Bigger lies are needed – Osho
Many people seem confused around the subject of “Lying, Osho and Sannyas.”. Osho was, as has been said in a few places, but clearly not enough, an “energetic” phenomenon.
Because he spoke a lot, even Indians sometimes call him a philosopher, especially as his training was in philosophy, and hence concentrate on his words, like a student of philosophy concentrates on Kant. Now Kant was a good puritan, and thought you should never tell a lie. However when he thought about it real hard he did say in a very few cases lying could be justified, for example when it saved someone’s life. So even with him things were not totally black and white.
Moses seems to also have had a problem. He was clear in the decalogue that people should not steal, etc, but when it came to lying, he just choose one species of lying, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour”….
maybe the Patriarch could see lying could not be the subject of a universal law.
I myself have never bothered to look much at Christopher Calder’s stuff on Osho. I know he was always on about Osho lying, but in my book “living a lie” is a bit different from telling porkies. Calder had once been a devotee, and a devotee turned has the venom of a snake.
To reach the place where we could just sit with Osho in silence, a lot of our own mental fabric has to be jettisoned. Some of that for those of us from the west was ingrained with a binary perspective, good and bad, truth and lying, love and hate, etc. My feeling is that critics of an Indian teacher like Osho never let go of that binary stuff.
Osho himself said it clearly in 1976:…
I am not here to give you the truth. Nobody can give you the truth. Truth you already have, but somehow you have tricked yourself into lies. Now you will need bigger, stronger lies to crush your lies. All philosophies are lies, devices, to help you to come out of your lies.
Osho./ The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2/ Chapter #2/ Chapter title: Happy for no reason
Parmartha with thanks to Arpana for the stimulus
Well said.All philosophies are lies, devices, to help you to come out of your lies.
Than there will be the ones who get the joke,and the ones who don’t.. Those last ones become the catholic sannyasin.Worst idiots you can think of.
wow,thats is a big one.
freddie neitzsche spent a long time on this one,and osho spent a lot of time reading those(favourite) books of his.
freddie said that truth doesnt exist as an absolute value,but rather,the criterion of truth can only be how life-promoting a particular idea or thing is…
here`s an example.
if your wife/girlfriend tries on a new dress and asks you “does my bum looks big in this?”
you can,if you are some kind of literal-minded puritan,tell her “the truth”but you`ll end up having a miserable life!!
tell her its fine,it all fits perfectly,even if it all looks a bit wobbly,then you`ve made her happy, your dinner stays out of the bin and you have a happy life.
its like osho and buddha both said:”truth is what works”
mankinds “success” has been largely due to lying,deceit and trickery.
for example,thats how we got to eat all the animals that were much bigger, stronger and had much sharper teeth than us…
we conned them into falling into traps…
all art and drama is essentially lying…
that is,is creates an art-ificial world that does not have to be validated in the same terms as everyday reality.
the fabrication of a sequence of words or colours may not relate to the literal truth of any known thing,yet you may cry laugh,get angry,get enlightened etc…..
isnt that what osho meant?
he was saying….the scripts and dramas that you are acting out are crap.
i`m going to give you some better ones…
here,try these for size…..occult societies running the world,enlightenment,the chosen few,utopian living,relationship freedom,eternal bliss,the ultimate high etc etc …have a go at these,and see how you get on……
when you find out which are useful and which are not,you can know which are “truth” and which are “lies”……
FN is not right, because truth is absolute. Truth for me is a permanent presence, only self realizing is missing. Osho said about FN, he did not know Meditation, maybe he got a little stuck at the peripheries.
‘because truth is absolute’
isnt it your personal assesment hence relative
This is the tragedy which has gripped the osho work , mentally puritans grown up in a day to day factual truths have taken control over the work.
such people will die out of guilt,if they propagate , osho’s intense energy presence in Pune ashram.
such things come very close to belief, very close to the saying,” beauty lies in beholder’s eyes.”
So their puritian western mind says factual things. Come meditate in clean enviornment.
It sounds like, telling someone in LA, come to Milan for a real Italian Pizza!
Many times, so called right minded truth, simply kills the truth; the mystical truth.
ö
Nothing wrong with a lie if it works….Osho’s intense energy presence in Pune ashram, for example, might be believed by some to good ends. Is the world a hologram? Was Osho’s work about fixing his presence to a geographical spot? I doubt it.
Some of that for those of us from the west was ingrained with a binary perspective….I am sure that is possible but I honestly could not count myself in on such a limited perspective and I’m sure many early sannyasins coming from an altered states background could not either.
Christopher Calder…well, hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn. The man did his bit and I’m quite sure he will have paid the price in one form or another and I don’t mean that in a negative way. I still have to chuckle when I think of the alter-ego I created, ‘Anita’, and how he used her comments to make a point on his ‘tells it all pages’. You see, nothing wrong with a lie if it works. The trick is to keep your energy up when delivering a whopper. A sensitive person soon picks up on the energy drop displayed by a poor liar.
You are right Lokesh. In 1974/75 this would not have been the case, and also when I was first there at that time. However when I returned to Poona one in 1978 there were many from the west who certainly were not psychedelic people. And even more so in 1979. I think there were many binary types by that time, and it has given them a lot of problems, both then and now. Look for example at regular respected contributor, Alok John, has he really moved, even now, from a binary focus…
Em…erm..that is a very good point Parmartha. But I somehow wonder if Alok might be in disagreement with that.
Pray tell me what a binary focus is.
It is when a person focuses on life and its happenings in a binary way.
Elucidate please.
i have heard:
there are 10 types of people in the world.
those who understand binary.
and those who dont.
Lokesh wrote : “Nothing wrong with a lie if it works.”
You sure? I remember a Mr H who wanted to become chancellor of Germany. He lied “Germany lost WW1 because of the Jews. The Jews are responsible for all Germany’s problem.” His lie worked. He became Chancellor. Nothing wrong with this???
Gee whizz and here’s me thinking he was telling the truth. Thanks for the update. Keep me posted if the situation worsens.
Sometimes I have to say things in such an exaggerated way that it is not
true to fact, because only if I exaggerated will things come to the surface, otherwise not. So I’m not much concerned about facts, but I am much concerned about transforming you. If I feel sometimes that a lie is going to help, I can be a liar– I don’t worry about it.
OSHO
At the Feet of The Master.
me too…
“dont worry,be dodgy”
This whole truth versus lie schtick is a bit like the Spy Vs Py cartoon in Mad Magazine. Always failing to blow oneanother up. If a lie does the trick then fair play. Mrs Ananto would have shown me the door years ago had I always told the truth cos just now and then her bum really did look big in that.. Opposite to truth isn’t a lie,it’s an even greater truth.
Hi everyone
Swami Prem Ananto
God is a fiction but Enlighenment is truth, thus started a new advertisement campaign targeting the educated, prosperous and clever!
Are all Lies of the same significance or do they need be distinguished?
If my Girlfriend is having a date with a charming Italian and telling she is for a Meeting. Or if that lie has greater Impact on Humanity. Absolute don’t want to raise a question about climate situation, just an example. It’s quite possible that the common Information about the Situation is a big Lie for making big money and keeping the people bent within their money machine scheme.
But if the people in power are taking away the natural freedom by lies with a network of intrigues and putting instead the truth – a lie, it is an conspiracy.
Another example for a bigger lie. If we forced by violence, believing finding God only within Temples if humble enough. With humility do your physical work, for bringing money oblations to get Gods respect. Is that a wrong oblation and not out of free will. All is caused by lies, base motives and their will of dominating others.
To me the issue is whether seekers lie to themselves. Masters like Osho need to wake disciples up to that. That’s what the encounter groups were about at their best, and what Osho was up to sometimes at darshan, and in the discourses.
The way we handle the world seems much less an issue to me. Clearly if a terrorist asks me where some innocent is hiding, I might well lie, even if he is pointing a gun at me, to avoid innocent people getting shot.
Just as Moses emphasised almost a legal approach to lying by restricting his edict to bearing false witness. These are just social rules which at their best avoid injustices occurring.
But the Master and disciple are in a different place. Even that you seem to exist to oneself as an individual is “a lie”, and the Master certainly is doing his job if he challenges this by whatever means.
well,this is what freddie meant when he said
“i am not a man,i am dynamite”
ok,it sounds like the sort of pronouncement you might expect from a guy twiddling his oversized walrus moustache and quaffing a decent amount of an “inspecified javanese brew supplied by a mysterious dutchman from amsterdam..”
but the point is…
once truth is accepted as relative and not absolute….the individual finds herself at odds with the “herd”,which is for the idea of fixed values…..
the whole structure of morality and “rightness” comes into question ,and now ready for what he called
“a complete revaluation of all values….”
that is,the shit hits the fan…
do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law…
expect some collateral damage….
ie the 20th century,for a start…
final destination global suicide or…..?
preetam has a point.
what about sheela,for example?
she was the mouthpiece of many of those lies that were for our benefit and enlightenment once…
these days….shes still got the habit..
but who feels that those are enlightening lies,now?
and parmartha…
no wonder moses didnt condemn lying per se in the OT.
….”i was just up the mountain burning a bit of bush,like, and then god comes out of the sky and gives me these tablets and says….”
er…yeah,right,mo…….
No idea about if Osho was lying, not to me… but whatever Sh..la was or claimed to be, for me from the first moment an unacceptable person.
p.s: but FN’s vision of Truth is indifferent, hypothetical and puts existence into question, it leaves confusion where serenity is. He opens doors for any kind of occult, mystic lies and fantastic ideas about world domination and superhuman. Sure he has Ego too and it needs food? Yes, western Mind is materialistic and misses often beauty, poetic, devotion of Meditation. For us westerners even Meditation seems material, New Age gets lots of money out of nothingness and relative Truth. As I see, Relative Truth amnestied every lie in the first place.
Are you sure about that? Osho gave you the name Preetam and that generallymeans “loveable and trustworthy.” I don’t find you loveable or trustworthy. So don’t ask me to lend you money.
But the Master and disciple are in a different place….
Parmartha, how to convince the elders at home that this place is not the same where masters were hiding the slaves?
“Come on, Charlie come on…Come on Dorothy, come on…this inner voice was disturbing the meditation, once it became clear that master is no more and that different place is like another place”
aha! but what about the place where the slaves were hiding when the inner voice was disturbing puritan whiteskin dorothy who is killing mystical truth and saying to charlie, “the master has gone to another place and that other place is also another place but different from the other different place”?
Awww, that place. Now I get it. Amazing how things fall into place.
“lying is universal,we all must do it.the wise thing is for us to train ourselves diligently,thoughtfully,judiciously,to lie with good object and not an evil one;to lie for others advantage and not our own,to lie healingly,charitably,humanely,not cruelly,hurtfully,maliciously,to lie graciously,not awkwardly and clumsily,to lie firmly,frankly,squarely,with head erect,not tortuously,with pusillanimous mien,as if ashamed of our high calling”
–mark twain
Like his contemporaries Bros. Rudyard Kipling and Conan Doyle, Mark Twain was also a Freemason, and, like them, Twain occasionally placed allusions to Freemasonry in his works, particularly in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy.”
Source: http://srjarchives.tripod.com/1997-03/chabot.htm
Really sorry for it, but for me it’s absolutely remarkable, if looking for truth and lies. At all essential Positions in Human History and Present, anywhere where great influence on Humanity’s growth can be taken, is the Freemasonry not far with their hypocritical pack of lies. Even story-tellers are Masons, not only Monarchs, Politicians, Militaries, Health Professional, Bankers, and Religious people. That is what I call a big lie that became a conspiracy.
Just hypothetical, if the money what was raised through Laxmi’s contacts, to stop Osho travelling, possibly came from the same source. Maybe now it goes back after the controlled explosion of Truth.
very interesting
but how many freemasons does it take to change a lightbulb?
Roughly 100, Frank – 1 to do the changing, the rest to keep the conspiracy theorists happy….
From Osho Commune to Osho Resort is one such lie,which is propagated not out of compassion but out of pre-emptive strike to make the position of two Western disciples secured, in case Indian mind play dirty tricks to make them unimportant.
To deal with the present lies can be quite a dangerous job, it can shake the comfortable equations,,,so like every self-protective instinct in every creature, let us keep our self engaged wíth Jesus and Judas, Bhagwan and Sheela!
ha! very dangerous job confronting mendacity of whiteskin terrorist hi-jackers of air-oshoindia religious flights from samsara to nirvana at the pune airport.
indian minds can play dirty tricks by also using nasty tactics by putting semtex in holy chuddies with oshos name and detonating in the indian parliament….then saying, see…the whiteskin western disciples have made us do it,it is their responsibility!
A few comments on the topic:
Art is indeed based on trickery/deceit, but science is based largely on truth. A truth that may be overthrown, yes (and commonly is), but the intent is to uncover things ‘as they are’.
Osho as an ‘energetic phenomenon’. What does that really mean? That in his presence we feel good? (Or ‘activated’, etc.).
This word ‘energy’ gets bandied about by many in more modern growth schools of thought, but it is a tenuous subject at best. Even science barely grasps what ‘energy’ actually is. The argument has been put forth that consciousness is actually energy, but there is no actual evidence for this.
The only thing that seems indisputable is that we perceive *appearances* of things. But we have no proof that the thing in itself exists, apart from our perception of it. We know our perceptions, our subjective experience, but what else, truly?
Was Osho doing some ‘magic energetic experience’ on us? I don’t think so. I think the power of relating to a guru lies entirely in one’s view of him. See him (and believe in him) as great, and your experience will accordingly be great. See him as nothing, or as a fraud, etc., and there will be no significant experience. (As Christ is alleged to have said, ‘he who has ears to hear, let him hear…’).
Osho’s great power seem to lay in his ability to provoke people, and to speak with confidence. That is, at some level he was communicating certain universal truths, and he did so in a fashion that impacted many. These ‘truths’ spoke to people, because they addressed something that at some instinctual level we all suspect is true. He certainly wasn’t the only one doing that, however. But he did do it with remarkable style. His apparent lies were simply part of his charisma. That is, he presented the possibility that one could be both very wise, and very human. That idea is a relief to most people.
You said.
Art is indeed based on trickery/deceit
+++++++++++++++++
What are you talking about.
I’ve painted every day for years.
I’ve not even considered this before, but my art is about the opposite if its about anything.
Arpana — I was responding to Frank’s post above where he made the comment that ‘all art and drama is essentially lying’. Your painting is your representation of reality, a dramatic performance (like theatre) is storytelling (someone’s fantasy), etc. The point is, such ‘trickery and deceit’ can be fun, beautiful, provocative, etc. In other words, truth does not have an exclusive hold on beauty or fun. A falsehood can be as instructive as a truth, and often more so.
Take a van Gogh painting, as an easy example. His stars do not look like the stars above our heads at night. They are his stars, from his mind. In terms of the stars we collectively perceive above our heads, they are a falsehood. But his paintings also sell for millions of dollars, so clearly they are valued.
I dont actually agree that the Van Gogh stars are a falsehood. They are as truthful as he is capable of making them, just like any statement made by anyone who is sincere
The only objective statement its possible to make is their is no such thing as objectivity.
please enllighten us what you actually mean by that
you said ‘they are truthful as he is….’
thats the point “he is” but not everybody
van gogh sees a star at night…his mind applies its personal perceptions and he draws it on the paper…way different from the original one
or for that matter consider a rohrsbach? test…different people see different stuffs in it..it is ‘their personal truth’ which is different from rest of us
Arpana, you wrote:
‘The only objective statement it’s possible to make is their is no such thing as objectivity.’
Given that you just said ‘the only objective statement it’s possible to make…’, that would seem to imply that objectivity *is* possible. That, in turn, seems to render the second part of your sentence wrong.
As for the rest, the main point is something like this:
1. Absolute truth is possible. (For example, 1+1=2).
2. Subjective distortion is not only possible, but commonplace.
3. Subjective distortion, within the realm of human existence, can go a long way. It can even be more impressive (fun, appealing, attractive, etc.) than objective truth. (Gurdjieff was getting at this in his teachings on ‘Objective Art’ vs. ‘subjective art’).
As an interesting comment on all this, behold Captain Picard’s famous ‘there are only 4 lights’ scene with the Cardassian commander — a play off of Orwell’s ‘Room 101′ scene. (And a brilliant example of two great English actors, Warner and Stewart, having great fun):
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
‘The only objective statement it’s possible to make is their is no such thing as objectivity.’
Given that you just said ‘the only objective statement it’s possible to make…’, that would seem to imply that objectivity *is* possible. That, in turn, seems to render the second part of your sentence wrong.
Give me a break. Do you think I dont know that.!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect
Now that the last word game has kicked in!!!!!
Objectivity. Subjectivity.
it seems to me one of his abilities was to give a unique, deep,and yet simple answer to questions regarding every aspect of spirituality, religion and psychology, basically everything a seeker of that time (70-80-90) could come across (from books mainly, and for some by direct experience, like people who have done other kinds of meditations or had experience with psychedelics or humanistic psychology) he gives a description of what it’s all about, taking off all the religious-devotional stuff and giving suggestions on how to make it bette ,for the “man of today”. There is a difference between a syncretism that is basical putting every kind of stuff picked up here and there and just mixing it in New Age soup,and putting things in a way that makes sense together in the biggest picture. He experimented with his sannyasins and chose what worked better and faster. The whole story was basically a big experiment, he said it many times. If you take only his words, without considering the experiences of the sannyasins, you are missing the results of the experiment.
Teertha I am open to discussion but I always took energetic as a word I use in English for Shaktipat in Sanskrit.
Shaktipat refers in Hinduism to the conferring of spiritual “energy” by one person on another.
It is considered an act of grace and its reception cannot be forced.
It depends on the receptivity of the disciple. It is commonly held that Shaktipat can be transmitted in person or at a distance.
When I was open around Osho’s physical presence, (which was not always by any means) I certainly experienced a dissolving of normal consciousness and ego, and a totally centered bliss, which was not at all concerned about what he may have been speaking about, or anything like that. It actually felt primordial.
Once after darshan (third eye contact with the finger) I could not sleep at all, all night, but did not feel anxious or anything like that, and can remember the dawn as a wonderful stillness. I felt in touch with what I figure mysticism is all about. It is a tad psychedelic!
Is that meaning okay for you?
Parmartha, over the years I’ve come to question the whole nature of ‘shaktipat’ energy, and related phenomena. Experientially I’ve been well acquainted with such things — in fact, what got me ‘on the path’, and drawn to Osho at a young age (I was 23 when I took sannyas in the early 80s), was energy phenomena like kundalini and shaktipat. And my sannyas initiation, though done via a medium (not Osho), was extremely powerful, and sent me home in bliss for several days after.
But over the past three decades, as I’ve looked further into the matter, I’ve become more convinced that all displays of energy are insubstantial, given to change, and unable to have any effect on the formless core of what we are. They are, in effect, ‘light and shadows’ and entirely related to perspective as it generated by consciousness.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t or don’t enjoy the show — I do, and by no means feel ‘finished’ with it, which leads me to suspect that if reincarnation is true, I’ll be returning. But I believe that the gig is up for me. The rest is integration, although I have no idea how long that takes.
Intelligence is born out of ignorance, but it is not separate. While you all bicker about whether a lie is okay, or how art and drama is a lie. You seem to forget that intelligence itself is a manipulation of truth. Truth is ignorance. Raw and untamed like the salty ocean. Respect truth like you respect the sea, and never turn your back on it. You may get away with your manipulations and never get caught. So, then. won’t you be proud on your death bed, that you willingly helped to manipulate and deceive others through trickery? Brutal honesty is on the other side of course. You simply can’t go around pointing out the truth, especially if it’s ugly, and it usually is fairly raw. Humor is key to making light of otherwise serious subjects, and once again there are exceptions. For instance some people are intensely literal, and must be in the correct mood for humor, or it will have the opposite effect. Sometimes even the best intentions can come with insurmountable obstacles. Your inner state of being is not fixed by any means, and neither is the external world. This creates a rich environment for a multitude of experiences to manifest, without a set pattern, a.k.a. mystery. There is no need to fabricate falsehoods because as they say “you couldn’t make this stuff up.”