Someone at Friday Evening Conversation recently said they'd been watching a Netflix Documentary titled "Wild, Wild Country" about Rajneesh, Antelope Oregon, and Ma Anand Sheela, his secretary.
An interview with Sheela posted on
Vulture:
Were you ever surprised by his requests?
In the beginning, I was and I questioned him. His answer to me: the way you are on television, you will protect the community by deterrent. You will become the deterrent.
He said also that outrageous performance will bring more interest from other television companies or television channels or news media. Media is very expensive, advertisement is very expensive, so every performance must bring new performances. Nowadays you see this on a daily basis with Trump.
I was going to say that, yeah.
He creates every day a new sensation and media gets exhausted what to do. Every day — five, ten breaking news. I think Trump is a better student of Bhagwan than me in that sense.
The Daily Beast compared you to Kellyanne Conway, but you didn’t seem to like that comparison.
No I don’t like it. What I’m saying is a joke, and I’m not comparing Bhagwan and me to Trump under any circumstances.
But the approach is similar.
Because people only understand sensation. They don’t understand, other than negativity and sensation. People remain stuck in negativity.
By appealing to that, aren’t you just propagating that quality?
You can look at it that way. You can also look at it that the negative approach brings you more media, and you want to remain on the tubes for self-protection.
I can tell you something. A small story. There was a man who goes to a master and says nobody pays attention to me, everybody ignores me. That hurts me very much. And master said: Next time somebody starts talking, you just say no. No to everything. It will create a counterreaction and then everybody will pay attention to you. The man tries this thing and suddenly he becomes a big important person from simple “no.” That is our mankind’s stupidity. When you say “yes” nobody listens to you.
(from, Wild Wild Country’s Ma Anand Sheela Did It All for Love, By Mallika Rao, Apr.23, 2018)
This recalls the line in "Man for All Seasons" where playwright Robert Bolt has Sir Thomas More, on trial for his life, say, "
Qui tacit consentiri, the maxim of the law is,
Qui tacit consentiri -- Silence means consent."
It suggests to me that all the news and hoopla about and from Rajneesh and Trump, the din and drumbeat, distractions and incessant caterwauling comprising our contemporary culture -- is our way of saying NO to what is true and beyond obvious, meaningful and nourishing to our lives.
Silence, the silence of mere moment within itself, is what YES sounds like -- affirming, forgiving, and allowing unadorned emergence of what is guileless humility to stand without pretense in the light of day and be unafraid of the womb of night.
May we be blessed with nobody listening to us!
Yes is saying nothing other than presence.
