Life at the Ashram – a Pressure Cooker

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Life at the ashram – a pressure cooker

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‚It was the closest I ever got to being a monk.‘

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We are writing approximately the year 1981 now.

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Pope John Paul and President Reagan both got shot at that time, both survived, by the way.

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HIV / AIDS ran rampant. The current king of England married his first wife, Lady Di, and Roger Federer was born here in Switzerland.

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So, Arjava, you are now back in Poona and in fact I just picked up this book.

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I think … probably hasn’t read it. Thank you for bringing it along.

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I’m looking forward to going into this,

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but this probably covers exactly the time that you’d like to explain to us and tell us a little bit about your time now in Poona.

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We are probably going to the year 1985 already.

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Anyhow, you carry on inclusive when you went to Oregon and I think you met your wife there for the first time.

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I think it’s through the Poona time.

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So many times people ask me, how was it, how was it with Osho, how was the time that you spent in Poona?

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And then about … ’10, ’12, ’13.
In 2013, I think, I had pneumonia.

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It was really bad. I was coughing very badly and then blacking out in between.

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It was really not nice and my doctor told me, either you’re going home to bed or I’m going to put you in the hospital. Your choice.

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So I said, ‚Going home! Bye.‘ and I spent a few weeks in bed. What to do, a few weeks in bed? I’m a creative person.

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I’ve been asked so many times about the times I spent in Poona and also I’ve been asked a lot about the Reiki development.

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So why don’t I just write that down, kind of my autobiography.

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So I started with all the Reiki related things.

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When I finished, I still had time then I wrote about the time with Osho.

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And then I still had some time and then I wrote about my childhood and everything.

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I never published it except this part of the, still here now that covers the time between 1979 and 1990 when Osho died.

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So those years. So I told you that I left Germany, escaped from Germany with the idea,

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with the plan not ever to return and spent the rest of my time meditating with Osho.

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So instead of going to a Zen monastery, I was entering a New Age Zen monastery.

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Now in your introduction you said, oh there were talks of sex orgies and drugs and all that.

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I have never seen either one of the two.

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You mean you missed out?

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I’m not … I’m sure that those things happened because these were all young people experimenting.

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But in the ashram that was a no-go, no drugs.

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If you were caught with drugs, you got kicked out, you couldn’t come in.

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And …

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orgies I’ve never been in one, is not really my thing.

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I’m sure if people wanted to do something in private they maybe did. But not for me.

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So I was there and I was there for one reason: I wanted to figure out who I am.

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And there were many people there for different reasons.

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Maybe some people wanted to have multiple partners which was easy there, 5000 young people in one small space.

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It was easy and natural to make dates. Maybe other people wanted to have power. It was easy to do.

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It was like a pressurized mini society, like a pressure cooker.

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And if you wanted to know how it was, it was like this:

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when you woke up in the morning you didn’t know if your girlfriend was still your girlfriend, if you still had the same job at the ashram.

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Or if you would be here day after tomorrow. It was like that, it was really amazing. Life in the fast lane, fast forward.

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So, after I arrived I went to the office and said,

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‚Okay, I’m here, I’m here to stay. What shall I do? Shall I do some psychotherapy groups? What do you think?‘

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And then somebody who was checking people out was saying, I think for you would be good to do this or that.

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I didn’t have to do any heavy psychotherapy groups like you mentioned the encounter therapy before because I was 18 years old.

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At the time, I was 19 years old, I didn’t really have time to accumulate much luggage, much anger, much frustration.

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I was still a kid. They looked at me and said, ‚You know what, do a 10 day meditation camp, Vipassana meditation camp‘.

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Then some bio-energetics groups, a dance group where you would express yourself with physical movements. All light weight stuff.

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And the Vipassana retreat was to be my last 10 days of sitting, 16 hours a day.

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Boy, was it beautiful, I loved it!

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It was the closest I got to be in a monk that I ever got to.

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But it was only close because Poona was a place where any button that could be pushed in you would be pushed.

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Any situation was used to get you out of your comfort zone, to freak you out, to get …

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One of the first things was: the bathrooms were not for men and women, they were for everybody.

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The toilets didn’t have walls. So you were sitting in one toilet next to you, somebody was throwing up.

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A boy, a girl across the street, somebody was under the shower.

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And I thought that was a hard-core hippie but the first time was like, ‚Oh, what the hell is this?‘

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And I really had to see my limitations.

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Then we were sitting in the Vipassana group and we were told, ‚OK, no smoking, no coffee. For the ladies no makeup.‘

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No drinking, no smoking, no coffee, no tea.

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Silence. Ten days absolute silence. You don’t talk at all.

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Nothing. No reading.

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So we started to sit the first three days of long meditation, really hard.

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Your legs, you think they’re going to kill you.

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But what was the worst was – typical Poona style:

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We were in the second floor of an old Indian villa with maybe 50 people sitting there all day.

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And under us was a Tantra training.

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A what training?

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Tantra.

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Tantra training.

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So we were sitting there and all day you hear, ‚Ugh, ugh, ugh.‘

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From underneath. I’m thinking, ‚My god, these guys, they’re really trying to push your buttons where they can.‘

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But it didn’t disturb me. After a while I didn’t hear anything anymore.

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I was just sitting like a Buddha, so beautiful.

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Thank you to our sponsors! This video depicts a segment of a four-day interview with Frank Arjava Petter.

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For all videos and the list of sponsors visit our website: www.reiki-conciliation.org

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Transcript: René Vögtli