Osho wrote many personal letters to those interested in him before the major departure into neo-sannyas in 1970. These letters were freshly translated into English in 1980 and appear under the Title “A Cup of Tea”.
Letter 54 written in 1969 has proved controversial over the years…
“Love.
I am one with all things -
in beauty,
in ugliness,
for whatsoever is – there I am.
Not only in virtue
but in sin too I am a partner,
and not only in heaven but hell too is mine.
Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu –
it is easy to be their heir,
but Genghis, Taimur and Hitler:
they are also within me!
No, not half - I am the whole of mankind.
Whatsoever is man’s is mine -
flowers and thorns,
darkness as well as light,
and if nectar is mine, whose is poison?
Nectar and poison – both are mine
Whoever experiences this
I call religious,
for only the anguish of such experience can
revolutionalise life on earth.
The interpretation of this letter has been used by some commentators to “explain” the Ranch experience. It has been used by others to suggest that all Osho is saying is that from where the enlightened sit they sit beyond both good and evil. And still others claim it is a typical piece of “Osho exaggeration used to throw the mind”.
I am not sure what is meant , except that Osho certainly did not want to be remembered as a “good man”, and the letter like Darshan responses were being directed at a single individual and a response to a letter that has not been archived… nonetheless it deserves discussion, and SannyasNews would be interested in on topic comments.
Parmartha
Without context we can only guess as to the specifics of this letter.It may well have been an ongoing exchange.
anyway…
Why do we find conundrums of consciousness attractive ?…Even if one manages to hint at something of a governing ‘quality’ or essence that manifests neurologically , but is not defined by that understanding then would that hint be enough for irretrievable immersion into the quality described or its ‘meaning’ ? I doubt it., very much ,despite your average mind shattering satori being great living testimony to such a (temporary) hinted, event.
Osho cannot help but absolutely talk in absolutes… just as the troops in the1950′s LSD experiments could not take anything seriously anymore, they were ontologically shattered. Language as we all know , cannot cycle backwards into consciousness..language and the metaphors used are an extension , but not an investigation of the absolute condition.Unless one is disposed to the quality described.Try saying ‘love’ with clenched teeth.
As an ethical investigation those ideas are concerned with cause, not the grappling with effect. Just as one cannot fight violence if one takes a position of non violence. One cannot be concerned with outcome if the outcome is not the goal.
It’s also perhaps the clearest exposition of ‘shit happens’ and that a requirement for justice is just not part of the demand for an insightful approach to living an unphased life .Justice or ethics don’t give you liberation per se . But even if you could buy that off the shelf, why would you ?
Its like asking why are we here and how comes nobody asked me if i wanted to be ? As i said ..shit happens, but that doesn’t mean all you do is watch. Get in there and muck in. It just wont do trying to be an immortal, leave them alone …its what they want ….
…..and only let them do what they want with you if you can do what you want with them.. that way you get justice. or fairs fair….makes me think of Tommy Cooper with the split uniform of the Nazi and the British officer….who is telling who what to do ?
it`s flowery poetry.
and very melodramatic in a kind of bollywood way..
i can see amitabh bacchan delivering those lines quite nicely.
yet,is he really saying anything fundamentally different from basic jungian psychology.?
that is to say…
to be fully yourself,you have to accept your “shadow”
that is to say,the polarity within you
the “evil” with the “good”,
the “black” with the “white”
the up with the down
the yin with the yang
etc ?
i guess you might also be asking….
does this mean you can poison folks in salad bars,knock off a few street losers and corrupt politicians or disembowell people for fun like ghengis khan
or maybe get whacked on hippy crack in your pleasure dome like kubla khan..
`cos you`re beyond good and evil?
well,whatever gets you thru the dark night of the soul,i guess…..
I’d say that the letter was just one more example of Osho trying to express how enlightened he was. The essence of the enlightened state is a unity which encapsulates and encompasses all the apparent opposites into what Hinduism calls oneness. Therefore it follows that one claiming to be enlightened would say that not only is he or she a witness to manifestations of light but also creations of unawarenes and darkness also. Basically Osho was taking the enlightenment thing to the ultimate level of incomparable abstraction and in so doing breaking out of the cage imposed by the idea that once enlightened one exists in a static state as opposed to exstatic. Historically there is nothing really new being said in this letter. Krishna addressing Arjuna on the battlefield told him to shoot the enemy down with his arrows, because viewed from his lofty transcendental perspective it was all an illusion.
As for the commentators using this letter to explain the ranch experience, I’d say doing such a thing is falling prey to not wanting to acknowledge a few hard facts. Ultimately it makes no difference and for a credo built around such statements as ‘life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved’ it seems highly ironic that there exists such a strong need for explanations.
“Osho exaggeration used to throw the mind”. Possibly, but then again not very successful in the case of the person who proposed such an idea, which can only have been formulated by someone using their mind or perhaps being used by their mind as a spokesman.
The discussion will be more meaningful if we go into the psychology of people who are obsessively fascinated by the rajneeshpuram phase. For example, Parmarha can share how much disillusionment he felt after the debacle, how it changed the course of his life etc.
As i have seen during Pune days, not many people from ranch phase had enough energy and financial resources on their disposal to invest again at the new bigining. Seems like foot soldiers don’t get the second chance!
the enlightened guy from his lofty perspective may be witness to the creation of good and evil both,as lokesh suggests…
but he still goes one way rather than the other..
i never saw osho disembowelling people with his bare hands like old genghis,for example..
but he acted more like laotsu and buddha,for sure..
and why bother with vegetarianism?
if you are beyond it all,a few burgers can be good,the abbatoir is after all,just an illusion,a cosmic play like in the gita…
what i mean to say is,you dont have to be enlightened to see that polarities are just that..
poles…of the same thing…
you can have a higher aesthetic of eating veg cos meatheads exist.
you have good because evil exists
we can be conscious,but dont forget the unconscious guys without whom it would all be impossible…
i can be a lotus because the mud exists..
really,it is all co-existent…..
and i doubt it all has much to do with the shenanigans on the ranch.
genghis khan was more for beheading whole populations and shoving their heads on stakes..
salmonella in a salad bar and poisoned pens up the ass?
genghis, adolf, tamurlaine would not have been impressed….
Shantam, you already posted more or less the same statement on the forum. Why don’t you examine your own psychology instead of someone elses? That way you might realize that what you are saying is basically a projection of yourself and quite uninteresting to boot. Of course, you have to chuck in a vague metaphor as a conclussion but what it is actually alluding to is anyone’s guess.
So here is an opening for you, Shantam, a chance to enter a dialogue instead of a diatribe. What does, ‘Seems like foot soldiers don’t get the second chance!, actually mean?
Macmurphy, that made me laugh. The vegetarian thing is more a question of aesthetics. Ever tried looking in a butcher shop window while under the influence of LSD. Scary!
darkness and light
white and black
god and the devil
genghis khan and buddha
tamurlaine and laotsu
psychosis and enlightenment
shantam and lokesh
the oaf and the genius
just polarities…
they are all within all of us….
om muddy puddly hum….
they are all polarities
mr shantam cares more about others’ mental condition than his own… Delusions of grandeur, maybe? Is he looking to start his own “Buddha- Field” and wants advice, perhaps hire some of the old-timers who used to live at the ranch. Osho did what he did caused he wanted to or thought he had to for whatever reason. Personally, I would have bought Bentley’s not Rolls. Diamond crusted watches, they’re common stones, how about rubies, sapphires, and emeralds- nice and colorful too.
Analyzing an Osho statement!!
You’ve turned the letter into a koan.
Yes, I was admiring a bentley coupe just the other evening and I thought to myself, by golly, I’d love one of those…all the Stones have em so they have to be good.
Thanks for this, Parmartha.
So we were warned! – “the anguish of such experience” – he is after all embarked on a passion play, inviting us to participate in the drama.
Here is no room for ‘betrayal’.
“nectar and poison, both are mine”… hmm.
there was an old man called bhagwan
who had a cup of tea with genghis khan
he said:”being a buddha is just too easy,
i need to try something less cheesy,
so i`ll spin `em a bloody good yarn….”