Ouspensky wrote in 1916 that
“I had seen two enormous lorries on a Moscow street loaded to the height of the first floor of the houses full of unpainted wooden crutches. I was overwhelmed by the sight of those lorries. In those mountains of crutches for legs which were not yet torn off there was contained a painful and cynical mockery of everything that civilisation was supposed to stand for. ”
He took his experience of this horror to Gurdjieff and his group (of which he was a part and where they were working on themselves in the latter part of the First World War. )
Gurdjieff’s answer was starling to the attendees
“What do you expect? People are machines. Machines are blind and unconscious …. all their actions simply correspond with their nature – that of being a machine. … and the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in these unconscious machines lies the origin of all evil… ”
Wooden Crutches are quite visible.
Crutches made with paper one can breathe faster, walk faster on the grounds of Hyde Park!
MODS, what is this supposed to mean?
Beats me.
MOD: PRESUMABLY, HE’S HAVING A GO AT PEOPLE WHOM HE THINKS USE WRITTEN WORDS (on “paper”) AS “crutches”?
I told you he needs to see a shrink!
I know many people on this blog will make even shrink mad. This is always the intrinsic quality of the pandits (syn. Brahmins, scholars, bookworms).
Are you one such, Mr. John?
Another laughably inapposite comment, Shantam, particularly so in view of the often careless, rambling nature of your own posts, getting facts wrong etc. (not to mention how you consistently refuse to answer questions, more instances of which have occurred in the last week or so).
The fact is, you could learn a lot from people’s responses here, not only their content but how they’re written – and how, for the most part, replies are made to others’ points, arguments and queries. That’s the essence of an online blog, isn’t it? Or, do you think it’s simply somewhere convenient for you, for example, to repeatedly ‘sound off’ about your pet opinions (and to hell with everyone else)?
Whatever you imagine yourself to be, this place would be a lot better off without the sort of gratuitous rubbish you like to perpetrate here, as in your latest post.
Yet behind that thick-skinned façade of yours, I suspect you’re suffering from an inferiority complex in the face of several well-read, articulate regular contributors at SN, who have also ‘been around the block’, in and out of sannyas, and are well prepared through their life experience to see through your silly posturing.
It would seem you know you can’t ‘compete’ so your sole recourse is to put a pejorative label on them (eg “Brahmins, scholars, bookworms”) calling them inappropriate names, similar, in principle, to the behaviour of a kid in a playground. Transparent, self-defensive nonsense (as usual).
These were the times, friends, historically of the first world war. There was an interregnum to summon up madness for world war two.
Interregnum is that kind of peace in-between which can be called war by other means…
It is the case that very often there are shielded and invisible ways as a result of robotics (and crutches of this kind).
They inhabit our daily life, bringing up new fields of unconsciousness and dependencies, where we give up the responsibility for a consciousness.
A Mr G and Mr O – discussed here – have been spiritual giants to deal with this at that time!
Thank you, Arpana, for posting some nuggets of Osho in the other string about Ouspensky – I remember Osho talking like this.
It is up to us, I would say, to take on the immense work involved in overcoming robotics, both by way of thinking and behaving.
In addition to work on the business of not becoming fanatical through this work or crude or sometimes cruel too (elitist thinking..).
And by way of further addition to draw attention to the huge amount of deceptional drugs which are available on the market(s) including so-called spiritual markets which can give us the delusion we have arrived somewhere…
As I remember reading Bodhi Vartan’s post last week, and not only one,
he said the enormity of the amount of Osho’s lectures keeps him stunned and in awe.
I feel that too.
I also want to share again that some of the hard core Mr. G. and Mr O. followers
(and I don’t mean Amiyo and her friends!) but others I met on some caravanserai trails
simply make me shudder and I feel cold inside.
Good morning, friends.
Madhu
(THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED AND SHORTENED TO TRY AND MAKE THE MEANING CLEARER, ETC. – MOD)
Maybe, Madhu, what you miss is that Gurdjieff is saying even his inner circle are sleeping robots, and soul-less.
Osho must have looked, and at an esoteric level still looks at us in that way.
Did you watch the programme called ‘Generation’ on German TV?
It is very good, covering the journey of five friends from 1941 to 1945, mainly on parts of the Eastern Front. It has just been on BBC 2. It raises a lot of questions for everyone.
Words on the papers…as seductive as the art of love-making in teeny magazines.
People need to go the shrink who live in the ashes of the past and that too, other people´s ashes.
Has Osho said something like, “My words are my disciples”?
Looks like Mr G is still haunting SN readers.
Fortunate indeed that we don’t live in war-ravished times. One can only imagine the intensity of living in a world where trucks were headed to the front, loaded with wooden crutches for the maimed and those who had underwent amputation. Shocking, and it is such shocks that might awaken one to what can be the horrors of earthly existence.
According to Mr G’s school, shocks are a prerequisite to awakening. Awakening to what? You are fast asleep…nothing more than food for the moon. Moon becomes hungry and wars begin. Moon satiated, peace reigns for some time.
How can I be asleep? For a start, you are asleep if you believe, like almost everyone else, that you’re awake, because you are not. You are not awake to the fact that you are a multiplicity. You think you are one but you are really many. All those ‘I’s bouncing around inside your head. Which I is reading this? Which I will choose to respond or not?
That is what I appreciate about Mr G’s work. There is nothing vague about it. It is down to the nuts and bolts of human engineering. Yes, we are machines, but we are machines with a rare potential. Unless you wake up to that possible potentiality you wll never know what it is. It is entirely up to you if you wish to ‘feed the moon’ or not.
Amazing, Parmartha, what a written text can go through when it is anonymously “edited”.
- So late this evening I’ve read the skeleton that has not been the ‘wave’ I have been riding.
- But so be it – that’ s the risk to write anyway.
And yes, i saw the series of films you mentioned.
And no, I didn’t miss that Mr. Gurdijeff addressed his disciples in his school like this.
And another “no” – I wouldn’t compare that with Osho,
and how I expressed the difference has been falling apart due to editing.
But once again: – be it – the way it is now.
Madhu
Madhu, you quite often refer to certain aspects of ‘all the work’ one has to do in order to liberate ourselves from what might be termed ‘psychological slavery’, eg:
“It is the case that very often there are shielded and invisible ways as a result of robotics (and crutches of this kind).
They inhabit our daily life, bringing up new fields of unconsciousness and dependencies, where we give up the responsibility for a consciousness…
It is up to us, I would say, to take on the immense work involved in overcoming robotics, both by way of thinking and behaving.”
How about moving from generalisations to bringing this into specific focus by looking at your refusal to explain exactly what you meant in your recent “koan” post and the other paragraph or two which no one here could understand?
Presumably, the situation at SN is that you write in order to be understood? So how come you can’t be bothered to make your meaning clear? If it’s because you perceive it as ‘giving in’ to others’ demands, thus inducing a stubborn refusal in you to do ‘any such thing’, then I suggest that your view of reality is, in this case, obscured by purely personal emotionalised considerations. As is invariably the case for all of us, of course.
Well, you (me and pretty well everyone else in the world) might say, “But so what? That’s just normal. Why should I do what I don’t feel like doing?” Thereby missing the essential point that such so-called ‘normal’ behaviours are exactly the sort of things that are to be looked at very carefully and honestly, being so ‘close-to-home’ and therefore so easily overlooked, if we are to free ourselves of the sort of ‘robotic’ emotional tendencies that you are very keen to highlight.
As you say, to clearly see and then dissolve such “fields of unconsciousness” requires “immense work…in overcoming…both by way of thinking and behaving.”
So, why not contribute to this great (in both senses of the word) work by being greater than your own ‘inner robot’ and simply clarifying those two parts of your recent contributions at SN? That would be an example of being true to the situation, rather than simply following (ie being in servitude to) your feelings, which, self-evidently in this case, have failed to produce a satisfactory outcome and, as is nearly always the case in such matters, have merely created more bad feeling, more problems.
(And Shantam, the general principle of this post applies to you as well, not least re your consistent refusal to respond to others’ questions or points).
Sometimes I wonder, whether Gurdjieff or Ouspensky were known to the wise Osho seekers or it was because of Osho underlining them?
To be true, what is their full name, I have just seen for the first time.
When one is under the full influence of someone, every reference looks like a lottery number. The exhilarating feeling of finding Ouspensky`s ‘Fourth Way’ in a second-hand bookshop in Brighton decades ago still is in my memory.
During the crescendo phase of His life, Osho has poured His heart out through the Zen masters. As most of the bloggers on this site were somewhere else but not in Osho´s energy field, therefore, it is below their height to acknowledge this highly intense phase.
How Osho rebuilt His work after American debacle is not less than a metamorphosis. Because Osho was giving such great height to Suzuki, Bokoju, Nitando, Kyozan and similar names, many people got the idea to shift to Japan in search for such great men, who will push you like a Sumo wrestler and will say, “Have you Got it?” You will bow down with tears of gratitude and will utter “Yes, Osho…”
End of the mind. Full-fledged Nirvana at the cost of Sushi!
Many times in moment of deep intimacy and oneness Osho has spoken this habit of hanging His coats, jackets, robes, caps on the hangers of others. G and O became relevant too in this context.
What amazes me the most is that people who have spent their years with Osho not just through books but in reality, still crave for the Marilyn Monroe or Sophia Loren!
Maybe the impressions from the media!
“The snake that cannot slough off its skin perishes.
Likewise, spirits that are stopped from changing their opinions;
they cease to be spirits.”
Freddie N
“The man who never alters his opinion is like stagnant water and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
W Blake
“The man who never changes his chuddies gets a sore crutch, spiritual halitosis and starts to smell like a dead water buffalo in hot season.”
Kabir
Few days ago I wrote a long story about meditation being like epilepsy, with references to Dostoevsky etc. and Anna Karenina. Only problem was that I confused Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I was too much euphoric about it, so relying on my poor memory, not checking the details. Typical me. Of course, I did send the post. So I had to ask MOD not to make it public(thanks for that). I thought what a mindfuck shit I am writing.
However, in my post was nothing really so much more interesting than this: we are like machines and our brains seem to need electric shocks to move into something else. Still also, we are more than our brains. But there seems no way to get there, but through our body, emotions, mind. So, epilepsy it is.
I go for Osho meditations again, the most shocking brain/mind confusing wave. To samasati. Lucky us, we can do Osho meditations – or any other meditations – in small groups or even alone. It would be self-infused slavery if it were only possible in some big communes, that would be like being a spiritual slave to some foreign cult leader. Some people want to be slaves.
“Lucky us, we can do Osho meditations – or any other meditations – in small groups or even alone. It would be self-infused slavery if it were only possible in some big communes, that would be like being a spiritual slave to some foreign cult leader. Some people want to be slaves.”
Good post, Freschie.
I agree, Fresch.
Even 30 years ago some of my best Osho meditational moments were in London squats, and a small commune in Eire.
I particularly dislike pious introductory remarks to the Osho meditations, which are common when one does meditations in Osho International and other officially approved places.
Yes, but often they are the most inexperienced people giving instructions, who then disappear to other ‘careers’.
But I do agree, it’s annoying. SD wrote about it too before. Is compassion for the post offices needed?
(MOD: Compassion FOR WHAT? LOL!)
Sure, Frank,
if you will apply all these strong recommendations (you cited) to yourself too,
just the flavour of this website would fill our poor nostrils with the glorious smell of midsummer English roses which have been exported all over the world,
especially to the colonised countries.
Looking forward to that miracle – happening
Yours sincerely,
Madhu
Lokesh,
Thanks for your earlier post.
Once you speculated that Osho must have known the work of Maurice Nicoll, who described Gurdjieff’s work – in five or six volumes. You describe yourself, at a difficult point in your life, reading all those volumes.
I can confirm Osho knew Nicoll’s works. Only yesterday I was reading about it in ‘Books I Have Loved’, by Osho.
In session 10, page 142, he calls it an “immense” book. He makes the point, perhaps worthy of your further comment, that Nicoll never “betrayed” Gurdjieff – unlike Ouspensky. I find this an unusual remark as so many, including myself, have benefited from Ouspensky’s book, ‘In Search of the Miraculous’, I never saw Ouspensky as a Judas, as Osho says in this session.
Further, Osho says that he thinks that nobody reads Nicoll as there are all those thousands of pages! Anyway, you proved him wrong there!
Osho goes on to say,
“But if one takes the trouble to read them one is immensely benefited. In my opinion, Nicoll’s commentaries should be considered as one of the best books in the world”!
PM, very much appreciate your comment. Great to hear that Osho top ranks the Commentaries. I suspected as much but never heard this before. 27 years I have been digging into them and still finding gold.
Definitely not for everyone. For the first time ever I lent book one to a friend some weeks back. He carries it with him at all times and is loving it. You need to love those wonderful books to begin to understand their contents.
It seems like OSHO was the last spiritual master who ever touched the rare disciple nerve in the West. Educated and brainy West as well as prosperous and educated people around the world simply won´t get attracted to the Master-Disciple bonding; they are happy to have teachers, coaches, trainers and above all – books.
The last, on such a large scale, possibly – also the first! Name another who was such a legend in his own lunchtime – er, sorry, lifetime.
PS, Shantam:
Please read my earlier post of today, 3.06pm. ( I doubt if you’ve bothered as it’s addressed to Madhu and I’d expect you to have stopped reading rather soon after starting, if you ever did bother).
And how about a response this time? Or is that just too much to ask from such a very busy online VIP?!
I’m not sure what the Chuddie King’s trip about books is…a bit nego as usual. Thing is, the man he calls his master had over 400 books published under his name and spent years reading books. Although we can’t all claim to understand Osho’s deep moments of intimacy and oneness to the extent that the Chud does, even us unenlightened ones recognise that Osho thought his own books were very important, not soley for economic reasons or public relations, but because of what his words conveyed.
Osho devoted much time to his books. No doubt about it. Osho also loved other people’s books. In the case of the ‘Chronicles’ he goes so far as to say, “If one takes the trouble to read them one is immensely benefited.” Chudo obviously missed that. Yet Chudo is making out like books are for losers, second and third prizes in a competition he alone is competing in.
On the other hand, he confesses to spending a lot of time watching tv and investigating people’s profiles on Facebook. Next it will be book burning, a fiery break from his usual mechanical crusade against the Resort kingpins. Now, when I think of people burning books, guess who the first group of people are that I associate with such a barbaric act? Ignorant people don’t like books, as history shows. They say ignorance is bliss, but from where I stand it just looks like ignorance.
For the lowdown on Osho`s lifelong relationship with books,
try
http://www.pierreevald.dk
Interesting resource,
starting from Oshos first library, aged 12,
self-written newspaper, aged 13,
and so on till 1990.
I have met sannyasins who have attempted to ‘explain’ Osho’s love of books with ideas like: he only read all that stuff in order to prepare himself to be ready for the brainy westerners etc.
I`d say he did it because he loved it.
Like he jumped into the Narmada river because he loved the feel of water rushing over his body and whisking him downstream…
he wasn`t training for the Olympics!
Maybe as the ‘new age’ approaches, those ‘spiritual aspirants’ who try to transcend their body by attacking their genitals with a stick and beating them until they don’t work any more
are being replaced by ‘spiritual aspirants’ who try to transcend the mind by avoiding good books and watching TV, reading the daily news and facebook instead?
I agree, Frank.
Osho was intensely interested in books all his life, both pre-enlightenment and post-enlightenment. So he was not pursuing books as some sort of sadhana. He simply loved them.
If these devotees don’t like it, so be it. They could be with the wrong Master!
Yes, I read newspapers and one day, I can read some story about some guys in UK, who have spent their productive years in India, chasing shadows of Indian gurus. They could afford years and decades-long break because they learned through their meditations how to squeeze the system, impress your GP with ‘holly growly’ talk (MOD: WHAT?) and get ‘Not Fit For Work’ certificate.
Now in their autumn of life, they want to teach deep breathing to the staff of the care homes where they are enjoying the books of o&O. Surely Polish women assigned to bring them to bath enjoy the company; there is some glimpse of Beyond in their flirty one-liners.
PS: Dedicated this piece to faceless Frank!
You’d think El Chudo would notice the big aluminium key turning in the middle of his back, but he does not. No doubt busy with repairs on the SN engine. Seems that there is a blown gasket and a cracked cylinder head. I telt yous the engine’s will no take it. Nurse Fresch to the rescue.
Lokesh, I remember when Shantam came to SN, my first post to him was about ”get your ass up from sofa”.
I know how it is when your energy goes down after an intense period. Most of you can also relate to that need of staying zombie, watching TV and eating pizza for a while. But not like for 5-6 years; how long sofa-time you have had, Shantam? And it’s a poor excuse that you would ”only lead meditations in Pune”, and one nataraj or kundalini a year sounds childish.
It’s kind of interesting to read Shantam’s comments about Indian politics, for those 2 minutes, but I have been waiting for anything inspirational and personal on meditation and/or personal development for quite some time. Perhaps nothing ever comes.
Perhaps, Shantam, you are not inspired by meditation any more. So, no nurse can help that, Lokesh, it’s an inner urge. And an ability and willingness to share about it.
Neither Nurse Fresch, nor even Polish old-people’s home cook with dumplings to die for can inspire the meditation of man with broken wooden crutch who has spent life chasing shadows of western female disciples of Indian guru, claiming social security and moving from meditation to medication with Conceitopram and Viagra from GP!
Concietopram. Pomposamine. Driveladram. Moronadrin and ex-lax abuse. Explains everything.
Didn’t Shantam ‘confess’ a while ago that he was ‘on Prozac’, the well-known anti-depressant? Or is my memory playing tricks?
A relative of mine started to have violent psychotic episodes when on Prozac. Not as benign a drug as it’s marketed to be.
Totally agree, Arps, many years ago in a medical trial I took it just once myself, couldn’t sleep that night and felt high anxiety. Needless to say, I resigned forthwith from that trial.
Can you give one example, Sweet Fresch, who is sharing wisdom grown out of meditation?
If you have time, go into your nearest fitness centre and see how much meditation is happening there.
Three packets of chips, five bottles of water, ten litres of milk, one bread and six eggs and you call it Aldi?
Your choice!
(MOD: WHAT DO YOU MEAN, PLEASE, SHANTAM? WE DON’T GET IT).
As collective, sannyasins speak too much about meditation. It is like village shopkeeper calling his little shop, Aldi!
Shantypantypoopypantzen pontificating about meditation is like a flea on an elephant calf, pontificating about how an elephant herd should function.
I am interested in your personal inner experience, not your opinion about Pune or any other people.
Fleschie,
it’s a simple story:
Boy meets girl in mango season.
Mango season ends.
Girl legs it.
‘Iitanic’ sinks.
Boy takes Prozac,
Ends up in engine room in own imaginary solo ‘Titanic’, scoffing conceitodrone and Lidl meatpies…
SOS…Iceberg ahead!
Dear Satyadeva,
Your turn, one of it:
“…thereby missing the essential point that such so-called ‘normal’ behaviours are exactly the sort of things that are to be looked at very carefully and honestly, being so ‘close-to-home’ and therefore so easily overlooked, if we are to free ourselves of the sort of ‘robotic’ emotional tendencies that you are very keen to highlight.”
Response of the moment from my side:
There is rarely anything that is so ‘far from home’ than an internet chat website
dealing with strong issues like ‘freedom, also ‘freedom from oneself’ – to mention this kind of idiom.
Yet we are craving and chatting like anything, sometimes dancing the digital mambo, even being sometimes imagining the joy of a real one (mambo-dance with a real partner, I mean)…
Doesn t last long, this delusion, and on it goes, for another one…
Why not?
Some mambo dance fans even meet, sometimes, in reality, one hears – and again some of these some feel gratified all over the world that such meeting points of internet had made this real connection possible.
We are all linked anyway – and even minds are opening up to that FACT.
Ancient fellow-travellers but knew that by meditating over the Upanishads and comparable wisdom whispering.so – can we really speak of progress?
I sometimes doubt it -
So I want to come to one of your other turns:
“…then I suggest that your view of reality is, in this case, obscured by purely personal emotionalised considerations. As is invariably the case for all of us, of course.”
In this complex interdependent reality with its, like I feel it seemingly, so many promises to reach each other understanding our call to ‘out-there’
and the new, pretty new possibility to conceive (by the very machinery character of the internet )
there is – maybe – a possibility to conceive and get a glimpse of that,
that we are much more than less
always talking to ourselves, yet waiting for an echo, to give the promise of a meeting, a meeting also which comes close to feeling love and acceptance
and sharing and togetherness -
(what we are also craving for – especially when we are thoroughly denying the latter).
Tell me, who is the orator without any audience?
Or imaginary audience?
Who is the one who likes the role of a priest in a confession room without people confessing?
Who is the teacher without disciples being either silent by respect or being silenced?
Well, Satyadeva,
we are in peace with your sentence :
“As is invariably the case for all of us, of course.”
Love AND peace to you and all the others ‘peeping -in’.
Madhu
P.S:
To tell you just one thing….of my gratefulness basket for the happening of Osho…
His invitation to meet others without having the feeling of a ‘confession room’, of being blackmailed for ‘the right behaviour’…and this is just one…the basket is so full and yet empty.
Love is emptiness in action I dare to say just here-now.
All the above rambling about the internet, blaming it for being so ‘artificial’ and ‘impersonal’, boils down to the simple fact that, as I suspected, Madhu, you won’t clarify what you wrote because you object to being ‘told what to do’!
Which blinds you to all other implications of the issue, eg the blindingly obvious need for clarity when writing here (or anywhere), to both further the purpose of the writer and respect the readers.
I repeat, given this context of communication, your indifference, or care-lessness means you’re not being true to the situation, instead you’re placing your own person-al, self-ish preferences above all, to the detriment of the whole enterprise.
Then, of course, you reject that this purely person-al, self-ish issue is a prime opportunity for self-enquiry (and, in classic defensive mode, even condemn me for pointing it out).
Classic denial, Madhu, even more so in your laughable claim that it’s somehow contrary to the ‘spirit of Osho’. Imagine that, justifying such ‘self’-ishness by invoking the master whose whole purpose was/is to dissolve that very ‘self’!
At the very least then, I suggest you acknowledge that in this instance you’ve chosen to be part of the problem, not the solution.
Only one question left for Madhoo to ask. When is she going to propose to SD?
If Madhu and SD come together, I will also have some hope; Sannyas News is doing Osho´s work.
Just one question, guys and gals…Anyone actually recommend a place for hanging out and exchanging good vibes?.Tthe last time I gave it a go it wasn’t anywhere to be found…and as the stuffed shirts and priesthood brigade don’t bring me sunshine, nor a good, shared, insanely mutually mocking laugh, then finding the apotheosis of SN plus any late night parties, some hearty participation otherwise without a venerable tag attached to the day’s activities… seems to be like looking for a pig in a poke…
Or will I have to create my/that reality before the memory fades?
Yours desperately, meditatively, lovingly, with a modicum of insight and selfhood and a packet of three,
M
P.S: Parmartha, here’s a link for that child of the commune vid you asked about years ago…
http://www.docsonline.tv/doc/673
and
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
P.P.S:
Anyone got video links especially for those hairy Pune therapy groups and other stuff from the first, early 70′s-80′s phases?
Cheers
The lad in that video got badly burned and he’s still not over it.
He’s still burdened by it. All over his face. (:
I reckon he’ll have to do some therapymeditwation to really get over it…plus maybe find some guidance from a master for the deepest, darkest recollections that won’t go away…either that or write on SN about ranches, the power of then, and insights I have loved….
Ta, after many years!
No need, Lokesh, to get any special ‘proposal’ being proposed.
I started up to write my first so-called e-mails ever last December
and SN (Sannyas News) is almost the only address I am trying to reach this way.
Long is the story of my hesitation and in some of my so-called e-mails I have tried to express why I’m so hesitant…that’s a long, and for you – most of the guys here – boring story, as I’ve found out so far.
I started and continued writing though
in the learning life school to read in-between the lines and also beyond the lines
plus (!)
the total insecure situation with so-called virtual surroundings.
From very childhood on I did like to be alone
as also to meet others,
as also to look out for a communion with others.
In a sangha – like I experienced it, I have been feeling I could have all three aspects in one, roughly said,
and sometimes I miss the alive situation of a buddhafield like anything.
That’s how we called it, didn’t we?
To stretch the imagination, a so-called virtual place could replace that.
I am not ready (yet?),
maybe you are or others are ready for such ‘evolution’.
I question it (that evolution) because in everyday life much harm is also going along with that, I feel, also at SN.
I say the latter, because I really went into working through the years and years postings when I was at a point either to quit or to get more acquainted with – out of my eyesight stuck role plays here.
So I have been much less “stubborn” as Satyadeva likes to see it,
and I don’t feel the need to prove that.
AND
concerning your allergies,
I really love the old love songs of Music Group and the fabulous musicians from our little sangha, Lokesh, although you are right (!), we shouldn’t overestimate our importance
for that which we call ‘the world at large’….
Little lunch break-prayer
in words.
Madhu
Talking about crutches, I come here on SN because of the jokes, and I am never disappointed. I wonder if somebody there is organising everything for a future book. All these jokes around Osho can not be forgotten. Cheers.
Tan, how about contributing into this yourself, some fanny – or any – story? Or you end up watching the ‘Fanny and Alexander’ (movie by Bergman).
Yes, we could definitely do with a bit more fanny around here….
It’s a ‘ muff-see’ movie.
Arpana,
your post:
“Shantypantypoopypantzen pontificating about meditation is like a flea on an elephant calf, pontificating about how an elephant herd should function.”
My comment:
You may have had too much vodka at the Russian disco
it so appears to me.
Maybe you met Frank there, or other guys.
In a desert SN caravanserai it’s convenient not to get so much intoxicants in the vains,
or other stuff.
Maybe then the danger of a Fata Morgana to be Mr. Gurdijeff himself… (MOD: WHO’S Fata Morgana, MADHU, PLEASE?)
Great error -
Madhu
Blah blah blah bla blah bla blah.
River of life goes by. It does not miss kings and mystics. It goes on creating new pyramids, dismantling the old.
Yet there are many events happening in the world, one can say gigantic events, and one hears only the pygmies, sheep and goats sharing their voice, illusion or vision.
Just concluded unprecedented Indian election is one such event. Billions of people glued with their tv´s and newspapers listening and reading all kind of commentaries and yes, not a single one who can even come closer to the dust of Osho´s feet.
For good or bad, time will tell, but India as of now will never be the same again after 16th May. This is the day, right-wing government will landslide its victory and usher a new era of Hindu pride, maybe after a period of thousand-plus years.
Surely, a part in the heart misses that Genius Mystic, that fragile man with lion´s roar.
Thank you, Osho, for selling light in the town of the blind.
“The dust of Osho´s feet.”
This is a strange notion. Perhaps explainable by the fact that El Chudo never had a close look at Osho’s feet. That was all over by the time he showed up, when the party was almost over. So, just for the record that is stuck, there was never any dust on Osho’s feet post-Mount Abu.
I am not as rigid, I cannot afford, I was never among the chosen few; so I can change my sentence:
Not a single religious or spiritual leader exists who can be even the socks of Osho´s feet as far as honest, clear and mind-blowing expressions are concerned.
Who is enlightened or not is not my business. I am not an auditor in the Cosmic Bank of Karma Unlimited.
This sort of ‘fan’s declamation’ reminds me of a woman I used to know who once most proudly declared, “I’m the disciple of the best master, in the best spiritual movement there is!”
It so happens that both her and her outer life were something of an utter mess…and continued to be, as far as I know.
In other words, it was just a load of compensatory hot air, a psychological ‘crutch’, in a way equivalent to someone with little or nothing in life going for them, fervently trumpeting their undying love for and loyalty to the Man United or Barcelona football club.
Try contributing something meaningful instead of such adolescent rubbish, Shantam.
To be fair, Dave,
fanatical support from the Chuddie Road End at Jullundur Wanderers makes them the most die-hard supporters you will ever find. Despite the team languishing firmly at the bottom of the lower leagues for decades (notwithstanding a brief taste of the top-flight, 88-90 season) and the fact they haven’t even scored since the last century, they still manage to get a crowd of at least one every week.
Out of their heads on Prozac and eating all the pies, they mindlessly chant all the old songs,
‘There`s only one guru’ etc.
They think it’s all over…
It is now.
Yes, SD, it is often the case that people who don’t cope too well with the material world start to develop a spiritual ego trip. Joining a cult and thinking its leader is the best and therefore I must be special is how the story runs.
It requires a shock to wake up from that condition, usually in the form of being forced to deal with an extreme situation, which demands that you draw on your inner resources. It is then that one discovers if your spiritual trip has any substance or not. It can happen that you see that your whole spiritual identity is based on a crutch. If you have guts you admit it, throw the crutch away and return to the drawing board. If you are weak you cave in.
The whole enlightenment trip has been wrongly packaged, ‘follow your bliss’ and all that shite. The truth is that if your search is earnest it will involve a stage of everything collapsing that you took to be your self…scary and nothing to do with bliss.
As it is, life is structured in such a way that shocks are integral to it. Does not follow that you will wake up to the false personality…you might just end up shell-shocked. There is no way to avoid it…unless maybe if one is firmly anchored in a space that is outside of mechanical life.
Well,
Arpana did understand!
His answering with: “blablahbalhblah”
shows up the angry boy’s style of an “understanding” response.
As well as Satyadeva still sticks to his blindfold to see his utter arrogance.
More clearness in the moment
is not possible.
Madhu
I suggest, Madhu, that refusing to explain what you mean after writing things that no one can understand at a discussion forum qualifies for the description “utter arrogance” rather more than asking the person concerned to clarify what they’ve written!
Which, of course, has nothing to do with ‘spirituality’ or depth psychology, it’s just plain common sense.
But your refusal to see exactly what the person-al, self-ish mechanism is and how it’s working in this case reflects poorly on your credentials as a would-be ‘seeker’, particularly so as this happens to be a discussion forum for people who claim to be on some ‘spiritual path’, or something.
You’ve shown that for you, Madhu, ‘spirituality’ stretches to close self-examination (eg your ‘apology’ post to Arpana today), but not, apparently, to all areas. I wonder why…
But again, it’s just common sense. As I said before, it would seem to be simply a matter of resenting someone else telling you what to do, ‘making you wrong’ – and all that that resonates with inside you, probably from ‘the year dot’.
Don’t worry, you’re in good company, ie pretty well the entire human race!
Quite often I feel like a surviving passenger of Titanic. Osho´s Neo Sannyas was one such modern ship and sank due to human errors.
Surely, majority of fellow-travellers won´t accept it. It is much easier to live in denial when spiritual movements die or shrink.
Closing paragraph of the string is quite fitting, maybe even more now than during writer´s life:
“What do you expect? People are machines. Machines are blind and unconscious …. all their actions simply correspond with their nature – that of being a machine. … and the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in these unconscious machines lies the origin of all evil.”
You’re taking Osho’s exhortation to “be a joke unto yourself” too far, SHANTYPANTYPOOPYPANTZEN.
Could this closing paragraph also apply to even you though, Shantytown?
Surely not?!!
Still, as the wise old Vedic masters used to say, “You never know, do you?”
I am that Nature´s robot, who knows actions are robotic. That is why I have passion for astrology. We operate with certain inbuilt software.
World goes the shit way, because of the people who claim their freedom and therefore ignore their mechanical behavioural responses.
That’s excellent, Shantam!
No, er, ‘blind spots’ then?
Where, you know, ‘tripe’ may be found lurking…here and there…possibly…by some minute chance…the faintest of probabilities…to trap its unwary conduit…its unconscious channel?
Ever actually looked?
BELOVED OSHO,
SITTING IN FRONT OF US, WHAT DO YOU SEE? DO YOU FIND ALL THESE JOKES WHILE LOOKING AT US?
Svabhavo, you are right. I have to confess it: looking at you, what else can be found? You are all a joke unto yourself. Gautam Buddha said as his last statement: “Be a light unto yourself.” The day I leave the body please remind me, so that I can make my last statement: “Be a joke unto yourself.” That is far more joyful than being a light unto yourself. What are you going to do with a light? Light your cigars, or burn people’s houses? But being a joke unto yourself, you will be a bliss for everyone. You are right…this is the way I find jokes — looking at you. So be aware when I look at you; I am searching for a joke!
A big old Indian was sitting in a bar out West when a dirty hippy came in and started to drink a lot and insult all the other people there. Soon everyone had left the bar in disgust except for the old Indian who just watched the hippy with interest. So the hippy walked over to him and said, “Hey, Indian, what the hell are you staring at?” “Well,” said the Indian, “many years ago I was arrested for making love to a buffalo, and I just had a feeling that maybe you are my son.”
I see your troubles and really…I take them seriously, but deep inside I am giggling. Not to offend you I talk about your problems, which are sheer nonsense — but don’t tell it to anybody!
Once there was a man who had everything a man could desire: a wonderful job that he liked, a wonderful wife and wonderful children, but then one day he began to see spots in front of his eyes. At first he tried to ignore them, but they began to get worse. So finally he paid a visit to the doctor. The doctor examined him but could find nothing wrong with him, so he sent him to a specialist, a neurosurgeon, who examined him thoroughly with many tests. He also could find nothing. But he said to the man, “Although I can find nothing specific, I have seen cases like this before; often it is some pressure on the brain, which usually results in death after six months to a year.”
The man became very upset, but then he decided that if indeed he only had such a short time to live, he would enjoy life and do everything he ever wanted. The man loved nice clothes, so he went to the best tailor in town and said, “Give me the best clothes you have in your store: English imported suits, Italian leather shoes, hand-stitched silk ties, and one dozen of the best tailored silk shirts, size fourteen neck.” The tailor who had taken all his measurements said to him, “Fourteen neck? You don’t have a fourteen neck — you have a fifteen neck!” “Don’t tell me what I have,” said the man, “I have been wearing a size fourteen neck all my adult life.” “Well, if that’s so,” said the tailor, “then you must be seeing spots in front of your eyes!”
Seeing you, certainly I rejoice. So many jokes all around! Perhaps this is the first gathering in the world where jokes are being used for your spiritual growth…And you cannot be otherwise — unless you become enlightened. Only enlightened people don’t have anything in life which you can make a joke of. But in ignorance and unconsciousness, whatever you do is somehow hilarious — your fights, your love affairs, your marriages, your divorces. If you start watching your behaviour, you will find out for yourself — “My god. My whole life is full of jokes!” And it will be a great revelation…far greater than the revelation of God, because that too is only a joke and nothing else.
Okay, Vimal?
Yes, Osho.
Osho
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Be a joke unto yourself
Wotta loada tripe, eh?
Tripe.
That’s a good, indeed excellent, old-fashioned English expression, not much used these days.
Yes, a most useful little word, Arpana, one that I tend to use more and more these days, eg while listening to politicians or football fans and pundits, or almost anyone who joins in any sort of radio phone-in…
Also particularly apposite re much of what’s bandied around concerning ‘spirituality’ etc., which is used as a convenient ‘crutch’ for the naïve and the misguided.
Eg, this extract from an email I recently received, most specifically the second sentence of the second paragraph, where the writer apparently equates “the world of spirit” (whatever that is!) with imagination, emotion, ie common-or-garden mind-stuff:
“Honest to god I really don’t think that you can have spiritual abundance without financial abundance if you are to experience any level of real wholeness.
To put it another way I really think that we have to get away from this idea that money is unspiritual. To my way of thinking it’s enormously liberating to see how the world of spirit can be used as a tool to help us create paradise both internally and externally in our lives by way of creating all the most wonderful personal circumstances that our hearts can desire.”
“Spirit” (aka the Truth) “used as a tool”, eh? That’s a good one, and a common delusion used by people whose primary goal is to live a ‘perfect’ material life – with a bit of ‘spirituality’ thrown in, but of course…
As the bishop said to the actress, that’s what I’d call a “crutch”.
And as I say, tripe!
My reply included:
“It seems you have a fundamental misconception of “the world of spirit”, that pervasive one of mistaking the ‘psychic’ for the ‘spiritual’.
I mean, what IS the ‘spiritual’, “the world of spirit”, anyway? Do you know, from your own experience? Or are these just an exotic-sounding word and phrase? You know, some sort of ‘ultimate magic’ that’s going to transform both your external circumstances and your internal living life – at some future time anyway….”
Thanks for that, Arpana. Cheers.
Arps, this was something. Not a dream, but something else.
Arpana,
After a night’s rest…
“Shantypantypoopypantzen pontificating about meditation is like a flea on an elephant calf, pontificating about how an elephant herd should function.”
I say, yes, Arpana, sorry, that my pain also sometimes brings me, ‘flea on an elephant’s skin’ indeed, also in danger to take over a pontification role about climate in communication areas – as well as in the danger to hit back, when chosen words of provocative as well as abusive – are just paining for me, when I read them.
(Even then when I am not meant but I get hooked, very often by re-living experiences of encountering the energy of contempt for example).
River of life this morning, where-else?
And so I say – sorry – about my hitting back yesterday.
Madhu
Madhoo, please stop pickng on Shantam. Without him SN would have no engine. It is unfair to pick on people with damaged helmets. Have you no compassion?
Lokeshooh,
I don’t know what kind of “database” you have been using to pass over your evening reminder to me;
must be the freedom of advaita…in misuse terms.
Or?
You didn’t take the time to check?
But you are in good company with that.
Madhu
Frank,
Your latest update: any idea about what the “happy couple” is going to teach the world?
Tan, some kind of hardcore Hindu good cop/bad cop routine no doubt.
Earlier in this string some seem to have doubted Osho’s love of books.
Most extraordinary that some do not know their “Master” at all!
Even pre-enlightenment Osho kept an “Accessions register” for ‘his’ library.
From age 12 in 1943, when Osho was in primary school, he organised and kept an early book catalogue over this first library collection in Gadarwara. It is an accessions register in chronological order, handwritten in large quarto format and containing ONE THOUSAND AND ONE HUNDRED AND SIX entries, covering the accession of new books in the period 1943-1950.
All entries in the accessions register are most professionally listed BY OSHO according to: / entry number / title / author / price / subject /.
For a young boy living in a small Indian town with very little contact with the outside world, as we would understand it at that time, it is extraordinary evidence of profound intellectual curiosity at a very early age.
Every follower, disciple, believer carries the book of his mentor the way smartphones have chip of the service provider.
So when I die
His books will be in my memory,
Maybe It will help to locate,
where he is hiding behind the clouds!
(Remembering the video footage of proud and dignified-looking Saddam Hussein holding the holy Quran before the noose).
Apparently though, Shantam, our death includes the obliteration (aka ‘death’) of our personal mind and memory, as well as our outer shell (or ‘space-suit’) – never to exist again – so I don’t really see how the mere memory of Osho’s books is going to help you ‘find him’!
But why wait for the ultimate crisis to ‘find him’ anyway? How about now?
Time for a spot of meditation, perhaps? Always useful in matters of life-and-death, according to ‘reports’…
Who knows, you might even find ‘you’ in there – and then you won’t necessarily need to ‘find him’!
You never know your luck in a small town….
Like many devotees of Osho, the devotional stance always hates to admit that Osho was, apart from anything else, and certainly in the first place before his enlightenment, an intellectual. His path to no-mind was certainly through the mind.
I never really understood why devotees never got this, and pooh-poohed those who were following his path of going beyond the mind through the mind.
On another note, I did not understand your post, Shantam.
Satyadeva, are you meditating?
I was thinking meditation helps to increase sense of humour!
Read the above post again or get some new master!
I might well answer you with a similar response, Shantam…
Especially, of course, that as one whose inside remains strictly ‘out of bounds’ to meditative enquiry, you yourself are hardly qualified to say anything at all about what meditation is ‘supposed to do’, are you?
Consequently, even if you were to chance upon ‘Osho’ after your body/mind/memory/opinions/emotions had been obliterated, then it’s a decent bet he’d try to make sure ‘you’ got into another body/mind that might actually follow what he’d recommended for all those years…
Of course, you could always start now…(if you weren’t so effin’ lazy).