First Impressions of an Osho Lecture (1975)

 

Osho lectured at eight o’clock in the morning, every morning – one month in Hindi, one month in English. And once every month there was an intensive, ten-day meditation camp, where the meditation described in The Silent Explosion and a number of other active or ‘chaotic’ techniques Osho had devised were practised… This was the first day of a series of lectures in English, on Lao Tzu, on the Tao Te Ching, and the first day of a ten-day camp. It was raining. In fact it was pouring. The monsoon in Maharashtra was at its height.

A queue, shorter than I had expected, was ushered past the side of Osho’s house. We went through some dripping
shrubbery then, with a sudden shock, turned into a large auditorium which had been built onto the back of the house. Chuang Tzu the auditorium was called, I knew that much already, and it was a dramatic piece of architecture.
With a sweeping marble floor and columns rising to a high ceiling it hit a classical, almost Grecian note… and was
about the last thing you’d expect to find in this erstwhile Raj hill-station, some hundred miles south of Bombay. All along the back it was open to the garden.
I picked my way through the people already sitting on the floor, heading for the back. They were all sitting quietly, I
remember being struck by that, how still everyone was. A lot of the men had beards and long hair, but they weren’t exactly Hippies. Everyone was wearing orange, the immemorial colour of the sadhu, the religious vagabond in India; though different shades of it were worn and in a variety of styles (frequently it was faded, like an old pair of Levis, and worn as a sort of cloak).

I sat down and leant up against a marble pillar at the back. Everyone continued to sit very still. Behind me birds
sang in the cold wet garden. From time to time you could hear old steam trains hooting down at Poona railway station; it wasn’t far, less than a mile away. The sound was small and distant, yet incredibly poignant; a perfect acoustic miniature on the still morning air.

Suddenly everyone was rising to their feet. Osho had come out of a small door at the front. He paused and made namaste, hands raised, the palms joined together as for prayer, the ancient Indian gesture of greeting. He was a smaller man than I had expected, but more powerfully built: bald, with a beard streaked with grey, yet somehow very young and vital. He was dressed in a simple white robe and carried a fresh hand towel folded over one
arm. The namaste was formal and very slow, he swept the audience making, so far as I could see, eye-to-eye contact
with a large number of people. Finally he lowered his hands and crossed to a high-tech modern armchair which was waiting for him.

Someone in the front row read out a short passage from the Tao Te Ching, just a few cryptic lines.
Osho sat there in silence, looking down. He appeared to be studying his hands. The silence deepened, the birds sang. Then he began. “Religion is not knowledge, it is knowing” he said quietly.  …. …

The voice is calm but fast. There is a sense of urgency, but no sense of impatience. The tone is pleasant – indeed
eminently reasonable.

“Knowing is always immediate, knowing is here and now. You cannot say anything about it, you can only be it.”
There is no faltering – no trace of hesitation. “Knowing has no past, it has no future, it has only the
present. And remember, present is not part of time. People ordinarily think that time is divided between
past, future and present. They are absolutely wrong. Time is divided between past and future, present is not a part of time at all. You cannot catch hold of it in time. Pursue it and you will miss… Present is eternity crossing time….”

Certainly it was a virtuoso performance. I had never heard anyone who could just sit down and spontaneously
talk like that. Some sannyasin had told me all Osho’s books were just his talks typed out, and hearing him I could well believe it. It sounded as though he was reading it out as he spoke – not only in the sense that the sentences were already all but punctuated, but that one felt one was being led through the stages of a carefully reasoned argument whose conclusion, when it came, would be quite inescapable… I felt overwhelmed: I began to space out. Trains hooted far away. Chuang Tzu became increasingly dream-like. Above Osho’s head, above the whole sea of orange, there was an enormous cut-glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it before. It looked like something left over from a ballroom during the Raj. Its presence added a raffish, surreal quality to the proceedings. It looked like…booty. Piratical, that was the word I’d been looking for to
describe Poona. Piratical.

I began to feel positively sleepy… Something I didn’t understand at all at the time was this: that Osho was a great
hypnotist; perhaps, in terms of being able to hypnotise large groups of people, a world-class one. Listening today to a tape of that long-ago lecture, there’s a lot of hypnotic technique I can recognise now of which I had no suspicion at the time. The trailing esses, the odd emphases, the gaps. There are passages where the whole vibe of the lecture changes. Osho’s voice loses that driving, metaphysical quality, and slows down… it becomes personal, as though he is talking to you, and to you alone… Inside everything is so dark. You close your eyes and there is dark
night, you cannot see anything… even if something is seen it is nothing but part of the outside reflected in the inner lake…” The voice is really silky now… it is the voice of a lover. The pauses between the words are getting longer and longer – you start to hear the silences between them rather than the words themselves.
“…thoughts floating which you have gathered in the market-place, faces coming and going, but they belong to the outside world. Just reflections of the outside, and vast darkness…
I was slumped, rather loutishly, against my marble column at the back. I just couldn’t get a handle on it – the
washed-out, apricot robes and rags, the God-talk, the chandelier out of a Hollywood movie. I kept nodding off, then waking up with a lurch, the way you do on a bus. Bits I heard with jagged vividness. Gurdjieff. Rabia the Sufi. Bokuju. Who…? By now Osho was well into his stride. His delivery never faltered. On and on he went. More and more, on the occasions on which I tried to rouse myself, I felt I’d had enough of sitting on this freezing marble floor. I wish, I thought with sudden venom, I wish you would bloody well shut up!

Time and time again he appeared to be tying everything up into a final, exceptionally neat rhetorical bow… only to start off once more. “Enough for today” he said suddenly, at the very moment I had finally given up all hope of ever getting out of there; and all around me sannyasins were scrambling to their feet.

Osho rose fluidly from his chair. He made another less lingering namaste and, towel untouched and still folded over
one arm, fresh as a daisy, made his exit through the same little door by which he had entered.

Taken with permission from “Life of Osho” by Sam  (Prem Paritosh)

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85 Responses to First Impressions of an Osho Lecture (1975)

  1. Lokesh says:

    “Osho made his exit through the same little door by which he had entered.”

    Don’t we all?

    “All the world’s a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players.
    They have their exits and their entrances.”
    (Big Willy)

    Or how about…
    “Pythagoras said that this world was like a stage / Whereon many play their parts; the lookers-on, the sage”.[

  2. Kavita says:

    Bombay 1986, I was living with an aunt & her family & some friends. One of the friends, who was an Irish-Anglo-Indian had a German girl friend who was visiting Bombay, who had been Shree Rajneesh’s sannyasin in Poona 1.

    I was in college & very much busy with my own life activities, she had come to be with her Master & she would go every day to Juhu ( that’s where he lived, she told me ), wearing her maroon-coloured clothes. Then one day she told me she was going to give me a session (totally new to such a concept but nevertheless wanting to explore).

    She put on some trance music with someone talking with a mesmerising voice in the background (it was her master), lit some incense & candles & started working on my body.

    After a very good upper body massage, then she started massaging the muscles just behind the shin; it was like she was massaging from inside my body. I went into such a trance for the first time & slept through the whole day, woke up just to have dinner that day.

    Later realised that was my very first ever audible contact with Osho.
    It’s always been a good remembrance, thank you.

  3. Parmartha says:

    Spent a lot of useless time in my life, but the long hours I spent with Paritosh working on the text of his book ‘Life of Osho’, through many Saturdays in 1995 and 1996 were not amongst them.
    He was a perfectionist, and it often felt beyond the pale! Sometimes I really felt that I was involved simply in an exercise, and that no book would emerge at the end of it!

    This short chapter did ‘capture’ the experience of lecture very well, and of that time perfectly, and brought in considerations (such as the hypnotic qualities of Osho) which were rarely discussed, if at all, in other biographical works.

    • Arpana says:

      Something about the title ‘Life of Osho’ by Sam gave me the impression the book was a bit of a cobbled together internet tract, when I first got hold of a copy. But I read it because of your recommendation and as far as I am concerned this is the outstanding book about Osho written by anyone, and he’s such an ace writer, I’ll read the book again sometime.

      P.S:
      Paritosh comes across as such a good guy. Solid and down-to-earth.

      P.P.S:
      I actually recognised the passage when you put it up, which says a lot about the impression the writing made, given I read it a year ago.

      P.P.P.S:
      A friend of mine, who is not a sannyasin, returned the book to me the other day, having read it twice, and he loved it.

    • Prateeksha says:

      Yes, it really captures the experience of the morning discourse in Chuang Tzu. Of all the memories I have of the time I spent with Osho, being there in Chuang Tzu remains the most powerful and lingering. I found the description from this chapter of Paritosh’s book very moving.

      Thank you, Paritosh and Parmartha.

  4. prem martyn says:

    Am surprised that no one’s picked up on that item on tingling sensation and being lost in the moments from previous thread.

    One of the beauties of the use of language expression through the voice is the ability to permeate with beauty. When I was first involved in a long residential training both in a European Sannyas centre and in an Ericksonian institute in Canada I really enjoyed both receiving and giving trance sessions for re-framing.

    Hence my posting in the previous thread about the streaming sensations now being recognised by millions it seems, across the internet.

    I asked Jyoti, here with me and my long-time friend, whether she had had or has this associative experience, and realised that I am not alone. They tended to be more prevalent in childhood, and memorably sweet and kundalini- like. Apparently, it is referred to as ‘bread’ from the original ‘ manna’ in the Lord’s Prayer.

    The excellent and sublime indulgence of Zahira’s Sufi work would often create the conditions for such direct gnostic immanence.

  5. shantam prem says:

    Without the hypnotic oratory, Osho would not have attracted thousands of people from around the world.

    Alas, this is not the end product.

    I am sure sannyasins have spent more money per head on different kind of groups and therapies after coming under the spell of Osho because of His hypnotic as well as convincing talks.

  6. frank says:

    The first Osho lecture I went to was in 1981.
    It wasn`t a lecture, as it turned out. He had just recently gone into silence.
    I didn`t have to leave my shoes at the entrance because I hadn`t owned any for a couple of years. In my youthful imagination, I fancied myself as a kind of part-fakir, part-beatnik, part-sadhu; I`d been trucking around the subcontinent looking for adventure since I`d arrived in ’77.

    I didn’t leave my mind at the door either, I hadn`t got a clue what that meant. I had just had my 23rd birthday. I was young and stupid. Now, of course, I have made enormous spiritual progress and I`m old and stupid.

    As we waited for Bhagwan to appear, I saw that the dais was surrounded by a bunch of bearded blokes leaning with their backs against the podium, looking away from the chair and giving the (quite small, hot season) gathering a serious eyeballing (paranoia from recent `knife attack`). I had never seen a bunch of hard-lads dressed in nighties wearing necklaces with wooly hats on their heads before.

    Bhagwan`s Rolls soon swished in behind the stage and then a funny thing happened: It seemed that no sooner had the vehicle gone out of view behind the screen/wall than…quickasaflash…he was instantaneously standing at the door, grinning and namasteing.

    Either he had been hidden behind the door all along or he had rushed out of the car and up onto the stage in a single fast leap, which may have been the case because I was close enough to notice that he was distinctly red in the face.

    The effect was that everyone present burst out laughing (only later did I find out he was supposed to be suffering from a bad back).

    Still having my mind with me, I remember thinking: this guy is cool, and a joker, too.

    The satsang started and it was kind of simultaneously relaxing and spooky as Bhagwan cast his gaze round the gathering, eyeballing people one at a time. His eyes seemed to have a blue sheen to them; like looking at a piece of moonstone or labradorite. When it came to the Gacchamis, which had been recently introduced, everyone bowed down in unison.

    I thought, “Oh no, this is like church. I`m not going to grovel like that, no way”, so I sat bolt upright through the Gacchamis and took some pretty hefty stares from both the ‘heavies’ and the Man himself. It was pretty scary, my heart was racing but I stuck it out. It was a buzz and I came out feeling high as a kite.

    I went back the next day for more, but one of the bearded heavies was waiting for me and headed me off at the entrance and told me in no uncertain terms to bow or else…To be honest, I felt a bit of a prat having been intimidated by a pasty-faced English carrot-top with sandals and a mal-fitting robe, but I went along with it in my need to get the hit from the main man.

    Bhagwan left for the States the next day, the scene went pretty wacko, and I headed for the hills.

    • Arpana says:

      Great post, Frank.

      I don’t remember the first time I saw him.

      Remember the first Darshan though, and I couldn’t speak. He was surrounded by this glowing nimbus, but that’s because I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I’m astigmatic, which distorts everything, and he put his hand on my forehead, and then I couldn’t stand up and had to be dragged away by two guys.

  7. shantam prem says:

    Frank was 23 in 1977.
    It means he is just 60 and living in NHS-funded home!

    Indian weather gives the opportunity to walk barefoot for years but Indian economy does not give healthy and caring homes, so all the past-life great souls from India born in the West, come back to the materialistic West for their last peace.

  8. shantam prem says:

    My First Osho Discourse I went to was on 18/19 August, 1986.
    When I look back, Osho´s entry in my life must be a kind of miracle. Even in my dreams I did not think to be initiated in the name of some living master.

    As a Sikh, I was and still am very proud of the glorious tradition of 10 Sikh masters and their final representative, The Granth Sahib; the holy scripture complied with musical verses of various mystics and masters.

    But once Osho penetrated the layers of the mind through his books there was not any looking back. I must say, I am one of those who has put all his eggs in one basket and basket has fallen with the time.

    During mid-1986, Osho came back to Bombay after his world tour. In the rich suburb, Juhu, He started residing in the villa of a prominent transporter who was a disciple too. I think within few days of his arrival he started speaking and giving press interviews.

    As sitting capacity in the living room was not more than 150 people on the floor, his management of that time decided to issue advance passes for the discourses. I don´t know about the western disciples but Indians were issued only one discourse card at one time in a certain time frame.

    Through the post I got my discourse card for 18/19 of August.

    I was final year law student at that time. There was limited pocket money, so to arrange money for Bombay trip was a bit of hazard. One of our close relatives was posted in Mumbai, so lodging and boarding was not a problem.

    But the train journey to Bombay for my first Osho discourse became a nightmare of a kind. The thought still shivers me.

    On 15th August, the day of India´s Independence, I boarded the train from New Delhi. Around 9.30 PM, when train took the halt in a small Rajashthan town, I saw few policemen entering the train for the regular control.

    After Indira Gandhi´s assassination and subsequent massacre of Sikhs and then terrorist activities by the militants, trains, airports and other public places were on highest alert.

    At that time, I was wearing turban as well as wearing Osho Mala too. For moral, spiritual and political reasons, it was not a right time to drop the turban. I was committed in my heart not to ditch my religion and community at the time of deepest crisis.

    I knew I was the only Sikh in the train compartment. I also had read hundreds of news how police were picking up innocent Sikhs and killing them, showing as terrorists or many times to demand money from the families. I felt some panic in my heart, hoped everything would be fine.

    So when they asked me where I was going and where is my ticket and what kind of luggage I am carrying, I answered them politely and showed my luggage. But they had sinister ideas in their brain. They told me to come with them.

    At the empty area near the train entrance door, the three policemen with their guns surrounded me and started their questioning: Why I am going to Bombay? Have I run away from home? Do I have some terrorist connections?
    I took the letter from my pocket and showed them, “See, I am going to Bombay to have darshan of my Sadguru. In this locket is his photo.”

    One of them asked me, “How much money are you carrying?”
    I showed them the place in my trousers where I was hiding the money to protect from pickpockets: “See, 650 Rupees I have in all and from this money I have to buy return train ticket too.”
    I took the money out. One of them said, “Give us 300 Rupees and we will let you go. If you shout or show hesitation, we will be forced to arrest you or kill you as terrorist.”

    I gave them 300 Rupees and five minutes later I was on my seat. When one of the co-passengers with whom I was talking during much of the day asked me, ” Are you ok?” I could not hold myself. I started crying loudly and told how I was being robbed.

    Next evening, my host was there at the railway station. Past was left behind and I was very much focused on my first discourse of the master.

    In the instructions it was mentioned that participants must be in good health, no cough and cold and no irritation of any kind in the eyes. So during the next two days I was wearing sunglasses not to get any kind of eye infection.

    (Rest in the next part)

  9. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    “Indian weather gives the opportunity to walk barefoot for years but Indian economy does not give healthy and caring homes, so all the past-life great souls from India born in the West, come back to the materialistic West for their last peace.” S

    Shantam Prem, what an ugly, ugly way you show up herewith, to relate to other contributors, not only Frank.

    I say, you sit in a glass house, throwing stones! It is this way of your relating to other contributors that´s repelling me the most; and is shadowing your own, following story. And that´s a pity.

    Madhu

    • shantam prem says:

      Madhu, dear, you love India very much. Why not live in India?

      If hundred thousand Indians and Pakis are living over all in Europe without feeling any love and respect for the local culture and customs, why not someone like you should live in India?

  10. avinashi says:

    Late seventies, I am a passionate reader of Osho books since 4-5 yrs. Got an Osho Hindi discourse cassette, somehow managed to get an old cassette player, thrilled, excited to listen to the voice of the only man in the world I adore the most.

    Play cassette, the voice is very low, even on full volume because cassette player is an ancient Indian product, plac it as close as possible to my ears, even than I have to maintain absolute silence if I want to listen to this divine music. I don’t want to miss a single word and I really manage with keen attention to listen to every single word.

    What an experience, he killed me.

    Once listening to him I said to friends, “No Ghulam Ali or Mehndi Hasan
    (great Ghazal singers) can beat him.”

  11. Lokesh says:

    My first Osho discourse was back in 1974. It was a long time ago and I can’t remember much about it. At the time I was very resistant to joining a spiritual cult, while on the other hand I desperately needed spiritual guidance.

    I took sannyas two weeks later, in mid-March. I felt like I was being initiated into the guru’s famiy. It was a particulary intimate experience and signalled the beginning of a long journey to what I can only describe as spiritual wholeness, or health. It was, on reflection, the best thing that could have happened to me and I will never forget that.

    Today, I have very little time for nostalgia in my life. Over the forty years since I took sannyas I have heard countless accounts of how people came to Osho. Some of them, like Shantam’s, are interesting enough.

    The thing is, I find nostalgic recollections of this kind the antithesis of what Osho was all about and bracket them in the same place as I do old hippies’ accounts of their wildest acid trips. In other words, boring and of little relevance to someone wishing to live in the here and now.

    Of course, it could be argued that these accounts might inspire newcomers to the spiritual master and disciple game, as well they might. The problem is that this sort of romantacism has no real place in the journey to awakening from the sleep of ignorance, because any enlightened human being is not interested in you as a person. This is because the person you imagine yourself to be does not exist in his/her eyes.

    Any real guru/master wishes only one thing and that is for you to see yourself as they see you, that you alone are the changeless behind the ever changing stream of events that we know collecively as life. Nostalgia has no place is such a reality, for it belongs to the past.

    Reality is here now and is the only place to be if truly seeking the truth. It is also the best place to be if committed to enjoying life and learning how to one day face death in a dignified and intelligent way, because it all happens now.

    Of late there have been a number of threads on SN which relate to events long gone. I find it all very stale. If this keeps up I will have to sit down and write something more current, which will have nothing whatsover to do with the latest edition of ‘All Our Yesterdays’.

    • frank says:

      Lokesh,
      Hang on a minute.
      The only old hippy to mention his “wildest acid trips” on SN was…er…you!

      But yes, it is a little tragi-comic to see the residents at the Orange Sunshine retirement home burning the midnight oil with copies of…
      ‘I was That’,
      ‘Been Here Now’,
      ‘The Power of Then’ and
      ‘Zen and the Art of Mobility Scooter Maintenance’.

      I guess being in the here and now just ain`t what it used to be…!?

      • Lokesh says:

        Frank says, and he is probably right, “The only old hippy to mention his “wildest acid trips” on SN was…er…you!”

        I have mentioned them from time to time, but only as a referance point, not as something to be examined and gone into in yawning depth, because I would not wish to bore you, unless, that is, I was in a bad mood.

        Osho experiences are two-a-penny because, like LSD trips, so many had them – which does not mean they were not valid. Emphasis has shifted from expeiences to the experiencer.

  12. Kavita says:

    “Of late there have been a number of threads on SN which relate to events long gone. I find it all very stale. If this keeps up I will have to sit down and write something more current, which will have nothing whatsover to do with the latest edition of ‘All Our Yesterdays.’

    How true, Lokesh, but if I am going in the right direction – which is ‘no direction’ – this moment/the here & now, nothing exists, not even this which you happen to be saying/me typing, but it would be interesting food for thought, as you mostly come with an innovative no-thought.

  13. Simond says:

    I was partcularly moved by Shantam’s memory. That he faced such a harrowing journey with the police on the train reveals a very different perspective to my privileged initiation. And is very humbling. I had it easy, just a plane and train trip and as a westerner I faced no obstacles as he did.

    It appears that for some, meeting Osho for the first time may be very transformative. In the same way, I was dumbfounded and amazed by the first book I ever read of Osho’s. It was ‘The Mustard Seed’ and my memory of this reading was as ‘awakening’ as the actual meeting of Osho all those years later.

    My own meeting was in Poona 2. The day I walked through the gates, I burst into tears. And I remember the thought, “This feels like Home”.

    Each night we sat and Osho talked to us, but I have no clear memories of them at all. It was if what he had taught me over ther preceding years had already done the work and I’d been hypnotised by all the videos, tapes and books I had read and the work I’d done in groups and meditations in the UK.

    Or perhaps I just can’t remember, old age messes with my memories. The key is the living of his teaching now, and not putting too much emphasis on the past, however dramatic, beautiful and moving it may be. I also know how difficult it can be – part of the attraction and mystique of Osho, in my day, was the eyes, the beard, the voice and the trance-like appeal.

    Years later, the appeal for me is not in his appearance or his hypnotic qualities, it’s just in what he spoke about and what I heard and learned. The words, not the man, are where the detail of his teaching is to be found.

    • Lokesh says:

      Simond says, “The words, not the man, are where the detail of his teaching is to be found.”

      I reckon he is mistaken. That detail, for want of a better word, had nothing much to do with Osho’s teaching. I don’t evem know if it can honestly be said that Osho had a teaching as such.

      Osho’s words were crumbs from the big feast, the main course being a state of being or presence, or was it absence? You had to be there to understand that.

      Osho’s presence was the real mover that attracted so many to him. Words were just bait to attract the kind of fish he wished to catch. You know, like fishing for men and women?

      • Simond says:

        Lokesh,
        It’s a very subjective discovery, isn’t it? What was the essence of his teaching? What he may have meant or done to you and others seems to vary with each person. This seems to me the conclusion I reach, reading the various posts on this forum. Surely it explains the very different understandings people have of his teaching?

        For me, his presence was important, but I got this through his appearance, in person and on videos, through his voice and through his words, not just because I was seeing him in the flesh. His attractiveness physically drew me towards him. But if he’d been talking a load of crap, I would not have been interested.

        Finally, it was the message that affected me. His words and his ability to show me the meaning ‘behind’ the words were his teaching to me.

        Are you suggesting that those who have never been in his presence will never get him? Did you ‘have to be there to get it’, as you suggest? Does that preclude all those now reading him, who have never been in his presence?

        The key, surely, is to hear and listen and explore for yourself what he said and integrate that into your life?

        • Lokesh says:

          Simond enquires, “What was the essence of his teaching?”
          What he misses entirely is that to all intents and purposes Osho did not have a teaching. Osho’s great love was Zen, which by its very nature has no teaching. You haven’t heard the last of this.

          Simond enquires further, “Are you suggesting that those who have never been in his presence will never get him?”
          There is always somehing to get around a wise guy, if you are a getter. The shift lies in the enquiry who or what is it that does the getting.

          • Simond says:

            Lokesh,

            You seem very certain that there is / was no essence to his teaching, as if you know something, without any question.

            May I suggest that this certainty you present constricts debate and real discussion? It’s a subtle form of bullying, which I don’t fall for.

            My approach is different. I recognise that the teaching is very subjective. Each of us learned what we needed, and I could, if wished, summarise his teaching, and in particular what I learned from him. There is a very clear essence, message or whatever, at least for me.

            Lokesh, have I misunderstood your suggestion that you needed to be there, in his presence, to know Osho? You didn’t answer my question?

            • frank says:

              Simond,
              It is possible to summarise a teaching, but:
              The menu is not the meal!

              To use a very simple example, take the poem that I wrote only a few days ago.
              You could summarise the poem. Its style, its meaning, but what would be the relation of that summary to the event of actually reading the poem for the first time?
              I would suggest, surprisingly little.

              A poem (hopefully) hits you direct, there is a visceral feel to the words, you feel it, it bypasses your analytical mind. It might cause wonder, anger or all sorts, but you don’t think: “Ah yes, he is using metaphor to say that struggling with the ego is like a mugging or a boxing match and that the enterprise is very possibly futile”. No! You just get it or not, in a total way, in your own way, in the same way that you ‘get’ a piece of music.

              Some neuroscientists are now producing evidence that language developed from music and that despite our over-emphasis on the logical construction of it, itreally works the same way.

              To discuss music is not in itself music – it is musical critique, interesting in itself but just not exactly the same kind of thing.

              That is how I understand the idea of ‘no teaching’. It makes the reification of the teaching difficult or impossible, which helps keep you in the realm of your own actual experience.

              It allows you to eat the meal without trying to chomp on the menu!

              Chomping on the menu has its place too, of course, I am not knocking it – it is also an art form.
              It`s not religion…
              It`s comedy!

              Here`s another little thought that goes with:
              You know the Liar’s Paradox’?
              Epimenides’ statement, “All Cretans are liars”?
              It has been taken as a central paradox that has remained ‘unsolvable’ in the whole of western philosophy.
              If it is true, it is false, and if it is false, it is true.
              That’s two thousand years of trying to summarise it.

              The amazing forgotten fact is that Epimenides was a poet and the lines were intended as humorous – pointing out the absurd, the funny and the impossibility of making sense of it.
              If we see it as his readers would have, we get the joke or the ‘point’ straight off.

              The analysis and centuries of philosophy were another thing altogether – the menu again.

              • Simond says:

                Thanks, Frank. I hear and understand you.

                I certainly get that the menu is not the meal.

                That Osho (and your poem) transmitted a truth beyond the “words” is very much my own experience.

                I’ve been trying to integrate this direct experience/transmission/knowledge into my life ever since.

                Any measure of success is determined by whether I make sense to other people and whether I bring more love into our lives.

                • frank says:

                  Simond,

                  Another amazing thing is that the `sense` may not even be `beyond` the words but inside them.

                  I would hazard that the idea of a ‘truth beyond words’ ignores how embodied words are (even online. It`s still easy to send and receive a reaction just staring at a screen.)

                  When Osho was doing silent sitting satsang he said that now he was giving the message beyond words. The interesting thing is that he did not sit behind a screen with disciples to convey this, he did it in person, in view. So he was still using language – body language – to convey silence.

                  It reminds me of something that I recently heard about. A kind of bush telegraph in Africa that existed not long ago.

                  The message was sent long distances by drum beats and rhythms. The people hearing the drums did not all speak the same verbal language but they understood what was conveyed because they were able to visualise the movements of the drummer and decode the message from that. It was a kind of audio-percussion-mime.

                  The point is that the idea that language is only ‘in the mind’ and covering up a deeper level may be a little exaggerated as all rhythm, drumming, musical sounds and silence all take place and come about in a body. Beats, notes and words are basically body-parts.

                  The idea of going `beyond` them may be to be involved in the same craziness as `holymen` up in the Himalayas knackering their dicks with a stick in the name of spirituality.

                • Arpana says:

                  Frank,
                  There is a silence which is beyond that which we label silence and that which we label sound.

                • satyadeva says:

                  Really, Arps? When did you ‘hear’ that then?

            • lokesh says:

              Simond, could it be that what you learned around Osho had nothing to do with being directly taught anything? Surely you most acknowledge that it is possible to learn something from someone without there being an actual teaching as such?

              Osho was too smart to create a fixed teaching, being all too aware that what is being taught today may no longer be valid tomorrow, if not completely obsolete.

              • Simond says:

                Lokesh,
                You may be right, but I don’t know if “I learned something without there being an actual teaching”.

                Sorry, but I don’t know what you mean. Could you clarify what you learned in this way? This may help me understand your insight.

                A practical example always helps, otherwise it can get a bit ‘esoteric’ and frankly, meaningless.

                What I’ve always loved is a teacher’s ability to demonstrate their teaching in everyday life. I’m pretty slow when it comes to the esoteric.

                By the way, I agree totally that Osho was far too smart to create “a fixed teaching”. He loved to show us how all forms of duality would fail us – isn’t that at least a real “essence of his teaching”?

                • Simond says:

                  P.S:
                  Lokesh,
                  If my last post bores the pants off you, I will understand…I think it bores the pants off me.

                • lokesh says:

                  You can learn patience by watching a spider spinning a web across the void. The spider is not aware that it is teaching you something. Nonetheless, you are. Nothing esoteric about it. Just a simple fact of life.

                  I have learned things from observing Osho, although I doubt that he was aware of those things. I learn things from reading your posts, and I am quite sure you do not intend to teach me anything. It is all in one’s attitude. Some people never learn. I’m sure you must have noticed.

              • Arpana says:

                Lokesh,

                I remember reading that story abut Robert the Bruce and the spider when I was about nine, in Churchill’s ‘History of Scotland’. Made a big impact on me. Flavoured my life.

  14. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Dear Frank, you wrote:
    “I guess being in the here and now just ain`t what it used to be…!?”

    The ´here-now´, including that very moment is what it is. Always.

    Matter of fact, we may not be able to live and approach life in an unconditional way. Especially when facing old age, sickness, aloneness, the frailties of the body and death.

    The more conditions we have on how that ´here-now´ should look like, the further we are away from it, get a narrow view – like seeing that half glass of water as an ´emptied´ one; sometimes, to an extent, to be a miser, either to ourselves or to others around. The ´here-now´, so to speak, has nothing to do with it.

    Our talk – more than less, is about ´conditionings´; an endless journey to get rid of these inner obstacles, isn´t it?

    Have a beautiful day.

    Madhu

  15. prem martyn says:

    Simond, Satyadeva and Madhu have begged for us to contribute to their semantic online need and linearity.

    Parmartha has kindly agreed to forward them our contributions via the kind services of the kind backroom moderators who work tirelessly at this unecessarily festive time of year to bring our Xmas post on time and round the clock, 24/7.

    Please give your unwanted left-brain definitions and precious metacognitive absolutes to help reassure others of life beyond Tamazepam and help them freely form and own their point of view from the top of the Xmas tree amongst the fearless fairies.

    P.S: I have several (hundred) copies of the rare Xmas songbook ‘Sing-a-long-Barry’, to give away.

    • Simond says:

      Prem Martyn
      I have absolutely no idea what your post refers to, it makes no sense to me at all.

      But I did understand your reference to the moderators and the hard work they do. Coincidentally, I wanted to thank whoever they are, for subtly editing my posts and, I guess, those of others.
      They do a great job and edit some of my posts quite beautifully and also make them ‘live’ so quickly.

      As it is also Xmas and the season of goodwill, I want to thank them and will work harder to make my posts more intelligible. Thank you all.

      • Kavita says:

        Simond, lucky you & other Europeans for being ‘live’ quickly, only I / few others like me know how we Indians have to wait to be ‘live’! Anyway, it’s worth waiting & glad you exposed the MODS so early in your SN life!

        • Kavita says:

          Frank, what can I say? I have forgotten how many times they have missed the point, I’ve lost count by now!

          MOD (TO Kavita, Frank AND all SN contributors): PLEASE LET US KNOW YOUR PREFERENCES WHEN YOU SEE THINGS IN YOUR POSTS YOU WANT CHANGED, RATHER THAN SAVING THEM UP FOR A BIG COMPLAINT.

          PLEASE ALSO BEAR IN MIND THAT WE CHECK EVERY POST AND DO OUR BEST TO PRESENT THEM TO A GOOD STANDARD – WHICH, IN SOME CASES MEANS QUITE A LOT OF WORK.

    • satyadeva says:

      What a pile of gratuitous bowlox.

      Perhaps you need to er, ‘get out more’, PM?

      • prem martyn says:

        As Socrates’s mate Pluto said to him…

        Either you know that you know nothing or you don’t – what’s the big deal-ios?

        (sound of penny making ‘kchhingg’ sound ).

        • satyadeva says:

          Left brain/right brain – I don’t know much, PM, but I do know a ‘Mickey Mouse’ comment when I see one, wherever it’s coming from…

          You’ve been on them meta-cognitives again, innit, you sneaky little so’n'so?!

          (MOD: OK, CHAPS, BACK ON-TOPIC, PLEASE)

        • Simond says:

          Sadly, Prem Martyn,
          You make no more sense in this post than you did in the last one.

          Perhaps try writing simple English. This is the best way to communicate, if you wish to share and be understood by other people.

          I’m sure you have much to say, but simple souls like me need it in plain English.

          • prem martyn says:

            Sid, I cannot post beyond the formula here of having PM’s boys decide, so you get things very, very abbreviated, which makes for little effect or continuity.

            I write for my pleasure, without an obvious online-on message, which makes their job difficult and my printed output minimal.

  16. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Simond,

    Words are mere containers; I contradict your statement: “The words, not the man, are where the detail of his teaching is to be found.”

    Sorry, that my Sunday´s contribution to this thread got captured by a neighborhood´s pirating of data(annihilation, x´clap (MOD: WHAT?) and another important growth experience, so to say). But your referring to ´words´ here, the way you are doing it, reminds me of what I have been trying to contribute on Sunday.

    Which more or less, and in quite different ways expressed by contributors here, is also made clear, that words are mere containers.

    See just the ´rhythm is it´ play from Frank and Lokesh, just this, and you get a glimpse.
    Also, your words, Simond, are just containers, they transport some of what you really are, and so do mine too.

    And they transport some of that, if you are interested to meet ´the other’, meet yourself in the other, and like to dance this way. Or not. By that I mean, when people here are not into meeting but more into ´performance´. Or have their secret codes to little secret gatherings amongst gatherings and so on. Using an open – and even crowded – place for this.

    Anyway, words are mere containers, and if a meeting and a loving (yes saying) meeting is happening, it is a miracle in itself. Ever again, the Master talked about that issue, also about ´hearing´ and ´listening´ and what that all is about. Same can be said about ´reading´. And can even be said about reading in a virtual chat like this.

    It is truly an art to let words come, which are good containers.

    Osho was a Master Artist, that way. And it is up to nowadays amazing how the resonance bodies, so to say, are resonating.
    Or playing their own musical instruments, calling for or inviting a response, or – some of the voices, so to say, prefer the individual performance – like a ´shut-up!´.

    It’s a true art to connect an orchestra, in the musical realms as also otherwise.
    And to manage that in a way that each individual can find its own ´sound´, yet staying connected with Being in the meeting.

    You – as any other living Being here – is part of that, also the echoes of somebody already apparently gone, like Paritosh ( to whom we owe the issue).

    I am a lover of music, Simond, and to stay in that metaphor, the piece we here are into – that’s happening – is a living one, ever-changing.

    Morning dawn here.
    Rain.
    December sky
    No birds to be seen today.

    Madhu

  17. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    P.S:
    In a good orchestra the individual players have to learn to disappear and yet to not disappear; that is an art in itself.

    I mostly experience that listening to classical music of all kinds or to some areas of good jazz, for example.

    The electronic realms, capturing more and more ´the stages´, so to say, are very different to experience – less human, so to say – but also this has a great impact on all our bodies.
    What ´meeting´ there is, or can be, then and there, is also different.

  18. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    What I wanted to come closer to express, Simond, is that when I use `orchestra´ and ´performing´ as a metaphor, also the audience plays a part in it.

    If the audience is just ´hearing´ there are all kinds of noises coming undertone the playing, if the audience comes closer to Listening and to Silence, those who perform with their instruments are indeed responding to that growing awareness and Silence too.

    Sometimes I say (when being able to attend a concert), “Oh, the composer was present, how beautiful.”

    And sometimes, rarely, I also have experienced a state of ´energy´, where even the latter is surpassed. Then I call it prayer. And feel immensely grateful to having been able to be present.

    I know these words of mine, can wake up the UK ´shut-up´DRUMS´ here, but I don´t mind at the moment.

    Love

    Madhu

    • frank says:

      Come on, Madhu, not all people in the UK are insensitive yobs.

      Ok, there`s Slasher Deva of the ‘Arsenhol’ hooligan gang who likes nothing more than kicking the head in of some irrational, unreasonable foreigner (he probably does it with ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ on his headphones, reading the Daily Mail and putting pictures of Nigel Farage on his bedsit wall).

      But he`s a sensitive soul underneath his bovver boots, I know he is.

      • frank says:

        But not all of us are thugs like him and that Scottish skinhead bloke…and you just wait `till he gets on the Buckfast tonic wine..!

        Can I recommend a trip to St. Barry`s Church this Xmas? The Reverend Simond will be giving a lovely sermon about the evils of having too much fun, the dangers of silly eastern religions and the irrelevance of the chaps who start them, and expounding his views on how kids should experience a deeper reality or be sent to their room without any tea, to find out about themselves.

        See you there!

      • satyadeva says:

        Now then, ‘Francis’, I know you’re getting on and are getting out of touch and all that, but have you never heard of ‘projection’? Ask Madhu, she’ll put you right, no worries, my son.

        • frank says:

          Bloody `ell, I’ve been hippy-bashed by the Crazy Gang!

          Projection? Never `eard of it, mate.
          Wossat? Lobbin` bottles at Spurs fans?

          Who does Rev support, then?
          Barry Town?

          • Arpana says:

            Reverend Johnson, an old preacher, was warning his parishioners about sin.
            “Sin,” he said, “is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of gluttony, and finally there is the big dog of sex. Now, folks, you gotta kill those big dogs before you are ever gonna get to Heaven. It can be done — I know — because I’ve done it. I killed the big dog of envy, and the big dog of pride, and the big dog of gluttony — and yes, brethren, I killed the big dog of sex!”
            “Brother!” came a voice from the back of the church, “Are you sure that last dog didn’t die a natural death?”

            Osho.
            The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9
            Chapter #3
            Chapter title: Buddhas only point the way

          • satyadeva says:

            Oh dear, it’s never a wholesome sight to see such blatant avoiding of the ball – er, I mean the issue…

            So irresponsible (far worse than ‘diving’)…

            Don’t you get it, ‘Francis’? These days all the top clubs employ a psychologist…

            Think about it….

  19. shantam prem says:

    After the generation of My First Osho Discourse, facebook is welcoming many such groups, My First Osho Quotation, My First Osho´s Photo.

    Brave new world has arisen. Here one does not need to do meditation, just the mention of the word Meditation is enough. Here one does not need any presence, just the photo is enough.

    God bless the souls who developed printing, photo and audio video devices!

  20. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    “(MOD: WHAT?)”

    Dear ´MODs’,

    What I was trying to say here, is that some, like me, have to face sometimes, that an e-mail or a text they have written with all their hearts’ ´longings´ to reach ´somewhere´ just disappeared into the void of the big, big Internet-´Brain´.

    What I feel – after a shorter or longer time of disappointment – is that sometimes the letting go of that longing to exist in a contribution (visible)
    has its hidden gifts too.

    It is another realm of the same experience one can easily be part of in everyday life, especially in a ´sangha´, but ´same, same´ is the letting go of any expectations. The virtual realm of ´chatting is such a profound playing field according to this issue.

    Sunday I have given myself a pretty hard time after that ´event´.
    Today and yesterday the river was and is quite somewhere else.
    Sorry, that´s a long one (again).

    Madhu

    MOD: WE ONLY WANTED TO KNOW WHAT x’clap MEANS!

  21. Chetas says:

    Hi friends,
    I am sure I have dreamed my first and only encounter with him because people tell me he was not coming out then. However, my feeling was Osho saw me as if with the look, ”now you have arrived”. Interesting that it’s so real.

    Right now I am continuing my personal marathon, listening to his discourses every evening for 2-3 hours since 3 months, sometimes I wake up in the night and I put it on again. I fall asleep listening to him and I do not remember most of it, so I listen to every discourse for 4-5 times.

    I am not sure why I am doing this, but every day I look forward to it…like what is he going to tell me tonight…?

  22. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    That´s OKAY with me, Lokesh, no sausages , no pudding…

    By the way, I really recommend the vid of Osho news about ‘Ormi the Pig’. Helped me enormously on Sunday. You have to enjoy that too, I feel. It’s hilarious! And I loved your contributions too!

    So glad that ´pudding´ is anyway not one of my favourites.

    Madhu

  23. shantam prem says:

    “Past is so glorifying, why the hell one should crave for the future?”

    One of the Sannyas maxims!

    Sannyasnews glorifies this past.

  24. Shantam prem says:

    First Osho lecture or first Osho book…Osho was still in the body.

    Without Him being in the body, neither his ashram around, I wish to never ever come across any of his books or audio video.

    Right now, business in the name of Osho is like Ponzi scheme.
    Once one’s defences fall down, therapists and group leaders are waiting like sharks or one should walk like a lonely wolf, emotionally-drained lonely wolf!

    Side-effects of coming in contact with Osho words is put aside by the clever ones.

  25. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    What a beautiful, beautiful exchange, Simond, Lokesh, Arpana.

    And no need to exclude or downgrade anybody from it, Lokesh – it´s all happening in a perfect way, and I loved very much, that you brought the web in it, in the web, in the web, in the web…rare it is (for me) that the w.w.w. has an encouraging instead of a discouraging effect.

    I am glad that the two emails I tried to text, today and yesterday, I de-edited myself. And I love you to be present the way you are just now.

    Thank you, all of you.

    And have a beautiful day.

    Madhu

  26. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    Frank, Satyadeva, is neither ´old´ nor ´poor´.
    Isn´t it so, Frank?

    It´s me who is quite slow to get acquainted to your wide, wide and complex range to express; and for some of your contributions, I need an extra dictionary, as you recommended to me ages ago.

    Also sometimes difficult to switch from your morning ´identity` to the one of ´afternoons´, ´midnights´, or your special ways of time-space-travelling.

    And – to be honest – sometimes a bit repelled when you end up with a response way under the belt.

    Male-Female – sometimes unbalanced, even though the majority here knows that we are both. Even Frank, you know it.

    You have a good friend with Satyadeva – and Satyadeva with you – too.

    Madhu

  27. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    P.S:

    Jingle bells, jingle bells…

    Contentment??

  28. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    I am tired, after a long day, Satyadeva, but will not wait until dawn. When I said I am slow to get acquainted, that didn´t mean that I don´t understand. Or at least feel to understand what´s meant.

    Took me time to go again in the thread to find what you were asking me for – as the postings obviously are not landing same time on all the computers…but that´s something else here, server stuff, I guess. No, I didn´t mean that I don´t have a glimpse on what he is referring to.

    But same with Lokesh, it needs time (for me) to be more acquainted. Quite often, I also re-read…and when I have been repelled, which also has been often the case, then I also re-read former stuff. We all are in constant change of expression, aren´t we? Me too.

    Jingle Bells over…

    Night is quite noisy tonight at my place. In the night, sometimes the trains nearby can be listened to, it depends on the wind. It´s like springtime wind these days happening.

    We won´t have a ´White Christmas´. But that´s very okay with me.

    Madhu

    P.S:
    Wouldn´t it be up to Frank himself to complain?

    • satyadeva says:

      Oh, no, Madhu, despite being a former football hooligan, fully-fledged wandering hippy (educational drop-out, psychedelics, four years without shoes in India) with impeccable ‘mature student’/ independent seeker credentials and ‘a way with words’, Francis is FAR too modest, FAR too sensitive a soul (uses humour to mask a lack of fundamental self-esteem, you know).

    • Arpana says:

      Madhu.

      Here’s photo of ‘Francis’ with a four legged friend.

    • satyadeva says:

      “We all are in constant change of expression, aren´t we? Me too.

      Jingle Bells over…”

      Madhu, your expression has changed a bit, you’ve ‘lightened up’ somewhat lately – have you been sensing recently the exit of Saturn from your Sun-sign, Scorpio? It’s due to leave in a few days, before the end of the year…although it’ll briefly return in summer and later in 2015, but essentially, ‘the worst’ is over (thank the stars – I’m in the same boat).

      So – ‘Jingle Bells’ time, after all, isn’t it?!

  29. madhu dagmar frantzen says:

    “Madhu, your expression has changed a bit, you’ve ‘lightened up’ somewhat lately – have you been sensing recently the exit of Saturn from your Sun-sign, Scorpio?”

    Dear Satyadeva,
    You are far too assertive here in your imaginations, they don´t meet (astrological) ´realities´ in my case.
    However, it is a nice thing to say, ´star-wars´ are over for X-mas peace and let the Jingle Bells come…and play and be.
    That´s at any time of the cycle a beautiful approach to the so-called ´other´, the stranger, the unknown, and also the unknowable.

    Waving hands to you ´out-there´ is me, ´in-here´.

    Madhu

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