The Welcome

 Friday, November 19

I arose to the symphony of car horns and bird song and the call to prayer from a near by mosque. It is the sound that greets me each day 5:00am. I am it seems, to be haunted by echos of ashram life.  Last night was filled with the sounds of fire crackers being set off until around midnight, and so sleep did not come easily to me.  The reverberation from the small explosions ricocheted off the walls of the closed court yard and crashed onto the soft pillow of my ear drum.   Even during the day the noise of peoples coming and going, disrupts the relative quiet of the apartment. Were I fluent in Hindi, I would be able to repeat verbatim, the conversations of people five floors down below, so amplified is sound in this corridor of four buildings.

I had breakfast and set off with Sasha for the Osho Resort to have a formal induction.  This included an overview of the various meditations and a tour of the premises.  I was impressed with the Olympic sized pool the sauna and whirlpool.  However, most impressive was the circular room of white marble, where Osho's ashes are int urned. It is called Chuang Tzu and the energy there can only be described as potent and profoundly peaceful.   It is the room where silent meditations are held daily and I mentally commit to sitting in this room every day.

At the end of the orientation, I ate lunch with some of my fellow neophytes and then returned to the apartment for a well deserved rest, in light of my sleep deprived night.  When I woke up two hours later, I had a high temperature and a pounding headache.  That pretty much characterized my physical condition over the next few days. The fever raged for four days and my body felt battered, as if I had been in the ring with Mike Tyson.  I was miserable. I drifted between waking and sleep, eating almost no food; rather, drinking copious amounts of water.  The fever finally broke on the fourth day and by Tuesday morning I felt well enough to venture out.  I had an appointment for a private session called the healing voice and I didn't want to miss it.