Sannyasnews is largely a UK based site. So we thought to give an airing, given recent social uprest, to Osho’s answer in 1985 to UK problems, has anything changed? Or is his view too simplistic here?
Beloved Master,
For centuries the British Bobby, with no gun, only a small truncheon, has been a symbol of the respect for law and order in a civilized country. Now rioters are attacking the police with shotguns and gas bombs. In the latest riot two hundred policemen were wounded and one killed with a hatchet. A senior officer said, “This is not England, this is madness. They are using my men for target practice.” What is causing this surge of violence against law and order?
Osho said:
People in England were rich, not because they had produced the riches, but because they had exploited the whole Empire. They squeezed the last drop of blood from countries like India. Of course, England was happy — at the cost of millions of people dying in poverty. You have taken all their gold, silver, their diamonds, their mines. You have taken everything from them.
And England is a small country, not big enough even to be compared to a state in India. India consists of thirty states now — British India was even bigger, because now Pakistan is separate, Bangladesh is separate. But even now India is thirty times bigger than England.
England was a parasite. Of course, the British behaved well, they were very cultured; they were ladies and they were gentlemen. And what were they doing around the world? They never considered other human beings equal to them. All other human beings, whom they were exploiting and on whose blood they were living, were treated like animals.
All these riches pouring in from all over the world made England really beautiful, rich, educated, cultured. But now the Empire has disappeared. Now England is going down the drain. And now all those people whom England has trained to kill and murder are turning upon their own people. Every action has its reaction. You cannot escape from the basic laws of life. England will have to suffer.
You are asking me: Why is it that there were no riots in England before, and now hundreds of people are being killed, policemen are being killed?
There will be more riots, because England has become accustomed to all the riches which are no longer coming. It has become accustomed to having all the luxuries without producing them. Now from where can it get all those riches? Now it is the darkest and the most dismal country on the earth. But that’s how existence functions. If you do something wrong, you are bound to suffer. If you do something right, existence is very rewarding.
England has done so much wrong in the past three hundred years that it seems difficult for it even to survive. All that glory and glamour was borrowed, stolen; forcibly, violently taken away from others. Now that glory is gone; those beautiful days have become dreams. People are unemployed. England is becoming every day poorer and poorer. And the people have become accustomed to being violent, violent with others, in the past; now they will be violent with themselves, with their own. It is absolutely natural, and absolutely justified.
It is going to happen to all those countries which have been living on exploitation, whose culture depends on somebody else’s blood. It is bound to happen. It is simply the law of life. You cannot go on against the law for long. Sooner or later it takes you over.
Now England is just a pauper country. And there is no way to create the Empire again, those days are gone. England will suffer much violence in the future from its own people. It has done that violence to other people; the ghosts of all those people will follow it.
England has no future. Darkness and more darkness…. And all that old nonsense of being cultured and civilized is already disappearing; the barbarous reality is showing its face. This is going to happen almost everywhere, for different reasons.
- Osho
- From Bondage to Freedom
- Ch # 33.
i think the point of it all is that by “nature” we’re all parasites.. every living thing on this planet feeds off of something else.. plants feed off the earth’s nutrients; fungi off of plant and the soil; animals off off plants, and other animals, same with bacteria, viruses… the difference is- the “higher” the life form the more wide range, the more sophisticated way is developed to feed off another creature(s). with humans, it’s really complex, sophisticated way or game, nature has allowed us to survive off another…Nature/evolution is responsible for our maniacal methods… just sit back and watch- ourselves go ape shit… nothing more to do, until “Existence’ says otherwise
Osho says, ‘And all that old nonsense of being cultured and civilized is already disappearing; the barbarous reality is showing its face. This is going to happen almost everywhere, for different reasons.’ Unfortunately I think he is absolutely right.
The British Empire was obviously a spiritual device run by therapists in a religion, similar but better than in strategy than the Ranch, and, this is important … with more Pirates.
In fact the recent riots were also a first stage experiment to bring a complete lack of accountability to anyone doing anything as it was also based on the sannyasin therapist principle; ‘ If I’m doing it it must be part of a greater vision’. Whilst the police adopted the ‘watcher on the hill’, meditation-techniques of serious seekers.
Actually, many therapists were later found to have been involved in the declarations that were found under the beds and in the wardrobes of serial looters after truth including; ‘ I’m following my feelings and if you are hurt and that IS, well . ermm… your stuff, then…. go throw a brick at yourself ‘cos you are full of shit .. Officer’ . And the more empathic, but no less daunting the; ‘ Yes i know you are hurt that iIset your house on fire , but it’s really not my responsibility for how you feel … golly, curtains burn quickly, don’t they ?’.
In their defence, some of the underprivileged ‘supermarket sweepers’, whose parents had nothing to do with them being pointlessly born obviously in a world without condoms, and who were now ‘blaming’ the universe for making life just too material, unfair and run by-liberated-from-oppression Apple gadgets, said that they had not done the really transforming looting and glass-breaking type Super-Groups that had been on offer. ..including; the…. Path of Love and Having a Laugh at someone else’s expense…the Diamond Breath and Stealing self realization workshops… and the break-through Start-an-Orgy (of violence group) the famous Who am I? and Who is in ..-my shop.?….with the answer being..’ I’m from a council estate where I get free housing, free time in the universe, free government money forever, free dental treatment , free hospitals, free drug dealing, free pregnancy prevention, and freely abused by all around me, whom I know really love me really….as they are from the Council-versity and have given me everything i am ‘.
When some of the looters-after-truth were asked why they did this sort of therapy some replied ; ”Ugh yeah uhhhnn knaw wha i meaannn yeahhhh right ”. Whilst many participants claimed that they ‘felt goods afterwards’, and later that they had got some ‘stuff they wanted to share’.
Some were asked by socially concerned therapists if they also blamed their parents for being so stuck and selfish and normal and never wanting to reach out and help themselves to unending amounts of universally available love joy ,wonder, energy ,laughter excitement and a complete lack of accountability or admitting to anything ever in public that might tend to gloss over the crap bits…to which all the looters after truth replied..’ er yeah like yeah thats yeah like yteahh maaan , knaww wh’ i meann like, wanker ‘
Later, a Therapist who was arrested for a complete lack of personal development claimed that the ‘ stolen’ Villa in the Italian mountains didn’t belong to her or her partner and was held in trust for a charity that had been given it from a kind and loving parent who had worked hard to be able to give their children a decent self satisfied retirement from a hard life of sitting on pillows in circles… and giving it large…
One corner shop owner blamed the British Empire, whilst another looter claimed ‘I’m doing a Nato in Libya’ re-enactment for my school play.
Police have declared that their tactics had failed , and from now on , shields and batons were to be disposed of and instead black and red robes were to be issued to all officers so as to stand around in them , looking important whilst not doing anything useful, actually.
Plans were being made to bus the homeless in for some white trash picking and laying.And to declare a 100 square miles of London a ‘Ranch’ run by undemocratically elected clones , appointed by a senior visionary with half an idea that hadn’t been fully thought through, …..where there would be free parking for symbols of freedom from economic worry such as erm, Empire style Rolls-Royces.
Great writing.
I guess one who knows . . will / shall make statements based on that . . which is inevitable & so . . that may appear as a prediction to some that may not know . . chareveti chareveti . .
An anonymous member of the public, who refused to be named (Ms Turaluralura Von Legover , Number 4b Buckingham Palace Road. London) claimed a lot of the public were worried by these wanton acts of British violence that had not been experienced since 1914 and 1939, without any provocation by anybody who was just minding their own business invading other countries for a laugh. She also said ‘they started it’ , but without continuing to explain.
‘ I zuggest ve all zit around finding a zero experience of the fuhre..masters vords’, she continued .. ‘ yes zat vill help everyone find a job, like vot i eff ..’
Of course many therapists, according to a recent poll, have seen an increase in business from the underprivileged and oppressed middle class who have had their ability to buy a second house by the sea seriously impacted by the riots, and now have to rely on taking out highly expensive bank loans for extended commune dwelling in India and overseas, so as to get a real feeling for what its like eating out in swanky restaurants and staying in luxury hotels away from the riff raff and carriers of resentment .
‘Luckily’ ,said one meditation expert who refused to be named ( Mr Swami Dingbat Rajneesh Swami, El Communita de Spiritual Mucho Favoloso, Mexico, Brazil and France, India, Latvia etc etc etc) ” ..our beloved master took a right royal interest in helping people to help themselves and that is precisely what we do and what we teach..love yourself…and help yourself to whatever you can get away with…this life is not the end.. there is more.. just relax the breath .. goodd yes now open the wallet .. ggood seee the universal love?… what ? not yet… oh well life’s a riot isn’t it .. especially being a meditation expert….my thanks go to the producers of Thunderbirds for my arm movements……”
*note ..Great Britain is currently holding a parliamentary investigation into the cause of the British Empire and how all the trouble was started by the Viking French Normans in the first place in 1066, cos all the British like best is a game of conkers really.
Editors note* Mr Ahmedinajad , of Number 1, Street Of the Heroic Taxi Driver Lookalikes of Tehran , has asked us out to point out that although many readers have written in to him, thanking him for his expert world view in the title article written above, he was actually in pyjamas at the time doing an impression of a chicken and it was not his opinion that the British screwed up the world but the view of everyone else who tried the same idea and didn’t do it for so long. He has asked us to contact the current Duke of Medina Sedona in Spain whose great forbear commanded the Armada in 1588, and ask him if his opinion on the British was also a ‘bit rubbish too’.
We did.. and it is.
It may be a surprise to commentators here, but Osho was briefly a supporter of Gandhi and the Indian independence movement. Part of what he says here sounds like something from 1946/7 when biographers say he was most closely aligned to that.
I dont buy the stuff about karma for the Brits just cos they exploited most of the known world. That just happened from the small ruling class, most of the English citizenry like my great great grandparents lived god awful lives mining coal, drinking gin, dying in India from cholera in the armed forces, and making short joyless visits to the planet.
The underclass of any society grows in such economically disastrous times as the present. Nation states always make benefits harder to get at such times and more means tested, and some young people just give up living within society and take to theft, squatting and the streets.
Frankly I often thought Osho got it wrong when he commented on politics, etc and thought so even at the time. The main thing however was he needed to endlessly find things to talk about to act as a foil for the mind, whilst just being in his proximity other delectable transformations were happening if one was open to his being.
Read an article not long after the trouble which suggested riots were a spontaneous combustion phenomenon, just happened periodically, and the Establishment attesting to establish cause an effect makes no difference. An energy phenomenon if you will. (Sorry I cant give you a reference. Darned if I can recall where I read it. The Guardian as like as not, on account of how that’s my daily comic. )
Their might be some needles in the haystack but……….. the haystack is rotten and is rotting everything it touches. I have witnessed it on my travels around the globe.
Actually I am quite sympathetic to what Osho says above. In 1900 England had the highest per capita income in Europe–I checked. Presumably some of this was loot from the Empire. Contrary to what Parmartha says, I do not think it was just the elites that benefited. Throughout the 19th century the English elites were terrified by the spectre of the French revolution. I think one of the motives for the Empire was to get cheap food and other small luxuries like tea for the masses to stave off revolution. Now in 1900 in England there was universal franchise for men. So the spiritual or moral question arises : if you are poor in England but take advantage of the benefits of the Empire, and you have the vote, are you morally culpable if Indians starve to give you those small luxuries? IMHO the answer is “yes.” Additionally you would have to adopt, at least a bit, the harsh values of the elites in order to get on. Of course there can only be such a thing as national karma if most people are reborn in the same country they lived and died in; but Osho does suggest this is the case.
alok john,
during the british industrial/colonial age “lower classes”were not much better off than slaves…
for example,the factory acts of the mid 18th century generously reduced the amount of hours that children could work to 12 hours a day!
and you want to karmically blame them for the starving in india?
that`s weird.
osho may help your meditation,but if you want to broaden your uk social historical perspective,maybe dickens,orwell,mayhew,would help more….
.
“Life expectancy rose further in Britain in the late 19th century. By 1900 in Britain it was about 47 for a man and about 50 for a woman. (That does not mean of course that people dropped dead in their late forties. The figures are skewed because death in childhood was still common in the early 20th century. That affected the average figure.) During the late 19th century living standards rose substantially and most people were better nourished. There were also huge improvements in public health with sewers being dug under cities and clean water supplies created. While life expectancy was indeed lower back in the early 1900′s this was largely due to the fact that many kids died at birth or at a young age. If you made it past age 15 you stood a pretty good chance of living into your 60′s.” (from two sources on the web).
My great grandparents, born c 1850, lived into their sixties in London.
” For example, around the middle of the 1900s ( I think this means about 1950), the life expectancy in India was a mere 32 years old.”
“The average life expectancy in India was 32 years and the per capita annual income in 1947 was Rs. 228.”
“A 1938 report by the ILO (International Labor Office) on “Industrial Labor in India” revealed that life expectancy in India was barely 25 years in 1921 (compared to 55 for England) and had actually fallen to 23 in 1931! In his recently published “Late Victorian Holocausts” Mike Davis reports that life expectancy fell by 20% between 1872 and 1921.”
“In the first half of the 19th century, there were seven famines in India leading to a million and a half deaths. In the second half, there were 24 famines (18 between 1876 and 1900) causing over 20 million deaths (as per official records). W. Digby, noted in “Prosperous British India” in 1901 that “stated roughly, famines and scarcities have been four times as numerous, during the last thirty years of the 19th century as they were one hundred years ago, and four times as widespread.” In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.”
“bobby with truncheon…symbol of law and order for hundreds of years…..civilised…”
its all complete bollox.
when the brit police force started out in 1820.they were attacked by a mob.
i dont think they were saying: “i`m terribly sorry,after you old chap.lovely day,a spot of rain later ,oh dear…”
and the met deliberately places well-spoken and educated officers on duty around tourist spots like the west end to keep the fantasy going.
its a pity sannyasins and osho were dim enough to buy into all that fair-play rubbish…..
“In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.
Not surprising, since the export of food grains had increased by a factor of four just prior to that period. And export of other agricultural raw materials had also increased in similar proportions. Land that once produced grain for local consumption was now taken over by by former slave-owners from N. America who were permitted to set up plantations for the cultivation of lucrative cash crops exclusively for export. Particularly galling is how the British colonial rulers continued to export foodgrains from India to Britain even during famine years.”
the british empire was a mass murderous usurous inhuman business,run by a lot of hypocritical psychopaths,of whom hitler was a great admirer.
no question about that.
have the perpetrators got their just karmic retribution,because a few wannabe gangsters nicked some trainers from jd sports,and burnt down some properties (of mostly immigrants)
(the fatalities in the recent riots were asian,too.)
while half the cabinet including the pm and the mayor of london are still old etonians etc……?
i doubt it.
Pre welfare state Frank. Pre antibiotics. I imagine people, even the wealthy, were a lot more affected by fears for survival than most people in the UK are now.
Osho’s intellectual ‘weakness’, if we can call it that, was in his tendency to generalization. Any man who reads 100,000 books is bound to generalize. He was painting with a very broad canvass to speak to his huge crowd of listeners.
For example, Osho said (quoting from above):
“But that’s how existence functions. If you do something wrong, you are bound to suffer. If you do something right, existence is very rewarding.
England has done so much wrong in the past three hundred years that it seems difficult for it even to survive.”
Of course there is some general truth to that, but it is so generalized that it is bound to be inaccurate. The British did not just do ‘bad things’, they also created/discovered many useful things such as Penicillin and most significant technologies related to transportation, like the steam engine, the electric motor, the locomotive, the jet engine, etc. The trains that transported Osho from town to town in India so that he could dispense wisdom were invented by the Brits.
Karma, like all cause and effect, operates in checks and balances. All that matters in the end is the bottom line. Hell the Brits even invented the toilet paper to deal with that.
How do you define Karma? ( Straight forward question. No point scoring. )
Teertha said.
“Osho’s intellectual ‘weakness’, if we can call it that, was in his tendency to generalization. Any man who reads 100,000 books is bound to generalize. He was painting with a very broad canvass to speak to his huge crowd of listeners.”
You’ve started another discussion.
Never particularly tuned into the generalizations as such. Have always and still do, picked up on the specifics, that relate to me personally, for example riding two horses at once, blind men and elephants story; and thousands more examples.
His generalizations are entirely balanced by specifics, which seems about right.
Arpana — karma is a hugely complex topic. Hindu Vedantic scriptures cover it in the greatest hair splitting detail, far as I am aware. They describe group karma, nation karma, individual karma, etc. The way I meant it is essentially cause and effect, which seems largely how Osho was meaning it.
Anyway, regarding Britain and ‘bad karma’, how on Earth was Britain’s opposition to Hitler a ‘bad thing’? Would we have preferred a Nazi Empire in Europe? I don’t think so. By Osho’s reasoning, one could easily argue that Churchill’s refusal to surrender during the Nazi bombing campaign reverses all the other nefarious stuff they did. That and the good works of Thomas Crapper.
But the whole thing is kind of silly, because much of cause and effect is invisible and untraceable. (Then there was Hume’s argument that cause and effect is essentially imaginary, lacking any detectable mechanism). Bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad people, doubtless because we can’t see all the causes. All nations will eventually fall into ruin anyway, given enough time. Entropy trumps karma. (My new bumper sticker).
Had a massive, big deal insight on a bus in the early eighties, when I understood how much my life had been effected by jumping to spurious conclusions as to cause and effect, and taking action based on those spurious conclusions.
A stepping stone moment in my life.
the rioters were young guys.
bored.
like all teenagers they need some edgy action.
that was the best night of their lives so far,for sure.
that was their way of getting to live in the moment,live dangerously and feel totally alive.
for sannyasins to wheel out irrelevant osho quotes to grab a headline is pretty dullwitted.
and osho predicted the i-pod..
and ghadafi was a nice guy etc….
the people “doing oshos work” putting out this kind of stuff come across as pompous,conceited relig-idiots marooned in the last century….
I think there is a lot we don’t know in England. I was shocked when a German friend sannyasin told me there was no pre war housing in Germany. “Allied” bombers destroyed the lot…..little villages, market towns as well as industrial and military centres.
hoho.
no pre war housing in germany?
that story goes to show that germans do have a sense of humour….
john,the bloke who told you that one must be wetting his lederhosen by now….
Well that is what he told me. I have only briefly been there so I have not seen with my own eyes.
By the way, if you want to appreciate what a difficult subject history is, read this http://india_resource.tripod.com/colonial.html which is what is taught to Indian schoolchildren today…this is where my quotes about India came from….
and then read the reviews (especially the two star review) to Late Victorian Holocausts here http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/1859847390/ref=cm_cr_pr_fltrmsg?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0
The two star review of Late Victorian Holocausts would seem to contradict what is taught to Indian school children today.