Learning from Santa Claus
Montagu Curzon
BHAGWAN, THE GOD THAT FAILED by Hugh Milne Caliban Books, 172 Hugh Milne used to be Swami Shiva- murti, one of the earliest and keenest disciples of Bhagwan Rajneesh, the scan- dalous Indian mystic. In the Poona ashram in the mid-1970s he cut a tremendous dash, being Bhagwan's bodyguard, crouched by his right knee during the evening recep- tions lest any overzealous disciple, over- come by the presence, should collapse on rather than at the feet of the Master. With a fine red bushy beard and red hair teased up into a great mane and wearing the statutory orange robe he looked quite the couched lion and was much admired. Prestige in Bhagwan's inner circle being measured, as in all courts, in inches from the king, Shiva, at approximately four inches, was hot stuff. That apart he was a friendly, merry Scotsman, always good for a non-spiritual chat about aviation.
He was greatly enjoying himself, largely, as he tells us in detail, by taking without a grain of salt all the Bhagwan's headline- drawing talk about sex. 'It seemed like an eternal Christmas Day,' he says with appropriate unorthodoxy, 'with Bhagwan as the generous Santa Claus.'
But what a terrible Boxing Day he had. Power shifted in the court and he fell foul of the new secretary, an Indian lady much fiercer and more devious than the first. When Bhagwan moved to America he was reduced to the ranks, forced to drive a bulldozer 90 hours a week, ground to dust Disillusioned he left and, lost outside his Rajneesh world, had a breakdown and attempted suicide.
His book is a purging exercise and, having sicked it all up, he does indeed feel better and is prospering. But the purging is long, rather repetitive, the weight of the word-processor can be felt, and perhaps a spectral hand in 'edited by Liz Hodgkin- son'. Those who cannot fit faces to the swelling cast of strange names may lose heart. But it made a fine serial for the Sunday People and for confirmed guru- bashers it will be required reading, and if they have to labour for their ammunition it serves them right, He goes too far, as people tend to when they reverse a former love.
Pity about that as he has quite an adventure to tell. The streak of grimness may come from a severe Scottish upbring- ing: ' "You laddies!", he yelled, "don't let me hear you milksops and bletherskites moan your wee spoilt mouths off that your nice new shoes are too tight . . ." ', etc. This, to his credit, he survived and did very well in alternative medicine. But the grim- ness was not assuaged until he met Bhag- wan, still obscure, in Bombay in 1973. The ensuing love, devotion, struggles, leavings, returns, greater love, deeper devotions might better have stayed private; all know the spiritual path is stony. Hugh, now Shiva, was nearly eaten by a tiger. He describes the prodigious growth of the Rajneesh phenomenon. From those one-horse beginnings in Bombay to the relative grandeur of the old cantonment in Poona to the vast sweep of John Wayne country in Oregon the circus rolls, its progress charted in the Poona Herald, then the Times, then the full blast of the US media, Quite a show to have been Mounted by one small chap from central India. It starts with a miscellany of 1960s' veterans, then neater, richer faces appear (e•g. your reviewer's), then a flood, of all ages and conditions. Work is declared the primary meditation and the hippies evapo- rate like dew, Germans and large women abound. The small, bizarre club, of a charm much enhanced by the Indian setting, is invaded; old members grumble and are shut up. With a crunch of doom the first Rolls appears. The stern new members were for impos- ing `Bhagwan's vision' on the world, by means fair or foul. First they regimented the club with all sorts of barmy rules and, as it got bigger and busier and became as self-centred as a vortex, they spun ever wilder ambitions. They came to think that at the name of Bhagwan every law would
bend, from the Poona planning committee to the Federal Government. They went crazy: Mr Milne's account of last year's debacle in Oregon, guns, poisons and all, is an awful tale. But ri.b. he was not there.
It would be daft to maintain that Bhag- wan, the Enlightened Master, did not egg these people on; the 'he knew nothing about it' defence is futile. It would also miss the point. He did not promise any Utopia and was content for his commune to be hellish as well as heavenly, a micro- cosm (he would say) of the outside world, with all the same temptations, the same sifting game, just sufficiently exaggerated so that illusions could not be sustained, so that people would learn, express speed, and even be jolted awake, like him. A traditional eastern approach inside the high tech. package.
Now the commune is scattered, Shag- wan homeless. Mr Milne dithers: is Shag- wan a burnt-out husk, destroyed by his own monstrous creation? Latest reports are not very husk-like. Or is he an arch-crook? But what crook orchestrates his fall as well as his rise? Your real crook would, with a little diplomacy, have glided out of trou-
ble, come to be revered by the right- thinking — little meditation classes in the White House one day, maybe? Bhagwan, a rebel from birth, would not have com- promised.
Mr Milne downrates the good side of the story, admittedly much harder to tell, that has had the best descriptive pens writhing in the pit of Pseuds Corner. 'The Tao that can be told is not the Tao of heaven', but a broader hint might have been given than here. For the small chap from central India aroused a volume of goodness and fun, laughter and compassion, love and under- standing that remains with those who know him and would seem easily to qualify him for the title of 'the blessed one'.
So, what to make of it all? A moral for our times? How foolish can people get? Up to a point, swami, but the main thing shown is what happens when people play politics with a mystic. Then the teaching doesn't half bite. He will let you, he will allow anything, but you will pay the price and learn. Mr Milne has learned, so the human inside the 'God' that he and others erected like a golden calf did not fail so badly after all,
Previous page
