Portrait of Rose at 36, photo via Rose's Facebook.
Rose stumbled onto the teachings of Bhagwan, later referred to as Osho, by accident. At a house she went to often for yoga, she went to grab a book out of a bookshelf, and out fell a pamphlet about the Indian mystic’s teachings. She needed to know more.
She began dynamic mediation, feeling what she described as a lightness she’d never experienced before. She congregated with others who followed the teachings of Osho. Before long, she knew she couldn’t stay in the Philippines.
“I have to see this master,” she recalls thinking to herself at the time.
She left for India on April 1, 1976.
She went to the ashram in Pune—a place of religious retreat for those who practiced Osho’s teachings—and further immersed herself in the world of the spiritual guru.
"What makes Osho stay with you is like that feeling of gratefulness," she says. "Of waking up from all the conditioning that you grew up with."
This visit to Pune would mark the first of many visits to the subcontinent. Though, this did not come without pushback from her community in Bacolod.
According to Gilda, Rose’s older sister, Rose was a very social person growing up. She was president of Bacolod’s Lions Club chapter, putting on fashion shows and charity events.
“A lot of people admired her, and all of a sudden, she just turned into something that would come out of the plane in a robe,” said Gilda.
“She [used to be] a fashionable person…It was like night and day. So, everybody was speculating that maybe [Osho’s] not a good influence because she was like a pendulum. She went from one extreme to another.”
This change would form a rift between Rose and her parents, staunch Catholics. So much so, her mother, who had ties to a Philippine government official in the Department of Foreign Affairs, barred Rose’s passport from being accepted into India.
But Rose countered. She needed the ashram. She told her mother, "If I don't go to India, I will die." And eventually, her mother conceeded.
The rift formed between Rose and her parents wasn’t just about religion, Gilda recalled. Rose, they felt, chose a spiritual guru over own her family.