Circa 1978/79 Osho had “Energy Darshans” virtually every evening in the Poona one ashram.
What was going on there? Why did Osho stop them as quickly as they had begun?
Energy darshan could be accessed by those who worked in the ashram about once a month. Otherwise it was a much rarer thing. Usually there were about 200 vetted sannyasins present.
Osho was surrounded by female “mediums”, usually about twelve, who in their turn connected with us mere mortals or with some circuitry involving us both. My own experience though limited concurs with that as described by one of the mediums, Ma Prem Shunyo, who describes it in her book “Diamond Days with Osho.”
She describes some of it thus:
During the energy darshan lights would be out throughout the entire ashram and so even people for whom there was no room inside the auditorium would sit in their rooms, or outside the gate, in the garden, – wherever – and the whole six acres that was the commune would be joined with one energy phenomenon that was radiating from Osho. Lights went out as music reached a crescendo, and bodies danced, and swayed; screams and laughter filled the air, and for some people, silence.
Osho described what was happening thus “This is not only a small experiment to help the guest; this is to transform the whole energyfield of the commune” .
Shunyo says
“to be on the receiving end of those high voltage hands was a psychedelic experience: it felt natural to be aware of energy shooting out of the heart centre”.
I agree about the feeling being psychedelic. Once the experience left me awake the whole night, and blended in my normal vision was the rich colour of extraoridinairy ordinariness, the rickshaw stop became flooded with colour. Another time it left me in touch with some hara feeling of ecstasy to which I was a total stranger, and lasted for hours. Once I stumbled from the bed of a lover and found my feet hardly touching the ground walking half way across Poona in the sandbya.
Shunyo says of her experience of being a medium: “My body felt like a vehicle and I never knew what to expect next: a song in an unknown language, a flight into a nearby tree, the sensation of being pulled upwards into the sky: I sat there, simply waware of all the colourts and dances of energy.
Osho himself commented (in the Rebel, 1987) ‘I used to touch people’s third eyes with my fingers, but I had to stop it for the simple reason that I became aware that that stimulating the third eye from the outside is good if the person continues to meditate, continues to watch – then the first experience coming from the outside will soon become his inside experience. But such is the stupidity of man that when I can stimulate your third eye, you stop meditating. You rather start asking for more and more energy meetings with me, because you have not to do anything!
I also became aware that for different people a different kind and quantity of energy is needed from the outside, and (which according to who it is) is very difficult to decide. Sometimes someone would fall into a coma, the shock being too much. And sometimes the subject was so retarded that nothing at all was reported as happening! ”
And so how was it for you?
Love, Parmartha
You may re-read the poem, Parmartha, which I posted to one of the ´caravanserai´ breakfast tables.
Then you will know what I was irreversibly introduced into, and maybe that was the best of mine I have ever contributed so far, all these months, concerning Sannyas (news).
All of the un-sayable is said there.
Love,
Madhu
PS:
Being just today so badly bugged, concerning emailing to you in particular – as I had posted a long email addressing your identity as a ´Victorian detective´s heritage – well, this email of the afternoon has been vanished into `something of neighborhood´s businesses.´
And so my response to this new thread is such to remind you that I have already expressed my response to this issue – and know no better way (in words).
Please render us the link to your earlier verse on this matter.
Thanks, SN
I love Osho’s response to his own work – he had to stop, largely because the phenomenon became so misunderstood by his own sannyasins. Here too is a great example of the human, Osho, learning from experience. Because he rediscovered his own limitations. He couldn’t change many people with energy darshans. We needed conscious, deliberate exploration with the mind in order to produce change.
I wonder how those sannyasins who love to think that enlightenment brings constant and perfect bliss will marry Osho’s own realisation that he too was limited, with their belief that he was ‘perfect’.
Just a tiny degree of reflection suffices to realise that – except in exceptional circumstances – of course a master can’t totally ‘transform’ someone, ‘just like that’, as it were. If he or she could, then we could all just queue up once, receive the energy and live happily ever after…
Sounds as if Osho realised he was ‘playing with fire’, so stopped, apparently not wanting (or unable?) to modify his ‘transmissions’.
Whereas the likes of Amma and Meera, for example, continue what might perhaps be termed ‘lower level’ (but nevertheless powerful) intimate energetic exchange with thousands of individuals, as the major cornerstones of their public work. Meera, for example, says she deliberately gears what she gives according to what the person is able to safely receive and work with, whereas Amma seems to focus directly on the ‘heart’. And Barry Long also worked energetically, didn’t he, simond, albeit in a different way?
As Madhu says, the point is to integrate whatever is received into normal, everyday life. Otherwise, if we can’t contain the energy, the ‘high’, then what’s the point? We just fall back…I guess that’s why basic ‘spiritual work’ is, on the whole, pretty mundane, getting grounded, eliminating causes of unhappiness, being emotionally healthy etc. etc., ie not particularly exciting or ‘glamorous’.
It’s even arguable that it’s pointless remembering such dramatic experiences, such ‘highs’, as if they’ve been of any value then the energy of them will have entered the system and be part of us, playing a part in our ongoing ongoing (as it were)….
Lovely response, Satyadeva. I believe you are right. It is pointless to remember these highs. They are memories, and they will have in some mysterious way have changed you, as they have me.
As you say, to reflect on them is to live in the past and in the miguided hope that they will return.
Reality now, in this moment, is enough, this is the core of any true teaching. There is no sensation in the present. Just the simple knowledge that you are alive, here.
I also love the way you embrace the so-called basic spiritual work, which is as you rightly say the real work. The focus on meditation, the search for stillness, via experience, is where the so-called spiritual search gets very lost indeed.
“The focus on meditation, the search for stillness, via experience, is where the so-called spiritual search gets very lost indeed.”
Could you expand on what you mean here, please, simond, I’m not sure what you mean exactly?
Dear Satyadeva,
As you so rightly said, the unglamorous part of the search is the real purpose. To rid oneself of unhappiness, to deal with emotion and feeling is where the search truly begins. Why are we unhappy, why do we suffer? Why does love fail us? Relationships? Why are we so afraid to be alone? Why are we afraid of death?
Meditation and the seeking for stillness is starting the wrong way round. We get lost in seeking a very temporary peace we may have discovered once or twice through meditating and stilling the mind.
But the mind is never permanently stilled. It has to be mastered.
The final discovery is to know why we are disturbed, why the mind is the problem. This is done by dealing with the emotions, facing the fear, dealing with everyday problems, jealousy, deep feelings of separation.
As we explore these with the mind and through feelings, both within ourselves and with others, so stillness descends upon us. It comes from within, without effort. It can only be accessed once the mind and feelings have been dealt with fully.
This is never accomplished in the meditating halls of Poona or anywhere else, it is accomplished in the daily rituals of living, loving, dying to my self, in sex, in work and most importantly of all, in intimate relating.
I tried many of Osho’s meditations over many years and I observed that as powerful as they were, the tendency within me and within others was to get lost seeking for the Now or for the Present.
This was futile. My obsession was a mad one. There is no now, no present, no stillness – at least in the way that I was looking for.
The now and the present were within me all the time. I was just looking in the wrong place.
Simond, you dd not respond to my asking if you actually had an energy darshan with Osho, and therefore I conclude that you did not. Which leaves me with the impression that you don’t actually know what you are talking about. Am I corresct in assuming that? Come on, don’t be a spoilsport.
Dear Lokesh,
Excuse me for not answering your question. No, I did not receive an energy darshan from Osho.
You may conclude I don’t know what I’m talking about, as you wish. That is totally up to you.
And you are right –
I don’t know anything at all.
Simond, first you say such things as, “There is no sensation in the present. Just the simple knowledge that you are alive, here.” Now you say, “I don’t know anything at all.” Your reaction betrays the contradictions that exist in your life.
Besides, what I was addressing was your speaking about Osho’s energy darshans and how you claim to know what that was about. How could you when you never experienced it?
Seems like ‘mere semantics’ though, Lokesh, doesn’t it? If simond had written, ‘Just the simple awareness that you are alive, here’ there’d be no problem, would there?
SD, the point that I wish to get across is that Simond is commenting on things that he does not know about on an existential level.
The thread begins with a short article about Osho’s energy darshans and Simond comes away with comments like, “It is pointless to remember these highs.” How would he know that when he never experienced them as such? I know where he is coming from and what he says is valid, but talking about Osho’s energy darshans without actually having attended is like speaking about a gourmet dish you never tried.
People think they know but do not really understand. How could they without the heart experience that was transmitted? Something that can remain with one throughout life without indulging in sentimentallity and longing for days long past.
SD says, “Just a tiny degree of reflection suffices to realise that – except in exceptional circumstances – of course a master can’t totally ‘transform’ someone, ‘just like that’, as it were.”
Yes, well, okay, but some transformation in a positive way is better than no transformation at all, and from what I have seen it does happen around wise guys. SD, how would you describe ‘total transformation’ as in who or what is being totally transformed into who or what?
I’m sure you’re right, Lokesh, that “some transformation in a positive way is better than no transformation at all” – otherwise, why would most of us have bothered, or more to the point, still be bothering?! I’m not sure though whether ‘quick hits’ that are easily lost because one hasn’t grown enough to be able to contain them are all that worthwhile.
As for ‘total transformation’, well, I suppose it depends on what level you mean. Plenty of people have been through a process of profound body/mind transformation, which essentially boils down to seeing through fear, usually, but not necessarily, through therapy (eg Osho meditations can do a similar job for some), thus preparing the way for ‘higher’ processes to take over, given the right teacher/teachings etc. One of the desirable – or essential – outcomes being the growth of love, joy and compassion, themselves spiritual qualities, probably in direct proportion to the dissolving of fear.
As for ‘spiritual transformation’ all I can do is repeat what I’ve heard and view as reliable info, as I’m firmly entrenched on far lower rungs of the er, ‘Ladder’.
It seems that for most this is a very lengthy process of conscious inner work, punctuated by many and varied ‘realisations’, at various levels, whereby the individual intelligence increasingly ‘sees through’ what (s)he’s previously been ‘identified’ with as ‘him/her ‘self’, leading (with a bit of er, ‘Luck’) to climacterics of psychological and emotional death(s).
Sounds scary, doesn’t it? And apparently it’s exactly that…But worth it, they say, as once you’ve overcome the fear of death, well…Life becomes something of a breeze…
But you and everyone else here have heard all this before, surely, Lokesh? To answer your question the best I can do is to say (but not, of course, from my personal experience, only from what sounds about right to me) that the transformation occurs when ‘someone’ (note the inverted commas) realises – and is able to contain and live the realisation – that (s)he is actually Life Itself, an open space, with, as Buddha said, ‘Nothing Arising’ – rather than the melange of conflicting thoughts, emotions, preferences and wants etc. etc. emanating from his/her past and self-identifications that we normally regard as our ‘self’.
Now, if you’ll forgive me, I NEED to check on a football match I’m betting on…
Come on, Sheffield United, I NEED you to WIN….
PS: Well, did I get the job?
Good response…raised a smle.
Spot on, old bean.
I survived a number of energy darhans, although trippy at times I would not go so far as to describe them as being psychedelic. Mind-blowing, mysterious…like how on earth did he do that? The theatrics were great.
Simple Simond says, “It is pointless to remember these highs.” Not quite sure what he is driving at, in the sense that I get the feeling he is coming from his head and not his heart, with all the usual blah blah about, “Reality now, in this moment, is enough, this is the core of any true teaching. There is no sensation in the present. Just the simple knowledge that you are alive, here.” Well and good, but I am quite sure he remembers his past or else how would he be able to say that? Naw, does not sound existential, mindy more like.
I rarely recall energy darshans, so long ago, I have a job recalling what I did last week. But, if I feel so inclined, I feel it is perfectly all right. Osho himelf, although claiming to be non-sentimental, spent quite some time recalling and sharing his past. I appreciate that, because at times it was most interesting.
I am glad I have energy darshans under my star-studded belt. They were a blast, a reminder of how good it can get and an indication of what one can invite into one’s life.
Simond, did you ever actually have an energy darshan with Osho? I am curious to know.
Dear Sannyas News,
took me some valuable ´time´ to scroll again on this my only few months’ contributing here in UK Sannyas News. Found the poem, as I remembered, on your “London Queen´s Wood Saturday Circle” thread at April-time this year and as a response to the Beauty Upnita shared with:
“…form has just emerged from formlessness…at the Wood´s cafe´.”
There and then – to share what came up for me – from the VOID – remembering the touch of the Master as well as the whole field around it, and it is irreversible, even when by myself quite often unsuccessfully (!) denied, as denied in the ´view´and responses of others ( I also scrolled again about your responses…).
I belong to those who hadn´t any spectacular visual appearances (before, during or after) meeting Osho in darshan.
But – relating to the issue of this present subject – entered a space even beyond space and in that Silence everything disappeared and yet in this Silence everything existed; and I was ´Home´ in an indescribable way.
So how to describe that ´in prose´- no way. at least not for me.
My experience is that even when you have touched This ( Osho sometimes described it as our birthright to evolve into) you won´t forget it, it´s simply unforgettable.
And to integrate that experience though into daily life may take a life time. Or not.
And by integration I mean for example ´suchness´ (potentially) like your `Queens Wood Saturday Breakfast Circle´and the meeting of fellow-travellers.
Being in an extraordinary way – ordinary – sharing, enjoying Life and enjoying, having been able to meet as Lovers of the Master and as Lovers of a never-ending Pilgramage from – Here to Here.
Hope you are content?
Sannyas News?
Love,
Madhu
Thanks, Madhu.
And who are YOU, Simond, to judge and to lecture about ´Oshos work´ and about His being “misunderstood” by His own sannyasins?
What did You understand? About ´change´, for example?
Change, as far as my experience goes, you cannot ´produce´ like a fabrication. Neither in others nor in yourself (I mean essential change!). And that is very, very good , as there must be left something that is excluded by its very Nature from the grip of the greedy ones who´know it all´and most of the time – know nothing.
Change has to be allowed by the Whole and also by forces you do not come across on the superficial levels of awareness. It’s a gift, a Grace too – and I dare say that the Master and the Masters giving their very Life in the bodies, sharing their Wisdom are Included in that processing and not Excluded.
Any moment Change is happening, any moment.
Madhu
Great post, Madhu.
Was always under the impression that the energy Darshans stopped because visitor numbers had gone up enormously, and many were people who wanted to take Sannyas directly from Osho, so there wasn’t time for giving Sannyas and energy Darshan.
Maybe these things are contingent on practical considerations, etc…I have no idea.
I was interested to read Osho’s 1987 comment that he had to give up touching people’s third eye… sounded like people got greedy for the effects of that!
I believe many of us have sometimes considered not writing into SN, also for very similar motives and the consequent realisation, because either many of our co-readers were not up to receiving the message, or they might be overwhelmed by the insights contained, or, upon consideration of the effect that the moment’s passing wisdom from the external ‘blogger’ might not last forever, and they, the aforementioned ‘blog-reader’, would become lazy and dependent on gazillions of hours worth of external insights..
Frankly. it’s a bit of a duff job at the best of times, (!), but someone has got to do it..(!+!).
It’s a bit like one of Sir Parmartha Onan d’Oyly Carte’s epic who-dunnits: you won’t know until you get to to end of the plot, through twists and turns…keep reading…
For fans of the never-ending story, here is a link for his forthcoming Detective Truth-Sleuther’s latest best-seller. The front cover on the right says it all…derring-do and nefarious deeds included..(!+?).
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/CI.jpg
Toodle pip – for now….
Just a note to say that I forgot to include instructions with my earlier post…
Relax, avoid reading it with both eyes open. Close the eyes. Now just read it with your third eye (no peeking).Let the effect go deeper.
Try this with other posts and notice without judging.
Unplug the computer.
Make tea.
Now try to go across the park with your feet off the ground.
It might feel like this :
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g3p2TZ5q9to
Is this similar to energy darshan? Love is the answer?
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Follow the energy here:
http://www.maninwhitedress.com/
“Frankly. it’s a bit of a duff job at the best of times, (!), but someone has got to do it..(!+!).
It’s a bit like one of Sir Parmartha Onan d’Oyly Carte’s epic who-dunnits: you won’t know until you get to to end of the plot, through twists and turns…keep reading…
For fans of the never-ending story, here is a link for his forthcoming Detective Truth-Sleuther’s latest best-seller. The front cover on the right says it all…derring-do and nefarious deeds included..(!+?).”
Prem Martyn, October 2014, on the day/night of the Red Moon eclipse, being also called ‘Blood Moon’- happens rarely – this time only having to be seen in full glory in Autralia and Asian countries.
“But the journalist has to keep a distance. He thinks that by keeping a distance he will be able to know better. No, he will only gather information, bits of information, in fact irrelevant, unconnected with each other, because he has no approach to the center. And he is going to distort it more to make it more sensational.”
Osho, in “Ah This”.
Osho, sometimes also being called lovingly “Lord of the Moon”.
‘Ah This’ – lecture of Question and Answer series, and a quote nugget about journalism’.
We are ´living´ in what is called “Information-Age” and we all are using a kind of ´Data-Autobahn´ to get here;
So much can happen on the way and after seemingly ´arriving´.
Much traffic too.
This morning , sun is bright and sky is clear at the place where I am writing.
Me indeed – like every morning first needs a deep clean – and then another coffee or tea break – I still don´t know, what to choose.
How are you, friends ?
Madhu
http://www.psychedelicsociety.org.uk/
Londoners: Check the event in November. David Nutt is the speaker and was sacked as Government specialist on drug law.
Like many things around Osho, it was a glimpse into otherness/possibilities beyond comprehension. For me, it was experiencing oneness and joy in an indescribable way…and once experienced, some part of it never goes away. Gratefulness for what was and what is.