Sw Prem Siddha
(Leonard M. Zunin MD)
Siddha, born in 1936, was a much-loved American group-leader and psychiatrist. He left his body in 2014.
The record of his sannyas darshan with Osho is quite truncated in the CD-ROM. The complete darshan appears in ch 25 of Believing the Impossible Before Breakfast and includes both an unusually warm welcome from Osho and several paragraphs from Maneesha. Her comments are in italics and the CD-ROM material underlined:
Leonard wrote a letter to Bhagwan three days after his arrival here, sharing what he was experiencing:
- The moving motion of orange flowing; the dancing, vibrating, shaking, of those orange robes and shawls.
- Those ones of orange -- of sun and flesh, and earth and light -- came they, to this place and time from karma ripened, to be showered by the presence and the energy. The message of golden words that pierce the heart and mind, shatter and crumble those delusions of who we are -- and think we ought to be.
- Within the confines of that robe and presence our eyes focus on the flesh and bones that say, A LIGHT SHINES HERE, a beacon in the darkness that gives us glimpses of what really is ....
He described himself in a later letter as being a highly successful psychiatrist in private practice, a writer and a lecturer. He seems to start with surprise as Bhagwan greets him with a special warmth.
BHAGWAN: Hello Leonard. So you have finally arrived.I have been waiting and waiting for you. Just put your hands towards me, close your eyes and feel you are being pulled towards me. Let the whole energy start moving, become a caterpillar, and if your body starts leaning or moving, allow it.
Leonard's body is slowly, tremblingly lowered to the ground with a volition seemingly all of its own. His hands are on the ground in front of his head, and now Bhagwan gently places both of his feet on top of them.
Good. Come here! This will be your new name: Swami Prem Siddha.
Prem means love, and siddha means one who has arrived. And you have arrived home, so that name will always remind you. Now there is no need to search for anything; you have searched enough. You have done all that you can do; now relax, drop all searching. The greatest and most miraculous experience is that when search disappears, one finds.
Never trust those who say that they found through searching; they have not yet found. Trust those who say that they found only when they dropped searching -- only they know. That is the meaning of siddha; one who finds by dropping search, one who arrives by stopping all the groping, one who arrives by stopping all journeying.
Those two words are tremendously important in the East: the buddha and the siddha. They belong to different traditions but they mean the same. Buddha means one who has become awakened, and siddha means one who has arrived, but both mean the same and both happen in the same way. Gautam Siddhartha became Buddha the day he dropped all his search. Because searching is a tension, it is desiring; it keeps the mind moving, it keeps the mind occupied. It keeps the mind alive, and the mind has to die for the truth to be.
Good, Siddha! How long will you be here?
SIDDHA: I think a long time.
Yes, be here forever if you feel like it -- this is your home; nothing to be worried about.
SIDDHA: I must go home this summer for a few weeks.
Yes, you can go. That is a holiday -- you can go for a few weeks, mm? (chuckling) but home is here now!
Siddha has already been assigned some groups.
Would you like to lead some group after you have done a few?
SIDDHA: Oh no... I feel too inadequate to do that.
(Chuckling) No, you will become adequate, I will make you adequate. I simply transform people. Ordinary people become immediately extraordinary; don't be worried! (laughter) Good, Siddha!
- bibliography
- 1972 : Contact: The First Four Minutes
- 1992 : The Art of Condolence
