He changed my life. (My experience with OSHO)

This story starts with my childhood. I have been taught in the school that Mahatma Gandhi was a great man, a great human being and one of the greatest leaders who changed this world. Mother Teresa was a great human being who devoted her life to wellness. Whenever I used to hear about a great personality, I wanted to be like him. Sometimes I wanted to be Gandhi, sometimes Teresa, Lord Buddha or Jesus Christ sometimes. Every year I used to get new books in a new classroom and every year I felt like being someone new. I wanted to be a Hero sometimes, who always win with bad people. Sometimes, I even thought about being like Lord Krishna, who is the controller of our lives.

You can easily understand how difficult it is for a kid, choosing the right role model for him. After selecting few hundreds of them, I started looking for my next question, “What do I need to do for being one of them”.

Was it a realistic question to be asked?

Well I feel, everybody in this world wants to be like someone. Someone, who is our role model, whose life fascinate us. But the only problem with us is, we think that we can never be like them. We are not fortunate enough, we are not lucky enough. Well this word “lucky” reminded me something. You know when we achieve something, we feel that we got it because we struggled. We did our best, we worked hard. When someone else achieves something, we say he is lucky. So technically this term “lucky” is applicable for others, not for us. So I always knew, I am going to get nothing by luck. All I need is the hard work. But exactly what I need to do. The question remains the same.

All these difficult questions are the main reason why people decide to follow other and not look for their own answers. Everybody knows that they need to find the answers to achieve the purpose of their lives, but very few of them actually look for the answers.

Sometimes I felt that being a follower of a Guru, could help me finding my answers. But it was very difficult for me to follow someone, as it is always difficult to convince me. I need the correct logics behind everything. But all those Gurus only teach to pray and worship. Prayers and worship can bring peace and stability in your life, that’s why it is important to us. But it can’t give me the answers to my questions with life.

So my search continued.

I this journey of life, I got to know about Jesus Christ. I read about him. I loved Jesus. I actually became very close to him. I felt him sometimes. I felt his presence, nowhere else, but right inside me. He was within me but I only started feeling, when I believed him. I believed in his purpose of life. He was the Son of the God. He came to this world for a purpose and he gave us the life for a purpose. It was a great experience for me, to feel the presence of the God. But again I didn’t find the answer. But, got a new question all together, “What is the purpose of my life?”

I started looking for these answers in books. And after sometimes, books became my best friends. You know I was one of the worst students of class throughout my schooling. But still books were my best friends. I never liked to read my classroom course related books.

I had a hunger inside, hunger of knowledge. I looked for knowledge not for theories. In this journey of life, I read few pages of Bhagavad Gita. What all I learned was, “Karma”. That we should act with believe in Lord Krishna, without caring about the fruit of our work. That means if we are acting in our life as per the work decided for us, we will get at the end what is decided for us. So we should not target the end result but should target the best of the work. That again left me with a confusion, “What is the Karma, decided for me?”.

So it continued again.

One day, when I was just looking for some books in a book stall, I saw one magazine. I do not remember the exact name of the magazine but I noticed on word “OSHO”. I was not a follower of OSHO. I didn’t even know his background. But it was a famous name. I started reading few pages and felt that there is something for me inside. I read so many magazines related to him. It was a great experience to read, as OSHO was a great translator of Bhagavad Gita. And finally one day, I read an answer to my question.

Someone asked OSHO, that what he should do to be like Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ or Krishna.

I do not remember the exact wordings but I remember what he was trying to say.

OSHO explained, Gandhi, Teresa, Buddha, Jesus or Krishna.... They never tried to be someone else. You can’t be great if you are trying to be someone else. No one can ever be someone else. So, if you want to be someone, try to be what you are. There is greatness within you. All you need to is to find out who you are and be yourself.

Frankly, it was not a direct answer to my questions. But I realised, that I was looking for an answer of a wrong question. Those questions do not exist, what all exist is me.

The journey does not end here, as I am still to find out who am I?

But now I am no more looking for the answers here and there. Now I know that I can find the answers within me. But it is not easy. It’s not easy to explore your inner self. It is not easy to find out who you are. I don’t how can I find out what is it. But there is something that is listening to me. Listening to my eagerness, listening to my true patience.

Now I know one thing at least that the life will itself give me my answers. Life will teach me the purpose of it’s existence. Life will teach me my Karma. Life will teach me whom do I need to follow. All I need to do is to believe. Believe in God, and to believe in me. Because one thing I realised in this journey, that God is nothing else but my own soul. I can listen to his voice, I can feel his presence.

I still don’t count myself as a follower of OSHO. But I found him as great translator of our inner voice.

And at the end I can say that “He changed my life”.

Written by: Sagar Srivastava