Rajen answered an inportant question today in an earlier string where it would have been lost, so we recreate it here as a string in itself.

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.

Rajen in Poona One (late 1970.s)

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.

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 the 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 discussions are evidently hooked on blame and judgement.  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 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.  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