What Osho Means to me Now : Part 2

Simond writes:

The King is dead, Long live the King. Osho is dead, Long live Osho.

In olden days this declamation symbolised that it mattered not that the King had died – because a new King was always available to replace him. The authority and position of the King was eternal, whoever he was.

It seems that for some Sannyasins they believe in a similar principle.  They insist that not only is Osho alive, but he lives in some ethereal manner known only to them.

It won’t be known to me, because I’m too much in my ” mind”, my ” ego”, or that I’m no longer a Sannyasin and have no right to comment.

If it were Christians who proclaimed such nonsense they would mostly ridicule the idea, but for some Sannyasins, the notion is unchallengeable and absolute.

I guess to challenge it, is to question the deepest preconceptions of these individuals, and they don’t like it very much. So, what are these preconceptions? Do they ever examine them or do they just believe them -  like the Christians?

Osho himself began the confusion by promoting himself as someone who could transcend almost anything. We could use Osho tarot cards to keep in touch with his wisdom, we could meditate on his image, (and images were positioned everywhere to remind us of him) .
We could wear a Mala to be reminded of him; we would be his vanguard, his Sannyasins, wearing red to mark us out as different, ” better” than others. And above it all was the Master, who was “never born never died”, who was at one time a reincarnation of Buddha, at other times the only true living master.
He was a man who occasionally loved and cherished past masters, and yet on other occasions proclaimed they were all without value. A man who could even ensure that if any of his Sannyasins died around him, they would automatically die ” enlightened”. He further confused us by referring to how his essence , after death would miraculously fill the universe – if that’s true – isn’t it true of all of us who die?

I was party to it, if not always a true believer, like some still appear to do, but over time, the real humanity of the man became far more important to me than his “God like” nature.

Osho was a phenomenon of the East, and he never understood the west, despite how many books he read and digested. His conditioning and upbringing and his values are Eastern.
Yes, he valued some western techniques and therapies, and he attempted to bridge the gulf in understanding between west and east.

I’ve always felt he did a wonderful job, his time and place in history and in the development and expansion of ” spiritual ” thinking has affected many. As it has affected me.
No one can fully explain the power of Osho, or how his charisma brought people to him who had no interest in religion, how his image alone could affect. How in his physical presence a magical stillness descended on many. But we might consider that many other charismatics also have touched people, whether they are Nelson Mandela or Hitler or Gurdjieff.

It doesn’t alter the fact that he is dead now, or that Poona is now unlike anything he could have ever envisaged ; or that it cannot be possible for anyone now to become a Sannyasin once the Master is dead. Indeed ” Sannyas”  itself always was a traditional eastern notion, and one that Osho apparently was uncertain of introducing at all.

What many seem to ignore is that Osho was not unlike any other human being. That his enlightenment didn’t mean he could teach us in the west, (or in the east for that matter). He may have realised a point in consciousness, but this doesn’t mean that he had transcended his conditioning.

It doesn’t mean he hadn’t finished learning, or that he couldn’t make mistakes. It didn’t stop him becoming a father figure for many lost souls. It wouldn’t stop people who needed an authority figure transferring their need and pain onto him. Indeed on occasions he encouraged such transference.

It didn’t stop him writing a book defending socialism in one decade and in a later decade proclaim capitalism.

For some investigating his contradiction or failures meant rejecting Osho. We saw this in particular after the ranch, when many were so hurt they blamed Osho. Forgetting that they were as ‘responsible ‘as Osho was.

Others stayed with him, thought thick and thin, because to abandon their new Sannyas identity would also be too painful. And when their self identify is threatened their vitriol knows few bounds.

Today it appears, many still believe that Osho ‘lives’ inside them, or outside them, that they can commune with him, feel his presence, that he is alive. To me, they are religionists, and Osho on many occasions attacked and ridiculed such ideas. They sentimentalise some notion of Sangha, the specialness of their relationship seems to know no bound. They even think their relationships with fellow Sannyasins makes them special. They gather together to discuss the past and to feel safe. They sing and sway to sickly melodic music using the words of Osho, like Jesus freaks, and sentimentalise the glorious days of Poona.
Of course there is a natural need to come together and to share, to feel safe and to explore together.
But where belief defies the facts, there is only emotion.

Osho truly did die some years ago, his message has resonance today, but to believe in the manner of some Sannyasins, is a delusion, and one Osho himself would have attacked.

This entry was posted in Discussion. Bookmark the permalink.

61 Responses to What Osho Means to me Now : Part 2

  1. Arpana says:

    This is so self-serving. Talk about a desperate need to rationalise your position.

      • frank says:

        It was a cool autumn morning when an earnest man of the cloth, the very Reverend Simon Cheeseman, from the Church of Latter-day Barrylongers, Totnes, went to preach in the chapel at the Orange Sunshine Retirement Home for the Spiritually Challenged.
        Ascending the pulpit, and gazing out on the motley crew in front of him, he began his sermon in time-honoured fashion:
        “Let us take a moment to remember why we are all here…”

        At that moment,a loud voice boomed out from the back pew: “Because we are not all there!”

        Now let us rise and sing Hymn 389,
        “O happy band of pilgrims”….

  2. Tan says:

    Again? Nobody is interested in what Osho means or meant to this bloke who has the same disease of Christopher Calder.

    Stop trying, you won’t achieve what you want, never! Sod off, Simond!

    • dharmen says:

      It interests me! So sod off, Tan. What utter arrogance, how do you know who this will interest and who it won’t?

      Better you pen your own article and risk ridicule yourself, but no chance of that, is my guess.

      • Tan says:

        Firstly, I thought Simond was Lokesh. Mistake! Secondly, PM. Mistake again! Now, I think it is you, Dharmen. It will be a great relief to know that you are taking the piss…

        No, Dharmen, I am not afraid to ridicule myself, I have learned with Osho not to give a damn about what people think. I can’t care less…

        I don’t write an article here because my English is terrible, can’t put on the paper what I really mean. If my English was good I would write about my wild nights with Osho. Really miss him!

  3. shantam prem says:

    Simond,
    Can you tell to your mom or grandmother that Jesus died 2000 years ago and all this idea of resurrection is nothing but Walt Disney fantasy?

    Still, the idea of Jesus as something superior gave the energy boost to the people who created one of the best civilisation of the world.

    Osho is surely no more. In a way leaving the body is another poetic name for death. Osho is dead the way Buddha or Mohammed is dead (Sorry, Muslims, I have no desire to hurt your religious feelings). But does it negate the institution of Zen masters and Dalai Lama or Ayatollahs, Popes and cardinals?

    Simond, whether you like it or not, you simply cannot put Osho in the same faceless, nameless grave as any of the masters/teachers you will encounter in your life. Man has left the seeds of all kinds.

    And anyway, if someone worships Osho, why it creates piles in the delicate organs of many people? Why you can not respect the freedom of poor sentimental people who are much below in evolution in comparison with you, Frank or Satyadevas of this site and the world?

    • satyadeva says:

      That’s your problem again, Shantam, imagining that Osho favoured sentimentality and people ‘worshipping’ him. He was against all that rubbish.

      Well-meaning fools like you would destroy the worth of any Sannyas organisation, centre or ashram within a very short while, if given the opportunity.

      • shantam prem says:

        Don´t you think it is a tragedy of the kind, Satyadeva, you got all the time and opportunities to be in Osho´s commune but I am sure, because of your itching mind, you always found the excuse to run away? Now you are pretending to know Osho from inside out.

        This is Panditism in its whiteman´s form. If you think what Osho is, you and your projections both can go into the garbage bin.

        Now about a common collective psychology:
        Has Buddha ever said, “Worship me”? Billions of people, Buddhists and non-Buddhists, bow down before His statues on daily basis. If you have a chance to look into your Mother Meera´s personal chamber, most probably you will see photos and statues of her deities.

        As far as I know and have seen on daily basis, Osho has created a wide base, where all kind of schools and thoughts were absorbed. A kind of supermarket where you can buy onions and tomatoes, computer and smartphones, condoms and vibrators.

        For God’s sake, doubt the closed windows of your brain, Mr.FrogPandit!

        • satyadeva says:

          Shantam, as you haven’t the slightest clue about any relevant details of my life your question is just a load of typically gratuitous bullshine, unworthy of further comment.

          As, of course, is “This is Panditism in its whiteman´s form.”

          Likewise, your fatuously unintelligent conclusions re Buddhists and uninformed assumptions re Meera.

          As Lokesh says, you just don’t get it, do you, Mr S?!

          .

          • frank says:

            As a whiteman pundit meself, Brian, I would say that the lad has been stuck in a relegation dogfight ever since his dismissal from the hallowed turf.

            It leaves you wondering what might have been….

            • satyadeva says:

              Yeah, game of two halves, Gary…

              The lads’s never got over the manager leaving both club and game for ever – and of course he was gutted when the foreign owners took over, he says it somehow just wasn’t the same – still isn’t, he reckons.

              Me, I reckon he’s going down…Heard him gobbing off on TalkShite the other day, still full of himself, really fancies himself as a pundit – he’s lousy though, the listeners weren’t impressed one iota, mate. “Get that fucker off the radio, he knows fuck all about the game!” was one of the milder comments!

              Sad case…blames everyone and everything but himself, says the game’s gone rotten since his day.

              But let’s face it, Gary, what do Indians know about modern football anyway, eh?!

  4. prem martyn says:

    On sale in the Parish News :

    http://www.westpointcycles.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/serotta-fit-bike-profile.jpg

    Ideal mode of transport, excellent for getting nowhere fast, only one previous owner, can reach phenomenal speeds backwards and forwards. Ideal for staying in the moment and the same place for extended periods. Will consider part exchange with a long sobering thought and/or a captive audience who have been locked in.

    Contact:
    SimpleSimonCycles
    Call: Totnes2468 (Who do we appreciate?) and ask for Sy-clops.

  5. Kavita says:

    Simond, now I am curious to know what your sannyas name was?! Seems you got it directly from Him!

  6. CREO QUA ABSURDUM. Yes, Simond and others who might heckle the devotional (sentimental???) side in us, ‘I believe because it is absurd’. “This (saying by Tertullian) should be written in diamonds, not even in golden letters…this saying is so valuable” (Osho).

    Note that Osho is quoting a Western saint here who probably had all kinds of psychological issues with his mom and dad and his girlfriend which are absolutely “typical for the Western conditioning” and who Osho seemed to have understood after all.

    But Osho cannot understand you, Simond, you have too much complex Western issues! It seems Simond has become too serious; try to do something absurd today is my advice to you. It seems Simond is mainly posting these (..?) just as to get hit a bit. And it is working, people are doing it. But I had a mosquito in my bedroom last night and I hit it a couple of times and it still goes on flying, it just won’t lie down! And it’s either him or me in the same room!

    And Frank: frankly I don’t understand the joke you posted above!???

    Lastly, I would like to say, I just wrote yesterday because I felt the need to defend Osho. Precisely because He is no more there to respond to criticism it is so easy to say anything about Him/him :) . Would these people have been so brave to say all kinds of stupid things if he were here? And yes, Simond, that’s when I become him :) /Him and therefore He is still here and alive! Confusing? Not to me.

    Btw, Christopher Calder was the type with whom the only remedy is to NOT give any attention…that’s exactly what the Resort did rightly! Because, as we know, the ego feeds on attention (so careful, Frank, if you are wanting/going to reply!) and then it goes on and on… But I feel Simond is not such a hopeless case, at least he is putting himself out on a limb a little bit with this post.

    Love,

    Charlie Brown :)

    • frank says:

      Vedant,
      The joke is that ‘not all there’ is not only the opposite of ‘all here’ but in colloquial English also means crazy, a few screws loose.

      The original story was actually told me by a bishop to whom this had actually happened when he had given a sermon at a mental hospital.

    • satyadeva says:

      Here’s some background info (from Wikipedia) of this phrase, ‘Credo quia absurdum’:

      It is a Latin phrase that means “I believe because it is absurd.” It is a paraphrase of a statement in Tertullian’s work, ‘De Carne Christi’, “prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est”, which can be translated:

      “It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd”.[1] The context is a defence of the tenets of orthodox Christianity against docetism:

      “Crucifixus est Dei Filius, non pudet, quia pudendum est;et mortuus est Dei Filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est;et sepultus resurrexit, certum est, quia impossibile.” (‘De Carne Christi’ V, 4):

      “The Son of God was crucified: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died: it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible.”

      As we can see from the above, the phrase can be used to justify any irrational belief, including the Christian nonsense (or even, for example, Hitler’s psychotic ‘Master Race’ creed).

      Tertullian, by the way, was a Roman philosopher, rather than a “saint”, who lived over 1600 years ago, so to declare he “probably had all kinds of psychological issues with his mom and dad and his girlfriend which are absolutely “typical for the Western conditioning” ” is itself probably a more than somewhat gratuitous claim, given the radical differences between then and now.

      Still, in keeping with the spirit of ‘credo quia absurdum’, why not believe whatever suits you, whatever feels ‘comfortable’, whatever turns you on, ‘whatever gets you through the night’, perhaps even through a ‘dark night of the soul’ (although I expect to get through that you’d probably need large doses of Truth, of Reality, instead of a few pleasantly convenient, ultimately relatively shallow beliefs)?

      As long as, of course, you realise it’s only a belief, so it just might not square with ‘reality’, it might not actually be true…Because ultimately, blind belief – however ‘convenient’ – is for fools, isn’t it, Vedant Singh, eh?

  7. Arpana says:

    Enough language games, enough syntactical tricks, enough word-juggling and phrase-making! We must now seek the great Law of the heart, that Law which is not a Law, not a prison, but a guide for the Mind lost in its own labyrinth.

    Antonin Artaud

  8. swamishanti says:

    “Today it appears, many still believe that Osho ‘lives’ inside them, or outside them, that they can commune with him, feel his presence”

    Simond, this may not be true for you, but can you be sure that it is not true for others?

  9. Lokesh says:

    About thirty years ago, Ravi Shankar and Yahudi Menuin cut an album that elevated world music to new heights. It was titled something like ‘East West Improvisitions’. It was a landmark recording, a remarkable amalgam of distilled Hindu, Yiddish spirit. At the time, and also the years leading up to it, there was much talk from Western philosophers and Indian mystics about the need for a union of East and West. That union has been going on for some time now. Whether or not it has been of much benefit to mankind is debatable.

    Simond declares, “Osho was a phenomenon of the East, and he never understood the West, despite how many books he read and digested. His conditioning and upbringing and his values are Eastern.”
    Hardly original and in my mind a somewhat sweeping statement that sounds maybe right but is far off the mark. Besides, Osho was dealing with something that transcends both East and West. The mind. Osho’s understanding of the mind and what makes a human being was remarkable.

    You might have thoughts that come from a Hindu mind or a Christian mind but when it all boils down to it the source of those thoughts is one and the same. That source was what Osho was pointing to.

    Osho had a personality that was, like all of us, shaped by his cultural background. This is a relatively superficial phenomenon. Osho knew the truth. The human personality is a small growth with shallow roots existing on the substrata of the self. In other words, a pretty ephemeral thing that has its birth and will have its death. The real self is never born and never dies. It simply is, always and forever, existing now.

    Vedant makes the confession,”Lastly, I would like to say, I just wrote yesterday because I felt the need to defend Osho.” Such thinking is for the dummies in the class, because it is built on the assumption that a non-existent entity is defending someone who publicly declared he was nobody, nothing.

    A few years down the line we could have Osho Jihadists declaring fatwa on the unbelievers who dare attack their beloved fantasy of Osho. In plain Scottish language…this is utter shite.

    • satyadeva says:

      Good points, Lokesh.

      Concepts, beliefs…how the mind loves to cling to them – for what? Meaning, ‘refuge’, ‘consolation’ – ‘power’ in the face of confusion, impotence and certain oblivion?

      No wonder it reacts so violently when its precious personal beliefs are seemingly threatened – it thinks they’re not only its security system and reason for being, but its very self itself, even its very being! The curse of ‘identification’…

      We see this played out all the time here at SN. But often with insight and humour, thankfully. Not always though – which is a bit worrying, coming from ‘experienced seekers’. No wonder the world’s in the state it’s in….

  10. shantam prem says:

    “The real self is never born and never dies. It simply is, always and forever, existing now”

    Lokesh, if this stuff called Real Self also dies and is not as eternal as plastic bottles, will you feel disappointed?

    Why to hold this lollipop?!

    • Lokesh says:

      Shantam, if the lolli pops there will be no one to hold it as the lolli’s very nature is one of total let go….some call it Magnum, others Voodoo-On-A-Stick, but they are mired in name and form.

      So, next time a lollipop man helps you across a busy street, bow down, kiss his feet and be grateful that the great pop blew life into your lungs, so you could do your dance.

      • shantam prem says:

        The real self is never born and never dies = God. Wordings on Osho´s tombstone is “Osho: Never Born, Never Died”. I have really no idea whether Osho suggested his own eulogy for his tombstone or it is a creation of disciples’ sentiments. Anyway, it is one of the top of the top eulogies of our time.

        “Never Born, Never Died” – does it mean God was visiting the planet Earth? Does it mean 2000 years after Son´s visit, daddy decided to visit?

        Simond and Satayadeva can take a joint effort to answer, ‘When a man leaves behind such words for his tombstone, does he intend to suggest, forget me or worship me?’

  11. This is a bit like joining ‘Dad’s Army’, my favourite English comedy of all time. There is also this Scotsman who deliberately tries to undermine Captain Mainwaring’s attempts at being the chief boy scout, but never dares to take the lead himself: (meaning) you are not guru-material, Lokesh, no matter how hard you try. So he is/remains the ‘Rebellious Scotsman’, hilarious!

    I would opt to being Frank, as I am probably the youngest member of the platoon, but then there’s already a Frank in this story and he reveals all his comic wealth to me only now! But seriously, thanks for explaining the joke, Frank, now I really enjoyed it to its full. Although Earnest wasn’t earnest in Oscar Wilde’s great play, you are certainly frank.

    So, I would like to be the Welsh photographer with the funny accent, he also joined later, I believe. Please feel free to watch ‘Dad’s Army’ on YouTube and have a good laugh at the antics of the old bogies.

    You should all get together and get smashed one of these days in a pub in London! Let me know when and I’ll bring a couple of bottles of champagne!

    Ah! I finally got that mosquito that was bothering me! Just dealt him the final blow, it’s good night for me.

    Signing off….

  12. Ashok says:

    “but to believe in the manner of some Sannyasins, is a delusion, and a position Osho himself would have attacked.”

    A lot of sensible stuff here, Simond, I am with you for the most part.

    You accurately describe some sannyasins as “Religionists”, and I would encourage you to ‘sod on’, rather than ‘off’, despite the bird-brained protestations coming from one local quarter!

    Oh dearie me, didn’t the Master himself have some very definite ideas about his movement not becoming a conventional-type religion? Of course, some do/did not want to hear this kind of stuff, being so concerned about preserving their own self-serving delusions and habits, much of which could be classified as anti-Osho!

    Some of your detractors might want to ask themselves why it is exactly that they are so upset, when it is quite clear to anybody with a modicum of common sense, that what you are doing is taking an anti-religous stance, which is therefore, also pro-Osho!

    Having said that, I very much doubt whether any of the holy rabble possess the awareness, intelligence and sanity to conduct anything approaching serious self-enquiry. Furthermore, in the case of fanatics and some lesser grades of sufferers, it is clearly not advisable to even try broaching this topic with them!

    However, whilst religious fanatics are often instantly recognisable, religious fervour comes in many guises, and is not always easily detectable. Some symptoms are quite subtle in fact, and those suffering them, moreover, are often unaware of their condition, as can be the case with the mentally ill, for example. Therefore, in my opinion, Simond, to approach and try to tackle this complicated area, does not make you ‘simple’, as one poster suggests.

    The spectrum between religious belief and atheism, covers at least ‘fifty shades of grey’ and much more!

    Good to see someone else getting amongst the ‘Holy Pigeons’.

    Please, keep it up!

  13. shantam prem says:

    The Atmosphere captured in the photo is what i feel like calling Legacy of OSHO. THE United Nations of Meditation…Without this, Osho is one finest orator.

    • Lokesh says:

      Is that a photo of some Christians in Alabama, lifted off the God Channel?

      • frank says:

        No, silly, it`s the White Rogue Brotherhood

      • shantam prem says:

        Lokesh, by grace of Bhagwan, you got the wife for life. Now leave Osho and his people on their own mercy. My suggestion, create your own sect or sit at the feet of Mouji Baba!

        You are like a character in a joke; my son with whom I have visited you made us laugh with this joke time and again when he was four or five years of age:

        On the way to school, Fritz goes to Baker and asks, “Do you have carrot cake (Rüblikuchen in Swiss German)?”
        Baker answered, “No, we don´t have carrot cake, but we have apple cake, Black Forest cake.”

        Next day, again Fritz asked the same question. Baker has the same answer. It went on the whole week.

        During weekend, Baker decided to make carrot cake. He simply wanted to make Fritz happy. So during the next school week, when Fritz asked about carrot cake, Baker answered cheerfully, “Yes, I have made one specially for you. Would you like to have one?”

        Fritz replied innocently, “This is the only cake I don´t like.”

        • Lokesh says:

          The only reason anyone could find that joke funny is if they had been brainwashed by a religious cult.

          • shantam prem says:

            How many people on the Earth have spent more time in a cult than you, Lokesh?

            You think you have come out from the cult but washing your hands.

            People who cross the bridge don´t look back how many others are walking on them or sleeping on them. You are still interested in the price of rice in a village you think you have left long ago.

  14. Swami Anand Yogi says:

    Simond,
    Your articles reveal an underlying current of anger, angst, disappointment and resentment wrapped up in considerable confusion and suffering. Did that bad boy Osho break your heart? Perhaps you need a heart operation like Teddy.

    The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

    Nevertheless, you should be commended for letting it out. It’s good therapy after all.

    • frank says:

      Anand Yogi,
      You say that Simond’s` “articles reveal an underlying current of anger, angst, disappointment and resentment wrapped up in considerable confusion and suffering.”

      You may well be right.

      I am curious. How exactly did you reach that conclusion? He is not overtly expressing those things so how do you read between the lines and deduce that? What are the giveaway clues?

      • shantam prem says:

        Frank, Anand Yogi is M.D. Doctor by profession. He is not like you, simply laughing over the diagnoses of others.

      • Swami Anand Yogi says:

        Frank,
        Simond states, “Whereas once I believed in enlightenment in some of the way Osho described – being a state of pure joy, bliss, etc., because Osho seemed to suggest it as such, I began to see this was fanciful and would always remain outside of my experience. No such state exists or ever has.”

        Simond’s mind is made up. There is no possibility to attain, to drop the small self and realise the greater reality. Osho’s work and the work of the Buddhas is fanciful. This is Ego 101. Because he cannot understand, he denigrates.

        “The idea that there is a final conclusion or realisation to understanding and living the truth, or attaining a complete sense of enlightenment seemed outdated to me.”

        More of the same.

        “He may have realised a point in consciousness, but this doesn’t mean he had transcended his conditioning.”

        This is the drop commenting on the ocean. Simond will have to transcend his own conditioning to know if this is true or not.

        Confusion is suffering. There is hope for Simond as there is for us all. Suffering is a great motivator.

        Osho didn’t write a book defending socialism. I haven’t heard that he ever wrote a book. However. he did give a discourse at Cross Maidan in Mumbai to 50 thousand people on the topic, “Beware of Socialism”. An essential read, by the way.

        • prem martyn says:

          Mmm…
          Thanks to Frank and A.Yogi for examining the guff behind the guffaws…

          I shall just come in at this point and remind the audience that Osho did mention in his post-Soviet era discourses (the ‘Zen Fire, Zen Wind’ etc. – and I only mention it in referential terms, not as an absolutist), being that you, AY, bring it up) that (in synthesis):

          Socialism is a compromise with capitalism. Communism is a religion. Anarchism is the ultimate flowering of the civic-social idea of engaging autonomy at all levels, personal/political. Humanity is not ready for Anarchism without preparation. He also said that the shooting of Kulaks (Russian land-owning peasants) saved an idea, viz: Leninism/ Marxism/ Communism).

          Italian Sarjano challenged him the following day and Osho replied (my synthesis): “I’m not here to fulfil your expectations of how or what I, Osho, should say.” I attended that period of discourses.

          Osho himself was in some ways a Leninist (though Sheela had intoduced a protectionist Police force with bullets for whatever ‘reasons’) as regards the Ranch & Pune 1/post-Osho phases of deliberate suspension of the personal in favour of the, apparently, collective via a Bolshevik nucleus, albeit a purely pragmatic one. It was also never a proletarian message for the mass.

          Osho Therapy and the therapised attendees have ‘never’ been freed of the stigma of authority and status in much of its cloned forms.

          It, the worldly body of Sannyas, remains heavily capitalist, centrist, avoids the contemporary radical themes of politics and co-sponsoring at large, both in its ambitions and investments, and remains quaintly quite archaic in its constant recourse to power through civic laws.

          SN is possibly, in this virtual part of its intention, the response to the institutionalisation of behaviour and, as such, the continuity of that representative polarity, to the extrinsic formality of the status and power forms of the Osho religion through individuality. It is welcome as an attempt at virtual, part-representation of that Anarchic collective spirit. Ko Hsuan School was also that intent, with a full dedication to the collective dispersal of responsibility, through both adults and kids together. All decisions had to be fully inclusive. There were no forms of majority voting or compromises.

          Ideas themselves and the language needed to support those ideas are fundamental to belief in them. Most Osho communes suffer the same ills, though with the attending feel-good pay-offs. It is very local and personal, though would like, like all religion, to be universal.

          One cannot take anything for granted. Not even Osho. Especially not his legacy. His criticism of Gandhian socialism was a direct attack on the Indian form.

          Anyone getting the next round of drinks in? Cheers.

        • Lokesh says:

          A. Yogi, you are nothing but a party pooper.

          “This is the drop commenting on the ocean. Simond will have to transcend his own conditioning to know if this is true or not.”

          What a load of patronizing keech. I mean, do you actually talk like that? Have you been brainwashed by the Osho cult?

          • Swami Anand Yogi says:

            Party pooper? You sound like a small girl, Lokesh. I was hoping to elicit greater insult from you. You are a Scot, are you not?

            Yes, I actually talk like this. I was brainwashed by Osho. I left when it became a cult.

            • Lokesh says:

              A.Yogi, darling, you obviously don’t realize that I am exploring my feminine side. Hence my mild response.

              • frank says:

                Yogi, the problem with statements like:
                “Simond will have to transcend his own conditioning to know if this is true or not” is that surely the same conditions apply to the one who says it? You or any ‘unenlightened’ person who says this without his/her having ‘transcended his own conditioning’ himself can only be a parrot, surely?

                I was talking to a chap I know from a while back, a sannyasin from Pune 1 times. He had declared himself enlightened. When I asked him about it, privately he was quite candid:
                “I have been on the path for so long, I got totally sick of being the guy who was always sitting in the crowd, not being able to say what I thought as everyone around would say I was ‘in the mind’ and ‘coming from my ego’, and so on.

                Now that I declared myself enlightened you would be amazed – I say the same kind of stuff and even more daft, too, and everyone laps it up like dogs on a dungheap. Enlightenment is the only way out of the double-bind, man.”

                I said:
                “You could just drop the whole mind/ego/beyond/transcend narrative altogether, and just live your life, meditate if you like, and so on.”

                “Yes”, he replied, “but I had been doing it for so long that I couldn`t stop, and anyway, which chick 20 years younger than me is going to look at a grizzled old fucker like me if I don`t have a good angle?”

                He has a point.

                • madhu dagmar frantzen says:

                  “He has a point.” (Frank)

                  What kind of “point” might that be, Frank?

                • frank says:

                  A woman is riding on a two-seater aircraft when the pilot has a fatal heart attack. She radios the tower, which assures her that they are experienced and will be able to help her get to the ground. They ask for her height and position and she responds:
                  “I’m 5’4″ and in the front seat!”

                • frank says:

                  Marty,
                  Yes, Osho’s support for Stalin’s` genocide “to save an idea and an experiment” was quite disturbing. And, even if taken as some sort of ‘device’, still, as you intimate, predicates pretty clearly the sort of behaviour one might expect from inheritors of his own experiment.

                  (I guess it also begs the question of whether a few Oregonians and homeless were acceptable collateral damage for the emergence of the ‘New Man’).

                  Btw, Yogi, Osho was a communist in his youth (see Pierre Evald, Osho’s librarian’s work for verification).

                  He went from teenage commie to presiding over a fascist dictatorship in later life.

                  It`s a surprisingly common route, if you have a quick glance thru the history of the 20th century.

  15. shantam prem says:

    At Simond´s thought-provoking prose, surely faithful ones will hit hard. Buddhists won´t accept Buddha is dead, long live the statues. Their story says, “Buddha has not gone into the heaven, but waiting at the gates till the last follower has entered.” I hope someone has sent him a smartphone to pass the time without feeling bored.

    Those who are complaining Simond´s post is all mind, they can ask, what are they?

    Has any single parrot ever dropped their small mind and merged into greater reality? Yes..there are many. Most of us believe what we read. Jihadis think, if they follow a certain doctrine they will get blow jobs from eternal virgins; their educated counterparts from other schools think something else…

    If it is not grace of God, then it must be His Blessings!

Leave a Reply