bunch of big guys (and girls) with egos to match. We
loved her for it and still do.
Zen Masters, as Osho explained, are there to hit,
push, and shock us i n t o waking up. As for the nudge
element, around that time I w r o t e a question in a
letter to Osho and the n e x t day got a blank page
back. Thinking that He had n o t got my letter, I sent it
again, but once more came a blank page as my reply,
n o t even
the usual “Blessings.”
For me, this was a device; I have no idea what the
questions in my letters were anymore, but I never
forgot the answers! If you know where to look, nudge
devices can be found in all kinds of ways, in enlight‑
ened words, in a shock, or a m o m e n t of silence.
That suffering itself could be a device, slowly started
to dawn on me only later. Like many others, I have
found the relationship device to be an intense means
of torturing myself with agonies of jealousy and con‑
fusion, as well as for flying off into various seventh
heavens. Devices? Maybe.
a few short, vivid weeks I was dealing with “losing”
my Master, my home, and my beloved all at once.
The Surrender device had been tough enough, but
the Crisis device was the spice that forced me to taste
a whole new range of bitter/sweet depths.
On this point I feel that sannyasins who essentially
decided n o t to see Osho again in the last phase of His
life (because of resentment and whatever else result‑
ing from their commune experiences), miss the point
that the communes were never m e a n t to be per‑
manent. Osho had warned us long before that they
were “ a n experiment to provoke God.”
For me, it is the let-go meditations guided by Osho
at the end of his final Zen discourses that are the
ultimate device, an incredible leaving-gift from the
Master. If energy darshans with Osho, or sitting in
morning discourse, had blown my heart and mind
CflflTlflUES 0|] FREE 36
If at these kinds ofjunctures, we get help to face o u r
unconsciousness and o u r projections and to figure
o u t how we managed to get into such messes in the
first place, they are devices. Therapy groups of all
kinds have certainly been devices to heal, and to see,
for example, that my so-called broken heart is some‑
times just a bruised ego.
On the Ranch, the head-honcho of all devices for me
was the work itself, and mostly I loved it, whether
cleaning, driving trucks, or serving nachos. Cutting
many long stories short, let’s just say that in the
1,500 years of Zen tradition, for every satori, or ken‑
sho arising from a direct whack from a Master’s stick
or from a koan, a hundred more m u s t have happened
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Considering that Osho was n o t speaking publicly for
much of the time at the Ranch, "His" device spec‑
t r u m gained some interesting n e w shades. Build an
incredible city in the desert and let it dramatically
unfold? No problem! Allow budding psychopaths to
work as community leaders? Why not?
Iam creating many devices, because others have failed.
I know perfectly well that mydevices will function only
while I amhere; they are bound to fail as every other
device has failed. I am not living in any fool’s paradise
thinking that mydevices will remain asI create them
forever. When I amnot there, people are going to distort
them. But that is natural; it has to be accepted; there is
nothing to worry about.
Despite the fact that life on the Ranch had m o m e n t s
when the question of devices seemed far away,
replaced instead by various major pains in the butt,
there was a weird m i x of grief and relief in having
to leave that beautiful place that had become home,
that had become a kind of utopia for so many of us.
Maybe we had forgotten that it really was “just a
device.”
Hence those who are here, please be alert and use these
devices as deeply aspossible. While I am here these
devices will function perfectly well. In myhands they can
be great situations for inner transformation, but once my
hands are no more visible these same devices will bein
the hands of the pundits and the scholars, and then the
same story will be repeated asit has been in the past.
Ashu, my girlfriend at that time, was Osho’s dental
nurse and so had left with the small group traveling
with Osho to Kulu and later Kathmandu, and so in
Beware, bewatchful. Don’t waste time.
to people while making the miso soup or cleaning up
the monastery