USC students wear red robes outside the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India.

For meditation you need quiet, or so the Oshoites say. If you’re unlucky enough to be the one soul-searcher to get a dry mouth in a room full of silent meditators, a volunteer will ask you to take your throat-clearing outside. 

Those aren’t the only rules. Osho wants meditation to be a distraction-free experience. All devotees must wear the same color—maroon during the day, white in the evening—to rid the eyes of visual annoyances. A guard at the center’s entrance will confiscate your phone if he spots it in your pocket with his metal detector. And forget about wearing perfume—the guards will turn away anyone whose fragrance might pique someone else’s olfactory sense. If you aren’t totally clear on the rules before you dive into the Osho lifestyle, the resort has that covered too. All guests watch a mandatory orientation video, which details all of the ways you might become a nuisance. 

It may seem extreme, but clearing one’s mind is tough work, especially when you’re meditating the Osho way. The retreat center is known for “dynamic” meditations which can include rounds of wild screaming, physical shaking, or expressive dancing to loosen up the mind and body before sitting or lying down to meditate the quiet, old-fashioned way.

Even within the highly regulated meditation zone at Osho, I still had trouble getting rid of my mind’s to-do lists, self-conscious thoughts, and re-plays of conversations. 

But lying on the floor silently after a long session of shaking and dancing I finally started to feel relaxed. My thoughts slipped away more easily. Then another practitioner somewhere in the auditorium got too deep into meditation. He started snoring loudly.

“Gosh, what a jerk,” I thought.