Nikos Kazantzakis, (1883 to 1957), the author of Zorba the Greek, was a favourite writer of Osho.
Osho seemed aware that the Greek Orthodox Church had excommunicated him, and mentioned it during his brief stay in Greece in 1986. (Osho himself was deported from Greece as a result of representations from the same Church, and in a very unseemly manner. (See Diamond Days with Osho by Ma Prem Shunyo who gives a first hand account, Chapter 12).
Kazantzakis was a Cretan, and the island of Crete is where Osho stayed for a month.
Kazantzakis was excommunicated a few years before his death, because of his unconventional views on Jesus as expressed in his book “The last Temptation of Christ”, where Kazantzakis makes Jesus really a human being with all the difficulties we all have of being human flesh. The Church condemned this anti-deity view. The Church refused permission for him to be buried in a cemetery. He is buried in the wall that surrounds the city of Heraklion. His epitaph reads “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free”.
What is less known is that Kazantzakis was doubly condemned by Christianity. The Catholic Church in 1954 placed the “Last temptation of Christ” on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books. On the latter decision a group of intellectuals defended the author by telegraphing the then Pope with Tertullian’s famous phrase “I lodge my appeal at your Tribunal, Lord”. Going as it were straight to Jesus’s authority. It fell on deaf ears.
Osho himself suffered similar treatment from the Greek Bishops. Within a few days of being in Greece Osho said
“And just being here for two days, I was thinking that in twenty-five centuries (after poisoning Socrates) Greece would have evolved towards some better qualities, towards more humanity, towards more truth. But I am feeling sad, because in just two days there have been articles in the Greek newspapers telling absolute lies about me, making allegations which have no foundation in reality, absurdities….
The bishop (of Crete) is printing a pamphlet against me to distribute. This Sunday morning he is going to speak against me. He knows nothing about me.
There has been a protest march yesterday. Phone calls are coming that stones will be thrown at my meetings. That gives me a feeling that certainly I am in Greece, but things have changed for the worse.”
As I write this I am listening to the inspiring music of the Monastery of Simonos Petra – Psalms of Mount Athos, a bastion of music of the Greek Orthodox Church. A peculiar paradox that such music can uplift and inspire, but be created in the heart of such conservatism, and so far from the real Christ.
Parmartha
I remember in Crete, Osho took questions from journalists, and one of them asked him what he thought of Madonna, who was just hitting global superstardom at that time.
Osho replied, “He (sic) is rubisss.”
Next day the papers ran with the story that “Bhagwan insults mother of God”!
He did wind up the locals and it wasn`t exactly all on the level of Socratic dialogue, as I recall. When it was suggested by the local church people that the influx of foreigners were behaving immorally and the rooms of Agios Nikolaos were full of sinful unmarried couples (this was years before places like Magaluf became normal), in response Bhagwan exhorted sannyasins to make love as noisily as they could in their rooms.
So the bishop was more interested in shagging than philosophy, really (aren`t they all?).
Some of the more worldly locals thought that the authorities jumped on the story as good front page cover for some scandal that was engulfing the govt. at the time, so how much it really had to do with Socrates, JC morality and Kazantzakis, or whether there was some realpolitick going on is anybody`s guess.
.
When they cancelled his visa and deported him, all the church bells rang out all over the island, like it was Xmas.
P.S:
I`m not so keen on christian music myself, apart from gospel, which paradoxically gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll, without which the whole Zorba the Buddha project would never have stood a chance…but that`s another story….
Were you there, Frank?
Where? At the birth of rock ‘n’ roll?
No, I missed that.
Sounds, from the way you wrote, as if you were there, in Crete. I’ve not come across anyone before who was at any of the places on the world tour.
Be interesting to hear about all that from an eye-witness.
Good post, Frank, and as it seems, based on experience. Thanks.
Yeah, Franco, good post, man.
Interesting to see how Osho becoming a global pariah has been turned into a ‘world tour’. Sannyas-spin.
Yes, I was there.
I got there only a few days after Osho arrived. I think there were only about 100 people there, although by a couple of weeks there were more 100s coming.
Osho was giving talks in the front garden of the posh villa where he was staying, on the outskirts of the tourist town of Agios Nikalaos.
He sat under a carob tree and talked for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening and everyone sat close by. It was very intimate, everyone was so happy to be there. He talked and did the old eyeballing routine on everyone and I remember being pretty tranced out.
It was a magical, atmospheric setting, with the place being on a small promontory above the sea.
There was nothing else going on, no meditations or therapy or anything.
The locals were bemused at the influx of weirdos, many of whom were still wearing red or partly red clothes in the post-Ranch confusion. It was too early for the start of the tourist season, but they opened up anyway, so there were plenty of sea-view rooms available and so on.
It being a tourist venue, there were a lot of places to dance. Local exponents of the the sirtaki (Zorba’s dance) were only too keen to show off their moves and I remember crowded, sweaty tavernas with everyone in the house, Theodorakis` Zorba theme on the turntable, strutting wildly on the floor and tables.
It was all impromptu and a few musicians were got together to play and so on. I remember Vangelis and Irene Pas ‘Odes’ being played when Osho made his entry at one point.
Osho said nice things about Irene Papas (the widow in the film ‘Zorba’), like she was the real Zorba and she was on her way, but she never showed.
He definitely pissed off the local authorities, although the locals, particularly the younger ones, were really friendly and I don’t recall any hostility at all.
The town council must have just panicked hearing the recent history of the movement and I remember Osho talking about the aforementioned bishop and making a joke that the congregation only consisted of three old women.
It was all provocative stuff. The bishop with his three old widows versus the sex-guru with his sexy young followers. It was a match made in Hell alright. In retrospect, with only one winner.
He challenged the Pope to a debate, blamed the Church for AIDS, said the German chancellor should be locked up in a mental asylum, and he even had a go at Krishnamurti, who had only died a couple of weeks before, saying he had basically wasted his life. He was steamin’!
It was all over in a flash, I forget, was it 2 or 3 weeks when his visa was cancelled?
Everyone went to the airport to see him off. I stayed in Agios and walked round the empty streets, thinking “What the f**k was that all about?”
Were you there serendipitiously, Frank, or had you gone out of your way to be there?
I guess it’s all serendipitious, but as you ask…
I had recently come back from the States and I had money, so as soon as I heard Osho was in Greece I jumped on a plane to Athens, then Heraklion, where I quickly installed myself into one of the aforementioned sea-view apartments.
In his discourses there, Osho also was giving the message that he wanted to stay in Europe. The clear buzz around the place was that this was the beginning of a European adventure for Sannyas.
There was a dream going around: The Yanks are fascists, but at least in Europe there is some hope…France seemed to be most in the frame, after all,they put the Ayatollah up for years, so Osho should be ok, we thought!
When Osho was deported, I decided to head for France. Maybe I could get a job in the new commune, a rambling chateau in the Auvergne or somewhere, I fantasised.
Ended up on the Cote D`Azur. It didn`t work out, with Osho calling it a day on the world tour and going back to Nepal and India.
So, there I was, penniless now and crashing on the beach. As I drifted off to sleep to the sound of the waves, with my half- baguette, a bit of brie and half a bottle of vin-de-table saved for tomorrow’s breakfast by my side, a memory drifted through my mind of the first time I had heard Osho speaking…on a grainy, wobbly Indian cassette…Someone had asked Bhagwan the question: “What is samsara?”
He replied (from memory):
There was an old, homeless guy, penniless, dirty, completely down and out, sleeping on a bench close to the river Thames, down on the Embankment.
Suddenly, a huge Rolls-Royce pulled up. The door opened, and as the tramp rubbed his eyes, he saw a beautiful young woman dressed in expensive finery beckoning him to join her in the back seat.
He stood up, tightened the string that was holding his trousers up, threw his empty bottle of meths into the river and staggered over and joined her in the vehicle.
The chauffeur drove them to her townhouse in Mayfair, where the butler attended to the hobo`s every need. Scrubbed clean and smelling like a rose after a long bath in the gold-plated bathroom, the manservant dressed him from top to toe in silk clothes.
Hardly able to believe his luck, the tramp then joined the beautiful woman in the dining room where, for hours they ate the finest foods and drank the best wines whilst being entertained by acrobats, comedians and musicians of the highest order…
After the finest coffee he had ever tasted, the lady invited the hobo to her room, and sailed up the enormous staircase like a sexy angel ascending to a tantric heaven…
When he arrived in her room she was sprawled out over a huge four-poster bed, her breasts, firm like ripe mangoes in the mango season, heaved wildly beneath the skimpiest of negligees…
“Why don`t you join me?” she purred.
Unable to resist, he sat on the bed.
“Come closer”, murmured the siren…
The hobo edged across the bed…
“A little closer still…”
Her voice now just a breathy whisper…
He could feel the sweet smell of her breath on his face…
He rolled over to take her in his arms…
And fell into the Thames.
Good stuff.
I remember that story.
Thanks for this reply, Frank.
If it’s possible to have a Satori in the Buddhafield ( circa 1980 ) after reading a book, turning over the last page… feeling utterly, movingly, tearfully, overwhelmingly uplifted and- ( words escape me … pffft , there goes one !).. then it was with this book, Zorba the Greek, no kidding.
I was in the Green Hotel at the time, a lovely old India fluorescent lit , steaming hot, slow ceiling-fanned, duck-egg green double room on the Bundgarden Rd. The smell of burning cow dung and leaves hanging in the dank evening air. You know that smell well, I’m sure.
I cannot remember much about it, but the state of oneness remains etched in my memory banks. Being an expert on such things, of course, I can categorically put the experience, which I’m about to relate, into the few of beatific unity that groups like ‘ Who is In/ aka Satori’ also aim to sponsor -and which similarly I haven’t done in thirty -five years, but always think I could do anytime again, but don’t.
Oh and the book… well I dunno , but it definitely seemed strange to me that I was compelled to get up off the bed and was forced into the garden at the ending of the last page, with tears streaming down my face, looking up into the silhouetted tree branches of the ink blue-black night sky and espying the half moon, nestling there, hanging, brilliant.The thing was, that this energy was seizing me from my buckling knees upwards and a deep joy/ecstasy/ utter unruffledness was welling up from inside- yet unclaimed by me…as if it was, for descriptions sake, like the saying of that bloke who wondered if he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man or conversely the other way round, being unable to define what is what.
The moon seemed to be saying that she was looking at herself …that eternal some-nothing to do with the dust-free mirror….through these eyes.
Anyway.. it’s all unexplainable, even with the best Haiku in the world written for it…and quite rightly so.
Compelled to start whirling to embrace this overspilling energy, under the tree, there was I turning in delight,….except ‘I’ wasn’t, not the usual formed ‘I’ anyway. No, a much much more, er, who the bloody hell am I, ‘I’…..ha, ha Ohhh blimey !
Laughter from the party on the second floor accompanied me at that very moment…
Buddhafield Osho moments…. wasn’t the only time, but it seemed utterly precise and relevant, was meant to be… the book,the celebration of Life in it, the moon, Osho, Zorba… a fusing cocktail of ‘divine touching’ from god-knows-where….always with tears and silence….and shockingly out of time, which is a good thing in my book, the one that I trust writes me even when not duly attended to in that fullness.
And the Haiku… well I’m in no mood to write one now but it would definitely be along the lines of ….
Thank you Osho, namaste… feet and all..
If it wasn’t for you, I’d, …….
The mood of this song seems to fit – not the words exactly, the mood….
Cheers, Osho.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7f189Z0v0Y
Another good post. This time from Martyn.
Good post, Martyn. Keep up the standard and drop that free association stuff.
Ta, PM. Anything to keep the world spinning, one more push of the wheel, eh!
Free association..?? You mean that Osho wandering off- topic for a couple of hours – a master of the art. Glad he set your standards. Mine too. They might well be in different directions. Glad the Earth is round. Let us bow in mutualness while the going is good, eh!
Quite another ´memory lane´:
Remembering that house beside the cliff in Agios Nicolaos, with its long stone-carved steps to the sea. The Garden then, and the huge tree under which Osho´s chair was placed, our abundant joy to come together again, our singing and dancing the Universe, another of the old songs.
Sitting in the wild, like wild flowers, the strong Cretan flavours, the sound of the sea surpassing the quite bad ´sound system´.
So I don´t know especially to say, like you, Frank, did, what triggered the utterly violent answers of the Greek and other orthodoxies, materializing then, like in one of Dan Brown’s crime storyboards of his books and movies.
But this then at that time was real – and very, very shocking.
I had been knowing Crete from before Sannyas (for longer than just a short tourist visit) and had been able to become aware of the strong, more than less ´secret forces´ orthodox religion there had and has.
But dissolving the shock I was in, when seeing Osho deported from Greece, the way that happened, other than rationalisations of violence was/is needed.
And still up to these days, isn´t it, friends? As violence in the name of religion is not of some yesterdays.
However, Frank, if you the dig in Greek history – soil and morphogenetic fields, you can find, besides Socrates, also the fate of the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras and his school, some centuries before Christianity.
My own experience though, is that all digging this way may lead us astray in getting hooked on some identification or other.
I was strong on the ´hook’, for example, in similar issue contexts with Wilhelm Reich´s work (1951) on’The Murder of Christ´*, a book which got to be burnt then, but didn´t disappear altogether.
Maybe Truth finds a way, and is not to be deported, exiled, domesticated, colonized or whatsoever distorted, by whomsoever.
That´s the best how I can finish up these lines this morning , friends.
Madhu
* Reminding me also of the Kasantzakis story and the ´Zorba of the Buddha` and the Buddha of the Zorba.
From Zorba the Greek to Zorba the Buddha, now that is another string.
Madhu, do you know where Osho talked about that?!
In Crete, Osho also slated Kazantzakis, saying something like: for Kazantzakis, Zorba remained a fantasy, unlived, which, reading Kazantzakis` autobiographical ‘Report to Greco’, is about right.
He was a very restrained, fastidious, monkish type who battled and struggled with his own physical existence.
Kazantzakis considered himself a kind of disciple of Freddie and he described his first reading of Freddie as an epiphany.
‘Zorba’ was an attempt by Kazantzakis to create a character who was a representative of Freddie`s ‘Zarathustra’ teachings and embraced the whole of the world: the ups, downs, love, war, struggle, art, life and death in one big yeah-saying celebration.
The young Osho obviously loved this idea, lobbed meditation and Buddha into the mix and pumped it out to the public.
Let’s face it, he did a pretty good job…cynical Scotsmen threw themselves at his feet…repressed, incoherent Punjabis got laid…a few stiff upper lips quivered…and even a few Krauts started laughing…
Result!
I bow down to that!
The little community on the verge of extinction, look around and see is there someone like Nikos Kazantzakis amongst you?!
We are all Nicos Kazantzakis.
And we are all Osho.
(In Oshodhara they even add Osho prefix to show, we are all Osho´s).
MOD: Osho’s, MEANING BELONGING TO OSHO, OR Oshos, IE MULTIPLE OSHOS?!!
Osho says, “The Bishop (of Crete) is printing a pamphlet against me to distribute. This Sunday morning he is going to speak against me. He knows nothing about me.”
This is an interesting declaration. Definitely non-aligned with Osho’s ‘Is That So?’ Zen story. The point is, the bishop knew certain things about Osho, but they weren’t the kind of things Osho wanted people to believe about him, as in being the master of masters etc., but rather the bastard of bastards.
The bishop was probably going on what he had heard about Osho in terms of his people poisoning a lot of locals in Oregon, tax evasion, setting up false marriages to gain residecy in the United Staes, a man who encouraged unbridled promiscuity in his commnity etc. Taking that into account is it really that surprising that Osho was viewed as an undesirable alien?
All this, “I was thinking that in twenty-five centuries (after poisoning Socrates) Greece would have evolved towards some better qualities, towards more humanity, towards more truth”, is basically spin. Good spin, maybe.
That does not mean that Osho’s situation was comparable to Socrates in this particular instance. What it does mean is that Osho was putting up a well-used smokescreen to cover up the fact that he had been involved to a certain extent in illegal activities on foreign soil.
I don’t have a problem with that but a Catholic bishop certainly would, because he was responsible for maintaining the status quo. We all know the status quo is bullshit but the bishop had to keep up his role as pillar of society and in regards Osho there were no surprises in the way he was dealt with.
Osho wanted to be a player on the international scene and underestimated what he was up against. He did not understand the mainstream western mind to the extent that he was able to pre-empt his opponents’ moves. He was an Indian at heart.
Shantam is the microcosmic representation of that here on SN. So often he fails to comprehend what he is up against, when coming away with what is to many readers very transparent nonsense.
I sincerely doubt a bishop in Greece would like to be called ‘Catholic’, but the ‘famous’ author perhaps does not know that the Church of Greece is orthodox? As for the rest, it’s just the ususal attack on the master that Mr. Mitchell consideres he was intelligent enough to find out and leave.
The rest of his post is, of course, typical SN babble: the bishop was absolutely right in demanding a 3 month visa cancelled after 3 weeks, Osho handcuffed and deported for the horrible crime of sitting in a chair on a lawn and talking to visitors and the press.
And of course, no parallel to Socrates, who got poisoned and ostracised for many of the same accusations that were aimed at Osho.
And of course, this is the kind of stuff that makes Parmartha & the pundits imagine that they are liberated and free-thinking ‘spirits’
Thank Existence we have FB nowadays where genuine sannyasins can hook up and share the Light and Love!
Tell the truth, I know nothing about what is what in the Greek Church, because I am not in the least interested.
Bodhi, in saying, “Osho handcuffed and deported for the horrible crime of sitting in a chair on a lawn and talking to visitors and the press”, says to me you miss my point entirely, perhaps because of an adopted Catholic sannyasin belief system, or perhaps sticking the noggin in the sand.
Another point you seem to miss is that if we all wrote loving accolades about Osho and not question him, this blog would become extremely boring. When I write I do so looking from different perspectives and seek the controversial because that way there might be a bit of fun happening. Obviously, you find Facebook more comfortable. Bully for you.
I would be interested to hear what your definition of a ‘genuine’ sannyasin is. That will be good for a laugh.
“Osho wanted to be a player on the international scene and underestimated what he was up against. He did not understand the mainstream western mind to the extent that he was able to pre-empt his opponents’ moves. He was an Indian at heart.”
I believe that’s right on the money and drives home the point that Osho was rather out of his depth outside India, as well as the previously mentioned ‘scandals’ indicating that he and his movement were not, by some distance, the purely ‘innocent victims of the wicked world’ that seems to be the generally held, ‘comfort-zone’ notion of many sannyasins.
Maybe he wanted to be ‘martyred.’
Maybe he set out to ensure he did appear to be ‘martyred.’
Maybe, far from not knowing what would happen he understood only too well. (Just a thought).
What works for me is never, ever committing to a future result, and if I do, notice the investment accordingly and rework it until it meets my version of integrity, liability and accountability without colluding my self or selling my soul to the Devil. This works at the level of identity and values and expression freed.
Commit to the result as if it has already happened, and act out of that.
The deeper that goes the bigger the window, until it disappears into ‘everything already is’.
Gnosticism is littered with trance-breaking prayer or contemplative stuff, just to crack that pattern of delay and time, as if it has a hold, which is the baggage to dump.
Just suspecting that leads to the double helix of effect being the cause – in oneself. (Parmartha, are you with me here, as I might be going too tangential before tea-time?).
The Osho that corresponds to that in this particular interpretive interlude of playing the Greeks is the same one who hurled himself off bridges ( if that is accepted as fact, of course) i.e. just chuck it out there and see where the cards fall. The commitment is everything.
In his case, we are led to understand by the ‘dissolved self-thingy’ that there wasn’t anyone to want or not want a particular outcome as a fixation. I’m sure its not that difficult to understand for lovers in usual contexts: you just do what you do. Sometimes it goes pear-shaped. So??? There is no lesson to be learned because the wave is also a point which is a wave, depending on contexts.
The complaining of the situations from Osho was not, I choose to consider, a result of poor foresight or bad strategic chess, it was and is just a straight confrontation with reality. I’m sure the net trail of effect it left in Osho was less mundanely stressful than me misplacing the front door keys, yet his take was also less considered about the fallout on others too. As if to say, “you’re here for the ride, aren’t you?”
To me, this is primary school stuff about motivation or inspiration as a way of life. What counts is who comes with you and shares your take. The rest is just laptopping. But hell, if someone out there needs the ironing done, then come on in.
I do not have issue with taking Osho-ness to task at all, so it’s not an impervious absolute that demands adherence. Tomorrow, I could run the other way with yet more grist in the old mill. What counts is your measure, no one else’s.
I refer your Lords and Ladies to my post of yesterday.
King Lokesh puts it better than I ever could….Arpana, I’m climbing up further and further up your proverbials. When someone does a better job than me, I have to give them their due.
Thanks, Lokesh.
A little defensive there, Rev.
So you should be.
.
Simond, I am quite at home with my nobodyness and can’t really envisage myself as any sort of king, which kind of brings to mind the name Osho gave me, which is another story. Anyway, thanks for the compliment, man. Appreciated.
It’s all good clean fun, an important point ethe Catholic sannyasins can’t seem to grasp. They are so fuckin’ serious it is really quite unbelivable, but there you go.
SD: “I believe that’s right on the money and drives home the point that Osho was rather out of his depth outside India…”
Intellectually, Osho was leaps and bounds ahead of those who reside outside India. In Books I Have Loved, Osho showed that he knew the western mind and had read and understood the western authors.
Westerners, including western literature professors and academics, are not so literate when it comes to their reading of Indian literature. How many westerners have read Indian works like Vivek Chudamani by Shankaracharya? Or the Brahma Sutras of Badrayana? How many could understand them from the inside and comment on their spiritual significance?
Osho had read the works of India and knew them from the inside: Osho could comment on their spiritual significance. But Osho had also read and could comment on readings of authors outside India, because Osho had read the western works like those of Nietzsche, Marx, Kazantzakis, and hundreds of other western authors.
Osho was not an innocent who was out of his depth outside India. He knew the history of western violence and ignorance.
The West never understood Osho. The West still does not appreciate Osho’s greatness.
Yes, Samarpan, of course Osho ‘knew and understood the West’ intellectually, and of course he knew many westerners personally, ie his sannyasins, and helped them enormously.
But both these areas are a very different kettle of fish to actually living in the West, directly confronting its values and practices, and generating and attempting to cope with the consequences.
The fact is, on a existential, practical, experiential level, Osho certainly did not ‘know’ the West, it wasn’t ‘in his bones’, his ‘flesh and blood’, as it were.
I mean, just look at the facts, man. He wasn’t too successful over here, was he?
SD, well put. I doubt Sammy will let that in, because he just does not get it. Seeing it, perhaps, as some sort of failure on the part of an image he holds of an infallible Osho.
The West never understood Osho. The West still does not appreciate Osho’s greatness.
Why on Earth the West must understand Osho?
Why?
If disciples understand their master, it is more than enough.
I mean Understand, the gestures and contexts and not just the words. As far as words are concerned, Isis kind of people are understanding their greatest more than anyone else.
SD: “I mean, just look at the facts, man. He wasn’t too successful over here, was he?”
Satyadeva, I suppose it depends on what you mean by success. Osho’s main goal was to deprogram sannyasins from all “isms” and belief systems. So, I ask you. Was Osho successful? My answer is yes.
If success if measured in terms of influence, it may be a few more decades before Osho’s success becomes apparent. It took Buddha over two thousand years to get to the West. Jesus had only 12 followers and, post-crucifixion, wasn’t looking much like a success. Osho has had immediate impact.
Osho has reached hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Thanks to Osho’s tactical decisions in Rajneeshpuram, he gained the co-operation of American media (publicity) and the American government (deportation). Osho succeeded in getting people’s attention. Osho always said it didn’t matter if publicity is negative or positive.
More to the point, Osho leaves a gigantic legacy in print and audiovisual. It is still early. I would say the jury is still out on Osho’s “success.”
“Thanks to Osho’s tactical decisions in Rajneeshpuram, he gained the co-operation of American media (publicity) and the American government (deportation). Osho succeeded in getting people’s attention. Osho always said it didn’t matter if publicity is negative or positive.”
Samarpan, to me such arguments are thoroughly specious, in fact sheer sophistry. I suppose next you’ll be affirming that appointing Sheela to run the show in America was a brilliant piece of ‘tactics’. That decision alone is more than enough evidence of Osho’s practical inexperience of the West and consequent poor judgment, a lack of capacity to deal effectively with a society very different to the one he was used to.
Yes, you can put whatever ‘spin’ you like on what happened – and nothing is necessarily all ‘good’ or all ‘bad’ – but to declare what went on then in the public arena was a resounding success is head-in-the-proverbial-sand nonsense, whatever Osho said about publicity.
Which, as I’ve already said, is not to suggest he couldn’t help us western people, but simply to state that he had his limitations re practical affairs, which were rather obviously exposed. And after all, why should enlightenment/’God Realisation’ make anyone an expert at everything?
Sammy, you are mistaken in believing that Osho will one day have the impact of Buddha. He won’t.
You seem impressed by big numbers: “Osho has reached hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Perhaps as a pop star that is something in terms of success, but in the spiritual dimension it means nothing.
The success of a real master has nothing to do with how many disciples he gathers round him and everything to do with how many disciples he helps become masters in their own right.
Samarpan,
You suggest that “the West never understood Osho and doesn’t appreciate his greatness”.
It’s not so simple, as I see it. His western sannyasins certainly understood him, if by that we mean that we loved him and appreciate his message. We took him to our hearts in a way that no other Indian guru has ever achieved.
His message affected many hundreds of thousands directly, and indirectly his teaching has reached millions, even after his death.
But we in the West are also capable of seeing him more objectively. We see his naivety and his innocence, his lack of understanding of the duplicitous western mind. He continued to learn about the West as he visited it. He learned about the powerful forces of Church and State that disliked the East and took great objection to the message he presented to us here.
In many ways I sense he was shocked by these powerful forces, he was a true innocent, a lover of truth and he may never have experienced such aggresion within India.
Whilst we all can read and digest knowledge from books, there is nothing like the experience to truly make that knowledge real. Osho was no exception, he learned much from his reading of Marx, Neitzche and others, but experience is the ultimate teacher.
This doesn’t invalidate him in any way, we are all learning, and he continued to learn. He doesn’t have to be ‘perfect’.
You suggest the West does not appreciate him. Many do. Many have no interest in him at all.
Those who are interested in him, do what many do here in the West. We read and digest what is real to us and spit out the rest. We tend to be irreverent, we have had enough of corrupt religions and are wary of devotees, or those who, we believe, are parroting ideas learned, but not digested. We have seen through the facade of religons and cults, and we have a longer tradition of thinking and discovering for ourselves.
In India, there is a greater tradition of reverence to the Master. Satsang, the sitting with the master in silence, is a feature of the East, and it works there in ways it can never work here. We are too wrapped in mind, in issues of love, pain and insecurity. We need explanations as well as silence.
As I see it, Osho recognised this deeply and he understood that the eastern mind was very quickly being destroyed as western culture took over the world. So too he attempted to bridge the gap between two worlds, West and East.
He did a good job, but not a perfect one. That he wasn’t perfect doesn’t mean that he was not appreciated.
SD: “but to declare what went on then in the public arena was a resounding success is head-in-the-proverbial-sand nonsense…”
We disagree about the public arena. The red clothes, the malas, the Rolls-Royces, Zorba the Buddha discos, dynamic meditation, etc. were all effective (i.e., successful) in attracting the media in the West. Just as meditation camps, and talking publicly about sex in the earlier years, successfully attracted media in India.
The first step is to gain attention… without attention no brainwashing and dry cleaning can be done. Osho is very successful in my opinion. People are still being transformed by his work every day… having great Zorba the Budda fun!
I remember when I saw Osho in chains in North Carolina, smiling, namaste-ing, unperturbed, radiating peace and love. External circumstances of the public arena be damned! What Osho conveyed to me in that instant represented the pinnacle of success. I guess it does depend on how you measure success. And we disagree.
Yes, Osho went through that arrest etc. scenario with consummate grace and no doubt some people were impressed at the time. But whether they bothered to follow that up and change their lives as a result is open to question.
What surely is not nearly as questionable is that the opportunity to provide Osho with a means to reach far greater numbers for a far longer time, to open up a national, even perhaps a global ‘debate’ (for want of a better word) – and thereby attract a lot more potential genuine ‘seekers’ – was blown; destroyed by poor judgment due to inexperience of the culture in which he found himself, and the hubristic stupidity of those he allowed to run the operation.
In contrast, what you term “success”, Samarpan, is on the level of a sort of ‘consolation prize’, but as Lokesh has commented today, as it seems you’re one of those who ‘needs’ to view Osho as all-knowing, a man who never made mistakes, pretty well ‘infallible’, with that sort of belief I very much doubt that you’re able to see the wood for the trees re this issue.
Thus are constructed ‘convenient’ (but misleading because they are basically self-serving) views of history, created to serve certain beliefs and values that are fundamentally based upon the emotional needs of some – but not, unfortunately, the truth.
“Osho wanted to be a player on the international scene and underestimated what he was up against. He did not understand the mainstream western mind to the extent that he was able to pre-empt his opponents’ moves. He was an Indian at heart.”
Yes, Lokesh, this is 100% true. I have said it hundreds of times. He was an Indian at heart and therefore gave the best of his country´s heritage to one and all.
After reading few of the intelligent mind crap of Lokesh, on the way to fitness studio on my bicycle I thought, just like Buddha, Osho should have said, “My spiritual movement can survive 5000 years, but because of the western male mind it will be extinguished within 50 years.”
El Chudo, one of the reasons Osho will not have a long-term global impact is that there is so much contradiction in what he said and it is what he said that matters in such matters.
His big vibe was what made people stay with him. Now he is gone the big vibe is also. What is left are his words and a few people who actually met him and have a clear picture of who and what he was and not blabbering on about him being the master of masters etc.
The thing about Buddha or more recently Ramana Maharshi is that they never veered from their path. They delivered a continuity. A continuity is important in order for something to have widespread and lasting effect on people on a large scale in any worthwhile sense.
I love that about the beedie wallah…he never veers from his course. Unlike Osho who one day says this and another day says something quite the opposite. If you were with him you pretty soon understood that was not important, but for newcomers it is, because eventually it leads to confusion, wheras truth is about clarity.
Yes, you can say people’s lives are being transformed by Osho today, and to a certain extent this may well be true. On the other hand, when I watch the likes of Swami Arun initiating people into Sannyas it looks like a trend for beginners that for most will one day be something they went though that may have changed their lives to some extent, but into what remains to be seen. Looks fishy to my weathered eyes.
Still, we all have to begin somewhere, even if it only leads to a cul-de-sac.
Valid points, I think, Lokesh. Although videos, eg at youtube, deliver a flavour of his extraordinary living presence and thus might well be far more influential, at least in in the first instance, than his books.
But what someone here in the UK, for example, would do now, having come across Osho somewhere, I really don’t know. I know of nothing I’d confidently recommend, unless the person had ‘special needs’ (Humaniversity) or really wanted to see where it all happened (Pune).
An arguable flaw in post-Osho-alive-in-the-body Sannyas is the point you make re a lack of a consistent teaching, so the would-be new person doesn’t have a lot to go on – or rather, too much to go on, but not a lot of ‘ground’ to hold onto.
Related to this, of course, is that Sannyas has always been a collective thing, somehow dependent on being part of a larger group. This, despite being “the flight of the alone to the alone”.
So I wouldn’t fancy being a newbie in the West these days.
Dear Satyadeva,
Methinks you worry too much.
Osho still attracts many people, even if it is a passing phase on their journey.
With so many books and videos available, newbies can pick and choose from a vast library of information.
His mesage remains valid, even if some of the history of the Sannyas movement is clouded in contradictions, politics etc.
The young have great discretion, they pick up what is required and move on.
I’m not embarrassed or worried that I was part, even if only loosely, of a cult of sorts, it is only what we learned as a result that is important.
Indeed, I delight in communicating the journey, when required to ‘explain myself.’ Through this I confirm with others if I’ve learned anything at all!
What may concern some – that the emphasis on the words (books, vidoes) is now more important than the ‘energy’ of the man himself, Osho, does not concern me. The message is all that matters, and the power of consciousness to reveal itself anew and in various ways, knows no bounds.
As usual, Lokesh, your post is a good one.
But I wonder if you are right about the inconsistencies and contradictions in Osho’s writing and life are that big a deal.
Whilst Ramana Marhashi may have been consistent, his words were few and he lived a life within the confines of the sheltered East. No travelling, no politics, no venture towards the problems of sex, love, or concerns with the mind of the West. He was of a very different time and his audience was pretty small.
As it happens, I came across him whilst young and immature. As a consequence, I didn’t get him at all. I wasn’t capable or ready. I needed someone like Osho to guide me to understand his meaning.
I have a good friend who found Ramana much younger than I. He got him, but I suggest he is rare. Most needed the help of an Osho to guide us to such subjective realms of understanding.
Might I suggest that you, like me, only appreciate Ramana Marhashi because of Osho? Now, as you have matured in your understanding you can appreciate him? Or are you like my friend?
His message, whilst it may have influenced some, is still a message that is rarified, whilst Osho has reached many more people. Is the messsage any more diluted by his inconsistency? The ‘truth’ may be simple and clear, and Ramana Marhashi may appear more consistent, but only because he spoke only of the most direct and most simple truth and didn’t bother with the wider questions of Love, sex and the mind.
As to the future of Osho or any of them:
As you often remind me, it doesn’t really matter. The truth will out, in one way or another, and Osho will be part of that history, acknowledged by the few, the many, or not at all.
Perfectly correct, Shantambhai!
The western mind has certainly destroyed all hope of a yuga of super-consciousness with you at the spearhead!
And you are perfectly right that Osho should have said what you say he should have said!
You have said it clearly that when you arrived in Pune you saw immediately that your path lay not in the western male mind but in the western female body!
You whipped out your mighty lingam that had been lying dormant in the folds of your holy underwear for thousands of years and peformed your dharma with heroic tenacity!
But now, the mighty lingam that once pointed to the stars is in an irreparable downward slump and you are understandably depressed that it will never rise to the heights once achieved with Kate Winslet lookalikes in maroon robes, but remain pointing to the ground, like its owner, with no chance of gainful employment!
But there is always blame to fall back on! Yes, it is perfectly good to keep blaming those bleached-skinned, religion-destroying goras with minds who have not only destroyed the future of humanity but also embarrassed you in front of your family who told you all along that you were wasting your life!
You are simply suffering from bad karma.
But do not worry, it may look up in your next life!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Poor Chudo.
Parmartha (18 February, 2015 at 5:19 pm),
I don´t know an answer; otherwise, I felt a constant craving about the issue (Zorba & Buddha / so-called East and so-called West) in His whole work with and on us.
Yesterday, moving your question, I was reminded of the lecture series concerning ´Zarathustra, the God that can dance`(1987) with the longer phase of Gurdijeff kind of exercises for us all, in the phases (music and dance) beginning and ending the morning and/or evening meditations with the Master.
Otherwise, Frank has given precise details, hasn’t he? And as far as ´text search´ goes, Arpana is the man….
Madhu
Heeren says:
”
“And of course, this is the kind of stuff that makes Parmartha & the pundits imagine that they are liberated and free-thinking ‘spirits’
Nothing could be further from the truth, Heeren.
PM, I reckon you are wasting your time telling him that. He will not understand. Why not? He has no desire to.
Osho did not understand mainstream western mind…And his western disciples were in anyway not in the right frame of mind to explain to him the pitfalls.
Last week, I was speaking with someone in Pune and looking at the history of Osho´s Sannyas movement. While discussing the group exit of Hollywood gang within six months of Osho leaving the body, the man said, “For them, Osho was a mystical puppet from an exotic land.”
More or less this is true with many of the consumers.
Anyway, why just Osho, has Punja ji any idea of mainstream western mind?
The provincial old man simply thanked his luck to see people from superior races adoring the turmeric-and-ginger-mixed- with-honey in Advaita talks!
MOD: SORRY, LOKESH, YOUR POST HAS BEEN ACCIDENTALLY DELETED. PLEASE SEND IT AGAIN, IF POSSIBLE.
“And we are all Osho.
(In Oshodhara they even add Osho prefix to show, we are all Osho´s).
MOD: Osho’s, MEANING BELONGING TO OSHO, OR Oshos, IE MULTIPLE OSHOS?!!”
As I have understood the concept of Oshodhara, adding Osho with name is as in certain part of India, father´s name is added. Osho as surname is a kind of reminder.
And yes, I believe it is a convenient way to hero-worship Osho. He is our Omnipresent, Omnipotent Spiderman, who is also an expert in window cleaning.
Once in a while someone reminds me at facebook, “Why you worry about Osho´s movment? It is all going fine. Osho knows what is good.”
I mean if such sentences are not hero-worship than what else?
P.S:
If there is some ambiguity left, let me know. I am not all-wise claiming to subscribe gospels of truth, but not some idiot too.
MOD: SO, IS IT Oshos OR Osho’s?!!
Oshos or Osho´s?
Difference depends upon personality type.
For Scottish, like Lokesh, between a prince and a subject can be an unbridgeable gap, but otherwise we are all Oshos. Why to give so much importance to master/disciple thing?
For someone like me, we are disciples of Osho, part of his lineage, ash from a new volcano. For me it is Osho´s.
(SOME EDITING)
Chud brains declares, ‘For someone like me, we are disciples of Osho, part of his lineage.’
Oh dear. That is that then.
El Chudo on the middle path…that’s a good one.
Parmartha,
Again you are trying to thwart the wisdom of mighty Bhorat by demanding that Shantambhai should bow to the dictates of your quite leftist, rational mind and write rational sense!
From this it is clear that Osho has not been understood in the West!
Your so-called commonsense is nothing compared to the wisdom of omnipotent spiderman hero-worshipping superior race middlepath gospels of mango in the 69 ash to volcano of perception and exotic puppetry of mighty Bhorat!
Shantambhai,do not be intimidated by these baboons!
Osho has not been understood by the West.Only one such as you who has shown the level you were coming from by grabbing the ripe mangoes of the western female body and so rightly avoiding and mistrusting the western male mind which is nothing but ego, is fit to build a religion that will ensure that our grandchildren will be able to wear the same chuddies as us when they are finally dispatched from the world!
Those of us who know about the holy vedic science of Starsigns in which you are also a great adept, know that astrologically speaking, your words of wisdom emanate from two orbs which are circling in the vicinity of Uranus!
I hereby speak for all genuine disciples when I demand Shantam must be left free to ejaculate freely without interference from the mind which is nothing but mind, as would have been clear had it not been for Jayesh and the Anglo-Saxons who have destroyed Osho’s vision!
What Shantam has to say is utterly important and stems from the wisdom of one who has mastered the art of being paid by the German govt. to watch Japanese Zen Porn!
Such advanced siddhis are not to be sniffed at, although they may also require the use of a hanky!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Great stuff, Yogiji. Very humourous.
Mama mia…
Anand Yogi knows how to roast!
SD: “the would-be new person doesn’t have a lot to go on – or rather, too much to go on, but not a lot of ‘ground’ to hold onto.”
But isn’t that the point? Osho was not re-programming with something to hold on to. He was pulling the rug out from under, taking away all supports, isms, etc. and not replacing them with anything to hold on to. Initial confusion is part of the process. From the dark night of confusion, throwing away theistic teddybears, and achieving clarity alone.
SD: “Related to this, of course, is that Sannyas has always been a collective thing, somehow dependent on being part of a larger group. This, despite being “the flight of the alone to the alone”.
In my experience sannyas was not primarily a collective thing. It is a heart to heart connection with Osho, then and now. Sure, we partied and danced and worked and had lots of fun.
But in evening discourse, over and over, Osho said to “go in,” beyond mind, beyond body, and that is the flight of the alone to the alone. The collective disappears. As Plotinus also said, the flight of the alone to the alone is a mystical experience which transcends reason.
That is the way it is on the death bed. The collective can accompany you only so far, but the collective will not be making the trip with you. Sannyas is ultimately a flight of the alone to the alone.
I take your point re the individual master/disciple connection, Samarpan, but you, I and many others have been lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.
Would you have bothered if there had been no large, psycho-socially-sexually radical, rebellious, fun-loving peer group community to belong to, where everything was more or less set up for you, as it were – not least, the living presence of the master?
All well and good saying Osho gave nothing to hold onto, but the communities he inspired were, in a way, just that, ie extended ‘families’ or support systems of fellow-travellers (that often, one might say, ‘degenerated’ into alternative ‘social clubs’).
What would be your practical advice to, say, a 25 year-old ‘newcomer’ to Osho, living in the UK, who can’t afford to travel far or – perfectly understandably – doesn’t want to visit Pune? Besides the obvious – youtube ‘sample’ videos, books, trying out various meditations alone (if the instructions can be understood) – how is such a person going to flourish here, in these times?
Also, Samarpan, you cite your commune experience, clearly an extremely rich one, especially given Osho’s living presence. But what about living outside such a commune? That’s the challenge, the reality of now, which this younger generation has to face. Is what’s left behind, as it were, enough, enough to go on, enough, as I said, to ‘hold onto’?
Perhaps they have a lot less internal ‘baggage’ than us, their parents’ generation (thanks, largely, to us), so perhaps they’ll find it easier to ‘go it alone’, I don’t know.
Still, as Simond says (which I’ve also mentioned once or twice here in the past), basically, consciousness, ie Life Itself, is in charge, and as so much of Osho has entered the human psyche there will, no doubt, be beneficial consequences, even if these are mostly after we depart the scene.
Samarpan – timing wrong.
The dark night of the soul prompts and even propels the exploration – that is when a healthy commune or collective can be a vital support for a growing individual.
My own experience from 1974/75 to…. , was that I met many fellow spirits in the commune. They were there sometimes from different histories and taking different ways. Some had been lost, some had been rebels in need of a community – and some in finding a community – well. it took the edge off the dark night. That was invaluable.
The living master can also hold your hand for a while, and that is very good, as long as one doesn’t cling when it’s time to let go.
Echoing SD, I would say we were very lucky in all that. Of course, today living masters may well have their own communes, etc., and that is all to the good. And it could be many of them operate beneath the wire, so they can’t be found easily – cos I have not heard of that many!
‘Going to Pune’ still seems to me to be an option of advice for some young person who might be a genuine seeker. And India is so vast, then the ‘energy’ will move them on somewhere else, if Pune is not suitable for them.
I actually still have the view that India, in and of itself, can be a guru, and I say that with a degree of affection.
It is interesting that you quote Plotinus to support your point. But he himself was famous for proposing the opposite. He proposed a ‘City of Philosophers’ that lived together for mutual support in the ways of personal growth, before such flights of aloneness were possible.
At one point he attempted to interest Gallienus, the Roman Emperor of the time, to finance the rebuilding of an abandoned settlement in Campania, for this purpose, where the inhabitants would live lives of mutual support in attempting to go beyond themselves.
“The fact is, on a existential, practical, experiential level, Osho certainly did not ‘know’ the West, it wasn’t ‘in his bones’, his ‘flesh and blood’, as it were.”
(Satyadeva)
Satyadeva,
Osho is no more. You are still alive. Let me put your words in your context:
“The fact is, on a existential, practical, experiential level, Satyadeva certainly did not ‘know’ India, it isn’t ‘in his bones’, his ‘flesh and blood’, as it were.”
So how you are going to walk your talk? At least accept that name you are carrying is a stolen luggage!
Irrelevant, Shantam.
The point I made there was re Osho in the West being like a fish out of water, out of his depth as far as practical matters were concerned.
Time has shown, Osho´s style of communication and his western disciples’ style of understanding were matching sometimes and most of the time not.
It makes hell of difference when writing passwords, capital or small!
In the inner journey and its outer expressions, it is more or less the same.
(MOD: SOME EDITING)
“Osho in the West being like a fish out of water, out of his depth as far as practical matters were concerned.”
What happened to the intelligence and legal acumen of western disciples? Some Indian goes to America on tourist visa at the end of 20th century and his western disciples create a city state in his name, ‘Rajneeshpuram.’ Can there be a biggest blunder than this?
Now think about a Christian missionary goes to India, buys big chunk of land and calls it ‘Francesland’; Indians will roast-fry the whole thing within months.
Osho has not failed, his disciples definitely, then and now.
Typical ‘Osho-is-infallible-he-can-do-no-wrong’ bullshit, as usual, Shantam.
He allowed all that to happen, while if he’d had any inkling of how America works he’d have realised even the name was a pretty bad start, let alone provoking the locals, and he’d have changed things
On the other hand, if it’s all seen as one great daring experiment to bring him into the spotlight, fair enough. Except that again, he seems to have been too naïve to realise that it was bound to end in tears, with damage to his reputation that arguably set his efforts back years.
You’re the blind devotee type who praises Osho to the skies for his successes, while blaming everyone but him for the failures.
Meanwhile, having the nerve to denigrate western disciples, conveniently forgetting that without them there would have been no worthwhile Osho Sannyas movement at all!
And that, from all the evidence, you yourself would almost certainly never have bothered.
SD, you have to understand El Chudo is treading the middle path…the middle of nowhere.
“Typical ‘Osho-is-infallible-he-can-do-no-wrong’ bullshit, as usual, Shantam.”
I don´t think I have ever given such an impression. I will never ignore the man behind the master. Therefore, I am not one of those, who believe, Osho is controlling the account books up from the sky.
(MOD: SOME EDITING)
SD:
“Osho-is-infallible-he-can-do-no-wrong’ bullshit, as usual, Shantam.”
Shantam:
I don´t think I have ever given such an impression. I will never ignore the man behind the master.
SD:
But you just have, in your post of 2.04pm!
It is interesting that Samarpan quotes Plotinus to support his main point earlier in the string. But Plotinus was famous for proposing the opposite. He proposed a ‘City of Philosophers’ that lived together for mutual support in the ways of personal growth, before such flights of aloneness were possible.
At one point he attempted to interest Gallienus, the Roman Emperor of the time, to finance the rebuilding of an abandoned settlement in Campania for this purpose, where the inhabitants would live lives of mutual support before attempting to go beyond themselves.
Quite the opposite of what Samarpan is arguing.
Parmartha: “It is interesting that Samarpan quotes Plotinus to support his main point earlier in the string. But Plotinus was famous for proposing the opposite. He proposed a ‘City of Philosophers’ that lived together for mutual support in the ways of personal growth, before such flights of aloneness were possible.”
Parmartha, I am not anti-mind or anti-rational. The mind has a role to play in everyday existence. For Plotinus, following Plato, the forms are rational and known by the rational mind. Like Osho, and Buddha and all the Advaitin ‘forest dwellers’ of the ages, Plotinus is talking about a mystical experience which transcends reason in his “flight of the alone to the alone.”
It is great if there is a sangha or a ‘City of Philosophers’ as support, but I disagree that they make such flights possible. A commune is not a pre-requisite to return to what Plotinus called the One. As Plotinus said: “The Proficient’s will is set always and only inward.” (Enneads I.4.11) Or as Osho told us: “Go in!”
Basically, I agree with Satyadeva when he says: “consciousness, i.e. Life Itself, is in charge,” which is why success is not a numbers game. And the way “Life Itself” worked it out, the element of mysticism in Plotinus became a major source of inspiration (pre-internet, pre-YouTube, pre-FaceBook!) for medieval Christian mystics and theologians (like Meister Eckhart) even though the Church did not support their flight. Society can be a help or a hindrance.
Life Itself also seems to have arranged for Plotinus to be influenced by Hindu mysticism. In the teachings of Plotinus there are echoes of the Upanishads, particularly the Chandogya of the pre-Buddhist era (between c. 800 BCE and c. 500 BCE).
Parmartha: “Samarpan – timing wrong. The dark night of the soul prompts and even propels the exploration.”
Yes, exactly. That was my point. Osho’s intentional provocation of confusion, the apparent “contradictions” you love to emphasize, is what propels the exploration until the contradictions dissolve.
This was my case anyway. I read his books and entered into frustration and confusion, and finally fell in love with Osho. All of this happened through books alone. No tapes, no videos, no trip to India, no darshan, no satsang, no commune. Just Osho and printed darshan diaries.
I don’t worry about newcomers to Osho. They have a multitude of resources I did not have. But all they need is a book and an open heart.
I am extremely optimistic about the future of Sannyas. Osho left a bibliographic store, now complete with books, audio, video, wiki pages, radio, television, and websites, for the seeker. No other mystic in the history of humanity can come close to what Osho has given us. Let me repeat that: no other mystic in the history of humanity compares to the greatness of Osho’s prodigious generosity.
Please note that “greatness” does not mean perfect, or infallible, or that the world beats a path to your door. Osho’s greatness cannot be denied.
A friend of mine in the seventies went to a darshan with Osho and asked about not feeling part of the commune and relationships, etc. Osho said he was an “Arhat” and that was not his path. just be singular and forget all about the social life of the commune, and relationships. So I can readily accept you might be also an Arhat, Samarpan!
On the other hand, I myself feel that for many, being part of a Buddhafield/sangha is really quite important as a launch pad for the flight of the alone to the alone.
I am clearly not alone in thinking so, Plotinus obviously thought so, and presumably Osho, otherwise why not behave like Krishnamurti and Barry Long, who discouraged any communities around them?
I am not sure of your background. I was lucky enough to study philosophy at university, as my Master was. You seem to know a little about Plotinus, and I would not want to top dog you.
But you may be interested to know that Plotinus hung around in Alexandria for ten years, studying from around the age of 28 to 38, and it is known that Buddhists and Hindus visited that place well before Christ. That may explain some of the derivatives of his thinking.
He also, after spending those ten years, consciously decided to study Persian and Indian philosophy, and in pursuit of this he left Alexandria and joined the army of Gordian III in an expedition to Persia. However, he nearly lost his life there, and eventually found his way back to Rome, and really didn’t leave the capital much after that!
Thank you, Parmartha.
“Gautam Buddha accepted that there are a few people who will become arhatas. And their path will be called HINAYANA, “the small vehicle,” the small boat in which only one person can go to the other shore.
He does not bother to create a big ship and collect a crowd in a Noah’s Ark and take them to the further shore. He simply goes himself in his small boat, which cannot even contain two.
He is born alone in the world, he has lived and died millions of times alone in the world; alone he is going to the universal source.
Buddha accepts and respects the way of the arhata.”
OSHO, ‘Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master’, Chapter #8, ‘Everybody has the right to be wrong’
The homage to great Nikos Kazantzakis, here is a link to his quotes; all delicious and exquisites and incomparable.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5668.Nikos_Kazantzakis
When Osho (with his sannyasins) arrived on Crete it was mid-Feb, out of season (the ‘season’ is when the tourists are there), and all the shop owners and hoteliers were more than happy with all the out-of-season lolly pouring in.
The problem was that Osho stayed too long, and the season was looming and the messages coming in from the foreign travel agents were saying that the sannyasins’ presence was going to affect the overall tourist business in the area. Meaning that if the sannyasins stayed, the tourists would not come. All the Church stuff was just a bluff, but it sounds good.
Yes, I was there. I arrived the day after Osho left. Yikes. I stayed for about a week, and being Greek, I did ask a lot of questions. The Greek people liked sannyasins. They generally found the whole thing very refreshing until they realised that it might hit their pockets. The situation got a little bit tense when some sannyasin girls started selling themselves up on the road leading to the village.
What I liked about Greece was that the newspapers were “actually quoting Osho”, something that the British press never did.
My feeling was that the locals didn’t really know what was going on, and they were just dealing with the situation on a day-to-day basis.
I had a great time meeting some sannyasins who were already on the island, living up in the mountains, pressing oil and stuff, and to their amazement Osho basically fell into their lap. What a gift!
“The situation got a little bit tense when some sannyasin girls started selling themselves up on the road leading to the village.”
Oh, really?! How strange…One would have thought these women would be applauded for their enterprise, their, er, ‘self’-reliance…
My God, I’ve heard some desperate stories, but this one’s right up there with the most pathetic – the downside of so-called sexual freedom.
Satyadeva, why it is pathetic?
One can see in this way too that longing closer to the master was stronger than the moral judgements.
Lower values can always be sacrificed for the higher ones.
Also, it is better to sell than to get betrayed in the name of Tantra!
“Lower values sacrificed for higher ones”, was it, Shantam? Pull the other one, man. (to coin a phrase!).
Such a degenerate attitude as yours knows ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’. But you’re too ignorantly self-ish to get the point…
Until, I imagine (or sincerely hope) it’s your own daughters out there on the streets of a foreign land….
Now South Indian Amma is speaking from an English Gentleman!
“Until, I imagine (or sincerely hope) it’s your own daughters out there on the streets of a foreign land….”
Satyadeva, you will understand and appreciate free choice if life brings you under the custody of ISIS.
Stay in the safe London and go on playing morally superior!
Eyes hurt to read bogus people.
In response to your all-too-typical, thoughtlessly shallow response, Shantam, here’s some food for contemplation:
I’m very far from ‘sainthood’, believe it or not, but in such matters I think we have to go beyond both the ‘it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry’ and the ‘freedom means anything is fine’ viewpoints, which conveniently leave out certain key issues.
Try expanding your perspective in the way I suggest and hopefully, you’ll hurt a lot more, Shantam…
If Vartan’s story is correct (and Madhu has challenged its veracity) then look at it:
Deficient in self-respect, as well as, shall we say, a ‘work ethic’, having inadequate money but not wanting to miss out on what promises to be an ‘exciting’, ‘glamorous’, fun-filled, extended (hopefully) holiday, the women in question say to each other, “Oh, yes, we’ve just gotta go there, we can’t miss out on this scene! Sod the money, we can always fuck our way around Greece – or wherever Osho goes next! Who gives a fuck anyway?! We do! (or rather, we don’t!)- let’s just have a good time out there, it’ll be such a gas, sister!”
In a way, another version of the sort of emotionally hyped-up, frantically irresponsible nonsense perpetrated by the powers-that-be at Rajneeshpuram, and making, apparently, its own singular contribution to a similar unhappy collective conclusion. Not to mention any self-inflicted damage to their own psyches.
But if you happily swallow this exploitative (of both self and others) behaviour as ‘spiritually commendable’ (as it were) then I see you as the victim of another sort of conditioning, one that devalues women, sex and love itself (and necessarily, men along the way) – under the all-consuming banner of a ‘freedom’ that always begs such ‘difficult’, ‘inconvenient’ questions.
Just see the point:
Even if the women’s motives were ultimately ‘pure’, ie rather than merely being ‘chancers’ out for a ‘good time’ they simply wanted to take an opportunity to bathe in Osho’s presence more intimately than ever before, and ‘feel the love’ – BE the love presumably being the object of the exercise – how can prostituting themselves, which entails being intimately polluted by men’s psychic garbage, be any sort of viable ‘sadhana’ in that ongoing, most delicate process?
I doubt whether you’ve ever bothered to consider this, have you, Shantam? Why should you, anyway – you’re a sexually-hungry man from a deeply repressive culture, who wants whatever he wants, are you not? And the Sannyas way of ‘anything goes’ suits you just fine. And anything potentially disturbing your so-called, self-ish, er, ‘freedom’ just has to be ‘wrong’, doesn’t it?
P.S:
Well, Shantam, are you going to answer my question (today, 12.02am), or are you going to hide behind gratuitous utter bollocks (citing “South Indian Amma”, “ISIS” etc!)?
Perhaps it’s just too, well, you know, kinda ‘inconvenient’?
Osho spoke a little about Kazantzakis’s book, Zorba the Greek, in ‘Books I Have Loved’.
See if this link works…
http://www.osho.com/iosho/library/read-book/online-library-zorba-kazantzakis-mad-ff0dccfd-b33?p=088c5b625700cc6d442931c2f00114d9
This is a link to download ‘Books I have loved’…
http://www.wikifortio.com/630104/Books I Have Loved.pdf
Thank you, Arps.
Here is one of those books on Daya…
http://www.baytallaah.com/bookspdf/76.pdf
Muy grazi.
As you yourself said it, Bodhi Vartan, you had not been present during His stay and especially not the day he was deported from Crete and then Athens. However, your then listening to the gossip with your natives one can easily recognize by the issues, “women selling themselves” etc. etc.´
Again, what you are reporting is your view and so be it…we don´t meet with that. This is quite a ´macho website, I like to add. Now.
Madhu
It was all a simple misunderstanding.
I heard that BV doesn`t actually speak the same dialect as the Cretan locals. So there he was, with his shirt half
-unbuttoned, with his heavy medallions shining on his hairy chest, twiddling his large moustache whilst sinking a couple of jars of ouzo, tucking into a kebab, twiddling his worry beads and gossiping at Stavros Papadopoulos`s kebab shop in Agios Nikolaos, when he misunderstood Stavros, who actually said to him:
“I`m just popping up the road to the village. I need to pick up some good red eat to put on my skewer. The rumps on those horny she-goats make my juices run.”
Osho was in Greece. Nepal, Uruguay, India..
Can someone tell, where He is now?
In you (and in all who loved him), Shantam.
Wake up from your thought-filled, anger-polluted, self-important slumber and you might find him…
(Miracles can happen!)….
Eehm…erm…nowhere?
So remember one thing: freedom is not license. Freedom is responsibility. And if you cannot take your responsibility yourself, then somebody is going to take the responsibility on your behalf. And then you are enslaved.
People have been asking me how it happened that five thousand people, almost all university graduates, having the best qualifications from the best universities of the world, could not see for four years.
The reason is, Sheela was not only doing something ugly and fascist, she was also creating the commune. She was also making the desert into an oasis. She was making the commune comfortable in every way. Every coin has two sides.
Osho.
From Bondage to Freedom
Chapter #4
Chapter title: Where do we go from here?
I LIVE NEITHER BY LAW NOR BY SENSE…
All these sutras are to help you to go beyond duality, the dualism, the two. I LIVE NEITHER BY LAW NOR BY LICENSE… There are two types of people ordinarily: people who live by license, by sensuality, by desire — people who simply indulge; they don’t know anything else. They are lost in very ordinary gratifications; their life is very gross. Then there is another type of people who live by law, discipline, commandment: the people who follow the ten commandments — who listen more to the tradition, the scripture, the society, the state, than they listen to their own desiring, body, mind. They listen to authority, they don’t listen to themselves. These are the two ordinary people.
If you live by license you live a life of indulgence — and you will be destroyed by it. If you live a life of law you will again be destroyed — not by indulgence, this time by authority — because nobody can give you the commandment, nobody can give you the law. Life is so spontaneous — how can there be a fixed law to follow? And the moment you start following a fixed law you are a dead entity, not a living being. Your life is no longer a river, it has become a stagnant pool which will simply become more and more dirty, will be more and more stinking, and will disappear into mud.
Kabir says: I neither live by license nor do I live by law. Then how do you live? Kabir says: I live by spontaneity; I live by awareness. Watch it — this is one of the most important things. Indulgence comes from your unconscious mind. Sexuality, or a lust for power, comes from your unconsciousness, from the dark parts of your being — overpowers you, possesses you, drives you mad… and one day you simply feel your whole life is finished and you have not gained anything. Maybe you have succeeded, but still, in the ultimate analysis, ordinary success proves to be a failure — utter failure. I always say: Nothing fails like success. You may have accumulated much money, then one day suddenly you find life is gone. Money is there, but you are gone — so what is the point of this success? You indulge with many women, with many men: energy is wasted, and suddenly there you are — a desert land, a wasteland; nothing has flowered, nothing has grown. That whole journey was just very very momentary, very temporal. Yes, you indulged in one thing after another — but all those things have passed like nightmares, and your hands are empty.
And those moments cannot be reclaimed. The time lost is lost forever; the energies lost are lost for ever… and people who indulge go on indulging to the very end — even when death is knocking on the door, they are thinking of indulgence.
Osho.
The Divine Melody
Chapter #7
Chapter title: : It is heard without ears
7 January 1977 am in Buddha Hall
It is impossible to communicate with people who are experts in copy/pasting the pages from their Koran, their Bible.
It does not need a Nostradamus to predict priesthood in the lineage of Osho will be the shrewdest and the cleverest one.
It is impossible to communicate with people who are always talking from the behind.
It does not need a Nostradamus to predict, priesthood Shantam types are destroying, will continue to be the destroyers of Osho’s work.