It’s a funny thing with me, this thing about the Master and N2O.
Sounds so unlikely, but then again even his dentist admits it now.
Now in 2014 the gas is all over London streets, according to that august paper the Guardian
And again according to them, messing up another generation. (See below)
Messing up, well maybe, but how can you tell those critters ain’t seeing what is,
and leaving the system for the last time in a gale of laughter.
Like a man in a white robe in the Oregon desert back in the winter of 1982.
The length of time a gas-hit lasts is apparently a minute. If that’s the case, then however sublime it is as an experience it soon is absorbed back into the ego as a reference, only.
It seems unlikely to be able to perform enduring mutation of a change in perception as a way of life. However, it might open up dormant possibilities. I’m just not curious about it at all, so will be leaving the balloon in the soda syphon.
What possessed Osho to risk heavy headaches from its abuse is beyond my ken. Still, there’s room for others to now reproduce those heady days of intoxication with some trainings perhaps…say yes to the N0 2.
“It’s a funny thing with me, this thing about the Master and N2O”
Your introduction, Paramartha, to a new thread. Introduction to another – quite another – ´One Way´ Road, this time. I´ve been reading the UK journalists, who are concerned, similar approaches can be detected here.
Strangely enough, the word ´OBLIVION´ came into my mind; not knowing why and what for, I searched in the big brain machine, finding (besides multidimensional computer games like oblivion cheats and so on) some blockbuster science fiction with this title (2013).
As I haven’t seen the movie, I searched again about the story, where ´forgetfulness´(‘oblivion´) is part of a movie script action thriller of apocalyptical measures, a fight between alien clones and the rest of the human race which had survived a big hi-tech attack on the planet, aiming to annihilate the human species.
New Drugs and Dope(s) are a big issue here also, concerning the youth of the country, but not only the youth.
In times of crises and chaos some go into wars, some go into ´oblivion’ (forgetfulness) and some – not a few – go into making businesses of both.
Some – and not a few – discover the ´newborn child´ as a sign of big hope and loading the newborns with all their wishes of being saved from calamities of all kinds for healthy living together in small families, building brick walls against anything that seems to them ´strange´.
Some – quite a few – make efforts to REMEMBER – the spiritual gifts having been given to them, trying their best not to lose courage in everyday life amongst a growing majority who are losing their senses and their sensibility or giving these capacities away to their CELL PHONES, or – as it is brought up here – who just want to forget and to forget irreversibly. With N2o or other stuff.
Not only the movie ´Oblivion´ though can script-wise be read as an incredible amount of mixing up any ´angst´, paranoia, confusion and mad and maddening fantasies (or acting) of what might be the outcome of such ´forgetfulness´.
There is a ´forgetfulness´ which leads straightaway to destruction, I feel, and there is a forgetfulness on another level, which may lead to a state where you may be able not to repeat the past in ongoing circles, especially the devastating ones.
The latter has been the invitation of the Master.
And this invitation is still alive as an invitation.
As Meditation.
It’s up to us, isn´t it?
Madhu
“There is a forgetfulness that leads straightaway to destruction”
Maddie, if you weren’t such a big fan of Kojak, I`d have you pinned as an apocalyptic religious nutter.
As verbs in language, `to forget` and `to remember` seem equivalent as things that `I` can do.
In fact, it’s possible to consciously remember something but is it possible to consciously forget?
OMG, I`m getting in too deep here…. I`m off to chill to some daytime TV…I`m more of a `Columbo` man, myself….
“It’s a funny thing with me, this thing about the Master and N2O.
Sounds so unlikely”
Yes, it does, if you compare it to standing around on a street corner inhaling from a balloon, but Osho had a far superior delivery system, provided by a state-of-the-art dental facility and someone administering just the right amount of N2O and oxygen to extend the experience….
Source?
Alok,
Swami Devageet’s own book is a good source book:
‘Osho: The first Buddha in the Dental Chair’.
This details quite a number of nitrous sessions with Osho.
As Devageet was Osho’s personal dentist then one could not get better than that.
It is available from Viha.
Thank you for appearing here, Dharmen , the way you did today.
What do you mean (or know?) , what may be the reason, why those people , who know by first hand , own experience and their own presence to some of the issues discussed here, rarely – or never appear – and share their experience.
Is it – because – it would spoil their seminars or book selling ?
Or is it (may be ?) because they don´t like the ways , issues are discussed here ?
I have been asking myself that quite often, when stuff is brought up , what may be good for all of us to be more transparent – and not gossip – wise.
Madhu
Any chance of you completing your notes on ‘double bind’, Madhu? What you wrote was very interesting but as I said, you gave no examples of this re SN, the Sannyas community and the wider society/world, although saying it was prevalent in all three areas.
I’m not trying to undermine you, I’m genuinely interested.
I wonder if anyone else round here has actually tried the wicked gas beside evil ol’ me. The high lasts longer than a mini minute…maybe five. I have not taken it in decades. First hit is a winner. Your senses go into overdrive, listening to music on headphones while inhaling is a blast, the sore heads are a bummer.
After using it a few dozen times I quickly lost interest. It is a flash and that is about it. You can experiment. One time I did a train journey and inhaled a dozen good hits from a special inhaler…end result: I felt like Iva Brainhemorrage had moved into my cranium.
If any kids are reading this I suggest you go smoke banana peels. You’ll get the same thng out of it…nothing much in the end.
When I took it I was hanging with a bunch of space cadets, some of whom actually had special clothes they put on for their sessions, like little mandala caps and other hippy trippy gear. A bit like Osho and his Gurulywood outfits. If you asked me to have a balloonful today I would give it a whirl…just to remind myself I don’t need to do shit like that anymore. For me, sobriety is indeed the greatest intoxicant. Nuff said!
If one “studies” ‘Notes of a Madman’ there are a very small number of references to Osho’s caretakers during the sessions being worried about Osho’s instructions to increase the gas, etc and he telling them to be less worried.
So whilst I agree with Dharmen that these sessions were very carefully orchestrated, it is clear that Osho went close to the line with the amounts.
I agree re these young people in the East End of London and their balloons – well, they’re a little different – except that the brief high they get in its effects (and which Osho sought for whatever reason) were still from the same chemical base, and must clearly be the same.
A gas is a gas, is a gas. That Osho developed a taste for inhaling gas will forever be a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved.
Maybe the Resort can set the trend by offering ‘Gas Saloons’ to the experimental souls. Most probably Pune will see the boost in spiritual tourism, and also good copy for the 24×7 televisions.
I am sure Osho would not have missed the chance to provoke the so-called spiritually superior Indians. Problem is, foreigners cannot go beyond the limits in a foreign country. This is the lesson, neo-priests have absorbed from Osho’s experiment in USA.
El Chudo has obviously been hitting the country liquor and inhaling gas by sticking his head in the oven. Thank goodness mama does not let him play with matches.
Shantam went back to India expecting a hero’s
welcome, and nobody’s interested in him.
Listen to how bitter he sounds.
Every high has a fall!
“Discourses” too create great highs.
Dear Parmartha,
There are Shamans who deliberately take intoxicants to ´travel´ into spaces which are not available for the average human being.
They do not only have a long way to fully reach their capacities to deal with that stuff, but also, as it is reported, have an Ethic of their own and often are called to this kind of existence and destiny (unavoidable) that we – (if interested) – can hear, if ever they talk about that.
Never have I come across even just one of these rare humans putting any recipe for intoxicants to be available for the masses. Never.
Yes, I also read the book, ´Notes of a Madman´ and gave it away after reading – long ago.
Not the other one though, referring to a `Golden Childhood`.
Why? As far as I am conscious about myself, I remember having thought after the read, ‘Oh , how different it all is, the individual disciple and also his or her karmic alliance to this Master.’
One of the many, many reasons (for me) not to envy anyone in anyone´s position. But try my best to look inside – to myself. Often failing, missing.
When – decades after, or with a long time in-between – stuff was and is brought up, be it in the Doc/Soap Movie, ´The Guru, His Secretary and His Bodyguard´, be it in discussions like here at this place, be it in numerous talk shows, including those of nurses on the Ranch who decided do do crimes, for myself, I have to go inside about what does that stir up in me, or ask to myself the question, ‘What may be the reason that I find myself mentally and emotionally occupied with it?’
I’ve always found out – sometimes sooner, sometimes later and sometimes as up to now, never – that I had been going astray therein.
For me, other than for the Scottish bodyguard of Osho, Osho never was a
´God´, not to speak of any failure…or not failure…
Although in the movie mentioned, I was surprised that I liked his honest speaking (didn´t read his book) – quite something else to how I experienced Sheela´s appearance in that movie (or her edited talks).
And yet – always the same Quest where I am ending in:
Is there any responsibility of mine, in the deep sense of the word, or not? And if not, why am I so kind of obsessed with stuff which are none of my business, so to say?
My instinctive feeling ever was that, being interconnected in the Sangha and also the Sangha´s history, we are indeed inter-dependent too. So, I can´t relate to or just simply agree with the words Arpana was posting here, referring to be gladly be out of any codependency stuff.
There is always a small borderline, I feel, of an area of codependency, which indeed has sickness in it (or may be a strong karmic line too). And the fact (in my understanding) that we ALL are interdependent, ANY moment and anywhere, as long as we exist in human body-mind-soul forms.
So – What is Freedom?
Maybe just the Freedom to celebrate all our Interdependency with the best wishes for each other that we are capable to spread at any moment.
Not more – and maybe not less, too.
And even that, which looks so marginal, quite often seems an arduous task of a ´Peace Force´…otherwise….
Love,
Madhu
P.S:
Maybe a perspective to be ´honoured´by Frank, to be ´pinned´ as a ´religious nutter´? As another way to read responses? Let´s wait, I say to myself….
P.P.S:
I loved to see Harideva’s proposal, an invitation for a celebration next year, even when I know that I cannot attend it – made me smile what he and other friends and fellow-travellers are planning.
Thanks for your post, Madhu, addressed to me.
As for the following:
“There are Shamans who deliberately take intoxicants to ´travel´ into spaces which are not available for the average human being.”
Yes, Madhu, I know that, but have also always had my doubts about this also, if one is in a permanent space of bliss, then what is the need to travel anywhere else with an intoxicant?
My notes about this `Double Bind´ stuff, Satyadeva, are completed for the moment. I tried my best for the moment to respond to you twice, also again recommending you read that well done ´Wikipedia’ article, in which also can be found that everyday life is FULL of double bind actions as well as procedures.
It’s a very good read and more than a read. To ponder about it, be still and see or feel.
For example:
If you ´invite` somebody to feel open to say whatever is in his or her mind (concerning a question), but with an energy which makes thoroughly clear, whatever the respond, the responder will be wronged either way, that is one of the smaller double binds, a NO-no-win situation, by that I mean also either the way..
Stuff ending ever so often in small or big wars, just to get rid of unbearable stressing situations.
If you’re asking something is applied with an sensible strong attitude of ´circling a prey´ (to quote Arpana, who knows you better and longer than I do), it is not promising a good outcome for all (as it is an open space here) either, I guess.
I really recommend to you reading the Wikipedia sites on this matter. And I still say, it is of everybody´s concern, just to take that to heart. What more can we do?
And I am not proclaiming that I am free of all bad habits of this kind. Neither are others, I’ve come to know and to experience.
Madhu
Madhu.
“If you’re asking something is applied with an sensible strong attitude of ´circling a prey´ (to quote Arpana, who knows you better and longer than I do)”
I was pulling Satyadeva’s leg, Madhu. Wasn’t serious.
You’re far too suspicious, Madhu, in fact a certain ‘paranoia’ has been evident in many of your posts since you started writing here.
I’ll read the Wikipedia article, but I find it disappointing – even perhaps a bit lazy – that (apart from citing me!) you can’t be bothered to actually provide specific examples for your assertions re SN, the Sannyas community and the wider world.
As a result, your contributions on the topic lack the impact they might have had, which is a pity.
As I said earler today, “I’m not trying to undermine you, I’m genuinely interested.”
P.S:
TORTURERS are said to be experts in creating double bind approaches for and to those whom they captured – to get them mentally and psychologically destroyed.
Some of these examples anyone who wants to know then can follow by the Wikileaks and that´s another way to understand why it might be so enormously important to get to understand this matter.
And also that our present and not only our present time is FULL of it, an issue also which doesn´t exclude any area as a potential danger for humanness (not to speak of fights in so-called ´spiritual gatherings´, which are happening, whether we deny it or not).
Whatever you did, Arpana, by saying this and maybe in utter agreement cheek-to-cheek, you know this whole game of this chat longer than me and also the regular patterns.
On the other hand, you also (besides your quoting role that I very much appreciate, don´t misunderstand), you sometimes joined a rot, maybe for most of you familiar, common and as you all sometimes put it, English native humour.
What concerns my citing you this afternoon – I just love the expression, it´s so damn fitting sometimes…
And true, I didn´t grow up where most of you grew up, I guess, so my ´spices´ are different, still are. And as well as yours, in progress to be worked at and on, by Life itself.
Madhu
“You’re far too suspicious, Madhu, in fact a certain ‘paranoia’ has been evident in many of your posts since you started writing here”
Take care, Satyadeva, to use a stigma attack; to avoid what I have been saying.
And mean what I say this time, concerning ´Double Bind´issues.
I am realistic re the conditions and old habits in new clothes, having been creeping through back doors of hi-tech and some incapacity with humans to cope with it in a way that can be named really civilized.
And the realms of Sannyas tribes are not to be excluded. Remembering the Master not only telling us but challenging us with the fact that the so-called ´Market Place´ is not to be avoided, can be found anywhere.
That´s realistic and yet no reason not to celebrate and give our best.
Madhu
“As a result, your contributions on the topic lack the impact they might have had, which is a pity”
And? Satyadeva, why not co-operate from your side and add from your side what you feel is missing?
That would be beautiful and – for me – a sign that we are fellow-travellers. And I would love to read your insights about the stuff I started and you spin it forth?
Madhu
Madhu, as you opened the topic of Double Blind, the onus is on you to elucidate exactly what you mean re examples you allude to but don’t specify: at SN, in the wider Sannyas community and the ‘world’ at large.
It’s not up to me or anyone else to make you feel as if we’re ‘fellow-travellers’ by guessing what you might be referring to, it’s your responsibility.
I wonder actually what Lokesh or anyone else thought of the experiment that Ram Dass played on Neem Karoli Baba?
He sort of slipped his then guru two tabs of acid (with or without him knowing, not sure), and fully expected the old codger to fall off his rocker.
Apparently, the wise old owl showed no effects whatsoever – much to the consternation of Ram Dass!
It was actually three caps of heroic dose acid that Neem Karoli Baba ingested. That is enough to send an elephant into orbit around the furthest reaches of the universe. The old baba did not blink an eye and changed the tides of consciousnes history forever. Many acid-dropping hippies were impressed by this astonishing feat, to the extent that a lot of us went in search of how to reach such a lofty inner space.
For the first time in a decade I took a trip on my own last September. It felt familiar and after watching my inner fireworks for a while I retired to my studio for a very long hour and focused on my breathing…deep breaths. It was interesting and very entertaining…up to a point.
These days I get my kicks from living each day as it happens and I do not really experience the need to take it further. Life is enough of a trip and I feel the best way to prepare for the utimate trip, death, is to try and live as consciously as possible, which is no easy task, as I am sure you are all very aware.
Something for the sannyasins:)
The new issue of Osho Sandesh XIV: Celebrating love, joy and silence (Osho Tapoban Video Magazine)
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Interesting vid in many respects. I can only be surprised how it all went. Looks like Osho had to die in order to gain respectability, something which never concerned him while alive. Squeaky clean, if you know what I mean.
People obviously enjoying themselves around Arun, a happy man whose dreams are coming true. Can’t take all that hokum about him being a master seriously, yet he is certainly making beautiful things happen. Can’t knock it. Not on my destination list. I wish all concerned the best of luck.
I experience you in this matter, Satyadeva, that you (verbally) behave persistently stubborn, arrogant and uncooperative and I really hope that in your daily work for living you are not in a position of a ‘therapist’ or a ‘coach’, or ‘teacher’.
In a chat ‘reality’ – indeed – such ongoings can / could go on and on and on.
Very much unfortunately.
Madhu
Unfortunately, Madhu, you appear blind to your responsibility in this case. You introduced a topic (within another topic), claimed it was a significant (or significant enough) feature of SN, of the wider Sannyas community and of the world in general – while refusing to provide examples, essential really in the first two of these three areas (the Wiki article possibly helping to illuminate the third, ‘the world’).
It’s rather like a scientist claiming to have discovered something ‘important’, but refusing to provide relevant evidence, leaving his interlocutors high and dry. Or a lawyer making an accusation in Court, but refusing to give actual evidence to support it.
Very annoying and in a way, disrespectful, both of your ‘audience’ and of the ‘Discussion’ medium we operate in here. In other words, a waste of time and energy.
You can call me whatever you want (I’m wearing my tin helmet), it reveals as much or probably more about your own stubborn-ness, your obtuseness in this matter, than about me (in my almost unbelievably humble, prostrating-myself-at-your-feet, profound-excuses-for-daring-to-have-an-opinion, opinion).
Madhu and SD sound like an old married couple. Ding-dong bells are going to chime.
Well, if you can’t see the point, Lokesh, then you definitely won’t be ‘best man’!
How about worst man?
Ok, you’re on the short-list….
On the other hand, what’s in a name? Or a title? Or a term of abuse?
Whatever we put on it, I guess….
“…if one is in a permanent space of bliss, then what is the need to travel anywhere else with an intoxicant?”
Yes, Parmartha, I also have no idea – and as I neither am aquatinted with `permanence of bliss´, neither also a ´Shaman’s Identity´ per inner call or necessity, nor have experience in abundance about drug consuming, I took it, like Lokesh today was expressing it, as one of the many issues around Osho having by me at least to be taken as a mystery ( a secret) not being able to solve.
What did it to me inside though, I can look at, to my best capacities at any time.
And a lot of issues came up in the course and history of so-called ´revelations´ and the ways how it was/is dealt with.
And I simply love the GAPS also happening, where there is simply Silence and nothing else.
Madhu
Always fascinating to see how different minds can read the same text completely different. When I read Devageet’s book I thought it thoroughly dismissed Parmartha’s and Christopher Calder’s allegation that Osho was addicted to nitrous oxide and (ab)used it regularily outside dental sessions. And I have supposed that was why it was never reviewed on SN.
Behind all this seems to be the assumption that an enlightened being should be so beyond the body that he/she can tolerate any pain without identifying with it and without taking anything to relieve the pain. Whereas in fact the body might on the contrary become more and more sensitive as I guess many (unenlightened) meditators have experienced.
The other question of mind-expanding substances and spirituality is of course highly complicated. The mixture seems to have been an integral part of Indian culture, mentioned both in the Vedas and Patanjali. And I guess the reaction in Western societies is partly due to general puritanical ideals and the fear of the authorities that these substances can lift the veil and free people from the bondage of tradition, greed etc. (just as meditation can).
Another shock for all National Socialists and (as Madhu would say) ‘fellow-travellers’:
UK Channel 4 documentary on Hitler tonight, revealing his doctor’s records exposing him as a ‘physical wreck’, hooked on, among other things, crystal meths…
“Adolf Hitler was on crystal meth and a drug made from human faeces
TV’s fascination with the Nazis shows no sign of abating. And tonight Channel 4 pore over the private records of Adolf Hitler’s personal physician Theodor Morell, a vain, squat, fat and unpleasant quack doctor (pictured above behind the German dictator).
Morell was a fanatical note taker and carefully recorded every detail of Hitler’s physical condition on an almost daily basis (it is thought to protect himself in case his boss happened to die and the dictator’s henchmen wanted a scapegoat).
So what was Hitler’s health like? Bad does not even get close. And there is a ghoulish fascination to be had in being told in the programme that the chief proponent of Aryan supremacy was a profoundly sick man with bad breath, chronic flatulence and stomach cramps who used pills made from the faeces of soldiers to keep him going.
Yes, the chief of a land of supposedly great warriors was a physical wreck and a nervy hypochondriac who relied on 74 different kinds of medication at one point of his life.
More bizarrely, the cocktail of drugs he was on included crystal meth which is thought to have powered his crazed speechifying and once saw him rant, without interruption, at fellow dictator Benito Mussolini for four hours on end. And he was treated with leeches at various points in his life.
It’s a fascinating film showing how the madness of Nazism extended even into the arena of the physical well-being of its figurehead, a man sick in body as well as mind.
The sometimes breathy narration tells us that Morell’s actual journals have “never been seen on British television before” but the juicy information is already there in the history books. But that doesn’t stop this being a well-assembled, diverting and intimate insight into the corporeality of evil. And yes, Morell’s notes testify that Hitler did have two testicles.”
Nah, Hitler weren’t enlightened!
“Another shock for all National Socialists and (as Madhu would say) ‘fellow-travellers’:
UK Channel 4 documentary on Hitler tonight”
Mentioning my name this way, in that context of your television BBC evening program, Satyadeva,
IS in a weird way, mean – in a mean way, weird.
Madhu
As is your apparent humourlessness and extreme over-sensitivity, Madhu. YOU are not the target, Hitler and the Nazis are. If you don’t or can’t ‘get’ the style of harmless humour there (often known as ‘banter’) then there’s not a lot one can say, but here are one or two more serious notes…
Hitler has often, both during the war and especially in recent decades, been dealt with here in Britain through a sort of ‘black’ humour, even at times making him into an absurd figure of fun. Such typically English comic approaches are ways to cope with an overwhelmingly monstrous phenomenon (although the information given in this programme and in the article I posted here did a similar sort of job in a different way, ie with extraordinary facts showing how inadequate the man actually was when under pressure in his final years).
Once again, Satyadeva, you are ´circling your own blind spot´ to what I was pointing at – and that was mentioning me in one line and my addressing “fellow-travellers” with the Nazi gangs.
Yes, I seem to be “humourless”to you – the utter distasteful and disgraceful performances in England (with and without Nazi uniforms at parties have been perceived also here) and very well known is also that problems with Neofascist gangs is not only a problem here in Germany but in UK too. As well as in other European countries the last decades especially.
So give me a break – concerning your verbal abusive attitude ‘titled’ as ‘humour’.
Madhu
As I said, Madhu, there’s really no point further explaining the finer points or arguing with you, as explaining how humour works is profoundly self-defeating and anyway, you clearly don’t and almost certainly never will ‘get it’. Shame, as you’re missing something..
Come on, Maddie, relax and let`s have a nice singalong…
Altogether now:
“Hitler has only got one ball
The other is made of crystal meth….”
I was given nitrous during dental surgery on several occasions. I felt no pain whatsoever, even though the dentist was cutting through the gums. It was a profound and liberating experience of being detached from my body and helped me to understand why Osho wanted to experiment with it.
Thanks, Prateeksha.
The use of nitrous oxide was discontinued in the UK as far as I know about 1960. But happy to stand corrected. Maybe you are talking of another jurisdiction?
As a boy in the fifties my dentist gave me a gas for an extraction with my father present. The idea was to ‘put you out’ or that is what I recall, as he told my father he was worried about how much gas it was taking to ‘put me out’.
I think that was nitrous, but maybe not. Anyone know about the history of dentistry and its use of any other gas other that nitrous oxide?