Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
jotting it down in a quire of dried goat skins. The bhagwan laughed.
Everyone laughed. I could not tell how seriously he took any of
this, or any of us.
Moving right along, he was suddenly recounting what he
described as 'one of the great novels of English literature,' a story
about some fellow who built a house that fell down, depressing him
so much that he set sail for unknown lands and discovered an island
populated by children who seemed much happier and better
organised than anyone he'd met back home. From this point, the
plot degenerated into a series of zany adventures involving this
unknown hero, the children, a band of pirates, a princess, and, finally,
a kindly old sea captain. Everyone smiled knowingly at the happy
ending. I wondered which of English literature's great novels the
bhagwan imagined this was.
But he was on a roll now. To his credit, he genuinely seemed to
enjoy reading. I heard names like Tolstoy, Jack Kerouac, Plato,
Confucius, and the Pied Piper all mentioned in quick succession.
Still, the bhagwan definitely had the gift of the gab, and unshakeable
faith in himself.
You can spot a real living religion, the bhagwan confided, by the
fact that it attracts young people. Over ninety per cent of his
audience, I'd say, were under thirty. Old people, Rajneesh assured
everyone, were interested only in dead religions. These, the
Bhagwan suggested, were just like flowers: they bloomed and then
they died. No one but old people were attracted to dead flowers.
And, he added ominously, his ashram was no place for old people. I
wondered about poor old Dadda. People 'old in their spirit' ruined
the vibes.
It occurred to me that old age scared him. He spent the last minutes
of his discourse discussing Mahatma Gandhi's repressed sexuality,
and how it had atrophied the poor old man's brain. He'd tried hard
to get a little action with young girls in his later years, the bhagwan
hinted, but Gandhiji had discovered that sex was the answer he'd
been looking for all along far, far too late in these later years. His
'channels' had dried up, and he'd forgotten what little he had ever
known about women.
This sexual ignorance was really why Mahatma Gandhi had
