Rajesh describes in his text “The day we got guns” (his account of his sannyas life between 1983 to1985 on the Ranch) where Vidya, one of Sheela’s lieutenants tells him to destroy six of Osho’s lecture tapes. SN give attention to this, partly because many people do not believe it, though we have no reason to doubt Rajesh’s testimony, and whilst this event is acknowledged by Ranch insiders, they say that only one tape was destroyed, the one where Osho described the fascism within his own organisation. Rajesh says it was six.
“Erase his tapes? Erase the master’s tapes?” I whine to Vidya. “Yes. Do it,” she dictates impatiently. It’s a late afternoon at Jesus Grove. I don’t like this new mission.
“Erase Bhagwan’s (Osho) words? This is too much. Not the reel-to-reel originals.
“Rajesh… Sheela says do it. The tapes are politically volatile. You know our dilemma. We have to lie to the government to survive, and then Osho turns around and publicly contradicts us. We can’t save the commune with him telling the whole truth.”
“But…
“It’s your American legal system that can’t cope with the truth. And we have copies, minus the embarrassing parts. It’s a few sentences, here and there, that we’ll lose. We already know what Osho says- he never fucking shuts up. He’s published more books than anyone in history. Just erase these six tapes. You can do it with your machines.
“Okay.” Too much monkey business for me. I sneak to Zarathustra and tiptoe upstairs, glancing furtively about.
Only a few stragglers are evident- everyone else has gone to dinner. I stash the tapes in the spy room, and return to the hallway, loitering beside the table that hosts the bulk tape eraser.
I contemplate my task. I am going to have to erase them. I can’t do it. I can’t assent to this. I remember Bhagwan (Osho) saying we should never introduce one iota of variance in our documentation of what he says; it’s critical to remain absolutely faithful to his phrasing, his nuances, his pauses, even his apparent omissions. And I am not changing his words, I am destroying them. I slip back into the spy room, shut the door quietly, and sit down. Deep breath
No one in their right mind would destroy an enlightened master’s words. Movement down the hall startles me. My friend, typewriter Arpito, approaches. Instinctively, I try to shield the tapes in my hand.
“Hey Rajesh,” Arpito says, “how are you?” “Oh, fine. ” “What are you up to?” he asks. “Oh, nothing much. Little of this, little of that.” He gives me a perplexed look, glancing at the tapes. Awkward pause.
“Well, it’s late,” he says, “I’m going to dinner. You want to come along?
“No. I’ve got more stuff to do.” “You sure you’re alright? You look awfully nervous.” “No. I’m fine. Just a lot of work to get done.” “Alright bro,” he says, starting down the hall, “I’ll leave you to it
Take care.” “Yeah, you too,” I say, as his footsteps trail away. I erase the first tape. Just like that. I drag the master’s reel of verbiage repeatedly over the bulk eraser, in multiple directions, scrambling the magnetic patterns into meaninglessness; order, back into chaos.
Glancing out the window, I imagine burying the remaining tapes instead of erasing them. I could return late one night in the future, a stealth grave robber under the moon, and exhume them for posterity.
Bhagwan could’nt care less if I erase these tapes. Nothing matters to him. Shit, I’m enjoying this. I do it- all of them- the eraser buzzing, history undone. He’s said it all ten thousand times anyway
As I kill the last one, my thoughts drift back to Poona, to a time when I once walked in his shoes, so to speak.
After one of his discourses, the meditation hall had cleared out, the cleaners were at work, and I lolled alone on the floor, mushed out from sitting in his presence. Near his podium, an exclusive exit path, reserved for only him, led out the back way. I quickly slipped from the hall along his private path.
On purpose. Just to do it. Guards converged on me from everywhere. In the loud confrontation, I played dumb. I’d made a mockery of their rules. Dispersing, they murmured righteous indignations. Secretly, I think he loves me for that rebellious act. When someone asked Bhagwan what he would do if he were a member of our commune,
he said he’d run away as fast as possible.
“When someone asked Bhagwan what he would do if he were a member of our commune, he said he’d run away as fast as possible.”
Well, some things we learn only with experience, I guess!
This was common knowledge in Pune 1!
It certainly has ramifications for all of us who lived in a commune which we considered the best place on Earth at the time!
Those six tapes were probably only ONE discourse – the very same where Osho said to Sheela something like: “You have turned my commune into a fascist concentration camp.”
Don’t forget – there were many people sitting in the room when he said it, and they didn’t all get poisoned!
That’s also what I was thinking, Abhi – that there could have bern six small tapes of the one discourse.
Prem Rajesh describes how he was assigned to listen in on Ma Laxmi’s trailer that was bugged, and how there was a whole stack of tapes from his recordings.
But in Rajesh’s account he also mentions other things that people may not have heard before, such one of the Jesus Grove crew, Julian, telling him that Osho’s room had also been bugged previously, back in Pune.
Ma Satya Bharti, who left Sannyas during the Ranch years, also maintains in one of her books that Sheela was already experimenting with poisons during Pune 1.
Anyone know what happened to Julian, or where he is now, or even his last name?
http://www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/index.ssf/federal_prosecutions_of_rajnee.html
Here you go, “Kosho”, here`s some more info on the scene at the Ranch:
https://youtu.be/MEsR2QhxV74
The responses to the video at youtube show how the Ranch experiment divided opinion, even among potential friends and well-wishers, eg this one:
“Many say go watch some of his vídeos or read one of his books before making conclusions. They are blind to the fact that talking and walking are two different things. Clearly Osho talked a marvellous game but at the end of the day he was drunk on power and material wealth. There is no way beyond that, as wise as his words may be, many of his actions or the actions of those who followed him were insensitive and wrong.
I guess my point is there is no use trying to justify his bullshit by pissing on American hypocrisy. Just because America is full of shit doesnt mean another person should go mindfuck and swindle others to buy a fleet of RR or lock motherfuckers in padded rooms to the point they want to assault, rape and attempt suicide, etc. Many bad sons of bitches talked a good game, while the game they played was not good at all.”
Certainly quite a comprehensive little four part report there, for Kosho.
Also, for more on “The Bhagwan”, and after Sheela left Rajneeshpuram, check out:
https://youtu.be/ULljM0i3oNc
They are making these judgements from a Judao-Christian mindset though, the very mind Osho set out to destroy.
Obviously what happened stank, but that doesn’t alter the fact they are judging from prejudice, not from higher-level consciousness.
Coincidentally, their prejudiced minds found something to feed the prejudices, and if it wasn’t that, there would have been something else.
Good video ref., Shanti.
Thanks.
Actually, not that many disciples for that discourse.
The practice was, during late 1984 and early 1985, for Osho to speak to about 20/30 people(they were called the Chosen Few), the discourse being recorded and then played to the whole commune next evening. Hence the significance of destroying a tape.
Devageet (Osho’s dentist), who was at a lecture that he thought had been trashed, gives a brief report of it as I remember in his book ‘The first Buddha in the Dental Chair’.
If, Abhi, as you seem to think you are some kind of authority on the subject, you know of any other accounts, why not give everyone the references?
I can’t believe you guys are still talking about the Ranch, remember it was 30 years ago. It’s kind of sad and pathetic, you seem to forget some people moved on and the commune is now in Poona, India.
Shanti Kamal, you are also living in fool’s paradise. From where you got the information commune is now in Poona, India?
Do you have the idea how many miles away is Poona from your home?
I blame the internet.
We used to meet at the Guru and Chaat pub in Wembley for some late-night energy transformation sessions, and a wobbly walk home, but since 1998 things went viral. Sannyas News has tried to diversify, with a choral group singing clap-happy tunes with hands over the chest, but membership fell after only two evening meet-ups which ended in a string of accusations over who was more open.
The most popular form of meditation still remains being unaware of one’s unawareness, which many legacy Swamis still practise with great flair; however, it is dangerous, it can lead to death by mediocrity or worse: making completely irrelevant assertions about one’s own point of view.
We therefore prefer to stick to the entirely predictable, as no one has written anything remotely relevant since 1986.
Love
from all,
Sheela, J. Heckle & Hide.
Don’t accept that, Kamal.
If lessons have remained unlearned, or if, as is the case, many devotees pass quickly over such facts and are in denial, then it was and is important.
Such denial is still found everywhere, within the so-called ‘straight’ Resort society of Pune and also amongst those who would resurrect Pune 1, such as Arun and, to some extent, Keerti.
Well, it certainly is interesting to go over the Ranch from learning more from a historical point of view, and learning new aspects every time, thus widening one’s general perspective.
Prem Rajesh’s account surely paints a vivid description of what life was like on the Ranch, not only the bedroom antics of some of the residents, but also bits and pieces from the criminal aspects.
I have been reading the Osho ‘source book’, and have been learning lots of new things about Osho’s early life, even if some of it sounds semi-mythological, it is still an interesting read.
Shantam Prem, please, please shut up!
Who are you, madam?
It must be late months of 1986…
Osho was in Mumbai. Master started taking disciples’ and media´s questions in Hindi also. The compilation of those discourses is called ‘Kounple Phir Phoot Aain’. The bad translation means, “Seeds Are Blooming Again.”
During this time, India was passing through the insurgency in Punjab. One questioner has asked about freedom of Punjab. Can disciples imagine the shocking answer? One full session is dedicated to this question.
I think within a day or two before Osho´s second homecoming to Pune, I purchased this discourse from the bookshop there. No need to say the ‘Punjab Problem’ discourse became hit in the Sikh circles. I was asked by many known and unknown people to have the copy of the Acharya Rajneesh talk on Punjab´s freedom.
The contents are so solid, no state would like to hear. What Osho says, in legal terms, it is worthy of sedition charges amounting to lifelong prison.
I think the after-effects must have reached Osho and the management. Cassette was withdrawn and discourse did not become part of the book.
Many hardcore disciples may think I am creating fiction. Thankfully, someone has uploaded the discourse on youtube. It is here and now. I have seen it but did not get the impulse to listen again.
Please give the youtube html, Shantam.
Parmartha, you can ask someone to translate the contents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqYUdgHmM0Q
MOD: HOW ABOUT YOU DOING THIS ONE, SHANTAM?
Thanks.
I still sense some disbelief from some contributors to this string.
In 2011, I wrote a short article called ‘The Lost Lecture’. That, and the string that followed it, may interest present readers. Especially the quotes from ‘A Passage to America’ by Max Brecher, which I believe is still in print. The events around the lost lecture are itemised there on pages 221/222.
The html for the 2011 article is:
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/986
It’s time for a reality check. Here we are talking about the world’s most flaunted democracy which is nothing but a sham.
Osho talked at length about the fascism inherent in authoritarian systems. The experiences outlined above were a direct result of an experiment ‘gone wrong’, in large part sanctioned by the great man himself, which, if he didn’t have fused neurons a-la-universal enlightenment, would have caused any other mortal to have said, “Oh, bollocks, what a cock-up I was part of/ had my part in.”
Be that as it may, we should never render ourselves powerless nor dimmed by having learnt from experience, which is another way of saying ‘having got something we didn’t want.’
In fact. the worst part of injustice and unfairness, despite personal karma and its rocky road, is how systematic abuse has become and how powerless people are when confronted by institutional systematic abuse on the grand scale – and how impossible change has become because of an abusive fascist ideology that trains criminals to be respected law-makers and enablers.
The US and its States, unlike some other English speaking nations, has played a unique role in promoting genocide amongst its own natives, the economic and political disenfranchisement of its underclasses and the ruinous sponsoring of fascist modelling with a smarmy face, around the globe for decades. I went to the US once and vowed never to go again; it is an appalling country of privilege and endemic stupidity across the board. It’s as if the country is run by clones of a backwater David Cameron, ugly, menacing and crushed individuals who live in suburban bubbles of privilege for aeons.
This model is not unique, of course, you can find it everywhere, but to some extent Osho was facing it down, as well as being a blithering idiot in mimicking its worst excesses via unaccountable core groups around the whole commune shebang.
If he meant to piss in the face of the US ‘democracy’ he was on the right track, but somehow lost the plot and didn’t understand the menace he was up against, both within and without. Even if he had been shrewder, I doubt much would have come true in a real alternative, because the white bourgeoisie are plumb suckered into the whole friggin’ mess out there, guru or otherwise.
The US penal system is the worst in the civilised world for maintaining the Protestant Victorian ethic of submission to the mighty god ‘mammon’.
There are undoubtedly fascist snoopers here who read both my contributions and track me and others across the social media, for the purposes of profiling in their databases. They can know that I will never seek to enter the US of A ever again, that they are welcome to their version of criminal democracy and its outrageous, institutionalised fascism – which has little answerability, as mentioned in the article below – that affects the daily lives of ordinary citizens and blights permanently any wish to live or visit the part of the planet now commandeered by those fascist oligarchs that run the territory, whom Osho despised, to his credit.
It’s two years old as an article, less than thirty years ago, admittedly, but the facts remain in place as the country of the “free and brave”…cowboy goons.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mom-released-early-prison-article-1.1210838
Prem Martyn, the way I know you from your posts, you are simply one of those anarchists who like to have complete control over their life and most probably the life of the woman who is around them.
I don´t think you will ever be satisfied with any socio-political religious system. Unfortunately, many such people came to Osho thinking this sugar daddy will give a fireproof, waterproof, rustproof bicycle, which can fly.
“I was tremendously disappointed when I came to America. I had thought that it was a democratic country. It is not, absolutely not, because what they have been doing to my people, to me, is fascist. Democracy is just a mask; behind the democracy everything is fascist.
You will be surprised to know that one of my sannyasins, one of my oldest sannyasins, Ma Yoga Laxmi, who was the president of the Indian section of my sannyasins for almost ten years, and has been with me almost for twenty years…She is frail, small-bodied…she has cancer. She has been operated on, much of her stomach has been removed. Still, in America – remember, I am saying in America, not in the Soviet Union – she has been beaten by your naturalization services. She was not allowed to have her legal expert, she was not allowed to phone anybody. She was not allowed – because other sannyasins were waiting outside.
The officials took her first into the front part of the building. They were very sweet – just the way communists are in Russia. They tried to bribe her. They said to her,
“We will give you a green card without any difficulty, we will help you in every way. And if you help us and whatsoever we say you support, we will replace Bhagwan’s secretary and put you in power.”
When she refused, when she said, “Whatsoever you are saying is absolute lies, and I am not power-hungry,” when they found that she could not be seduced in a friendly way, they forced her – four strong people for a tiny person, fragile, the body is dying – and they took her to the back. She told them, “Please, let me have my advocate with me.” They did not allow it. And at the back of the building they started beating her – of course in such a way that no medical evidence can be found. And she is so weak…
You call this democracy?
My sannyasins – the president of the international Sannyas movement, the president of this commune, the head of another corporation – all these three women, and I don’t know about others, whenever they come into the country or go out of the country, officials take them into a dirty room, force them to be naked, and force their fingers into their vaginas under the pretext that they are searching for drugs. This you call democracy?
And doing it to three women…Perhaps they have done it to many. Those poor women cannot say anything, just out of shame: what to say to anybody? And there is no witness; those officials will deny it flatly. These women are tortured in an ugly, inhuman way – and this is a democratic country. Sometimes I think the attorney-general of Oregon must be the reincarnation of Pontius Pilate.
This is also humiliation of womankind. Not only should sannyasins fight it, all the women of America should fight it. This is simply against every woman; it is not a question only of my sannyasins. But other women will remain silent because they are Christians, they are Protestants, they are Catholics, they are Jews. People cannot see because they have so many curtains before their eyes.”
‘From the False to the Truth’ (1985)
And if you want to watch Osho talking about this one, there is also a clip at about 5.45 mins in the video below:
https://youtu.be/SZ0SIs2plPw
Pandit:
Tell me anything. I will find the relevant words from the holy texts.
I have been reading the Osho ‘Source Book’, which Parmartha put on the noticeboard.
It is a very detailed and in-depth look at Osho`s early life, compared to some other less complex texts about Osho`s life that I have read like ‘Wot the Bhagwan Done’.
Apparently, as a young man Osho was very much into communist and socialist ideas, as well as anarchism.
Osho described the fascism within his own organisation and that tape was erased…
Maybe this is the reason fascism within his own organisation prevails.
(Devotees don´t like to see this, won´t believe this…).
The idea of not taking it seriously – you know, all that gumbo about laughing as a religion…
How we were all just playing at it…
The ‘leela’…
But some things were sacred…like devotion and disciplehood.
And the almighty deliverance awaiting our fragile, paper-thin selves,
as long as we were sincere…
and kow-towed a bit
as mature adults
and didn’t flick two fingers at the whole ambition involved – in becoming awash with lyric poetry morning, noon and night
or apparently so…
peer-group pressure-wise.
Or put a colander on our heads whilst watching our thoughts…
But clutched malas in earnest claphappyness…made of evanescent ooochy-koo-ness.
But no public displays of self-mockery…
Ohhh, noh!
That’s actually fascism – in most books.
Like Buddhists actually
They’re fascists – supremely dogmatic, smiley ones, complete with uniforms.
This week’s tip:
Drive like a nutter….
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35305899
“How we were all just playing at it…
The ‘leela.” (Prem Martyn).
Please take care about your “we” – to subsume anybody to anything in your fiery generally put up speech here.
And as it is you, forming up the thread topic to the fullest (sure with a modified ´cap´ on your head yourself), and you gave it quite a remarkable good start in creative writing with the ‘love letter’ of “Sheela B., J. “Heckle & Hide”, didn´t you?!
I don´t know – how could I? – what Parmartha or Sannyas News (anonymous) is up to when choosing the title “Killing…”, but what I know is by now that quite a lot of Spin ´Doctors´ here are in full gears, and that besides the hidden amount of traumatising enough ´hidden´ facts!
I would say, to use the chat for some kind of ´AUM meditation’ performance on the viral line, is off the wall! And by that I mean, misusing this meditation as such, as it is meant face-to-face and in the reality realms of being together in the body.
It´s anyway NOT one of my favorite approaches, as well as the whole Humaniversity tribe and its therapists (whom I encountered partially as very abusive too), not at all skilled to deal with trauma; Neither the collective ones nor the individual ones, which are anyway both inter-linked. Always.
Some obnoxious power play is going on here, and very hidden, and I would love to know what the guys who formulated the thread topic (UK) and especially also you, Prem Marty, are really up to – in the ´Here-Now´ realms. In 2016, January.
Looking forward to your response(s) to that.
Madhu
Martyn, share your photo when you get initiated into the cult which pokes religions. Your sharing of the video shows your fascination with nuts religion without bolts.