My Diamond Days with Osho [antikvár]

t is fitting that I should write a foreword for Shunyo's book, for it is I, as she puts it, who started her off on her adventure and waved goodbye as she boarded the plane to India seventeen years ago. She was to become an intimate disciple of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who became known as Osho (Zen Master) shortly before he died in January 1990. This is a story of what it's actually like, in our lifetimes, for a Westerner to tread the path of the bhakti, the way of devotion to seek, recognize, and follow one's true Teacher — the gateway to one's own enlightenment. He may not be your master or mine, but in Shunyo's limpid telling, the truth becomes abundantly clear in the old saying: All pathways with heart lead to the summit of the same mountain — and the nearer they are to the top, the more they resemble each other. In Shunyo's case, her path was the notorious "sex guru" of the popular press, thumber of his nose at the establishment values, amasser of Rolls Royces and tens of thousands of uninhibitedly joyful red-robed sannyasins. The guru who was unceremoniously deported, vilified by the media, his Oregon Ashram crushed, was then — in ill health, with a few close disciples — hounded by the U.S. government from nation to nation for a year until returning to India where he died shortly afterwards of unclear causes. For fifteen years Shunyo devoted herself to following Osho's pathway to enlightenment, as well as to washing his clothes and caring for his basic needs. She was always the "quiet one," the "Mary Magdalene" of the long-surviving intimates. A dark Celtic beauty from the wilds of Cornwall, Sandy Pengelly danced, looked for love and meaning, and strived vi