The Falling was Endless – Osho
The Year before Enlightenment:
This extract is taken from “The Sound of Running Water” the early Pune one biography of Osho.
The text of the “The Sound of Running Water” introduces this extract with the words
“Osho was on his own without a Master to guide him”
My condition was one of utter darkness. It was if I had fallen into a deep dark well. In those days I had many times dreamt that I was falling and falling and going deeper into a bottomless well. And many times I awakened from a dream full of persperation and , sweating profusely, because the falling was endless without any ground or place anywhere to rest my feet.
Except for darkness and falling nothing else remained, but slowly I accepted even that condition. Many times I thought that I might agree with someone, I might have held on to something. I might have accepted some answer, but that did not suit my nature. I was never able to accept anyone else’s thoughts.
The approved photobiography text then says
“As he began to lose the links with both mind and body he hit upon some strange and often bizarre methods of remaining conscious, sane and even of keeping alive”
Osho says: “For one year continuously it was difficult even to keep myself alive. Just to keep myself alive was a very difficult thing because all appetite had disappeared. Days would pass and I would not feel any hunger; days would pass and I would not feel any thirst. I had to force myself to eat, force myself to drink. The body was so non-existential that I had to hurt myself to feel that I was still in the body. I had to knock my head against the wall to feel whether my head was still there or not. Only when it hurt would I be a little in the body.
Every morning and every evening I would run for five to eight miles. People used to think that I was mad. Why was I running so much? Sixteen miles a day! it was just to free myself, to feel that I still was, not to lose contact with myself – just to wait until my eyes became attuned to the new that was happening.
And I had to keep myself close to myself. I would not talk to anybody because everything had become so inconsistent that even to formulate one sentence was difficult. In the middle of the sentence I would forget what I was saying; in the middle of the way I would forget where I was going. Then i would have to come back. I would read a book, I would read 50 pages, and then suddenly I would remember “What am I reading? I dont remember at all”. My situation was such.
Osho during the year he said of himself he was in utter darkness
….. For one year it persisted. I would simply lie on the floor and look at the ceiling and count from one to a hundred then back from hundred to one. Just to remain capable of counting was at least something. Again and again I would forget. It took one year for me to gain a focus again, to have a perspective.
For those interested in this period it would not be complete without mention of Osho’s interaction with conventional medicine.
As Osho’s condition worsened, his outward manner was strange and his family were very alarmed. His father took him from Doctor to Doctor, though Osho told him that no medicines would help.
Osho says
“I was also taken to a vaidaya, to a physician. In fact, I was taken to many Doctors and to many physicians but only one ayurvedic vaidya told my father, “He is not ill, don’t waste your time”.
Of course, my family were dragging me from one place to another, and many people would give me medicines and I would tell my father, “Why are you worried? I am prefectly okay”. But nobody used to believe me, they would say, ‘You keep quiet. You just take the medicine. What is wrong with it?’ So I used to take all sorts of medicine.
That one vaidaya was a man of insight. His name was Pundit Bhaigirat Prasad, That old man is gone, but he was a rare man of insight.
He looked at me and he said, “He is not ill”. And he started crying and he said, “I have been searching for this state myself. He is fortunate. I myself have missed in this life. Don’t take him to anybody. He is reaching home.” And he cried tears of happiness.”
He looks well rough in the right hand pic.
I wonder what the diagnoses of the various doctors were and what the medicines prescribed were. He says he took all the medicines.
Here is a list of drugs that were prescribed for various behavioural disorders before anti-psychotics were invented in the early 50s:
Opium
Bromides
Barbiturates
Benzedrine
Amphetamine
Lithium
Hysocine
Paraldehyde
Thyroxine
ECT
Scary!
Not scary, frank.
Osho said: “So I used to take all sorts of medicine.” That does not mean “I took all the medicines.” In fact, “sorts of medicine” could refer to medicines from different traditions: homeopathic, ayurvedic, western, etc.
Also, someone could take “all sorts of medicine” for headache. Naproxen sodium recommended by one doctor. Tylenol recommended by another doctor. Aleve recommended by another doctor. Those are ‘all sorts of analgesics.’ But that does not mean the person has taken ‘all the medicines’ available for headaches (not even all the NSAIDS). Just those few prescribed by doctors.
My point is by listing all those drugs, without any evidence that Osho even took a single one of them (or in what dosage, or for what duration), it does seem like you are intending to scare. Unless you present some evidence, it is not really scary.
Then, at the end of your list, you put ECT. As if there was a scary possibilty that Osho had been zapped. Again, presented with no evidence Osho ever underwent ECT.
Remember, we are talking about 1952. The first article about ECT to appear in the Journal of the Indian Medical Association was in 1962. Until the 60s ECT was not possible except in hospitals in the larger Indian cities. (Delhi had a population of 1,391,000 in 1950). Osho was in the more rural area of Jabalpur (population 251,000 in 1950). ECT would not even have been a possibility where Osho lived in 1952.
(We are actually talking about 1950/51 when Osho was 19/20 odd).
In Osho’s case, one can consider it a great blessing that mainstream anti-psychotics, as now used, were not around then. They are terrifying and people end up being zombies for decades in the wake of a single psychotic episode. The daily intake of such drugs also leads to some severe physical side effects in some people.
‘Managing” psychosis is the major preoccupation, but as Osho and others, who have gone through such dark nights of the soul – without such interventions – prove, one can go through them, and emerge the other side. Being made a zombie for years seems a very violent manner of dealing with such mental illness, but very sadly it is now routinely done.
I am reminded of meeting a female Bengali mystic, whilst in India, who was travelling on her own.
A bit of a sufi/fakir, she would dance in the streets wildly, and sing Islamic songs passionately.
When she spoke it was difficult to understand her, she was speaking gibberish in about five different languages, including English, Bengali and Urdu!
But I felt blessed to smoke cigarettes with her and share her company.
In the West, this woman would no doubt be treated as if she should be in a mental hospital, but in India the Kashmiri shopkeepers were inviting her into their shops and asking her to sing her songs.
Here, she was ‘masti’, or divinely intoxicated, divinely mad.
One who is half in/out of the mind.
From the Osho Biography text at Oshoworld:
“I was staying in Patna in 1960 and I was suffering from a migraine. I had suffered from migraine since my enlightenment; I had never suffered before. And the migraine is in only half of the mind; it is the active part of the mind that has it. If the active mind loses contact with the inactive mind, then it goes on working but it has no time to rest.
Because I was staying in the house of a doctor and he was very concerned that this was a terrible migraine, and it was really very strong. I could not open my eyes, it was so painful.
The whole day I would simply lie down with a wet towel around my head. But it was not a help — just to pass the time…And it remained with me for twenty-one days exactly when it came. And it came at least four times a year, so it was wasting too much time.
The doctor gave me some sleeping pills. He said, “At least in the night you will have a good sleep; otherwise this migraine continues twenty-four hours a day.” Usually, a migraine does not continue for twenty-four hours; ordinarily, migraine starts at sunrise and disappears by sunset, because it is only in the active part. As you drop out of activity, and the world starts cooling down and you are preparing for sleep, the migraine disappears.
But that was not the case with me – it continued for twenty-four hours – so I said, “There is no harm in trying.” And it really helped: I could sleep, after many years, for the first time. I don’t actually know what the sleeping pills did chemically, but one thing I am certain about – which the chemist may not know: it made it possible again for the active mind to be connected with the inactive mind.
I remained a watcher, something in me remained awake, but only a small flame of awakening; otherwise everything went into sleep. My feeling was that the sleeping pill helped to make a contact with the non-active mind, which I had lost completely.
It was just this doctor who, feeling so much for me, said, “The whole day you are in trouble so much; at least for the night, take a good dose and go to sleep.”
But the strange effect was that I went to sleep and the next morning there was no migraine. He was also surprised. This was strange; these were only sleeping pills, they were not meant for migraine. And for migraine I had taken all kinds of medicine — nothing helped.
I had one famous doctor in Jabalpur, Dr. Barat, a Bengali doctor, but the most famous physician in that part of the country. He was the president of the Rotary Club; that’s how I came to know him, because he requested me to address the Rotary Club.
So he had come to my house and taken me in his car, and had listened to me for the first time in the Rotary Club, and became very deeply interested in me. He used to come to see me once in a while. He was reading books I had suggested to him because he wanted to read something about Zen, something about Tibetan mysticism, something about Sufism, something about Hassidism — the things that I had been talking about to him.
So he came to the point of knowing about Bardo. He said, “What is Bardo?”
I said, “I will come to your clinic and give you a try.”
He said, “What do you mean, you will give me a try?”
I said, “In fact, it is just the opposite. But let me come to your clinic.”
So I went to his clinic and I told him, “Give me the chloroform.”
He said, “What?”
I said, “You just give me the chloroform, and I will go on repeating: one, two, three, four, five…and you just listen at what number I stop. And when I come back, when you remove the chloroform mask, just listen to me. I will start counting at the same number where I had stopped, in reverse order.”
He was a little worried. First he said, “Now we have stopped using chloroform.”
I said, “You will have to do it if you want to understand Bardo.”
He said, “But it is dangerous.”
I said, “Don’t be worried, it is not dangerous.”
So I persuaded him. He put me under the mask and I started repeating the numbers: one, two, three…And I was watching inside that my voice was becoming slower and slower and slower, and that he was putting his ear close to my mouth to hear the last — it was nine. After that I could not speak, the body was completely paralyzed, my lips wouldn’t move.
After ten minutes he removed the mask and he waited. As I became capable of moving my lips, he heard: “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.” And as I was coming in the reverse order, my voice was becoming clearer and clearer. By the time I reached one, I was back.
I said, “This is Bardo. When you are dying, if you can manage by yourself, good; otherwise call me. Then I will give you the idea where to go, what kind of womb to find, what kind of parents will give you freedom, what kind of atmosphere to look for where soon you will become intelligent and will not remain retarded — the idea of becoming a Gautam Buddha, the idea of becoming enlightened.”
But he was still alive when I left Jabalpur in 1970, so I don’t know what happened to the fellow. He was old, most probably he is dead and is born somewhere. And I don’t think he was capable of creating the whole program for the new journey. Bardo is programming your whole journey.
Samarpan,
You are right,I don’t have any `evidence’.
That is why I wrote:
“I wonder what the diagnoses of the various doctors were and what the medicines prescribed were.”
However, your mention of headaches reminded me of the above passage that I had read from Osho`s `biography`, where he does seem to have taken one of the aforementioned drugs.
Big P,
I totally agree about anti-psychotics. And I speak up from recent personal close-up experience of people close to me chemically coshed in mental hospitals and battles with doctors especially ‘specialists’ who refuse to accept the harm those poisons do.
Two things about my initial post:
1/ Osho`s drug-taking and the reasons for it seem to be highly idiosyncratic, to say the least.
2/ I am also glad Osho couldn’t have been given anti-psychotics and ECT as he certainly would have been had he been in the West then and quite possibly now also.
And I wouldn`t wish it on anyone to be prescribed any of the drugs I listed in the bizarre belief that they were `medicine`.
Shanti, when I travelled widely in India, I also found the acceptance of craziness by regular people – not only of religious crazies, but everyday crazies (if there is such a thing) – to be impressive. I hope that modernisation does not destroy that.
Nice Post, Frank.
I worked for some years with some poor souls who were chemically coshed – it just ain’t right.
Good if you reference these quotes from Osho, Frank.
The best I can do is to say google ‘Osho’s experience with medicine and miracles’. Then it comes right up in a section in the Oshoworld website called `biography`.
I think it is an online version of ‘Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic’. Which is all bits of Osho talking about his life, cobbled into an “autobiography”.
“Osho was on his own without a Master to guide him”
Maybe he had transpired from the silence of the wise he had met earlier or he had enough inner guidance on his own to pass through this darkness.
Thanks, Kavita.
Yes, this sentence appears in the ‘The Sound of Running Water’. I found it odd when I first read it in the late seventies.
Osho had met some people by then whom he rated as teachers and with whom he had ‘sat’. The implication of such a statement is that it is easier to ‘go through’ such dark nights of the soul if a Master is holding one’s hand. I think I would agree. Osho’s father was not a Master, but clearly he was a little wiser than most, and seems to have done quite a lot to try and help and support his son during that period.
Yes, ‘sat’ is the word.
Parmartha says:
“The implication of such a statement is that it is easier to ‘go through’ such dark nights of the soul if a Master is holding one’s hand. I think I would agree. Osho’s father was not a Master, but clearly he was a little wiser than most, and seems to have done quite a lot to try and help and support his son during that period.”
My experience is that the Real Master is not a physical entity at all but nevertheless there is a kind of protection created naturally (in the form of a father in Osho’s case).
One thing missed here, of course, is that Osho was also not part of any sangha either.
I know how supportive the sangha (commune) could be at an individual level if oth’rs felt one was ‘going through some stuff’. Support from those who might have at least some insight into the dissolution of the ego is obviously much more valuable than from a conventional carer, however well-meaning and compassionate, and of course this was often a two-way thing.
Thanx, Parmartha, for reminding me about the Sangha. I am grateful for having this/that kind of priceless support, created through a once physical Master, Osho, which continues to support, since I think & feel my dark night is not yet over.
“Support from those who might have at least some insight into the dissolution of the ego”
Osho had the best sangha possible surrounding him (everywhere he lived, from the 1940s onward), providing him with descriptions of and insight into the dark night of the soul.
Osho also had two masters. He frequently visited and sat with them. Both of them were supportive and both of them, independently, recognized Osho’s enlightenment. The universe provides. Osho was not alone.
“Both of them were supportive and both of them, independently, recognized Osho’s enlightenment.”
According to who?
This is just a tautology, Samarpan. Osho, you, me and everybody else in retrospect might say the things that happened to us that lead up to the present moment were the right ingredients for what follows.
It seems to me, in reading the biographies and the autobiography, that Osho had very few fellow-spirits around him, especially in the Jabalpur period, who might have held his head above the water.
Other commentators might say it was just a matter of good luck that Osho did not become like the traditional Indian masts, like many others who got lost in their wall of darkness.
Parmartha: “(We are actually talking about 1950/51 when Osho was 19/20 odd).”
Osho’s enlightenment happened at 2 a.m., March 21st, 1953 when he was twenty-one years old and was majoring in philosophy at D. N. Jain College in Jabalpur.
The year before enlightenment would be 1952, not 1950/51.
Perfectly correct, Samarpan!
In mighty Bhorat, trains arrive 24 or 36 hours late, but the arrival of enlightenment happens at completely correct time!
In fact, I checked Akashic records and fortunately, cosmic station master was there in astral body with stopwatch and Osho in fact fell from tree at 1.58 and actual moment of slipping into the Void was 2.01am!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
“Osho had the best sangha possible surrounding him (everywhere he lived, from the 1940s onward), providing him with descriptions of and insight into the dark night of the soul.”
Samarpan, thank you for including the “possible surrounding him” as a sangha. Why do you not include the nine-odd years before that? Only if it’s ok with you to share.
Thank you, Frank, for your 4 April, 2015 at 11:28 pm sharing.
“Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
FOUR QUARTETS
T.S. Eliot
http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/1-norton.htm
Medieval music – Ma fin est mon commencement by Machaut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHGA8SNWJrc
”Dance, Lalla, with nothing on but air.
Sing, Lalla,wearing the sky.
Look at this glowing day!
What clothes could be so beautiful, or more sacred? ”
From Coleman Barks translations : http://www.scribd.com/doc/54317629/Lalla-Naked-Song
on the Lal Vakh poetry of Lalishwari..
(Scribd is for users who upload a file to download a file for free,or, without uploading by payment.The extract there is available for viewing only. I am making no recommendation or suggestion of downloading the book from the link, of course. The book may be purchased elsewhere.)
and.. Last night 4 April in the UK was a full moon, on Easter Sat/ Sunday…So…
At The End Of a Crazy-Moon Night, by Lalleshwari
At the end of a crazy-moon night
the love of God rose.
I said, “It’s me, Lalla.”
The Beloved woke.
We became That,
and the lake is crystal-clear.”
Nice Coleman Barks translation, Martyn.
But I sometimes feel the poems are his, not those he translates.
“Nice Coleman Barks translation, Martyn.
But I sometimes feel the poems are his, not those he translates.”
“…as when stumped by the density
of our own selfie, imaged
and encased in routine sensation
of a well padded-up soul
Awaiting
the call of
‘Howzaaatt?’
to be bowled out and over
whilst the etenal jumpered umpire of fair awareness
stares
no digit raised
no lbw,
on mirrored iphoned self or i-pad
but instead returns enthusiasm to crease
and to dejected slump of chin on chest.
Crowd voices roar disbelief.
Not out, still in.
Better luck next time.”
Translated by Fred Trueman Barks
Dear Friends,
Here is the picture of The Tree where Osho achieved his enlightenment.
Have a Darshan.
If you feel like, use it as a computer screensaver.
Kavita: “Why do you not include the nine-odd years before that?”
Because in those first nine years Osho had not yet started to gather his sangha. The sangha I am talking about are all the saints, sages, masters and mystics that Osho came to know through books. Osho lived with them until his death, always moving his personal library with him wherever he lived.
From age 10 in 1942, Osho found lots of bibliographic inspiration. Osho was the youngest member ever to join the public library in Gadarwara. He got family members to join and check out books for him to read. He started reading magazines and taking out books from the library at age ten in 1942. By the time Osho was a teenager he had read all 3,000 books in Gadarwara Public Library (Sarvajanik Pustkalaya). (Osho Source Book, p. 91)
Osho later dedicated discourses (published as ‘Notes of a Madman’) to speak of those very special beings in his gathered bibliographic sangha.
“By the time Osho was a teenager he had read all 3,000 books in Gadarwara Public Library (Sarvajanik Pustkalaya).”
According to whom? Osho was a great story-teller and as any story-teller will tell you there is nothing wrong with exaggeration if it makes the story more interesting. Osho, being very aware of this, was, I believe, prone to exaggeration when telling his stories, particularly in relation to himself and his golden childhood.
It all makes good reading, but anyone who takes it as God’s honest truth is a fool. I find the need of people to make Osho out to be special on every conceivable level to be pathetic, and over time will create a myth that has very little to actually do with Osho the man.
By the time Osho was 13 he had read all 3,000 books in Gadarwara Public Library. Do your arithmetic. If you believe that nonsense you will believe anything.
I suspect Osho felt like me whenever I go into the Avalon Healing Cafe, Bookshop and Seekers’ Convalescent Centre and stand in front of all their self-help books, of which I have only read the back cover of one; I truly feel they have become as one by the end of the first sentence.
I’ve seen how small ants can miraculously lift and carry leaves and objects that are many times their own body size.
It may be that the young Osho had this ability, although he was relatively small, to read the contents of large shelves and thousands of titles of different books in a huge library very quickly, keep it in his head and then produce it later in the form of parables for our spiritual growth during lecture.
I tend to agree with Lokesh on this, that it’s all too easy, and a perhaps dangerously seductive process as well, to create sheer myth from the bare, uncorroborated details of a dead master’s (or a dead anyone’s for that matter) early life.
There are a number of such instances, concerning Mohammed, Jesus and Sai Baba, for example, where followers and would-be and actual priests have made similarly outrageous claims. In Osho’s case, we know enough of his tendency to tell a few ‘porkies’ to an often credulous audience, when it suited him, to view such tales with a degree of scepticism.
Anyway, it’s all pretty pointless speculation, with nothing to do with what being a ‘disciple’ is all about. All too easy to slip into in the absence of the living master, and unfortunately one of the ways in which a human being can become mythologised into the almost ‘superhuman’ founder of yet another, ultimately doomed-to-degenerate ‘religion’, or master-worshipping cult.
SD, I am just wondering, if one/you cannot trust the once living master (not his words) how can you trust a living master now or are you saying there is no need for trust at all?
Far simpler, Kavita, I’m only saying one can’t necessarily take every single external detail Osho said happened in his life to be 100% true. Don’t you realise yet that he fairly often ‘embroidered’ the truth in his anecdotes?
Internal matters would be another case entirely, of course, although one still has to judge/evaluate/decide, by looking inside at one’s own experience whether something he (or any other master) recommends actually applies to oneself, whether it’s appropriate or not. Because, for a start, he can’t ‘do it’ or ‘be it’ for you, can he?
Basically, being with a master doesn’t imply one has to renounce or devalue one’s common sense or discrimination based on rigorously honest self-examination. Quite the opposite, I’d have thought.
“Far simpler, Kavita, I’m only saying one can’t necessarily take every single external detail Osho said happened in his life to be 100% true. Don’t you realise yet that he fairly often ‘embroidered’ the truth in his anecdotes?”
Yes, in fact I don’t take every single external detail he said, I am sure he knew that for himself. And I do think his embroidery of words was his bait & it has done the needful.
“Internal matters would be another case entirely, of course, although one still has to judge/evaluate/decide, by looking inside at one’s own experience whether something he (or any other master) recommends actually applies to oneself, whether it’s appropriate or not. Because, for a start, he can’t ‘do it’ or ‘be it’ for you, can he?”
This too is my experience, that I cannot go by anyone’s (including any master & you) experience.
Thank you.
http://sannyasnews.org/now/now/files/bpfb/2264_0-47942400-1423240463_osho-colour-3.jpg
Shanti, I’ll bet you were never much good at arithmetic at school. Besides, such a libary’s shelves were probably home to a lot of books that would have served a better purpose if employed to start a fire to cook chappatis on. Although ‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’ probably left a strong impression on the young Osho’s mind before he shifted into the no-mind department.
That’s right, Lokesh, some of those books sure would be better off being used to light fires and cook chappattis with.
And those kind of books have another use, they can also be used as toilet paper too.
I have found the Jehovah’s Witness magazine, ‘Watchtower’, very usefull for this purpose.
Thank you, Samarpan, for shedding light on this significant aspect.
Parmartha: “This is just a tautology, Samarpan. Osho, you, me and everybody else in retrospect might say the things that happened to us that lead up to the present moment were the right ingredients for what follows.”
Parmartha, we have an historical record. When I read Heidegger, or Plato, or Aquinas, I am not thinking they “in retrospect might say the things that happened to us that lead up to the present moment were the right ingredients for what follows.”
I especially do not think that in the case of Osho. There were people who accompanied Osho before 1974 and I have no reason to doubt the record they left about their life experiences with Osho. Do you?
I was wrong, Parmartha, in saying Osho had two masters. Osho had three Indian masters: Masto Baba, Magga Baba, and Pagal Baba. The first two recognized Osho’s enlightenment (Pagal Baba died before Osho became enlightened).
“After Osho’s enlightenment Masto Baba was the first to use the epithet ‘Bhagwan’ which was later to be accepted by Osho from his early days in Bombay. After showing their reverence to Osho their supportive mission for his spiritual growth had come to its ultimate end and accordingly they [Masto Baba and Magga Baba] could now both leave for the Himalayas.” (Pierre Evald, Osho Source Book, 2014, p.145).
Ma Anand Urmila also provides testimony from the early days. Urmila says:
“Nani was waiting at the platform for his train to arrive at the railway station and she had already been well informed by Shambhu Babu on what had happened to her grandchild. To Nani, Osho looked completely changed, like something unprecedented had happened to him. Remembering the forecast by the astrologer from Kashi, she recognized his enlightenment and touching his feet, she became his first disciple on that very platform at Gadarwara RLY, as Osho later recalled her spiritual state:
‘This is the first time I have told anybody. My Nani was my first disciple. I taught her the way. My way is simple: to be silent, to experience in one’s self that which is always the observer, and never the observed; to know the knower, and forget the known…Nani was not only my first disciple, she was my first enlightened disciple too, and she became enlightened long before I started initiating people into sannyas. She was never a sannyasin.’ ”
(Ma Anand Urmila (2007) ‘Osho, Call of the Ocean, Pictorial Glimpses of Osho’s Life, 1931 to 1990)’, p.132).
Parmartha, do you treat Socrates and other pre-Socratics the same way? Or do you trust the record that comes from what was written (often fragments) and corroboration from those who were there? Please give Osho the same respect.
We have many different sources that corroborate Osho’s enlightenment. We were not there, but there were people who were there, and they have left evidence.
Parmartha, it is easy to be a skeptic and ask “how do you know that?” and then repeat “how do you know that?” ad infinitum. It is more difficult to actually provide counter-evidence to support a claim of “tautology” or disprove the historical record.
As the exchange here once again is deterioating into some ´catch as catch can’ algorhythmic-wise (historical data?), I´d like to thank Lokesh, Parmartha and Satyadeva for reminders here of some faint memory of human common sense, which may be lurking in some corner.
Reminders about that (common sense) is more than needed.
Otherwise, maybe Prem Martyn reminds us all that one cannot beat an alogorhythm machine, and although his triumph-roar comes quite poetically along, I wouldn´t count a bit on its humanness in terms of action(s) – instinctively.
Too much egg-o-mania after all; yet I know it´s Easter – party-time.
And I also know that the chicken yards, also those with cocks in it, nowadays are more industrial-biotech administrated than anything.
Design though of manipulation in ´Easter party-games´ for infotainment are not as nourishing as they look.
And Samarpan, contributions sometimes are by their very strong intentional approach also not as informative as they look.
That´s my impression and expression of my impression.
Madhu
P.S:
Sun is shining, all kinds of weather, but just now the sky is blue
and cloud watching is in progress.
Maddy says, “And Samarpan, contributions sometimes are by their very strong intentional approach also not as informative as they look.”
An understatement. If you ask me, Sammy is new to the game, or why else would he bother with all the irrelevant shite that he does? If he were more familiar with Osho he would not bother with trivia like “Osho’s enlightenment happened at 2 a.m., March 21st, 1953 when he was twenty-one years old and was majoring in philosophy at D. N. Jain College in Jabalpur.”
Knowing such trivia or googling it and then quoting it really makes no differance to anything of importance. Osho represented a unique vibration. You either experienced it or you did not and it shows.
Lokesh: “According to whom?…Do your arithmetic.”
Lokesh, when a book was checked out from the public library, someone signs his/her signature. I am not relying on Osho’s storytelling here. Osho and his family members checked out books for Osho to read. 3,000 books read is probably a conservative estimate, as Osho also had a private library in his house.
Please note that the time period of public library use shows Osho’s signature on books taken out between December 1942 and November 1951 (when he was a teenager). It is not, as you implied, that Osho stopped reading books the day he became a teenager at age 13. If you start with faulty assumptions, Lokesh, your arithmetic will be flawed.
You ask “According to whom?”. The answer is according to the librarian and according to those who have confirmed the facts through research by actually going to Osho’s first public library:
“It is a fact – not that I have been told about this, I have myself seen the names mentioned in the pages of the registers – the columns for the members name bear as four names viz, Rajneesh Chandra Mohan, Shikhar Chand Jain, Vijay Kumar and Aklank. Against these names are mentioned the names of those who issued the books and then of those who deposited them and it bears the signature of Rajneesh alone. This fact alone goes to prove that Osho got the family members enrolled to have more and more books to study. All these registers have been safely preserved. I have kept them separately and safely to ensure that the librarian has an easy access to them in case one is interested in seeing Osho’s signature etc in 1942.” (Ageh Bharti (2012) Beloved Osho, p. 59)
You and Satyadeva make another assumption: that I am making it seem as if Osho has superhuman powers. In my case, nothing could be further from the truth. Some public library users today, like Louise Brown, read 12 books per week. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5932159/Britains-most-avid-reader-91-has-borrowed-25000-library-books.html
Osho checked out books from the public library for nine years (1942-1951), so now I am going to do the arithmetic, live on SN. Watch carefully. First, I am going to use multiplication:
9 years times 52 weeks equals 468 weeks.
Now, again watch carefully, as I am going to do division: 3,000 books divided by 468 weeks equals 6.4102 books per week, less than one book a day and half the number of books that little old lady in Britain, Louise Brown, reads today. No superpowers needed.
The arithmetic checks out, Lokesh. Although I would say 3,000 is a conservative number, as Osho was also developing his own personal library during that time, in addition to reading books from the public library.
The answer to your question “According to whom?” is primary source data in the form of signatures on library cards carefully preserved.
If you refuse to believe both public arithmetic and primary source data, that is your choice. That choice does discredit you, as most rational persons accept such data as reliable evidence.
Samarpan, you misled the readers in your original post by one of the most utterly appalling misuses of language it’s ever been my misfortune to have come across in this Court.
Now watch carefully, please, I’m going to quote your very words and then tell you exactly what they mean:
“By the time Osho was a teenager he had read all 3,000 books in Gadarwara Public Library (Sarvajanik Pustkalaya).”
“By the time Osho was a teenager” actually means ‘by the time he’d reached the age of 13′, does it not?
So, while there might well be convincing evidence of his having borrowed vast numbers of books from his local library from age 11 to 19, your earlier statement, according to the same evidence, referred to only 2 years of his childhood, age 11 – 13. And, voracious reader though he was, no one – not even you, Samarpan – is going to convince me he was capable of getting through 1500 books per year at that age.
Keep watching now, please, I’m going to do some division…
In order to calculate the average number of books the pre-teenage Mohan Rajneesh would have had to have read each week of those two years, one has to divide the average number of books read per year by the number of weeks in a year:
1500 divided by 52 makes 28.85 books (to 2 dp) per week.
28.85 divided by 7 makes an average of well over 4 books per day.
Mind your language in future!
My Lord, I rest my case.
Yahoo!
SD, the jury concludes that the defendant is not only tonto but also as guilty as sin.
Sammy, you say, “It is not, as you implied, that Osho stopped reading books the day he became a teenager at age 13. If you start with faulty assumptions, Lokesh, your arithmetic will be flawed.”
And you said before that, “By the time Osho was a teenager he had read all 3,000 books in Gadarwara Public Library (Sarvajanik Pustkalaya).”
One becomes a teenager at 13.
Just a moment, Samarpan, there is a little misunderstanding here.
You wrote: “by the time Osho was a teenager he had read 3000 books.”
Which means by the time he was 13.
Now you are arguing that he read 3000 books whilst he was a teenager (42-51).
The difference between “by the time ” and “whilst” in this case is the difference between 13 and 19 years old.
So that means you and Lokesh are arguing at cross-purposes due to your first statement which you now also disagree with!
Frank and Satyadeva, if you read carefully this is what you are concerned about:
“By the time Osho was a teenager he had read all 3,000 books in Gadarwara Public Library (Sarvajanik Pustkalaya). (Osho Source Book, p. 91)”
You are both right. I plead guilty to using “by” instead of “during.” It should be “During the time Osho was a teenager…”
My subsequent calculations were clearly stated as being from 1942 to 1951, Osho’s teenage years. I should have made that more clear in the original post.
Nevertheless, the arithmetic checks out for the time period of 1942 to 1951, when we actually have Osho’s signatures on library registers. And no superhuman powers were needed. Give Osho the respect he is due.
Samarpan,
This is the correct quote from Osho Source Book p.91:
“He started reading magazines and taking out books from the library at age ten in 1942, and the whole stock of 3000 books in Gadarwara Public Library (Sarvajanik Pustkalaya) had been read by Osho when he was a teenager.”
I`m curious, how did you come to make a misquote that changed the meaning?
I have read the book. It is fascinating.
It might be better if you just recommend the book to SN readers, so people can make their own enquiries (or not, as the case may be) instead of misquoting it whilst claiming insider knowledge and then becoming all prickly and priestly about others taking exception to what in all fairness sounded like a bonkers claim?
Maybe write a review of the book and post it on here or Oshonews if you are passionate about it?
“If you refuse to believe both public arithmetic and primary source data, that is your choice. That choice does discredit you, as most rational persons accept such data as reliable evidence.” (Samarpan 6 April, 2015 at 6:15 pm)
Samarpan,
May I ask you, what is your intention? Or better said, what do you want and strive for?
For yourself? And/or for us, onlookers or contributors in the Sannyas chat?
You know, this Easter Monday, I listened to an Israeli author, Amos Oz, and he said in an interview about his new book, ‘Judas’, that we all are living in that new century where all kinds of wars are happening, and that we all have but one thoroughly massive global problem to deal with, and that that is…
Fanaticism – Fanaticism, in and on all areas (religion, money, power etc. etc,).
In whatsoever form and disguise this kind of hungry ghost may appear. Never to be satisfied.
Leaving not only streams of human bloodshed behind, but also destroying Souls, as the latter is not that easy to recognize.
Madhu
And what is fanaticism?
‘Just’ rigid, even ‘fossilised’ sets of self-righteously and self-defensively held extremist beliefs and values that promise radical benefits for their adherents, the driving force and ultimate sources of which are what might be termed, most euphemistically, ‘unexamined’ negative emotion, rooted in actual and perceived grievances, both of the past and present, that have given rise to chronic resentment, murderous anger, hatred etc. etc., together with a hope for some sort of ultimate personal and communal ‘liberation’.
Not sure if Samarpan actually fits this picture, to be fair, Madhu. Mind you, my above, more or less ‘instant’ definition might well lack one or two essentials, but it’s too late at night to bother now.
Also, fanaticism would seem to be a response – even a ‘survival’ response – to feelings of personal and/or collective insecurity, not least of which is a sense of powerlessness.
Frank, thank you for citing the quote on p. 91 directly and accurately. I messed up a paraphrase and should not have used quote marks. Thank you for clearing it up.
When I was last in Pune, I decided to do a bibliomantic experiment with Osho`s library on the way to the Samadhi.
Bibliomancy is when you open a book at random and take the first thing that your eyes fall upon as significant to your present state. I am sure most of the folks on Sannyas News have done such a thing with Osho or other books.
I decided to do something similar with the book-titles in Osho’s library that are on the way to Samadhi.
I went into the section with my eyes closed, shook my head around a bit like shaking a dice in a cup, and when my eyes opened they fell straight onto the title of the book, ‘How To Murder Your Wife’. It is an American 1950s comedy that I later found out was also made into a film starring Jack Lemmon and Terry Thomas.
Pierre Evald`s work is interesting, but nowhere does he mention that Osho also had American screwball comedy books in his library!
I e-mailed Pierre Evald to ask him for a list of books in Osho`s library but he replied that he could not supply it.
People can bang on all they like about Heidegger, Plato, Aquinas and all the rest of them. But if they were just used for bog rolls it would be no great loss.
But without the carnivalesque and grotesque of Rabelais, Cervantes and onwards the world really would have been a dead end.
Just my tuppence worth.
Yes, Frank, I am sure we’ve all done that, bibliomancy (new word to my vocabulary). Now, tell us if the title of the book helped you, if the bibliomancy worked…if you read the book or not, if you dismissed it. Elaborate a bit, please. Cheers!
Tan,
In the spirit of you fooling around here with the boys…otherwise clearly misnamed as Tantricking…you can reach Frank at his daytime job somewhere at the BBC…
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/bbc-accidentally-calls-the-large-hadron-collider-a-hardoncollider–gyQltk9ZkW
PM, Hardon Collider…My God, I am not a physicist, but Higgs boson, bottomunium – really, I could get physical! Ann Summers will be out of business. XX
Tan.
I would say that the bibliomancy worked.
It didn`t mean I had to go out and kill my wife, or that Osho did, or anything like that.
It`s a bit more subtle than that.
Many thanks for sharing, Frank, it helped me many times as well, like you said, in a very subtle way. Cheers!
Madhu: “May I ask you, what is your intention?”
Just enjoying the repartee in response to SN posts about Osho and sannyasins.
Well, Satyadeva, I didn´t ask you questions, but you felt ´called´?
Reading your contributions, more or less my experience that you like to dissect or degrade others in a psychoanalyst´s (expert´s) way.
To make that clear, that was not my intention here, addressing Samarpan yesterday evening.
By the way, the book, Amos Oz wrote, is more than a a tremendous good read.
It’s very contemporary stuff. For anybody interested in peace, anybody; also psychological ´experts´.
It´s looking deep, deep down in very fatal collective unconsciousness ruling our ´walking a talk´, ´talking a walk´.
Madhu
Good, Madhu, so Samarpan can sleep in faeces – sorry, pieces – er, I mean peace, after all…
Btw, I’m still working – most ‘expertly’, but of course – on both your and Herr Shantam Prem’s psychological profiles. Your earlier remarks to me today are a most interesting piece of extra evidence that I’ll be analysing and even meditating on for several weeks, before most carefully integrating them into the main body of work.
I’ll let you know in good time when you’ll be required to attend the statutory 21 days in-depth ‘analytical interview’ process.
Remaining your expert expert, forever Jung,
Yours 101% clinically,
Dr.S.Deva
I am not participating in this discussion, but I try to understand from the perspective of silent and hidden readers. After all, there must be 50 to 100 people who open Sannyasnews regularly. It can not be the blog of 5-10 people who read each other´s posts.
I ask Samarpan, the main contributor of this string:
Please copy one paragraph from the whole discussion, which is uplifting or hilarious or provocative or creates gratitude.
Shantam,
Feeling a little uncomfortable with discussions of the bad side-effects of pharmaceutical psychiatric drugs?
It`s understandable.
Just say `no`, bro.
El Chudo is requesting the impossible because Sammy’s condition is one of utter daarkness.
Judgmental mind lives in darkness.
Sri Sri Lokesha ji Maharaj
To judge that there is something wrong in making a judgement is in itself a product of a judgemental attitude…ironic, isn’t it? It is also very old hat.
You may, Samarpan.
I did not that much ´enjoy a repartee in responses´, as you did or pretended (?) to do yesterday, Samarpan.
And – up to now – I couldn´t and cannot find so much significance in the point, fighting about what number of books have been read – when and where – by the Master.
(If the chat here mirrors sannyasins or Osho in general, I would clearly doubt).
As far as I am concerned, my expression is more like a drop in the ocean of consciousness and sometimes I feel like going for the venture to describe a wave, which I am disappearing into (like a wave-surfing experience).
And as a human, and female, I am looking for contact too, and sharing.
Just about two hours ago, Satyadeva added some other response…about personal and/or collective insecurity.
To stay open, to honestly feel that security is but an illusion, and yet try best to express feelings or thoughts coming up and sharing that, is for me more a virtue than a sense of powerlessness; but we my not agree about that.
And such trying may be of more help to avoid fanaticism than to play the aloof and righteous and ´cool as cool can be´.
That’s all I can respond to your question just now.
Sincerely,
Madhu
Speed reading teen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ygu4qWlmw
Aieeeeeeeeee!!
Madhu: “As far as I am concerned, my expression is more like a drop in the ocean of consciousness and sometimes I feel like going for the venture to describe a wave, which I am disappearing into (like a wave-surfing experience).”
Thank you, Madhu. Maybe we are the ocean of consciousness, indistinguishable really.
A wave-surfing experience is thrilling, but short-lived. Is that what you are saying about our thoughts and emotions? Why are not all the moments equally enjoyable?
I think sharing our thoughts and feelings is a safe thing to do. They are ‘ours’ and, as such, are subjective. No one can challenge them or even experience them in the same way, as they are private. Like when you point out that I might be enjoying or I might just be pretending to enjoy. Is there a difference really? No one knows. Does it even matter? We are just endlessly surfing our waves of thoughts and emotions in our own private worlds, and no one knows anything with certainty.
Although on SN I have learned that some things may have more worth than others: satire, the carnivalesque and the grotesque. But I’m not really certain about that either.
All this uncertainty makes it difficult for me to be a fanatic, a priest, a fitful sleeper. You cannot imagine how terrible it is to live in a condition of utter darkness, where there is nothing uplifting or hilarious or provocative or that creates gratitude.
But as long as we have these thoughts and emotions to share, there will be an ocean of drama, name-dropping, arithmetic, and endless online psychoanalysis. We are the ocean of consciousness, indistinguishable really.
“But as long as we have these thoughts and emotions to share, there will be an ocean of drama, name-dropping, arithmetic, and endless online psychoanalysis.”
As one contemporary spiritual master once said, “Sannyasins are the most emotional people I’ve ever come across.”
Or, put in a rather more downbeat way (preferably heard via headphones)…
https://youtu.be/eEGJOTi6Yw4
“As one contemporary spiritual master once said, ‘Sannyasins are the most emotional people I’ve ever come across.’ ”
Bloody hell, where had that guy been hanging out?
Studying Logic, Sphincter-Tightening and Cold Showers at the Royal Academy of Seriously Stiff Upper Lips?
Well, I hope he gets his rocks off eventually!
Samarpan,
Thank you for your responding and sharing.
You´re asking: “Why are not all the moments equally enjoyable?”
Because, I know we are more than less living in the state of forgetfulness of what we really are. And forgetfulness of this kind is also taught to us from the very start-up. That´s the way it is.
Blessed are those who are able to meet a Presence, a Presence in a body too, who escaped that ´calamity´, or who worked Him or Herself through the vast amount of blindfolds, earplugs as also the fear (and its nightmares) of facing aloneness, or better said, nothingness, in that vast ocean of consciousness.
We are each other’s teachers too, and the drama you spoke of belongs as much to the ocean we talk of, as the pleasant moments.
And I would say, we are very distinguishable/indistinguishable – both.
You can go into a coma – if that happens – and that has nothing to do with disappearing into that which I mean; also a trance-like state is not ‘it’. Nor a drug supply can bring you to oceania-utopia, it just looks like it can – for the time being.
As long as we are here, we are each other’s teaching, I would say.
You taught me (reminded me) today, how in all aloneness is a togetherness. And I bow down to your afternoon sharing.
Other answers I don´t have, also when it seemed so.
Madhu
P.S:
As I said here – a long time ago, I ever loved the Sufi Dance, and I don´t mean the whirling now, but the dance in a circle, exchanging the bowing down to each other, then turning and meeting the next one, bowing to each other again.
Sometimes deep joy in doing this, sometimes very uncomfortable, really.
And the unlearning-learning happens so naturally this way…I loved that – like the gorgeous music too, in which we did let that happen (like a safe place).
P.P.S. (for Samarpan):
“You cannot imagine how terrible it is to live in a condition of utter darkness, where there is nothing uplifting or hilarious or provocative or that creates gratitude.” (Samarpan)
Samarpan, how do you imagine to know this? I mean, to imagine you are the only one to have come across such a state of being?
I’ve met some of these people, including myself: those whose part of their life experience has put them in a position to face torture and abandonment and being treated like a pariah, an outcast or a scapegoat, for example, or if you are taken hostage.
Some Souls survive that, also in the body, some don’t.
Because the latter does not mean automatically to leave the body.
Life – also in such circumstances – is a gift, to be taken care of up to our best capacity in all measures, we came to know.
Few months ago, I had a talk to a former sannyasin friend; he is a musician and in a former time had been enjoying my gratitude for the music that came through him.
Without any hint according to the talk we had had, he asked me. “Do you want to commit suicide?” And my spontaneous answer was “No”.
Only hours later, I really realised how he had treated me in the whole little chat, as we hadn’t met for years.
‘Munich business’.
However, I am still here to respond to a chat called ´Sannyas-and-Friends-of-Sannyas-Chat´.
On a bugged computer.
That´s hilarious and uplifting enough for the moment.
The present moment is all you get – and why not give our best, which is possible under any circumstances?
Rarely – but sometimes – for a bit more than a year, I have been contributing here at SN. I watch my heartbeat when reading a post or posts, or riding the wave of an issue, posts being sent off by sannyas names (mostly), from whatsoever anonymous places, and then rarely, this very special, sweet pain, indescribable though.
Not nostalgia, as some cynics here like to put it.
No – it´s more of this stuff, called ´Samasati’:
“Remember that you are a Buddha.” And the sound of Nivedano´s drums.
An echo-plant in the heart. And don´t need His voice for this anymore (although that would be very beautiful).
I used to come across many of those who offer their skills in Osho News or somewhere else.
Besides the skill of living in very uncomfortable surroundings and under very difficult circumstances, I have no special skills to offer.
Not more, but also not less.
Madhu
Thank you, Madhu. You are right. I cannot imagine other people’s experience of darkness.
I have been through some dark times, like everyone has. I have been kidnapped by guerrillas, held as a “prisoner of war,” and threatened with execution…by people holding AK-47s.
None of the external experiences (before/during/after taking sannyas) have changed my basic inner feeling that life is fundamentally blissful (ananda), no matter what drama is happening on the outside.
“My whole religion is playfulness. This existence is our home: these trees and stars are our brothers and sisters; these oceans and rivers and mountains are our friends.”
Osho, ‘The Rebellious Spirit’
Thank you for sharing, Samarpan.
You must have an unwavering inner connection to what I call TRUST, Trust in LIFE. And in this, you are a Blessed one.
Osho´s compendium about ´The Rebellious Spirit´ is also one of my favourites.
I also loved Him over and over again differentiating between ´rebelliousness´and ´revolution´. A deep Teaching, when He described, why ´revolutions´ so often utterly fail and do so much harm by installing just a new regime, by just replacing the old – with violence and terror.
And talked about ´rebelliousness´ as a very inner quality, not to be messed up with a habitual fighting mood.
When I listened to the latter attentively I felt HOME (with big letters). And imagined being home with the right friends in a Sangha happening.
There are no right and no wrong ´friends´. Apparently. As well as there seems to be no limit to corruption of a truth´, that rang and rings bells in our hearts.
So, I mostly ended – and end – with the old, old Sannyas song:
‘Home is, where the heart is’. And feel our whole understanding about the next song verses had and have to be ´broadened´.
I wish you well. And – have a beautiful day, today, Samarpan.
Madhu
“I have been through some dark times, like everyone has. I have been kidnapped by guerrillas, held as a “prisoner of war,” and threatened with execution…by people holding AK-47s.”
Sounds interesting, but only a taster. How about composing an article and share what you learned from such a terrible life situation?
Seconded!
And Samarpan, what superb raw material for a ‘proper’ short or long story, if you were moved to do it.
But perhaps your story has already been made into a film? I seem to recall something like that shown on tv, or I might have read about it in the papers.
I got mugged by a couple of gyppos in Scunthorpe once,
but that was lightweight.
C`mon Samarpan, let`s hear it….
Oh well, let`s face it…if Samarpan managed to escape a gang of AK47-toting terrorists and maintain his internal bliss, he shouldn`t find it too hard to give a ragtag bunch of spiritual bootboys in baboon costumes on SN the slip….