“In the West they have destroyed poverty, they have destroyed much disease, they have made man’s life longer. They have made man’s body more beautiful, they have made man’s existence more comfortable, but the man himself — for whom all these comforts, all these conquests of science and technology have been done — is missing. They have completely forgotten for whom it was done. The inside is hollow. Everything is there, all around, and in the middle there is a retarded consciousness, almost non-existential.” (Osho, ‘Beyond Enlightenment’)
To not get caught up in society’s games, to realise what really is important to us, is one of the questions that comes with the spiritual path. Once you start thinking about freedom, happiness, what is causing your suffering, you soon find out that society is not your friend. Society wants to make you into a replaceable cog in the machine of business.
When Osho says “the inside is hollow” we get an inkling of what is missing. As soon as you resign yourself to being a cog, you lose a certain authority over your life, you take the dollars industry offers to you and obey the goals set for you; but in fact taking sannyas is a taking back of that authority. It is an act of rebellion against society’s machine.
In my case and in my father’s that took the form of finding a way to have time for ourselves. My father — also a sannyasin — worked as a teacher and was able to reduce his hours, so that he basically had half-days off, as well as having long holidays. I worked in the games industry as a software developer and technical director, and have been able to take a ten-year career break. These two different approaches to earning money allowed us to find time to spend on the spiritual quest.
In the time following Osho’s death this took the form of occasionally visiting Poona. The last time I was there was in 1997, I remember standing in front of the Ashram gates and later working in the book design department. My father and I shared a little flat overlooking the river, near the burning ghats, I remember the unmistakable smells of India, spices and plants and execrable other influences.
Living this life has been a letting go of luxury, that is true. I always followed my passion, doing what I enjoyed and being good at it, but with simple surroundings. Ultimately, as U.G. Krishnamurti said, man does not need more than shelter, clothes and food. Simply living and being content with ordinary things is a good discipline, although I was never afraid to spend money on the things I loved, whether that was single malt whiskey or photography. For me it was clear that it’s better to have been time-rich but money-frugal, than to have been money-rich and died of stress at age fifty-five.
Then, what does being time-rich bring? My father used his half-days to meditate, read the paper and snooze. I joke a little, he also did a lot of Yoga, but there is a certain relaxation which is conducive to spiritual growth. It reminds me: there was a slogan on t-shirts sold in the commune, which went “Is-ness is my Business”. I took it to mean that ‘being’ was what was important, and that meditation was about discovering what was within. Later I found that prolonged silence is good for one’s being and self-knowledge, that there are things to be found in silence which you will not find in partying.
Yet is sannyas not also about celebration? It is the little things in life, bringing a farmer’s cake from the supermarket or some fried fish to share with friends from the Wednesday market in town. A good new film on DVD in the evening. A Saturday paper to read with a double espresso. A birthday at a friend’s house nearby. Ordinary life, it turns out, is pretty good.
Good article, Nitya Prem.
But what is the case if society is an illusion?
Why should one escape from an illusion?
Not only Sannyas is about celebration.
The whole Existence celebrates itself in its different forms.
And yeah, good auld words:
“Living in the world but not being part of it …”
I don’t think it is about escape from society. You spend time in society earning your money, and you spend time pursuing the spiritual path. How much time you want to dedicate to that is a personal thing, for some people listening to an evening lecture is enough, while others want to go all-in, give up working and do nothing else.
But always you are confronted with “shelter, clothes and food”. U.G. found a good woman to be with, and she took care of him. For others all they can afford is a yearly solo holiday to the Resort, which is a celebration and a de-stressing. There are different strategies for earning money and the spiritual path.
The ultimate, I think, is the way of the Buddhist monk, where you give it all up, live with no possessions and beg for food in a distant corner of Thailand. The problem with that is that you’re no longer free to follow your own spiritual path, but have to spend your time thinking about Buddhist beliefs.
The other problem with that is you depend upon the goodwill of others to keep you from starving. How can that option be considered “the ultimate”, NP?
Buddhist belief in those parts is that giving food to a monk brings you merit and a better rebirth in a future life. So it’s more a trade than pure goodwill, the monk strives to reach enlightenment and the common folk who support him share in his merit. It’s a cultural thing.
In Europe Christian monks used to be supported by the wealth of monasteries, who owned vast tracts of land, often settled on them by the nobility in return for spiritual favours. It’s a different system, a different culture, but the same spiritual trade.
The way of sannyas where each sannyasin is responsible for earning his own living is maybe more honest, more everyday.
I meant ‘ultimate’ only in the sense of a total focus on the spiritual life, and not having to bother with the realities of living and money.
“You spend time in society earning your money, and you spend time pursuing the spiritual path.”
I don’t think it is sannyas-style to make this distinction.
Maybe it is Christian style:
During the week you work and earn money and on Sunday you go to the church and pray to God.
Osho’s teaching is: This life is that life!
In the early days maybe that was the case, when everybody’s ideal was to live in the commune, but I think by the time Poona 2 rolled around the idea was to “visit the mystery school” and later the meditation resort, after you saved up your money for it. In practical terms.
Of course you still had a life to live even while earning money at a job, it doesn’t stop, so it is all one life. But arranging it in such a way that you can spend time close to Osho was a challenge, and today it is still a challenge to find time and money for groups and festivals.
Actually, many of Osho’s talks on living with a worldwide network of communes, even of living communally without money, where given in Poona Two, although he had argued that also during the sixties, that capitalism , when mature enough, should ultimately evolve into wealth distribution and more fairer systems.
Clearly in those early talks in the 1960’s were given when he was talking in the environment of a very undeveloped , third world country, that he believed was not at that time ready for socialism, communism, anarchism etc. Indian intellectuals were talking a lot about moving into socialism at that time.
Unfettered capitalism simply produces a class born with silver spoons in their mouths which feeds off the work of the majority of the population, whist the poorest always end up becoming poorer when that class raised to rule is in power. Obviously some of the wealthiest people do support the idea of wealth distribution or fairer alternatives. Capitalism provides a certain amount of freedom and can generate wealth quickly but is inherently not good for the poorest and most vulnerable, but presumably will evolve into something fairer as humanity gradually evolves in its consciousness.
The wealthiest are able to put their energy into meditation as Osho pointed out but the majority of workers don’t have the time. Which is why the sadhu traditionally left the world behind so he can focus his energy on meditation.
The Indian sadhu has no problem collecting donations all he has to do is knock along a street of shops or houses and people feel obliged to give as he is at the highest stage of life.
The practical alternative would be to have communes where people work a few hours a day and have plenty of time left over to meditate.
“ The whole world should be one humanity, only divided by small communes on a practical basis. No fanaticism, no racism, no nationalism – then, for the first time, we can drop the idea of wars. We can make life with honesty, worth living, worth enjoying – enplayful, meditative, creative – and give every man and every woman equal opportunity to grow and bring their potential to flowering. “
‘The Golden Future’
He can read some of those talks here at Osho.com :
https://www.osho.com/read/osho/vision/the-greatest-challenge-the-golden-future/a-world-of-communes
Although they don’t like to put those ones out on YouTube.
True, Swamishanti, but the question is not how society should evolve but how we as sannyasins can best live in it.
I’m not in favour of capitalism, although I understand that the wealthy and powerful want to keep their privileges and will do everything in their reach to keep the status quo.
“I worked in the games industry as a software developer and technical director, and have been able to take a ten-year career break.”
Means the last ten years you’ve lived from your savings and pursued your spiritual path?
Yes, that’s right, Satchit. I’ll write more about it in a future article, but basically I spent ten years reading about Buddhism and meditating, and listening to the odd Osho discourse. It was a time of a lot of silence and solitude.
Satchit quoted “Living in the world but not being part of it…”
It depends on how you go about doing that. If you are an artist living off the proceeds of your art, then it would be a lot easier than if you were to live as say a freelance photographer taking any job going.
Any job which requires you to work with ordinary folks as customers will need you to wear a business hat and be in the world, I should think.
NP, the quote “Living in the world but not being part of it” means: create a distance to yourself!
In the world you cannot escape from playing roles.
Artist, freelancer photographer, technical director, father, son, husband, Buddhist monk,
sannyasin – they are all roles you can play in the world.
Watching them, witnessing them, being aware of them creates a distance from them.
Means living the roles, but not being part of them.
Does it mean that? I think if you start identifying with the masks that you wear you are in trouble, regardless of whether you try to create distance…
Does that mean one should try to wear no masks and be nakedly honest all the time? I never got into the habit of wearing masks and communicating in patterns. Being responsive, actually present as an individual, is better than communicating in a conditioned way.
The whole idea of masks is about a certain stance and pre-selected series of responses that one adopts, to not have to be present in the situation. Just drop it, and be honestly present.
Your ideas here, NP, are echoed (with further suggestions and observations)) by Eckhart Tolle in this response to a question re how to approach business relationships, ‘The Practice of Conscious Business Relationships’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNNO_JiFQz8
Thanks for the link, SD. I have a lot of respect for Eckhart Tolle, and he usually has sensible things to say from the perspective of a lived human presence. I will definitely watch the video.
I’ve watched it, and I thought his comments about not getting attached to outcomes was spot on. It’s always a problem when ‘you’ want something, desire gets in the way, you attach too much importance to things.
The idea of people playing roles is also very true, it’s a shortcut to certain patterns of behaviour which are “good for business” but in reality you are not wholly present when you do that. It’s a form of unconsciousness, the automatic pilot.
It’s good that Eckhart talks about these things, because that too is a version of samsara, the world of unconsciousness, ignorance and suffering.
Playing a role, if that’s all you’re capable of or if that’s what the sitation requires, is ok though, isn’t it, if you can manage to be aware, conscious that’s what you’re doing? It can be an easy or even skilful way to cope with certain situations that might otherwise be problematic, anxiety-creating.
I recall Osho (as Bhagwan) advising someone about to do military service and resisting the prospect not to create unecessary problems for himself, that he should simply follow orders, do what he’s told and, most important, watch himself doing that. I think he highlighted marching, like an automaton, as being particularly conducive for this.
“Playing a role, if that’s all you’re capable of or if that’s what the sitation requires, is ok though, isn’t it, if you can manage to be aware, conscious that’s what you’re doing?”
You can be conscious and play a role.
Every actor is capable of this.
Osho did this too, playing the Master/Guru role.
If he had not done, nobody would have played the disciple role.
Funny story, Satyadeva, I can hardly imagine a sannyasin doing military service. Some countries allow you to do a form of replacement service, if you want to avoid the military. Maybe that’s a better option for a meditator?
I think we all use the shortcut of roles sometimes, it’s just a question of becoming aware of where a certain reaction is coming from. Often a man defaults to being a husband, for example. Does the fact that the Valentine’s Day flowers he buys his wife are an automatic thing mean anything?
Satyadeva said, “playing a role, if that’s all you’re capable of…”
I think we adopt roles in an effort to appear sophisticated…as if our natural responses aren’t good enough, and we have to try to be something more.
But really you leave the ability to respond in the moment when you do that. A genuineness, an openness disappears.
It’s up to you to determine whether you need that mask, which is also a shield, or whether you gain more from a real meeting with the world.
In the end, it’s all play, the world doesn’t matter so much. If you can just stay relaxed, it’s cool, it’s easy to be happy…That laid back being with the world, while you keep a little distance, don’t get caught up, is a key to a life of ease.
“SANNYAS IS A REBELLION against both the past and the future. Man has either lived in the past or in the future, but never in the present..
There have been societies whose golden age was in the past, for example Indian society: its golden age has passed. It believes that the future is going to be darker and darker every day – there is no hope.
Hence the Indian society lives in a state of depression, hopelessness, with no possibility of any change for the better. It lives in misery, poverty, sickness.
But because of the idea that the golden age has already passed long before, thousands of years before, and we are falling by and by, every day, it does not believe in evolution, it believes in involution, it believes in regression.
It is a regressive philosophy, not progressive.
The West lives in the future; its golden age has yet to come: the classless society, the crescendo of communism, the world of equality and freedom, the stateless state.
Those golden days are ahead, far away.
In a way, both are the same. If one has to choose between the two then I will suggest: choose a progressive stupidity rather than a regressive one – if that is the only choice! At least with the progressive stupidity you have some hope, you will have some thrill, you will have some excitement.”
From Oshos instructions to the British Buddhafield: ‘The Wild Geese and The Water’, #1 1981
Angel Girl loves Devil Doll !
This meditation is not for kids only:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pONbiiKvKaA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlsiyll8JH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vgF3PfhzWY
I watched a little bit, not really my thing. I find cartoonish representations of heaven and hell to be very unbalanced and built of stereotypes which don’t really help me.
Oh, man, what a serious Approach.
You’re not entirely wrong, seriousness is very often the mind trying to be in control. But all these supernatural entertainments are the dreams of other people, they are not real. It is a question of the power of ideas, you can take in lots of other people’s memes, but they can move you away from what’s true.
All religion’s ideas of heaven and hell are based on what people experience as pleasurable or painful here on Earth. The Muslim heaven is supposed to contain rivers of wine, which is forbidden on Earth. The Christian hell is a place of torture, no doubt based on all the things the Inquisition did. But wine and torture exist on Earth. There is nothing spiritual in these beliefs, they are the merest beginnings of dreaming about better and worse places.
A big part of the spiritual search for me is about finding truth and clarity, and throwing out that which makes no sense. A walk through the woodland can tell you a lot more about truth, than most imaginings of men. It comes down to de-programming, de-conditioning.
One thing that I have found important is to become aware of our deep connection with beauty. You can look at a rose, and examine petals and thorns and its heart, and miss the beauty of the whole rose. In a way, this beauty is a message from the beyond. It speaks to us, about the essence of life, about the sense of things in the unconscious mind.
There are many things that are beautiful — women, sailing ships, horses — and each contains a drop of that essence. You gain an appreciation for things, and this tendency to appreciate, this sense of beauty in what you see is an echo of the essence of things. It is the heart calling to you about your purpose in life.
Learning to recognise what makes your heart sing, what inspires you, is an important step. It is only then that you can work to bring these things into your life, can explore or multiply them. In a way these things breathe life into our vision of the world. Things are ordinary, and seeing the beauty in them makes them magical.
And…when everything goes to shit…
I go where I went first…to my happy place:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkBlUyib4Mk
Morning, VeetTom…There are always silver linings around the clouds we see. I’m involved with caring for an older sannyasin who has now reached his end-of-life journey, he is comfortably sleeping with a morphine drip in his arm, and the thing he said yesterday to his wife was, “I’m experiencing such a sense of wonder.”
Even shit is necessary for fertilising tomorrow’s growths, it has a place in the world which is a continuous cycle of transformations, of building up and breaking down.
You don’t even listen to the song advised by me and just continue chatting with yourself…writing your own headlines and the fitting replies…Big job.
I did listen to it, I just have something with song lyrics, I rarely pick them up well…so if you ask me the meaning of songs, I’m usually in the dark except for the refrain.
It was from the Divine Comedy, called Happy Place – seems fitting?
Yep…you are relieved
You taught the usual sannyas-like belief to just be positive…and I had quoted a song like that before.
Teaching triumphantly successfully concluded.
:::: BREAKING NEWS ::::::: BREAKING NEWS ::::::: BREAKING NEWS ::::::: BREAKING NEWS ::: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl_YnSiFv94 The end is near: “Swarm of mosquitoes forma ‘tornado’ over Pune, cause panic among residents.”
Rest in Peace Swami Anand Yatri, my good friend.
I got to know him when I was just 13 on the Ranch when he met up with my mother. He introduced me to The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, and I introduced him to computer games where he much enjoyed playing Aces of the Pacific in the mid 1990s. He was an artist, author, graphic designer and illustrator, and one of just a few people with regular walk-in access to Osho in Poona One. He was also known for doing the cartoons in The Rajneesh Times.
I’ve been reading articles from Sannyas News for some time and your words about Yatri prompted me to join this forum. He was a wonderful soul, vibrant and full of creativity. I worked with him in the darkroom in Poona 1 and I remember us playing with ways to colourise black and white prints in Radha Hall. The side effect of this was we produced such noxious-smelling chemicals that we had to evacuate the area. I don’t remember them smelling much (perhaps there’s a reason for that) but I remember his positivity and boundless energy when while we played.
Hi Devaprem,
Yes, Yatri often told me stories about the Indian printers and the old typesetting machines from the design days of Poona 1. He taught me graphic design in the period after my university studies in the mid-1990s, when he, my mother (his partner) and I lived together in Charmouth, Devon. I saw him often over the years, we spent many happy Christmases together, although he was indignant when I once called him ‘paps’ (dad in Dutch) which he misunderstood as the English ‘pops’ meaning ‘old geezer’.
About duotone colouring he mentioned a few things. He did a book called ‘Iron Horse’ about old steam trains when he lived in Italy after the Ranch, which was done with duotone printed images. The little tricks of mixing colours so that first one, then another part of the mix would become dominant, great stuff!
He did a lot of work for magazines and illustrated books later in life, producing images for Stephen Hawking’s ‘Universe in a Nutshell’ and publications such as the Scientific American and Welt der Wunder.
Many of Yatri’s old friends are tuning in apparently, quite a few people on Facebook (or so I hear – I’m not on FB), a few more on OshoNews and many people he knew are getting in touch by email. There’s a lot of love for him around. People in New Zealand are holding a little vigil, a small group of friends are meeting up to sit silently and swap stories.
I liked Veena’s ‘Voyages’ piece on OshoNews, I would have written something if no-one else had, but it has been so busy arranging the ceremony. I was doing the PowerPoint presentation for the photos for the goodbye this morning, and that took a while.
The goodbye and cremation are on Monday, just a small circle of family and friends will attend.
I am not sure how Yatri looked in “those days” to reactivate my memory…Subhuti seems to be from the same decade
…also with another face now, here, below…
Just my association…
Btw:
I very much recommend his book! It’s well written and witty. I’ve read half of it so far. Every chapter collects inspiring aspects, filled with some insider’s stuff, but especially meaningful for the almost complete newbies about Sannyas history and Osho, so it’s for those who – already guesssd it? – only saw the netflix docu.
Yatri was from 1936, born in London, so he experienced the Second World War as a young lad. It marked him as a man, he was an RAF fighter pilot for a while after he was old enough.
The goodbye and cremation ceremony were beautiful. The body was in a natural wooden coffin covered with flowers and rose petals, in a wonderful wide open space with windows on three sides at a nature reserve here, on the waters’ edge. Heartfelt speakers celebrating his life and the places where their lives had touched.
Afterwards there was a feast meal for close family at our home, with a giant platter of fish delicacies, breads, soups and salads. There was not a lot of mourning but rather a getting together in joy and love.
I’ll post some photographs when I receive them from the photographer.
https://www.sannyas.wiki/index.php?title=Sw_Anand_Yatri
Right one or another Yatri ?
Yes, that is him. Knew him for 40 years.
You know him well.
Do you think he was enlightened?
Was he enlightened? He was certainly a bit of a mystic, and a very talented man. There were stories about him…there was once a local Indian man who had been bothering sannyasin women and Yatri came across him cycling in the street, and got so angry that he power-shouted the guy off his bicycle.
But he was a real sannyasin, and still trying to figure Osho out, he was very close to ‘the old boy’ as he used to call him. Spent a lot of time with him in Poona 1, often talking to him about books and photographs when he used to be in charge of the book design department.
The last years of his life he suffered from Alzheimer’s, which was difficult for his partner (my mother) and me. He was my stepfather, we were good friends…
“He was certainly a bit of a mystic” – Well, NP, with his obvious intelligence and creative spirit and all that time close to and helping Osho he must have absorbed so much. So I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t. An amzing and fortunate life indeed.
Cheers !
That above-mentioned Swami Anand Yatri, the painter of these cartoons, has died – ok, only left his body.
I always loved these little sketches because they were lovingly beyond holy testaments of willing and surrendered disciples.
https://www.satrakshita.com/osho_cartoons.htm
Yeah, I’m still expecting to see him sitting in his favourite chair when I walk past it. Still we celebrate life, one life ends, another begins. My cousin’s wife has announced that she is pregnant again.
Btw:
With bowler hat and umbrella – The perfect Englishman!
Now:
Because you are still alive you may need something delicious to eat, for example a rich and very tempting noodle soup?
But wait:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WrkdTrrwew
The Alzheimer’s Enlightenment:
Before enlightenment, chop water, carry wood. After enlightenment, chop water, carry wood.
I have heard meditation can be a medicine against Alzheimer’s.
Did your stepfather remember his Pune time or was the memory gone?
At the end he could just about recognise the people he lived with and who cared for him, for the vast majority of things his memory was perhaps 5 minutes? He couldn’t remember that his body produced poop, the immediate evidence notwithstanding.
But he was told by Osho that he did not need to meditate, and so he never did. Hence he is not a good test case for the effects of meditation.
I dropped the whole concept of religion in any form some years ago, I left behind the idea of being part of a religion like Buddhism. Instead for a few years now I have been searching through the words of those who are held to be enlightened, in a search for truth and freedom. These of course included Osho, but also the Buddha, Papaji, UG Krishnamurti, and others.
It was Osho who said religion is largely a product of the priests, with only its deepest roots in the resonant concepts of enlightened sages. Therefore, don’t be a Buddhist, but be a Buddha. And if you have to ask ‘how’ remember to not identify with the mind and just trust that you are a Buddha and let go, relax.
I was considering freedom a while ago, and I realised one of the great things about the words of the enlightened was that they make you more free. Freedom from conditioning, from society, from illusion, from desire, from clinging, even from the spiritual search itself. Freedom is the natural consequence of letting go of clinging in all its forms.
What is left in the end are certain core principles, like Love, Truth and Being. These seem to function like rudders guiding your essence. Things like joy, kindness, and equanimity start to surface.
“What is left in the end are certain core principles, like Love, Truth and Being.”
There is no end, as I see it.
Truth is not linear, it is circular.
A circle has no beginning, no end.
Only the meeting of opposites:
knowing – not knowing,
seriousness – laughter.
“What is left in the end are certain core principles….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48MI_srgnrk
It’s interesting. Osho certainly didn’t shy away from confrontations with politicians or commenting on their corruption, but he wasn’t foolhardy in pursuing groups he knew to be dangerous. For example, he never talked very much about Islam, I think he was aware that doing so critically could get a man in his position killed.
It’s one thing to occasionally comment on political matters, it is something very different to put oneself in the spotlight by trying to be David fighting Goliath as Navalny has done.
A lot of places that pretend to be built on ideals turned out in the end to be cynical political exercises of power, like the USA is largely a plutocracy (government by the wealthy), China isn’t really communist, and Russia isn’t democratic though it has elections. Politicians become expert liars and traders of support, and end up using the idealists for their purposes, manipulating them, and so infiltrate systems of power even if they are built on high ideals.
In a way, being a politician is a dead end of spiritual evolution; it slowly seduces you into giving up on principle, the things you hold dear, until not much more than the love of power is left.
Following the spiritual path takes you in a different direction, away from politics and power. Osho had remarkably clear vision to see that the spiritual held the key to fulfilling life. It’s a great pity that so many people these days put other goals ahead of a spiritual life, because there has never been a better time to hear the words of the enlightened.
Indeed, NP. But Osho did survive several assassination attempts, including one by Vilas Tupe, a member of the RSS, the right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary organisation, who threw a knife at him during one discourse.
An ex-sannyasin, Strelley, one of Sheela’s young protege’s, who Max Brecher in his book ‘A Passage to America’, exposes she was one of those who turned government agent, like Milne and Deeksha, tried to make out that the whole thing was staged.
Anyhow, it definitely wasn’t staged, Vilas Tupe tried to get into the ashram to assassinate Osho several times, as bodyguards in the Loveosho podcasts have recalled.
And later in 1987, when Osho returned to Pune, the same guy threatened to force his way into the ashram with 100 commandos trained in martial arts.
Of course, there were also death threats and assassination attempts by American right wing Christian fundamentalists too, and it was/is extremely important to them that Osho died/ doesn’t look good. Extremely important that people stay in their cult mentality in the same way that the native Americans , and others where forced or converted into their cult mentality and programming.
Shanti claims that there were also death threats and assassination attempts by American right-wing Christian fundamentalists.
Really? That is plural. Shanti, could you please describe two of these assassination attempts by American right-wing Christian fundamentalists, as in where and when did these events happen? I have never heard of such a thing.
Well, Osho mentioned several times that he believed he had been poisoned by the Christian neo-con fundamentalists in Ronald Reagan’s America.
Ronald Reagan’s close friend and election campaign manager from 1980 was William J Casey, also the director of the CIA from 1981 to 1987. Casey was a conservative Catholic who is said to have made regular secret visits to the Vatican.
It has been claimed by Ashok Row Kavi, a former columnist for the Bombay ‘Sunday Mail’, that someone “very close” to the highly conservative Cardinal Ratzinger, the second most powerful man in the Vatican, revealed that Ratzinger “was known to be working behind the scenes to secure Rajneesh’s expulsion from America.”
Ratzinger was apparently worried that the appeal of Eastern mysticism would lure people away from the Church, and had spoken of the ”seductions” of Buddhism.
In early February 1990, Kavi reported in a column that Ratzinger had said in 1981: “All sorts of Satanic cults by oriental godmen are out to seduce the faithful away from Christ.” Kavi claimed that Osho was the “object of these controversial statements.”
In a 1997 interview published in the French ‘L’Express’, Ratzinger called Buddhism an “auto-erotic spirituality” and said: “In the 1950s someone said that the undoing of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century wouldn’t come from Marxism, but from Buddhism. They were right.”
There were lots of serious death threats coming in at the Ranch from people threatening to come in and murder Osho and destroy the commune, etc.
Some of the death threats letters can be found in the FBI files.
The local Ku Klux Klan sent in a threatening letter, stating that “God took six days to create the world, and it will take us just three days to come and slaughter all your animals and ‘the Bhagwan’ and burn your camp down” … You you get the picture. Stuff like that. The American Nazi party sent it a letter.
And there were also lots of threatening phone-calls, someone sent in a parcel with a large chunk of raw meat on a box and said, “This is what ‘the Bhagwan’ will look like if you don’t pack up and leave.”
One of the letters is below. But there are many more. Someone sent in a copy of Osho’s own ‘death certificate’ from 1984.
We know there were undercover CIA operatives on the ground in Rajneeshpuram, some were pointed out and expelled by Osho himself, if you read the FBI files.
Max Brecher interviewed a guy named ‘Don Stewart’, who alleged he was given the assignment of assassinating Osho.
Brecher interviewed Stewart in southern Oregon in early 1989. At the time Stewart was around 40 and said he’d been an ‘undercover government operative’ for the past twenty years.
The Sacramento Bee newspaper had established that Stewart had worked for the FBI and BATF and had even once infiltrated the American Nazi party.
In 1984 Stewart was contacted by a certain ‘Wolfgang’, another ex-Vietnam vet and alleged FBI mercenary.
Stewart, Wolfgang and three other guys were supposed to go to Rajneeshpuram and assassinate Osho using military grade ‘C-4 explosive’.
The idea was to do it during one of the drive-bys that Osho took daily in one of his Rolls-Royces.
They assumed that many disciples would die as ‘acceptable collateral damage’.
There was a second plan, which was to blow up Sheela’s weapons arsenal to create an excuse for the National Guard to invade.
For this, the five mercenaries were to be paid $100,000 each.
Stewart bailed on the plan because he believed that once the deed had been done the government would itself quietly eliminate the five mercenaries to cover up their connection to the assassination of Osho.
In the end all would be dead, no money paid out, and the trail to the government non-existent.
In Stewart’s talks with Wolfgang the latter claimed that he mainly worked for the FBI, and that the whole effort to eliminate Osho was stemming from local farmers and ranchers who had been accumulating a ‘war chest’ to get rid of the Rajneeshees.
Towards the end of the Ranch saga, after Sheela and her gang had left in September and Osho called in the FBI, the government INS were planing to arrest Osho for immigration violations so that they could get him out of the country. That had been their objective ever since Osho had got there and they had some ex-sannyasins-turned-agents to stand up in court.
So Osho;s lawyers had tried to negotiate a deal with the government lawyers where he would hand himself in for voluntary surrender.
The National Guard had surrounded the commune and were planning to invade Rajneeshpuram with over 300 armed officers and helicopter gunships, to arrest Osho for immigration violations. This was codenamed ‘Operation Serenity’.
So to avoid a Waco style confrontation with sannyasins and bloodshed, Osho and a group of disciples flew to North Carolina and they where arrested without any warrant, and he spent some in several jails, slowly dragged back across the country to Portland to stand trial , and later deported and banned from reentering the US for five years for immigration violations.
But after his time in jail, on all accounts, Osho’s body was fucked up and his body was never the same again.
He started to feel nausea and vomiting and a churning feeling in his stomach, and fatigue and weakness.
E He also complained of strange nervous-system problems, especially a tingling all over the body, vertigo and headache… trouble with his eyesight, a blurring of vision that he had never suffered from before. The symptoms continued throughout 1986 on the World Tour (where the US also pressured countries to refuse him entry or leave if he had landed), and Osho had a recurrence of the tingling sensation and the bone pain in his upper limbs.
Sings and symptoms related to his spinal column became apparent, making it difficult for him to walk steadily. Insomnia, loss of appetite and weight loss continued.
There were also the suspicious circumstances surrounding Osho being signed in under a false name on the way back to Portland, ‘David Washington’, in Olkahoma State penitentiary.
Max Brecher investigated and discovered that the Oklahoma City Marshall who met the plane, signed Osho in under the false name and gave him the mattress was not part of the normal staff at the jail; and the day after Osho finally left Oklahoma City he resigned from the Marshal Service, and disappeared.
“What I’ve established is that Osho’s arrival in Oklahoma City was anything but accidental. It was deliberately manipulated by people high enough in power to re-route a large federal transport plane to Charlotte, North Carolina, pick up one guy, take him to Oklahoma City and leave him there in jail under a false name. That’s a strong indication that orders were coming from the very top of the Justice Department. All the press reports, all the officials said it was accidental that Osho was routed through Oklahoma City. No way on earth was it an accident! That’s proven in ‘A Passage to America’. His winding up in Oklahoma was definitely planned.
And he would have been there much longer if it had not been for an enterprising and resourceful television reporter in Oklahoma City named Curt Autrey who tracked that story for three days. He even slept one night in the parking lot of the El Reno Federal Penitentiary, just outside the city. When Osho’s Charlotte attorney, William Diehl, flew into Oklahoma City, Diehl didn’t know where Osho was. Autrey led him to El Reno and Osho was flown out to Portland six hours later.“
(Max Brecher interview)
As Ma Yoga Neelam pointed out in her recent memoir, after Osho left his body several Indian newspapers carried the story that Osho ‘had been murdered by foreigners’ close to him.
More recently, a story has been spun in the Indian media that Sheela was actually innocent and she is being promoted as a kind of hero. The real killers were those Westerners closest to him. We are meant to believe that Sheela’s crimes were invented, even though there are still living witnesses, sannyasins at the Ranch, who where affected , that he was completely unaware of his closest physical disciples’ intentions to murder him and then they ‘pretend’ to be sannyasins and run the Meditation Resort. Of course this is bullshit but people are stupid and they are lapping it up.
Thanks for the long response, Shanti.
That’s what I give when I have the time. A fucking good, long response.
Shanti, would you not agree that a lot of what you write is in fact hearsay? Many of the sources of information you quote could be viewed as dubious.
Well, I’ve read through a lot of the books, sources and materials and looking at the wider picture and reading behind the lines, no, it’s definitely not just hearsay or dubious at all. All sources are credible. And theres a whole lot more that I haven’t included above. For example, the close connection between the Bowerman family and US congressman and Oregonian officials, who promised to get the Rajneeshees out. Of course, most of the public this stuff is not known but it will be made more available with time of people who care about this kind of thing get involved.
Osho’s attorneys eventually won the legal battle for Rajneeshpuram in 1988, when Osho was back in India. So, he could have returned to the US if he had wanted to.
Amongst the better informed most people view the mainstream media as a dubious source of information. The UK media is a good example. Daily newspapers like the Mirror and Express print blatant lies and make out like it is God’s honest truth. As for the Indian media it is probably even worse. As long as it is negative they will publish it because negative news feeds people’s negative emotions and thus they gobble it up.
The Sacramento Bee could be viewed as an exception to this rule, but even there one does not know the reliability of their sources of information. In general, I think that if you look to the mainstream media as a source of reliable information, you are in all probability misinformed.
Thanks a lot, Shanti.
NP claims, “Osho never talked very much about Islam.”
This is completely untrue. Osho talked a lot about Islam. While we were whirling around like Dervishes, Osho gave many discourses on the Sufis, a mystical movement within Islam.
Osho was fond of quoting Mansour al-Hallaj, a Persian mystic, poet, and teacher of Sufism, who is best known for his saying: “I am the Truth”.
Osho even went so far as to read the entire Koran, which he denounced by saying, “It is rubbish.”
NP draws the following assumption: “I think Osho was aware that doing so critically could get a man in his position killed.”
Osho was not stupid, but I think he did not speak about the Koran because of that. He simply did not find anything in the Koran worth expounding on. As for Sufi poets, mystics and philosophers, there was plenty there for him to work with. I found his discourses on the Sufis to be amongst his best. Perhaps because the way of the Sufi was so close to his heart.
He said he liked the sound of the Koran more than reading it. Arabic is a beautiful language. He loved Urdu poetry, and listened to particular Urdu vocal classical music records, the same records everyday to help keep him rooted in his body.
But yes, he was into the mystical side of religion and that’s why he got into so much trouble with the organised religions.
Although he did also have a lot of support and respect in the form of hundreds of letters sent to the US government in 1983 from various scholars, leaders, monks, theologians etc from whose mystical traditions he spoke on. More letters and testimonials from different religious traditions than any other guru in history in fact.
Shanti claims Osho had a lot of support and respect in the form of hundreds of letters sent to the US government in 1983 from various scholars, leaders, monks, theologians etc. from whose mystical traditions he spoke on. More than any other guru in history in fact.
Does this mean there is someone somewhere who has been keeping a record of how many letters have been sent by various scholars, leaders, monks, theologians etc. to the US government in support of gurus throughout history? Where does this so-called fact come from?
Yes indeed, they have been preserved in a special archive in the Oregonian Historical museum and can be accessed by someone who is interested in historical accuracy and who are determined, by asking for permission, and may be preserved in other collections.
Watch for more on this soon.
A historian, a one man army, a commando, has been in contact with the museum and in the process of obtaining the entire collection and they will be made available to the public for the record for the first time, I mean the originals, and they should be for historical purposes. Otherwise Osho is really looking way underated and just like people opposed to him , want him to look.
Mystic waters flow everywhere if you really look for them, but not in the political mainstream of ugly Islam these days.
Yes, some wise Sufis may have been there but were quickly killed when discovered, so HE spoke about them hiding as ordinary handymen or shopkeepers.
I remember HIM saying he only found simple folk wisdom here and there in the Koran but it sounded quite good when recited or sung. (Kidding?)
Forget about those holy books – we can do better – right here on Sannyas News… *twinkersmiley*
Yes, VT, I also recall Him saying that, it sounded good when recited or sung.
And I also appreciate hearing the call from the minarets when I am in India as a type of music, just as I sometimes appreciate the sound of Sanskrit being chanted.
Perhaps I should have qualified it by stating “except for the Sufis” but Osho only rarely spoke about mainstream Islam, while he often spoke about Christianity, Judaism, and so on. I think what I said was reasonably clear, and Lokesh is just being obtuse for the sake of having someone or something to correct: “Hold the presses, someone on the internet was wrong, they must be corrected immediately.”.
NP, you can view what I say however you want to. If you want to make statements that are untrue and wish that nobody points that out to you, go right ahead. You might want to believe that what you said was reasonably clear. I do not think it was in the way you are trying to make out. “For example, Osho never talked very much about Islam, I think he was aware that doing so critically could get a man in his position killed.” That is plain to see. So what? If you can’t simply say you were mistaken that is fine by me. By pursuing such a course you will not learn by this particular mistake. Better luck next time.
At least you had the decency to respond, something which I do appreciate. I see this as being more important than proving one’s point of view is the right one.
Obtuse: lacking sharpness or quickness of sensibility or intellect; insensitive, stupid. Sorry, NP, you chose an inappropriate word.
And just for the recordless record. Sufism is a mystical and ascetic form of Islam practiced by tens of millions of Muslims.
I feel more and more that the so-called “spiritual path” is just another proud escape from the world,
We agree on positive meditative influences only because we have choosen that path and think it’s gold-plating our ego.
Whatever Osho was and said – as far as I could grasp it – was just what I always understood for myself, me and I.
Meditation or therapy has not brought any depth at all.
Before and after Osho – the same me in space as always.
Osho is untouched and loved anyway – needless to say.
Did you meet Osho, Veet Tom?
Yes.
I used to think that Veet Tom was younger than me but then I realised he wasn’t.
Yes, I also sometimes felt younger than you, Swamishanti.
I mostly felt that way with other sannyasins.
“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” – sounds better, more poetic, more clever even.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92cF_KCH7TU
Please activate subtitles for it’s a good song!
VeetTom said, “Meditation or therapy has not brought depth at all.”
I think this is a very interesting point, and I think I agree. What did bring depth for me was reading and thinking about the words of certain Buddhist teachers, namely the Buddha himself, Thich Nhat Hanh and Ajahn Chah. Of course there was also an ample quantity of Buddhist Junk to get rid of afterwards, but the high points of what they said, those will stay with me forever.
Osho…I met him on the way – but I did not “kill him” just like all ‘Late SwaMas’ still thinking to meditate on Sannyas
while not having passed that optional ‘firetest’ for decades.
I am just like you are…trying my best to hide my religious beliefs and spiritual bias.
Btw,
If sacred Sannyas had been established as a new religion it would have surpassed all other churches in ignorance.
Thanks to Osho it was aborted soon after its birth….
Love.
His Blessings.
You made me laugh, Veet Tom — thanks. I think you’re right, Osho wouldn’t have wanted a religion of Sannyas.
I remember him with fondness, showering us with his presence.
Blessings indeed.
Great quote, Shanti.
Although these principles are also for us to apply in our own little lives, aren’t they? Not to get over-excited with visions of some golden future or burdened with fears and anxiety that it’ll never come, or with regrets and pain at the passing of good times that we thought would never end. Easy to think or say yet maybe not so easy to apply, but that’s one way to keep relatively sane, as far as I can see.
Osho said so many deep things about Mainstream Moslems and Jews, we can’t even repeat in public – especially right now. Anyone else we just have to be respectful about “other” religions and dogmas. Those deeper understandings by Osho cannot be proclaimed…same about gay sexuality, or politics…and all the rest.
Those things were only said for us – being just too much for mankind. We can’t even use those insights about religious dogmas by quoting them cleverly with our own words – only the soft sayings about love and meditation that may not hurt anyone’s feelings…Those provocative things have to be kept locked in our minds and only ‘meditated upon’.
For example, I found it psychologically extremely interesting when he spoke about Jews making their neighbours hate them all through history because of that ‘Being The Victim Lament’ & which created even more hate against them and fuelled the Shoah. Impossible to repeat such ideas – for example, in Germany.
Difficult to discuss that now? Not quite. The present war Israel against Hamas shows: “We are not victims any longer”, which shows a powerful and natural self-acceptance – a needed resistance.
Osho was no peace-prophet. He was fond of Sikhs because they were proud fighters and not servile underdogs like Hindus who were being conquered again and again by many tribes, all through history.
Osho would have loved the Ukrainians for resisting facist Russia with such a terrible dictator. And so he would be all in favour for more weapons and money to Ukraine.
But people dream of holy peace and so unconciously create the aggressive forces in the first place. Nobody wants to hear such militaristic psychology in the modern spiritual scene – that also is not at all ready for a man like Osho yet.
Veet Tom, Israel has never been a “victim” ever since its creation by the Allies who, since the second world war, have supported, protected and armed the country. Which, btw, doesn’t imply that I’m advocating for or against the Israeli government.
And I suggest you’re not fully aware of the extent of the danger we (the human race) are in. Although the principle of ‘standing up to bullies’ is admirable, desirable, the problem in our times that undermines such a ‘noble warrior’ policy continues to be the threat that any time, any day, some lunatic might have had enough of it all, feel angry, impatient, pathologically inclined and/or humiliated enough to resort to pressing the nuclear button and thus obliterate all chance of justice, of victory/defeat, of any ‘noble fight against tyranny’. Just listen to one or two of them from the Kremlin, or that little maniac from North Korea, for instance. Or even the British general who recently confidently predicted an imminent war between Russia and the West, as if it were very serious, but in a way as if it were somehow ‘just another war’.
Hard to have to admit the truth, perhaps, but it does seem that with the emotional temperature being ratcheted up everywhere (via media, including (anti)social media), there’s not a lot of hope left – except for ever-greater numbers of people taking responsibility for themselves and committing themselves to finding the depths of truth/love within. If you’re really as sceptical of ‘all that stuff’ as you seem to be, then you’re maybe part of the problem, not part of the only possible solution (however faraway that might seem or in fact be).
As for your speculation that Osho would have supported arming the Ukraine against Putin’s Russian invasion, you might well be right, he wasn’t necessarily a total pacifist, so who knows? But I suggest that he would be acutely aware of the potential grave dangers of ongoing wars, as before he passed away he made it clear that the world was about to enter into a particularly dangerous phase, where the only realistic option would be to dedicate oneself to ‘going inside’.
It’s difficult to accept that on a collective level there might be little or no hope left, it goes against our all-powerful survival instincts, but if someone as conscious and as far-seeing as Osho offers this perception (and he’s far from the only such one) then it’s worth at least taking it seriously.
Satyadeva, what if it were true that the best times were behind us?
And what if it were also true that what awaits us has deep roots in the horror in which we have already been immersed for a few decades?
Don’t you think it’s bizarre that you want to stay sane in order to better adapt to the current horror?
I believe that sanity should be the side-effect of the possibility/freedom to love, for example choosing wisely who to love, between a victim and a tyrant, fuelling the passion for life.
It is especially in times of war that we should affirm life, explicitly when it is still possible; for this reason we should trust in the strength of truth, for its power to illuminate the nature of conflicts and possibly propose solutions.
How can you not distinguish between a Zionist government and a government that has as its motto “Yes to peace, no to violence”.
How can you not support Yitzhak Rabin over Yigal Amir?
How can you not support the Palestinian people, harassed for decades, today increasingly defenceless and hungry under the bombs of Netanyahu’s genocidal government (by the UN)?
What is the contribution of your equanimity to the resolution of the conflict?
Staying on the sofa munching popcorn in front of a soap opera in order to escape the horror that threatens your mind’s sanity does not seem to me to be a symptom to be underestimated.
Veet Francesco, it’s a matter of personal choice: If you want to busy yourself (your mind and emotions) by thinking and emoting about the latest obscenities in this terminally dysfunctional world (while condemning those who don’t) then go ahead, see where it leads you (apart from any sense of righteousness) and whether all that concern has any effect at all upon Israel/Gaza or any other similarly appaling situation out there (seems there’ll always be plenty to dwell upon).
For me, beyond a fairly minimal basic grasp of such matters (I mostly ignore the news these days as it invariably only confirms the narrative that everything’s getting progressively worse) I have more than enough to do to get through each day as best I can, hopefully as consciously as possible, reminding myself that life itself is good.
Good, well-balanced comment from SD.
I am not a fan of Facebook, but I do use FB Messenger because it is good for video calls. One can’t help noticing all the posts about Gaza on Facebook, and I suspect most of these comments are posted by people who do nothing at all to help the Palestinian cause. It is as if people believe that bringing people’s attention to human tragedy means they are doing something to alleviate it, when they are actually doing nothing about the situation. Unless you are living in a cave it is impossible not to be informed about the atrocious events taking place in today’s troubled world.
One thing I have always appreciated about the Dalai Lama is his non-violence stance. The Tibetans have mapped out the intermediate state between life and death better than any other civilization. They know nothing good ever comes out of a violent act. I tend to go along with that. One has to keep the big picture in mind. What is taking place behind life’s stage is far more important than what is being enacted upon it.
Turning within is part of the solution, but even though there are storm clouds on the horizon we can still make beautiful places which we can share with our beloveds. Osho also said to be creative and intelligent, and that means bringing beauty, peace, a cozy warmth into our spaces.
We can share those things of spirituality and nature which we can still find, we can come together and sit around a campfire and share our stories. That means a lot more to me than talk of worries, death and war.
Sounds like sanity to me, NP, thanks.
I agree to yours above, Satyadeva, but…only a tiny misunderstanding:
We have to differ between Jews and Israel. Osho sometimes spoke about the historical Jews always lamenting to be the victims and so making their neighbours hate them for this ever repeating accusation. Just psychology.
It’s true, when Israel was erected, it quickly disconnected with this old type of victimization and fought back against their aggressors (successfully and rightfully). They (as Israelis) are now part of worldwide effective powers and politics and not just poor victims any longer.
Short time ago Israelis/Jews were so terribly slaughtered as victims again but fought back so forcefully as if to neutralise lots of their past traumata – a heavy catharsis – if you will.
They have to fulfil this “healing” by killing – so to say – and this can be watched without pro and cons for sometime – that’s just another human wartime story that just has to unravel as long as the energies want to develop.
Btw, this video (well-known of course) is a MUST to watch again and again talking about the “Promised Land”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
If Indians became aggressive like Westerners, if they lost their femininity, their spiritual culture would lose its grace and fall into decline.
Osho grew up during the struggle for independence and sometimes spoke in favour of freedom fighters such as Bhagat Singh, anarchists like Aurobindo, or Sikhs.
But he also spoke very strongly against all forms of violence, including trying to convert another to your particular faith, which he considered a form of violence.
In his talks on ‘The Rebel’ he is very clear on that.
And, he was absolutely against nations, countries, false lines on the map.
“If Indians became aggressive like Westerners, if they lost their femininity, their spiritual culture would lose its grace and fall into decline.”
But Shanti, hasn’t it already fallen into decline, in the sense that most Indians just follow the established religions’ traditional priestly interpretations of very old teachings that tend to encourage blind belief, even superstition, based upon the worship of long-dead masters and their legendary powers? In those senses just like we find in the various Christian denominations in the West.
Perhaps what you see as ‘the grace of Indians’ feminine spiritual culture’ is a rather sentimental attachment to something more exotic, more mysterious, more aesthetically attractive than our own cultural equivalents, the common attraction of westerners to ‘the Glamour of the East’ (which might well be on the way out anyway, thanks to the ongoing westernisation of eastern cultures).
I’m more in love with the idea of India, rather than what India represents today…a massive mess. There is no longer much of an East/West divide. The world has become united under the banner of consumerism and the mantra of that world is ‘more, more, more’.
Unfortunately it seems to be so. In Japan people revere Zen less and less, in China people are more interested in the financial health of Evergrande Corp than in Confucius or the Tao.
Is hasn’t fallen onto decline just yet, only there are too many people, overpopulation, and pollution from motorbikes in the cities , but unlike the very narrow religiousness of Christianity in the West- and the immaturity of the Western ‘anticult’ mindset which doesn’t understand the Master/disciple relationship- and projects the Christian conditioning-
in India there is still the spicepot of spirituality – the output of many different masters – when you go to check out an issue with your train ticket with the station master he is wearing a wristband with a photo of Shirdi Sai Baba or he may have a chat with you about J Krishnamurti.
Autorickshaws carry pictures of Shirdi Sai Baba, and various other gurus or gods.
Osho is widely respected and his books are everywhere, in the bookstands, his quotes are in the daily newspapers.
Baba’s are still roaming around smoking their chillums and sleeping next to the fire, and will buy ganja from under the counter of the village shop.
There is more alcohol use – and although I am not against alcohol and occasionally enjoy it a lot, and have enjoyed it with Indians, it has widely replaced Ganja smoking in India and Indian men sometimes get aggressive under the influence of alcohol. Plus, villagers who would have grown and smoked a crop of ganja in the past are now being poisoned and sometimes even blinded by cheap packets of dangerous homemade toxic alchohol.
In the countryside villages , there are a lot of concrete buildings, wheres before there would have been huts. And there is a problem of too much plastic waste in the countryside. And everyone carries mobile phones around these days which is a bit sad really.
The old style Indian huts are very special because they keep the inside warm in the winter and cool in the summer, there is no need for any fan or air con.
One thing that I like about the houses in India is the aesthetics, and they are often painted in psychedelic colours. Pink, blue and green exterior and interiors. I also appreciate architecture, including the architecture built during the days of the Raj.
India is reconnecting with its more sexually open past, which used to be less repressive before the British Christian and Mogul rules. I noticed a crude sex shop with vibrators on the shelves in a Chennai shopping centre when I last visited Chennai.
The poorest have grown poorer under Modi, whist the rich have grown richer. More than half of the country’s wealth is now owned by the richest 1% while over three quarters is owned by the top 10%.
But, Westernisation is good and bad in different ways. One of the ‘declines’ is that Indians have begun using sofas and chairs instead of sitting on the floor. An old Indian man of eighty can still sit comfortably on the floor, even on a dusty road or a train station floor with a perfectly straight back, whilst a Westerner has difficulty walking and has a weak spine. But India is moving in the same direction.
But aren’t these examples you quote, Shanti, essentially just cultural relics, the handed down traditions of ritual and belief around dead masters and other spiritual figures which have long deteriorated into sentimental attachment, sources of consolation, or means of escape from life’s suffering, offering hope but little else in the way of awakening and nurturing genuine spiritual consciousness?
Yes, rather exotic and entertaining for the western mentality, and there might be a few genuine gurus, and Osho in bookstalls and his quotes in one or two newsapapers (a much safer option now he’s no longer in the body). Plenty of anti-Osho sentiment gathering too, we hear, as stated earlier at this topic. Still, his influence is there and offers some prospect of revitalisation.
But as for “Babas are still roaming around smoking their chillums and sleeping next to the fire”, well, so what, what’s special about them? That’s a prime instance of your sentimental, glamour-struck personal take on the Indian scene.
I mean there is still the consciousness raising element and vibrations from thousands of years of the inner search, lots of meditation and of the combined energy fields of so many enlightened ones (people from Pune are said to be the happiest in India), as well as certain vibrations that do come from repetition of mantras on a daily basis.
That is still there at least.
“…lots of meditation and of the combined energy fields of so many enlightened ones (people from Pune are said to be the happiest in India)….”
Which unimpeachable authority says this, Shanti? And how were the levels of happiness measured, or rather, estimated?
I remembered a study some years back. Here’s some articles:
Pune happiest in India 2005:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Pune-is-home-to-happiest-Indians/articleshow/1254874.cms
Pune happiest in Maharashta 2020:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/pune-is-the-happiest-city-in-maharashtra-report/articleshow/80160225.cms
Well, in 2005 they only interviewed a particular privileged section of Pune society, ie “upscale urban Indians” (who were enjoying previously unheard of material prosperity and therefore highly likely to be pleased with their lives) on behalf of multinationals Toyota, Sony and McDonald’s. Hardly representative of the total city population.
And in the other survey in 2020 only around 400 people were interviewed in each Maharashtra city and, perhaps crucially, how many of these places enjoy such a good (by Indian standards) climate, as well as other key factors, notably ongoing prosperity, that contribute to a relatively pleasant environment and a general atmosphere of well-being, as the following description indicates?
“Pune, often called the “Oxford of the East”, is Maharashtra’s second-largest city. It is a thriving educational and IT hub, renowned for its esteemed universities, research institutes, and technology companies. Pune’s pleasant climate, historical sites, and vibrant cultural scene contribute to its popularity.”
https://testbook.com/mpsc-preparation/list-of-cities-in-maharashtra#:~:text=The%20state%20boasts%20a%20significant,cities%20recognized%20by%20the%20government.
Swamishanti said, “vibrations from thousands of years of the inner search”
I think that is a bit esoteric, but there is nothing wrong with the esoteric, it inspires certain groups of people. Osho himself could get quite esoteric at times.
Interesting that you talk of alcohol replacing ganja smoking, Shanti. I’m not a fan of alcohol, it is poisonous in large quantities and quite dangerous even in moderate quantities. My father for his heart condition has done quite a lot of research into this, and he found that medical opinion was that even a glass of wine a day could harm your health.
“Cummannari è megghiu ‘ca futtiri” – Sicilian proverb (‘commanding is better than fucking’).
Veet Tom, are you paid for such propaganda or does it come out for free, naturally from some orifice of yours?
Before you put things into your head by watching mainstream television and reading newspapers you should smell them a bit.
Is it possible that the wine of paradox by Osho hasn’t opened your mind to the counter-intuitive implications that often dominate power relations between men?
You don’t need a degree in proxemics to understand that Putin may have authoritarian traits, but this should be contextualized by considering who he has to deal with, in his country and internationally.
It also helps to understand which country he had inherited from that nice sober guy, Boris, a country at the mercy of former Soviet bureaucrats who were shooting at each other to appropriate the resources (natural or otherwise) of the largest country in the world.
It seems that through the choice of Putin as arbiter, a balance was achieved that prevented the country from slipping into criminal anarchy.
Things outside the border were no less threatening.
With the crumbling of the USSR, the military pact of defence, friendship and mutual assistance between socialist countries stipulated in Warsaw also ended (it was 1955, the Cold War had been inaugurated by the USA six years earlier with NATO).
The Cold War did not end with the end of the Warsaw Pact, on the contrary, NATO recruited many of those countries that had recently been allies of Russia, making war on one of them, Serbia, which tried to resist the disintegration of the geopolitical order of the Soviet era.
What the Bush/Clinton/Obama loved to mark with the New World Order began, an order written with the blood of Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Somalis, Libyans, Ukrainians, Palestinians…after the river of blood in Central and South America, without forgetting the genocides in Indonesia and Vietnam.
Western propaganda decreed that communism had failed, that the Socialist ideal of a world fit for man, a man free from exploitation and competition against his peers, was not possible…because progress is decided by the hand invisible of the jungle that rewards the most barbaric: Socialism has at least seen this prophecy come true (socialism or barbarism).
But history does not end, if it is true that the lust for power of the Stalins, the Castros, the Maos passes but the ideal remains.
Veet Tom, what do you think about the Odessa massacre and the Nazi crimes in Donbas?
I asked the same question to a Ukrainian friend of mine and she replied that the story began 100 years earlier, when Stalin (a Georgian) took away what Lenin (a Russian) had given to the Kulaks (landowners). Nikita Khrushchev, who gave Crimea to Ukraine, was also Russian.
For her, Stepan Bandera is a hero, who out of love for his country put himself at the service of the Nazis to fight the Russians (selling Jews).
In short, I’m curious to know where your anti-Russian sentiment comes from.
Veet Francesco, if I may, do you think it makes anyone happier to hear of the disgraces of our fellow human beings? I think that later in life many would find such acts to be a heavy burden. But I don’t see any use in remembering it.
In an enlightened world, people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan and others should not be remembered. Theirs were not proud accomplishments but moments of power-mad crimes against humanity.
Me: not Anti-Russian but: Anti-Dictatorship.
Using history to justify Putin is ugly and stupid.
Those Ant-Nato stories of yours are pure propaganda of Anti-Freedom and Anti-Democracy.
Your conspiracy-stories belong to those hidden neo-fascist ideas I don’t even want to discuss, because they have no truth and no honest seeking background. Many former sannyasins bow down to such esoteric, stupid explanations, because nowadays – left on their own and without Osho – they have no true inner guidance. Sorry to say so.
“Osho would have loved the Ukrainians for resisting fascist Russia with such a terrible dictator. And so he would be all in favour for more weapons and money to Ukraine.”
Osho would…this is just your mind’s opinion, nothing more.
A master is unpredictable, so you don’t how he would have responded.
Anyway, his response was always to the individual and not to political situations.
Veet asks the very current question, “How can you not support the Palestinian people, harassed for decades, today increasingly defenceless and hungry under the bombs of Netanyahu’s genocidal government (by the UN)?”
I’d be interested to hear what form his support for the Palestinian people has taken.
Satyadeva, “life itself is good” for me too, and probably many other people, even those who find themselves in a more or less “victim” condition, would agree with you.
You can love even in extreme survival conditions, struggling to change things.
Would you call this being “busy”?
I call it passion for life itself despite adverse circumstances.
As for people who live in objectively better conditions, let’s say from the third floor upwards of Maslow’s pyramid, one might have the luxury of asking questions like “who is my neighbor? to which family/sangha/people do I belong?” .
In different social eras perhaps we would have responded differently, finding fairly obvious answers and gay sannyasins like me would not have been persecuted so much..
In the current global world, governed by plutocracies (of which Nityaprem speaks), which have powerful means of information to manipulate the masses at will (as Lokesh says…in wonder why for him this not applies when they speack about Osho), people like you, Satyadeva, would seem too busy to have time to ask themselves: am I sure that the “bad guys” (also applies to the “good guys”) that the news talks about are the real ones?
Certainly hearing on TV that it is the “bad guy” who die, people who are physically and spiritually distant from us, helps us not to send the 5 o’clock tea pastries down the wrong pipe.
Even the Bard seems to help you swim, without the thoughts of wars far from the Iberian stage.
Since I’m not that busy, I found the time to register again in this forum to chat with people who I persist in imagining as more alert and sensitive than average, capable of noticing the subtle distortions in the description of reality.
Having a passion for the fate of the “bad guys” (in Palestine or Donbas), who want to live despite all the propaganda is trying to make them a threat to those like me who live on a different level of the pyramid of human needs, do you call it being busy?
Would you call “busy” the people in the TV news, who disturb your tea ritual every evening at 5?
Do you consider opposing these people (journalists/politicians/scientists/jurists) who work on this global formatting device of human minds (how many billions of healthy people have taken an experimental drug after signing a clause on adverse events?) unhealthy?
Someone asks me what positive contribution this form of resistance can make to changing things, they ask me it after having recognized the disinformational power of the mass media…
The Spanish sun plays certain tricks, especially when you have no hair.
Veet F, you assume far too much, inventing stuff about others while knowing next to nothing about them.
For instance, what makes you think I necessarily believe everything I read, hear or see in the media? You too easily jump to conclusions, as if you relish finding ‘enemies’, which is one of the characteristics of the undiscriminating mind that only sees ‘black-and-white’, not shades of grey.
As I said, if you’re moved to obsess about all that’s going wrong in the world, then ok, carry on and see where you end up. And don’t complain if/when you find there’s no realistic solution, it’s all gone too far, the collective karma’s just too much – even for a would-be romantically heroic freedom fighter such as yourself (lol).
For me, just a minute or two yesterday of a tv news report from Gaza I accidentally happened upon, about a child who’d lost a limb and all but one of her family through the Gaza war, was more than enough. In our lifetimes we’ve heard of so many atrocities and the inevitable horrified reactions – and they still keep coming…I don’t need further exposure to such obscenities, either on news film or in discussions.
It’s one thing to go out there and offer to help somehow, quite another to sit at home and be an impotent observer or commentator. And as Lokesh enquired, what do you (or me or anyone) think you (we) can do to end or to improve such dire situations? Would it be a good idea to look at your (our) own easily offended emotionality, eg impatience, quickly growing into despising others, then hatred of those who have differing stances on issues to yours (ours), perhaps even making you (us) want to injure or even kill them? Because if that’s unconscious, or even regarded as normal and acceptable, and ready to boil over under certain conditions then you (we) are not that different from those ‘over there’ you (we) like to condemn.
Our awareness of obscenities does not influence our choices or those of the national leaders, so why would you want to focus your mind on what is basically a mental pollutant? Does being aware of war and talking about it bring more light into the world?
Your apology for impotence is interesting, assuming that you are the disciple of a rebel.
If your premise is true, that awareness of obscenity does not influence your choices nor those of the politicians involved with that obscenity, then how can you say that focusing on obscenity influences your mind, the instrument of awareness?
Instead I have a lot of faith in the power of awareness (recognizing and staying with what is there, love for reality/truth), especially when I observe the obscenity of war.
You too, NP, seem to assume that I love observing a particular aspect of reality, the horrible one, while in reality I only get pissed off at Osho’s self-styled friends/disciples who try to escape from an aspect of reality with the recipes (frames) provided by journalists/politicians.
It’s clear who is committing the crime of war, Putin in Ukraine and Netanyahu in Palestine. But I don’t need more awareness than a daily paging through a few sources to see this.
NP, it’s strange how the descent observed from England seems like an ascent observed from Donbas.
P.S:
What do you think about the son of a bitch/cuckold who changes the lyrics to what I write? Don’t be too self-defeating.
I try never to be self-defeating… anecdotally strange things seem to happen to posts on this site, but I’ve never yet noticed any of my posts being affected. So I can’t say for sure.
NP, it’s unlikely anyone will tamper with your comments because you never write much that someone could be offended by or get fired up about.
While searching for material for the new SN book, I came across dozens of my comments that had been altered in some way or another, many in a very anti-Osho style to the point of being absurd. It does not bother me, especially considering that I would not have found out about this had I not been doing what I was doing. There is something vain about going over comments you have made months before and getting upset about someone sabotaging them. Who cares about such things? It is all just tepid water passing under the SN bridge.
It would bother me if people were to change my comments and make them anti-Osho!
And that affects the whole of SannyasNews because it impacts the reputation of the site, if the majority of its commenters are seen as anti-Osho.
I have noticed comments that have dissapeared, such as from Chetna, one of the few women who has commented on the site in the last ten years, from the LoveOsho podcasts trying to explain some of her experience with Osho to Lokesh after some comment he made or thread he wrote about ‘spiritual fantasies’. Her comment has disappeared.
And it is only the tip of the iceberg, I only noticed that because I was looking for it. A lot of comments except Lokesh’s have disappeared from the old nitrous oxide forum. And last night, whilst reading the comments, I noticed that Veet Francesco had something suspicious added about “if you want to meet in Madrid in the gay bar, I always wear orange. His blessings.”
SD informs he has now removed that. But judging by the way it was written, the “His Blessings” part, I can guess that was likely done by someone who has been involved in Sannyas in some way in the past. It’s pretty obvious. Only old (ex) sannyasins use ‘His Blessings’.
Shanti says, “I have noticed comments that have disappeared.” And then proceeds to point a finger at me.
I find this a bit rich coming from someone who actually admitted he was deleting other people’s comments because the water became too hot for him. I had nothing whatsoever to do with deleting Chetna’s comments or comments on the nitrous oxide forum, whatever that is.
No, it wasn’t comments that were “too hot” for me it was just a comment that was abusive.
And I noticed you deleted one of Satchit’s comments.
No, I can believe that you had nothing to do with the comments being altered on the nitrous oxide forum or Chetna’s comment, and wasn’t necessarily pointing at you re the alterations made to Veet Francesco’s comments.
It is also that there are Christians that are keenly onto Osho, like when they were holding onto women and pulling them on traction racks, and asking them if they were having sex with the devil: “pull, pull!” Oh dear, we accidentally pulled her head off.” The same type who are likely responsible, who are now holding onto Osho and sannyasnews.
Abusive, extremely offensive and insulting.
I do not take what you are saying about me as abusive, but I dare say others might. After all, you are accusing me of something that I had nothing to do with.
“There is nothing wrong with the senses, it is your imagination that misleads you. It covers up the world as it is, with what you imagine it to be — something existing independently of you and yet closely following your inherited or acquired patterns. There is a deep contradiction in your attitude, which you do not see and which is the cause of sorrow. You cling to the idea that you were born into a world of pain and sorrow; I know that the world is a child of love, having its beginning, growth and fulfillment in love.”
( Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj )
NP, these seem to me to be somewhat generic words, they should be contextualized. If the person who said them was truly an awakened person, it is possible that he did not bother to contradict himself, first speaking of the wrong perception of reality by those who observe through lenses of pain and sorrow and then giving his version of reality made only of roses and flowers.
Satyadeva, I assume that what you write is the result of a poor capacity for political analysis; I don’t make other hypotheses, assuming that you are a disciple of a bad guy, I could be offensive.
Don’t be so busy repeating the arguments you hear on tv about the good guys and the bad guys and I’ll be happy to ignore you.
It would be even better if I could live without your analyses and judgments based on…my astral karma (?), which would make me do things compulsively, such as accumulating bad news that would undermine my mental health, when I could follow the example of sannyasins who are wiser/smarter than me (like you or the father & son of this forum).
Veet F, I’m not naive nor incapable of political analysis (I even studied politics at uni) but I don’t enjoy it, it has little attraction for me; it’s enough for me to know that almost everywhere in the world things are getting ever worse, with little evidence of viable practical solutions, and anyway I’ve always preferred to devote my time and energy to other things.
Do you understand that what might be right for you isn’t necessarily right for others? Or are you some sort of ideological authoritarian, a fatal trap for all fanatics?
And btw, what makes you think I bother watching political discussions on tv – don’t you read what I say or do you prefer believing your own version of people you violently disagree with, ie your own convenient falsities?
Before leaving this propagandist sewer of politically correct vaccines against the critical sense (saving Shanti and a few other sincere friends), listen, friend who has studied politics (SD), you wrote what follows. I’ll put a short comment from my friends nearby if the full version was not sufficient:
“Israel has never been a “victim” ”
…is this your sanctimonious way of saying they’ve always been “tyrants?” Or is this your rhetorical ploy to avoid mentioning the real victims, quote-unquote?
“Which, btw, doesn’t imply that I’m advocating for or against the Israeli government”
…was it necessary to specify that you are not unaware of the existence of the Anti-Defamation League? Don’t worry, the Israeli people are not represented by the current government, as almost no people are, judging by the galloping abstentionism with people and tractors in the street.
“…the problem in our times that undermines such a ‘noble warrior’ policy continues to be the threat that any time, any day, some lunatic might have had enough of it all, feel angry, impatient, pathologically inclined and/or humiliated enough to resort to pressing the nuclear button and thus obliterate all chance of justice, of victory/defeat, of any ‘noble fight against tyranny’. Just listen to one or two of them from the Kremlin, or that little maniac from North Korea , for instance”.
Finally some courage, you have spat out the sentence on the potential nuclear risks of whoever will explode this cosmic speck, a couple of bad guys who inflame television debates by those who have studied politics, sitting a few desks in the class ahead of you.
“Hard to have to admit the truth, perhaps, but it does seem that with the emotional temperature being ratcheted up everywhere (via media, including (anti)social media), there’s not a lot of hope left – except for ever-greater numbers of people taking responsibility for themselves and committing themselves to finding the depths of truth/love within.If you’re really as skeptical of ‘all that stuff’ as you seem to be, then you’re maybe part of the problem, not part of the only possible solution (however far away that might seem or in fact be).”
So…here you recognize that you have a certain emotional fever and you share it with Veet Tom who would be skeptical of the politically-based reasons for this fever, accusing him of being part of the problem.
But how? Weren’t people like me part of the problem, not at all skeptical about the problem?
“It’s difficult to accept that on a collective level there might be little or no hope left, it goes against our all-powerful survival instincts, but if someone as conscious and as far-seeing as Osho offers this perception (and he’s far from the only such one) then it’s worth at least taking it seriously.”
Here is your masterpiece, a worthy conclusion to an inconsistent jumble held together by one of your wet farts: transforming Osho from a Master of reality to an apologist of hope, in short, a comforter.
“Israel has never been a “victim” ”
…is this your sanctimonious way of saying they’ve always been “tyrants?” Or is this your rhetorical ploy to avoid mentioning the real victims, quote-unquote?
SD:
It means exactly what it says, Veet.
“was it necessary to specify that you are not unaware of the existence of the Anti-Defamation League?”
SD:
Never heard of this league, Veet – any decent teams playing in it?
“Weren’t people like me part of the problem, not at all skeptical about the problem?”
SD:
Yes, Veet, the self-righteous venom and hatred you spout definitely qualifies you as part of the problem. Congratulatioms.
“Here is your masterpiece, a worthy conclusion to an inconsistent jumble held together by one of your wet farts: transforming Osho from a Master of reality to an apologist of hope, in short, a comforter.”
SD:
On the contrary, you yourself have here delivered a masterpiece of misunderstanding. I was referring to Osho’s warnings that there were very hard times ahead for this world and the only way to go was deep within.
Your problem is you believe you can help save the world. Writing in such a reactive manner is enough evidence you’re deluding yourself.
“Before leaving this propagandist sewer of politically correct vaccines against the critical sense…”
SD:
Glad to hear you’ve had enough.
Satyadeva, would you rule out that having studied politics you could be identified with some of its famous interpreters?
Above all, I think of Pontius Pilate, for your Advaitic propensity, of Joe Biden, for your reactivity in getting back on your feet, and of Tony Blair, for your empathy towards the less well-off classes.
You’re wasting your time, Veet.
Veet Francesco is beyond mainstream, the owner of special higher consciousness.
I doubt it. You are just a conspiracy dealer. Sannyas has not helped you to look deeper.
Lokesh, you are Anti-Semite in my eyes.
Lost Sannyas can’t help.
Enough said.
But…but…but I’m Jewish.
@MOD: The usual son of a bitch/cuckold who changes the text of what I write, not only that, I can’t even open my comment posted on “caravanserai” before publishing it on the forum page.
I have never expressed the following thought:
“…and gay sannyasins like me would not have been persecuted so much….”
I can’t even suggest the correction because I haven’t kept any other copy.
MOD:
Where exactly is this comment at the Caravanserai, Veet? I’ve looked but can’t locate it.
VEET FRANCESCO:
MOD, I’m busy with life/love and you are busy with the propaganda. Amen
MOD:
Which is why you’ll get no more help with this.
You have been posting on your profile, not the caravanserai page, VF. You can alter it when you make a post by choosing the selection and opting for ‘caravanserai’.
Thanks, Shanti, I do this in an attempt to leave an unmanipulated trace of what I write, but I’m not sure if it works, ask SD, he’s the MODipulator.
MOD:
Any more such unwarranted accusations and you’re out of here, Veet.
I agree with you on this, MOD
Veet Tom, I’m sorry you’re angry with me, I like you, you seem innocent, like an altar boy in Monsignor Satyadeva’s parish.
I understand your frustration as someone has been messing around with your comments, as I have certainly witnessed myself here, VF, and that you want to keep a record of your original comments.
Shanti, no frustration, that was the past, now the frustration belongs to someone else, for example those who claim to moderate the debate but recognize that they cannot distinguish between an original comment and a manipulated one.
It would be more honest not to hide behind a role for which one does not have the prerogatives, rather than getting frustrated with those who remind them that the manipulations are only the tip of the iceberg of an intellectually flawed debate, starting from the “license to kill” granted only to some.
Take recent events for example, in this forum, is there a more innocent accusation than that of copying and pasting? How many times have you yourself been called, even just suggestively, “parrot”?
Yet our diligent moderator decided not to publish my comment with that adjective, preferring its delay.
No, I don’t think I’m frustrated, not even angry.
About the way old Osho books are being edited…My father was looking for references to Swami Anand Yatri in a certain Darshan Diary, where he knew from having an old paper copy that there was a question by Yatri about himself and Sarita (they used to be an item back in Poona 1).
To his great surprise, in the PDF file he had on his hard drive there were no references at all to Yatri, and when he checked the one place where he knew there should be one, he found a heavily-edited version of the old text, referring only to a “sannyasin couple” and leaving out, for example, Yatri’s letter to Osho which had been published in the original.
I find it deeply worrying that this kind of revisionist editing is being done.
NP, you say, “I find it deeply worrying that this kind of revisionist editing is being done.”
That you should find such trivia as deeply worrying sounds absurd to me, laughable. There is so much Osho news online, including the good, the bad and the ugly, that such minutiae is just a drop in the ocean.
As for the reputation of this site, you need not worry about that as it is pretty much a reflection of Osho in general. In other words, Osho, like Sannyas News, has a reputation that includes being multi-faceted. Osho was not in the least bit concerned about his reputation or being respectable. Why should a blog with a few sannyasins exchanging ideas, comments etc. be concerned about such things? Its reputation in whose eyes exactly? Father O’Leary, the local Catholic priest? Mother Mary, who thinks he’s a fairy? Heaven forbid, NP, keep this up and you might gain a reputation as being a bit of a prude. Deeply worrying, I’m sure.
If someone wants to tamper with this comment, please go right ahead. I’m sorry that you can’t find anything better to do with your time.
I don’t think you quite understand the power of negative propaganda, Lokesh…if it happens here, wherever else might it be happening?
But the worry is actually only superficial, in the view of galaxies, star clusters and life itself it is a concern of vanishingly small proportions.
Osho was a wonderful phenomenon, a man of rare talent and insight, and reading his words will make you more free than you were. That bears repeating, if nothing else.
NP, it is obviously a back-peddling day. First Shanti and now you.
First you say, “I find it deeply worrying that this kind of revisionist editing is being done.”
Then you say, “The worry is actually only superficial.”
This leaves me wondering if it happens here, wherever else might it be happening?
As for, “I don’t think you quite understand the power of negative propaganda.” Yes, you are probably right. I muust have made a mistake by adopting the idea that the best example of persuading people in order to hurt others is the negative propaganda used in World War II by Hitler’s Nazi party. Coincidentally enough, I am currently reading a fascinating book about the rise of the Nazis during the 1930s in Berlin titled ‘In The Garden of Beasts’. Highly recommended.
Well, I found myself using a figure of speech that was actually factually false. Go figure. There is actually nothing that causes me “deep worry”, the very idea is laughable.
As far as ‘negative propaganda’ is concerned, there still seem to be quite a few anti-Osho influences, I still come across young people whose first impressions of Osho have been negative.
I think that is a great shame because Osho’s words can still help many people today, if only they would read some of his books or listen to discourses.
Don’t worry, NP, Lokesh is not interested in the original.
He even creates a whole book by manipulating:
“I had to beef up some of the threads so that they would appeal to a discerning reader. Part of this process involved taking the good comments from otherwise dull threads and splicing them into more interesting threads.”
Read Lokesh’s words more carefully, Satchit. It doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s created anything misleading or dishonest. If he had, then I doubt he’d have announced what he’d done so openly, thus setting himself up for potential exposure and justified condemnation.
It depends how you define “misleading”, SD.
Did he not say that he changed comments and threads to make them more appealing for the thousands of readers that will come in the future?
Because we all know dullness is not good.
Did he ask for permission for this? No.
He did it for his personal fun.
Fact is: he changed the reality.
Certainly one can do this, but one should be honest about it.
As I understand it, Satchit, Lokesh improved threads by transferring relevant posts from other discussions.
Satchit enquires, “Did Lokesh not say that he changed comments and threads to make them more appealing for the thousands of readers that will come in the future?”
No. I did not say that. And if I did, I have completely forgotten about it. Perhaps Satchit could be kind enough to copy and paste where he believes I said that. Talking about thousands of readers really does not sound like something I would say.
Shanti, you write,”Trying to explain some of her experience with Osho to Lokesh after some comment he made or thread he wrote about ‘spiritual fantasies’. Her comment has disappeared.
And it is only the tip of the iceberg, I only noticed that because I was looking for it. A lot of comments except Lokesh’s have disappeared from the old nitrous oxide forum. And last night, whilst reading the comments, I noticed that Veet Franscesco had something suspicious added about “if you want to meet in Madrid in the gay bar, I always wear orange. His blessings.” I can guess that was likely done by someone who has been involved in Sannyas in some way in the past. It’s pretty obvious. Only old (ex) sannyasins use ‘His Blessings’.”
This all indicates that I am somehow the culprit, even though I do not view myself as an ex-sannyasin, whatever that is supposed to mean.
And then you say, “No, I can believe that you had nothing to do with the comments being altered on the nitrous oxide forum or Chetna’s comment, and wasn’t necessarily pointing at you re the alterations made to Veet Francesco’s comments.”
Back peddling…to change an opinion that you had expressed before.
In my opinion, Lokesh is reaping what he has sown in this forum.
But he is honest when he says that reputation is a small thing, he is referring to that one of the others. His own, however, is so important to him that the MOD, his butler (SD), knowing full well how vain he is, rushed to censor a negative judgment directed at his latest literary effort: “Psittaciformes”.
Years dedicated to demolishing the reputation of others, in particular that of Osho, clumsily preserving that one of Poonji ball, ridiculing those who tried to bring to his memory the qualities of the Master of Masters, in the most intellectually honest way, using the Master’s own words, a simple copy/paste, without claiming any credit, with humility.
No, for him, and for some of his snack friends, this was unacceptably devotional: “we must go further!”
The genius, stubbornly, invited to kill the Buddha by practising his character assassination, not distinguishing the container from the content, the qualities, the value, the beauty…
Today, when there is a great need for that content, on the horizon, we cannot see a container capable of conveying that Vision. Amen
MOD:
“But he is honest when he says that reputation is a small thing, he is referring to that one of the others. His own, however, is so important to him that the MOD, his butler (SD), knowing full well how vain he is, rushed to censor a negative judgment directed at his latest literary effort: “Psittaciformes”.”
Yes, Veet, and I told you why your unwelcoming remark wasn’t going to be included as the first response to the new article, and that it would just have to wait to be included. That’s not ‘censorship’, it’s simple courtesy – to the author and actually, even to you.
One of the saddest stories I came to know about in these last years is the downfall of far too many sannyasins. They once were strictly anti-establishment, then somehow integrated by Osho to find themselves and not just fight the evil outside world.
Now – without that stabilizing loving and helping care of Osho – they again go their old ways…The rich and frightening vacuum can’t be upheld any longer and has to be filled with esoteric bullshit theories because after the enlightening mystic pastimes with Osho now it will be needed to re-establish personal and hidden truth along with new conspiratorial, esoteric groups of alternative believers, who rather accept Trump, reptiloid Aliens, Corona-doubters, Anti-Americanists and modern fascists of all kinds and colours.
How does esoteric bullshit help to substitute for truth?
Just look into history and presence of the “old man”….
It’s true, I think it’s partially because there have been so few homes for sannyasins online. OshoNews, OshoWorld, they tend to project the image but they are not a home for an online community. Maybe the Facebook sannyas groups are more a thing?
It’s a great shame that so many anti-establishment thinkers turned into conspiracy theorists. In a way, esoteric thinking goes together with hard-to-believe underground theories, my hard-headed engineering training wants to find less flattering words for these people but I have a kind of fondness for them…
But look, for instance, at Graham Hancock, there is someone whose anti-establishment thinking is slowly turning the science on its head. I was watching some long discussions between him and Joe Rogan, fascinating stuff on ancient civilisations.
Out of courtesy to SD, I cannot quote, without his authorization, the content of his email on the reasons for not publishing my comment.
It seems clear to me that the only character assassination that is guaranteed in this forum without delays and consequences is that one against someone who can no longer defend himself, by a cynic (Frank), now disappeared from the radar, and his gang.
It’s not an email, I put it up at the Caravanserai, 2 days ago:
“Veet, this post will be put up after others have made a few comments. Lokesh’s effort doesn’t deserve to be greeted with such mean-spirited negativity.”
I can’t really follow all of this. A much too complicated flow of comments, commenting on this or that comment before. The topic of things gets muddled by a terribly confusing board structure in time and place and order… I got lost.
Maybe one has to just comment only on the very last comment…and not reply in between the 1001 commented on comments so one doesn’t lose track of the thread and content. Also there are no notifications if someone replies to your words.
In the old days it was needed (or happened automatically) repeating the answerable and wanted comment before – so one clearly knew what somebody wants to react to.
MOD:
Veet Tom, I sympathise with you but the site has been flawed in these ways for years, since Dharmen, the former tech adviser, passed away. We lack the financial and ongoing technical expertise to make a significant difference so unfortunately we just have to make the best of it as it is. Every new SN year feels as if it could be the last one but somehow it all carries on.
Ok, I only read your email.
It seems to me that the courtesy towards me you speak of has nothing to do with it.
Well, frankly I wouldn’t expect any other response from you, Veet. Perhaps you’d have preferred if I’d said absolutely nothing as then you could have really indulged your apparently insatiable appetite for hard-done-by resentment?
This is precisely the point, that is your partiality (if you are in good faith), calling my responsibility as a sannyasin (gratitude for Osho and his lovers) “resentment”, while you admire the claimed emancipation (from Osho) of others, as a result of intelligence and apathy.
My opinion is that the worst form of resentment is that which fuels the stubborn idolatry of one’s own image.
You’ve just provided a pretty good precis of what’s driving you here, Veet F. There’s just no truth in these claims, you’re creating such drama from so little, essentially fighting imaginary enemies.
If so, SD, and we are all friends of Osho, why are you not happy and want to kick me out?
Veet, playing the disingenuous card really doesn’t suit you, lol.
SD, do you have any idea about the last manipulation on my comment?
My comment was this: “Veet Tom, I’m sorry you’re angry with me, I like you, you seem innocent, like an altar boy in Monsignor Satyadeva’s parish.”
MOD:
That’s the comment that’s already there, Veet. Otherwise, I’ve no idea about any “manipulation”.
Well, he had something about being gay added on the end of it which you must have removed.
MOD:
You’re confusing two different posts, Shanti. I deleted the offending part of the one you mention here when it was pointed out. Re the other one, re-read my comment below Veet’s post.
SHANTI:
I saw something which was added into his post which he posted as an update.
MOD:
But it’s all right now, isn’t it?
SHANTI:
Yes.
SD, there is an Italian (Neapolitan) dialect expression that describes your way of cheating at cards, “a culo apierte” (with your ass wide open, it means doing something without shame, with greed), and you expect me to get fleeced like a chicken from you, so that you can then offer a drink to your Scottish hero?
“an altar boy in Monsignor Satyadeva’s parish.”
Got the picture.
Ok, I may have deserved that, haha…
In Poona One, when I was a guard, we had to look into the guards’ book for training reasons where photos of some cuckoos, a few madmen or even dangerous people were shown with a little text to it.
Reading your sophisticated stuff, Veet F, there pops up a feeling you could have been mentioned there: “Don’t worry, he is doing no harm, but tries to enter Buddha Hall without paying the fee or likes to be strolling around in the area ‘for residents only’. Gently but straightforwardly show him the way out.”
Veet Tom, if you think what I write here is offensive or irrelevant you could directly ask me to stop or leave the forum, and not encourage SD to kick me out.
I believe that already in Poona One there was a dialectical relationship between the people in charge who had to enforce the rules and those who only had to apply rules for themselves.
One day a friend of mine came to Poona, he liked Osho, intellectually (today, 15 years later, he’s different, he’s much more in the heart and less in the genitals as a thirty-year-old), and he really liked women, almost the opposite of what happened to me when I lived in that buddhafield, loving Osho and having an intellectual interest in my dynamics with the female world, having there the necessary space for a detached observation which in Zorba’s fast and chaotic world was not always possible.
We sat at the smoking temple to chat and he took out a joint and lit it, to my surprise a sense of amazement mixed with scandal came over me. Usually out of there, overlooking my anti-prohibitionist positions, if he had offered it to me I would have taken a couple of puffs too, but thereafter the surprise I felt a certain anger towards that dickhead.
I believe that this testifies to the fact that by and large, love for a Master like Osho encourages people to give their best in many aspects of behaviour, and not for the rules themselves but possibly through them, that is, to create a relationship of trust also with people in power, but only when their action is experienced as a practical expression of the shared existential vision.
Days ago I was reading an old article on this topic, it would seem that in the neo-sannyasin world the relationship with the rules has always been rather dialectical and much less dogmatic, even when the rules were embodied by Sheela and her gang.
https://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/3575
MOD:
Veet F, your “averagely” (or, as you suggested, “on average”) has been altered to “by and large”, meaning ‘usually’, ‘on the whole’, ‘more often than not’. Let is know if you prefer one of these alternatives.
Hi Veet F, this is Veet T speaking…
Only saw your words now on the 20th – 10 days later! You are mentioning some real thing here. I understand your anger on being warned by the admin and me as his yeah-sayer. I later felt I was stupid – but didn’t show it.
I was ready to leave this board when I saw my last post deleted two times now. Maybe the mod was confused about my wish to delete a crippled last part of that article, where the first two parts were taken away by him, or by accident? He may also be an old man – and I know from my experience that old minds have certain memory-blackouts here and there.
So maybe he didn’t want to censor me? Did you, mod?
MOD:
Veet Tom, I’ve already replied twice to your enquiries about this issue, via your personal email.
I repeat, I did not delete anything from your post and have no idea what happened.
P.S:
I might be “an old man” but I don’t suffer from merntal “blackouts”, I’m fine in that respect.
I am very close to trusting you.
Some technlcal problem may have been the reason.
A real and very easy way to help might be to allow all posts and don’t control them before they reach these pages. This is for all to read, btw.
MOD:
Your suggestion won’t make any difference, VT, as such deletions have been made in already published posts. It’s annoying, but it’s something we’ll have to live with at an insecure site, without the necessary funds to make radical changes.
Besides, posts need to be screened to avoid people getting away with offensive, abusive comments. I can’t always be on hand to check what comes in immediately, now and then I might be out for a few hours or occasionally even longer.