Interview with Prabhu Praveeta

The Further Shore.
Darshan Diary.
Tuesday 21 June 1977.

Almost 2 months after her last Darshan, (See end of interview) Maneesha asked Prabhu Praveeta to talk about what has been happening for her since she’s been here. To put those changes and her impressions of Osho on what is happening here in perspective, she first talked of how she came contact with Osho.

Prabhu Praveeta: Osho said yesterday’ If I go and you’re not ready, I’ll send you to other Masters‘. To me that was the promise of promises! Well, I was sent to him by an enlightened man, because since my childhood I have always been around enlightened people; I had that great fortune. My mother was very close to the man who first brought Sufism to the west in our century-Hazrat Inayat Khan. I didn’t know him but as a child of eight, I was given my first Sufi named’ Hayat’ by him. It means’ life‘, and as my daughter wrote to me when she heard I was now called Praveeta’ that’s just a continuation - being pregnant with God.’ Inayat gave me my first name, and my whole childhood and adolescence was under the wing of this form of Sufis which came to the West.

Maneesha: Where you living in England at this time?

Prabhu Praveeta: Oh! Don’t ask me! I was living all over the place. I lived in Geneva-working for 18 years with the United Nations’ FAO‘, being responsible for the Latin American of side grants and scholarships to people from underdeveloped countries-in England, In Spain, in France. Then after the war was over I went to Mexico and then travelling South America. Finally I went to Italy and there I’ve lived the longest period of my life.

But to come back to him-’ Murshid’ we called him, which is like’ Osho‘. The extra ordinary thing is that he has an actual physical likeness to Osho. Osho talked yesterday about seeing other masters in his eyes. It’s not only the eyes that are the same-even the faces are alike, so the identification is quite complete.

The first problem I remember quite vividly was when I was fourteen, it was my first metaphysical doubt. I began to feel, ‘Oh, my God! What if it weren’t all true and if God didn’t exist?’ I asked to see Murshid Ali Khan, who was the cousin of Inayat Khan, and he was sitting there in this rather lovely room. This was in Geneva where the Sufis have their international headquarters. He read one’s thoughts so one didn’t need to say anything. Before I had even touched on the subject, he said, ‘hello! How are you?’ and sat me down. He was very, very fat, simply rolling in fat, rather dark, very good-tempered and always full of jokes. He said,’ You see, there are some people who think that God does not exist! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!’ And he went off into laughter, rolling and rolling! That cured me for life and I never had a doubt after that-because of the way he said that.

Then my own particular teacher died and the movement carried on with a younger man. The teacher who is with us now is very young and there is missing a central element-the heartbeat of the really enlightened, so I been put off by some things.

When I read the first book of Osho which came to me as so often happens quite out of the blue, I had only to read a few lines and I knew that this was it. To me, his is the voice of my teacher only rendered more-many things Inayat spoke of in a half veiled way that this was the same voice speaking for a new age and saying a whole lot of new things as well.

Praveeta goes on to talk about the book she mentioned in Darshan-about Francis Bacon. (She’s also written the detective novel and the story of the children but sees herself primarily as a poet.)

Maneesha: Do you find a way Osho speaks particularly appealing because of the poetry?

Prabhu Praveeta: I love it! Yes, it is pure poetry-especially towards the end of each discourse. He’s such a genius at expressing himself .. .. just unbelievable! It is partly inspiration I suppose, and partly his mind, but he is able to just gather all the threads up one after another at the end of the lecture, but in the most poetic way so that each word falls into rhythm. Everything is just like one poem.

Maneesha: What were your first impressions on coming to the ashram?

Prabhu Praveeta: Well, about the first Darshan and the first meeting with Osho I almost can’t talk because one is so moved and it goes so deep. Then came the counter-shock of the groups! Even though I wasn’t put into some of the more violent ones, I did see that .. .. And Osho touched on that today .. .. I see that some of his group leaders are transparent and let Osho through, and others are just sticks brandished at you .. .. And I got in the stick first (the enlightenment Intensive)! So I had a bit of a shock; then I got over that and realised that it was a very important thing to have been through.

After that group I did centring. I was really touched because Prasad (the leader) seems to me to be really a glass through which a lot comes, and of course I enjoyed much of it. Then I did the to hypnotherapy groups, and that was to me the great revelation. Santosh does seem to be one of the ways, the instruments, through which Osho comes. I could ask him many things and feel that it was Osho’s voice answering.

Maneesha: Can you say a little more about that, because for someone who is not a sannyasin that must sound rather extraordinary!

Prabhu Praveeta: Well, for one thing the hypnosis he uses is quite different from hypnosis as its practice outside. Instead of putting asleep and putting suggestions in, he puts you to sleep and keeps you awake at the same time. It’s quite masterly; He does it with a magician’s touch. He trains one very gradually so that you relax your body more and more until there comes a moment when you literally think your body has disappeared. I felt as if my body had been rolled into the mattress and there was only the mattress left! At the same time he says’ And keep your consciousness aware so that you are always listening to my voice‘. At the beginning it’s that; later on it’s only pure awareness. So it really becomes an opening for meditation. It can calm and quiet all your doubt and then you can go into meditation more quickly.

Praveeta recounts some more incidences and experiences in the group, then adds

It was all very loving. Santosh managed to create and spread among as a very loving theme from each to all and so you came out of it really very purified and clean and washed

Maneesha: How did you feel he was being a channel?

Prabhu Praveeta: For one thing, Santosh consciously brought in Osho in certain moments in a very nice way. Santosh wasn’t there, he literally wasn’t there are accept to love everybody and to understand everybody at each moment. At one moment we all found ourselves seeing something in front of the picture of Osho that was in the room. These are externals. The real thing is that he seemed in many of the things he said, to give a practical reality to things we had already read or I had heard from Osho. And in his own self he definitely puts love into practice because he was just a selfless person watching everybody, not saying anything but just being there at the right moment.

Maneesha: Can you talk a little about the ashram, the people you’ve met here?

Prabhu Praveeta: Well, one has this extraordinary feeling that there are people from absolutely everywhere and of every kind. Thanks to the fact that I know a number of languages I did make contact with Italians In one way, with one or two Spaniards, some French people and naturally, English and Americans. And each one is so totally different! What has struck me in quite a few people I’ve known, is the change, the development and the opening up. I’ve seen so many now, and it seems to me that nobody remains unchanged very long. In a very short time changes begin to happen. That’s what Osho promises and it really is true.

Maneesha: How do you feel it is that Osho is able to appeal to so many diverse people?

Prabhu Praveeta: Well, he must be using his intelligence in the service of people. There are enlightened beings who are just there to radiate, that don’t communicate. It must be a combination of his own powerful radiation and his capacity to use mental play.

I knew Krishnamurti but I didn’t get on with him; I found him rather harsh. The others I’ve known were just flowering love and some of them were more reserved and quiet and you felt their radiance, but there wasn’t this communication at all

Maneesha: Do you feel a sense of kinship with people here?

Prabhu Praveeta: I feel that the whole atmosphere is very powerful and one feels a sense of kinship. In the Sufi dancing, when one moves from one person to another you notice very much the people who are afraid and won’t look in your eyes, but mostly there is great joy in passing from eyes to eyes. The majority of people are more or less open and joyous; There’s a real chord of love that goes through everyone. The waking of, and giving expression to, love and naturalness and nakedness and all these things is very nice. I really like it .. .. I think that’s wonderful.

Another thing that struck me here is the children, except if they actually get hurt, you hardly hear them. They seem to be like happy little spirits around the place. Something very, very calm must enter them through the presence of Osho. I’ve often been struck by that; they seem to be so easy and so happy on the whole

Maneesha: Looking back over the two months you’ve been here, what do you feel has happened for you?

Prabhu Praveeta: First, coming across the negative side of myself and being much more clearly unaware of it and practising that awareness continually. The most positive experience has been hypnotherapy which really wakened up an awful lot. I felt the negative first and the positive afterwards, and now I feel just wonderful.

I had this beautiful Darshan yesterday; It sort of completely fulfilled me. And Osho said I should come and live in the ashram. I’m getting ready to do that but I’m not quite ready because I still have some work in my mind.

Maneesha: But you feel ultimately to become part of the community?

Prabhu Praveeta: I think so, yes.

Maneesha: will you talk about your experience at Darshan?

Prabhu Praveeta: It’s very nice to hear his own voice not to hear him through the microphone; that always does something to a person To hear his own voice is lovely, and of course to be near him. At Darshan he is setting out his fishing net, so to speak, and he’s in his utmost love and gentleness, whereas in the discourses he is on a different beam. But every Darshan has been a joy. It is a great joy to listen to all that he says for others because it’s so profound and you see how he meets the needs of each one. And then there’s that thing he has said to me

Maneesha: This is a tricky one: can you talk about your feelings for Osho? Do you feel the a love relationship .. ..

Prabhu Praveeta: Oh, it is absolutely a love relationship-I have no doubts about that. It’s a continuation of my love relationship with Inayat Khan. I don’t see a difference between them, nor do I see a difference between him and any of the other great founders of religion; they are one voice. And the fact that he speaks so beautifully on all; that is what fascinates me, and that is what he has in common with Inayat Khan. Whatever he’s talking on, suddenly nothing else matters; that’s the only thing that matters to him! (Warm laughter) I find that delightful.

Maneesha: Yes, It’s a kind of childlike quality, isn’t it? A child becomes totally engrossed in something and the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

Prabhu Praveeta: Yes, yes. Suddenly he’s Jesus or a Zen Master or .. ..

I think I can approach the reality in the emptiness and the space and the personality of Osho, and that’s my line: thinking of him and his presence.

Maneesha: What are your fantasies about what is really happening around Osho?

Prabhu Praveeta: He is always saying-and quite rightly, It seems to me-that religious movements are dead things, and so one wonders what’s the point? As far as I can see, he has this sense of urgency and is sending messages and calling in everybody and putting them all into Orange and so on, so others see it. There is a kind of urgency to bring people to near enlightenment so that they can influence the world in a different way. But what will happen after he’s gone, one does wonder. He himself does say always that religion is only valid when the master is there.

Maneesha: Do you anticipate there being any difficulty in being a sannyasin in Italy: being in Orange, wearing a mala?

Prabhu Praveeta: No, I couldn’t care less! I go my own way. People can laugh at me if they want to; I don’t mind! I mean, this is the only thing that Osho asks us to do; how could I refuse it? Personally I wouldn’t have chosen to wear external signs because having been a Sufi all my life, I consider religion is something very deep inside, but I respect his wishes and their it is.

Maneesha: It’s lovely that he’s been speaking on Sufism while you’ve been here.

Prabhu Praveeta: Yes! I thought the first discourse was the best that he’s ever given. It was powerful and gathered together in his way. I mean, the greatest orator couldn’t have invented, with all his efforts, such a work of art as that first discourse. I felt again my old Masters speaking because it’s absolutely the same fountain springing up







An elderly, grey-haired and elegant woman is sitting in front of Osho, In fact she doesn’t feel elderly: she has lovely, vital energy, a sense of alertness about her. Osho is absorbed in writing her name down and she is being a tree-a solid, grounded tree, but lively, abandoned.

I don’t know much about her except that her name Hayat Matthews, she is an Englishwoman living in Italy, and she has written several letters to Osho over a period of time expressing a desire to see him and, each time anxiously seeking an assurance that he will still be here when she is able to manage a visit. Now Osho is gazing at her, pen poised in hand. He calls her to him and shows her her sannyass name.


Osho: This will be your new name .. and a new birth.. Prabhu Praveeta... Let the past be dropped as if it were part of a dream, as if it belonged to somebody else, as if you had seen it in a movie that you were just a witness to and not a participant in -- just a watcher, a spectator, standing aloof.

That is the best way to drop all the burden that the past naturally creates. There is no need to fight with it. In fighting it you remain attached to it; in fighting it you remain obsessed with it; in fighting, it remains. At the most you can press it back into your unconscious, but it will be there. It will move into the underground of your being, will become part of your basement but will go on affecting your life from there. So the best way is never to fight. To fight means one is ready to get defeated; it is self-defeating. The best way to win is not to fight. Just drop it! Just have the awareness that you are a watcher... and that's how it is!

Whatsoever has happened to you in your life and whatsoever you have done, deep down your inner being has been just a witness to it; it has never been a doer. It is always transcendental. When you are angry, it is standing far away and looking at your anger. When you are cleaning the floor, it is standing far away and looking at you cleaning the floor. You are young and it is looking, you become old and it is looking; you are happy it is looking, you are unhappy it is looking. It is always just there, standing by the side; it never gets involved. It remains pure and untouched by all experience whatsoever: neither good makes it good, nor bad makes it bad.

That purity, that innocence, is always there. It is ours to claim: it has just to be recognised. So with the new name forget the old and drop the past.

... Prabhu means god and Praveeta means pregnant -- pregnant with god. And you are pregnant with god; that has been your search for many lives. You have been groping in the dark but the search has been there. And unless god is born in you, you will never feel contented, you will never feel satisfied. Nothing less than god will help, nothing less will do... and that can happen!

That is the easiest thing in the world to happen because it is our innermost nature. We are made in the image of god, we carry the seed inside: it just needs right soil, right nurturing, right nursing, and it will sprout. That's what I mean by pregnant. Everybody is pregnant with god but very few people are fortunate enough to give birth.

You can become one of those fortunate ones. Just trust and courage -- almost the courage of a madman -- is needed. The courage of a fool is needed because it is such an impossible adventure that clever people cannot go into it; their very cleverness prevents them. Calculating people cannot have any god; their very calculation is against them.

Only people who are innocent childlike, in a way primitive, mad, can take the jump -- because they can trust that the impossible is also possible.

The moment you believe that the impossible is possible it becomes possible -- because it is all our belief. As a man thinketh, so he becomes. It is all our idea: if we think we are unhappy, we are unhappy; if we think we are not unhappy, we are not unhappy. It is just that we go on creating a certain vibe around ourselves by thinking it continuously. If somebody lives in misery it is his own fiction.

It is just like people who go to the movie to see a horrible film: they know it is horrible but they want to see it. And they suffer in the film; they go through all kinds of torture because they become identified. Still they pay and go; they pay for it! They know it is just a film, and it is horrible, but they want to see it.

It is exactly the same case in life: there are people who want to remain in misery; that is their decision. There are people who don't want to remain in misery; that is their decision. And you choose your life; it is all your choice. The moment you want to change, you can change it -- just like that.

So let this sannyas be a radical change in your pattern of life. From this moment think of god, from this moment look for god, from this moment whatsoever you see, try to find god in it. It may be a rock, but god is rock in a rock. It may be a tree, but god is tree in a tree. It may be a child giggling, but god is child in a child, god is giggling in giggling.

Go on looking for god. By and by you will see that this whole universe is his temple and we are not to go somewhere else to find him. He is here, he has always been here... just a recognition was missing.

Prabhu Praveeta: I wanted to ask your advice on about. I can stay six weeks or eight weeks and then go back to do some work and come back later on for a longer time.

Osho: When can you come back?

Prabhu Praveeta: Well, I’d like you to tell me. I would need about six months, I think, to finish this work, or is it better to try and stay longer now and forget about the work?

Osho: What kind of work is it?

Prabhu Praveeta: It’s a book that I’ve been writing for some years. It’s nearly finished and I’m interested in it, but if it’s better to just forget about it and just stay longer here.

Osho: What are you writing about?

Prabhu Praveeta: It’s a historical study of Francis Bacon. It’s a historical study about what historians can do to the reputation of a man who was loved in his time and was hated and treated very badly in the 19th and 20th centuries and still is, and how history plays with all this.

Osho: Mm .. .. Good! Bacon is one of the most important persons to think about. Good!-go and finish it.

Prabhu Praveeta: Will it be right to come back? Will you be here?

Osho: Perfectly .. .. I will be here-I promise!

I feel a great flood of affection for her-with her humility, her ardent enthusiasm to Osho until being here, and sophistication and unpretentiousness.

Praveeta says she has been studying yoga to some years and practices it regularly. Osho suggests what meditations here will best fit with her energy and gives Praveeta some groups to do in the time she will be here. The following morning, Osho referred to Praveeta In the discourse saying

Osho: Initiation with knee is not a formal thing. Sometimes it starts even before you have seen me .. .. Sometimes it starts when you are thousands of miles away from me.

Just the other night one beautiful woman took sannyass. I have given her the name, Praveeta. For months she has been writing that she wants to come, she wants to come, and she wanted assurance that I would be here when she comes. She was feeling that it was getting late and I might be gone, and she was much worried.

Now she has come. The work on her had already started before she came. Before she came here she had fallen in love with me; her heart came before her body did. She became connected; she was thousands of miles away.

The work that goes on here which I don’t call work is a love affair.




The Further Shore Darshan Chapter #19 The courage of a madman is needed 21 June 1977