35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

158
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
‘Every fibre’s gotta come alive.’
I stretched reluctantly, the bedsprings beneath me protesting
loudly. ‘Now laaaaff.’
‘Laugh?’
‘Yeah. Keep you eyes closed and laaaff.’
The last thing I felt like doing at four-thirty in the morning, after
less than two hours’ sleep, was laughing. But this was the bhagwan’s
prescribed eye-opener: the ‘laughing meditation.’ So I laughed –
ho-ho-ho – suddenly recalling the psychedelic laughter on Calangute
beach with David. The more I laughed, oddly enough, the more
amused I felt, and the more I felt like laughing, until I was slapping
my thighs and weeping with mirth. Eventually I was gasping for
breath, shrieking hysterically, tears in my eyes, hooting and howling
for mercy, and I think this actually irritated Ma Tantra.
‘You ain’t takin’ this seriously,’ she snapped, telling me to stop,
that five minutes was enough, was all the bhagwan recommended.
‘How can you take laughing seriously?’
She answered the question adequately with a weary glare.
The address I gave the taxi driver was 17 Koregaon Park. ‘Rajneesh
ashramasham?’ He knew the place, all right.
The pre-dawn light gave the impression one was viewing the
world through the sort of blue filter used in day-for-night film scenes.
It was difficult to miss the ashram, even in this iridescent gloom: a
huge sign in two-foot-high letters stretching above excessively
ornate gates capped by odd looped crenellations read SHREE
RAJNEESH ASHRAM. On either side sat large octagonal
gatehouses with small circular windows like portholes. The overall
impression was of schizoid neo-utilitarianism, an architect
commissioned to construct a Taj Mahal, then informed he’d be
using concrete, not marble, for the job, and would have to dispense
with the domes and minarets due to lack of funds, besides changing
his original plans to incorporate windows that were the wrong shape
and design but came very cheap. In addition, would he mind if a
few structures were designed by other people, who, although they
knew nothing about architecture, were very keen to take a shot at it?
At least the grounds were full of trees.