Rashid Maxwell: A Master for Life

Rashid Maxwell, Osho - The Culturium — Rashid Maxwell, *A Master for Life*.
Photograph: © Rashid Maxwell

Verses and drawings of an Osho lover

IN THIS MONTH’S guest post for The Culturium, Rashid Maxwell—writer, poet, artist, beekeeper—shares a series of previously unpublished sketches, made during his time spent in darshan with the spiritual teacher, Osho, with their accompanying lines of poetry arriving retrospectively only in recent years.

The complemental synthesis of verse and drawings is not only in honour of Rashid’s love for his Indian Master but also recognition that the moniker “Osho” is synonymous with the virtues of Truth, Love, the Self—attributes which are inherent in all of us, forever and always.

Rashid’s published poetry includes Not Knowing Guides Our Feet, Life Is One Blessed Thing After Another and Everything Is Something Else. He currently lives in Devon, England.

Osho said, ‘Tell Rashid that when he is taking notes he should be taking notes.’ Those were his words. Ma Neelam, Osho’s secretary, handed me back the sketchbook I had earlier submitted to the Master for approval. In it were 24 mounted drawings of him made during the recent morning discourses.

‘Drawing in discourse?’ you might ask with a hint of shocked reproach. ‘How could that be?’

When we first returned to Poona Two [the time when Osho returned to Poona after his world tour until his death in January 1990] in January of 1987, we had neither the manpower nor technology to properly collate Osho’s recorded words. Two or three of us sat on daily rotation in the front row and made notes of the shifting subjects about which he was speaking.

Sometimes Osho would stay elaborating one particular topic. Then I would draw him. At any moment, he might change the subject; I had to be quick. Indeed, sometimes the drawing happened so rapidly that my mind had no time to intervene.

After a few weeks, the commune had sufficiently reassembled for the practice to be discontinued. The drawings were mostly on cheap lined paper or on thin carbon copy tissue; some drawn with pencil or biro, some with a felt marker pen.

I had carefully mounted them into the sketchbook and sent them to him with certain expectations of acclaim or approval. A master is predictably unpredictable, however. He uses any passing moment to deflate a puffed-up ego.

Rashid’s ego took the hit and kept the drawings safe. And even if not to the Master’s taste, they are fulfilling to mine.

Some 33 years later, these following verses, like unexpected visitors, appeared daily for a month or two. They are complemental offerings of love to the One always here.
—Rashid Maxwell, A Master for Life

In all the garden greenery
a single crimson rose
leans towards the sun
like i lean to you
Osho

Sometimes i gaze out at this troubled world,
what’s the point i think
you reassure me
that there is no point
Osho

I lie in the long grass
beneath a circle of cerulean sky
the one single tattered cloud dissolves
like me with you
Osho

I struggle often with the current
then remember to fall back
float in oceanic stillness
that you are
Osho

Last night in the silence
the knitted wollen silence
i could hear
our heartbeat
Osho

So beautiful this morning light
so beautiful an infant’s smile
so beautiful my life with you
so beautiful to disappear
in you
Osho

When first i arrived at your ashram gate
the gates of my heart flung wide
now i’m submerged in silence
adrift in the infinite ocean
of you
Osho

Each day i roll that boulder up the hill
enjoy the sweat and watch it
bounce and crash into the valley floor
celebrate everything you say
this changed my life
Osho