Comments on: Clap! now Clap!!!

By: swamishanti

swamishanti — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 15:34:21 +0000

“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

By: Arpana

Arpana — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 06:59:41 +0000

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.

By: Ashok

Ashok — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 06:36:50 +0000

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?

By: prem martyn

prem martyn — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 21:21:08 +0000

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.

By: Arpana

Arpana — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 05:52:17 +0000

Bangin’ metaphor for sannyas P. Spot on. Bloody hell thats true.

By: Arpana

Arpana — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 05:45:54 +0000

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.

By: Arpana

Arpana — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 05:28:42 +0000

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.)

By: Parmartha

Parmartha — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 04:28:20 +0000

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.

By: Parmartha

Parmartha — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 04:20:06 +0000

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!

By: Ashok

Ashok — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 02:40:07 +0000

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)