SWAMI DEVA ANANYA (One with the Divine) 
Born in 1956 in Munich, Germany. Ananya took sannyas in 1976 and presently lives in Walchensee, Bavaria, Germany.
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It is the winter of 1975-76 in Munich. I am 19 years old, finishing the last year of high school. Very frustrated with life, especially sexually, and suicidal, with no exciting prospects in sight. I am basically anti-establishment. I am living in a house with a couple of other young people. One day, one of them, a woman, brings along a strangely dressed street musician who has a guru. Later on I get to know him as one of the main ashram musicians called Govindas, but at that time I just gather a sense of strangeness about him and find out that he will soon be travelling to a place called Poona in India. It sounds kind of interesting, but too far away from my perspective on things.
The housemate, however, is following him to Poona a few months later, and I get to know from her that there is an ashram in India with a guy called Bhagwan running it. I imagine long lines of people sitting there cross-legged and silent all day long. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but for a guy who is sympathising with the Baader-Meinhof movement and wants to change the world into a blissful anarchy, it is simply not relevant.
But my radical political ambitions soon give way to a more introverted approach to life as I start experimenting with drugs, first with marijuana and then with LSD. Especially the use of the latter hits me like a steamroller – suddenly life seems different; there is much more to it than the usual dullness! There seems to be a hidden meaning in everything; there are endless secrets to be discovered, and spontaneity and creativity open new doors into previously unknown spheres.
But there is a high price to be paid: after the effects of the drug cease, there is mostly despair and depression, and the dullness lies even heavier on the mind.
When school is finished, there is a gap in my life as I have to wait either for a place to study in the medical faculty or to be accepted as a conscientious objector; both options are lengthy affairs.
In December 1976, two friends of mine are hired to accompany a cattle transport to Turkey. One of them, Rainer, wants to continue to India from there. Quickly, I decide to come along as a stowaway on the cattle train, and my new girlfriend Bettina wants to join us in Istanbul for the trip to Asia. I certainly don’t go in order to seek any kind of guru, but to search for adventure, cheap drugs and spend winter in a warm climate.
The train consists of many wagons, and each of them fits six cows inside. Half of one wagon is reserved for the crew, equipped with nothing but a bit of straw for a bed on the planked floor. The only heating are the cows in the other half of the wagon. I love the originality and simplicity of the setup, even though it’s not easy for a yuppie child to renounce the usual conveniences.
I have to leave the train in Belgrade, as the controls in Bulgaria are supposedly very strict, and continue hitchhiking to Istanbul. There, the three of us meet at the famous hippie meeting place, the Pudding Shop. It’s one of the bus stops of the famous Magic Bus Company en route from Amsterdam to Goa. This was before the overthrow of the Shah of Persia and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, so the roads were open to travellers.
What follows is a miraculous three-week trip to Delhi through icy Eastern Turkey, dusty Iran, and Afghanistan. Contrary to my firm belief that all countries south of the Alps have no real winters, we encounter minus 20°C in the highlands of Anatolia just as the heating of the bus breaks down. Even in Kabul, there is snow on the streets, but the residents don’t seem to bother much, walking around with feet shod in sandals only.
In Kabul, I sample raw opium for the first time, a drug that makes one extremely relaxed and takes care of digestive problems at the same time. And, of course, we get a lot of black Afghan, the strongest dope around. But the drugs are enhancing my madness more and more. I start imagining that I have to kill friends with the knitting needles I am carrying in my backpack (I actually knitted a scarf during the long hours in the bus!).
By the time we arrive in Delhi, my horror visions and phobias are becoming so strong that I decide to try another radical change in my life. Instead of coming along with Bettina and Rainer to Goa, the drug paradise for young westerners, I decide to go to Poona, oddly the only ashram that I know of.
A few days later, I stand in front of the ashram gates, willing to become a good meditator and renouncing drugs (had I known about Goenka’s Vipassana School in the same town, I probably would have ended up there). I learn quickly that there is no sitting cross-legged in large halls for hours on end; instead, it’s a very dynamic place with lots of noisy, dancing, and laughing westerners, mostly dressed in orange clothes and wearing wooden necklaces. I find the majority of them quite revolting, particularly the happiness they are radiating.
Nobody there thinks that the huge problems of the world need serious consideration. But everybody tells me about the amazing groups, lasting from three to seven days, during which one can make incredible experiences, and I get curious. But to sign up, you have to see Bhagwan, the guru, and he can only be seen during an evening event called darshan. So I go to the main office smoking a beedi, not knowing it’s a non-smoking area, and yet nobody stops me. To get an appointment for darshan, the friendly lady tells me that I need to participate in the 10-day meditation camp. Not being a friend of discipline in those days, I last for about three days before my diarrhoea acts up strongly again. I start taking opium once more and decide to go to Goa after all.
By chance I reconnect with Rainer and Bettina at Colva Beach. It’s quiet and sleepy there, and the decision what to do with my life gets postponed as I have to take care of a dog bite and a big infectious wound which develops from a small burn on my leg. A few weeks later, after an acid trip at the beach, Bettina and I decide to go back to Poona and give it another try.
This time we both manage to participate in the 10-day meditation camp, and even though it seems a very awkward thing to do, we decide to get an appointment for a sannyas darshan afterwards. It’s not a decision born out of conviction; it just feels strange amidst hundreds of orange people not to be part of the game. However, both of us lack any sense of the amazing gift we are getting. After receiving the necklace, the funny, bearded guy tells me things that don’t seem to concern me at all. Years later, I discover the passage in one of the darshan diaries that have been published and find out that they actually were quite to the point; only at that time, I didn’t realise that at all.
I become Swami Deva Ananya, and Bettina becomes Ma Deva Prerna. We are among the first ones to go up front, and when we are back in our rows, Bettina nudges me and says, “Let’s go.” I agree, as I’m quite hungry, too. So we leave in the middle of darshan, and while the assistants look at us in utter disbelief, we don’t find anything strange about it.
Each of us gets three groups to do. The first one is for both of us and is called Shunyam. It’s an experience of learning how to get bored, as Bhagwan puts it. For five days, one doesn’t talk unless being asked to do so by the group leaders, and you have to eat as much as possible. There is a list of rules that has to be followed, and you have to stick to them or get kicked out. It’s hard, and the group leaders do their best to really get us bored by playing the same discourse from Bhagwan every day, letting us tell our life stories to the same person every day in a very dry way. But the effect after five days is amazing; I cry tears of happiness and feel totally new-born. After all, there seem to be ways of getting high without drugs.
Prerna likes it too, and we look forward to the next experiences. I’m in the group of a Philippine faith healer, whom I find completely phoney, but nevertheless, it’s a funny theatre. Prerna, on the other hand, is in some kind of encounter group where she has to face her rejection and hatred of men. It’s too much for her. She urges me to cancel the third group and go to Nepal instead. I agree hesitatingly, but my attraction to her is stronger than to stay in Poona.
Our new sannyas identity is quickly stored away at the bottom of our backpacks while travelling north. We spend some time in Kathmandu and Pokhara, but I feel more and more weakened by the frequently returning diarrhea, and opium doesn’t seem to be a lasting solution. Also, we start having arguments more frequently. So we arrange for some money from our parents to fly back to Germany.
Bettina and I separate painfully during the next weeks, and it takes another summer of drugs and severe heartbreaks before I join a Tai-Chi Intensive at the German Rajneesh Ashram called Purvodaya in the countryside.
One morning after the daily Dynamic Meditation, I find myself in front of the little altar in the meditation room, prostrating before Bhagwan’s picture, tears flowing down my cheeks. I have an acute sense of feelings of gratitude and devotion, feelings so strong that the resistance to wear orange and the mala and to dedicate my life to a weird Indian guru is overcome completely. I am staying in this posture for what seems to me like eternity. Many of my negative attitudes are turned around in the following days, and a real shift in paradigm is taking place. I have finally discovered my true love for Osho and decide to take on my sannyas name, and to wear orange and the mala.
For the following fourteen years, Osho was the main focus of my life. Either making money that enabled me to be at his place or living and working in communes in India, Germany, and the USA – I’ve had an amazing time.
In 1991, about one and a half years after Osho’s departure from the planet, my life took another strong turn by meeting Poonjaji in Lucknow, but that’s another story… *)
“Deva means divine, ananya means one – one with the divine. That’s our reality, that’s how it is. We may know, we may not know, but our knowledge or our ignorance does not change the reality at all. It is so: we are one with the divine! Otherwise is not possible because we cannot exist without being one with the divine. We are rooted in it, we are part of it. In fact to say we live is not right: only he lives through us. So many millions of forms but the reality is one.
Ananya is one of the beautiful terms, the most beautiful terms. Literally it means ‘not other’… not other than god. Mm? Somebody thinks he is a man, somebody thinks she is a woman, somebody thinks he is a child, somebody thinks he is old, somebody thinks he is beautiful and somebody thinks he is not beautiful, somebody thinks he is intelligent and somebody thinks he is not – but all are one with the divine.
These are all just forms of the surface; deep down our reality is one. They are just like waves of an ocean: they are all ‘ananya’ with the ocean, not other than the ocean. A small wave, a big wave, a very big tidal wave – all are one with the ocean.
So this name will remind you again and again, and whenever you are reminded of it feel one with god in that moment. By and by one becomes more and more skilled in that feeling, that’s all.
We have not lost anything, we have simply forgotten. Once the memory returns, once the remembrance comes back, everything is there, has always been there. The treasure is not lost, we have only forgotten where we have put it. It is in our houses; we have lost track of it.”
Osho, The Zero Experience, Ch 18
From the book, Past the Point of No Return by Ma Anand Bhagawati
*) Ananya has been called Mahendra since the 1990s.
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