Letter from Ramateertha
Cologne, June 21st, 2014
Dear Friends,
On June 12th we received the decision of the European Office for Harmonisation of the International Market in the Osho trademark dispute: Our request for cancellation of the Community Trademark OSHO for “educational services; yoga instruction; religious services; meditation services” has been refused. This decision is not yet legally binding and can be appealed till Aug 11th.
I have to admit that this verdict came as a shock to me. After gathering evidence in five rounds of litigation (two rounds would be normal in such cases), OHIM writes that the evidence provided by the parties is too complex to enable a definitive finding on the validity of the contested trademark.
They then add that the trademark has been valid for the past fourteen years, and that OIF was the first to register the mark. Therefore, the argument is that there is a prima facie presumption in favour of OIF, and that the registration is valid unless….
The fact that the trademark has not been controlled by OIF for years, mainly because it was not registered at all until 1999 (the name Osho was used freely before that), was not taken into account.
The key question of whether the name Osho can be used as a trademark at all is not even discussed in the findings.
Furthermore, the fact that a fake “Last Will” of Osho was submitted during the proceedings was also not taken into account and the wording of the decision ignores it completely, as if it had never happened.
As I said, the decision is a shock for me. The five years that the court case has been going on have been an incredible strain, both for me personally and also for the people here in Cologne working with me.
In particular, we have experienced OIF’s strategy of spreading lies, false allegations and defamatory statements shocking and appalling. Producing a so-called “Last Will” of Osho, which handwriting experts have unanimously exposed as a fake, is only the crudest among many examples of an attitude that is willing to accept and employ virtually any means, no matter how reprehensible, to achieve their ends.
In this situation, the question of whether or not we should appeal the court’s decision is a difficult one: Continuing to live in this situation is really not a very attractive prospect for any of us. But then you could argue that if we give in on these grounds, these cunning strategies have worked, and that is equally unpleasant.
We also have to consider the financial aspects of this litigation. Huge amounts of money have been poured into this dispute already, and this has placed an enormous strain on our financial situation. So we have to ask ourselves, is it really worth it?
On the one hand I know that Osho never wanted a trademark or an organisation controlling his sannyasins in his name. OIF and the Inner Circle are trying to depict this issue as my own “private agenda”, and that is most definitely not the case!
On the other hand, this legal dispute is taking up so much energy, time and money that it has become an incredible burden. For all these reasons, I and my friends in the Lotus Verein organisation here in Cologne are going to have to take some time to decide whether or not an appeal is the best course of action.
At the moment, the situation of OIF has also changed: Its board of directors has been suspended by the Swiss Government following a disciplinary complaint which I personally filed in Switzerland (this was not an initiative of the Lotus Verein e.V.) The Swiss Government responded to the complaint in a matter of days, suspending the board members and freezing the bank accounts of the foundation.
People have quite rightly asked me why I did this, and I would like to take this opportunity to give you the facts that prompted me to take this course of action:
First of all, it is important to know that OIF lost its non-profit status in Switzerland in 2012. As a result, OIF’s operations are now classed as normal, profit-oriented business activities. As a business organisation, the foundation is infringing on its own charter, because its revenues are not being used for the purposes laid down in its own by-laws.
Secondly, OIF is over-indebted to such an extent that its debt endangers the survival of the foundation. In this context I was particularly alarmed by the presentation of the so-called “Last Will” of Osho and its implications.
Thirdly, almost all of the OIF directors are directly involved in companies that are privately owned by them, and the available evidence suggests that funds that should have gone to OIF have been diverted into those companies.
The decision of the Swiss Government was issued on June 2nd and OIF has until July 4th
to appeal. To date, no appeal has been filed. Meanwhile, the investigation of the Swiss authorities is proceeding and an administrator has been appointed by the Swiss Government to manage the affairs of the foundation until the situation changes.
I do hope that this letter has been able to answer some of your questions and
provide a better understanding of the current situation.
We will be publishing the full text of the decision on the trademark case on www.osho.de shortly.
I would also like to take this opportunity to ask for your support for the work we are doing. Especially we do need also financial support… If you click on this link, you can find all the information you need for this:
http://www.osho.de/2012/04/how-to-support-trademark-case-en/
Ramateertha
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In the trade and copyright issue, both the parties are missing the finer points.
Somewhere it hurts to see, even the fight is not based on the time-tested principles of life and its functioning.
Do you know, I’m shocked that maybe this isn’t the first time someone’s got involved in fucking expensive court cases to determine the legality of a vision of a bloke with a beard versus mammon and reality…
The danger is we could all miss, become suddenly unsurrendered or have our minds controlled by an edited, non-definitive version of what he said once…
We might even find we become confused, with no way to discern…
Then what would happen? It could be awful…a disaster…people might become utterly incapable of archetypes and their derivatives, such as trusting, letting go, looking in, looking out, sharing, linguistic metaphors, claiming to do the master’s work on their own authority, being told the correct version to have, imposing psychological significance on innocent bystanders – or perhaps the danger of being in two moments at once…
We might then be forced to write about it all online…ad infinitum…with justifications or worse….patronisations that manifest all by themselves at the touch of a keyboard…
We might then be forced to write about AND have our thoughts investigated by persons for whom reading others’ thoughts before publication was a form of punishment for them imposed by the draconian vision of a…
No, it must not be allowed…it could all go ape-shit…plus the fact that if they win in court we’d not only let humanity down, but have wasted all that time and money for nothing…and have some smarmy Irish registered twat mocking us eternally…
Okay, thats decided…raid the piggy bank…we have 1,2,3 euros and a postal order for the use of some charity, ‘World Victims of Unawareness and Survivors of Jumping Up and Down’.
I think we need to investigate who created the wording for the tombstone, “Never Born, Never Died”.
Was it really Osho, or the spin doctors?
My request is, morons from both sides should plead their case, in case ‘visiting person’ has still some interest left to see dream turned into nightmare.
One thing is clear, it is not because of meditation but collective evolution we have come this far away from the days of crusades with real weapons. For suited, booted Talibans, lawsuits are AK 47 or OO90!
MOD,
I can’t make any sense of the last two parags. of Shantam’s comment. Guess you can?
In his first parag., well, yes, Osho was said to have penned this himself as his tombstone saying…Why should Shantam doubt this? And if so, what significance does he think that has?
If it was penned by Amrito…does he think the saying has some inauthenticity hidden within it, or what?
I always thought it was not a bad summary of Osho’s life, whoever wrote it.
MOD: I THINK visited person MEANS visiting person, IE OSHO! SHANTAM SEEMS TO BE EXASPERATED WITH ALL THE LEGALISTIC WRANGLING (morons from both sides), SUGGESTING OSHO MIGHT NOT BE TOO PLEASED (IF HE WERE ACTUALLY NOT ‘DEAD’).
I’m sure it came from a spiritual teacher who preceded Osho, but damned if I can recall his name.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.
Albert Einstein
Couple of points on this issue that I’m unclear about.
Point one is that OIF has put people’s backs up, and that means Amrito and Jayesh, because they have apparently altered texts in Osho discourses and books in some way.
On the other hand, the same people have put various individuals’ backs up, and again this means Amrito and Jayesh, because they have made such an effort to control the distribution and reprinting of Osho discourses through copyright.
Those people who are angry about those two points seem to believe, as I understand the issue, that anybody who’s anything to do with sannyas should be free to do what they like, when they like, regarding the discourses and books, because anybody who’s got anything to do with Osho Sannyas can be 100% trusted to do the right thing by everything to do with Osho discourses.
However, out of all the people who have something to do with Osho Sannyas, there are two people who can under no circumstances be trusted to do the right thing regarding Osho discourses and books – and that’s Amrito and Jayesh.
Over and above that, if there’s no control or precedent established over the copyright (or it looks that way to me) that means people like Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos at Amazon, if they find out there’s money to be made in printing Osho books, can also do what they like with Osho’s discourses.
So what seems to be being said here is that any businessman who is not a sannyasin, and anyone who in any way, shape or form considers themselves to be a sannyasin, connected to Sannyas, can be absolutely trusted to do right by Osho’s discourses and books; however, the two people in the whole world who can under no circumstances can be trusted to do right by Osho books and Osho discourses, are at the ashram and have absolute control of or are trying to retain absolute control of what happens with Osho’s books and discourses through copyright law.
P.S: I am deliberately not addressing the issue of misappropriation of funds, because that is under investigation and presumably, if they are guilty they will be punished, and if they are not they will be in a position to sue those who brought the action against them for slander.
In 14th century Europe, due to political and spiritual disputes, a rival pope was installed in Avignon contra the Roman pope.
Both popes wasted no time in excommunicating the faithful of the rival pope.
Thus for a period of 70 years or so, the whole of the Christian world was excommunicated!
As a teenager, chewing my pencil and looking out of the window in history class, that story got it just right and illustrated perfectly the utter idiocy of autocratic religion, where guys who think that just because they have got a bit of bumfluff on their chin they can order other people about.
Fast forward 8 centuries and clowns are still at it, hurling their ex-cathedra pie-in-the-sky ideas in each other’s original faces and spending the money obtained from the faithful on their in-fighting hobbies!
Humanimals are territorial animals, not dissimilar to dogs and baboons.
But we have an advantage.
When we fight for territory and control we can say that it’s not just about land, bananas, pissing rights, or females…
We’ve got a way of making the game a lot more interesting and exciting and vital…
We introduce ideas of spirituality, visions, legacies, lineages, and so on.
That is a game worth the candle!
Fight the good fight
with all thy might, chaps…!
Suddenly, I feel so interested in this saga again…juicy, juicy…In my time as an official researcher I would have never imagined it would turn out like this 20 years down the road.
Personally, my problem is not with editing Osho`s words…some of them deserve to be edited…as much as he spoke so, but so much wisdom and understranding of human nature; he spoke some big-time bullshit, I mean big- time male chauvinist, homophobic, scientifically inaccurate stuff…that dedfinitely NEEDS to be edited. The question is WHO we want that to be edited by?
Personally, I would choose a former Marxist British doctor who became a spiritual seeker, than some Indian accountant who thought God was alive on earth.
But then again, that is just just some bias, personal preference.
Yours,
Anthony
So, that for the editing part.
Is the question who should be editing Osho or who is editing Osho and why?
Would you agree that Osho is being sanitized (edited) from the point-of-view to delete his controversial statements so that he/his books will be more sellable to the mass markets?
OIF is now publishing and distributing Osho books, so no worry about a publishing house not publishing Osho books. And the (new) books they are publishing are mostly compilation books, which in reality are all edited books. Have you seen/read any of those books?
The issue is really about trust and fear.
Whover is editing, there will be some who don’t trust them.
Fear, because of some people’s insecurities about Sannyas,
fear that Sannyas will break down and they will lose their safety net.
I don’t accept what you say, Anthony. I love the ‘old’ books published from 1975 to 1980. Such love and such devotion was involved. I remember being in the silk screen department and we used to print all the covers of the books individually, and many were rejected for really small mistakes.
Those books were in fact edited. Satyadeva, for example, edited the Mustard Seed (first edition). Maybe he can comment here about what that really meant. As I recall, grammatical things were changed, etc. but they went back to Osho before publication for his final say-so.
If you sanitise Osho you reduce the energy impact of the man, whatever he was actually saying.
I looked at some of the modern compilations, they seem to be ‘selecting’ text that offer a ‘public relations’ window to Osho.
How about we start an archive of all the original editions of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh books?
You can have mine. Been wondering what to do with them when I die.
Trouble is, who will trust us, trust that we will tell them the truth about the texts if it doesn’t fit with their prejudices?
There seem to be some confusion in emails received at SN office.
This is a ‘European’ decision on trade mark, presumably part of the European Community Bureaucracy. We are open to stand corrected, but it is not a Swiss decision. As far as we understand it this decision emanates from an EC office in Alicante, Spain.
The other decision about the OIF Directors and their suspension IS a Swiss decision as that is where the said Foundation is registered. Switzerland is not part of the European ‘Common Market’ and has never wanted to be.
So, “former Marxist British doctor who became a spiritual seeker, or Indian accountant who thought God was alive on earth” must know better than Osho about some issues.
The question is, am I interested in their interpretations and what would happen if I just read what Osho said? Do I have a choice to just read or hear what he said?
Thank you Anthony, very good post.
Fresch, sure, the actual discourses are and should be available, but as far as publishing is concerned, editing will be there. His talks are full of racist jokes and sexual remarks, that, to a live audience of his disciples, in the seventies, was just delightful, but to a simple-minded American of this century will simply sound bigoted and offensive. So unless you want a tabloid, no publishing house will print it as is.
The man was an iconoclast, no doubt – but the iconoclast is gone…
Some exaples of poor editing:
In India, Keerti´s ‘Osho World’ keeps on doing their own compilations, much to OIF sadness. You know, India´s court cases can take centuries. So, they came up with a book called ‘Einstein the Buddha’ – seriously, it is not a joke! They collected Osho´s sayings about science and Einstein and the meeting of science and religion…and they came up with the stupidest book ever.
On the other hand, OIF had things like courage, intimacy, etc…
See what I mean?
Yours,
Anthony
It’s interesting that the well-known master, Ramakrishna, was also edited by some of his diciples.
Apparently, he was uneducated, and his language was very coarse and sometimes included the f word! And some of his discourses were littered with swearwords, which some of his followers were quite embarrassed by.
You have a perfectionist thing going on, Anthony.
If you keep reshaping the discourses to make them perfect,
soon nothing will be left.
Like sharpening a pencil and trying to keep it just right.
Both OIF and Osho World are mistaken with their collections. Osho was always very strict about his books, despite what others may say. I knew people who worked in the publications dept. and he always insisted on no compilations, and that his books be “complete in themselves”.
Actually, how the books were produced in Pune One was often a work of art and beauty. Sheela destroyed all that.
But some of those early books are now fetching good prices, as I understand it, in the second- hand market…I would say a return to that standard and beauty of production would be a great contribution to the Master’s memory.
There were definitely compilations when Osho was alive. I remember three paperback volumes, Bhagwan A to H, I to P, Q to Z…or something like that.
The volumes you refer to were called ‘The Book’ (published 1984).
They were a ‘dictionary’ of references, not a compilation of edited transcripts.
‘A Must for Morning Contemplation’
and
‘A Must for Contemplation Before Sleep.’
Both compiled, as I recall, at Osho’s behest and with his help.
I have the ‘Before Sleep’ book – not in the bedroom but in the bathroom…Single page extracts combined into chapters on various themes. Very good it is, for a quick “contemplation” or two….
I committed myself to going through both books just after the pair came my way about twenty years ago, and that experience was like daily meditation. Really powerful.
Arpana, true…Personally, I like the old, dirty, imperfect old man, misquoting Sartre, Buddha or Freud, speaking nonsense about things he did not know, like transpersonal psychology…it was part of his flair.
But I am just saying that publishing houses, as a fact, will not agree with me. And some of the stuff he said is so cheesy that I would edit it, but not the dirty/racist jokes – those I LIKE A lot….
Yours,
Anthony
The last line, of course, made me laugh.
Does the phrase, ‘I know that you know that I know you know’ (humour) mean anything to you?
Anyway, I always saw Osho as the master of that.
Has undertones of naughty kid…
You sound a good guy. Devoid of affectation (which I suspect you will say is your affectation).
Good to have you about. I am interested in and enjoying your posts.
Einstein the Buddha?
E=MC²
Enlightenment = Meditation x Celebration²
Did they spot that?
I doubt it, as the last time Keerti was on here he was too busy expressing his view that Vivek’s suicide was a case of “Sati”.
What with that and then Arun expressing his idea that the Inner Circle are “criminals” who should be “punished” by the likes of the genocidist Narendra Modi,who is, according to him, an “embodiment of Zorba the Buddha”,
I`m not so sure about the meditation…
it sounds more like ‘medication time’.
Nurse…
and the strongest enema you can find for these two while you`re at it…
they are completely bunged up with 5000 years’ worth of holy crap….
Hari Om!
Arpana, it is my affectation…to be devoid of it. In a way, it gives me an advantage to surrendered sannyasins, because I am not obliged to interpret as devices the misjudgments of such a wonderful man as your master was.
But on the other side, it is my curse…I never dared to take ‘the jump’ – and I will regret it for ever…
So, a blessing and a curse, all in one, as the paradox….
Yours,
Anthony
Anthony, what happened to your ‘middle man’ to get rid of? (MOD: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, FRESCH, PLEASE?)
I am, like most of the contributors and readers of SN, normal, perhaps a not so bright, but also a not so stupid person. How come I get this feeling you take readers here for idiots? Would you write or talk like this for a ‘Guardian’ reporter? I do not think so.
MOD: FRESCH, MADHU HAS WRITTEN TO YOU THIS MORNING (JUST PUT UP HERE)
Fresch, I do not know whether it is a language barrier (my first language is Spanish) but I just did not understand your last post.
The trademark is not the only issue here for seekers who visit the Resort.
If you were to sing, “Osho, the ‘bald-headed one’, I love You and I can feel Your presence everywhere”, which used to be perfectly acceptable, you are now liable to get whacked over the head by one of Jayesh’s goons and escorted off the premises.
This actually happened to one of my friends there who was singing about feeling Osho’s energy in his wooden box.
Parmartha would probably incline to feeling the energy despite being escorted off the premises, although…the goon sounds as if he didn’t ‘miss’ but hit the target…
Your friend was probably creating an opportunity for himself to look within…It’s an archetype that you can use reflectvely in all sorts of situations, but is best dished out to someone else with a patronising tone of voice for emphasis….
Well, Martyn, the management has appeared to have taken a very ‘Zen’ approach to the Resort, with no pictures, “Yes, please come in, pay $50 to work here, if you feel, meditate in the Pyramid Hall and we knock you over the head with a baseball bat or a truncheon if we catch you dreaming…or singing devotional songs.”
But Master always made space for heartfelt songs…in the old Buddha Hall.
it could be Ramana Maharshi, Arpana (? at 11.07 pm).
While passing to the other shore, being with his disciples, it is refered He said: “Where will I go? I will be here” – those words a western conditioned mind can easily misunderstand.
There are even videos available (not compiled and digitalized).
All in all,
such another kind of atmosphere
also amidst the disciples.
‘As times went by’….
Madhu
Madhu,
Sure, thats the man.
Thank you.
Osho said many more people would come and he was talking to ten thousand buddhas. I am sorry if some old people have fixed ideas about some buildings and landscape in an Indian city, because there must be about ten thousand buddhas meditating – all over the world right now (not in the one Indian city). You can, for example, count different Sannyas therapists’ facebook friends, that is a more accurate number than any million ‘likes’ on Osho in facebook. The grass roots level is just so important, you need to have a real life connection with meditating people.
I wonder, if Jayesh, even with OIF’s money, would be able to start a meditation place somewhere else, except in Pune. I do not think anybody else, but perhaps you, Anthony, would go there. And you would go there for holidays, perhaps for some gin and tonic, not for meditation.
So, let’s just let go of some place and buildings like what happened with the Ranch; who cares about the Ranch or some Sannyas centre in an Indian city, if it does not even have a Samadhi? All these international festivals with thousands of real life, real time meditating people do not seem to need any fixed place. Osho is an energy phenomenon, as somebody here wrote, who normally has only fixed ideas.
Also, I was just reading ‘Book of the Secrets’, unfortunately the 2010 edition from OIF. Anthony, thanks for reminding me to remember it’s somebody’s (= middleman’s) interpretation.
Good post, Fresch. Although perhaps you overstate the significance of facebook ‘endorsements’ (after all, it’s just too ridiculously easy to click ‘like’!).
Especially questionable is the notion that facebook ‘likes’ of therapists is tantamount to ‘endorsing’ Osho and Sannyas and that the number of such ‘likes’ equates to the number of ‘buddhas’ now involved in Sannyas. How laughable is that!
I’m not anti-therapy, far from it, but if people think therapy is what Sannyas and Osho are all about then they’ve been misguided, or are sadly self-deluded.
Hi Fresch, from my viewpoint, meditating is about being alone and a 24 hr inquiry of who you really are. Osho’s meditations are a prelude to that, necessary to the western mind in giving us a taste of the Divine, but as I see it, a first step.
If you get stuck there then it becomes a socialising thing again, with the false promise: we will all be happy and blissful ever after when we keep doing Osho’s meditations….
I agree, so there must be 20,000 buddhas.
Good post, Karima. Osho meditations are an excellent way of creating body/mind well-being, ie they are a great therapeutic resource – with perhaps a taste of ‘something else’ (or at least, a few new neural pathways – if done consistently – and some beneficial brain chemicals) in the ensuing silence and rest…
A beginning, and always useful to fall back on, if necessary, but a long way from ‘the final solution’!
Yeah, Satydeva, me is afraid it will be a dissolution….
I hear Jayesh was in Lucknow after Osho left his body.
Perhaps Lokesh met him there and can write an article about it here.
I wonder from where you got this junkyard information.
Jayesh´s trust, passion and sincerity towards Osho is unsurpassable. Only problem is that he does not trust that there are other disciples too with similar state of being.
Jayesh going to Punja-ji is a rumour. Though one of his close trustees and another Inner Circle member dropped Pune and went to Lucknow.
His name I have forgotten. But his face and his Mumbai girl friend´s face are still in my memory.
Many men down the history lane have followed the scent of their women, the way many Indian wives took sannyas because their Swami-ji insisted.
So, perhaps you wrote it then.
Lucknow is over 23 years past now. Can’t say I remember Jayesh there, but even if I had he would have ranked far down the line in terms of being interesting to write about. Just another fish in the tank as far as I am concerned.
Living on Ibiza I meet lots of well-known people and in my opinion it is all bullshit. As Osho so rightly said, in life respectability and money are booby prizes.
I did meet an interesting chap the other day in terms of presence. He served me a cafe con leche and he is a real man of zen. He goes about his life humbly yet he looks pretty enlightened to me. Most people would pay little attention to the man because he is only a waiter. I studied and watched him for some time. His every movement and action was delivered with awareness and his manner was in all ways impeccable.
Now that is what I appreciate in a man or woman. As far as personalities go…forget it.
“his manner was in all ways impeccable”
What a great phrase.
People like that have dignity,
Regardless of age.
Where is Lokesh?
Duel with Anthony will be of interest.
Many times, I think it was an intuitive idea from Lokesh, SD and many others, to leave the boat when upper decks were being constructed with paper boards.
Sometimes I also think, so many books, so many titles of Osho books have created the reverse reaction. They have proven counter- productive. Words on papers and their marketing has become more important than the human resources.
Sad!
Breaking News -
What a honour for Arun. BBC has invited him. Daily Mail has article about this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2675391/BBC-staff-furious-controversial-mystic-follows-teachings-guru-believes-Jews-died-peacefully-gas-chambers-invited-teach-employees-MEDITATION.html
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ub3Ges9EmAc
Yes, the Ranch does have a habit of repeating itself as a bit bothersome for explaining the finer parts of transcending the ego…Oh well, The Daily Mail might write about the Osho-loving Modi PM…and dig up something on the BJP homophobia stuff…at least then Arun would be stuck between a rock and a hard place…He could claim libel or infamy then…as in “they’ve got it infamy.”
….
Extraordinary youtube docs in the link – thanks, Martyn, fascinating stuff. Likewise, other videos on same page.
Its alvayz gut to goose step out off vone’s Mein Kampfert zone…und giff peeple ze arun around mit ze right meinkampfulness und kleer heded sinking….
Dear Friends,
Before I went out early today, I had the idea to post to you, as I was haunted in a way by an article in the English press about some of the Murdoch team, like Rebecca Brooks, who, with others, had to attend court because of their drastic manners in terms of
‘investigative journalism’ (bugging phones, stealing privacy of traumatized people etc. etc. etc., very ugly methods. As you all might know by now, the Murdoch empire had and has good lawyers…so she (a most impertinent and attractive woman) was deemed ‘not guilty’ the other day.
If someone – no matter who – is associating by free will to that or another kind of press
(I mean, BESIDES offering them a meditation hour beyond any political mix-and-merge, because the latter would be urgently NEEDED at these times) one has to beware of potentially ending up in one of their ‘yellow press’ trash bins.
I don’t know Arun – by now, maybe from former, former, former days, just by passing in the Ashram –
but I simply don´t know him.
But I feel concerned about one point:
That we here at the caravanserai don´t start to behave like the ‘yellow press’ ourselves!
Wish you a good night, friends,
Madhu
The right to appeal ended on July 2nd. Does anyone know whether the case was appealed or not? Seems really quiet on the airwaves.