Split Seconds are spontaneous. Previous experience or practice with spiritual matters is not required - they just happen.
Kundalini was unknown to me; I was not seeking it. I ate meat, smoked cigarettes and sometimes took drugs. My innocence concerning spiritual matters was probably to my advantage because there were no expectations. Why the ego returned after complete ego dissolution has always baffled me. I can only place it under divine will and will discuss it in a later chapter.
Money finally arrived for me in Kabul and immediately I left for India. In New Delhi, I met Holyman on the street once again. He brought me into an alleyway, asked me for money and I gave him what I could. I found myself leery and cautious, and not open for another explosion to happen. We talked for a while, I told him I will travel to Poona and he told me that he travels from one pilgrim place to another. At this point he asked me if I wanted to go with him again and I said “No.” He smiled, laughed and started to float away and actually disappeared right before my very eyes.
It was very extraordinary and I was reminded of one of Carlos Castaneda’s books where Don Juan opens a world and steps into it.
I instantly felt regret and had the strongest sense of missing something important. However, my ego had set in again and was determined not to let anything happen: I was going to Poona and that was what I would do.
I arrived in Poona by train, engaged a rickshaw at the station and instructed the driver to take me to an ashram. He took me to 17 Koregoan Park. When he let me out in front of a big main gate, I noticed people, both Western and Indian, walking around in orange robes. I walked into the ashram and approached what seems to be a main building. On the front porch, I asked a woman sitting behind a desk, “What’s going here?” She looked up with a giant smile and said, “Why don’t you stay and find out.”
“Hmm, maybe I will,” I answered.
That began a 15-year association with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who in later years was simply known as ‘Osho’. The next day I attended my first discourse and for the first time saw Osho. My heart did not explode in love as it did with the Holymen in Delhi but I sensed some sort of silence around him. I thought ‘Well, here is an important man.’
I was very impressed by his discourse on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. On that day, he spoke specifically about the seven chakras. The way he described them left no doubt in me about his authenticity because nobody could speak in that way without having self-knowledge. In that two-hour discourse, he described almost every experience I had in those last two months.
Within three weeks I took sannyas. I decided to do this because I felt the need to work on my psychology. My enlightenment was slipping by me and I wanted to plug the leaks.
Something else - after being in Poona for two weeks, I simply had to have the mala and wear the orange clothes Osho asked his disciples to wear - it had become an obsession.
(I don’t know why and at the time I didn’t examine whether this desire was coming from my own source or from a sort of group hypnosis. There has been much speculation that Osho was using hypnotism on his disciples. I can confirm something like this happened to me even though there were no bad feelings regarding it.)
My sannyas initiation was very sweet, Osho was very loving with me and there was recognition between us.
Attending his private darshans, I felt his grace, his power and silence, and started to feel he was a great man.
Shortly after taking sannyas, Osho suggested I do some therapy groups before I leave because he said,
"Much has to come out of you."
Following his suggestion, I booked for a seven-day encounter group. In encounter, the group lives together in a confined space in which the participants interact exclusively with each other, sharing whatever feelings or thoughts that arise. There is no contact with the outside. The interaction can be both negative and positive. On the first day, the group leader suggested to us not to hold back and to be as total in our expressions as possible. I tried this and by the end of the third day, I found myself on the floor screaming and crying uncontrollably. All I felt was hate for my parents. I just wanted to die. Two months ago, I was in total Christ Consciousness and now all I could do was hate my parents. I felt terrible and did not want to live anymore. What happened with the Holymen seemed so far away. There I was, back in the mud, identified with my mind and personality.
I became a sannyasin and immersed myself into sannyas life, which I found to be great. There was always a sense of magic in the air – a feeling anything can happen - and it usually did. So many beautiful people from all over the world were living here. And of course, there was Osho, the great-enlightened Master, helping us with our problems and creating a vast Buddhafield. His discourses were brilliant and we flew with him into the unknown every day, feeling like we were doing something unique and wonderful. I became totally involved in sannyas life, thinking it was the best thing happening in the world. Yet, there was a longing always for contentment and peace, which I only experienced momentarily with Osho.
I longed to return to the experience with the Holymen, but I could not get back to it no matter what I tried. I participated in groups, in therapy, in all aspects of the ashram life and after 15 years, came to the conclusion that therapy doesn’t give any real results other than the need for more therapy. I forgot my own experience that in a split second I could go simply beyond the mind and its problems.
Living in Osho’s Buddhafield gave me the opportunity to live out many desires. So many people were ready to jump and we jumped freely into many interesting situations. In the areas of relationship and sexual exploration, we would say we were living seven times faster than normal life. We tried not to hold back any expressions of feelings and thoughts. Osho always suggested that all we need is to be total in our actions and this would lead to happiness and fulfillment. Under Osho’s guidance we thought we were going into these matter consciously.
The problem I found was that no matter how total I was, it was never enough or another person was more total. It left me always with more discontentment. And the desires never ended. There was always the next woman or the next power trip. Again, discontentment was created. By the time Osho died, the ecstasy of sannyas was gone and mostly I was in agony. Even though I lived out many desires, participated in the collective desire to built a commune and create a buddhafield, explored my deep unconscious psychologically and emotionally, doing every type of therapy, I was even more unhappy.
It was at this time the desire to find a different direction, a new teaching, arose in me.
Many seekers gathered around Osho who lived in the vicinity of the ashram. He attracted many people from different spiritual practices and quite an esoteric scene developed.
One afternoon I visited with my girlfriend a woman Tarot reader. We spent the night in her house and woke up in the morning to the next Split Second. 

One morning I woke to the sounds of a woman
giving a Tarot reading.
Often, I watched her give readings,
always the cards looked significant and beautiful
but never did they have real meaning for me.
That morning, to my complete surprise and astonishment,
as I looked at the cards,
I understood them completely
- as if waking up one morning
and finding yourself able to speak
and understand another language.
A transmission of knowledge occurred
with no effort or study. The next week
the woman dissappeared
and was not heard from for years.
And I ... became a reader of cards.