The Free Radical

On the topic of Great Souls…

I tried to kill two birds with one stone. The embedded poem (in all caps) in the following narrative is from the ancient Chinese sage, Chuang Tzu; it is titled The Empty Boat. That is also the title of my favourite book of all time– a modern interpretation of the Chinese classic by a most politically/spiritually incorrect mystic.

The voice in this first-person narrative is… well, I’ll just let you figure that out for yourself as you read along…

The Empty Boat and the Demon in the Knitted Cap

HE WHO RULES MEN, LIVES IN CONFUSION;
HE WHO IS RULED BY MEN LIVES IN SORROW.
TAO THEREFORE DESIRED
NEITHER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS
NOR BE INFLUENCED BY THEM.
THE WAY TO GET CLEAR OF CONFUSION AND FREE OF SORROW
IS TO LIVE WITH TAO IN THE LAND OF THE VOID.

When I accepted the assignment, he was still just a little boy. As I reflect upon it now, I can only conclude that even then– he was scarcely out of diapers– that I was already too late.

There was nothing normal about the boy. He was mischief incarnate, unruly; all who knew him in boyhood called him the devil himself. And that was very much an affront to me and my Master. At first appearance I thought it was all well and good, that my task was already half done, but the place where the boundaries of decorum and the values of discipline should have been placed upon him, there was instead an endless empty sky… filled with a child’s raucous laughter.

It was the grandmother’s fault. They say she raised the boy. She did no such thing! She spoiled the incorrigible little bastard so that it was impossible to raise him… or lower him, for that matter. He held no place in heaven’s hierarchy, flaunting structure and station with every breath; he was the very winds of hell, blowing across the battlefield, causing the war machines of centuries to hiccup and sputter in total disbelief for this unforeseeable human condition.

He argued with scholars from the age of five, and set them in their place, I might add. There were no crafty philosophies which could nail him down, no bait to make him bite. He was hooked to nothing, not even the acerbations of his own endless wit. The policies of kings, the doctrines of erudite men, even the poetry of mystics and saints– these were his preferred playthings, and he marched through them all, rendering them naked and nearly invisible.

Perhaps he saw himself as the undoer of the world.

IF A MAN IS CROSSING A RIVER
AND AN EMPTY BOAT COLLIDES WITH HIS OWN SKIFF,
EVEN THOUGH HE BE A BAD-TEMPERED MAN
HE WILL NOT BECOME VERY ANGRY.
BUT IF HE SEES A MAN IN THE BOAT,
HE WILL SHOUT TO HIM TO STEER CLEAR.
AND IF THE SHOUT IS NOT HEARD HE WILL SHOUT
AGAIN AND YET AGAIN, AND BEGIN CURSING —
AND ALL BECAUSE THERE IS SOMEBODY IN THAT BOAT.
YET IF THE BOAT WERE EMPTY, HE WOULD NOT BE SHOUTING,
AND HE WOULD NOT BE ANGRY.

The structures and protocols of formal academia seemed to afford me my first stabs at his ego. At first I thought “This is too easy!” In the corridors of higher education, he was good, better than the rest. And that was the problem. Usually, my job has me investing a little energy into each inflammation of the ego– you know, encouraging it… by poking it with a stick. I was puffing him up. But it didn’t take me long to realize that he WAS the best. If anything, I was bringing out the very best WITHIN him. Imagine my chagrin!

I firmly came to believe that there was no one on the planet who could make Rajneesh eat his words.

And his words were gaining popularity… They were being gobbled up.

IF YOU CAN EMPTY YOUR OWN BOAT
CROSSING THE RIVER OF THE WORLD,
NO ONE WILL OPPOSE YOU,
NO ONE WILL SEEK TO HARM YOU.

Blah, blah, blah… words were designed as shackles; their very nature is to bind and fetter, but this one– nicknamed Rajneesh– could turn them inside-out, enticing them into the costumes and pageantry of a dance to freedom and liberation. Can you fathom how loathsome this might be to my archontic nature?

I can only tear down the messenger; I cannot touch the message. But the bastard refused to identify himself with the message! He sent it out to stand on its own, just like his grandmother had done with him.

And they called him “Bhagwan,” Blessed One, God’s left nut. But he just stood there; and they heaped upon him the epithet of “Shree,” or sir– a real man among men… except that he was real in a way that no one else seemed to be. Was he still among his own kind? Had he ever been? The realest among men left me no purchase in his mind…

And he knew I was there, in his mind, rattling around like a ghost. I remember one of his earliest interviews in english with an american journalist; he was asked “Who are you?” And he smiled devilishly replying “I am the demon in the knitted cap.” The finger which tapped against his head was pointing right at me! Yes, he knew I was there.

If only he would’ve engaged me, mocked me, ridiculed or berated me; or offered me the balm of his salvific philosophy. But he was no one’s saviour, least of all, mine.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh… the untouchable.

THE STRAIGHT TREE IS THE FIRST TO BE CUT DOWN,
THE SPRING OF CLEAR WATER IS THE FIRST TO BE DRAINED DRY.
IF YOU WISH TO IMPROVE YOUR WISDOM
AND SHAME THE IGNORANT,
TO CULTIVATE YOUR CHARACTER AND OUTSHINE OTHERS,
A LIGHT WILL SHINE AROUND YOU
AS IF YOU HAD SWALLOWED THE SUN AND THE MOON —
AND YOU WILL NOT AVOID CALAMITY.

Yes, like one who had swallowed the sun, he shone. And as such, he attracted an orbital entourage of varied and mostly useless satellites– whose numerous, common and persistent shortcomings provided finally the fertile ground for a proper archontic intrusion. I had to rely on my fellows. Over time, we established our own little archon network, playing one inflamed ego off another like acned teenagers making out– zits colliding! Pop! Splat! Puss everywhere…

When he amassed a fleet of Rolls Royces, I thought “Surely…?” But no. Could he be blamed if people liked to buy him things and he once mentioned that his favourite thing of all was a Rolls Royce? He had never asked; it was true.

It was all fodder for the appetites of public opinion anyway. It didn’t look good… but the Rolls Royce Guru is old news. Memory faded quickly from the public mind. Meanwhile, he had 93 of them!

A WISE MAN HAS SAID:
“HE WHO IS CONTENT WITH HIMSELF
HAS DONE WORTHLESS WORK.
ACHIEVEMENT IS THE BEGINNING OF FAILURE,
FAME IS THE BEGINNING OF DISGRACE.”

The wicked Sheela, gloriously enflamed bitch of a woman– so rigid and tight, yet so easy to penetrate: woman, we whispered “betrayer,” and you blushed. I had hoped that you had indeed betrayed the realest man, but alas, you had merely betrayed that which he’d hoped to teach you. How could you ever hope to feed him his own words, when his silence merely continued to allow the world its own madness?

WHO CAN FREE HIMSELF OF ACHIEVEMENT AND FAME
THEN DESCEND AND BE LOST
AMID THE MASSES OF MEN?
HE WILL FLOW LIKE TAO, UNSEEN,
HE WILL GO ABOUT LIKE LIFE ITSELF
WITH NO NAME AND NO HOME.
SIMPLE IS HE, WITHOUT DISTINCTION.
TO ALL APPEARANCES HE IS A FOOL.
HIS STEPS LEAVE NO TRACE. HE HAS NO POWER.
HE ACHIEVES NOTHING, HE HAS NO REPUTATION.
SINCE HE JUDGES NO ONE,
NO ONE JUDGES HIM.
SUCH IS THE PERFECT MAN —
HIS BOAT IS EMPTY.

He was the still spoon, standing in the cauldron, upright and centre, while the soup swirled about him, stirring the world to near panic. Who could take him? No country would have him. The man was too real for our systematic schemes. They all wanted some of his inside-out words, but they didn’t know what to do with an inside-out man. And no one wanted ALL of his words, except perhaps he who had spoken them. While he was alive, the perception was that they came only as a package deal.

He had 5,000 copies of “Rajneeshism” burned, his divorce from Sheela’s legacy– our debacle to fill the silence… nearly come to fruition. Drat!

Sheela killed Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

And now you probably know him resurrected as Osho… and you probably love some of his words… and have mixed feelings about his silence. He’s dead, you know. For quite some time: 1990.

Rajneesh lies buried beneath the message-standing-tall. I can do nothing to tear it down now. And Osho, that empty old boat, floats in its shadow, tittering and giggling, while pointing to the demon– tangled– in his knitted cap.

Osho was my biggest failure… since Chuang Tzu.

For other perspectives on Great Souls, please visit the Mystical Masters Facebook Group.