I remember being in discourse with Osho in Oregon when he spoke these words below. I remember feeling at the time an enormous shift, though even now I could not fully define it. But it did mean to me then and now, that an “enlightened Master” could be mistaken and could own his mistakes. And even more so that he could be mistaken about the spiritual readiness of his commune to absorb his silence and become part of it. The most telling sentence to me was “I had never thought that going into silence could lead to such calamity”. Instead of the self congratulatory stuff about the Ranch being such a wonderful crime free place, here we had the clear description “a calamity”. A calamity that I had been involved with in deep sleep: Parmartha
On September 19, 1985 Osho said ( recorded in the discourses From Bondage to Freedom): “I take blame for everything that happened”. On September 20th, he added: “That is why I have said I am responsible for whatever happened – because you are fast asleep (…) Nor can I say Sheela and her Group are responsible. They belong to the same category as you. They had power and in their sleep they did whatever sleep allows you to do. So the whole responsibility is basically mine. I should not have gone into silence and isolation.
The law, perhaps, may not allow it, but this is my deepest longing: that Sheela and her group should be forgiven, and if any punishment is needed the (Courts) should give it to me.
Only I am responsible, because I went into silence. I had never thought that silence can lead to such calamity.
How can you be sure those words weren’t just another device?
maybe it was a device he devised to show that devices dont do what they`re devised to do?
I think he had to take decisions without anything in the past to guide him. So he was bound to “make mistakes.” He was an Indian man who became enlightened in an Indian culture. The western sannyasins (I include Sheela among these) were a type of person he had never met before. In fact I would go as far as to say they had never existed before. They were certainly very different from their parents and grandparents who had run the Raj and who Osho must have been a bit familiar with . He was dealing with people born in the wake of the most terrible war in history. These people had been “freed” by the pill. They had rejected their Judeo-Christian roots, yet had nothing in its place. There was bound to be trouble and “mistakes” were inevitable.
Might that not have been mitigated by his capacity to learn, respond in an intelligent manner to the people and events happening round him, because of him. Cant believe his learning capacity was frozen.
“i am responsible for what happened ,because you are fast asleep”
hahaha.
i tried that one one my girlfriend…
i got a black eye.
disciples will believe anything!
Those words of Osho are highly interesting. At first glance, they appear noble and praiseworthy. At least he is assuming some sort of ultimate responsibility. It seems the words of a very honorable and loveable father.
But, for Devil’s Advocate heck-of-it, let’s examine the words a bit more carefully.
Osho is releasing responsibility on his disciples because, as he puts it, of their unconsciousness. He is letting them out of jail on the basis of their incompetency. It is somewhat like a legal position of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’. Only here, we have ‘not guilty by reason of unconsciousness’.
My question is, how does that aid in the growth of the sleeping disciples (us)? It seems to amount to little more than a gesture of sentimental fealty toward his disciples.
I’d agree that the gesture contains another element, that being that Osho is demonstrating that enlightenment has nothing to do with perfection, something badly needed when religions have done so much to make the ‘divine’ flawless, and the rest of us wretchedly and hopelessly flawed in contrast. I’m just unclear what the learning is here for the snoring disciples. One could argue that the learning is obvious, i.e., the need to awaken. But surely awakening includes becoming responsible, something not possible unless irresponsibility is recognized and owned, by all parties concerned (master and disciples). Unconsciousness seems a dubious excuse, because it is an excuse that can be perpetuated indefinitely. Were that the case, then the whole world can be exonerated from whatever acts, since the whole world is largely asleep.
I have heard a discourse at some point with this tack of ‘mea culpa’, he continued with (yes its me quoting him as i dont know the lecture).. ”and if I saw a problem arising , I knew that I could stop it from developing by stepping in as I have done by speaking again.. so it was my fault and now i’ve put it right.”
As i said in my post to you which was edited and not put up for reading elsewhere… the relation with osh was that of passivity.. he spoke.. we did…and there was no self regulating strategic structure that was in place for autonomy.. as in countless self directed groups around the world, because of implicit edict directed management….put in place by you-know who…hoping against hope that having courage to boldly go etc and bouncing up and down would be a bulwark against failure of collective living tensions…organised top down with deference to higher interpolated wisdom….
” Told you so, but you wouldn’t listen…..now look what’s happened”..and
‘ I talk, you listen.’. …..are not exactly interactive human forms of getting through the day are they?
Passive disciplehood with caller collect charges.
In the above extract Osho says “… but this is my deepest longing: that Sheela and her group should be forgiven, and if any punishment is needed the (Courts) should give it to me.”
In a sense his wish was fulfilled. Sheela and her gang got light sentences considering the gravity of their crimes, but he was murdered in jail.
“Forgive them for they know what they do”. Wasn’t that an indication of more or less total human unconsciousness from Jesus on the Cross?
“forgive them for they know what they do?”
poor old jesus,he must`ve drunk so much homebrew wine,he forgot his lines.
unconscious?
paralytic,i`d say…..
It’s been conjectured that Jesus was administered belladonna during his crucifixion. The bit about ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’ may have been brought about by hallucinations. A significant teaching within the Christian canon may have been influenced by a psychotropic.
Gurdjieff said something about it being wounded vanity that prevents forgiveness, but that the real test is to face our enormous self-centeredness. ‘Forgive them, for they are unconscious’ doesn’t seem to address the root issue, which is self-centered childishness — ‘you tell me what to do, I get to remain a child.’ Sheela may have been the corrupt oldest sibling of the dysfunctional family in the dystopian city of the lord of the full moon, but we all were in the sandbox and enjoying it.
He was murdered in jail, says Alokjohn. I don’t believe that because it does not make any sense.
Not so sure about that Lokesh, unless you give no credence to Osho own words on being poisoned see The Signature of Poison/ Osho’s death . Of course this opens up the old chestnut of what did Osho die from.
Was he poisoned?
Was his body poisoned by Nitrous Oxide use?
Did he just die?
Anybody who saw him in January 1990 would have to say he came across as frail and weak. Again, did either kind of poisoning bring him to this point. It maybe that from that point he said enough is enough and chose euthanasia. Its not as if Osho was against it, he spoke favourably of it many times. So its quite possible he chose this for himself. The reports of the hours prior to his death have him talking with people and issuing instructions down to who should receive some of his personal items. Then at some point, and this is the one I find the most difficult to believe, just closing his eyes and dying. Having seen both my parents die, death in my limited experience, does not come so easily. But then again, he could have had the capacity to do just that. Who knows?
For me, that he chose to die is the most likely option, given he was clearly suffering physically. The burning of the his body so quickly after his death would insure no evidence was found that he chose such a route.
“The burning of the his body so quickly after his death would insure no evidence was found that he chose such a route.”-spot on. There is a theory he was actually killed on that day and burned to hide any evidence. Many Indian sannyasins imply that. I think it is a possibility.
If this suggestion that Osho chose euthanasia would be true then it is unlikely he would have self administered the means, which means, technically someone killed him. I can’t imagine euthanasia (for Osho) sitting so well with many Indians and I think it is unlikely they would be able to make room for it. I seem to remember, it was one of Osho’s brothers that first made the allegation that Osho was killed. He may have known something, its also possible he could not take on that this was Osho’s wish.
it’s a fact the old man was on his way out several months before his death… he even made comments how he was being called ” to go to the other side” and it was a struggle just to stay in his body- this i believe was said about a year before… hence, i believe he was dying a “natural” death, which includes ailments caused by virus’ bacteria etc. You all should keep practicing your drama for after hours and at your local acting academy.
Okay, Dharmen, two little things. First motive. Please explain why the American government would want to poison Osho.
Seeing as how the old boy claimed to have been a victim of thallium poisoning why did he have none of the very distinct symptoms of such a poisoning.
Osho himself said that a lie is okay if it works and I agree. Better to use his death to smear the dark forces of evil than to admit that some of his personal behaviour was very destructive on both a physical and psychological level. As an older and very knowledgeable American friend once said to me, ‘The Americans are to stupid to have pulled of such a poisoning and kept silent about it for twenty years.’ Something which you can also apply to the 9/11 conspiracy theories. If the twin towers were rigged with explosives too many people would have been involved for not a single person to spill the beans.
Motive: Osho had stuck a giant finger up at them. The Ranch was audacious, it was almost a country within a country, a lttle Indian gurus kingdom inside the land of mighty America. When you visited the ranch you went through check points just like border entry points, you were checked more thoroughly than any border I’ve been through.(we were total, remember?) Not only that, when it was realised there had been a huge fuck up not checking the land use laws, it was thought it could be toughed out, the right to build and stay could be won.
The approach to do this was incredibly Machiavellian, the dealings with locals and officials became very ungracious to say the least. we got peoples backs up very quickly! The Ranch became a problem and the solutions to it were being considered above the local level. The national guard were on alert, Osho could well have been a marked man from that time on.
Osho had riled Ronald Reagan with his rants on Christianity, for me, its not a big stretch that such a Jackass would agree to Osho’s removal or even suggest it.
When you consider the so called world tour and how he was sent packing as soon as the Americans new he had landed somewhere, you have to acknowledge they had more than a cursory interest in him.
As to the symptoms, I thought it had been claimed that his symptoms were consistent with Thallium poisoning but I haven’t looked into this, so I can’t say much about it.
That Osho may have been trying to gain the same status Socrates and Jesus is a possibilty, and if the poisoning is not actually true he could well have been trying pull off something like that.
As to motive I agree with you, Dharmen.
We learn that calling people names pisses them of as children. Find it inconceivable he didn’t know calling Reagan names wouldn’t piss him off, and when you factor in, and I quote you, ‘it was almost a country within a country’, how much more provocative could he have been;?
Who knows. Maybe he was just having fun knowing the faithful would protect him.
those gringos must have been pretty annoyed at being badmouthed in public by a brown injun woman only 15 years after the end of segregation in the US.
i guess that must have been like walking into a redneck bar and calling john wayne a faggot…….
That’s a really strong point. Yeah it was only fifteen years. Says a lot.
dharmen, the agents of the U.S. made a deal to get osho out of the u.s. as quickly as possible. reason… one of their own(U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jean Kirkpatrick’s son) was at the time a sannyasin living at the ranch. I know this because a gentleman sought me out when he took a break from Bill Clinton’s campaign(he was on his staff), he told me he that Clinton was going to use this information against George Bush during the election campaign, on how Reagan’s administration made a deal to avoid an investigation and bad press, if osho were to go to trial.. the deal also included Sheela and he thugs were only to serve minimum jail time. So, this “Slap in america’s face theory is just hogwash.. something of a plot for the next Rambo movie, that’s about all. I think watching all of those Hollywood action movies has rub off on you.. some de-tox is necessary.
I find it hard to understand why people find it so difficult to believe that he was poisoned in jail and this killed him. Motive of US government was great anger with him and racism.
L wrote “Seeing as how the old boy claimed to have been a victim of thallium poisoning why did he have none of the very distinct symptoms of such a poisoning.” The Americans used two or three poisons in low doses.
Go and read on the web how the CIA tried to poison Castro. They did not succeed because castro had a massive secret service to protect him. Osho had no protection of this type. He was in jail. They could do what they wanted to him.
its true that the american govt may have got seriously pissed off at some shortass smartass brown guy telling them they were monkeys….
but just one more thing…… my inner columbo reminds me of a certain millionaires wife (real columbo material,here) who turned out to have a (possibly very long)history of poisoning,a poison lab,finally convictions for it,too…
…and on top of that osho himself declared publicly that she had murdered her first husband…
you would certainly have to eliminate her from your enquiries first……
frank- the u.s. gov’t was more concerned about the image of one of their own than of some raving lunatic driving around in a Rolls with red clad hippies fucking their brains out. they take care their own first, and Politics is local. talk about image- look at what osho and his advisers did to protect his own.
Reagan’s daughters rejected him. One was gay, one left wing I think. Did not affect Reagan’s popularity. I think no one cares if Jean Kirkpatrick’s son was at the time a sannyasin living at Ranch. Clinton to use Reagan’s deal and cover-up against Bush? Far too convoluted. Public would not follow the argument.
having lived there… the fear, paranoia was mainly from oregonians… NOT a national thing… but as said above, politicians do anything to preserve their image and this is why, the U.S. gov’t didn’t kill osho— way too risky, if they even had it on their minds– best to kick the bum out as quickly as possible- no trial, no jail, where he could sit and fester and get more attention.. they just didn’t want attention drawn to them with the reason(s) i mentioned. I think sannyasins paid the americans back by defaulting on the ranch’s mortgage, what was it, 5 million U.S.$$? payback is a bitch and can be expensive….
Many anaesthesiologists believe that the potential dangers of N2O are so great that it should no longer be used at all for routine clinical anaesthesia. Osho inhaled dozens of steel cannistaers of the stuff, yet it is never mentioned as a contributing factor in his death. Why not? Because it would have seriously undermined his work if it had been made really public. Much better publicity to say he was a modern-day christ crucified by the CIA.
Me? I don’t know. But I have to admit that I really enjoyed Al Pacino’s performance in the Devil’s Advocate.
Castro was home to a nation that had an association with the Soviets. It was slightly bigger stakes than Rancho Rajneesh. Agreed, however, that CIA covert ops were/are capable of most anything.
There is that thing called ‘perspective distortion’, which happens to anyone too close to something. The tendency for sannyasins, especially during the 1980s (and still), was to assume that Osho was significant to a degree that was probably out of proportion to the reality. It’s true that there was congressional level awareness of Osho, and that the bio-terror attack on The Dalles was outrageous. But Osho was ultimately just a guru in a robe. How important was he in the eyes of the NSA/CIA?
There is something of an ironic twist concerning the National Security Advisor of the Reagan Administration at that time, Robert McFarlane. He had been a Vietnam marine, and was involved in the Iran-contra affair around the time the Ranch drama was unfolding in late ’85. A year after the Iran-contra scandal broke open, McFarlane attempted suicide by ODing on valium.
As for Osho’s being driven from other countries by the Americans, I never bought that, except in the case of Uruguay, as there was a loan pending. The other nations ejected Osho on the basis of the INTERPOL notice about him and his ‘drug smuggling, whoring’ disciples. That and their fear of the American economic clout. America of the 80s’ was something like present-day China as an economic force not to be fucked with.
I would agree with you about the perspective distortion, and of course he wouldn’t mean to them all he meant to us, but the whole bloody western world knew who we were collectively, although certainly in the west, after the peak of the furor, fairly quickly took us for granted in the later days of the Mala and red clothes.
Occurs to me, on consideration, people didn’t know whether to treat us as low life, drug raddled, sex fiends, or higher than them spiritual types
One of the symptoms of thallium poisoning is an increased use of woolly hats even in the middle of a tropical Indian summer. However in this case there is the issue of the distinct sound of two nuts being heard coming from the grassy knoll just yards from Sheela’s bank account. In a typical official denial the CIA said it had never used weather balloons with aliens in them despite experimenting with crop circle harvesting near Oregon. When quizzed for further information Pope Borgia admitted he was not in the kitchen at the Democratic Party convention in ’68 , and had never even met Marilyn the night she was found.
As usual Indian sannyasins were unable to confirm or deny anything with any change from a ten ruppee note for a two rupee rickshaw ride, stating they never carried any coins, ever, honestly.
If you watch the movie Summer in Orange, I think it more or less sums up how orange-clad sannyasins were seen collectvely by the world….a bit of a joke. This whole thing about Osho being a threat to the American status quo is nonsense.
It is only natural that many sannyasins prefer to see it that Osho was a martyr to the cause of freedom. The alternative leaves them on shaky ground because it summons up the spectre that Osho was a spiritual con man who, although a brilliant charasmatic, was not enlightened.
Osho often said that drug use took you in the opposite direction from the world of meditation etc. Next thing you know he is seriously hooked on a mind-altering drug…all well and good if you are a hippy but not if you are someone who is proclaiming you are an enlightened one. Why not? Well, for a start, who is it that is getting high? This whole story is very Orwellian. Double speak and think rules the day. Osho gets daft and starts wasting commune money on glitzy watches and cars….oh, it is all a device for our awakening. He gets hooked on valium and laughing gas, does not do any exercise and lives on cloud nine for years….good recipe for killing yourself…he was assasinated by the CIA. I don’t know how many of you have tried NO2 but if you haven’t I can speak from experience and tell you that if you take a lot you can have terrible headaches as an aftereffect. It is also a bit dumb in the long run….not a challenge like say, LSD. And NO2 was Osho’s drug of choice and he took it for years. I’ve mentioned before how Mexican Rupesh was the gas delivery boy on the ranch and how he complained about the strain it caused him hulking the heavy gas cannisters into the old boy’s house.
I have no difficulty in seeing that the whole thallium poisoning thing was just Osho making the best of a pretty shit situation. He was good at that and it is not a bad thing to learn from the man because it is quite often the case that life does not go the way we want it and the sooner you learn how to make the best of it, the better.
This idealized version of a holy Osho does not wash. Osho was very influenced by George Gurdieff and if you’ve read enough about George the canary painter ,who knew how to sell barrels of rotten fish at a huge profit, you will soon realize that Osho and Gurdieff’s common denominator was the fact that they were sly old foxes who knew how to roll with the punches.
Lokesh you are stupid and will suffer from it (probably already do)!
Lokesh, just for a moment read the below and imagine (as you have no depth to experience) that the below is true. Your words will be a great burden for your soul for a long long time….I feel. It is not worth it to follow the negative mind!
“His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Osho, the tantric master, have both
come to planet Earth to promote Synthesis. So have other masters, teachers and guides.
They are forerunners, in the forefront of the
Earth’s ascension process. All karmas related to planet Earth are being
returned and transmuted, at this time, prior to earth’s ascension into the 5th
dimension…and beyond. Thus, The New Man and The Golden Future referred to by
the Master Osho.
In a past life, Osho was a Tibetan Tantric master. He is considered to be a Divine Incarnation.
So is His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
Osho’s karma is similar to that of all those belonging to the
Tibetan Buddhist Lineage. At this time on planet Earth, Tibetans’ karmas are being
returned and transmuted through the sufferings of exile.
Other major religious groups are also experiencing this. The sufferings
born by Sannyasins are similar to those of Tibetans. “
chetna,
that`s all mumbojumbo..
ascension?
just more escapist rubbish.
the “new man” will not be one who escapes up his own ass-ention.
religion has been doing that nonsense for thousands of years.
a “new man” if he says anything,may say,will say like gurdjieff.
“i will balance my angel and my devil like each person must.”
the new man can at least have the decency to thank existence for what it has given and not plead “holiness” and then preside over a “celibate” monastery, like the dalai lama does,where the standard accepted form of sexual release is sticking your dick in the robes under the arm of the monk standing in front of you.
excuse me for the graphic description.
but if you find the description distasteful…
well,that`s the divine incarnation your talking about.
Chetna- you must have been high to think of that…. i mean “His Holiness…” why is he so holy? has he actually helped his people get back their country- NO!!! i feel he uses the whole “Free Tibet” crap to justify his position.. otherwise if Tibet had him as leader, by now he would have been kicked out, just like what the Nepalise did with their king and pretty soon in Bhutan, since their king opened up the country to the west not too long ago… freedom does strange things to oppressed people, whether politically or spiritually. please save any sudden urges to spout this “His holiness” and King Osho tirades for your next gibberish meditation session.
The bit about ‘ascension’ and ’5th dimension’ is mostly deriving from Theosophy (Blavatsky and Olcott) and slightly later writings such as Godfrey Ray King (he was the guy who coined the term ‘ascended master’). King said that he met ‘an ascended master called St. Germain’ back in the 1920s while walking in the hills around Mt. Shasta. It was the don Juan-Castaneda precursor. Only in California, you might say.
The part about the Karmapa recognizing Osho as the ‘greatest incarnation in India since the Buddha’ was apparently fabricated. This was confirmed by Ole Nydhal, the Danish Tibetan Buddhist teacher, who was a close confidante of the 16th Karmapa. He asked the Karmapa if he had in fact said that Osho was ‘the greatest incarnation since the Buddha’, and the Karmapa responded by saying that he’d never heard of Osho. I provide the reference for this story in my book. (This happened around 1980).
Osho was a great teacher, I doubt anyone here seriously questions that. The point is that what he was teaching was the art of being human, above all. Too much of traditional religion, and new age airy-fairyness, is based on escaping the human condition rather than embracing it. Osho was an existentialist who admired Nietzsche. Nietzsche was counter to the Platonic ideas of ‘higher, invisible worlds’ lurking beyond this one, not because he was invested in whether such worlds existed or not, but because he saw the importance of embracing this world and this life — ‘experience trumps essence’. Osho’s work was all about that.
that whole “accept life” and dont try to avoid it with ascended worlds and platonic ideals was indeed the very heart of nietzsche that osho clearly admired.
not everyone is aware that “depth psychology” as developed by freud,adler,jung,neumann etc was pretty much entirely based on these neitzschean insights.
neitzschean-based psychology plus meditation equals buddha,or osho…
N+M=OB.
the problem that osho poses with his championing of neitzsche in this way,is this…
when the old ethic of placing polarities,particularly good and evil, in opposition to each other,with the need of good to suppress and control evil (within and without the psyche) ie old style religion comes to the point of collapse.
it will be replaced with a new ethic,that is,the recognition of the need for valuing the co-existence of all the polarities,(previously assigned good and evil) within oneself…
this is where the new nietzschean/depth/psychology (embraced by us)leads.
i can say its where we are now.
at that point,does the “master” with his “enlightenment” and his lotus-like,unblemished perfection simply become an anachronism,a dinosaur.a relic of the old order?
Frank.
Always see Osho’s work is in part to make himself redundant.
then send him his UB40..!
Silly. He never signed on.
`Teertha`,
I`,m not sure that you are right about the story of the 16th Karmapa not having respect for Osho.
Here is another sannyasin`s story of meeting the Karmapa: http://o-meditation.com/2009/10/18/osho-and-the-16th-karmapa/
Seems convincing to me-unless he just made this up.
a disciple making up a story to glorify his master ?
time to witness your own negativity,swami…..
this story i heard many times since my old sannyas days… the first few times i heard the story, it had a different lead character, instead of this lama Karmapa, it was in fact the Dalai Lama. nice to see how a story takes a life of it’s own and mutates as critics point out the inconsistencies. kind of like how George W. Bush kept changing his stories to justify the Iraq War. first, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction; then, Saddam is harboring terrorists; then it’s because he’s a tyrant and iraq needs democracy and who else is going to get rid of Saddam…. Genes aren’t the only things that mutate.
Just to go on the record. I am the one who wrote the above mentioned essay “Osho and the 16th Karmapa” and as I have written I had read the report of Swami Govind Siddharth’s meeting with the Karmapa in Rumtek and also took it with a grain of salt. I am well aware the devotees want their master to be the highest, the best. But as I wrote, I met the Karmapa in the Oberoi hotel in Calcutta and he was sitting on the sofa and next to him propped up was a “Sannyas Magazine” with a picture of Osho beaming out into the crowd. You can make out of this whatever you want, but for me it was not important whether the story related was true or not, from what I witnessed in my experience there was an affinity between Karmapa and Osho. Love is Being. Purushottama.
purushottama.
you say:”you can make out of this whatever you want,but for me it was not important whether the story related was true or not,from what i witnessed in my experience there was an affintiy between karmapa and osho”
what are you saying here?
that the story is a poetic flight to express something that you intuited but didn`t actually see?
frank,
When I say “it was not important whether the story was true or not” I am referring to the story told by Govind Siddharth of his meeting with the Karmapa and what the Karmapa said about Osho. I am saying whether ‘this’ is factual or not was not important to me after seeing Karmapa sitting on the sofa with the photo of Osho propped up next to him. To me, clearly there was some affinity. Cheers!
thanks for clarifying.
it does seem a remarkable synchronicity.
where was the sofa
and the crowd you mention?
in his room where he was giving a teaching,or did you just run into him in the lobby?
did some scallywag sannyasin stuck the picture there while he wasnt looking?
http://o-meditation.com/2009/10/18/osho-and-the-16th-karmapa/
during the ranch days, Sheela said that a native american chief from the nearby reservation had a vision that osho was a great religious leader sent by the great spirit to give the white man a hard time. Supposedly osho sent many gifts to the chap. This was later declared to be a made up story by either Sheela or Osho. A memo to Alok John… do you now see how sannyasins particularly in those in power, lie and cheat and steal and contemplate murder and mayhem. Stop being naive.
Fascinates me the amount of energy you anti Osho types, anti sannyas types, put into proselytising your ideology here at a site devoted to Osho’s work. Have never actually been evangelical for Osho, in the way you are anti Osho.
Who are you trying to convince?
If we are fools why do you care?
Those of us who are into Osho want to share with others who are into Osho.
We don’t run after you forcing anything down your throat.
\(^o\) (/o^)/
Arpana, I don’t think ‘anti-Osho’ is what’s happening here. I see re-evaluation and re-assessment, something necessary for anyone seeking to self-realize. The point is to locate one’s true voice. That can take time. Everyone is ultimately involved in that in whatever domain of life.
‘Arpana, I don’t think ‘anti-Osho’ is what’s happening here.’
We’ll have to agree to differ on that one.
‘I see re-evaluation and re-assessment, something necessary for anyone seeking to self-realize. ‘
Agree 100%. Also get something out of the anti Osho stuff. They remind me of so many people I came across before sannyas, which gives me a new perspective on those years. This is why the site is so interesting. Worth the investment of time and energy.
I find your viewpoints really interesting.
Namaste.
Very sweet, but you did not answer a couple of reasonable questions I for one would be interested to hear.
Arpana.. define sannyas and being into osho… your time starts now…. tick tick tick…..
You’ve got mates , you’ve got friends. Define friendship. What do such things mean. I don’t understand that outlook anymore
For what its worth, despite your attitude, I reckon I’d have a good laugh in your company. What box is that supposed to go into?
Frank, you are funny! Of course there is a lot of truth of mad things hapenning…
osho referred to the dalai lama as “his phoniness”…
so i hope it doesn`t all kick off when they find themselves as roommates in some newage ass-ended nirvana…..
he seems like a nice bloke,del,but belonging to a religion that allows full english breakfast and forbids sex is definitely quirky,to say the least.
actually i checked the akashik records and although,officially, del is being lined up for assension at the end of this incarnation,the dakinis are quietly planning him an incarnation in peckham next time around.
he wont even have to change his hairstyle or his name, and theres a nice little greasy spoon on the corner…. £2.75 all the trimmings………..
sounds like heaven……
chetna i’ve read that stuff up above and felt and lived and listened and absorbed.. …..Still am, if my breathing patterns are correct…..
didn’t see any association with the name chetna on your quote….oh i see we can freely associate with recognition or not , inherent or adopted meanings ascribed to what is true…and what we choose ….or what chooses us…
thats nice…
i love defining it before the event , instead of after.. i find afterwards nothing looks the same anymore….same as reading travel books or being there…
well here i am then in all my glory.. enjoy .. i may not come back again…..(its an old neutrino thing i picked up on my interstellar travels)…
Chetna, what you are missing is that I am questioning and not simply accepting what I’ve been brainwashed to belive to be the truth.
Even if it were true that Osho was some great tantric master it doesn’t mean you are a very enlightened disciple as your words already tell us. Please don’t concern yourself with the suffering I will have to endure due to my stupidity. You have enough on your own plate. More than enough if you ask me.
What I find interesting about this current thread is what it provokes in people. I find these Catholic sannyasins incredibly dumbed down and smug. The deceased Pope Paul has now been declared a saint, because some nun prayed to him and her Parkinson’s disease disappeared due to his miraculous healing powers. It is the same kind of thinking that’s behind the infantile need to have some big shot verify who Osho’really’ was. How shallow, how utterly immature and shortsighted.
I don’t need anyone to tell me who Osho was, because I met the man enough times to guage that for myself…as it happened, I found him to be the most remarkable man I have had the pleasure of meeting in the entire sixty years of my wonderful life, filled with fascinating and beautiful people…a few bastards chucked in for good measure.
The problem with smug people like Chetna is that instead of learning something from Osho they end up worshipping him and thus become identified with an external father figure…and in the process adopt a whole lot of silly beliefs that turn into tomorrow’s problems. One of those problems is viewing people like myself as some sort of traitor or enemy…just because I’m not willing to accept what I am told is true when there exists a strong possibility that it is not. I find it tragic that a brilliant man like Osho is now becoming the banner for the kind of thinking that he rebelled against for his entire life. If Osho was enlightened he didn’t get there because he believed everything he was told by some authority figure. He got there by the path of questioning authority and thinking for himself. All those fools who have short-circuited their critical faculties by negating thought to attain some transient bliss state are now wandering around like a lost herd of bleating sheep. Baaaaaah! Wake up and roar!
put it this way Arpana,
(a suggestion i’m sure you are familiarly practised with already in many ways).. ahemm…
You may have by sleight of keyboard managed to rhetorically question my question about your definition, by way of defining my question as a statement ..which it could be ” such as who knows what sannyas is”…..or have you?
to which the answer is surely.. ‘well it all depends, i’ll have a babycham thanks’.
Roar!
Now all you have to do is wake up.
Awake, my dear.
Be kind
to your sleeping heart.
Take it out
into the vast fields
of Light
and let it
breathe.
Hafiz
I’ll try Lokesh-thank you!
Good, keep me updated as the situation improves.
Of course, and if I reach and you are still around I will come to Ibiza to give you a huge hug, as will be eternally grateful for your compassionate advise! Not even joking…
How sweet!
Beloved master, we love you, all is forgiven
Picture this.
Hank Meredith and Pete Rains are sitting round in their office, drinking coffee and finishing off a couple of Big Macs and tub of French fries as big as a bucket.
Hank pats his beer belly and pulls a filthy hanky out of his faded green cotton shirt’s breast pocket. ‘Who we got coming in on tonight’s flight,’ he asks across the metal-topped table.
Pete burps and replies, ’That Rajneesh fella.’
Hank farts. ‘Who?’
Pete searches in his green canvas Prison Transit Authority issue trouser pockets for a twist of chewing tobacco. ‘You know, Hoshow.’
Hank wipes some burger grease from his triple chin and lets rip another loud fart. ‘You mean than son-of a-bitch who poisoned all them folks up in Oregon?’
Pete nods. ‘The one and only. I was thinking of giving him that blanket the stray left all the fleas on.’ He winces from a sharp pain in his stomach. Pete has a malignant tumor in his guts and all the steroids in the burger he just ate are feeding it. He’ll be dead in six months.
‘Haw, haw,’ guffaws Hank, ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
Pete bites off a chunk of tobacco. ‘I’m listening.’
Hank nods towards a broom cupboard door. ‘We got any of that rat poison left?’ (rat poison used to contain thallium until it was banned)
A plane’s engines drone in the distance.
Pete says. ‘You better get a move on if we’re gonna get this show on the road.’
Hank hurries over to the cupboard, saying over his shoulder, ‘You get the tomato soup on the stove.’
Pete stands, shaking his head and chuckling. ‘Hey buddy,’ he says as Hank enters the cupboard, ‘You are one goddamned son of a gun.’
Oink –
“`Teertha`,
I`,m not sure that you are right about the story of the 16th Karmapa not having respect for Osho.
Here is another sannyasin`s story of meeting the Karmapa: http://o-meditation.com/2009/10/18/osho-and-the-16th-karmapa/
Seems convincing to me-unless he just made this up.”
First point, I didn’t actually say that Karmapa had ‘no respect’ for Osho. I said that Karmapa did not know who he was.
The blog you provided a link to seems sincerely written and gives a bit more info, but there are so many suspect things about it that it’s hard to know where to begin.
First, the business about Osho ‘speaking for the akashic records and astral planes’ — this is Hindu/Theosophical terminology, not Tibetan Buddhist. It’s possible that something got ‘lost in translation’ from Karmapa, but it seems highly unlikely he’d use that terminology (Tibetan Buddhist senior lamas are deeply traditional, usually teaching/speaking within their own terminology). ‘Astral plane’ as a concept is Greek in origin (Plato/Aristotle and their ideas of the ‘ethereal, astral’ spheres beyond the earth). The Rosicrucians/Theosophists revived it in the 19th century. The idea is found in Eastern traditions as well but not via those terms.
As to the reference I made to Ole Nydahl’s remarks, these were his words:
***
Disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh…had just published a book with a few humble claims that were new to us: that Karmapa had pronounced him the greatest Bodhisattva of all time, the man to bring Buddhist Tantra to the West. Karmapa, who did not even know him, was as diplomatic as possible, but the guru’s disciples were not very pleased with his reply. Once again I could only shake my head at the enormous naiveté of people in spiritual matters. It is shocking how readily they give up both discrimination and common sense.
Source: Lama Ole Nydahl, ‘Riding the Tiger: Twenty Years on the Road: The Risks and Joys of Bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West’ (Nevada City: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1992), p. 127.
***
The part about Karmapa sitting with the sannyas magazine with Osho’s photo beside him means little. Many eastern gurus are notorious for a child-like demeanor that embraces whatever is unfolding in that moment around them (something some claim caused the young Dalai Lama to not take Mao’s threats seriously). Someone may have put that magazine beside Karmapa just a minute or two before, for a photo op. The 16th Karmapa was renowned for his sense of humor/playfulness. I’m sure endless photos were placed beside him, for his blessing, on endless occasions. (The story of the 17th Karmapa is another matter, a fascinating twisted drama that involves two separate guys making the claim to be Karmapa, which has effectively split the Tibetan Buddhist community in two since the late 1980s).
Lastly, the part about the ‘golden statues’ and the ‘hall of incarnations’ is just absurdly dramatized. It seems strongly effected by something called ‘Rampai-sm’. (After T. Lobsang Rampa, the British imposter who claimed to be the reincarnation of a famous Tibetan lama). A fascinating piece on Rampa-ism and ‘fictitious Tibet’ can be read here:
http://www.serendipity.li/baba/rampa.html
As for Swami Govind Siddharth, I don’t think he was out and out bullshitting. I’m sure he had an audience with Karmapa. I’m equally sure that he dramatized and projected things onto Karmapa that were not actually happening. In short, he fabricated meaning and drew conclusions because of his love of Osho. We tend to distort what we are attached to.
Well,maybe there were two Tibetan Lama`s and they just got the names mixed up.
I`,m sure that Govind Siddarth and Prem Purushottama were telling the truth-unless they are both crazy. There is an interesting book from Prem Purushottama where his story is taken from,named `From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva`
you can download it at : http://pgoodnight.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/from-lemurs-to-lamas.pdf
I’m also sure Govind Siddarth was ‘telling the truth’. My point was, it was his *subjective truth* — the ‘truth’ giving meaning by his own mind, which inevitably involves projection, interpretation, distortion, etc.
In other words, he probably did sit with Karmapa, show him the locket, and Karmapa probably did say some things about Osho. But what he meant by those things, and whether or not he truly ‘knew’ Osho and in what way, was something Siddarth largely made up in his own mind. That is, he made inferences and drew conclusions that probably grossly exaggerated the meaning of what Karmapa was communicating.
Anyway, that’s my take, your mileage may (and doubtless does) vary.
Also, as a p.s., I find the idea of a ‘hall of incarnations’ somewhat repugnant, a kind of echo of Roman imperialism and worship of gods and their earthly personalities. Doesn’t fit well with Osho’s teachings about ‘dissolving into existence’.
Well,I`ll guess we`ll never know the full truth about the meeting between the two of them-I wonder if Govind Siddarth is still around to talk about it.
Perhaps he`s enjoying his enlightenment somewhere.
I believe that it is likely that Osho was the reincarnation of a buddhist monk- he seems to have had a great love of Buddha and even said that he had loved Buddha more than any other man-
he spoke a lot on Zen and he also believed that Buddhism was a higher flowering than Hindusim-whether that is true is highly debateble of course.
If only they could use all this insight to remedy the world economic situation….
Overheard at G20 cocktail drinks evening…
Yes Yes I see our stocks are riding bareback at the moment on false promises of a new dawn, creating millions of serially long term unemployed .. but how about if we could prove that it wasn’t really happening…like it was just thoughts on a cloudless sky…all money shortages were just invented..all experiences were just empty of enduring content…. lots of zeros added without reference to reality….and that everything is just perfect…you know go spiritual on them….give them enlightened altered states to achieve.. that’d keep ‘em busy ….and who knows if we told them infinite love takes care of everything from fukushima to arctic drilling..to getting out of the endless 9-5 karmic debt……
wow..blisss….pass me a photo of an enlightened one i see a cure for all problems…
What still try to proof, that “Osho” was a real Master?
The answer we find within our “Self”. “Realisation of the Self” still is the Point where Osho (Hiranyagarbha) wants to have us, there you will find him again and all the Master witch are the axis of this hole great mystery and all the answeres.
Once again, good comment, Teertha.
The need to bring in authorities to authenticate who another authority is shows simply that people are caught up with the need fot authoratarian figures. If you take the Dalai Lama as an example, he is more a product of his upbring and educational process than he is someone shaped by previous incarnations. The need to have it said that Osho was somebody special on a reincarnation level is just another version of my guru is really special and therefore being his disciple makes me special also.
Osho did not really give much juice to these stories, although he never actually said they were nonsense. Knowing him, I’d say he secretly encouraged them because they furthered his cause which brings us back to the idea that if a lie works use it.
Machiavelli suggested to leaders that they ‘never tell the truth about why they did something, unless it was *useful* to do so.’ I think there’s a slight Machiavellian quality in any good guru worth their salts.
Some of my best friends support the Tibetan cause, and as someone gave them my address I get quite a lot of Tibetan mail looking for donations, etc.
To me it is nonsense. Democracy is pretty difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to sustain, most of the world still lives under one tyranny or another. Whether the Communists or a theocracy rules Tibet makes little difference, except that the latter is aligned in ethnic terms. Your average Jo will still be a kind of medieval serf one way or the other.
I think Osho is better off without any testaments from the Tibetan theocracy, and better off without any from Red Indian chiefs invented by Sheela, whether they were actually made or not.
There was also the Nostradamus matter, put together by a non-sannyasin, ironically (John Hogue), ‘proving’ that Osho was the future lord of the world as predicted by Nostradamus. I found in looking into it that Hogue’s criteria he used for interpreting Nostradamus applied with equal measure to Aleister Crowley — that is, Crowley was also the ‘futurelord of the world’ according to those same criteria. Interpretation is so often very funny stuff.
That book by John Hogue was awful.
Free Tibet with every two packets of Surf…hurry offer must end due state monopoly of the means of production..
use Oshwash…for all stubborn saints…..