India My Love
Armchair travel has never been such a delight as it is in this beautifully illustrated hymn to the uniqueness of India. In these pages, we are treated to a spell-binding vision of what Osho calls "the real India," the India that has given birth to enlightened mystics and master musicians, to the inspired poetry of the Upanishads and the breathtaking architecture of the Taj Mahal. We travel through the landscape of India?s golden past with Alexander the Great and meet the strange people he met along the way. We are given a front-row seat in the proceedings of the legendary court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar, and an insider?s view of the assemblies of Gautama the Buddha and his disciples.
In the process, we discover just what it is about India that has made it a magnet for seekers and adventurers for centuries, and the importance of India?s unique contribution to the human search for truth.
Reviews
Amazon.com
A paean to the Indian tradition of truth-seeking, India My Love tells the stories of the great masters of the magical subcontinent.
Osho introduces us to his spiritual heroes - Muslim fakirs, Hindu yogis, Jaina ascetics, and Buddhist monks - men and women who transcend the boundaries of convention to attain a bliss that is beyond happiness. And since Osho is an entertaining speaker, these transcripts of his talks do more than relate ancient tales, they narrate competitions, journeys, and the exploits of kings, prostitutes, and musicians. Taking the theme of meditation and the goal of liberation, the stories are woven together with snippets about the mystical energy of India and interspersed with beautiful photos of temples, statues, and religious devotees. Carefully edited, this Osho is thoroughly mainstream and India My Love eminently palatable. -Brian Bruya
From Library Journal
A best seller in India in 1997, this collection of discourses has been completely overhauled for the U.S. edition and defies categorization. While it could easily be classified under spirituality or stories of Indian saints, this would not be conclusive, as the book also contains 42 full-color photographs celebrating the grandeur of India.
Osho, who is considered an enlightened being by some and a charlatan by others, is equally unclassifiable. An erstwhile professor of philosophy, Osho laces his talks with anecdotes, stories, and references drawn from history, mythology, and literature. This book is a collection of such stories, along with tales of saints and enlightened masters from the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Sikh, and Sufi traditions of India, illustrating the state of an enlightened master and the inner resonance between the master and disciple. According to Osho, this tradition is unique to India. While this may be arguable, the stories and pictures make the book highly accessible to all readers, including those unacquainted with India and Eastern mysticism. - Ravi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL; Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Chapter Titles
Introduction
India is not just geography or history... It is vibrating with certain energy fields that no other country can claim.
the universal dream
The dream of the buddhas has always been to remind you of that which has been forgotten, to awaken that which is asleep in you.
the flame of awareness
Meditation is a state. You are simply silent - no thought to concentrate on, no subject to contemplate, no object to meditate over.
golden spires of consciousness The East has so many secret keys, but even a single key is enough because a single key can open thousands and thousands of locks.
fragrance of the east
The whole story of India is a story of nonviolence.... No other country in the world is feminine in the same sense as India.
songs in silence, sutras in stone
In the East a statue is made not for its own sake: it is made as a code language for the centuries that follow.
a bolt of lightning in the dark night
In India, what we call experience, intuition, reveals all things simultaneously, like a flash of lightning. Hence, truth is seen in its totality, as it is.
Excerpt from India My Love
Introduction
India is the only land in the whole world, strangely, which has devoted all its talents in a concentrated effort to see the truth and to be the truth.
You cannot find a great scientist in the whole history of India. It is not that there were not talented people, it is not that there were not geniuses. Mathematics was founded in India, but it did not produce Albert Einstein. The whole country, in a miraculous way, was not interested in any objective research. To know the other has not been the goal here, but to know oneself.
For ten thousand years millions of people persistently making a single effort, sacrificing everything for it ? science, technological development, riches ? accepting poverty, sickness, disease, death, but not dropping the search at any cost...it has created a certain noosphere, a certain ocean of vibrations around you.
If you come here with a little bit of a meditative mind, you will come in contact with it.
If you come here just as a tourist, you will miss it. You will see the ruins, the palaces, the Taj Mahal, the temples, Khajuraho, the Himalayas, but you will not see India ? you will have passed through India without meeting it. It was everywhere, but you were not sensitive, you were not receptive. You will have come here to see something which is not truly India but only its skeleton ? not its soul. And you will have photographs of its skeleton and you will make albums of its skeleton, and you will think that you have been to India and you know India, and you are simply deceiving yourself.
There is a spiritual part. Your cameras cannot photograph it; your training, your education cannot capture it. You can go to any country, and you are perfectly capable of meeting the people, the country, its history, its past ? in Germany, in Italy, in France, in England. But you cannot do the same as far as India is concerned. If you try to categorize it with other countries, you have already missed the point, because those countries don?t have that spiritual aura. They have not produced a Gautam Buddha, a Mahavira,a Neminatha, an Adinatha...they have not produced a Kabir, a Farid, a Dadu. They have produced scientists, they have produced poets, they have produced great artists, they have produced painters, they have produced all kinds of talented people. But the mystic is India?s monopoly; at least up to now it has been so.
And the mystic is a totally different kind of human being. He?s not simply a genius, he?s not simply a great painter or a great poet ? he is a vehicle of the divine, a provocation, an invitation for the divine. He opens the doors for the divine to come in. And for thousands of years, millions of people have opened the doors for the divine to fill the atmosphere of this country. To me, that atmosphere is the real India.
But to know it, you will have to be in a certain state of mind.
When you are meditating, trying to be silent, you are allowing the real India to come in contact with you. You can find truth in this poor country in a way you cannot find anywhere else. It is utterly poor, and yet spiritually it has such a rich heritage that if you can open your eyes and see that heritage you will be surprised. Perhaps this is the only country which has been deeply concerned with the evolution of consciousness and nothing else. Every other country has been concerned with a thousand other things. But this country has been one-pointed, a single goal: how human consciousness can be evolved to a point where it meets with the divine; how to bring the human and the divine closer. And it is not a question of one person, but millions of people; not a question of a day or a month or a year, but thousands of years. Naturally, it has created a tremendous energy field around the country. It is all over the place, you just have to be ready.
It is not coincidental that whenever anybody is thirsty for truth, suddenly he has become interested in India, suddenly he has started moving towards the East. And it is not only today, it is as old as there are records. Pythagoras, twenty-five centuries ago, came to India in search of truth. Jesus Christ came to India.
And down the centuries, seekers have been coming to this land from all over the world. The country is poor, the country has nothing to offer, but to those who are sensitive it is the richest place on the earth. But the richness is of the inner. This poor country can give you the greatest treasure that is possible for human beings.
