Mature woman leaves her 30 year marriage and joins Rajneesh commune in Australia and later in America.
Beyond Darkness is the third book in a trilogy tracing the blossoming of
a woman's sexuality from childhood masturbation, thirty years of faithful
marriage and then leaving the marriage to find freedom and liberation
from guilt and shame and the joy of belongin solely to herself.
Excerpt
When Sue and Bill Stapleton set off for India to visit Kevin, their eldest son, who had written to say he was living in an ashram and had changed his name, they little guessed the impact the journey would have on their lives, or that it would lead to the end of their thirty-year marriage. They had no idea what an ashram was and, when Sue found out, she was most concerned that Kevin had discarded all his Christian teachings and was trapped in some terrible heathen cult. As it happened, they soon became enchanted themselves with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh—their son’s Master—and decided to become sannyasins themselves.
They returned to Australia as Taru and Almasto, in orange clothes with beads around their necks and a new outlook on life. However, Bill quickly became disenchanted. He didn’t want to be Almasto to his mates and family. And certainly did not want to go to the pub in orange clothes and beads. He promptly got back into civvies and hid his beads away in the back of his cupboard.
On the other hand, Sue was delighted to be Ma Prem Taru, Miss Tree of Love, and rejoiced in the feeling of freedom to just be herself as an individual rather than being identified as somebody’s wife, mother, daughter, sister, niece, cousin or friend.
Bill could see what was happening and tried to hold her tighter in the bondage of matrimony but the more he pulled, the further Taru slipped away from him. Finally, in 1980, at 52 years of age, she walked out the door carrying a few clothes in an overnight bag, a blanket and forty dollars.
Professional Reviews
Beyond Darkness
Beyond Darkness by V. Tamaso (2012) is like the searing light of the first
day. It is an ecstasy of liberation of self and sexuality for its main character, Susan. Set in the 1980s, the story traces Susan's encounter with the Rajneesh movement in communes in her home city of Sydney, Australia and in Oregan, America. Rajneesh and she, herself, questions her preconceptions of what a woman should experience in life and realizes her own unique authentic, exciting, being.
Susan's story is held in counterpoint with reactions to her stepping beyond the darkness of her past from her extended family; a complicated family structure we've already come to know from V. Tamaso's earlier books, Brothers? Uncles? Sister? Aunt? and The Missus. In those two books, we'd seen Susan's struggle in trying to disentangle guilt and shame from the pleasures of simply being herself and trusting herself in the process. Beyond Darkness, with its luscious prose, literally feels like a breaking free of the viscous mud of a life of "shoulds" to a life of "I am!". It is the best book, I believe, of the triology and I recommend it highly. Please, though, read all three books in sequence to experience all that I've traced here. It is well worth it.
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