I trust introjection. Everything I’ve seen up to now has been ok.

SD:
You are where your mind is? Shouldn’t that be ‘You are where your body is’ and ‘You’re just dreaming, unconscious, if you mentally drift off anywhere else’?

Sure, there are “more parameters at play”, but I remain convinced that whatever positives are involved in post-Osho-alive sannyasin group gatherings, there’s a general, pretty well tangible wish in the air for drama, excitement, one might say ‘emotionally dramatic experience’, which I suggest inevitably leads to people creating scenarios of so-called ‘craziness’, freak-outs etc., then wrongly labelling them ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘psychic’.

Apart from the point that the first is positive and other negative … the way I feel that it works is that it operates on the level that you are better off sitting in the office thinking about the beach than being on the beach and thinking about the office. You are where your mind is. The ‘Buddhafield Effect’ is an event which occurs when the body and the mind are the same place (for a period). Now, you may wish to call that “a group-induced hysteria” but I am sure you can see that there more parameters at play. I’d say that it works closer to the phenomenon of stigmata, but without the stigmata.

Although I’m still uneasy about the ‘going crazy’ taking sannyas from Arun story. Such phenomena remind me of the various psycho-physical disturbances that happen to people undergoing so-called ‘faith healing’ in certain allegedly Christian groups in the US, brilliantly highlighted by Derren Brown and his team in a recent UK tv documentary.

Brown and a couple of other acting (etc.) experts trained a man from scratch to act like a ‘healing minister’ and sure enough, dramatic effects followed his emotionally-charged ministrations among a group of fairly desperate (it seemed) believers.

As I said, never underestimate the power of the emotionally hyped mind, esp among a suggestible crowd of like mentality, only too eager for a bit of drama to ‘prove’ ‘divine intervention’.

You might call it the ‘Buddhafield Effect’, Vartan, others might feel it’s closer to a sort of group-induced hysteria.

Some might say, ‘Yes, but the same sort of stuff happened around Osho in similar circumstances, so it must be authentic, it must ‘mean something’.

Far more chance of that being so around the true Master, and far greater chance of self-deluding fakery – at some level, not necessarily totally conscious – without that consciousness presiding over the scene.

One is real, the other (and I’m not referring to Arun himself here) a copy (along rather similar lines to Osho and his would-be clone, ‘Osho Rajneesh’).

I have been to several of Arun’s weekends, and once he told the story of his first meeting with Osho. He obviously loves/loved the Olde Boy.

Swami Arun telling the story about his first meeting with Osho is second to none …

Imagine … in twenty to thirty years there will be nobody left who met Him …

Why not of Life, the Divine, Spirit, whatever you want to call It?

Bringing Osho into it brings in the ‘psychic’ element, it sort of muddies the waters…

This is exactly how religions are born, isn’t it? Well-meaning, 100% sincere people wanting to keep things as they were when the original Master was alive – rituals, ceremonies, now even a certain ‘channelling’ element.

All run by ‘priests’ who can’t stand alone and so lack spiritual power.

No doubt plenty of good stuff goes on, but let’s see it for what it is, a sort of ‘copy’ of what was once truly vibrantly alive.

As for: “As for the not so sane, who cares?”, well, may I remind you Osho himself used to say he was the guru for “the crazies”…