The “Cult” Story
Anthony Thompson criticises those who see Sannyas as a Cult:
I strongly disagree with statements about Osho´s movement being a cult. Why?: Simply because some of the pre-requisites to have any sort of cult, is to have systematic body or set of beliefs. A complete belief system that explains everything in terms of itself. As one knows, and has consistently argued so, Osho contradicted himself a lot. It is practically impossible to create a cult out of his words. The only consistent idea in his talks is that of awareness and meditation. The rest is simply not systematic enough to do anything with it.
If you are going to join a sect, you need to have something to believe…some promise of paradise or future enlightenment. You don’t join a sect that tells you that “you are already a Buddha, enlightened” (from “The heart sutra”) and that you just “need to come back home. However you are, you are beautiful the way your are” (from “The Goose is Out”).
My understanding is that Osho´s work was mainly deprogramming people against their self constructed ideas about love, spirituality, growth, relationships, etc. In fact if you want you can find statements where he speaks of karma and reincarnation and then another statement where he says there is no soul, no reincarnation (see “Reincarnation a Misconception” discourse given in 1989) , and that karma is just a way of social control. He speaks of god and then says there is no such a thing and it is just a” teddy bear” for fearful people.
Second, you need rituals that people, old and new, can join to. And nowadays there is nothing like that. Even the celebration of his death and birthday, and his pictures, or the “sannyas giving” have been removed as official celebrations in the Osho resort in India. Anyone can go there and verify and see if there is any “blind cult” happening.
Third, a cult does not admit dissent, .Sannyasins tend to be free, open minded, closed, fanatic, or careless… as all human being can be. But there is no official enforced dogma on believing or agreeing on anything.The proof of this is that sannyasins are the single group of spiritual seekers that you can find practically at the feet of many modern masters, or new therapy or mind expanding method. You can see them in shamanism, ayurveda, Kalindi´s, Diamond logos, work, etc, etc, in addition to their ranking with different therapeutic schools.
Fourth, you need someone to believe in, some savior, and Osho himself advised his disciples not to believe in him unless it was their direct experience (Golden nuggets). And repeatedly he told his disciples he was “no savior or prophet or only begotten son of god, just an ordinary human being, like you” (Osho 1985, Interviews with the Press). Or “a master is not someone who has archive anything. a master is someone who has discovered that there is nothing to Achieve”(Dying for enlightenment, 1979, By Bernard Gunther)
My research shows that Osho was no ” Deepak Chopra”. The man was a rebellious iconoclast who did and said what he thought was his truth. He demolished the catholic church, Islam and any form of organized religion; he spoke against mother Theresa, Gandhi (precisely for being against technology, which Osho strongly advocated).
Osho, was a man who saw no use for rituals, discipline and all the self-torture that is going on in the name of renunciation or spirituality. The development of self-awareness was his flag. More over, he spoke against Indian traditions. Reason enough for the attempted murder against him in early eighties in Poona, by a fanatic Hindu during a public talk.
He thought of the meeting of east and west, of materialism and spirituality. “Zorba the Buddha”, he called his “new man”. And certainly he did not live the life of an ascetic. But beyond all, he helped his disciples and friends to be independent and rebellious individuals.
first we have the dalai lama giving tintin an award for services rendered…
now,after prof anthony thompson,we have richard thompson,the other half of the thompson twins.
what next?
captain haddock declaring himself enlightened?
By what authority doth he give his approval.
Seem to recall someone else here challenging the notion we need
outsiders to ratify us.
Good article though.
ahh but therapeutically aligned sannyasins were full of amateur sherlock freudisms, and extremely bereft of self and therapy and osho-p*** taking and fun.. emphasing growth and attitude religious sententious examinations over straightforwardness…the typical ‘I’ve got someting i need to share….gnash gnarl gnash…
when the sh** hit the fan you had to be more than well trained you had to have all your wits about you to fend off the opposition…I finally learnt that what i am and was, was far more valuable in its non-iconoclasm than all the middle class warriors who had paid for their rebellion groups and badges or malas of honour spouting their repetitive accusations of this or that ‘conditioning’ guff.
I never recommended or got anything i want to take with me out of any encounter type relationship , group, process, weekend, opening up, overcoming fears type bunkum.. that iconclasts and public school housemasters like Teertha and Turiya and Veeresh still vainly offer. Not a single memorable thing .. and thats not me being caustic.. it was just a complete waste of time…
I am all in favour of passion intensity ruthlessness grab your opponent by the balls if you have to and squeeze… but not through these bludgeoning routines of amateur dramatists who forgot the laughter was the priority , not bullying strangers you’ve never met before with paid for insult routines.
And yes folks that is sannyas too…but not according to the book of lovey dovey knife in your backey oshowme-theway-to get enlightened sponge smarm sponge sannyas….
On the matter of cultic tendencies, the thing to remember is that it is primarily a psychological thing. Anthony Thompson’s piece above is a good apologist piece that presents a reasonable argument for the ‘non-cultic’ elements of Osho’s whole approach. Technically Thompson is right, Osho’s approach doesn’t fit well with the standard cultic model.
But cultic tendencies are psychological in nature first and foremost. A good loose definition of a cult is any organized gathering where the group itself becomes more important than the individual. By that definition the military is a kind of supreme example of a cult, where individual will is broken and subservience to a chain of command is primary. Organized religions and large corporations are other simple examples. Much of civilization is cultic in nature, including so-called mystery schools.
What happens if we apply that model to the history of sannyas? Without question cultic tendencies then become obvious, as they do in most any organization. It isn’t hard to find examples of ‘the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the one’, to quote Spock, in the history of Osho’s movement. He himself may have been a fierce iconoclast but he attracted a movement and encouraged its organization. Within that, individuality often took a beating while at the same time being promoted. It was one thing to be a lamp unto yourself and another to remember to be ‘surrendered’ in order to get closer to the master. Rajneeshpuram was without question heavily cultic in nature.
I remember the last time I was at Poona, in 1991, a year after Osho had died. They were still bringing out the chair, complete with air conditioner, for the evening meetings. There was the same familiar faces sitting up front near the empty chair. The politics of ‘rank’ remained implicit, with all attendant issues of self-importance that go along with toeing the line and being a good soldier, even while engaged in this matter of self-realization.
There’s an old expression, ‘the ego is a cult of one’. When people get together to (allegedly) self-observe their egos, the ‘cult of one’ simply becomes a cult of many. It’s unavoidable.
I don’t find this article to be good at all, other than it is clearly thought out, albeit uneducated. It is based on the assumption that Mr Thompson knows what he is talking about and I don’t think he does.
There are a number of criteria that constitute whether or not Sannyas is a cult and as it happens sannyas fulfils more than a few of them. Right now I can’t be bothereed writing what those criteria are because I think if you don’t see sannyas as being cultish then you must be stupid.
I will say this much, though, the basic quality that defines whether a group constitutes a cult is the idea that the leader is unchallengeable and infallable, which for many Catholic sannyasins Osho was and still is. One need only look at the rationalizations that many sannyasins make about Osho’s bizarre behaviour in order to make him look infalible. For years he told people that drugs take a person in the opposite direction from meditation, meditatation being the foundation of his teaching, then next thing we know Osho is hooked on NO2. Personally, I don’t give a shit about that because I don’t have the need to see Osho as infallible, but many do. The thing is, clearly something went wrong in Osho’s life before he became dependent on laughing gas. Why not admit Osho was human? Instead the perfect image is required and to sustain it the assault on reason is intensified. All Osho’s shortcomings are viewed by the party faithful as devices for their awakening.
I also don’t have a problem with saying to people that I belonged, or some might say belong, to the sannyas cult. This is because although I believe in democratic process I don’t believe that the majority is always right, because they are often wrong. Being a sannyasin was always a minority thing and a lot of good ideas came out of it. If someone wants to see the sannyas movement as being a cult that is their business and it does not really effect how an individual actually perceives Osho, if one actually had any real contact with the man. ‘Cult’ is afterall only a word, but it does have a meaning and sannyas fulfils that meaning to a large extent.
thats all well and good.
but osho also employed everything in his show….
re-incarnation,prophecy,ritual,lies,religious mumbojumbo and cultism.
you would have to admit cultism at least as a “device”.
also,go to humaniversity,the most successful osho enterprise in europe and tell me that its not cultish there
and i will say you are either brainwashed,braindead or on the payroll…..
and what of all those banned from pune?
what did they transgress to get expulsion, if not some unwritten dogma..?
osho “demolished the catholic church”?
more delusionary stuff,
if the the catholic church is actually being demolished,it is by victims of its systematic abuse and their lawyers who have spoken up over the last years.
The article is unusual though, in that he writes from a glass is half full perspective, as apposed to the sheep like, glass is half empty outlook flogged as objective.
this is our old friend professor anthony thompson,leading oshologist and author of the anti christopher calder blog “the man who lies about osho” and old time contributor to SN,affectionately known as twoton tony on account of his liking for a bit of intellectual rough and tumble.
howzit going tony?
there are some battle-scarred old gnostic hardmen on the site these days….
loco lokesh,the gorbals grizzler…
PT “lord of the universe” mistleberger…
prem “the sidesplitter” martyn…
just for starters…..
can you handle another 15 rounds?
or have you retired?
i dont blame you….
http://truthaboutosho.blogspot.com/
In Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Osho comes across as a right pain in the ass. Disrespectful and Bolshie towards, teachers, authority figures, old people in general.
By god he would have regretted it if he had started anything here. Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. LMAO.
Anthony is welcome, as is Calder. Both will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
– MistlBORGer
thompson & thompson it is…
I smell a double identity, “anthony” sounds too much like someone very much involved with the resort organization trying to sound like someone else, e.g. an “independent researcher”, but his style is familiar.
Speaking of cultish, Frank, there is also the meticulous examination of the robes’ colour or the compulsory EM, but the main point is the acceptance of the guru as a godlike, unchallengeable figure, so any critic is lese majesté and the critics have to be pushed out of the fold, and any lie is good to make things acceptable.
Been on line and involved with Osho sannyas sites for about five years or so, and have been fairly amazed at times, at the number of people with a Messiah complex I’ve come across, including one individual, who I am convinced saw himself not so much Oshos successor, but rather saw Osho as having come before him to prepare the ground for the real thing, said individuals mission.
Given the number of active posters on all the sites cant have been much more than fifty, half a dozen is more than 10%.
Oshoism is all ready at the same stage it took Xtianity 1600 years to reach.
psychologically,this is known as “inflation”…
the ego is overwhelmed by a transpersonal energy,eg “god” “brahma”,”osho”etc…
the ego identifes itself with this energy,
to do this it is neccessary to deny,or remain ignore-ant of anything that threatens to expose or undermine the ego`s fantasy.
also constant self-hypnotic efforts must be made to sustain the inflation,erroneously perceived by the ego as a “connection”..
its actually great fun.
it makes you feel huge,of course.
i can recommend it highly to anyone who fancies a taste of real of religion…..
however,like psychedelic drugs or any other “trip”,eventually you have to come down….
existence will always yinyang you into shape….
How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to screw it in, and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness. – Anonymous
“existence will always yinyang you into shape”
Pity about this Frank, but it’s wish fulfillment.
Where was the existence when Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot needed to be “yinyanged” into shape. The existence is totally indifferent to human affairs.
existence might be,but you`re not!
maybe you are showing a deflation there…
thatis,identifying with a meaningless existence that cares not….
that`s one possible way to go after the religious inflation has been blown…
but there`s still remains a disharmony between the ego and the rest of the self,if you personally still do care and are not indifferent about human affairs….
Nothing very complicated here Frank. Just there are those with delusions of grandeur that find a way beyond them (as Dharmen indicates elsewhere – they become ordinary).
But there are those who (like most human beings) live in a cosy world of self inflation but dont go overboard. Then there are those who do go overboard and end up defined as mentally ill, and finally there are those who actually live out their delusions and kill millions of people. I was sceptical of you conflating all human beings somehow into the first category, which is actually very small.
On whether there is some advaitan or Taoist (yinyang) metaphysics you or anyone else can apply to this, well it does not really add to human knowledge to simply be tautological.
Things are as they are, but sometimes a simple brave act by even a single individual can alter the world, and not let it be consumed by a sort of predetermined script – which Taoism and advaita imply.
I reckon existence was right there yin-yanging away, even with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. Just we have to take in a bigger picture; this world don’t always look pretty. Yin-yang is indifferent, all it knows is a balancing act. A balancing act too big to take in.
I think what Frank is saying, is, in the end, we all become ordinary.
existence is “bi-polar” parmartha..
you left out genghis khan, his sons, most of the roman emperors, most of the ancient mayans, aztecs, incas, japanese emperors and shoguns, chinese emperors, the turkish sultans, christian kings from the dark ages, most of the rajs of ancient india, oh yeah, alexander the great, egyptian pharoahs, Moses, abraham, king david and other hebrew warrior kings- and not to forget all the bottom feeding minions who wipe their asses and also the women who blindly and fearfully supported their madness. All thanks to the evolutionary process on this planet called Earth.
did you know that there is now less violence happening per capita on planet earth than at any time in the history of mankind on earth?
statistically,even in the second world war you had less statistical chance of getting done in than in the middle ages and before …
so claims steven pinker in his new book.
and he`s got the stats to prove it.
thats good news.
humankind is on a roll….
lets celebrate……
has Pinker calculated the number of people having thus far lived and died equating to the total number alive now, minus the 37 enlightened ones who got a choice not to….do the numbers add up, as in karmically returning.?.. if not where are the souls coming from ?this might be a case for mister thistle burger to comment on.Can r-souls come back ?or is our Karma just a pain in arrears?Parmartha reckons we just carp on and on without any sign of relief.Its all quite consternating.
hey frank , i just wikipedia’d Pinker thanks for the name..he’s right up my street .. check out his bio and you’ll see what i mean nudge nudge…
oursouls keep coming back
the place is full of oursouls….
Thanks for the longer list Jay. I think it is a very moot point whether “evolution” can be said to have occurred with the human species.
Perhaps we can tweak this line ‘existence is indifferent to human affairs’ to ‘existence is indifferent to human interpretation’.
In other words, a type of balancing may indeed be occurring (even if understood only via entropic decline to zero), but it is a process that rarely accords with human expectations of how things *should* be.
Good point Teertha. My main preoccupation with this statement is to counter the endless stuff from the Abrahamic religions about loving fathers, and being protected by the holy ghost and all other such nonsense. I abhor the humanisation of God.
This article is an interesting read. It clarifies that Osho did not want a religion to be formed around him,( but at the same time he wanted the understanding and awareness about consciouness to be reached out to the whole earth). People who get connect to him will be helped to turn inwords and find their own inner master, and that’s the whole game in a nutshell. In a way, if the person is willing, it will create a relation between him/her and Osho. Some take it as master disciple relation, some take it as friendly relation and so on, but there will be some kind of bond and some kind of chemistry. If there is no such relation means its not working..at the least, a person will say a big thank you or if he/she is as aware and as genious as Osho, he/she will at least appreciate him. Simple.
Yes, simple. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
dont forget not every cult ends up in mass suicide or a in shoot-out with the feds…
some are great fun,relaxing,partying ,enlightening,made up of sexy,intelligent,fun-loving breathers and nudists worshipping space aliens and doing weird “therapies” etc…
like most things,there`s good `uns and bad `uns`…
if you were/are in a good `un,
why try to deny it?
remember cult is just a word.
take a leaf out of the gays book.
they started to own the word “queer,”
“we`re queer,we like it,your problem,not ours”
come out of the closet…
“sure,i was /am a cult member…and i`m proud of it,
its got its upside..check it for yourself”…
think outside of the cultbox
tony thompson has about as much chance convincing anyone (apart from diehard catholic sannyasins) that its not a cult as he has of convincing anyone that,say,elton john isnt queer as a coot……
or that elton doesn’t like “fags”.
NEWS !
UK TV’s favourite chef, Anthony Whyworrayatall Thompson releases new recipe books just in time for Xmas.
Whilst many of us are familiar with the tasty dishes and routines Anthony has dished out before, these new books reveal a whole new load of old ideas cooked up into something fancy that’s easy to digest.
For starters, Anthony provides us with some of his re-assuring fireside favourite tidbits in his pocket cookbook, ‘How to re-arrange the furniture without making a fuss’
.. a handy guide to using favourite old left-overs that everyone is tired of, into scrumptious and bite sized bits that will leave you feeling really stuffed.
In the companion cook book, ‘A Load of Old Hogwash’, Anthony tells us how using plenty of soft easily found veggies can transform the world from craven self-centred indulgence to a kinder more aware self-centred indulgence with less tripe. Anthony has been sourcing his own bio-organic ‘more aware’ produce for years. He confesses in his autobiography how on the day he actually became ‘more aware’, of how awful things were, he then changed from using a diet of spoon fed corn…. and took down all the photos of Mother Theresa from his barnyard wall, and replaced them with posters of Animal Farm, as a reminder of just how much better things could be…or not… depending on who gave the orders.
Although critics accuse him of using fast acting ‘growth’ hormones for his flock he denies this , countering with ‘ I’m not as stupid as you look’ , and then retorts with an unfamiliar, self-mocking; ‘ I actually have no idea what I’m talking about ‘.
In the recipe book accompanying DVD, we see Anthony walking aimlessly around what he calls his; ‘ perfect commune paradise ‘. Anthony points to a dusty pair of well worn-out and past their sell-by date ‘new for old’ robes hanging in the corner of the barn. He also has a fine posse of young horses in the farm paddocks.
‘Colts’ he says in a whisper then suddenly, unexpectedly he can be seen repeatedly knocking his head against the farmyard wall…..
‘a bunch of colts …they are all a bunch of colts’ he wails inconsolably…
His wife rushes out and takes Anthony inside , apologising profusely.
Anthony hobbies include writing and and seeing things from a fresh perspective. In fact his earlier bestsellers were a revised ‘relaxing’ history of the second world war called; ‘ A spot of bother with the neighbours’. In it, Anthony examines long lost archival material that revisits those events from the comfort of his armchair to show that even slightly difficult things like conflict and human beings can be made safe.He also keeps a telescope on the writing table which he often looks through ,he says, from the reverse end, because ‘then things really do look small and further away..and even insignificant’.
Anthony is a keen sportsman in his spare time, including tennis, and reveals he once had a problem with taking tennis too seriously until he realised that by little stretches of the imagination , many double faults could be overlooked, the nets lowered and the game extended forever through long summer days of hazy reflections.
Anthony drinks only mild brews and likes nothing more than a bottle of fizz, and keeps a lid on stronger brews, by bottling out other people’s whines in an hermetically sealed vat that takes out the less palatable ingredients for consumption.Like beliefs, Anthony says, alcohol is okay only in small doses which don’t show up as proof.
Anthony, as a keen re-heated cook, really has cornered this particular market in selling things you already have , by making you think you haven’t , although you have even though by being less aware you probably haven’t, even though you have…. if you see what he means …He previously sold antiques for a living at inflated prices.
He now sells what he makes you imagine he’s got, that he convinces you, you think you need ,and although the ingredients are secret, like with many things on the farm, some things just thrive in the dark and being fed shit for years. If you’re around that area and want to know more,just follow the signs up the ‘lovely garden path’ marked ‘Smarmland’.But don’t tell anybody what you saw, only that you’ve been.Its better for business.
His wife confesses that she was often unsure of exactly what Anthony did in his potting shed at the bottom of the garden, though she often reassured herself knowing that whatever he did was all for the best, banging around for hours as he did, with anything he could lay his hands on of an evening. He often told her that it was his form of anti catholic behaviour , that she was never to interfere or complain and if she didn’t like it she could go back to Roumania and her repressed unaware roots.
If you want to contact Anthony he is always keen to answer your questions as long as you remain vulnerable, open and sensitive , and you defer to higher interpolations for your own good via a complicated network of dips loops hoops and troughs that are lying around just about everywhere on his farm.
Sannyasnews tried to reach Anthony by phone today, but the call was repeatedly put through to what sounded like a voicemail message that changed every time we rang. Here are just two of them we chose at random…
‘Thank you for ringing Thompson Patios, suppliers of pebble dashing , roofs, asphalt drives and specialists in iconoclasting outside walls. If you would like your brickwork or foundations iconoclasted please leave your suspicions after the beeeeep.’
and;
‘ Mr Worzel Thompson ‘ere ……if yer lookin for Tony ‘ee ‘baint be home righteously speakin’ like and…this is his cousin. At the moment he’s busy tearin down t’ foundations of Christendom armed only with the lamp of truth and a handy spanner.Should yee be likin’ to as call him after he’s finished settin’ aflame a grand pile of heathen images of the lord, and blastin’ a few icons with his shotgun, yees be right welcome…..(…crackle… brr …whizz …pipp…..)
….you Roumanian trollope i told you not to pick up the receiver in the kitchen i’m recording a message…..get off the scumbag phone ,wench or its Bucharest by lunchtime….
, Thank eeess and his blessings…’
To me the words, Cult, sect or religion are just words, they should not tug the nose of the discussion, but be servants of the discussion.
By embracing the mystical view that when we become unified with God, source, existence, what you will by way of calling it, we loose our ego in the service of those forces which hold up the universe, we demonstrate an interest in life beyond the pursuit of the material. Finding friends into the same sort of thing along the way lightens the whole search up. Sannyas seems to me at its best such an informal gathering of friends attracted to someone who arguably was not even a person at all. No-one has ever been stopped leaving sannyas, I knew those who were encouraged to leave for example in the seventies as not ready.
Hence though catholic sannyasins do seem to have both been, and to sustain cultish behaviour much of it seems pretty harmless.
Sannyas itself as lived by me and my friends in the present does not seem cultish at all.
Parmartha: you say you knew sannysins who were encouraged to leave during the ’70′s as not being “ready”… i heard that phrase- “not ready” spoken many times during my tenure as a subordinate sannyasin during the early – mid ’80′s. now, why then was not Sheela encouraged to leave, for she was obviously “not ready”, same with her cohorts- Susheela, Vidya, and Homa.. not to mention all of those thugs who worked for sheela as security guards… just to stop there, for i can go on and on with names… so, since you seem to be an intelligent guy, why the fuck did you even mention that ? or are you just pretending to be intelligent or maybe took a whiff of some nitrous before you posted the above. Got started out on a straight path but quickly deviated into the dark forest of delusion.
maybe they just didn’t generate enough money for the ashram or ranch… money does buy many things, including your graduation diploma from sannyas school and therefore being “ready” for — whatever.
It’s a paradox Jay of which I suspect you are aware that many of those who reached positions of power in the ashram and the Ranch, and still run things now (like Amrito) never did any real apprenticeship in and with the group psychotherapy groups that have been offered ever since 1976. For example Sheela like many Indians did no groups. Amrito by his own admission did only three low level groups.
One thing that the encounter groups did was force a sort of self awareness. One can go through one’s whole life simply courting situations where no real criticism arises, the Encounter Groups never let one get away with that. My own feeling is that those who avoided the group psychotherapy process for whatever reason missed out, and also then visited their “personalities” on the whole commune.
Really my only direct personal experience of people being asked to leave was from groups where the group leader felt they wern’t ready for some ego bashing. They wern’t actually invited to leave sannyas, but they did.
One friend of mine was asked by Osho to leave Poona in 1977 but not sannyas. This was because he kept on criticising the attitude of the ashram “guards” towards the Indians! However he did not leave, except in his own time, and was never ejected.
You are certainly right to say that many who gained positions of power were not ready for a real sannyas.
But you seem in other blogs to support Osho in simply saying yes to everyone. To my mind this was a great mistake and led to the tragedy of Rajneeshpuram.
Well yes, but Krishna Prem of Osho, India and Me did no groups and it does not sound from his book that he missed very much. Maybe Amrito also did not need groups. You talk of encounter group leaders engaging in ego bashing. But these guys were not enlightened, had their blind spots to say the least. What they considered ego bashing may have been destructive essence bashing. You say “those who avoided the group psychotherapy process for whatever reason missed out.” All of them? Who knows?
Krishna Prem did the group to end all groups. The Kailesh (excuse possible spelling error) experiment. There is an account of it in the book you mention. It contains everything that also occurred in the encounter groups, but in a much more powerful way.
Well yes, but I think he also says in the book that when the formal encounter groups started he prayed Osho would not ask him to do one, and he did not.
Don’t you reckon there was a big ego boost in encounter Parmartha; as in ‘I’m hard me. I got through the hardest group of all.’
from Parmartha: well I dont know. Some sannyasins did the encounter group like a badge of initation but when they were in the group just surfed it. Any situation in life in my experience is what you make it, whether one is really 1000 per cent, and that included the encounter groups, and all the other great groups in Pune one, like the Tao group and the Tantra group.
i didn’t do any groups except one minor weekend one up at Sambodhi ashram north of Boston, that weekend i did for the first time Dynamic, and Kundalini(I still wasn’t a sannyasin) but i guess i impressed the ashram leader that he gave me a sannyas application… the whole trip from my intro to osho to taking sannyas took only a little over a month, and how i came across osho is of movie making material(not to puff up like a powder pigeon). It is/was true, that you don’t find the master but the master finds you.
to continue … Back in my neck of the woods in the big east coast city, u.s.a. growing up was a daily encounter group… the poor and working class kids are subject to daily trials and toughness tests… ego bashing, by the way of insults and humiliation , fists fights, maybe even knife fights, was back then(1960′s-70′s) the norm.. today, it’s even worse, where guns fights are included… thank the fucking gods i’m not growing up now. So i suspect the characters you speak about were not the typical working class stiffs but more of the bourgeois type, the spoiled child with the silver spoon in his/her mouth. Sheela and her gang and i presume Laxmi and her rich Indian elites(even worse than the euro-american trash) fit the bill, hence the trouble.. i really don’t think osho’s open minded, free for all to join policy was the mistake but instead it was delegating authority to the rich elitist gang that accounted for all of the turmoil… they are pompous asses- no? what more to say?
Appreciate you sharing this background Jay. Maybe you are right. Some are simply born on the other side of the tracks and soon go through a sort of running encounter with life/survival and thereby “grow” if they survive.
Certainly to narrow the discussion down the “elites” successively around Osho, especially the Sheela elite were upper middle class and to me some of the old Poona groups offered an antidote to this upbringing.
Certainly Osho showed little judgement in choosing these elites, and maybe they sort of choose themselves. They were arguably inexperienced in life or having any sort of power, even in the workplace, and so made a total hash of it.
Rajneeshpuram was a tragedy, and history has to adjudge why.
If Osho was right as you maintain in having a totally open gate to sannyas, he sure needed to have good temporal leaders to take care of such an enterprise as Rajneeshpuram.
if the encounter groups were so successful,why did they pave the way for a crypto-fascist cult situation,where people were even less able to “encounter” others who were abusing their power over them in their everyday life ?
surrender to authority was inculcated in these groups more than anything else.
(why didnt the participants rape,attack and break the arm of teertha and his cronies…they needed it just as much as anyoneone else,no?)
the main effect of the so-called “ego-bashing”therapy was not therapeutic at all but rather ego-enhancing in giving people a sense of being part of a quasi-tribal initiation to an unusual and valuable group.
they were a rite-of-passage…
parmartha is still crowing about it as if he had been awarded a great honour.
and he feels others have “missed” (notice the old cult catch-phrase there)
if i found myself saying:
“i had my ego bashed and i am better for it,and better than the others who didnt and missed”,
i would sincerely hope that it was a line in a comedy,rather than that i really believed it…..
btw,i had my ego “bashed” too.
after the shock passed,i felt great,like licking 12 volt batteries or banging your head against the wall!
now,i can only shake my head and laugh….
i was a young arrogant idiot…
quelle vie!
Speak for yourself, although at the same time, what are you banging on about?
You come across as a guy who is neither bully nor victim. Smart arse, yes, but that’s not fascistic.
Sounds good to me.
I tend to agree with Frank here. Did you know that the encounter group was created by the CIA in the post war years as a means of social control.
You have to provide sources for a statement like that.
Arpana, there is a long discussion in ‘Libido Dominandi’ by E. Michael Jones about the history of the encounter group. It is quite a complicated history. They were also called T-Groups. I cannot quote the whole chapter but… “Encounter groups, as Carl Rogers himself indicates by his oblique reference to Kurt Lewin in describing the sources of sensitivity training, were a creation of the CIA’s psychological warfare campaign.” (page 482 of the 2005 paperback.)
Oh ok.
Karl Rogers. That was the name of the guy I was trying to recall as well.
I’ll do a bit of reading.
Thanks.
Encounter groups in the form they were used in Pune were “invented” by Fritz Perls from the Esalen Institute in California. He wrote several books, but whether they are still in print who knows.
Both Poonam (Patricia Lowe) and Teertha (Paul Lowe) studied/trained there before returning to the UK in the early seventies to set up Quaesitor where some of us met these type of groups for the first time.
Teertha then went on to Pune around 1974/5 and later around 1976 started the first Encounter Groups there with Osho’s blessing.
Alok’s reference to the CIA doesn’t seem to us to have much import here.
As far as I understand the history, many American soldiers returning from the Korean war had been brainwashed into accepting communism. The Office of Naval Intelligence, a precursor the CIA, wanted to study how this had happened, with a view to social control. After a bit of experimentation they created the T group, an early encounter group. This was first used among business executives in the early 1960s. Carl Rogers used encounter groups to promote an anti Christian value system. The values of Rogers’ groups were intimacy, self actualisation, following your feelings, all the stuff sannyasins take for granted. Nevertheless these were/are values, and the peer pressure to accept them in such groups is considerable.
The main “group” after meditation and the groups in Pune one was “work”. Most genuine and determined seekers seemed to me to graduate there. Had some of the elites followed this course I think they would have at least showed more human empathy.
Some like Sheela never did any mediation or groups for example, and others boasted that they “got sick” when asked to do a vipassana group (by their Master). What hope is there when such elementary forms of surrender are ignored in a disciple.
Frank it is not true to say there was no “revolution” between 1981 and 1985. There were many thousands of sannyasins at that time who refused to have anything to do with the Ranch, or the organised communes. When I ran the discos in Hamburg for the commune I was always amazed by the number of sannyasins who used to pack the discos to the rafters, but who clearly regarded us communards as dopes.
Not sure about this.
Taking sannyas turned life into a group.(^o^)y
the idea that the valuation “like a group” would signify the pinnacle of possible experience is/was one of the mainstays of the sannyas cult.
always implying that the top experience was in the hands of the so-called therapists and their authority.
are you empowering yourself by persisting with that, or just being a washed up cultmember with allegiance to a passe cult?
Thank Gord someone here’s got it the right way round (congratulations, Frank)…
Imagine, you’re present at the birth of a child, or on your deathbed, or diagnosed with a fatal illness, or ok, lightening things up a moment, your team has just won the league…”Ooohh, this is just…I don’t know, it’s somehow ‘special’…I know, yes – it’s just “like a group!”
Gord help us ‘n’ save us from such delusion!!
well parmartha, those “kraut” sannyasins who thought that those of us living on the ranch to be dopes, perhaps they were jealous cause they couldn’t afford to go, and/or couldn’t shag an american for a visa/green card.. those krauts are a handful, mentally that is, they goosestep in their sleep, recite “Mein Kampf” every nite before bedtime, and act like traffic cops during the day.. and they’ve got the nerve to complain and criticize?
‘Cultish’ behavior is, for many, a phase as well; an early stage that is left behind if meditation etc. is explored.
its the thing and the friends… or the friends .. or the thing..etc etc
???
.i’ve been very very lucky with some extra splendid sannyas friends who were the real thing… i’ve also been explicitly ‘betrayed’ by callous women and men(its a my-a karma) who were very experienced in sannyas and who represented nothing of the thing or of friends.. it just goes to show that its not the thing but the effect of the thing on the person…and the person’s latent integrity and frankness..and friendliness
copper bottom guaranteed trustability in sannyasins doesn’t exist and thats why i play out the exaggerated routines ..its been a way of ‘sifting’ in late sannyas..and evidencing myself to others… and its worked for me by polarising those who would either draw towards me or against.. quite different from social or meditational routines of aligning the group energy and any conferred mutuality based on identity..my aim was to play out investments quickly and without quarter…hope it works for some out there too…otherwise i really am wasting my time here….
wonder if that makes sense using few words to explain years of engagement…
night..
Worth exploring is the distinction between ‘cult’ and ‘mystery school’. The former implies a closed system that essentially feeds a King (or Queen) Bee of powerful charisma but questionable merit. The latter implies a relatively closed system that functions to arouse its members from sleep.
Fichte pointed out (two centuries ago) that consciousness arises from reflection, and reflection needs limitation in order develop.
For example, looking into a mirror that is a hundred feet away provides little reflection. Bring the mirror up to your nose however, and the reflection is intense. Consciousness develops via limitation and proximity. No limitation, no reason for consciousness. As Gurdjieff stressed, consciousness develops via struggle. As you may have heard, most people payed G. to be in his presence. However one guy, Rachmilievitch, had a naturally sour disposition and tended to piss people off, and so G. payed *him* to be there.
The line between ‘valid mystery school’ and ‘cult’ gets blurred when the leader is fed increasing power. All power derives from attention, and a man like Osho was a magnet for attention, because he was always cutting against the grain, and mostly in a very skillful way. (Hitler also cut against the grain, but unskillfully). Going with the flow makes you disappear; cutting against the grain makes you stand out.
The residue of organized religion is this idea that ‘cutting against the grain’ is bad, and going with the flow is good and necessary (i.e., follow the commandments like everyone else). Whatever else might be said about it, ‘awakening’ has to involve embracing paradox — in this case, embracing both going with the flow and cutting against the grain. We become more aware when faced with limitation (the mirror being closer, even stiflingly close), wherein we learn how to do this balancing act between ‘flowing’ and ‘resisting’. Arguably a cult is a mystery school that has forgotten this an insists its members only go with the flow.
Equally arguably that is what happened at Rajneeshpuram, which is why it was less mystery school and more cult.
p.s. — the ‘Rachmilievitch’ of this particular community seems to be JCPenny. Perhaps sannyasnews should pay him to be here.
“Mystery School”- catchy name, my studies over the years regarding “mystery schools”, is that they are cults… no question about that.. all groups, schools, cults, religions have leaders, we are children of the earth and all types of creatures have pecking orders, a hierarchy; with humans, it reminds me of part wolf pecking order and part cattle. i’ve gotten to understand the cattle pecking order a bit with my lengthy work on bio-dynamic and organic dairy farms. talking about bio-dynamics, that “mystery school/cult” is run by the Anthroposophical Society dim wits, the offshoot of the Theosophists… some nice practices when it comes to rejuvenating farm land and general farming practices, but when it comes to the person to person interactions, they’re from the stone age.. Steiner often spoke of “Mystery Schools” but he too was an old fart, an antique, and sexist. It’s all about control and manipulation regardless. nothing has changed much over the eons. i don’t expect any, regardless who or what the new cult,/mystery school maybe.
The biggest mystery about sannyas is how anyone calling themselves a sannyasin, wearing orange clothes, a mala with an indian guru’s photo in a plastic locket round their neck and allowing a complete stranger to change your name, could possibly not see that they had joined a spiritual cult. Perhaps even more mysterious is how those same people could put forth an argument till the holy cows came home that they did not belong to a cult. Well, as Osho was so fond of saying and his sannyasins also, life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved.
The biggest mystery about sannyas is how anyone calling themselves a sannyasin, wearing orange clothes, a mala with an indian guru’s photo in a plastic locket round their neck and allowing a complete stranger to change their name, could possibly not see that they were motivated by constant unconscious one upmanship.
Perhaps even more mysterious is how those same people could put forth an argument, to themslves, till the holy cows came home, that they were on a higher plain than everyone else.
Well, as Osho was so fond of saying and his sannyasins also, life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved.
You fools .. you brazen lumpen headed fools all of you… can’t you see what you’re doing….i can’t believe it…. i just can’t believe how dumb you all are…. sitting there.. hah hah…wow it really makes me laugh… you are all so stuck… here i am trying to give you something and you are so closed no wonder hah hah…haven’t you heard what Osho was saying….its freedom man… and you are all just turning away from what’s staring at you….look in the mirror guys ha ha ha….
sure you can say ‘but i let my girlfriend do whatever she wants’…’LET’ see how manipulative the tricky mind is…. watching her instead of your own thoughts… and oh poor me i don’t want to jump up and down anymore because its good for me… baby all babies…so go back to posting on the internet.. see what good that’s gonna do you…feeling all better about yourselves looking at a screen when you could be in a pyramid in red robes drinking in the masters video wisdom from 1989..you really are all catholics…one big heap of Catholics..
come on Anthony lets go… these guys just….. haa haha…..
Anthony.. Anthony….whats that ? you said you would swap your Roumanian for my Bulgarian.. come on Ant .. hey we are on the same side.. you can’t have both…
Jeezus h Christ.. it just goes to show you can’t trust anyone these days…
hey guys ….
I was just er….. joking ….. about those Catholics.. glad you are not like them eh, wow i really see some beautiful people here… come on lets all have a hug….hey did you hear 20 priests from the Seminary of the Saints are all doing the Path of Love and turning their backs on Christendom en mass .. and Osho therapists will only be attacking bankers and politicians and bollywood popstars from now on… yeah even mentioning them as having visited the ashram will be banned…. no, really…
hey guys we rock don’t we, we are all so cool…
…. guys…GUYS.. gals… anyone…… ?????
ah well guess i’m all alone just like osh said i was………who needs a mala anyways…..
You guys sound as though you carry such a weight of disappointment.
Isn’t that expectations?
Not knockin’ yah.
Recognition.
Could not have conceived getting into this would be so isolated.
Something about Osho has kept me going down this road I’m on.
One of the problems of getting hitched up with a guru is that you want the best. Who wants a second rate guru? Nobody. Osho was very much aware of this and eventually started telling people he was the master of masters etc.If you think about it you will find that perhaps the greatest irony in the guru stakes is that it is a very competetive business, while being enlightened is supposed to go beyond competition. Therefore someone who makes it to the top, like Osho did, has to be very smart and manipulative. He was a master of double speak. The current thread illustrates very well how good he was at manipulation…he managed to convince most sannyasins that sannyas was not a cult. This is really quite a feat. I can only take my hat off to the man for pulling that one off. Absolutely brilliant.
didn’t jesus have similar problems? Poor chap even got strung up in the end. his disciples, well, what can be said.. and the osho’s sannyasins got problems? those numbskulls in Palestine 2,000 years ago were really basket cases.. just look at the result after their master left this earth.
Yes Jesus had and has the same problem.
Once Paul and Peter got on their organisational and evangelical sexless life attacks, Jesus very, very soon got lost. There may have been a few guys in the desert called Gnostics who were closer to the Source, but even they got involved in monasticism, another blind alley.
Osho was aware of this problem – that is how the original mystic and ecstatic impulse soon got lost. He used to say that he had solved the problem by allowing his “Church” (Rajneeshism) to be created before he died, and then destroyed, never to rise again.
Smart thinking, Batman, but sadly this did not work, and the original face has largely been lost in the strange medley of his successors and organisations.
how on earth can you know that “jesus had the same problem”?
i dont believe that jesus and early christianity was about ecstacy in the sense you have felt it around osho at all…
their ecstacy was the ecstacy of feeling that pain was divine…it was no longer meaningless,that`s why they sought it out in asceticism wherever and however possible.
these guys were masochists big-time…….
and they looked up to jesus in theway that hard-core masochists will admire guys who “go the whole way” and get beaten to death…
like they have done the best group of all!!
Granted that we cant know such things re Jesus as history Frank.
But my preoccupation is not about Jesus. It is clear that there were movements that were associated with a mystical loss of ego (whatever method was employed for that), that have become Churches or organised establishment supporting institutions. Osho clearly wanted to avoid that happening to him, but sadly it has not happened.
i`m not convinced that the “ego to be mystically” lost was actually the same all through the ages.
people and their consciousness were configured differently and seeking different things at different times imv.
to equate the experience of the fisherman in galilee with the 21st century guy in london or the US,is just a faulty idea.
they wanted no sex and a good self-administered thrashing and the desert fathers etc saw straight insanity as in totally losing it, as “divine”
do you fancy a bit of that?
i dont.
they were known to the Romans as “The Cult of the Fish”. this whole suffering and dying on the cross crap and the idea that people need to suffer to attain “paradise” was introduced several centuries later… generally, after the first generation of devotees die off, the essence of the guru disappears and is corrupted by not-so innocent individuals, except of course by the present day sannyasins… for them the corruption happened on an incredibly accelerated rate… they jumped 10 generations in a manner of a decade. Thank the gods for science and technology. Saves a lot of time waiting for the inevitable B.S.
Arpana, I actually went through a very intense period of disillusionment with Osho and his credo. That disillusionment contained disappointment. A lot of holy water has passed under the bridge of sighs since then. Now I just see that the whole sannyas and Osho trip is something I can have a bit of fun with. I remember Osho fondly. He was a great guy and a lot of fun to be around when I knew him.(over thirty years ago) I really can’t take the whole thing seriously, and that is not because I was told that seriousness is a disese by Osho. It simply seems daft to me to get caught up in the enlightenment game. Obviously many still do and hence we have clowns like Swami Rajneesh pandering to peoples’ needs on that level. Good luck to them all. I abandoned the ship of fools a long time ago and am now content to row my own wee boat across the endless waters of life. I never had a problem with sannyas being a cult because it was fun. I also don’t have a problem with people who don’t think sannyas was a cult, because if they really believe that I know I’m wasting my time with an idiot and I can move on quickly to more interesting territory.
Cant disagree with a word of this.
Appreciate the very genuine sounding response.
(Yes, but with that attitude, you’ve blown your chance to enter the 5th dimension on December 12, 2012. When Osho appears over the ocean in flowing white robes emerging from sunset streaked clouds, waving from the driver’s seat of a fifth dimensional holy Rolls, surrounded by surrendered sannyasins blowing trumpets and heralding the coming good, your pitiful soul in its wee boat will be lost at sea).
Lokesh seems to have the right approach. Being bitter about the past is stupid. So is holding it to some glorified standard it never achieved.
Is this aimed at me,cos if it is you’ve taken me to new heights of DHo!!.
yes
its really not worth banging about how you heroically and importantly received the legion d`encounteur for fuckyous rendered to the cause of enlightenment in 1977…
nor is it worth complaining that you got shafted by some dodgy cultmembers when you were too young to know what was what…
all the worlds a stage etc…….
I didn’t get the the legion d`encounteur for fuckyous rendered to the cause of enlightenment till 1979, late at that. !!!
yes,we are all older and wiser now.
but i cant forget what le duc de la rochefoucauld said:
“good advice is what a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example”
During Teertha’s encounter group back in ’77, a big Austrlian gallot tripped on a cushion and accidently gave me a Glasgow kiss on my right eye, which knocked me unconcious. So much for awakening to reality.
http://captions.illmeyer.com/?do=3;152096;SdxFHg
Anthony Thompson caught on recent protest march outside the Irish embassy..
Bitterness about
Fools a long time ago.Now
I’ll iconoclast the wife…..
….Haiku found in ancient 12 century text; ‘ The Chi-Pi-Taike Heiwei ‘
I totally disagree with Anthony Thompson here.
Rajneesh should never have gone to america the first place.
I wish he`d stayed wearing lunghi and nice and simple.
He should not have been allowed to wear expensive watches.Guru`s should never be allowed to enjoy nitrous oxide for more than dental purposes.
Valium should never be pescribed to gurus just for back pain.
I think Rajneesh lost his way when he started allowing himself to be called `Bhagwan` by his followers.
I wish he`d behaved more like Ramana Maharshi or theBuddha.
Doing silly dances and wearing funny hats and clothes,how is that going to help anyone?
hey did someone mention Synanon..its cultic associations and how Veeresh got to be lord and master of a bunch of dependent yea sayers.. all with Osho’s blessing…
oh…Anthony Anthony that photo of yours, which is currently being moderated, shows another side of you…maybe you are free to protest there .. but try protesting at the Humanoidiversity…..
what a surprise to visit this site after such a long time and see my piece still being discussed and revived by Parmartha. A compliment. The piece is actually a small section of an article I wrote some years ago. I was discssing here for some time and I enjoyed it very much. Only Frank remans of those beautiful times. Yes, the discussion and the audience is much better now, martyn, teertha, lokesh great contenders… but I am retired now… just smelling the flowers, no time or energy for it. But I appriciate the invitation, frank… you were always my favorite and I actually missed you when your northern england girlfriend kept you away from the forum.
Sorry for any morphosintactic mystakes… english is still a second language… and no… I am not a sannyasin and certainly not part of the organization.
Good luck to all
Anthony
oooh,i like a bit of flattery…
tony,you are welcome to join my cultless cult anytime…
hasta la vista…….
hello chris…
i wouldn’t complain too harshly, you managed to get a lifetime of regrets out of sannyas.. now where else could you get that for an honest days no-work for an honest days pass…
not only that but you really have got religion badly with some orthodox Xtian-linked stuff last time i saw your blog.. or am i barking up a wrong tree ? or are you just plain barking?
Pune 1…from what i remember you were taken off the instructions for kundalooni because you just kept saying too much and you weren’t neutral in your delivery.. you know the speak your weight machine type intros they used to make every 5pm at meds time..not for you eh?
speaking of which they might work instead of religion for a better vision of reality and who knows it might cheer you up…ask a doctor….try my favourite seekers pharmacy online….buddhasagainstpharmaceuticals.com.uk.net.org
Rajneesh`s skull was too big…that`s why he had such a large consciousness…I,m not complaining about Rajneesh,I just think that sannyasins should know the truth- guru`s shouldn`t be allowed to wear those sort of clothes in my book- he was enlightened but I liked him more as Acharya Rajneesh…
Well, Chris, I always liked you back in the old days…maybe just because I was the official shaker…what a laugh…I’m grining from ear to ear just recalling it.
chris ,
i am really grateful that you have been around to courageously reveal the vital truth about gurus that pretty much everyone else had missed….
that all proper gurus have extra-large craniums and a short ass….
that is just so true…
no need to believe or take anyone elses word for it,check it for yourself,people……..
Thankyou,Frank.
I,m still having nightmares about when Rajneesh left the Woodlands apartment in `74.
Rajneesh should never have been allowed to go to america in the first place.
I say,bring back Acharya Rajneesh.
Mr. Chris or how about Mr. Christ? How’s it in Eugene, Oregon these days? I stumbled upon a couple of “letters to the editor” of yours in the Eugene Weekly rag. i used to live there myself, perhaps we even met unknowingly @ Drum circles, Saturday market, Oregon Country Fair… Eugene suits you, keep up the complaining and dreariness , like the Eugene winter. see u around some time Christ.
Chris, this earth is already burdened many burdenous people. common man, let go of it and leave. Guess no one is going to miss you and alikes.
i cant agree with that prem.
remember
“enemies dont find each other,they are in each other all along”
——frank rumi
I had a number of friends who got into Barry Long, and then some who got into Papaji and Andrew Cohen, etc.
It’s a little strange but true, that Barry and Andrew for example, (and of course only as far as my own reading goes) never got or get attacked for cult creation, etc. And I never saw a follower of Barry for example be attacked for being a member of a cult.
There are also many variants of advaita teaching, but I never saw them being attacked as cults. However they do have many similarities with sannyas.
Can anyone comment? It’s a bit of a mystery to me.
parmartha,
i dont know where you get the idea that no one called andrew cohen for being a cult guy
try the books “american guru” a compilation of ex-disciples abuse stories by william yenner.
and “enlightenment blues”,cant remember the name of the author.
“what enlightenment?” blog
even andrew cohens mum called him. and wrote a book about it,too….
and theres more…
as for barry long,maybe he was just too small-time for people to write books about.i dont know.but there are plenty out there who will file him under “cult”(correct spelling)…..
a lot of the advaita characters have been pilloried too.
gangaji,byron katie etc…
the guruphiliac site…….have you checked that that one out?
Okay Frank, and thanks for the references.
Accept that re Andrew, though he is still big in London, and does not seem to attract much poor press comment.
Barry Long was actually pretty big in the UK, and many used to go to Australia to see him. I figure he was never labeled as a cult person cos he actively discouraged any organisation around him?
It’s true that some of the advaitans attract negative comment, but also quite a number do not, of advaitan/sannyas quality I would include Unmani who gives talks in London sometimes.
its a bit like comparing a sunday league football team to manchester united,tho….isn`t it?
Barry Long was Eckhart Tolle’s main guru although Tolle rarely acknowledges him.
Frank is correct about Andrew Cohen, he’s been heavily attacked from a number of quarters, similar to how Adi Da Samraj (Free John) was pilloried.
Cult accusations are probably proportional to style, materialism, and lack of tradition. Andrew Cohen in teaching style is aggressive and has bruised many egos, and he forged his own tradition (not a traditional advaitin — even his own guru, Poonja, was not very traditional — hell he once put a T.V. complete with a cricket match playing, on the guru’s seat and announced that this was to be the day’s satsang).
There are some Zen masters in Japan who might have been accused of being cult leaders in the West but were protected by the parameters of their established tradition. Osho had all three of the cult biggies — non-traditional, money, and a penchant for bruising egos. And apparently a big skull to boot.
One of the more quirky cult leaders of the 20th century was Edward Wilson (aka ‘Brother Twelve’), an Englishman who ran a ‘mystery school’ near Vancouver BC in the 1920s. He started out as a somewhat traditional teacher influenced by Theosophy and ended up declaring himself the reincarnation of an Egyptian god and some of his followers various deities, including his partner the infamous ‘Madame Z’. He amassed a fortune in gold and then disappeared when the heat got turned up.
Most old myths of ‘gods’ and their fortunes with men are variations of the cultic theme. These myths are acted out in modern times by the cultic leaders we know. The Sumerian Marduk was probably the Osho of his time, Osiris was the Egyptian Krishnamurti, etc. Nothing new going on here.
i belonged to the Barry White cult during the ’70′s— danced my ass off, usually under the influence of ‘ludes, coke, countless number of other depressants and stimulants including liquor… Barry White didn’t have a big skull, just a big voice, along with flashy clothes, watches and doing his “silly dances” and us followers were the ones who were doing the nitrous not him… was that a problem? what say you Chris(t)?
“cant get enough of your love,babe”
was that barry white or barry long?
barry white did have a pretty big cranium didn`t he?
“i love you just the way you are”
pure enwhitenment….
Well,my apostles were never actually labelled as a `cult` when I was alive.It was later,that the Romans labelled my people as a `cult` and used to throw them to the lions.
But then luckily for us,one of the Roman Emperors got into the holy spirit and then my teachings hit the big time.
Praise be unto the holy,father,the son and the holy spirit.
Well, Parmartha, let’s take Papaji for an example. He really was not interested in building a big scene round himself. He was basically saying what he had to impart could be had in a few days. I think that he was surprised to find a couple of hundred seekers gathering around him. He was not in the least interested in changing the world. Had he not been unwell in the last years of his life I don’t think the possibility for people to cling to him would have existed. He was a really liberating force and after the way it all went with Osho it was refreshing to meet a man like that. He was a jovial working class teacher who was content to watch cricket on TV and live off his government pension. A million miles away from Osho on that level, but when you sat with him it was a blast….just like in the early days on Osho’s back porch. So, Parmartha, there was no question of a cult building around Papaji, because there was little about that scene that fitted the criteria for a cult label. The more sannyasins appeared on the scene the more the sannyasins in Lucknow tried to bring elements that had existed around Osho, you know namasteing for a drive by etc. It did not work. The old boy was simply puzzled by it. He did not really know much about Osho.
One thing I might add about the trip with Papaji in the early nineties is this. There was a lack of formality about how things were conducted round the man, a spontaneous vibe that perhaps once exsted around Osho but was almost gone by the time of Rajaneeshpuram. When I first arrived in Lucknow the satsangs made me think this is how it must have been around the Buddha. People actually debated their points and there was none of the daft pomp that existed in Osho’s later years. It is all history now and as Papaji was fond of saying, ‘The past is a graveyard.’
I’ve met a few of the Poonjaji proto enlightened ones. Gangaji is too American in her delivery for my taste, but I see her as a genuine Advaita teacher. As for the rest of em, I’m sorry to say they look like wankers to me.
We live in strange times. People are desperate. When people get desperate they run anywhere they think there is a chance of finding light. There are two main aspects to the self-enquiry gig. Once you get the hang of it you don’t need anyone to hold your hand ….you just go for it. The problem is that at a certain point it is easy to imagine yourself enlightened. Ramana warned aspirants about this. Many of these post Lucknow teachers are stuck there.
Thanks Lokesh. Perhaps it is more important to explore the “desperation” of the times which you mention and the patterning of those who seek escape from it.
I see the human condition as desperate, and one that all human beings have had to confront in all ages, not just this one. It’s tragic that we have to die, and it’s tragic if we could live for ever… this paradox can only be escaped by living outside of time, which is the invitation of the genuine mystics…
you hope!!!
thats the point about xianity.
they saw the hopelessnes of pain and death.
they saw that if you go for the good stuff and pleasure,you will still get pain and death.
(like the bonga bonga joke)
so the solution was,might as well bring on the pain ,the more pain the better….
they thought that solved the problem.they made a big fuss.fooled a lot of suckers into buying it…
but it didnt work…
and it was jesus himself who was responsible for this.
he taught some run of the mill moral law for the crowds and for the hard core it was crucifixion and self-harming here we come…..
the ascetics did not misinterpret jesus message…
it was an attempt to escape what you call the paradox.
but it did not succeed.
“the new man”
remember him?
does not want any part of this failed game.
at least thats how i took osho to be saying….
beating the fuck out of yourself(that`s literal) was a despearate attempt to “escape” the paradox and get out of time…
now we know that we are already outside time as well as in it……
so i dont believe that what we are attempting to do is simply a timeless thing that was the same for all,all down the ages.
so in this way,theres not much to be found by living in the past lane….
The ‘homo novus’ has been in the works for some time. The Rosicrucian manifestos printed in the early 1600s were on about this. The Romantics tried to revive it, the 19th century fin-de-siecle occult societies, Nietzsche, the National Socialists, etc. Crowley’s work was all about that, as was Gurdjieff’s. Then came Wilhelm Reich, Perls, Rogers, and the 60′s human potential movement. I get the sense however that Osho represented a kind of culmination of the attempts, what Terrence McKenna called a ‘failed alchemy’. At present, in the smartphone era where everyone is lost in their private portable TVs and microcosm pixellated universe, I see little evidence of homo novus arising any time soon.
Self-sacrifice was the main value declared finished and abrogate by the era of the New Man, but we seem to be struggling with what to do in its absence. Fear of the unknown and all that.
if more people used condoms there wouldn’t be a question… but despite all the G20 summit meetings not a single condom is handed out with the admonition,’ now don’t go spreading karma….’ frankly if all we are worried about is ourselves then the show would be over in no time…and there would be ever growing silences on a less and less populated planet..but most people especially women go gaga over reproductions of themselves without batting an eyelid as to consequences and significance of this singular event…
traffic jams, queues, the rent, supermarkets .. why oh why don’t people see these images before buying child buggies and prams…
ol’ buddha said in answer to how not to suffer…
‘first of all don’t be born…..’
… and unrepotedly..’the rest gets trickier but here’s several million words to help you sort it out..cheerio..’
but….so as not to end on a duff note..>
Listening to Osho can still put one in a hyper relaxed state..whether one is literally awake or not to hearing the discourses..i often fall asleep to him and wake up feeling radically ‘better’ than before…
so despite my harangues as to the sometime collective sannyas debacle …the energy of his voice may well help more than or as well as any other solution to just being alive…..
there is a part of us which if we happen to be attuned to Osho still may penetrate us even after all these years..which i find utterly amazing..and happy to confirm….in this little wee testamanent to life being more than the sum of its parts…on a good day that is….
..
the rest is just not worth worrying about….
which is why of course people have families.. as all sorts of indemnity.. but most particularly against feeling unresolved, unfound, disempowered,futile, homo patheticus,unwanted and still here…
but enough of my autobiography…
time for some news from yesteryear.. and how online blogging resolves the anonymity of post war social democratic planning of a virtual society anonymised into manageable cells of information instead of human beings in deliberate community…for about an hour a day….
nice….
its true, homo senilius seems to be outstaying his welcome on the planet quite badly.
the old selfharming thing still keeps coming out.
as a couple of examples,look at professional sports for example….
apart from the money,its all about suffering and cruelty,and the actual harm and injuries involved are frightening….
plastic surgery is shame based and those who undergo the knife suffer for their cause in a weird way not completely unlike a modern hairshirt.
reality tv is the modern roman circus where the vistims are not eaten by lions but risk the worst fate of all…humiliation…
i guess the suffering has gone more into the mind in many ways,but the principle is the same…suffer and you ARE someone..
same shit different day,it seems…
homo novus has probably missed his chance.
i would say its definitely time to wheel out homo ludus…..
You’ve got it all wrong…..all the signs, nuclear proliferation, environmental contimination, herald the arrival of Homo Extinctus. We are entering an existential cul-de-sac where we may end up as just another of the Earth’s failed biological experiments. (I stole that last bit from George Carlin)
i hope homo humurus can at least get a bit of a run out before homo extinctus kicks in…..
George Carlin was a Homo Hummorous but unfortunately he evolved into Extinctus and the world is a sadder place without him.
I realise it is fashionable to say the human race is on the road to extinction, but I doubt it really. I mean even if there was a major nuclear war and major environmental catastrophes,there would still hundreds of millions of people left alive.
Those of you friends who were around during Ranch time – if your were intelligent enough, you should have questioned and stopped Sheela from what she was doing. Whats the point in arguing now that Osho also has a normal human side to him. You should have alerted him and helped him with whats happening around him or even corrected him out of love. Love knows no boundaries. You probably are after all kinds of dramas and were ignorant. I was not around, If I were there, I would have done one or the other.
But OF COURSE you’d have done either this or that, Prem, it’s obvious, innit?!
As usual, hindsight’s such a wonderful thing – and I trust you’re thanking Gord within and without for it bringing you SUCH clarity, SUCH wisdom?
PS: Btw, don’t take ‘Chris Calder’ (or evben ‘Jesus Christ’) too seriously here – it’s a spoof. Humour, sir, humour!
Prem, I was around during the time of rajneeshpuram and expressed how I felt about what was going on there by giving it a miss.
Daft people in charge was not exclusive to the ranch. In Poona One we had ‘zen mistresses’. According to Osho they were gates one had to pass through in order to draw close to him. In reality most of those women were grossly overweight with a tendency towards fascism. Standing up and opposing them was out of the question because they were given their power by the man himself.
Watch the ‘Guru’ movie and you will see towards the end that when people claimed that Sheela was going too far Osho responded by saying she was not going far enough. Of course, when the shit hit the fan, he back-peddled but that was quite true to form for him by that time.
Prem, you speeak as if Osho were a victim. Wake up, pal, that is not how it was unless you understand he was a victim of his own devices, something I don’t think you are smart enough to imply. You’ve been conned. Wake up and bleat!
Well, to me “Guru” movie is a fabricated vesrion and one sided ( at least the second half). Even though name says ” Guru” its all about Sheela and Shiva. And then on the otherside, what about Manisha’s version and her trilogy. According to her, Osho and the commune are victimised not only because of external elements but equally because of internal regime.
Prem you are bleating in your sleep. Nobody fabricated Osho’s words because they came out of his mouth. Guru is a good objective documentary. Sheela tried her best, but still looks like she has a few major screws loose in her head, although no flies on her when it comes to making a buck. It is history now…well, Sheela was absolutely right when she said that.
Your problem is that instead of learning from Osho you are using him as a screen to project a perfect image upon and at that you will never succeed, at least as far as people like myself are concerned..
I’m sure Maneesha’s book says this and that, but like myself she is just another sannyasin presenting her version of events long gone.
I’m always open to meeting an enlightened person and digging what they have to impart. But listening to your ignorant rant confirms in my mind that I have no need for some warped version of a perfect big daddy in my life. The view thar enlightenment is beyond reason, allows gurus to undermine reason. This in effect makes the guru feedback-proof, something which lays the ground for simple folks like you to be taken in and explain away even outrageous bullshit, while smugly imagining you are tapped into the truth. It seems to be a stage that many people have to go through. XXX
Seems like Sannyasnews has become the magazine for the people who are making reservations for the nextdoor old people´s home. Show me a single comment from any one which sheds light on the present or future of Sannyas…For few people world has stoped at Rajneeshpuram 1985!
And wonder is these Bhagwan ´s drop outs are commenting about Osho!
Funny, your view. I’ve seen more intelligent and witty thoughts on this board than any other sannyas forum I’m aware of. Arguably this may be the only sannyas forum around that actually has some sort of substantive discussion about Osho/sannyas, that is, one that is fundamentally sympathetic but unafraid to tackle the more difficult issues.
As for ‘old’, well, that’s a given. Pretty much all who took sannyas while Osho was alive are over 40 now, and most are over 50. Probably half are over 60.
All these sannyasins will be gone in a few decades, at which point the biographies about Osho will be written by the historians who gain their knowledge via other books. What you have here, however imperfect or even at times stupid, is a living, breathing commentary on the master by disciples who walked with him on the earth.
Interesting comment; and of course these contributions will one day be seen as source material, primary source material for the gospels according to Swami / Ma whoever. Wow.
Thanks for your comment Teertha. Basically what you say re sannyasnews is what we have always seen ourselves as being about, a take on sannyas of
“one that is fundamentally sympathetic but unafraid to tackle the more difficult issues.”
“those who realise their folly are not true fools”
-chuang tsu
“those who realise they`re cultmembers are not true cultmembers”
–frank tsu
And I dare say you’ve done a very good job. I once ran a busy message board for seven years and I know what a thankless task it can be. Hell you don’t even make minimum wage.
The Internet is a very strange realm — it would have been interesting to hear Osho’s take on it. I see it as a type of Bardo, a dimension full of disembodied souls struggling to make sense to each other. Minus the embodied element it is a great training ground for clear/creative communication, but it is also a dumping ground for unfinished business. A type of wasteland with the occasional gem on a hilltop here and there among valleys of shit and debris.
Yes, and the Book of Arpana is being written now, so look sharp.
Might get noted as some one who said something to Saint Teertha, is all.
(n_n)
yes, unfortunately.
Shantam is back, the same old vinyl stuck record with his agenda full of how to overturn the regime in Poona and replace it with what? Well, nothing too brilliant for sure, but that is not the point…as long as he has something to fight for he’s a happy puppy. He never actually met Osho yet he believes himself capable of maintaining Osho’s legacy, which as far as always having idiots in charge is concerned he is the perfect man for the job. Jai Bhagwan!…as we used to shout in the old days.
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.[1]
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.
An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and by redirecting libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or “projecting,” those same faults onto another person or object.
that’s a projection Arpana….
Lokesh, If I am in sleep, you probably are awake but on something. Sheela and Shiva are in some psychological complexity because whole ( most) commune looks at them at fault. Guru seems to be an effort to somehow show that they are not at fault. Thats all it is. If she is intelligent enough to be around such a loving and genious like Osho, she should have politely objected to what Osho was instructing( if that is true) her to do. She only left the show when things started going southwards..
I was not around when Osho was alive, but I am connected with the whole thing like you and many people, thru his words, videos, pictures, meditation events, friends and books etc. So obviously Manisha or any one presenting the history will have impact on my underatnding. But I look at them as they are and bring my own analysis into it.
One small incident that happened when I was in Poona for a short stay in late 90s. I was taking stroll inside the Ashram, walked past the book store and just tried to continue my way towards the compound where Samadhi is there. All of a sudden someone ( supposedly a volunteer) jumped on my way and says ” you cannot go that way”. Whole thing came as an order or an imposed rule. I starred at him ofcourse not with anger but a with wide question mark ( Osho said ” I dissolve into my people”. I don’t know how you take it, but my eyes have a different quality after years of my connection with Osho). To which the whole body language of that person changed and then he tried to explain something which I do not remember exactly. So my point here is why people did not question? Asking WHY is synonymous to Osho/Rajneesh.
I sometime feel its waste of time to interact with people like you buddy.
Prem, you seem to be out of your depth with what you are talking about. That is in no way a putdown and I don’t need to put people down to make myself feel in some way superior.
You are missing a few major pieces in the Osho puzzle. I really can’t be bothered going into it too much as it is really old hat. Suffice to say that the whole sannyas game was a fantastic experiment. There were some great successes and some tragic failures, which is kind of in the nature of all experimentatation. Osho was the master of ceremonies and his role in what turned out to be a completely mad game brought with it certain responsibilites that he did not have a problem with until things became very serious. Poisoning men women and children is a serious crime and Sheela and her cronies were guilty of it. When things were going great he proclaimed that he knew everything that was going on in his commune and everyone believed him, because they wanted that to be true. (the all-knowing master…great for folks brought up on Paramahansa Yoganada’s epic depictation of Indian gurus) When the serious shit hit the fan…oh dear, he claimed to not know anything about anything and the gullible believed it. You are the gullible type, Prem, probably a ‘nice’ person etc but in the end gullible.
The party faithful claim that everything was a device designed by Osho for our awakening…ultimately this might be true in the greater scheme of things but down here on reality street it is holy bullshit. You come across as someone who wants a perfect master to guide him along the slippery path of life. You are holding the wrong guys hand. Osho might have led you along the path for a while but in the end he would push you off a cliff into the great unknown that we all must face sooner or later. He was more inclined towards sooner rather than later but preferred the here and now if you could handle it.
One of my favorite quotes from Osho concerns him saying, I am not your uncle because I am not nice. Osho wasn’t nice and that was something I really dug about him. You can read as many Osho books as exist in the world but you are mistaken if you think you can get to know him through a book. Osho was all about presence. He was a great man with great love but he was also a outrageous rebel, with bad taste in cars, who certainly wasn’t perfect except in his imperfection. Now people like you come along waving their banner and speaking about Osho like he was a saint. Well he was not a saint…in fact he detested saints.
Lokesh, you definetly seem to be drawing conclusions of your own from your own world which is still struck at Rolls Royce saga. All I am saying is Osho is a spiritual man and he did not have much exposure to the law, enforcement etc. etc. (I am not saying its easy to work with him, like you said he is rebel and could be tough). But at the end of the day, the organisation of the organisation was done by the regime. So its wrong for the people who are at the helm, to blame Osho when things went wrong. It looks childish to me when they say we were dictated by Osho. How can you disown the responsibility and put all the blame on Osho. And you seem to be totally missing this simple point.
And Sheela and cotery missed a great opportunity to tell the truth through “Guru”.
Prem, wise men leave behind what they can’t take with him. See you around.
Much of this boils down to a variation of what Joe Campbell called ‘the supernatural aid’. This was his term for that mysterious support and help that seems to come from some ‘higher source’ that aids us on our journey.
In terms of the modern seeker, the ‘supernatural aid’ essentially takes the form of the guru. Our entire history is based on cultural myths in which this ‘supernatural aid’ is beyond our ken, and in many cases, is a being that is understood to be ‘perfect’ or at the very least, beyond reproach or criticism. In fact, to oppose or critique this being could easily result in death. It is this ancient cultural conditioning that often lies behind a disciple fearing to critically assess his own tradition. Gurdjieff was on to this when he made one of the main aphorisms of his community, written on the wall at the Prieure, ‘if you have not by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless’.
Osho of course went to some lengths to attempt to dissociate himself from this ideal of the perfected supernatural aid, even toward the end of his life insisting that he had no followers, only friends. He was trying, at least, to bring some maturity into the whole guru-disciple set up. But the problem lies mostly in the mind of the disciple who insists on seeing his/her guru as perfected. Osho’s regal and elegant bearing made this all the more tempting — I’ve often said, in terms of style, he was no ‘Zorba the Buddha’, he was more a royal Buddha. But he was also a wild and crazy guy and his imperfections are what made him human. This last part is essential because without it we simply replace the old gods with their threats and floods and thunderbolts (Osiris, Yahweh, Zeus, Odin etc.) with the modern guru, and remain fearful, stunted, and stupid as a disciple.
Teertha…spot on. In other words, concise and informative.
when sannyasnews becomes,as it inevitably will, the unholy gnoshtic reference text par excellence,(in the heyday of neo-neo-neo-neo sannyas,in 200 years time, as osho predicted)….
…i would like to be remembered as st francis of oshisi, the magus who famously conversed with his ass…….
and all due credit to
big al the magick…
st george the rascal…
osh the gasssss….
and the multi-coloured rogue brother and sisterhood….
chariveti chariveti
keep on keepin on…..
Lokesh only claim to fame is that he met Osho Aka Bhagwan Shree, when the master was in the process of first delivery to the export market, and once the business started growing, people like Lokesh simply left the arena. After all, personal attention of the Daddy was not available any more.
Bascially the myth that a personal guru is very important is shrded to pieces by the first generation Osho disciples. I cannot see a single trait where they prove better then the average sannyasin or even the world around them.
Seems like any kind of short cut makes the path long!
blunt arrows shot with antiquated metaphors.. that’s shantam for you…
Shantam, your blunt arrow comment is so off target it does not even warrant a response, other than to inform you that is the case.