Swami Anand Kul Bhushan
Only two persons can play this game. It has no rules. It has no appeals. It has a beginning but no end. It gets tougher as it goes on. It demands complete commitment.
Sounds like a mad game. Yes, it is the MAD – Master and Disciple – game. Once you surrender and become a disciple, a real disciple to a real master, this game begins. A real disciple is one who has surrendered totally, without any questions, any conditions, any expectations.
Once accepted by the master, the disciple starts transforming, not just gathering information and knowledge. Like a lamp with oil and a wick but no flame; the disciple gradually moves closer to the lighted lamp of the master until the flame transcends to the disciple and lights up; this is known as the transmission of the lamp. Two become one.
Osho explains, “This is the last game. After this game, games stop, game-playing stops. Once you have played the game rightly – the Master-disciple game – by and by you come to a point where all playing disappears. Only you are left – neither the Master nor the disciple exists there. This is just a device.
“Between the Master and the disciple – if the rule of the game is followed rightly – devotion arises. That is the fragrance, the river that flows between the two banks of the Master and the disciple. That’s why it is so difficult for the outsider to understand,” he says. (The Art of Dying, Ch 8, Q 1.)
A really devoted disciple remains Ma Yog Laxmi whose birthday on 12 February is now celebrated as Disciple Day. Fragile, diminutive and sensitive, she always looked very alert, indeed aware. Soon after finishing college, she was inspired by Osho’s discourses and later was in initiated into sannyas. From then onwards, she surrendered totally and became his disciple and later his secretary during the early years of Osho’s work in Mumbai.
After moving to Pune, she worked non-stop to develop the ashram to its peak, attracting thousands of searchers from all over the world. During this hectic decade of the Seventies and early Eighties, she was always calm, balanced and smiling through all the huge challenges.
In the presence of her master, she was always silent with bowed head, taking down instructions in her notebook. With everyone else, she was always smiling and, uniquely, referring to herself as a third person. In an uncanny manner, she would say, “Laxmi is pleased to meet you.” Or “Laxmi wants tea.” Even when she was seriously ill, she used to answer questions about her health by saying, “Laxmi is well but the body is in great pain.”
These statements show a clear distinction between the body and the soul and control over the mind. Nowhere was ‘I’ of the ego which identifies the body as everything while forgetting the mind and the soul. Plus, it demonstrates a degree of awareness not commonly found. Never any question on the instructions of the Master even when she was asked to stop coming to the ashram. He response was always, “His grace.”
She played the MAD Game to perfection. Once she decided to be a disciple she entered into another world – a totally different world of the heart, of love, of trust. For her, it was a play. She was never serious, but ever very sincere, radiating and bubbling with joy. She played this ultimate game right up to her last breath when fighting cancer, by saying, “His grace.” Here was the final step from a disciple to a devotee merging into the flame of the master. Two became one.
