This is an extract from the book Love and Above: A journey through shamanism, coma and joy. The book is available on Amazon, in stores in SA or on Audible
‘It’s a meditation centre and the perfect place to just wind down after this frenzy. There will be daily yoga and groups. Think about it . . . hot Greece in summer! Let’s go there rather, and get out of Cannes?’
We were in Cannes at the annual film festival and it was all getting too hot and too much. Liz and I were sharing a room while she networked and partied as part of her marketing efforts for her film production company. It was eight months after I had got out of hospital and many commentators thought this trip to France was a step too soon.
I was starting to feel that too as the crowds and the world crowded in.
I was still thin as a reed, fragile and frail.
‘What meditation? It is the Osho Centre?’ I asked.
‘Yes, and most of my friends are there. You will love it.’
Adventure. That was aligned with my vows and my search.
‘I am in. Do we need to buy the maroon robes?’ I asked.
Liz shook her head and logged on to Ryanair to find us a cheap flight to Athens.
‘Not in Greece. It’s only really in Pune that we wear the robes. But in Greece you can wear anything – or nothing. It’s an olive farm and its mid-summer so the less we wear the better.’
The destination was Afroz, the Osho Meditation Centre on the small Greek island of Lesbos. Liz had been an Osho sannyasin (devotee) for close on seven years now, and I had read some of Osho’s books and done many of his meditations before. A few years before, Liz had brought a facilitator out to Cape Town and we had done an art as meditation process. I loved anyone who shared deep and old wisdom, and I took what I could from any religion. They all hold some truths.
Osho, born Rajneesh, was particularly interesting. He was an Indian spiritual teacher, guru and professor of philosophy who died in the nineties. He was highly unconventional and one of the first eastern gurus to speak about modern psychotherapy.
Many people thought it a cult, and I must confess that thought had crossed my mind in the years I had watched Liz travel for months each summer to India. But we are very quick to label or dismiss things we don’t understand.
In the eastern world, gurus are accepted teachers and Osho has endured. In fact, his teachings have reached so far beyond his own life that there are still millions of sannyasins across the world, and you can find an Osho Centre in almost every country – even China, where everything is banned.
And so it was to one of these we were heading. To a summer of sannyasins and meditation and dance.
I had seen photos of Liz over the years in Pune and had long coveted the maroon robes and bikinis worn by all sannyasins there.
An hour later, we had stuffed our cocktail dresses and high heels into suitcases and were sitting on a bus back to the Cannes – Mandelieu Airport to zip across to Athens before we connected via the small Aegean flight to the capital of Lesbos, Mytilene.
When we landed on the small island and I took my first deep breath of the sweet warm air, it was intoxicating.
The light captivated me, the colour and the sounds. But mostly it was the light and the quality of the air. In Africa we say this is where the ancestors live – in air, the ether. The ethereal realm. Not real and tangible, but all around anyway.
The Greek air spoke to my soul.
I felt shivers down my spine. I felt it before in my early twenties when I’d travelled here. It called to me. I know this place. I know this air.
The first glimpse of a holiday with a difference was the sign at Mytilene Airport, Welcome Lesbians, flapping in the hot island wind. But I was swallowed up in the sweaty mix of families welcoming friends and tourists trying to find a cab. The plan was to spend ten days at a meditation resort just outside a small coastal village.
Adonis, the taxi driver, explained it on the way: ‘We are all lesbians here!’ he chuckled. ‘I am proud to say I am a lesbian.’
We arrived at the centre and were shown across the olive farm to a small stone cottage with two beds, a shower and a toilet. Perfect. A few of these cottages were nestled in the open expanse of land, some under green-grey olive trees.
We unpacked; the sticky heat of summer hit us and we fell down into a dead afternoon sleep.
Later that afternoon, in a post-siesta daze, we stumbled out of the cottage as flute music snaked through the olive trees and over the warm air towards us.
‘You need to wear white,’ Liz told me as, back inside, we flung clothes on the bed to find something suitable. ‘It’s the Evening Meeting, or White Robe Ceremony. We must attend. This happens every night in Osho centres all over the world and we all have to wear white. It’s not a strict here, but in Pune there are white robes.’
She pulled a sheer, white, lacy dress out of her bag and paired it with some shorts and a bikini top. I scrambled through my colourful wardrobe for anything white, finding only a long cotton dressing gown. The no-black rule had almost ruled out white too.
‘Perfect,’ she laughed. ‘Pop a bikini under it.’
I slid some shorts on and a tank top, snickering as if we were going to a costume party.
As we neared the clearing, I realised anything – or nothing – would have been suitable.
An expansive white marble floor rose in the open air from the ground and figures dressed in white were swaying to the music, arms in the air.
Lithe, lean and lush women in bikinis. Others in long flowing skirts. There were men in long cotton pants, some in sarongs. Others in swimming trunks only, their bodies glistening in the late afternoon heat.
The music pulled us closer and a small crowd gathered around Liz as they saw her.
‘Zuri,’ they murmured, pulling her into a tight hug. One by one they embraced her, each one a long hug. I saw that this was truly her tribe. Here, with these easy and beautiful people, she was at home.
They turned to me. I stood there, thin and scared, my hair shorn, a long cotton dressing gown skirt half falling off me. I knew nobody. I grinned broadly.
They pulled me into a huge embrace. Each person I met grabbed me and pulled me in. Deva. Shakti. Abhijeet, Mridu, Swargo, Vikalpo. Nirdosh. Adiraj. Gulistan, Zikr.
Names I tried to wrap my tongue around.
I had known that she was called Zuri in this world, and finally I saw her. Her hair long and flowing down her back, she weaved and danced. I had watched my sister on so many dancefloors over the years, but this one was the best. Her body moved gently to the music and her face shone with love.
I moved into the space and joined them, my feet sliding on the marble and my arms high in the sky.
The music grew as we moved faster and faster through the Buddha Grove. Swirling and jumping.
Later that night we called a series of taxis and drove the ten minutes down the hill to the beach. We tumbled out and into the small Greek seaside village of Skala Eressos.
A small grocer beckoned me, with fresh red cherries spilling out.
‘Come, let’s go dance!’ Zikr and Zuri pulled me onwards with the crowd. We headed to Zorba the Buddha, a cocktail bar that was perched dangerously on a deck right over the Aegean Sea.
Lean bodies were dancing to the house music. Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Italian, American.
I sat back with a cocktail, watching.
‘What’s with all the strange names everyone has?’ I asked. ‘It is so hard to remember them all.’
‘We have all taken sannyas and when we do that we let go of our given names,’ Zikr explained, her native Spanish tongue rolling the words. ‘Sannyas is one of the four ashrams or stages of life in Hindu philosophy. Those who adopt it often give up all possessions and drift from one place to another, with no worldly possessions and no emotional ties.
‘Of course, it is not so strict in the Osho world. He called it neo-sannyas and said it simply means the movement of the seekers of truth. He also says you can move in and out of it, like your sister does as she moves into her job.’
She nodded at Liz.
‘She cannot be Zuri back there. There she must be Elizabeth and so she moves in and out as it suits her.’
A number of women were walking past, holding hands.
‘There are a lot of women here,’ I mused.
‘I think maybe it’s a women’s festival,’ Liz nodded. ‘I didn’t notice so many last time.’
We glanced over at the bar just down the strip. All women.
A lot of women were dancing together.
A lot of them were kissing.
We looked at each other and nodded.
‘I think that sign at the airport was for real,’ I said.
We both laughed.
‘Didn’t you know?’ Zikr asked as she laughed with us. Tears were streaming down our cheeks.
‘This village is the capital of lesbianism in the whole world. All people are welcome here. Greeks. Gays. Lesbians. Lovers. Meditators. This place is freeeeeeedom. It is love. You are so welcome, beloved.’
Her arms went in the air as she danced across the floor.
One woman, who’d lived almost three thousand years ago, was the siren who called women and poets to this island. Sappho. Not much was really know about her and huge debates raged among classicists and historians about her life, her work, her sexuality and her family. She was reportedly born on the island in about 600 BC. Many languages use the island’s name for describing the love two women have for each other. She was credited with a four-line stanza form called the Sapphic stanza.
Some of the islanders of Lesbos had taken offence and started a court case to reclaim the word ‘lesbian’. They demanded that Greek courts ban its use to describe gay women. It was the source of much amusement in the lesbian bars on the island, I was to find out.
Sappho’s name and her fragments of verses have endured through the ages. She was the muse of writers and poets, and her name still called women every summer to visit the island.
Her name caught in my throat as Zikr moved away into the night.
I leaned back and looked around.
This was it.
The place I had been looking for without even knowing it. The place I had tried to touch.
This was so far from the fear and the terror of the world of nightmares. It was light and bliss and fun.
This was joy.
This was fun.
This was pure delight.
It wasn’t just the place . . . it was the feeling and the energy of the people.
I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I could feel it. And I wanted to stay with that feeling.
The words I had woken with a year ago, and the mantra burned into my brain and written on my wall, started to activate on some level. They were just words before.
Have. More. Fun.
Love and above.
Yes. It was time.
I was in just the right place.
And I knew just the person to do it with. He found me the next morning at breakfast.
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