Letters_OSHO: SONGS TO MARK

A young man in his early thirties, whom I shall call Mark in order to preserve his privacy, e-mailed me from his home near Liverpool, England, regarding, California Sigh, a solo guitar tape I recorded in 1989

I told it him it was out of print and was not necessarily something he might like. "It has nothing to do with Tim [Buckley's] music, or with electric based music, or rock, or jazz, or with emotional stimulation. On the contrary, it has to do with quietude, going inward, being peaceful. Unless you have found yourself receptive to this kind of mood/style/climate, you might want to save your money. I normally do not release this tape into the world, except to those who are interested in moving past personal egoic considerations into serenity. Let me know if you are still interested."

He wrote back and said he had been practicing yoga for three years, had just spent two months in India, had started meditating, and was beginning to understand the word "peace." He said The Only Dance There Is, by Ram Dass, was his Bible, and asked if I had read it. I told him I had, and that I had attended one of Ram Dass's talks. I told Mark he sounded as if he were "deeply involved in exactly the kinds of activities and thought processes that lead toward self-understanding and wholeness of being," and let him know I felt assured that one of my last remaining copies of California Sigh was being passed along to the kind of person who "can be with it and find value in it."

He asked if I would recommend books to him that I thought might be helpful. He also said he loved the music of Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, David Crosby, Jeff Buckley, sometimes a little Miles Davis. Would I recommend music for him, too?

He seemed like an unusually intelligent and receptive fellow. He was bright, sincere, receptive, and apparently an accomplished reader. I decided to test the waters.

We began a correspondence that continued for several months. For the most part, he raised questions and was appreciative of my answers, many times offering his own opinions and insights. But it was his good questions that fueled the conversation. During the course of our writings I found our correspondence stimulating and very often challenging for both of us. We had an excellent relationship, out of which flowered some very interesting writings.

We began casually, of course, simply getting acquainted. As we moved into our discussions of books, music, the value of reading, and explorations of various authors and seers, including Hermann Hesse and Osho, our talks became deeper and more intense. We gathered momentum, exploring books and music and "right reading," yes, but we also explored and expanded ourselves.

From my side, the relationship was especially satisfying because Mark is the only person I have personally encountered (other than my wife, Sonia) who was deeply, seriously, and profoundly interested in these matters. Others often claim to be, but rarely do they actually read or meditate or sustain intention long enough to be egoically altered. Mere curiosity comes easily and departs quickly.

I have known many well-meaning people who spend time in shamanic earth-based zones, a kind of psycho-spiritual regression back to a primitive, pre-personal, pre-Enlightenment, pre-modern, pre-rational, animistic-mythic state in which they feel merged with unconscious natural elements. They are good-hearted people and I like and respect them. However, they tend to see "spirituality" as going "back to Eden," a return to a pre-conscious womb-state, whereas I see the spiritual journey as an interior evolutionary and transformational developmental process leading up from Eden, as writer Ken Wilber phrased it, into higher and increasingly more inclusive levels of transpersonal awareness, culminating in a nondual embrace of the entire Kosmos.

To his enormous credit, Mark understood this central and most important issue of our times: the evolutionary development of consciousness, the movement from a self-based, fear-oriented perspective rooted in safety needs, survival needs, and narcissistic satisfactions, to an orientation based upon growth, change, the diminution of narcissism, the burgeoning capacity for empathy, and the ascension from lower to higher levels of consciousness that increase autonomy every step of the way (until we arrive at that point of expanded, non-egoistic, psycho-spiritual embrace where nothing exists outside of us: we are the All, and the All is us, and there is no "I," "we" or "it," only the unified, nondual Totality of existence: the Kosmos: matter, mind and Spirit: Buddha's One Taste).

Because of Mark's understanding, I was able to speak openly and freely about people and books and music that have been close to my heart for many years (for more on this, see the letter, "Growing + Deuter," January 26, 2002). He often thanked me for sharing information with him, but it is I who feel indebted to him for being so receptive. He let me speak freely, for which I shall always remain grateful.