Comments on: Osho and the Second Secretary

By: rich

rich — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:29:13 +0000

he came out everyday except for one day while i lived there(over one year), that was due to the immigration chief visiting the town mall. but sheela’s people went around saying that he was ill.. We just laughed when one ma told us that.

By: roman

roman — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:43:06 +0000

Teertha,
Wordsworth Press have brought out the complete collection of Crowley’s Short Stories which they say are apparently long overdue. Wordsworth speaks for itself. So no doubt the guy could write. I haven’t read any.

By: roman

roman — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:37:41 +0000

Teertha,
The comments are touching and thanks for the comments about the obscure mystics. Maneesha points out how she went through his library to find these guys. A very close friend of mine, Satish, who was a very good poet and died in Poona in 1992 had a wonderful library of these obscure zen poets which he left my partner and I.
She also ran an esoteric bookshop back in those days and she would order every one of those characters. Those discourses in 1988/9 were pretty amazing. I’d been into Gary Snyder and others centuries ago but Osho bought me back to them and ones I hadn’t heard of. The early publications of Hackett, Stryk and Anne Walderman ( Director of Poetics at Naropa Instute) are wonderful to have on the shelves. I’ve got an old tape of Anne Walderman chanting ‘Fast Speakin Woman’ which I love. And what to say about Tuttle Press?
Douglas Stewart, a well known Australian poet, spent many years living in Kyoto where he eventually died. His doors were always open. His Net of Fireflies by Tuttle is beautifully designed and full of wisdom. Thomas Merton also jumps to mind.

By: Teertha

Teertha — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:48:36 +0000

Last week my girlfriend and I attended a Gnostic Mass, Crowley’s version the Catholic Mass. Far from being some sort of devil-worshipping affair, it is a lovely, poetic ceremony that involves a mystical validation of the divine feminine and divine masculine. Osho’s work was ultimately about an attempt to exalt what is best in both men and women, get us beyond our neurotic, self-absorbed needs in relationship, and aspire to something higher that is beyond all the nonsense. It was not much different from the alchemy (inner marriage) and tantra as taught in the western esoteric traditions. The Pune resort is the Church, the meditations (Dynamic, Kundalini, etc.) are the “Masses”, the therapists are the priesthood, the seekers in maroon robes are the congregation. Crowley’s people took Latin names, we took Sanskrit names.

Gurdjieff also gave names, incidentally, only they were less flattering — he called his students by the names of animals. One of his women students he called a boa-constrictor, another a crocodile. Ouspensky he called “Mr. Wraps-Up-The-Thought”, a comment on his need to resolve thing intellectually as quickly as possible. The Sacred Dances were their version of a Mass, etc.

By: Teertha

Teertha — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:34:01 +0000

The best Gurdjieff biogs appeared roughly between 30-50 years after his passing (Bennett’s “Making a New World”, and Moore’s “Gurdjieff: Anatomy of a Myth”, and Patterson’s works). It takes around that amount of time to properly evaluated a master of that scope. In that sense, no surprise about the lack of comprehensive Osho biogs up to now. A generation or two seems needed to gain sufficient perspective. Too close prevents clarity as much as being too far away, and that seems to apply to time as well.

By: Teertha

Teertha — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:29:34 +0000

Thank you Arpana. This will go under the section The Book of Arpana and Related Acts, in the forthcoming Holy Rolls Scriptures.

By: Teertha

Teertha — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:10:15 +0000

Not to re-flog an old horse, but in point of fact Osho did have a few positive things to say about Crowley. Scroll to page 122 of the following darshan diary:

http://www.livingworkshop.net/PDF-files/dd-The_Buddha_Disease.pdf

I found these comments of Osho’s touching, actually, because as much as anything they reveal the scope of his mind, and his penchant for flushing out obscure mystics and shining a light on their redeeming qualities. (Look what he did with all those obscure Chinese Zen mystics during those incessant Zen lectures of 1988-89). As for Crowley, he was in my opinion a sort of English Edwardian-era precursor of Osho (his whole teaching was ultimately about rescuing the sanctity of the individual from 2,000 years of self-sacrificing Judeo-Christian programming, a sort of blend of Nietzsche and esoteric practices). Imagine Osho trying to teach about sex as a means of conscious liberation (as Crowley did) in a repressive pre-1940s British India, and imagine him not being maligned (far worse than he was in the late 1960s) or strung up on a tree. Social context amounts to quite a bit, and accordingly colors future reputation. The Bible paints Simon Magus as bad not because he practiced magic, but because, essentially, he wasn’t Jesus — but what he was doing was uncomfortably close to what Jesus was supposedly doing (walking on water, raising the dead, etc. — i.e., magic).

By: Lokesh

Lokesh — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:18:38 +0000

Crowley was a powerful figure for me during the late sixties in that he was a ‘head’ of his time. Since then I have found what I believe are a lot better men and women to look to as some kind of guiding light if I find myself needing one.

By: Lokesh

Lokesh — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:14:03 +0000

I never visited the ranch. I was undergoing a rude awakening from the sannyas dream. It was a dificult time but in retrospect I am glad that I woke up to certain aspects of the sannyas way that were stunting my growth.

By: Arpana

Arpana — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:53:41 +0000

and inconsistencies.

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