One day, it touched my heart very deep when Osho said: “Do it not with me”. The work has been always an inner work. “A journey hand-in-hand”, Osho said. We ARE Osho!

MOD: ROSHANI, PLEASE CLARIFY:
LINE 2: would OR who would?
LAST PARAGRAPH: “Do it not with me” – IS THIS ACCURATE? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

And who knows, my feeling is Osho’s message will get stronger when it is passed on without books, audios videos or samadhis: Om Mani Padme Hum: The jewel is inside; pass it on straight from heart to heart…because who is the owner of this divine energy called SELF? RIGHT!

So I wish that you, Devageet, will enjoy this fight till you drop it and see Om Mani Padme Hum! The treasure is inside and has always been!

MOD: RE LAST PARAGRAPH, YOU MEAN Prem Geet (NOT Deva Geet) SURELY?!

Yes, I agree, the name became optional. But not in 1975, my year of Sannyas.

Later, when large numbers started to arrive, I reckon the option to keep your own name was pragmatism (as the Indian ones were starting to run out).

I am surprised that you are not more concerned with the obvious manipulation of sannyasins in Premgeet’s letter. Unless, of course, you believe taking Sannyas gives you rights.

If you do, then please post what those rights are. (And who told you).

Deference by internal sabotage? Have you considered re-writing newspaper headlines too? Or do you prefer obsequious group rooms and imposed screwed relating in the name of the father, son and holy moly?

I love laptops…it’s a great game for all the dysfunctional family. At Xmas.

P.S:
Role modelling generic abstract answers means you miss a go and have to talk from your own experience and extrapolate from there, for yourself though. Sorry. No, really, rules are rules, sorry mate…it says so in the book.

Crackers, anyone?

Of course, as it’s Pantomime season in the UK, you can now all join in with the refrain, ”Oh no it isn’t”, to which you receive the reply, “Oh yes it is”. This then goes on for several more exchange (which I’d be glad if someone could find a good Yuletide Xmassy panto clip for).

Merry Xmas -
”Oh yes it is.”
”Oh no it isn’t.”
Etc. etc. etc.

I could not turn over, because to keep my nose as far away from the bed as possible, the only position was just to lie down straight and look up. But I enjoyed it really – remaining in the same position, looking at the roof, the stink of the kerosene oil all around, bedbugs, mosquitoes…everything that you could conceive to make a man suffer. I laughed.

The man was on the veranda. He said, “What is the matter? Why are you laughing?”
I said, “I am laughing because of this little experience of hell. I have always been intending to go to hell; this is a good training! And I promise you that once in a while, whenever I pass through here, I will be your guest.”

He said, “I was afraid, because although I do this business, the stink is so much that even after doing it for years I have not become accustomed to it. The mosquitoes are so big, the bedbugs are there; and I can see you are not even lying on your side. I know the reason,” he said, “but I am sorry. I don’t have anything else to offer to you.”
I said, “Don’t be sorry. I am rejoicing in the whole experience. It is so new to me, and everything that is new is a great adventure and excitement.”

Next day, when I was leaving, he asked me, “Are you really thinking of coming back again?”
I said, “Certainly.” And I went to his hut at least four times. Whenever I passed through there, I always stopped at the wrong stop, reached the hut. And the man could not believe it: “Either you are crazy, or something…because now you know where to get down. The first time it was a mistake, but why are you doing it again and again?”

I said, “I am not making any mistake – I enjoyed that night so much. I could not sleep at all, and I had had no experience of bedbugs, mosquitoes. It is always good to be acquainted with new people. One never knows where one will end up…New acquaintance is always good. And your kerosene oil makes me feel I am in hell. I don’t know whether there is any hell or not, but I don’t want to miss any experience. Perhaps there is no hell after life; then I will have had this experience. And I am immensely grateful to you.”

Whatever happens, you can always look into it and find something really precious. Now, once in a while sleeping on my back, looking up, I remember and I laugh. That experience has made all my life’s nights far more beautiful. Now the comparison exists. Before it there was no comparison, it was stale: no bedbugs, no mosquitoes, no kerosene….

I don’t regret, I don’t feel that it should have been otherwise. No, whatever has been should have been exactly the same as it has been. And I am perfectly happy with every act and with every consequence, because everything has been a tremendous teaching. It is just that you have to change your outlook, and the whole of life becomes a terrific drama.

And you are not victims, you are just actors in it. You can keep your witness untouched by whatever happens. And the witness knows no regret, the witness cannot say, “I am sorry.”

Osho, ‘From Bondage to Freedom’ (ch. 42)

Festive tip:
Do not avoid. Go headlong fully into the Mystery. Try witnessing yourself, especially in situations that, viewed from the outside, seem to be hellish. Then laugh…and be a joke unto yourself.

Hmmm…I remember the name was optional, you could keep your given name. What I remember were these three things: 1) wearing a mala, 2) orange, and 3) meditation.

Later, Osho said the orange and mala were optional…that only meditation remained as the essential part of neo-Sannyas.

Shantam, your belief that you’re in any way ‘qualified’ to have a major influence on the future of ‘Osho’s Sannyas’ is as pure a piece of self-concocted “fiction” as one is likely to ever come across!

Unfortunately for you (and for everyone else who has to suffer your absurdities) you are unable to perceive this simple “fact”, obvious to all but yourself.

Yes, it might be true that any fool like you can start a legal action. But that in no way implies the purity or ‘rightness’ of motive of the individual concerned and in your case, Shantam, the latter is highly questionable, your motivation arising from a purely personal discontent with your own life, together with a misplaced dream based on a flawed conception that it’s possible to restore the dead past, to make everything ‘all right’ again, as it was in ‘the good old days’.

Which, to be blunt, for you fundamentally means the possibility, however remote, of ‘free’ sex with willing young foreign ladies, hopefully eventually finding a wife, does it not?!

It seems that’s basically what’s ‘running’ you, plus a fervent wish for the usual collective Indian traditional routine of formal religious observances, worship of the guru etc. etc. in order for you not to feel so much like the ‘fish out of water’ you have been for a long time (not to mention the prospect of getting ‘revenge’ on those whom you – wrongly – hold responsible for much of your own purely personal discontent, the ‘ashram regime’).

In a way, one can perhaps understand where you’re coming from, the unhappiness with your lot, the otherwise apparent almost total lack of purpose in your life, but trying to mask these self-ish reasons behind a self-created façade of “sacred duty” is the stuff of self-ignorance – where fact and fiction are indeed badly confused.

At least attempting to see oneself clearly is the very name of this game you’re allegedly in, but so often, Shantam, it seems you just can’t be bothered, preferring to trust your aberrant emotions, that are anyway likely to lead you astray, based as they largely are, on personal unhappiness.

That’s why you get so much criticism here – and why you’ll almost certainly say I’m talking a load of irrelevant rubbish!

You will no doubt recall your remarks as follows, and I quote:

“It is a known fact no white sannyasin has ever handled a potato.”

“It is a known fact the egos of all white sannyasins are hurt because Osho is an Indian.”

Your astonishing statement that you have a skill set that makes you particularly suited to running the ashram.

Just a few of the reasons you have no credibility, why nothing you write has any credibility.

They never apologise.
For anything
Ever
That they actually got or get wrong.
Ever.

A bit like a nightmare dysfunctional relationship.
But with less fucking to make up for the missing bits.

Or just being fucked, and you know you’re alone with it.

Festive tip: Avoid.