Nirman Reflects on the Second Gauchhami
I believe most readers will know or remember that when Rajneeshpuram was created, there were three Gachchhamis that were an essential prayer and part of daily life.
I am highlighting here the second jewel, taking refuge in the sangha – Sangham sharanam gachchhami. This technically alludes to bowing in respect to the community of those who learn the teachings, seek the understanding of the work, and aspire to embody the teachings. Sangha points to those who are consciously evolving, sharing their understanding and bliss with others, and acting as teachers of freedom to other beings and helping them discover these jewels. Is that happening today in the world of Osho sannyasins or is there room for a better feel of an Osho sangha than what exists today?
Years ago, when I was new to Osho, I found His teachings not so easy to understand. Coming from a completely non-religious, non-spiritual, and quite a mainstream family made things more difficult, as I had no one to help me understand what I was listening to in Osho’s tapes. I found concepts like no-mind, awareness, jump-into-the-unknown, and original face very hard to understand. So, to me, it is very clear that sanghas or communes or Osho centers are very much needed to play the role of mentoring and coaching the beginners in addition to teaching and facilitating meditations.
I read that when Osho was in His body the various Osho centres around the world, while fully independent, stayed in close communication with Osho. I also heard that there were exchange programs where sannyasins and sannyas kids from one commune could go to live at another one for things like meditation or therapist trainings, work-as-meditation programs, or children’s education. From what I have read and heard it seems that there was a sense of a large global sannyas family when Osho was in His body. It feels to me that Osho was, in many ways, the glue that kept the various centers and communes moving together to further Osho’s work. He was the hub, and the centres and communes were like spokes in the wheel.
Now, with Osho not in the body, and with many of the first-generation sannyasins aging or leaving their bodies, we have seen many old centers close down and activities slow down or simply wither away in the absence of new or active leaders. The recent upsurge of terrorism (e.g., the bombing of the German Bakery) and harsh economic pressures across the globe have also impacted the ability of people to travel internationally to Osho centers. Also, what can be called ego clashes among the family members have led to many rather unfortunate circumstances, such as blacklisting of people from entering certain communes or the writing of slanderous “open letters” to each other.
While I am not arguing for or against such open letters or blacklisting practices, which are open to debate, I do think that such instances are manifestations of deeper root causes. These causes include the lack of heartful communication in the community and fewer occasions to meet and bond as a community (such as the world celebrations in Rajneeshpuram).
Similar events are happening in the virtual world of the Internet. Of late, numerous Internet communities of Osho’s friends have appeared, which is great, and yet it is not uncommon to see slander and verbal abuse galore in many of these online forums. To people new to the world of Osho sannyasins these easily visible discussions in various online forums, and some more widely talked about issues that pop up as Googled results, may seem both confusing, ironical, and may even sound like some sort of infighting going on within the sannyas community.
To the world, this may appear to be a somewhat sorry state for a community like ours that is like a newborn baby – so young compared to other global communities (like followers of Christ, Buddha, etc.), and more importantly, one that is inspired by one of the greatest Masters who is most known for spreading the message of love and awareness! I would not really call it dysfunctional, but more like a young family with teething troubles. Can we do away with all such heated exchanges, or is it even wrong to have them? We probably can’t do away with them, because, firstly, this is being human and, secondly, we as sannyasins are highly individualistic, sensitive folks who are not afraid to voice our feelings fearlessly. At the same time, I hope we can shift our focus more toward creating light. That is one of Osho’s messages that I continually remind myself of when at times I get bogged down with the mundane or fall in the dungeon of judgments. I remain extremely hopeful of seeing a breakthrough in this area of the community of a Master who had unlimited compassion, patience, and love for everyone.
In my mind Osho’s work has just begun and will see a huge surge in the days and years to come. However, I think that much more needs to be done at various levels to make Osho’s teachings available to a wider cross-section of people. While so far the majority of Osho’s friends and sannyasins across the world are the highly literate, the rich, or the intelligentsia, I feel that Osho’s message is even more relevant today than in the past and very timely for the youth of today who are questioning all the old belief systems, the hierarchical structures, and so on. Some studies also suggest that on an average the young people of today are more aware and evolved than in yesteryears – Osho may have called this evolution!
Secondly, with so much religious violence prevalent around the world, I see the youth across the world giving up faith in the organized religions. I say so not just from my own observation but also based on current statistics that suggest that there is a huge decline in interest in established religions among young people. More and more, younger people are becoming non-believers and moving away from the organized religions. While this remains a big concern for some organized religions, for Osho’s world this is great news – as we see more and more young people getting drawn to Osho’s teachings. As the founder of an online community of Osho lovers, I get many inquiries from new seekers asking for direction and guidance to help them understand Osho’s teachings easily. Frankly, I feel that much more can be done in the direction of supporting the young people in their quest to understand Osho’s work.
I believe that the time has come for us to play together as a global community (or Osho’s garden of unique flowers), to facilitate more and more growth of Osho’s work. I believe this is happening now and that more can be done. We can do a better job of helping Osho reach new seekers. And equally importantly, as I mentioned from my experience, we need to find better ways to help new seekers easily interpret Osho’s concepts. From the fast degradation of both human society (terrorism, crime, etc.) and of our planet Earth (drilling, plastic waste, deforestation, etc.), I have reasons to say that matters are most urgent and the need critical to give a massive boost to the Osho Revolution of the birth of the New Man and New Woman!
This article first appeared in Viha Connection and is reproduced with permission. Viha’s website is at http://www.oshoviha.org
Alas..Osho born before the arrival of big tide in information technology. As the trend is, by sitting in His room in Jabalpur, he would have nourished the master disciple bond through the website. Get the blessings through the webiste, share the donation through pay Pal. Spirituality in our times has become Livejasmine.com (Lol)
Sangham Sharnam Gacchami in boxershorts by having the tab on the lap!
nirman.. i’m exhausted already…anyone for tea ?
i don’t know which rose coloured spectacles you’re wearing nirman but i’ve just counted the varieties of osho communes i have either lived in , worked in, visited , trained in,meditated in, had extensive contact with
…the total number is, in no particular order ,
Miasto,Italy
Vancouver, Canada
Kalptaru, London
Afroz, Greece
Osho Humaniversity, London
Osho Humaniversity ,Holland
Sofia Centre .Bulgaria
Rome Centre , Italy
Ko Hsuan .UK
Gondhwana Byron Bay.Australia
Freemantle Osho Community Australia
Pune, 1, 2, 3 post Osho
Osho London Community
Osho Centre Bohemia Cz Republic
Osho friends, Havana, Cuba
I don’t wish for a moment to remind myself of why the majority of these so-called Osho places were in my experience utterly utterly despondent.Both at the time and more coherently on reflection.
Just for starters …I never liked then at age 20 or now at age 52 Pune 1 or Medina/Kalptaru managements/therapists etc etc, or their vibe …ugly disastrous people who couldn’t run a dogs home without malice.The list of names is endless.Which meant the big dream of living next to the master and his people was at least fraught.At the very least.
Next the Insaniversity. ‘Nuff said.
I heard about the ranch from the inside and what it was like to be shoved around .Thanks i never went.
If i went on and on it would sound like i was having a psychotic episode.But facts are facts whether i felt ok about them is another matter, granted.But i can corroborate the facts of dislike and have done with my most trusted friends, it all comes out in the wash eventually.
I could only recommend the experience of just one maybe two locations, and that only in parentheses,(brackets) and no i’m not going to look back in anger and itemise it all, thats a waste of hot air…But if your open letter includes being read by me….just include me out as I’m utterly delirious at never having to try out another Osho vision ever again.Now dear readers judge that any which way you like… and no i’m sparing myself and you any further posts on this Cheap Rose’ Whine.
cheers..
All of those gachchhamis didn’t do squat back in rajneeshpuram days.. isn’t that the point? no matter how many mantra one does or by how many, they are still “SIMPLY WORDS” nothing more- action is needed not words, not mantras- mantras are for the stupid masses; action is done by intelligent, awake and aware people.
Sounds like you still associate spirituality, sannyas, meditation with being nice. That’s Xtianity (:
As long as the senior most sannyasins now tickling closer to their death don´t acknowledge the importance of Osho, Pune, the biggest brand in the world of Osho, communities will grow, sannyasins will meet but in a very small personal gatherings. After all , gas stations cannot become refineries.
Martyn, somehow I am following you the same direction. And I have not had even 20% percent of the journey you seem have had. My list is also very short of the Osho places I would love to stay longer than a month. I think there are 2 fundamental problems: 1) there is no enlnt guy like Osho sitting there and spreading his fragrance; 2) all the unenlnt guys like therapists and gurus sit there pretending to be God knows what and it stinks. We animals can smell egos from far away, much more than God, meditation, nature. So it kills it for me too.
Western communes are full of showmen and eastern have become so religious! So far I have enjoyed a bit here and a bit there, but fundamentally do not feel there is a Sangha support at all.
young people are moving away from established religions
and osho`s community is a young baby compared to the global communities of jesus and buddha and we must work a lot harder at osho`s work,in order to make osho into a global community that can compete with xians and buddhists so the “youth of today” (i laugh as i remember the time when condescending old farts once refered to me like that!) can then reject the new global osho religion…..
good thinking batman….
i love that neo-sannyas hubris.
competing with jesus and buddha?
actually,the osho movement is somewhere way behind the hare krishnas,paedo baba,wicca,paganism,sri sri mickey mickey,the raelians and prem rabbit…
in fact,we could learn a thing or two from the raelians about self-promotion..
a journalist recently had this to say about them:
“they are good-looking sexy nudists who worship space aliens.
if that doesn`t get your attention,you`re probably dead..”
or maybe,as we are all great mantra lovers now,we should get some tips off the hare krishnas or paedo baba`s lot,as they seem to know how to shake off scandal and still pull in the customers…..
Nirman wrote “In my mind Osho’s work has just begun and will see a huge surge in the days and years to come.”
Well yes, but surely not days and maybe several decades hence. I can only speak about the West, but IMHO it has regressed in the past few decades.
Okay, maybe today’s young people will change all, but my generation said the same thing, yet has obviously contributed to the gross materialism of today.
I think the world is moving into a period of chaos and war…..it will only be after a lot of people have lost everything that they will really start searching and find Osho.
I say, pass the sugar.
Although, jay. c. pennie, Nirman isn’t advocating or making a big deal of the prayer/mantra, he’s only using it to introduce his point re the possibilities of the ‘Osho Community’.
alok john- “chaos and war”- well, that’s existed in some for in all species since the beginning of life itself. many years ago(Genghis Khan time), killing and war was done in totality- leave no prisoners, kill the entire cities’ population if they resist, etc. This last few hundred years it seems chivalry has taken over in the act of making war and conquest. The british are the most famous in “cleaning” up war making, the rules of when to, how to, kill and being decent in the act of killing. What the fuck? now that’s madness. that just leads to a continuation of war.. hiding the grotesqueness of war. maybe if the Genghis Khan method of war making continued we might have one day realized the ugliness and put a stop to it once and for all. Alok- you think “the world is moving into a period of chaos and war”- what type of ecstasy are you taking?
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Satya deva- nice to see you again- and for lokesh- take a hike. s.d.– nirman’s even mentioning the past fiasco at rajneeshpuram and the daily ritual of gachchamis is one-sided. Now, if he were to mention the daily personal confrontations that went on at the ranch along with sheela’s nearly psychotic behavior and to be fair, the fun times that went on, the playfulness, the partying at the discos, the over abundance of sex, then i’d say he was being thorough in his outlook of the possibilties of the “Osho community”. As i said regarding the Keerti article, all of this went on with all of us dealing in an upfront and personal and face to face level. Not via facebook or some stupid blog. This generation of so-called sannyasins sit back, act even more neurotic from afar, often with anonymity. This generation and future generations probably won’t “get it”, in the “EST” way of speaking… not with fear of intimate contact, they won’t.. Facebook sucks- plain and simple.. the lazy person’s guide to intimacy and enlightenment. Now facebook take’s Osho’s saying -”A lazy man’s guide to enlightenment” to an entirely different plane of existence. A plane where human kinds’ self- destruction is clearly marked and everyone’s blinded by their fear of flying
I take your point, Jay.
I agree with Chetna. There is not much of a sanga, is there. But maybe mature people have to walk the path alone. I must say sometimes I find being a sannyasin very lonely.
Man, Nirman does not even seem to know that FUCKING was one of the old boy’s favorite words. I mean to say, ‘slander and verbal abuse galore in many of these online forums.’ Gee whiz, how awful! I am shocked!
It would be terrible if newcomers got the wrong impression. That is why there is lots of bad language…so they get the right impression!
Not much to say other than ,im greatful for the journey,as ive been diagnosed with lung cancer and given about 18mths to go and having served nealy one year,i take this opportunity to say thank u,to all fellow travellers in OSHO and it can only,be getting better with time,deeply inpressed as im,and thank u,to our consciousness that Osho is,first anf foremost not forgetting,Rahman Lord,Siv Lord,Christ(Yashua!)lord,Meher Baba lord,Krishnamurti lord,Suzuki lord all masters of consciousness pointing to Osho and the feeling of great fulness,despite this sickness,that is showing not to be a curse,but a means to help acertaint the guidance of *FAIRYSAINT,or the lunar side of lord’s conscioness!
Thank U, Osho!
see ya in some future evolution,god willin’!
Hi Amrit, I just finished reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. It is the second time I’ve read it fully and if you have not done already I suggest you read it also, because it is a beautiful and heart-warming book.
@ Alok John.
I came to sannyas and meditation with so many unconscious ideas about these matters. (I know now.) One of them being that to be a meditator, had to cut myself of, make myself a hermit. However have come to the personal understanding this is not so. To go into meditation is to be set apart, and the longer this goes on the less people around to connect with. Osho says meditate in the Disco (Words to that effect). To be a meditator in a disco, sober is to be a drop of oil in water. To be a meditator around people who are connected to co-dependency collections, which often use drink and drugs to bond is to be a drop of oil in water. Solitude follows meditation pursued in depth.
its not a great surprise that neosannyas wanderers are not up there competing at the top of the religion premier league with the big boys,but rather, facing life in the lower leagues with the likes of baba freeload and gurdjieff academicals…
the dental chair in the samadhi were always going to slightly undermine the credentials as serious contenders..
like having a giant blow-up banana in st peters square,
a bouncy castle on the burning ghats at varanasi
or a big wheel next to the kaaba..
its amazing how things go over time.
ol` buddha said dont make a statue of me when i`m gone…
and according to recent research,he died from eating a dodgy bacon butty,yet his religion is synonymous with the statues and vegetarianism….
to the extent,for example, that most newcomer buddhists are shocked to hear that the dalai lama is a meat eater.
did you know that when DL visited london ,the dean of westminster went to great lengths to provide veg food, but DL went for full english breakfast every morning?
full english breakfasts
laughing gas dental dens
the most important word in eng lang “fuck”
slander and verbal abuse
these are the stuff of true enlightenment,my idiotic retarded pygmy friends…..
I didn’t know you could get crossed lines on the internet, like you do on the telephone.. one minute i was having my comment moderated , and the next i’m in the emergency room , reading a list of deities…readying myself for the afterlife…
Amrit if you want an obituary then please start by illuminating us with more than the three snippets of your personality so far.. otherwise we, no matter how loving we are, will feel that you could do with help we can’t provide.. appropriate to your distress.. whatever that is….and you seriously risk not being taken at face value, and no one wants that do they ?
@Arpana,
You are right of course. It is just most of the sannyasins I know see sannyas as social work in one way or another. It gets a bit tiresome.
I should add that I am sixty, so most of the sannyasins I know are about that age, people who were around in the 70s and 80s.
Maybe younger sannyasins have a few more brains!
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cara dillon sings : magic..
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LOVELY POSTS everyone…nice to see contributors contributing….
Chetna cooooolllllll…..seeing has a magic of its own…isn’t it great that you know the difference !
RPM well spotted language use..from N’man’s post… i do hope you’re getting royalties for the gems.
Lokesh, time to pray at the sangha….. Assammm,….lapsang souchongggggg…… Darjeeeeeeeliiingggg
Alok : Better enjoy yourself loads then while there’s still time….
Satya deva…. the UN is currently seeing if the document above applies to all natural born liberators , and like you they are going through it point by point in the committee stage.
Shantam….When is spiritual night for you? Shall we make it Thursdays at Mcdonalds?
Jay c pennenbaker.. i want to retire and leave my feral posts for you to do
Kavita .. i left the forum… and am now in the piazza on my way home…
For the first time in a couple of decades I’m reading and enjoying an Osho book, Vedanta. ( I recently read a couple of cheapie first editions from the sixties…but found them a wee bit too holy holy) Published in 76 I actually attended the discourses. Dental chair apart, you have to hand it to the man for having his own enlightened slant on things. In particular I enjoy his take on the purposeless existence and how people who constantly rattle on about enlightened states…no-mind etc, are more than likely a million miles away from the actual reality. Funny too…this was when Mullah Nasruddin was about as risque as it got. Highly recommended.
Just finished reading all the Darshan Diaries by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, for the second time, although Ive read Hammer on the Rock ten times previously.
Life enhancing. Life enriching, and when you add in meditating in one form or other. Oh Boy.
Prem Martyn:
Satya deva…. the UN is currently seeing if the document above applies to all natural born liberators , and like you they are going through it point by point in the committee stage.
SD:
Quite so, PM, such matters are for too important to be left unexamined.
However, I hear that a significant portion of the committee are seriously intimating that the very use of the ‘Gacchami’ mantras (albeit used, ostensibly, to merely open a ‘public debate’ regarding the, er, ‘Osho Community’ – see my earlier post) might well tend to indicate a certain predisposition in the writer of the article to a certain – and possibly rather spiritually dangerous – sentimentalism regarding the potential of this ‘Community’ to revert – ie to devolve rather than evolve – to a type of ‘religious orthodoxy’ characterised by conventional mantra chanting (with the danger, of course, of this merging into hymn-singing), regular semi-compulsory attendance at communal gatherings (that might all too easily degenerate into religious ‘services’, of course), and, worst of all, the authoritarian imposition of mandatory standards of ultra-polite behaviour on all, er, ‘communicants’.
The Committee’s Minority Report is therefore awaited with both much interest – and indeed, trepidation.
Nirman you say: “I also heard that there were exchange programs where sannyasins and sannyas kids from one commune could go to live at another one for things like meditation or therapist trainings, work-as-meditation programs, or children’s education. From what I have read and heard it seems that there was a sense of a large global sannyas family when Osho was in His body.”
This was true for a short period of time between 1983 and 85. But not as you describe. It only applied to those described as full commune members and their children. I was a full commune member at that time, and “benefited” from a compulsory move from Medina (English commune) to Hamburg commune, and then to the Ranch. Compulsory in the sense that if I refused then I was invited to leave the commune.
Actually in the end of Sheela’s reign there were very few communes, they were large, and had to tow the party line, even to the extent of mimicking the Ranch menus! Control and conventional behaviour, as always went together.
This particular thing you mentioned did not bind the communes together, lots left because of the dictatorship involved, and many children were very unhappy when they had to leave the communes in which their parents served. Frankly it was a terrible advert for sannyas at the time, and the free atmosphere of today is much preferable.
If sannyasins want to move from commune to commune now this is possible but a question of free will, (see Prem Martyn’s recent post).
There has always been a debate about the anchorite spiritual life and that of a community but it need not be divisive. Just follow one’s inner voice carefully and the path will emerge.
Thanks for all the Contributions to this string.
Please remember that we put together the caravanserai option for an interactive site so that anyone was free within reason to start for example their own group, and also edit as they wished, etc. We are sorry that it took so long to restore due to overwhelming technical reasons we faced.
The main articles on the home page had a different intent which we would like to restore. Please start using the caravanserai again for more personal exchanges, discussions, etc.
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