A Brief Reflection on Swami Anand Rajen
In Poona one days there were three “foremost” therapists. All, as it happened, previously plying their trade in London, prior to joining Osho and continuing similar work within the Poona ashram. Teertha, Somendra and Anand Rajen came, by way of time in that order, and were “revered” by your average sannyasin also in that order. Okay I never said it at the time, but maybe should have. Teertha and Somendra both seemed to have quite big, but carefully disguised problems of their own, not least self-importance. I found, by contrast, that Rajen had a natural sort of equality of being, and acknowledged his own suffering and misery in a telling way.
The two London therapy centres, Quesator and Community, were also dominated by their personalities and work and also in about that order. They were following on to a major extent from the Esalen encounter group centre in California, and on Karl Rogers humanistic psychology.
As someone who worked, and still works, in the helping professions I did not actually agree with the ranking. Rajen (Alan Lowen) seemed to me a much better “therapist” than the other two. He seemed to have a deeper knowledge of the human condition, and was not self important. In the video below he shares a lot of his early life in an orphanage, his sannyas “career” and his final reconciliation with Osho. This came on the day Osho died with a letter to him written just a week or so before.
Punters at SN seem to have a poor attention span so it seems, so whilst I recommend the whole of this link, you can pick up the sannyas history from about minute 30.
Parmartha
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Very moving to hear a man of his age talk so openly about his mother and love as a child, their love.
Ye gods, but that generation were affected, or so many were, by fathers from the forces.
Parmartha,
Friday afternoon, seeing that new proposal of a string on my screen here, blew up some yet not reconciled deep spots in my life as a sannyasin so far.
I got hooked by the following of your remarks:
“…that Rajen had a natural sort of equality of being, and acknowledged his own suffering and misery in a telling way.”
And still – after thirty years and even after having seen this vid twice before – my experience of former Rajen, Alan, has been quite different. Although I totally agree with his point in his sharing with Ian nowadays, that we all are going on “replicating-patterns” – until it´s done.
I also know by experience that his insights and the inner processes he talks about concerning the Ranch in Oregon have been similar to so many beautiful people, including me – yet no essential sharing, processing important issues has been happening.
Especially not from the place of the RIMU VIPS, like Rajen and Teertha (Somendra was already ‘out of the game’), those who, on the other side trained lots of people in ‘human’ communication and sharing skills.
In my soul, I am not done with encountering former Rajen´s “replications” at that time, to use his own words for this, and the best I can say after ´sitting on it’ thirty years is:
We all serve each other anyway.
We serve each other in “replicating” and there is no guarantee to reconcile ever, but that is a very beautiful dream.
What kept me going after being hospitalised on the Ranch and after the Ranch ‘clinic-treat’, following the encounter with a man in a “replication”-rage, I cannot really define or put in words.
Quite often these decades I have been simply amazed – amazed that I am still sitting here, responding to a thread of UK chats called Sannyas News, amazed to sometimes (rather rare) see people on screens or – also rarely – in the streets or in sharing groups these years or decades, listening to the whole variety of expression and change of how ‘history’ takes shape.
And the best inner picture I can have then and there is running water,
and the best sound of silence to the flux of all I can hear is the sound of running water,
or a ney* flute…
And then just
nothing.
Madhu
(a long way short to this Friday late afternoon midsummer-day – saying hello to ‘out-there’ and in-side too).
*You can taste the sound of this special flute in the music to “The Four Dimensions Meditation’ in the CD dedicated to that meditation.
So, Madhu, what actually happened to you in that group that Rajen/Alan presumably led?
Anand Rajen means ‘King of Bliss’. But as Rajen quite happily shares, Osho told him he was a beggar of misery – the name was just a guide towards what his potentiality could be.
I think you may be alluding to the period, Madhu, when the ‘therapists’, with the notable exception of Veeresh, ‘left’ Osho, which was following the demise of the Ranch in 1985/6, and what seemed to have gone down there.
Osho subsequently did say some cutting things about these therapists, including Rajen. Of course this was a difficult area for many. For indeed, many had come at that time to Osho from a therapeutic background and looking to the personal growth movement within the umbrella of Osho, to leave them free of their neuroses.
They also experienced great trust with these so-called leading disciples – though Somendra had ‘left’ in 1982, as I recall – so it upset the applecart for many who still felt that Osho was their Master, despite everything that went down on the Ranch, to see such leading lights move off, and in the case of some, criticise the Master.
I was pleased when a member of the SN collective drew this video to my attention, and in particular the last part of it, because I had not known that Rajen had received a letter of reconciliation from Osho on the day he died. This fitted with my own experience of Rajen, which, though limited, was that I felt he was in touch with something, was not just a therapist, and that he was able to communicate that in a non-verbal way.
Once, we almost ran into each other when we were both on bicycles on the Ranch, and there was somehow something beyond words that passed, which as you can see I still remember to this day.
Sorry, Satyadeva, Parmatha too, somebody or something just sucked my answer to you, both the emails just disappeared. I responded to you, Satyadeva, that it wasn’t a group happening but a one-to-one encounter with former Rajen.
And I responded to you, Parmartha, that I did not refer to 1985 or all the stuff that was happening there and then, but exactly to summertime 1984. And that it has been worthy to be compared to an Orwell opus.
And that in the Ranch Clinic I met some other VIPs then, trying to cure their heavy eye infections, and that I have been in deep shock, frozen and solitary in that clinic.
And that I really know that a PTSD takes time to dissolve and to heal and that the healing of such is always connected with what I call: In a way we are all serving each other…
And I want to repeat just now what I mentioned in some earlier threads:
We are not to push the river, all of us.
Madhu
Some of you, friends in UK, may have had a Humaniverity training or a deeper connection to that branch of a tree so to say.
I came across many friends of the Humaniversity tribe here in Germany in the course of time. And that may be the reason that in spite of sometimes despair or strong irritation, I still try to share.
Yes, a caravanserai is a meeting place of very different colours and shapes and individuals
(not to mention some onlookers or also data- phishers, or on the other hand, rare contributors like Anand “Oldman”, for example).
I confess that it is difficult for me to feel utterly insecure at my place and also addressing people I haven’t met or do not meet physically –
thus writing to a kind of VOID, looking for words to come to share about issues which, in my life, have been points of ‘no return’.
Or maybe better said: taught me about THE lesson that we all are at any moment of life embedded and exposed to something so much bigger and incomprehensible.
To get such a lesson by a beautiful love affair is just one way of many; some traumatic and very painful happenings also belong to that.
In the end…
same, same lesson, if ‘life’ is allowing to get it
but that ‘getting it’ is also not in our hands, like life itself.
And that was what I understood when the Master spoke about “choiceless awareness”, letting more and more go about ‘my’ conditions about happiness or fulfilment, for example.
Writing into a VOID is a strong lesson too.
Using the word, ‘friends’…
not knowing a thing -
saying ‘Love’ at the end of a sharing, not knowing a thing…
And yet….
Madhu
Thank you, Madhu, for sharing this, your openess, vulnerability and wisdom.
Lok: Article about Rajen here on SN.
Preeti (my wife): He was a good guy. A genuine therapist who wasn’t chasing the girls all the time. I once did a long encounter group with him. It was a lot of fun. It was a very clear group and Rajen handled it very well. He got right down to people’s issues. No bullshit. Much better than that man Teertha. I just didn’t click with him. There was something very unclear and murky about him.
Glad that I am not alone in my view of Rajen. I still would rate him as the best group therapist at that time in the sannyas world.
Teertha came from a Salvation Army background with both his parents being in the nutter brigade in Birmingham.
I’m not familiar with Rajen at all. So can’t comment.
What’s significant overall is that intentional collaborating leads to a quickening of the spirit. Define that for yourself. Being alert is a start.
If, by adding experiences and opportunity to reflect and expand in, then we live up to life, our loves and any inbuilt faults get lived out or brought to the surface…that’s probably a good thing, because the rest is just a barely functioning disaster movie lived without significant love or fulfilled ability, by rote 9-5 function.
Anyone who wants to can speak up about this urge for truthisms, but you can’t become trained in it. Because it’s just not a monopoly of some soul, or a means to an end. It just is one’s nature, should one so require, on tap and available…give or take a few obstacles, granted.
I really cannot abide that part of the history of the early personal search movement that progressively mimicked in large part the other professionalisms operating within society that never effectively sponsored self-regulating intentional economies and lifestyles for the ‘tune in-turn on brigade’, to the same extent that mundane society, the mass, dominates and regulates the only major options even to this day.
I’m still working on my own all-round project of fulfilment -if work is an appropriate word…don’t like that as a life description myself, but in larger part there is not a single national society that I wish to be a functioning recognisable part of. For me, any ‘endurance’ or what you make of it, is either in having enough support to confront alienation in the given daily life, or to ‘go out there’ and create your own hidey-hole amongst a few friends and welcome guests with low impact and shared resources and intents.
I have not seen this realised as per the variety of possibilities of interpretation of Osho, in all my travels as a consummate wish-fulfiller of dreams, in materis, in reality. Somehow Oshoism got terribly stuck and unfulfilled as a lifestyle address.
My project is ongoing. I’m extremely grateful for the few friends whom I have met along the way, with whom nothing would ever be too much to say or ask or give. And for whom resentment never got a look in.
. And for all you highly advantaged, funky-idiosyncratic, mutually-supporting Osho networkers out there, without a care in the world: could you come out of the closet and tell us what life in the er, Azerbaijan or the Argentinian-Osho-Amish-Woodstock-moneyless-non-hierarchical- non-messianic Coconut farm, without selling therapies or meditations, actually is like?
Ta.
“Punters at SN seem to have a poor attention span, so it seems.”
All depends how you look at it. Bit of a general statement and vague at best. Speaking for myself, I do not suffer from attention deficit. I pay attention to what I value in one form or another, even if it is only having a laugh.
The Russell Brand vid received a minute of my attention, because it is pedestrian at best. The man talks so fast because he believes it the best way to reach the masses, perceiving quite rightly that it requires a high speed rap to capture their fleeting attention. I simply find it a complete turn-off.
On the other hand, I found the Rajen interview to my liking. I sat and viewed it with my wife early this morning. I enjoyed the fact that I could relate to what he said 100%. I also found it very informative, especially in relation to how he viewed Osho in retrospect. He’d obviously given it a lot of thought and his responses were concise and at times amusing. Certainly a man whom I would enjoy to meet again after such a long time.
So if Rajen happens to read this he has a room at my house on Ibiza any time. I also found the interviewer to be very good at what he does. In particular, the way he kept Rajen on track and focused on what he saw as important.
Thanks to the SN crew for posting this vid.
Perhaps you might care to view Mr Brand in more relaxed mode, with a slower delivery (and for me, consequently more impressive), Lokesh?
I put up such a video at that thread, so it’s there whenever the mood grabs you.
SD, Mr Brand is not new to me. I just don’t find him interesting. I have mentioned before that Ibiza, amongst other things, is fast becoming Europe’s New Age capital. Yoga, consciousness etc. has gone mainstream. Archaeologists will one day be digging up so many Buddha statues on this island they will mistakengly believe that this place was some kind of buddhist centre, which it is not. People might talk the talk but little evidence exists of them walking the walk.
Mr Brand is excited about his viewpoints because they are new to him. Every generation goes through that. Ultimately, little changes and this world goes on flying through space. I appreciate the man’s excitement, but I have heard it all before and I do not share his excitement.
That is something I appreciate about Rajen. He takes his time and measures his words. I take that as a good sign. Mr Brand is in a hurry to get nowhere fast. I take that as a bad sign.
Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I would take one Rajen to a hundred Mr Brands.
Well, as I said here several days & a week ago, it’s not that I regard him as a great fount of ‘brand-new’(!) spiritual wisdom, for me I find it refreshing that he dares to stand up in public to the purveyors of media-driven socio-political crap, using his rather unique talents to shake up complacency and offer the wider audience another, more intelligent way of looking at things.
In the previous thread, editor-in-chief has written:
“Osho was an international Master, by accident an Indian by birth, just as the circumstances of all our births are just chance.”
Sounds cool and wise!
On the basis of this accidental birth, I was presuming, if Osho was born in UK or USA, the citadels of western civilisation, what would have happened then?
In the category of Somendra, Teertha, Rajen, Veeresh?
What more height one can expect here?
Maybe one more, L. Ron Hubbard, the only one who has his own Church empire!
Question is, why it hurts the white men´s pride that from Moses, Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Osho – none of such people are from the Anglo-Saxons?
Why not appreciate what you have?
After all, without Anglo Saxons there wouldn’t be the cutting-edge technology in almost all the fields of human existence.
Cannot you leave some gold medal for others?
Think about.
I thought about it. Uninformed mumbo-jumbo.
I am not at all interested in Nation States. They are figments of man’s diseased tribal imagination. Actually they don’t exist. I am totally against any kind of gold medals… competition is a sort of immaturity.
Osho visited this planet ‘Earth’, and this was the greatest blessing.
Alan Lowen on CONSCIOUS TV:
I was living on the Ranch when Bhagwan, at that time, declared the group of 21 enlightened. What Alan failed to say, was that Bhagwan later declared it was a joke.
So, Rajen was never truly declared enlightened by Bhagwan, and neither was Alan Lowen.
Saadz, I think that goes without saying.
I thought Lowen was a bit disingenuous when he said Osho ran away from the Ranch. There was an agreement that he would present himself to the authorities if an arrest warrant was issued.
He “ran away” because the Government wished to arrest him on the Ranch, which may have led to a shoot-out and many deaths. I thought Lowen was a bit tricky and manipulative.
He is still in business http://artofbeing.com/
Actually in this play, by chance one of the declared enlightened was in fact actually enlightened, his name was Anand Maitreya. His reaction to being included was great!
Osho described it thus:
Sometime in 1984 Maitreya became enlightened, but he had chosen to remain silent, so he remained silent. He did not even tell me what had happened to him…
Because I had included Maitreya’s name, he was shocked. He wanted to keep it completely to himself, not to say anything about enlightenment to anybody. As he left the meeting, he told a few people outside, “It is very strange, I have not said – I have been trying to hide it – but somehow he has seen it. And not only has he seen it, he has declared me enlightened.”
And his response was truly a response of great love. He said, “Osho is really a rascal.”
It is wrong to say that Osho ran away from the Ranch. It would be more accurate to say he ‘flew’ away.
Dear Prem Martyn,
You wrote: “Somehow Oshoism got terribly stuck and unfulfilled as a lifestyle address.”
“Oshoism” as such has never existed, not to speak of “a lifestyle address”. There has never been an ‘ism’, nor an address.
But you are gratefully existing with a few friends on your way and that is very good. And you are moving, that´s also good.
To meet people who are involved in projects, to live and work together in a more co-operative and a more loving way without merchandising ‘love’ as a product, I guess it is for you to have to travel and look out for them and maybe join their dance.
I also guess that those have better to do than to expose themselves just for advertising reasons or expose themselves for ‘ratings’.
And maybe in some areas there are still bunches of people who found each other like in a mysterious magnetic pull; that´s what I myself remember about Sannyas.
An alive happening like this, nobody can ever programme or repeat or make a logistic plan about it, it´s kind of natural how that comes into life and also if or when it withers away.
Nothing can be DONE about it.
But maybe staying on the move, insite-outisite-insite…(MOD: WHAT DOES insite-outisite-insite MEAN, PLEASE – insight-outasight OR out of sight?!)
So – have a good move.
Madhu
MOD:
I meant the energy being called ‘us’ is at any moment in osmotic exchange
like a blade of grass.
And even if we are silent – going inside – we are in exchange as well as when we are going outside, into action.
Once someone comes closer to Osho through his mesmerising words, natural instinct is to know similar people on the path. One does not even know when the suction happens and get in the traps of the therapists and healers.
Osho created their space in the system of his commune, but now, all are taking their pound of flash.
Osho is heard saying quite often about the business of psychotherapy and how no one is fully analysed because purse gets empty. More or less similar is the situation with this business of Art of this, Art of that kind of groupies.
Shantam once again pronounces on something of which he has zero experience and therefore zero credibility.
Shantam’s credibility is so low (about everything) that no matter how high he jumped he would not be able to reach the floor.
People who run away like mice surely know quite well how much it was costing to book a voyage in Titanic!
(´◔౪◔)
Dr. Alexander Lowen, 1910-2008, was a leading American psychotherapist and the founder of bioenergetics. He was a qualified doctor and the author of more than a dozen books including ‘The Language of the Body’ (1958) and ‘Bioenergetics’ (1975).
It is a hell of a coincidence that one of the three leading sannyasin psychotherapists was also an ‘A.Lowen.’ One wonders if Rajen was born with the name Alan Lowen. Or did he change his name to Alan Lowen so that punters would think he was the famous American Lowen, this being good for business?
Just a coincidence? Alok, as far as I know but happy if you have evidence to correct my view.
Also, people knew Rajen as ‘Alan’ in the pre-sannyas early ‘seventies days when Alexander Lowen had not become well-known.
Alexander Lowen’s most famous book as far as I know was called ‘Bioenergetics’ and published in 1975.
From http://names.mongabay.com/data/lh/LOWEN.html
“LOWEN ranks # 23283 in terms of the most common surnames in America for 2000.
LOWEN had 1,021 occurrences in the 2000 Census, according the U.S. government records.
Out of a sample of 100,000 people in the United States, LOWEN would occur an average of 0.38 times.”
So an ‘A.Lowen’ would occur in less than one in a million people.
People have been convicted of crimes ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ on odds far worse than this.
The plot thickens, Alok.
Sounds like you`ve been drinking too much Lowenbrau, bro.
Alan Lowen is English.
From http://dev.britishsurnames.co.uk/surname/lowen/stats
The frequency of the surname Lowen is 12 per million in the UK.
And how many of these would be A.Lowen? Well, there are 26 letters in the alphabet, but I would guess the initial A is more common than one in 26; say one in twelve.
So that makes the frequency of the name A.Lowen to be one in a million in the UK. I doubt it can be more frequent than one in half a million.
To restore some balance into this discussion:
Yahoo news reports:
“Jihadist in beheading video is a Londoner called John.”
Only 4% of the male pop. in London is called john.
Only a very small percentage have an interest in bizarre eastern religions.
The chances of this man in the video being Alok John are approximately 1 in 572.
People have been beheaded on less evidence than that!
Hi Parmartha,
I’m very touched by your tribute! I came across this website quite by chance and was astonished to find this whole discussion going on, especially since it has all taken place in just these last days. I found the website in the process of looking for a way to publish my first book, Dying Naked (the second one, Living Naked, is about my sannyasin years). I love the mystery of such ‘non-coincidences’. They were always the most magical part of my time with Osho.
I feel cared for too by your supportive responses to those who would begrudge me even the slightest appreciation. Oh dear, Saadz, did I really forget to say that the whole enlightenment thing just left me confounded? Forgive me. It’s not so easy in an unscripted interview to keep track of everything that should be said. But don’t worry, in the second book you’ll be able to read the whole crazy story. There is so much more I have to say about it.
For now, just this: some months after that extraordinary evening I walked into Pratima’s office on the Ranch, very upset about something.
She said, “Rajen, I thought you were enlightened!”
“I tried it,” I told her, “but I didn’t like it,” which drove us both to laugh so much that I couldn’t go on being upset.
And Alok John, I can help you with the question of my real name. Even disregarding my birth certificate, which in your eyes of course I may have forged, there are still plenty of people on the planet who knew me as Alan Lowen when I was just a kid at school. So if I was really just a John Smith who decided to change his name to Alan Lowen in order to ride on Dr Alexander Lowen’s greatness, I must have done it in my early childhood – and as Parmartha pointed out, decades before the doctor was ever famous! In which case, I think my infant clairvoyancy merits your praise, not your derision.
But I have to add that if it were so, I would have gone for Einstein instead of Lowen. I hope this helps you let go of your mean theory. Sadly though, it probably won’t have any impact on what really matters – which is your need to be mean in the first place. Regarding this I truly send you my love, because your need to demean and vilify people who probably deserve at least a little appreciation just tells me that you have not been loved enough. I don’t mean it condescendingly; I just happen to know what that’s like. I wish you the happiness that can happily let others be.
With love, Alan (Alan Lowen, Anand Rajen, Alan Einstein, John Smith)
Rajen,
The opportunity has never come up before this, so I’ll pop in to say I still hold onto memories and value insights gathered during your visits to Santa Cruz in the 80′s. ZenCounter were great days. “If the activity doesn’t get to you, the silence will” – Rajen
I hope you enjoyed those visits as well.
Garimo
PS to my response: Lokesh, thank you too for your kind words, and what a beautiful invitation! I haven’t been to Ibiza for decades, but if fortune brings me that way, I will happily accept your gracious offer.
And, I think it would be fun to sit down with all of you, including you who don’t like your projections of who I am or who, with no experience of it at all, condemn my work with such authority. I trust that something beautiful would happen for us all. In any case, I thank you for moving me to write all this. It is very timely. No coincidence!
Alan, I enjoyed your online interview at Conscioustv, one of the most interesting such discussions I’ve found and you came across very well.
I have a question about ‘casualties’ of group therapy, specifically sannyas groups, about people who not only didn’t benefit but who suffered a setback, sometimes lasting years, through their participation. I’ve heard of quite a few instances, including yesterday a French woman who was apparently “traumatised for years” following one of your own groups at the Ranch.
I myself went through 3 months of a Somendra ‘intensive’ in London, back in ’76/77 which, in retrospect, was a total mistake, being nowhere near ‘fit’ at that time, physically, mentally, emotionally or financially, to be involved in such a radical enterprise, something that should have been obvious to the man in charge. It was a nightmare that effectively ‘finished’ sannyas for me for years, which I somehow think wasn’t quite the idea…
At that time, of course, the ethos was ‘everyone’ can join, the former ‘people, not psychiatry’ ideal, and so on, something that the early days of sannyas therapy took on and continued, not always successfully.
What are your thoughts about such matters, please? Do you regard yourself or any group leader as responsible for the well-being of people who participate (and who pay good money for the privilege)? Do you carefully ‘vet’ applicants for their suitability before allowing them in?
Or is it all down to the people themselves, individual responsibility being the name of the game – and any resulting depression, sense of personal failure or even hopelessness, ‘loss of heart’ etc., or other prolonged suffering or even ‘trauma’ incurred being either ‘the luck of the draw’, because life itself is insecure and dangerous anyway etc. or somehow bound to have occurred anyway, sooner or later, so therefore a ‘blessing’ to have surfaced ‘early’ (to summarise views I’ve come across) and up to the person concerned to deal with it, if possible (well, who else?!) – you know, ‘karma’ etc?
Very good points, SD.
As far as I know, participants were hardly vetted at all in London. Maybe things were a bit better in Pune.
There was very little, if any, vetting, that went on for westerners in Poona 1 or anywhere else. Indians, of course, were vetted strongly by Laxmi and were never allowed in most groups, which seemed lopsided to me.
Places like the Humaniversity (Veeresh) now do some vetting of people for their groups, I am not sure of their guidelines. Anyone know?
I have met a few casualties in my time as a sannyas networker. Sad to say, they were mainly from the Humaniversity stable.
There were casualties from all the sixties/seventies ‘experiments’. I would include R.D. Laing’s experiments with taking vulnerable people off medication and his encouragement to some to take LSD. (Somendra claimed to have had such advice from him).
I also have met people who had “suffered” from joining conventional ashrams and experiencing long periods of formalised meditations and semi-fasting, etc., whose mental health had been damaged and were not ready for such things.
Of course, the main ‘numbers’ of casualties were from those who took mixtures of recreational drugs and were not ready for them, or whose mental health was not of the best and were pushed over the edge by such ingestations. Professionally, I have met a small number of people who still suffer psychosis from breakdowns they suffered on Goan beaches, from taking mixtures of drugs in the seventies.
Only to add, SD, that of course an important perception is not about those who ‘did’ groups but those who it seemed, did not.
Sheela and a number of her gang, for example, could have done with a Rajen group back in 1978, would have done her the world of good.
Also Amrito, who sometimes boasted that he only did “a couple” of low-level non-encounter groups.
Also, I do sometimes wonder whether someone like Shantam, who is here often, ever did or was allowed to do any groups. One has the impression he did not do any encounter-type groups, certainly.
Also, the so-called guru, “Brian” Rajneesh. I would guess he never did any groups in Poona 1 or 2, but he could have done with them and Rajen’s would have been a good one for him.
Also, frankly, there was a sizeable number in a sub-group of sannyasins who were endlessly engaged in some kind of illicit or licit business or other, ostensibly to allow themselves to stay in Poona 1. So busy were they, they never got around to doing even a single encounter group etc. So they became fogged-up in their business miasmas.
I loved Paritsoh, the author of ‘Life of Osho’, but he also inhabited this latter world. The only group he ever did was the early Vipassana groups that he led. His Poona 1 tented lifestyle and degree of muted self- importance always stopped him from ‘partaking’ in group therapy. Had he met someone like Rajen it would have enriched him, rather than the other way round.
Hi Rajen, good to hear from you. Decades since you were on Ibiza…has changed a lot, but haven’t we all also?
Ah yes…do you remember Premada? Ha ha, that will make you chuckle.
Contact me if you wish to visit. Prita would also enjoy to see you.
Didn’t you used to wear cowboy boots?
Tricky & manipulative is right. Alan’s ego is sooo tricky & manipulative it even tricked him into dropping Sannyas. Poor Alan!
Why do you care so much?
He’s respectful of Osho.
So he dropped sannyas.
That’s his business.
Saadz:
Plese register at SN to authenticate yourself. This is, by the way, a discussion board, not somewhere just to fling personal prejudices without reasons for your views.
I’ve just caught up with this discussion, though I also recently posted on an FB thread that Alan had started, where I was recalling my own vivid memory of when I took part in a one day workshop with Alan, when he was Rajen, in 1981. Something got triggered in me and I ended up crying through most of it. This was partly because I was following the advice from another therapist, Sudha, during the March Event a few weeks previously, to go ahead and “cry a whole river”…
When, at the end of the day, I finally plucked up the courage to sit in front of Rajen to receive his insights and feedback, not altogether surprisingly, he commented on the fact I seemed “miserable” and that I had “an investment in being miserable”..
Actually, I recall that in that particular moment when I was sat in front of him that I had stopped crying and was feeling more of a buzz, because I’d just put myself into what looked from the outside to be a very scary situation, having spent the day observing all these other participants being told what their trips were, in front of the whole group.
Megalove Anand drew my attention to this article and Alan’s interview, which I have found very illuminating – especially about the meaning of his name, Rajen, and what Osho had said to him about transforming from being the ‘Beggar of Misery’ to the ‘King of Bliss’.
So I can now see that I was probably being quite a powerful mirror for Rajen in that situation, and in fact it’s since been fed back to me by other facilitators that I tend to trigger other people when I get into expressing my own feelings and emotions. It’s also been pointed out to me about my identification and attachment to my emotions, which I think Rajen was probably seeing and tried to pull me out of.
It’s certainly interesting and illuminating for me to recall my own past experiences from that era – and especially the projections I had at that time about Osho’s therapists from Pune, when I myself had taken sannyas in the West and not actually been to Pune.
It’s been great, through watching the video, to hear Rajen, as Alan, share so openly about his own journey, and shatter an illusion I have been carrying for the last 30-odd years, since he had seemed at the time to be an almost Christ-like figure due to his appearance at that time.
The therapists probably did identify with and play up to being special in those days, but this was with the full co-operation of the rest of us being willing to play the same game by putting them on a pedestal.
And where did all that come from? Centuries of religious conditioning where the majority of people have been taught to look up to the ‘high priests’.
The same game continued when the women, as centre leaders then became the ‘high priestesses’, headed up by Sheela.
For me, both the power that was invested in the therapists and then during that era when Osho was at the Ranch, was about confronting the way in which we, as human beings, create hierarchies and invest power in others who we think ‘know better’. I do remember during that last festival at the Ranch, in 1985, when Osho was speaking, how he seemed to be really hammering home the message about trusting our own intelligence and not remaining mere followers of someone else.
I’d also back up what someone else has said in this discussion re the question of whether Osho “ran away”. I would recommend reading Juliet Foreman (Maneesha)’s book, ‘Twelve Days That Shook the World’, which documents what went on at that time, from her own first-hand experience and observations. In her account, the decision to leave was made not by Osho but by those around him wanting to protect him, because the situation on the Ranch had become very tense and potentially violent, and it was thought best if he was physically removed until things calmed down.
His eventual decision to leave America after the trial was also made by those around him, who feared for his life if he remained in custody of the US Government. Osho had wanted to stay and fight to clear his name.
Having lived through the various phases of his work and listened to Osho over the years, I feel I understand some aspects of it much better than I did back then, where taking sannyas, for me, had literally been just a ‘leap into the unknown’, just to find out what would happen.
Looking back on that one workshop I did with Rajen, I also recognise now how this was at a time when Osho’s work was still becoming known in the West, and it was bringing in a new dimension and going beyond psychology and even the whole therapy and human growth movement.
Recalling that experience when I was still quite new to Osho and sannyas, and how scary Rajen had seemed at the time when he was telling other people what their trips were, has also made me aware of how I perhaps come across as equally scary in a situation I’m currently in. Even though I’m not actually leading groups as a therapist, I do sometimes express my insights about people and situations, and express things that people who have not experienced Osho or even personal growth, would not even think of, let alone express.
It’s certainly helped me to understand what may be behind the behaviour of one person in particular who has had a strong and hostile reaction to me – and realise it’s their trip and not my problem, rather than feeling like I’m the victim.
I feel perhaps all of us – therapists and group leaders included – still probably only have a partial understanding of what Osho is really all about, which does seem to be very much in tune with how human consciousness is currently evolving.
I also recall Osho saying it’s the people coming in 100 years time who will really be able to understand him – and I think there could well be something in that. I certainly think we are all very much ‘a work in progress’.
About Ranking:
All experiences and perceptions are neutral in nature and it is only the ego which places an emphasis on good vs. bad, or right vs. wrong.
Hierarchies have also been formed creating further degrees of separation (good, better, best) where particular persons or events are rigorously judged within this context. This will end.
Agree with you about ranking, Jen, definitely way too much ranking going on around here.
What a bunch of egotistical rankers!
You say, “this will end.”
I wouldn`t bet your house on it,love!
Frank has come out of silence!!
Praise the Lord.
I felt it coming a few days ago, when I suddenly asked myself, “What happened to Rajen?”. And here comes the opportunity for me to thank you, Alan, for being my inspiration in Pune, summer 1979, and in Milano some time later.
Through you and your work I suddenly perceived for the first time the new professional direction my life was about to take. As it turned out, I work today more like Teertha, but the spark started through watching you in action.
So much of your energy stayed in my heart all these years, and yes, I’m happy to have noticed still today, that something about Rajen was about to come. In essence we are ONE.
Thank you again for being the gift that you are, Alan!
Attilio Piazza Swami Anand Satyam
Why is a comment like Rajen’s about Alok John admissible on this site?:
“Regarding this I truly send you my love, because your need to demean and vilify people who probably deserve at least a little appreciation just tells me that you have not been loved enough. I don’t mean it condescendingly; I just happen to know what that’s like. I wish you the happiness that can happily let others be.”
While what Saadz says about Rajen is not?:
“Tricky & manipulative is right. Alan’s ego is sooo tricky & manipulative it even tricked him into dropping Sannyas. Poor Alan!”
It seems, Parmartha, to me, double standards are at play. Ordinary sannyasins are not allowed to take pot shots against other sannyasins, especially sannyasin therapists, while sannyasin therapists can take pot shots at other sannyasins and can do whatever else they please. Do you find this fair?
Cf…
Maybe because Rajen’s job is to big up himself and what he does and represents…just like any business..it’s got to be worth his time and some punters’ money. Whilst Alok is a name on a blogsite.
And SN is part of someone else’s version of Osho’s legacy and we commenters are choosing to pass the time here instead of at the amusement park.
“Why is a comment like Rajen’s about Alok John admissible on this site?”
Probably because, rather than merely “taking a pot shot” he took the trouble to explain his point, with a degree of compassion, even empathy, in contrast to Saadz’s offering, which was merely a gratuitous attack.
As for, “Ordinary sannyasins are not allowed to take pot shots against other sannyasins, especially sannyasin therapists, while sannyasin therapists can take pot shots at other sannyasins and can do whatever else they please. Do you find this fair?”
Well, I suggest you need to check your facts as there’s plenty of interpersonal criticism on here (although we’re encouraged to give reasons rather than just pour out the hostility).
Similarly, you appear to have overlooked Alok John’s ‘case’ v Rajen/Alan L, my own queries to R/AL re therapists’ responsibility for clients’ suffering, and reservations about his work from one or two others.
As for therapists “can do whatever else they please” at SN, that’s a very strange statement as – please correct me if I’m wrong – there’s no evidence, therefore no foundation for it at all!
All in all, it might seem, canadafollower, that you have a bit of a ‘chip on your shoulder’ about therapists and perhaps even ‘authority’ in general, which has clouded your view of what goes on here. IE another instance of judgment distorted by person-al emotional considerations.
I do not have a “chip on my shoulder” on all sannyasin therapists. I do not know anything about Rajen so I am not in the position to make any comments about him but Alok John raises an interesting question if A. Lowen happens to be his name by coincidence or he purposely chose his name for business.
I can not answer this question but I know SOME (not all) sannyasin therapists who have done fraudulent things so I think it is a question worth asking. So I do think that Rajen should not deride Alok John for asking this.
It seems to me, Osho himself had problems with authority (I remember reading stories how he gave his teachers a rough time when He was young). Why is this so unusual for you as a sannyasin?
Why do many sannyasin therapists seem to teach the opposite of Osho on the subject of authority?
I do not think that people on this site are necessarily anti-therapist but they simply want to protect their consumer rights against any possible fraud that some sannyasin therapists have committed in the past.
canadafollower, it’s very easy to make general claims, accusations of “fraud” against a group of people, or even “some” of a group, but unless you provide evidence, including names, then it just remains innuendo and as such, both unconvincing and arguably, even rather devious.
As for your remarks on Rajen, again I must point out that you appear not to perceive the compassion and empathy in his comments, which, of course, is perhaps unsurprising given your general sceptical, suspicious, anti-therapist stance.
You ask, “Why do many sannyasin therapists seem to teach the opposite of Osho on the subject of authority?”
It would be interesting to know exactly how much personal experience you have of sannyasin therapists to see whether you actually know what you’re talking about.
Please clarify exactly what you mean here, both in terms of what the therapists teach (or what you think or imagine they teach) and what Osho teaches (or what you think or imagine he teaches).
And by the way, before you start pigeon-holing me as some sort of ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ apologist for therapists, please read my recent post in the ‘Rajen’ thread (‘He Came A Well-Placed Third’).
My critical responses to your posts are due to perceiving unclear, over-emotionalised thinking giving rise to opinions that can so often be the result or the source of troublemaking prejudice.
SD said, “canadafollower, it’s very easy to make general claims, accusations of “fraud” against a group of people, or even “some” of a group, but unless you provide evidence, including names, then it just remains innuendo and as such, both unconvincing and arguably, even rather devious.”
This is all very well, but by insisting on “evidence”, I think it is possible to err on the side of gullibility. I am sure lots of people at the Ranch had the feeling something funny was going on with Sheela and her cronies. Maybe they did nothing because they had no evidence.
But perhaps if they had shared their suspicions and “innuendo” between themselves, they would have eventually found “evidence”. Sheela relied on sannyasins’ excessive trust and gullibility.
It might well be helpful to establish precisely what sort of “fraud” is on the ‘prosecution’s agenda here:
Are we talking about intrinsically ‘fraudulent therapy’, ie therapy that doesn’t and possibly even can not live up to its deliberately exaggerated claims?
Or,
So-called ‘Osho therapy’ that somehow ‘misrepresents’ Osho, using his name as a sort of marketing ploy to bring in the punters (ie closely allied to the above category)?
Or,
Therapy that’s basically implicated in ‘financial fraud’, through over-charging or some other means whereby people are ‘hoodwinked’ into parting with their hard-earned cash (again, closely allied to one or both preceding categories)?
Or, a combination of two or all the above?
Also, isn’t there an essential difference between the ‘monolithic’ regime at the Ranch and sannyasin therapists out in the world, a disparate (perhaps you might suggest ‘desperate’, Alok?!) bunch of individuals, independent of each other?
So whereas shared suspicions of and ‘blanket’ accusations at Sheela’s outfit might well have been appropriate in Oregon, it’s hardly fair to direct similar negativity now towards ‘Osho therapists’ as a generic whole, to tar them all with the same brush, as it were. Which is why I would insist upon detailed evidence, names and actual instances, when bringing up any question of “fraud”. Then at least those accused would be able to put their case, if so moved.
Otherwise, this sort of online talk can all too easily degenerate into the sort of irresponsible innuendo, gossip without integrity, worthy of the tabloid press rather than of a spiritual movement supposedly dedicated to love and meditation.
Well, maybe, but I was bringing up the question of gullibility amongst sannyasins. I used the Ranch as an illustration. I think the tabloid press sometimes does a good job in exposing evil. Do you think evil should be exposed in order to protect the vulnerable? Or maybe you think the vulnerable had it coming because of their karma, so it is not necessary to expose evil. I think there is an element of the latter belief in sannaysin circles.
“…worthy of the tabloid press rather than of a spiritual movement supposedly dedicated to love and meditation.”
Well, I think there is a long history in the movement of pretending evil does not exist. There is an element of “Let’s not talk about evil so we can all be lovey-dovey. Anyway, talking about evil is bad for business, so do not do it.” Osho never feared to point out evil, but I do not think the same can be said for many first-generation sannyasins.
Alok, although you haven’t actually specified which of the three categories I outlined a few days ago you’re referring to, presumably, what you term “evil”, in the context of sannyasin therapy groups, is imposing exploitation and suffering upon the ‘innocent’ and ‘helpless’, the “gullible”?
These are very serious allegations and, as I said, evidence is a prerequisite for exposing any ‘wrongs’, otherwise one creates another sort of ‘wrong’ (itself aguably verging on a type of “evil”), for which libel actions are an appropriate worldly legal remedy.
To put it bluntly, it’s a question of ‘put up or shut up’, a standard that even the worst tabloids are careful to observe.
Having said that, however, I tend to agree that ‘back in the day’ there was a fair degree of ‘gullibility’ in such areas among sannyasins, myself definitely included, although whether that’s still the case I somehow doubt, at least among those of our age.
These days, my personal reservations would be more along the lines of ‘inflated claims’ made by the marketing promo hype rather than any perpetration of “evil”. Particularly if the ‘Sannyas world’ still attracts young people with unresolved childhood issues and a significant tendency for remaining a ‘puer eternus’ (‘eternal child’), ie with an undeveloped sense of discrimination on such matters (‘gullibility’, I guess!).
Something like this, SD?
http://youtu.be/lyv0Wv_uPhM
Now that’s what I call “evidence” – well researched, sir!
Unless and until similarly definitive material fulfils the requirement, then I shall view all other therapists as innocent.
Come on, Alok, where’s your sense of ‘fair play’?!
More incriminating “evidence” here – this one’s specially for you, Shantam…
http://youtu.be/P2hGWqqGybU
@SD, I was asking about the general problem of evil, rather than saying any particular therapy is evil. I do think some therapies were/are evil. I disagree with you that I should not talk about such things unless there is evidence. It is only a chat board. Talking about suspicions and rumours might help vulnerable people.
I might add that if no one wants to know, and no one cares about vulnerable people, which I think is a characteristic of the movement, I won’t bother.
I’d probably go along with you, Alok, that “vulnerable people” aren’t exactly welcome in the movement (although it depends how one defines “vulnerable”), except in the Humaniversity (whose style doesn’t by any means suit everyone, of course, and which, sensibly, vets all applicants before they’re allowed in).
Re ‘evidence’, do you have any from your own personal experience, or are you only speculatively fuelling your suspicions by referring to hearsay, gossip, “rumour”?
canadafollower,
Alok John certainly has a right to bring up such things, though as I remember, they were immediately refuted by me, and then by Rajen.
Given the accusation of impersonation is quite a big one, Alok John could have even given a one line apology, but it never came.
@ SD, both really. But I think no one really wants to know. A couple of reasons for this:
First. people have an ego investment in thinking they are members of a ‘loving, spiritual movement’.
And second, I think there is fear; fear of being rejected by others in the movement and fear of some of the leaders of the movement. For example, I thought your first post to Rajen was a little obsequious.
Well, Alok, I guess it might sound “a little obsequious” to anyone who is chronically sceptical and/or very angry about therapists and their work.
As I said before, I’m no apologist for therapists, I’ve had some very bad (ie ‘damaging’) experiences, some indifferent, some good and some even very good ones (the latter two almost all in one-on-one sessions rather than in groups).
But if possible, I like to keep an open mind about individuals so, as I don’t know Rajen at all, our paths never having crossed before now, and after enjoying his long interview at Conscious tv, which generated in me a certain respect for him, there was no reason to be anything other than ‘reasonable’, an aggressively confrontational tone being simply inappropriate in the circumstances.
As a matter of interest, Alok, have your negative experiences in therapy been only in groups or also in individual sessions? As someone who’s had his share of being a ‘vulnerable case’, I wouldn’t necessarily advocate groups, most definitely not most sannyasin groups, for such people, I’d suggest finding a therapist they can trust who can work with them one-on-one and support them long-term, for as long as it takes.
Amadis, for example, who contributed an article here fairly recently, would be one such I’d recommend (and he exited Sannyas decades ago).
“I’d suggest finding a therapist they can trust who can work with them one-on-one and support them long-term, for as long as it takes…
Amadis, for example, who contributed an article here fairly recently….”
I am certainly not going to pay someone out of social security at the age of almost 64 for “therapy.” I do not make a judgement that there is anything ‘wrong’ with me.
I recall reading some years back that the less you need therapy, the more use it is to you.
Care to comment on that, Alan?
Ok, Alok.
But what about the “vulnerable” people whom you’re understandably concerned about? Would you recommend more or less what I’ve suggested, ie individual sessions rather than (most) sannyasin groups; or more conventional groups (eg those run by the NHS or ‘human potential’ centres like Spectrum or The Open Centre (both in London); or would you perhaps tend to favour meditation? Or even Christian Church exorcism, as you went through a few years ago, which you wrote about at SN and which you said ‘worked’ for you?
Or simply not recommend anything, let people choose their own fates, but just warn those ‘tempted by the Devil’ (as it were) to avoid sannyasin-led groups like the plague?
canadafollower, it says a lot that you choose to disregard my response to Alok John. You say, “I cannot answer this question.” As though you have the authority to answer it but the evidence is lacking?
As you also wrote, you don’t know the first thing about me. What you do have the authority to say – and with evidence to support it since it is there in black and white a few comments above this one – is that Rajen/Alan Lowen has laid the question to rest.
And am I not allowed to humour the one who launches such a silly smear campaign against me? Really, who is deriding who?
With love,
Alan-Rajen
@ SD, well, it would depend on the person. I probably would not recommend anything unless explicitly asked, which I do not think has ever happened.
Perhaps Alok John has had bad experiences with fraudulent therapists and therefore he is not giving you a fair chance in what you have to say about yourself, which is unfortunate. It is up to Alok John to comment on this.
We often do not know where people are coming from when they say things like this. It must be unsettling for you when someone denies the authenticity of your own name and I understand this.
Right now, I will sit back in the background and see what you and others post as I do not know you at all.
And maybe, Prem Martyn, you are cynical?
At least that´s how your response energetically arrives here, touches me – body-mind-soul – at my place.
And for sure, that´s pain (for me).
As far as your guess about SN logistics is put in words:
“And SN is part of someone else’s version of Osho’s legacy” -
Could be that way – I don´t know.
It feels like….
Madhu
SN statement:
Many people over the years who are basically anti-therapist have posted here and been tolerated if they adduce rational arguments. The people who surround this guy who calls himself Rajneesh are particularly anti-therapy, as SN recalls.
Another group are those who felt hurt by therapists, who, whilst liking Osho etc. could not get on in or with the groups etc. There certainly were a few casualties. They have also sometimes posted.
This is a caravanserai and we do encourage all views that are not just prejudice. We much prefer people to register as a member of SN and post as themselves.
Some are sceptical of therapy, per se, irrespective of the therapist.
The best way of looking at this is to see it as ‘part’ of growth, and one to move on from at the right time. The groups certainly were part of Poona one. Some of the lessons of honest social interaction and authentic social skills learned there were indeed taken into the work situation, but any hierarchical stuff was left quickly behind.
Once you did washing-up with a group leader who was doing this as part of his ashram “worship” any distinctions were left far in the distance.
I sometimes feel, like SD, that some commentators on groups here are not authentic. They seem to be from three sub-groups of people:
1) those who may not have experienced group psychotherapy, or
2) got caught up in it and took it for an actual ‘reality’, rather than a stage, or
3) did it, but were not really ready for it, and have come away with some unresolved hurts that result in them taking a pop at any well-meaning therapist.
Psychotherapy and meditation are just
tools, are they not? Not sacred.
1983 – Medina & Rajen ran a group.
I was such a chicken I dropped out the back door because he sat still waitong for us to crack open.
Why was I so frightened?
What was I frightened of?
Me.
Sorry, Rajen, I should have given you a present.
Hi Satyadeva, just quickly to say hello and let you know that I have almost finished a very long personal response to you. You surely deserve it and should see it tomorrow.
With love, Alan-Rajen
Hi Satyadeva, I’ve enjoyed very much your contributions to this discussion, including that you don’t cut me any slack (which is very different from trying to cut me up or down!). And I do thank you for bringing balance to some of the nonsense.
And about your searching question regarding the participants who perhaps incurred damage in those very wild Poona ashram ‘therapy’ groups of the 70′s. The apostrophes are meaningful. I don’t regard what was happening there as therapy even if most people called it that. Yes, for the great majority of seekers – the group leaders as well as the participants – some very therapeutic openings and awakenings happened. But for me anyway, coming from a growing enterprise as an encounter group leader in London, leading groups in Bhagwan’s Poona community was an extraordinary leap into pioneering freedom that was as scary as it was transforming.
I can’t speak for all the therapists and group leaders there, but I trust that what Somendra, Amitabh, Teertha, myself and quite a few others of that first Poona ashram generation seized was the astonishing opportunity to grow out of the shackles of the therapy business – we gave up our own comfort zones in the adventure of learning to embrace the unknown and open beyond our own limitations. We were pursuing freedom, presence, consciousness and love as much as the participants in our groups.
‘Therapy’ at its best is the same pursuit, but mostly its focus is more limited. For myself anyway, I see what we were about then and what I’m still about today as education rather than therapy: the learning TO BE, that our schooling systems from kindergarten to university ignore.
I have so much more to say about leading groups in Osho’s ashrams, but I trust you will understand that it’s just too much to delve into here. It all belongs to my second book. (And please, Prem Martyn, until you know me personally, at least try to give me the benefit of the doubt that what and how I write is not run from a business perspective; whether you believe it or not, it’s just not who I am).
OK, Satyadeva, to continue! I look back with admiration on all those who came and immersed themselves in what was at the time probably the greatest personal growth adventure happening on the planet. There came too those who, hearing about the wonder of it all, came driven by their hunger, their greed (especially for enlightenment!), their egotism and even their demons. Yes, the ‘therapists’ too!
Now, 35 years later, I can look back, and look around too, and it is clear that most who gave themselves wholeheartedly to Osho’s crazy adventure have woken up and opened up in beautiful ways. To do so requires always that we dare to go into our own inner darkness and bring light to whatever we are not in friendship with in ourselves. To help and guide people into this realisation of BEING is still what my work is about.
Is it OK for me to say that I’m better at it – a lot better! – than I was those decades ago? Some lyrics of Leonard Cohen are running through my head as I write: “If I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by”. All this is to come to your basic question: yes, I think there were people who were not helped, and by me too. Whether they were actually damaged is impossible to answer all these years later. In the first place, weighing one person’s recollection against another’s is so unreliable.
But more significant is the very provocative fact that there are people who exploit their own damaged psychological state. Some people’s psychological wounds require them, usually quite unconsciously, to play the victim, and they seek out that which supports their agenda.
I learned long ago that what matters is to help people become aware of their hidden agendas – the secret intentions hiding behind their declared intentions: for example, “I want you to help me come out of my despair.” And hiding behind it is the unspoken agenda that is running the whole show: “With your help I’ll do everything I can, on one condition: that I don’t have to give up my despair.” The clients who are hooked on their own anguish are therapists’ most challenging teachers! Learning to help such people requires a great sense of humour, and a lot of love and patience.
Do I think I have a responsibility to protect people in my workshops from being damaged? Absolutely. Am I responsible for what happens to them in my workshops? If I said ‘yes’, I would make myself the target – and potential victim! – of everyone carrying a hidden agenda that needed such targets and victims. Some of the writers in these discussion are evidently hooked on blame and judgement. That may or may not be true too of the French woman in my group on the Ranch 30-odd years ago.
What can I do? The answer is for me much simpler nowadays, and it has been decades in the learning:
I see and feel and sense every person with whom I am relating, with my eyes and my heart open – with the love and awareness I learned in being with Osho. The best I can give anyone is my presence. That was so even before I went to Poona in 1977, but I still had so much of my own fear and woundedness to befriend. I knew that in working with people I was working on myself.
Mostly I helped people. Sometimes they helped me. Often (knowingly or unknowingly) we helped each other. And sometimes I couldn’t help them and may even have hindered them. We were, after all, pioneering – but not without a guiding presence.
Osho – Bhagwan as he was in those years – was there. Leading groups in his commune was as profound an education as participating must have been; for me it was an ongoing dissolving of all that was in the way. Every day – and the days I was leading groups were no exception – I was sitting up to 3 or 4 hours with him, imbibing his presence and awakening into mine. Without that I would never have dared, or even desired, to lead groups in the commune that grew around him. But it’s OK: without him, it all would never have happened.
My work comes – as it always has, even before I met Osho and still today – from my ability and my commitment to be with people in their stuff and to keep on being with them until they are able to emerge from it into happy, innocent (no motives) loving presence. While they are busy with their stuff, I’m keeping my eye on the one hiding inside it.
I could write on and on, but life calls. Thank you so much, Satyadeva, for compelling me to spend these past hours writing this to you. It has been good to reflect on it all, yet again, and of course the dance goes on. Every workshop I lead is still a learning experience for me; but then, so is every moment of my life. It’s how I love to live. Thank you, Osho!
And who knows, maybe the judges and conspiracy theorists on this page can find in what I’ve written some inspiration to let go of their stuff, let me be and let themselves be. I’m not holding my breath, and still, miracles do happen.
With love to you all,
Alan-Rajen
Good post, Rajen.
Thanks for such a considered response, Alan, fascinating reading indeed.
Still, you overlooked a couple of points:
First, that my particular ‘group trauma’ (3 months long) took place in London, via the old ‘Community’ centre in Highbury, run by Somendra & co., not in Poona.
In that situation, there was no benign (perhaps not necessarily the right word) Osho presence around, despite the (in retrospect) absurdly pretentious attempts of Somendra to pretend he had a personal ‘hot-line’ to him. Eg, at times, he’d stop everything for a few moments, then announce ‘Osho’s view’ of the particular situation being addressed: “Osho says…blah, blah, cliché, blah, cliché, blah, blah etc.!”
Very funny now, of course, but we were all paying good money for that load of baloney.
Then, the other main issue you haven’t responded to is the question of ‘vetting’ group applicants for their suitability, including their physical, mental and emotional conditions (mine were poor on all three counts), and not least their situations in their normal daily lives, including their accommodation (mine was utterly rock-bottom) and even their financial circumstances (mine were dire as I could barely even hold down a job and only finished paying for the ‘intensive’ months after it had finished).
The Humaniversity does ‘vet’ people, but I guess it’s not nearly as straightforward to find out people’s circumstances when one is a peripatetic therapist/educator. Nevertheless, it surely could be done, eg via questionnaire and preliminary interview, and I think it most definitely should be, to screen out those deemed ‘at risk’, the vulnerable, from any particular therapeutic/educational environment.
For example, if such measures had been in place ‘back in the day’ then I wouldn’t have been allowed to take part in that wretched enterprise, I wouldn’t have been essentially ‘put off’ Sannyas, believing I wasn’t ‘good enough’ (although maybe I wasn’t anyway)- and I wouldn’t be writing this here and now!
It strikes me that “Therapy” (with apostrophes) was an experimental operation not entirely dissimilar to the psychedelic movement. The stated aims of the two movements, not to mention the members, overlapped heavily of course, pushing the boundaries, going beyond limits etc…
So….high priests, disciples, devoted followers and…casualties.
It’s little surprise that they are all in there.
There isn’t a definitive ‘for the greater common good’ conclusion about whether “therapy” was efficacious or damaging. (There is less consensus on that for ‘therapy without apostrophes’ than most people imagine, btw).
Like Alan says, it was all a bit Leonard Cohen:
“Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free…”
Osho was giving the Mahakashyapasyougoalong transmission.
Peeka peeka, risky business!
Look at Osho`s close entourage:
Vivek killed herself.
Sheela`s still has a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock.
That is two shots of pretty serious collateral damage for a movement that was trying to “prevent global suicide” and deal a blow to “politicians and priests” – and there were a few more.
Still…
Setting sail on that open sea…
And raising an orange Jolly Roger…
The odd shipwreck and some casualties were bound to happen…
And most importantly…
What was the alternative?
Born a generation earlier and I woulda been getting ‘therapy’ from Swami Adolf and all…
You won`t hear me complaining.
Btw, SD,
like your story of Somendra receiving messages from the boss, presumably on his hands-free mala?
Memories are one thing, but lets face it, if anyone here on SN could go back in time for 24hrs to all that, they would probably have to have been wheeled out laughing at the silliness and delusoriness of it all and would have ended up either in Deolally or been declared enlightened!
One thought experiment you don’t do, SD, is to ask how you might have felt had you been summarily rejected from such an Intensive.
I have actually met a few people over time who were ‘rejected’ from doing groups, and even more who were rejected from commune membership. Their accounts of their feelings were sad…and bespoke all sorts of things about not being worthy, etc.
This is not meant as an argument against ‘vetting’ but just to show whether one passes the vetting or not, a raft of feelings are likely to be produced and needing to be dealt with.
A word or two from someone who has reached maturity can certainly help, whatever the situation, in a one-to-one setting. However, transference can be a greater problem in one-to-one situations, rather than group psychotherapy, where the client is less prone to transference.
No choice we can make will not lead to buttons being pressed.
Is that even more so after taking Sannyas, or does heightened awareness make it seem so?
Definitely a good point, Parmartha, although I’ve always realised that not being allowed to do that group would have been extremely disappointing, to say the least, as, in naivete born of relative youth, inexperience and desperation, plus Somendra’s exciting words re ‘potential’, I really hoped and even believed it would be ‘the answer’!
I suggest what should ideally happen (and should ideally have happened then) was for any ‘rejects’ to be carefully informed as to the reasons for their exclusion – and, crucially, to be recommended or offered one-on-one counselling/therapy (whatever) to help them move on, to do what it takes to get themselves together (or more together), so that they might hopefully be ‘ready’ for a similar enterprise in the future (should they still be interested).
Apart from a continuous current of incipient and actual violence, emotional and physical, during those 3 months (Somendra euphemistically put it down to “personality issues”) a measure of just how inappropriate and even destructive this group was is that the only three contacts I ever had with any fellow-participants after it had finished were chance meetings, ie:
1/ receiving a very condescending, brief remark from someone I ‘ran into’ who happened to be working for a day or two in the same place as me.
2/ a similarly judgmental, contemptuous attitude and the memorable remark that I was “just an old dosser” from another (extremely amusing now, but not so much back then, when I was beginning to attempt to move out of the mire).
and 3/ a chance meeting with Somendra himself on Hampstead Heath, London, where I was enjoying working in a summer job, 3 and a 1/2 years later, who, when he heard I wasn’t bothering with any more groups, rather nervously responded, “Oh, that was ‘the group to end all groups’ then!” – before hurrying away, seemingly rather embarrassed and at a loss for words…
At the end of the Intensive, all he could say to me was that I “should go to Poona” as “there’s much more of a community there now” and it was “a waste of time” for me to do any more groups in England “at the level they’re at”. I suppose he meant well, but how on earth he expected me to do that in the state I was in, God only knows…(and how come he was surprised that I wasn’t involved in any further such initiatives?). It might have been helpful to have received some more practical, grounded help and advice as to how to proceed from ‘rock bottom’, but that wasn’t what he was about, apparently.
Also at the end of the Intensive, when I was still in significant financial arrears with the fees, barely having made ends meet before and during it all, he simply suggested I “get a better-paid job”, in the tone of voice which implied that was somehow pretty straightforward, even easy, which at that point it most certainly was not, demonstrating what little grasp he had of such basic realities of my real life practical situation.
Anyway, sure, eventually I ‘got through’, improved on all levels – but in the shadow of the cost of a lot of already very fragile self-esteem and ‘faith’ in Sannyas as a viable way for the likes of me. And I’ve certainly never done or wanted to do any similar group – no way, no matter how ‘seductively’ it might be packaged, or how eminent the person running the show, or how much others might have waxed lyrical on how great it was or would be.
As for ‘transference’, well, surely any therapist worth his/her salt will have been trained to spot and deal with that almost inevitable symptom in a long-term one-to-one situation, for the benefit of the client? I recall that when I did part of a ‘Body/Mind Therapy Training’ with the eminent Glyn Seaborn-Jones, he devoted the very first session (maybe two) to this very topic, clearly regarding it as fundamental.
The sort of “vulnerable” people excluded from groups are exactly those that need individual attention, or less ‘extreme’, less ‘confrontational’, more gently ‘supportive’ situations, aren’t they?
In darshan, Osho himself used to choose groups for people, including steering them away from inappropriate ones. I recall that he wouldn’t even allow me to engage in one-on-one ‘madness competitions’ (where the idea was to ‘defeat’ the other person by being ‘madder’ than him/her), gently advising me to “do it alone”. And as for “relationships”, his advice to me, aged 27, was just to “forget about” them (which I had anyway, since I was 21!).
To conclude re the 3 months group ‘trauma’, re the encouragement of unrealistic expectations:
I was keen to take part in the ‘Intensive’ as I believed the promo hype, which intimated that there was the prospect of somehow finally transcending the sort of limitations that had severely contracted my life for years, through prolonged exposure to the ‘magical energy work’ on offer. Indeed, Somendra himself had even once told me that I had “the potential to do the same sort of work” as he was doing! I mean, what a mouth-watering prospect for a young guy who desperately needed a radical change!
Unfortunately, however, it was a pile of unrealistic, irresponsible codswallop. Me (and a few others) doing that group was akin to signing up to a course on writing a novel – while barely able to put a single sentence together!
That’s why I recently suggested here (with Alok) that exaggerated claims made in promotional material (aka ‘hype’) for groups might have much to answer for in terms of ‘fraud’, and, as I’ve just outlined, also even for potential and actual ‘casualties’ incurred by the enterprise.
I suspect that certain purveyors of vaguely similar set-ups, including Swami Rajneesh with his asinine “for enlightenment, only dancing is needed” are also leading the gullible (again I agree with Alok) on an essentially false trail and into eventual disillusionment. But that’s another story and more than “enough for today”….
That’s a good point.
A lot of the advertising blurb for all this newage stuff is real crap. And tests show that 4 out of 5 spiritual seekers can’t tell the difference between enlightenment and horseshit!
But then, if you are selling healing, you have to make sure you don`t lose the placebo effect.
A lot of all healing is about building up a positive expectation.
Again, it’s like the acid thing. The dealer isn`t going to say, “Here, get this down your neck, you might blend into total oneness or you might lob yourself out of a 17 storey window, who knows?” He needs a positive slant.
I remember once visiting Community. I was in the waiting room and Somendra waltzed in, wearing a broad-brimmed hat. I thought, “What an idiot.”
I never did much therapy, a day here, a session there, a weekend there. My experience varied from indifferent to quite good. However, I always had a very good nose for bullshit, so I was never taken advantage of.
I never visited Pune 1 but I suspect there was magic in the air, to say the least.
“First, people have an ego investment in thinking they are members of a ‘loving, spiritual movement’ ”
Could be true for me, Alokjohn, and is very uncomfortable to look at that, being defined by you as an “ego investment”.
As far as your second point you made is concerned, I came to know by experience that ‘rejection’ is part of ANY group mind according to open or hidden standards -
however, nobody human is an island – without exception.
So – it is good to have a look at the standards and i appreciate that a new thread has opened just now.
Madhu
I would like to address Arpana and Parmartha in particular.
When sharing that the last two days I have been (again, again) into inner research about the dilemma and the fatal consequences of what is called ‘Double Bind’, also ‘Posthypnotic Suggestions’, ‘no-win’ situations for the so exposed, up to a thoroughy damaging process, ‘Soul Killers’ – if any of you still presume that everyone is born as a Soul Being, besides bodymind psyche.
I myself do presume that, by the way.
If the way human beings are nowadays and – maybe especially – when their expression is transferred to a computer screen in terms of an algorithm, if that way we can maintain Trust in the quality of human inter-relating for a vision of ‘win-win’ situations? To enrich each other or to support each other instead of fighting? Or is it possible to send off a peace-train of reconciliation of unresolved stuff, individually as well as collectively too?
Open questions – for me.
Yesterday, I walked the inner research about ‘Double Binds’ by the River Isar here – a river but such a good teacher helping in its very special way. The Wiki page I had chosen had also put me on a long memory line in my life, including Sannyas…Listening to the river recommended to stay with especially two of the issues mentioned there:
One is connected to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There’,
the other one connected to Zen Mastery and the essence of ‘river’ too.
And here I am, at Sannyas News and wish us ALL well on a Monday morning.
Madhu
PS:
http://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Double_bind#Examples