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Dave Oshana
East End Vedanta

By Parmartha Dave Oshana is a newboy on the block, giving satsang across the South of England, and to whom a lot of sannyasins seem attracted. Sannyas News Editor Parmartha went along to take a look.. Dave Oshana gives satsang wherever he is invited, tonight I hear he is giving satsang at a rave in Brixton. Brave man and perhaps a good man for being so open to whatever the existence might bring. When I went to a satsang of his recently in Soho, I thought: if he wasn't a teacher of Advaita Vedanta you could easily imagine him as a pretty smart and friendly wide boy. Dave woke up recently, and started giving satsang, as far as I can make out about a year ago. He told me in an email that he woke up after he gave up. like them all! Dave calls himself "Oshana", but he was never a sannyasin, or let's say he never took the orange. But he did hang out at the old Bell St Osho Centre ( Nirvana-the first sannyas centre in the UK) years ago and got into sannyas meditations with Gautama, the late Shyam Singha's leading disciple at the time. Furthermore Dave does attract sannyasins, the night I went to his satsang, sannyas names were flying about everywhere. The model of Dave's satsangs is pretty close to the Papaji format. No formal silence, not much of an introductory talk, and an emphasis on participation with him in a one to one on the sofa, except in Dave's case it's a chair. In terms of the outward form, Dave is great in that he seems totally ordinary, and is always full of what I take to be a ready London humour. You might get a little metaphysics with Dave, but it wont last for more than a minute. You will get though, a line from Pink Floyd or a pop song, that sums up all that Hegelian stuff in a single shot. And you wont get those long shakti stares like those from Mikaire or John de Ruiter, but shakti is there none the less. Energetically something is going on. As Osho used to say, I just keep talking and talking, but what is really going on here is not a talk at all. Check him out Different people choose different ways to describe it. Dave uses the "consciousness" rap. I prefer the "beyond mind " or rather the "before mind" rap. But for me there should be no quarrel, for where it is authentic it always seems to lead to the same place, an infinite flow of love towards all the objects of experience. Dave talks Ramana 'who am I' self enquiry a fair deal, frankly I think it worked for Ramana because he was "ready". I don't think I can be a pro forma for everyone, and feel Osho was right in creating loads of ife situations partly through therapy, meditation and communal living, that ripen the soul. However what is going on energetically with Dave is of a high order. In the face of a realiser it does seem that it doesn't matter what they say, but some alchemy goes on beyond ordinary consciousness. Such an alchemy is worth more than rubies, and has a value beyond anything of this world. No one has a monopoly of it, but it was good to come across it in Soho. If you want to get to know a bit about Dave you could read an exchange he had with John De Ruiter in 1998, presumably before he was enlightened in John de Ruiter's book "Unveiling Reality". Dave has internet exchanges with others at www.yahoogroups.com/messages/oshana. Some of these where he gets into a discussion or whatever are good to taste his flavour. Dave gives satsang in Brighton, Glastonbury, Totnes, Bath and London, and anywhere he is invited. Details on the listings of this web-site. Check him out . Courtesy: www.sannyasnews.com You can contact Dave via: Tel: +44 (0)7768 741874 www.enlightenment-now.com Meeting Reviews 14-2-01 A Gathering at Mysteries. About two dozen brave souls negotiated a crippling tube strike to attend a dialogue with Oshana at London's famous Mysteries bookshop. The psychedelic decor laden with kabbalistic symbols certainly gave our meeting room a strong psychic charge- you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Or was it just Dave radiating with extra intensity that night? Every time I go to satsang with Oshana it seems to be a completely new experience- and so it was this night. New people had no problem sitting in the dialogue chair on Dave's invitation to take "a leap into the unknown". Each one confessed to varying degrees of pain and separation, and yet, after barely ten minutes of interaction with Oshana, seemed to experience a profound release or breakthrough, often in floods of tears. One young woman described her fear of being judged by others- a fear which dominated her waking life. Dave invited her to investigate the source of this terrifying self-consciousness; and she instantly experienced a delicious and liberating blankness. Another woman was lead to realise her addiction to pain - yet another contraction, a subtle resistance to the natural flow of emotions as Oshana reminded her. I myself squirmed in my seat, seeing my own dramas being played out in front of me. At the end I jumped into the "hot seat" to get a taste of the energy- it was electrifying! On the way home I had a mini-sartori crossing Waterloo Bridge. My head exploded into bliss and St. Paul's Cathedral confronted me in a looming singularity...I had my first decent night's sleep for a week, and woke the next morning to strains of the Hallejulah Chorus ringing in my astral ears. Bizarre......

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