In the Dark and Still Moving

Chapter 13
Roots and Wings

Oak Village and Kalptaru were a whirlwind of activity with just two weeks to The March Event, our planned party in a palatial suite of ballrooms over two floors of the Café Royal, though no ordinary party, a psycho-spiritual rave to raise the collective Kundalini of first London, later the world. There were press releases to write, ads to place, programmes to design, food to organise, transport timetables, bookings, airport pick-ups, accommodation to find for the ‘spiritual therapists’ from Pune, traffic flow diagrams for the thousands of people we were expecting. If you’ve ever organised a war or a party for thousands, then you will know what was involved. Sujan and I had no time together until late that night.
There’s nothing like the material reality of a body to bring you back to your senses. In bed, in the dark, I realise I am in love with Sujan after all. Not for the last time when apart from him, I have fallen in love with the one I was with, rather than remain true to the one I loved. Though there are now three in this bed, even if one is a disembodied entity, here only in spirit.
I am to lead a meditation on the Sunday morning and must therefore be kitted out in a suitable outfit. With the eyes of the British Buddhafield on me, and hopefully all the press we’ve invited, I cannot wear my usual feminist-hippy-careless, yet in my opinion stylish, ensembles. I am sent to Oxford Street to buy something the Oak Village crew think is chic. But in previous lives Poonam was a hairdresser, Adheera and Weechee secretaries, and Mangala in PR. They wear nail varnish, make up and blow dry their hair and throw up their hands in horror at the cool hip clothes I bring back. I am sent out again with Adheera. I return and parade in front of a panel of critics in a pleated skirt, blouse, high-heeled shoes and nylons. I look like a secretary dressed for a job interview with a vicar. I am sent out again with Mangala this time. Mangala has not the slightest trace of hippy boho-chic and her blood red fingernails never break. If she can’t sort me out no one can.
We enter shops, the windows of which I have never dared to even glance into before. I return, walk the walk and twirl, this time looking like a secretary dressed for a job interview with a Bishop. I look ridiculous, even in their eyes, though they cannot explain why. I can. These straight clothes just do not suit me. They give up. I wear a silk shalwar kameez, flat shoes, elegant. At least I think so.
The weekend is a success. Several thousand of us move between ballrooms, sing Sufi songs, primal scream, meditate, gaze into each others eyes, communicate uncensored truths, accumulate insights, let it all go and dance wildly to a thumping disco beat, a tribe spiralling ecstatically into life, love and laughter. These elaborate ceilings and glittering chandeliers have never seen anything like it, not even in the days of Oscar Wilde. The Press, responding to our invitations, wander freely through this magnificent love-fest. If only we’d known…
We stared at the front pages of all the Monday papers. ‘Sex Romp at Café Royal.’ ‘Drug Crazed Sex Orgy.’ ‘Sex Guru Followers Make Love in Hotel Lobby.’ ‘Free Love Orange People Lick Carpets in Frenzy.’ Had these journalists been at the same event? Discussion programmes on TV and radio analysed the attractions of these dangerous cults with their harmful ‘pseudo-therapies’. There was a question in Parliament about whether such things ‘should be allowed’. Fortes, the owners of the Café Royal, banned all sannyasins from entering any of their premises for life. No more TV appearances, invitations to Downing Street or tea breaks on the motorway then. Only good old Bernard Levin argued that something profound and significant was going on. But then he had visited the ashram, listened to Bhagwan and actually talked with us. He knew there was more happening than met the jaundiced media eye.
Clearly our project to turn on the world would take longer than planned.

Meanwhile our vision shifted from East to West as news arrived that the new commune would be created in America on the several hundred square miles of an over-grazed cattle ranch in Oregon. Young Tim also looks west. John now lives in California and Tim wants to go and spend some time with him. John and I agree he goes for six months. On his last day I take him to all his favourite places in London, the games arcades on Oxford Street, the Oasis outdoor swimming pool, Trafalgar Square to feed the pigeons, Burger King for a non-veggie beef burger, Hamleys for a present for John. ‘Probably he’d like some Lego’, thinks Tim. The next day Sujan and I drive him to Heathrow.
I try not to cry but gulp back sobs every time I hug him. I attempt to distract myself in details of his packing, has he got his gloves threaded through his coat, does he have enough books and crayons for the flight, will he remember where I have written all John’s details down, is his passport safely zipped into his bag… But really nothing can distract me. My little boy is going to the other side of the Atlantic and then the other side of another continent; to his father. Where he will be safe. Where he will be loved. Where he will have a comfortable home and go to a good school. And where he will be further from me than he has ever been. Not just for a few weeks. For six months. Maybe more. This is a goodbye I never imagined I would ever say to the little boy now laughing with Sujan as they skid on the trolley through Terminal 3.
Do children, who live in the moment more than we do, feel less fear because they are protected from the painful futures we so easily envisage, or are they more afraid, because they do not know and have so little power over what lies ahead? For Tim this was an adventure where he would be with his dad again, a dad who earns lots of money and that means new Lego and visits to Disneyland. Perhaps we can only ever be afraid of the return of what has already happened. How else do we know to be afraid? Only a burned child dreads fire, the rest are cautiously curious. Tim has known just a few grazed knees and falls from trees; even the split between John and me was as friendly as could be. Oak Village, though not a traditional home, was much more fun than any boarding school. And he has always been held in the affection and love of all three of us, John, Sujan and me. While my heart breaks through the long farewell, Tim does not weep. He plays with his new Transformer and warns us he will be speaking American when he comes back.
We check in and are introduced to the stewardess who will be taking care of Tim on the flight. He holds her hand, his faithful Snoopy who never leaves him like I do, in the other. They walk through to the Departure Gate. My last view of him is his smiling face, half hidden by his backpack filled with treats and favourite toys, as he turns round for one last shout of good-bye. And is gone.
I am inconsolable and cry all the way back to London, for once grateful for the slow crawl through rush hour traffic. We pass Evening Standard placards saying that Bob Marley had died. No woman no cry; but my tears fell and continued to fall – in meetings, in meditations, on the ‘phone, on the shoulders of friends on the smokers bench outside Kalptaru. Anywhere and everywhere.
I have always leaned more towards tea and sympathy than tough love, now I am hopeless. I weep when dealing with recalcitrant workers, resistant egos, and resentful disciples. ‘Oh how sad!’ I cry, ‘how painful for you. How can I help?’ - not at all what the commune momma’s taught me. Some, tougher than me, tell me to stop my self-indulgent whining. Especially one Ma, but she had given her twins away at birth so course she would see it that way. One evening while round at Somendra’s for dinner he tells me I have two millstones round my neck – Tim and Sujan. All I have to do is get rid of them and I will fly. But I love my millstones. I don’t want to fly.
It didn’t help that few relationships survived in this Tantric hothouse, where following your energy was a spiritual discipline on a par with meditation. It didn’t help either that Nutan arrived, tall, tanned and sexy from Pune, to be with me. I tried to be with two men but this proved too difficult for me. I have always preferred the personal love of intimacy than the impersonal pleasures of love where you find it. Like making a home and being a hands-on parent, what is a strength in the world is a failing in a Tantric commune. The turbulent struggles this put me through has taught me however, the commitment must be to the love first, not to the person, and with that comes different securities, demands and freedoms.
One thing not possible in a Tantric commune is to dwell for too long on your own misery, if only because more turbulence is always on its way. Poonam has organised a month long counsellor training with thirty participants, mostly women. She has Sujan assist her, which means he takes care of her during the course and does whatever she tells him to. Even when she picks out certain women and tells him to sleep with them, to ‘move their energy’.

When he tells me his work for the evening, I narrow my eyes and spit out, it’s the Earth that supposed to move. How’s he going to manage that? I go to bed alone and privately weep for the loss of Sujan now, as well as Tim. I hate feeling sad, angry and insecure. And besides, a tear-streaked face is so unattractive as well as jealousy so uncool. I can’t do much about Tim, but maybe I can break through my attachment to Sujan.
I am to run an encounter group with the counsellor training, which includes the women whose energies have been moved by Sujan. We sit on cushions in a large circle. Rajneesh Spiritual Therapists are supposed to leave their personal selves outside the group room door and become a channel for Bhagwan, a ‘hollow bamboo’; tonight I am more a blocked drainpipe. I tell everyone I am angry, hurt and jealous of what has been happening with Sujan. They know this anyway. They’ve seen my glares in their direction, when they emerge flowing and glowing, after a night with him. I sit in the middle of the group and let it all hang out. The whole shebang, my inarticulate rage, my fear, my helpless grief. I should have known better than to throw myself onto the mercy of a group of trainee therapists.
One lot let me know what is wrong with me - I am too possessive, full of ego, in my head. Another lot tell me how to fix it - I need to let go, put my ego aside, live in the here and now. The primal therapy crew try to push me into my core pain by yelling ‘Get off it - get real!’ ‘What a pathetic display of shit!’ The body workers come to knuckle into my tension. The re-birthers want me to lie down and breathe. The energy workers want me to meditate and open up my higher chakras. My assistant shouts at them’ Bloody lousy therapists you lot are!’ and puts her arms round me. I sit in the middle in my own private let-go.
A giggle begins somewhere in the region of my stomach. I try to suppress it. I must feel my pain. But suddenly it is apparent we are possibly the most ridiculous event in London at that moment. A few of us catch each other’s eye. The absurdity hits us - we are completely and magnificently preposterous. We start to laugh. We cannot stop. We collapse, helpless with laughter. It is infectious. The whole group falls about laughing. Even the re-birthers are gasping for breath between deep sobs of laughter. It is hurting, the tears are falling and still we cannot stop howling. Help! We might die in here! A few curious people poke their heads through the door. We try to explain but it’s impossible and we collapse all over again. I don’t know how we got out. Possibly our addiction to nicotine saved us when we staggered out for our fags.
I still didn’t like Poonam telling Sujan he must ‘move the energy’ of other women - even less that he followed orders. But she is a double Scorpio, he is a surrendered disciple; c’est la vie, es la vida, das ist Leben, in the Rajneesh International Commune. Besides, there are other ways to lay claim to your man.

I bought one of the first Sony Walkmans on sale in Tottenham Court Road with two headphone sockets. People laughed at us as we danced around together, but Sujan and I could no longer hear them. We smiled serenely from within our own world, being blasted by a music no one else could hear. Several years later they were wearing them too. The cooler ones that is - and who cares what the others thought.
No one wore a personal stereo or danced at the meeting where three mommas from the ashram, Sheela, Susheela and Arup, arrived with a message, or rather several messages, about our new corporate image.

Out were eastern or hippie dress, swearing, long embraces in public, slouching, drunkenness, drugs, cigarettes if you have to, but not beedis, fighting talk, dancing in the streets and flowing men’s locks. In were - handshakes, polite conversation, designer hair (oh dear), handbags, sobriety, upright posture and civilisation. In the groups there was to be no more nudity, sex or violence. Those working full time would receive full board and accommodation and £5 per week pocket money, and anything we earned would go into the collective pot. Also into the collective pot went our cars. Mine was commandeered anyway by one of the mommas to go shopping on Oxford St. and her driver wrote it off. I never even got a ‘Sorry mate!’ - just a casual ‘It must have been time for you to let it go.’
There was more. Money. On the Oregonian cattle ranch we were to build a city, Rajneeshpuram, and money was needed to finance this project to make a thousand flowers bloom in the desert. Buddhafields throughout the world, especially in Western Europe, were to create businesses to make as much money as possible. We were also to build sacred cities where thousands of sannyasins would live, work, which was now to be called ‘worship’, and make… money. Interesting that the work that had been a meditation, such as cleaning every inch of a vast parquet floor with a toothbrush, shifting a pile of manure from here to there, and then from there back to here, became ‘worship’ now the focus was making money and not Gurdjieffian exercises to energise our souls.
These mommas told us they understood some of us may feel resistant to these changes, so it was important we knew they were coming directly from the main man himself, Bhagwan. We were to be positive whatever our personal feelings. Negativity was to be dealt with firmly because, as Susheela told us, ‘One bad apple can spoil the cart.’
We listen in silence.

It’s an old dilemma. You hear someone with fresh ideas and insights, as had I when I first heard Bhagwan. Their wisdom makes sense, doors open in your mind. You move closer to listen some more. Old certainties are challenged. You begin to question some of your assumptions. We can learn nothing new if we remain within the confines of our own beliefs, but at what point do we abandon what we think we know? When does an apprentice trust the Master and do as he’s told, when does he trust himself and leave? And, when you have loved a Buddha with a devotion that takes you beyond your self, at what point does a disciple kill the Buddha? As even the ancient Masters say this is the only way through the psycho-spiritual Oedipal crisis to become a Buddha yourself.
Most of us at this stage, still loved the dream enough to surrender to the imperfect organisation attempting to embody it. So we breathed deeply, put on our smart clothes, practiced being polite, and even the old socialist-feminists amongst us, got ready to make money as well as love. And while 700 million people watched the fairy tale wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in July, we were busy building our own happy-ever-after.
We sat around the kitchen table with a map of the UK. Where was Medina Rajneesh, our sacred city to be? We dangled a pendulum. It swung over the North Sea. Surely our business could not be in oil? Sujan was put in charge of finding a property and contacted estate agents for large properties within two hours drive of London.
A collection of brochures arrived, one of a mini village in Suffolk that had been an American school. A large mock-Tudor manor house, Herringswell Manor, with thirty bedrooms, numerous cottages, houses and teaching blocks in twelve landscaped acres with no near neighbours. Five of us, dressed in green and blue, malas hidden, drove up to look round it, claiming to be setting up a school, though we neglected to mention this was for Buddhas. We wandered around the gardens and winding paths, through spacious rooms and an array of offices and houses. We had found it. Now we had to find £250,000 to buy it.
Poonam and I tour the UK and Ireland to sell the idea to sannyasins that they buy into the commune – £5,000 and you can stay any time you wish for free. Sell your house and donate enough, and you can live in the Buddhafield, supported completely, forever, however long that is. Though if you were a plumber or an electrician you can come for free - some things remain the same, whatever the community. A two-week tour and we had 25% for the deposit. With no chance of a mortgage we had three months to find the rest.
The next weeks are a blur. We go into overdrive to explain, persuade and sell this possibility to as many sannyasins as we can. Two weeks before the deadline we are £75,000 short. A final push to far-flung sannyasins with savings and, with a few days to spare, we were there.
Sujan and I went to the solicitors to sign the deeds. They had champagne and a celebration planned as in 1981, a quarter of a million was a lot of property. We puzzled them with our complete lack of high or excitement. We had to get back for a workers’ meeting and for us it was like, OK, what’s next.
What came next was I went to Suffolk to co-ordinate the building, decorating, cleaning, buying equipment, organising the kitchen, laundry etc. Thirty of us had three months to get things ready before we planned to move up en masse. Sujan was sent to Devon to help a sanyassin get his farm ready to sell. While Sujan shovelled shit, I played lady of the manor. When he came to visit at weekends I tried to help him see that surrender to the Buddhafield was the thing, not his rages of jealousy. My enlightened wisdom unfortunately failed to illuminate his darkness, so I simply smiled at him with deep compassion, which for some reason enraged him further.
Strangely, there were others, who did not appreciate the gracious way I spread sweetness and light in my position as lady bountiful. One woman took it upon herself to personally supervise the deconstruction of my ego. She told Poonam I had smoked dope, stolen some of her clothes, cut up her precious photos and said bitchy things about Poonam behind her back. Rather confusingly these were not wild spins on real events but complete fabrications. Initially I was angry, and our fights looked like half a dozen of one and six of the other, but someone who lies so completely has weapons that defeat mine and I gave up. Not quite. When she was near I would flirt particularly charmingly, perhaps to remind her I got much more attention than her because I was so much more beautiful, sexy and desirable.
One morning she bursts into my room. Here we go again, I haven’t seen her for a while. She tells me she’s come up with some great lies for Poonam because she loves to see me angry. I tell her to fuck off and get a life; I don’t give a shit. She runs to Poonam and tells her she knocked gently on my door to make friends and I wounded her with my verbal abuse. But this time, we were overheard. I was wise not to fight her directly, when confronted she laughs and says ‘Oh well, the game’s up.’ I’d have been mincemeat in a hand-to-hand fight with this marvel. For two weeks in full view of everyone at breakfast, she is to bow and kiss my feet. She gets the fun and I get the embarrassment – where’s the justice in that?
There ain’t none. This is a Tantric community, different rules apply.

Bhagwan told us, ‘I am against the old family structure because it turns children and adults into possessions. The nonsense of monopolizing love has to be dropped. If your husband is laughing with someone else, it is good. Your husband is laughing – laughter is always good. If your wife is holding someone else’s hand…good. Warmth is flowing and that is good. With whom it is happening is immaterial. And if love is flowing with your partner it will more easily flow with you too.‘
Some days it was easy to go with the flow of love, ‘the life of the soul’. For example when drinking my daily allowance of one glass of wine or half a pint of beer in our ‘Omar Khayyham’ bar and I found myself smiling and leaning into a particularly gorgeous fellow Tantrika.
Some days it was much harder. Like when Sujan was doing the smiling and leaning.
It is six months since Tim left. We have spoken often on the phone and John has sent me photos of a tanned blond Californian boy. He flies back for Christmas, to stay. John will send him a ticket every summer for a long visit until/if he decides he wants to return for longer. That is the plan anyway.
I pace around Heathrow once more. The board lights up, his flight has landed. I peer through the crowd looking for a little boy among the business men, families, holiday makers, travellers, as they wheel suitcases, carry back packs, briefcases, handbags, parcels and push their trolleys into England. There he is! A stewardess has brought him through and passes him over to me. Tim and I laugh and hold each other. This is wonderful. We smile and cuddle all the way to the car. He has a new watch on his brown arm and can tell the time to the second. He tells me time is different in America, it is morning for him and early evening for me, which means I will fall asleep before him. It is cold and threatening snow, but this little boy is dressed for California. First stop, some boots and warm clothes, before we drive up the M11 to Medina, our new home.
I explain to Tim all the children sleep in the Kids’ House, official name, Ko Hsuan, where during the day there are lessons. There are now six children and about eighty adults living at Medina and more will arrive after December 11th, Bhagwan’s birthday, when we officially open. I describe the communal dining room where we eat food cooked in an enormous kitchen, including at least once a week chips, beans and veggie burgers, and the huge oak-panelled hall with a large fireplace, a real fire and eight sofas. I tell him the main house has thirty bedrooms and Sujan and I have a room on the top floor where he can spend the night with us any time he wants to. I explain there is a laundry for our clothes as well as an accounts office, a design studio, a healing centre, carpenters and plumbers workshops, garages, a visitors cottage and in the grounds, an old swimming pool, tennis courts, all sorts of nooks and crannies and hiding places in the woods. Tim is more interested in whether there are boys his age who like Transformers and Lego.
We arrive, deliver the car into the transport office and walk round the corner to the kids’ house. Our feet crunch over the frozen gravel as we walk towards the two-storey mock-Tudor building where the school and play rooms are on the ground floor and the kids sleep upstairs. We unpack his bag and I bring out his old toys I have kept safe for his return. The other kids crowd round to examine this new arrival and his toys, then take him with them as they wander through the commune in a pack. Like tribal dogs, they sniff and knock into each other, half in play, half in challenge. I hear one ask Tim if he’ll swap his watch for a Star Wars Model. Another asks if he has any comics. The kids are still one cohesive group. They have yet to create the rules and pecking orders that define the territory of their new life. This is all new for them too, and the fault lines that run through all communities to define status and difference, had yet to be drawn by any of us.

I began to organise the Groups Department. We planned a programme of therapy groups and sessions, and created the first healing centre in the UK that incorporated complementary therapies such as naturopathy, acupuncture, homeopathy, massage, with allopathic medicine from two GPs and a gynaecologist, with counselling and body psychotherapy. People came for a week of healing where an individually designed programme of sessions, meditation and diets would be created to meet their unique needs. There was a sauna and a flotation tank too, and in the energy of a Buddhafield, this was a healing of the heart and spirit as well as the body. In the early eighties when power dressing with hefty shoulder pads, not to mention the and hair, were only beginning to threaten us, this was revolutionary. We had many successes when more traditional routes of healing had failed, but like the true source of new fashion, the street, we were never acknowledged for our pioneering work. You only hear about what the fashion scouts have picked up when it walks down the catwalks. Many doctors, healers and therapists came to see how we worked, were impressed, and went away to set up something similar. We would be there still, but there were more important lessons for those of us on a spiritual quest, and for these, something else had to happen.
While I designed and ran courses in psychosexual group dynamics, enlightenment intensives, open encounter, sharing my wisdom like a hollow bamboo, Sujan had his hands in the dirt, digging herbaceous borders and planting a different bamboo. He designed the garden and created a lake. Co-ordinating therapists is very different from co-ordinating gardeners. For a start, what would be their collective nouns – an enlightenment of therapists, a muddy earth of gardeners? And therein lay the difficulty.
I flew high and hung out in the lofty reaches of the hidden hierarchies you find in all communities, especially Marxist, feminist, socialist, spiritual and religious orders, where everyone is supposed to be equal. I was a channel for Bhagwan, dispensing wisdom, blimey I was practically enlightened myself after sharing a particularly deep and meaningful insight. Sujan meanwhile was on his knees digging up weeds, making compost, pruning roses. We swung between these increasingly disparate polarities. Those times when I was on the verge of enlightenment and going with the energy flow of a Tantric community, and all that entailed, Sujan would be storming the grounds in a black rage, until, unable to stand it any longer, would find some fun of his own. My turn to fall into the mud, smoke furiously, swig the brandy, beg Tarot readings from Jaya where I told her to keep the cards turning until one I liked turned up, not those swords in the heart. Jaya was a Tarot mistress, but whatever her Celtic respect for the cards, she had to do what I told her, because I ran the department and that was the way it worked. The chain of command was absolute from Bhagwan downwards. A particularly potent way to break down a stubborn ego if you were very keen, was to have a boss you didn’t like and who didn’t like you.
As those who live in deserts well know, soil can be worth more than what grows in it; but not many see it that way, and what is rooted in the earth often envies those who fly. And I was rather flying about in those days, especially when regurgitated Bhagwan dropped from my lips and I fondly imagined these pearls of wisdom to be my own. I flew even higher when I began to run groups all over Europe. But while gardeners may be jealous of stars, those with wings need grounding else they fly too close to the sun. At least when you are planting bulbs there’s not much room for illusions that you are a guru yourself.
In every group room would be a large full colour picture of Bhagwan with soulful eyes ready to look with compassion and wisdom into anyone opening up their heart. And we were very keen on opening the heart and feeling vulnerable. The group participants that is, not, of course, the therapists. Particularly potent, after exercises with pillows representing parents and forty or more participants were weeping with deep sobs of grief and loss after having screamed out their primal rage, was to breathily speak into a microphone about opening the heart and surrendering to love. I was rather good at this because I also played cool music to back up the message. ‘I wanna know what love is, I want you to show me’ sang the Foreigners, as I suggested people opened their eyes and looked at the smiling picture of Bhagwan on the wall.
Many years later, full of the bonhomie that can come over you after a good night out, I chatted in the cab home with the Nigerian driver. He was street sharp and disconcertingly perceptive. He told me he thought I would be able to sell anything to anyone. ‘You could even’ he said shaking his head in disbelief ‘sell religion!’

Periodically more instructions would arrive from central office now in Oregon. We were to do Gaachamis every morning and evening. This involved kneeling and bowing your forehead to the floor, chanting the three Buddhist vows to go to the feet of the Awakened One, his Commune and the Ultimate Truth. Like cooking, first you catch your chicken, then you kill it, then you cook and eat it; first you fall in love with the guru, then you fall in love with the commune, then you stagger through to the final fall into the Dhamma, the Law, the Tao, Life. And then people can fall at your feet and the whole thing goes round again. But we didn’t read the small print telling us we would have to kill the Buddha first.
The instructions from Rajneeshpuram, referred to now as ‘The Ranch’, arrive piecemeal. All at once they would have been indigestible. The next one tells us we must be even more positive. Not only must we smile and sing under all difficulties when meeting a suspicious and often hostile public, such as our neighbours now they have found out who we are, we must now flash those shining smiling teeth relentlessly to each other as well. No more negativity, not even between consenting adults in private. With one exception - the plumbers and electricians, a natural aristocracy even in a vegetarian Tantric community. To keep them happy, they could moan as much as they wished over their beef sausages in the transport café down the road before they fixed that leaking tap.
Another difficult pill to swallow. All worshippers were to use allopathic medicine for their ailments, not alternative or complementary therapies. Odd, given our successes at the Healing Centre. But not so odd if you consider, rather than lingering in the slow lane back to health using more subtle techniques, the priority was to get back to work as fast as possible, to sidetrack your ego or make more money, depending on whether you looked through a disciple’s eyes or more worldly ones.
During our second year in Medina, another one arrived. We were to point out any undermining negativity in each other by saying ‘UDB’, shorthand for ‘un-divine behaviour’. Not only the plumbers and electricians had fun with that one. I remember ‘unusual doggy bag’, ‘under my dead body’ and ‘up de bum’, but in the worker’s meeting when the announcement was read from a fax straight from the source, I was dying for a pee. To leave would reveal my unconscious un-divine resistance, so I held onto it. The longer we were in there, the more focused I became, not on the papal encyclical, but on my bladder.
Had someone really imagined this kind of thing would create a docile obedient workforce? Surely not? But this was just the surface dross of a much deeper process that infiltrated our lives more subtly, like water on the rocks of our rebellious egos that would one day wear them away.

As recovering alcoholics, self employed business men, women who love too much, and children of unhappy parents know all too well, it is possible to love someone or something so much, you suspend your natural self protective instincts and wander into a dark alley where you hope to find whatever you are seeking. But do any of us really know what we’re doing, I mean really? I have been most blind when I have seen the light, and stride purposefully down that cul-de-sac, fondly imagining I’m walking towards the Promised Land. And in my case, I’m sorry to say, proclaiming the good news to others and telling them to follow me.
Many of us in the commune vaguely sensed another fault line cracking open, but were not aware of its implications. We were headed towards the light and it never occurred to us the light at the end of the tunnel might be the headlights of a train coming towards us. Bhagwan had after all appealed to intelligent rebels, who loved dancing and making love, not losers who couldn’t make it in the world. Over half of us had degrees, most of us successful professionals, many with impeccable revolutionary credentials from other arenas. You couldn’t be more intellectually right-on than my old lover Nigel, who was so intelligent he could actually explain why the mind is servant of reality not its master, yet even he now wore orange and lived at Medina as Bhajan. And we were definitely not anaemic tambourine bashers or bloodless meditators, pale from all that time in the dark. Though we did get up to a lot in the dark, it just wasn’t meditation. There were moments during one of our parties, when it was blindingly obvious to us we were in fact the chosen few, an amazing tribe strutting the world’s stage, sexier and funnier, as well as with more soul, than any bunch of people gathered together before.
Even next morning in the laundry, when you found your favourite pink cashmere sweater streaked with the purple of someone’s sweatshirt, the glitter from the night before still sparkled. Schooling sharks, let alone herding cats, would be easier than training us to follow orders.
Yet there was common ground between even therapists, gardeners and plumbers - we had fallen in love with Bhagwan. He had spoken to our hearts and souls in such a way he had brought us, however reluctantly, to our knees and such a love cannot be argued with. He had a wisdom we had not encountered in western culture with its love affair with rational materialism. Our love affair with Bhagwan, where we played with the real life force and did not just fiddle with ideas about it, took us on adventures more cautious creatures would shy away from, maybe even sneer at. But we knew where it was really at; the instincts and energies of life are in the animal body not the intellectual mind. Plus we had also fallen in love with his commune. The parties helped.
Brilliant musicians as well as mean DJs. lived at Medina. Every Friday was a disco, every Saturday a party. Regularly we would decorate the vast main hall for a summer ball or a winter extravaganza and invite the sannyasins of Britain for a weekend of celebration, meditation, dancing and 'lurve'. There were actors, comedians, singers and dancers who had left their careers in the world and now put on shows for us. Musicals, revues, dance and theatre. Comedians had us in hysterics at their un-divine portrayal of life in our commune. The last dance of Romeo and Juliet, performed by Sujan and Jayananda at one of our Midsummer Balls, was a comedy classic still remembered, with its squashed flowers, streaked make-up, hairy legs in tutus, the competition to be the one the camera lingered on disguised as the romantic love dance of the century. There were days when it seemed we were living in one long continual party where you need never be invited, because we were the party. We were the A-list celebrities, so exactly where it was at and so utterly chillingly cool, even hell held no more threat. And this was long after our instructions to find only spiritual ecstasy meant we had flushed all our weed, dope and coke down the toilets.
And all the while the love grew irresistibly between us.

There is a personal love that grows in face-to-face intimacy, vulnerable bellies exposed as we share secrets and make love. And there is an impersonal love that grows when you stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder, working together for a common goal, personal egos put aside in the service of this united vision. During those glittering nights of celebration and laughter, dangerous liaisons and dancing, sexual intrigues that would have delighted even the gilded mirrors and chandeliers of Versailles; during the times of reflection and meditation, where we would turn inwards and journey into the silence and emptiness between the stars, falling into the other world; during the daily routine of cooking, eating, caring for the children, the laundry, the shopping, the building, the cleaning, an energy field of love was being made. Even now if I meet anyone from that commune, there is still a love. I may not like them, they may even be an enemy, but there is an irrefutable energy field of love between us. And love is more powerful than liking.
Perhaps it’s not so surprising in our hyper-connected universe, where sub-atomic particles are forever connected to every other particle they have encountered, even for a nano-second. Old warriors sit around and tell war stories, not to listen to the well-worn tales, but for the love there still exists in that comradeship. Yet we were comrades on the Tantric Path where love is a disembodied sentimentality without its dark twin and soul mate - hatred. An unhappiness too, was slowly depositing itself, layer upon layer, until one day it became a sandbank that would shipwreck us all.
I would like to tell you I was aware of this and spoke eloquently and compellingly of these things; that in the dialectic of our human predicament, caught between compassionate action and detached awareness, we necessarily suffer; that without the suffering we perform a different function, perhaps keep the food flowing into Tesco, organise the trains to run on time, teach children the lessons of history. I would prefer to have been wise then, already mysteriously knowing that an expert is someone who has made all the mistakes; that without the struggle, which in hindsight looks foolish, we cannot create the understanding that will release us from such foolishness. But I can’t. Back then I was still getting here, and still had a long way to go.
But how to do we become wise if we are never foolish?
This was never going to be a simple tale where good triumphs over evil, sanity prevails and the light vanquishes the dark. If it were that simple, it would have been told long before, and we would not have to have lived it. It would already have been done.

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