Veet, this is probably your only statement which I may have read on SN, which I could ever relate & agree to & found profound so far!

A failure presupposes a goal that wasn’t achieved, like the conclusion of a fairy tale: “and they all lived happily ever after.”

Instead, other things happened after the Ranch, just as they had before the Ranch, yet it seems like failure is only spoken of when referring to the pinnacle of the American experience.

From my perspective, I might consider what happened on that piece of land not a success but even a miracle.

It could have lasted another 20 years after Osho’s death and faded away “naturally,” without trauma or major events, like a natural demographic phenomenon. Perhaps some would find this a sad failure, like the young spiritual warriors of that time who are now aging and dying.

To me, however, it seems that those young spiritual warriors wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else other than where you see a failure.

Perhaps this could be a criterion for evaluating a social failure: interviewing those who were there and asking whether personal goals were compromised by the end of that social experiment.

And what if what you call failure was actually the seal of a highly successful experiment that increasingly called into question the success of others, and for this reason it would have been unbearable to them to continue?

But we’re in a Zen context; we might be talking about masters beating people or cutting off heads.

Perhaps I haven’t managed to convey the symbolic level of my point, which nevertheless refers to a violent reality.

Osho often tended, getting to the root of problems, to refer to the importance symbols have in shaping reality.

Kronos is a mythological symbol, while initiatory genital mutilation is reality.

Did happen already with the Ranch and it failed.

Why does every commune fail?

All nations have light and dark sides to their cultural personality. Let me tell you about the Dutch way of good cheer. It is about a shared coffee and rationality and emotional warmth, honesty and closeness.

I have a great respect for spiritual people, while I see religion as a kind of wrong-headed approach to the reality of spirituality. Religion needs priests, spirituality needs only a certain care and love.

“When we grasp Jerusalem’s significance as the goal of God’s creative and redemptive activity, it’s easy to understand why Newton concludes his hymn with the words, “Solid joys and lasting treasures, none but Zion’s children know.” A fake renegade quoting a real renegade.

I believe this son of Kronos here declares his love for the Zionist cause, his unshakable faith in the destiny of the predestined, convinced that one day he will be rewarded for recognizing the true “Jewish Antichrist,” Armilus.

“And if God was so angry with the Jews because they did not more diligently examine the prophecies he had given them to recognize Christ, why should we think he will excuse us if we do not examine the prophecies he has given us to recognize the Antichrist? For surely, adhering to the Antichrist must be as dangerous and as easy a mistake for Christians as it was for the Jews to reject Christ. And therefore it is as much our duty to strive to be able to recognize it, we who can avoid it, as it was theirs to recognize Christ, whom they could follow.”

(Isaac Newton, ‘Treatise on the Apocalypse’)

NP, in your opinion, what does spirituality mean in the twenty-first century?
Why would spirituality mean something other in the twenty-first century than what it meant in previous centuries?

You wrote, “The idea of a whole city where people live and worship in a spiritual life is well ahead of its time.”
And I wrote in response that what you wrote is untrue.