Stephen Hawking died yesterday. Perhaps his greatest contribution was not as a physicist, but as someone who against all the odds “Lived”. One liked his simple advice to students, “dont look down at your feet, look at the moon, look at the stars, go beyond yourself”
A quote by Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018)
I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.”
Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the best selling books ‘A Brief History of Time’ and ‘The Universe in a Nutshell’. www.hawking.org.uk
You have been inspired, SN Team? Gratefully inspired?
Also inspired by one of the warnings this great Human left as a very valuable legacy re the appliance of AI (artificial Intelligence)?
The ´Beauty and the Beast´, in a nutshell. And what if this nutshell is a human biological one (with a limited capacity) as a container?
Yes, we all really owe him much, this giant human mind amongst our midst in this time of very big changes, his scepticism re any belief systems, his ways of humour and irony, his acknowledgement that Life as such is a precious gift, his vast vision of that, and what not…what not….
Feel like adding that the little, light, playful exchange between Kavita and Kusum, which happened today in the Chat here around lunch-break time (1.55, 2.07, 2.12) lightened me up, and I felt grateful for that too.
A great man indeed, as much, if not more, for what he demonstrated about the human spirit, as for his staggering scientific achievements.
Worth keeping science in perspective though, as BL (who loved science, btw) points out here (June, 1995)…
http://www.barrylong.org/statements/TruthAndTheIgnoranceOfScienceToday.shtml
I read only parts of the article you posted, Satyadeva; then a little more research (as far as possible, wiki etc.) about BL.
Remarkable was that he – BL – made a point re a growing conflict zone re different perspectives (and use/misuse) that science and applied science do take in this challenging time of big changes.
Couldn´t warm up with the content though, eg with his kind of ´UFO´ approach´. Reminded me a bit of the really outrageous stunts of a Ron Hubbard (Scientology Church).
But something else is moving me, and that has something to do with your kind of ´special interrogator style´ you´re keeping. A style which – how I experience it – you are quite often taking here in the UK chat.
And as you obviously have been associated with BL for a longer or shorter while (?) or up to now, I have been asking myself if that could have been the style of communication in BL´s Sangha?
My own experience is, when being approached like that, that I am closing down. That just happens.
Madhu
Madhu, if by “Sangha” you mean a ‘community’, comparable, say, to an ashram or ‘centre’ then your question’s not relevant as there were no such structures around him.
People went to his public meetings for an afternoon or evening or a day, or a weekend, or occasionally to residentials of a week or more, where there were plenty of opportunities for personal interaction with him, and for meeting others, if one was so inclined, outside the actual formal sessions, but basically it was all about looking inside and at one’s life situation, identifying personal difficulties, confusions and dilemmas while absorbing the master’s energy, not primarily about ‘community stuff’.
Satyadeva, it seems BL was your type. Bhagwan Shree, later days Osho, must be too Indian for your inner DNA.
Thank you for your response, Satyadeva.
Never met this late spiritual Teacher while he was in London, or travelling, or when He was returning to Australia then. Others of my former sannyas friends occasionally did, and I remember now the very rare talks we had together. Long ago.
What I also remember is my feeling of awe, when listening to them, just getting a glimpse of that which may have been attracting them to his Teachings, walking their own path of Life, step by step.
None of them, though, had this special way of relating like you show up with here (with only one exception in my eyes, when you had some exchange with Alan (aka Rajen in 2014) and that’s why I was asking).
Maybe what I have been wondering about your way of relating to others happens due to the virallity re communication in a net like a SN/UK Chat, who knows?
Madhu
MOD:
Madhu, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY the virallity re communication in a net like a SN/UK Chat, PLEASE?
Madhu:
Very simple, Moderators:
I simply say therewith, that a face-to-face-talk re the matters we´re responding to here, sometimes sharing, sometimes ‘discussing’, would take another turn most probably and re most of the issues.
So simple a fact that it seems almost obsolete to recall it…
I did mention it in this case because I read Satyadeva´s exchange (2014) not only with my mind but my heart too.
Barry attracted a lot of sannyasins as well in the eighties, just for a day, or a weekend, or occasionally longer, as SD states. He also commented in one meeting that he admired Osho`s head and said something along the lines that it could be studied by scientists in the future.
This Stephen Hawking’s quote reminds me of my father’s last moments in my arms , smilingly showing me the sky from his window .
Salute to SH for inspiring able-bodied as well as disabled people.
P.S:
Thank you for yesterday’s correction about the 16 moons on Jupiter, SS. Actually 69 moons…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter
Thanks for the correction, Kavita.
There have been several more investigations of Jupiter by spacecraft since I learned about the solar system, as well as probably more powerful telescopes.
I remember that there used to be nine planets, with the furthest from the Sun being Pluto, but that has since been declassified by astronomers or NASA or whoever, and they decided that it doesn`t fit the criteria needed for a planet.
So it has been dropped.
I remember hearing that gas giants like Saturn would be able to float in water, if there was a sea large enough to float it in.
There is a giant red spot on Jupiter which is apparently a huge storm that has been raging for thousands of years. Two of our Earths could fit into this red spot.
Sagittarians like myself must be grateful for our ruler, which is Jupiter.
“The Big Wheel keeps on turning….
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis….”
https://youtu.be/_M9muYyYxhI
There is no God, nothing to worry, there are Buddha statues.
There are also audios, videos, photos of someone else who also said there is no God.
Stephen Hawking said, “There is no God”, but he certainly believed in love. “Love between two people is called love & love towards the whole cosmos is called religion.” (Osho).
He even advised his children that “if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.”
Something really good from Kusum.
There was an interesting article on BBC yesterday, written by another intelligent person in a wheelchair. The essence of it was that is somehow demeaning to use someone in a wheelchair as a source of inspiration. This contradicts my own thoughts on the matter because I view Stephen Hawking as a very inspirational figure on any number of levels. He was a great and brilliant man.
That does not mean to say that I took everything he said as God’s honest truth. His future speculations are interesting but not always grounded in a firm foundation, perhaps influenced by reading science fiction.
Without doubt, England has given top-of-the-class scientists, physicists, mathematicians, chemists, biologists, economists, literary giants, jurists. I don´t think some other land has so many Nobel Prize winners as Britain.
Its contribution is so legendary, as a student in the collage I was continuously occupied by this question, “What India has given?” As all the subjects I learned in college and university years, like English Literature, Physics, Chemistry, mathematics, economics, and then all the branches of Law; in 99% cases they were brainchild of the West.
Other than academic books, my personal interest in Palmistry, Numerology, Astrology also had British stamp. One can check any Indian railway bookshop, Cherio´s books about palmistry and numerology are just before the eyes. Without doubt, more than 95% Indian soothsayers have read these books. From where comes the Cherio?
It was in final year of graduation that I came across one essay, ‘Education and the Significance of Life’ in the course book. It is J. Krishnamurti´s work, and first time I felt someone is speaking what I feel inside. Yes, this is what India gives to the world.
One year later, by chance, it was Osho´s book and my pain ended. I felt happy and proud to be an Indian. We have given.
I don´t buy this bullshit, ‘Osho is no Indian, he is universal’. Is it not wonderful someone from India has enriched human evolution by going beyond the borders? Even this is nothing New, it is part of spiritual evolution, it is rooted in the very earth of India, this is mysticism pure.
Surely, by choosing the path of mysticism, I don´t say it is the best thing in life. My appreciation for western genius will never, ever go down.
To appreciate the contribution and beauty of others means you have the eyes, you are awake, you are not sleeping in your own fucking ego.
I think I am quite awake.
It does not mean I grow my beard, drop my jeans and start wearing lunghi and jump in the satsang scene. I prefer to share my life as disciple of Osho, who gave me a bit of positivity about my culture, about my roots.
I really would like to tell to the fellow western disciples, “Please, try to see behind the curtains. Try to understand the earth, water, air, sky of the landscape which gave birth to Osho. Create bonding with that.”
Shantam, isn’t much of this sudden burst of patriotic fervour an attempt to boost your self-esteem, to resort to the collective to reinforce your sense of identity, alone and adrift as you are, thousands of miles from your homeland, with little else going for you? A common enough phenomenon amongst ex-pats.
Not to mention the implication that you as an Indian therefore have more of a natural right to ‘oversee’, as it were, the direction of ‘Osho’s legacy’ etc?
I laughed at your claim of being “quite awake”. Do you equate extreme emotionalism with increasing consciousness? Someone as chronically emotionally reactive as yourself is the very antithesis of that. Then there’s the medication, of course….
Shantam suggests, “Please, try to see behind the curtains.”
Okay, I will. For a start, Shantam also says, “I think I am quite awake” without realising that nobody, including himself, is who they think they are.
The bottom line in regards the rest of his above statements is best summed up by using Samuel Jackson’s well known saying, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Mahabharata is not over yet. S.Hawking states before a few weeks: “Till 2050, Humanity can be immortal or has disappeared from Life.”
Maybe right, but immortality for a privileged minority. The ‘Georgia Guidestones’ explains…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
Steven Hawking was warning about the possible dangers of Artificial Intelligence.
Recently, Facebook engineers had to shut down some AI robots, as they had become more intelligent and invented their own language which they had been using to barter:
“Bob: I can I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
Bob: I I can I I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
Bob: I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you I I I I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you I I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to….”
Read about it here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html
Stephen Hawking wasn`t stupid and perhaps he had watched the Terminator movies.
A future war between AI robots and humans could be on the cards. On the same scale of the Mahabharat:
https://youtu.be/ih_l0vBISOE
Point is, Swamishanti, that late Stephan Hawking didn´t need to watch crap like ‘Terminator’ movies or similar but knew by very own experience in body, mind and soul over his pretty long, astounding lifetime how that really feels when AI is taking over slowly but irresistibly more and more:
´Step by step by step´ replacing human consciousness and its expression by its own measures.
Point is that since about two, three decades, a tech development in ´Information-Societies´ is happening and the examples to sense it amidst apparently total ´drunken of fake-power´ swarms are numerous.
More and more tangible, feelable amongst a ´majority of ´everyday people´ on the basement of everyday life.
(Tangjble, feelable also for not bodily disabled humans, some, who – like me – did often find a kind of support (help re understanding) for what´s happening in that, in what SH, and not only him, had to say and to share).
About the very fact that more and more governments and their representatives mostly hide their helplessness (or their stupidity or their greed for power etc.) and are dealing with the effects, going more and more for info-wars or whatsoever other obnoxious, cruel stuff, crossing for quite a while the borderlines onto the so-called material plane…
I am very much concerned! For quite a while!
And I perceive the big Global Silicon Valley´s Players and their representatives (worldwide btw) by their very own ‘nature’ not as my friends. In moments when I´m really panicking I see them – or better ´it´ – functioning like methodical ‘friendly fire’ (militarily speaking) if that which I want to say could be ´inconvenient´.
Decision then taken by an algorhythm, but maybe executed as real-life threat by a so-called ´real human´.
The ´annihilation´ of the Ego, some very precious Wisdom Masters and Teachers over the Millennia are speaking of, is quite something else, is quite something else….
Madhu
That reminds me of a film that was dark but I thought was quite good, which was shown on Film Four recently, about a scientist who lives alone in his complex in the mountains, and works on creating super-intelligent cyborgs.
And plot centres around someone who is sent there to study the cyborgs and try to find out whether they have consciousness and emotions or are just pretending.
I honour the man who against all odds has struggled and won against the disease.
I do not know if even for him you can apply the saying, “time has no end if you live for someone”, if for him it was more decisive to live for ‘something’, if the two things can be kept separate.
I do not know enough mathematics and physics to know if Hawking’s theory has succeeded in explaining how Einstein’s relativity and sub-atomic physics can work together, revealing the nature of the interregnum between corpuscle and wave of light.
In the absence of a continuous unifying theory I go on to refer to the theory that there are no higher truths but infinite points of observation, which influence the observed thing, which influence the observer, which …
I give an example about ‘what truth is’; how a sentence pronounced in a certain context sounds as wise and the same one bullshit in another.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
The saying became famous through the mouth of Colonel Dax in the movie. ‘Paths of Glory’, quoting an actual English conservative politician; this sentence has never been well contextualised, given that the same person complained after the independence of the American colonies, saying that after that defeat he no longer recognised the kingdom of England.
There is a difference if the flag of patriotism is in the hands of Hitler or of those who oppose his invasion, but we must know who Hitler is.
An example of scoundrels hungry for glory, via the ass of others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqLq7sMS2sU
Strange but possible that Hitler, Nazis and SS had been funded by the ‘Knights of Malta’. Yes, seemingly, that patriots and invaders often having the same interests.
Yeah, Veet, that is all very well in a ho hum kind of way. Thing is I did not place the saying in a certain context. I put it in a direct context, as in referring to Shantam spouting all his Indian nationalism, which is utter shite.
Shantam lives in Germany and for the most part he has been living off the welfare provided by the German state for the citizens unable to provide for themselves. I wonder how far the Indian government would support him…answer: not at all.
Shantam’s “I’m an Indian and proud of it” number is based in a need to prop himself up in a country where he is an absolute nobody. His dreams of running the Resort in Pune are also tied in with his nobodiness.
Personally speaking, I am also a nobody in the world. The difference between myself and Shantam is that I have embraced my nobodiness and Shantam is constantly running away from it, believing he has to be some kind of somebody, whatever the fuck that is.
Never had doubts about your patriotism, Lokesh, apart from those cases in which you would barter it for a joke.
Lokesh will try his level best to prove his nobodiness; this is the man who is so full with his own little experiences, hardly one sees someone so full with false vanity.
Moreover, there is a sense of perverse pride in him that once he left, Osho´s work rose like a balloon and landed like a gas-less balloon.
Many times it is joy for me to write which can provoke the well-hidden shadows to pop out.
Shantam, my vanity is not false, it is real.To imagine one’s vanity and pride are false is a mistake. Better to acknowledge their existence and not feed them.
After my time with Osho I spent quite a lot of time in Hell for a few years. I did not rise like a balloon. I fell like a sack of lead from not a great height. It had nothing to do with Osho. Shantam, you make assumptions and promote them as truth.
Shantam says, “Many times it is joy for me to write which can provoke the well-hidden shadows to pop out.”
Such a statement reeks of conceit.
Just in case anyone is interested. I watched the first two episodes of Wild Wild country. Its not just good, it is excellent. Recommended viewing for all sannyasins. Sheela is on great farm and as mad as a bat. She is fascinating in the way she glosses over so much and paints her picture as if it were consensual reality. Shantam holds a lot in common with her.
If Lokesh and Satyadeva have a little sense of patience to read, I was not bragging about the patriotism but sharing the happenings in my brain without judgement.
But these two are so clever like a fox and hungry like a bottomless pot, even masters get befooled by their presentations. After all, they too are human beings.
And why, one wonders, have these “happenings” in your brain surfaced, Shantam? Any idea? Or are the sources still buried in the “well-hidden shadows”, just where you prefer them to remain?!
Any evidence, btw, for your bizarre claim that “even masters get befooled by their presentations”?
You still haven’t learned to wait, calm down and check your thoughts aren’t emotionally contaminated before putting them out, which is a major reason why you put your foot in it so many times.
Yes, Shantam, the man who has spent years around Osho´s commune and left his well-cushioned life in India, has lived for years on social security. How many bloggers or sannyasins can say this with honesty?
Matter of the fact is clear in black-and-white: almost all the sannyasins who came back after the commune fiascos have lived at the mercy of their country´s resources. It is almost like licking their own spit because once they spat on their family, country, culture and people who work 9-to-5.
Neo-Sannyas has proven to be the biggest social blunder of all the times. I am saying social blunder, not spiritual blunder.
I don´t blame anybody, there is immense sympathy and love for common disciples who are living on the sidelines of their surroundings, mostly cut off from the happenings around them. They are simply not part of the game.
Has anyone shown any gratitude about their countries and the common folks who are not meditating, who are not spiritual?
I am contented to say I have told all the people I know and even in the offices, “I am indebted to the generosity of your country and promise not to leave the country in case war happens. I will live and die with you.”
People like Lokesh and Satyadeva, who are the most prominent voices here, were never part of Osho´s commune. They came to the shop when it was newly opened and left when master was expanding. I think they are villager types who are uncomfortable in the cities. I have much more respect for those disciples who gave their best to be part of new experiment.
No need to feel guilty, everybody in middle Europe has normally a right for 1500 Euros unconditional basic income!
MOD:
1500 FOR WHAT PERIOD, Preetam?
For the whole life. Maybe differentiated for younger ages.
“Matter of the fact is clear in black-and-white: almost all the sannyasins who came back after the commune fiascos have lived at the mercy of their country´s resources. It is almost like licking their own spit because once they spat on their family, country, culture and people who work 9-to-5.”
I’m not at all sure these two claims are true, Shantam.
What evidence do you have that “almost all” sannyasins who returned from Oregon depended on State benefits from then onwards, as you imply? Many, possibly, for a while – but for ever? I doubt it somehow.
Also, to say “It is almost like licking their own spit because once they spat on their family, country, culture and people who work 9-to-5″ seems like typical hyperbole to me, and which might well indicate the level of humiliation you feel, but are unwilling to own.
Likewise, I suspect you exaggerate the numbers and the plight of the “common disciples” you profess such “immense sympathy” for. Again, where’s your evidence?
So when you describe these probably largely imaginary characters as “living on the sidelines of their surroundings, mostly cut off from the happenings around them. They are simply not part of the game”, I suggest you’re again really talking about yourself, and creating a certain comfort for yourself in the feeling that you’re in the same boat as very many (thousands?!) of other ‘victims’.
Similarly, by declaring “Neo-Sannyas has proven to be the biggest social blunder of all the times” you again seem to be deflecting the realisation that you yourself have ‘blundered’ in a big way, rather than taking responsibility for your actions.
As for “They came to the shop when it was newly opened and left when master was expanding. I think they are villager types who are uncomfortable in the cities. I have much more respect for those disciples who gave their best to be part of new experiment”, well, I suppose if you can’t find an adequate response to criticism then you can always deny the worthiness of the critic. A transparently desperate ploy really, although I guess it buys you a bit more time to believe in your own fabrications.
There is difference between criticism and mental projections.
On this site you as faceless writer and Lokesh as visible one cannot digest those facts and people who carry different world view.
I don’t write about physics but the subject I am passionate about and know facts and figures.
When I say sannyasins are living at the mercy of companies and firms created by others or on social security, I know figure is more than 60%.
When few thousand people follow some guru and pour their energy and emotions, one cannot expect them to come back to society without scars and bruises after the collapse of their project.
Let us say as test example, all these 10-12 people who write regularly can dare to share their stories of success and survival? Most of them write anonymosly, still I think they won’t do.
I know hundreds of cases and stories because I have loved people who came to India because of Osho and his commune. Do you love something which is bigger than your personal gratification?
“I don’t write about physics but the subject I am passionate about and know facts and figures.
When I say sannyasins are living at the mercy of companies and firms created by others or on social security, I know figure is more than 60%.”
So you’ve added “companies and firms created by others” now, have you? For Christ’s sake, man, most of the population work for such outfits, why should you expect sannyasins to be any different, what’s so ‘special’ about them?!
“I know hundreds of cases and stories…” – Really? How exactly? Knowing your propensity to exaggerate and create “mental projections” to attempt to avoid tricky issues when facts, counter-arguments and criticism don’t suit you, ie when emotional bias is running you (most of the time, apparently) I’m not inclined to believe you without clear, unadulterated proof.
SD, have you guts to ask fellow-bloggers how they have managed their survival post-communes of any kind? These 12, 15 people are enough a specimen.
About hundreds of sannyas stories, they are too less. When you work in a commune of Osho´s kind you read people as books. Never seen so many people, specially from the West, with so open hearts. With many of them I am still connected.
Here in Germany, I can describe body proportions of hundreds of men and women Ihave seen almost regularly, yet know no story about them. In the West, people live as capsule in the folio, Osho gave them the space to unwind themselves.
Anyway, such things are not of your interest. Live your life with the memory of BL!
By the way, what kind of job you have done, Satyadeva? I will be really embarrassed if you tell you are professor at London School of Economics and your real name is Prof. Dr. Richard Dixon!
Shantam, you’re surpassing even your own extreme standards of foolishness. You claim you know “hundreds of cases and stories” as evidence that the end of Osho communes caused long-term serious emotional and material hardship among former members – yet, as I suspected, when pressed you are unable to provide a single example (except yourself), even having the cheek to suggest I should do your research! Who do you think you are, you lazy, irresponsible so’n'so?!
(And btw, fyi, 12-15 people is nowhere near an adequate sample, besides which I’d be most surprised if 7 or 8 of these numbers were to confirm your views as accurate).
As for the rest, it’s just another of your irrelevant smokescreens, unworthy of a response.
As you obviously don´t shut up here, Shantam Prem, I can reassure you that I, for example, am ‘traded’ in the view of former Sannyas friends as a failure and a loser for a long time, one who simply “didn´t get it together”, whatsoever that may mean…
If you have watched the Bavarian movie ‘Summer in Orange’ (which I recommend) – up to its very last minutes at the end – you will find that most of the characters of sannyas life in the seventies described there (quite realistic and humorous) found their ways to contribute to society after then, make their own money and be respected – some, even, as very creative ´entrepreneurs´ in society ´to go´ of nowadays – and as the Bavarian film-maker is not a ´bad boy´ (with bad intentions) the story is told with a bright Bavarian smile.
The nineties then brought up the big Family-Constellation Therapy Servicesand I can reassure you (if you find a space inside to let that in) that most of them also found their peace with the family of their bio origin and are well, and mostly founded their own little family, successful living, etc.
And not unlike anybody else in the social marketplace, they feel a need here and there for a scapegoat to cast out and look down upon, and that´s the way it is. Has always been like that, btw, also in former times and also in former sannyas times.
It takes courage to let go of any expectations and to view one´s own wounds without developing an obsession to change the so-called outside world instead of oneself.
I wish you well, Shantam Prem, to find that courage in yourself.
Where else one can find it? No-where else….
Madhu
Nowadays, I am one of 3800 workers at Europe’s biggest amusement Park, Europa Park.
I am recording the experiences in my brain for a grounded report with the title, ‘From Disappeared Osho Commune To Highly Successful Europa Park: Work Experience Of An Osho Disciple.’
Easy path would have been to grow beard and play Mini-Guru, I know more stories than combined Indian gurus in the market, also not a bad personality.
I have chosen a bit difficult path, maybe I am a bit masochist and also believe one must earn the right to criticise. My targets are surely little champs parroting literature of last century and creating business models out of them.
From ‘Ten Bulls of Zen’, Osho:
“You have reached Everest, cool, collected, calm. Now what is the point of going back to the marketplace? But if your meditation does not become compassion, then your meditation is still somehow hiding your ego, then your meditation is still selfish.
If you don’t cry, if tears don’t come to your eyes for others, and if you don’t start moving back to the world to help people who are stumbling, then somehow your meditation is still not religious. It has helped you; you may be feeling very, very good, but unless it becomes a compassion and overflows in all directions, the tree has come to a stopping point, it has not yet flowered. The tree is green, healthy, perfectly beautiful looking, but a tree without flowers is not fulfilled. A tree without flowers may look beautiful but there is still a perfection to be attained. The tree must bloom, the tree must release the fragrance to the winds so it can be carried to the very ends of existence.
Kakuan brings the seeker back into the world. Of course, he is totally different so naturally the world cannot be the same. He comes to the marketplace but he remains in his meditation; now the marketplace cannot become a distraction. If the marketplace becomes a distraction, then your meditation is not yet complete. If anything can distract you, then your meditation has been a forced thing – you have made yourself still, you have controlled yourself somehow. Your meditation is still not spontaneous, it is not a natural flow. It has not happened to you; you have made it happen. Hence the fear of coming back to the marketplace.
You will find many sannyasins in the Himalayas who are stuck there with the eighth bull – empty, silent. There is nothing wrong with them, at the most you can say nothing is wrong with them, but you cannot say that they have bloomed, you cannot say their fragrance is released to the winds.” The search for the Bull.
The whip is a symbol for awareness, and the rope is a symbol for inner discipline. Awareness and discipline are the most fundamental things for a seeker. If you discipline yourself without awareness, you will become a hypocrite.
If you discipline yourself without awareness, you will become a zombie, a robot. You may not do harm to anybody, you may be known as a good man or even as a saint, but you will not be able to live your real life, you will not be able to celebrate it. There will be no delight in it. You will become too serious; the playfulness will be gone forever. And seriousness is a disease.
If discipline is without awareness, then you will enforce it and it will be a violence, a rape of your own being. It will not give you freedom; it will create more and more, bigger and bigger, imprisonments. The discipline is right if it is based on awareness. The discipline goes completely wrong, becomes poisoned, when it is done not with awareness but by a blind, believing mind”.
http://www.mindfulness-kingston-upon-thames.org/ten-bulls
So true…
And next time, Veet, may we see the eyes of the one who is contemplating the bull?
Or is it a cow? I see 2 others/udders.
Yes, she is girl, much more wild.
For those things, looking in each other’s eyes, there was once also Pune.
What about your eyes? We met already in Italy or Pune?
No, I don’t think so, Veet, I’m an old-timer, Poona 1, and if you want you can see my eyes/i’zzz on facebook.
I do not use facebook or other social media.
As everyone, they (the people below that bray of superiority) experience the drama of the advancing social desert, hidden behind their “don’t give a damn” attitude about the destiny of the ‘Garden of the Beloved’.
I am sure you are enjoying writing in English in German-speaking country. Also, there is very big Punjabi community & gurudwaras as well in Germany. There are so many Indian restaurants in Freiburg as well. Royal Punjab restaurant is one of them. You may always open up a restaurant or shop! Or work in the restaurant or bar too. Make lots of friends in your own culture too – why limit yourself?? Maybe you know all this anyway….
He is not interested in any of that, Kusum, he wants the moon (commune in Poona)!
Well said, Kavita.
And when I have the moon there will be a colony there.
Commune in India is that master´s legacy for which I “left well-cushioned life in India”.
MOD:
POST EDITED.
There’s a new TV series coming out soon, called ‘Shantam in Blunderland’. Apparently, it follows the exploits of some Sikh guy in Germany who gets a job in a huge amusement park.
One day, while sitting posing for a selfie, the spirit of Mickey Mouse enters his body through a hole in his head. Apocalyptic scenes follow, where the Sikh wallah, the amusement park and the whole of Germany lift off into the sky and eventually land on a huge planet called Guruantia, in a distant galaxy. It is there that the Sikh bloke becomes a warped spiritual leader who thinks he is Dog, the name Guruantians call God.
The series ends with the Sikh guy nailed to a cross. He looks down at the multitude and with his last breath whispers, “Forgive me, Lord for I know not what I do.”
It all sounds a bit far-fetched so I will probably give the series a miss.
”Yes, Shantam, the man who has spent years around Osho´s commune and left his well-cushioned life in India, has lived for years on social security.”
Shantam, why did you leave Osho’s commune & your “well-cushioned life in India”? The way you have been consistently literally vocal after J & A I am wondering if J & A were behind taking away your well-cushioned life in India!
Kavita, it could well be the case that Shantam’s well-padded life is an oblique reference to the padded room he inhabited for some years, before his escape from a mental hospital in India.
Lokesh, Mr. Nobody is writing with his bruised ego.
It is ok, Lokesh. We are not enemies, just playing Zen Boxing with the words!
Shantam says several times in this string that those who left the Osho communes ended up claiming social security, etc. in western countries, etc.
This is really a sort of Shantam nonsense or projection and needs to be nailed. I know many who, like myself, have led creative lives and earned their own living over many years.
Parmartha, I hope other bloggers too will refute my charge, even without revealing much.
In the end, I believe our commitment is to be closer to truth rather than to claim victory like barristers.
Shantam, I suggest you stop wasting your own and others’ time and energy by peddling untruths as facts, as you have so blatantly done re the post-commune lives of sannyasins.
To claim “I don’t write about physics but the subject I am passionate about and know facts and figures” was a lie, born out of sheer fantasy, driven by your particular mode of escaping from reality, whereby you probably even believed it yourself.
Then, when you’re cornered, you try to make out your only concern is the truth! Do you really think we’re that stupid not to see you’re simply attempting to ‘save face’?
Do you actually see the point, what gets you into difficulties time and again? Or do you deny it all, telling yourself your critics are a bunch of arseholes, and anyway, no one has suffered like you have, so you must be ‘right’?
Frank, Arpana, Kusum, Tan, Kavita, Madhu, Anand Yogi, Martin, Lokesh, Veet, Preetam, Swamishanti, Satchit and you, Satyadeva. 14 people are enough for a broader survey about their work experience in the real world.
It is a common psychological fact, it takes years of effort and psychoanalysis to remove strains of the cult. I know how much Osho cult has nourished me and how much toll it has taken.
Surely, Satyadeva was always an outsider, a consumer who pays the bill and gets the commodity. It will be shame to treat him as the gambler, the way Osho has depicted.
MOD:
Martin HASN’T BEEN HERE FOR A LONG TIME. WE’RE NOT SURE WHETHER TWO OR THREE OTHERS HAVE LONG-TERM OR ANY OSHO COMMUNE EXPERIENCE. BTW, Anand Yogi IS A SPOOF – AND YOU’VE MISSED OUT THE EDITOR!!
Shantam, you confidently state, “14 people are enough for a broader survey about their work experience in the real world”, yet it seems, as well as downplaying or censoring anything I might say, you might struggle to get 10 or 11 survey respondents.
Moreover, to claim that’s anywhere near “enough” for a representative sample of thousands of ex-commune sannyasins is blatantly false, in fact any market or social research professional would dismiss out of hand results from such a limited number, not to mention the total lack of screening by key factors such as age, gender, nationality, education, marital status, health, qualifications, previous work experience, and so on.
In your desperation to ‘prove’ you’re ‘right’, you’re willing to sacrifice intellectual integrity, a characteristic, of course, of all hyped-up fanatics.
However, I’d set your chances of achieving anything like your assumption of 60% long-term casualties, in emotional and work/financial terms, as a direct consequence of having to leave an Osho commune, as absolutely minimal. I wouldn’t bother, if I were you, unless you enjoy humiliation, of course….
And btw, you’ve missed out two more contributors, Anubodh and Simond – both of whom I’d strongly back to fail to make your 60% ‘post-commune misery quota’. You’ve put your foot right in it again, Shantam.
“Imagine the case of someone supervising an exceptional team of workers, all of them striving towards a collectively held goal; imagine them hard-working, brilliant, creative and unified. But the person supervising is also responsible for someone troubled, who is performing poorly, elsewhere. In a fit of inspiration, the well-meaning manager moves that problematic person into the midst of his stellar team, hoping to improve him by example.
What happens? And the psychological literature is clear on this point. Does the errant interloper immediately straighten up and fly right? No. Instead, the entire team degenerates. The newcomer remains cynical, arrogant and neurotic. He complains. He shirks. He misses important meetings. His low-quality work causes delays, and must be redone by others. He still gets paid, however, just like his team mates.
The hard workers who surround him start to feel betrayed. “Why am I breaking myself into pieces striving to finish this project,” each thinks, “when my new team member never breaks a sweat?”
The same thing happens when well-meaning counsellors place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilised peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability. Down is a lot easier than up.”
Jordan B. Peterson, ’12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos’ (pp. 78-79), Penguin Books Ltd.
Arpana, are you answering Shantam, agreeing with him about Satyadeva?
Are you blaming Osho for giving Sannyas to Shantam?
A rotting apple can cause other apples in close proximity to begin to rot as well.
A group is as strong as its weakest link, so the group is dependent on the weak link. If they want to stay strong, what to do with the weak link? Try to make it stronger by correction, nagging, judging, throw mud, ignore, compassion, seeing that it’s just a game, or just accept and let the group be as weak as its weakest link?
I still do not understand who you’re pointing at.
If you do not want to answer me you are free, but faking to do it makes you look like a sour apple that complains about rotten apples.
It does not seem to me that Osho has prevented anyone from getting better by working in the Buddhafield.
Satyadeva is 1000 times more self-aware than Shantam. Shantam has the self-awareness of a three year-old whose parents haven’t taught him how to behave properly.
VF said, “If you do not want to answer me you are free.”
That’s very generous of you, but a bit manipulative.
Arpana said: “VF said, “If you do not want to answer me you are free.”
That’s very generous of you, but a bit manipulative.”
A bit manipulative is to complain about who did you notice that it is not generous throw stones hiding the hand.
MOD:
to complain about who did you notice that it is not generous throw stones hiding the hand.
NOT SURE WHAT THIS MEANS, Veet F.
@MOD:
“throwing the stone and hiding the hand” is a saying, like that one about the ostrich that hides the head in the sand, and describes ‘avoidance behaviour’, a form of neurosis that inspires behaviour that deviates from the achievement of well-being.
Perhaps initially, Arpana thought that alluding to the presence of bad apples would have contributed to the general well-being, avoiding making enemies by explicitly naming them, as, for example, Shantam does about the Resort.
Arpana prefers to support Satyadeva, who does not give a damn about Resort and therefore does not have any problems with enemies, apart from Shantam, who says he loves that place as it was in the past: “an exceptional team of workers, all of them striving towards a collectively held goal; imagine them hard-working, brilliant, creative and unified.”
ROTFLMAO.
MOD:
Veet F, THIS MEANS Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass/Arse Off,
Cheers, Arps – the cheque obviously arrived then?
Arpaaanaaa is 2000 times more self-aware (notice the self) than Satyadeva or Shantam…How do i know this? Well, ehhh…it was just a thought that came up, and I believed it to be true….
Hmmmm, Levina, what a nice Kolibri kind-of short visit to the net, from your place, bringing up a real smile at my place….
MOD:
Kolibri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2mm_Kolibri
Madhu:
I meant the Kollibri bird, you Idiots!
MOD:
WELL, Madhu, THE ABOVE LINK WAS WHAT Google SHOWED WHEN WE SEARCHED. LOOKING AGAIN, Wiki GIVES 11 DIFFERENT MEANINGS FOR THE WORD! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolibri
QUITE FUNNY REALLY!
Madhu:
WELL, Moderators,
YOU´RE PROBABLY LIVING IN A MILITARY FILTERBUBBLE, ARE YOU?
ME – I M COMING FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE!
MOD:
YES, Madhu, WE PROBABLY ARE – POST-RANCH TRAUMA, PROBABLY!
P.S:
Btw, you are implicitly putting on the same level work with alienation for a salary (Marx) and work freely and lovingly around a Master (Osho).
That’s good to know.
Stephen Hawking said that a good question was ‘why there is a universe, rather than not’.
And that the question was meaningful. It is sometimes dismissed by some metaphysicians.
I would say that in many conversations over some 40 years this is a question many sannyasins have shared and discussed with me.
This does not make Stephen Hawking a sannyasin, but perhaps someone we would happily say we travelled with.
The other day my post was to glorify the contribution of western genius. I believe even without some kind of guru or meditation, discoverers and scientists from the West are chosen few of the universe.
Dear friends, next time you have fever and body pain try to think with gratitude about those who meditated on the compounds and molecules to create medicines. One tablet works faster and is more efficient than prayers to all the masters and mystics.
Yes, Stephen Hawking travelled the whole universe with his mind.
Yes, Kusum, I guess it was his uni-verse, ’cause it didn’t appear in my mind!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5514939/Stephen-Hawkings-final-legacy-detect-universes.html
“Just two weeks before his death, Stephen Hawking submitted a research paper revealing how to detect evidence of a multiverse and predicting the end of our existence.
The multiverse is a theory that our universe is just one of many others out there caused by the Big Bang.
The paper, which was completed on his deathbed, discusses the idea that we could measure other universes using a detector on a spaceship.”
When i read this prophecy of “this world coming to an end” from a physicist, it reminded me of Osho too.
Sometimes I wonder, why not Earth becomes enlightened and achieves Nirvana?
And ‘Theory of Everything’, a film about the life of Stephen Hawking, is on tonlght at 10pm on ITV3.
Yes, Swamishanti, the film, ‘Theory of Everything’, is done as a Docu-Soap honouring that remarkable Being (now we can also say, honouring his Life, his family, his contrahends as his friends – and not least, his legacy) with as much loving respect and awareness as conceivably possible.
Thanks for the tv tip, SS, I watched the film last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.