Some SN people were at this lecture on Sept 26th, 1985 and the following week’s lecturre referenced below. We remember how it took people, and it is true that many felt some kind of relief to be freed from the orange. (Below at CLAP is how Shunyo records and experiences it. )
To be fair, Osho was to say later, traveling underground as it were, suited the times. There had been such bad publicity, and more was to follow, following Osho’s arrest, that going incognito felt not only wise (safety wise), but a relief.
However some felt that Osho had created a double bind over the two weeks, …. and one known to us left the Ranch because of it, because, as he said, no double bind is good, even from an enlightened man.
Many of us Communards , anyhow, did not have any non sannyas clothes! So it was a while before this kicked in. Those rich kids who suddenly brought out their embroidered denim, etc – well maybe Osho had a point that they were “suppressing” their narcissism all the time they were in orange?
SN
(Above Ma Prem Shunyo today, and below the text extracted from her
book: My Diamond Days with Osho)
‘CLAP! now CLAP!!! ‘
During the month that followed Sheela’s exit flight (September/October 1985) Osho talked three times a day (about seven to eight hours) to disciple and journalists. For such a self-acclaimed lazy man He was doing a tremendous amount of “work,” and was obviously getting tired.
When asked by a journalist how was it possible that He did not know everything that was going on, if he was enlightened, Osho replied:
“To be enlightened means I know myself, it does not mean that I know my room is bugged.”
September 26th, 1985. It takes a diamond to cut a diamond, and I recognized that what was coming was going to hurt when in discourse Osho said:
“And today I would like to declare something immensely important – because I feel perhaps this helped Sheela and her people to exploit you, I don’t know whether tomorrow I will be here or not, so it is better to do it while I am here, and make you free from any other possibility of such a fascist regime.”
“That is, from today, you are free to use any color of clothes. If you feel like using red clothes, that is up to you. And this message has to be sent all over the world to all the communes. It will be more beautiful to have all the colors. I had always dreamed of seeing you in all the colors of the rainbow.
Today we claim the rainbow to be our colors.
The second thing: you return your malas – unless you wish otherwise. That is your choice, but it is not a necessity anymore. You return your malas to President Hasya. But if you want to keep it, it is up to you.
The third thing: from now onwards, anybody who wants initiation into sannyas will not be given a mala and will not be told to change to red clothes.
So, we can take over the world more easily!” (From Bondage to Freedom)
These words from Osho had an ominous feel to them, but it was the clapping and cheering that frightened me. It was like a stupid mob; like the clapping that had accompanied Sheela’s meetings. Many people left Rajneesh Mandir very happy and went to buy new color clothes in the boutique. I saw Vivek, we were both wary of the change, and she said to me, “He may disband the commune next.”
Ocotober 8th, 1985, Osho said in discourse:
“…You have been clapping because I have dropped red clothes, malas. And when you clap, you don’t know how it hurts me. That means you have been a hypocrite!”
“Why have you been wearing red clothes if dropping them brings you so much joy? Why have you been wearing the mala? The moment I say, ‘Drop,’ you rejoice. And people rushed to the boutique to change their clothes, they have dropped their malas.
“But you don’t know how much you have wounded me by your clapping and by your changing.”
“Now, I have to say one thing more, and I would like to see whether you have guts to clap or not; that is, now there is no Buddhafield. So if you want enlightenment, you have to work for it individually, the Buddhafield exists no more. You cannot depend on the energy of the Buddhafield to become enlightened.
Now clap as loudly as you can. CLAP!…”
“Now you are completely free: even for enlightenment only you are responsible. And I am completely free from you.”
“You have been behaving like idiots!…”
“And this has given a good chance to see how many people are really intimate with me. If you can drop your malas so easily… Even in my own house there is one sannyasin who immediately changed to blue clothes, with great joy. What does it show? It shows that those red clothes were a burden. She was somehow managing to be in red clothes against her will.
But I don’t want you to do anything against your will.
Now I don’t want even to help you towards your enlightenment against your will. You are absolutely free and responsible for yourself.” (From Bondage to Freedom)
When He shouted “Clap!” it was as though a bomb had exploded and we were all sitting in its fallout, frozen.
This was a very difficult time, Sept/Oct 1985, for ordinary commune sannyasins on the Ranch. This is often missed by those who write their histories and biographies and were not there, or living in protected situations.
Everything was being thrown in the air.
Most of us knew that the National Guard were metaphorically camped over the hill. The fact that Osho had told us we were free to wear “civvies” was important. I remember talking to a friend who knew the geography of the Ranch well, and discussing how we could get to a local road and hitch hike out of there in our civvies, should we find ourselves in need of so doing.
Also every day revealed fresh crimes, etc that those who had been responsible for the temporal affairs of the Ranch had committed.
I cannot say I regret living through that time and remember those lectures Shunyo alludes to, however it certainly tested my sannyas and my sense of survival more than it had been before or since.
As for the double bind mentioned in the string leader, I can see it, but zen masters have been known to create such situations simply to “test” the character, strength and lateral qualities of their disciples.
One enlightened master….
a double bind/zen koan….
10000 disciples….
but how many got the clap?
…”but how many got the clap?”/Frank
May be, Frank, the ones , practicing , to listen to ´the one hand clapping´ ?
However, I feel , it may not be our concern to indulge into a rating who (from the so called others)´got it ´and, who ´not´, and often happening remembering in such moments another string: that ” life is a mystery to be lived instead of a problem to be solved”.
Or then happening often as well the reminder of another ´koan´- like – ´effortless effort´, what , for me, has any Koan´s intrinsic essential energy mixture, according to my own experience.
Guess, we are bound to lifelong practicing the art of tension as relaxation in a dance together , dropping the expectations to get gratifications or rewards.
In rare moments in wonder, not knowing ,but feeling been taken care of; a fabulous to me unknown poet of our own sannyas realms did put it : ´…life takes you on its shoulders…´
(easy to misunderstand, though…)
Yesterday, I entered with my bike a pretty very much crowded stinking underground tube.
In a corner just a few day´s old babe was screaming desperately – so much so – that all stink of the crowd inside mutated to a one pointed awareness and attentiveness.
And out of this then a miracle was born: An intuition of the father of this babe to just put it into his arms and walking all the way through the fully crowded large stinking wobbling tube wagon.
In a minute or so, when he had passed very carefully and attentively our whole lot, the screaming stopped , and a silence fell which was felt by many, if they acknowledged that, or not.
I call that a ´miracle´.
And also a reminder , that we are all interdependent on our trip(s) from here to here in this Existence, in the bodies.
Madhu
Madhu says:
” I feel , it may not be our concern to indulge into a rating who (from the so called others)´got it ´and, who ´not´”
Agreed,it`s a private thing. Nevertheless many sannyasins got the clap. A large percentage,for sure.
I got it.
I still get it,even now.
That kind of transmission affects you for life!
“To be enlightened means I know myself..” Osho
Wise words. No need to say anymore, is there?
“You have been behaving like idiots!…..”
Oh dear! Does not sound very good, does it? Sounds like He was maybe trying to take the heat off Himself, going on the attack in a classic defense movement? Osho’s own charge could be levelled against He Himself, could it not? He in the final analysis was the one responsible for appointing Sheela, wasn’t He?
Osho did actually say at one point that finally “He was responsible” for the Ranch fiasco. I freely admit that that period was a double bind one.
Calling us communards “idiots” and yet also in the end seeing himself as responsible. Well there’s one for a start.
I have often felt that “education” is not a guard against autocracy. Germany pre 1934 was actually in the main quite well educated, yet they voted Hitler in. It is also true that if one looked at the Ranch population of commune sannyasins they were highly educated on the whole, but we were all very slow to question the autocracy, and even notice some of the strange things that were going on.
Shunyo is perfectly correct to say that Osho worked overtime during this period, giving press conferences and lectures daily, amidst everything else he would have been called upon to do. I never felt that Osho’s self description as “a lazy man” fitted over his whole life time, except perhaps the early/middle Ranch period when clearly he switched off from temporal affairs.
Would be interesting to hear how individuals felt when they got the news.
Have a very strong picture in my imagination of a bright sunny Sunday, and being told by an acquaintance who wasn’t a Sannyassin, who had heard about the change indirectly.
Was quite freaked out really, alongside feeling was a challenging and interesting new start, and took me a couple of days to change, start wearing ordinary clothes again. Reactions from all the other sannyassins I knew were very mixed. Some were delighted, but I can think of a couple of individuals who were actually really angry at Osho, and in fact dropped Sannyas because of the change, and pretty much everybody I knew then has dropped Sannyassin, or say they have stopped
I was absolutely shattered after a brief honeymoon phase, and took me months and rising to pull myself together, and I certainly think that at some point I was hanging by a thread really, fighting for psychological survival, although that wasn’t helped by my living situation.
I was on the Ranch at the time. Was on an “exchange” commune scheme, coming from Hamburg, and prior to that Medina.
Good question, Arps. To be honest I was one of the “relieved” ones. I remember going out of the first lecture and heading to find some private space. not so easy on the Ranch! I wasn’t in a celebratory mood as some, but I was street wise enough to know it would make life easier to go around incognito. That had always been my style, and still is! I find most of humanity a bit of a pain, and without much hope. So the old Sufi way of spiritual interface always appealed to me, and still does.
The announcement later about the end of the Buddhafield I found a total shock, and was relieved, when I think very shortly afterwards, Osho said even he did not have the power to close a Budhhafield!
I went to some public burning of Sheela’s book called Rajneeshism and her clothes, etc around this time. They put them in an incinerator that was used to burn bodies! I didn’t actually like that. It felt like it might harbour the kernel of another extremism.
I actually still managed to retain a copy of that book, for historical reference, and it acts as a much better reminder than if it had been burned.
Wearing the mala and red was hugly challenging for, me. (Paranoia inducing actually.) but I had got used to it and missed it it in some ways. I enjoyed being out and about and being able to spot each other a mile off. Fantastic icebreaker.
For year after I would reflect on events from my past and in my imagination I was still dressed in the mala and red, which continued untill about 1997, and in fact when I picture myself now I am wearing a shadowy mala and red mixed up with ordinary clothes.
http://www.thornybleeder.com/index_files/uniforms_and_rituals_costumes_of_identity.html
I have been often wondering about , how Shunyo (and others) could have been spared of ” ominous” feelings about the ranch episode so long (?), and just bind it to the mentioned very few couple of weeks, targeted at this string here now in the chat. They hadn´t be mixing and merging so much with average wor(k)shippers all over the place, I presume.
Or with some of the the bureaucracy aspects….
Anyway, re Arpana´s question: I have had been expelled and brought out of the place by a taxi in an early august ´ night and fog action of this year, after having had several appointments I had to stand alone with the bureaucracy like interrogations because of my resistance to this and that and I have been asked to declare my reasons for this ever again.
The settings of this had been having a kind of Gurdijeff approach on the one hand (as also the deportation as such) and on the other hand, there has been also a climate of respect and dignity in the whole stuff.
May be because one of the Ma´s interrogating me was Yoga Priya, to whom I had been having a very good contact from Pune I and also after;Pune I an integer women, I felt (feel up to nowadays).
Met her later then, when she visited Munic surprisingly ( she was living in Boulder then at His world tour times).
The way of massive cheerings, and clappings mentioned here in this thread string, which I came to know, when seeing the vids in Munic at that time at the TAO centre , had been at that time very stocking for me, as that really revealed -seeable , tangible, what could have been and also was felt underneath the carpet before – and I clearly deny Parmartha , that the ranch episode as such was inhabited by stupid ´sheeps´ all the way.
However, the corruption circus and that, what Satyadeva called a ´deterioration issue´had been going on.
And for me , the experiment of a big challenge , had been going down the drain in a way and in a more continuous way, step by step.
“It takes a diamond to cut a diamond”, Shunyo says, and she knew “it would hurt”.
Well, I would say, it did hurt even before these two weeks.
Deeply.
And I ´d like to say also, that humans in all their frailties and diversities are not made for an experimental setting of this amount.
Otherwise, I also recall lots of friends , I had, who have had nothing ever in mind to “overtake” the world as such, but where deeply involved all the time in their personal growth issues, dealing as to their best capacities with the irritations to come inevitably (obviously).
I am very glad to see in that string a contemporary pic´of Shunyo; she is looking pretty healthy and beaming and laughing .
I know, that not all of us, came out of the many phases like this.
And so – for the latter, I have a little extra shrine, so to say, to honor the costs, what it takes to evolve.
Also for those , who have been, or are crushed (like ´material´- or are forgotten). Or for those, who are chatted about , without any awareness or respect and from people , who know nothing – and – yet discuss stuff in a deliberately ugly and despiteful way.
Instead of ´human conditioning´, I would replace that then with ´inhuman conditioning´ of bragging and stupid chatting swarm manners like the whole facebook and other so called social ´E-communications´is so full of.
So often more harming , than doing anything of a good or value, addressing newcomers this way and filling them up with rubbish.
Yes, I love to see the contemporary pic of Shunyo.
And would like in a dream to see all your faces, either the way…
Sunday dreams… are they ….
with love
Madhu
PS
as for the clothes change Arpana – or the burning of stuff or comments on that, I can only say that the times of delusion ended thoroughly to phantasize similar ´understanding standards or loyalty with outer costumes and devotionalias of any kind
For me a growing up issue ongoing on and on. And yes, all takes it time… and pain and joy are sisters and brothers so to say in these procedures
A long post Madhu! .. ..
I think quite a few sannyasins felt pretty uneasy for some years, from around 1982 to the denouement of the Ranch in September, 1985. Especially those who lived outside the communes, and felt that that type of sangha was not what they had joined up to in the seventies. Prem Paritosh who was a close friend of mine and who wrote “Life of Osho” felt that, and disliked the new post Laxmi administration from the start, and said it was nothing to do with Osho.
Many I suspect were like me, they felt that commune life had “something”, and that was not because of, but in spite of, the temporal leadership.
The Shunyo’s of this world did live arguably a protected life, and may not have sensed that anything was wrong, though one does wonder as to their antenna.
Have you ever been in a double bind ?
One of the commonest double binds I know of is when, in relationship, we create and experience mutual identity or the experience of the ‘us’.
Silent or overt , heartfelt, or, by familiar ordinariness the ‘we’ that is two ‘I’s, is a double bind. This I is never felt so strongly, vibrantly, devotedly, as when in relationship with You….!. With the other playing the converse role.
In balance or equanimity, these relationships can be maintained indefinitely or they can ‘break’ at any moment, or even be lost, rebuilt, or extended. To live them they are re-proposed from day to day through familiarity and engagement, commitment and context.
Osho and ‘us’ was and remains, in part, and between us such a relationship, even though we lag ourselves to the mast of a ship through storms, sometimes rudderless, utterly at sea, in love with the night, transfixed by the moon.
There is no greater upliftment than love like this, no more fathomless a meditation, no fuller devotion, than to be beholden to the beloved and the beloving.
The grandeur of Osho’s mirror to ourselves was his intimate mortality, his generosity, his intensity, his availability, which then also contrasted with his absent reclusiveness and privacy to all but a few. So it could appear that here was someone who was either toying with the ‘other’ or who demanded that the other remain faithful because of his own utter commitment !
Ever been there ourselves in wondering what the hell was happening in a relationship ? Who was doing the string pulling and who or what was pulling the strings ? For what and how, and what needed doing or undoing?
If we remove the sense of division for a moment it seems that on appearance love divine or love mortal speak the same language. The same intensities , the similar accusations of ‘ but you said that..then you said….”
Who cares what anyone said ? The ship was sailing deep into the warmest balmiest tropical storm with hot monsoon rain down-pouring onto the motley crew and plastering their billowing shirts onto their now transparent bodies. The rain, their clothes, their hair, their bodies , the tossing ship and the warm- soaked air becoming as one , for those tumbled, disorientating moments.
Have we ever felt incapable of turning around when in unchartered waters ? Is the sense of being gripped by something larger than ourselves, which can lead to even our annihilation, intrinsic to Pirates of the Calmer Being ?
I’ve recently been caught between a rock and a hard place, not for the first time, but on this occasion egregiously so.
There is a point when climbing the Eiger, Martyn, when apparently it makes no sense to descend, as that leads to one’s annihilation, whereas if one goes on, one has half a chance of survival!
Bangin’ metaphor for sannyas P. Spot on. Bloody hell thats true.
Fair enough…Parmartha.
Its been quite a snowstorm for far too long..,but goggles are on and up, up and away. Having a Sangha to singalong to is always worth it, as many have passed this way before on the way up whistling a happy tune as they went. Its a big mountain and a great view from the top, I’m told. Don’t look back … or down.
“Have we ever felt incapable of turning around when in unchartered waters ? Is the sense of being gripped by something larger than ourselves, which can lead to even our annihilation, intrinsic to Pirates of the Calmer Being ?”/Prem Martyn
Yes , Prem Martyn, and there´s exactly the Sangha issue comes in.
And by that I mean, a Sangha committed to Life and surely denying any suicidal approaches and sick phantasies (like some insane islamic tribes are obviously in it for example, and the ore educated around those may have eloquent as poetical versions).
Or christian fundamentalist ´s sects as well, only otherwise coloured mentally.
We are talking about these far former historical issues with our here-now circumstances, do we ?
And we are not to write here a doctorand´s treatise about spiritual groups, or do we ? For anybody having no shame to phish the datas für his or her career.
And we don´t talk about a new bible kind of stuff, do we ?
The words where you ended with and what I was hooked to comment in special are significant; as nowadays , anybody writing has less than in anytime before, having any influence what is done with written datas, is not that so ?
And influence about – who the fuck – does – what the fuck out of it.
This way, we are all in – how did you put it ? – ´unchartered waters´ .
To go for a human honest and intimate approach took courage before, and takes courage now-here, and may be even more so.
Madhu
Can’t help feeling that Shunyo, although likeable as a person, is rather naive & gullible.
She is similar to many other sanyassins I have met, in that she is rather prone to child-like’ magical thinking.
The tone of what she has written in this excerpt, strikes me as being over-reverent, star-struck etc. She would have us believe that Osho, had in some way turned disaster into triumph, whereas….
(THIS POST HAS BEEN TONED DOWN WITHOUT LOSING ITS MEANING, AND SHORTENED – MOD)
We were naive ashok.
I for one was one extremely iffy about Sheela, that regime, but I didnt trust my own pereptions, and I suspect thats true of a lot of us. Some people blame everybody else, and some people blame themselves. I blamed my attitude on my failings, albeit in a massively conflicted way.
I was besotted with Osho before i truly realised he was offering me a way to sort myself out, and I basicaly just needed to learn to trust my own perceptions, my own discerning ability, and live, deal with, learn when I screwed up and accept then, that screwing up sometimes was part of the deal. (And I did.)
Worth bearing in mind, we dont take sannyas because w’eve got it, we take sannyas to get it; allthough is pretty common amongst takers of sannyas, the delusion, this is happening because they have got it.
Indeed, as a few individuals who post here demonstrate, some remain stuck in that place of believing that the fact they got to take sannyas is a certificate of their towering spiritual development, and that they need do no more, that they are here to put the rest of us right.
Many thanks, Arpana, for your honest reply about being naive. There is no great harm in that as far as I can see, as long as you wake up when harsh reality and truth slap you across the gob, and stare you in the face.
There was no harm either in trying out something new, which advertised itself as being about peace, love and understanding etc. In fact, I think I should actually congratulate you guys & gals, who were part of the movement that was going on back then, for having the courage to try something so different and unconventional. I really don’t think that at the age of around 25yrs old let’s say, I would have had the balls to get involved. I found it pretty scary, to be honest, turning up in Pune, in my mid-forties, when things were really cooling down and starting to move in the direction of being more standard and conventional, (circa 2002).
As I have said before, we ‘live and learn’, don’t we? All of us, including Osho, when he was alive.
Finally, Arpana, one question for you if I might be so bold: when you wrote ‘….they are here to put the rest of us right.’, I assumed you were specifically referring to the ‘Gang of Four’ (aka Prem Shantam, Satyadeva, Lokesh and Prem Martyn). Am I right?
Ashok,
Sannyas, IMO, is a path of trial and error, a path of working it out with a lot of balls ups on the way, and one of the reasons I dont particularly look back at the past and have a lot going on about right and wrong.
“Keep `im talking!” Keep `im talking!”
That is my favourite part of Shunyo`s book.
“Sheela called a general meeting for the whole commune, and it was to be held in Rajneesh Mandir. Vivek suspected that Sheela was going to try and stop Osho talking, so we made a plan that a few of us would spread out in the Mandir, and call out “Keep `im Talking!”
This way people would understand what was going on and everyone would start chanting to keep Him talking!
I sat at the back of the Mandir and switched on my tape recorder, hidden in my down jacket, just to record the meeting correctly.
Sheela started to say that with the coming festival there was so much work that there was a `backlog` and it was going to be impossible to prepare for the festival, and go to discourse. My cue…
“Keep `im talking. Keep im talking!”
I bellowed out.
Silence.
Where were my fellow anarchists?
“Keep `im talking!” I continued to shout, as people turned around to see who the idiot was disrupting the meeting.
I saw their faces incredulous- Chetana, Chetana?- but she is such a quiet type. Must have gone mad.”
From Diamond Days with Osho