Osho disciple Vinod Khanna was a multi-dimensional personality–better to say that he was a man of individuality. Personality means persona–which is not the real self, but what you show to the world. It can be totally false also. Politicians have a personality which is not a real face that they show to world–it is a mask. They make this mask very colourful and appealing and finally become fully identified with the mask.

Vinod Khanna was a wonderful and colourful personality–with one great difference, that he was a great meditator who did not get identified with any colour of personality. At the feet of his beloved master Osho, he learned the art of becoming a pure witness–Sakshin, in the words of Lord Krishna. A witnessing consciousness is transcendental to all worldly identifications. In the earlier days of his filmy life, he had asked Osho how to be a successful movie-star, and Osho gave him a wonderful life-sutra: Act as if it is your life and live your life as if it is just an acting in a movie–and you would succeed in both the dimensions. And Vinod did succeed in both. And at the same time, he remained unidentified with all this success. He remained untouched–like a lotus in the mud. He was in politics–and he was not politician. He was simply a friendly human being without the ego that poisons relationships. He was always approachable who would share whatever he could, with anybody who came to see him. Ultimately he was sharing his enlightened master Osho’s vision with all.

Vinod started living in Rajneesh Ashram in seventies as a very simple human being and meditating in the presence of his master, when he had attained to the peak of his career, and later in eighties, he followed Osho to Rajneeshpuram where he worked as his gardener.

Five years later he returned  and  decides to end the sabbatical, Vinod not just bounced back with romantic outings like  Chandni and Jurm. He emerged as one of the most successful actor politicians during his multiple Lok Sabha re-elections. By that time he got married again and started his family life. From the second marriage, he was blessed with a son and daughter.

Based on the vision of his master, he gave a name Sakshi to his son from the second wife, and later his daughter got the name Shraddha. He distributed the cassette of Osho Hindi discourse–on the topic of Witnessing (Sakshi) and  Trust ( Shraddha) to his friends in Bollywood. Vinod was always a trustworthy friend.

Recently Vinod Khanna has received the Dadasaheb Phalke award for outstanding contribution to Indian cinema. This award catapults him into the league of personalities like Dilip Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Raj Kapoor and Satyajit Ray. Lata Jha writes about him in Mint newspaper:  For a star who possibly never looked to awards functions to validate his popularity, the Dadasaheb Phalke recognition may have come as a surprise to Vinod Khanna, were he alive. The legendary actor, who died at the age of 70 this time last year, was conferred the highest film honour by the Directorate of Film Festivals for his outstanding contribution to Indian cinema, catapulting him into the league of personalities like Dilip Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Raj Kapoor and Satyajit Ray, recipients in the past.

During all such happening, Vinod shines as a sannyasin star all along who has a very different understanding of life and career. Osho concludes: Understanding is not of the mind: understanding is of the heart. You will have to fall in love. That’s what sannyas is all about. Falling in love with a Master, for NO reason at all – just for the sheer joy of falling in love with someone who has disappeared, who is no more, who has become a great nothing. Who has become a silence.

Ego represents our mind, and this mind does not want to lose control on our being.

It happens often to so many people in the moments of deep meditation that a meditator comes face to face with some kind of psychological death. His or her mind starts dissolving like a tiny drop disappears into an vast ocean and loses its own existence forever. The same happens in the moments of deepest prayer also. It is the dissolution of ego.

Osho explains this phenomenon with a wonderful poem of Rabindranath Tagore: The poet has been searching for god for millions of lives. He has seen him sometimes, far away, near a star, and he started moving that way, but by the time he reached that star, God has moved to some other place. But he went on searching and searching — he was determined to find God’s home — and the surprise of surprises was, one day he actually reached a house where on the door was written: “God’s Home”.

You can understand his ecstasy, you can understand his joy. He runs up the steps, and just as he is going to knock on the door, suddenly his hand freezes. An idea arises in him: “If by chance this is really the home of god, then I am finished, my seeking is finished. I have become identified with my search. I don’t know anything else. If the door opens and I face god, I am finished — the search is over. Then what? Then there is an eternity of boredom — no excitement, no discovery, no new challenge, because there cannot be any challenge greater than god.”

He starts trembling with fear, takes his shoes off his feet, and descends back down the beautiful marble steps. He took the shoes off so that no noise was made, for his fear was that even a noise on the steps… God may open the door, although he has not knocked. And then he runs as fast as he has never run before. He used to think that he had been running after god as fast as he can, but today, suddenly, he finds energy which was never available to him before. He runs as he has never run before, not looking back.

The poem ends, “I am still searching for god. I know his home, so I avoid it and search everywhere else. The excitement is great, the challenge is great, and in my search I continue, I continue to exist. God is a danger — I will be annihilated. But now I am not afraid even of God, because I know His home. So, leaving His home aside, I go on searching for Him all around the universe.

And deep down I know my search is not for God; my search is to nourish my ego.”

Ego represents our mind, and this mind does not want to lose control on our being. So it creates all kinds of seemingly rational excuses against going deep into the mysteries of life that exist beyond its boundaries. And the experience of godliness does not happen within the confines of mind-it is totally beyond the realm of mind.

The last night of this month happens to be a very special night–it is the night of Buddha Full Moon. It is a well-known fact that Gautama the Buddha was born on full moon night; he became enlightened on full moon night — the same full moon night, the same month. And he attained to mahaparinirvana on the same full moon night. It is certain that he was in deep communication with the moon energy. Though this happened over 2500 years ago, this great incidence has gone so deep into the psyche of millions of meditators that every month they get reminded of Buddha’s enlightenment.

Before his enlightenment, the Buddha was known as Gautam Siddhartha. As a sincere seeker, he had been meditating for a very long time, over six years. He went through all the austerities one can imagine. He had been fasting for long hours on the banks of Niranjana river. He had become very very week. And on one blessed night, he realized that it was really not needed to torture oneself to attain to enlightenment. He dropped all efforts to attain to anything. With this dropping of all efforts, his ego also evaporated–and with it evaporated the whole anxiety of achieving something and becoming somebody. He entered the space of total non-doing, no-mind space, and shunyata–the ultimate void.

In such a space of deep relaxation–he disappeared as an ego and became one with cosmic consciousness, as the mystic saint Kabir describes: Bund Samani Samund Me, So Kat Heri Jaye. The drop disappeared into the ocean. Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, the awakened one.

It happened on a Full Night of Vaisakh..which became associated with the Buddha. Since then this Full Moon night has become a tremendously significant night. To meditate on this night is considered very auspicious. It seems that the energy moves in a different way during that time, and entering into our inner space becomes easier. The opposite also happens. The psychologically week people may feel insane and could harm themselves and others under the influence of such powerful moon energy. It has been observed that more people commit suicide on full moon night. More people have road accidents also. They go lunatic. The words Lunar and Lunatic come from the same root, and on the night of the full moon, it is easier to access the irrational, the right brain, the mysterious, that which lies outside of the known, outside of the mind. So it is best to go deep into meditation and not go lunatic. This will be deeply relaxing.

The easiest way to meditate is to keep looking at the moon very softly for some minutes and then close the eyes and feel the moon energy within. We can go through a mysterious metamorphosis. We become more loving and compassionate, creative and artistic with overflowing energy. in deep silence, we become free from our limited self and connect with the universal reservoir of energy and consciousness.

Osho explains this space of meditation: Truth happens to you in a wordless silence, in deep, deep meditation. When there is no thought. no desire, no ambition, in that state of no-mind truth descends on you —or ascends in you. As far as the dimension of truth is concerned both are the same because in the world of the innermost subjectivityheight and depth mean the same. It is one dimension: the vertical dimension. Mind moves horizontally, no-mind exists vertically. The moment the mind ceases to function — that’s what meditation is all about: cessation of the mind, total cessation of the mind — your consciousness becomes vertical; depth and height are yours.

Talking about Zen, the enlightened master Osho concludes: So in every Zen monastery on the full moon night, people just sit under their trees and watch the full moon. The full moon has become symbolically connected with Gautam the Buddha. And just watching and witnessing the full moon, they enter into deep meditation.

With Gautama, the Buddha begins a new chapter in the world of meditation–and remains new forever and ever. It becomes even more contemporary and futuristic with Osho consciousness. Read and listen to Osho, and you will become contemporary to the Buddha.