the time. The majority of these hippies would spend their summers at Goa, then return to Babylon for the rest of the season, but some decided that they would stay there.

The music of the time was, of course, nothing like the music that has come to be known as Goa trance, and around 1980 the staple beach party repertoire still consisted of the Doors, Neil Young, the Eagles and perhaps some Pink Floyd. The pioneer Goa trance DJ, Goa Gil, who was one of the originators of the famous Goa full moon parties, played live with a band, and also DJ’d in Goa throughout the 1970s. When, at the beginning of the 1980s, he grew tired of the “rock/fusion/reggae” music he was spinning, he introduced the first post-punk experimental electronic dance music coming from Europe, the neue deutsche welle, electronic body music.

The international character of the Goa scene seems to be a key to the development of the genre of Goa trance. There were many influences from French and Italian DJs, specialising in electronic music, Australian DJs playing rock, and others playing only South American styles. Also it is believed that the classical music of India played a strong part in the development of Goa trance.

“The freaks and the hippies used to collect the most mind-boggling psychedelic dance music they could find and bring it to India and play it at these parties, and we used to exchange this music……In the old days we used to call it “special music”. It was very obscure and it was very hard to get your hands on. You were a real connoisseur or collector, and Goa was a kind of fraternity of obscure, weird psychedelic music collectors getting together, sharing each other’s music, exchanging it, copying it, and then making parties out of it. The collecting and exchange of music was a central practice of the Goa trance community. The process of absorbing unusual music from diverse international sources often had a liberating, mind-broadening impact on those involved.”
A typical party in the late 80’s involved a PA, a few coloured lights, some black light, and occasionally some psychedelic banners, but not much. There was one dance floor and the music normally started around midnight. Local Indian ladies-‘Chai Mommas’ would set up mats to one side selling cakes, biscuits and chai. There were no police hassles The 1991/92 season, generally regarded as the last important year of Goa parties — there was a party every two days. There had been no parties for one or two years because of one or two problems with the police. Suddenly the parties were on again; everything was in full scale…………the ‘Feeling’ became something that everyone wanted to identify with…..Suddenly everyone wanted the ‘Feeling’ coming from Goa. By this time the size of the parties had increased dramatically and had become even more international. They had between 500 to 1500 people, many Japanese, Germans and Israeli’s.

“The authorities became embarrassed by it….it was getting slammed in the West, about it being a drug haven, and the Indian government were courting tourists and they wanted to bring more up-market tourists to Goa. It never really worked because Goa doesn’t really have the infrastructure. Now, It’s more expensive to put on a party in Goa than it is in London or in any big city in the world. It’s lost it’s innocence…”

THE IMPACT OF GOA TRANCE MUSIC AROUND THE WORLD

In the mid-eighties, as warehouses in Detroit were transforming Kraftwerk into techno, Chicago DJs were creating house out of the ashes of disco, and New York’s hip hop scene was taking popular culture by storm, in Goa the all-night parties were going strong. The electro from the UK, and kraut rock from Germany were making their impressions on the dance floors, as well as psychedelic rock which has strong roots in the hippie movement. In a scene reminiscent of the early hip hop artists taking the drum breaks from their favourite funk records and looping them for breakdancers, the dance shamen in Goa would take the crazy electronic pieces from M.A.R.S. and Eddy Grant and layer them overtop the heavy beats from Skinny Puppy or Front Line Assembly. When Detroit techno took the UK electro scene by storm at the end of the 80s, the acid house craze became what we know as the ‘rave scene’, and the UK hippies that were still visiting Goa every year brought these acid records to India, and it was then that Goa trance was born. The introduction of the tb303 sound to the parties in India was all that it took. Within a few years, artists were inspired by the intensity of the parties in India and went back to their home countries and began producing what became known as Goa trance.
Starting around 1992, mostly in the UK and Israel, labels began to pop up all over the place that were releasing the Goa sound. A few popular DJs picked up on it, including Paul Oakenfold who (I’m fairly certain) went to goa in the early years, and brought its sound to Ibiza, and his essential mix in 1994, eventually dubbed Goa Silver, remains a classic.
Fast-forward to 1995, and an Israeli group called Astral Projection releases their third album, Trust In Trance 3, and it is HUGELY successful, in particular the single People Can Fly was played at clubs around Europe and was perhaps remains the largest cross-over hit for psychedelic trance to this day.
The upshot was an EXPLOSION in the goa trance scene. A growing scene of upper-middle class travellers, rebelling against their parents began travelling around Europe, and eventually around the globe to go to huge outdoor festivals. Voov in Germany, Boom in Portugal, Samothraki in Greece, Koh Phangan in Thailand, and others in Brazil, Australia and around the world, as well as solar eclipse parties in exotic places such as Nigeria, Turkey and in the middle of the Australian Outback.
After the huge increase in popularity in the mid-nineties, there was a bit of a lag, a few labels had to close its doors, and a new, darker, tribal, minimal sound began around 1997, labels like UK’s Flying Rhino and Germany’s HadShot started to move away from what they saw as cheesy- the uplifting, twisty fun melodies of earlier goa music became anathema. Suddenly talking about ‘goa’ was like talking about ‘raves’- it meant that the speaker was not cool enough to know that psytrance is what is cool.
Fortunately, the dark minimal tribal trance was only dominant for a very short period, existing almost as a backlash to the popularity of commercial trance music that took the rave world by storm at the end of the century. 1999 was the ‘year of trance’ according to MixMag, and it really seems to be true. In 1999 it seemed you couldn’t go to a party without hearing the succulent, over-sweet sound of formulaic build/break/build/break shwag trance. Ayla, Madagascar, For an Angel, Out of The Blue, anything that Tiesto played, the crowds ate up. At least for a while.

Meanwhile, across the English Channel, a new movement in psytrance was gathering steam. Artists like Talamasca, GMS, Infected Mushroom, Toi Doi and many others, spearheaded by a label known as 3D vision were focusing on what is known as ‘full-on’. Full on is psytrance that has intense basslines, twisted-up synths and is probably the most gnarly of all trance music. As with many styles born so late in the rave scene, it’s very dance friendly, and the best music for really dancing your brains out to. Perhaps, even better than hard techno or acid techno. Infected Mushroom has become hugely popular, especially in Israel, where they are routinely played on pop radio. Psytrance parties continue to happen globally, and new, awesome music is still being released around the world…..

Words and pics – MA FAIZA – Next issue “ Part 2 – Trance music explained….. Musicology and styles “

Ma Faiza’s Top Ten Albums for ‘Monsoon’ 2006

All Genres

1 GATATIKA – LEMON STRIKE – Millennium Records
2 FEUERHAKE – RE:START – Synergetic Records
3 ENTHEOGENIC – GOLDEN CAP – Chillcode Records
4 V/A Compilation – BETWEEN THE LINES – Groove Control
5 MA FAIZA & VEET SANDEH – LIQUID DREAMS ->Masti Music
6 V/A Compilation – CITY HIPPY – Globetronica
7 V/A Compilation – PSYMEDITATION 2 – Organic>Records
8 DAO – SOHAM – Peacelounge Recordings
9 AEROSPACE – EARTH – Medium
10 V/A Compilation – OXYCANTA – Ultimae Records
xxx ma

www.mafaiza.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

Interview with Kiran

by Madhukar Thompson

Kiran was born in 1941, he studied Hindu philosophy at the Sanskrit College in Thane, near Bombay, He went on to become a lecturer for Chinmayananda’s Divine Life Society. In 1967, he became a disciple of Osho, while pursuing the life of an industrialist, and a Householder. Following Osho’s 1981 departure from India for the United States, Kiran sought out a number of other gurus. The one who influenced him most was U.G. Krishnamurti. In 1993 he began to teach, sharing his understanding with seekers from all over the world.

 Madhukar – How long have you been with Osho?

 Kiran – I was his disciple for more than fifteen years.

Madhukar – Up to a point, you and I both traveled the same path with Osho. As a fellow seeker, the most important questions I have are: what exactly happened to you? And what did you do or not do to bring about your enlightenment? I want to know if you practiced exactly the same methods and meditations that I did. And if so, why did realization happen to you but not to me and other friends of ours? If you practiced different or additional meditations and methods, what were they? What can I learn from you? Can you assist me and other seekers on the spiritual path?

Kiran – For many years, I was traveling together with you all; we were fellow travellers on the path searching for something – searching for truth, searching for the reality of life. While we were traveling together with Osho; we did many things – meditation, therapies, groups, and work in the ashram. We did whatever Osho suggested to us. We surrendered to him totally.

Madhukar – We had the privilege of experiencing Osho’s guidance ‘live’ every day, twice a day.

 Kiran – Me too- I sat there right in front of him and listened to his lectures for many years. I was following his suggestions with the hope that one day I would reach my goal of enlightenment. My spiritual and worldly lives were absolutely secure and safe with him. I was absolutely satisfied with him. However I fell asleep.

Madhukar – How could you fall asleep in the presence of your teacher?

Kiran – When I met Osho for the first time in 1967, I was on fire and my thirst for truth was very strong. But as I came closer to him over years, I fell slowly, slowly asleep. For a long time I didn’t notice it. Only when he departed for the States in 1981 did I wake up to this fact – and remembered the search. With great intensity I took it up again.

Madhukar – What happened then?

Kiran -By and by, I began to understand that something was wrong with searching. I felt that it was wrong to be after something all the time. I woke up to the understanding that I was making a mistake by searching for something, somewhere outside. I came to know that I was making a mistake by going to somebody, by asking for the way, by sitting at somebody’s feet, by waiting for something to happen, or by desiring that realization may happen with the help of effort and spiritual practice.

Madhukar – What did you do then? Did you stop practicing?

Kiran – I started to simply watch myself, to watch my mind. I was watching all my inner processes. And ever so slowly I began to understand that the desire, the effort, the doings and practices, were the actual disturbances of my peace. The seeking was the obstruction to realization. Osho had told us many times that we had to drop all our doings and efforts. He said that we had never lost our enlightenment, that it was already our nature. Sitting right in front of him, I had heard him say that so many times. But I could not understand him because I was sleeping and dreaming. I believe that’s what happened to all of us, we fell asleep and therefore didn’t hear him.

Madhukar – How did dropping all efforts and practices affect your life?

Kiran – I just became an ordinary man. And slowly, very slowly, began to awaken. I worked in my business and I looked after my family. I did not desire anymore to achieve something spiritually. I was not after anything any longer. I said, “It’s there, it’s there. Let it happen, let it happen. I am not bothered.” The thirst was still there, inside me. That longing remained. But I was not doing anything about it. That’s why I stayed away from Osho’s physical presence for the last ten years of his life, three of which he lived here in Pune right around the corner.

Madhukar – What happened for you when Osho returned to Pune?

Kiran – I didn’t feel a pull to go to the ashram. There was no energy inside me that made me go and see Osho, because in my aloneness everything had started settling within me. Then one day it dawned on me that the search had ended. All my searching just dropped away by itself. I started accepting Existence. I found I could accept myself as I was. I did not desire any change. I was not even asking to become something. I found myself saying to myself its okay, its fine. I don’t want to become somebody. I don’t want to get anywhere. I was not asking for enlightenment anymore. I was just relaxing with myself. I was happy, peaceful and relaxed with how and what I was in the present moment. All questions had dropped. All questioning and searching were simply finished.

Madhukar – Let me ask you, “Are you enlightened?”

Kiran -For many years, I just sat quietly alone at home on this chair here. I was enjoying nature and myself in silence and aloneness. I did not bother whether this was enlightenment or not. I could feel the silence descending on me I was feeling close to Existence and to everything and to everybody. Slowly, slowly I was dissolving. In my silence, I was becoming one with everything. Nothing could disturb the peace inside me. From January 1993 onward, people started coming to see me. This was a surprise for me, too.

Madhukar – So we practiced the same sadhana, except perhaps the most important one. Did I understand you correctly that the only additional spiritual method you applied was basically not doing anything? Your blooming and awakening happened only after all doing was left behind and ‘just being’ remained. Is that correct?

Kiran- That is correct.

Madhukar – Was there anything that triggered your blooming? Was there any kind of cause and effect relationship? Usually we believe that practice leads to the goal. Please tell me as much as possible about the blooming process and its workings. By describing your process, you may help me to understand my own. Furthermore, through your description, I may come to know where I am in my search.

Kiran- There is no cause-and-effect relationship in the awakening process. That is my basic understanding of the whole spiritual journey. Awakening is not an event that is going to happen because you are doing something with your mind – be that meditation or whatever. Awakening is uncaused. It cannot be achieved through effort, because you have never lost it.

Madhukar – Were all of our practices and our efforts in vain then? What was missing in our search for enlightenment with Osho?

Kiran – We forgot the main point. We have to seek the seeker. We always seek somewhere outside. We are always after some goal. We seek enlightenment. We seek Buddhahood. We seek so many things. Because we are so busy with seeking, we have forgotten to ask who it is that is seeking. Who is it that wants to become enlightened? Who wants this enlightenment? Who wants to become a Buddha? When we forget to ask this question, we go on trying in all directions. We go on making all the effort to seek outside of us. Who is the seeker? We must go on asking, “Who am I?” And who is asking this question? You are asking this question! You are asking these questions because you want to know who you are. But it is a contradiction. How can you find yourself somewhere when you are not lost anywhere? All efforts and all doing are taking you away from yourself. Therefore, anybody who has awakened could come to ‘know’ only after dropping all doing and all effort.

Madhukar – Please, explain further why in your understanding, meditating is a mistake?

Kiran – We all were making this basic mistake of undertaking goal-oriented actions. Intentional and purposeful actions are initiated and done by the mind. The mind understands only the language of doing. I can tell you, “Sit silently, do nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.’’ Osho said this so many times. We heard him say it again and again. But we don’t understand what “sitting silently doing nothing’ means we keep asking ‘How to do nothing?’ We always want to know what to do, how to do it, and how to reach it, even when the ‘it’ is ‘do nothing’. All these questions come from the mind.

Madhukar -And what we are, or rather who we are, is beyond the mind.

Kiran – That’s right. In our quest we are searching for a space which is beyond the mind. It is a space that the mind cannot reach. That space can only be reached when the mind has dropped. Actually that space remains when the mind is dissolved. The mind is a wrong instrument here; it is of absolutely no use. How could you reach that space by using the instrument of the mind? The mind is actually a hindrance to reaching that space. The practice of meditations, the undergoing of therapies and groups, and all such nonsense are done by the mind. We all were committing the same mistake. We were even doing meditations sitting right in front of Osho.
These practices are actually the obstructions to awakening.

Madhukar – Are you saying, “Don’t meditate!”?

Kiran – Yes. I say, “Drop all your efforts! Drop all your doings! Just stop and see! Watch! Simply look at what is happening. Just drop all desire to become.” And when you drop all your doing, the doer starts to dissolve immediately. The doer is the mind. The more the doer dissolves, the more Existence expresses its own doing. And in one fine moment you’ll find yourself to be free. “Oh God! Is it so? Is this it? This is it!” you will say to yourself. And you just laugh. You just laugh at everything. It’s so simple, so easy.
But we made is so complicated!

Madhukar – Your teaching seems to hold that Osho gave us a wrong teaching. He requested us to meditate and practice.

Kiran – As I said, if I tell you to do nothing, the mind will not understand it. What you really are is beyond the understanding of the mind. As long as you are using your mind, the master must give you something to do. He gives you something to do until you become frustrated and exhausted by all your doings. But at some point, you will be finished with all doing. At that time, you will know and feel that you have done everything possible, and that in spite of all your efforts, nothing has happened. Then you come to the point of total frustration. This will lead to total surrender. At that point, you say, “Oh, I can’t do anything anymore. I am finished.” This surrender will take you to total acceptance. You will start to accept Existence and yourself. And acceptance will cut all the roots of the mind that was nourishing all doing. Without nourishment, the ego will dissolve. By witnessing what is happening around you and by not doing anything, this state of acceptance will start to come slowly, slowly. Then you see that everything is just happening. When you come to that point of being the witness, you are ‘there’. You are at the end of your journey.

Madhukar – Okay, you seem to be saying, “Nothing can be done, no teacher can help, no technique or method is useful, and no meditation practice can cause enlightenment to happen.” On the other hand, I see seekers coming to you for advice and guidance. And I even notice people sitting and meditating in your meditation room. Did you teach a meditation technique to those people?

Kiran – No. I don’t give any technique. I stick to what I am saying: “Nothing can help!” Sitting with me is not of any help as long as you’re not awakened and as long as you have an urge to do something. I don’t claim to be a master. I am just sitting here as a friend helping you. I am not helping you in the sense that I teach you something or because I know something you don’t know. It is as if you were just closing your eyes and crying, “I can’t see the light.” I say, “Just open your eyes and you will see that the light is here.” This is how I can help. I am telling you, “Just open you eyes!”

Madhukar – This sounds so simple!

Kiran – It is. But for many of you, even “open your eyes” may seem to imply some doing. How can I convey to you that ‘open your eyes’ is not a doing? I have to use the words. Awakening is not even the effort to open your eyes. It is just a waking up. It is like when you wake up from sleep. I see you all asleep, dreaming, and crying. I am just shaking you and waking you up. I say, “Please, wake up! Don’t cry! No dreams” This is what I am doing here.

Madhukar – So why then do those people meditate in your cottage over there?

Kiran- I allow the people to sit in the meditation room because for many, many years they have been in the habit of meditating. As long as they still want to enjoy their dreams, they can sit in meditation. I want to keep them with me. I let them sit in the hall so that they don’t escape [laughter] but I am waiting for the opportunity to hit them and shake them again and again and shout at them, “Please wake up!” This is what I am doing. [laughter] I am not proposing any method or any doing whatsoever so if they enjoy sitting there, fine. I know I don’t sit there. Madhukar – But you sit there as a teacher. Kiran – When they come out of the hall, I hit them again. I ask them, “What are you doing there?”

Madhukar – What are they doing there?

Kiran – I am providing a space for them to sleep. When they come close to me, I shake them again. I try to wake them up in the hope that they will awaken at some point.

Madhukar – Can you do it just now? Please hit me! Please, wake me up once and for all!

Kiran – I am doing it. We are doing it now. That’s what we are doing in this conversation.

Madhukar – I know.

Kiran – But you are enjoying the dream. What can I do?

Madhukar – What would you do to me if I came out of the meditation room at this moment room and sat down opposite you?

Kiran – I keep telling you this is a dream. You are enjoying it. I am sharing my awakening with you, although I know it is of no use to you. It has no meaning at all. If I try to wake you up all the time, I become your enemy. I want to remain your friend. That’s why I can’t keep on hitting and shaking. Once in a while I have to be friendly to you.

Madhukar – Is that why you share dinner after these ‘friendly meetings’ in your house? [laughter]

Kiran – Yes. Sometimes it is difficult for you because I must beat you hard. I know you want to run away from here. But there is no other way.

Madhukar – You claim not to have a teaching. On the other hand, you are suggesting three points to the seeker: One, accept Existence as it is; two, accept yourself as you are; and three, be totally aware of everything you do. For me, these suggestions imply that something actually can be done for enlightenment to happen. To whom are you talking? Who is the listener?

Kiran – This question is asked by the mind. It’s a logical question. You know who I am talking to and who is listening and who is ready for this acceptance. You know it very well. What I really want to say I cannot convey with words. But when I speak to you, I have to use words. That’s why I give the three suggestions to enable people to stop their efforts: Surrender to Existence with total trust; accept yourself as you are, with love; do everything with total awareness.

Madhukar – If you have no teaching and you are not a teacher, what function do you have?

Kiran – I am not teaching anything. Teaching implies some knowledge. Teaching is a demand from the mind for someone to understand something. When you are asking me questions, I am not giving you answers which add to your knowledge. I am just sharing what I have.

Madhukar – What is the difference between sharing and teaching?

Kiran – Sharing is sharing your joy, silence and understanding. Because I am awake, I share my awakening. Because you cry in your dream, I shake you and try to wake you up. You may ask someone in your dream, “Please give me some method or some technique which will awaken me!’’ If that someone answers you and gives you some techniques, he and his methods are also part of the same dream. In fact, you only can be shaken and woken up by someone who is outside the dream. What technique can be applied in a dream? There is no communication possible except to hit you hard and wake you up – shaking you so much so that you wake up. We can share no other thing. When you wake up, you just laugh and I laugh. There is nothing to understand, nothing to know, and nowhere to go. All is a dream. Your practices of methods and techniques for awakening are part of the dream. And the one who is suggesting methods for waking up is also taking part in the dream. You are dreaming about him and he is dreaming about you. No communication is possible.

Madhukar – How do you handle people who make you their guru and become attached to you?

Kiran – At all times, I am very alert that I don’t become part of somebody else’s dream. When I realize that somebody is clinging to me, and he is making me part of his dream, I create a device which forces him to return to his normal waking. If he doesn’t wake up, the device forces him to leave me. On the other hand, if I let him dream and cling to me, I create a situation which compels the seeker to get hooked to me. Then I am not helping him, I am harming him. This may sound contradictory. But it is the bitter truth. That is why a real teacher does not allow the student to hang on to him. Rather, he hits him, shakes him, and wakes him up. Therefore, one always hates the person who wakes one up from one’s dream – more so when the dream was very beautiful.

Madhukar – Are you a guru?

Kiran – I share what I have understood. I don’t claim,“I am enlightened” or “I am awakened” or “I am a free bird.’’ I have come to my home, to my own natural space. It is so beautiful there. I invite you all to partake. I want to share it. I don’t want it all for myself. I don’t want it for my own exclusive enjoyment. It belongs to you too. I am not afraid of any comments. If somebody misunderstands me, it is his problem. In spite of misunderstandings, I go on hammering and pounding until somebody wakes up and laughs with me. If it was possible for me to wake up, why should it not be possible for you too? Existence is speaking through me.

Madhukar – You say that enlightenment has no cause and that no effort can help it to occur. Why then do you give satsangs and take us out on picnics with you?

Kiran – I am just making all the efforts to wake you up to the understanding that there is no effort to be made and nothing to reach. To tell you this, I need some excuse. Therefore, I create the excuse with the name “satsang.” Because you understand only your language, I have to speak in that language. That’s why I am just calling you to come to me in the name of satsang. When you are here, I am talking to you. I am simply waking you up to the fact of my understanding, which is: There is nothing to do. You must only understand the whole game of the mind. I repeat myself endlessly every evening in our meetings which are called satsang. There is no sat, there is no sang!

Madhukar –I like your term “friendly meeting”.

Kiran -Yes, this is just a friendly meeting in which a friend is speaking with another friend. I am just standing at the corner of the street, telling people that this road doesn’t lead anywhere. If I stood on the street silently, you wouldn’t listen to me or understand me. Therefore, I create a small shop, a guide shop to which you can come to ask for directions. When you visit my shop, I can tell you, “Please, don’t take the path of doing and effort. It doesn’t lead to enlightenment.’’ The purpose of the signboard ‘Guide’ is to attract the people so that they can be told the truth.

Madhukar – You could put up another sign that reads, “No way!’’

Kiran – Once the people come to my shop, I tell them, “There is the no way!” [laughter ] The signboard, ‘Guide’ gives the impression that there is somebody who is able to show the way. I am sitting in the shop playing the guide. The seekers are attracted to the guide. When they enter my shop, I show them that there is no way. Therefore satsang is just an excuse. A picnic is also an excuse. In your language: to picnic means to be together in nature and share some food. I use the occasion to tell you that there is no way to reach enlightenment through effort. I say, “Just eat, relax, and don’t expect anything.’’ Is that difficult? Wherever I am, I say the same thing: “Just go inside yourself! Look within and wake up!’’ I am using all these tricks to make you listen to this simple understanding.

A native of Germany, Berthold Madhukar Thompson left the West in 1980 after achieving success as a businessman, becoming a fervent disciple of Osho. After his master died in January 1990, Thompson became a student of Sri H.W.L. Poonja, and served as his personal assistant. On several occasions, Poonjaji publicly declared that Thompson had attained enlightenment, but he eventually left his teacher, believing him to be mistaken. The author has since 1993, pursued an ever-deepening dialogue with enlightened adepts throughout India and in the U.S.

www.madhukarthompson.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

Exploding the Mechanism of Mind

Is one ever disturbed at seeing this self-centered, cunning, delusive and disorderly mechanism inside, called mind? How is it that one’s honesty does not revolt at this fact about oneself?

Armed with the spirit of benevolent rebellion, one will be able to dispel the allure and dark shadow of the self-centered mind. Only by standing up courageously to one’s enslavement will one discover the freedom – the divinity within. A spirit of adventure is absolutely indispensable to discover one’s own inner flame.

Such a revolt is free from any reaction. Instead there is pondering, a search, a way of looking within, in silence. For in-depth looking within, the state of aloneness is necessary. Aloneness is the state of absolute freedom from all the contaminants created by the world at large, including one’s own conditioning. Such freedom is the gate to enter this inner region – one’s own uncontaminated being.

This turn towards inwardness brings the quality of psychological solitude, where the activity and busy-ness of living slow down to create an interval, a gap, in which to feel and experience the inner reality.

Then, mysteriously, the mind energy begins to fall back upon itself. This is the U-turn of life – to look back at itself. In this benevolent revolt, with a sense of urgency, mind energy begins to undergo a change. One begins to become eternally aware, intensely watchful, like a hawk. All-around passionate vigilance, within and without, becomes the way of living.

When awareness begins to work from inside, it causes total perception. This integrated awareness is free of personality, and so of fragmentation. It then assumes all-around total perception, which gives the experience of the truth of that moment.

When the attentive awareness begins to work within, from moment to moment, observing each thought as it enters, it becomes possible to slow down and finally dissolve thought, thus releasing the energy that thought is using.

This conversion of thought into energy is the magic key. Released mind energy in turn brings heightened sensitivity and deeper watchfulness. Such intense vibrant innerness invites the touch of the spirit, which is Life energy itself. The impersonal intelligence beyond thought is what awaits a human being. Discovering it is the quest, the true challenge, the ultimate revolution…

With humanity on the brink, mankind is now facing its greatest challenge,. Sensitive and intelligent people are recognizing the fact that everybody is adding his bit to the world problems. Now their obligation is to become part of the solution. Only the individual, acting and inquiring alone, within himself, can take up this challenge. Each one must explore within, with utmost urgency and honesty, to invite the radical revolution in this age-old mind.

Therein alone lies the hope for mankind. The mindless mind freed from its fetters, will transform our perception, way of living, and relationships. The human being will rise above individuality and nationality, to embrace the law of universality. Only through total upheaval and revolt, with radical revolution of mind, can one discover this great fulfilment – with peace, love and the benevolence of life. Universal human beings will live by the intelligence beyond thought, manifested in lives of creativity and intuitive spontaneity. This is the birthright of every human being on the earth, the mystery which the Eternal is offering.

Let that Life lead you on…

With Love

Dada

Excerpts from Intelligence Beyond Thought – Exploding the Mechanism of Mind – Dada Gavand

www.mysticdada.org

Pandit Jasraj – Raga Purvi

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

I do not believe in believing. My approach is to know, and knowing is a totally different dimension. It starts from doubt; it does not start from believing. The moment you believe
in something, you have stopped inquiring. Belief is one of the most poisonous things to destroy human intelligence. All the religions are based on belief; only science is based on doubt. And I would like the religious inquiry also to be scientific, based on doubt, so that we need not believe but we can come to know the truth of our being, and the truth of the whole universe.

Osho: The Book of Understanding

‘Osho is an enlightened master who is working with all possibilities to help humanity overcome a difficult phase in developing consciousness.’

Dalai Lama at Bodh Gaya in India

Osho is not trying to purvey information but a truth that bypasses conscious thought and all that belongs to it, just as the most important activities of human beings bypass the mind.”

Bernard Levin, Journalist, commentator and writer

“It is a religion for the irreligious, for the agnostic, for the unbeliever, for the rationalist.”
Khushwant Singh, former editor of The Times of India; author and historian

This new religion shall spread the world over. It teaches a new acceptance of life – A kind of magic used as a launch pad to an experience of the divine. This suggests a concept of complete surrender of belief.
(Chapter15) Nostradamus



“A great mystic, a great philosopher…. In his own way Osho captured the essence of ancient wisdom, related it to contemporary needs, tempered it with the modern times and became a powerful messenger of eternal Indian thought and wisdom.”
Dr. Manmohan Singh, Indian Prime Minister.

“I was inspired by Osho’s wisdom when I wrote the song ‘How fragile we all are’; Reading his books gave me hope for humanity. It is a must for everybody to have a look into his words …..”
Sting, Singer and Performer

“When we wrote and prepared for shooting Vanilla Sky, I constantly checked in with Osho’s insights. It is not so easy to present the unconscious mind with images and a story. Osho is the only one who can perfectly explain it all, the inner and the outer and that helped me and my team immensely”
Tom Cruise, actor

“Through my friend Deepak Chopra I came across Osho’s books which gave me another deeper shift in my life. I regret I did not met him in person, and I feel sorry the US Government missed such an opportunity back in 86.”
Madonna, Singer, and Performer,

Courtesy www.otoons.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

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Interview with Sona by Kamakshi

You have a reputation for being one of the finest tarot readers. What makes you so good?

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Osho taught me, himself. I had been reading for 15 years professionally before I came to Poona, and Osho called me a fortune teller. He said you put people in their minds because you tell them about the future. You don’t know here and now, you must read from the present. I really didn’t know what he was talking about. He then started sending me people, and I would go see him once a week. There were so many people, I was reading 10-12 hours a day, one person after another, I’d try to understand what language was here, and understand what they were saying – that’s how I learned. He taught me in a 9 month period, completely shifted my consciousness, so that I got out of the way; to read. I was like a psychic sponge, I worried about every reading, I worried about all those people. I didn’t know how to disconnect and I was just going mad. But it cleared me a lot, he started saying that I would be a master of Tarot, so I was encouraged to take bigger and bigger chances, without having any safety nets… just going for it. There’s a possibility – if somebody’s mind gets blown enough by what you’re saying – that there’s a gap. They could become enlightened, both could! (laughs) That’s the secret of the Tarot; for that mind blowing experience only takes one tiny little nano second, that’s all we need where two hearts go like that…So each reading is, I feel, Existence offering an opportunity for two people… that’s why I don’t read for myself. Some readers are very good, they read for themselves. I don’t do that because I feel its a two way street, its heart to heart. I knew it from the beginning…

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Were you always reading cards?

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The cards happened because I saw the word tarot one day, and it rang a big bell, and I started asking around what did that mean, I didn’t know it was even a deck of cards. Same thing happened when I saw Tantra and come to find out they mean the same thing. But I got the same kind of inner feeling, I don’t know what is that – the warrior way, the middle way, and that made sense to me.

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What are the origins of Tarot? Its history?

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Somebody had the presence to ask Osho that question. I’d never ask him anything in darshan, I’d get in there and I couldn’t think of a question. But other people would ask, and very articulate questions. I’d think wow, I should have thought of asking that, about their experience with the reading, and how it affected them, and they’d ask if there was a secret to the Tarot? I mean what a great question. He said that it was at the time that the great library in Alexandria was burned, and it took 9 months to burn, it was such a huge place. The holy men got together and comprised 22 Major Arcanas showing people how to wake up. Each can be the stepping stone, it can be the thing to us, like a challenge or an obstacle that we would go through to become totally clear. They decided to disguise this book of tarot as a deck of cards. He said, knowing man’s propensity for gambling and entertainment, they were put in the hands of Gypsies who spread it throughout the world. On the 8 of Cups, there is what looks like an ‘M’, they might have written it a long ago. And in the miter, the hat that a pope wears, there was another upside down M, perfectly out of synch with the rest of the card. Then Osho told me that Jesus had not died, like they said that he did. He was a Yogi, he had become enlightened in India, and he had put himself into a deep samadhi like a deep sleep, Yogis can do that, and that they had got him down. He then continued his ministry, was married to Mary Magdalene, had children… So that M was a way of letting the people know her lineage is still ongoing. Osho had told me this back in ’75. So, chronologically I don’t know when it happened, I don’t even know when the library burned down, but to me that rang a bell of truth….

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How did you arrive in India?

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I was 35, I used to read for some very big people, revolutionary people, they’d fly me down to the Burbank studios on the Red Eye, and I would read for people in Hollywood, and then go back to San Jose, 50 miles from San Francisco. I was reading for a benefit in San Francisco to raise money for a meditation center – Divine Light Mission people. An Indian man came in, actually I wasn’t reading cards, I was reading hands because he showed me his palm, and I told him exactly what had been going on, which was quite amazing really, because it wasn’t a usual set of affairs. And he was very intelligent, he decided I would make a very good partner to him because of my abilities, and so he brought me to India. I came for 3 months, but no one knew anything about Tarot, so I only read hands. And then the next time I came to India was at the end of ’74, and I had decided I wanted to come to Poona to meet Osho.

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You also teach how to read the Tarot, do you think anyone who is interested can learn it?

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Yeah, beacause I believe that the people who come are supposed to come. And after a while they say that too, they start looking in retrospect, how they first heard about it. I had somebody tell me the other day that they’ve been looking for me for 20 years, and they had gone to Dr. Patrick’s. I had left a card there on the table, and they had to move the table, and the card fell on the floor.. (laughs) And it said Sona and phone number (0091-9850722828 ) … she was so happy. So that’s how I think it is – its just some beautiful play and synchronicity. A very famous Indian lady, a very fine reader, Ma Prem Usha, she does the tarot scope for the ‘Osho Now’, she does the ‘Delhi Pioneer’. and she’s on television. She has her offices in the Maurya Sheraton Towers in Delhi, I didn’t tell her I was coming and one day I just dropped in the door and walked in. She was sitting behind this beautiful desk, and she said “I’ve been waiting 6 years for you to come through that door.” She said “How am I doing?” So sweet. She was my first student in India, and she gives me full credit. Lot of people don’t, because I was blacklisted for many years, it wasn’t popular to be my student. I mean there used to be crosses on my front lawn… (laughs)

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Yeah?

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People were superstitious, I’d have to move…

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Are people scared of tarot and readings?

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My youngest daughter is 40 years old, this was 40 years ago…

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What about free will and destiny?

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That has been a query for me – whether its predestined. I have read some people’s palms over 30-40 years; and I can see that the main lines stay the same, some lines can disappear, and more can come. So I started having them take prints every 3 months. Even after a 10 day meditation camp, your hand can change – its amazing. I’d take prints from people before the camp and after.Everything’s made perfectly balanced. I don’t think of it as free choice. I think we have freedom if something comes up – to accept it and go along with it, or kick and scream and drag our feet. (laughs) But the river’s moving, one way or another, so might as well surrender and enjoy it.

Legacy of the Divine Tarot by Ciro Marchetti

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You have said this is the year of ten thousand buddhas awakening?

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Yes, ten thousand. That was really fun, so clear…in Goa. That’s where I heard it, I’d been sitting silently for about a week. I heard it really clear, its not just the words, its the way it came, and in that moment, that electric moment, it was just really incredible! I’d been sitting watching the ocean for about a week, and it just shocked the hell out of me. I mean its just too much! (laughs) It was the one, even now the hair raises on my arms, I get goose bumps thinking about it. It was amazing! I always tell everybody when I get a flash like that, but I can’t jump up and start going “There will be 10,000 Buddhas!!!” But that’s what I felt to do…
I was predicting earthquakes, and I really got scared – I had to stop all that. I even moved my children to a zone that I thought would be safer – and the earthquake came there. So I went and found my earthquake, basically that’s what happened. And I was telling everybody to move and some people even sold their house, so I couldn’t go back to that town.. (laughs) I’m pretty convincing…

.

What do you make of that?

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For me not to be meddling in the affairs of tomorrow so much (laughs) Not to be a doomsayer, its not my job.

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Where do you see people are at now? Do you see a change??

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I see in the way young people talk to each other, the words that they use. When I was that age, I didn’t have a clue to be talking about ‘projections’, or ‘that’s just a trip’, or ‘don’t worry, you’ll get over it’… In this way there’s much more emphasis on awareness, being aware. I look into children’s eyes, and I see amazing children. I see a future that is more conscious…

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e-mail – sonalayla@gmail.com

www.geocities.com/sonalayla

GateLessGate Magazine

Android Jones

Boom Festival is a global art, music and culture gathering held every two years in Portugal’s sun-drenched countryside in a stunning outdoor location on the shore of the Lake Idanha-a-Nova.

A multi exploratory art platform/ gathering for the psychedelic culture and scene. It is not easy to try to describe the essence of Boom Festival in only words – it’s whole purpose is the challenge to express the individual free spirit, outside of the matrix which surrounds us, and create a different reality while vibrating within the collective consciousness.

Bringing together the latest in psychedelic audio and visuals, art installations and workshops this week-long event is a harmonic convergence of people, energy, information and philosophies from around planet Earth and beyond.

Boom is an art event, born from a culture which has a long grown out of the dance floor (the heart of it) to new expressions and visions.

A whole world of people involved in the psychedelic culture get together to show and share what they have found inside the conscious fractal.

It’s a celebration of intuition and telepathy. Dance, music, sculptures, paintings, fashion films, photography, ideologies, experiences, communication, philosophies and lots more – all enhancing the possibilities of life’s experiences.

Our communication changes during these few days and in the end there is no more need for words.

We communicate through Art.

Synchronized multi-dimensionally with the full moon of August the next incarnation of Boom is taking a bio-dynamic approach by incorporating a variety of sustainable techniques and Earth-based forms throughout its infrastructure.

Reflecting a harmonic balance of the organic and the cyber-technologic, Boom  maps the metaphysical framework in accordance with Peace, Love, Unity and Respect.

Boom festival due to its conscious shape shifting and mutating properties happens every two years.

The tone is set for a transformative experience in celebration of the perpetual cycle of creation and re-creation – from the Beginning of the Whole to the Eschaton.

www.boomfestival.org

www.podcollective.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

You are well known for your amazing artworks and continuing involvement for the last fifteen years at Burning Man Festival. How has the whole experience affected you as an artist and as an individual?

It changed my life. It was a big jump in my career. It jumped from sculpture to the degree of architecture, it was a great opportunity to take my capacity to the extreme. Burning Man is an art event of radical expression, participation and community. It’s a great chance for sculptors to express themselves to the biggest and maximum stage that is possible. About 40-50,000 people go there. There is a big sign that says “No spectators”. It’s a philosophy, so you can participate in very small scale by dressing up, wearing a mask, you can dress up your bicycle, lot of bicycles there, you can make an art car, or you can make a bigger vehicle, as I have done once – I did a float which was an Ark, a large boat pulled by 300 people and that was the way it moved through the Playa, with all the artists dancing and singing on top of it. The first time I went was in 1992, we were 500 people. In the beginning it was very, very very small, it was a gathering of friends… with time I realized that it would be nice to accompany the burning of the man with a show, so for my third Burning Man, I created an Opera, and I worked with composers, choreographers, set designers, and in collaboration with an opera director, we created this Opera with 200 dancers, most of them gathered from the “burners” as they are called, 30 singers and musicians, an audience of 5000-7000 people and these large towers and stages that were burnt to the ground at the climax of the performance. Many subjects surrounded these Operas: the interesting thing of this project was that we chose religious or historical facts as a source of inspiration. We did one on Hinduism, on its history, mythology, art. Many sculptures were designed like Hindu gods, such as ‘Shiva Nataraja’, and things like that. We had different sets within the Opera to give colour to the choreography and possibilities, we choreographed dances based on sacred geometry.

It’s funny the way it works. When we have an idea, we talk to Larry Harvey, who is the number one guy there, “Hey, Larry, we have this idea, what do you think?”. “Oh yeah, how much money do you need?” “Ah, this much” “Okay its yours”. For instance, shortly before coming to India, one night I sort of hallucinated, and I saw a large Kali of about maybe 15 meters high, and the tongue being a slide so it would be vomiting people continously. So I phoned Larry, I said “Larry, I have this idea…” And he said “Fantastic, how much money do you want…?” That’s like a dream for an artist, and most of the Operas were just like that.

You made the Opera ‘The Daughters of Ishtar’?

Yes, I got inspired in Turkey. I wanted to make an Opera with a different kind of aesthetics and design, mosaic and gold and all that, so we based the Opera on the ancient mythological goddess – Ishtar. It was incredible to be able to bring this story of death and resurrection: Ishtar kills her lover Tamuz every year in winter, that’s why we have the desolate landscape of winter, and then she starts remembering and desiring his company by the springtime. So then Ishtar goes to the underworld, rescues Tamuz and bring him back to life. The whole myth of Ishtar and Tamuz is a vision of the process of death and resurrection in Nature. And it was very beautiful to bring it down into an Opera, sung by a powerful soprano, a wonderful composer… the people just went crazy with it. We have this story in books but the verses that were sung in the Opera were taken from the original that were written on stone 5000 years ago, like the phrases of Ishtar in the role of desire, when Tamuz is in the underworld, she sings “Who will plough my vulva?” for instance. Those are original old verses that we used. It was beautiful to be working with that material.

Why do they burn the man?

The story is that in the beginning, the inventor of Burning Man, Larry Harvey, his girlfriend left him for another man, so he burned a human figure representing the other guy, on the beach in San Francisco. He’s a popular guy, very intelligent, lots of friends. So the next year there was a crowd there on the same day to see the burning of the second one. The police arrived, they stopped the whole thing, and on top of that the figure broke (laughs) and it fell down. So it was a total disaster. But nonetheless, there was this small community there. But then the event was taken to the desert. It’s in a dry lake, its the second largest dry lake in the world, its huge, about 120 kms by 40 kms. The event takes place in the middle of it, and its authorised by the government of Nevada to burn pieces of art of any size. So it’s a festival of fire, fire of liberation.

You were initiated as a voodoo priest. Could you tell us about your initiation process, and could you talk about voodoo?

In order to get inspiration and material to create an Opera inspired by voodoo, three of us went to the voodoo capital of the world, Haiti, and found a group who initiate people. We spent 7 days enclosed in a room being initiated as voodoo priests – chickens were decapitated in front of us, there was blood being thrown on our heads, one of our guys fainted. And then at the end when we graduated as voodoo priests, there was a big party with people going into trance, things like that… The essential part of voodoo is going into trance, its a sort of shamanic contact with the beyond. That’s their spirituality, their way of connecting with the divine. It was an interesting experience, and we learned songs and terms and rituals, and all that we then used in the Opera. An anthropologist could say its a very interesting religion, lets put it that way.

You’re a very talented scuptor, what do you tap into for inspiration?

What inspires me mostly is religion, although I don’t profess religious ideas. I’m closer to being an agnostic, an atheist, than anything else. Although I think religion is impreganated with incredible possibilities of beauty. Let me tell you a story: I was in the Shiva temple in Chidambaram, many years ago, and I saw this ceremony, this procession, they were bringing fire on their shoulders, and there were elephants, horns, drums… I had goose bumps, and I was absolutely taken by this ‘spectacle’! And so I realized that a good spectacle, because it really hits you, doesn’t need an anecdote, doesn’t need a story to be told. And that was the basis of the idea of the Opera. So I owe my inspiration of using rituals for art here in India.

‘Invocation’, your sculpture, so powerful and uplifting! He feels like a spiritual warrior. How do you convey it so well?

“Invocation” is a figure, an Eagle Warrior, an institution from Mesoamerica, who for thousands of years were the corps d’elite of the Aztecs and the Mayans. And this Eagle-warrior is invoking the Gods. I do my best to convey the feeling of what the piece represents. I am flattered that I got the feeling. Thank you very much.

You are such a dynamic creative force. What is the passion that drives you?

Adrenalin. I was born like that. When I was in my teens I went deep into the mountains, I spent one year in the Amazon, at the end of my 20′s I crossed the Pacific in a sailboat, but that was adventure. Later on I found in Art the same sense of adventure – first for the exhilaration of discovery. When you jump into a large project, for instance like the Opera, because of the 250-300 people that are going to work with you – the sculptors, lighting people, the sound people… Then the element of risk – there is no adventure if you don’t risk. Fear limits a lot of the creative potential in people. It is an adventure to go to the top of the Everest, because you might die, and in the arts, it’s the same. There is a high percentage of risks, especially when you do large projects. It could be a kitsch, a horrible thing, and you discredit yourself as an artist.

Could you talk about how this amazing piece ‘The Dreamer’ came about?

The Dreamer with open eyes (photo by Steven Fritz)

In 2005 the theme in Burning Man was “The psyche”. I thought it was appropriate to create a space to experiment with the world of dreams, that part of the mind that is so much out of our control. So I made this sculpture which was a large half head emerging from the ground and the inside was a space with capacity for 40 – 50 people. The interior was focussed on dream observation and analysis. We brought scholars from the University, psychologists, dream experts, played dream inducing music inside, etc. It worked very well. Now ‘the Dreamer’ has been invited to be set in Golden Gate Park, which is the heart of San Francisco. It’ll be there for 6 months.

You are a co founder of Artnetwork Productions making films on ancient, indigenous and nomadic cultures, and the development of projects alerting audiences of the need for the preservation of the planet environment, and vanishing cultures. Is the message being heard? And what are some of your future projects?

Melitta Tchaikovsky and I are small time filmmakers. We make documentaries, we try to bring awareness on communities, on the state of the world, and things like that. We did a documentary following a bus, in fact, inside a bus, propelled by biofuel. We went from San Francisco to New York promoting bio fuel and political awareness. We are also doing movies for National Geographic.

About future works, we are planning to do a documentary called ‘The Hindus’ to bring out the depth and beauty of this religion. We are planning to interview the luminaries of Hinduism in India – scholars, wise men, sadhus, Yogis, etc… to reveal all these deep concepts of Hinduism, and probably the deepest or highest ever reached. The plan is to set the interviews as voice over, while showing the beauty of India, its art and architecture, the intensity of the rituals, etc.

You’ve made a couple of beautiful movies, ‘Ganga Ma – A pilgrimage to the source’ and ‘Jaisalmer Ayo’ which are based on India. What turned you on to India?

I came to India about 30 years ago because I was studying bansuri. So it is the music that brought me to India. But after some time here, I realized that the spectrum and the mystery of India was much bigger than just the music. In 2001, we came to document the Ganges from the mouth in the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas for the movie ‘Ganga Ma..” it was an incredible journey. While filming this movie we had the chance to meet the late Komar Kothari in Jodhpur, he was a prominent scholar, who told us that the nomadic groups that we had seen in the Thar desert were genetically connected to the Gypsies in Europe. That sounded to us like a very interesting subject, which brought up our second project. The amazing thing for me was that these are people who live with very little, and yet they are very happy. Their way of life, which is traveling, gives them that edge of adventure, meeting people, and avoiding the monotony of everyday life that the villagers have. Most of them, except for the metal workers, are artists – dancers, singers, story tellers, that’s a very important thing. The romantic spirit of travelling with art from village to village is accompanied by a certain degree of happiness that you can perceive from these people. These nomadic groups were the ones who left India a 1000 years ago from Jaisalmer, which was connected to the Silk Route. I believe that ‘Jaisalmer Ayo’ is an important document of information about the origins of the Gypsies. And the most important thing is that these people that we shot, are the last generation of nomads. What we wanted to show in the movie is this pure way of life that is vanishing, and it is a reflection of our past.

If we could find a commission for you to create in Koregaon Park, what would you create for this place?

Hmmm…. I would create space. City planners here don’t think too much about space. Also parks and squares are places for sculptures. So, yeah, that’s what I would do. I would create green spaces, and then I would invite local artists to set their work in those sites.

You are based in San Francisco. Why do you choose to be there?

Yes, I am based in San Francisco, and I fell in love with the city in ’75, the first time I arrived there, I saw the wealth of oppurtunity. Young kids who don’t know what they want to do, but they feel some artisitic vein burning in their hearts, they go to San Francisco. As you know it was the capital of the Beatniks: the writers in the 50′s, it was the capital of the hippie movement in the 60′s, and starting in the 90′s was the capital of Burning Man, which is a movement that has polarised a lot of artists, and has propagated a certain taste, a certain way of being, and seeing. Burning Man has been a source of transformation for many people. It happens in the Nevada desert, but now it has come to San Francisco 365 days of the year. There are many events and many people attend, dressing up, participating in the same spirit as it happens in the desert.

Wow, so it went out from San Francisco, and then it came back into the city

Exactly. Before it was an event, but then it became a philosophy, it became a lifestyle, it became a way of being. There are many different groups that originated from Burning Man that are friends, and they make Burning Man-like parties, meetings, events, workshops, trips, adventures… It has grown in a very interesting way, it’s grown as a spiritual movement…

Do you see it happening more? It happened in the 60′s as you said Haight and Ashbury, San Francisco – big movement. Do you feel there’s going to be another movement like that happening?

Well, the big difference is that the 60′s movement had a wide acceptable philosophy. There was love, peace, Vietnam, lot of things like that. Burning Man is apocalyptic and not oriented to the large public like the hippie movement. It is for artists, free thinkers and the like, it is not a philosophy of broad reach, like the New Age movement. Burning Man doesn’t profess salvation or anything like that.

Apocalyptic? It means its finishing…Wake up…?

‘Apocalypse’ according to the Bible, is the end of the world. The ‘Burning Man’ festival is apocalyptic in the sense that everything is about burning – ephemeral art, burning art, sex, fun in the present, obliviousness of responsibility… Burning Man is all about lust and art, with everything going on, lets live as high and beautifully, as intensely as we can, with the tone that we might be going to disaster…

Interview and Pepe's photo by Kamakshi

www.artnetwork.com

www.laughingsquid.com

www.burningman.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

What gives you the edge? What’s the secret?

The first time we came to Goa, it was a big bloom. We were just playing around in the apartments with cassettes that we stole from our mothers, and we were mixing this… When we left from India, me and Riktam we had taken sannyas there together, when we came back here to Goa the next season we played music with a few Dats that we had collected from certain older DJ’s that we knew from the past. So from there, everything grew, to what we are now. Evolution…(smiles) The two big parties that we played at, left a big imprint on people here, and elsewhere, in the trance scene. That season we had the most amazing parties we could ever imagine. We were 16 I think at the time, 14 years ago, but we played like 16 hour sets

You played for 16 hours…wow…

Yeah, me and Riktam. So from there it all started. Its been a long time. I think from the energy that we had as kids, its still like that, and even more, because we can make the music now – express ourselves in that way. And that’s what we want the crowd to have – the young energy.

How does it feel when you’re up there, and when it really starts happening, and everyone is all moving together, how does that feel?

That’s what we live for…

That’s amazing

Yeah, it’s amazing, it takes you very high… it takes a while to come down

Like meditation, no? Its coming into a space…

Especially when we’re making music. We hardly talk, and its like the whole track is finished within 6 hours, we spoke 5 words

Do you have a background in meditation?

Poona

You are so in tune with Riktam. How did you meet?

My father came to me one day, he was coming from India, saying “I have a friend here in Amsterdam and her son does exactly what you are doing all day long. You guys need to meet” It was like maybe for one year he was saying this, and then we got together for the meeting, And its a guy I know from a coffee shop, for two years, and that was Riktam. It was meant to be. We already knew each other from a different crowd of people, than from our parents.

Its beautiful that your father thought somehow to put you together..

Yes, it was meant to be, I already knew him.

And your father, Harida, has played with you?

Yeah, he goes on tour with us in Brazil, Japan. He does perccussions.

And how does that feel, having your Dad along on tour, playing with him..

It’s great, its a strong feeling

How is your connection with him?

He’s great, he’s one of my best friends. Apart from being my father.

How did the name ‘Growling Mad Scientists’ come about? This is when you were 14, right? You chose the name then?

If I tell you that, I’ll have to kill you…

Okay, it does sounds like from 14 year old’s, its very cute. What was the vision of the band when you started, what was the concept?

We were just mad about the sound, We made a strong characterstic sound. Its really recognizable. Everybody’s like “Oh yeah, that’s GMS” Its like Madonna when you hear her sing, you know its like, “Oh…”

How would you describe your style?

People say psychedelic trance goa. I personally like to call it Energetic Dancefloor Music

It is true. when you came on – you can’t stop yourself… you really have something. Its a gift… Are you also a trained musician?

I went to Music School, where you learn how to write music, play different instruments. I was 5 years old, into rock music all of a sudden. I enjoyed listening to U2, all kinds of pop-rock music. I was in a band when I was 10 years old. And we played every single day, somewhere, in the park, this kind of thing. I have been involved with making music, or writing music, or learning about music, from a very small age. I used to sleep in my Dad’s bass drum as a baby. Maybe that’s why I lost my hearing…

You did, really? And how is that?

I only hear 25% in one ear,

You first played when you were 14, which is under age. How was that for you because you are not really allowed in a club, though you are playing there, you are the DJ

When I went to the United States, it was kind of hard, because the age there is 21 to get in. So they had to sneak me in the back, and still there’s the security guard.

Were you successful very soon? How did it all happen? Now GMS is huge.

Top three acts in the trance world

You play at these huge parties in Brazil…

Yeah, mega parties – 25,000 people, big celebrations. They are doing these kind of parties there for 10 years now

Where is the trance scene happening the most in the world?

Brazil at the moment. Its a madhouse there. There’s parties every single night, five parties different places. Every weekend there’s something. The parties in Mexico are also pretty big, 12-15000.

And what’s special about Trance?

Its uplifting, gives you a high.

Are you based in Ibiza?

Yes, for the last 11 years. Making music in Amsterdam was very hard and we’d been going to Ibiza every summer to spend the holidays. There were lots of parties going on there, these kind of parties as well – outdoors. The situation in Amsterdam for making music was very hard in the city, you have neighbours, you can’t do what you want, wake up in the middle of the night, make a track, can’t do that, and so we decided to move there.

You’ve made many albums..

It’s 8 now, counting remix albums, and with 1200 Mics, it should be close to 520 tracks produced, and maybe 400 released.

What’s one of your favourites?

‘No Rules’ The music that we were making at the time was really inspirational. Changed a lot in the scene, the sound that we created, changed a lot of people’s way of thinking about the music, how to create it, and the dance floor, how to recieve.

For somebody who’s never heard of GMS, which album to listen to?

I would say, here take all the albums and listen..

You also created the label ‘Spun Records’. What’s that about?

Yes. Some friends of ours, Americans from Detroit, that were also really into the music, they came to us and they said, lets try to make a record label, put music together, and release. We decided to do this and that became ‘Spun Records’ Its growing very fast, many young DJ’s, very talented, many new artists this year.

Any exciting projects coming up?

The new ‘Zorba’ album will be excellent. Working on ‘Growling Machines’ at the moment, its also amazing. And ‘Growling Mad Scientists’ – the new one will come at the end of the year again.

What is the inspiration of the name of your new album ‘Zorba’?

The music itself, its celebration, its more melodic, its more open minded, for a wider range of listeners.

You’ve also done music for films?

The producer of the movie, Tony Scott, was filming in Mexico. The filming site was a Rave, and the DJ over there played our tracks, and the producer loved the music, so he had to have it in the movie. He played 5 of our tracks. Its called ‘Man on Fire’ with Denzil Washington and Christopher Walker, its based in Mexico. He’s the bodyguard of a little girl, and she gets kidnapped, and he goes after her and ends up in this Rave.

Who are the hottest DJ’s and artists right now?

Infected Mushroom, Astrix… apart from what we produce. We produce 1200 Mics, Zorba, GMS, Soundaholics, Gnarling Machines, Shanti Matlin, that’s Riktam little brother, he’s awesome.

What inspires you?

A lot of things. Everything. Moods, movies, news, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot driving the car, or a motorbike. The concentration is somewhere else, and you’re just making music on the way. Then when you get there… you put that in. Kind of weird, yeah. When I’m here its mostly No-Mind, so its great.

Here? In Goa?

Yeah

How is the trance scene in Goa for you?

At the moment, we are not having the outdoor experience, we are having beach parties which is also nice, not that small, still pretty big. There were 4-500 people in there for sure. Quite a lot of people. These parties are amazing, how all the friends come…

How do you see India in the trance scene?

Its great here, its amazing, everybody’s really into the music, all ages, here’s kids running around dancing, there’s older people, 50 plus on the dance floor, singles, great thing to see the energy, the whole vibe. I think that the trance scene here will grow a lot. There will be a new generation of youngsters, really into the music. India’s evolving really fast. There’s a lot of people coming back to their roots here from abroad, and bringing new ideas to the country. I see a big change coming for India, its going to be a bigger force. It will light up the whole country, in the next 10 years, and the people themselves.

Do you feel a Revolution happening?

All the time. Slower than expected…

Some dreams that you still have…

Make a thousand tracks and more. Find a way to put this music into a format where everyone will be intoxicated by it, and want to listen to it. There’s this track, its close, its very close. Everyone I play it to gets addicted to the music and wants more…..

So, you’re living your dream…

Yeah…

Interview with Kamakshi

http://www.myspace.com/growlingmadscientists

GateLessGate 4-DV

What’s your driving force? What makes you get up everyday and go for it? Keep putting it out?

That’s our job. We all came here for one reason only. All of us, To create more light on this planet. And we all forgot, And created more darkness.
In order to learn not to do that, as you become more and more aware of that, that’s your focus. My purpose is to inspire people to Wake up.
And we all will eventually, its just a matter of time, to understand how it works Then we have responsibility. First of all to be responsible to the energy, And second of all, to share with others so that they will slowly but surely become responsible for energy. Now we are not only creating more light by example, but hopefully we are inspiring people to be more interested in the same. And that’s the whole game. Everything else is just what we do and are learning to do. What it all breaks down to, it’s a Life game. When you Understand it, then you have the responsibility for being more on the Light side, and hopefully inspire others to do the same.

What are the different things you put together, in your work?

See, the reason I like this work so much; I’ve done all those therapies, I’ve checked them out, I’ve studied them. And to me, they all were power trips. And not only, power trips, most of them are just band aids, First Aid. Yes, they will all make you feel better. You can do all those different things, Reiki etc…. And they will bandage you temporarily, but they won’t change your programming.

And that’s where the problem is?

That’s where the problem is. Because we keep under stress going into our computer, going back to the same program, to survive! Because when we were little and we did this, we survived. So it became a survival program. Now the thing happens here, and I do it again, and then I go, “Why, why did I do that? That’s ridiculous. I keep doing it” And the interesting thing is you need to watch this movie called ‘What the bleep do we know’ Every time you are upset, every time you are angry, your body goes into turmoil. And then people wonder why they are sick? And in my experience, most illnesses, especially long-term ones are self punishment. I think I’m a bad person, or I’m not a good person. And so therefore I’m proving it, and I’m punishing myself for not being what I should have been for them to love me the way I wanted them to…. Oh my goodness! This is an energy game of ‘responsibility’ and ‘choice’. That’s it…. And when you choose to feel better, and that’s your focus, you will… How can you not? You’re putting forth ‘feel better’ into energy, ‘feel better’ will come back. You put ‘poor me’ into motion, ‘poor me’ comes back. You put ‘anger’ into motion, ‘anger’ comes back. You put ‘willing’, the other side of ‘anger’ in motion, “Yes, I’m willing to learn from this and grow” Then solutions comeback, because you are willing. “Here, you want solutions? Have some…Oh you want some more? Have some more. Its whatever we do, we get back. But its not punishment. The religious leaders made this punishment so that you’d have to pay to feel better. So you could excuse your suffering instead of being responsible for it and changing it. You don’t have to suffer.

The focus is on your self?

Totally. What about them? The better you are, the better you’ll treat them. How about your job? The better you are, the better your job will be. We are going into businesses, working with executives and CEO’s, because wherever they are, they’ve got themselves to that point. The reason they don’t go any further is because of some negative programming from childhood is keeping them away from it. It’s in their way. So they can get rid of that and take more advantage of where they are in their power, to be at more of an advantage and grow, and be able to deal with everybody else better. That’s why what we do is so valuable. And its very difficult to sell to people, because we are selling responsibility. And that’s the key. Response means conscious awareness. Reaction means emotional addiction. So we need to be aware of our reactions, and choose to respond. And awareness and commitment will do it. Just got to work at it, baby steps. Everyday- little bit better, little bit better… No more judgment, “Oh I did that so many times!” No, no, no. I did better – once, twice….count your betters only. Start playing the game consciously on the positive side, to see what you can accomplish.…… for six months, I guarantee your life will change. How can it not? You’ve got six months of focused commitment on the positive side. I guarantee that will bring light to you that you have no idea. And don’t doubt it. Doubt your doubt. “No, no, no can’t do that…” Don’t do that negative self talk. Stop that “How do I do that?” Choice! “Well, how do I make a choice?” Give me a break! You make a choice from choice. “Whoa! Really? Are you sure? If I make a choice, then.. If I don’t do that, then…” I’m making a choice with other people’s ideas of it, and I can blame them. Well they told me that this would work . And it’s their fault, it’s not mine. So I don’t learn anything except don’t trust them. But Hello? When I say what did I do to cause this one? And I start accepting, and I look for… “Okay, okay” I expected them to be nice to me and they weren’t.
So I get pissed off. Appointments, disappointments. So every time I’m disappointed now, I can say”Okay, how did I set myself up by expecting something I didn’t get?” And that’s all we’re all doing. We don’t think we got it.
We’re expecting something from life that we don’t have. You’ve got you, that’s all you need. Until then, you’re in the game of ‘prove yourself’. What’s to prove? You’re a divine being pretending to be who you think you are. And pretending that all these problems you got are really problems, instead of opportunities to become more involved with who you really are. And your power. You have a ton of power. There’s nothing to prove. Just be you. If they like it, good for them. If they don’t, it’s their problem. If you like it, that’s all that matters. And don’t judge it, just look to see where you can improve it. Judgment is looking what’s wrong, criticizing. But if I look at it and say “Well this is how I did it. Now how can I do it better?” Now I’m looking for more solutions, and I have no energy on how it didn’t work.
My energy is on how can I make it work better next time. What is this going to teach me that will help me accomplish that? So now my whole focus is changed. So now you can see for yourself how you made yourself miserable because you thought you ‘deserved it’, or ‘should be different’, or ‘should be better’. You should be you. Existence doesn’t make mistakes. We aren’t wrong. Existence doesn’t make wrong. If it did, the whole Universe would crumble. If it doesn’t make wrong, then what’s wrong with us? The answer is – Nothing! Nothing’s wrong until we think about it. We are in a great age. This is the greatest thing that ever happened. This is the first time in existence of this Universe where you can become ascended in body.

Deva Premal and Miten – Gayatri Mantra

What is Ascension?

Ascension is coming in tune, in harmony with the energy that you are which creates that which is called Enlightenment. And to me, the first step towards Enlightenment is when you are no longer a victim. Until then, I don’t think you are in your spiritual trip at all. You are playing the other trip, the ‘drama game’. “What you doing?” “I’m doing the drama game. I thought it was going to be a pyjama game, but it turned out to be a drama game!” And here we are. After a while, hopefully I’ll go, okay enough with the drama. It never changes anything, the same things still happen. So let’s forget the drama and do something different. Let’s see its value, instead of its pain. Pain comes from “Oh no!” Value comes from “Oh really? Wow, that’s wonderful! What am I going to learn from this?” I like to use the example of this professional athlete who’s a runner. In an accident he loses his legs. Now he has two choices. He can be a victim to that and talk about the rest of his life as reason why he can’t do anything else. Or he can get on the other side and say “Wow. I never had no legs before. I know, I’ll create some new ones. I’ll be able to do this. A whole bunch of experiences that I never even dreamed that I had. Isn’t this wonderful?” Same thing, different attitude, different perception. One guy’s going to find a life of suffering. The other guy’s going to overcome the problem. Even if he only feels great about it because now he can go in for the handicapped race or whatever. But he’s going to find something positive because he is looking for it. We don’t look for positive, we look to prove – “See they don’t like us, see the rejection, see, see, see…” It’s because we are rejecting ourselves. When you accept you as you, you don’t care whether they do or not, at all. No matter what they do, they can’t affect you. You have to use what they are doing to affect yourself. I can say anything I want to say. And unless you buy into it, I’m just a nut, saying these weird things. I don’t have to defend myself because I’m not buying in. I know who I am, I know what I’m doing. And by doing that, I’ll do it a little better everyday. And that will make me feel good, because at night I can see that I’ve accomplished something that is valuable for myself. And I reach up and say, good for you kid, and I pat myself and hug myself and go to sleep. Because I did something valuable,
for me. Just that much, if everybody did that much, the world would change. Because it would be that much less negative which feeds the terrorists, which feeds the Palestine-Israel number, all that’s fed by everybody’s negativity.

What’s the trick to change it from “Oh no” to “Oh really. Wow, that’s wonderful. What am I going to learn from this?”

We’re energy soldiers, we’re light soldiers.. We came down in this energy, which is emotional energy. The energy of the planet is emotional, and we chose to come down in this energy so that we could learn through free will which is the law on the planet, to create light instead of darkness. All negativity, all negative ideas are darkness. Understanding is Light. The problem is that until we get to a certain age level or soul level, you don’t want to be responsible. You want somebody else to do it for you, and they can’t. Because these are the things we chose to play with, and its up to us to do it, or not do it, but because we have free will – it doesn’t really matter whether we do it or not, except to the purpose of the planet. Because Existence doesn’t make mistakes, it doesn’t punish. Karma is not payback, its another opportunity to learn something that we didn’t understand before. So it gives it to us again, and its going to keep coming until we finally go “Ohhhh, that’s what that is. Well, I can do that” And we choose to be more positive and transform that negativity through understanding into Light.

Well, what’s the trick?

What trick?

To change it from “Oh no” to….

Oh that’s easy – I want to feel good. That’s the New Age mantra. Our job, our responsibility is to say “I want to feel good” Worry, fear, doubts…. “I don’t do that anymore, I want to feel good”
In the New Age we have two basic responsibilities – one is to be positive when we think, speak and feel. And the other is to look at the past and find the good in each one of those things we thought was terrible. If it hadn’t been for that so called terrible experience, I wouldn’t have made the choices that make me be who I am now. But because of that thing that I was faced with, and had to do something about, I made choices that improved my life. So now I can look at that, instead of saying “Oh that was terrible” I can say “Thank you for that experience because it enabled me to improve myself”
In the first six years of our life, we create our entire belief system – what we believe we are, what we believe the world is. And from then on we’re either responsible or reactive. Responsible is conscious, reactive is always negative, from an old childhood program, that we learned from somebody else, and that we’re still doing, because we think that’s who we are. No we’re not. We are as Osho said – a divine being pretending to be a person. And now we are pretending the person we are pretending to be has all these problems. And that’s the game of life. We’ve come down here to play, and everybody gets serious. “This isn’t funny!” Honey that’s funny. What do you mean this isn’t funny? Its the Cosmic Circus, and we’re the clowns! That’s why the work that we do, we help you go back into your time track, into your computer when you first decided there was something wrong with you, so you could understand where you did that, when you did that, why you did it, and change it if you want to. Because to me, you can’t change anything until you change the programming.

And the programming is destructive?

Yeah. Now therapies to me, most of them are power trips. Make yourself do this, this and this. If you don’t get rid of the stress, and you do achieve that through force; inside the stress is still there, you are going to destroy yourself physically. That’s why in our work we reprogram, we go back into the computer – when did I first decide there was something wrong with me?
Here’s a good example – my mother, when she realized she was pregnant, said “Oh shit. I’m pregnant.” And the child is going to feel responsible for her reactions and will start doubting myself right now. “Oh look what I’m doing to my mommy. I must really be a bad person cause she is upset cause I am here.”
Now I knew she was going to do that, I just didn’t know how I’d handle it this time. Now the minute I get conceived I don’t remember any of my spiritual trip. All I want to do is belong to this family, and to be loved and accepted like I am, and I’ve already chosen the family that doesn’t have it, to give it to me, the way I want it. Why? So I could learn to give it to myself!
There are four things that you want from the outer world that you can’t get. First of all you want to be Important to them. The idea is to be important to you! When I’m important to myself, if and when I decide to do that, I don’t care whether they think I’m important or not – I got it covered. I’m important to me! You don’t think I’m important? That’s your problem, not mine.
Second thing – we want to be Accepted as is, by them. Forget it. We need to accept our self as is. And if we were any different, we’d be learning different things. So we purposely chose to be whatever we are, so we’d have something to play with, to learn through. So we need to accept ourselves as we are, and when we do, if we do, we don’t care whether they accept us or not. Again, we got it covered. I’m important to me, and I accept myself as I am. What’s your problem? The third thing we want from them that we can’t get is Appreciation. When you do something that you feel good about, you reach up there with your hand, and pat your shoulder, and say “Good job. Good job honey, you really did good that time” Because we are the only ones that know when we want to be appreciated, they don’t know. Now we expect them to understand that and tell us how good we’re doing, but we won’t believe them until we appreciate ourselves. We can’t accept appreciation from them because we don’t think we deserve it or we’d appreciate ourselves.
Fourth thing – Love. Until we love ourselves, we don’t even know what love is. Its something that somebody else said – when you love, you do this and this. So somebody taught us that – its a belief system. And until I love myself there is no way will I let anybody else love me. Even if they do, I won’t believe it. “I love you honey…” “Yeah what do you really want from me? I know its not love. What is it?” Because I don’t love myself, how could you? Now I expect other people who don’t love themselves, to love me, who doesn’t love myself. Ohhh deeaar…I’m in a lot of trouble here.
So when I do love myself, then I don’t care whether they love me or not. I got it covered again. So now when I’m important to myself, and I appreciate myself, and I accept myself, and I love myself; what do I need the outside world for? To share my energy with, only. I feel great, you want some?

And when we look at life, and we have all these ideas of it – are these really our ideas, or whose eyes are we seeing through – mama’s eyes, papa’s eyes, teacher’s eyes, preacher’s eyes… whose belief system am I looking at life through? And Osho used to say this – until you’ve had an experience yourself, even if it’s true, its not true to you. Because its not your experience, its somebody else’s belief system that you’re still pretending is true. But you don’t know because you haven’t had the experience.
One of the biggest problems with mankind is impatience. “Have to have it now!” Really? Why? “Well, to prove that I’m important and I’m worthy and somebody cares” How about you caring? A lot of us go with this feeling “Nobody cares about me” That means I don’t, or it would be – nobody else cares about me. But it’s nobody. Well, I’m part of nobody then. Ohhhh, isn’t that interesting?
And if you can accept that Existence doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t judge, doesn’t punish. It just supports whatever we do for as long as we do it. Now Existence doesn’t know about negativity, so whenever we do anything that’s negative – it just kicks it right back to us “Here, you put this out, have it back” And its going to give it to us a bit stronger to see if it can get our attention – see what you did. We ignore it. “ha-ha…ha-ha..”. Pretty soon it gets so strong, we go “Oh, okay. Okay, okay. I see it. Alright. I’m in a corner here Okay? Alright! Let me out….” Because it finally gets strong enough to get our attention, cause we don’t pay attention. We’re so busy begging the world to love us and accept us and to think we’re important…. We don’t do it ourselves. Remember there’s nothing wrong with any one of us. Existence doesn’t make mistakes. We’ve all chosen to be exactly what we are so we could see how was life through these eyes – by being this person. What can I learn from life? How can I understand myself and make more positive choices in my life that will improve the evolution of the planet.
“Oh you have no choices, its all God’s will” Yeah, but you’re the God, so its your will. You’re part of Existence – that spark that keeps us alive inside is part of Existence, pretending to be a limited person, with all these problems, and nobody cares you know… Which means I don’t. Next question…

You say ascension in the body is possible right now. For someone who doesn’t know about personal growth and meditation, what’s the way in?

“I want to feel good” – that’s the answer to everything.

Dr. Feelgood…

Its the answer to everything. If you don’t doubt yourself, don’t worry – then your energy is up. When your energy is up, you feel good, and you’re adding more light to the evolution of the planet. And other people around you will start feeling better themselves, because your light of feeling good is influencing them, whether they know it or not. And the stronger you get in your feel-good business, you can walk down the street, and people around
will start thinking a little different because of the light that you shared with them as you walked through. Its that simple – its the mind that makes it difficult. This is the complexities here (pointing to the head); this is the simplicity, in your heart (pointing to the heart) This is a simple game that we make as difficult as we possibly can, otherwise how would we suffer? We couldn’t. We’d just say “Okay, today what am I going to do? I want to do this and this and this… Good for me…Next… Wow, that was great. No legs – I never did no legs before…Wow, what an opportunity” Different approach to the same thing. One makes it a problem, the other makes it an opportunity. Now, if Existence doesn’t punish, then why is this happening to me? Again, we are back to ascension – when you can stop being a victim to anything. If I’m not a victim, then what’s life doing? Its teaching me something. Every time something happens, there’s a chance to learn, to learn, to learn, to learn…. What? How to make light instead of darkness, to see some good in it, to find some way to solve it, to do something of value with it, instead of using it to feel bad, to prove that I’m not worthy of loving myself. Why? Doesn’t make any sense. And most of us spend our lives looking for the problems “See how difficult it is.. See.. Nobody cares. See… See. See… See…” You’re looking for the negative – you’ll find it. You find what you’re looking for. The minute that you change your mind, decide to look for the positive, you’ll find that everywhere you look; because now you’re looking for the positive, the light instead of the darkness

You’ve said, “When you come in tune with the energy that you are, which creates that which is called Enlightenment” Is everybody’s frequency different? Does that mean there are six and a half billion different solutions?

Yes, to the last part. To the first part though, there’s only One energy – energy is the same. The choice of using that energy is the only difference. Remember I chose to be born so I could learn from my choices. There are no right or wrong choices, there are no good or bad choices, there are only opportunities for awareness. Otherwise it’s somebody else’s belief system, and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Parents have good intentions – they want to save us from their mistakes. They want to save us from learning, never having to struggle in this. We can’t do that, because we have to do our own thing. So their intentions are “Alright, young lady, be home by 8 o’clock at night, and you don’t go anywhere without a muzzle….” (Laughs) “.. That’s so you won’t be able to do things bad or say things bad” But they do all this stuff to us from their heads, they are being parents, and doing good intentions to help us. No they’re not, they’re limiting us. If you want to raise your children properly – teach them how to think, not what to think. Let them make up their own minds, let them make their own mistakes. If its all Existence, and we’re pretending to be a person anyway, what real difference does it make? Nothing, except to the person doing it. And what difference does it make to them – either they feel good or they feel bad – in simplicity terms. Its that simple – you want to feel good, you want to feel bad. And what you are willing to do, to feel good, if you want to. Are you willing to take the responsibility for being positive for your energy? Or not? Or are you just waiting for somebody else to come along and do it for you? And they can’t, even if they could do it. I used to be a hypnotherapist, and I realized that when I had you under hypnosis, your conscious mind was asleep. All changes that we make in life, we make consciously. So if my conscious mind is asleep, then who’s making the changes? The hypnotherapist. Now that’s temporarily making me feel better, but in the long run I got to come back and do it again, because I chose those problems personally to learn to overcome, as my job here, but now someone else did it for me? No, no, I got to come back and do it for myself. So when I realized that I wasn’t really helping people by helping them change those things, that I could only help people by helping them understand why they created what they are, and hopefully inspire them to do something about that.
And they’re the only ones who can do it, no one can do it for them. We have to do it ourselves. There’s no magic pill out there, no magic person that’s going to go “Poof! You’re alright” No, cause that’s not the way it works. The minute I understand that, hopefully I’ll start going to work – with me. Start being responsible – for me. Start being more positive – for me! Start feeling better because that’s what I decided I want to do.

Do you feel this new perception will spread rapidly once people realize how simple it is?

It already is – because of the New Age. We’ve been in the New Age over 12 years now. The magnetic grid around the planet has changed, that’s why the weather’s all different – the planet’s changing. And people who never before were interested in spirituality or metaphysics, are going “You know, I’ve been thinking about that lately” Because of the new energy – we’re in new energy, new radio stations, and we’re starting to tune in slowly but surely into new frequencies, which is new thought processes, and this is going to keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

There are many people freaking out about 2012. What’s your take on it?

What do you mean – twenty twelve?

Two thousand and twelve.

Oh, two thousand and twelve – well, that’s beautiful. That’s the end of the Mayan calendar, which is the beginning of the real New Age From that point on, the people that are born will be born programmed to find solutions, to fix it. Now the kids that are being born, are the kids that are being born to teach us how to handle them, for one, and to be the parents of the New Age people – a higher frequency, a higher vibration. That’s why they are not buying into our old habits of – do this and don’t do this. They’re going “Oh yeah, says who? Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t do that. Don’t just tell me not to do that. Give me a choice” Twenty twelve is the beginning of everything; the war should be over by then.

Though some people are feeling 2012 is the end…..

No, its the beginning of the real new world. And it’s the beginning because enough of us have chosen to be positive that have allowed that to happen.
If we hadn’t done that, the world would have ended, sometime ago. Didn’t. Why? Because enough of us have chosen to be positive. I had a radio programme, I was a Cosmic Messenger and I told cosmic bedtime stories on K.P.P.C. in Pasadena in California. I was on from midnight to 1 o’clock in the morning. And afterwards the phones would light up, and I’d answer a lot of them, just to see what people said. This one time I answered the phone, they said “You don’t know who we are, but we thought you’d be interested in knowing that the energy of the planet has improved 28% on the positive side because of people’s positive actions” I said “Oh thank you very much.” (laughs) And another funny story is – years later I ran into some kids, and they said “You were the Cosmic Messenger?” I said yeah. They said” You know we used to get together and take acid trips and listen to your programme!” (laughs) Believe me its all good, anytime you want to see the good in it.
We are a magnet that attracts unto ourselves the equivalent of what we express. Energy passes through us. When we think, speak and feel; we change that energy with what we do. And that change is attached to us magnetically until we transform it into awareness and understanding, now, not only are you feeling good, you’re adding to the light of the planet, more light to all the problems in this world, you’re helping them change because you’ve changed. You know it takes one half of one percent of the population of the world to change it totally, by being more positive. One half of one percent!

Dr. Warren Stagg/Narendra

A faculty member of THREE-IN-ONE Concepts, and a teaching metaphysician, who
is in INDIA to help establish Precision Muscle Testing as a reliable tool
for use in transforming individual limitations. Warren has been in the
Holistic Health movement for over 30 years. He has a Doctorate in Natural
Science, a Degree in Naturopathy, and has been involved with the majority of
the therapies and self help techniques in the United States and through out
the world, in a search for simple techniques that work and most importantly
last.

www.ajnacenter.org

Interview and photo by Kamakshi

Muhammed and Zubin – Sufi music in Pune, India

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

You are part of the very successful band – ‘1200 Mics’ with Rajaram and GMS.How did that come about? How did you meet Rajaram?

Wow…those are several questions…. How did I meet Rajaram? He came to Goa in ‘89-’90, it was his first season in Goa. A friend of his said you got to come to this place called Goa, and he came here. He had never heard trance music before, and he instantly went wow! And he went right back and found a young guy named Graham Wood and they started ‘The Infinity Project’ – the band, which was one of the biggest bands in the early 90’s. Rajaram and I became instant best friends, and he lived here in Anjuna, and me too; so we were together almost every day. And then we were going so many times to see live concerts, live trance shows, and found them always boring to watch. You could like the music, but just watching was never very interesting. So we said we could get together a band and do something more fun, more interesting, that has some visuals to it too, so people could enjoy it that way. We knew Riktam and Bansi fom GMS since they were 16 -17 years old, and we were close with them. Raj got the idea thar why don’t we ask them if we can make a seperate band, the four of us. So that was the beginning, we asked them and they were up for it, and here we are five years later with three albums done, and we are working on the fourth one right now.

What is the vision of the band?

Well, I don’t know if we’d call it the vision of the band, but there is no way of getting high quite like dancing together to this music on a big system. Its a special kind of high and those of us who love that music just love to get out there and dance. Even these small parties, now Goa has become much smaller in the parties… But I noticed the last couple of times here that there is a core group of people who really love dancing and this music, they’re just happy. It gets you high in a very special way. So our vision is that we want to get high ourselves on the music, and make other people high all around the world enjoying this music, dancing together and hearing the special sounds we are trying to make.

How is it having been around the trance scene since the beginning? You must have seen many changes and directions. Tell me a little how its been, where it is now, where is it going…

Well there have been changes and directions. First of all, the technology keeps getting more and more incredible all the time, year by year. and all these new sounds and different things that artists are able to use. That is one thing that has happened. A lot of the older people have drifted away from trance now, and there’s a whole new young generation that has come in, that’s a big change. Even teenagers,they really like to dance to it, they love this music. And Rajaram and I many times have young people come up to us, and say that we are an inspiration, here they are teenagers or in their early twenties and when they see two old guys still rocking away, it gives them inspiration and hope for the future. Many people are complaining now that too much of the music sounds the same, its got a little bit boring, all sounds the same. And I agree in many ways. We are here at Curlie’s, and they are playing trance music all the time, and many of these tracks sound the same. But in 1200 Mics we are trying to do something different, we build layers of sound, and we are trying to make intersting soundscapes, in addition to having strong pumping driving bottoms, which are really dancey, we like to have all kinds of interesting melodic aspects going on in the top to take people flying in their heads. So that is what we are doing… The scene is growing in Brazil fantastically. It is the Number 1 place onthe planet. Its kind of levelled off on most of the rest of the planet. The police are causing problems all over the place, they somehow don’t like this story. So that’s a change as well. And I would say that the parties are smaller now. One other aspect is that before in the 80’s and 90’s, everybody was dressed psychedelic. Everybody had all kind of trance clothing on, now you hardly ever see anybody in anything trance, its just normal clothes that evrybody wears. That’s another change, so some change is going on, but overall this core group of us who love trance music and are dedicated to trance music and partying all around the planet because it just feels so good to all of us to get together and dance together and have fun. That’s what we want to do. The world is spinning more and more out of control. There’s more and more harsh reality for everybody in their lives, and if they can get away a little bit, and just dance and feel good with friends, that’s a blessing. It’s wonderful.

What is the maddest experience you ever had?

The maddest? Well, I tell this story often…I was…(laughs)…its a pretty mad one for all of you, I hope nobody is squeamish. I was trekking in Nepal, and everybody had diarhoea, because in Nepal everything is very dirty, the food and the water, and they had one pit in the back that everybody squatted over, with two stones on the sides to stand on. And its 5 o’clock in the morning, I woke up, and I had diarhoea myself. I ran out in the back there, and I wasn’t quite making it, and I sort of leaped in the air, and I came down and I fell right into that pit of diarhoea! And it was five in the morning up in the Himalayas, and I am covered in @!$%#, and I run over to this little creek, and its like from the glaciers – ice water coming down, and I’m trying to wash this diarhoea off me, and its all over… you sleep in all your clothes because its so cold, so all my clothes are completely covered in. I had to rush back into my sleeping bag which unfortunately was in a guesthouse in a dormitory with about 30 other people. And when everybody started waking up, they were going, ‘Oh my God! What is that smell?!” I had to tell them what happened…

How and when did you arrive in india? What does is do for you?

Well, I arrived in India in 1983-84, And I had been travelling already for years around the Pacific Islands, which I also love. And I met a guy in Borakai in the Philippines, Miguel, who was also a Goa guy, and he said you have to come to this place called Goa, you will love it. And I came here. He said go to ‘Jo Banana’s’ and ask for me, and there he was. I got a house… and I’ve been coming here ever since for more than 20 years. There is no place on the whole planet like Goa, where tens of thousands of people, like minded people who want to live an alternative lifestyle, not the normal way that everyone lives in their countries, but something different, come here to Goa. Its so internatonal with people from all over the planet and everybody is enjoying the beauty of the nature and the wonder of India, I ride my motorbike around and I love it; especially at night, cruising around and looking at all the little scenes happening all over the place. There is nowhere like Goa on the planet and there is nowhere like India on the planet, there is something special, magic that is still alive in India, a very special magic that you can’t find back in Europe or America or Israel. And its hard to describe in words but its something that all of us feel and love. We are in love with India, mad as it is.

What were you doing before you came here?

I got married at University, and all through my twenties I was a businessman in Chicago – in my suit and tie, going to the office in a big advertising agency for ten years; being a businessman and a yuppie collecting all these things, and the house and cars and all of that, but dreaming of being outtravelling the world and going overland to India! Like people were doing then, this was the late 60’s, early 70’s, but finally at 31, I decided to get a divorce and leave that business and I went trvelling and I just never went back, because it is such an amazing planet. Unbelievable.

Where does the name Chicago come from?

I am from Chicago, and there were lots of Dave’s around, my real name is Dave, and everyone called me ‘Chicago Dave’ because there was ‘Amsterdam Dave’ and ‘Sydney Dave’, but slowly that Dave seemed like that dead married guy who used to be a businessman and a yuppie in Chicago, and I didn’t want to be Dave anymore . And some people called me Chicago, so it stuck.

Is it true that when you play with 1200 Mics, young girls throw their knickers at the stage?

Yes, but that’s only in our fantasy. No, I can’t say I have ever seen any knickers thrown at the stage, but there are a lot of girls with their tits out, up in the front, bouncing around, and smiling, and there’s a lot of flirtation, and they ask us to sign their bodies sometimes with Magic Markers. Yeah, we sign a lot of autographs. And Rajaram said he did sign somebody’s knickers once, but I haven’t, and so that is an outright lie!

You have such a great voice. I understand you use it in voice overs and recordings.

Yes, well, in 1200 Mics, both Rajaram and I do vocals, like ‘A thousand years ago’, ‘Deep in the darkest forests of the Amazon’ – that one is me. Aha, you didn’t even realize… yeah, sure, in many of them, ‘LSD’… But I’ve also done about ten tracks now which I would say are more ambient and Ma Faiza with Chicago chill out tracks, more normal kind of music, not trance music. But they use my voice speaking, friends of mine make the music, they give me the music, and then I write the words, I do the vocals. I’ve done about ten of those tracks. About half of them are released on compilations already and the other half are looking for homes. So yes, I am doing vocal stuff too.

Some of your songs have names like ‘LSD’, ‘Marjuana’, Mescalin’… As a group, are you behind drug usage as a way for creative expression? And how much of a role does that play? What does it do for you? What is the experience? Also I will not print this if you don’t want to, but if you want to talk about it…

That’s alright. Yes, i get asked this question many times. And our answer is that we are interested in consciousness expansion, and we believe that all of us owe it to ourselves to explore these other dimensions; there are more dimensions than just our five senses. We all know that, and these different things like marjuana, hashish, help you to expand your mind, open your mind, and your senses come alive. This is one thing that is very important particularly for dancing. That is why in every club all over the world, with all kinds of music from hip hop to rock to trance, people are taking drugs, and having fun. This is the idea, it opens your senses, you hear the music in a different way than you normally hear it, you feel the music in a different way. When you are on the dance floor, and its playing on a big system, you experience this music in new ways, and also many times you have consciousness-opening thoughts come to you; new ideas and perceptions that you didn’t have in your normal reality before. Its a door opening into a new reality, an alternative reality, which is very interesting, and many times people have what we call in English – epiphanies. This means a light bulb goes on, you suddenly understand certain things that you didn’t understand before, and you go – Wow! So we are behind that, we believe in that, and it combines with the high-ness of the dancing and the music. People like to do all of them together, and its a very fun experience. Basically, we all want to be high and happy, and on the dance floor with our friends dancing to this music is one way we do it. And consciousness expansion is also quite interesting and important to us. By the way, for anyone who is using drugs, we always say that they should be very careful with this, and responsible. Many people get to a certain place and they are high and they take more because they want to get higher and this is a mistake. You have to respect these things, and do them with the proper mindset, and not get carried away, and not overdo it. We are not believers in excess, we are believers in use, not abuse.

What are your other influences?

Well, I have to say I’m an old rock ‘n’ roller from way back. All through my teen years I played in a rock bands, and I always liked hard rock and the early heavy metal like Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top, ACDC, those kind of bands. We use guitar in a lot of our tracks, we like this strong guitar thing, and as DJ’s we see when we are playing our DJ set, and then when you put on a guitar track there is a jump in the energy of the crowd. Something about guitars is also beyond words, there’s a primal something that moves people, and moves me too. When I hear those guitars it really makes me high. So we use guitar a lot, and that’s one of our influences. But I would say in general, Rock and Pop are coming more and more into trance and we like to use them. It brings more and more poeple into the audience, it broadens the group who are interested in trance now. So yeah I would say Rock and Heavy Metal are two of my strong influences, and good dance music, Pop music. There’s a lot of good dance music on the radio also.

Being in India, are you attracted to the mystical sides of India?

I am, but I must say I never went on the sadhu trail like many did. But for sure, and I think its a fascinating thing that the mystical side of India has gone all around the world. Wherever you go, you see Om’s, and people are doing Yoga and meditating and all the spiritual aspects are spreading right around the world. The New Age of open consciousness is expanding and more and more people are interested in this, and a lot of it comes from India. Yeah, so we are always influenced from the beginning and always like to have that around us. Just the experience of being here in India, you have that mysticism in your life, without even consciously being aware of it.
There is no place on the whole planet like Goa, where tens of thousands of people, like minded people who want to live an alternative lifestyle, not the normal way that everyone lives in their countries, but something different, come here to Goa. Its so internatonal with people from all over the planet and everybody is enjoying the beauty of the nature and the wonder of India…

When you are in a creative mode making music, and you use magic drops; how is it different, the whole experience?

When we are in the studio, we like to use these magic drops, for the same reason I mentioned before. It opens your senses, you experience and you hear the music in a different way. And as we are creating the music, we also have different feelings and special ideas and responses to what we are doing as we are making the tracks. So we do believe in that and it works very good for us.

Does it give a different edge?

Yeah, its definitely a different edge and usually we make most of our tracks in two days, and we spend the first day preparing all the different sounds and sequences and ideas; and then the second day we take a magic drop and start to listen and put it all together. And that’s how we make all our music, and its working very good.

You start with the left brain in a way, and then you get into the right brain and it all flows..

Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. I like that left brain-right brain thing…yeah

Maybe its my way of trying to understand it…

No, no, but the left brain is more organizational, and we set it up the first day; and the second day we open up the right brain access and start flowing with it….yeah

Interview and photo by Kamakshi

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

Ma Faiza was born in Africa and is of Indian origin. She evolved as a DJ in London. She is an Artist, Producer and Head of A & R for Masti Music, India. She DJ’s internationally, travelling around the world, playing at some of the biggest parties and festivals on the planet! Her djing has taken her from
London to India, Germany to Israel, Greece to Turkey, Ibiza to
Portugal….Dubai to Austria…and the journey has only just begun! She participates in some of the most cutting-edge concepts in sound, vision and experience. Welcome to her page!!!!!

One of the most amazing and inspiring concepts I participate in with much passion is Liquid Sound® I think a bit of background information is needed to explain this amazing most unbelievable experience
What it is :
It s a branded high-tech underwater sound and light installation that allows people to immerse in a symphony of body temperature water, coloured light, music and video images. All the senses are stimulated in a harmonic massage that speaks to the body as much as the soul. The system was developed by artists, technicians and therapists for use in thermal saltwater pools. It attracts people who love music, people who love water and people who love the healing and relaxing innovation of “bathing in light and music”.

They are located at present only in Germany – Liquidrom in Berlin, Toskana Therme in Badsulza, and the newest most hi-tech Toskana Therme in Bad Schaudau. It was developed
by Micky Remann and is dedicated to the body-soul-spirit. It’s the body and soul in complete harmony. It is pure relaxation to bathe in sound, colour and light, to indulge your
pleasure and fantasy in an aesthetic experience and to discover new worlds of sensation. You experience total inner concentration, the feeling of the music on your body – in the water, letting the sounds and associations of underwater worlds carry you – pulsating life from water, light and sound.
Sheltered and secure as an embryo in the womb, you absorb subtle vibrations and feel at one with yourself – letting body and soul sway, moving on a personal and physical journey with nowhere to go but inside. It revives your strengths, your playfulness, your inner child and your trust, emerging as if reborn.
The Liquidrom, Berlin, Germany, Full Moon with Miko The
Violinman Live, 2nd July 2004 In the middle of Berlin under the large Tempodrom roof is a wonder, an oasis. The Liquidrom – it sits in an unbelievably creative ‘horn of plenty’, in the pulsating mass of Berlin with its need for recreation and relaxation. In a performance in water you always have a strong sense of the present, you press a kind of psychosomatic reset button: when you go into
these waters you leave everything behind; you depart, you float away, but you also reach yourself, are at one with yourself, are outside yourself, you are in a particular geographic location and at the same time in the oceanic wide world, far more extensive than the place in which you are.
I have participated on these magical events, by performing with Miko the Violinman at the side of the liquid poolcoloured
lights and projections covering the space and seeing the shapes of the people just being in the water, floating dreaming and experiencing something which is so subtle yet
penetrates so deep inside us
I found playing and performing music with live musicians a challenge, and each time you have to be flexible to switch from land tempo to water tempo, where the regular beat is not so important, as the sounds underwater have much more penetration. I feel much more sensibility and understanding is needed to adjust to the musical dimension of water. The water allows you to really break free from convention, and take the plunge to allow something to develop which may never have been known before.
The joy for me is to be able first to experience this magic gift that has been created, and to be a small part of the experience that others can participate with me, where we push the boundaries of our own imagination, to allow others the chance to walk into the very building of these liquid sound
temples, and know that their energy will be transformed by their own intimate experience……..

Ma Faiza

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

www.mafaiza.com

www.liquid-sound.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

Born into the world of fine fashion,Cerfontaine is the baby of designer par excellence, Rudhra Cerfontaine. Marrying Oriental image with the European sense of style and shape, the Cerfontaine collection is a range that satisfies the burning desires of a fashionista.

Natural fabrics are the heart and soul of this designer’s collection. Textured cottons, silks and linen with fine sensations are a pleasure to wear, and aesthetic beauty the central theme.

Intricate detailing of Banjara stiches and decorative abala work are central to the range. Embroidered kurtis in silk linen, tops with lace trimmings and leather strings, drawstring trousers with the exotic Banjara stitch and moth- er of pearl buttons, all convey a sense of elegance and fun. Tibetan shirts in cotton with tie ups and tie dye shirts with bright tattoo prints… makes one want to wear it instantly and walk out with the air of a celebrity.

Creativity flows in the form of intricate, innovative Kaatyawad inspired prints that have been crafted by Rudhra himself. These take the shape of silk spaghetti strap dresses, shirts and skirts embellished with abala. Muted earthy tones, ivory, sand, mustard, coal and brick… are some of the major players in the colour palate of this collection .

“A woman or man is perfect just as they are. Imperfection is beautiful,” says Rudhra. What can one say to that except… welcome to a world of incredible clothing that you can call your own.

By Shruti Kothari

www.cerfontaine.it

GateLessGate 4-DV

Glastonbury Festival is the MOTHER of all festivals…….it is in the magical area of Somerset, England, and it has to be experienced to be understood……it is so big that it feels like a new community, a voyage of discovery in music, art and culture…..with 150,000 people of all colour, age and lifestyle… music from every genre imaginable…. Dance, rock, chill, retro, commercial, house, latin, break beat, world, pop, indie, acoustic, grunge, drum & bass, R & B, jazz, trance, spiritual, the styles are endless… music to blow your mind wide open!!!

The festival evolved over the last decade by Michael Eavis, from a simple hippie gathering with rock music, to one of the biggest, commercial and most diverse music culture festivals in Europe, with tickets selling out in one week, at over £100 (8000 rupees) a throw!!!! On ebay tickets can go for up to £500 (40000 rupees)!!!!!

Photos of the festival are incredible…it seems like a whole city is pulsating on the Somerset fields with so much life, I mean 150,000 of anything is huge, let alone all those people, their cars, tents, shops, lights, stages, restaurants, bars, dance arenas, cinemas, tipees, sculptures, exhibits of art and madness, stalls of every description…….

So how does the festival spend that £10 million pounds (80 crore!) in entrance money I hear you ask!! Well, much is spent on security and constructing a huge outer perimeter fencing around the entire festival area to make sure people can only enter with tickets…. Years before, people would enter free by climbing over the ditches and hedges around the site, then it became large fences, and now of course it’s a huge, high fence, patrolled with security in 4×4 vehicles and dogs, and impossible to climb over without breaking bones…

I arrived straight from sunny hot Ibiza to a cold day to drive to the festival……the rain arrived that evening, and didn’t stop for 24 hours……The whole festival was under water…..unimaginable pictures of mud, mud and more mud..!!! The dance village where I was playing had to be evacuated…. lightning hit a stage and wiped out the electricity…. We had no sound system, no crowd and nowhere to hide from the rain!!! My shelter was the geodesic dome from ID Spiral…..

We were lucky that by evening the rain had died down enough for the power to be switched back on, people allowed back onto the dance village field, and we were able to continue…it really was amazing to see the energy of the team go so low with the weather, but still soldier on and make the best of a really mad, bad and messy-messy situation!!!! Slowly the fields filled with people determined to have a good time…no matter what!!!

The music continued…the crowd filling the fields with positive energy… the main stage was awesome…people dancing in the rain……the main DJ was suspended in a cage on a wall on the main stage… saw Fat Boy Slim kick ass!!!!
So much to see…you just could not take it all in…the photos, the reports of the festival just can’t describe the energy…it just has to be experienced… whether you go to dance, to meditate, to work, or party with your friends…Glastonbury is such a personal voyage of discovery… even though it has become such a huge commercial festival, you will meet magic people that may change your life forever, and open your mind…………

Ma Faiza was born in Africa and is of Indian origin. She evolved as a DJ in London, and is based in Pune, India. She is a DJ, an Artist, Producer and Head of A & R for Masti Music. She writes for several international publications, and she DJ’s globally, madly travelling around the world, participating in some of the most cutting-edge concepts in sound, vision and experience…
Ma Faiza shares her own personal adventures DJing at some of the biggest parties in Europe this summer…

www.mafaiza.com

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

How did you come to India, to Osho?

I had studied French and European literature at University, but my first sort of sensitising process was through novels. That was where I began exploring the inner world. When a girlfriend came back from California with the book ‘Tantra, Spirituality and Sex’, I remember taking the book around with me on London buses, and for a long time I was not able to put it down. I had no idea about enlightenment. I wasn’t connected with India at all. it was the first time for me that Osho had introduced this concept of enlightenment and related it to Jesus. I came from a Christian background, and I thought Jesus was a one-off. I thought, okay, it happened two thousand years ago, but as far as I knew, it never happened again, and bad luck to everyone else. Osho was the first person who not only said that Jesus was in this state of enlightenment, but also described this living history that had happened in the East over the centuries, of people on their spiritual search and the eventual outcome if you were lucky, of enlightenment. When I was at school and read about Jesus’ persecution, I remember saying to myself then – If I had been there I would have recognized him. Now two thousand years later, two thirds of the world is worshipping this guy, but how come they missed him when he was alive? So when I read these words of Osho I understood the context of spiritual seeking and enlightenment. I was freaked out that Osho was going to die before I got there and I wouldn’t be able to fulfill this promise I had made inside myself, that if ever I was in that opportunity, I would be able to see it. I wouldn’t miss it. And it all started like that….

What is your background as a filmmaker and how did that carry on into your sannyas life? I did a one-year film course in London in ’73 and then went to the United States. I spent 2 years in the United States working with all sorts of small feature films, documentaries and advertising. I then came back to London and started my own company making music videos, advertisements, commercial and industrial films. And then at the end of ’78, I came to Poona, India – I came in the second wave. Osho left Bombay on March 21st 1974 and moved to Poona. It was a very intense place. Everyone had given up something to be there. Osho represented a possibility that other social, therapeutic, political movements had manifestly failed to deliver. A lot of the people who came in the 70’s were people who had been involved in the political, social, student movements in the late 60’s in Europe; where Paris was within one day of being taken over by students, and there was a real sense of “Wow, we could change this planet through politics, through social change” And then the Governments got together, and they clamped down and arrested all the leaders. So by the beginning of the 70’s you had a lot of people asking, “What was that about?” We finally thought we were going to create heaven on earth, and suddenly everyone’s arrested and it’s worse than before. I was at University during those years, so when you came through that and suddenly you met Osho, he was there saying – “You were right. It is possible but you were just going about it in the wrong way. Forget about the outside. Go in.” That was the message that I got from it – “Turn your focus around. Use the same energy. Come here. I know how to do it.” People came from all walks of life. When you collected everyone’s story and how they arrived around Osho, it would be an Encyclopedia. I had been training as a therapist in those days, so I was hot to do all the tough groups. The Encounter Group was something where you took your life in your own hands, with no holds barred. As it turned out that when I got there Osho gave me ‘Centering’ which was a normal group that started people off. He also gave me ‘Rebalancing’ and ‘Vipassana’ and I was rather disappointed because I wanted to get in the middle of it and get into the real cathartic, emotional groups and he sent me to do meditation, which I found to be the most difficult thing I had ever done in my life. I returned to London to close my film business and then came back. When I was there I wrote him a question, and I said, “Look I’m training to be a therapist but I also make films. Please, can you guide me; can you tell me where I should go?” And I got the answer back from him – “If you like therapy, fine. But film would be very useful.” So I took that as a ‘Drop the therapy, and continue with films’ There was a guy from New Zealand called Hasyo, and he had a very basic piece of video equipment with which he filmed a few of Osho’s discourses in 78-79, which had Osho with a green beard because the camera wasn’t very good.! Then in 1980, Sheela, brought the first decent video equipment that we had and then we started getting into a regular program of filming ‘Discourse’ until the last English discourse, which was on March 10th 1981, and the series was called “The Goose is Out”. Osho then basically decided to stop speaking and then we filmed one month of silent Satsangs in Poona. Later when he came back to India, I was still involved with making films. I made “The Manifesto’ and “I leave you my dream”

A special moment with Osho?

When Osho left the body in Jan ‘90, Anando called me in right away to bring the cameras into his room. I was in there alone with him; I don’t know how long it was. I had a suspicion it was a practical joke as he looked so alive. I was filming and going very close with the camera. I thought at any moment he might suddenly go ‘Boo’ and I’d have a heart attack, because of all the Zen stories! He really didn’t look dead, his neck was totally loose, his skin was perfect, and he looked like he always looked, just sleeping. When he left the body, the most touching thing, the deepest that I got that night when we took him down to the Ghats and burned his body, was – “The guy just set everyone free.” I felt at that moment the utter ordinariness that he always insisted he had, that he was, when he was alive. It was so difficult to see; because of his charisma, because of his wisdom, because of his robes, his image. In that moment of death, I saw it. And for me, that ordinariness was there in a way that I could understand, and feel. Also just to see him go out so beautifully. I felt such tremendous gratitude for the way he organized his own departure, and how that left me, as a sannyasin. feeling a tremendous freedom. And I think that was probably the highest moment for me. Only when he was gone could I feel the truth of what he had said before. That here was this guy, just like us.

You have been spending a lot of time in the Himalayas…

For the last 9 years I’ve lived in India, and been to the Himalayas to do fairly long retreats. When you were all meditating, I was filming, and so the one thing I felt I had to go into more deeply was formal meditation. Although filming Osho had its own meditative aspect and was a beautiful experience, where you disappeared in that space. I didn’t want to die without having gone into what he so strongly recommended. I no longer wanted to go off into a beautiful space when I closed my eyes; and then come back to my daily life. I wanted to integrate it; as something spontaneous, alive. And then over a period of time the whole sort of spiritual seeking just stopped. Now I just move with the weather. I don’t have a home. The beauty of these last few years is that everything has become so much more portable. You can carry a whole film studio on an aircraft as hand luggage. I work on projects that have something that grabs me. I don’t make many films. I work sporadically and live a very simple life. Nature itself for me is spiritual. I lived near Manali for 5 years continuously, and Manali is the entrance-way to the travel regions of Spiti, Lahaul and Ladakh. The beauty of it is when you cross the range, is you enter into a totally different culture – the Tibetan Buddhist culture. I’m not much into Tibetan Buddhism, but I like the art, I like the images. I find the people are very open; the way they live together is very organic, very harmonious. Their architecture, their agriculture, the whole spirit of the place has a beauty about it which is similar to Tibet. That’s why people call it ‘Little Tibet’.

How did the movie – ‘Riding High’ happen?

Dipesh and Ash, friends of mine, had always wanted to go to Ladakh because they had this idea to do bike tours in the Himalayas. And so in 2002, we decided to make the trip and do the initial filming of the trip. My motivation was that I just love the nature up there, I think its one of the most beautiful places I know on the planet and I wanted to have the footage in my archive. Ai, who runs the Spiritual Film Festival in Goa, had seen the promotional version, and wanted to show it for the festival, but I wasn’t happy, it didn’t have enough cohesion, enough of a documentary feel about it. So this year in Goa, Ash and me, we took the material from the different trips and re-edited it into the movie, ‘Riding High’ which was then screened at the film festival in Goa. …tremendous gratitude to Osho and the Commune for allowing me to pursue something that I was interested in, to pursue it around a subject matter that touched my heart. I don’t regret one millisecond of it. The journey with Osho was intense but I like intensity…

www.mutribo.com

www.ridinghightours.com 

Ma Faiza was born in Africa and is of Indian origin. She evolved as a DJ in London. She is an Artist, Producer and Head of A & R for Masti Music, India. She DJ’s internationally, travelling around the world, playing at some of the biggest parties and festivals on the planet! Her djing has taken her from
London to India, Germany to Israel, Greece to Turkey, Ibiza to
Portugal….Dubai to Austria…and the journey has only just begun! She participates in some of the most cutting-edge concepts in sound, vision and experience. Welcome to her page!!!!!

Along my travels I have the great gift of experiencing many different forms of “art”………meeting people with such passion to express “something”……using new technologies with old, taking all the tools they need to let us experience a cosmic reality……….One amazing artist I encountered was Mattias Strobl, at Wonderland Open-Air Festival in Germany, and from the first moment I saw his projections, standing in the open, I was mesmerized, I could not stop watching the huge 40metre images projected onto a big white cloth, hug between trees in the forest……Using a projector designed and patented by himself, Mattias drops many different colours and liquids on a glass petri dish containing a water-based clear liquid……..the petri dish can then be rotated at different speeds and in different directions and there is also a small mechanical arm which spins and mixes the liquids in the dish…….. he calls these images “lightmotivs” and they can be up to 50 metres in diameter and can be projected onto the sides of buildings or any white background…………Mega-sized, organic, colourful
free-floating fluid forms that unite or repel before the eye of the beholder, undulating bubbles that touch each other, millions of colours, forms and dynamics magically evolving, taking you on a journey into a whole new universe…… These lightmotivs create light spaces that permit unusual and amazing perspectives that free our optics from the captivity of our inner eye level……….they do not provide any answers, but instead ask questions because it connects levels of perception, and visualises self-organising processes and structures………

Lightmotiv – Contact

Witnessing a lightmotiv is about asking yourself what you see. The flowing forms and colours affect the brain to search for references in recognition . This “cerebral massage” is experienced as contemplation, comparable with looking into the clouds in the sky. It is stepping back and enjoying the beauty of nature …….More than ever before, we are occupied with the desire to recognise structures and regularity of nature, and it is not uncommon for us to fail
because of the new, old chaos of the world. Although in the age of technical reproduction everything seems to be repeatable, there is sometimes still a chance to consciously experience the uniqueness of the moment and become aware of the beauty of nature……… Mattias’s lightmotiv projections are alive and living……..he travels across the globe sharing his lightmotivs in Europe, America, Japan, Turkey and more….. and I have had the great pleasure to share a few dj/vj sets in Germany, London and Turkey with him……. I feel so connected with the lightmotivs……and was inspired to make a music compilation for the lightmotiv DVD………..This project has been in development for the last one and a half years, and we just now have completed a DVD, with Mattias’s images and a magical water-liquid-based chillout-mix, containing many new artists and previously unreleased material from myself and Veet Sandeh….. All the music was made specially to syncronise with the images and a layer of about 50 sounds evolve throughout the mix as the images move and spin, grow and shrink, repel and attract, merge and swirl……and so the music reflects this evolution……….Mattias was the first to agree that this synchronicity of his lightmotivs and the music brings the whole feeling more alive, more present and more dynamic…… From our first meeting I talked about me putting music together for a DVD of his lightmotiv’s, and was so interested in the way all the fluids work within a natural evolution, I ended up picking Mattias’s brain for a couple of hours, both of us sharing that it was a real shame that the music was just not being played with any attention to his images and at dance parties its very hard to find a dj sensitive enough to allow the music to work with the images. Mattias also has permanent installations, and has manufactured fifteen of his projectors at present…..he shares his visionary concepts with art festivals, corporate events, and many psychedelic parties. Check out www.lightmotiv.de and www.tnl.de where you can download some pictures of his art, many small movies with music, purchase the DVD, and get more info….

Check out www.lightmotiv.de and www.tnl.de where you can download some pictures of his art , many small movies with music , purchase the DVD , and get more info

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

www.mafaiza.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

It’s the moon on a sliding scale
Its creating reality the way U see it
Its inventing the life before your dream defined U
A layout of emancipation that has no name…. but colors

The vibration of the master
Picture it….

—————————————————————————————————————
Every painting has its own life
If it stays the same as the last, it means the painter did not grow through the process
He is a machine of expression,

One who has finally digged deep enough in his mind
To know that the machine he carries is his own… But the painter who carries his expression in his own veryness of being,
And through that is a growth unto himself
Bejokes the joke, as a mystic walking through glass,
Be aware of he who does not take his own expression seriously,
But expresses seriosity about it, for the merriment of the many,

Just to laugh within himself of the simplicity he sees, as it is made circumstantial by people who don’t practice being,
his being is his true painting,
the painting is his experience of that in this moment
he is no longer machine but pure organic matter coming from balance of totality… he sees it, he knows it, he is it, hence be a creation unto yourself, create your own destiny

——————————————————————————————————–
Moving through Definite spaces
Shows One the Infinite space
That which is in between
And that which is beyond
The beyond is deep inside
It is beyond that which is not deep inside
All that is not rooted deep inside, in the beyond, is surface
Moving on the surface is tiring
Moving in spacelessness is invigorating energizing fulfilling
Don’t just travel on the surface, move deep inside where
Spacelessness governs your total being

—————————————————————————————————–
U might have purchased my painting but the experience of it is mine,
U just own the result, still if you want to know what u are looking at,
Or even just to feel something when looking,
U have to know loving openness, or U are bound to ask someone else,
if it is made from the core of the self, and then what is it to U?
Just a proof that you could buy something,
From someone who is himself, that does not make you yourself!!!
Once u have all the famous paintings in your room u will know u don’t know the treasure of them all,
Yourself,
And then U know U have nothing,
And then the only question that persists is:
do U have the courage to acknowledge it?
Because only then U can begin that journey called: Integration

Excerpts from the book ‘Art Is’ -by B (Tobias Ginsborg)

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

“The desire to be extraordinary is a very ordinary desire.
To relax and to be ordinary is really extraordinary”

Osho – The Art of Dying.

I was beginning to see how my mind could play tricks on me, because one consequence of becoming a sannyasin was that I began to create an image of myself as a very serious and dedicated seeker. I certainly was totally involved in meditation, doing Dynamic every morning and another technique called ‘Kundalini Meditation’ every evening. I was also experimenting with meditation techniques given by Osho in darshan and in his discourses. But I wasn’t planning on years of discipleship. In fact, I was expecting to become enlightened in a matter of weeks or months. Not surprisingly, the level of tension, seriousness and expectation in me was very high, and I had not yet gathered enough experience to see how such an attitude is itself a hindrance to being ‘loose and natural.’ Fortunately, Osho was available to keep my feet on the ground.

I remember in one of the discourses on Tilopa’s ‘Song of Mahamudra’ I was so completely ‘gone’ that I felt as if I had left my body. I was outside the body. The body was sitting there in total stillness – the back completely straight, not a movement, not a flinch – and at the same time something in me was watching it from the outside. Clearly, this was another good reason to see Osho as soon as I could and tell him about this great spiritual experience. He looked at me and said,”No, no, no, that’s nothing. Just wait a few months, just be here for a while, then I will teach you real astral traveling. Then you will really know what astral traveling means.” For weeks, I was excited. Sooner or later, I was going to learn astral traveling. But then, as time went by, my interest in this esoteric subject faded and I began to see a different purpose in Osho’s response. It became clear how he would create situations that would appeal to our minds so that we would be hooked into staying longer, sitting longer, meditating longer, and in this way come to know – or at least touch – that inner emptiness for which we had made the spiritual pilgrimage to India. The mind is a restless creature that needs a lot of entertainment, so he would sometimes talk about occult powers, or siddhis, as a way of keeping out mental bio-computers engaged. He was not supporting people in learning such things, but playing the rascal with us – tricking our minds into remaining occupied while the real work happened on another plane.
Apart from the time I asked about having a baby, Osho was always laughing at my questions. It didn’t matter what I was saying, whether I had come with a serious problem, or a half-made-up spiritual experience, he was always chuckling, being playful, and dissolving my seriousness with one of his smiles. Slowly, I understood that humour was one of the most precious keys on my new-found Tantric path, because it kept deflating my otherwise ballooning spiritual ego. This did not mean that Osho was devaluing the sincerity with which I was plunging into meditation. On the contrary, he was encouraging it. But at the same time he was making sure that no serious spiritual attitudes developed that would keep me ‘stiff and unnatural.’

In 1968, Osho was invited to give a lecture to a big, open-air, public gathering of several thousand people in Mumbai. The theme he was asked to speak on was love. Instead he talked about sex. He told the audience that the condemnation of sex by religion has created a loveless world – full of phony and fake expressions of love – because it is only out of transformed sexual energy that a loving heart is created. He said that the repression of sex, rather than destroying it, has made everyone sexually obsessed, so that instead of being a natural phenomenon, sex fills our minds with pornography and perversion – and religion is to blame. By the end of the lecture those who had arranged the talk, sitting behind Osho with their white Gandhi caps, had fled from the platform and the gathering. To give some idea of the shock this created in Indian society, one woman present at the lecture said afterwards, “I knew that the word‘sambhog’ meant sex, but until that moment I had never heard it uttered in public” Osho gave four more discourses on the subject, ignoring public objections and threats to his life. In one of them, he asserted that meditation must have been discovered during sexual intercourse; because at the moment of orgasm the mind stops – time and space disappear – giving a glimpse of expanded consciousness. This glimpse provided the clue for seekers to explore ways of having the same experience without dependence on sex, hence the birth of meditation. The five discourses were published as a book titled, ’From Sex to Superconsciousness, which made Osho famous throughout the country.

Tantra is a dangerous way to live your life. This is especially true about your love life, because Tantra knows nothing about relationships. It knows everything about love, but has never heard the word ‘marriage’. It respects the individual but does not recognize couples. And if this does not make you shiver down to your very bones then perhaps you have not understood what I am saying, because to be honest it even scares me sometimes, when I see the truth of how life really is, rather than how I want it to be. The basic choice for all of us, at any time, at any moment, is the choice between life and death. If we choose life, we are on the path of Tantra, because Tantra is nothing but awakening, celebrating and transforming life energy. If we choose death, we have abandoned Tantra. Of course, nobody really thinks they are choosing death. What intelligent human being would do such a thing? But the truth is that every time we suppress an impulse of life and instead choose security, safety, comfort, or compromise then we are choosing death. We are announcing that we don’t want to live.

Excerpts from the book Tantralife by Radha C. Luglio

e-mail – radha@tantralife.com

visit – www.tantralife.com

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

He was trained in western classical music and specifically guitar since he was twelve and gave his first performance at sixteen. As a child he was always thrilled by the orchestra with its ocean of sounds, and its capacity to completely engulf the listener. Music was always the big love of his life though it still is a mystery to him. For him music is meditation, his inner work, a profession as well as a way of communicating with the world. He feels there is an art in listening to music which can also be a way to get enlightened as you need to be receptive, attentive and have an empty mind without a constant flow of thoughts. He says that it is a rare quality now.

He has a beautiful story from Osho about Hariprasad Chaurasia, the maestro bamboo flute player. It seems that Hariji, even though he was a world famous musician, liked to come and play for Osho, as he really listened, and this was such a great difference from playing for the general public. People just don’t know how to listen, instead they do everything else – eating, talking, sleeping… As a listener you really have to learn how to listen. And in these times, he feels there is no respect or interest for live music.

As a teenager, he felt playing music would make him into a better person, until this was shattered by meeting some excellent musicians who turned out to be not such nice people. Realizing that there has to be a more holistic approach to his life with music, he began to look in all directions – philosophy, India, teachings… Finally he came across an Osho Meditation Center in his town of Frieberg, Germany and started doing meditations and groups. And then coming to Poona for the first time, he remembers sitting in the gardens of the Osho Meditation Resort playing his guitar for hours. He enjoyed this very much as he could play with no pressure which was a contrast to performing in concerts. He soon started to play in a band situation where he had to then start improvising. The turning point came when he did a group with Anuprada called ‘Gibberish to Music”. The group opened the floodgates for him and a lot of ideas and music started pouring out of him to the point where he could not sleep. It became an internal process and he learned a lot from this.

After spending half of his life playing guitar, he started learning the computer with all its intricacies for producing and mixing music. He describes it as going from one colour to playing with a kaleidoscope of many colours. Working in this medium has opened up a whole world for him musically. His hearing changed completely, his experience has taught him to sense quickly what element is working or disturbing in a mix. It’s like being in the place of a conductor with an overview of the whole process. Although it’s very demanding, it’s also an enriching experience at the same time. In electronic music as well he always uses some live element, whether it is flute or even just a voice because it then makes it sound natural. When you combine it with live acoustic music, it gives it soul. For him purely electronic music has no depth.

He has been working with DJ Ma Faiza the last couple of years producing music together. They met after she had heard the Global Gypsies CD which gave her the idea to organize what became a very successful tour of the band in Goa, India, in a combination of live music and DJ sets. Her dedication to music impresses him, and although they come from such different backgrounds and are very different personalities, he feels they complement each other beautifully. She comes from the viewpoint of a DJ knowing exactly what it is that literally moves people and what they respond to. He says he could have composed his whole life without anyone ever noticing, but she immediately plays what they create together in clubs in London and Ibiza. Working in this situation he feels he has done in one year what may have taken him ten. He now has a new album with Ma Faiza, also recently they did a remix for Omar Farouk … He presently lives in Jatzberg in Germany which friends playfully call Jazzberg.
He feels there are karmic problems with Germany and life is harder than it used to be, especially maintaining the standard of living. There seems to be a role-swap happening between East and West. The West was materialistic and the East was meditative, but it seems to be the opposite now. You can’t be in Poona these days without having a business meeting on the first day you arrive.

Ma Faiza and Veet Sandeh

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

Email: veetguitar@web.de

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

1Giant Leap is a title, a philosophy, a leap of faith that sprung from the minds of creative visionaries Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, and was supported by music industry legend Chris Blackwell. It is a melding of 21st Century technology and age-old beliefs; of careful planning and spontaneity; of East and West; rich and poor; the embodiment of the unity in human diversity.
1Giant Leap features contributions from some of the most creative minds of our generation: Dennis Hopper, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Stipe, Robbie Williams, Tom Robbins, Speech (from Arrested Development), Brian Eno, Baaba Maal, Anita Roddick, Ram Dass, Michael Franti, Gabrielle Roth, Asha Bhosle, and many others

The primary theme of the project is “unity in diversity” – the assertion that regardless of one’s circumstance and experience, our similarities vastly outweigh our differences. 1 Giant Leap explores simple but universal concepts that touch all of us, no matter where we come from or where we are going. Chapters of the DVD correlate to tracks on the CD, each examining a fundamental concept like sex, death, God, time or unity with a powerful message of hope.

Adding to both the difficulty and joy of 1 Giant Leap were the logistics of amassing music, words and images from over 20 countries; from towns and villages with no running water to the most modern and technologically-forward cities. Catto and Bridgeman journeyed around the world for over six months, with mobile studio and crew in tow, compiling unique digital music and footage from evocative locales like Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Bombay, Bangalore, New Delhi, Varanasi, Calcutta, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bangkok, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The result is a new collaborative genre of music and image, a visual time capsule of the planet Earth at the turn of the 21st Century.

1Giant Leap-The Interview with Jamie Catto

1) What inspired you to make the film, according to you what did you wish to express, what was the message?

Jamie – The original idea sprang from getting heads of religions to all say basically the same things and unwittingly express unity – Suddenly we opened up the discussion to ‘everyone we found inspiring’ and the parallel metaphor of the unity and diversity in the music spoke for itself.

2) ‘1 Giant Leap’ is the door in the future or does it start in the ‘here now’?

Jamie - As Osho says, the only choice you have is the part where you start’The Process’, after that there’s no control, but the river will surely reach the ocean.

3) One Giant Leap to where, and for whom? Do you feel it would be a collective leap or is it individual? Can the transition be peaceful or will there be chaos?

Jamie – Transitions mean death – so it’s a question of how you leap, but really it’s just the way Duncan and I satisfy ourselves artistically much more than a contrived ‘message’, we want more conversations, not answers.

4) Jesus comes up a lot in the film; also you spoke of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ as a film that had inspired you, along with “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” the album by Brian Eno and David Byrne. What does Jesus mean to you, do you see him as a mystic with contemporary solutions?

Jamie – Films like Jesus Christ Superstar and Jesus of Nazareth had a profound effect on me as a kid – I was particularly fascinated by Judas who, at a very young age, I felt sorry for. I don’t know too much about the specifics of Christs plan, but just for placing ‘Compassion’high up on the agenda he gets my vote.

5) ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts?’ was such an avant garde album. I still remember hearing ‘Regiment’ for the 1st time in 1978-9, and it blew my mind, the whole album still does. Can you talk about Brian Eno influences?

Jamie – There’s something about the chaos and discord of that record which is perfect for me, Brian Eno has always been very generous to us with his time and spirit, unlike David Byrne.

6) What did you do before 1 Giant Leap? What are you doing now?

Jamie – I was in ‘Faithless’ for 4 years – now we’re in post production on the second leap ‘2sides2everything’ – The dance of opposites that drives the universe.

7) Have you ever been to Koregaon Park, Poona, India or encountered Osho in any way?

Jamie – Osho’s books are great – especially ‘The songs of Milarepa’.

8)  Was the original plan to make a movie or did it start as an audio project?

Jamie – Started as an audio, it was only because Chris Blackwell, who paid for the first record and film, was obsessed with dvd that they asked us to make a film.

9) Did you already have a script or did the ideas come as the film developed?

Jamie – It was thought up over one meal.

10) How did you make a connection with all the contributors in the film like Dennis Hopper, Tom Robbins, Michael Franti, Anita Roddick, Kurt Vonnegut, Asha Bhosale, Baaba Maal?

Jamie – Cold calling with intent.

11) How is the movie being seen across the world, is it spreading by word of mouth, in what way are you promoting it?

Jamie – It was years ago we promoted it but it’s growing even more now – we sell thousands on our website.

12) How did you and Duncan meet? Is there an interesting story?

Jamie – Not really, he was using a room in my house when a mutual friend was away.

13) I hear you are working on the second movie? What is it about?

Jamie – Duality.

www.1giantleap.tv

GateLessGate 4-DV

GateLessGate Magazine

Shyam Singha, D.O., D.Ac., a doctor of both osteopathy and acupuncture, with a practice that also includes naturopathy, homeopathy and meditation. His students have included Dr. J.R. Worsley, the renowned English acupuncturist and educator, and Dr. James Gordon, the holistic physician and author from Washington, D.C. who serves on the faculty of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He also was a close friend and later a disciple of Osho. In this interview with Dr. Daniel Redwood, Dr. Singha’s unique and uncompromising perspectives on health, diet, meditation, and personal power come through in a lively interchange marked repeatedly by unexpected turns in the road. Singha has a great aversion to becoming stuck in ruts of any sort, and he is dedicated, as a teacher and a medical practitioner, to using all the tools at his disposal to enable others to escape the cages of their own making

SHYAM SINGHA: No, hold on. First of all, the answer will not be the same. Second thing, this may sound very funny to you, but I am not talking to you . . .
I have nobody to influence, I have no one to convert, I have nobody to follow me. I have not written a book for 35 years. [If I had] they would tie me to the book, saying “Bloody fool, you said that ten years ago, why today are you saying this ?

REDWOOD: Emerson said consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

SHYAM SINGHA: That’s why I speak of “bibliographical mind.” That means we give a list at the back of the book, the bibliography. “This has been said before, therefore what I am saying …. is actually accurate.” I’m not interested in accuracy. I’m interested in touching the heart. I may tell fibs to touch the heart, so they may call me a liar. Do you think people who think that lies are the opposite of truth, know the difference between them? Have they ever felt the difference? What is it like? What is truth? The truth of today is the lie of tomorrow.

REDWOOD: Does whether it is truth or a lie come from the intent?

SHYAM SINGHA: Everybody is doing it every day, every moment. Mother is doing it to the children, the husband is doing it to the wife, the boss is doing it to the employees, you are doing it to your son. The moment there is some gain to be had, in that game you are going to tell lies, because you want to get something.

REDWOOD: When you tell your stories, are they sometimes a lie on the outside, but true on the inside?

SHYAM SINGHA: For that moment, yes. At that moment the heart wants to touch another heart.

REDWOOD: Does meditation open the heart?

SHYAM SINGHA: The word “meditation” itself has to be understood. Meditation is your birthright, like sleep. Sleep is a birthright. If you can go out of, or be lost in the mind, you can also come in to the mind. It’s your birthright. The question is, we can discuss how not to meditate. To meditate is your birthright, and you have to find your own way.

REDWOOD: How should I not meditate?

SHYAM SINGHA: By dissipating your energy in a hundred million different spaces. There’s a very beautiful story about that. The disciple is leaving the master [after a visit] . . . he is walking very happily outside the door, and the master says to him, “Only one thing. You can think of anything else, but don’t think about pink elephants.” Now of course the poor devil can’t think about anything else except pink elephants, and the story is, he gets enlightened because there’s only one thought left.
So, that which helps also hinders. One moment it will help, and if you want to repeat it again, it will hinder. Now you’re frustrated. You thought you found the answer. And therefore your answer is wrong.

REDWOOD: What kind of healing qualities come to people from meditation?

SHYAM SINGHA: If you’re seeking healing qualities, you won’t get it. It comes of its own. If you demand healing qualities from meditation, you are looking for a needle in a haystack.

REDWOOD: This is what I was telling a patient of mine last week who has leukemia. Regarding meditation, she was saying “what if it doesn’t help my leukemia? I said, “if you’re going into it just to help your leukemia, it may be better not to start.”

SHYAM SINGHA: Have you ever heard of “placebo?”

REDWOOD: Sure.

SHYAM SINGHA: But have you heard the word “nocebo?”

REDWOOD: Yes.

SHYAM SINGHA: We do nothing else but put nocebos in the human brain. Parents do it, physicians do it, politicians do it, priests do it; police sergeants do it. Everybody’s putting nocebos in.

REDWOOD: Wait, I was thinking of a nocebo indicating “pain,” like in “nociception.” What do you mean by it?

SHYAM SINGHA: Nocebo means “negative thought process.” “No!” You’re carrying more no’s than yes’s. Thou shalt not do this, thou shall not do that. Twelve Commandments…

REDWOOD: I’m familiar with ten. What are the other two?

SHYAM SINGHA: The eleventh is that there are no commandments. The twelfth is, “Thou shalt not be found out.” Nobody should be able to find out.

REDWOOD: I assume that people come to you for many reasons. Are there certain kinds of ailments, or certain kinds of people, that you feel you are most effective with?

SHYAM SINGHA: There is no fixed pattern. None…

REDWOOD: So you are always open to what presents itself?

SHYAM SINGHA: Whether it’s AIDS or cancer or depression, it doesn’t matter. That’s only the name. I’m not treating the name. I’m not putting a diagnosis on my cases. When they come, they already know that I am a “crackpot.” They already know they have to take their bloody clothes off. They already know they will have to do something drastic, like dancing naked in front of a mirror until they fall down. If they don’t want to follow it, they cancel the appointment. If I find out they haven’t done it, I don’t give them another appointment. I tell them “you’re wasting your money and my time.” So nobody does that.

REDWOOD: Was there a time when all doctors were like this?

SHYAM SINGHA: Why do you ask that question ?

REDWOOD: Well, it seems so rare now. Is there a tradition from which you come, in which you believe, in which this is the normal way of doing things? Because it’s not normal now. Not here.

SHYAM SINGHA: The dictionary meaning of “doctor” is “teacher.” Not [someone] that takes away the pain. So if you can’t teach, you are only celebrating somebody’s pain. Or suppressing somebody’s pain… Or replacing somebody’s pain… You haven’t enabled them to not create the pain.
. . . Once in a while a phenomenon happens, an Einstein phenomenon. And when he [Einstein] is dying, you know what he said? He said, “Oh God, if I am ever born again, make me a plumber, not a scientist,” Because he created so much misery, by giving knowledge into the hands of fools, who are more destructive than constructive.

REDWOOD: What is the moral of that story?

SHYAM SINGHA: The moral of that story is, “Thou shalt not throw pearls in front of swine.”

REDWOOD: What should we do with pearls?

SHYAM SINGHA: Make a necklace.

REDWOOD: Do you feel that the positive value, if there is any, in modern technological medicine, outweighs the harm that may come from it?

SHYAM SINGHA: Modern medicine in many ways is good. If you’re run over by a truck, no voodoo is going to save you. You’ll need the beautiful hand of a surgeon. I’m talking about unnecessary pill-pushers, unnecessary prescribing.

REDWOOD: How about the use of radiation, diagnostically or therapeutically? I sometimes feel that if x-rays had never been invented, overall it would have been better, although I use them sometimes.

SHYAM SINGHA: Do all chiropractors use x-rays?

REDWOOD: Nearly all.

SHYAM SINGHA: In 35 years, I have taken x-rays probably three times.

REDWOOD: Which times? Why?

SHYAM SINGHA: The brain was not giving an answer. And if the brain is not giving an answer, you should neither fool yourself nor the patient . . .
Tell me, if you went with a glass of water to the tenth floor of whatever the biggest petroleum company in this country is, and you said to them, “I can convert water into petrol, do you think you would come down the elevator again?

REDWOOD: No.

SHYAM SINGHA: Good. So most of civilization is run by four items; armamentaria, locomotion, pharmacopia and insurance.

REDWOOD: I understand armamentaria. What do you mean by locomotion?

SHYAM SINGHA: Trucks, cars, airplanes. Movement. Pharmacopia and insurance… You take those four out, and there are no roots. You can’t grow your principal food.

REDWOOD: Do you feel that all doctors make their living from people’s suffering?

SHYAM SINGHA: Most surgical interventions become obsolescent within 10 years, and obsolete within 15. Surgeons perform the unnecessary operations not because they are needed, but because the surgeon wants a swimming pool in his back yard. These are not my words. These are the words of the Surgeon General of America.
The hospital is run by 10 departments. So you send them unnecessarily to those 10 departments because you want to maintain those10 departments. Not because it is a necessity. 13.8 percent of diabetes happens because of the glucose tolerance test.

REDWOOD: Are you saying the test itself causes people to begin to be diabetic?

SHYAM SINGHA: When a person is diabetic, if you will give him no sugar, and put him on a diet, and not give him the bloody glucose tolerance test, he will not have a shock. You will avert 13 out of 100.

REDWOOD: Do you ever recommend that test?

SHYAM SINGHA: No. I will check the urine and pinprick and then put him on a diet

REDWOOD: What kind of diet?

SHYAM SINGHA: That’s the million dollar question.

REDWOOD: Depends on the individual?

SHYAM SINGHA: There is no panacea. There is no Elixir.

REDWOOD: What kinds of factors do you base it on? Do you base it on the Indian Ayurvedic system, or the Five Element Chinese system, or on a synthesis which is within you ?

SHYAM SINGHA: Synthesis. When you have an eye of depth, you will see that all systems somehow or other interconnect. Ayurvedic has five elements, Chinese has five elements. Chinese have heaven, earth and man. Ayurvedic has three gunas; air, water and fire.

REDWOOD: But the definitions don’t overlap exactly. Fire in one is not exactly fire in the other.

SHYAM SINGHA: True. But the concept, once you understand the body, and look deeper into it, it fits in. Then you are at a level where you can understand another physician from another group altogether. Like let’s say a surgeon goes from here to Indonesia, where another surgeon has done a similar procedure . . . they will understand each other.

Surgeons never want to call themselves doctors, you know that? They are called “Mister.”
In indian culture. When a physician reached a stage where he could see these things, he was not called a physician; he was called “Kabiraj,” “King of Poetry”

REDWOOD: Poetry?

SHYAM SINGHA: Because the body is poetry now. He is a physician, but he is looking at the rhythm of the chakras, so he is “Kabi.” Same thing happened with the Chinese. When he reached a stage of thankfulness, he was no longer an acupuncturist. He wouldn’t stick them with a needle. So you see it’s the same. I’ll give you an example.
You take homeopathy. One says, “No, no, no! You have to take a constitutional remedy.” The other says, “No, no, no! You’ve got to remove the miasma.” [Miasma refers to what homeopaths consider to be three general categories of illness/imbalance. Everyone falls into one of these categories]. The third one says, “No, no, no! First you’ve got to get rid of the symptoms.

REDWOOD: Is there no one answer?

SHYAM SINGHA: Can’t be!

REDWOOD: Can healing therefore come from any one of many approaches?

SHYAM SINGHA: In society (now please listen to this very carefully) it is not what you know, but who you know. In society, in healing, it is not what is given, it is who is giving.
The patient rings up, and says, “I’ve got this disease and this disease.” I say, “Okay, take this, this and this.” The patient says, “But I have already taken this, this and this that you are recommending.”
You know what my answer is? I tell them, “Do it now, and see what happens.” They might have done it before, but they were doing it with a doubt in their mind. Now Shyam has said it, and they are doing it without any doubt in mind.

REDWOOD: Would you say that standardization of care, which is such a highly valued quality in western medicine, is therefore a mistake?

SHYAM SINGHA: Totally.

REDWOOD: How then does a patient, or a licensing agency, determine which approach is dangerous, which is helpful, and which is neither?

SHYAM SINGHA: You have to teach the precepts first. Then create a situation where these precepts can be broken. A bandwagon quack, not trained properly, can be dangerous.

REDWOOD: By “bandwagon quack”, do you mean someone who follows the rules all the time?

SHYAM SINGHA: No. A bandwagon quack is someone who thinks that modern medicine is bull@!$%#. Who thinks he has found “the way,” and he calls modern medicine all…. [knocks on table twice…]. Nothing on this earth is not useful, but we fall into a trap.
Doctors practice fueled by fear… You want to practice; first you have to have malpractice insurance. So you are afraid before you started.
[Notices other people around him have finished eating]. I have become a slow eater, or what?

REDWOOD: You’ve been talking. Maybe it’s that you chew well also.

SHYAM SINGHA: Chew well! What was the name of that Canadian, who said chew the food 40 times? By the time he was 40, he ground down all his teeth. Gurdjieff was ticked off by a Sufi master, who was giving a discourse while they were having the meal. Gurdjieff was sitting right in one corner. He heard somewhere that you had to chew the food 40 times. The Sufi master gets annoyed, and he says, “You are taking away the bloody work of the stomach!!” It will shrivel. You’ll get dyspepsia. So, that which helps also hinders. You can do things beyond.

REDWOOD: Would it be reasonable then to say that moderation is a virtue?

SHYAM SINGHA: Nothing is a virtue. Sometimes moderation is needed, sometimes total license. So don’t feel if you’re moderate, “I am pious, I am good, I have no faults.” How would you know what good and bad is, if you don’t know anything about faults? Do-gooders are a pain in the neck. They bring more harm than good.

REDWOOD: If we shouldn’t “do good,” what should we do?

SHYAM SINGHA: Movement… Response… Spontaneity… What the Chinese masters say: “Find…fix…forget” If something does not work, do not feel deflated. If something does work, do not feel elated. Look, the beauty of that is if something works, you will remember it. If you use it next time, how do you know it is going to work again? You are not finding and fixing and forgetting. You are remembering the formula.

REDWOOD: And then applying it inappropriately.

SHYAM SINGHA: To someone else who doesn’t need it. And if something doesn’t work, how do you know that that very same thing is not going to work better next time.

REDWOOD: Is all healing intuitive?

SHYAM SINGHA: What is the meaning of intuitive?

REDWOOD: Comes from within you, not based on deductive thought processes or something you were taught in school.

SHYAM SINGHA: When you play the piano, you have to learn, “do, re, mi, fa” and all the bloody things, all the scales and everything. Then one day something happens, and now you can create your own music. You must learn your precepts, and then make music.

REDWOOD: If someone comes to you, and says they want to become a healer, what might you say to them?

SHYAM SINGHA: I tell them to go learn a discipline first. No matter what discipline it is, go and learn a discipline.

REDWOOD: Is it important to always be thankful?

SHYAM SINGHA: Yes. This has to come not from word of mouth. It has to come from somewhere very deep down, where you say “Listen, I don’t deserve it, but you’re so kind to me.”

REDWOOD: Do you think the food we eat should be reflective of the climate in which we live?

SHYAM SINGHA: That’s the idea of Michio Kushi and Oshawa [macrobiotics] because they wanted to flog Japanese rice.

REDWOOD: It was in Edgar Cayce too, and elsewhere.

SHYAM SINGHA: What I’m trying to say is that you have to make this temple [points to his body] right. If your eating is wrong, it doesn’t matter what food you eat. Ayurveda says that once you have sat down at a table, you give thanks and eat stones, and it will be digested. Every time you take a fork and say “My God!” [his facial expression indicates scowling rejection of the food], now you have made yourself ill.
The only time you have to think about food is when you are preparing or buying it, not while you are sitting and eating. Eating means “Eat!” If you start thinking about what to eat while you are at the table, you produce acid and you will destroy everything.
There were 20 people, and a woman walked in, and she was furious, because this Sufi had put her son [who was quite ill] on a vegetarian diet for one month. She walked in, and there was meat and chicken, and she was shouting [because the man himself was eating meat, while he had told her son not to.] So the Sufi lifts the lid off the dish, and a [live] chicken walks out. He said, “The day your son can do that, he can also have chicken.”
Now you have to listen to me with a pinch of salt. It has nothing to do with the food. What I am trying to say is that it is the one who is eating it. Once you are here, eat and thank: “Hello carrot, how are you?” [He eats a carrot].
Suppose you are a vegetarian and she is a non-vegetarian, and you are sitting at the table. Now you are a finicky vegetarian. You look at her eating, and you think, “That food, it is killing her.” You think you are doing yourself a favor? You are producing acid, and she is enjoying herself. She is celebrating.

REDWOOD: So if we are truly in tune with our own needs, maybe anything is good?

SHYAM SINGHA: You are getting there. It is not the food. It is who is eating it. That doesn’t mean epidemics won’t happen, food poisoning won’t happen… But that also means that you will eat [only] when you are hungry.

REDWOOD: We were planning to go out for dinner last night, but we weren’t very hungry, so we just had a banana, and that was fine.

SHYAM SINGHA: This is very good.

REDWOOD: Thank you very much.

SHYAM SINGHA: Well, I enjoyed talking to myself. ©1995 by Daniel Redwood

Recognized as a leader in his field, Dr. Redwood is the author of three books, including the textbook, Fundamentals of Chiropractic (Mosby, 2003), which reviewers have called “the most important book on chiropractic in the last decade” and “simply the best text yet published.” He serves on the editorial board of Journal of the American Chiropractic Association and is Associate Editor of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the world’s leading research journal in the field.

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GateLessGate Magazine

On Primal Therapy , Purnananda says it’s an inner journey of self discovery, that allows you the freedom to be more responsive rather than reactionary, more loving than critical, more compassionate than judgmental. You begin to trust yourself. The answers are in you, to discover your own feelings, and to go with them. When you start stepping into the unknown, you realize it’s the only way to be alive. People live in fear, primal helps you face your fears, and take the risk to go through them. People ask me what will it cost me to do Primal, I say, ‘Your life, as you know It.’, the old has to die, in order for the new to be born.’ Primal is one half of a whole. The other is witnessing or meditation. You can’t have one without the other. Osho used to say Primal is either the first or the last therapy you do. The first if you are all in the head or the last if you’ve done many other therapies.. Arthur Janov, author of The Primal Scream, has a background in neuro-physical psychology and is a graduate of Claremont Graduate School and the University ofCalifornia. He was working with insight therapy before he discovered primal therapy. He realized that conflicts in peoples present situations have their origins in their past, in their childhood. And any traumas that we haven’t been able to fully experience can become encapsulated in the body in the form of chronic tension or as emotional baggage; behavior patterns that cause pain, misery and suffering. In Primal these repressed feelings are released in a neuro-physiological sequence. Feelings run like this – fear, anger, pain, feeling.., a lot of what people call anger is really fear. Death is the one thing people fear the most. The other is being alone, which is also a death.

John Lennon went through Primal in 1970. He felt it was a huge improvement on his time spent with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It seems that Janov had come up with a cure for the cure, screaming as a remedy for the Maharishi’s meditation technique. Afterwards he made the first primal album, which was considered the most important solo post-Beatles record – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in which on the track, ‘God’, he rejects all his past belief systems and declares, ‘The dream is over’.

Purnananda says, when I did therapy with Janov, it saved my life. It would be just another step on the way. The final step was Osho. I came to India biased against meditation as Janov was against meditation. He felt it was not existential. Of course, people do meditation techniques and think that that’s meditation. Meditation is a happening, it’s not a doing. An enlightened master can take you right through it. What are masters for? To wake you up!

Purnananda came to Osho in 1976. He remembers a darshan with him, when he had asked “Purnananda, something to say?” I said, “Everyday is different”. His reply was, “Yes it is. And if you think it isn’t, it’s only the mind”. I was like a kid. How to keep that space..? Primal has played a part in that. You can’t do Primal from the head. It’s not something you can figure out; it’s not some systemized thing that you can follow. That’s the beauty of it; you’re flying by the seat of your pants. If you’re a technician you’re going to fail because you have to have a presence. I am at ease with it now. It’s not a struggle, not a doing, not a performance. It’s being here, its meditation. Sometimes you have to be as gentle as a feather, and other times like a hammer. Sometimes the feather can be heavier than the hammer. The beauty with Primal is watching people come alive.
Purnananda says, go with what you feel, you will benefit from it. If you keep doing it long enough you will get to where you trust you, and then you are open to existence. Love is the key, to live totally and enjoy. Everything is an opportunity, if you look at it correctly.

Purnananda is a Primal therapist and has trained with Arthur Janov who discovered Primal therapy. He is based in Pune, India where he conducts groups and trainings, as well as travels the world where his work takes him.

Primal therapy is also available at the Osho Meditation Resort, Pune.

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GateLessGate Magazine

‘A man of peace is not a pacifist; a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way. His very way of life is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy. The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war; he simply
understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful. Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear.’

OSHO, from: ‘Zen: The Path of Paradox, vol. II’

www.geeyouareyou.com

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GateLessGate Magazine

In England at the beginning of the last century a system of milk delivery began where people had bottles of milk delivered to their doorsteps. After about twenty years in one city, Southampton, blue tits started tearing off the tops of the milk bottles and drinking the cream from the bottle. This was a very successful habit. It spread by imitation throughout the whole city, and usually it worked very well. There were a few tragic cases where blue tits were found drowned, headfirst, in people’s milk bottles, but most of these birds got a free breakfast. After a while this turned up in another city far away. The rate at which the habit spread throughout Britain was carefully monitored by observers all over the country.
Now, blue tits are home-loving birds. They move very short distances from their homes, so at the time, it was concluded that the habit was being independently discovered again and again in different parts of the country.Yet the rate of discovery was accelerating.The most interesting developments actually came from Holland. After British blue tits had started stealing milk, Continental ones began doing it, too. And in Holland the habit spread as it had in England, until by the time of the Second World War, all over Holland blue tits were stealing milk. Then unfortunately for the Dutch blue tits, the Germans invaded and milk delivery stopped. It was not until 1948 that deliveries began again. But blue tits do not live more than three or four years, so there could have been no blue tits around in 1948 that remembered the golden age of free cream before the war. Nevertheless the habit re-established itself all over Holland within two or three years.

el geko - TARSIS

This is one of the few well documented cases that have many interesting implications for change in the human realm. It suggests a new view of evolution, because it allows new patterns of form and behavior to spread much more quickly and effectively than they could on the basis of conventional Darwinian evolutionary theory based on random genetic mutation followed by generations of natural selection.
- Rupert Sheldrake

RUPERT SHELDRAKE received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge and was a research fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and director of studies in cell biology and biochemistry. He studied philosophy at Harvard, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow, and has done research on tropical plants in Malaysia and India. He is the author of the books, A New Science of Life, The Presence of the Past, and The Rebirth of Nature

www. primalspirit. com

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GateLessGate Magazine

Dr Albert Hoffmann and Goa Gil

It all started for me in 1965 when I was 14, there were some of us musicians and we used to sit on the sidewalk outside the psychedelic shop on the corner of Haite and Ashbury, San Francisco. In 1966 I was in a group that included Janis Joplin, and then with another group that became “Steppin Wolf”. After that I started to work for “The Family Dog” which was a group of freaks who made the first parties in San Francisco. Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company were like the house band. There was this explosion of awareness that hit so many young people which became the whole 60’s movement, the scene was new and everybody was so innocent, it was the first time it was being done, and there was something really magical happening. It ended in the summer of ’69 when the Rolling Stones played a free concert in San Francisco and one guy got killed in front of the stage. That was the moment the bubble burst. Everything changed after that. Nixon was President, Reagan was the Governor of California, and all over the world people had had enough. Some people stayed on in San Francisco and became yuppies, some moved off and made communes as they no longer wanted to live in the cities. Many people came to India on a spiritual trip.

In 1970 I found myself on a beach in Goa; where the psychedelic revolution was allowed to mutate and grow without government and media pressures and we synthesized a new lifestyle. We assimilated the simple life with the spiritual traditions of the East, knowing that it leads towards peace of mind. We put it together with our art, ideas, music and hippie culture. Then for many years I was in yoga sadhana, doing kriyas, pranayama, meditating for long hours several times a day, living in the jungle. I see myself as a link between the yogis of the Himalayas and being here. I began to understand how high you can really take people with music; you can give them a spiritual experience. You can take them to divine places, uplift their consciousness, open them up and give them a transfer of this power.

Dance is active meditation, when we dance we go beyond thought, beyond mind, and beyond our own individuality - to become one in the divine ecstasy of union with the cosmic spirit. This is the essence of the trance dance experience. I always said a Goa party is not a disco under the coconut trees, it is an initiation. That’s why we created our own sound, our own vibe, which has now spread all over the world. We are using it to set off a chain reaction in consciousness. This is what we call redefining the ancient tribal ritual for the twenty first century. Hopefully people become more sensitive and aware of themselves, of their surroundings and the needs of the planet. With this awareness comes understanding and compassion. That is the need of the hour and the true Goa spirit. Goa is not just a place; it’s a state of mind. What I’m doing now comes directly out of what happened to me in the 60’s. It’s natural and all fits together. It’s just been one evolution, everything’s connected.

May the light of love shine in your hearts and in your minds and may you always walk in peace.

www.goagil.com

Watch Liquid Crystal Vision

Goa Gil is a recognized sadhu, a trance DJ, and is featured in the movies “Last Hippie Standing” and “Liquid Crystal Vision”. He is also included in the Book of the Hippies

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