Sweet Surrender

Taking the words of Osho “literally” was always a problem, even in the early days of sannyas. I cant remember how many times fellow sannyasins prefaced their remarks with “Osho said” when one brought forward something they did not agree with!

“Surrender” was surely one of those confused areas, but arguably some things Osho said about surrender turned out to be dangerous, and led to the easy introduction of a dictatorship on the Ranch.

For example I remember Osho talking  in Poona one  about Deeksha who was an Italian dragon who ruled the kitchen where many served a sort of apprenticeship to ashram life:

“It is very easy to surrender to me, difficult to surrender to Deeksha. So I will insist that you surrender to Deeksha, that is the way to surrender to me. Deeksha will be much harder to surrender to.

To me it is easy to surrender because I dont come into your day to day , moment to moment work. This has to be learned by everyone”… . .

It was precisely this type of literal acquaitance with what Osho sometimes said,  that made it so easy later to silence any critical thought.

And yet Osho said all sorts of things about surrender  from the beginning of his Ministry that looked at,  in strict logic,  contradicted this view.  He often said that if “you” surrender then I have failed. You have misunderstood that surrender to mean anything is,  when you as an ego ceases, not through a method of forcing this, just a question of allowing it when the ego falls away.  I like this latter take!

BUT, the version of what “Osho said”,  that related to Deeksha certainly got an upper hand, and was very suitable for those who needed for whatever reason to “get their own way”. In the end there were only Queen Bees and worker bees. Okay for a hive, but not for a human society that claimed to have developed and improved on what had come before.

Parmartha

 

 

This entry was posted in Discussion. Bookmark the permalink.

93 Responses to Sweet Surrender

  1. frank says:

    You can complicate it as much as you like.

    In reality, ‘surrender’ leads to right-wing-style fascist politics.
    Simple.
    ‘Gurus’ and ‘Masters’ of a certain size, congregation-wise, have always supported and been supported by local (feudal) landowners.
    Its not going to change.
    Arun grovelling to Hindu nationalists is par for the course.

    Even that chuddie boy so beloved of enlightenment seekers, Ramana Maharshi, communed compassionately and on level-pegging with donkeys and monkeys, but still upheld Hindu caste-ism in his ashram.
    Tells you all you need to know!

    If a guy sits on a throne and everybody bows to him, the politics will be ranging from feudalism to fascism.
    You don’t need a degree in political science to suss that one out!

    Osho used it because…what else was he going to use?

    It’s funny that all the different sides of the ‘legacy’ dispute see the others as fascistic and oligarchic.
    The truth is, that that is the point at which they are all correct!
    That’s the type of game it is and has always been!
    It’s like being on a football pitch and complaining people are kicking a ball around.

    • satyadeva says:

      And where it inevitably degenerates and breaks down (if it hasn’t already before) is after the original master/guru/teacher dies. Because then everyone can say to whoever’s running the show, or any particular aspect of it, “Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what to do and how to do it, how to run this outfit? I know as much, or better than you, what the master ‘really’ wanted!” (and so on).

      I guess that’s the flaw in the concept and practice of any communal-type ‘enlightenment’ project. After the Enlightened Inspiration has exited the stage, the unenlightened multitudes of his ‘followers’/ friends/ fellow-travellers etc. are going to be at loggerheads with each other, both individually and in factions. Particularly in a set-up like Sannyas, which so much emphasises individual freedom.

      So there’s bound to be some extremely disillusioned, unhappy people around. Seems obvious to me that if you’ve over-depended upon being a part of such a ‘collective phenomenon’ then this situation could ideally be a ‘wake-up call’ to see where you’re really at – and take appropriate, self-enquiring, meditative action. (But this is preaching to the converted, isn’t it, Shantam?).

      • Parmartha says:

        Ironically enough, SD, your view that somehow the ‘Presence’ of the Master/Inspiration inoculates any movement from things going wrong in some way, was not the case with Osho. I think something went wrong prior to 1985, don’t you?

        Also, there were factions when Osho was alive. Sante Fe was not the only place where the so-called camels went. Many people in the UK did not like the communes for example, and spoke openly against them during that period but still felt and retained their connection to Osho.

        Another faction was the Hollywood set, some of them would be worth interviewing in retrospect, likewise them writing their own memoirs.

        They took over after Sheela left, but actually then slowly, slowly (except for Jayesh who may have been peripheral to them at the time), left and went back to their own lives in the US. But none of them ever spoke or wrote about their time with Osho as far as I know. Dhyan John or Hasya, for example, would be interesting.

        • Arpana says:

          On every occasion I’ve become involved with a new project, either on my own or involving other people, I have always gone through a honeymoon period, followed by the shit hitting the fan, which certainly, when the project involves a number of people, usually means it will break down completely.

          However, I learned, when I was exploring something on my own, to keep going through the shit-hits-the-fan phase and that everything will settle eventually, and a good example of that would be going into a meditation I hadn’t explored before, such as dynamic for a couple of years, where that pattern repeats itself.

          I’m suggesting that Osho’s work had a honeymoon period which began to break down towards the end of Poona 1, the shit hit the fan in Oregon and then began to settle again, and yet another phase started once he settled on the name Osho, which I sometimes think of as Osho took over from Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (I hasten to add I use that as a metaphor). And there was a honeymoon period then, which began to end about 10 years ago and we are still in the shit-hits-the-fan phase of the Sannyas of Osho.

        • satyadeva says:

          That’s true, Parmartha, although by far the worst of it happened while Osho was ‘taking a back seat’, during what I tend to regard as his ‘fish out of water’ period, in America.

          I find it pretty well inconceivable that any such breakdown as occurred at the Ranch could have been allowed to happen in India – while he was alive.

          He did refer to his living presence being what essentially held the ‘movement’ together, predicting virtual chaos after his departure, due to so many different kinds of people calling themselves sannyasins. Which is what’s going on now, before our very eyes, isn’t it?

  2. Fresch says:

    The police is Osho’s best friend.

    I have been wondering why the rest of the Inner Circle do not open their mouths. It’s very difficult for ordinary sannyasins to do anything about this situation, because it would not help.

    There is nobody to surrender to, except yourself. Kitchen is already empty.

    If in Deeksa’s kitchen, some main chef had taken all the food paid for by the kitchen (meant for the dinner for everybody) and taken it to his own home for his own private dinner and everybody else would have been just stood there, doing nothing but going home getting a burger on the way, would somebody have called the police?

    Nobody did anything at the Ranch before authorities interfered. The police is Osho’s best and only friend.

  3. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    You have not been present there, Fresch, have you?

    You are pontificating about a place you don´t know inside-outside and also about people you don´t know either.

    And with that I mean the challenge that is to have a dream of communal living as a love affair to wisdom, creativity and sustainability AND to experience as if in a pressure cooker (and in a desert place where you really couldn´t just walk round the corner to avoid anything uncomfortable – to have a cappuccino next door, to have a small talk of indifference) -
    AND the experience of the failure inside-outside.

    No – that´s not true – the bunch and variety of friends I met there have NOT been all the way dreary and dull, obedient to the max. etc., or howsoever on a fascist trail.

    Like me – there were quite rebellious spirits, and some – like me –
    paid the price for that.

    And when I lived intensely here now, around all sorts of characters, a wide range from those with fascistic mind tendencies up to lovers of freedom and human dignity living next door too.

    The difference on the Ranch was what I call a ‘pressure cooker situation’, where we were committed in that dream to each other and you could not – like here – avoid challenges or camouflage it…
    or just go into the cinema to see ‘another movie’.

    The ´movie´, so to say, was ´us´, ourselves, and was a 24 hour one.
    And the failure of a dream to get communal together in a peaceful, creative and loving way left scars as well as a lot of insights and awareness.

    You, Fresch, are not the person (for me) to make a judgmental-flatliner out of it – by pontificating.

    Madhu

  4. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    So true, SN, and Parmartha too.

    It always was a problem to take Osho´s words ‘literally’ and it is a problem up to nowadays!
    Maybe even more so today – as we sometimes find out in the quote against quote fights; being all together in the heritage of all living paradoxes of the Mystic, quotes being then and there attached to whatsoever (historical as also present) scandals discussed.

    ( I sometimes see His mischievous smile…taking care of the issue this way, so that a fundamentalist Church simply can not happen out of it).

    The ‘sweet surrender’ happening moment to moment to
    THAT WHICH IS
    is not something of the past.

    And no request, we can get rid of, including the moment, (MOD: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, PLEASE, MADHU?) we then have to depart the one or the other day and hour into the unknown-unknowable.

    The invitation to THIS is ongoing, even if the Master has taken His own turn and is not available any more in the visible world. And we got a lot of precious moments to practise, didn´t we? What a strong support a living Buddhafield was and is, to practise that way to face the challenges of life in this body, mind and soul.

    ‘Wish you were here’ to get it on the virtual go with the Pink Floyd song.

    And ‘sweet surrender’ is asked from me by Life to accept that that is not the case
    - so any moment, ‘sweet surrender’.

    What a fabulous issue that is – and thank you for bringing it up here.

    Love,

    Madhu

    • Parmartha says:

      Thanks, Madhu.
      Whatever was going on in Deeksha’s kitchen in Pune 1 was new to me at the time. I felt it had a certain ring about it. Something of the pressure cooker. She herself, as you may know, became unsurrendered, not sure exactly when, but she did as I remember leave the commune and speak against the movement and Osho. SN readers please add more if you know.

      I didn’t work in Deeksha’s kitchen, but had friends who did, and worked in similar departments where personal criticism and surrender to it was universal.

      When I was in Pune later in 2000, one thing I noticed was that the Resort restaurant was manned by ordinary waged Indian workers. Something about that felt, well, not really quite right!

    • lokesh says:

      ‘Wish You Were Here’ is a bit of a tragic song and like much else of the album is about missing someone, mainly Syd Barrett, who had blown a cylinder head gasket in his brain at the time, due to way too much acid. Good song though.

  5. lokesh says:

    I worked under Deeksha’s iron fist for some time. It caused conflicts in my life at the time because to all intents and purposes I was completely unsurrendered and Deeksha never let me forget it. I helped organise and worked in the first ashram bakery off M G Road. Turned out to be a blast. Deeksha, once we had the place up and running like a well-oiled machine, gave all Bhagwan’s bakers the sack, because we were having too good a time.

    I also worked in the kitchen, where Deeksha made it her task to make my life as unpleasant as possible. I wanted to do what I believed was the right thing for my spiritual development, but I hated the whole carry-on. It was a farce. Eventually, I told Deeksha to shove her surrender trip up her fat Italian arse and walked out in disgust.

    Osho knew about this and had a good chuckle about it. In retrospect, I think he loved me for my rebelliousness and wondered why it had taken me so long to tell Deeksha the right thing to do. It was pure bullshit and at times good, mad fun. In spite of Deeksha’s quest to bust my balls I remember her fondly.

    Deeksha, as it turned out, left the Ranch in disgust. When push came to shove she could not surrender to all the bullshit that was going down in the name of spirituallity on the Ranch. She and her husband began a construction company in Oregon and went on to do very well for themselves. Three years ago, she was looking around in Europe for a place to retire. I invited her to Ibiza but she did not take me up on it.

    On reflection, I don’t really believe the surrender trip that Osho cooked up had very much value for me other than showing to me that I could not swallow it. Surrender in the spiritual sense has nothing to do with playing a crazy game but the willingness to let go internally and disolve into presence, wherein one’s limited ego self has no place. It can be and is scary to let go like that because it is a kind of death.

    The good news is that it always works out fine and for one reason or another the personality re-establishes itself to play on the stage of existence. Ultimately, it will one day not return and that will be the end of it. The fruit falls from the tree when it is ripe and it always happens now. Waiting earnestly for that moment is real surrender.

    • Parmartha says:

      Thanks muchus, Lokesh.

      This post is very comprehensive, and makes an interesting account. You might give a more extended version a go, as a string leader on a theme perhaps of devices, surrender and such like?

      • lokesh says:

        Hi PM, Poona 1′s surrender scenario was more based on Gurdjieffian principles than traditional eastern guru/disciple relationships, at least as far as western sannyasins were concerned. Whatever way one looks at it, if having been a part of it, it was definitely a steep learning curve.

        Osho spoke out about guilt being a useless emotion. Yet, within the ashram’s social structure guilt was employed in liberal doses. I can recall feeling guilty about my resistance to so-called surrender. This had to do more with ashram policy than my conditioning from my Scottish protestant background, for sure. I was naive at the time, due to lack of exerience in such matters. In my mid-twenties I had not fully comprehended the advice Tim Leary gave in regards thinking for oneself and questioning all authoritarian figures.

        It took some time for it to sink in that Osho surely appreciated my rebelliousness much more than my lack of willingness to follow a party line based on a mish-mash of ego- busting techniques. Surrendering to the fact that it was okay to surrender to one’s rebellious nature took time. It was all good.

  6. Shantam Prem says:

    Contexts have changed, weather has changed, past is neither present nor future.

    There are still people who think George Washington is their President!

  7. swami anand anubodh says:

    The urbandictionary.com definition of ‘Keystone Cops’

    The term is to be used to criticise a group for its mistakes,
    particularly if the mistakes happened after a great deal of energy and activity,
    or if there was a lack of co-ordination among the members of the group.

  8. Parmartha says:

    Frank:
    Wasn’t trying to ‘complicate’ the issue, just simplify it!

    When I learned, for example, that Deeksha had not found her role in Rajneeshpuram to her liking and had left…well, I did think she may have had her comeuppance!

    Surrender talk needs to include a consideration of what Jesus was supposed to have said. which rings true for me within all the mystical traditions, certainly not just Christianity: “Not my will, but thine be done”. That is not about human societies, large or small, just a relationship between an individual and ‘Existence’ or God, or whatever one wants to call it.

    • frank says:

      Learning and miming the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ at school, with my grasp of archaic English being understandably a little limited, I always thought that “thy will be done” was a threat,
      as in, “don’t try to get away with it, because thy will be done”.

      So I tried as hard as I could not to `get done`-
      with mixed success, I must admit…

      Can’t relate that Xtian language to anything but abuse.
      I know some people say there is an esoteric Xtianity.
      I only came into contact with so-called ‘muscular Xtianity’ and I`m happy to leave it at that.

      Amen.

      • prem martyn says:

        Cathars, Frank…loads of free love, direct gnosis, a veg. recipe book, and living in the south of France…purrfect…
        No Guru or code book…
        Double bloody marvellous…

        Troubadours out walking the mountains most of the time…nice…strangely, the SS got interested, thinking there was gold buried at Montsegur…

        I know of a purrfect hotel with pool way up on the border with Spain…in the middle of nowhere…fine walking country…with a big Pyrennean mountain dog for company….

        • satyadeva says:

          Wonderful indeed, apparently, Martyn (although time and a shortage of historical evidence can lend it all a possibly not wholly deserved enchantment in our idealistic imaginations)…

          Until the King and the Pope got together and slaughtered them.

          Now, of course, the tales and the ruins are a major tourist attraction down there (and in our heads). ‘Progress’, I suppose….

          • frank says:

            Yes, back in 2012 I was down in Cathar country on a mystery school trip with some lightworkers when I got the calling from spirit to rebalance the energy of the planetary telluric Earth energy grids…

            The energy was amazing but when we arrived
            it turned out Merlin had been attacked in his base chakra by some reptilians and had got his energy wand stuck on a ley line (painful) and was having a lot of difficulty pulling it off. We got Mary Magdalene in, but even she couldn’t pull him off.

            To make things worse, we had to re-align his DNA as we found out that he was a few strands short of the full Atlantean quota.

            I did a bit of sex magick too. After a few days in the vortex, had increased my energetic frequency to about 3 a day.

            Those Merovingien girls drive me crazy…
            and the Albigensian chicks are randy
            bougres…

            etc.etc….

        • Parmartha says:

          Yes, rebels all.
          And as I believe, the Cathars were all slaughtered by some Pope or other’s allies.

  9. Shantam Prem says:

    Surrender and patriotism are like emotions of football fans.
    For players, it is all profession.

    When all the soothing words have lost their hallow (MOD: hallow? hallowedness, perhaps? halo? hallo?) blame goes simply to the people who were using these words as coins fallen from grandpa´s pocket.

    Is this not so, Beloved Friends?

    Love,

    Outer Circle

    PS: Your opinion has no worth for us.

    • frank says:

      Quite so.
      What you say makes a lot of sense.

    • satyadeva says:

      You appear to have mixed up your notes for your sports journalism course, your poetry writing, public speaking and how-to-be-a-politician classes with your notes for your posts at SN, Shantam.

      So easily done for an extremely busy man like yourself. Perhaps you’ve been overworking? How about a spot of Devavani meditation and a nice cup of afternoon tea to get back on track?

  10. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Dear Frank ,
    “Can’t relate that Xtian language to anything but abuse.
    I know some people say there is an esoteric Xtianity.
    I only came into contact with so-called ‘muscular Xtianity’ and I`m happy to leave it at that…”

    I can easily relate to your post and this part (above) of it.

    My experience, though, is – when it’s done, it’s done, and not when we decide so.
    It’s amazing in how many different costumes and varieties button-pushers come and re-appear on stage, fooling around in our consciousness repetitively.

    So, what we want to leave doesn´t leave us; as long as it goes, it seems to go that way.

    When it’s done, YOU will exquisitely KNOW it – by a deep, deep relaxation or maybe even tears of gratitude and by feeling an empty space, where before that had been no space at all.

    A well-being.

    This all has to do with ‘surrender’ and ‘devices’ too, but maybe your altogether more ‘male’ approach to the thread will not appreciate my way of expressing it.
    Then I might try again, looking for better words to come.

    Madhu

    P.S:
    Like to tell you how long I’ve been hearing the one or the other revengeful remark to
    ‘the big MAMA’ thing – or comparable stuff.

    That´s not easy for me, as I’ve found out that the bullying ‘devices’ and ‘counter-devices’ were targeted and are often targeted ‘happily’ in both and in any possible directions….

  11. mandiro says:

    At the end of the Ranch (after Sheela had left) a disciple made his way to the podium while Osho was talking and he laid his mala at Osho’s feet in silence. The disciple was taken out of Buddha Hall by security. Osho had stopped talking while this was happening, then resumed his discourse like nothing had happened.

    Next day, Osho started the discourse by saying (not exactly His words), “Yesterday, a stupid disciple laid his mala at my feet like making me responsible for what has happened to the commune, but Sheela had all her power because you let her; it was very easy not to accept responsibility and blame her and me for your laziness and lack of courage.” (Maybe somebody knows the exact words he said, but this was the message).

    But we all know that if somebody stood up to Sheela she just banished the person and Osho did not interfere. He is an enlightened being, full of contradictions and that is OK with me.

    • lokesh says:

      Mandiro, how are you able to determine if someone is an enlightened being? The rule of thumb is generally that one understands others to the extent that one understands oneself.

      Therefore, to recognize that someone is enlightened one would have to have realized enlightenment. I take it then that you are an enlightened one.

      • Shantam Prem says:

        Answer of Lokesh is born just out of mind and that too out of an ordinary, logical mind.
        “Therefore, to recognize that someone is enlightened one would have to have realised enlightenment.”

        Conclusion goes like this:
        If a child has to find out who is the daddy among all the lovers of mother, he has to become father first.

        As I remember, Lokesh has mentioned somewhere his mother´s history!

        • satyadeva says:

          Just cheap, lazy, essentially flawed logic, Shantam. The two things, being physically responsible for a child’s existence and being an ‘enlightened being’, are qualitatively different:
          one might be termed (for want of a better word) a ‘condition’, the result of a single act, the other a ‘state’ of consciousness, wherein a person has died emotionally and psychologically, and been re-born in Being, as it were.

          If you can’t see the radical difference between the two then I suggest you’re hardly qualified to say anything at all on the matter, let alone imagine yourself as an arbiter of someone’s ‘enlightenment’!

    • satyadeva says:

      If he wasn’t revered as a spiritual master and was, say, a politician, local government official or a top police officer then Osho would surely come in for severe criticism for this apparently hypocritical, even ‘self-serving’ double-talk, wouldn’t he?

      Which brings back the issue of ‘mistakes’ and his ability to handle the situation at the Ranch, too easily uncritically glossed over by Mandiro’s facile “he is an enlightened being, full of contradictions and that is OK with me” explanation.

      Unless, of course, he knew absolutely nothing of what was going on there, including not being informed about any ‘banished’ commune members?

      • alokjohn says:

        I have often thought he was aware of the very low quality of many of the leading sannyasins, and that he went into silence at Rajneeshpuram with the intention ‘to give them enough rope to hang themselves’, which they duly did.

        • satyadeva says:

          Unfortunately though, Alok, Osho himself was virtually ‘hung’ as a result, as were thousands of sannyasins involved, including many who lost significant amounts of money invested in the Ranch project, as well as their ‘allegiance’ to and trust in the master.

          Not to mention the damage to the image of Osho and Sannyas, apparently pretty well irreparable even to this day, at least in the western world.

          So if this was Osho’s intention, it backfired, spectacularly. Again, if he wasn’t an ‘enlightened master’ but just an ordinary politician (or even a run-of-the-mill ‘cult leader’), such a policy would be viewed as a serious error of judgment, for which he’d come in for severe criticism.

          But people fall over themselves to give him the benefit of the doubt, or even to say that it was all somehow pre-planned by Osho as a ‘lesson’ for his people. I can only think that such assessments are due to their personal emotional investment in their image of the master and their unwillingness to accept he might not be all they’d ideally prefer him to be.

          • alokjohn says:

            Well, I take your points, SD. My answer would be:
            Things could have turned out a hell of a lot worse than they did.
            There could have been a mass shoot-out with the FBI.
            Some people at the top were so evil/crazy, there could have been multiple murders.

            If such things had happened that would really have destroyed the movement. As it is, the Pune Centre still exists, with thousands of new visitors per year.

            • lokesh says:

              AJ, you sound like someone who has been brainwashed. Do you consider yourself to be amongst those who were…erm, “given enough rope to hang themselves”, or were you…ehm, beyond all that?

  12. Shantam Prem says:

    Even those who have seen the life around Osho after Sheela give the examples of Sheela.

    It is the easiest thing to pump bullets into someone who is already dead.

    Are those also rebels who beat the statues of the fallen despots?

    • lokesh says:

      El Chudo, reading a few comments of yours of late I am left with the impression that you have lost your chuddies. Your interpretations of other’s comments are so off the mark it defies belief and betrays an extremely narrow viewpoint.

      • Shantam Prem says:

        Lokesh, thanks for showing me the mirror. I don´t disagree with you. Not just me, but many of us, including you, have the habit to give off the mark interpretation or shallow interpretation.

        In my case, I must confess most of my words are born out of the state one can call, ‘Loss of Innocence’.

        There are many books regarding the mental state of people whose trust was used and manipulated in their childhood.

        I think similar study needs to be made of those whose inner world has had to pass through betrayal of trust.

        History repeats itself and followers of Moses die or get lost in the Arabic desert!

        • satyadeva says:

          Are you saying, Shantam, that you’re suffering due to having your idealistic dreams of living in a sort of permanent ‘Garden of Eden’ destroyed by ‘Evil (so to say) Forces’? Is that your perception, the self-pitying story you tell yourself?

          If so, well, who ever decreed that such hopes and dreams were certain to be realised? What sort of childish delusions have you been harbouring all these years?

          Welcome to the world, Shantam! The world that will always break all such externally projected idealistic fantasies – in order for you and me to eventually realise that nothing out there – no matter how ‘wonder-ful’ – lasts for ever and that we’d better look within for any truly fulfilling, lasting reality. Which will be the end of your ridiculous, reality-avoiding, self-dramatising self-pity.

          Haven’t you heard, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within” (ie certainly not in Koregaon Park, Pune, past, present, or future, or any other geographical location)?

          This basic point seems to be something that you’ve yet to grasp. As is a pre-requisite of ‘the spiritual life’, being responsible for yourself rather than the all too easy way of blaming others or ‘circumstances’ for your unhappiness.

          • Shantam Prem says:

            Satyadeva,
            Were you some kind of Ayurvedic doctor in the past life or a voodoo expert?

            Such people have all the cures for all the sicknesses.
            Can you ever accept your general knowledge spirituality may be more than 16 GB, but there are still many things in life you have not seen?

            For example, for what fuck Osho was hell-bent from the beginning of his Profession to have His Ashram which runs in His way and which is unique.

            By George, you have not more than 5% idea about it.

            AND LET ME SAY IT ONCE FOR EVER: I DID NOT COME TO OSHO FOR LOOKING FOR A SAVIOUR WHO IS EVERYWHERE AFTER HIS DEATH.

            IT WAS HIS COURAGE TO DARE TO CHANGE THE WHEEL OF DHAMMA.

            I think for someone like SD, OSHO aka Rajneesh is a male version of MS. MEERA.

            MOD: SHANTAM, WE’RE NOT SURE IF YOU’VE SEEN REQUESTS FOR YOU TO CLARIFY WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN IN TWO RECENT POSTS, BOTH JULY 8: AT 3.08pm AND 1.04pm (PARMARTHA’S REQUEST & MOD’S RESPONSE, RE YOUR POST OF 10.59am).

            • satyadeva says:

              You can bluster and try to insult all you like, Shantam, but your extreme reaction here (all those CAPITALS, “BY GEORGE”!) suggests I’ve hit a nerve, in the form of issues that you’re uncomfortable truly facing up to. I repeat:

              1/ The first imperative, to be responsible for oneself and not blame others or ‘circumstances’.

              2/ The dangers inherent in personal attachment to particular places and conditions, expecting them to last ‘forever’.

              Are you going to tell me this is nonsense, or what?

              If you’re saying that the ‘Pune ashram situation’ justifies the degree of anger, unhappiness, depression you exhibit here, which apparently casts a shadow over your entire life, then I can only conclude that your time there has failed to do an adequate ‘spiritual job’, as you would appear to have no inkling of the points I’m making, which are both pretty basic, however hard they might be to ‘live’.

              Who knows, maybe the ashram for you was more ‘holiday camp’ than a place of spiritual understanding. IE all very well, even absolutely necessary, up to a point, but ultimately leaving you ‘high and dry’.

              • Shantam Prem says:

                Satyadeva, be sure, in spite of strong words in capitals sometimes, I will never, ever insult you or even the people I disagree with completely.

                On the contrary, I am a sentimental, small town person who does not cut the bonds but cherishes them, specially with those who are capable to disagree, but are clean-hearted.

                Meanness is the last shit I can bear.

  13. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Thanks for your background info, Lokesh, as I didn´t know in particular the story about Syd Barrett; quite a good wake-up call and reminder to whom I am chatting here and also how.

    The body I am in is sick for quite a while, and to face that as well as to face isolation without indulging in self-pity – a day-to-day task.

    Madhu

  14. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    You wrote, Shantam Prem:

    “It is the easiest thing to pump bullets into someone who is already dead.
    Are those also rebels who beat the statues of the fallen despots?”

    No, Shantam, thoseyou mention are not rebels.
    And neither are you, Shantam, using your verbal pump gun in abundance here, targeting the living.

    One of the main reasons rebellious actions don´t succeed is the mostly missing capacity to co-operate and to have a vision for the better.

    Madhu

  15. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Hi Arpana,
    or workgroup ´Arpana´,

    The poem you posted at another place is beautiful,
    it does really belong as a not-hidden reminder
    in many or any of our ´issues´ discussed in these rows.

    But anyway – there are always secrets which cannot be spoken.

    Which I was reminded of spontaneously when some sannyasin once asked:
    “What else have You up your ´sleeve´to puzzle us, confuse us, surprise us
    …awaken us?”

    This had been brought up as a joke – everybody was laughing -

    Madhu

  16. Fresch says:

    You are what you see. Some people see only the surface; ‘Dallas-Texas-separate-seats’ people seem to see the colour of the skin only. I remember Lokesh writing about Veeresh (half-Philippino) being ‘nobody in his book’, because he smoked cigarettes in some Humaniversity group.

    Well, I heard Veeresh say something so much more valuable about seeing enlightenment, he said something like, “if you see a person enlightened, you are enlightened” (not at all the same exact words, but very much like it).

    Also, one of the last wishes of Veeresh’s ex-wife, Sudha (black American) was to see a black American become President (what a political gesture from her). I happen to be trained by both of them and really see them both, if not enlightened yet, very near to there. In spite of the colour of the skin or cultural background.

    • satyadeva says:

      I’m afraid I disagree, Fresch. You only have to see how people view obvious frauds and non-entities as ‘enlightened’ to realise that what you and Veeresh say is nonsense.

      Not to mention those who might well be ‘on the right track’ in viewing someone as ‘enlightened’ – yet who are themselves clearly ‘light years’ from that blessed state! (No names mentioned, of course…except mine!).

    • lokesh says:

      Stale says, “I remember Lokesh writing about Veeresh (half-Philippino) being ‘nobody in his book’, because he smoked cigarettes in some Humaniversity group.”

      I say that is utter shite. Show where I said that. You will not, because I did not say that. Some of my favourite people smoke cigarettes and I certainly enjoy one after dinner. I did do an Aum Marathon and for the first time in my life smoked cigarettes. I like Veresh and he is no more a ‘nobody’ than anyone else around here. In Poona, I saw Veresh as just another fish in the tank, which is an entirely different matter.

      I knew Sudha and liked her also, but this is the first time I heard that she was married to Veeresh. I suspect that like the rest of Stale’s post she is trying to oust El Chudo from the throne of make-believe.

      • satyadeva says:

        Veeresh and Sudha, who met at a therapeutic community in the States, separated in summer, 1972, Lokesh, ie quite a while before ‘Bhagwan’ reached London the following year. Just for the record….

        • lokesh says:

          Yes, SD, that sounds more like it. Why Stale needs to attach nationality and colour to Veeresh and Sudha’s names sounds odd to me. Apart from people like El Chudo, people’s skin colour was never an issue in the sannyas community.

  17. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    That´s true, Alokjohn (at 3.29 pm).

    I do know by own harmful experience, which left enduring marks in my psyche.

    Yet I don´t know about the Resort today, and for quite a while.

    But I too am concerned, like many of the lovers of this specific caravanserai, to also take care of the preciousness of a huge and living heritage, although the word ´heritage’ might itself fall very short and is not the right one (but at the moment there is no other there inside).

    “Be patient”, I hear, when I listen to my inner medicine-woman,

    Madhu

  18. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Dear Satyadeva,

    It’s only a very short while since I volunteered to this blog.
    Sometimes I am looking into the archives, to get more acquainted.

    But in this short while, a few months, when I look into your contributions,
    I am sometimes missing there any dealing with issues of interference and interdependency of the Master and the disciples and also vice versa.

    And that kind of stuff is a LIVING issue, in various appearances though, whatever comes up on stage -
    up to this very moment.
    It has ever been that way, by the way, dependent on our capacity and levels of understanding, as well as bringing understanding into action.

    That is a very complex affair.

    I am happy – unhappy – and sometimes beyond too – to say that this is a kind of love affair for me too – but not on a personal level.
    It has never been!

    The challenge is to resist a climate of so-called ‘majorities’, and yet to go in deep research to see at what level the resistance (or disobedience) is happening.

    (There has been the possibility in abundance to experience that in what i call a ‘pressure cooker´ – like I was more than once under ‘interrogation’ by the main office (Ranch) because of disobedience – and some of my experiences were similar to those Lokesh has been telling a story about, with a nice ending – and some, NOT!).

    So, as I am one of thousands, I can say, and my focus has been on the fellow-travellers I dealt with, instead of hanging on to fantasies of upper and inner circles.
    And up to now, my main interest is going more into the whole of it, the climate, and if it is possible to enjoy the gifts given together, or not.

    My focus on (political) history and that I mention only because some of you like to mention German fascism ever again. Well, some of those have a blind spot about their own fascist tendencies.
    That´s quite old stuff…but again and again, taken out of the ‘pockets’.

    When I reached the Sangha in outer form, that was at the right time, like it is for anybody ‘just the right time’.

    As anybody of us contributing here , and I mean those who are concerned in a good, willing way, and not just intentionally to shit on anything and to imagine to have a free place to shit on anything and anybody, or just with the intention to spy and harass or to fix a ‘spiritual career’.

    And also this very moment inherits all that’s unresolved of the past (individually as well as collectively) and it goes in circle songs (to find a romantic word for it).

    Have a beautiful evening, friends, in the midst of all and everything – and NOTHING -
    and this moment – YES…

    Madhu

    P.S:

    May we be able to take care of the PRECIOUS, will we?

  19. Anthony Thompson says:

    Just to add some information (my speciality) on the Veeresh subject.

    Veeresh was far from being a nobody. Before coming to Osho, he was the first therapist to introduce the Phoenix House therapeutic method to Europe. He and his wife Sudha (Leida Yuson), a licenced clinical psychologist from New York, were awarded the highest honour to a non-medical doctor by the British goverment, when they were appointed in charge of of the first residential community for addicts in England. This recognition was later given also to Veeresh by the Dutch goverment when he was asked to set up the residential farm to treat drug addicts in The Hague.

    He was an innovator, for being the first therapist to use music in his groups to set up moods and mark phases of the work.
    He combined, for the first time in a therapeutic community, Lowen´s bioenergetics with Schutz’s encounter groups.
    He set up the first 9 months residential programme of humanistc psychology at Quaesitor, the second growth centre in the world after Esalen, set up by Paul and Patricia Lowe, who later became Teertha and Poonam.
    He also introduced to Europe Richard Bach and Stoller´s marathon method.

    If in the ashram he was “just another fish in the tank” it speaks very well of the man.

    Yours,

    Anthony

    • Parmartha says:

      Thanks, Anthony.

      I myself would have never ‘surrendered’, which is the subject of this string, to Veeresh. I found him and his therapy mix somewhat dangerous, though in other ways he was an okay fellow, and in the little I had to do with him sort of friendly to me.

      I have met a number of ‘casualties’ of the Humaniversity over the years. Okay, they may not have been ‘ready’ for such therapy, but the therapist has a responsibility to NOT be guided by monetary considerations when taking on ‘clients’ and to say no to those that are not ready or not suited to such ‘work’.

      As for Veeresh himself, the last time I spoke to him he was praising some new south American native drug which he said he was experimenting with, certainly not my sort of path, but it takes all sorts.

    • lokesh says:

      Yes, no doubt about it, Veeresh has done good works. Talking of ‘works’, he used to keep his concealed in a hollowed-out Bible.

      Last time I saw him he was visitng Ibiza and I went out with him to purchase painting materials as he was in an artist phase. I wonder if he still paints today.

      Yours truly, just another fish in the tank.

  20. Anthony Thompson says:

    Surrender is a double-edged sword: it can be the biggest rationalisation for exploitative behaviour… and it can be a wonderful tool for self-development and the learning of letting go of the attachment to our own restricted views.

    So, the danger is there…With Osho, it was a walk on the edge – that could have terminated in terrible bloodshed and disaster…

    But that was the Sannyas game, wasn´t it? You all knew that you were hanging out with a crazy man. I never dared, I was way too careful, the possible dangers put me off. But those of you who dared to walk that walk, I admire. You all went to the freak show, knowing perfectly well that the smutz could spit blood on your face.

    And if you didn´t and thought that a clean, holy spiritual path was ahead…Well, you were just simply not listening very well.

    Yours,

    Anthony

    • satyadeva says:

      Anthony, you must surely only be referring to the Ranch phase as containing such potential life-threatening dangers – and a very brief period of that time at that.

      So I find this post of yours far too exaggerated, melodramatic in fact.

      Perhaps nearer to the truth is that you were/are ‘deathly afraid’ of something else entirely, ie the death of your predominantly ‘mentalising’ way of being, of the standpoint of the ‘intellectual spectator’, the gatherer of ‘information’ (your self-confessed “speciality”!), which has always appeared to be the self-created ‘raison d’etre’ of your life?

      While, as a spectator, you were feeding off the lives of people who had actually committed themselves to the way of being that you hadn’t, because you couldn’t bring yourself to sacrifice that seemingly ‘safe’ intellectual identity you’d worked to create for yourself.

      (Which reminds me of how we like to watch the news, in a way similarly feeding off the travails of others whom we have no intention to join, in other words just filling ourselves with more ‘information’, with no apparent end in sight to such greed).

      Clearly, the well-known psycho-spiritual phrase, ‘All fear is fundamentally the fear of death’, doesn’t only apply to physical death, but also to the death through renunciation or loss of such intellectual standpoints and mental constructs, eg gathering information, opinions, ideologies, viewpoints etc. etc., as well as to the fear of losing love, friends and family.

      That’s pretty well the human condition, isn’t it? So you can hardly be ‘blamed’! But it’s useful to have no illusions about where we’re actually at.

      • Anthony Thompson says:

        You are right. I have never denied it, you describe me perfectly.
        It was my choice – my blessing and my curse, both.

        However, nowadays I can defend your master better than any of you, precisely because I was never a ‘surrendered sannyasin’. As a bystander I have the advantage of not having my opinion brushed off by the people who despise your master, simply because I have nothing to lose. I have stated and praised what this beautuiful, mysterious man has done.

        So, yes, i never dared and hid behind my intellectual defence – my curse – and today I can defend him from the people who wish to portray him as a monster…and say, “Hey! Wait a second! This guy is one of the most important spiritual masters of our time” – my blessing!

        Yours,

        Anthony

        • satyadeva says:

          Sounds good to me, Anthony. I guess such unofficial pr work is a ‘meditation in itself’ (as the saying goes) for you.

          How about the first point I made, re your exaggerating the external dangers?

          • Anthony Thompson says:

            Satyadeva, I was being poetic, so to speak. I do not think the danger in Pune 1 was more than ending up trespassing on your own boundaries and feel awful about that. (MOD: DO YOU MEAN YOU feel awful OR THAT SUCH trespassing FELT awful, ANTHONY?)

            The Ranch was another story, it could have ended really badly…But again, for me I can see both the dangers and the utility of surrender. And the utility is IN the danger: If you are willing to take full responsibility for your unconditional ‘yes’, even the potential danger of being exploited becomes a door for growth – it all depends…

            Not to request unconditional surrender is always safer, anyway. Or perhaps on a very small scale where you can be in control.

            Surrender as a motto, with 5000 people and a bunch of paranoid, power-hungry mamas, becomes a whole different story.

            But my research shows that for even those who came out hurt and took full responsibility for their surrender, growth was the outcome.

            And that, in my understanding, was the beauty of Osho’s way: it was not safe, it was a gamble – and the smutz could spit blood on your face….

            Yours,

            Anthony

            • satyadeva says:

              Ok, Anthony, yet the period when there was possible “terrible bloodshed and disaster” was a tiny fraction of the entire period of Osho’s ‘Sannyas experiment’, otherwise there was no such risk involved in ‘surrender’.

              Although there are those who felt ‘damaged’ by their involvement in the movement, ‘casualties’ of group therapies and of sexual exploitation. Why not highlight these, rather than something that never took place?

              • Anthony Thompson says:

                The point I am trying to make is that I do not have a definite take on surrender as such…that it all depends…and I like that paradox, that double-edged sword: it can be both a blessing and a curse, it depends.

                And with an iconoclast like Osho, danger was the way, and I both loved and respected that – from my fence…

                Yours,

                Anthony

                • karima says:

                  Hi Anthony, from reading your ‘viewpoints’ I read insights into surrender which some sannyasins might not have, and I suspect you might walk your own path.

                  So even if one is a so-called sannyasin, that doesn’t mean it is the only path in Mysterie.

    • Parmartha says:

      Surrender was a ‘play’. Very few sannyasins who embraced it thought that it could lead to the nemesis at the end of the Ranch.

      You have hit the wrong key here, Anthony.

  21. Fresch says:

    Sounds very good indeed, now you do not need to refer to any individual’s racial, sexual, cultural, political etc. background any more here if you disagree with him or her in your posts here. Not Arun’s, nor Shantam’s, nor Indians working for OIF in Pune.

  22. Fresch says:

    Also, I am glad about Jehovah’s Witness Sam’s visit here, because it made me take notice of news regarding cults in my country, which happens to be one of the most free western countries to appreciate human rights.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses have very specific rules about all behaviour (rings a bell in our cult?) and they abandon people, give orders to their people not to have anything to do with people who do not obey them, they have their own ‘judicial’ system, a small circle of people deciding that, in secret. They tell parents and siblings, and of course friends, not to have anything to do with somebody who is banned.

    Rings a bell? However, my country is making a law against that, on the basis it’s against human rights. Does it ring a bell? It seems, lawyers are sannyasins’ best friends.

  23. Shantam Prem says:

    Death of A Disciple-

    Other day in Pune, one of Osho´s longest-serving disciples, Swami Anand Swabhawa, has died after battling mouth cancer for last few years. Osho declared him as his ambassdor for India and most probably he was the only one who continued with his master´s given job though all other ambassadors and director generals hung up their robes within months or years after 19th January 1990!

    In 1984, when I took sannyas, he was the meditation camp facilitator. During Pune days, I got the chance to work with him too.

    This man, Swami Anand Swabhav, has taken more meditation camps than all the others together. Swabhav ji had initiated more people into Sannyas than all the full enlightened/semi-enlightened/non-enlightend Osho disciples put together.

    And not for a single minute he played the Guru. Lived like every other disciple, enjoyed good things of life, including women and Gutka!

    I simply love this Osho style of humanness and spirituality. New Man is without pretensions.

    Swabhav Swami, you walked your walk, you lived master´s talk.

    P’S: On facebook there are many photos of his death celebration. Resort´s security in-charge Dhayanesh Bharti has photos on his wall taken in Osho Auditorium and Ma Bodhi Pratima has 16 photos set on her wall.

    One can have a look and see the crowd and atmosphere of present day Sannyas life in Pune.

  24. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Dear Anthony,

    “And with an iconoclast like Osho, danger was the way, and I both loved and respected that – from my fence.”

    Respect from the other side of a fence, there I can follow your comments.

    But was has the word “love” to do with that position?

    Madhu

    • Anthony Thompson says:

      Madhu, I was enchanted by the old man and his caravanserai, as he liked to call it. I was not blinded by this love and I could see the flaws of his humanness, as I could see the brightness of his wisdom, love and daring.

      So that is why in this forum I get misunderstood so much, because I do not have one definite position to defend, as I stated before regarding surrender. I embrace the paradox that Osho was in my eyes, I immensely respect his courage to walk on that tightrope.

      This guy was a not a goody-goody, ideal holy man, as some Indian friends would like to see him. Neither was he the monster-crook, cunning drug-addict that Oregonians liked to see in him.

      In my eyes, he was a wise, daring human who could understand human nature better than anyone I have met, and was willing to conduct an experiment to help other people discover what he had. And in that process, trespass many social, legal and moral rules of the places he lived in.

      He enjoyed the adoration, lied about his life and intentions, rationalised as ‘devices’ his own flaws.

      And loved you as if there was no one else for you in this world, understood human psychology better than Freud, loved humour and adventure as very few people I know. and above all, taught that naturalness is the closest you can get to the divine, brushing off all sorts of disciplines and self-torture methods that go on in the name of spiritual seeking…and loved spontaneity as a religious quality – only on condition that it did not disrupt his discourses…

      And there was that something else I can not put into language, but which I certainly felt and experienced…

      Yours,

      Anthony

  25. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Fresch, you may have to decide, the other day it was secret services and police as ‘best friend of Osho’.
    Now:
    “Does it ring a bell? It seems, lawyers are sannyasins’ best friends.”

    Human dignity and human rights can be harmed any day, even in countries which have ratified these rights.

    In industrial, highly developed countries like here, the judicial cat is as cunning as anything.

    It’s nice though, when in the one or the other RARE case, cult mechanisms as barbaric as those you mention are prosecuted.

    Yet in soft, skilful ways and undercover they are very common, as I came to know.
    And the sannyas realms when some of former buddies go into business are quite skilled too, very much beyond ‘friendship.

    So what is friendship anyway?

    And what is friendship for you in particular?

  26. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    So true, and what a beautiful, beautiful response your responding is, Anthony.

    No fence needed now, is it?

    Or maybe the one or the other fence to look at His lovers, His disciples?
    To describe them as more or less blinded or mostly in the habit of ‘defence’, maybe deserving not only your loving ‘re-aspecting’ as well.

    Yes, not only yours -

    the miracle and mystery to come together as such was – and is – ONE.

    I came across quite some tightrope walkers these decades.
    As well as I came across some walkers who liked to sabotage a rope, so to say.
    And to say in a crude way,
    so – the medicine man and medicine woman are not out of work…

    And we all may have to decide if this love affair is something for elaborate ‘history books’ or a mystery to be lived.

    Thank you for being part of the caravanserai.

    Here are no fences; fences are of imagination
    (especially on the virtual-line…as we all know).

    Love.

    Madhu

  27. swami anand anubodh says:

    Anthony wrote:

    “I can defend your master better than any of you,
    precisely because I was never a ‘surrendered sannyasin’.
    As a bystander I have the advantage of not having my opinion brushed off
    by the people who despise your master.”

    That’s fortunate, as recently the ‘MailOnline’ published an article which scandalously took our master’s words out of context.
    And we need somebody to spearhead his defence.

    You have announced yourself as being most qualified.

    So may I ask: When will you be contacting the Daily Mail?

  28. Shantam Prem says:

    Can someone be so foolish enough to write, “I can defend your master better than any of you”?
    It is childish, absurd, ludicrous.

    But anyway, it is nothing new. Meditation makes people drugged and boisterous.

    If disciples are not capable to defend their master, they should go out from the bond. Why to waste time?

    • satyadeva says:

      “Meditation makes people drugged and boisterous.”

      One of the most ridiculously foolish, most ill-informed statements that even you have ever made, Shantam.

      With ‘friends’ like you, Osho has no need of ‘enemies’.

  29. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    That´s true, Satyadeva,
    sorry to say – but your conclusion is true (3.20 pm).
    I went for a long walk outside – after having read what Shantam had been up to again.

    And sometimes I wonder about the moderation issue.

    Madhu

    MOD: LET US KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN, PLEASE, MADHU, OTHERWISE WE’RE JUST GUESSING.

  30. Shantam Prem says:

    So it looks like our meditation without any personal coach or teamwork can make us drugged and boisterous.

    For centuries it was like this.

  31. Shantam Prem says:

    Parmartha,
    One just needs to look at Indian mind of last few thousand years; the mind which could bear the political slavery for more than 1500 years; meditation was the tranquilliser, it helped to transcend the day-to-day misery.

    With the export of meditation to the West, same kind of effects are visible.

    I think OSHO´s whole life vision and work is based on this idea: how to create balanced human being. What is otherwise the concept of New Man?

    The challenging aspect, how to use meditation as medication is put aside. Quick fix approach which is always masses’ favourite has crept in.

    • satyadeva says:

      But your previous post referred to the Sannyas movement, not to “the West” or to anyone else, didn’t it, Shantam? Here, you’re merely serving up yet another dish of ‘red herrings’ – well seasoned by an astounding ignorance for an Osho disciple – which unfortunately (for you) completely lacks anything approaching ‘the tongue-tip taste of Tao’.

      If you don’t realise that meditation – ultimately, as a way of life, rather than something to be ‘done’ for an hour or so per day – was recommended by Osho as a key aspect of his teaching, a means, for example, to awareness of and dissolution of our mental and emotional identifications and attachments, hence to inner space and stillness, then you’ve understood very little.

      In fact, it’s always seemed to me that you just don’t have the remotest clue what real meditation is about.

      It might well not be part of your personal experience, therefore somehow irrelevant to you, but if you reject this way of being out of hand in such a dismissive way then I suggest you’re dangerously close to rejecting Osho himself.

  32. Shantam Prem says:

    If dogs become humans they will smell the words.
    Naturally borrowed words and expressions are like stale meat!

    Meditation is a way of life and Satyadeva lives this life.
    My feeling is if someone enters his bathroom and looks at the mirror, mirror will peep, “You are not Satyadeva!”

    • satyadeva says:

      Funnily enough, that’s exactly what happened this morning, Shantam. Nothing unusual, nothing to brag about, just par for the course for an advanced meditator like my, er, ‘self’. I feel blessed because it’s such a wonderful ‘reminder’…

      My bathroom mirror is an unfailing source of spiritual wisdom and guidance on many matters, by the way. In fact, I’ve never known it to be wrong. Now you might think it’s an enviable ‘siddhi’ and I realise you’re jealous and as a committed non-meditator feel terribly inferior about this sort of thing, but you get nothin’ for nothin’ in this life and the fact is, I’ve put in the hours, you haven’t.

      Hang on, it’s calling me right now…
      … … … …

      It says, “Do not waste any more of your precious time and energy on this individual, if it wasn’t for the freely available sex with foreign women he would never have bothered.”

  33. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Moderators, I said it was in agreement to:
    “…one of the most ridiculously foolish, most ill-informed statements that even you have ever made, Shantam.

    With ‘friends’ like you, Osho has no need of ‘enemies’.”

    And what has been so difficult to understand there?
    As I mentioned the time of his post.

    Madhu

    MOD: MADHU, WE WERE REFERRING ONLY TO THIS BIT OF YOUR EARLIER POST:
    And sometimes I wonder about the moderation issue.

  34. Shantam Prem says:

    How wrong one can be in his judgements and self-assessments, SD, you are the right proof.

    As I remember, that was the purpose of commune and master´s zen stick to take disciples out from their comfort zone. Without this, meditation can be used as natural Prozac. Not bad, it has only one side-effect, one sits on the tied boat and behaves as if sailing.

    This is called Siddhi!

    • satyadeva says:

      Here, you only provide yet more evidence that you haven’t the slightest clue what ‘real’ meditation is about, Shantam.

      I suggest you carefully study Karima’s post of 10.26am today, in the latest thread.

      Meanwhile, I’m taking the wise advice of my bathroom mirror….

Leave a Reply