Vinod Khanna stepped away from the peak of his stardom to pursue a spiritual path with Osho. (Photo: Express Archives)
Vinod Khanna’s spiritual journey has been widely documented. At the peak of his career, he took a hiatus from Bollywood to join Osho’s commune in Oregon. However, his second wife, Kavita, recently shared that Vinod Khanna’s spiritual inclination began much earlier. She shared that Vinod had been through a few losses in his life when his spiritual journey began.
She shared with Loveena Tandon, “He was always spiritually inclined. When he was 17 years old, he picked up Autobiography of a Yogi from Strand Bookstore in Bombay, an iconic bookstore, and didn’t put the book down until he finished it. He stayed up all night reading it. Even at the height of his career, whenever J Krishnamurti (spiritual figure) was in town, if he happened to be shooting, he would take the day off and go attend the lectures.”
Kavita further revealed that Vinod’s close connection with Osho began during a particularly difficult phase in his life. “I think he started listening to Osho’s discourses, as they went through a terrible period in their lives, with five deaths in the family, including people who were particularly close to him, like his mother. When his mother died, he went to the ashram and took sanyas. That’s how that journey began.”
She also described how Vinod balanced his booming film career with his spiritual pursuit: “Most people don’t know that for three years, while completing the films he had already signed, which included super hits like Hera Pheri and Qurbani, where he looked his absolute best, he would come and shoot. If the shoot was on location, he’d be there, but his base was Pune. He had a room in the ashram that was just four feet by six feet. Osho even joked about it in his discourses, saying the room was so small that he had to step over the bed and sleep diagonally because there was barely any space. He literally had to step over the bed to enter the room.” She added, “But he did it. In front of the camera, he was doing films; off camera, he was meditating. He was Osho’s gardener in the ashram. Then he went to Oregon.”
Explaining the reasoning behind his move to the Oregon commune, she said: “I think he found what he was looking for. He didn’t feel the need to be in an ashram anymore. When you’re on a spiritual path, the idea isn’t to keep doing the same thing endlessly. Some people choose that, but others make it practical. You achieve a certain sense of peace. An inner evolution happens. And then the idea is to be a Buddha in the marketplace. To me, that’s the pinnacle of a spiritual journey. If you can be a Buddha in the marketplace, with everything happening around you, and still remain centered, then that’s really the thing.”
Recently, actor Kabir Bedi also reflected on Vinod’s spiritual leanings in a conversation with Filmfare: “Vinod had a very philosophical bent. He was very interested in Osho, became one of Osho’s great devotees. Definitely, I had enormous respect for Osho. I just didn’t go and see him, which I regret deeply, because people were expected to wear a certain colour and something when they went to see him. I said, ‘Nobody’s going to tell me what to wear.’ It was an ego thing, and I regret it, because I would have met one of the greatest minds and philosophers.”