SN’s old friend, Iqbal Singh, presents and comments on a video where the high-profile and extremely popular Indian guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shahkar, makes the extraordinary claim that Osho was ‘rescued’ from America by none other than Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (of TM fame).
My name is Iqbal Singh (fornerly aka Swami Shantam Prem).
I took sannyas in 1984, presently I don’t consider myself a part of the Resortist Sannyas Cult.
I am neither a sannyasin nor ex-sannyasin but a lifelong disciple of Cosmic wisdom and till now no other human being of our times has inspired me other than Master Shri Rajneesh. (I denounce the imposed name ‘Osho’).
The way the master tried to create a merger of East and West is simply far-out.
I am still in love with His thousands of people who gave their best to be a part of His Buddhafield, whether in Pune or Rajneeshpuram, USA.
Recently, a hugely successful Indian Hindu Guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, has compared Osho Rajneesh & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Both from Jabalpur, both created their niche in the western hemisphere, one could say ‘Export Quality’ Indian Gurus. The rise and fall of their work deserves to be studied in business schools: how followers destroy the work of charismatic Gurus.
Through this post in English, I would like that sannyasins of various countries who were part of Rajneeshpuram share their understanding, whether there is some essence in Sri Ravi Shankar´s confident assertion that Maharishi bailed out Acharya Rajneesh.
I would prefer that Raviji prove his accusations in this video with evidence or withdraw his lies.
One thing is clear, science must develop hi-tech lie detection devices. Youtube likes and clicks are creating foot-in-the-mouth syndrome in guru types.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb00JKCgv1w
Reply
Very funny, people calm and smiling, listening to a bit of folk wisdom, one that doesn’t create too much stress/anxiety, but also isn’t a fairy tale without villains that would bore even a child—the middle way, between yawning and snoring.
His sly expression had only a couple of flashes of cunning, for example when he shared his thoughts in response to an Osho’s remark.
In reality, the ego that was being directly targeted wasn’t that of the guru who, upon receiving the honor of an award, bowed to a politician, but rather the politician’s presumed ego.
Instead, he defended himself by speaking as if his ego were the target (maybe, it was, but indirectly), concluding laconically that even if he hadn’t bowed, egoistic motivation couldn’t be ruled out in that case either.
The other moment of complacency over his own wisdom (absent the playfulness and detachment of a conscious witness) comes at the end of the video, when he says that between Osho’s unethical and self-indulgent disciples and the rigid ascetic discipline advocated by MMY, he allows his followers small daily satisfactions…hoping that an Epstein won’t find his followers.
The story of paying bail or something similar to get Osho out of prison is instead an opportunity for this friendly and harmless guru to positively highlight MMY’s paternalism, helping Osho despite being judged badly by him.
It also seemed to me that the emphasis of the story alluded to Osho’s lack of pride, for example, by refusing financial help (assuming that this actually happened).
I don’t see why this money thing between Osho and MMY is important to Mr. Iqbal; perhaps because if it had happened according to the Indian moral code, Osho would lose his dignity? Perhaps men who get paid by other men become like women, losing their virility?
Indian mysteries.
The master of masters and the masters of a master….
It seems fairly obvious to me that a guru like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, when speaking of lineage, is addressing a community of disciples united by a value system that also includes the ethical tradition of previous generations; the possibility of short-term atonement for sins does not seem to be contemplated.
Such an orientation toward sainthood, which is the norm in the spiritual/religious world, can only create a neurotic tension regarding one’s own reputation that must be defended/flaunted, and speaking about that of others can be a solution.
It seems quite likely to me that the outcome of such communities tends to cause individuals to fall into the trap of private vice, which would not be a problem in itself if it did not entail the burden of hypocrisy of having to share public virtues.
Osho was not a hypocrite; if he had collected luxury cars, psychotropic or sexual experiences, even that would not have fuelled the level of moralism that conflicts with the honesty (with oneself first and foremost) necessary for harmonious individual and communal spiritual growth.
Striving towards such a society is the true “dream” that Osho left us, the only resource left today at the bottom of the barrel of so-called Western civilization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb00JKCgv1w
Had watched this video when it was freshly cooked up!
Seems Ravi jiji is trying to bask in Osho’s sun!
Do you think so, Kavita? I thought that Osho’s popularity was no longer what it used to be, and that in fact Sri Sri Ravi now has much greater reach than Osho.
Rather, I think it may be a step towards rehabilitating Osho, and bringing him again into the fold. Some of the things that SSR said were definitely forgiving-minded, conciliatory. It’s a question of making it ‘ok’ to read Osho, to accept him as a modern guru not different from SSR, MMY or Sadhguru. Even though they see him as a bit of an iconoclast and also a trail blazer.
NP, it could he is trying to get attention from Osho’s people / lovers / followers / disciples / market and bmaybe is trying to get some Brownie points, more so from his own people & also to expand his market.
From having watched the video, I quite like this Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, I like his energy and his humility.
Whether or not Maharishi bailed out Osho Rajneesh is something that I don’t really care too much about. I think gurus tell these stories to their followers in order to bring a bit of life to the situation, not necessarily because they are true. It’s a device, as in the story of the Buddha and the three visitors who each came to ask about the existence of God and received three different answers, which I quoted here not long ago.
I think it is interesting to examine what led Shantam to ask this question; perhaps it was a feeling that Shree Rajneesh is the superior guru and stands on his own? If this is all we can say about what Rajneesh means to the modern seeker some 30 years after his death, then that isn’t much.
Came a across a Hindi (with no English subtitles) response from a SSR discple’s video to Osho’s disciple’s video.
Seems a New Age Religious Crusade is going on!!!
Just sharing that video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lCXzJPviRo&t=69s
Gurudev Sri Sri Shankar has 9.44m. followers on the internet. OSHO has 1.52m. followers.
Who is the greater Guru?
Anyway, I still remember his words: “Every Master is a great liar.”
Frankly, I am not interested in anyone’s market value!
Those are numbers of followers for the YouTube channels I noticed. It’s just an indication that Raviji is much more widely followed in India.
However, Osho may well be the more modern guru, less connected to the Hindu establishment but with many more ideas.
I think it’s a good thing for these gurus to discuss Osho, because it brings his thinking into a wider circulation.
Probably what I am getting from what you are saying is:
Once upon a time, the original Acharya’s/Rajneesh’s teaching was like some uncopyrighted currency that’s more like today’s digital money, which now this and mostly every modern Master/Teacher is freely using – & needs to do this without revealing its source – maybe for a practical purpose!
I guess Osho is also more widely followed in India than anywhere else.
I think with this ‘rescue’ Osho, Sri Sri is just playing jokes on him. This one can more easily do if the person is dead and cannot react.
And just by the way…another K-Video:
“Why do your teachings have so little effect on us?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WZKmVc-FuE
Well, he is asking the same question that Osho said would be different through him and his work. In the end both knew YOU yourself have to transform, change, or even be what you already are. But the surroundings of such Buddhas may give you the momentary feel there is a change happening, true understanding, bliss and freedom is here and now. But that energy of the “Buddha-Field” is just in time…we will all lose it when the speaker has left his body and the primal quest for change may rise again, or just wither away in time…if you are lucky.
This is of course a funny and interesting topic to Neo-Neo-Neo-Sannyasins like us
yes.
First time I listened to this Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (not the musician) I liked many parts of this gossiping and also doubted some others.
The foolery about different gurus is part of the game anyway!
For example, also this video with another famous modern Indian Guru is very interesting. We can see and love the truth in it anyway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJdbj5d1v64
Good day, friends,
I wanted to talk about something important to me, and that is the expressing of one’s innate joy. My experience is that we are born joyful, and that we accumulate seriousness, anger, damage and trauma, which obscure that joyfulness and make us feel tired and serious and down at heart.
If you go and examine your childhood damage and trauma and what these things meant to your view of the world, just watching with kindness and love, these ancient hurts can be greatly eased, and your natural joyfulness again gets a chance to shine. It’s a meditative process which can bring a lot of happiness to your life.
Nityaprem, you’re asking indirectly: who would repress joy to express a little agony?
I don’t know if, as David Icke (who’s been discussing the horror of the Epstein files for decades before Mr. Jeffrey’s case) says, there are entities in the astral world who love “to eat” certain negative vibrations (fear-anxiety), thanks to an elite group of hybridized shapeshifters (Anunnaki) who sacrifice humans in their honour (in exchange for their position of power). But if I were you, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that there might be some human or demi-human who has never known joy, due to their constitution or a hard and painful life.
How would you feel about the idea that there might be people/entities who invest in your/my/our fear/suffering?
After all, even if such demonic entities capable of living by taking over our physical bodies don’t exist, what would prevent an elite of aristocrats who have passed down power for centuries from reaping benefits from blood rituals?
Even in your democratic and emancipated country, not everyone is joyful, perhaps due to some who prefer to be powerful like Joris Demmink.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making this a reputational issue; rather, I’m saying that the elite’s power system uses reputational arguments to hide their misdeeds, going unnoticed before your joyful and innocent eyes, the eyes of one with an excellent reputation — human, all too human.
I don’t believe in such things, Veet Francesco. Entities, fine. Thinking ones who have a voice, ok. Annunaki, definitely not.
The whole Epstein Files show that there is some sort of shady elite who do connect to each other, and that they get up to unpleasant things. It’s all stuff that is coming out now, about entitled people. But it seems to be all of this world.
Nityaprem, I don’t know what’s more unscientific:
believing that entities from other dimensions could exist, or
believing that there couldn’t be bipeds from this dimension who could contact the dimension where the entities (you claim exist) live.
I wonder what it would be like to wash the dishes or mop the meditation room floor with you, NP.
For example, if I should avoid talking about politics in your presence and always appear optimistic and joyful.
Everyone has their own way of managing their own and others’ energies.
I think meditating together is important, more important than doing it alone, but doing an Osho therapy group together (with the right therapist) could help us understand each other better, our belief systems, and love each other more.
There was something left unsaid in the previous thread, regarding the reputational criterion applied, with a synecdoche, to the Osho encounter groups of the 1970s.
Although Satyadeva, 10 years ago, in another thread on the same topic, expressed almost entirely what I also see as my point of view (Lokesh, too, was kind and protective towards Rajen, who had been criticized by some forum commentators, as a therapist in the 1970s encounter groups), I would like to add that therapy played and plays an important role in the community model envisioned by Osho.
If it’s true that the interchangeability of roles is already a “therapy group” in itself, because it inverts the perspective on the power dynamics among sannyasins working in the same community context, what (imv) group therapy adds, facilitated by expert and loving guidance, is the possibility of resolving (through observation and understanding) all those conflicts arising from the different cultural/existential settings of an outward-facing community (there are no exams to pass) like Osho’s.
I admit, attempts to talk politics would probably fall on deaf ears during the mopping of the meditation room floor (or at other times). I am largely disinterested in it. Although I did come across this which is an interesting group of political economists…
https://youtu.be/TGM5u23P12I
In terms of managing each other’s energies, I believe some good music would help. There’s some of what I like in pop, jazz, new age, r&b and soul, for example, I have a pretty broad range, though I like the eighties. Something like this…
https://youtu.be/NyUc2BrpiMk
https://youtu.be/PIh07c_P4hc
https://youtu.be/PgRafRp-P-o
Therapy groups I’ve always found to be a very human activity, and good for the soul. There is something of the confessional in it, although leaving out the influence of a father confessor.
David Icke had too much bad acid…Poor guy. He is that conspirator only famous for his weird reptile paranoia. Forget the rest.
But I’ve always found it funny that by chance science calls the oldest parts of the brain “reptilian”.
Icke must have combined his horror-trip with that psychological insight. A distorted mind lost in altered states and btw, essential MAGA bullshit.
Veet Tom, I envy your rock-solid convictions.
I’d like to point out that the conspirator is the one who creates the conspiracies, not the one who reports or suffers them.
If there’s one issue that’s occupied Western philosophical reflection for millennia, it’s precisely that of giving a foundation to the truth of what exists, since what appears depends on subjective sensory perception, an opinion among opinions.
For example, trusting in the five senses, seeing all those philanthropists like Bill Gates on Jeffrey’s Island might make you think they’re planning an attempt to save humanity from some viral threat.
For me, it’s not so important that philanthropists shed their skin like a chameleon; the important thing is that they produce powerful vaccines against the seasonal cold.
But that’s just an opinion, absurdly opposed to yours.
Yes, basically you have to put your ego on the cross.
And by going through suffering, you can transcend suffering.
NP delivers the spurious claim that “My experience is that we are born joyful.”
This is pure nonsense, and you can count me out, because I have no memories at all about being born. In fact, I would go so far as to say that we only know that we were born because we have been told that. Therefore, I do not believe that NP has any experience of being joyful when he was born, because NP did not come into existence for at least a couple of years after he was born.
Coincidentally, I read an article in ‘El País’ recently which delivered the following information:
“In the first years of life, an explosive learning process unfolds. Yet, paradoxically, we rarely remember any fragment of our existence before the age of three, and complete memories usually don’t form until around six. Some people claim to recall their first steps or being cradled in a crib by their mother, but these are almost certainly false memories — reconstructions shaped by photos or stories from those who were present. As memory researchers have demonstrated time and again, our capacity for recall is less like a recording device capturing reality and more like a narrative we construct to shape our identity and better navigate life.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud coined the term infantile amnesia to describe this lack of early memories, attributing it to the repression of thoughts related to childhood sexuality or aggression — ideas deemed unacceptable to a civilized mind. Since then, various theories have emerged to explain this phenomenon. Some, like Freud, suggest it results from later reformatting, though not necessarily due to cultural repression. Others argue that the infant brain is simply not capable of forming memories.
This second hypothesis is based on the fact that the different regions of the hippocampus are connected by what is known as the trisynaptic circuit, a neuronal pathway that is still immature in a child’s brain. This immaturity would prevent the hippocampus from encoding episodic information, the ability that later enables us to recall personal experiences in specific places and times. Furthermore, this idea seemed to be reinforced by observations that children’s memory capacity is as limited as that of adults with hippocampal damage-induced amnesia.
However, an article published on Thursday in ‘Science’ challenges this hypothesis, providing evidence that children do form memories but later, when they grow up, cannot retrieve them.
One common explanation for childhood amnesia is that the hippocampus — the brain region responsible for memory storage — has not fully developed before adolescence, which prevents memories from being encoded. But a team led by researchers at Yale University has found that this is not the case. Using innovative techniques to study memory formation in infants, the researchers showed images of faces, objects and scenes to children between four months and two years old while monitoring their brain activity with fMRI. Then, while continuing to monitor neuronal activity, they showed them the same objects again along with others they had never seen before.
When infants had previously observed a stimulus, they were expected to look at it more closely when it was presented again. In the experiment, when shown two images — one novel and one familiar — if the infant focused their gaze more on the latter, the researchers concluded that they recognised it as familiar.
With this hypothesis in mind, the team investigated whether hippocampal activity was linked to infants’ memory. The results showed that the greater the activity in the hippocampus when an infant first saw an image, the longer they gazed at it when it was shown to them later, suggesting that the information had been stored in that brain region.
But where do these memories go if they are formed but never retrieved? That’s the question being asked by researchers like Nick Turk-Browne, the study’s lead author. One possibility is that they are stored in ephemeral memory. Another is that they reside in our brains, although they can no longer be accessed.”
NP then draws the following conclusion:
“We accumulate seriousness, anger, damage and trauma, which obscure that joyfulness and make us feel tired and serious and down at heart.”
This sounds like something he might have read somewhere. Paradise lost. I have observed many babies and not all of them were joyful. Some of them were upset and screaming their heads of in discomfort.
Then NP delivers his ultimate conclusion:
“If you go and examine your childhood damage and trauma and what these things meant to your view of the world, just watching with kindness and love, these ancient hurts can be greatly eased, and your natural joyfulness again gets a chance to shine. It’s a meditative process which can bring a lot of happiness to your life.”
So now we know how NP spends his days when he is not gathering book knowledge. He is busy in his living room, examining his childhood damage and traumas, so that his natural joyfulness again gets a chance to shine. What a load of shite!
What a load of shite you have produced indeed, Lokesh. I take it you are not up for a bit of self-examination then?
NP, what I wrote has nothing to do with being up for a bit of self-examination. My comment is based on debunking your ridiculous claim that “My experience is that we are born joyful.” What is your actual experience in such things? Can you share some examples? I suspect it is yet another of your mind trips, perhaps based upon something you have read.
My partner asked what I was writing. I told her. She laughed and showed me the ‘happy baby’ exercise she does in her yoga class.
All you have to do is think back to your earliest memories and feel what you felt at that time.
Okay. So, how far back do your earliest memories extend and what did you feel at that time? And how can you be certain that those memories and feelings are not the result of later reformatting?
NP delivers the claim that “My experience is that we are born joyful.”
Maybe the experience in the womb was joyful, but certainly not the birth.
The birth is painful, for the child and for the mother; there ia a reason the expression “birth trauma” exists.
My experience is that as we get older we move from innocence and cheerfulness and non-seriousness to dourness and seriousness.
Exactly when or what your earliest memories are is largely irrelevant, all you need is a sense of what you felt during your earliest childhood years.
In other words, NP, you just want to write nonsense on SN, and if questioned about it you simply write some more bunk to divert attention away from the fact.
Elderly people are often quite funny. Perhaps it is just a reflection of yourself you are seeing.
I can’t help it if you refuse to see the truth when it’s plainly stated and waved in front of your nose, Lokesh. I don’t have all the answers either, I just know a few little bits.
“My experience is that as we get older we move from innocence and cheerfulness and non-seriousness to dourness and seriousness.”
You are confused, NP.
There is no “we”.
It depends on the individual.
It is not a question of age, but of the inner.
Professor Andrea Zhok, in the article I’m adding below, offers a bitter reflection on the paradox of living in a world of billions of citizens seeking to cooperate on an ethical/reputation basis, governed by a pack of sons of bitches, cooperating on the basis of unspeakable crimes, committed together as an act of mutual loyalty, a blood pact that makes the ritual of mafia affiliation (pricking the index finger with a pin—used to pull the trigger—blood falling on the photo of a saint, which is then burned, and reciting the sacred formula, to burn like that saint if the code of honour is betrayed) seem like a Boy Scout game.
A. Zhok uses the case of the disgrace of an intellectual like Noam Chomsky (on the verge of 90, he met a billionaire criminal and tried to refute his racist theses, albeit by accepting gifts…from a racist) to argue that the form of cooperation based on ethics and reputation is much more fragile than the criminal one used by the elite.
This reflection also applies, to a varying degree, to what is happening in Osho’s world.
For me, using Osho’s “oddities” to decree the disastrous end of that social event — that is, a joyful, creative and compassionate awakening of human consciousness — is an attempt to discourage/stifle an original and effective cooperative model, a true alternative to the one that has dominated for millennia, based on double standards: one for the king and his court and one for the people.
It’s truly unforgivable that those sannyasins, despite having witnessed that miracle, now use the reputational argument, knowing full well that ethics and reputation have never been the cooperative foundation of our community;
A more or less direct contribution to that system of power that Osho always fought, knowing full well the roots of human misery, that structural hypocrisy with which he wrestled, until his dying breath, with those within his sight.
‘PRIVATE VICES, PUBLIC VIRTUES’, by Andrea Zhok
“Discussions like the recent one about Chomsky and the Epstein files have made me reflect on a profound problem in Western societies today.
To get to the point, I must digress.
Let’s start with a basic anthropological and sociological question. Given that what characterizes human beings in terms of effectiveness in the world is the capacity for cooperation, let’s ask ourselves: how can we build a network of cooperation?
Formal institutions exist, of course, but they in turn depend on a deeper motivational level: you can formally have a state and a judiciary with laws, and yet this can be completely empty and ineffective if people don’t believe in it, if they don’t feel a reason to recognize it. The world is full of states and institutions that exist only on paper, but which in reality conceal other mechanisms of power.
The question therefore becomes: what allows us to build networks of cooperation at a profound motivational level? In today’s context, I believe two factors should be mentioned. Models.
1) The traditional model is rooted in human nature and has a glorious past: groups of people organize, coordinate, and cooperate based on shared ideals, giving to others and receiving recognition from others. The emotional foundations of these systems are things like friendship, loyalty, honor, and reputation. All these values require time to consolidate: honor or reputation is not assessed on a single case, but on the overall pattern of behaviors over time.
The fact that they are built over time makes these values difficult to develop, especially in contexts like modern work, where people do not live and work in close proximity for long periods. It should be noted that these forms of reputational construction can also be used in criminal contexts, and therefore for purposes that we might consider anything but ideal. (This is the case of the “familism” present in various mafia-style criminal organizations.) The fact remains that even in those contexts, this cooperative model builds an internal ethic. Moreover, criminal organizations founded on family loyalty cannot extend too much, and the further one moves from the primary center of loyalty, the more easily they disintegrate: their power is limited.
For this reason, broad ideals work best as a basis for building solidarity, loyalty, honor, and reputation within a group: faith in God, the idea of nationhood, communism, etc.
These ideals are essential for obtaining the cooperation of large numbers of people, which is essential for those who do not hold significant amounts of power.
2) However, if we look at the other extreme of today’s society, we find other groups with an interest in cooperation. What we call “the elites” are represented by People who INDIVIDUALLY hold significant portions of power.
In the liberal narrative, the fact that these individuals are a plurality (hundreds, thousands, depending on their level) would guarantee their safety, because in the liberal system these elites are in constant competition among themselves. This competition would guarantee a mutual limitation of power.
In principle, coordinating the efforts and activities of a few hundred people is immensely simpler than doing so for millions, tens, hundreds of millions of individuals, for a nation. But for elites, there is another problem. Those who reach the pinnacle of power in a context of economic competition like the Western one are typically unscrupulous sharks, where appealing to loyalty, honor, friendship, or reputation would be pathetic as well as ineffective. Therefore, while numerically facilitated in cooperation, they are hindered by their nature. How can this limitation be overcome?
The answer lies in a stratagem found in some versions of the “prisoner’s dilemma.” You have to make yourself MUTUALLY BLACKMAILABLE. A financial shark who has reached a national or international apex doesn’t count on the loyalty of another shark. They swim in an environment where tearing a piece of flesh from those around you guarantees you’ll grow bigger and be able to eat other smaller fish the next day. But if you become complicit in something completely unmentionable, this guarantees long-term cooperation. Even though the only ideal that drives them is an antisocial one, an ideal that demands “mors tua vita mea,” they manage to cooperate steadily with this substitute for loyalty and reputation: complicity in crime, mutual blackmail.
At this point, my question is: which of the two systems of cooperation tends to be more successful today?
The first system has the entire history of humanity behind it; it is potentially inclusive, constructive, and ethical, but it must coordinate many people based on issues that are constantly being eroded, ridiculed, and discredited, such as honour and reputation.
The second system, thanks to today’s colossal concentration of economic power, can exercise enormous power by coordinating relatively few people, people who know each other face to face. These individuals may be perfect sons of bitches — in fact, it helps — but if they bind each other through mutual blackmail, they can operate with extraordinary effectiveness.
And here I return to the Chomsky affair and why it struck me.
Not for reasons of personal affection: Chomsky was a liberal, with very conventional views on the usual American “villains” who took stupid positions during the pandemic, etc. Not my hero. The only book of his in my library is on linguistics.
What strikes me here is an element related to reputational dynamics.
Chomsky appears as an idealist who fought against the system, and as far as I can tell, he firmly believed in it. He wrote something like forty volumes of severe criticism of the American system of power — certainly, criticisms within the framework of the American Constitution; he’s not a revolutionary, and yet he’s been perceived by two generations as an exemplary figure. He lectures all over the world, always with huge audiences. And yet, he doesn’t get rich (he’s wealthy, but nothing more).
At 87, he met Jeffrey Epstein.
At 95, he suffered a stroke that left him incapacitated.
At 97, his reputation was destroyed because a review of the Epstein files revealed frequent visits with Epstein, the acceptance of favours (a financial arrangement, vacations), a conversation in which he attempted to refute Epstein’s racist ideas, and private conversations in which he seemed to believe in Epstein’s innocence.
Well, as I said, I’m not interested in defending Chomsky or anyone else, but I can’t help but wonder. Is anyone clear on the tunnel we’ve found ourselves in?
I mean, if someone can build an impeccable, even glorious, reputation in the eyes of the world’s public opinion well into their very old age, and that reputation can be incinerated in a week by the wrong acquaintances in their old age, who exactly is safe?
Who can say that investing in the traditional values of honour, loyalty and reputation, working hard in the shared pursuit of an ideal, makes sense today?
Do you understand what’s at stake?
We’ve built a world where you can slaughter your neighbours, massacre peoples, plunge regions into poverty, rape, buy organs, do whatever you want, and in the end, if your circle of blackmailed co-workers holds firm enough, you get away with a side note, you retain all your power, and on your deathbed you can commission a glamorous director to make you a flattering biopic, which will make the viewer say: “yes, he was a bit of a son of a bitch, but a nice son of a bitch” – come on.
On the other hand, you can dedicate your life to ideas you believe are right, argue with everyone, never shy away, participate, sign appeals, write incessantly, maintain consistency even in difficult situations, refuse blackmail, don’t let those in power dictate what you say, and in the end, if someone lists ten “inappropriate” incidents in their senile phase, that’s enough to engender disgust for you and throw everything you’ve done in the incinerator.
Well, I don’t know if it’s clear what lesson the new generations are learning. Then don’t be surprised.”
Certainly this whole idea of loyalty through shared crimes is nothing new, it has been used by the drug cartels at the street level as an initiation for quite a few years.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Epstein Files end up having long-term consequences. I’m not sure enough of my history to say what started the French Revolution, but this sure feels like something that might light the touch paper.
Epstein, the Sexguru for the rich and mighty.
Good morning, friends,
I was watching a video blog by a Dutch YouTuber called Flora Gonning about her trek in Nepal along the Manaslu Circuit. It’s something that does touch me, the beautiful views of the Himalaya mountains, the valleys, the tea houses where she stays. I think it was a wonderfully well made piece of reporting, and worth taking an hour or so to view…
https://youtu.be/7PL5zb6GxmI
It’s amazing that one can just for free go on a visual journey through a distant place, be told the story of a long mountain trek at the drop of a hat. Ain’t the internet wonderful.
Another source of wonderful videos is the YouTube channel ‘Reflections of Life’, who make short 15 minute meditations on people’s lives in South Africa. Well-made, cinematic, colourful and full of wisdom. Maybe you’d like to take a look.
https://youtu.be/_qLPnHQ8kx8
Few years ago I searched the web for “Bhagwan” and came to a video that left me confused, because it made little sense to me what the background for this could ever be.
But the lovely way “Bhagwan” was pronounced in this great song touched me deeply and I had to find out what this crazy stuff was all about.
Ready to be confused too? Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6SutyLlzws
“The real opposite of your smiles are not tears, but smiles which are painted, smiles which don’t go any deeper than the lips, which are nothing but exercises of the lips. No heart collaborates with them, no feeling stands behind them. There is nobody behind the smile, the smile is just a learned trick. Tears are not opposite to smiles, they are only complementaries. But the false smile is the real opposite.
Remember it always, the false is the enemy of the true. If your smile is true and your tears are true, they are friends, they will help each other because they both will strengthen the truth of your being. If your tears are false and your smiles are false, then too, they are friends; they will strengthen your falsity, your personality, your mask.”
( Osho, ‘The Book of Wisdom’ )
NP, you are obviously confused. Not really my business. I trust you eventually sort yourself out. Nothing more to say on the matter.
Could be…as Osho says, confusion is a great opportunity, an excellent state of mind, as certainty is the death of original thinking.
“Osho says”! NP, have you not realised that Osho said so many things and then later contradicted them, that to rely on them for some form of back-up for your current state of mind is strictly for the numpties in the class?
For example, there are numerous Osho quotes about confusion. You can choose whatever one you wish to suit your needs. How convenient. Surely it is much healthier to examine one’s state of confusion and what is at the root of it, as opposed to finding an Osho quote to put a Band-Aid on your confusion. It might temporarily cover up your confusion, but basically, it is a form of repression, and therefore, it will eventually fester.
Confusion stems from identification with the mind. If one takes a step back, one can easily see that is the case. And in doing so, the confusion will fade. No mind, no confusion. For fuck’s sake. I’m starting to sound like Satchit.
It is our destiny to all become like Satchit, spouting one-liners and pithy wisdom…That is the endgame, where Earth is ruled by spiritual zombies engaging in wisdom battles on every street corner….
Na na, spiritual zombies?
Now you drop your peaceful mask and show your real face, NP.
Kindness gone?
Did not go very deep.
https://youtu.be/1-hYdihOEqI?feature=shared
“That is the endgame, where Earth is ruled by spiritual zombies engaging in wisdom battles on every street corner….”
Sounds like a gamer’s destiny, not mine.
I was actually thinking wisdom battles as in rap battles….
A strangely appropriate image, considering Shantam’s diatribe at Sri Sri Ravi Shankar which started all this off….
“Once a man asked me, “Are you an egoist or a humble person?”
I said. “Neither. neti neti, neither this nor that. I cannot be either.” He said, “What are you talking about? One has to be either an egoist or a humble person.”
I said, “You don’t understand. You know nothing; you have never gone within yourself. If you are humble, you are an egoist standing on his head. Humbleness is an expression of the ego. I am neither. I am simply whatsoever I am, neither humble nor egoistic, because I have seen that there is no ego. How can there be humbleness then?””
( Osho, ‘The Book of Wisdom’ )
I think the whole idea of using labels to identify oneself is nonsensical. Just be as you are. Once you use a label like ‘generous’ or ‘loving’ and you apply it to yourself, that leads to identification with a concept, to using that label as a mask, forcing yourself to be that. It gets in the way of knowing yourself as you really are.
Remember this shrinking EGO?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mFuq7rxksg
“But the time has come now for a great change. The future belongs to women, not to men, because what man has done, down through these ages, has been so ugly. Wars and wars and wars — that is his whole history. All the great that man has created is…Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong — people like these.
Yes, there have been a few men like Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Krishna — but have you noted one point? They all look feminine.”
( Osho, ‘The Book of Wisdom’ )
Well. not the images of Jesus that I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, there exists no image of Jesus.
Selfies had not been invented at that time.
I guess this quote is from before the breakdown of the Ranch.
After the breakdown, he blamed it on the women and their jealousy that the breakdown happened.
‘The Book of Wisdom’ is a 1979 lecture series on the sutras of Atisha, so you may well be right.
Atisha’s birthplace is actually in a place in what today is called Bangladesh.
He travelled to Tibet from there.
This is the problem with these quotes.
They belong to a certain time and moment. They are not true for all and always.
The science of researcing the Observation of thinking:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/19/inside-voice-what-can-our-thoughts-reveal-about-the-nature-of-consciousness
Haaah.
On the Road to find out.
That’s very funny…That is The Guardian’s weekly Long Read article, which this time was an extract from Michael Pollan’s new book on consciousness, ‘A World Appears’, which I was saying below I was so much looking forward to reading.
Thanks, Klaus!
Good morning, folks,
I came across this interview with Michael Pollan in The Guardian, it’s interesting. He has a new book coming out about consciousness, which I am quite looking forward to reading. He always approaches his subjects first as a journey in learning, because he often chooses subjects with which he is only somewhat familiar.
He then starts from a scientific view, but later experiments on himself, and he says this book on consciousness was present in seed form in the earlier book he wrote on psychedelics. A new book by Michael Pollan is a treat for me, I have much respect for him as a non-fiction writer.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/08/michael-pollan-psychedelics-consciousness
“Meditation is a state of silence; meditation is a state of no desire; meditation is a state of no past, no future; meditation is a state when you are not doing anything, just cherishing your being. You are just happy that you are, happy that you are breathing, simply happy for no reason at all. In those moments there is meditation.”
“Deep in you, meditation is already the case. So whenever it happens that your day-to-day turmoil is a little bit less…. Maybe you are watching a sunset, and watching the sunset your constant chattering mind has become quiet, the beauty of the sunset has made it quiet. You are in a kind of awe – the wonder, the mystery, the beautiful sun setting, the night descending, the birds moving back to their nests, the whole earth getting ready to rest, the whole climate of rest. The day is gone, the turmoil of the day is gone, and your mind feels quiet. The bird on the lower branch sits for a moment unmoving. Suddenly there are not two birds any more, there is only one bird. And suddenly you feel great joy arising in you.
You think that the joy is because of the beautiful sunset. That’s where you are wrong. The beautiful sunset may have functioned as a situation but it is not because of that. The joy is coming from within. The sun may have helped, but it is not the source. It may have been helpful in creating the situation, but it is not the cause. The joy is coming from you. It is arising in you. It was there; the surface mind had only to settle in a quiet space. And the joy started arising.”
( Osho, ‘Sufis: People of the Path’ )
This is my understanding also.
NP, this is probably your profoundest post. ❤️
The Osho quote above (which I think you mean) is from a longer piece posted on OshoNews, it just struck me so much that I thought I should reproduce it. But the longer piece is on this page:
https://www.oshonews.com/2026/02/19/meditation-is-life/
Thank you.
“Mulla Nasrudin was sitting with a beautiful woman on a full-moon night talking about great things. He was getting very romantic. But women are very earthly, earthbound, very practical.
When Mulla was getting really too high the woman said, “Mulla, your love is okay, but will you marry me?”
Mulla said, “Listen, don’t change the subject.” ”
It’s funny that I’ve never heard of sannyasin women reacting like that… I came across Osho’s take on the family not too long ago, where he first talks about the commune as raising all the children and the harm that the family unit has done. Seeing with the perfect eye of hindsight, I don’t think the commune is the solution, maybe there isn’t one and we have to be content with flawed systems.
The whole system called life is flawed.
Either there is frustration because one does not get what one wants. Or one is frustrated because one gets it and
cannot hold it.
Well, it’s true that if you view life as a system it will never be perfected. But I don’t think life is exactly owing us a smooth ride either. Much of how we view life is due to how we see circumstances around us, a truck driver in India might be continually worried that he might get hijacked, a pilgrim is worried that his tractor ride might overturn…but somehow it all seems to work out, existence provides what we need, not what we want.
People always try to make life go according to their plan, but the unexpected often shows up. In a way, a mind that looks to the gods and sees miracles everywhere is a mind more easily inclined to the spiritual than a mind that looks to cause and effect, the mind of a scientist. There is less room for the unexpected in the mind of a scientist, he sees systems everywhere, but in the end that too is a matter of faith, faith in the predictability of the universe.
It is interesting if you consider recent theories that quantum fields are conscious, because that says that at very small scales the universe becomes less predictable, more a question of thought, faith, miracles.
Nityaprem, I don’t see much difference between the minds of those who believe in God and those who believe in science, both involve an unquestionable dogma and a certain predictability, due to the trust in link between cause and effect…you should reflect on the relationship between prayer and miracles.
The best gifts of life came to me after I stopped praying, emptying miracles of meaning.
I’ve never really prayed. Prayer was just the habit of my Christian grandparents.
But I don’t think it is possible to believe that the world is ordered the way it is because of God’s will, or that prayer has any effect on it. That is just believing in magic, superstition.
The world is ordered the way it is because human hands have built on what nature provided, sometimes wisely, sometimes not.
The influence of miracles comes when the unexpected touches your life, in various ways.
I am also a friend of the unexpected.
Here comes:
Sadhguru on Osho
https://youtu.be/RlFlrG6JyJw?si=_Mpd9xO8Hd8fM1dC
Veet Tom,
In this video linked below, Professor of Moral Philosophy Andrea Zhok explicitly states that, in the light of what the Epstein case is revealing, the mindset of the so-called “conspiracy theorists” is correct: the imbeciles are the others, those who blindly trust authority, those who accredit philanthropists like Bill Gates or Epstein.
Indeed, it turned out to be correct to have intuited/thought/deduced that the intentions at the highest levels of political decision-makers are different from those publicly declared, while acknowledging that what could possibly be unfounded are the specific arguments used to demonstrate the true objective, beyond the stated intentions.
Therefore, be careful in the future about pointing the finger at those who appear to you as “conspiracy theorists”, because you’ll have three fingers pointing at you, judging you as an imbecile.
The Professor quotes Marx on class consciousness, when already in the late 19th century, with the same conspiracy-theorist mindset, he envisioned the asymmetry in which a population of ants attempted to counter the domination of a group of five capitalists anonymously gathered in a London pub.
Perhaps even in a community like the Ranch, a little class consciousness, to understand the kind of power relations we are immersed in, would have avoided some of the errors Sadhguru mentions.
I’m sorry that the automatic translation into English isn’t precise, although the underlying meaning remains, as in the case of “asocial” translated and transcribed as “associate” and a few haphazardly inserted question marks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-SE31sT3t8&t=540s
That commune was poisonned by politics: by those in power and those who let it happen.
USA with Trump is just the same problem, spoken in a generalized way now.
Many Americans resist – Communards did not.
A president of low quality can be seen easily compared to a secretary of the master of masters.
A country needs a leader, a commune needs a master.
Without them the whole thing falls apart…we fear.
So get ready for meritocracy – after Armageddon!
P.S.
Francisco, you are right.
The “conspirator” was the wrong word. I was too lazy to use the “lust for conspiracy” as Icke’s description.
Saswad scene…
“Many Americans resist – Communards did not.”
It depends, Veet Tom. It’s true that the Paris Commune resisted for a few days and the Ranch for 4-5 years, but the St. Petersburg Commune lasted more than 70 years, and in any case, Osho’s commune was not explicitly founded on socialist ideas (equitable distribution of resources).
The problem isn’t occupying a piece of land, conquering it or paying for it regularly, where one’s own law is applied, but whether one has the means to defend that autonomy.
A capitalist community like the American one in the 1950s proved capable of resisting socialist communitarian ideas, even though McCarthyite propaganda had sufficient means (in the hands of a tiny minority of Americans) to influence consciences clouded by too many Coca-Colas and hamburgers in their diet.
Today, those resisting Trump aren’t all socialists—quite the opposite, they’re capitalists, like those who support Trump. I myself thought that perhaps Trump was the lesser evil compared to Biden, but instead he’s turning out to be a gatekeeper too, with a narcissistic complication.
If I found myself in the freezing cold of a mountain besieged by wolves, and had to choose between a drunken bus driver with a euphoric hangover and a half-witted bus driver licking an ice cream cone, I’d get on the latter.
A political leader often seeks to please his followers, a spiritual master invites us to become leaders of our own lives. Consequently, you can’t compare a community founded on Osho’s vision with a stratified community like the American one. In terms of destructive power, there would be no contest, but neither in terms of widespread joy.
I believe that even today in the Sangha there is no widespread political awareness of how Osho’s model, implicitly socialist, represents a danger to the capitalist socio-economic model and its values that encourage greed, in the context of rigged rules.
Probably, there is no solution anywhere & probably only the random lucky ones will get this & I have come across many first generation sannyasins who have been randomly lucky; the second generation sannyasins probably know very few who get this!
After discussing the propagandist aspects, that is the attempt to attack a guru’s teachings/truth/witnessing/being through the unfolding of his/her private behaviour (a process that would be shocking in case of lack of grace, that isth e distance between a state of perfect inner fulfilment and a state of instability that makes he/she seek satisfaction in the objects offered by the market), perhaps another reflection would be on the limitations and physical imbalances involved in placing one’s body at the service of compassion/truth/being when around you, even within your inner circle of people who should be spreading your work, there is a coherent energy field determined to destroy the vehicle of Love/Grace/Truth that is your body-mind system.
I believe that in evaluating this we cannot even exclude the role/responsibility that each person, with their own energetic field/presence/thought/activity, plays in supporting or not supporting the energetic field necessary for the master to resonate with his/her being when the guru is under attack. Therefore, I am not only talking about enemies who get too close to the guru’s energetic field, but also about supposed friends who distance themselves when the master is under attack.
This reflection only makes sense if it is conceivable that Osho may have posed a problem for a system of power that based its success on the transmission of knowledge through a rigid hierarchy operating in the shadow of esoteric/Masonic secrecy; white or black magic does not matter, if ultimately it is about power and not compassion.
A spiritual vision, as in the case of Osho, without an ordering/creating entity (while belief in an entity, Satan or God, it doesn’t matter, is a requirement for any Masonic membership) that has proven to make the treasures of the inner world accessible, without the need to shut oneself away in a hermitage, is in clear contrast with the root of any system of power.
It is a real danger because it reveals the hypocrisy of those who speak of the greater good for humanity without placing the human being at the centre of the spiritual trip.
A text on the beginning and the unfolding of the spiritual path.
How do insights happen? When can insights happen? What method can be preparatory, i.e. letting go of ambition etc?
Which path is appealing to a person? I.e. bhakti, zen, or different ones?
Consciousness and involvement with its contents.
The witness is not the end.
The gap is not “nothingness”.
Written by Christopher Titmuss, meditation teacher.
To me, a striking text. In the words. As well as between the lines.
I feel calmness. Coolness. Openness.
‘Fit to Receive’
https://www.christophertitmussdharma.org/p/fit-to-receive-a-reflection-on-going
Quote
…
In our practice of equanimity and witnessing, we realise stepping back also means a step towards something else. At this juncture, one also becomes fit to receive. Insights and realisations come out of the blue.
…
Unquote
Huhhhhhhh.
For those who do not know much about Christopher Titmuss, here is his Wikipedia page…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Titmuss
He started as a Buddhist in the seventies, and his thinking has stayed very much in that groove if you look at the titles of the books he has authored: a lot on Buddha, mindfulness, politics and everyday life.
Actually, politically-minded people IMV must value this stance of Christopher’s – who is very supportive of and engaged in social activism:
https://www.christophertitmussdharma.org/p/we-welcome-our-first-independent-mp-for-totnes-our-conservative-mp-has-been-reborn
Klaus, re-entering the European Union through the window to better satisfy the demands of the working class?
What the heck? Is this a joke or a provocation?
I’m referring to my wages over the last 25 years.
Are they worried that people will start voting for right-wing, nationalist, and xenophobic parties?
But what if the European Union was born precisely with the narrative that individual states would not survive globalization, structured by supranational institutions (IMF, WTO, OECD, World Health Organization, WHO, etc.)?
And what are the ideological pillars of the global free market?
Free movement of capital, services, goods, and people… yes, because labour is a commodity like any other, and if a British worker costs too much, they’ll do everything they can to bring in an African or Asian worker to replace him.
What applies to NGOs, which fish for labour off the coast of Libya, a free port since the assassination of Gaddafi, could also apply to Nazi-fascist groups, as false flags used to pollute the political arena of true anti-globalization sovereignists.
The Maastricht criteria are calibrated to initially favour countries with the most competitive economies, with the largest trade surpluses, and therefore with the strongest currencies and lowest public debt.
But in the global market, as we saw with Germany, this advantage lasts only for a short time, because if you start competing with the most competitive country on the global market, China, then, gradually, German workers have to work like Chinese.
Especially when the ECB is a neutral investment bank like all the others, disconnected from politics and therefore from the demands of the people, over time it will end up indebting every single state, unconcerned with the Keynesian lesson on economic cycles.
Why not bring back the Roman practice of every so often cancelling out all debt? That should keep the oligarchs in check.
It doesn’t seem like a huge provocation to me when a Dutchman jokes about an Italian’s wallet; it’s like an Italian joking with a Dutchman’s wife; no one gets angry.
NP, thank the Sephardic Jews who brought diamonds to your country, otherwise you’d be selling tulips at the traffic lights today.
Hi Klaus, do you have any fresh news on whether the patient wait has paid off?
The risk is that if you do fitness for enlightenment, you’ll imagine there must be a role model to identify with, a role model that’s too apathetic for my tastes.
It might be this postmodern ideological wave that encourages this Advaita trend.
It’s interesting, the quote I gave above about “Meditation is life” also suggests that deep down, meditation is a state that already exists, and we are just creating the right conditions for it to surface.
I think with enlightenment also there is something similar that happens, we create the right conditions for it to happen and then we wait. In waiting we let go of an awful lot of things that modern life has encouraged us to hold onto.
I’ve wondered what Osho would say of social media, I rather suspect it would be along the lines of “when you are with fellow sannyasins, be with them totally; when you are alone, don’t hold onto distant friends through electronic devices.” In a way, smartphones are too good at what they do, they create an illusion that you have your friends in your pocket.
It is like there is never a sensation of aloneness anymore, and also no sensation of togetherness. Instead, most of the time we spend in a halfway house of social media. It is like our prehistoric brains being continually in the heart of the tribe, without ever going on a lone foraging trip into the forest.
I’ve heard it said that we have brains adjusted for World 1.0, while we live in World 5.0.
Nityaprem, the things you want to let go of aren’t always at odds with meditation/enlightenment/being; they’re part of life, often the most fun part. The question is how to live them gracefully.
You and Klaus seem a bit hasty with your “doing” to make things leave you, while I’m more concerned that the same things don’t leave me too soon.
VF,
You are of course right to a large extent:
I started my meditation practice in the Hinayana tradition – working towards enlightenment in this life.
However, I have been into Tibetan Mahayana (bodhisattva vows etc.), too.
And Sufism in the market place.
Therefore, there is a mix of all of it in my motivations…
Besides all sorts of therapy in order to clean out.
MLK (Martin Luther King) quote:
“Nobody is free. Until we all are free.”
Has an appeal, too.
“No one is truly free until he/she knows what to do with freedom.” This also has a certain appeal.
That’s true. 2 me too.
Short and sweet.
Thank you, Klaus, also for sharing your life as a spiritual seeker, written in the previous forum homepage topic.
I feel great compassion for that young man from the ’80s I imagine from your words; I find my own commitment to trying to quench my thirst, the same spiritual atmospheres, near a possible source.
I read it on my mobile phone; I believe you quoted some words from Osho regarding an invitation to have an outsider approach. I’ll go back and read it more closely on my computer, but…I wonder if those words were addressed to you personally or if you chose them because they fit your character, perhaps not very sociable.
It also makes a difference if the same invitation were addressed to a spiritual seeker grateful to his community of seekers, or if the same words were casually read out of context by a self-satisfied man successful in the world of material affairs.
Outsider compared to whom/what? An outsider always and in any case, like a solipsist?
Thank you, Veet Francesco, for your feedback.
Appreciated.
After the hard work of confrontation and “Who am I?” – (some) communion. (Some) understanding.
That is how it should be.
We were really digging into it? Weren’t we?
If we don’t learn, who would?
American Billionaires?
Take care.
The outsider text came with my Sannyas letter.
So it was someone of the admin in Oregon who chose it for me.
Well, you know, I once thought computer games were fun. Now I think they are almost entirely devoid of real meaning.
Similarly with novels, most are just vehicles for fun, without much depth or reality. Not much better than other people’s dreams.
Fun doesn’t mean it contains any measure of truth. Once you start paying attention to truth, you find that fun loses its lustre.
“Similarly with novels, most are just vehicles for fun, without much depth or reality. Not much better than other people’s dreams.”
So many are published, as so many paintings, so many pieces of music, so many films, plays and dance performances are created, but to condemn all artistic creations – which are always, in the first instant, attempts at art, experiments – and place them on the level of bloody computer games is just undiscriminating foolishness, NP. I can only assume you haven’t been exposed to much high quality writing.
And we all know from experience, from what he said directly to many, including me, that Osho placed much emphasis on creative activities, but pf course not only on doing but also on reflection, regarding studying literature, for instance, as thoroughly worthwhile, even a privilege, a means whereby one can enter, experience and meditate on many otherwise hidden realms of the human psyche through the integrity and skill of gifted writers.
He said that such involvement is an opportunity to deepen understanding of human beings, of human nature, of life in all its complexity and wonder. A valuable addition to and preparation for any spiritual life dedicated to truth rather than something to be rather arrogantly dismissed as essentially shallow, meaningless.
I’m quite widely read in the Classics, SD, everything from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to ‘Great Expectations’ to ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. No real impulse to read them or their like again.
That’s not a particularly wide-ranging set of genres, NP.
Apologies, by the way, for having been so late with the moderation on Thursday, which was due to a major computer problem that required expert treatment until it was finally solved around 9.30pm (Uk time).
Reading is inspiring.
Current reads:
Sir Peter’s short stories show a lot of knowledge. And his humanity. Besides sharp observations. As UN ambassador.
…
More books…
Prentice Mulford
‘Vom Unfug des Lebens und des Sterbens’
Hermann Hesse
Anyone like posting their list of current reads?
Buongiorno, Klaus, speaking of digging with the words of ants and digging with the shovels of millionaires, I’ll share a few clues about the gestalt that organizes my perspective on a forum inspired by a multidimensional Master like Osho.
1) What I perceive from my interlocutors is only related to what they write and how they write it; for example, here, whether or not they use their sannyasin name could be one of the clues for me;
2) Osho is a controversial Master, especially for those who isolate his teachings from the cultural and social context in which he shared his vision; an essential part of the context, to understand Osho, is placing the sannyasins in the frame, the people who surrounded him and ideally continue to express their gratitude. In this forum, there’s traditionally more room for criticism, judgment, and resentment, and it’s therefore not representative of the world associated with OMC attendees, who are more outsiders than insiders.
3) “Outsiders” (note: I use quotation marks here) like myself, who in the early 1990s became acquainted with Osho through sannyasins, books, videos, groups, and places, might feel grateful for the Master and our community.
Privately, I feel especially comfortable sharing what I experienced in the meditation room/groups, but I’m aware that there are also market people who today only visit the worst Scottish pubs. I can’t prevent the market mentality, with its values and cynicism, from taking over this forum. In that case, I feel an easy responsibility to affirm the value of what today can be a resource for consciously experiencing the market dimension: the Zorba the Buddha vision.
4) Since it’s increasingly clear that we live in a world connected and dominated by the Epstein and friends paradigm, where part of the conspiracy of these few psychopaths (against billions of atomized ants like the rest of us) is a mountain of available information and digital solicitations designed to distract us from directions that don’t serve the market, which essentially wants to sell us a docile consumer approach (from vaccines to the war against Palestinian children), then the question remains whether, even in this forum, it’s part of our spiritual heritage to respond like misfit rebels to the dominant model of society or to react avoidantly and give free rein to millionaire psychopaths who have lost touch with reality, the most important aspect of which is that it’s not a good idea to piss off billions of ants who are not outsiders to the common destiny that is being envisioned.
The question I ask you and anyone who wants to answer is whether Osho is a function of the market or an enemy, whether he has donated red or blue pills (Matrix, film), whether there are spiritual pills that stifle the cries of horror and dismay around us.
If domination is global, does it make sense for rebellion to be individual?
Do we realize that the average community in today’s world, to which each of us belongs through emotional ties, is no larger than a millionaire’s club?
Not only do they dominate us globally, but if they wanted, they would outnumber any of our social groups, should they challenge us to a street fight.
This is my POV, regarding the importance of a community aware of what happens in the market, so as not to abdicate our dignity as human beings, so that meditation is recognized as a luxury, the fundamental value of every social group.
My final clue: political analyses of the market must be related to the achievements of the meditation hall.
sVeet Francesco.
Actually, I get a sense that you can be quite funny…
Do you have any information on measurable progress made in the social reforms department worldwide? According to your analyses and visions?
You would get my vote as the CEO or General Manager in the case that RFI will introduce a new department: Sannyas Social Reforms. Or Social Reforms as per sannyas. (Monty Phyton is calling…Judäa National Front etc…).
My first introduction to Sannyas was via a quiet meditation session at Tapoban Medi Centre, Kathmandu. From all I have read and talked about Osho in the meantime meditation seemed to be #1 priority.
As from the last comments here, now I will take ‘all departments as equals’. Due to your efforts: Gracie mille.
(In banking, departments were like separate silos – working for the success of the whole – but often not communicating; thus making everything tedious.) Sannyas is different! Of course.
Why don’t we leave aside the personal for a while?
And go with the flow. Of energy – love – visions – whatever.
So many words.
Cheers.
I know, Klaus, it can be frustrating. I write more than you do in this Sannyas forum, because for a sannyasin like me, Sannyas is different. Of course!
Otherwise, you wouldn’t come here seeking a flow that would give your life a meaningful direction, but you’re not the only renegade here experiencing this condition. Don’t despair. If the registry office grants me authorization, I’ll be able to consider your request for reinstatement under your real name.
Even when I quote a long article, I use more words in the introduction than you do when sharing something personal, that is, behind my/your mask, without which there would be no communication, and you’d have to settle for the silence of communion.
I also understand your frustration working in a bank…so plan something fun using Biden’s mask. Give to NP the Obama mask, to Lokesh the Bush Sr. mask, Kavita the Hillary Clinton mask, SD the Lincoln mask, Mr. Iqbal the Clinton mask, and me the Kennedy mask, even if it doesn’t bring good luck during the car ride home.
Communion is exactly what makes Sannyas different. Of course! This isn’t always fun for those who confuse apathetic skepticism with wisdom, sorry.
Hey, Veet,
Kindly spare me from your given mask; if I have to choose my mask it would be Helen Clark!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Clark
All right, Kavita, granted, the important thing is that you make some tasty samosas, to distribute to all the bank’s staff and customers.
Klaus’s plan does not allow for the slightest error in the dosage mix of laxative and sleeping powder. Before bed, everyone must run to the bathroom.
Impv, you are getting carried away easily: interpretations, speculations, judging and so forth.
That’s in the many words: quantity.
Impv, you’re getting carried away so easily: posting links to long articles, which I’m humble enough to read all the way through, but then you complain about the amount of bullshit I’m highlighting for your interpretation, speculation, judgment, and so forth.
Your lovely EU is leading us into World War III.
Sw. ‘Vesuvio’ Francesco,
IMPO, your rage ranting about reality is certainly not helping you.
Or anyone else.
Most likely you have got more ‘hot lava’ to spill.
That’s how lovely Pompeii was destroyed.
Keep on overflowing. You must.
Dear Iceberg Klaus,
As Satchit already pointed out to NP, your quest for sanctity by avoiding aspects of reality you don’t like forces you into a defensive posture, which results in you taking refuge in the reassuring narrative of the mainstream.
When, in a context like Osho’s, someone applies the method of honestly mirroring your aporias regarding the available data on reality, the two of you, instead of responding on the level of evaluation/interpretation of the data, react aggressively, even, as in this case, invoking Vesuvius, as if to say: burn in hell!
In the future, don’t link to any article where you don’t feel available and open to possible rebuttals; otherwise, be prepared, along with your wife, for my offensive reactions.
Veet,
Sorry, if you feel offended.
I accept your rebuttal.
Iceberg. Ok. No problem.
I know about the European reality and elsewhere.
I just don’t want to discuss the details.
Why should I?
Why was your salary low?
My salaries were low in the beginning, too: 0.23 cents per line typed in a translation office, freelance.
Were you in a union?
My first job with a real contract after graduating was in Machine Engineering – continously rising salary every year.
That is reality, too.
“My” Europe is something you interpreted. Not me.
Let it be.
No need to write back more threats.
I will not answer your comments. Enough. Confrontation.
To me, it is not ‘mirroring’, but turning the tables.
Cheers.
Ah yes, Klaus, meditation #1, but what kind of meditation? Osho gave lots of different kinds of meditations to different people to do, and he talked about 112 types in the ‘Vigyan Bhairav Tantra’.
Personally, I am inclined to do ‘just sitting’ which is also known as shikantaza. But you may find yourself drawn to other types, the only thing is I once read Osho to recommend to do a type of meditation daily for at least six months.
Trial and error. I guess is the standard.
We are sure free to switch to another, if one is not suitable.
You big cuckold, Klaus, you approach me with your fake smile, saying you’re sorry if I feel offended. With the same smile, you then address my objections, only to say that you don’t give a damn about my salary situation since it’s not yours, implying that the EU’s macroeconomic failure on wages can be refuted by the increasing of your own, the only salary that matters.
And you also ask me, in a snobbish way, not to reply, from the height of your engineering degree and the list of books you claim to have read.
This is what I despise about renegades like you.
You haven’t managed to find inspiration in Osho’s rebellious spirit.
Now you continue to bury your heads in the asshole of people like Epstein and Friends, while the Middle East, where the Master indicates much of the conspiracy against humanity was born, is burning.
@MOD
sw. veet francesco says:
1 March, 2026 at 12:55 pm, 5th and last paragraph:
“Now you continue to bury your heads in the asshole of people LIKE Epstein and Friends, while the Middle East, where the Master…”
MOD, the same-usally son of bitch post edited my comment, now in place of “LIKE” you can read “ABOUT”.
The thing is:
Are most people capable of assessing whether a type of meditation is doing them good?
Osho gave such guidelines as “easy is right” and “follow your bliss”, but he just as often recommended the Dynamic, which is a stressful affair.
Often it is only by laying down your burden of trying to achieve something through meditation that an inner release happens.
All we can do is create the conditions for meditation to arise…
“In the Western mind, man becomes body; in the Eastern mind, man becomes God. In the Western mind, the world is just materialistic; there exists nothing else but matter. In the Eastern mind, there exists nothing but God, but soul. Matter is also soul – asleep. Matter is potential soul – one day it will become soul. These are different visions. And if you have to choose, choose the Eastern vision because it has reverence for life, reverence for truth. Fact is an ordinary thing. Don’t be too much entangled by the fact.”
( Osho, ‘Sufis: People of the Path’ )
Today I have been musing about getting older, and losing fellow-travellers along the way. In my family it’s been very noticeable, all the men who were of my father’s generation have passed away in the last five years. My mother is the only one who remains of the over-seventy year olds.
In a way it has been a passing of the baton, from one generation to the next. I wonder if the family traditions such as the summer barbecue will be upheld by the new generation of elders. It is certainly a time of transition for us.
In the wider sannyasin community this is less visible; those sannyasins who were in their forties in 1980 would now be aged 85 and over, a ripe old age, but those who were in their twenties on the Ranch might just be touching 65. That generation is passing, but has not passed yet.
‘Not Dark Yet (But It’s Getting There)’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ1bzKISLBw&list=RDFJ1bzKISLBw&start_radio=1
My God, what a song.
This board sucks.
For example, the latest ‘updates’ by Veet Francisco are posted in ‘Caravanserai’…where no thread
seems to be clearly obvious. It’s a drag. Forget it.
This chaotic board is the only place where some sort of communication is wanted and happens.
Social media – mosty facebook – almost has retired.
Another GURU award – Oscar for Osho – is here…
Just for YOU:
https://youtube.com/shorts/bojhuxbdidg?si=Tm10jc9he9RzKiG_
MOD:
Yes, Veet Tom, the SN site has many flaws as it hasn’t been looked after, updated etc. for a very long time, as there’s been no one available with the know-how to do that. SN is technically on ‘borrowed time’, it’s pretty well down to the bare bones and could collapse any day, it’s surprising it’s still alive, so enjoy it while it’s here.
And let’s not forget Clive who has funded the site during this current phase and not even mentioned this to me (I’d forgotten about that completely).
But re your other point, I’m not sure which posts by Veet Francisco you’re referring to, unless you’re not saying his posts aren’t at the main thread, but simply pointing out that the Caravanserai serves no purpose. In which case I’d agree with you!
Ye, I know about that software problem.
But Caravanserai also is the only good way to see what is new and if this could be interesting enough to go for the thread.
So at least a last and good enough overview here.
But how can one do an update?
His Holiness St. Francisco knows how to do it. I don’t.
I can only reply below a post, or to a main article, so my post reaches the last spot down below, but still the chronology is mixed often enough – hard to follow.
Just in Time to See the Sun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxAqROTVo04
Ciao, Sweet Tom,
When I write a comment, before it’s published on the homepage, I also post it on the caravanserai, because in the past, someone (who isn’t the moderator) would edit them to ridicule me, making me say things I didn’t say, like inhaling poppers in a gay bar.
After my post is published on the homepage, it automatically appears on the caravanserai for the second time, so I’ll delete one of them. I do this so that, as in the past, if anyone manages to edit my comment, I can republish the original by copying and pasting it.
Hi everyone,
I’m not a sannyasin at all — just an outsider with zero connection to Osho or the movement. I read Ma Prem Shunyo’s ‘Diamond Days with Osho’ out of curiosity and got stuck on some passages in Chapter 16, especially after seeing the sannyas.wiki page on Sw Anand Milarepa.
Exact quotes from Shunyo’s book:
From Ranch period (when she wasn’t living with Milarepa yet):
“Each time I saw Osho privately to take him tea or to accompany him on the car ride he would ask me how Milarepa was. He would chuckle at me as I told him of Milarepa’s new affairs and my distress. Many times I asked Osho: “Should I finish with him?” but he would always say no. [...] But then Osho said: “But he will miss you….” What could I do?”
From Pune 2 (when they lived together):
“He was attracted to very young people and I lost my own integrity, my own worth, by comparing myself and feeling, of course, that I fell short. I did not have the bubbling personality of a teenager, and so I was feeling lacking.”
Milarepa (Sw Anand Milarepa) is mentioned on sannyas.wiki as a long-time sannyasin, musician in the commune, etc. But there are also references to Sarito’s letter/allegations from Ranch years.
As a total outsider, the timeline confuses me: Shunyo shared regularly with Osho about Milarepa’s “new affairs” and her distress during the Ranch period — Osho asked every time and advised not to break up.
So my question: Could Shunyo have mentioned anything about Milarepa’s attraction to very young ones in those talks, or did she not know/realize the full extent back then (since the “very young people” part comes only later in Pune 2)? Could Osho have been aware of any such patterns from her or others, or was it all outside his knowledge?
No agenda, just trying to understand the historical context from public sources. Appreciate any thoughts from those who know the book or the times better.
Thanks for the open discussions here.
Gregory, before expressing my point of view, I’d like to know if you’re an adult or a minor, and what you think of the story, as an outsider.
If, among many things you could ask about Osho, you post on the forum about a 40-year-old story in which the main character can’t answer because he’s been dead for decades, it’s likely that you’ve made some moral investment in good and evil, pleasure and sin, body and spirit…in short, tell us about your neuroses.
But above all, with everything happening regarding the recently begun Third Hot World War, thanks to the mutual sexual blackmail in which our leaders are held by the balls, you’re curious to hear about these old stories. Are you also an Emmett Brown fan, looking for 1980s psycho-cults?
Sw. Veet francesco,
Gon’t worry, I’m an adult, although I’m much younger than the people writing in this forum. As an outsider, all these stories seem wild and incomprehensible to me. They say completely different things about one person, as if they were talking about different people, and nothing is clear at all.
I’m not particularly interested in the psychocult, it’s just that Rajneesh always seemed to me to be a very deep and wise man, even though he periodically flogged complete nonsense. And what has surfaced recently, especially compared to the mawkish memoirs of the 90s, does not quite fit into my exuberant head. And no one really understands it.
But I’m just interested in the opinion of the people who were there, even though I understand that this is a kind of blind spot. But the mind can’t stand uncertainty, what can you do?
I have the woman who can satisfy your curiosity, Gregory, her name is Ma Anand Puja.
Her toy boy recently passed through this place. Try asking him or, if necessary, yourself.
Yes, I understand your confused mind, even though you expressed a clear opinion on the “mawkish memoirs of the 90s” that might imply that you are looking for something that confirms such judgment, for example with less sweet memories from the 80s, even bitter ones.
So don’t get down; with a little effort, you’ll be able to find that woman…just avoid accepting food from her hands…if you want to avoid talking nonsense and having bouts of intense nocturnal lust afterwards.
Hi Gregory,
Thanks for stopping by. Personally, I think that Osho did know, but didn’t particularly care. I mean, teenagers often married older men in rural India in that time, so the idea wouldn’t be foreign to him.
I’ve heard that Osho once said that the ashram wasn’t for kids, in the days of Poona 1, but there were always some around. I was 7 when I visited there in 1979.
I understand that ‘Children of the Cult’ is going to be shown on Dutch tv on March 8th, so maybe there will be other questions about this.
So this Swami Milarepa is supposed to be that evil abuser?
Such rare cases in Sannyas like “Epstein files” are an open secret?
Didn’t know that….
A lot of this material about Milarepa and what went on with the teenage girls on the Ranch came out first in private Facebook groups and later to the public in Sarito Carroll’s memoir ‘In the Shadow of Enlightenment’. It wasn’t just Milarepa, there were hundreds of swamis having sex with underage girls on the Ranch, according to the book.
The documentary ‘Children of the Cult’ interviewed quite a few of the people involved. A lot of the girls are now adults in their fifties, but their lives were substantially affected by these things. It’s been discussed on SannyasNews when the documentary was shown on English tv and was on Facebook for a brief while.
Nityaprem, I’d like to point out that you’re talking about teenagers while promoting a book whose title itself is about children, and not just sexually abused children, but children of parents who were themselves mentally abused by a guru, the leader of a psycho-cult.
If the book’s title refers to children aged 0 to 12, you’re talking about teenagers aged 13 to 19, not taking into account that the age of consent has since changed, raised almost everywhere. For example, the age of consent in Italy until 1987 was 13 (the biblically appropriate age for procreation); today it’s 16.
This should prompt some caution, given that if today you wanted to judge the same sexual conduct on the Ranch by people of different nationalities, you’d have to consider their nationality and culture. The same act would have been judged differently by judges of different nationalities; perhaps in some countries it wouldn’t even have been punishable under civil law.
You might argue that the law of the country where those events occurred applies, but then, if it’s just a techno-legal issue, you should stop acting like a moral avenger on your shiny time machine.
Otherwise, you’d find yourself in the position of some guardian of divine law sentencing to death a drunken Dutch sodomite who spouts nonsense during Ramadan, your own legal logic at work when you rage against an American, his only crime being that he doesn’t live in Holland, where the age of consent was 12 until 2002.
You continue this campaign to defend children abused in America in the 1980s, a country famous for its tradition of sensitive policies for the protection of children (policies that the US loves to export worldwide whenever it has the chance), but you don’t realize that while you’re hypnotized by the noun “children,” so charged with emotion, induced by the propaganda campaigns of your famous philanthropic heroes, from some orifice left unguarded by your already underperforming critical sense, the peaceful idea creeps into your brain (and others like it) that the adjective is “follower”,implicit if you’re part of a cult: children and adults did sex following the teaching of the guru.
Yes, because children are innocent creatures, even if they’re grandparents today, and if they say they were abused, we must believe them, even when they describe the context where those events occurred as a cult.
Perhaps you could feel less hypocritical and more sober by using a tenth of the energy you’re using to promote your anti-cult campaign, offering a few words of compassion for the children of the war cult, in these hours.
I feel a certain disgust for greedy people (they say the Dutch are greedy, but I don’t think all of them are; I’ve known very sweet sannyasins with big hearts). They tend to accumulate everything, even resentment, along with feces. They don’t know how to let go, forget, or forgive.
Even the justice system must be paid, even after years. The fact that this law is always recognized reassures them.
“Evil, as has been said elsewhere, is extraordinarily banal: it is the dedication of small, enormously frustrated men, capable of spending their lives — their own, but especially those of others — to “obtain profits”, that is, to gain further power without anything significant to do with it; that is, ultimately, to feel like winners, to avoid perceiving themselves as “losers,” “defeated,” “poor wretches.” ”
Dedicating one’s life and energy to the battle for profit is a real vocation, widespread among many small men raised in the great, mad menagerie of modernity, subhumans who find their revenge in it.
The resentful triumph of the lack of love.” Professor Andrea Zhok
(a big heart, despite having banned me on Telegram… perhaps he could scold me in this case too; at the end of the quote I translated his “nothingness” as “lack of love.” Around here, “nothingness” has a positive connotation, a condition of the divine’s precipitation.)
“Meditation is the only resource against nuclear destruction” (Osho, a bit from my memory).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Neighbourly_Love,_Freedom_and_Diversity
Veet Francesco, I am far from some avenging evangelist, I’m well aware of the shifting moral codes of the times but merely want to make sure the facts are not buried under a tide of indifference.
Many young women at the Ranch were subjected to extraordinary pressure by their environment to have a lot of sex, with different swamis, and it didn’t do their later lives much good. They weren’t given the time and space to find their feet in the world of relationship. It’s a sad story, that free love ends up doing harm.
There is a wider perspective, not all of the kids had this experience, and to overexpose the story also hurts the cause of a balanced view on the communes. But it should be mentioned as a cautionary tale.
Nityaprem, it’s not a question of indifference. You don’t have to have lived on a ranch to have been exposed as a child and adolescent to the social effects of the collapse of the millennia-old dam erected by priests and nuns of (others’) sexual repression, a high and long wave, unleashed by the sexual revolution of the 60s.
I was born in ’64, believe me, very morbid years, especially for women in my case…Imagine the scene:
July sea, Lazio coast, 197…6 (or 7?), she’s my age, adorable, I don’t know how to begin, yes, privacy, we walk, we walk…then, a free beach, wide, half-deserted, from the shore we go to sit where the sand is deep and hot, a little further back are the dunes and a bit of vegetation, we talk, we talk…
I keep my eyes down, trying not to look at her too much, trying to control my erection in my too-small swimsuit, according to the fashion and wallet of my mother back then, before the baggy shorts of today.
I lose all track of time; paradise awaits me between those thighs, those breasts, that mouth, in fact I don’t notice that there are fewer and fewer people strolling along the shore; The sun must have been incredibly strong, almost a relief compared to the lava swelling my cavernous, spongy tissues.
It’s about to happen; maybe I’ll find the courage to ask her for a kiss, if just I had the right language to do it, but there’s no rush; meanwhile, I try to bridge the gap between the poetic love I dreamed of as a child and this new, powerful thing happening to my body.
In the distance to the left, where a couple of kilometres ago I had the family beach umbrella, the reality principle draws my attention like a bucket of icy water on August 15th: the bringing near of the familiar silhouette of two women walking briskly, almost martially, on the beach.
One is the dark, tall, and austere figure of my grandmother, wearing the long black dress to mourn my uncle’s death, a couple of years earlier; the other, shorter, in a one-piece swimsuit, also black, is my mother; the end of the eruption, the snow starting to fall.
They arrive like two vultures on two paralyzed lambs, close enough to blot out the sky and the sea, with the inquisitive attitude of the many priests and nuns I’d met at school or parish, extinguishing the smile of that flower I’d nurtured and contemplated so carefully to my left.
My grandmother, with her contempt, targeted her, asking rhetorical questions about shame, while my mother blamed me for my disappearance, especially the wrong reasons for it, for my clean fingers, just moments before dipping them into the jam.
The girl, whose name I perhaps forgot in that moment, looked at me sweetly and vulnerably, with a slight expectation. I said nothing but looked down, before noticing the disappointment in her eyes. She stood up, and I didn’t even see her as she walked away behind me, among the dunes, that failed paradise, my personal Ranch.
I hope you and your group of victims are not indifferent to putting things into perspective, including the human and hormonal story of Osho himself, who in those years found himself riding the same tsunami, alongside the more or less young bodies of women in bathing suits, as they discovered a sexual pleasure free from guilt and the moral obligation to procreate.
Disturbing the spiritual framework of a joyful exploration of life, which claimed to include sex, imv, was the power system that for three years at the Ranch attempted to obscure the master’s vision, an attempt likely directed from places outside the Sangha, judging by certain clues.
A few years earlier: the matriarchal version of the same control of consciousness, which even when not explicitly repressive of sexual life, after a certain level of “interference” with what remains of community life, could awaken dormant defence strategies in the cauldron of the collective mind of that group of pioneers of consciousness, especially among men, pushing adult men toward softer and more malleable feminine energies…
just an intuition, to explain why the phenomenon discussed in the book seems confined to that temporal black hole of about three years.
In case I’ll answer you later, regarding the importance of critically examining the spiritual journey.
Yes, thank you, Nityaprem, I had already read about the feat, if it’s true he’s a champion, not everyone can stop the heartbeat while maintaining an erection.
A clarification to my comment from March 5, 2026, at 1:43 pm, penultimate paragraph, where I write about women in power at the Ranch:
“a few years earlier: the matriarchal version of the same sexual repression, awakening dormant defenc7e strategies in the cauldron of the collective mind of that group of pioneers of consciousness, especially among men, pushing adult men toward softer and more malleable feminine energies…”
From what I’ve read and heard, it might seem that Ma Anand Puja and her group of zealous performers weren’t against sex, given that the presence of gloves and condoms in the sannyasins’ quarters was a structural requirement. Formally, this is the case, but they weren’t.
In practice, even if one doesn’t follow a doctrine that ethically condemns sex, one can still be sexually repressive.
When the rest of one’s life, not dedicated to sex, is conditioned by the presence of an oppressive/controlling power, there is the possibility that that matriarchal or patriarchal “presence,” the primary source of neurosis, prohibits the free flow of sexual energy, leaving it confined to the genitals, satisfying the primary need for pleasure as compensation for a lack of recognition of one’s own dignity, which primarily requires freedom from the domination of the arrogant.
It reminds me a little of my resistance to having sex in a well-known therapeutic community, where intimacy was also supposed to be part of the therapy, at the times, places, and methods decided by the therapists present everywhere: in my tantric vision, the sexual act thus “packaged,” isolated from the meditative process, is weakened (castrated) by its potential to awaken other energy centres or regions of consciousness.
I hope this makes explicit what I had in mind when I spoke of matriarchal power.
For this reason, @MOD, you could correct my old comment I quoted above as follows:
“…a few years earlier: the matriarchal version of the same control of consciousness, which even when not explicitly repressive of sexual life, after a certain level of “interference” with what remains of community life, could awaken dormant defence strategies in the cauldron of the collective mind of that group of pioneers of consciousness, especially among men, pushing adult men toward softer and more malleable feminine energies…”
This was the piece I wrote for SannyasNews a few months after ‘Children of the Cult’ came out:
https://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/12898
I think now that the documentary is largely about the abused girls, and doesn’t represent all of the sannyasin kids of that time. There have been meetings on Zoom of a wider group with more diverse opinions, which I was part of. But the docu is still a valuable point of reference, for the abused and the abusers.
There was a class action court case against Osho International Foundation, but that has now been dropped due to statute of limitations problems, I saw in an interview in a German paper. It’s too old, people are dying, and so it seems there won’t be compensation and costs for therapy paid for through the courts.
“If you are sitting on the grass, don’t go on pulling it up and destroying it. I had to stop sitting on the lawn – I used to give darshan on the lawn – because people would go on destroying the grass, they would go on pulling on the grass. I had to stop it. People are so violent, so unconsciously violent, they don’t know what they are doing. And they were told again and again, but within minutes they would forget. They were so restless they didn’t know what they were doing. The grass was available to their restlessness so they would start pulling it up and destroying it.”
( Osho, ‘Sufis: People of the Path’, Vol. 2 )
“Spring comes and the grass grows by itself”!
Btw, searching “grass” I found this photo, a rare one, guarding the paywall of: “Frankfurter Allgemeine” with its article: “Pychologie von Gruppen: Die Anziehungskraft der Sekte” – von Stella Marie Hombach, 21.04.2023
Subtext:
“Gurus locken mit der Verheißung von Liebe und Erleuchtung. Was treibt Menschen dazu, ihnen zu glauben?
Google Translate:
“Gurus lure people with the promise of love and enlightenment. What drives people to believe them?”
Sorry, website journalism more and more is hiding its content, but the photo is nice. It obviously shows a therapeutic or meditation group (Poona?), mostly with NEWBIES before taking Sannyas. I know the boy on the left, he later on lived in my hometown, Bremen. I forget his name, right now.
And that famous green where Osho gave darshan later on was just open to workers and residents. But I prefered the samadhi (grave) of Osho’s father right beside that lawn. It was shadowed by bamboo and and so chilling to lay down there on the cool marble.
Satsang on the lawn with Osho in Pune, circa 1975
Just btw: ‘The Grass Is Always Greener’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-htnqmlgKE
It seems to me that to examine one’s spiritual journey with a critical eye is not really worthwhile. All the things you did and participated in brought you to the point you have reached today, and what seems bad to you today may seem neutral tomorrow. So to say “sannyas was a cult” and should be condemned seems foolish to me now.
The only thing you might say is “these things were helpful and I am grateful for them”, and leave the rest unsaid. That way, you build on the helpful things going forward and allow the rest to be forgotten. It’s not necessary to carry the deep markings of a lifetime’s exact memory and regret.
As you live, you accumulate a lot of debris. Things you identify with, things which grabbed your youthful enthusiasm, things you were encouraged to believe by teachers and priests. The spiritual journey consists of letting it all go, and that includes attachment to the memories. Eventually death also takes the body.
Nityaprem,
If a critical examination of the spiritual journey really isn’t worthwhile, how would you know if you’re going in the right direction?
How could you distinguish between experiences that enhance the journey and those that lead you astray?
On what would you base wisdom if not learning from mistakes?
Yes, defining and recognizing mistakes requires critical examination.
If you, or your friends who were with you at the Ranch, say you lived in a cult, you’re making a clear point: that experience in the Oregon desert contradicts the values that should underpin the spiritual journey.
The reader should conclude that if that experience caused so much suffering in those young people, to the point that after 40 years it has precluded them from pursuing alternative spiritual paths that could heal those wounds, then it’s best to stay away.
“If that experience had centered on the existential compass offered by Osho, by YOUR inviting us, NP, to uncritically forget all the consequences of using that tool, you are denying the possibility that there could have been, or could still be, joyfully successful uses/applications of that vision, especially in matters of healing.
I share the solidarity and empathy you feel for your friends; this doesn’t mean that the victims of the past can’t become the perpetrators of today, the same lack of compassion and forgiveness.
Andrea Zhok:
THE DANGEROUS ERA OF MURDERING VICTIMISM
“When one discovers that the majority (73% according to the latest poll) of the civilized, educated, democratic Israeli population supports a sort of “final solution” towards the Palestinians, one cannot help but ask: how is this possible? How is it possible that someone, faced with manifest, ongoing forms of abuse and violence against innocent people (children, the elderly, civilians), continues to calmly defend these activities?
In the case of the Israeli population, it is a population that has internalized through education a vision of itself as victims of history, as fragile and oppressed individuals, who therefore have an implicit right to comprehensive “preventive self-defence.”
In essence, since “we” are indebted to history and humanity, we can afford what others cannot. The position of exemplary victim places us in an unsurpassed position of superiority, morality, which greatly simplifies every decision: I don’t have to weigh rights and wrongs because everything I do falls by definition under a form of “preventive self-defence.” It’s enough to assume that the other person could represent, from any perspective, a threat to me, and I am legitimized by my role as victim to resort to any form of suppressive initiative. Etc….”
t.me/andreazhok/651
Veet Francesco, is there even such a thing as a direction in the spiritual journey? A direction presumes a sequence of steps, where each one follows the next and ultimately leads to the goal.
Certainly from Osho’s discourses such a thing does not appear to exist. Often in Q&A sessions he tells people, this that you are feeling is a good thing, go more deeply into it. But steps and direction are not discernible.
There is a discussion in Buddhism about gradual versus sudden enlightenment, and you might believe that for those who believe in gradual enlightenment there are steps and direction. Yet I haven’t been able to discover such a thing.
I think it is because any idea of a direction or sequence of steps reduces enlightenment to a mechanical recipe, something of low consciousness within the mind. And how can a high consciousness result from a low consciousness recipe?
Nityaprem, you’re the one who mentioned a spiritual journey. I don’t know your map of consciousness and its value system. If you’re now telling me your spiritual journey has no direction, it could mean you’ve achieved what you were looking for, and therefore you’re stuck, standing still, or you find it comfortable to chase your tail.
You need a thorough critical examination to tell me which of the two options is the right one for you, so that more accurate feedback can follow. In the meantime, I’ll try to write a story about my argument with my former Ashtanga yoga teacher, now re-appointed by me as an IAG teacher.
A friend from the yoga group asked me to try Osho meditation techniques at the same gym, possibly at a time that’s compatible with those who want to practise yoga. After preparing the programme for a month’s trial, all that was missing was the yoga teacher’s approval, as she’s the only instructor at the gym who’s supposed to understand Eastern things (she has a degree in physical education, a scientific-logical-mathematical approach, and is highly skeptical of metaphysical subjects. During practice, she often speaks of “concentration” of the mind. She’s never been to India or read about it so she gains a broader perspective on the wealth of spiritual approaches, etc.).
I discovered that after hypocritically giving me permission to propose Osho to the gym owners, she actually refused.
When pressed, she denied it. Extremely disappointed not to receive a response, I speculated that the problem for her might be me, Osho, or money, since meditation techniques could empty her private Ashtanga classes.
Quite furious, and since it wasn’t polite to respond by considering the hypotheses about her lack of respect for me and her greed, I hypothesized the reputational hypothesis of the leader of a psycho-cult, which went mainstream with the documentary ‘Wild Wild Country’.
So I reminded her that her insistence on concentration has nothing to do with meditation, although those with a vague understanding of meditation can meditate during yoga practice with her, and that her teacher is also quite controversial, particularly regarding his brahmacharya claims.
I sent a few links about her teacher (including one from Osho who talks about toxic and nurturing personalities) to the gym receptionist’s chat and to the yoga class chat.
Then, this morning, cooled down, like every Saturday for the past seven years, I went to do Indian Acrobatics Gymnastics with her.
The people of the Italian provincial community can continue their spiritual journey behind their masks of ‘quiet desperation’.
How do they live without hugs, smiles, dancing, celebration, silence? (Every now and then I try to hug… but too many wary looks).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12A_mrdTI6M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-gItiQUr7A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIR0gdq3Tqg
In the same small town where I live, there’s a very nice disciple of Swami Rama; he’s supposed to be returning from a retreat in India next week.
I’ve practised with him, but I find it a bit tiring to follow.
There’s too much theory for me, as I tend to intellectualize. There’s always the risk of philosophical dispute arising…perhaps because Swami Rama had a philosophical background, as well as a monastic one?
Yet Osho had also studied philosophy…it seems the two met, and that S.R. saw a spark of enlightenment in that young man.
Maybe I’ll go and do a few sessions with the smiling Simone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvwucv8ZzCc
A goal-oriented mind was a no-no in Osholandia. A goal, as you more or less write NP, requires movement in one direction or another. If there is a step to be taken it must be taken back. Stand back and watch the show. If you catch my transcendental drift.
I can recall, during my time with Poonjaji, that he often had a theme to his talks that, on occasion, ran for a few days. One of those themes was throwing away one’s compass, because a seeker does not need directions. The abode of truth being here and now.
Of course, verbose windbags will create all kinds of mental constructs to illustrate how far along the spiritual path they are, which amounts to less than nothing. It is all just talk. People who abide in truth have no need to make a fuss about themselves by producing pages of blah-blah. They remain silent.
This is why Osho said, “When silence arises from your own heart with a deep understanding, by and by you become silent. In fact, then you don’t become silent; you by and by drop the talk – the inner talk, the outer occupation. Then silence is not the thing; you just understand that the whole talking is nonsense. Why go on talking? For what? There is nothing to say, but you go on talking.” Or in certain cases you go on writing, as if you have something to prove, when you don’t.
I wonder if among the sannyasins who shared the presence of other gurus after Osho’s death, besides the popular Poonja, they also considered sharing the presence of Swami Rama.
Possibly, if it’s true that Osho never commented on Swami Rama, even though he was asked the question a few times.
I agree with what Lokesh says, quoting Osho and Poonja, about throwing away compasses and sinking into the here and now. The problem is that even these indications can become compasses, methods for achieving a result, even the smallest one, by not thinking about the result.
In my opinion, Osho would have recommended different compasses to those overly oriented by minds sensitive to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, money, success, sainthood…
Perhaps he would have recommended the Primal group to me (40 years ago), a couple of months of Dynamic Meditation three times a day to Nityaprem, a placebo shamanic group to Lokesh (using a broccoli tea with the roots still holding some soil), and an intensive tantra for men only to Mr. Iqbal.
It is not a question of going into a direction but of the recognition that you are already the one you are searching
for.
Then it may happen that silence speaks. Or not.
I think that Osho was a great rascal. The talking was all nonsense, but he talked more than anyone. People kept on asking him questions, and he kept on answering.
For the few like him, perhaps Ramana said it best when he explained “when people can’t follow my silence, I direct them to self inquiry; when they don’t make progress with self inquiry, I ask them to sing bhajans at the temple.”
https://youtu.be/jPzP_zEuFwA?si=BoK7gfHER50gmWJu
Stumbled upon it again…a minor cineastic and spiritual outcome – that was my previous early judgement…but at least the best trial and error for a movie on Osho? Now – for the first time with subtitles – I will try again and I could sneak in for something promising…
First tune in to:
Subtitles: Set Direct Automatic Translation for your language.
This is the first time I found this film to be interesting. Because of its low-drama and low-budget nature, I wasn’t particularly interested. But now I’ve found some truly interesting things. The film is authentic and pleasantly simple in its production, and the songs, with their lyrics, are significantly more engaging this time.
The “rebellious”aspect makes perfect sense…many of these anecdotes are familiar from his speeches and books. He was always straightforward, strong, and un conventional—or rather, a free spirit and individualist—from the very beginning. The film beautifully illustrates this, for example, in the school scenes.
A very inspiring adaptation, strangely different at times, almost like a documentary, then again mystical. The film deserves to be acquired by television and perhaps receive a good dubbing, or at least good subtitles.
First, however, we need to find sponsors with a multi-cultural bent, like reputable channels such as Arte, 3Sat, etc., and editors who professionally acquire films. After all, India is now a wonderful new trading partner for our poor Germany.
Veet Tom, I liked the film (how many years ago?), the budget limitations you mentioned are evident on screen.
In Italy, I don’t think the conditions are right for your admirable project; our friend has never been as trivialized as he is today.
Journalists and politicians today only mention Osho to refer to a pseudo-political satire author who pleases the people in charge with photomontages and captions (he became famous for initially using Osho’s photos, before Pune lawyers stopped him, perhaps claiming the publishing rights), while there’s a very popular TV quiz show that makes a ridiculous parody of him.
I may have already posted the two videos below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRipnS6FaGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyj_Wi60yNU
What are these tv programme people saying here, Veet Francesco?
Satyadeva, in the first video, I don’t think the subtitles tool is useful. The song says, “Open (and close) fontanelles-soft spot (seventh chakra), take the energy (here, there) and put it on…(pointing to the genitals).”
The second video (an interview with “Osho”) has English subtitles to select.
I searched for Swami Rama on Sarlo’s guru, but the site is down. On SN, the search engine doesn’t seem to find anything. Have you ever met him?
Neither met nor heard of him before reading your post, VF.
I thought the interview with “Osho” was rather fun, that he posts fotos of Osho while making him say fun things in a Roman dialect is just chef’s kiss. Great that it went viral. Pity that OIF took exception and didn’t see that any publicity is good publicity…
Nityaprem, it’s one thing to desecrate a clown, but another to desecrate a master.
You’d be right if Osho had given three-minute talks and then an hour and a half of jokes.
It seems to me like a way to make him inoffensive, creating clownish expectations around him after he was framed as the leader of a psycho-cult—and I’m not just referring to the well-known documentary.
I’m not so convinced that this kind of publicity gets people reading more Osho books, quite the opposite, when “Osho” in our country is increasingly being referred to as “Federico Palmaroli.”
Obviously, the answer, given the balance of power between those who want to meditate and those who want to bomb, can’t even be censorship, especially since meditating under bombs is unwise.
Swami Rama’s entry on Sarlo’s page:
Sri Swami Rama M 1925-1996 Breath control, hatha yoga, ayurveda. “Demonstrated under lab conditions precise conscious control of autonomic physical responses and mental functioning – feats previously thought impossible.” Renounced high poohbah position to pay serious dues in Himalayan caves, studied with many teachers, etc. Sober, somewhat institutional, methodological approach. Some sexual abuse dirt. Himalayan Institute
Yes, thank you, Nityaprem, I had already read about the feat, if it’s true he’s a champion, not everyone can stop the heartbeat while maintaining an erection.
When it all boils down, who is Sarlo, and what credentials does he have to rate anyone? Answer~ Sarlo is nobody special and he has no credentials.
I don’t think Lokesh adds much information about Sarlo, speaking of qualities Sarlo doesn’t possess, coming from someone who’s very sparing in his compliments, such comment isn’t easily decipherable.
Link after link, as a starting point for the vast panorama encompassing a Master and faded attempts at imitation, it seems to me that the site does a bit of dissemination.
I don’t think Lokesh sees anyone capable of carrying out the mission that Sarlo, perhaps playfully, has taken upon himself.
On spiritual journeys and organized crime in a psycho-cult in the wild country:
“An old acquaintance of mine, Swami Rajesh, affectionately known on the Ranch as “White Boy”, wrote a fascinating book about his experiences during this time called ‘The Day We Got Guns#, which was published after he died from emphysema at the age of 61 – he’d always been a heavy smoker.
In his book, Rajesh described his adventures as a spook, working for Sheela, thoroughly enjoying his undercover surveillance work on and off the Ranch.
With raw honesty, he also described the endgame, when his illegal activities were exposed and he faced imprisonment.
But the most touching moments were his conversations with FBI agents and his own family members, when he confessed everything and yet still, through it all, valued his spiritual connection with Osho.
He could not defend what he did in Osho’s name, but never lost that basic link.
At the end of his book, Rajesh described how, three years after the Ranch ended, he visited Pune to see Osho, who’d returned to his old ashram after his World Tour:
“On arriving, I write Osho a letter. I confessed that I’d been involved in criminal acts at the Ranch, and that I’d betrayed everyone, including myself, by not exposing the corruption I witnessed behind the scenes. I admit that despite my ugly actions, I had a great time.
Osho writes back, in his divinely detached way, that he’s happy I enjoyed it.
White Boy’s situation, and my own, reminded me of Alan Watts, a well-known Zen teacher in the 1960s, who once observed that, on the spiritual journey, during the process of losing one’s ego:
“The consequences may not be behaviour along the lines of conventional morality.”
Eloquently said! In other words, one’s own self-identity as a “good person” may go down the tube.
Reading Rajesh’s story and remembering this quote from Watts, I understood why I had been so interested in discovering what had happened.
I’d been trying to squeeze my understanding of events at the Oregon Ranch into the wrong box. I’d been struggling to find an explanation that would satisfy my own ideas about conventional morality.
Only one problem with that: it didn’t work. Not with Osho.
“Who knows why he let it happen?” Rajesh had mused in his book. “You can never second-
guess a master.”
To me, it was like a koan, which, after leaving the Ranch, I’d bring out and chew on, usually around three o’clock in the morning, when I couldn’t sleep.
It bothered me for several years: a koan that seemed to have no answer but wouldn’t go away.
But I was wrong. This particular koan did have an answer. It came to me in the autumn of 1987, when I returned to Pune and saw Osho after a two-year gap.
I was sitting in Chuang Tzu Auditorium, waiting for him to come out and give his evening discourse.
Osho walked in. Instantly and involuntarily, for the first time in two years, I found myself sinking into a deep state of inner silence and peace.
My mind stopped and meditation began.
Journey’s end? Well, not exactly. Not for this pilgrim. But it was the end of a two-year wrestling match inside my mind.
The koan had been answered, as all koans should, by a taste of No Mind.”
https://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/7709
I watch television, the feminists are talking, “Patriarchy is war”, framed by the camera on a mural in the city.
They criticize one of the laws passed by a government led by a woman, in the remaining time of her main activity as a lady-in-waiting to rich men… not all the law is wrong, harsher punishments rules are fine, but something more structural is needed, they want more seats of power, emulating the peaceful matriarchy of Margaret T., Ursula v. L., Roberta M….
For me, women in power are more dangerous, because in the event of war, I wouldn’t be able to kick them in the balls. I project my mother, sister, girlfriend onto the women; no one should touch them, not even with a flower.
This could explain why the gang of women at the Ranch were able to spread so widely.
Does this mean that the only ones who could oppose them, the rest of the women (and mothers) in the community, identified with them?
I believe that in the narrow circles of conspirators against humanity they have understood this.
On Sheela in Poona 1 – from Facebook: ‘Sannyas Lost & Found
I remember the day in Poona One when all available guards found around the Ashram were urgently transported to an unfinished building somewehre around Boat Club Road / Bunt Garden Road (In that street was an Ashram house for groups as well). We had to stand around a shack where Sheela organized our troop to look like defending security quards – one man every 10 metres. That hut was to contain a baking oven and had been built quickly overnight. In those days in India a new building was legal if it happened overnight – we learned.
But the neighbours had been fighting this matter by aggressively attacking and damaging this shack. Sheela and a high police officer walked along the defence line of maybe twenty guards. We were positioned that way to significantly manifest our house right to defend property and building. Sheela excitedly reported to the commander about the previous escalation. I heard her say: “They even called me a bloody fucking bitch” …then both patrolled out of my hearing range.
A “Sheela presentation” – maybe a year before Osho left the town. The story had begun to take shape.
When I copied Chitbodhi’s chapter 27 where he wrote about the – in his eyes – “grim peace force agents holding their guns in Rajneeshpuram”…I remembered that early happening above, on a much smaller range of course.
I will now add another small episode with Sheela on Krishna Roof, Poona One:
Living around the Ashram and being a guard myself I was also aware of quite a few nutcases and criminal activities by a few lost Sannyasins, quite tragic and even deadly sometimes. Drugs and financial deals – horror trips – even a few suicides – and also rare murder – not always just made up by the press or resentful Indian politicians…
When Sheela called the guards to meet her for a special instruction, she demonstrated a rapid technique – a circular move – to grab hold of the mala of someone who just freaked out and went aggressively mad. This act was presented to take away the outside Sannyas connection from someone who might really create a bad press or a real police operation. If we should come across a dead corpse we also were adressed to quickly take the mala away, so no stories against the Ashram could be created out of this unclear drama.
We then trained a quick movement there on the roof for a few times. Grab it with one hand only, then twist and quickly lift it over someone’s head without getting tangled or stuck …
Sheela somehow was also the temporary “boss” of the “Shiva Guards” (internal term) but in those days such adjustements were still understandable and on a low scale of politics, but….
That image fits to part 1 – above.
Btw:
Sarlo’s Guru Rating Service is still available…
https://web.archive.org/web/19991128202942/www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm
Grazie, Veet Tom, to your big heart.
This was placed on the ‘Vrienden Van Osho’ Dutch website (translated via Apple Translate):
“On March 8, 2026, KRO-NCRV broadcast the documentary ‘Generation Bhagwan’, a film by the Dutch filmmaker and author Maroesja Perizonius. This denounces the sexual abuse of minors that took place in some communes of the Bhagwan movement in the 1980s. Although there was no question of sexual assault or rape, the transgressive behaviour that some teenagers of some adults experienced in some communes brought them into great mental distress. The victims of that time now speak out as people over fifty.
Anyone who takes cognisant of Maroesja’s story wonders if Osho (Bhagwan) was aware of this aspect of communal life, what he thought of it, and whether he felt responsible for it. And since it is our primary task to inform about Osho’s vision, primarily through this website, we feel called to answer these justified questions.
Apart from exceptions, media coverage of Osho has shown a negative pattern for decades. Also in 2025, examples of this can be found in articles about the documentary in the national press. Sensational clichés such as “semi-criminal, totalitarian cult” and “systematic sexual abuse of minors within the sect of the Indian sex guru” paints a picture in which we, and many friends who lived in Osho communes or visited them regularly, do not recognise ourselves. It also completely ignores the fact that Osho still inspires countless people on their path of meditation in word and image and writing.
This does not alter the fact that we take the accusations of Maroesja Perizonius et al seriously and believe that they deserve further investigation in terms of nature and scope. We sympathise with the women and men involved who, after forty years or more, are still burdened by nasty memories of transgressive behaviour to which they were exposed as teenagers in Osho communes. Their voice, as expressed in the documentary, is heard and recognised by us.
Four things stand out in the documentary and in the reporting on Osho in general:
• Osho’s vision of sexuality (‘sex guru’)
• The suggestion that this vision inevitably had to lead to sexual abuse
• The disparaging designation of the Osho movement as a ‘sect’
• The lack of the notion that the zeitgeist of the 1980s deviated drastically from what we consider to be desirable and normal today. It emerged from the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
We will discuss these points in more detail in the next part of this message.
Do you want to respond? Then contact the board of the Friends of Osho via info@vrienden-van-osho.nl .”
The programme ‘Generatie Bhagwan’ is the same as ‘Children of the Cult’, and the next part of the message is a four-page pdf document which goes into more depth.
USARAEL is bombing schools and hospitals; it seems the AI that identifies military targets makes mistakes.
The reason is that the broader a machine’s operational language, the greater the possibility of error.
In logical-mathematical terms, an error is a contradiction between the implicit order of input and output information.
From this, it could follow that those who use a limited language tend to be more coherent, achieving mathematical perfection in silence, like a crucifix or a statue of Ganesh.
The limits of the mathematical logical system are also the limits of the principle of cause and effect and, ultimately, of the possibility of being able to say something definitive and universal about reality, whether it concerns the private life of a guru or his spiritual legacy.
Perhaps, then, the performance criteria applied to a computer before throwing it in the trash do not apply to a human being, to ourselves and our Master.
On the contrary, a Master is as different as there is from a machine, capable of recognizing its own limitations at every point in its flow of thought, from analyzing reality to synthesizing an opinion on it, the first one who does not take what he says too seriously.
The suspicion is that this caution-humility is not due to a fear of contradicting himself, regarding the practical effects of what has been said, but rather to compassion for those people who have invested in those practical effects, desperately seeking guidance to do the right thing, the only condition for them, in that moment, of feeling worthy of love.
Like children, fresh from dreams, I approach Osho, who does not judge me as underperforming machine, speaking my own playful and error-filled language, about a colourful world without war, a child among children, vulnerable like us under an anonymous military target decided by the implacable judgment of an algorithm.
I can’t stop thinking and feeling about that school (Minab) of little Iranian girls fresh with dreams…while in Gaza, schools no longer exist, not even a colourful world.
https://ilsimplicissimus2.com/2026/03/08/lintelligenza-artificiale-perde-la-sua-prima-guerra/
Dear friends,
Over the last ten years I have done a lot of letting go: news, television, novels, computer games. Recently I was considering many of these things were distractions from the spiritual path, but perhaps they also lent my life a joyful quality, and these last years I found I was losing my joy in life. They haven’t been easy years, but many things that used to give me joy, are now appearing as merely neutral. Even my morning coffee is no longer the joy it once was.
The process of letting go eventually leads one to live a life that is lean and devoid of the juicier aspects of lay life. After all Osho says to celebrate, dance, be joyful. So it now appears to me that this automatic living in the spirit of letting go is also a danger on the path — I don’t have to live as a monastic, even though my inclination may be headed in that direction.
I find it interesting, that when I was focussed on Buddhism all these things disappeared from my life, and now I am finding my life is too lean, and I’m seeing the need to cherish and protect the things that give me joy. To bring back the spirit of wonder. It doesn’t mean I will go back to computer games, I think there are too many negatives to that, but I may broaden my reading somewhat, for starters.
Also I thought it useful to pay more attention to what gives me joy. One thing I noticed was that I feel more joyful when I am not thinking, like when I am focussed on my breath, or when I am riding my bicycle and am too engrossed in the feel of my tires on the path. When I’m busy being in the moment.
Reading this, NP, makes me wonder who it is that believes they are letting go. Letting go is all well and good, but what you are doing sounds like the spiritual ego at play. You conclude that you are busy being in the moment. Who exactly is it that is busy? It is all mind-fuck. You think too much. It sounds like you need to sit down on a bench, forget about this spiritual path you imagine yourself to be on and simply watch the river flow, or maybe just observe the passing clouds overhead.
Hi, Nityaprem, I’m not sure if the letting go of the things that used to bring you joy-wonder-fun was part of a discipline you wanted to follow or if letting go was due to your “being focused on Buddhism”, whatever that means.
NP, this is not letting go. This is suppression.
Nothing wrong with things like news or TV, it’s just a question of balance.
If things become “lean and devoid”, it’s a sign that one is on the wrong path. Life wants you juicy.
No woman in your life besides your mother?
I’m touched by your concern, I was merely observing my well-being.
Hi NP,
The masses are often wrong but then again when 3 commentators also express very much the same feedback to you, I’d say it’s worth asking yourself if they may have a point.
If you are to express yourself on this site, be prepared to explore what others say to you. To answer their questions. To be more open to suggestions others make of you
I’m more concerned that a lot of commentators here “shoot from the hip” with their comments, without living in my mind with my concerns, and I can’t explain it to them without losing a lot of privacy and using a lot of words.
I do take what you all say on board, otherwise why do it at all, but I do so through certain filters. The thing is also, there are questions I’m not prepared to answer, just as Satchit evades a lot of personal queries and Lokesh subtly changes the subject sometimes. I think that is reasonable.
NP writes, “A lot of commentators here “shoot from the hip” with their comments, without living in my mind with my concerns.”
Duh? How can anyone live in another person’s mind, or live in their concerns? It is impossible.
All people inhabit their personal dream, live in their own mind. They are in an entirely different world from the world you live in.
The only timeless time we share the same world is when we step out of the mind and its limitations and concerns.
A perfect illustration of my point, thank you, Lokesh. By inserting a period where there was a comma you have produced a “shot from the hip.”
Anyway, a chat with Claude.ai was interesting, it suggested that it was all an effect from grief over my father’s death…
Hi NP, that’s all very well, but I am no wiser as to what your point is. Brownie points? I’ve no idea.
As for my punctuation, standard procedure with nothing underhanded. Truth is, I have not a clue what you are referring to.
I know SD sometimes tidies up punctuation and grammar. Not guilty, your honour.
“shoot from the hip”
Yeah, this is part of the game.
Friends provoke each other.
Nobody becomes enlightened by being nice. Breathing in, breathing out.
But Satchit, I’m a nice guy…
We all know that you are a nice guy, NP.
But did you not want to find a deeper truth inside you?
It’s difficult to apprehend deeper truth, it tends to get stuck on the way to the mind’s comprehension.
The Tao that can be told is not the Tao.
Maybe that’s all the truth I’m going to get.
Hi Nityaprem,
I’ll try to explain what’s stopping me from welcoming a nice guy like you.
I think I’m closer to your age than your parents’; the fact that you’re often at the centre of forum controversy may not be due to alleged paternalism, although it can happen that sometimes someone could identify himself with authority figures and wants to have the last word.
More likely, you’ve decided to write on this forum, a community mostly of your parents’ age, with the mission of making the me-too movement’s point of view known through a reinterpretation of events from 45 years ago, even though you’re neither a woman nor a victim of male power.
Mission failed.
You could turn the page and do something else, but instead you continue to justify your good intentions and those of the community with which you committed to that mission, exposing yourself to judgment/criticism from both sides, which evidently apply different analytical criteria.
Your attempt to remain faithful to that community is honorable, but evidently there is a larger community held together by something deeper than a sense of victimhood.
You have chosen to place yourself between these two visions, with the added responsibility of being able to influence your parents’ inner vision; they are not indifferent to the outcome of your mission, even though for them it is a lose-lose situation, whether you succeed in proving that you grew up in a psycho-cult or fail at it.
I just came across a bundle of paper in my father’s things which turned out to be loose pages from a copy of ‘The Sound of Running Water’. They were from the front of the book, including the title page and the contents, and when I sat down and read them I found much of an early biography of Osho. Fascinating stuff.
Hi Nitya,
Would you please copy a certain photo from that book ‘Sound Of Running Water’?
It is very rare and nowhere else to be seen.
If you can find it please upload it here.
It shows Osho in a strange mood that we never saw before and it seems almost unthinkable.
There he is in deep pain and misery.
I only have some of the pages, and not the entire book, unfortunately. I’ve not found the photo you were referring to.
This book and the follow-up are kind of summing up the movement.
That miserable Osho with obvious pain never ever got reproduced as far as I know because it doesn’t fit with his serene image.
We only know that “dark night of the soul” photo from his stage before enlightenment.
“The Tao that can be told is not the Tao.”
Right. Truth cannot be understood by the mind.
But it can be sensed in the body with its easiness and cessation of thoughts.
I will let truth be, it is what it is. The whole spiritual search seems to be collapsing under its own weight — seeking is no longer happening. For a while now I have not felt the need. Instead what is left is a feeling of devotion and gratitude to the divine in nature: I greet the sunrise, I take a cold shower, I feel the solid ground under my bare feet, I give attention to my breath.
Time for this at last…
Niets te geven, niets te nemen
Het lied van lege woorden
https://www.samsarabooks.com/boeken/niets-te-geven-niets-te-nemen/
Hi, Veet Tom, do you think this Kraut could say something fascinating to the average sannyasin’s intellectual taste?
Is there a community around him that feels the need to live together to preserve the light of his presence? Or does everyone go back to their own beer after the talk?
What interesting things does the Master do after the talk?
Your question compares two different approaches.
Karl is not on the Guru Movement Trail.
Call it Advaita if you must.
But your guess is right, you picked the surrounding picture.
Satsang these days is getting rare.
If new and open you might go to Tiru to find any freewheleing topsitter, or just wait till he/she visits your city and their impulse reaches you.
Same as ever if you are really met.
So it is about you – or not.
Hi, Veet Tom,
This is the forum that explores the 50 Shades of Brown legacy left by the guru on his underwear. So it makes sense not to raise too many expectations for those looking for the perfect guru.
It’s better to start the rating by picking the surrounding aspects of the picture, with the same subject framed at different hormonal moments in his life.
The most popular questions here seem to concern the relationship between biochemistry and the self, particularly the biochemistry of pain and sex: prostaglandins, bradykinin, histamine, substance P, testosterone and estrogen for libido, dopamine for euphoria, and oxytocin/vasopressin for attachment…
The community experiment that grew up around Osho also allowed us to investigate the biochemistry of hunger and power, with its paradoxes (according to studies, power can paradoxically reduce the empathic and cognitive abilities that helped an individual obtain it, a phenomenon often studied in relation to the neurochemical alterations induced by command. AI).
In short, for me, the balance between the physical body and the spiritual body is a delicate one.
No matter how wise one may be, a hammer stump on the toe or a slip on an icy road can always threaten homeostasis, interfering with inner ecstasy.
When the ultimate existential/spiritual realization occurs (the dissolution of individual consciousness into the Whole), the physical body participates in the phenomenon; it does not disappear, along with its biochemical structures that are activated by hunger, cold, pleasure, pain, stress, danger…
Who is the wise one? The one who exposes himself to the risks of worldly life, or the one who protects hormonal homeostasis by living in a cave in Assisi or Tiruvannamalai?
Is it possible to fail by remaining silent and always in the exclusive company of one’s Self?
Is there a virtuous behaviour that does not reinforce the “reward circuit”, making us addicted to dopamine?
Are there non-virtuous behaviours to counteract/inhibit the dopamine addiction of sanctity?
Osho didn’t exactly live in a cave…
I read a lot of Advaita Vedanta a few years ago, especially Tony Parsons. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on the language, there seemed to be a few tricks being used to push people around.
Is there more to it than that? I was thinking ‘satsang’ is a sharing of truth, it doesn’t only have to be not-two-ness.
“The whole spiritual search seems to be collapsing under its own weight”
Good. Sounds almost enlightened. lol
Almost enlightened…haha!
What else can we say from the valley of deep, experienced thoughts? Right on.
I received an invitation from the Dutch ‘Vrienden van Osho’ to write an article about their response to ‘Children of the Cult’, as I had written a piece about it earlier for SannyasNews. But I’ve decided not to go into great depth about it, limiting myself to just these notes.
Now, they originally wrote “there was no question of sexual assault or rape”, but they wrote from the understanding that these things have to include violence, which of course isn’t true. They later adjusted their message to sensibly remove this phrase. It seems to me that the pressure to sexualise that teenagers on the Ranch experienced was much more harmful than if they had just been left to their own devices.
Grooming is something that has been in the news in recent years, and I feel it is relevant to this discussion, because there was definitely a large group of swamis who took advantage of the teenage girls.
Anyway, I think the damage done to their lives by this was considerable, as the docu plainly shows. OIF should stop faffing about and make funds available for reparations.
Just this small part of Guru Rating Service has survived.
This phenomenon (often called Shaktipat) involves several neurological and psychological layers:
Biological Perspective
Pressure & Sensory Input: Physical pressure on the forehead (the location of the pineal gland and prefrontal cortex) can trigger a vagal response, instantly calming the nervous system.
Neurochemistry: The combination of deep meditation and intense expectation may stimulate the release of endorphins, serotonin, or even trace amounts of DMT, leading to euphoria or altered states of consciousness.
Brain Waves: The touch can act as a catalyst for a shift from Beta waves (alertness) to Gamma or Theta waves, which are associated with peak experiences and deep insight.
Psychological Mechanisms
Suggestibility & Placebo: The disciple’s total faith in the guru acts as a powerful psychological primer, making the brain highly receptive to a “breakthrough”.
Transference: Psychologically, the student projects their own inner power onto the guru, allowing the ego to “surrender” and release subconscious blockages.
Hypnotic Anchor: The physical touch serves as a sensory anchor that induces a sudden, deep trance state.
Would you like me to dive deeper into the specific role of the prefrontal cortex in mystical experiences? (says Gemini)
Two posts somehow got mixed here.
Of course that Gemini talk has nothing to do with Sarlo’s Guru Rating.
I just wanted to add a note that the well-known Dutch sannyasin Ojas has added a piece on the ‘Vrienden van Osho’ website, which I will translate here for you:
Ojas’s text
“I was surprised. But now it turned out that Maroesja had found some people who I think could tell very honestly what had happened to them and what that meant for their later lives.
Shocking. And they couldn’t talk to anyone about it.
As far as the latter is concerned, it is a good thing that they were now able to tell their story and that they were listened to, not only by Maroesja but worldwide. The film has already been shown and actually seen in many countries.
I know it from people who have been abused in the Catholic Church: getting recognition and being restored, that heals many wounds. Unfortunately, Sargam and others have now had to wait more than forty years for it.
Does this make my view of the years I spent with Osho different? Then I didn’t see anything like it, not in Poona 1, not in Rajneeshpuram or in the City of Rajneesh. That’s why this doesn’t appear in my booklet ‘Can a caged bird sing?’ In which I put my memories of that time on paper. Stupid and naive? Maybe. But I was doing other things at the time.
Does this make my experience with Osho different? When I went to Poona I knew I was going to immerse myself in an experiment where everything I experienced could be consciously experienced. Nothing would be squeezed away – something that had seriously suffocated my life in my previous monastic years. That would also mean that not only the wonderful of life but also the misery and pain would be seen in this experiment. I would face the monster in myself and in others. That has indeed happened and for me that has brought enormous resilience and a deeply experienced contact with the universal Consciousness and Love.
A risky experiment that has realised a real leap in consciousness for many of us. Unfortunately not for everyone. And we get more clarity about that in this documentary by Maroesja. Fortunately, this could also come to the surface. The truth must be told.
But that does not mean that the incidents that are now painfully visible in this documentary can just be declared as ‘general patterns of the entire sannyasin movement’. That’s pure sensation for the sale. Because it is known that the hidden algorithms of our internet love this. These algorithms know the ‘likes and dislikes’ of us humans and they know that a documentary that hurts, cultivates fear and anger, accuses others of sexual abuse etc. just does well in the market. That’s how we humans are.
To name a few things that have stuck with me from the newspaper articles about this documentary from NRC, Trouw and the VPRO guide:
• the sannyas movement is immediately called a ‘sect’.
• it is a movement of ‘enlightened parents – abused children’.
• ‘The children were collective property of the commune’.
• ‘What was done to me under the guise of love and light was outright rape’
• Bhagwan emerged as the Trump among the gurus…
Terrible. So I can continue about how people like to see the past now.
But there is also something coming up about the present that is totally false: the fact that in the media it is always said that at the moment ‘the responsible sannyasins love the stupid’, giving no response.
That’s not true at all. Perhaps they are not heard by the press, but the Vrienden Van Osho have done everything they can to give a real response through the resources they have (website, letters, contacts). Also internationally, in the Sannyas Wiki there are a lot of articles and honest research on this subject. The current press should also read this.
Looking back on Maroesja’s documentary, I can now only say what Johan Cruijff once noticed; ‘You only see it when you realise it.’ The documentary has again given a more extensive view of the sannyas movement of the 70s and 80s. Painful, but what really happened should not remain hidden. And Osho has taught us to deal with it ‘consciously and with attention’.”
I was talking to the AI chatbot Claude about animism, about how animist people think about the world, and it pointed me to some interesting resources.
First, Joanna Macy’s ‘The Work That Reconnects’, which is based around a book and a series of workshops that are intended to create community. They do things like dancing and eating together.
Second, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, which has a number of stories in it about how humans participate in the life of plants. She is an indigenous author in the US.
Worth a look….
Hi, Nityaprem,
Are you looking for a human community to connect with? Don’t you feel inspired and loved by your imprinted community anymore?
For me, one criterion for defining a community in its essence is ethical: whether or not there is an authority that decides about good and evil.
If such an authority exists, then there will also be a discipline to help achieve the appropriate ethical model.
The limits of this model are the possible presence of a double standard: “You forget about the losses; you exaggerate the wins.”
Somewhat the opposite of the tantric-meditative, anti-authoritarian model of the old guy.
https://oshoworld.com/vigyan-bhairav-tantra-vol-1-02
I’m not really looking for a new community at the moment, thanks Veet Francesco. I’m caring for my mother and living with her in a little commune arrangement, visiting my aunts and seeing my cousins every so often, it’s a cozy extended family.
There have been a few deaths in my family circle recently – my father, my stepfather, two uncles, the husband of my youngest aunt, my eldest aunt – but the people who are left are happy in each other’s company.
Hi, NP, I also take care of Mom (85), although it would be fairer to say that she stubbornly continues to take care of me, like an Italian mother.
I’m sorry for your many recent losses.
Here too, it seems, there has been an increase in mortality, especially sudden deaths (cardiovascular diseases) and turbo cancer. Perhaps not as dramatic as your description might suggest; perhaps the difference in latitude affects the preservation of vaccine efficacy, I doubt that in Italy they have always respected cold chain logistics.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates seems to be shirking public engagements.
“I am doing something really revolutionary, radical – I am trying to make you happy. It may not be very obvious to you how it is concerned with the revolution of the society – it is. A happy person is beyond being oppressed, exploited, because a happy person needs no promises. A happy person is already happy so he is not worried about paradise or after-life. That is all nonsense A happy person is not worried about tomorrow; the morrow takes care of itself. Jesus says: Look at the lilies in the field. They don’t think of the morrow, they don’t toil, they don’t labour. They live an unworried existence. They are just there. But I say unto you that even Solomon attired in all his beautiful, valuable dresses was not so beautiful as these lily-flowers.
That’s what sannyas is all about. I would like you to become a lily, a flower, unconcerned about the future, unconcerned about the past. The past is no more and the future is not yet. Only the present is there. Bloom in it, be happy in it, rejoice in it, celebrate in it, and you bring a great revolution in the world – because you will be getting out of all the traps of the priests and the politicians.”
( Osho, ‘Sufis: People of the Path’ )