Yes—he was very sad; the Gita gave him hope like a sunray, starting his walk toward Krishna-consciousness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, when the German thinker Schopenhauer read the Gita, he put it on his head and began to dance. Did he then move toward Krishna-consciousness? And Bertrand Russell also read the Gita, yet he was not much impressed by Krishna. Perhaps he was influenced by Buddha. Still, he did not become Buddha’s disciple either! Please shed some light on these two happenings.
Schopenhauer and Russell’s inner states were utterly different. Schopenhauer stood exactly where Arjuna stood—at the threshold of despondency. He is the West’s most pessimistic philosopher, sorrow-laden: “Life is nothing but suffering!” He was in the very state of Vishada-yoga when the Gita fell into his hands. He had searched everywhere, but his gloom would not lift; it only thickened. He was in Arjuna’s very mood. Schopenhauer was a very profound thinker. Profound thinkers do arrive at despondency. He could see no ray of light—only darkness upon darkness. It was a night of no moon. He had even lost trust that morning might ever come. Just then the Gita came into his hands, like a sudden spring to a thirsty traveler in the desert. If, all at once, in the desert you come upon the gurgling of a spring, you won’t prefer to listen to Tansen’s music; all other music will…
Questioner: the other day you said that a soul is reborn within a year of its leaving its former body, and just now you said that a certain ghost lived in the bodiless state for eleven hundred years. Please explain the contradiction.
Yes, there are a few people who have extraordinary memory. People with ordinary memory don't take much time for being born. But those of extraordinary memory, who are few and far between, do take time. Curzon, a former British viceroy of India, has mentioned an event in his memoirs. A man of extraordinary memory was once brought to his court from Rajasthan. Even the word "extraordinary" does not rightly describe his memory; it was really incredible. The man did not know any language other than his mother tongue -- Rajasthani. Thirty persons speaking thirty different languages were called to the Viceroy House in Delhi to test this man's memory. Each one of them was asked to formulate a sentence in his own language and keep it in his mind. The Rajasthani man, a villager who knew no other language than his own, went to each of the thirty persons, one…
Osho, in the Gita, what did Arjuna hear that made him turn within?
Krishna! Not what he was saying, but Krishna—what he was. That is why you can read the Gita and it will run off you like water off an upturned pot; you will remain untouched. The kind of revolution that happened to Arjuna will not happen to you. Because you have forgotten one thing: Krishna is not present. Arjuna was transformed by listening to Krishna. If he had been transformed by what Krishna said, then by reading the Gita you too would be transformed. Revolution happens in the presence of one like Krishna. A lit lamp can light an unlit lamp. The Gita contains what Krishna said. But what Krishna was—there is no way to collect that in the Gita; there is no way to put that in any book. That is why when the Master is present, his words are alive—not because of any special quality in the words, but…
Osho, you just said that sannyasins like Buddha and Mahavira are sorrow-centered. But their sannyas arose out of a life of great splendor; renunciation was the next phase of their opulence. So you can’t put sorrow at the base of it.
But Gandhi was far removed in time; there are five thousand years between Krishna and Gandhi. So calling a five-thousand-year-old story “myth” is not hard. The Jains did not have such distance, so they could not call the story a tale—the event happened. Jain thought is as ancient as the Vedas; the first Jain Tirthankara is mentioned in the Vedas. The antiquity of Hindus and Jains is equal. The Jains could not deny the war, nor that Krishna had it fought. So what could they do? Had they had Gandhi’s convenience, they would have done what Gandhi did—who, in the body a Hindu but in mind deeply Jain—dismissed it as myth. The Jains could not; it was contemporaneous. They had to consign Krishna to hell. Their scriptures had to say that Krishna went to hell. If someone causes so great a violence and does not go to hell, then what…
Osho, you once said that, at the most, within a year of leaving the body the soul takes another birth. Today you said that for eleven hundred years a ghost kept demanding blood?
Yes, these are people with exceptional memory. I was speaking about ordinary memory; these are people of special memory. And among us, too, there are people with special memory. Curzon has written an incident in his memoirs. He writes that a man with extraordinary memory was brought to him from Rajasthan—extraordinary is too small a word for his memory. He knew no language except Rajasthani. Thirty people who each spoke a different language were seated in Lord Curzon’s Viceroy’s House—thirty speakers of thirty languages. Each of the thirty was asked to hold in mind one sentence in his own language. Then that Rajasthani rustic, a simple villager, would go to the first person, and that person would tell him the first word of his sentence in his language. Then a loud bell would be rung. He would go to the second person, who would give him the first word of…