‘The Song of Ecstasy’ is the transcript of Osho’s talks on Adi Shankara’s ‘Bhaj Govindam’. It is believed that Shankara became a sanyasin at the age of seven. He wrote the greatest commentary on Brahma sutra at the age of eleven. By the time he was thirty three he had written all the great commentaries on all the great scriptures, and he had travelled all over the country and defeated all the so-called great philosophers, theologians and priests. The way Osho sees those defeats is rather unique. He says that the so-called philosophers including Kumarila were bowing down not because they were defeated but because they were awakened. Shankara has awakened others, not defeated them. Shankara died at the age of thirty three.
Legend is that Shankara was caught by a crocodile while he was bathing with his mother, and in the grip of death Shankara asked his mother to give him the permission to take sanyas, and the permission which till then had been denied by his mother, was given. Osho interprets this incident in a different way, that freedom from the mother is possible only if death can be seen. One gets free of the mother as soon as he sees death because mother means life. When Shankara saw death, sanyas happened. The crocodile catching hold of Shankara is only a symbol, that man is saved only when he becomes a sanyasin, then even death cannot harm him.
‘Bhaj Govindam’ , according to Osho is more precious than anything there in the whole of Shankara’s literature. The meaning of Bhaj Govindam as Osho puts it is that “you are singing out of your happiness, that whatever may happen, the divine is to be seen everywhere and whatever you see will become a song of the divine. At the time of death the principles and theories of immortality are of no use.”
In ‘Bhaj Govindam’, Shankara says:
see only yourself in all
Don’t waste one’s energy in the duality of enemy and friend, in son and in brother, in war and in peace. To see everything as equal is the journey to oneness.
‘Bhaj Govindam’ is Shankaracharya’s reflections on worldly life. He says that it is easy to do things like fasting, giving in charity, living in discipline and in austerity. But attaining self knowledge is difficult because it means transformation.
He may undertake the journey to the Ganges or to the ocean, he may undertake many austerities and fasts, he may give away in charity, but if he does not have self-knowledge he will not be liberated even in hundreds of lifetimes.
In Osho’s words: “You may give up your home, your money, you may become naked, you may shave your head or keep long hair, you may wear ochre robes and go to the Himalayas or sit on the bank of the Ganges but if you are not happy, if you are not blissful, then all these things are nothing but a deception.”
A few of Osho’s observations found in this book are given below:
There are long ques in the bars, and God goes on waiting in the temple but nobody turns up.
You will know the anger within you only when someone abuses you.
My idea of sanyas is that people should be brought near the divine so that the world just drops away.
Until a person is happy within himself no one else can make him happy.
‘Bhaj Govindam’ is a small devotional composition of Shankara. ‘The Song of Ecstasy’comprises of ten chapters of which Osho’s commentaries on Bhaj Govindam and his replies to related questions are given in alternate chapters. The way Osho interprets things is all different, it all depends on beauty, reasoning and depth.
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