Ranch Endings

When Ma Anand Sheela left the Oregon Ranch in September 1985, which, in a way was her creation,  the veils of secrecy surrounding her own inner circle and their machinations dropped away.
Believe it or not, most commune residents knew little about her very strange conduct – for a number of years,  before she actually left.  SN knows this is difficult for the sceptical to swallow, but it is certainly true. Below former ordinary residents from around the world recall their reactions when they first heard the news that their world was about to change for ever.
RAMA PREM
Osho was “about” freedom. He wasn’t about organization or religion or any of the things that people associate with him. He allowed the freedom to make (big) mistakes – and some people did, in fact, make whoppers. And it saddened me deeply to discover how far, and the extent to which,  some of “us” went – supposedly in his name.
ANAND SUBHUTI
I was driving a dump truck way out on Mevlana Road, at the southern end of the Ranch, when I stopped off for a chat with my friend Milarepa, who was operating a bulldozer in a nearby quarry. He gave me the news: “Sheela’s leaving the Ranch.”It was hard to believe, because her regime seemed so entrenched and, up until this moment, so firmly supported by Osho himself. I drove to the downtown area, parked and walked to Jesus Grove, the name given to the compound where Sheela lived.She was sitting on her sofa, talking to a group of department managers, the people responsible for running the Ranch’s various functions: kitchens, house cleaning, tool shops, truck farm… and so on. She was trying to convince them to leave with her.

“I’ve had it,” she said. “I can’t take any more. Osho doesn’t care about the commune. He doesn’t care about you. His only interest is in getting more and more Rolls Royces, more and more watches…”

She also referred contemptuously to the ‘Hollywood crowd,’ a group of Americans from Beverley Hills whom Osho would designate to take over the running of the Ranch, after Sheela had informed him she was leaving.

Curiously, I found the sight of Sheela badmouthing Osho a refreshing spectacle. For years, she’d been harassing us, repeatedly insisting on a 100 percent positive attitude from everyone. Now here she was, letting her own negativity spew out like a busted sewage pipe.

The (apparent?)  trigger for her dramatic change was a mildly-delivered public rebuke by Osho who was now giving discourses to the whole community each morning in the main auditorium. Sheela had written a letter to him, asking why she no longer felt excited when returning to the Ranch from her international trips. He explained that her ego was suffering, because all the media attention was now focused on him — he no longer needed a spokeswoman.

That was enough. His devoted secretary was out the door for good. As I saw it, Sheela’s sudden turnaround was like the spiteful reaction that is so typical of modern-day divorce proceedings, when the loving couple suddenly start snarling and snapping at each other. Having played the faithful ‘housewife’ — her favorite term for her role as the ‘mother’ of our community –Sheela vindictively wanted to wreck the family home by taking all the important managers with her.

But nobody felt like leaving, including me. I liked the ‘Hollywood crowd’ and the prospect of them being in charge was appealing. Moreover , the choice of remaining with an enlightened master or leaving in the company of a former hotel waitress whom nobody liked anyway, really wasn’t a tough call.

MA ANAND HARITAMA
I myself, like many many others, had no idea what Sheila & her gang had been up to. I only remember seeing odd things & thinking”this doesn’t feel right”….When Osho announced to us what had been going on I felt shocked. I realized Sheila had been listening to all our phone calls which people made, even from the public phone boxes, & that is how she knew who was for or against her. At first, I couldn’t understand why she would destroy our beautiful commune. But very soon after the initial shock wore off, I came to understand how power corrupts, even in a “spiritual commune”. I am not bitter about it, it was a wonderful experience & I have no regrets. However, I do wish we could have been a positive example for the world………..
MA DIVYAM KAILASH
I was in the commune in Switzerland when Sheela and some of her cohorts arrived there. It was the next day, after they had left, that the story started to unfold. We flew back to the Ranch a few days later and I was shocked at what Osho was revealing about what had been done. It was a very intense time, and yet the love for Osho, the commune, my fellow sannyasins, all stayed the same.
MA PREM ARCHAN
When it was first revealed to us about Sheela we laughed. We thought it was a stupid joke. Nobody, for one moment, believed it could really have happened. When the seriousness of it sank it, we wept. I remember going out into the woods, sitting on a log and just sobbing. I could not understand how something so beautiful could turn ugly so quickly. It was a hard lesson to learn, but we learned it — eternal vigilance is always required even in EDEN!
SWAMI DEVA RASHID
I was on the ranch from start to finish. I had always had an aversion to Sheela and a few run-ins with her too. But i had always understood she was an agent for our growth. We sannyasins were so innocent, so trustful. When Osho made his revelations I reeled, I staggered, I vomited and swore and cried in disbelief, I huddled deep in talk with friends I’d never met before and stared for ages at a burnt out bole of Juniper outside my window. Then, like most of us, I picked myself up, dusted myself down and went on with the work. What haunted me as time went by however, what cropped up in my dreams for years to come, was the antics of the State, successful finally, trying to close us down. They dealt with us and our corrupt regime with ten times the corruption.

 

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85 Responses to Ranch Endings

  1. frank says:

    A quote came to mind:
    “We must not judge God from this world. It`s just a study that didn`t come off. It`s only a master who could make such a blunder.”
    Vincent Van Gogh.

    • Arpana says:

      “A Cup of Tea”.
      Letter 54 written in 1969.

      “Love.
      I am one with all things -
      in beauty,
      in ugliness,
      for whatsoever is – there I am.
      Not only in virtue
      but in sin too I am a partner,
      and not only in heaven but hell too is mine.

      Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu –
      it is easy to be their heir,
      but Genghis, Taimur and Hitler:
      they are also within me!
      No, not half – I am the whole of mankind.

      Whatsoever is man’s is mine -
      flowers and thorns,
      darkness as well as light,
      and if nectar is mine, whose is poison?
      Nectar and poison – both are mine.
      Whoever experiences this
      I call religious,
      for only the anguish of such experience can
      revolutionalise life on Earth.”

      • Arpana says:

        Success and failure.
        Good and bad.
        Right and wrong.

      • frank says:

        Fantastic poetry…
        But was Osho really like Ghengis and the boys..?

        Poisoning the odd salad bar ain’t exactly marauding across the world disembowelling whole towns with your bare hands, then shoving their chopped heads on a pole, building towers using skulls as masonry etc…

        And as far as Hitler is concerned, it has been pointed out before that the only gas chamber on the Ranch was Osho`s dental trailer!

      • Parmartha says:

        These letters were always being written to a particular individual, and a reply to a letter received. Of course, we don’t have that context, but it might be ‘enlightening’ to see such a statement in the context of the question being posed.

        As Arpana hints, the normal polarities of good and bad, etc. are societal norms, and there is a point of wisdom beyond them.

        I remember an old, very good English school teacher of mine discussing Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s famous novel ‘Wuthering Heights, saying he was “very interesting” as a character simply because he contained both what would be conventionally called good and evil. That was why the novel was ‘great’. Ho hum…maybe germane here.

  2. shantam prem says:

    ‘Blame Sheela’ is the parroting mantra.

    With such kind of denial, cosmic laws can ever support Sannyas?

    It was in fact a multi-organ failure. The palace politics and racial divide. And naturally, Osho was busy in throwing stones on Christianity: ‘You dirty people from the past, my rainbow people of the future!’

    The creator of the movement suffered immensely. Toothless Rats are still waiting for the chance of Tongue Chow* in Chairman´s Resort.

    *Tongue chow is a Neo-Zen version of Cunnilingus!

  3. Lokesh says:

    Here we go again, Sheela and the Ranch. I was talking to an old school sannyasin the other day and he mentioned that a lot of sannyasins felt bad about how it all went and what a mess it was when the shit hit the fan. Yes, I suppose many did. Subhuti mentions how Sheela’s behaviour was like someone in nasty divorce proceedings. Not difficult to imagine, all things considered. Remember, it takes two to tango.

    More than anything, these anecdotes remind me of soldiers after a war. The Wehrmacht did not know what the SS was up to. What! They were poisoning innocent people! Meanwhile, the great leader comes through it all smelling of roses. Instead of the Cenataph we have Osho’s Samadhi. Keep right on till the end of the pathless path.

    Rashid concludes, “They dealt with us and our corrupt regime with ten times the corruption.” Interesting point. Osho and his inner cicle tried to beat the Yanks at a game that was made in America. It was ridiculous to believe that such a force could be overcome. The outcome was inevitable.

    25 years ago I was visiting Ireland. I landed a commission for a big painting and a friend lent me a beautiful house in a nature reserve where I could work in peace and quiet. I stayed for a couple of months. The scene was set for what would be one of my last heroic dose acid trips. It was a 24 hour molecular level mind-bender. During that period I had been experimenting with so-called smart drugs. At the peak of my trip I ingested some neuro-transmitter boosters and as a result went into hyper-warp…

    When I returned from the distant edge of the universe, I found myself staggering around in an ancient Celtic graveyard and came upon a very old man, taking his early morning constitutional. He was wearing a baseball cap with OREGON printed on it.

    “Morning”, I said, “are you from Oregon?”
    “I sure am, son”, he replied.
    “Didn’t you have some trouble over there with some Indian guru and his cult members?” I enquired.
    “Yes, siree, we certainly did, son,” he answered, his grizzled head nodding from side to side at the recollection of it. “We taught those varmits a lesson and ran them out of town and they never came back. We won, son, we won!”

    As he said this I was standing close to him. Close enough to smell his rotten breath. I looked into his watery eyes. They shone with a glitter due to the rising sun behind me. His face looked like a skull.

    I must have looked like I had gone into a trance because the old codger repeated, “We won, son, we won!”

    “Well done,” I said, thinking to myself, this old bastard did not win anything.

    I nodded and said, “Nice talking to you,” turned and walked over to a massive Celtic cross that was covered in moss. At its centre there was a carving of an angel’s face. Such was my altered state that I could have sworn that granite angel smiled at me and said, “Whatever you think reality is, so it will appear to be.”

  4. Parmartha says:

    The Autumn of 1985 was a very major watershed moment for many fellow disciples I knew at that time. Some left ‘the movement’ with bitterness, and also left the strong friendship network that was Sannyas entirely. However, many simply left the formal organisation, and made their way in the world, and retained an open mind about the meaning of the Ranch and continued to ‘network’ within the Sannyas community, and some like me still do!

    And believe it or not, a small number saw the demise of the Ranch as their re-entry into Sannyas, and ran off to see Osho in Greece, or in Katmandu as soon as he became publicly available there – who had never been near the Ranch as they claimed they had always ‘smelt a rat’ there.

    Like Lokesh, I find the most interesting point of the above vignettes that of Rashid, who says,
    “What haunted me as time went by, however, what cropped up in my dreams for years to come, was the antics of the State, successful finally, trying to close us down. They dealt with us and our corrupt regime with ten times the corruption.”

    I like that he admits to our regime being “corrupt”, rather than as some of the old timers somehow being in denial on that point.

    However, he would have to expand on his statement that the State dealt with our corruption “with ten times” more corruption. Can’t see that so much myself.

    Any which way, corruption is corruption and one never excuses another, whatever way round one looks at it.

  5. mandiro says:

    I never went to Poona 1 or Poona 2, I lived 2 & 1/2 years on the Ranch until the end.It was the best time in my life. Most people talk about the bad things that happened, but I will tell you about the good things.

    I was a new sannyasin and I felt right away that there were people there whom I worked with that had something I did not have. Men and women that had been with The Master for a longer time. I did not feel envious, it was what it was. It was not easy to be at the Ranch with all the work and the construction going on. Sometimes we worked for 16 hours building the town houses, I slept about 6 hours a day. But the energy was there and driveby made it precious.

    I did not question any directives, I did not know what Sheela was doing, I was just there and trying to stay there, which was not easy at times. So when the end came it was very sad, but now I see it as reality, the impermanence of everything, even of a commune that cost more than $100,000,000 and all the effort we put in. But that is how life is constantly changing.

    I don’t blame Sheela, maybe I would have acted the same way if I was in that position. But just to see Him every day was enough. No murders were committed at the Ranch, no rapes, people were free to be with somebody, same or different sex or race, or stay alone. The food was good, out in the country. For me, it was the best, I was very sad when it ended. Because of family issues I could not go to Poona 2. But that is ok also. The Ranch was a true commune, we were there for ever!

  6. shantam prem says:

    Whether it was Ranch or Pune, every disciple was feeling part of the game. So they poured their heart, money and time. What astonishes me the most is after Osho´s death, how Jayesh simply became the sole proprietor and others just visitors to the spa. Most of them, individually or collectively, have not shown any kind of protest other than not going to Pune.

    These people who have lived decades long around Osho and have no obvious interest to play some kind of power games are the right people to take decision-making initiative in their hands and bring the same spirit they witnessed and benefited from.

    Without such actions, past will remain glorious but not the future. This wound of not taking the stand will go on haunting.

    • satyadeva says:

      Shantam, nothing you say or write has made, is making, or will make the slightest bit of difference. Firstly, sannyasins (and ‘fellow-travellers’) – like most people – are not ‘politicians’; second, all your efforts are tantamount to ‘pushing the river’, going against the flow, trying to recreate a long-gone past – doomed to failure.

      It’s life as it is, not some ideal dream-world of your imagination. People have moved on (for a start, they’ve got older and hopefully, wiser), there’s clearly no widely-felt need or motivation to flock to Pune in multitudes, as there was during Osho’s lifetime, simply because he’s not physically there – and never will be! Not ‘rocket science’, is it?!!

      As Lokesh has pointed out, Life also works in not-so-obvious ways, its purposes to unfold…Stuck on the surface as you appear to be, obsessed with externals, you clearly have no inkling of how things go, which unfortunately, unless you ‘wise up’, also dooms you to a lifetime of righteous anger, self-important frustration and resulting depression.

      Because your personal preference doesn’t count for even a click of a finger – and to imagine it does, or could, is the delusion of an impotent fool.

  7. shantam prem says:

    Satyadeva, you come from the space of such superiority complex, unfortunately this is going to be your biggest fall. People who don´t fall, are always in control, fall very dramatically.

    Lokesh suits you because you both have similar life story around Osho. You both left with the dividend rather than loss of investment. Greed of the mind is such, it still wants to crave that rare trophy, which one gets after losing the game.

    And moreover, loss of track of Osho movement is not due to the natural causes. it is purely due to human folly.

    • satyadeva says:

      Shantam, yours is the offended, pained, aggressive complaint of the blindingly ignorant when faced with something that contradicts their precious beliefs and values. Clearly, there are things you simply haven’t come across, either by ‘chance’ or through someone’s teachings – or even via your own common sense!

      As for “Greed of the mind is such, it still wants to crave that rare trophy, which one gets after losing the game” – once again, a statement of yours applies rather well to yourself and your stubbornly thick refusal to face and accept reality as it is.

      To paraphrase your last sentence, your “loss of track” of Reality “is not due to the natural causes, it is purely due to human folly” – yours, Shantam.

  8. shantam prem says:

    Osho and His PR machine was hammering the idea that man like him does not come every day. It takes 2500 years of time to produce such an awakened being.

    When one combines this with the high-class spiritual oratory, many sensitive souls from around the globe get affected and attracted.

    Osho himself gave the impression hundreds of times that Existence is pouring itself through Him, that every idea coming from him has a divine sanctity behind.

    I think whether it was Ranch or Pune, majority of disciples dropped their analytical mind. Once you start analysing the motives, there is no other way but leave the cult as Lokesh and Satyadeva did. As time has shown, their leaving the boat has proven right.

    Noah´s Ark gets holes too. Unfortunately, other than me, not many sannyasins are willing to discuss the organisational matters after patriarch´s departure.

    • satyadeva says:

      Shantam, what you say about my ‘leaving Sannyas’ is pure, unsubstantiated imagination on your part, just unadulterated bullshine. You like to invent things that fit with whatever point you’re making, which is one of the reasons no one here gives any credibility to what you say.

      Another reason, of course, is in your last paragraph:
      “Unfortunately, other than me, not many sannyasins are willing to discuss the organisational matters after patriarch´s departure.”
      How many more counter-arguments, put-downs, insults, satires (not to mention plain ignoring or avoiding your posts) does it take for you to realise you’re wasting your time and energy, that NO ONE TAKES YOU SERIOUSLY?!

      If that penny drops, then the next step will be to consider whether their approach might just be on the right lines, ie that your standpoint is fundamentally redundant, outdated, deluded. I’m not sure you’re capable of coping with that, however.

      • shantam prem says:

        “that NO ONE TAKES YOU SERIOUSLY?!”

        Look how a pussy cat is hiding behind the veil of everybody. The recognition-hungry catty aunty!

        Satya Deva, do you think I waste my time to address four, five people on this site? You provide me material to write, maybe I provide you guys some material.

        If there is some spirit of Sannyas still alive, my posts are dedicated to that.

        • satyadeva says:

          But you only have one topic you’re interested in, one topic about which you continuously pour out the same old stuff, the same old propaganda, same old same old, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

          Thank God you provide 24 carat gold nuggets of unconscious comedy, otherwise your presence here would be totally unbearable.

        • satyadeva says:

          “Look how a pussy cat is hiding behind the veil of everybody. The recognition-hungry catty aunty!”

          Translation, please!

    • Lokesh says:

      Chudo, as I understand it, you are having difficultes organizing your own life. Signing on at the dole is not exactly an inspirational profession. I know that one can fall on hard times and I don’t blame you for it.

      What I fail to understand is how on earth you think you have the brains to run an international meditation resort when you can’t support your own life on a financial level.

      You don’t even meditate yourself. How would you be able to relate to all the meditators who visit the Resort when you do not share their wavelength?

      How can you purport to carry on Osho’s vision when you never even met the man? Never had a conversation with him etc. Your fixation on this topic is unhealthy and absurd.

    • Loveet says:

      That is why Sannyas has no meaning anymore to the whole of mankind and this globe, society, science, alternative movements, etc. Right now in this very present time the whole religious construction around Osho has died off completely, and that is the good and positive thing about a good clean death that cuts off all old rotting roots completely.

      No living deads are real or could have any influence on these days but in the memory of some aging spiritual minds here and there, remembering their golden days or sentimental feelings long gone, just like our fathers did when holding on to some old dreams in lonely nights.

  9. shantam prem says:

    If you want to carry on Osho´s vision, the most important questions to ask are:
    1.Have you ever met the man?
    2.Have you ever had conversation with him?

    Are there some living human beings on the Earth, who can fulfil such simple criteria?

  10. shantam prem says:

    “What I fail to understand is how on earth you think you have the brains to run an international meditation resort, when you can’t support your own life on a financial level. You don’t even meditate yourself. How would you be able to relate to all the meditators who visit the resort when you do not share their wavelength?”

    Only some dumb, deaf and blind can get such opinion after reading my posts.

    Not in a single post out of thousands I have expressed the desire to run some kind of meditation resort.

    Simple fact I am pointing again and again is that people who are running the show in the name of Osho have hijacked the movement. Osho has not chosen any successor but group of 20 people. It means Osho´s work is based on the principle of co-operative society.

    Surely if life allows, I won´t mind to be one among the twenty. It means just 5% of the voting power in a decision-making body.

    And I am not saying I want to be in the management team of Google or facebook, Pfizer or American Express. I have no experience and no passion for their kind of work.

  11. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Friends,

    The last hours so to say ´contribution-communication-wise´ remind me of how ‘Survival of the Fittest’ as an axiom has operated in the course of time, also Sannyas ´Times´ and the merciless ways that that is lived and acted out and verbalized.

    I strongly contradict.

    And even further going would say that such is not even productive but may take revenge in ways incomprehensible, as not being able to be foreseen.

    However, I remember well how people who couldn´t cope and have been declared openly or behind hands as ´Losers´ take revenge in ways incomprehensible, as not to be able to be foreseen.

    Also the so-called `Loser´ mirrors standards of a group, which may be questionable, Satyadeva, Lokesh; at least some standards are questioned from my side. Although your ways to humiliate and shedding contempt about somebody´s contributions, or to ´put somebody right´, according to your standards have experiential different effects on me.

    The thread here-now goes about ´Ranch-Ending(s)´, isn´t it, that´s the title?

    I can very well relate to Kavita´s words – having had the experience to be thrown out in a kind of ‘Gurdijeff´ procedure from the bureaucracy. Much later, I found out that I had been spared of much even less digestible.

    So I DO know that understanding and acknowledging the ´good´ in the seemingly ´bad´ can take time and can be grace too.

    Otherwise, I can relate to the words of Rashid, including Parmartha’s response about ´corruption issues`, the latter important and for me very significant; maybe because I didn´t stay all those years in total, but for two longer periods and one long one. But my ´eyes´ were functioning.

    Maybe reason for that, that up to nowadays – so long ago, the whole stuff – I even now react sometimes allergically to those I came to know as power Mas or power Swamis, putting me right in a fundamentalist way when I questioned or opposed something . And I did.

    At another spot in the chat lines here I did say once that I often felt like Mullah Nasrudin´s wife, going to swim against the stream; and still I love this and other Mullah parables very much and the laughter, which gives miraculously space for another sight of view, especially when one is stuck in bitterness, which I have sometimes been and sometimes still am.

    The Grace, though, is, having been able to meet such a bunch of very precious people, being total in their trials as total in their errors too.

    And what has been very very important for me was the role Nature of this Ranch area has been playing, this vast land and the Spaciousness in that.

    If Osho wouldn´t have again spoken first in 1984 and then also in 1985 – I wouldn´t have survived the ´experiment´.

    And I belong to those who then saw Him in Crete, Greece, and later in India again.

    And sure, I always met myself according to my understanding. But the love affair goes beyond all these datas or even ´you´ and ´me´…or ´me´.

    To learn ever new vocabularies for THIS (if speaking at all) is never ending. And necessary.

    Love

    Madhu

    • satyadeva says:

      Madhu, please be specific in your critical remarks. What exactly do you object to in my and/or Lokesh’s recent criticisms of Shantam and his obsessiveness?

      Btw, do you think what he says is true, or of any value at all? If so, please say what you agree with, ie be precise, rather than rambling on, making vague, generalised comments, including about imagined dire consequences of some unspecified ‘Revenge of The Loser’. What, I wonder, might that be…bombing, murder, robbery with violence, rape, perhaps?! Waddya reckon, Madhu, eh?

      Besides, do you really think he is unable to take care of himself? Have you ever come across such a stubborn so’n'so?! Sikhs like Shantam are renowned for such qualities. He’s been repeating the same stuff for years here – and receiving the same sort of negative response! I think he actually enjoys it…He’s one tough old bird – aren’t you, Shanty-pants?

      • Parmartha says:

        The only way that Shantam will ‘go away’ is if you ignore him!…This does not seem to be happening!
        Incidentally, having just scan read some of his posts I see, whilst he does not consider himself to be, as it were, the leader of the revolution, he would be quite happy to be one of the 21! My God, shiver the thought!

        • shantam prem says:

          For the sake of protocol and seniority, I don´t mind if Parmartha or anyone else gets chosen as one of 21. I can do other mundane work.

          But one thing is clear, dear ones, in the twilight zone of your life, don´t live and die with the feeling, you the rebels compromised on the last wish of your master.

          OSHO was not Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who appointed one disciple as the next great one.

      • Lokesh says:

        Yeah, Madhu, stop picking on our beloved mascot, Chud Meister. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, like em…erh…Tom Thumb. You are turning into the neighbourhood bully!

        It is simply unfair to bamboozle readers with such statements as, “I always met myself according to my understanding. But the love affair goes beyond all these datas or even ´you´ and ´me´…or ´me´” Don’t you realize such words could leave innocent readers with permanent brain damage? Of course you do…you evil old lady.

        Young children might inadvertently come across your comments with God only knows what horrible consequences and thus go on to lead dysfunctional lives due to your fiendish efforts. Out demons, out! Get thee behind me, Satan! Your existence gives credence to the reality of the fight between good and evil in the Sannyas community today.

        Osho left us his dream and you do everything you can to turn it into a nightmare, while the valiant El Chudo fights the good fight to repel the repugnent forces of evil.

        I will do everything I can to thwart your malicious attempts to humble our Chud leader. You asked for it! I am calling an exorcist to purge your foul, sulphur-smelling presence from the hallowed pages of SN, a website dedicated to upholding Osho’s vision of a world of peace, love, harmony, luxury cars, fancy watches, laughing gas and fallen Madonnas with big bezoobies. The fight is on!

        • anand yogi says:

          Perfectly correct, Madhu!
          I was also thrown out of a commune in a Gurdjieff procedure of the “survival of the fittest” and only later I found out how much I had been spared of even more indigestible fate as concerns “contribution/communication” so ‘I’ understand perfectly well what ‘you’ are trying to “express”.

          Do not concern yourself with “losers” for whom it takes two to tango! The drunken Scottish baboon Lokesh knows nothing of spaciousness, except in regards to the large spacious patch on the top of his head!

          And the violent baboon and football hooligan Satya Deva is not as rational as he would like to “contribute/communicate” – in his choice of enlightened masters and football teams he has shown himself to be a “loser” and he has about as much chance of reaching Samadhi in this lifetime as his beloved ‘Arsehole’ have of winning a ‘game’!

          You are absolutely right, Madhu, there is certainly a need to learn new vocabularies, it’s never-ending, otherwise how could the love affair continue between ‘I’ and ‘you’ and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and THIS, according to my understanding whose eyes are functioning in the spaciousness of a Gurdjieffian understanding that is even more indigestible?

          Yahoo!
          Hari Om!

          • anand yogi says:

            And Madhu,
            Do not worry about Shantam.
            There is no need to take revenge in incomprehensible ways which cannot be foreseen…
            As Swami Bhorat observed only the other day:
            “Shantam is like the clap.
            No amount of meditation or medication seems to help.
            It just keeps coming back.
            It is probably terminal.”

            Yahoo!

            • Lokesh says:

              Aieeeeeeeee! Yogi and the scarlet woman, Madhu, are in cahoots with El Diablo. We need Chudo to destroy this axis of evil and carry the torch of Osho’s vision into the netherworlds and banish the beast from our midst.
              His blessings.

  12. I remember in 1985, reading the English papers, the Sun I fink, about Sheela’s departure from the Ranch.

    “Sheela’s gone, but it woz the Bhagwan wot done it”, the headline read.
    “Fucking ‘ell” , I remember finking, “could there be any truth to this?”
    Could Osho have really changed since ‘e arrived in America?
    After all, wot was ‘e doing wiv all the Rolls?

    But straightaway, I’ve gone, ” ‘E ain’t involved, I know Bhagwan’s innocent – ‘e would never want to deliberately poison anyone like that, would ‘e?”

    I knew that my Marster woz alright.
    After all, ‘e woz a top-notch geezer, old Bhagwan, really furst-class geezer.
    ‘E woz ‘the Guvnor’.

    • Parmartha says:

      Nice one, made me chuckle!

    • Lokesh says:

      Young declares, “But straightaway, I’ve gone, “‘E ain’t involved, I know Bhagwan’s innocent – ‘e would never want to deliberately poison anyone like that, would ‘e?”

      Bhagwan was not innocent, neither was he guilty. A simple case of the hunter being captured by the game.

      • Lokesh goes, “Bhagwan woz not innocent, neither woz e guilty. A simple case of the hunter being captured by the game.”

        Now this all sounds a bit zen, bwut I fink wot Lokesh is trying a say is that Bhagwan wearn’t no mafia don – e wearn’t trying a kill no-one – but e wearn’t no spring chicken neiver, e wearn’t no angel.

        In fact, e probably encouraged Sheela to be really nasty to people an really out of order an all.

        She fought she woz jus following is orders.
        Following is example.
        But she really went off her ‘ead wiv it all and caused loads of stress.
        But Bhagwan didn’t know she woz trying a kill people – that wot I fink anyway.

        • shantam prem says:

          Swami mabody young aka Frank,
          Let us create a spiritual stand-up comedy.
          First performance in Osho Auditorium Pune.
          Let us revive the tradition.
          You pay the ticket. Your accommodation with Aya I will arrange.

          • Shantam, your’e barking up the wrong tree, mate.
            Frank’s another geezer.
            Can’t you tell by the syntax?

            • shantam prem says:

              Swami Mabody young,
              One thing is clear you have a fake name but quite an art of hilarious writing.

              Will your Mom feel ashamed that her son developed such writing style, therefore you must create some name just like porn writers?

              Feel pride for your style, boy.

              • Shantam, mate,
                How do you know my name’s fake?
                Swami Mabodhi, that’s the name what Osho gave me.
                Young’s the surname, like Neil Young.
                An my old dear’s very proud of me how I am thank-you.

                I came on this site and I faught “this place feels lovely,this, I fink I’ll just write naturally wot ever comes into my head”, so I don’t bover with all that posh stuff an all that.

  13. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Satyadeva, Parmartha already gave one of the answers with:
    “The only way that Shantam will ‘go away’ is if you ignore him!…This does not seem to be happening!”

    And he did that while you were already ´sharpening your knife´ for attacking my response to a climate, or in other ways said, before you ´switched to circle the next prey´ (me).

    To say it with Lokesh´s words: “there are always two needed for a Tango” – and that´s including you as anybody else here. And that´s what I have been trying to point at in my longer contribution.

    You – other than Lokesh – sometimes take verbally the role of an investigator, a prosecutor, like in a Court trial, and you also are as stubborn as Shantam. It´s just the case that your very eloquent elaborations seem to be as sharp as an intellectual razor-blade and rarely, rarely are ´questionable´; there is hardly a doubt about that.

    However, I feel like in a deep-freezer most of the time reading that kind of your stuff, and as it shows, that procedure of yours doesn´t change the communication for the better – for years, yet is like an ongoing repetitive CD – from both of the so-called sides.

    That´s what I wanted to point at, as not only me , but also others in a caravanserai of this kind are part of it, if we are not blind and deaf or completely unable to respond. Or maybe choose to be indifferent.

    I understand if someones´s paining, as I know how that feels in myself. That´s the way I myself am experiencing when reading most of Shantam’s contributions, and most of the time I don´t see any necessity to beat him up for that like an ´Ego Shooter´.

    There are two for a ´Tango´, I repeat.

    We are neither in Court here, nor at a real Tango Place, we are trying to chat about this and that, aren’t we? And if something goes stuck for a long time it’s good to develop new ways of dealing with it.

    You won´t increase awareness , or consciousness, by beating somebody up verbally or putting him or her into a situation like an investigator, a prosecutor.

    I don´t take the latter ´offer´.

    Madhu

    • karima says:

      Satyadeva and Lokesh must both be very fascinated with Shantam’s mind in order to mechanically react to him, year in, year out! Yawn!

    • satyadeva says:

      Madhu, I think you over-identify with Shantam and his suffering. As I’ve said, he’s a tough, stubborn old bird (perhaps even too much so?), well able to look after himself, otherwise how could he have survived all the ridicule that’s been poured upon him all this time, and kept coming back for more?

      And you seem to prefer your ‘medicine’ with considerable amounts of ‘sugar’ – both of which serve to prevent you from seeing straight, or at least lead you to feel what I would term inappropriately uncomfortable when things are put bluntly (‘unfeelingly’, as you would no doubt put it). I may be mistaken, but I don’t think it does Shantam any favours to ‘go easy’ on him when he comes out with transparent nonsense.

      For the record, I expect Shantam’s a nice enough chap in person and I realise he’s not in an ideal situation, also that online communication, ‘disembodied’ as it is, tends to be intrinsically almost ‘impersonal’, therefore fundamentally an unsatisfactory way to relate.

      But, despite any such mitigating factors, I find his repetitious ‘political’ propaganda, which has been going on for years here, very offensive, which is why I tend to actively oppose it.

      The fact is, he has virtually ‘hijacked’ every single topic at SN in order to promulgate his views on what he calls the ‘hijackers’ of the Pune ashram management regime – an endless series of monotonously predictable posts, utterly and totally boring (apart from the unconscious comedy, of course – not to mention the often hilarious ripostes from others), despite having received almost zero support from fellow-readers/contributors.

      However, yes, it’s possible, as you and Parmartha have pointed out, that silence would be the most effective response, ie he might just realise that he’s banging his head against a wall of utter indifference. And, in view of his recent remarks, perhaps the penny has begun to drop…I wouldn’t bet on it, but we shall see….

      P.S:
      Anyway, what is this ‘Revenge of the Loser’ you were going on about and haven’t clarified yet?! Is it possibly your own rage, reflected in various horrendous news stories, projected on to another, ‘poor old victim’ Shantam?

      • shantam prem says:

        It is pity, Satyadeva, that you have not become clinical psychologist. The job fits quite well with you.

        Anyway, it is not your bad luck, many people who became part of any cult lost many of their chances and became dependent on the continuous inflow of men and women with self-chosen divine mission.

        • Arpana says:

          A 5 year-old and a 3 year-old are upstairs in their bedroom.

          “You know what?” says the 5 year old, “I think it’s about time we started swearing.”

          The 3 year-old nods his head in approval, so the 5 year-old says,

          “When we go downstairs for breakfast I’m gonna swear first, then you swear after me, ok?”

          “Ok,” the 3 year old agrees with enthusiasm.

          The mother walks into the kitchen and asks the 5 year-old what he wants for breakfast.

          “Shit, mum, I don’t know, I suppose I’ll have some Fruit Loops.”

          WHACK…she spanks him.

          He flew out of his chair, tumbled across the kitchen floor, got up, and ran upstairs, crying his eyes out.

          She looked at the 3 year-old and asked with a stern voice, “And what do YOU want for breakfast, young man?”

          “I don’t know, mum, but it won’t be fucking Fruit Loops.”

        • satyadeva says:

          Setting aside your irrelevant second paragraph, Shantam, is it possible, please, for you to reassure Madhu that you’re definitely not a potential mass-murderer likely to take ‘The Revenge of the Loser’ when you finally crack under the strain of others’ indifference and ridicule?

          Because if indeed the probabilities are weighted in favour of such slaughter then we’d all be well advised to review our life insurance policies (or get one).

          Thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

  14. Kavita says:

    “I can very well relate to Kavita´s words – having had the experience to be thrown out in a kind of ‘Gurdijeff´ procedure from the bureaucracy. Much later, I found out that I had been spared of much even less digestible.”

    Madhu, I am trying to figure out exactly what you are trying to convey , but I am sure it will be an effort, so I shall just let it be.

  15. Kavita says:

    For me, when I came to Ashram in 1992, Shantam was a commune guest and didn’t have any complaints about the set-up. In fact I am reminded of an incident when Swami Vijay Aftab, who was our common friend and who was Osho’s student of Jabalpur days, said something against the administration & Shantam stood strongly for the administration.

    I am sure only he knows the reasons for this compelling stand he takes now.

  16. avinashi says:

    There cannot be a successaul commune without a living master (physically alive) like Osho level. For a commune, a physically alive master is unavoidable requirement. No point criticising Jayesh or anyone, we all are potential Sheelas.

  17. shantam prem says:

    “But one thing is clear, dear OSHO disciples who were sitting and dancing with Him, in the twilight zone of your life, don´t live and die with the feeling, you the rebels compromised on the last wish of your master.
    OSHO was not Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who appointed one disciple as the next great one.”

    I think with these words I have written the epilogue of my political work. Now go on writing as Oshonews style, feel-good articles.

    I won´t come in between to spoil the ‘mental joyful activity under the disguise of meditation.
    Indians who were the pioneers in the world of inner exploration created a new saying after seeing a part of society getting converted by force. The saying is, “Newly converted Muslims always talk about Allah.”

    More or less, one can say similar thing about westerners who have come across a new wonder drug called Meditation!

  18. Lokesh says:

    Chud brain refers to…5% of the voting power in a decision-making body. Right now he has…0.0000000000005% of the 5% of the voting power in a decision-making body. Now let’s see what that actually amounts to…I will need to consult my calculator…that amounts to…wait for it…absolutely nothing.

    I predict that it will remain so for the remainder of the chuddy-burster’s life. After all, he is not a very well man and needs care and thus is renedered incapable of making any decisions about anything whatsoever, except perhaps deciding what irrelevant shite to post on SN next. Thank goodness for that. What a relief!

  19. Kavita says:

    Anand Yogi, there is hardly any sannyasin who has not been shown the Gurdjieff procedure by the administrators, except maybe to a certain extent their own coterie.

    I am grateful to SN that to a large extent SN has (maybe unintentionally) provided a venting box for many of us who have managed to survive here – but can there be a watertight guarantee for not causing any ‘Gurdjieffian procedure’? The answer is NO.

    I agree with Avinashi, but only regarding Master’s physical presence for a better co-ordinated administrative purpose of his commune & external activities.

  20. shantam prem says:

    Avinashi says:
    “There cannot be a successful commune without a living master (physically alive) like Osho level. For a commune, a physically alive master is unavoidable requirement. No point criticising Jayesh or anyone, we all are potential Sheelas.”

    My thought:
    Master’s death leaves a big vacuum to be filled by the bullshitters and fence-sitters.

    Looks like Osho did not know that simple fact which Avinashi is saying with such deep authority. Should people still believe Osho as enlightened, as spiritual genius of a kind?

    Is it not a crime against humanity to ask disciples to pour truckloads of money for a successful commune which was bound to fail after his death?

    I think honesty requires OIF should add disclaimer in Osho´s books, similar to those for dangerous stunts, eg ‘Don´t perform at home’:
    “Osho´s words were spoken in a certain context during certain time before a certain group of people. Please don´t take them seriously.”

  21. Hafiz says:

    I’m lucky enough to have enough time these days to read books. Sometimes interesting connections open out between successive reading experiences. So it’s been with three recently completed tomes.

    Book one: ‘Osho, India and Me’, by Jack Allanach, aka Krishna Prem. A wonderful account of Poona One, written in the full freshness of surrender, bathed in a mystic perfume.

    Next up: ‘Albert Speer, His Battle with Truth’, by Gitta Sereny. A fat work this, but gripping from start to finish. How much did this key Nazi administrator know about ‘what was going on’? Interesting how the big boss could kindle absolute devotion simply by locking eyes with his acolyte.

    KP, in his benefit of hindsight epilogue, made it clear that things had taken an unwelcome turn on the Ranch, recommending Frances Fitzgerald’s account in ‘Cities on a Hill’, which did indeed seem like a fair enough (for an outsider) telling.

    I wasn’t on the Ranch (except for those strange hyperbolic ‘celebrations’) but I was in the next best thing (so we liked to think), the European Commune. When it all blew up, all I could think was “Animal Farm, here we go…” A lesson to be learned, for sure.

    Yeah, I’m still churned up about all of this; maybe this will be with me to my dying day, one of those impossible koans. Tricksy folks, gurus.

  22. shantam prem says:

    Today is 25h Anniversary of Ma Prem Nirvano´s death. As per tombstone, an untimely death.

  23. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Satyadeva,
    Your P.S. to my address shows what you still might be up to and how you have developed a kind of interpretation of my words in the course of time here in the UK chat. Same has been happening in my conscious as well as unconscious individual realms, sure.

    However we might be evolving to ´nobodies´ in spiritual terms, but yet, ´sender´ and ´receivers’ are not disembodied, and that´s wonderful to presume.

    The way I agreed with Parmartha in this thread has been coming up over and over again from the very beginning of my start in the Uk chat here, and is partly rooted in my vita (trainings as praxis in the psychology/therapy stuff, as praxis also as a social psychology researcher before Sannyas, and above all that, the most prominent point, the experiences in joining a sangha with a living Master – so all of it).

    Nothing to do with a sugar placebo medication imagination. All of it. In fact, it has been and is quite often inconceivable (and also torturing me mentally and psychologically) how long and also how stubborn some of these fights have been going on without results, and partly I related that to the specific IT-medium as such, where it is so easy to forget that we address each other as ´body-mind-SOULS´.

    When I spoke about the ´loser´, I presumed that anybody here knows how that feels. And has been preoccupied with what we call ´compassion´and also compassion not meant as a sugar pill.

    At the end of such a line of ´losers´, not rare but ever more so often these decades, are individuals like Anders Brevic, the Norwegian man who shot down a lot of innocent people. He having been well connected in the internet realms with other total crackpots – as we came to know when it was too late.

    Also, this guy had dreams he called ´spiritual´ and a role he wanted to play. And has been humiliated to an extent that he shot back, one day.

    I am a contemporary, Satyadeva, and by that I mean I don´t exclude these shady, very shocking sides when I talk about my instinctive understanding when something goes very ´wrong´ for quite a time in the communication resorts like this one.

    There is one good thing about being German I ´d like to share with those who have their ´noses´ very ´up´, so to say:

    I belong to a generation, right after world war II, and belong to those who gave their lives for a deep and painful research how a mass of people could go so utterly wrong. And what the individual response-ability or the missing of that has to do with it.
    That was my background on the Ranch too.

    Up to nowadays, so many people of other nations have the illusion to be by birth certificate free of such a danger. That´s more than wrong thinking.

    Maybe I’ve responded to you a little bit? Or maybe even Kavita reads, if it is not too much effort. Who knows..?

    By the way, I loved when Lokesh reported that he used his calculator for relating importance to unimportance. Other than that he put it out I found it good for anybody to get a glimpse. And in that contradiction, why not try to respond? As I am just trying,

    On a…uuuuhhhh…really nasty, cold and foggy December afternoon. In a warm flat.

    Grateful – not only for the latter.

    Madhu

  24. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Frank,
    Yogic Yawning, so to say (see Prem Martyn’s pic, or compilation of a pic), or ´yawning´ of and in Daily Mail, Frank, quite different.

    I prefer gym exercise to bring not only more oxygen into the brain.

    Did you know that Tibetans have also an exercise to stick the tongue out? And it’s not the same procedure comparable to the one in our culture (sticking tongue out). Interesting.

    And inspiring too to meditate-identify, discriminate mere superstitions, mere fantasies and mere imaginations, projections, discriminating those from real threats (= crackpots in action) – borderlines which – sometimes – are thin, so to say.

    It is not bad at all to remind that we all are sentient beings. Also in a virtual thread.

    Madhu

  25. Kavita says:

    Madhu, reading has been an effortless effort mostly on SN.

    What I read is that you don’t have the response-ability to get out of the world war II & post-world war II situation. Of course, I am aware not all fingers are the same. Really hope you & the likes of you get the courage to move ahead in this life & also that I go ahead & pass my own obstacles too.

  26. Arpana says:

    A Zen master was again and again caught stealing small things, so small – a button, somebody’s needle, one shoe, somebody’s cap…. And he was such a respected master that his disciples said, ”Why do you go on doing such ridiculous things? What is the purpose of it all? We are ready to give you whatsoever you need – you need not steal!”

    http://shorttext.com/600f5cc6

  27. shantam prem says:

    Tomorrow is 11th December.

    When I had young, impressionable mind and heart, I was reading in the prefaces of the books, similar feelings like, “This day was born a man like Buddha, like Krishna, someone like who don´t come so often. It takes 2500 years for Earth to invite such a soul. Please, visit and quench your soul´s thirst in His rare presence. A new humanity, a Naya Samaj is happening around him.”

    What will be happening tomorrow in that person´s created ashram makes me a bit sad. Ashram called Resort will try to pretend ever cheerful as a widow going for daily needs shopping and few hundred metres away in a public auditorium around 100-150 people will sing their cultish songs before a faded photo. Yes…this man stands for singing, dancing, laughing, sharing. He intended to bring the new wave of religion.

    Beloved OSHO, you visited the planet Earth and went back without leaving the address behind. Sorry to say, I am not going to say Happy Birthday to you, Beloved Master.

    But surely, I will remember you as I am doing today.

  28. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    What a beautiful, beautiful, ´riding the wave´, Lokesh!

  29. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    “What a beautiful, beautiful, ´riding the wave´, Lokesh!”

    Gone, gone, gone, beyond by now -
    Gone already by having been writing that down. But couldn´t resist the temptation to say hello: land rats are watching and enjoying this ride…

    I don´t regret it though.

    May you all have juicy tofu burgers for dinner.

    Madhu

  30. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    “But where’s the rest of the story – and what’s the point of this anyway, Arpana?”

    You didn´t ask me, Satyadeva, but as the afternoon has been marching on into the evening, I am reminded again (and again) on what disciples sometimes were inspired to when the Master talked like this, about thieves, robberies and stuff like that (Pune I memories)…

    Sometimes the amount of pocket robberies in the Ashram went up, when He talked like this. And then, sure enough, the next, or the next after the next days, when that was reported to Him, the unending ´story´ of Paradoxes – as well as working on our all misunderstandings. That´s what a living Master can do.
    He left it all to us after decades of giving it all and giving in abundance.

    He trusted we are grown-ups by now.
    Are we?

    Madhu

  31. Kavita says:

    I am spared from responding directly ( we all know to whom ) – feels like a holiday after long time. Hope this continues, I love holidays!

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