He was a modern day saint. We miss him. Every time if someone asked me a spiritual question, or I had a question; all I had to do was think and next day his email contained the answer. I never had to ask him the question, somehow through divine intervention I always got the answer from him. Attached is a copy of the blog I wrote the day he passed away.

Incredible Journey 173: Dr. Om Johari passed way

March 18, 2015

I had to go to my dentist today. I was on the dentist’s chair and during a break, I check my email. It had the sad news that Om Johari passed away today morning in the hospital in Chicago.

He was a good friend and a brilliant and noble person. I was always in awe of his intellect. He was gold medalist from IIT from our 1962 batch, and had finished his Doctrate from Berkley in two and a half years at a very young age of 24.

I learnt all about OSHO through him, for which I am eternally grateful. I received my last mail from him only 10 days ago. Though I did not read all his daily and weekly mails, I have kept them, as they all are so valuable and contain a lot of wisdom in it. I am reproducing his last mail to me below to give you an idea as to at what level, he was communicating with us.

In addition, he was volunteer driver teacher and Yoga instructor for seniors in Chicago.

A true modern day saint in my eyes.

I was dumbfounded to see his death’s news. In the past, deaths used to affect me and I used to keep them in my meditation for thirteen days.

Now I understand the birth and death cycle, however still it made me think in a worldly way. Why he has to go so soon. He must be at least 2-3 years younger than me. Why I still have to live 7 years and 10 months more, when I am not doing anything compare to what he was accomplishing till his death.

I guess everyone has a role to play in this world and when ones task is complete one departs. It could be Sri Ramakrishna at 52 or Swami Vivekananda at the age of 39.

Another event happened this morning that relates to Om and the power of the consciousness.

Today I did not drive my Toyota to the dentist, as Neena had taken it to Cerritos. So I was driving her Mercedes. I came out of dentist’s office and adjusted my iphone to Bluetooth as I sat in the car.

As soon as I started the car, instead of playing the CD it was playing during morning drive to dentist, it started playing from iphone music section.

Before I realized it played Sri Ramakrishna Mantra by Jayati, followed by Surdas’s Hari Hari Hari Sumiran karo followed by Third Chapter of Ashtavakra Gita by OSHO, where he talked about Drashta (Observer), Drashti (Observed) and Drashya (Scene).

My interpretation of the whole event is that, it was my homage to OM. I prayed through my Guru Sri Ramakrishna, worshipped Krishna my Ishta Dev and then Listened to OSHO, the teachings that I received through OM. I cannot thank divine enough to let this happen for me.

Last message to me from Om (March 8, 2015):

Seeing Without Thought (Om Johari)

(1) Late J. Krishnamurti (JK) on: Is it possible to just look? “Can I look without the word at every problem: the problem of fear, the problem of pleasure? Because the word creates and breeds thought; and thought is memory, experience, pleasure, and therefore a distorting factor. This is really quite astonishingly simple.” JK. Dr. Indra K. Somani: Because it is simple, we fail to see the beauty and depth of this statement.There are enormous benefits one would reap if one leans the art of seeing without any movement of thought or without judgment coming into play. This is seeing when either the ‘me’ is not or the ‘me’ is utterly still and unmoving.

Items (2-4) are from Dr. Somani: Yoga of Seeing (Darshan Yoga): Darshan means ‘to see’ or to ‘perceive. Yoga means ‘Union with the Supreme Being’. Human beings are in bondage, the bondage of ‘me’, that is the bondage of ‘I-thought’. This bondage is the root cause of sorrow and fear. The ‘I-thought’ is the basis of all the innumerable thoughts that arise in the consciousness as waves and create a network in which one is caught. If one sees this simple truth, one can do something about it and the possibility of ‘freedom’ may become a reality. However, the lack of this understanding leads one to seek freedom in a direction in which it does not exist! Thus one remains everlastingly caught in the network of ‘search’ and the pursuit of ‘methods and techniques’ using ‘time’ to reach the ever elusive ‘goal of freedom’. One fails to see the beauty and the depth in the statement of JK that ‘the freedom is the very first step’ - it is not at the end of ‘search’. If one is serious, one should begin by learning the three great Arts as per JK: The Art of Seeing, the Art of Listening and the Art of Thinking.

(3) Do I pay attention to the subtle intricacies of ‘seeing’ or do I take ‘seeing’ for granted and employ it in a routine mechanical manner? Do I see through the screen of ‘word’ or do I see directly without the ‘word’? Do I see that the process of ‘naming’ is a movement of thought arising from memory: ‘I have seen it before’? With this thought, the sense of ‘newness’ is no more! Beauty is in the newness - only the shadow of beauty remains once ‘naming’ has taken place. If one is very sensitive, aware and alert, one will eventually identify the following subtle steps in ‘seeing’ - seeing a tree, or seeing the moving gray clouds in the blue sky, or a pair of Canadian geese gracefully flying and eventually vanishing from one’s sight: (a) Pre-recognition moment - sensation and contact; (b) Recognition arises - that is ‘naming’, which is a thought; (c) A thought arises, giving rise to a chain of thoughts - one thought after another - thinking without resistance; (d) Eventually a split happens in a thought to create a separate thinker and a thought and a gap between them. Here are the implications of clearly understanding the above steps of seeing: …One may come upon this truth that the thinker is the product of thought. The fact that the thinker is created by thought, makes it trivial and one wonders why one has been giving so much importance to thinker in one’s life! One discovers that thought is the only problem there is - not the ‘thinker’. One discovers that as long as there is this gap between ‘thinker’ and ‘thought’, sorrow or conflict will inevitably continue. There is no way out!

(4) A question may come up: What is the place of ‘will’ in bringing about a radical change in consciousness. Is the use of ‘will’ a continuation of ‘me’ or ‘I-thought’ and thus continuation of bondage. If one ponders over this question, one will eventually discover the truth that ‘will’ has no place in the discovery of the marvelous state of freedom!

(5) Excerpts from Chapter 10: Seeing Double (of OSHO’s And The Flowers Showered): Yes, the way is right before your eyes. But your eyes are not right before the way - they are closed, closed in a very subtle manner. They are clouded. Millions of thoughts are closing them, millions of dreams are floating on them… how to attain unclouded eyes, how to make eyes empty so that they can reflect truth, how not to be continuously in a mad rush within; how not to be continuously thinking and thinking and thinking, how to relax thought. When thought is not, seeing happens; when thought is, you go on interpreting and you go on missing. Don’t be an interpreter of reality, be a visionary. Don’t think about it, see it!

What to do? One thing: Whenever you look, just be the look. Try. It is going to be difficult, difficult just because of old habit… You see a flower: then just see, don’t say anything. The river is flowing: sit on the bank and see the river, but don’t say anything. Clouds are moving in the sky: lie down on the ground and see, and don’t say anything. Just don’t verbalize! This is the deepest habit, to verbalize; this is your whole training - to jump immediately to words from reality, to immediately start making words: ‘beautiful flower,’ ‘lovely sunset.’ If it is lovely, let it be lovely! Why bring in this word? If it is beautiful, do you think your word ‘beautiful’ will make it more beautiful? On the contrary, you missed an ecstatic moment. The verbalization came in. Before you could have seen you moved, moved in an inner wandering… Don’t give much energy to thoughts… Whenever thinking starts, if it is unnecessary - and ninety-nine percent of it is unnecessary - immediately bring yourself back to reality. Anything will help: even the touch of the chair you are sitting on, or the touch of the bed you are lying on. Feel the touch - it is more real than your thoughts… Touch it, feel the touch, be the touch, be here and now. You are eating - taste the food well, the flavor. Smell it well, chew it well - you are chewing reality! Don’t go wandering in thoughts. You are taking a bath - enjoy it! The shower is falling on you - feel it! Become more and more a feeling center rather than a thinking center… Remember, this Way doesn’t go to a goal; this Way is the goal. So in fact there is no traveling, just staying alert, just being still, silent, not doing anything. Just becoming a clarity, an awareness, a silent cool understanding…

(6) Once you label me you negate me. Søren Kierkegaard.

(7) Wisdom: ‘Is there any such thing as one minute wisdom?’ “There certainly is,” said the Master. “But surely one minute is too brief?” “It’s fifty-nine seconds too long!” To his puzzled disciples the Master… said, “How much time does it take to catch the sight of the moon? Then why… these years of spiritual endeavor? Opening one’s eyes may take a lifetime. Seeing is done in a flash.” (From: One Minute Wisdom by Anthony de Mello)

(8) In short, we all go through life wearing spectacles colored by our own tastes, our own calling, and our own prejudices, measuring our neighbors by our own tape-measure, summing them up according to our own private arithmetic. We see subjectively, not objectively; what we are capable of seeing, not what there is to be seen. It is not wonderful that we make so many bad guesses at that prismatic thing, the truth. (From 1916 book: Pebbles on the Shore, by Alfred George Gardiner).