Alok John explores Liberal Democrat leader’s past
Following the inconclusive British election, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, can choose, albeit within political constraints, whether the Conservatives or Labour will govern.
It has been reported in the British press that, as a young man, Nick Clegg was a devotee of the Maharishi’s transcendental meditation for six years.
Osho had a poor opinion of TM, and I have put some of his quotations about TM below. One would have more confidence if Nick Clegg had done dynamic meditation for six years or even six days. But I suppose if he had he wouldn’t be about to get into bed with Conservative leader David Cameron (perish the thought!)
Here are the quotations :
“Question – What do you think of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Views on Transcendental Meditation
Osho – Transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation. But still what he is doing is good. What he is teaching in the name of meditation is only an ancient method of chanting. If you chant any word or any mantra continuously inside the mind, other thoughts stop because they don’t have any space. And this continuous chanting is a certain device of auto-hypnosis; it is not meditation. It does not lead you to any spiritual enlightenment, but it certainly gives you a good feeling of wellbeing and health. You will feel refreshed — just as you feel refreshed after a good shower; but a shower is not a transcendental meditation.
So there is nothing wrong with what he is doing. It cannot harm anybody. He is harmless, but he is misdirected. He is giving a toy which is not the real thing. If people enjoy toys — and many people enjoy toys — I have nothing against them. If they are happy, that’s perfectly good.”
“2. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls Transcendental Meditation is only transcendental stupidity! Certainly it is transcendental — it is no ordinary stupidity, it is very sacred! — but stupidity is stupidity, and when it becomes transcendental it becomes more dangerous, more poisonous.
3. And all these people, like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi teaching transcendental meditation, are giving techniques which mind feels perfectly good with. The mind can use it. But there is not going to be any growth. The technique is not bad, but it simply gives you an illusory feeling of well-being — as if you are evolving… and you are standing where you have been; there is no evolution, no growth. All these people are exploiting humanity by giving techniques — and this is the worst exploitation because it stops evolution. I am against all techniques.”
“ The West is unnecessarily making tremendous effort in analyzing the mind — utterly useless unless they accept a transcendental state. And that’s why again and again they get cheated by frauds.
For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is cheating the whole of the West by any stupid thing. First it was transcendental meditation, then people became fed up with it because it was not meditation; it was mind repeating a mantra. You were not going beyond the mind, so what is transcendental in it?
So his earnings became very low; he had to invent something new. So he has invented spiritual yogic flying. First he started by spiritual levitation: you can meditate and become so light that you will start rising upwards! — and you can find idiots everywhere… And people were paying four hundred dollars for learning spiritual levitation. In the first place what are you going to do by… even if you levitate, what purpose is going to be served by it? In the second place nobody was levitating; people were hopping….
The West is being exploited by all kinds of frauds for the simple reason that the West has not looked into the matter of meditation itself. So any idiot goes and says anything, and gathers followers because they don’t know what meditation is. Neither will chanting a mantra nor hopping nor levitation…
These things have nothing to do with meditation. Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle — the whole mystery of life.”
“And there are methods for grown-ups too, for example Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. It is just a lullaby – a little sophisticated. It is meant for grown-ups, for adults. It is a process of auto-hypnosis. The mother is no more there and your wife certainly is not going to sing a lullaby to you. She can freak out, but she cannot sing a lullaby! She can throw pillows at you, but she cannot sing a lullaby! She will say, ”I am not your mother!” And you cannot ask her either, ”Please sing a lullaby,” because that will hurt your male chauvinist ego.
So you start repeating a mantra. It has to be in some dead language which you don’t understand – Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Chinese, anything that you don’t understand. If you understand you will not get into it. If you understand, doubts will arise. If I say, ”Just repeat ’Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola’,” you will repeat it two or three times, and then you will say, ”What nonsense I am doing!” But a Sanskrit mantra is just like ”Coca-Cola,” nothing special in it. But you don’t understand so you believe that there must be some secret in it, some great mystery in it, and you go on repeating it. You are singing a lullaby to yourself; soon you will fall into sleep.
Transcendental Meditation and methods such as it have become more important in the West for the simple reason that the West is losing the art of how to fall asleep. People are suffering from sleeplessness more and more; they have to depend on tranquillizers. Transcendental Meditation is a non-medicinal tranquillizer. And nothing is wrong if you know that you are using it as a tranquillizer, but if you think that you are doing something religious then you are stupid. If you think this is going to lead you to meditation you are a fool, an utter fool, just a simpleton.
It is not going to take you into meditation because meditation means awareness. It is taking you towards just the opposite of awareness: it is taking you towards sleep. I am not against sleep – a good sleep is a healthy thing. And I prescribe TM for all those who suffer from sleeplessness, from insomnia. It is perfectly good, but remember that a good sleep has nothing spiritual about it. It is good for the body, it is good for the mind too, but it has nothing to do with the spiritual dimension. The spiritual dimension opens up only when you are awake, fully awake. And the only way to be awake is to drop all sleep and all dreaming.”
With all due respect, if Osho actually spoke those words then he was simply wrong—about TM and about Maharishi. TM has been proven to be the most effective meditation practice around, and it’s as far from stupidity as you can get.
The words quoted misconstrue Maharishi, his intentions, and his accomplishments. Osho obviously didn’t know him and could not have been familiar with Maharishi’s revival of Vedic wisdom–otherwise the above words would never have been spoken.
Consider Maharishi’s success as a meditation teacher: Never before in recorded history, going back as far as the birth of Buddhism and beyond, has any meditation teacher’s technique been learned by so many people (6 million) during the teacher’s lifetime, and with such demonstrable results. TM has spread mostly by word of mouth. This could only happen if the technique was uniquely, profoundly effective.
Maharishi’s further accomplishment was to establish the practical benefits of meditation on the solid ground of modern science—lifting spiritual development from the realm of mysticism and confusion.
Before Maharishi introduced the Transcendental Meditation technique in 1955, this particular meditation technique was virtually unknown to Indian society and “Hindu” culture; for all practical purposes, it was lost.
Maharishi revived the ancient technique of “effortless transcending” and restored its original effectiveness. Calling it “the TM technique,” he systematized the practice into a seven-step course to preserve it, so that teachers could be trained to teach it in every language and the technique would give consistent, all-positive results for people everywhere—bringing enlightenment to this and future generations.
Maharishi set up a global, non-profit educational organization to preserve this priceless Vedic knowledge in its pure form. And no one, including Maharishi, ever profited financially from the organization’s teaching activities.
Maharishi did not “invent” yogic flying. The practice is derived from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and is another technology that Maharishi restored to its original effectiveness.
So many misunderstandings are expressed in the above quotations. I personally respect whatever good Osho contributed to the people around him. But Osho’s opinions are on a very limited, misinformed human level, far from the wisdom and power of Maharishi’s knowledge of consciousness and human evolution. Maharishi’s intellect and depth of heart are unsurpassed, his teaching a perfection of knowledge in the tradition of Shankara.
It’s hard for me to believe that Osho actually said all that. It’s hard to believe he was that misinformed and would draw such small-minded, base conclusions.
When Lion roars, it has beauty when the horses and sheep adopt the same roar, it looks comic, funny, childish.
What Osho says about ABC, He has the height, the stature, when the foolish followers quote Him to undermine the others, it is like speaking with toe in the mouth.
The writer says, if Nick Clegg had done dynamic meditation for six years or even six days; what bloody proof ALok John you have that Dynamic doers prove better leaders, senstive to the problems of their time and create trend setting leadership.
PS- for more than 25 years, i am doing Osho´s meditation regularly and cannot think to follow another brand, but will not be that stupid to say, my dick is better than the others, because i did Dynamic and other is doing something downright bogus.
If one looks from open heart, One can appreciate Nick Clegg that for six years he was doing something different, he was searching beyond the tradional ways, that he was open, less prejudiced.
We sannyasins have got a unusual habit, neither we play Foot ball or Cricket, but spit on the ground, piss on the pitch.
I am meditating and understanding the spiritual concepts much better with Maharishi’s TM. I am happy about it. I am healthy in doing it. Atleast Maharishi was teaching something sense. Stop criticising and start evolving.
Laughing Crow,
(Read your paragraph again,and i hope you understand the childishness of your comment. Enjoy your life with TM or go the next level with ols cookies packed in new format by Maharishi´s disciple, Ravi Shankar).
But Osho’s opinions are on a very limited, misinformed human level, far from the wisdom and power of Maharishi’s knowledge of consciousness and human evolution. Maharishi’s intellect and depth of heart are unsurpassed, his teaching a perfection of knowledge in the tradition of Shankara.
It’s hard for me to believe that Osho actually said all that. It’s hard to believe he was that misinformed and would draw such small-minded, base conclusions.
It may be hard for someone to believe what Osho said about This or That. Osho has no obligation towards Vedanta or Zen or Sufi; He knew what he was speaking, day after day, year after year; and everywhere He has shown his single minded commitment towards TRUTH and noting else.(who bothers about factual errors.)
Shantam Prem, I think that’s a rather hypocritical comment. Your “Lion’s Roar” reference comes directly from Osho, doesn’t it. You are doing with it exactly the what you are think Alok John is doing – using Osho’s words to attack someone else.
Also, Alok isn’t actually doing it. He said his own opinion, and then adds a few quotes from Osho. This being a sannyasin site, I think one can reasonably do that without further explanation or justification. He isn’t “adopting the lion’s roar” as you accuse him of doing, just providing a few quotes for anyone interested.
You say: “what bloody proof ALok John you have that Dynamic doers prove better leaders”
No proof at all, no doubt. But, seeing as he wasn’t claiming that it does, he doesn’t need to show any.
What exactly is the problem here, Shantam Prem? Anyone familiar with Osho’s words knows he criticised TM clearly and frequently. A politician is stating publically that he was doing it, and acting like a weasle. Why can’t sannyasin make a few barbed comments about it on a site like this, without needing to add all kinds of caveats or lengthy justifications?
Personally, I’m strongly in favour of publicising Osho’s criticisms of TM as widely as possible. TM has been the cause of untold idiocy in the new age movement for years – Deepak Chopra’s dangerous and ignorant health propaganda, for example, has spread like a virus through the public imagination and spiritual ideology, and monopolised the market definition of “meditation”. There is much to criticise in it, and good reason for sannyasins to distance ourselves from it.
In short, I think Alok’s brief aside prefacing a few Osho quotes is perfectly in order. If you want more justification for the view that dynamic is better than TM, just consider all the reasons why you have been doing it, rather than TM for 25 years.
Or do you think that anything with the label “spiritual” should be given a free pass, and any criticism can be waved away with a dose of relativism?
Why not just let everybody be happy on the path they chose?
Crow, they are definitely Osho quotes. The last one is from Guida Spirituale. Most of the rest can be found by googling “Osho maharishi.”
Osho did not have his reputation as a rebel for nothing!
Here is Nick Clegg on his TM history
http://www.t-m.org.uk/meditation-news/2010/04/transcendental-meditation-helped-nick-clegg-during-his-years-at-cambridge-university/
Osho teaches to observe or witness the mind. He says this is quite different from quieting the mind, as in TM.
Crow, they are definitely Osho quotes. The last one is from Guida Spirituale. Most of the rest can be found by googling “Osho maharishi.”
Osho did not have his reputation as a rebel for nothing!
Here is Nick Clegg on his TM history
http://www.t-m.org.uk/meditation-news/2010/04/transcendental-meditation-helped-nick-clegg-during-his-years-at-cambridge-university/
Osho teaches to observe or witness the mind. He says this is quite different from quieting the mind, as in TM.
Then, if Osha said this, with due respect, he simply did not understand TM. I am sorry that he would say so much about something he was so uninformed about, and would so falsely criticize others. I respect Osho and believe he was sincere, and that he offered something of great value to all those who flocked around him. Otherwise, people would not have come to him and stuck around.
TM is not just a process of quieting the mind, it is a technique for transcending the mind to experience pure consciousness–Atma–which is the only true basis for “witnessing” mental activity and witnessing all activity in the state of Cosmic Consciousness.
FYI: Ravi Shankar is definitely not “the next level” in the framework of Maharishi’s Vedic knowledge. (Talk about fatuous, childish comments.) And thanks, I am immensely enjoying my life with TM.
I like that Osho was a rebel and felt free to say what he liked and was beholden to no one. Maharishi was the same. But Maharishi did harbor great respect for the Vedic Tradition, and led a revival of it.
Yes, thanks, I do understand the childishness of my comment, but thanks for reminding me. It is indeed childish to try to correct anyone’s misunderstanding (unless they ask you to), to criticize anyone, to compare one person to another, or to defend Maharishi, who needs no defending. I probably did of this. But alas, sometimes the devilish fun of childishness is just too tempting. As Ananda Ma said, “Everyone is doing the best they can.”
Best of luck to all you good Osho sanyasis.
The most important thing for Osho is TRANSFORMATION.. Thats the key.. No one can transform themselves without understanding the workings of their own mind and only by practicng a meditation technique
TM can be a effective meditation technique..there had been 100 plus meditations techniques.. effective.. Thats not the point here….
Osho clearly said that practicing meditation techniques like TM without understanding mind and awarenes it can be very dangerous..you can end up supressing negativity.. In my own experience i have seen people who are TM practioners but who just couldnt come to terms with their mind,, who ended up suppressing..
Osho is not for people who want to understand him very superficially..not ready to go deep into their own unconiouness and bring everything out into conciouss level. …He also understood the modern mind and its needs rather than creating techniques based on historical knowledge and push it down people’s throat…
To me the combination of listening to Osho and doing Dynamc is the only way out.. Later Dynamic can be repalced by awareness methods
If you want to keep playing games with the goose without any intention to release it from the bottle then practice any technique like TM..and be happy with it.. It will give you happiness.. Surely..But happiness is not the real goal of sprituality.. Finding TRUTH is..
” I am happy about it. I am healthy in doing it. Atleast Maharishi was teaching something sense. Stop criticising and start evolving. ”
Vijay.. You are right in your view point.. This is what Osho also said
” It does not lead you to any spiritual enlightenment, but it certainly gives you a good feeling of wellbeing and health. You will feel refreshed ”
What Osho was reffering to is Buddhahood , No-mind.. Not superficial happiness and well being ..For that there are so many health plans are offerened by hospitals.. we dont have to practice meditation,,
Laughing Crow
From what you say it sounds more like ‘ Bypassing ‘ mind rather than ‘ witnessing’
Can you tell us a little more of this
” TM is not just a process of quieting the mind, it is a technique for transcending the mind to experience pure consciousness–Atma–which is the only true basis for “witnessing” mental activity and witnessing all activity in the state of Cosmic Consciousness. ”
I am also too tired of lot of arguements on this forum on topis which lead us to nowhere..Lets see whether we can have a meanigful discussion
My above comment is with due respect to al the people who posted here for the last year or so…. By all means we had fantastic times , thrashing each other and expressing boldly like typical Osho people.. People like Abhay ( Sw Detective ) had been awesome in putting up those strong views..I have immense respect for these people..
All said and done i will live and die around Osho and His people.. for the sheer energy and liveliness they bring out..
Just for a change lets discuss some meditation related points.. Lets see whether this thread goes beyond 50 posts.. hahahhahah
Thank you, Kranti, you are right. Better to have a meaningful exchange.
Maharishi would agree that understanding the mind is of utmost importance. When one learns TM, one takes a comprehensive course, gaining knowledge about the mechanics of transcending and establishing pure consciousness. Certainly not everyone who has learned TM (6 million) fully understood the mechanics of the practice, or the process of purification of the nervous system, or other subtleties of the process. But the understanding is very important. Which is why the TM program is structured with a lifetime of follow-up and support—advanced lectures and continuing knowledge—so intellectual understanding can grow with experience.
During TM, one experiences finer and finer states of thought—earlier stages of the thinking process—until the mantra is transcended and one is left in the Self (Atma, in Sanskrit)—the state of pure consciousness or pure Being. This is the fourth state of consciousness, identified by Patanjali, the Upanishads, Gita, etc. as “turiya,” meaning, the fourth state (not waking, dreaming or sleep).
This is pure mind, consciousness by itself. It is not ‘relative mind,’ or jiva, but universal, unbounded awareness—Sat Chit Ananda.
The mind has not been by-passed during TM, it is being experienced in its pure essence, which is consciousness.
Experiencing this state twice daily in meditation cultures the nervous system to maintain pure consciousness even in daily activity. Immediately after beginning TM, the meditator experiences that this inner silence of the Self is growing in daily life, more and more, and with that increasing presence of the Self, one experiences the witnessing quality, referred to in the Gita as “Self as separate from activity.” As Vasishta said, “When you begin to see the world from a great distance, it is good, you are approaching the goal.” Witnessing is the experience, in Maharishi’s framework, of experiencing the Self as separate from the world, separate from your own actions and thought processes. It is something that comes naturally through regular meditation and cannot be contrived or imagined into being. It is based on the reality of the nervous system, on the brain’s natural ability to maintain pure consciousness in the midst of the most dynamic activity. But brain functioning has to change (and there are many studies from neuroscience showing what happens to the brain during TM).
This state of being established in Atma continually, witnessing the world at a pleasant distance while functioning smoothly in it, never being overshadowed by it, is what Maharishi defines as Cosmic Consciousness, the first stage of enlightenment.
TM definitely leads to spiritual enlightenment. It’s not just about feeling refreshed and relaxed, although you get that too.
You say Osho was offering “Buddhahood.” That sounds nice. Of course, Buddhahood is the state of Cosmic Consciousness—direct realization of the true nature of Being, the state the Buddha described as freedom from suffering, the state of Self knowledge. You may want to rephrase your wording, however, because, can anyone really offer that to anyone? Of course not. No one can enlighten you. You cannot buy it, you cannot steal it. You enlighten yourself. The Self is gained by the Self. Awakening comes entirely from within. The guru provides the understanding and the techniques to help the aspirant on his way.
I hope Osho’s people are feeling fulfilled on their path, and that they are continually transcending their path and all limited concepts of reality. This process of transcending and spontaneously growing to identify with the transcendental field of pure Being is what TM is all about. There’s nothing wrong with it. Any slamming of TM is based on misunderstanding. It’s like criticizing perfection.
Yakaru, your points are justified,whether it is about my comment or about TM or Deepak Chopra kind of hinduism packed in the polythene of meditation for the doller rich west.
And my comment isbased on this deep rooted expereince that sannyasins have become experts in finding the Chemical in other people´s biological food and yet don´t use the same obervation for one´s own group.
We have the best master, we have the best techniques of watching the mind, we know meditation is not sleep but deep awareness; show me where we are leaving the foot prints of our better than Deepak Chopra kind of approach.
Personally, I’m strongly in favour of publicising Osho’s criticisms of TM as widely as possible. TM has been the cause of untold idiocy in the new age movement for years – Deepak Chopra’s dangerous and ignorant health propaganda, for example, has spread like a virus through the public imagination and spiritual ideology, and monopolised the market definition of “meditation”.
Yakaru
I am immensely enjoying my life with TM.
Laughing crow
So yajaru we should play the patriarch, Jehovah the witness, The Mormons of New and brave world and tell others that they are walking on the slippery path.
Cann´t we accept the freedom of others to follow their journey to buy and endrose what they want.
In the end of the day it is not the holy books but the personal human to human exchange which inspires others to try something new and go on using it in their life.
And Yakru don´t you see that decades ago Sannyasins have lost the moral authority to preach others, or do you think Greeks in the presnt scenrio can still contribute to the IMF and world bank.
And Mr. Crow, my “childish” adjective is reserved for those people who criticize the Masters of others, just like children who boast about the salery of their father, and the fat ass of other children´s mothers.
And a question for Mr. Laughing Crow.
Did Maharishi has spoken somewhere about Rajneesh (Osho) or was simply ignoring him.
And how come this crow lands up in Osho´s Bistro.
Were you reading the posts at sannyasnews regularly?
and today when it was TM´s turn to get few punches from a regular of this site Mr. Alok John, your comment became the first reaction.
I agree, as usual, with Kranti. People who do TM look like they are suppressing to me as well.
Shantam, I’m not suggesting that sannyasins have any right to preach to anyone, (so I agree with you absolutely there). But as individiuals there’s no reason why we shouldn’t criticise nonsense where we see it.
I don’t mean insult, but criticise intelligently. Chopra for eg., doesn’t have a grip on science – neither quantum physics nor even very basic biology. Yet he is counselling people to throw away their medicine and think their cancer away. It’s not being patriarchal to point out the blatant factual errors in his statements.
TM has a history of claiming all kinds of stupid nonsense like levitation or reducing crime through meditating. I see no reason to passively tolerate their lies and fudging of the evidence about this kind of thing.
Alok John has shared a link about the real king maker of queen´s Britain, Nick Cregg and this has lead me to the official website of TM in UK.
I have really no intention to know how TM practitioners touch the G spot, but looks like they are good in organising networking, quite efficient in supply chain management, whereas our managers behave like running an exclusive high street jewellery show room
with a note in the bracket, (OFI has no branch or subsidiary, please check the sign of Olympic size swimming pool as a mark of authenticity).
Yakaru, as an Indian, i will trust more the innocence of this man who claims to be surviving without food and water for the last 70 years than all the Deepak Chopra´s of the world.
and this question always wonders me how the rich and famous and sexy ones of the west become so easily prone to gullibility.
The other day i have seen at tube a video about “Super Brain Yoga”, may be this will prove the mother of all DM, TM, AM, PM.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Laughing Crow you sound like a puppet from the TM Movement. Are you one of those group of Tm bloggers that goes around trying to drown out negative comments critical of TM? And there is most likely a conflict of interest if your on Sannyasnews. Besides you do not have sufficient knowledge about Osho and in what context he uttered his criticisms to make any intelligent conclusions. You say “TM has been proven to be the most effective meditation practice around”, With all due respect you might try levitating out of your rabbit hole and give Osho meditations a try.
Laughing Crow
Thanks for detailed info.. Yes..You do have a systematic way of practiicng meditation and all..
I didnt mean Osho offered Buddhahood as ‘ transfer ‘.. May be i didnt word it wrongly.. What i meant is Osho is someone who didnt settle for anything less than no mind.. And his techniques are experiential.. Within the world of Osho approaching meditation as a sort of dicipline , or with health goals is not valued..
I can only tell you Osho is just not another master..I myself found him after trying few things including TM.. He blew my mind off in one discourse…
The experiment He did in conciuouness was too big and my mind is too tiny to talk about it .. I simply fail to find words when it comes to Osho.. He is too vast and swept everyting that came on his way..
I am not preaching here or supporting Osho and all.. Osho doesnt need it..
Since it seems you have a open mind towards meditations and enlightenment ..
Like Kartar rightly said give Osho active meditations a try , just go crazy by dancing in Buddha grove or wherever it suits you , laugh madly and let go..Osho world is a different world altogether
Just to add
” Any slamming of TM is based on misunderstanding. It’s like criticizing perfection… ”
Osho didnt belive in perfection. For him even the existence is not perfect.. Perfection is a neurosis for him.. ( for me too.. I became sane after stopping efforts to become perfect )
When i read the post and the comments, Alok John has triggered a nice atmosphare by bringing TM and therefore Laughing crow from the garden of Maharishi.
But where crow has disappered, may be doing TM before 10, D(r)owning street, when Daily mail is screaming, “A squalid day for democracy.”
Transcedental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is neither transcedental nor meditation. It is a mixed of much Hindus tactics, as is being done with new nomenclature by Ravi Shankar and Deepak Chopra. Hinduism is a religion of convenience in the present day. The truth and realism of Hinduism is gone. Mr ABC, Mr XYZ or Mr Tom, Dick, Harry, if you are serious with your life, soul, mind and Meditation, than, Osho is best in this Millenium to bless us with Meditational techniques.
Shantam Prem vouching for Osho is appreciable and I endorse. May be people here in this Forum are unable to understand Shantam, he being an outspoken personality with his clear picturesque view of Osho. Roaring or no-roaring does not matter, only Meditation matters, which Shantam Prem is stressing upon.
Love to all friends here.
Maharishi and Osho were mutual friends – they grew up in the same street somewhere in or near Jabalpur. I have a tape bought in India where Osho talkes about Maharishi and Maharishi’s Guru Brahmananda Sarasvatii in very high terms.
When Maharishi was told about Osho being put to prison in the US He was furious and got very angry on the man who told this news… .
I am pretty sure that the quotes You are presenting here are NOT from Osho – they sound more like a … agent who tries to remove one target using another…
Shantam Prem, I guess this is why TM is TM is more popular than Osho; none of them say things like this:
(From The Dhammapadha Vol.9 #5)
“The pseudo masters speak the language of your desires. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says if you meditate you will become healthy, you will become rich, you will become successful, you will become famous. In whatsoever line you are working you will be at the top. That’s what you want, so you say, ok then it’s not such a problem to meditate…You want a thousand and one desires to be fulfilled.
There are masters who say, whatever you want, you will get it through meditation. Money will pour in. Just ask in deep meditation and it is going to happen. This is speaking the language of your desire.
The truth is just the opposite. If you ask me, if you really meditate you will be a failure in life, an utter failure. If you are succeeding, then even that success will disappear because meditation will make you so relaxed, so non-violent, so loving, so non-competitive, so nonegoistic that who cares for success? Meditation will make you so joyous that who wants to bother about tomorrow. Meditation will make you inwardly rich, certainly. Inwardly you will become ecstatic, but outwardly it can’t be guarranteed that you will become rich, that you will become successful, that you will become healthy, that no disease will ever happen to you. That is all sheer bullshit.”
Akanda , the words were pure Osho. Relax. These words are well known for people who know / listen to Osho. And Osho talkng highly of maharishi in a certain context has nothing to do with these words. He puts everything in a perspective. Think you are too new to Osho.
Hey, why people are serious to make a comparison of the two. Everybody plays its role, like Shakespeare says in his Plays. And we all are bretherns/sisters of one universe. Neither Osho nor Mahesh Yogi is patting us all now, while we are supporting and taking side of any of the two. It seems, you people want to throw the mud on each other, by showing the supermacy and superiority of two different people.
They are our past and we all are their future. Meditation can help us to become Master at our own place and Osho always advocated on this point. May be Mahesh Yogi has no such views, because his total message is involved more to Ego (Transcedental Meditation) than to true Meditation, for the masses.
God bless us all.
all that matters, ultimately, is attaining the “no mind” and living it as an all-time reality. yes? do you agree, or no?
it seems that many of the Osho followers harbor resentment or some kind of negativity toward TM and Maharishi. does this harshness toward another system have anything whatsoever to do with spiritual enlightenment, with furthering your own well-being and attaining the “no mind?” — or might such negative feelings and snarky opinions stand in the way of rising above pettiness and realizing something bigger?
intellectual analysis has it’s place, real discrimination between Self and non-self is important, using the intellect to discern what is real and what is not real is crucial, as enlightenment is a state of understanding and experience. for me this commenting process is all about intellectual clarity and dispelling misunderstanding through discrimination. i came here only to clarify what i saw as blatant misunderstandings being expressed about TM and Maharishi. it is something i do on my own and not as part of any organized effort. people working for the TM org would never spend their time on this, that i know of. some of you criticized me for being here at all. (are counter viewpoints and exchange of ideas not allowed in your belief system? to your credit, some of you display open mindedness and freedom of thought). it’s clear to me, having experienced the Absolute all my life thru TM, that most of the statements made above in the comments are based on a gross misunderstanding of Maharishi’s teaching. i suggest, if you want the truth about TM and about life, that you use your intellect to discern what you really KNOW and what you don’t, what you know for a fact as opposed to what you only believe.
can any of you say with CERTAINTY that you know for a fact that Osho’s alleged remarks about Maharishi and TM are 100% true? if the universe is not perfect, as Osho says, if life is not perfect, then is your master also not perfect? are his words not perfect? could it be that he was mistaken about TM? could it be that you are also mistaken? if the universe is not perfect, then how can a single human being such as Osho be infallible? i’m not saying that Osho was not “perfected,” because, honestly, i don’t know. i’m just asking if you believe his words were perfect and infallible, and how could that be in an imperfect universe?
i am not criticizing your path at all. so why do some of you feel it necessary to degrade other people’s form of meditation? perhaps Osho did so because he felt a need to keep his followers focused on their path with him, and not be drawn to any other system. maybe it was right and good for you that he did that. but when you broadcast these statements to the world, you’re exposing yourself to a variety of points of view. it’s natural that someone would respond who sees it differently.
i hope you all understand your master’s words. when he says life is not perfect, the universe is not perfect, he means the relative field of life, the ever-changing phase of life. he doesn’t mean the Absolute, non-changing field of pure consciousness. not if he knew what he was talking about.
when i say criticizing TM is like criticizing perfection, i mean it’s like criticizing the Absolute, because experiencing the Absolute is all that TM is about. the transcendental Absolute is perfect. anyone who experiences it KNOWS this. and the Absolute is what life really is—an unbounded ocean of consciousness. which means, life is ultimately perfect. this is the universal, perennial truth of life. but it can only be truly known through direct experience.
did Osho not teach this?
if your understanding is different from this, then either you’re misinterpreting Osho, or you need a new master. because no master worth his salt will tell you that life is meant to be lived in suffering, imperfection, and ignorance. such a master would be only a master of the relative, and not a true master at all (there are many of them). the true state of “no mind” is a state of transcendence and singularity, where the relative does not exist, and that means that in that state imperfections do not exist.
i can say with absolute certainty that life is bliss, that life is perfect, that in reality it is a perfect universe. i say this because i experience the Absolute. I AM THAT and i experience that EVERYTHING is THAT. but i say so with full knowledge that this is not most people’s experience. from the standpoint of the individual wave on the ocean, there is diversity, multiplicity, and sometimes turbulence. when the wave experiences itself as the entire ocean, it’s a different and truer story.
life in ignorance is not experienced as perfect. life without direct experience of the Absolute field is perceived as suffering. perhaps this was what Osho was referring to when he said life is not perfect. to talk of imperfection is to speak of an existence outside the Absolute, and in reality there is no existence outside the Absolute. every true master knows this. i hope, for your sake, that you guys are experiencing transcendence, the state of “no mind” beyond relativity, and living it throughout everything you do (not just occasionally, momentarily during meditation). if you’re not, i suggest trying TM (again, in some cases) and really gaining a clear understanding of how it works and what it is.
if you are regularly experiencing “no mind” — the state of pure consciousness — and growing in bliss and unboundedness, realizing the true nature of life as perfection, then you know you’re on the right track. if you are experiencing THAT, it seems you not be so critical and negative toward TM; it seems instead that you’d feel a kinship, a sort of brotherhood, with your fellow human beings on the spiritual track.
If anyone wants to check Osho quotes about TM, one quick way is to subscribe to the on-line library at Osho.com for a short time and do a search.
Laughng crow. I am travellng and had a quick glance to your post. Seems to be very thoughtful and beautiful one. I wil read further and expres my opinion. Not arguements just my views
Laughing Crow: “i am not criticizing your path at all. so why do some of you feel it necessary to degrade other people’s form of meditation?”
- Criticism is not degrading.
“can any of you say with CERTAINTY that you know for a fact that Osho’s alleged remarks about Maharishi and TM are 100% true?”
- No, and for my part, I posted a quotation simply to illustrate what he said, not to criticise by proxy.
But I will criticise directly: if someone gets famous selling the idea that he has magical powers, I think they deserve to be publically ridiculed until they either back up their claims or shut up. And I don’t care whether that’s Maharishi or any of the Osho sannyasins and hangers-on who advertise here.
Criticism isn’t appropriate for subjective experiences in different meditation techniques, but claims like I can levitate, or God talks to me, or whatever, I don’t think we need to pussy-foot around that kind of stupidity.
We must laugh to the views of Laughing Crow, instead of analysing his statement seriously Because Life is a Fun, Let Us Play……..
Hahahahahahahaha
Here is a wee quote from someone who really does know what he is talking about. No need to even mention his name as his indelible signature of truth permeates his words.
Every living being longs always to be happy, untainted by sorrow; and everyone has the greatest love for himself, which is solely due to the fact that happiness is his real nature. Hence, in order to realize that inherent and untainted happiness, which indeed he daily experiences when the mind is subdued in deep sleep, it is essential that he should know himself. For obtaining such knowledge the inquiry ‘Who am I?’ in quest of the Self is the best means.”
I have spent over 35 years exploring meditation techniques from different traditions. As a young man I spent several years working inside the TM movement when I was in my teens at University and trained as a “checker” of the TM meditation technique. Indeed TM was my first introduction to meditation practices and spiritual ideas.
I came across Osho’s somewhat disparaging comments about TM at the end of my University time and I can vouch for their authenticity. Yes, I was a little peeved that he did not have a higher opinion of my favoured technique. Nevertheless he did credit TM with stress-reduction and relaxation…. similar to a “lullaby”. At the time I felt he simple didn’t understand some of the subtleties of Maharishi’s technique, as Maharishi himself would emphasise that TM wasn’t the classical ‘mantra jappa’ technique – merely the inner repetition of a mantra – but involved letting the mantra get finer and finer until the sound, and thought itself, all but disappeared (thus ‘transcendental’.)
In due time I became a sannyasin and practised all of Osho’s meditations and quite a few others aside. Each one brought an alertness – a sharp bright light of pure consciousness – which was quite unlike the state I had experienced through TM. In other words TM does seem to me to be unique and unlike other meditation methods. I have concluded after many years that the TM technique is closer to a trance state or hypnotic induction. The “deep rest” of TM comes with a strange heavy, dissociated experience in the limbs which other meditations even those which involve sitting in silence do not evoke. (And quite different from stiffness, aches and pins-and-needles that accompany sitting cross-legged for long periods.)
I now question the claims that TM is either a method of spiritual development or even entirely healthy. There is a body of research that shows that intense TM practice can have harmful effects – odd physical and emotional symptoms which are well known within the TM movement and euphemistically referred to as “unstressing.” I haven’t seen such symptoms arise in myself or in other people working with any of the other meditations I have explored.
However I am not going to claim Osho’s meditations are quite as perfect as they are usually cracked up to be either. In more recent years I have worked with a another class of meditation techniques based upon “energy resonance”. I experience far deeper states of inner peace and outer oneness using these methods. Going back to Osho’s classic meditations – Dynamic, Kundalini, Nataraj etc. – many of these seem a little forced, a little artificial, in comparison. They seem to be too much based on the assumption that a change of consciousness must be arrived at through self-imposed effort and activity instead of being settled into as a natural state.
Meditation, effort, and seeking are absolutely essential in the search, but don’t forget that clinging to any technique will prevent you from relaxing into a place of true freedom and completion.
I´m unconscious thru alchool and other drugs perhaps Our beloved master Osho had some unconsciousness going and teaching as existence send Him drugs,like laughing gas,pain killers and pills!
May be for our sake He needed it!
Please share *Soror Terezinha du Petit Jésus because She the devine was sent by the *Most High to show Us around the forest of mind and its jungles!
*Male- nature needs to follow our sisters in the forest and a single file is defnitly what is needed in this evolution!
please allow the safe passage of anyone that wants to contribute even if He ´s a liberal Democrate!Please don´t go the way that congressional (joe!)that turned aginst Obama for Obama later on to show Him compassion how it works!
Our love is Osho,
until than,
amritlind and crew!
Please in need of a laughter please check blog:-”mcveeresh.com”by amritlind!
Please look it up in the googles!
Mcveeresh looks like he is not only lost in the woods but sittting in a stream. He does have a great name, though.
Nothing is “Hindu” about chanting, Muslims, Christians – every religion uses chanting.
And nothing is competitive or insulting about a meditation teacher pointing out the dangers of every method, and nothing is strange about disciples quoting their master.
And we are talking about Osho, who developed the Nadabrahma meditation and many others that are simply hypnotic! Here is a better quote;
(By the way, Osho did know Maharishi – he addressed a TM camp once – but Maharishi preferred not to debate with him.)
This is from the Book of Secrets
If you repeat a particular sound, it creates a circle within you. It creates boredom; it creates sleep. That is why Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation is known in the West as a non-medical tranquilizer. It is because it is a simple repetition of a mantra. But if your mantra becomes just a repetition without an alert YOU inside, an alert YOU constantly listening to you, listening to the sound, it may help sleep, but it cannot help anything else. As far as it goes, it is good. If you are suffering from insomnia, transcendental meditation is good.
Otherwise, it helps — but not unless you use the mantra with an alert inner ear. Then you have to do two things: go on reducing the pitch of the mantra, reducing the sound, making it more slow and more subtle, and at the same time simultaneously go on becoming more alert, more alert. As the sound becomes subtle, become more alert; otherwise, you will miss the whole point.
So two things have to be done: sound has to be slowed down, and you have to become more alert. The more sound becomes subtle, the more alert you are. To make you more alert the sound has to be made more subtle, and a point comes when sound enters soundlessness, or soundfulness, and you enter total awareness. When the sound enters soundlessness or soundfulness, by that time your alertness must have touched the peak. When the sound reaches the valley, when it goes to the down-most, deepest center in the valley, your alertness has gone to the very peak, to the Everest. And there, sound dissolves into soundfulness or soundlessness, and you dissolve into total awareness…..
This is a way — one of the most used, one of the most helpful. Mantra became so important because of this. Because sound is already there and your mind is so filled with it, you can use it as a jumping board. But there are difficulties, and the first difficulty is sleep. Whosoever uses a mantra must be aware of this difficulty. That is the hindrance — sleep. You are bound to fall into sleep because it is so repetitious, it is so harmonious, it is so boring — you will fall victim. And do not think that your sleep is your meditation. Sleep is not meditation.
Sleep is good in itself, but beware. If you are using the mantra for sleep, then it is okay. But if you are using the mantra for spiritual awakening, then beware of sleep. For those who use a mantra, sleep is the enemy — and it so easily happens. And it is so beautiful, because it is a different type of a sleep: remember that too. When it comes from a mantra, this is not ordinary sleep. This is a different kind of sleep….
But in hypnosis, or in yoga tandra, the watcher is asleep. That is the problem with all those who want to use sound to go into soundlessness or soundfulness, to go beyond. They must be aware that the mantra should not become an auto-hypnotic technique. It must not create auto-hypnosis.
So what can you do? You can do only one thing: while you are using your mantra, while you are intoning your mantra, do not simply intone it. At the same time be alert and listen to it also. Intone it and listen to it both. Otherwise, if you are not listening consciously, it will become your lullaby and you will fall into deep sleep. That sleep will be very good — you will feel refreshed after it, alive; you will feel a certain well-being — but this is not the point.
“real discrimination between Self and non-self is important, using the intellect to discern what is real and what is not real is crucial”
But this is a different method – a jnana method.
“When you begin to see the world from a great distance, it is good, you are approaching the goal.”
Also one can practise this without chanting.
It is like saying – if you do nothing but eat chocolate, by and by you will become very aware – so long as you become aware while you are eating.
Laughing Crow suggests that the mantra itself brings awareness, but that is not the case – hence the need for the jnana stuff.
Thank U,dear boy!
Lokesh what a name…?!Was you ever locked up some where and now you feel free to speak ,so to ask!
Thanks for watching thefairysaint in the forest…we´ve got to single file like our sisters ants do…!
Male-nature and femenyn-natute take note!Single file for one and dance,eartly dance until the male-nature is free from His “*pussy clot”,
best wishes,
amritlind
Dear Bhaskar, I’ll put it like this.
There is no place quite like a prison cell for honing ones philosophical blade to cut through the maya. Somewhere down the line I learned that everyone is doing time. It’s just that many don’t realize it. It really is true that the only prisons that exist are the ones we create in our mind.
Then it is dear Scottish Lokesh! I am so glad to find you are still in the orbit, though I expected it.
What you say is a beautiful realisation. It once happened to me also that I found myself in a place perimetered by high walls, barbed wire and machine guns. You will be surprised to know that the purpose of these surroundings was to encourage me to stay in a certain place.
But the pigeons would fly in, fly out.
They did not know at all what kind of place this was.
Why should I be less free than a pigeon?
Dear Oblique, good to hear from you. It is moments like this that make visiting this site worthwhile.
Interesting to me, this discussion, as I too began my ‘spiritual career’ with TM, at the age of 20. However, 9 months of practice wasn’t enough to prevent a descent into 4 and a half years of dysfunctional depression, during which I found, to my huge disappointment, that the technique simply didn’t work, it had lost its former potency.
What rescued me from this painful decline was Osho’s dynamic meditation, which, after several months of wholehearted, frequent practice, liberated me into a ‘new life’ of well-being, where I was able to function again ok, and sensed new abilities, new interests, new life.
A personal experience of ‘re-birth’!
Looking back, I still had a LONG way to go, of course, and when I went to Poona, full of expectation of even more and greater ‘highs’, I was disappointed. Because, within a few days, no more loud dynamics were allowed, due to complaints from the neighbours! And Osho was no longer leading ‘kirtans’ or ‘Hoo’ meditations, which I’d previously so enjoyed and got off on while in London and especially at a week’s meditation camp in Denmark.
Now, to the point:
Within a few weeks I began doing TM again and at a darshan checked this out with Osho as I’d read and heard he didn’t rate it.
Surprise, surprise – he told me it was fine, nothing to worry about, no problem, I could do it if I wished!
So I carried on for a while, although it sort of faded away in due course, not long after in fact.
However, although I was a book editor in Poona, my 9-plus months there definitely didn’t lead to ‘bliss’ of any kind, nor even a great deal of enhanced well-being and returning to London – penniless, of course – I fairly soon plunged into another 2 years or more of depressive inadequacy, with accompanying ill health and a lot of despondency.
Oh yes, I did all the groups that were going, 2 ’3-months Intensives’ (one with Somendra), Osho meditations (dynamic was virtually useless by this time, I’d shot my bolt with that and was probably not fit enough for it to work properly anyway).
What eventually lifted me out of that painful trough, as a second ‘re-birth’? You guessed it – TM!
Within a very short time I felt health and energy, clarity of mind and good humour return. Depression lifted and I could actually enjoy being alive. (Almost worth the suffering of the previous two years! Almost…).
I did TM, and continued Osho meditations as well, for the next 6-plus years, until it felt right to stop.
No need to add any more ‘life story’, except to say that after another 8 or so years I took it up again, for another 2 years, and felt the benefits.
So, while Osho’s dynamic ‘saved my life’ (probably literally),
I’m also very grateful to Maharishi’s TM for helping me to be healthy and relatively stable during a number of years.
HOWEVER…from my experience I can say that for me, TM is definitely not true meditation, it is simply more like a self-therapy. Very beneficial and, like simple exercise, much cheaper than other therapy, but still superficial compared to the ‘real deal’.
And nothing like as powerful as the Holosync Programme, another so-called meditation method, which looks a bit like meditation but which is in fact a therapy – a very effective one, but still a therapy.
Only last week at this very site I was reading a lengthy discussion/debate between Osho (at the time, Acharya Rajneesh) and TM people (including Maharishi himself), which I think took place at some sort of large TM gathering, maybe a ‘camp’, in the late 60′s.
Well worth looking at, it would be definitive evidence, I’d have thought, of Osho’s stance.
And frankly, it seemed he won over many of the people.
Or was it at this site?!!
I’ll check and post the link tomorrow.
My God, I’ve just read that not only did Clegg practise TM, William Hague (new British Foreign Secretary) has done it for 30 years (clearly a real pro!).
Then there’s Donovan (singer famous in the 60′s) and, to cap it all…Russell Brand (probably now the biggest, ‘hip’ comedy act in Britain), who recently learned it and says it’ll help him stay away from addiction…
Huge programmes afoot to help addicts, prisoners and ex-cons, ex-soldiers etc.
All very helpful, that I know from personal experience.
Yet…It might feel good, it might do you the world of good, it might well be ‘just what the doctor ordered’, but…
It ain’t the ‘real deal’, spiritually speaking, just a first step…
(Otherwise, how come William Hague’s still a Tory?!!!)
Satya Deva,
Can you write for the benefit of people like me about the technical aspcets of TM, how it is done?
I have checked in the net and could not find the ways of doing it but surely the addresses of people, who can initiate people into this?
(Otherwise, how come William Hague’s still a Tory?!!!)
Should he be Tony, the labourer, your loving Ex. Ex. prime minster, the puppy dog; tailing around the Bush.
May be Britísh Sannyasins can request Dr. Amrito, the personal physician of Dymanic founder to take a pludge into the public life and bring some lightening?
Wow.. the posts by Oblique , Madir and Satya Deva are so beautiful and full of good info ..
Last two days i tried posting messages from mobile but couldnt do so..
In the next thread Prem Jashan has contributed very beautiful posts..
just when i thought no participation is coming in threads there is so much fresh air.. feels good..
Ok, here’s the link to the lengthy discussion between Osho (‘Acharya Rajneesh’) and followers of Maharishi and TM, from the late 60′s:
http://pgoodnight.wordpress.com/osho/osho-meets-with-followers-of-maharishi-mahesh-yogi/
Just for the record. I listened to Osho talk ‘live’ about TM on several ocassions. He never had anything good to say about it. His headline ran somewhere along the lines of gaining the same effect from chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola. Seeing how TM is part of the status quo these days and some are interested in propagating a respectable image for Osho perhaps what he said is being watered down. Basically he made out like TM was a joke for dummies.
All things considered, it is hardly surprising that Osho did not speak about TM in a particularly positive light because it ran contrary to what he was about. He saw it as necessary for most that a period of sustained catharsis was needed before a person, particularly westerners, could sit silently and do nothing. In my opinion on that level he was absolutely right on the money and it still makes sense.
What passes for ‘spiritual’ in most people’s lives is a lot of bunkum. East melding with west has not been the great event that many dreamed it might one day become. if anything it has created even more confusion for many, The one thing really fantastic to come out of the east meets west concept is fusion music, but that is about it, if you ask me. Remember, I’m a Scotsman and prone to sceptism.
It is possible that for many TM is beneficial. I have one friend who has practiced it daily for twenty years and I believe it has a lot to do with him being a very relaxed and calm person. Nonetheless, his ideas on matters spiritual are not very developed.
What I have learned on my own inner journey is that bliss states in themselves are illusionary. A lot of being around Osho was about living your bliss, energy, getting high on your inner supply. That is where many sannyasins became stuck, myself included. Eventually, with a little help, I saw where I was stuck and moved beyond the bliss states.
Of all the things I’ve read on this particular aspect of the spiritual journey I think that nobody wrote it better than Chogyam Trumpa in his classic text, ‘Cutting through spiritual materialism’. The chapter on the six lokas, or realms, captures perfectly the nature of the beast. I highly recommend reading this as it can be a great aid in seeing where one is at because the six realms are not somewhere else they are here and in all likelyhood you are caught up in one of them right now.
Get it in your head what is going on, then feel it in your heart and soon understanding will happen.
Good stuff, Lokesh, although as I said, my experience included an ‘ok’ from Osho to my doing TM in Poona. Maybe he thought it better not to set up a tension in me by recommending not to do it, and just let it run its course…Which is what happened.
I have to say I found that Barry Long taught me more about the practicalities of spirituality in everyday, western life than Osho, but that without coming across Osho I’d never have had a chance.
Mind you, I’m still a ‘beginner’ really, I reckon, despite God knows how many hours of meditation and therapy etc. over the last 40-odd years!!
“In more recent years I have worked with a another class of meditation techniques based upon “energy resonance”. I experience far deeper states of inner peace and outer oneness using these methods.”
Madir, can you please, explain more about these meditaions and their source.
Who knows few more people try them.
As a general characterstic of Sannyasins, i will say, Osho people are the most open one to try this and that whereas many other groups remain faithfully bound with their spouse technique.
Satya Deva. Barry Long is cool in my books. He was without doubt a unique teacher with a very original perpspective to share that still brings the flavour of authenticity with it. Great man who I’m sure I would greatly have enjoyed meeting.
Lokesh
Thanks for highlighting this particular point..
” A lot of being around Osho was about living your bliss, energy, getting high on your inner supply. That is where many sannyasins became stuck, myself included. Eventually, with a little help, I saw where I was stuck and moved beyond the bliss states. ”
Although i wasnt thinking exactly about bliss states , I always felt Osho’s insistence on enjoying the jorney is so beautiful , finding truth and nothingness pales in comparision from the view point of seeker..
I feel Osho differs here from other teachers who stick to this so called ‘ awakening ‘ and just dont talk about living life joyously.. So in that sense Osho is so beautiful ..
There is nothing to miss or regret if you have lived life the Osho way .
Satya Deva..
Sometime back we had a discussion on the aspect of looking out for another teacher for few gaps / questions which may have been left unfulfilled / un answered with Osho.. You mentioned Barry Lang at that time ..
I am still not fortunate enough to meet someone like that.. But i found listening to Adyashanti as very beautiful in expression of the thruth . And his ability to really get into details of the mind helped me a lot.. And he has good sense of humour also.. althought not Osho like.. but different.
Satya Deva
Was Barry Lang in anyway connected to Osho?.. I didnt find any such reference in his website
Absolutely not, Kranti, Barry went his own way, both before and after ‘awakening’, and although many sannyasins and former sannyasins went to him he used to point out that his way was not like Osho’s.
And boy, did he sometimes give sannyasins a hard time! Often along the lines of criticising their ‘self-indulgence’ and/or ‘over-emotionality’.
I found (and find) it refreshing to be with such a thoroughly western man as a Master, with almost no reference to eastern terminology or tradition. You, as an Indian, might not, of course…
But it doesn’t matter, a Master, however great, is not necessarily for ‘everyone’ – how can he/she be?!!
Another thing Barry wasn’t too keen on was the sexually extremely promiscuous culture in the sannyasin world, which, he reckoned, didn’t do a lot to serve love.
And I think he felt it damaged women in particular, from his experience of them, during or post-sannyas.
All of which is covered in his famous ‘Making Love’ audios.
So…there you go, a man of Truth, undobtedly, but different to Osho.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/happiness-begins-at-50-scientists/115640-19-93.html?from=tn
The above article is of good interest, specially for the seekers who have crossed the life span of 50.
Sometime things happen in the natural process and we believe it is because of this or that Master or this or that Medittation technique.
Good idea to read the two comments below the article as well, Shantam…
And the scientists’ hypothesis hasn’t really applied to me, nor to various people I’ve known. Although I do recall my father saying, “The great thing about being 60 is I feel I don’t have to worry about the world any more!”
IE he felt a certain relief from his ‘worldly burden’ after that age, despite continuing to work at his usual job. And lived on to be nearly 93….
Satya Deva used the following words in relation to Barry Long: The sexually extremely promiscuous culture in the sannyasin world. Which brings up for me an interesting point.
Gurus and followers is not a one way street. It is a two way phenomena. Traditionally Indian gurus keep the boys and girls apart and that way the chance of people forming deep emotional bonds is lessened and the emotional energy is channeled towards the guru. Osho did this by encouraging promiscuity. because just like a celibate society a promiscous one also lessens one’s chances of forming deeep emotional bonds. He even went so far as to discourage couples having children. At the time there was some flim flam about there already being too many people in the world, which was true as far as India was concerned but not in regards the west, where people are not having enough kids to support the pension system.. What it was really about was cutting out the children as they require a lot of emotional input. Some gurus feed on emotionsl energy and use it to raise a communal energy level. Osho operated like that. He was wonderful with kids on a personal level but did not really want them around.
Personally I loved the promiscuity that existed around Osho. I needed to go through that. For me it was a case of getting into it to get out of it. I met my partner in Poona one in 1977 and we are still together. I believe the promiscous life style that both of us lived was very good of us.
Traditionally Indian gurus keep the boys and girls apart and that way the chance of people forming deep emotional bonds is lessened and the emotional energy is channeled towards the guru. Osho did this by encouraging promiscuity. because just like a celibate society a promiscous one also lessens one’s chances of forming deeep emotional bonds.”
One does not know what will be the trend in future, but as of now, it looks like the traditional organisations inspite of their childish looking beliefs can survive and grow much better than the one of its kind Osho experiment.
As the reality shows, most of the sannyas community is not willing or is unable to create deep emotional bonding beyond me and mine.
This is the reason there are so less tears even from old sannyasins who got immense benefit because of their intiming connections with the Living organism around him and yet remain silent spectators to see the mystery school turning into a Fitness club.
You get a daily pass for the fitness studio and go home, why invest emotional energy around.
This arrangement suits both the owners and the patrons.
Shantam Prem. I am not sure about this but it does at times appear that you have a bit of a myopic view of things as regards what is going on in the world of sannyasins.
Most sannyasins that I know and connect with (in the hundreds) are not in the least bit interested in what is happening in Poona. To most it is a bit of a joke at best. Club meditation, or whatever the setup in Koregaon Park is called, is just a small part of a global network.
I talked to a friend who had just returned from Berlin the other day. While there he visited a sannyasin get together. He found it very boring because there was much talk of the ‘good old days’. He concluded his story by saying, ‘I wish people would wake up to the fact that Osho was a gate. A gate is something to pass through not sit on like a bunch of old age pensioners sitting on a park bench talking about the old days.’ I know exactly what he means.
On the other hand there is much excitement about the Osho celebration that will take place in Portugal next month, which promises to be a cosmic gathering.
When sannyasins used to leave the hive Osho would always tell them, ‘Help my people there’. Three decades of helping my people there has worked a miracle and that miracle has little to do with what is going on in Poona now.
From what I hear of what is going on there I personally imagine it must be quite an interesting scene in Poona these days. I am 100% sure there are lots of great people to meet and enjoy there. Most of the old-timers that I know who continue to go there usually have reasons for doing so and those reasons have little to do with spiritual growth but rather personal investments. It is all okay.
Shantam Prem you say;’ As the reality shows, most of the sannyas community is not willing or is unable to create deep emotional bonding beyond me and mine.’
I think that the only reality you are refering to is a very personal one. Basic stuff…don’t you realize yet that the world is but a reflection of yourself and in this case a very negative one. I know many sannyasins and they are among the best people I know and I know many wonderful people. Many sannyassins form deep emotional bonds with other people, what on earth are you talking about? Perhaps a reflection of myself but I know that many of my brothers and sisters out there will agree with me wholeheartedly.
Perhaps it is time for you to start looking in instead of out and that way you might come to one day realize that you have up until now been living in a roomful of mirrors…a very small one. For all your talk of meditation it would seem that in your case the mind is still very much ruling the roost. Well…no big deal there but I do so very much enjoy to call a spade a spade.
After reading many of each other´s posts, i am not surprise about your answer.
And as it is said,” To see the reality through the eyes is much better than the here say.”
Please, do visit Pune, it is without doubt much more happening than Lucknow or Auroville or Mehrabad or Bhagwan Raman Maharishi´s place, where every neo satsang giver goes for a pilgrimage.
As you said, Most sannyasins that I know and connect with (in the hundreds) are not in the least bit interested in what is happening in Poona.
and in the subsequent paragraph you mention,”I talked to a friend who had just returned from Berlin the other day. While there he visited a sannyasin get together. He found it very boring because there was much talk of the ‘good old days’.
It seems British Scotish Sannyas community thinks in a different way, than the German one.
And i am not talking about the good old days, my simple objection is how two three people impose their listening of Osho over the vast majority of other listeners.
And to these people in Berlin i will say, if you feel old good days were better and can be used again in the today´s context than show the courage and confront the people who changed this, after all it is not the natural calamity.
My emotional quotation was in this context of taking emotional responsibility towards the structure they were the foundation of. Many simply left like the mouses to see a hole in Noah´s ark.
This emotional bonding was used in this context otherwise i am aware too that in general, a sannyasin Nurse or doctor show extraordinary respect and caring towards the patients and i am also aware that when a sannyasin sits on the beach he has something different, a feeling of emotional bonding with the cosmos.
As there are no outer signs of sannyas, still many people have observed that sannyasin walk differently than the others. Many times in different European and Indian cities, out of gut feeling i have gone to few people and enquired, ” Are you a sannyasin?” 7 out of 10 times it was a right guess.
On the other side, i do take the responsibility that when i am writing continuously for many months, chances of exaggeration, poetical expressions getting too much salt or pepper is very much there, and hardly a single comment is there, where my heartbeats are not beating with other sannyasins, those hundreds of thousands of people, who dared to surrender at Osho´s feet and still go on singing the songs of gratitude.
And as far as meditational matters are concerned and whether the mind is very much ruling the roost, this kind of utterly mediocre Advaita kind of bullshit judgement i never pass about any body on a personal basis.
Because it is said nobody knows whether the prostitute prays better or the Nun.
And with this principle, how so ever i write against the management style of Jayesh and Amrito, i will never fall so low to say, there are not meditators or because of their working style they are going in the backward walk towards journey of awakening.
And as a record, this i will say for Pope the Benedict and other millions of Christians or Hindus too, the people who don´t meditate but only pray out of some belief. This is the beauty of life that people get healthy because of placebo, what to say about the unknown mysteries.
What so ever the poins of views, if i visit Ibiza this year, i will be utterly utterly happy to have a coffee with you. Crossing the spades also create bonding.
May God bless us all who are seeking and searching and also those who looks like not searching, not seeking.
when it is a matter of interpretation-
A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning.
The wife said, “You should do it because you get up first, and then we don’t have to wait as long to get our coffee.
The husband said, “You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee.”
Wife replies, “No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee.”
Husband replies, “I can’t believe that, show me.”
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says”HEBREWS”
Very Good! Shantam Prem.
One thing I always appreciated that Osho said was that he wants his sannyasins to provoke the devine in each other. Now, if that ain’t cool what is?
If you make it to Ibiza you have a place to stay.
Exactly Lokesh, the hundred doller sentence,” His sannyasins to provoke the divine in each other.”
Most probably for this reason, i am so fascinated with the meeting place at 17, Koregaon Park, Pune.
The friction, attraction,conflicts and hugs afterwards in the non stop enviornment of Meditation and self observation; Poona got the reputation what IBIZA is.
I think sea and shops still exist, winter or summer; but it is the sun shine which brings multitude of people, and life takes the shape of festivity.
In our bathrooms and in some intimate moments we all take the clothes off, but the sun bathing with others, known and unknown has some innocence, some beauty.
Medittaion shared with others is i think similar.
Ibiza ia a multi-dimensional power spot that people have been visiting for thousands of years and it is easy to understand why. There exists something magic about this island and it is tangible.
What I love most about the place is the sea. Crystal clear in summer and feels like finest silk on the skin. The many bays provide a multitude of beautiful spots to enjoy.
Socially it is a hive of celebration during the summer months with more nightclubs and gourmet restraunts than even the most decadent hedonist could ask for. There are many meditation centres. In my neighbourhood is a sannyasin run meditation centre where visiting gurus pop in and various happenings take place. It is called ‘House of Light’ and it is well named and run by a marvellous woman who is an embodiment of everything good that comes out of being a sannyasin. I reckon Ibiza has more Buddha statues per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world, with perhaps a few living Buddhas wandering the hills to the north of the island. I feel priveleged to live here. The perfect place for Zorbah the Buddha’s children to run around and around. Yes.
” You, as an Indian, might not, of course…
”
I hate this easterm terminalogy and tradition eventhough i am indian as i have experienced the negatice side of it.. For an Indian its not all about some magical mystical stuff..Its suffocating
Just one point Satya Deva.. Overindulgence is not something Osho asked sannyasins to do..Isnt it.. I dont relate over indulgence to him..although He would have been aware of that possibility when introducing few things to people..
Couldnt post yesterday due to some server error..
Overindulgence is not something Osho asked sannyasins to do..
This is very true kranti and without hesittation i will say, Indians who were part of the ashram life were more drawn to indulgance than others.
Blaim the collective Indian mantality but many Indians simply drop their brakes and may be it is out of this reaction that western bosses simply tightened the racing paddle.
With the eyes closed i can still see brownies like us using all kind of short cuts to be hugged. After all It is a surivival need for Indians to learn the tricks,shorter ways to reach the goal, when the competition is cut throat.
Well, Kranti, regarding whether Osho encouraged “indulgence”, let me tell you this story:
A friend of mine was advised by Osho, at a darshan, to stop masturbating (not that he was wanking at the time, mind you!) and that if he could manage that for 3 weeks, then he’d be “fucking every sort of woman – short, tall, old, young, fat, thin!”
One could say he was simply ‘adjusting the scales’, to correct an ‘imbalance’, but if this wasn’t advising indulgence I wouldn’t know what is!
Then – although this is not an Osho anecdote, but nevertheless done ‘in his name’ – another friend was encouraged by a ‘group leader’ whose group he was particpating in at the time – to throw things around a local restaurant – food, utensils, anything – if he felt like it. My friend didn’t, in fact he says he felt it was a revolting suggestion, but there it is, that was the sort of climate around at the time (late 70′s).
Another group created hell in another restaurant, hurling things around (like spoiled kids, frankly). A female co-leader returned the next day, with apologies and flowers.
A bit late, perhaps?!
Anyway, to say Osho never encouraged indulgence is so absurd as to be completely laughable. Have you never heard what went on in the therapy groups, for example?!
And outside the ‘little world’ of therapy, do you have any clue at all of how, for example, high-status therapists carried on – who were living in close proximity to the Master himself, in the ashram?
I’ve heard a few disturbing stories from women and only the other day a female friend of mine said, with some disgust, that Teertha, to name but one, was basically “told by Osho to go forth and fuck!”
Look, Kranti, why do you think so many were attracted to life there? It wasn’t just for the beauty of meditating with the Master, that’s for sure.
Shantam Prem:
With the eyes closed i can still
see brownies like us using all kind of short cuts to be hugged. After all It is a surivival need for Indians to learn the tricks,shorter ways to reach the goal, when the competition is cut throat.
SD:
Ooooh, you naughty lot of “brownies”!!
This sounds so innocent, Shantam…Are you sure you didn’t write it with your tongue well and truly in your cheek, keeping the irony well in check?!
Or, are you actually hinting at, er, rather ‘stronger’ exchanges than a mere hug…?!
Some of the comments currently being posted are laughable. Thanks for that,
To say that Osho did not promote indulgence is ridiculous. I mean to say, how many Rolls Royces does one need.
I did most of the therapy groups that were going on in the shram during the seventies and there was a lot of overindulgence being encouraged. It was great fun.
I don’t really think that overidulgence is the right word as there is something prudish about it. Lets simply say that Osho often encouraged people to say yes to another excess and enjoy it and why on earth not? One thing he did not encourage was drug use, In all of the darshans I attended he only once recommended that one individuk continue to smoke hashish. Then again Osho himself did ‘overindulge’ in the use of laughing gas. Personally the stuff only succeeded in giving me a headache. Wouldn’t life be boring if we were all the same?
I think it can safely be said to be ‘over-indulgence’ when it harms others, eg the restaurant behaviour I mentioned, also – according to various women I’ve come across – the sexually predatory, exploitative stuff by high-status therapists and others.
I recall citing the latter some time last year and was called all sorts of names by outraged proponents of the ‘if it moves, fuck it’ school of thought…..
Damage was done, however, in the name of ‘freedom’, so let’s not kid ourselves that it was all wonderful.
When we look honestly, somewhere some wiring defect, some behavioural over do has taken place in the collective mind of sannyas movement.
By hiding behind Osho´s words and feeling superior, we cannot play anymore. World around us may not be officially meditating, but smart and confident it has sure become.
for example, when i write collective mind of sannyas movement, somebody will jump immediately to say, We don´t have collective mind. Osho always teaches individuality. When i say organisational structure needs a complete overhaul, someone will say,” Osho is not in favour of organisation we have therefore, Organism, and in this camouflage we are rolling like a Taliban(student) in a cave of make belief world.
Honest discussion and sharing from the top Clergy to the participants of last two three decades will be of great help and a push forward.
Well Shantam Prem, you seem to be sticking to your agenda, which is one that I can’t really relate to, seeing as how what happens in Koregaon Park these days is of absolutely no concern to me. I wonder if you can imagine that, so involved are you with that particuñar stage.
Satya Deva, in regards your definition of what overindulgence means in relation to sannyas dimension in the past the incidents you describe are only scraping the surface , I also don’t think that much of the damage done was done in the name of freedom. A social experiment perhaps but in retrospect much of the damage was done by pure stupidity and people following blindly.
Shantam Prem, I would be happy to try to describe Energy Resonance as a meditation principle, although it might be difficult to fit a meditative experience into an explanation.
Basically it is the same idea as walking out in the countryside and feeling something changing within – something of the wholeness, freshness and harmony of Nature starts to penetrate; something deeper than simply a dose of “fresh air and exercise”.
In appearance we are finite and limited and Nature is eternal and unbounded, but in essence the inner spirit of both is the same – just two different types of energy flowing. Bringing these two energies into an intimate connection via meditation can lead to a profound sense of the unity, perfection and timelessness of Life. Satsang is another example, where resonating energies lead to a sharing of inner states between the student and the Master.
In general terms resonance is the energy transfer that happens when one system which is vibrating with energy comes into connection with another system which is still but able to move freely. The most intimate kind of connection is a state of love, but it also works by drinking in the inner essence of something in meditation and welcoming the energies within. It doesn’t involve effort – rather relaxing into a let-go of openness and receptivity.
One formal meditation based on this which I have gained enormous healing from is known as Bodyflow. First stand in a quiet, empty room and allow the energy of the empty space to flow inside one’s system. For 20 minutes allow the body to move spontaneously in response to whatever feeling that comes – this is the ‘Bodyflow’ part. The second stage is a 10 minute STOP exercise – freezing on the spot. The energies that have been awoken still want to move, but with physical movement restricted they now move deeply within, cleansing the personal energy channels. The third and final stage is 15 minutes of music – initially gentle and gradually becoming more and more ecstatic. The instruction is not to ‘dance’ in any familiar way, but as in the first stage, to let the energy of the music to move inside and letting oneself be moved by those energies from moment to moment with complete freedom.
By continuously letting go into this flow at some point a doorway opens, words drop, and all experiencing becomes felt in its purest form as energy in motion – we call this meditative awareness the ‘Energy Space’.
Where did this come from? Well, no-one invented it as such; originally it occurred as a spontaneous happening to my teacher which he later found he could formulate and pass on to other people. So where it comes from is something of mystery; perhaps that is why it is so effective in reconnecting people to the larger Mystery. I have seen people go into such deep meditative spaces the first time they tried it that they were quite speechless at the end when I asked them how it had been. A simply beautiful process.
Madir: Sounds a bit like latihan but whatever the case might be your description is a very good one.
Lokesh:
Satya Deva, in regards your definition of what overindulgence means in relation to sannyas dimension in the past the incidents you describe are only scraping the surface , I also don’t think that much of the damage done was done in the name of freedom. A social experiment perhaps but in retrospect much of the damage was done by pure stupidity and people following blindly.
SD:
Yes, I think that must be true, Lokesh, especially stretching ‘over-indulgence’ to include the extremes perpetrated by Sheela & co.
And, to a greater or lesser degree, the stuff I was referring to may be explained by a certain ‘cultish mentality’, with people going along with what they think is expected of them, losing their personal discrimination.
A huge irony there, of course:
Losing their freedom, impinging on others’ freedom – in the name of ‘freedom’ (or, ok, a ‘social experiment’ , but one where ‘freedom’ was the prime value.
” I gave you your freedom”, as Osho said, near his leaving the body.
Also, I think,
I think the biggest ‘overindulgence’ took the form of young women being persuaded to undergo steriliztion. When that nonsense was going on I really began to wonder about what was taking place. I’m sure that there was a lot of damage done during that time. Unfortunately, some of it was irrepairable.
Satya Deva, about Teertha fucking everyone, people smashing up restaurants, general abuse of freedom. Yes there was a lot of bad stuff round Osho. I found the Pune 1 atmosphere far too aggressive for me.
But maybe it is like this. Without Osho, Paul Lowe (Teertha) would now be imprisoned as a serial rapist. Without Osho the people who smashed up restaurants would have smashed up heads instead. Etc. So Osho transformed the energy of some very dangerous people, at least to the extent that they refrained from committing the most serious crimes.
Alok John, your hypothesis is inaccurate to the point of being ridiculous.
I lived in Poona One for over six years and watched the sitution daily as it evolved or, as some like yourself might say, degenerated.
I was never particularly fond of Teertha but he was, in my eyes at least, a brilliant therapist. His encounter group was an unforgettable experience that helped me learn a lot about myself. Your speculations about Teertha being saved from being a serial rapist are completely unfounded. That is a very serious accusation to make about another man and it might be a good idea for you to examine your own personal motives for saying it. Teertha, like many men in Poona One days had a lot of women to play with but I cannot believe that he forced any of them to have sex with him. He did not need to.
You say that Osho transformed the energy of many dangerous people. A guru always attracts a few nutters but I don’t think Osho attracted that much more than anyone else. Open your eyes, The really dangerous people did not make it to Poona One because they were too busy with their careers in the world’s governments.
Let he that be without sin cast the first stone. I suppose we can count you out of that one Alok because sin means missing the mark and you are way off target.
Lokesh, my remarks were not specifically directed at Teertha, but at the general energy of the times. I did say ” Maybe it was like this.” I still think the Orange people, ie sannyas from 71 to 85 included some very odd people indeed. Read Vismaya’s book. The arrogance and lack of self awareness is breathtaking.
I remember someone shouting at me that “I was not into my feelings.” Actually I was but the feelings I had, fear and sadness, were not acceptable to others. Acceptable feelings in the community were lust and anger.
I should say I was too ill and poor ever to go to Pune1, so these are just my impressions from being around Kalptaru, Medina etc.
Lokesh:
Teertha, like many men in Poona One days had a lot of women to play with but I cannot believe that he forced any of them to have sex with him. He did not need to.
SD:
From what I’ve been told, by two women who were in that very situation, one of whom was the cleaner of his ashram room, it was a case of the man, unprovoked, exposing himself and moving towards her in a sexually expectant manner, while she went about her work.
All part of a typical humdrum day at work at the heart of the Poona ‘inner circle’….
Then, she found herself simply giving in, as she felt it to be ‘the norm’ at that time, especially as it was one of the ‘top dogs’ of the whole scene – and ‘very close to Bhagwan’, therefore of possible great psycho-spiritual benefit! You surely get the drift….
After, she regretted it and felt he’d simply taken advantage. of her innocence, her youthful naivete, and the prevailing ‘cultish mentality’ of the time. She felt violated in fact, damaged.
He seems to have pulled a similar ‘trick’ on more than a few.
But
And I recall Barry Long mentioning his name at a public meeting in the 90′s, saying a number of women had cited Teertha to him as having been a particularly damaging sexual predator.
Kind of ‘weird’ really, if this stuff apparently often happened in such close proximity to Osho’s home….
And Alok, I’m sure you’re not the only one who felt like ‘a misfit among misfits’! I often did (and still do at times), especially during difficult periods.
Including my time in Poona, when even Bhagwan advised me to do a ‘madness’ meditation on my own, having advised others to do it in pairs, to ‘defeat the other in madness’! Maybe he thought I was simply too suppressed and/or too vulnerable, he never told me why.
And for me, the groups I did were rather unsatisfactory, disastrous even. Partly because of the prevailing ethos at the time – almost a ‘survival of the fittest’, it seemed – but mainly because I should never have been accepted into doing some of them, esp Somendra’s 3 months intensive, in the first place.
I emerged in a worse state than ever. And that, effectively, was virtually the end of real sannyas for me. I hadn’t ‘made it’ and doubted I ever would. So, began to look elsewhere….
Alok, you are back peddling. It would also appear that you do not understand some basic laws of therapy. You talk about your feelings of sadness and that sounds like a sad story to me. Emotions are energy. Sadness when expressed outwaedly often turns into anger. Anger turned in upon yourself often turns into sadness. I ask you, where are you in that particular equation?
You say: Acceptable feelings in the community were lust and anger. That is such an obvious reflection of your own ego-bound reality that it does not warrant any more of a response than to simply state that fact.
Satya Deva. As I say, I wasn’t a great admirer of Teertha but he was definitely all right in my books. I don’t feel the need to defend his reputation other than saying what I have already said.
The other day I was approached by a sannyasin women who told me about a story told to her by a women who reported that her teenage son was asked to suck Osho’s penis. The sannyasin woman was very upset upon hearing this story as she is still quite identified with the time she spent around Osho. I told her to relax as I found such a sordid story impossible to believe, even taking in to account that I know very well how belief and doubt are two aspects of the same coin
In my time I’ve heard a bookful of scandelous stoties about Osho’s personal life. I also happen to be friends with people who lived in Osho’s house when a lot of these purported transgressions were taking place. Quite naturally I’ve asked my friends if they knew anything about this. One friend in particular lived in Lao Tzu house for years. She told me that in all the time that she lived there not once did she see anyone of a suspicious nature entering Osho’s room. I might add that she is a good friend who has no reason to lie to me. She is one of those rare people who never lies about anything.
The point of me telling this is that there will always be rumour mongers and there will always be people who are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to draw attention to themselves, including fabricating stories.
I am under no illusions about Osho. He certainly was not a saint. Whenever I hear shit stories about him I simply think about the many times I shared his most enlightened company and what a wonderful spiritual friend he was to me. If Osho were around to hear the bizarre rumours that circulate about him these days, I can just imagine him giving a lovely smile and saying, ‘Is that so.’
How quick we are to judge and condemn, oftentimes going on pure hearsay.
Satya Deva: So, began to look elsewhere….
Well…what did you find? Nothing worthy of a wee report? Come on now, I’m waiting to hear about this.
Lokesh, Osho is ‘all right by me’ too.
But if you’re also implying that stories about Teertha are mere fabrications by ‘attention-seekers’, then you’re way off target.
The cleaner I mentioned was my partner for around 8 years and she was no attention-seeker or self-dramatiser. Likewise the other woman known to me.
I also suspect you’re at least somewhat misjudging Alok John, which is easy enough to do, if you don’t know a bit about him. It’s easy enough to roll out these ‘catch-all’ psychological analyses, but they don’t always necessarily fit exactly. But that’s for him to deal with, if he wishes.
Lokesh:
Satya Deva: So, began to look elsewhere….
Well…what did you find? Nothing worthy of a wee report? Come on now, I’m waiting to hear about this.
SD:
I’ve already mentioned a few things in this thread, Lokesh. That’s enough to be getting on with, I reckon!
Satya Deva you say. But if you’re also implying that stories about Teertha are mere fabrications by ‘attention-seekers’, then you’re way off target.
Okay I’ll let you in on a wee secret……………………I really don’t give a hoot. Most of these things happened so long ago, there is a six inch layer of dust on them. Alok was implying that maybe) the man was some sort of closet rapist. I really don’t think so. I watched Teertha in action once, he didn’t have the staying power that a rapist needs.
I think Alok was just suggesting a possibility though, by saying, “Maybe it was like this”…
None of the women I’ve come across who had ‘dealings’ with Teertha suggested he was a ‘rapist’, rather that, in an extremely selfish and uncaring way, he took advantage of his position and the prevailing climate whereby anyone not into casual sex was labelled “uptight”.
Also, re his famous Encounter Group, it certainly didn’t suit or benefit everyone. Eg, a woman I know extremely well tells me all she got from it was fear. Which wasn’t helped at all by the then standard practice (it happened a lot in Somendra’s 3 months intensive) of ‘suffocating’ her beneath a pile of cushions – with several people on top, of course,and, similarly predictable, a number of the group yelling abuse at her…
Teertha, in his great wisdom, also advised her to walk around during breaks feeling how she was metaphorically “closing her legs” and thereby becoming a virtual ‘pariah’ of that community: a sexually unavailable woman! More purveying of a cultish mentality.
That too, had no tangible effect on the woman concerned. In fact, she says all that Encounter Group did was to leave her with the sense that she “wasn’t good enough”, ie a sense of failure, and not the greater sense of self-aware confidence which was presumably the object of the exercise. At least that was what Bhagwan said was the idea….
Yes, it was all a very long time ago, 30-odd years, and things have changed, I guess, so I understand anyone saying, ‘So what?’
But I think it’s worth pointing out the less great aspects of those times, if only to make ‘newer’ people aware of them and so they don’t get trapped in a too sentimental view of a ‘Golden Past’ that they’ll never have the chance to experience themselves.
Yes, Osho was/is a great Master, I probably owe my life to him…But not all that went on in his name, even before the Ranch debacle, was good, there were casualties, eg the people I’ve mentioned, myself and, it would seem, Alok.
Satya Deva,
Why you or the partner of yours, who was chased by Teertha(Paul Löwe) confront him publically, specially when now web sites and emails have made it quite easily.
Just the other day,there was a similar news,when a man in authority takes woman as a ride-
‘I’m telling the truth and Roman knows it’: Actress Charlotte Lewis claims she was abused by director Polanski when she was 16.
The website of paul-www.paullowe.org
It seems, when one wants to invite the angles, so many demons also come with. How much, Osho´s call to our higher potentials has been heard is a matter of individual´s own actions but collectively it is a right time to look at our joint history, where the rug pullers were hiding their own dust under the rugs.
Lokesh wrote : “It would also appear that you do not understand some basic laws of therapy. You talk about your feelings of sadness and that sounds like a sad story to me. Emotions are energy. Sadness when expressed outwaedly often turns into anger. Anger turned in upon yourself often turns into sadness.”
I don’t think most properly trained psychotherapists would say there are such things as laws of therapy. It may occasionally be true that sadness is repressed anger, but I do not accept this is necessarily the case. Nor I think would most properly trained psychotherapists.
Lokesh wrote : “You say: Acceptable feelings in the community were lust and anger. That is such an obvious reflection of your own ego-bound reality that it does not warrant any more of a response than to simply state that fact.” I am not sure what this means. I am tempted to use the word psychobabble. But perhaps Lokesh means that because I said ‘Acceptable feelings in the community were lust and anger’, it follows I must be lustful and angry.
I do not accept this and I do not accept the logic of the argument. Of course sometimes people do project their unconscious on to others, but it ain’t always the case. There is also reality out there.
Okay, of course I acknowledge sometimes feelings other than lust and anger were acceptable.
Actually I was not a casualty of sannyas and was never really hurt by anyone in the movement. But I did become quite wary during the years of the Orange people. I learnt early on best to rely on myself and stick to the meditations and the discourses; although I did do a couple of nice meditative introductory groups at the Amsterdam centre.
Lokesh said “Alok was implying that maybe) the man was some sort of closet rapist.” Actually if you read what I said you will see I did not imply this.
I also agree with SD that it is not a bad idea to free newcomers from a overly sentimental view of a ‘Golden Past’ .
Dear Alok John, Satya Deva, thank you both for your last posts. You both make very good points and I basically agree with much of what you say. You both sound like fine people and I really do appreciate what you have to say. It is having contact with people like yourselves that makes me return to this site.
Now then, I see that there is a new post about the Humaniversity. Perhaps you’ll be so good as to join me there and see what comes up when we stir the pot.
Thanks Satya Deva
Its hard for me to digest few facts..
If the master gives a go ahead for someone He should have ensured a level paying field where co-ersion is not possible..
But i am talking about a idealistic situation
” Then, she found herself simply giving in, as she felt it to be ‘the norm’ at that time, … ”
I feel , Wherever it is not level playing ground and where one person can take advantage of other what follows is not honesty.. Having said that the person taking advantage of the situation himself may not be even aware and do things in an unconcious way .. But again the negative impact is almost always on the person who was used or manipulated whereas other guy dusts himself off and convinces himself in some way or other that what he did was natural or situation ( Master ) made him to do ..
Yes, Kranti, I think you’re on the right lines there.
I’m absolutely certain Teertha would have no sense that he might have somehow damaged anyone, or that even what he got up to might at times perhaps have been questionable.
And arguments that defend him, saying that the woman concerned could have said ‘no’, ignore the power of living in such a community, where there was a prevailing belief in the value of being sexually open.
And where a top group leader like Teertha was widely considered as ‘second to Bhagwan’ in authority and, er, ‘spiritual consciousness’.
Almost as if the woman was rejecting Bhagwan, not merely Teertha!
I’m reminded of something Somendra used to get up to in his groups, not a sexual thing but relevant to this highly elevated status such people enjoyed then:
Now and then, when he felt he needed inspiration or ‘advice’, he’d say he was going to “ask Bhagwan” (who was 6000 miles away in Poona), then he’d close his eyes for a short while, before opening them and revealing what ‘Bhagwan’ had told him.
Gullible fools that we were, imbued with the ‘cultish mentality’ of the time, we sat expectantly and listened with great interest and belief to the actually rather humdrum revelations.
That’s an example of the crap that went on.
And within a few years both Somendra and Teertha announced their ‘enlightenment’ of course – but of course….
Still busy with archaeology I see. Is Somendra still alive? He was a bit of a fossil even in the old days. He was a miraculous person…..in the sense that it was a miracle that anyone took such an obviously conceited man seriously.
Lokesh, re Somendra, sadly see http://www.wildgoose.net/en/man_1.php
Somendra – now once again ‘Michael Barnett’ – is alive and kicking and is the teacher I referred to above who developed the Energy approach to meditation and other explorations. He is 80 years old this year and considerably mellowed, and coincidentally is holding a 4-day seminar at Croydon Hall this very weekend.
I have attended many of his seminars over the last eight or nine years and found him to be a teacher of extraordinary understanding and great practical value.
However I am well aware of Somendra’s controversial reputation in sannyasin circles – indeed I was actually sitting at Sheela’s feet the day she excommunicated him, having just arrived at the ranch with a batch of visitors for one of the annual festivals. I can clearly recall her distinctive tones coming over the speakers, “Swami Anand Somendra is no longer a sannyasin!” deeming that he was setting himself up as a guru and so coming between naive sannyasins and their true master, Bhagwan. So I was rather disappointed to miss-out on a chance to experience this therapist with the rock-star reputation.
Of course being kicked out by Sheela came to seem less of a negative over time as the crisis on the Ranch played itself out, but for 20 years or so I honoured Osho’s instruction that this guy was persona-non-grata, even long after Osho had passed away.
Eventually my wife persuaded me that Michael Barnett was a significant figure who ought to be checked out. I looked deep inside to see whether going counter to Osho’s instruction was wise or appropriate. Eventually I decided that if I had learnt anything at all from him then Osho would have trusted me to use whatever awareness and sensitivity I had gained to make my own assessment. And if I had learnt nothing from him then perhaps I shouldn’t be giving Osho’s views quite so much weight in influencing my own choices.
In 2000 I attended a 4-day seminar in Italy which was my first chance to see this infamous guy in the flesh. I had a check list in my mind of potential black-marks that would warn me off: Too Money-Oriented: Too Serious : Too Heady : Too Occult : Exploitation : Arrogance : Too Much Adulation : Power Games : Stuck Students . In the event none of my warning signals were triggered. I found Michael to be a pretty ordinary family man with an extraordinary connection to the Mystery that he was somehow able to awaken in other people.
There was a small group of sannyasin amongst Michael’s students; lovely, sincere, open-hearted people, and I realised I had found my people and my place again after many years of solitary work. What I was unable to find with Osho despite giving my all to sannyas (too young, too afraid?) – I began to find with Michael, and I resolved that this time around I would not miss the opportunity to learn from a Master.
So let me state it as clearly and definitively as I can… This is a man who knows the Beyond – if you are still seeking – frankly, still lost – give him some consideration – he can only have a few years of good health left when he will still be publically teaching. I say this not expecting to persuade, but only in case it touches someone who needs this particular signpost to find their way home.
With love.
Interesting, Madir, thanks for the update.
I know he was/is an exceptional man, very gifted and a wholehearted seeker, so he was always never going to ‘rest on his laurels’, despite the ‘conceit’ mentioned by Lokesh, which I too sensed (and told him) during a 48 hours Encounter Marathon, way back in pre-sannyas days.
I accept, of course, your description of him now, it has the ring of truth, so fair enough.
Still, over 3 years after the 3 months intensive course I did with him in charge, I ran into him while working as a park keeper in a beautiful part of London, Hampstead Heath, a seasonal job I greatly enjoyed, having become much healthier altogether due to regular TM practice and proper exercise since we’d last met.
He was strolling along, accompanied by 2 or 3 young women, and seemed a bit embarrassed to see me. 3 years before he’d advised me to go to Poona as a last resort (no pun intended!!) as I was obviously totally ‘stuck’ and being in his intensive course had been of zero benefit, despite the harangues and the humiliations.
Having asked me whether I was doing any similar group work etc. he appeared at a loss how to respond when I said no, his group had been the last one I’d done and might well ever do.
“Oh”, he said rather nervously, ” the group to end all groups then?!” Then he turned away and wandered off down the path with the women.
Mind you, he did include me in his greetings in a note he sent to a friend, saying I was “obviously on some crazy path of my own”, but sending love to me anyway…
Well, I knew I wasn’t on a “crazy path”, I was feeling better than for a very long time, so I didn’t go much on his judgment then, I’m afraid.
Still, he was an Arsenal fan, so I caught up with him eventually, in the early 21st century, watching that great team on satellite tv in south-east Asia…
And he certainly had a sense of humour.
Btw, Madir, is the ‘Energy Resonance’ practice derived from or similar to his famous and excellent therapeutic technique, ‘Doctor Body’? That was something of value I did learn from Somendra, but well before I did his 3 months group.
More on my experience of Somendra, I’m afraid!
I suppose one reason he might have had for calling me “crazy” at that point was that he himself had used groups in an absolutely committed, almost ‘fanatical’ way even, for a number of years, as his major growth practice. So he tended to put them right at the top of the list for anyone who was seeking to ‘free themselves’.
But in stressing all that, he ignored the actual realities of people’s everyday lives outside the group situation, paying little or mainly no attention at all to key areas like work, finance, accommodation etc., all of which have a huge bearing upon a person’s well-being or lack of it. Not to mention their fitness for a demanding ‘psycho-spiritual quest’.
It was fine for him of course, as his entire life was that therapeutic world. But in retrospect, his outlook was not balanced and he allowed people – myself included – to join his groups who should never have been there. One, for example, was a ‘schizoid’ sort of chap, perfectly harmless but God knows what he was doing there…
To be fair to him though, I guess Somendra was coming from a compassionate space, from the viewpoint that he espoused in his revolutionary ‘People not Psychiatry’ ethos, ie that all could and should be helped, that none need be excluded.
A fine ideal, of course, but unrealistic, especially in the context of the sort of thing that was going down in that 3 months group, where I don’t recall much at all, apart from the violence and the threat of violence. That, and sitting there feeling out of synch with the entire process, wondering what the hell was going on!
Once, he went round the group giving each person his impressions of them (not in the music hall sense!!), telling me I was “simply bewildered”, as if it was some sort of joke.
He was spot on, of course…
But did he ever question why that might be? That maybe I was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time? That rather than mess around hopelessly in that context I’d have been far better off going ‘back to basics’, eg taking good health advice and sorting out adequate living space, as foundations for getting work and finance sorted out.
Once, I told him I was having financial problems, making it difficult to pay for his course, and all he said was, “Well, can’t you get a better-paying job?” Completely and utterly missing the point that I was thoroughly incapable of doing anything other than the most menial occupations – and even then I was struggling, barely able to keep up and losing temporary job after temporary job.
As illustrated by his throwaway suggestion that I could do “some sort of social work”! Oh sure, I was so well qualified at that point to help other people! I mean, what a f-ing joke!
No, he just wasn’t oriented towards those basic realities, which was a serious weakness on his part, serious because it was damaging to the vulnerable seeking his help.
Then I remember him saying that I was “the hardest person” he’d ever had to deal with in a therapeuticsituation. What an accolade! Again, did the question ever occur to him that maybe it wasn’t appropriate for me to actually be there?!
Somendra : I had little contact with him but always had the feeling “keep away from that guy.” I remember once visiting a “growth centre” called Community in the mid 70s. He waltzed into the reception area wearing a broad brimmed hat, and I thought “What an idiot.”
Michael Barnett does claim enlightenment explicitly.
From his site… “To be able to work with an enlightened teacher is a great stroke of luck, because it means getting answers on central questions from someone who is able to answer it from personal experience.”
Yes, ‘Community’ was his HQ, from where the two 3 month intensive groups I did (just one with Somendra) were organised.
I’m not necessarily doubting his ‘enlightenment’, but I somehow think that after various past experiences it would take a lot for me to accept him wholeheartedly as a teacher.
And one of the things that put me off was a sense that he tended to be a bit ‘too clever by half’ – brilliant, yes, but a bit too ‘mercurial’ for my liking…
I’d hope he still has a sense of humour though, as in those photos at his website he does look pretty grim!
He does look grim in the photos, doesn’t he?
Somendra probably mellowed out due to the rapid decline of testosterone. It is the chief cause of aggression, wars, etc. etc. Just think, a tiny bunch of molecules playing havoc on a male’s brain… Oh, then again we humans think we’re above all of that natural occurring stuff, also another cause of our problems-arrogance!!! Swamis, time to be neutered!!!! Ma’s, times to lose your ovaries!!! simple answers to complex(simple) human problems….Oy Vey!!!! Who the fuck is Somendra anyway? Small potatoes.
Well, Prem Bubbie, lack of testosterone doesn’t appear to be in any list of your problems!
Btw, in my experience, Somendra, aka Michael Barnett, wasn’t an obviously ‘testosterone/aggression’-driven man, so I doubt whether your explanation actually holds good.
Perhaps though, you’ve never met him…?
nope, btw a guy doesn’t need much testosterone to be aggressive; mental aggression, being a manipulator, mind fucker, whatever other name there is. a common thing with modern man…. Wall Street, Mumbai financial district, London… stock market manipulators all at a push of a button and the whole shit comes tumbling down… Not much physical exertion needed…. perhaps somendra fits right in?
Paul Lowe!
I met Him in Italy in Venice,or just outside Venice 1990/91!
I found Him to be a very knowlegeble man and very strong and His personality had Him to be restrained by His girl-friend beautiful Ma(forgotten Her name!)Why are like this to Bhaskar?
wHAT IS THE MATTER?
I was dumb struck,because He´s much more corageous than I am!He could have pissed on me,but His girlfriend refrained Him!Go and pick on someone of your size!
But the only His girlfriend didn´t know that this had not been the first time someone had found me to be insulent!
Once at a college I was going(midsex poly)the the psychology teacher just out of blue told me, that He was a doctor,.for some impersonal coment I must have made and was quiet offended but I´m not sure what for?
Not long ago in certain place in goa someone still alive told me,that Himself was a doctor!So it must be for my stupid coments that no one botheres too much or it´s at times edited!*Where From?*Who am I?(I still don´t know !)
Finaly :*WHO IS IN?
Finaly with regards Tm:
Mantra meditation watch my words unless made in awareness leads to a beautiful sleep!Very relaxing!
Much better than any tablets I tryed for sleeping,but that´s not the point!It´s idiotic!
Better do mantra but remain awake!Please discover that which sleeps not!Please dear god help Us all to discover the one that sleeps not,is awake!
Osho is our love,
until then,
amrit & crew(no special crew,any one!)
PS_Why are you like this to Bhaskar?
bhaskar… maybe they are the ones with the problem, why so hard on yourself? Low self esteem since childhood? You’ve been listening too much to others’ criticism of you and have been believing it so now this guilt trip that somethings wrong with you… if there is something wrong with you then join the club, we’re ALL fucked up… keep on throwing it back to them… nothing better than showing others the mirror!!!
Thank u,Prem Babie!
Osho is our love,
until then,
amritlind & Crew!
Prem Babie!
About this tostesterone and its chemical use by the brain if awareness is out for a walk!
Firstly,breath awareness is the most indispensable part and parcel of modern man and perhaps ancient man from distracting Himself!
Agreation is fear that is running and fear is O.K if one has a bus coming towards oneself,That Fear is inteligent!
When breath awareness is present fear is not the thing that is most important for survival,rather present or absent,inteligence is the beauty and in the end!Being Present!-Obsrever is observed,please allow that too!
Tostesterone low or like a “Bull*unless we discover awareness thru breath-pranayama very important!
I´m totally dumbfound as to why the ashrams around the world don´t teach more of this discoverys about man´s mind thinking and gap between “TOTS”!Shame on myself as I`m unable to use breath!
Only for the love of *Fairysaint to Osho that I´m not cursing my luck!!!!
Osho is our love ,but please as the sister said no more bulshit!
Amrit &Crew:
I think it is because those running the ashrams don’t want intelligent, awake/aware conscious beings…. It is much like capitalists/businesses who just wants people to keep coming back and suck the life energy and money from them… there is the good/evil yin/yang , those who feed off others are “evil”. I think the word “vampire” must has originated from a person who experienced this long ago, then made up a word for it.
Lets allow the *Fairysaint a Wee*pick view from the hiden wardrobes as She is the *Devine Daughter; Just as important to Sannyas hapning on earth as breath awareness is to meditation,that is, for watching the mind with!
This *fairysaint is in part of that great “*fairytale story” that we lived in whilst Osho was on this planet in His body!!!!
And so, She this *Fiarysaint came to *renew that time on,until we´ve discovered within ourselves that which thru Osho was possible!Joy!!!
She is the beloved that came as the *Bodichitta of Compassion when seekers gotten lost in the forest,fogs or jungles!
Please before we enter in any *mental hapnings ,such as a *breakdown or *disulousionment of any kind in life which is just human,lets please enquire wheter She this *Fairysaint Has any reality per SE,and if yes *WHERE FROM?
The second point to all seekers of this path of love and *no-mind or *”no-tots”or a “free slate”is geting down to *Breath as this part of human *psycho-anotomical has much to do with *mind, *thinking and “Tots!”
PLease I know of people that were a “nervous recks” that only thru Breath control could they regain some sort of sanity!One could not live near them very long as this *fellow travellers were short on *breath and before one new every thing would chage to actual”colors,Hate, anger,short temper and malice!But thru Osho´s grace and thru Breath Terapy,alas they found peace within for themselves and for others too!
*Where From?
*Who is IN(N!)?
*WHO ARE WE*?
*WHO AM I?
For Osho is our Love
until then,
amritlind & Crew*
Trouble with your posts, Amrit B, is that all this stuff about a “Fairy Saint’ makes you sound like a completely ungrounded nutter, frankly!
Why not try explaining yourself in ordinary, clear language, instead of this mumbo-jumbo?!
Dear Satya Deva!
Wonderful Name!
I pray that you´re blessed as the *devas and the devatas are in the sky above,as the lord´spoints to, and that for sure we will join them,one day too, and looking forward,when by Osho´s grace you will join the ranks of *bodhi tree search thru the *fairysaint!
This is a *fairytale story and no matter how good we look,or foolish for that matter it makes no difference!Please this is not arrogance on our part ! It´s just not wright to argue or convince people that we´re being *watched and this watch have made it clear that its only thru an enquiry and not a curiosity, that are people enjoying bliss,and other states in this very life and whilst, I´m tremendous happy in spite of all uncosciousness within and without, that even some people feel that… there might be something on it,only if it were explained in clear langueech,and straight forward!
We human beings have passed the bench mark,and our knowing have grown so much that it´s also difficult to be inocent and trusting!
This is what the *fairysaint have asked ….*if we want to join the ranks of *silly,*nutty or *fairy ones and discover thru our own self help and self trust, what cannot be argued*clearly or in sattlelty, even for the benefit of peoples…!?
Ready?!Whenever one feels that way,She the Devine Devinity will make Her call known just as sotimes ones sees and senses,higher and lower planes thru intuition of Heart!
Please do not worry yourself too much about *fony or nuttiness respectability when we are so sad,whilst there´re people so happy and in ecstasy going about,an enquiry!
No one pays a dime and it has been gained thru an enquiry and the tracing back to ones childhood!*
Thanks to *Osho that made the *fairysaint poss!
God bye!
Osho is our love,
until then,
amritlind & crew*