Here, inspired by a random encounter with Ramana Maharshi’s teachings, Lokesh describes the process of observing and disidentifying with mind-made processes that obscure our awareness of what we essentially are, our fundamental Being.
I’d sworn to myself that I would never again read another Jack Reacher novel, but Lee Child’s writing is so addictive, I eventually succumbed to temptation. I felt a bit stupid about it, and after I’d finished the paperback, I went in search of a book that would be a little more intelligent and hopefully inspiring.
There aren’t any decent English bookshops in Ibiza, so I passed by the place where I usually pick up something to read. A little second-hand shop in my local town. There was a pile of old paperbacks in front of the shop window. I started to look through it and came across something unusual. ‘The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi’. The book was in very good condition, and I had the distinct impression that it had been waiting there for me to pass by and collect it. The person who had donated the book had obviously been to Tiruvanamalai because lodged between the paperback’s pages were various flyers and business cards from the holy city in India’s Tamil Nadu state. I paid the shopkeeper one euro and walked through the relentless heat to reach my car.
The sun dropped towards the horizon, and I went up to my roof terrace to enjoy the cool breeze blowing in from the sea. I started reading the Ramana book and entered a different dimension, the world of truth. Ramana wrote very little. He taught mainly through the tremendous power of spiritual silence. That did not mean that he was unwilling to answer questions when asked. So long as he felt that they were asked with a sincere motive and not out of idle curiosity, he answered fully, whether in speech or writing. However, it was the silent influence upon the Heart that was the essential teaching. Which reminds me of when Osho said that his message was not in his words but the silence between his words. A very important point.
The more I read, the more an unsettling feeling began to rise from my guts. I was struck by the undeniable fact that I was not the great seeker that I perhaps once imagined I was. Reading the profound words of the master, I felt like I was just a beginner, a novice. Once more, I thought of Osho. I recalled that at one point during my first darshan with Osho in March ’75, I felt like a scruffy schoolboy sitting at the feet of the headmaster, immaculate in his freshly pressed, high-necked, white cotton robe, manicured toes peeping out from the front of his brand new sandals with black velvet straps, that special balm he used filling my nostrils with its exotic scent. Osho looked down at me and chuckled.
That was something of note about Osho. He made the path to enlightenment look like an easy one to tread, a spiritual adventure to enjoy. He told us we were 10,000 Buddhas just waiting to claim our birthright. Over 50 years down the line, it hasn’t quite worked out like that. The handful of sannyasins claiming to be enlightened and satsang givers that I have met over the years all seemed a bit delusional to me. They simply did not cut the spiritual mustard. I am no longer interested in contemporary gurus like Mooji, Sat Guru, etc. Which isn’t to say that they don’t have something of value to offer, I’m just not drawn to them. Not enough of that spiritual magnetism that both Osho and Poonjaji generated.
At heart, throughout my over seventy years of living in this body, I’ve always felt like a child. I sometimes felt weird about this until Nisargadatta Maharaj pointed out that it is the child within that I should nurture. What a relief! Permission from on high to remain in my playful, childlike state and observe in shocked disbelief the insane world the grown-ups have created for themselves, clutching their mobile phones as they hurry down the bomb-cratered road to nowhere, making all their nowhere plans for nobody.
Returning to Ramana Maharshi, I have to confess that I take his word for what makes us what we are in essence, as God’s honest truth. Osho’s words I no longer listen to. Too many of them and so many contradictions carried upon them that I suspect this was a deliberate undertaking on his part to break people’s attachment to what he said and stop people from trying to construct some daft religion upon his words. You know, Osho said, ad infinitum. From what I know of Osho, there was an aura of silence around him that conveyed far more than words could ever do. Like Ramana, Osho’s transmission took place in silence.
In retrospect, I view Osho’s sannyas movement as a specialised garden nursery for human beings. Osho tended his germinating seeds and watched them sprout. Of course, not all of the plants were destined to grow into beautiful lotuses. As history has shown, there were some nasty weeds in Osho’s garden. This was not an entirely unexpected development. Osho was out to spread the word far and wide, he said ‘yes’ to almost everyone, and he knew Jesus’s parable of the sower.
It was Osho who first introduced me to the method of inquiry into oneself. During the seventies, he developed a group called ‘Enlightenment Intensive’ which was loosely based on self-inquiry. It was strictly for beginners, an introduction, one might say. But it was a start, and most of us were indeed beginners. And that was something truly remarkable about Osho. He got the spiritual mirrorball rolling all around the globe. No easy task.
It was thanks to what I’d learned from Osho that I was able to fully appreciate what Advaita, non-duality proponent and direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi, HWL Poonja, had to offer in Lucknow in 1991. And it was thus that I first truly entered the inner world of self-inquiry.
Now, 34 years later, Ramana Maharshi once more enters my life via a book. I have been sitting and meditating most mornings over the last year. The Ramana book is a tremendous guide on this level. And guidance on the path of self-inquiry is certainly something I need. Like a recipe in a cookbook, I will follow the instructions and see what kind of dish comes out of it.
Ramana says, “Grasping form, the formless phantom-ego rises into being; grasping form it stands; grasping and feeding on form it grows [spreads, expands, increases, rises high or flourishes] abundantly; leaving [one] form, it grasps [another] form. If sought [examined or investigated], it will take flight. Investigate [or know thus].” The ego is really just a construct of the mind; it has no real substance. It emerges as a “formless phantom,” coming into existence by attaching onto forms. Its existence relies on this continuous attachment to forms.
What this actually means is that the ego is a by-product of the operations of the mind. The mind is always active; it is constantly modulating and forming mental representations of senses and perceptions. In doing this, it assigns identity to this information, which creates a coherent narrative. Because of this, the ego is nothing more than a collection of these thoughts, sensations, and perceptions. It doesn’t possess any essence of its own. This is what is meant by the ego standing as it grasps form and growing as it feeds on form. Its existence is dependent on thoughts, sensations and perceptions. Because we don’t investigate into its nature, we mistakenly believe in a separate entity that claims “I see,” “I think,” “I feel,” etc. However, this ‘I’ is only just a narrative constructed by the mind from the mind organising thoughts, sensations and perceptions into a bundle of information.
Just like we may mistakenly perceive AI as an entity when it’s actually just the processing of digital information in a complex pattern, the ego can also be mistaken for an autonomous self due to the misperception of the mind’s processing of information. It is basically a ghost in the machine. There’s no actual “ghost” running the machine. Instead, it’s the machine itself operating in a way that gives the impression of an overseeing presence. In truth, there isn’t a separate entity controlling the “machine” of our body and mind system; what we experience as the ego or self is an emergent property of this system. The workings of our mental processes create the illusion of a self that appears to be in charge.
Since The Self or Consciousness is always present, these mental processes become intertwined with this fundamental awareness, which gives the appearance of a conscious entity that we experience as an individual conscious self. However, this entity has no reality of its own. It is not the same as consciousness, or is it the mind? This individual self is just a by-product of consciousness infused into the mental activities, but it does not possess consciousness independently, nor does it have the autonomous functionality of the mind.
The ego, like the misperception of a snake mistaken for a rope, cannot be directly changed or eliminated because it doesn’t have any real existence. It’s an illusion of the mind.
Recognising it as an illusion through investigation can help, but this doesn’t lead to its dissolution. The ego’s existence is tied to habits of the mind that become ensnared in identification with thoughts, sensations and perceptions. So, it’s also important to cultivate practices that help the mind untangle itself from these identifications. Practices like Self-inquiry or cultivating silence and stillness are beneficial because they help to quiet and return the mind to a more natural state, preventing it from latching onto and identifying with sensory objects and thoughts. These practices do not fight or destroy the ego directly but they help dissolve the ego’s foundations by changing the way the mind functions, which then leads to a state where identification with senses and perceptions falls away along with the ego.
Yes, that is quite a lot to take in. This article was my way of clarifying and condensing my intellectual understanding of the process. The real deal is to put into practice that understanding. I’m heading down to the coast for an open water swim. Before I enter the sea, I will sit and meditate in the shade for a half hour or so. Tourists wander by. Conversations waft up from the beach. Canned ambient music tinkles from a nearby luxury hotel’s swimming pool. Children cry in delight before diving into the warm sea. Meditation in the marketplace, indeed. To whom are these thoughts occurring? Me. And who are you? The ghost in the machine evaporates. Silence.
“Silence is also conversation.” (Ramana Maharshi)
Photo of the book…
Nicely and easily readable essay about our ghosts in those machines we call our individuality…Three of my thoughts popped up while following the thread:
Just a by-the-way:
‘Enlightenment Intensive’ rather was invented by Charles Berner and later on picked up by Osho and/or his therapists – Osho gathered a lot of raisins …So what, the sun rising in the east is always new.
I also completed some literature – in my case: ‘The Martian Chronicles’ by Ray Bradbury. Entertaining me while riding home by train, coming back from my pensioner’s job of transferring cars to and from different car rental stations. (I will be 70 this November and still need something to spend my day and little old-age pension).
Now the paperback in my backbag is: ‘The Guru, the Mountain and the Silence: Tales from Tiruvannamalai’ by Subhuti Anand Waight. My copy has even been translated to German, and so the flow is easier for me. Subhuti has a fine style of writing clearly, straight and with humour. At home I only read half of his book ‘Wild Wild Guru’ (still original English version only – till now).
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All those years I misunderstood what meditation could be. At first I thought of it as a more mature and more healthy way than trips on LSD, because those experiences had been the deepest moments in my life and worthwhile. But meditation never came close to psychedelic affairs at all – that Instant Nirvana…
Osho’s techniques to me were substitutes – first tying my shoes much too heavily, so I could feel some relief when taking them off. (Mulla Nasruddin’s paradox?). Yes, the reward was some relaxation and easy-going afterwards – for some time – but no breakthrough at all.
I saw thoughts and mind as something to avoid by certain meditation techniques but they could never fulfil those high promises at all. Grasping for some silence between endless thoughts was some kind of fighting windmills. I never really knew how thoughts could be watched while coming in and out. How to do this was never revealed to me because I alweays wanted to push those thoughts away, so as not to be drowned in that eternal mindfuck and proceed towards the light… haha.
Since a few days I am trying to think my thoughts with more awareness and not just try to escape towards the space between those thoughts. Maybe this approach can develop further on? I am just new to this new ‘path’ and not sure if I will continue….
A good read, Lokesh, I liked seeing your views on Ramana and Osho, and how both taught through their silence more than their words. I always thought that Osho’s words had something hypnotic, that this prepared you to receive his silence. Ramana was never known as a great orator, so I guess the technique was different. Not that it matters, each teacher is unique and individual.
On Mooji and Sadhguru, I think it is a question of what we can still learn. There is a saying, ‘even from a poor teacher much can be learned’ and although they may not reach the heights of Ramana or Nisargadatta, they may be the right teachers for Generation Z. I had a look at their teachings, it didn’t do much for me.
If you can develop the sensitivity to look beyond the obvious, to allow trees and rocks and waters to have spirit and consciousness, to respect and honour these aspects of the world, then you can learn from the world itself and I don’t think ego will give you much trouble.
NP, whether we allow it or not, consciousness will be consciousness.
I know from my sojourns in dimensions beyond the known that plants have a certain awareness. Many times I have seen that trees, for instance, have an awareness of one’s presence. I see that as a kind of bio-awareness, chemistry and electromagnetic energy, not consciousness.
Rocks and water do not have awareness as such. They vibrate at different frequencies, but they are nothing like plants.
On the subject of rocks having a vibration, a story from an old sannyasin friend, now deceased, comes to mind.
Premendra was in a remote region of Tibet in the 1950s. He came to a village in the mountains and noticed a very attractive mani stone that weighed about 80 kilos. He approached the village headman and offered him $200 for the rock, a huge sum of money at the time. The headman could not resist the offer, although some of the villagers kicked up a fuss.
With the aid of a wheelbarrow, my friend set off with the mani stone, trundling down a narrow mountain path. The sky darkened. Out of nowhere, a storm appeared. My friend’s Sherpa guide said that they should not have taken the rock from its resting place. Soon, they were engulfed by a white-out blizzard. My friend relented and somehow made it back to the village. The stone was returned to where it was taken from that morning, and the weather immediately began to clear. Half an hour later, there were blue skies overhead. My friend told the village headman to keep the money he had paid for the stone. Premendra told me it was a lesson worth learning.
Like it! Great story about your friend.
I came across a video about a South American tribe named the Elder Brothers, who live in Colombia. They came across a sacred pond on their territory which had been drained for irrigation water by local guerrillas, who are basically thugs. They looked at the rock at the bottom of the empty pond, and now declared that it was stripped of its “seal”, that which made the pond sacred was no more.
Just an example of how indigenous tribes view the life of rocks, water and so on.
I said, “If you can develop the sensitivity to look beyond the obvious, to allow trees and rocks and waters to have spirit and consciousness, to respect and honour these aspects of the world, then you can learn from the world itself and I don’t think ego will give you much trouble.”
Of course, Ramana always spent much time with the mountain Arunachala. It was said that when he was young he was drawn to the mountain, and he would circumnavigate the mountain almost daily. The mountain was eventually said to be holy by his disciples.
The mountain is drawn at the bottom of the book cover that Lokesh posted above.
Lokesh said, “This article was my way of clarifying and condensing my intellectual understanding of the process. The real deal is to put into practice that understanding.”
The conviction that we are the Doer dies hard. In reality we do not ‘do’ anything, the moment of understanding does all the work in a receptive person. It is inner resistance and blockages made from old beliefs that keep us from truly being receptive.
The last year of my spiritual search I have been just relaxing. It is like the story of the sadhu who stood so long with his hand forming a fist that he could no longer open the hand. It had gotten used to being a fist — it took hours of gentle persuasion to make the fist into a hand again. It is the same with the mind and its many beliefs and identifications. Relaxing too is a form of meditation.
Whether this would be the right path for anyone else is a mystery to me, all I know is that it helps me.
https://youtube.com/shorts/pUXRMnQYYXI?si=K1w9r47tdTLkO-7h
Cool, NP, Sat. Offline for two weeks. Up in the north of Scotland.
Enjoy your holiday, Lokesh. This essay will certainly give us enough to chew on for a while…
Flashback:
Just for you to enjoy this enlightened dialogue from Mars.
The movie/series was poor – but this talk stands out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfypTnKYN5s
Lokesh said, “Osho’s words I no longer listen to. Too many of them and so many contradictions carried upon them that I suspect this was a deliberate undertaking on his part to break people’s attachment to what he said and stop people from trying to construct some daft religion upon his words. You know, Osho said, ad infinitum.”
If you don’t take what Osho said too seriously, his words can still help you. He was mainly busy destroying people’s questions, and there are sannyasins who still say today that “all my questions ended with Osho.” They may not read many of his books or remember many of his words though.
Ramana was of a different sort. He spent most of his life around the mountain Arunachala, and shared his silence and a few words with those who would come.
There is so much insight and reflection in your writing on Ramana. It’s a wonder to read your interpretation. So thank you, you add your own intelligence to what is sometimes a challenging read in Ramana.
He’s an easterner and his subjectivity or his depth of perception is so immediate that it has been helpful to have someone from the West, in this case, you, provide a more intellectual but also a subjective and authentic perspective.
It has seemed to me that there is a real need for this here in the West. We are so bound up by our minds and our clever thinking that the direct simplicity of the Eastern mind is lost on us.
For me Ramana only began to make sense much later in life, when I had been through much of the psychological stuff, the traumas, the childhood pain etc. etc. Only then did my real search within begin. His writing only began to make sense when I’d begun to explore the subject of the Self, non-Self, the Ego, with some form of discretion. Words like ‘Nothing’ or ‘Emptiness’ were subtly avoided in my younger days, or I pretended I knew what they meant.
Additionally I have seen for myself and I see in others, how the reality of Nothingness is so dangerous, so awful to the mind. The empty void is what we have all been running from, as it rips apart, tears through everything, and until and unless we come to recognise it as the source, we are always in awe and in fear.
As you also suggested it takes practice and effort to do this. It’s a meditative practice to slow down the mind, to breathe, to come to terms with the fears around what Ramana offers us.
Ramana’s genius is that whilst he looks like some sadhu, enlightened and at peace, his story is so authentic and his words are so immediate, and he has so deeply penetrated his own mind and provides some tools to help us do the same.
You are not wrong that Ramana’s writing benefits from some interpretation, Simond. I find that some words like ‘emptiness’ carry a certain Eastern context which doesn’t come naturally to foreigners.
But the words, although we Westerners choose to focus on them, are only so much help. In reality a photo of Ramana’s smiling face conveys more truth than a dozen Osho books.
There was a story told by Ram Dass. He and his guru Neem Karoli Baba were handing out photos of the guru, and Ram Dass noticed that the Baba was handing out photos to all kinds of people of low status, beggars, thieves and such. Ram Dass said, “how can you gift your photo to such unworthy dacoits?” Neem Karoli Baba replied, “if I can convince only one out of twenty of them that he might someday be a holy man himself, it will have been worth it.”
Simond, you say:
“Additionally I have seen for myself and I see in others, how the reality of Nothingness is so dangerous, so awful to the mind. The empty void is what we have all been running from, as it rips apart, tears through everything, and until and unless we come to recognise it as the source, we are always in awe and in fear.”
I’ve just found this Alan Watts short talk on the wonder of “Nothingness” – superb stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqGMDYzI8OQ
Nice, Satyadeva. A good find.
You can look all you like at his face, but it will get you not very far. Put him on a pedestal or feel a tingle looking at him. However you romanticise him, the real journey is to find your way to become your own version of him.
In other words, what “truth“ does an image of Ramana convey to you?
A clearness of the eyes. A humorous smile. A sense of compassion.
He basically says to me, all these books don’t matter, don’t get lost in them. If you can achieve clarity and love in heart and mind, then you’ve done well.
Spending time at the feet of a master is learning to lay down your burdens. You give it all to him, and let what is in your heart bubble up. And then, when you come to a parting of the ways, the difficulty lies in not picking up further rubbish.
Simond said, “the real journey is to find your way to become your own version of him.”
It’s not entirely right. I can only be myself, never him or a version of him. But we have certain things in common, enough that viewing him can give me a hint, a clue. A human being is like a rosebud, it requires the right conditions to flower — sunlight, warmth, water, the right soil. What the right conditions are for me to open a little further, perhaps Ramana’s smile may tell me, because he was the rose fully in bloom.,
“A human being is like a rosebud, it requires the right conditions to flower — sunlight, warmth, water, the right soil.”
A romantic idea, NP.
A human being needs also obstacles to grow.
Otherwise it remains childish.
Maybe you’ll like this SD, the bit about “you are the universe expressing itself as you” and “you do not grow your hair, you do not beat your heart” gave me a bit of a lift. A bit more Alan Watts.
https://youtu.be/B03oJooJG18
Tell me, SD, where are “the right
conditions to flower”?
Well, Satchit, if you don’t know by now perhaps it’s already too late for you (lol)!
How about ‘right teacher(s), right community of fellow-travellers, right meditation, right relationships, right occupation and/or right service, right care of the body, right living space’ – those or even just two or three of them would be a pretty good combination.
Aha, the right and the wrong.
Sounds very much Buddhist style.
Who chooses the right?
If the mind chooses, then it is the wrong.
It’s just a matter of psycho-spiritual common sense, Satchit. No need to use your mind to over-complicate the issue!
SD, things are not complicated at all.
In our world of duality, it happens that if something is “right” then there is also something “wrong”.
Seems to me, Buddhism is a kind of moralistic religion.
I was using the word “right” to mean appropriate for the stated purpose, Satchit, not to be promoting a specifically Buddhist perspective. To put it as I did simply occurred to me in the moment.
Now, are you going to say “Oh, but ‘appropriate’ implies ‘inappropriate’, so that can’t be right either”? If so, you might as well withdraw your original question and we should forget about communicating in words.
That dualism is mainly in the language of philosophers. In the teaching of Buddhism the word right’ is more used to indicate the correct or better way to proceed. In Buddhism you won’t find references to ‘wrong livelihood’ while ‘right livelihood’ is often discussed.
Precisely, NP.
I found Buddhism’s discussion of the ‘right’ way to proceed to sharpen my inner sense of direction. It was as if by discussing it I was clearing up a muddle somewhere inside, leaving an ‘aaah, yes!’ feeling.
I think that’s a good pointer, SD. Often we know what is meant by ‘right’ or ‘beneficial’ in a given context, whether it is relationship or meditation.
Osho’s books are full of good answers to these questions, if your inner compass is so out of joint that you can’t see where it is pointing.
Lokesh said, “It was Osho who first introduced me to the method of inquiry into oneself. During the seventies, he developed a group called ‘Enlightenment Intensive’ which was loosely based on self-inquiry. It was strictly for beginners, an introduction, one might say. But it was a start, and most of us were indeed beginners. And that was something truly remarkable about Osho. He got the spiritual mirrorball rolling all around the globe. No easy task.”
True for me as well, Osho was the start of the spiritual path for me, long before I even knew what it meant. These days I am grateful that he set my feet on the way of being a sannyasin.
Without Osho I might not have read the Tao Te Ching, or Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’, or Nisargadatta’s ‘I Am That’. And these are books that keep giving, they reward repeated visits with deeper insights and new details.
When I was a very young child I was fascinated by toy guns and pistols, whenever I visited a toy store I would go and examine them and pester my long suffering mother for one. When I was an older child I was interested in military history. When I was an adult I worked on simulation computer games. Now, I say all of that is dropped, it was childish.
I’m just grateful that I have had a peaceful life, away from wars and persecution.
I came across this video on ‘The Sadhu who came to Varanasi from Italy’ a while back, and I just had an impulse I should revisit it today. Because you know we as Osho’s sannyasins have a bit of common heritage with this man from Italy who came to Varanasi aged 22 in 1974 and never left.
It’s worth watching the video just for the vibes of India it brings back, casually seeing the Sadhu strolling past a cow in the middle of an alleyway and giving it a pat on the back.
It’s a short interview made for a documentary about the sunrise over Varanasi, and they later released this video with the extended footage after they learned of his leaving his body. But you can still get a bit of the vibe of the man, and maybe like me you’ll feel he was a similar soul….
https://youtu.be/-SKUclLlBgY
Lokesh said, “He told us we were 10,000 Buddhas just waiting to claim our birthright. Over 50 years down the line, it hasn’t quite worked out like that. The handful of sannyasins claiming to be enlightened and satsang-givers that I have met over the years all seemed a bit delusional to me. They simply did not cut the spiritual mustard.”
Certainly the likes of Teertha, Vishrant, Swaha are or were all far dimmer lights than Osho. I think it takes a special kind of person to want to be a spiritual teacher, a special insight. From what I’ve heard Somendra did have something, a certain energy, but he broke away from Osho quite early on.
Whether Osho’s Sannyas was a nursery where people spent a few years and then moved on, as Tony Parsons apparently did, I think that now makes a kind of sense. That those we see left in the Osho fold are those who don’t have the energy to stand on their own, and all the most promising people broke away after a while.
I think it really depends on if you have something interesting and new to say. If you just repeat Osho’s phrases on celebrating or meditating, it’s something that millions of seekers will already be familiar with. It doesn’t, as you say, cut the mustard.
“From what I’ve heard Somendra did have something, a certain energy, but he broke away from Osho quite early on.”
Yes, Somendra did have “a certain energy”, he was gifted, innovative and insightful, had a sense of humour (and, most importantly, he was an Arsenal fan), but for me he remained more a therapist rather than a true spiritual teacher, a role he tried to perform when I experienced his work, for instance claiming he could “channel Bhagwan”!
I’m rather biased, I guess, having participated in his 3 month intensive course in London when I was 29, which I entered with great expectations only to find it a huge disappointment, a waste of time and money at a particularly difficult period of my young life. I’d have been better off focusing on improving my health, work/finances, living situation and quality of daily life, all of which were at an all-time low. Somendra couldn’t help me with any of that and blamed me for my lack of inner progress, announcing that I was ‘too difficult’ to work with.
I had mixed feelings about him, knowing he was far from ‘perfect’, capable of making mistakes with people, at some level deluded about himself, and yet despite all that I quite liked him although (or perhaps because) I couldn’t take him totally seriously.
Satyadeva said, “announcing that I was ‘too difficult’ to work with.”
Lol, a classic cop-out. It reminds me of Swami Anand Yatri first coming to Poona. He was having a darshan with Osho, and Osho asked him, “Who are you? Where have you come from? Where are you going?” The classic three questions with which you greet a spiritual seeker in India. Yatri replied, “Well, I’m Malcolm Carder, I came from London, and I was going to take sannyas but now I’ve seen you I’m going back to London!” Some days later they met again, and Osho asked Yatri, “What if I offered you sannyas as a gift?” And of course, Yatri being British he couldn’t turn it down. The beginning of a long togetherness. Osho was a bit smarter than Somendra in seducing stubborn Britishers!
(By the way, have you been tracking Liverpool’s spending on the transfer market? Florian Wirtz for 130m euros, Jeremy Frimpong for 40m euros, Kerkez for 40m euros. They are building a scary team).
Somendra, the “consolidated creep” (Osho’s words, not mine) suffered from an overblown ego from day one. I guess he was present in Poona 1 to allow anyone with a similar affliction to work as a mirror.
Teertha was of a different calibre. He was at least when I knew him, an insightful and sensitive helper who could take himself out of the picture if needed.
Now, anyone who ever fell for this idiot “Poonjaji” deserves a hit over the head. I remember when I was lured to Lucknow by rumours of an enlightened master being there, when I first saw him I took him for the cleaner (nothing against cleaners). I told him to his face that he was just playing an act and as a result he raved about me being “the scum of the earth” and “earth will take care that you die” (literal quotes) for 20 minutes. It would have been amusing if not for 100 or so stupid believers in the room who might have gotten ideas – luckily nothing happened and I got out unscarred.
Since then life has been good (mostly), he is dead and I enjoy driving my Enfields in the mountains of Ladakh.
I’m sure Lokesh would present quite a different view of Poonjaji, he has stated previously that he considered him the real deal. Maybe when he comes back from holiday he’ll add a few words…
Positive statements about ‘sannyasin gurus’ seem to be rare, maybe we should take a leaf from Ramana’s playbook and take up venerating the spirits of mountains! Do you have any favourites in Ladakh, Samvado Gunnar Kosatz?
Well, I usually do my Rishikesh – Leh tour every year, sometimes I just drive there, park the bike and fly back – then collect the bike a few months later. Sometimes I do the entire circle via Srinagar, Jammu etc. Spiti is also quite a challenge. I have done a few simple videos; if you check the ‘Samvado Rishikesh’ channel on YT you can enjoy a few excerpts.
I have found driving in India to be an exquisite method to stay in the here and now – if you don’t the consequences can really hurt
Samvado, you didn’t get much out of good old Indian Masters and Satsang Gurus it seems. You have completely missed Papaji. He was right about you… and you still haven’t got it and thanked him for those graceful comments about you. And that can be seen without ever having met Papaji.
You have much to learn, my young Padawan.
The most important thing to learn on this level is discernment. It.s also the most lacking in those who profess to know who is for real and who isn’t.
And then there is the entire misunderstanding around the the issue of “non-duality”.
Really, think about it. This imposter monkey presses your third eye and professes that you now “have it”. Go out into the world and spread the good news. My god, Osho must have been such an idiot, putting us through the wringer when the solution was that easy.
This also may help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RmMnsIT0S0&ab_channel=SnakeSpeak
Thanks, Samvado, for the video link, I really appreciated it. A few years ago I inherited a trove of books on non-duality which I have been steadily reading or leafing through, depending on how much they gripped me. So I have been exploring the terrain.
But what bothered me about it, the reason why I never fully committed to it, I wasn’t able to put into words, and this video does a good job of clearly explaining it. If ‘there is nobody here’, who is experiencing this life? Yes, as Alan Watts says, the universe is living itself through us, but there is still a presence, an ‘I am’ here.
“Yes, as Alan Watts says, the universe is living itself through us, but there is still a presence, an ‘I am’ here.”
And he (and Osho, Eckhart Tolle and many others) also says you’ll find…”the universe…living itself through us” if you investigate further into this ‘I am’ presence. It’s a matter of the universe playing hide-and-seek with itself in order to become conscious – for a ‘purpose’ which is impossible to articulate in words, ie a vast, unfathomable mystery.
Yes, but you can’t discard this presence. Despite knowing that you’re just part of the universe playing a role, still you have to pay the bills, do your taxes, and so on.
But who suggests one should do this, NP? No one with any vestige of common sense! If we’re both person and impersonal presence (as we’re told), what exactly do you think might be the problem?
You appear to be creating a potential problem without enough experience of the potential problem-creating condition (typical trick of the mind!). Why not just relax and see what happens (could be a long wait of course, speaking for myself that is).
You’re absolutely right, SD, my mind is very tricky, dodging first one way, then slipping the other like a greased Mohammed Ali in his prime. And my ego likewise….
Drop the duality!
The universe pays the bills.
Lokesh said, “In truth, there isn’t a separate entity controlling the “machine” of our body and mind system; what we experience as the ego or self is an emergent property of this system. The workings of our mental processes create the illusion of a self that appears to be in charge.”
Hmm. I’ve wondered who decides the trivial things, like when to have coffee, or at what moment to do the dishes? But likely it is an internal coin toss, and the idea of a ‘doer’ is just an illusion.
Alan Watts says exactly the same thing. I’ll see if I can find the video…
This will do nicely, I think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19dyZX9mVC8
On Somendra… Osho said:
“He [Somendra] does not know that deep down he is trying to compete with me.
Now Somendra is writing to all sannyasins everywhere, “Come, we are going to create a great commune.” Nobody seems to be listening, and nobody seems to be coming. This is not the way. In the first place, he betrayed me. I had immense trust in him, and still have the same trust. I loved him as I love you. And it makes no difference whether you are a sannyasin or not. What difference does it make?
But people who drop sannyas get into a very difficult situation…
If he tries to create a commune on his own, he will get into a mess, into trouble, into all kinds of problems. He himself is not yet in a state where he can be of any real help to anybody. He himself needs help. His creating a commune is just like a blind man collecting other blind men and saying: “Come follow me.”
Perhaps a few blind people may start following you, but sooner or later you will find yourself with all your group in a ditch. One should be absolutely aware: Do you have eyes?
Can you see the light? Do you have that energy that you can share with people? If not, then don`t try such an idiotic act, because you are playing with people’s life. You are in darkness, and you will lead those people into more darkness.”
Osho, ‘From Personality to Individuality’, Ch. 14, Q.1 (or ‘Rajneesh Bible III’, Jan. 12, 1985)
I came across this recent video made in the Poona ashram. Worth viewing to get an impression of what it’s like now.
https://youtu.be/bzY12FHnRvM
I had a discussion with a sannyasin friend the other day, and she said that for her all spiritual questions ended with Osho. That he didn’t answer questions, but he destroyed them in order to take them away from the mind.
So she doesn’t read Eckhart Tolle or Nisargadatta or Ramana, or books on non-duality, but only occasionally a piece of Osho. Mostly from the articles on OshoNews.
I can’t say I blame her. If you have no spiritual questions left, why should you read spiritual books? In a way, her kind of sannyasin are no longer seekers. Which then begs me the question, what drives me to do it? Not a specific question as such. It’s more a kind of curiosity — maybe the urge to find out where in the universe I fit, which for me sounds like the core of the spiritual seeker’s quest. But that too seems to be fading.
There seems to be an end to questions, an end to seeking. I think Alan Watts said it well, saying that “we don’t digest our food or beat our hearts, our bodies are the universe living itself through us.”
I was considering an Alan Watts quote, “Life is music, not maths.”
It is seductive to approach life with maths, to try and reduce the uncertainty of living with calculated planning. I was watching a video about a trend called FIRE, ‘financial independence, retire early’ which is all about planning ahead and seeing when you have enough money to retire.
But in reality, the best parts of life come when you go on an adventure, when you leave time for life’s idiosyncrasies, when you don’t plan every detail ahead. In a way I am very bad in this, I tend to plan and arrange stuff in detail, and when I don’t I vegetate. But on the few occasions that I haven’t done this I have had a great time, and I realise in hindsight that maybe I should have more music in my life.
Coincidentally, I was just listening to this excellent talk that confirms and expands upon your experience, NP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIUNoWMJ3PI
Maths means mind.
Fact is, if there were no maths, you could not communicate with someone you live 10 000 miles away from, like here.
Best places in the world to retire to?
My mother asked me the question, what would I really like to do when she passes away? At the moment, I care for her, we look after the house together and so on, but when she is gone, very few things tie me to the Netherlands, and I will have enough money to retire on. I could go to Bali perhaps? Some place warm and spiritual.
You could do a lot worse than retire to Bali, NP, it’s a magical place (outside the more touristy zones). I had three holidays there when working in that part of the world in the early 2000s, including touring the island via hired car. After a while though, I suspect it might begin to feel a bit claustrophobic.
I was just last night rewatching Koyaanisqatsi, the 1982 documentary film made by Geoffrey Reggio. I’ve now seen the film a half dozen times, but it still impresses, especially how it tells the story of humanity and its environment evolving. The question it poses, about whether the world we make will be liveable for a humanity which is not composed of automatons, is very valid.
Yes, the film’s end is a rather doom-laden prediction. But I think it is a timely warning because the course we seem to be steering is not a good one.
(Gyokeres to Arsenal? He is a big acquisition for sure).
Samvado pointed out this YouTube channel earlier, SnakeSpeaks, and I have been enjoying a few of their videos. It’s a grounded kind of spirituality, basically answers to a series of crazy positions held by nondual teachers and people of that ilk…
Look below for a discussion of the position “there is no doer”, and watch out for the question “does awakening make you avoid, or does it make you more precise?” Good one.
https://youtu.be/nQLHJB4WeP
Today, a friend of mine, Navojat, has sent me this video of a female Indian teacher, Maharishikaa, speaking on similar issues of certain non-dual, advaita teachings. I have to say that I’m impressed:
https://youtu.be/amPCuUdH2i8?si=gYMbuGjxqMPuaVjf
Interesting! I’ll have to listen to a few more pieces by her, she seems to know a few things. Being ‘this’ struck me, because at the end of our lives we all have to return to being ‘this’, sickness and ill health calls you back to experience of the body.
I got bored after 3 minutes and then I dropped it.
Too much mind for my taste.
I just came across this video on how AI in some cases seems to be inspiring religion. It happened when books first came along, that holy books inspired religion, and now we have a technology far superior, something with encyclopaedic knowledge that answers any question, the pinnacle of human knowledge so far.
Some people’s reaction seems to be religious in tone, and in some ways I think it can be a new direction for worship. I asked it to create an image of an AI Jesus, to create an iconic image for the new religion and I present that pic below.
https://youtu.be/k23eHouOUzk
AI can create religiousness because it can create beauty.
But for this one must be open and drop knowledge.
Well, NP, I find this image utterly uninspiring, lifeless, lacking humanity. Then there’s the blue skin…Perhaps he could do with warmer clothes!
Too human perhaps to accurately reflect an AI presence? You might be right….
NP writes, “Maharishikaa seems to know a few things.”
Satchit says, “Too much mind for my taste.”
I agree with Satchit.
Maharishikaa says, “I am this” as opposed to “I am that”. Really, man, what an absurd world we live in that people actually sit around with serious meditators’ faces listening to that kind of convoluted nonsense. Advaita Vedanta is a practice, not something you sit around intellectualising. You either practise it or you don’t. It is not for everyone, but it certainly gets to the heart of things if you do practise it.
Somendra? I found him to be a very egotistic man. Head jammed way up his own arse. I did learn something from him. Don’t be misled by a therapist’s inflated reputation. He was a phoney. No doubt about it, from my experiences with him after doing two groups with him. I did not like him. A bit of a jerk.
Samvado writes, “Now, anyone who ever fell for this idiot “Poonjaji” deserves a hit over the head.”
I can see how Samvado draws such a conclusion. Poonjaji could appear like a daft and dithering old man on a superficial level. Get beyond that, and one could discover that he really was a force to be reckoned with. It is a very individual thing. Maybe it is, in Samvado’s case, a ‘biker’ thing. I met Poonjaji at the same time as a biker friend. He stayed in Lucknow for less than a week before heading for Ladakh on his Enfield. He simply said, “This is not my thing.” I appreciated the two months I spent with Poonjaji. Learned a lot and moved on.
I just returned from a fascinating road trip in the north of Scotland, culminating in a visit to the Aboyne Highland Games. As I sat with pine-clad hills as a backdrop, watching and listening to a massed pipe and drum band composed of around 150 marching players, I got pretty choked up. One can only imagine how the enemy must have felt in the time of the British Raj when a pipe band marched in front of an army of red-uniformed soldiers. What a sound. Both rousing and intimidating. Scotland the brave, right enough.
Well, that’s a few robust opinions from Lokesh the Scottish Sage who has been around the block a few times. Hope you had a good holiday, mate. I never did any groups or satsangs with Somendra or Poonjaji, I know them only from the records they left behind, but I enjoyed the docu ‘Call Off the Search’ on YouTube about Poonjaji, it gave off a good vibe.
Here it is: https://youtu.be/dBIK-VFvDhA
On Maharishikaa, she’s not afraid to tell her truth, even when questioners are going in a different direction. She emphasises surrender, just being This, which is maybe a bit obvious, but a good counterpoint to neo-advaita which says ‘there is no-one here’.
I’ve read a lot of books on modern non-duality (from a rather large inherited stack of them in Dutch) and I found very little there which I consider worthwhile. Out of eighty volumes there were maybe half a dozen which had something original to say, and not all of those were things you might have wanted to learn.
Modern non-duality seems to be a trick to release some feel-good chemicals, which are rather short-lived and don’t do much, as Maharishikaa also observed. This is of course looking at neo-advaita which has become popular in the last few decades in the West, not at the traditional Indian Advaita Vedanta, which I don’t know a lot about.
“Out of eighty volumes there were maybe half a dozen which had something original to say, and not all of those were things you might have wanted to learn.”
Six out of eighty? This is less than ten percent.
I guess you have to first empty your cup.
NP writes, “Modern non-duality seems to be a trick to release some feel-good chemicals.”
A bit of a contradiction is contained in that statement.
I once asked an Ibiza socialite if she ever felt tired being who she was, of being her. “Oh, no,” she replied, “I love my life. I love being me.” I suppose she felt good being ‘positive’. Of course, she missed my point entirely.
Advaita Vedanta has nothing to do with releasing some feel-good chemicals. It is a simple and effective practice that can bring release from the notion that one exists as an entity that is separate from existence. This either makes sense to you or it does not. I see that all of the problems that arise in ‘my’ life are rooted in a feeling or idea of separateness. My solution is to practise self-enquiry. It is not something to think about. For feel-good chemicals to work there needs to be something or someone who experiences the feel-good factor. This is the antithesis of non-duality.
https://selfenquirydyads.org/
Has anyone had experience with this group? And, even if you haven’t, what’s your opinion?
It looks okay, if you are into that sort of activity, which I am not.
I’ve heard of this, they used to do these groups as a basic starter course in Poona 1.
Re Maharishikaa, I instantly liked her on a personal level, was drawn in to her talk and have no doubt she’s totally genuine. Although I did find myself wanting more down-to-earth clarity, real life examples to illustrate the ideas she was presenting. I had to remind myself what “I am this” and “I am that” were pointing towards, ie grounded presence and mental concepts (hope I’m right) and I think she could have illustrated ‘surrender’,'choosing Soul over ego’ to make what she was recommending absolutely clear. So I wonder what total beginners might make of what she was saying.
There’s quite a few extracts from her sessions at youtube now, including one where she speaks about Osho and his work, her view of positives and negatives, including explaining ‘what went wrong’ in similar terms she uses in this video, pointing to his ‘spending too much time in the Beyond’ (my word, not hers), losing physical groundednes, which eventually led to major problems in the movement.
Now that’s highly controversial stuff and no doubt will be vehemently disputed by many. Personally, I still maintain that whatever his faults may have been, Osho was a giant among masters, who did tremendously important work for his people and for humanity.
SD, according to on high, there are different stages and levels in the enlightenment stakes. Some people become unenlightened, then become enlightened again and so on. Others become enlightened and remain in that state.
I don’t find it important to try and rationalise what went on in Osho’s reality. What difference does it make to you? No difference, because you will never know. It is all just speculation, including what Maharishikaa says.
We each of us must figure out the riddle of life for ourselves. That is the challenge that life poses. Others can point the way, but it is you who must travel it, even if you follow a dead-end street. You have to find out experientially. Nobody else can do that for you. That is why I am uninterested in the latest blah-blah from various teachers like Maharishikaa. I have heard it all before and it is of no use to you at all, because what really counts is experience. Unless you have existential experience, it is all useless.
Lokesh said, “you have to find out experientially”
For me, Osho and sannyas was something I grew up with. I didn’t really experience it as a mature seeker, and I wonder if some of it didn’t pass me by. By growing into it you don’t really experience the impact of it, if you see what I mean.
What for me made the biggest changes in my life was studying Buddhism. In a few years of reading, studying and practice at the local Tibetan temple I stopped reading fiction, stopped playing computer games, stopped watching most tv, stopped paying so much attention to the news. These things just dropped away — they had ceased being interesting. It was like my life refocused itself around a new way of being.
These different paths all contribute to how we approach life. You grow up in a certain way, pick up certain habits, then reach a point where they don’t serve you anymore and you let them go. The moment of realisation is the essential experience.
The biggest mistake that people make who were kids in Osho’s communes is believing they were somehow special because they were young and open, and exposed to Osho’s energy. It just did not work like that.
What made them special was that they grew up in a unique social environment. Forget about the paedophiles. They were a small minority. Shit happens. The communes provided an extended family for the kids, where they were surrounded by wonderful aunts and uncles. This created a foundation for the kids to grow up in a world where they felt at home.
Some might not agree with this viewpoint. That is my perception.
“The communes provided an extended family for the kids, where they were surrounded by wonderful aunts and uncles. This created a foundation for the kids to grow up in a world where they felt at home.”
Sounds very romantic, Lokesh.
Fact is, the feeling of being “at home” is not related to the outer world. It is an inner experience.
If they would feel at home, why start seeking like NP?
Satchit writes, “Sounds very romantic, Lokesh.”
Well, I am not a great romantic. I am a good observer, and that is what I saw.
Satchit asks, “If they would feel at home, why start seeking like NP?”
Well, maybe he feels at home in a madhouse, and questions that, and wonders if there is something more to life.
Satchit said “why start seeking like NP?”
Honestly, there came a point in my life where I felt finished with the work that had enthused me, a turning point, and the question that arose was about the spiritual search. Then a whole series of things started happening, about health, seeking, work and purity, and I ended up exploring the Buddhist path alongside sannyas for a while.
Seeking is fine, playing hide and seek is better!
I can’t say that I ever really looked at people as being ‘special’, at most we are all unique. I recall Osho once saying, “the universe does not create duplicates.”
Of course most people have two arms, two hands, a head, a torso, etc. So we do all fit a certain broad category, and are equal within that category. So unique in detail, equal in broad strokes.
Whether you can see people as unique or equal depends on what you want to do. For a man in love every detail of his beloved matters, for a prison warden perhaps a lot less.
Makes me think of ‘The Green Mile’.
Great film, by the way. I recall very much enjoying it at the time
I came across a really interesting video on Osho on Islam:
https://youtu.be/iBPDPJgQhe8
Osho didn’t speak much on Islam, but I liked this. The whole thing of the Koran being a teaching for a primitive people, but being presented as the last word from God to man, “the only book you will need”, is very much in line with what we see happening in the Islamic world.
NP writes, “Osho didn’t speak much on Islam.”
That is hardly surprising.
It seems the video is AI generated but the text was taken from an interview, so it is actually Osho’s words.
Fake video, still not learned that it is a question of the heart, not of the words?
I was just yesterday rewatching the film ‘Samsara’, which is a docu without words or characters, and found it interesting to trace through the film themes of life and death, desire and how it leads to suffering, impermanence. The film illustrates these things by showing little vignettes, connected sets of scenes and shots which make a certain comment about the modern world.
Some of the footage is of primitive tribes, where one or more people look directly into the camera, as if to ask the viewer “what kind of world are we building?” And there are a few modern people who do this also, with varying expressions, some defeated and carried along by the system, some questioning, as if they don’t have control.
It is a fascinating film, featuring Buddhist temples, sand mandalas, volcanoes, offices, meat packing plants, urban landscapes, dumpling factories, military parades, funerals, cathedrals, and much more. I’ve watched it a few times now.
Where can this film be found, NP?
You can buy it on DVD or Blu-ray from Amazon, or get it from the Apple TV store if you prefer a digital copy.
I have to say it really rewards viewing in high resolution.
The earlier film ‘Baraka’ – which is similar but is about the religious impulse and its consequences – is still on YouTube at the moment. Both are really worth watching, they are like audio-visual poems. Here’s a link…
https://youtu.be/38dbNiHCvvo
I wanted to add this ChatGPT-generated summary of the themes in Samsara…
Samsara (2011), also directed by Ron Fricke, is often described as Baraka’s spiritual sequel, but its thematic focus is sharper and, in some ways, darker.
Where Baraka feels like a prayer, Samsara feels like a meditation on the cycles of desire, suffering, and impermanence—the very meaning of its title in Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
Here are the core ideas and themes woven into it:
1. The cycle of existence
The word Samsara refers to the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—driven by craving (tanha) and resulting in suffering (dukkha). The film’s structure mirrors this: it flows from scenes of raw nature, to human ritual, to consumerism and destruction, and then back to moments of quiet and transcendence. It’s less about a linear story and more about showing that all life is caught in repeating patterns.
2. Desire as a driving force
Fricke repeatedly links images of craving—whether for food, sex, possessions, or power—to scenes of production and consumption. Mass manufacturing, strip clubs, gun factories, plastic surgery, and high-end malls appear in visual proximity to ancient religious rituals, suggesting that the human longing for satisfaction is ancient but often misplaced.
3. Suffering as the shadow of desire
The film doesn’t shy away from showing poverty, incarceration, slaughterhouses, and the aftermath of war. These aren’t presented as anomalies but as integral parts of the same cycle—desire leading to exploitation, exploitation leading to suffering.
4. The fragility of beauty and tradition
Like Baraka, Samsara reverently presents sacred spaces and ceremonies, but here they often feel more fragile, under pressure from modern forces. Ancient temples sit beside scenes of industrial scale; desert nomads appear before shots of sprawling megacities. The editing asks whether the spiritual can survive the machine.
5. Death and transformation
Recurring imagery of corpses, funeral rituals, and ruins underscores impermanence. But Samsara also shows renewal—dancers, children, lush landscapes—hinting that transformation is always possible, even within the cycle.
6. The direct human gaze
One of Samsara’s most striking devices is the lingering shots of people looking directly into the camera. These stares bridge cultural distance, pulling the viewer into a shared human space. The unspoken question seems to be: What kind of world are we building together?
7. A Buddhist undertone
Though it never states it outright, the film feels like a cinematic expression of the First and Second Noble Truths: life in samsara contains suffering, and that suffering is rooted in craving. The absence of a narrator allows the viewer to feel this truth rather than be told it.
In short, Samsara can be read as a meditation on the beauty and tragedy of being human: we create, we destroy, we long, we suffer, and all of it repeats until something—perhaps awareness—interrupts the cycle.
And here are the themes for Baraka…
Baraka (1992), directed by Ron Fricke, is a non-narrative film—a kind of cinematic meditation—shot in 24 countries, weaving together images of nature, human culture, spirituality, and industrialization. It’s often seen as a spiritual cousin to Koyaanisqatsi, though Fricke has said he wanted Baraka to feel less like a warning and more like a prayer.
Here are the key elements and underlying themes:
1. A portrait of the planet as a living whole
The title “Baraka” is a Sufi term meaning “blessing” or “breath of life,” which already hints at its unifying view. The film opens with scenes of untouched nature—volcanoes, waterfalls, animals—before moving into human rituals, urban life, and industrial activity. The pacing invites the viewer to feel that Earth, life, and humanity are interconnected parts of one breathing organism.
2. Spiritual diversity as a universal thread
The film lingers on religious ceremonies from many traditions—Tibetan monks in prayer, Sufi whirling dervishes, Indigenous rituals, Christian processions, Shinto rites. Without narration, these are presented as equally valid expressions of humanity’s search for meaning, pointing to a shared human impulse toward the sacred.
3. The tension between the sacred and the profane
Baraka juxtaposes meditative, timeless rituals with footage of war, urban poverty, environmental degradation, and factory assembly lines. The film suggests that modern industrial society, while impressive in scale and precision, risks becoming disconnected from the spiritual core that animates traditional cultures.
4. The cyclical nature of life and death
Images of birth, daily labor, decay, and renewal flow into one another. Scenes like the funeral pyres in Varanasi or the mummified remains in the Philippines bring mortality into focus, but without morbidity—death is framed as part of a cycle that underpins the sacredness of life.
5. Human impact on the planet
Although less overtly critical than Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka still addresses modern excess: strip mining, deforestation, and overcrowded cities are shown as consequences of industrial civilization. The editing contrasts these with the serenity of untouched landscapes, hinting at what’s being lost.
6. An invitation to stillness and reflection
By removing spoken language, the film bypasses rational analysis and invites a more contemplative mode of watching. The slow, deliberate editing and use of time-lapse photography encourage a meditative state, making the viewer more receptive to perceiving patterns and connections.
In short, Baraka is a wordless prayer for the Earth—celebrating beauty, acknowledging suffering, and holding up the possibility of harmony between humanity and the planet. While Koyaanisqatsi feels like a diagnosis of imbalance, Baraka feels more like a spiritual reminder of what we stand to lose or preserve, depending on how we live.
“Because I am talking about simple things, many people simply feel that this is not what religion has to be. They have got an idea of religion, of complicated abstract hypotheses, you can go on thinking about them but it makes no difference to your life – you remain the same. You may be a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian, it does not matter; your real problems are the same. Your unreal problems are different, but those unreal problems are nothing but a burden to the mind.
It is possible to understand me if you can just put aside your mind and its complicated mechanism. It is not needed because my work is heart to heart.
I am speaking from my heart.
I am not a theoretician, I am not speaking from my mind. I am pouring my heart to you, but if you are going to listen from the mind you are going to miss it.
If you are also ready to open a new door into your being, if you are ready to hear from the heart, then whatever I am saying is so simple that there is no need to believe in it because there is no way to disbelieve it.”
( Osho, ‘Beyond Psychology’, Discourse 7, Q2 )
Good morning, friends.
I was contemplating the spiritual search in the early hours, and I couldn’t find a reason for it. The thirst for it seems to be quenched…a friend pointed me at the following saying yesterday:
“Everything evolves comes to mean that nothing is true.”
— Nietzsche
And mostly that is right. The only things that are true are abstract chains of reasoning, constructs of the mind. The real is messy and incomplete and partial, always caught amid step. The mind is not good at dealing with it, and instead of paying attention to it we are better off just accepting life.
I was watching Baraka yesterday, and it seemed to me like a koan or a meditation, to be viewed many times until its philosophy becomes clear. It isn’t really meant to be analysed, rather to be experienced, and something like ChatGPT’s list of themes is just a glimpse. It actually resists being analysed, instead carrying you away in dreamlike associations. Yet to really watch and stay aware is rewarded, because there is a philosophy there…
Like Baraka’s chain of scenes, life is to be experienced and watched, and the spiritual is as well until the thirst is slaked. Perhaps in that we find an answer to Nietzsche’s saying about truth.
Truth is not an evolution, truth is a discovery.
Unless, of course, you’re Donald Trump, in which case it’s forbiddeen territory, absolutely out of bounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8btHDxZgydc
In case anyone is interested, I have compiled comments from the past few months to create a new chapter for ‘The Very Best and Worst of Sannyas News, Volume Two.’
The book has come a long way since its initial publication. It is a pretty good read, according to the reviews. Quite pleased with it myself.
I do enjoy your cover image…always fun to try and put names to the faces. Did I spot Lady Gaga tucked away, and John Lennon, and Timothy Leary? Cool.
Yes, all the gang is featured there. I limited it to personalities who are mentioned in the book. Barry Long, especially for SD.
I just read the reviews people had left on Amazon, it seems the second book is getting some love from the fans in the bleacher seats! Praise for your hard work in editing the rough material.
I’ve been reading some sannyasin memoirs in Dutch, which have provided a few inspirational segments, not quite sure what I’ll do with them yet but at least I might translate a few choice quotes. Might even make an article out of some of the material.
Cool, NP.
I am currently reading the memoir of Ojas de Ronde, an interesting Dutch sannyasin who started off as a Catholic monk. One of the things he says is that we have entered an age of ‘spiritual loners’, people who read books, go to satsang, or go and do a tailored retreat, but who do not join a commune or have a Master.
One of the downsides of that, or so he writes, is that you are not continually confronted with the results of your spiritual practice. In a commune, with a living Master, there is a certain reflection that shows you your spiritual ego and where you are fooling yourself.
Now it struck me that this is most likely true. In retreats the retreat management wants to make sure you are a happy customer and will book another retreat, so they are unlikely to give you ‘hits’. In a commune where you are committed to staying, things are different.
Something interesting to think about…
On Bhagwan lecturing…
“I realised that someone here spoke from a broader perspective, a higher consciousness, without judgement and absolutely to the point, full of paradoxes, not to understand the ego. Someone who spoke from a different, new world of experience and who tried to bridge with language that could only be experienced through experience.
Also someone who constantly tried to make something very simple clear to you that you always felt was true, but which you always lost at the same time. Finally, someone who spoke on his own authority, with his own authority like Jesus, of whom even his fiercest opponents had to admit that ‘he spoke with authority’.”
( Ojas de Ronde )
Apparently, Bhagwan once said of his discourses, “it is my song”, when asked how he spoke for hours and effortlessly kept people entranced.
On the secret workings of the mystery school…
“Anyone who became a disciple of Bhagwan could count on ending up in an intense inner adventure. During his lectures, Bhagwan often said that he did not give his disciples rest. He seduced them with honey and sweet promises, but also set traps for them, chased them up and chased them into the night. ‘I force you to give me your dreams and nightmares,’ he once said. ‘Just give them, then you don’t have to believe in that anymore. Then you have lost those illusions and you can wake up.’
That was the esoteric work that Bhagwan did. It happened in the contact between the disciple and the Master. It remained secret, often also to the other disciples of the ashram. All mystery schools and philosophical currents know these secret activities and experiences, which are only accessible to the initiates. Sometimes these are also converted into a ‘secret doctrine’ that can only be understood by insiders. This doctrine is not transparent to outsiders, not transparent to the outside world. You must have completed an inner path to understand its symbolism and wisdom.
Many mystery schools also keep this doctrine hidden, so as not to be contaminated by outsiders who have no slight suspicion of what it is about. Did this also happen in the ashram of Osho? In a way, it is, because it lies in the nature of things. The spiritual path, the ‘way inward’ is an experience path that everyone experiences in their own way and about which it is difficult to communicate. People who talk about it too quickly often get the wind from the front. “Every truth creates a scandal,” the old Emperor Hadrian once said. And that is also true if you look at the history of the esoteric movements.”
(Ojas de Ronde)
It all sounds good, but was it really? As it turned out, the biggest secret in the mystery school was Osho’s clandestine hanky-panky with female disciples in the wee wee hours. Yes, indeed, it remained a well-kept secret for decades and, depending on how you look at it, can be viewed as rather mysterious. It remains a mystery to me how Osho could speak so much in public about transcending sex, while behind the scenes he was indulging in sex.
It was a book titled ‘From Sex to Superconsciousness’ that first brought Osho into the spiritual limelight. Perhaps the publisher got it wrong and the book should have been titled ‘From Superconsciousness to Sex’. I’m sure I don’t know.
As for individuals sharing their fly-on-the-wall accounts about commune life, it has all been done before. I have done it. One review of my ‘Sagara’ novel described the book as delivering the best objective view of what Poona One was all about. I can remember when writing it that I wanted to present a balanced take on things. I suppose I succeeded. All in all, just another literary brick in the great wall of India. I did it and moved on.
To what? Leading a simple life with minimal stress, where there is enough space to realise I am a ghost in a biological machine on the third stone from the sun.
Today, I am uninterested in people’s Osho commune stories. How much of that sort of thing does one need to read in one’s life? I reached saturation point years ago while researching for my books. You have to get into it if you want to get out of it. Maybe.
What it eventually comes down to, if one is so inclined, is to lead a meditative life. Otherwise, one can just go on consuming whatever is produced for your particular taste in consumption. In this case, stories about how life in Osho’s communes ‘really’ was.
What I’ve noticed is the mind gets restless if it doesn’t have something to consume. So I occasionally give it a new bone to chew on. Some people consume news, I prefer spiritual stories.
I think you’re right, the mind can only take so many stories of the commune before it starts saying “I know this already”, but that is why Osho discussed Lao Tzu, the Sufis, Zen, Nietzsche, Christ…all the jewels in the mystery school’s treasure chest. Eckhart Tolle, Nisargadatta, even Tony Parsons are just slightly more modern chapters to be added.
One thing Ojas said was he was told in one of Osho’s darshans to stop thinking, and he tried and tried, and eventually he went back to a darshan and said, “I just can’t stop thinking”, and then Osho said, “if you can’t stop thinking, just play with your thoughts.” And that was enough to push Ojas into witnessing his thoughts, which lasted for several weeks. Nice story.
So is keeping the mind consuming spiritual content a way of playing with your thoughts? I think in a way it keeps you tuned to spiritual frequencies, lending your energy to those strands of the world’s spirit.
Perhaps for some people it is about chasing the spiritual experience, like Ojas looking up at the night sky from the roof of one of the ashram buildings and seeing the starry heavens and realising that no matter what happened to Osho or to him, the stars would keep looking down in their impersonal fashion. These moments and deep realisations, are they not worth sharing? Just to awaken the taste in others?
Lokesh said, “What it eventually comes down to, if one is so inclined, is to lead a meditative life. Otherwise, one can just go on consuming whatever is produced for your particular taste in consumption.”
But what does that mean, “to lead a meditative life”? Do you have to meditate in order to do that? Is it enough just to be calm? Does it imply some kind of continuous meditation? These are all the doer’s questions, things that are going to inevitably arise.
I think Bhagwan was wise to send out his discourses as a way for his disciples to attain a meditative state of mind. I think he realised that most sannyasins wouldn’t be able to stop consuming, and so he gave them something to consume.
NP writes, “But what does that mean, “to lead a meditative life”? Do you have to meditate in order to do that? Is it enough just to be calm? Does it imply some kind of continuous meditation? These are all the doer’s questions, things that are going to inevitably arise.”
In a nutshell, as Osho taught, meditation is just to be, not doing anything, no action, no thought, no emotion. Just being in the present. You cannot do that. True meditation is the end of the doer, the end of the actor, the end of the thinker, the end of the feeler.
Beautiful words easily said, but have you experienced what it means?
From what I have seen, very few get to the point of being a hollow bamboo. At most people get a few glimpses.
NP writes, “Beautiful words easily said, but have you experienced what it means?”
Yes. I am off for my daily swim and will meditate before entering the sea, which is also a form of meditation and for me, the best exercise there is.
Water has a good effect on the whole being, I totally agree. Unfortunately I have to go shopping today, otherwise I might also make a little trip to the beach. It’s a balmy 29 degrees here today.
To recognize a hollow bamboo, one has to be a hollow bamboo by oneself.
You only changed your motivation from working life to spiritual life. From this to that.
“True meditation is the end of the doer, the end of the actor, the end of the thinker, the end of the feeler.”
And the end of the seeker too.
Because seeking is also a doing.
It might be the end of everything…aieeeee!
“This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end.”
I must admit, I am really enjoying Deva Ojas’s book about his years in the commune. He kept a diary, and it formed the source material for much of what he later wrote in the memoir. He details his key spiritual experiences, his conflicts with Deeksha in the kitchen, his thoughts about what to write to Bhagwan. It’s a good record of a sannyasin’s life in the commune, someone who really went the whole way on the journey of being a disciple.
I find it inspiring to read about all the things that happened to people in the ashram alongside my child’s eye view from the gardens. It’s like someone says, yes, the ashram was your ashram, but it was also this, and this….
I’ve now reached the part where Ojas talks about the Ranch years. He talks about the commune back in the Netherlands, he talks about ‘work as worship’, he talks about the Full Moon Festivals, he talks about the drive-by. It’s all illustrated with photos of the time, so it really gives a flavour of the time.
He basically gives a Bird’s Eye view of the time period when talking about a new period, and then there are a series of chapters about specific times and events within that period. It’s not a bad way of telling the story, allowing you to digest a certain amount of context before diving into specifics.
It’s early today, but the bumblebees are already active at the roses outside my window. Last night at about 7 I suddenly felt very tired and so I went to bed, with as a result that this morning I was up at 4.30.
I’ve been reading what Deva Ojas wrote about the rigid hierarchical structure in the communes. How in the late seventies Osho started to withdraw from the day to day affairs of the ashram, and instead said that everything from the Main Office should be treated as if it came from him. This carried on into the Ranch and led to Sheela and her Ma’s being responsible for much that went on.
I can recall this from the Ranch, that when you were ‘given orders from on high’ you were expected to obey without question. It raised my hackles back then, even at age thirteen, but you could just be told to leave the commune if you didn’t and that for me was unthinkable.
For Ojas, when he was brought to the Ranch to work in the press office he told them he would much rather work on the farm, and they gave him the space and said it was ok. He became the ‘mama of the sprouts’ for a while.
I’ve finished Ojas’s book, and was surprised by his reaction to Osho’s talks on the Ranch after Sheela departed. Ojas had been close enough to the Mas that he knew that Osho saw and guided Sheela every day for years on the Ranch. So Ojas got angry that Osho threw all the responsibility on Sheela. But he worked through it.
This was the first of a series of serious doubts. At one point he read Hugh Milne’s book ‘Bhagwan: The God that Failed’ in order to write a review for The Rajneesh Times, and saw Milne as having gotten caught in seeing the man Bhagwan and not the master. And so he similarly got a glimpse of that view.
Not long afterwards someone passed him letter 54 from ‘A Cup of Tea.’ You can still find it discussed here on SannyasNews, here:
https://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/1028
This was a turning point, where he discussed with his girlfriend that Osho at times also gathered the dark energies to himself, and made use of people with dark leanings. Much became clear.
At that time he was left with a big question: Was Osho still his master, all things considered?
A little while before this question arose, Ojas had bought with some sannyas friends a series of adjacent garden plots, and in his plot he had made a fish pond. Fearing passing herons, he had put up a plastic heron, which worked beautifully to scare away the birds. Now after a few days he had a dream in which Osho appeared next to the pond, and pointed to the plastic heron, and said, “see, a plastic heron also works!”
Ojas on waking told the dream to his girlfriend, who immediately got it, “a plastic guru also works.” It is the trust and love of the disciple that is the key.
In a way I am sad that my father, Deva Subuddho, left his body when he did. He went through years of doubts about the darkness in Osho’s commune which his girlfriend Prasad (who was psychically rather gifted) had made clear, and then through the ‘Children of the Cult’ which caused him a lot of anger and grief, without afterwards also reading Ojas’ book which contains answers to these questions.
Ultimately, Osho’s own job, besides discoursing, was to be loveable for his sannyasins, a mirror in which their own tendencies would be exposed. In that he did not always succeed, his escapades with the ladies, occasional displays of anger and his tendency to provoke had him slip out of the role of the perfect guru from time to time.
I’m grateful to Ojas for the book detailing his spiritual search and time with Osho from 1977 to 1990. It showed me the ashram and communes of my childhood from an adult disciple’s perspective, one who truly dedicated his life to the search, and got me a step closer to a resolution with Osho.
It is difficult for one who has been a child sannyasin to let go of the images and dreams of childhood, and to come to the guru with fresh eyes and a new viewpoint.
I tend to disagree that “occasional displays of anger and his tendency to provoke” disqualify a master from being “a perfect guru”. Let’s not forget he was taking on a generation of disciples who were spiritual novices in a world that didn’t understand what he was up to. All in all, a pretty lonely job. No wonder he was frustrated at times and let it show.
Where did you (or I) get the idea that a master should never be angry or provocative? From Christian interpretations of Jesus? What about the tradition of Zen masters being hard, occasionally even a little cruel (to our sensibilities)? It must have been quite a test for those in Osho’s inner circle when he ‘hit’ them, particularly if it seemed unreasonable, unfair. Wasn’t coping with that a part of their process, a test of their love and devotion?
In this context It’s well worth remembering, as he memorably declared, “I am not your uncle!”
P.S:
As for “his escapades with the ladies”, well, that’s only come out in recent times so had no effect on his ‘live’ work.
People’s viewpoints are bound to differ, and you’re certainly right that he was trying to unite a fractious lot. Maybe showing a bit of anger was necessary to fulfil the role for some people.
I’m still chewing on parts of the book, there was one bit where Osho said on the Ranch after Sheela’s departure and the dropping of the red clothes and malas, that with all the devices he had tried to create something for his sannyasins and that the Buddhafield would no longer be possible. Ojas wrote that it was one of the few times where he saw Osho strike a note of sadness.
“Ojas wrote that it was one of the few times where he saw Osho strike a note of sadness.”
Why not? Sadness makes him human.
Maybe he realized that he had failed.
It feels thundery outside. Warm, a bit clammy weather, and overcast, as if any moment we could get a downpour with lightning and thunder. Not good weather for a swim.
But excellent weather for cold showers. Yesterday it was 31 degrees and I had two to cool me down, just short and brisk to rinse off the sweat.
Down here in sw France it’s been in the late 30s, even reaching 40 now and then, for 5 or 6 days, laced with downpours of rain in the late afternoon/early evening the last couple of days. So we’ve had to get used to remaining indoors for large chunks of the 24 hours. At least another day or two of the same is forecast. Last week forest fires raged about 60 miles away. Could this be a symptom of global warming?
I think it’s likely that climate change has played a large role here.
But I also saw a graph of planetary methane levels which were climbing steadily the last ten years, with a note that this was not a man-made effect and that it might be a sign that the planet was coming out of an ice age! Somewhat alarming.
Are you on holiday in south-west France, SD? I always thought you were based in England. We’ve been hearing about the fires on the news, the smoke alone doesn’t sound healthy.
Yes, on holiday, NP, in an area I know quite well. Normally I’m based in north London.
No smoke issue here though, thankfully.