My Life in Orange

by Tim Guest

  Before going to India my mum had signed me up for Oak Village School, around the corner from our communal house. After we came back from the Ashram in Pune they told her my place had gone. So each morning she drove me to Spring Hill School, half a mile away.

  In order to free my mother and Poonam for fund-raising, and also to engineer a first step towards communal child-care, the Oak Village sannyasins set up a ‘kids rota’. Each day a different Swami or Ma was assigned to take care of Rani, Soma, and me. They would pick us up from school and usually take us back to Oak Village. If we were lucky, we got someone who was willing to take us out in the evening.

  I remember one of these outings very clearly. All three of us, just picked up in turn from school, were sitting in the back seat of a car. The Swami driving was keeping our destination secret. Finally we pestered him so much he told us: we were going to the Swiss Cottage Odeon cinema, to see Superman II. We started jumping around on the back seat. He laughed. We jumped higher. Then Soma, the eldest, managed to prise open the plastic panel on the car roof. The three of us stood on the back seat and squeezed our shoulders out through the sunroof.

  We looked at each other, the wind heavy on our faces.

  ‘Help!’ I shouted. ‘Stop him! We’re being kidnapped!’

  The two girls laughed. ‘Help us!’ Rani shouted. Soma joined in: ‘Stop the car! Help! Call the police!’

  The streets were full of people carrying shopping bags, people dressed in greens and blues and browns and greys, people stooped and hurrying in the February rain. We gasped in the wind, laughing hysterically at the few who turned to look. ‘Stop the car!’ we shouted. ‘Help! They’re taking us away!’

  We were laughing too much for anyone to take us seriously.

  Three weeks after we returned from the Ashram, Poonam asked my mother to run a meditation at the March Event, at the Café Royal, a luxury hotel off Piccadilly. The March Event had been arranged to help broadcast the good news about Bhagwan and hopefully get some national media attention. Pune’s biggest group leaders, some of whom had not left the Ashram for ten years, flew into London for the weekend. It was important my mother looked the part. She was still wearing the loose orange robes and sandals she had sported in the Ashram. To prepare her for such a high-profile event—advertised on buses and the London Underground—Poonam sent my mum to Oxford Street with £200 to buy a new ultra-smart outfit. On her return she was paraded back and forth in front of the other Oak Village sannyasins in a pleated skirt and nylons. Someone said she looked like she was going for a job interview. They sent her out again for another outfit. Eventually she wore a peach silk trouser-suit. Even Poonam admitted she looked good.

  I remember the March Event. In the main ballroom there was Sufi singing and dancing; hundreds of sannyasins swayed under the huge Café Royal chandeliers, arms raised, heads shaking, slow-clapping to the sound of the sannyasin band playing Bhagwan songs. There were Mandala meditations, whirling energy mediums, and a parade of the major Ashram therapists, who took turns at the microphone talking about Bhagwan—the work and the message. Off every hallway encounter groups and mini-discos littered the smaller rooms.

  What I remember most clearly was the whine as the microphone was switched on in the main ballroom. An elegant black woman sat on a table out front, facing two hundred mostly sannyasin faces, from under the biggest photo of Bhagwan I had ever seen. She waved the microphone and the thick black cord snaked out in front of her. ‘This is Bhagwan’s message to the March Event,’ she said. Her voice came from speakers in each corner and on the left and right walls. There was a hum of feedback. ‘“Be ordinary. Be yourself.”’ There was applause. She waited until it died down. ‘“Make it happen. You are the March Event.”’ The audience cheered. After that, I remember running around in the back halls and the cloakroom with the other kids, playing ‘meditations’, hitting each other with cushions, stealing blindfolds and flicking them at each other across the room.

  The event raised Bhagwan’s profile in the English press, but not exactly in the way Poonam had planned. They made the headlines: ‘CULT LOVE ROMP AT CAFÉ ROYAL!’ bannered the Sun. ‘SEX GURU FOLLOWERS MAKE LOVE IN HOTEL LOBBY!’ ‘THE RING-A-ROSES OF SEX!’ and, my mother’s personal favourite, ‘FREE LOVE FANATICS LICK CARPET!’ One Sunday Times reporter described the scene: ‘About 1,000 people, mostly under 25 and loosely dressed in reds and oranges and pinks, swayed and shook yesterday under the chandeliers of a fourth-floor ballroom at the Café Royal in London.’ Elsewhere, he wrote, ‘a thin, bald man in long underpants and nothing else wandered about saying to anyone he met: “Thank you for being who you are.”’

  The bad publicity encouraged sannyasins all the more. Those attacking Bhagwan were the very same narrow-minded intellectual enforcers of the status quo they had been trying to escape in the first place. Mortified by the embarrassing publicity the Forte Group, who owned the Café Royal, banned anyone wearing only orange and red from entering any of their premises. Since the Forte Group owned most of the UK’s motorway service stations, this restriction made life difficult for those on a promotional Book Drive—a push to promote Bhagwan’s message to those who were ready and to generate income to help grow Kalptaru into something bigger. Sannyasins were sent out in pairs, one Ma to each Swami, to drive up and down the country, to sell his books and tapes from the back of commune vans. My mother, by then the co-ordinator of Kalptaru, was left behind to run groups in her new silk trouser-suit.

  As recorded in their books and newspapers from the time, buzzwords from Jung and Nietzsche peppered sannyasin conversation. Sannyas was ‘an experiment in the collective unconscious’. The divinations on the back page of sannyasin newspapers talked not of personal choice, but of the choices facing mankind. Something big was coming, and the Tarot (‘Death represents a situation of rebirth, a totally new way of living in western society’), the I-Ching (‘The new situation arising is shown by Feng—Abundance—which is a period of advancement of civilization attained with the guidance of the Master’), and the stars (‘It is the entry of Pluto into Scorpio that heralds a new age and the transformation of society’) all agreed. ‘Humanity is at a crossroads,’ sannyasins told anyone who would care to listen.

  Then, on 10 April 1981, Bhagwan announced ‘the ultimate phase of his teaching’: he was going into silence. ‘Words are too profane, too inadequate, too limited,’ he had said. ‘Only an empty space, utterly silent, can represent the being of the Buddha. Because you cannot understand silence it has to be translated into language—otherwise there is no need.’ Now one of the Ashram’s Big Mammas, Arup, announced that Bhagwan’s sannyasins were ready for the real truth—which could only be communicated in silence. On 1 May Bhagwan gave his last evening Darshan. Each morning in Buddha Hall, in front of an audience of nearly six thousand people, Bhagwan still attended his hour-long morning discourse session—now called Satsang, ‘a heart-to-heart communion’—but he simply sat in silence. Laxmi and Teertha continued the Darshans without Bhagwan; but the evening blackouts ended, giving everyone the opportunity to start work earlier and finish work later. (‘This latest announcement from the Ashram about creating an alternative society feels beautiful to me,’ my mother told the Rajneesh Buddhafield European Newsletter. ‘I can see that something is growing here and especially now that Bhagwan is in silence, sannyasins need nourishment and support from those around. We should be a family that provides physical, mental and spiritual nourishment.’) A memo from Arup went out to all the major international communes, including Kalptaru, saying that there was a shift of emphasis. Now that Bhagwan had entered into silence, his energy would be more present in his communes worldwide. The purpose of the work now was to create alternative societies in every country rather than return to Pune.

  This international shift in emphasis, it came to pass, also included Bhagwan.

  On the afternoon of 1 June 1981, Bhagwan walked out of his Lao Tzu residence, got into the back seat of his white Rolls-Royce, followed by
eight of his closest sannyasins in two black Mercedes. Together the three cars drove down the short road to Buddha Hall. This time, however, instead of stopping at the auditorium, the convoy continued out of the gates of the Ashram. Bhagwan, who once said ‘I never visit the same place twice’, would avoid returning to the Ashram until 1987—just over two years before his death.

  Among those close to his inner circle there had been a growing sense that Bhagwan would soon be leaving the Ashram. His departure happened too quickly for most sannyasins to notice, but those in the know spotted the signs. certain members of the inner circle had their hair cut: a surefire indication of a visa application. That morning the usual slices of breakfast bread were absent from outside the Lao Tzu bedrooms; the ovens had been used to burn financial records, not dough, the night before. The guards at the Ashram gate who saw Bhagwan leave stood on the road in tears.

  The day after Bhagwan left Pune my mother and her friends at Oak Village received a telex. ‘It is time for the next phase of His teaching,’ the telex read. ‘Time for the wisdom of the East to be spread across the world. It is time to take His message to America, the most powerful country in the West.’ They pinned the telex up in the Kalptaru reception. People gathered around the notice board in shock. Bhagwan had long maintained he would never leave India: so many Buddhas, he said, had walked upon its earth. Now he was applying for a green card.

  Upstairs in Poonam’s room a few days later, my mother and her friends watched the first post-Ashram Bhagwan video—‘The Goose is Out’. It showed Bhagwan at a New Jersey airport, with Vivek grinning behind him and a rented Learjet in the background. It was the first time they’d seen Bhagwan outside the Ashram. To my mother and her friends, Bhagwan seemed strangely vulnerable on the runway.

  The plan had been for Poonam to leave my mum in charge of Oak Village and Kalptaru. Now they would both remain to run the new commune together. The Big Mammas entrusted my mother, Poonam, and their friends with the task of establishing one of these sannyasin cities in Britain: a bigger British Buddhafield. A large community was to be found or built, near London, where sannyasins could live and work, as at the Ashram, within Bhagwan’s energy as much as if they were in his presence. To make this possible, everyone had to clean up their act. Positivity and productivity were to be increased; negativity and resistance were to be eliminated. Sannyasins who were not working at the commune were told to get jobs, using their non-sannyas names if necessary—even if it meant cutting their hair. They were to shy away from drugs, public displays of affection—anything that could give sannyasins a bad name. Sannyas was to have a slogan: ‘Working Towards a New Way of Being’—and a logo, two birds wheeling against the sun. There was to be no more nudity or violence in sannyasin therapy groups. The work was the priority now. Poonam received a personal message from Bhagwan. ‘I want every country to have a Rajneesh city,’ he said, ‘and I want you to found the first one.’ Bhagwan had already given a name for the British sannyasin city-to-be: Medina Rajneesh.

  The new phase of Bhagwan’s work had begun. My mother, Poonam, and their friends sat round the Oak Village kitchen table late into the night, making plans. They believed these cities would be models for the whole planet—models of a different way of relating, working, taking care of the kids. Other people would see there was a different way of living, one not dominated by war, oppression, greed—a spiritual community that worked, with a heart of meditation.

  Having just missed the deadline for the July 1981 issue of the Rajneesh Buddhafield European Newsletter, Poonam and my mother typed a sheet which they photocopied and inserted by hand into every issue, calling on sannyasins to come forward and make the dream a reality.

  I found some copies of their hand-printed newsletters recently, in the British Library. Sandwiched in between predictions for the coming spiritual revolution (‘The entry of Pluto into Scorpio heralds a new age and the transformation of society’) and beauty tips written by my mother (‘Whether windows to the soul or communicating that you fancy someone across the disco, beautiful eyes need taking care of!’), I found their advertisement in the July 1981 issue, announcing the birth of a new British commune.

  STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP

  Medina Rajneesh: A Rajneesh City to be Built in Britain

  No longer is the Buddhafield restricted to six small acres in an Indian town; the seed is being scattered to the four corners of the earth. In every country, our master has said, there is to be a city of sannyasins, a Buddhafield, a self-supporting alternative community modelled on the ashram in Pune.

  The city is to be a strong and potent availability, an offering up of the creativity, awareness and love we have received through our sannyas. It is to be a model city through which can be glimpsed the possibility that is open to all. It is to be an energy field so that all those who, knowingly or unknowingly, are seeking Bhagwan can find him.

  The city has been given an Arabic name—Medina Rajneesh. The sacred city. The holy city. The marketplace. We have already started looking for a large suitable property.

  Medina Rajneesh will be a rural village filled with sannyasins—with weavers, potters, carpenters, soap-makers, bakers, cobblers, a children’s school, a university, doctors, dentists, gardens, cultivated fields, livestock, residences, offices, restaurants, bars, hotels, swimming pools . . . everything . . . squash courts, theatre, cinema . . .

  The vision can become a reality. The opportunity is being offered to all sannyasins to participate in the building of Medina Rajneesh through their energy, skills, ideas, labour and money. The energy is here right now. This is the time to begin.

  At the bottom are two contact names: Ma Prem Vismaya, my mother, and Ma Deva Poonam.

  A big part of Bhagwan’s message for those living in his communes was to surrender: to him, and to the commune. In practice, this usually meant submitting to the often well-intentioned whims of whoever was running the particular commune you were at. There was an unspoken but intense competition among the leading sannyasins about who was the most ego-less, the most detached, the most un-phased by jealousy and by need. The most enlightened inevitably therefore cared the least about who was the most enlightened. Competition was often disguised as admiration. ‘You used to be so ugly. Now you’re so beautiful!’ It was a psychological slow-race, all kudos going to those who proudly finished last.

  Poonam’s strength was provocative mind-games. She would hold court round the Oak Village kitchen table, teasing and prodding each sannyasin in turn, provoking their jealousies and uncovering weaknesses, in the name of their quest for enlightened transcendence. One evening they were playing this game with Somendra, the therapist who had introduced my mother to Poonam. Somendra was an even sharper player than Poonam. He did his group-leader party-trick, facing the Oak Village sannyasins one by one, dispensing wisdom to each of them in turn. When he came to my mother, he told her, ‘You have two millstones around your neck: your lover and your son. All you have to do is get rid of them, and you will fly.’

  Around the kitchen table they played their hard games; in the back bedroom we gathered soft things around us. Each night on my bed, I lined up my stuffed animals in order of preference. My favourite was the seal my mother had bought me at the toyshop round the corner. I loved the creatures of the sea. Back in Leeds my father had bought me picture books, and I knew all the names. The narwhal that gave its single horn up to the myth of the unicorn. The dugong that sailors mistook for women in the water, giving rise to the stories of mermaids. So when my mother took me to an old toyshop round the corner, with a window full of tiny furniture and vegetables made from china, to buy me some kind of compensation for the loss of constant access to her, I chose the seal. In pictures my dad showed me I’d seen speckled seals. I’d drawn them from his books. Now I had a seal of my own. Next to the seal on my bed were a lion, my Snoopy, and my two monkeys, one large and one small. (To be sure none felt left out, I took care to arrange them differently each night.) Rani
and Soma, too, lined up teddy bears and pink elephants across their duvets. Sometimes Soma let me slip into her bed at night and read to her. When the story was finished, she made me go back to my own bed; I used to wait until she closed her eyes then stop turning the pages. I’d make up the story so it wouldn’t end too soon.

  We had our soft toys, and our cornflakes, and each other, and it was nearly enough. But I wanted my mum. My elephant puppet, long since shoved under my bed, was in tatters. There were now three kids and nine adults—including one man, Suresh, who slept in the books and tapes room on a bed that folded up into the wall—plus regular visitors, all packed into this three-bedroom Victorian terrace house. I’d had enough of living with two girls (especially because Soma kept kicking me out of her bed). I’d had enough of being an obstacle to their mission. I’d had enough of seeing my mother only over breakfast, of being cared for by a rota of volunteers. Two months after we got back from Pune my father had flown off to San Francisco to work as a systems analyst in a start-up software company. He had been sending me postcards. After speaking with him on the phone one evening in early july, a week after the Ashram Mammas came over with their new mission to build a sannyasin city, I went to my mother in the kitchen and told her I wanted to go and live with john in California. When she said yes, I swallowed the lump in my throat. We agreed I would try it for six weeks. It seemed like an arrangement that would suit us both.

  On my last day in London, my mother asked me where I wanted to go for a final treat. I said I wanted to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. When we got there, she bought me two cups of birdseed. I held one up in each hand, and the pigeons flocked from all around. They landed all over me to get at the birdseed. I shrieked with laughter. I loved the way the pigeons fought over me. My mother picked me up and squeezed me, and I dropped the cup of birdseed. More pigeons flocked down from the sky to land in a cloud all around us.