The Only Life by Rashid Maxwell

Author:Rashid Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S India
Published: 2017-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

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Despite the ever-increasing pressure of people to feed and accommodate, no one ever saw Laxmi stressed or tense. There were always the bright eyes, the joke and the logical explanation, ‘It’s HIM.’ But there was also the hard Zen stick. Here’s the story of how Osho used Laxmi to hit the proud and cerebral Krishna Prem, journalist, writer and first head of the Ashram press office.

During the monsoon of 1979, Krishna Prem had developed pneumonia. After a long convalescence, he had energy darshan (shaktipat) with Osho. The following morning, he dropped by Laxmi’s office. This story is shortened and lifted from his book, Osho, India and Me.

‘Good news, the body is better,’ she says. ‘It was beautiful last night the way He held Krishna Prem’s hands. And this morning too He spoke of Krishna Prem.’

‘Really?’ I was moved and flattered.

‘Yes,’ she continues, looking me straight in the eye. ‘One word gets Krishna Prem and that word is Laxmi. Now he is vulnerable. Get him.’

The floor disappears from under my feet.

She returns to her papers. ‘Just so you know.’

For the next months, Laxmi was on his case. She criticised him relentlessly, finding fault with his work, his behaviour and with his deep-seated, overflowing negativity. After some weeks he protested,

‘But Laxmi! I don’t feel negativity! I don’t know what you’re on about!’

‘See?’ she shouted back, ‘exactly what Laxmi means!’

I wrote to Osho asking why I was being continually berated by Laxmi. The answer came back: ‘See Laxmi.’

With a sinking feeling Krishna Prem, a mature, intelligent and forceful man, entered the tiger’s lair.

‘Laxmi looks up from her papers. ‘He says it has nothing to do with Laxmi. He says to start smoking again.’ As I rise to leave, Laxmi’s hand thrusts a book into the air, her eyes still fixed on the piles of paper spread across the desk. ‘This is for you.’

It is one of Osho’s books signed by Osho with a loving message and the date of my birthday.

Over the coming weeks, Laxmi makes greater and greater demands on me. Nothing I do is ever right. One day, in exasperation, I too yell back at her, ‘Why do you have to shout and scream at me?’

‘This is Laxmi’s way. If you deserve it, take it; if you don’t, just laugh.’

It took Krishna Prem a while but finally he got it. He heard Osho’s words of counsel, to live from the heart and from intuition, not from the head and from logic. He went to thank Laxmi. ‘Thank Laxmi? For what? No need for thank-you,’ she smiles. ‘Laxmi enjoyed.’

Laxmi had become a master of the well-delivered Zen strike.

***

Swami Keerti, editing in the Hindi book and newsletter department, also recalled her countless hits to him. ‘She told me, “Hurry up. This is needed as of yesterday!” And she was right. I was a lazy man. You see we all had this great respect for her. Osho gave her a function—his secretary—not power. Because she stayed with that, being just a medium, people had respect for her, totally trusted her.

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