Kailash – An Osho Experiment to provoke God?

Osho’s Kailash Experiment

In 1973 Osho tried his first “communal” experiment. In many ways it was a failure, and it is always a surprise to me that five years later he began to again court the commune idea in such a big way and talk about it in such large terms, and then actually do it. Do the enlightened somehow miss out on the ordinary?

Kailash was the name of the farm and commune, it was a long, long, way from anywhere. Take a few day’s train journey from the then Bombay to Chandrapur and alight! Then get on a four hour local bus (described by some as the most agonising of their life!)  to a village called Saoli. Then Saoli was a general store, a couple of buildings and dust, and then dust! Two roads, one pointing back and the other on into the jungle.  From here on in, this was bullock cart country only, and walking the only possibility. And at least a couple of hours walk into the jungle… to the farm.

When the first gang of sannyasins arrived, (all volunteers), they made their own dwellings in the time honoured way in India, using cow shit, gathering it and then mixing with water, and then spreading it on the earth to create a flooring…. quite quickly a non monsoon communal building is created with reeds, everyone except the leader sleeps in it.

Food was the biggest hassle, basically there was not enough to eat for manual work – but this was contrived. Somehow the guy Osho had put in charge believed in starving as a form of personal growth, there was plenty of money thrown at the project, and food could have been bought, but, then you get leaders don’t you who have mad ideas… Stalin comes to mind…

Messages from Osho arrive, this guy should stay in charge…

The leader gets another idea…. everyone should live like Indian peasant farmers… no chairs, always trying to squat deep on one’s haunches, difficult for most westerners… wearing only lunghis…

The leader not only wants his share of work, he wants meditation… get up at 5am, and then dynamic… the diet is mainly sugi for breakfast and rice for lunch.

Then Veena writes to Osho about the food, he replies via Laxmi…

Eat what you will and drop all this nonsense of a diet…

Interesting that her name means instrument of love…

So the communards are eating again, but then  comes that old Indian friend… dysentery.

Some left after a few months, as one Irish sannyasin said “I want to die with one arm around a tart and the other around a bottle of good Irish whisky. This boy’s getting out of here”…

And so though I don’t know an actual witness of the ending of Kailesh it does so, and after less than a year, or so the rumoured record says.

Now there were lessons there surely for the future. Unrestrained leadership with carefully disguised mental health issues?  – being just one. Long days of surrender to someone else who is loopy, and the body not used to continual manual labour…. Osho a distant figure, maybe not really in touch with what was going on, on the ground, or just maybe that’s how he wanted it to be… ?

Any views, especially from anyone who was at Kailash…

Parmartha

 

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15 Responses to Kailash – An Osho Experiment to provoke God?

  1. Swami Prem Arpana says:

    Have felt for years that this sannyas Osho world is primarily a forum for working though issues about status. Authority. Power. Superior and inferior. Submission and aggression.
    All the barriers to the kind of relationships we wan, that can only happen through balance, assertiveness. This was just another group within the group that is the sannyas world.

  2. Swami Prem Martyn says:

    Parmartha.. rice rations, tropical heat, loony leader..crazy building project volunteer officers in charge ,all wearing regulation clothing,plus dysentery and a surprising resemblance of the loony leader to…. Alec Guiness ?…I think what happened is that you took a left instead of taking a right on that jungle path..there’s a film clip here of the Bridge over the River Kwailesh (notice the black rober in the opening shot in the sparse meditative interior )….

  3. Swami Prem Martyn says:


    The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

  4. Lokesh says:

    In the old days, mid-seventies, Kailash was still fresh in the minds of a few people who were in Poona One. Over time it started to enter the realm of myth….if you’d participated you gained insider status. Shiva, Hugh Milne, was there from the start and it was probably round about then that his personal mantra began to form, namely ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’.
    I’m currently reading some Osho first editions from the sixties. Osho then and what he was to turn into during the seventies are two stages of his life where it is hard to find a bridge. Osho’s language was very religious during the sixties…the Lord etc….and at times in stark contrast to what came later. One thing that remains a constant was Osho’s ideas about experimentation. Failure is inherant in experimentation so no big deal if Kailesh (Kailash I believe) turned out to be a bit of a hot and dusty disaster. Things moved on and many of Osho’s experiments went on to be successful…dynamic meditation etc.

  5. satyadeva says:

    At that time I was an enthusiastic practiser of dynamic meditation and anything else that was put on at the old Nirvana Centre in Bell Street, central London, one of the very first Osho centres in the West, run by the same Veena Parmartha refers to in the article.

    We newbies heard about Kailash of course and at that point I envied the people over there, imagining it to be a wonderful sort of life, full of healthy meditative catharsis (!), free ‘kirtan’ dancing etc. and without the existential anxiety of having to choose what to do every day, but just to ‘follow orders’. Back then, that didn’t bother me one iota, I was simply so pleased at how this new discovery seemed to be transforming my life, after nearly five years of depressive dysfunction.

    I couldn’t really relate to others’ expressed worries about having to ‘surrender’ to a leader, I recall thinking that with ‘Bhagwan’ around, nothing could go wrong! (Interesting to realise that this attitude corresponded to a very happy, optimistic, almost carefree (and in fact, pretty brief!) period of my life (in contrast to much of what had gone before), but one where I had certainly yet to ‘grow up’, despite being 26 years old).

    Re the food issue at Kailash, I recall tales filtering back, relayed by Veena before she went over there herself, that in response to complaints ‘Bhagwan’ had simply suggested that the communards learn to ‘live on the air’ they were breathing!! It seems he changed his advice after Veena herself complained….

  6. r p macmurphy says:

    on the subject of provoking god…
    1973 was a long time ago..
    “tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree” was the best selling song of the year…

    its got to be done in the present
    with some nod and wink to the old maguses who set the scene…
    here`s an up-to-date invocation/provocation……

    o!mighty mischeivious,irreligious,sacreligeous,gargantuous,prodigious,rampageous,rumbunctious magus….
    o! thaumaturgus of con consciousness elevatus ab spiritus sanctus,aqua vitae,nitrus gasus,valius,wackus bacchus,magicus fungus,smackus, tabletus de tripmegestius.
    hallowed be thy name ad dopus dealus powertripus dodgus medicus et tantricus succubus therapus coitus interruptus findus sexus fucus fleecus et leavus….
    o!fantasticus faustus beelzebob`s your uncle,blackus magicus biggus dickus lodus of chicus, maximus hubris et selfless phallus
    ……….we want what you`ve got……

    amor vitus risus….

  7. alokjohn says:

    I read about it in Osho India and Me as well. Sounds like the Olde Boy knew roughly what was going on. Prob felt the worker.s needed a tough regime to break their egos a bit. Masters will risk their disciples lives for their growth, or so i have read

  8. shantam says:

    If Kailash was an Osho experiemnt to provoke God, no harm to say, God changed the noisy neighbourhood.

  9. shantam says:

    From Kailesh to Osho Resort fully controlled by the best of the west brains trained by Osho will be really an MNC brand if these new age meditators try to open their second branch in the heartland west. Any way recession like situation in USA can make the way for cheap property needed for this project.

  10. shantam says:

    World of people around Osho is a living testamony that Ego just don´t Go by reading or listening Master´s words, on the contrary devices of Osho bring Ego games on the surface for the couragoeus to encounter. No wonder many such devices have been put in the godown by the people who are not willing to confront their will to power. Every single Osho project started leaking not because Osho was not in tue with time but disciple´s illusions to be above the gravitation pull.

  11. Lokesh says:

    As an experiment in provoking the shits it sounds like Kailash was a resounding success. A few years later, during the theraphy years, I often heard it shouted, ‘You should go to Kailash. because you are full of shit!’
    Perhaps you should make a pilgrimage to Kailash, Shantam.

  12. Kavita says:

    so wonderful & lovely . . to read / be part of this experiment . . :)

  13. Swami Prem Martyn says:

    there should be a law against Guru worshipping through hard volunteer work in jungles…have you thought of writing to your MP ? Maybe you could sue the Osho estate … under broken dreams ,shattered trust, emotional and personal disillusion created through cathartic breathing programmes resulting in erratic levels of deciding for oneself what the hell its all about…and an impaired ability to impress anyone with a search for spirituality.. or…write a book about sannyassins mental and hallucinogenic experiences in jungles..name it : ‘Alotoftrips Now’

  14. Its always to expect failure to be accompaning any projct that is being started for the first time,so pl.familiarise with its markings of suc’cess…!
    Now comes the suc’ceed as we’re moving from *jungle(of confusion!) to *forest (of innocence!),as the *master has it,and it’s a good omen to watch for,as troubles arising from all sides as the confusion that underlines the sentiments that the Lord is creating within/outside!*Where from,lord?*Who “R” We?(finally!)*Who am I(in this confusion?)no worries the lord has its ways!Om namah Sivaya,om namah Ramanaya,Om namah Oshoaya!

  15. Swami Prem Martyn says:

    Re above post..You are a basket case, Bhaskar…for thou writest in medieval english gibberish twenty first century indian bollox.. .. so moot it the E+2 =Mc Lord bananas, hello rickshaw Om am cuckoos nest …..nuts… okdokey

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