There is a German series playing on mainstream English Channel four on Sunday nights. It is a spy theme at one of the cold war near misses in 1983. Not bad. In episode two last week there is a short interlude where the daughter of a German Nato General’s daughter is a sannyasin in the Cologne commune. Not too badly done:clip below. Difficult in some browsers, try safari if having difficulty.
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Really touching clip.
Call it conspiracy of time or thanks God, within span of few years, most of the daughters have gone back to their mothers.
There´s nothing much ´touching´about the few minutes setting the trigger that politics is always part of the games and one at least needs to know more of the plot.
And what is really a ´conspiracy of the time´, as you put it, Shantam Prem, is that people of your kind of mentality spill their utter stupidity and intrigues unhindered by editors/moderators all over the virtual places. Also here in SN. You are not alone in that procedure and represent the MOB as such.
Unfortunately, your base is Germany as well as some English-born nutters of your kind, male or female, who like foul play, the Murdoch ways.
Madhu
Osho Commune International, the place and the brand created by Osho, is the crescendo of His work. Once master started talking before people and taking meditation camps; He has put forward His vision, how His ashram will be. Commune is the word and the concept, no known master of His time and of 21st century has used.
Just 26 years after His death (in flowery language, ‘leaving the body’), the name and the concept cherished by the master has been gutted and guttered by the same very people who were entrusted to take care of masterly work.
It is already 19th January in certain parts of Earth.
The video clip is a testament to how a life-quality-enhancing idea died prematurely.
“The video clip is a testament to how a life-quality-enhancing idea died prematurely.”
Is it? In what specific way(s), Shantam?
To me, it was just a bunch of young people sitting around listening to a Bob Dylan song sung by a nice-looking young woman who apparently had some deep-rooted family issues.
While the young man arguing with the police made a highly suspect, typically ‘cultish’ remark, “She belongs to us and we belong to her”.
Where’s the ‘visionary glory’ in that?
Again, Shantam, I suspect your longing for all that reflects the unsatisfactory nature of your own individual life. It’s more the nostalgic fantasising of an otherwise rather purposeless, rather ‘lost’ soul, a lonely 50-plus man in a foreign land, in what might well be termed a ‘mid-life crisis’, rather than being an accurate representation of the ‘failure’ of others to properly implement ‘Osho’s Vision’.
Besides, as others have put to you, there are plenty of Osho-inspired communes out there, in India and elsewhere. Why not explore them instead of incessantly moaning and complaining? Your choosing to home in only on Pune would seem to be just a convenient outlet for your purely personal chronic discontent with your own life.
Why is this so hard for you to realise?
Satyadeva,
Commune is the word and the concept, no known master of His time and of 21st century has used.
In Pune it was in full bloom. In Germany its effects were felt. So as a disciple, it is not a very big crusade on my part, but a small fight to restore master’s glory, his work.
As far as my personal life is concerned, with the grace of God, it is not like top one per cent but also it is not like bottom 70 percent. So there is immense thankfulness of getting much without much effort.
Surely, idea of commune coming from Osho has touched me more than anything else. Maybe it is because of Neptune in the 4th house. This astrological connection I have with him. God willing, I may write an article about this. In few astrology books, Osho chart has already been discussed.
You haven’t answered my two questions, Shantam.
“So as a disciple, it is not a very big crusade on my part, but a small fight to restore master’s glory, his work.”
Well, this “small fight” appears to be a daily concern of yours, Shantam, something that, judging from your posts here, has pretty well obsessed you for years.
In fact, I recall you writing a year or two ago that committing yourself to this issue had in effect become your very raison d’etre, giving your life purpose and meaning.
And when you say you’re aiming “to restore Master’s glory, his work” I’m afraid you give the game away, Swami. This is clearly hugely important to you and you think you’re doing very important work, don’t you?
So no more false modesty, please – we know you think you know you’re on a major mission (even though you’re sadly deluded!).
The clip has one main weakness, it overcultivises Sannyas.
I was a European commune member at that time. I was never denied contact with my family, and I visited them freely, and many families visited Medina and were well looked after, exactly at that time of ’83.
It has always been a myth that such a cult divided families. I remember cases where parents of sannyasins became sannyasins themselves.
Jesus started the whole business! He rejected Mary, his mother, on at least one occasion very publicly, and told her now everyone was his mother and father and family. But spiritual life has moved on in the last 2,000 years.
The clip doesn’t make much sense without watching the episodes that are available. There were indeed some sannyasins who had famous or powerful parents, and the fact that this one was the daughter of a German NATO General at the time did actually ring a little bit true to me.
“It has always been a myth that such a cult divided families. I remember cases where parents of sannyasins became sannyasins themselves.”
Yes, I remember those kind of ´happy go lucky´ rare incidents too, Parmartha, listening to friends, whose parents or sisters or brothers were really interested, why some family member took such an unfamiliar life-turn as Sannyas with Osho.
It never happened in my life though and so the thread, how it is developing, especially by the ´markers´ you chose, touches some very deep and sad issues in my life, not reconciled (and even worse).
Madhu
P.S:
It was you, wasn´t it, who once asked if anybody here knows about Nirvano´s family. I remembered having read somewhere that they didn´t show up, didn´t respond, as I felt quite identified with one of us, whose family constellation might have been as dysfunctional as mine….
Another P.S. for Parmartha (if my response of yesterday evening comes ´through´) is that´s at least well documented how religious cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses (present in this chat mostly as ´readers’) or Scientology Church for example commit severe and sometimes capital crimes against individuals, family members – not to speak about about the wide range of crimes against women driven by the lust for money and power (also a kind of cultish colour in times of ´digital age) or crimes with an Islamic or otherwise fundamental Christian ideology background.
As time goes by in digital age, just the few here mentioned cultish behaviourist crimes are mixed in an unbearable way, as even much less than in the eighties people like or are able to discriminate before going into actions of all kinds.
Madhu,
I don’t have judgements on cults. Jesus and his gang were a dangerous cult in his day, that’s why the Romans and the Jews murdered him.
I can see how ‘family’ can constrict and destroy people so they never really claim their own lives, and being drawn to someone like Osho is likely to bring such tensions to the surface, whether one was in a commune or not.
My point, returning to the clip, is that my experience of families and the Osho Medina commune, of which I had the most experience, was sort of ‘enlightened’.
If one wanted or needed to go and see family this was never denied as far as I experienced it, and families were also made very welcome when they visited the commune – even when the family was related to Hitler’s No 2, Mr Goering!
“Jesus started the whole business! ”
Yes, did his share in destroying family values and engaging in hurtful behaviour, like when he said (speaking of his mother), “Tell that woman I am not her son” (ouch!).
But many go through a stage of rejecting/separating from parents and find a cult family. I don’t think that happened so much with neo-Sannyas since the majority coming to Osho had finished degrees, were in their 30s, and had already resolved family issues. They were not looking for a father figure.
In any case, Osho was not interested in making people dependent upon him, just the opposite. And the commune was not a cuddly place. It was a place for confronting yourself and your issues, including family issues.
“…had finished degrees, were in their 30s…” (That’s true).
‘…and had already resolved family issues.” (Elitist bollocks. The idea that being in your thirties and having a degree means you’ve resolved your issues – fucking snobby claptrap).
Agree, Arps, that picture strikes me as false. The post-war generation, growing up in the midst of the often seismic psycho-socio-economic shifts of the 60s onwards, had many personal difficulties arising from unsatisfactory family backgrounds and I think very many people gravitated to Sannyas and/or Sannyas communal living due to ensuing ‘unresolved family issues’ and individual ‘emotional issues’ of various kinds, at various levels along a spectrum from mildly debilitating hang-ups to desperately dysfunctional (or even community-endangering) psychosis.
Of course, it might well depend on who you met and hung out with (and/or heard about), so maybe Samarpan had his “fully resolved issues” High Achievers Circle (those who could, as it were, ‘HAC(k)’ it) and the lumpen rank-and-file footsoldiers (you know, cannon – er, sorry, group and individual therapy – fodder) like you (?) and I had (if were lucky) our own little ‘gangs’ of fellow-sufferers, hovering around the fringes, watching in wonder as Samarpan and the rest of our obvious superiors strolled around, amused by, disgusted by, or, it would seem, even totally oblivious to our benighted, oh-so-problematic existences….
Looking back, a lot of early thirties, with degrees, were up against the barrier of being pretty sophisticated in putting on a good face, well practised by then in self-deception.
What ´Jesus´ did or didn’t do, Samarpan, Parmartha, nobody really knows, and the least He did was starting a business –
that for sure was/is happening after torture and crucifixion.
There have been parables, a lot, and as parables they were used by the Master.
I agree, Samarpan, the commune wasn´t at all “a cuddly place”; growing up – small family style – and repeating all kinds of devastating patterns in installing another ´small family´ is quite often not at all “a cuddly place” either.
Has been a beautiful and courageous spiritual experiment to bring so many people in such abundant variety of national or family backgrounds together, to live and love and work beyond the ´small family style´ together.
I am deeply sad that it turned out a failure.
Madhu
But no “failure”, surely, if people also benefited from such experience (great, good, average, mediocre, indifferent, bad, terrible)?
Perhaps expectations were too high, eg “to be here for ever and ever”?
Or, “Aaah, a proper ‘family’ – at last!”
And, perhaps especially, “nothing can possibly go wrong with Osho here to lead and protect us”?
“nothing can possibly go wrong with Osho here to lead and protect us” (Satyadeva)
Anyone believing that must have been there for the social scene, or for sex, or some other reason not related to neo-Sannyas/Osho.
I had low expectations. Didn’t even think about ‘enlightenment’…but the experience was great, with no disappointment (a benefit of having low expectations), much better than I ever could have imagined.
“All expectations belong to the mind, all disciplines belong to the mind, all so-called saintliness and so-called sin belong to the mind. When there is no mind, there is no sinner and no saint, and the gift simply showers on you.”
Osho, ‘A Bird on the Wing’ (chapter 2)
There is kind of ´black-and-white´ looking at things here, Satyadeva, Samarpan.
Not only Osho had a dream of undoing much harm on the human scale – I´ve been meeting many very beautiful dreamers too, including myself.
To degrade that, the way the yellow press always did (and does), may increase the numbers of your clients for counselling or your personal social credibility and honour, acknowledgement and career nowadays.
So, there is and has been something more to it than shattered dreams because of unresolved primal issues or ´free-sex fantasies´, all of which go down the drain anyway.
Madhu
Madhu,
I was disappointed in sannyasins for years, and I am no longer, but there was a definite connection between my utopian idealism, and that disappointment.
As for failure, My inner life has been transformed since I came across Bhagwan. I know others who would make the same claim. Seems to me the more successful Osho is with the more people, the more ‘chopping wood and digging the garden’ is going to happen, and much less of the visible mass movement, which we had at one point in time.
I expected fairly unconsciously we were all going to be one big happy family for years, and I was unconsciously seeking that, and not for the first time, as I now know I had done that in other situations prior to Sannyas.
“I expected fairly unconsciously we were all going to be one big happy family for years, and I was unconsciously seeking that, and not for the first time, as I now know I had done that in other situations prior to Sannyas.” (Arpana)
Arpana,
Good that it all worked out fine for you.
I didn´t have the dream of ´just another family…only a just “better” one, but I surely had the dream not to end up as the target for misuse and crime in a business-family-constellation circus with clearly fascist characteristics.
And I didn´t know for sure that I would be exposed then to people making their money for their so-called spiritual trips, events and episodes (up to nowadays, btw) with means one can call criminal, like drug dealing, dope dealing, sex industry with all its * and tasting crime stuff all around – and nowadays, as before, criminal dealing with private data all the way. Just to name a few examples of money and power-mongers’ activities.
Some, just to get a white collar (using then their Sannyas name in so-called privacy, only if it is convenient), otherwise sliming their way to social acceptance as business people just do it.
So I was also really not prepared at all to meet some of their kids (now grown-ups * with baby as * or kids themselves who obnoxiously go for revenge tours here and as ´mama and papa´ are helping them out, look for somebody else in that age for harrassments of all kinds.
And last and not at all least, I know that former ´Julian´ from the Ranch ´bugging as bugging can be´ section has a lot of ´brothers and sisters´ nowadays also amongst those who write similar well-sounding posts like you as a male contributor, who obviously hasn´t had to deal with collective unresolved riddles as I as a woman have had to (being targeted as a kind of scapegoat).
Madhu
MOD: MADHU, PLEASE CLARIFY:
PARAG.3: sex industry and all its * – ITS WHAT?
PARAG. 5: grown-ups with baby as * – ?
You mean, you think – unlike you – it’s been easy for me.
No, Arpana; I don ´t mean that.
Anyway, the diversity of your identities you´re playing here with and changing your ´graphic logo´ and contribution contents then according to that, makes it quite difficult (for me) to relate to you as a coherent being.
And anyway, this SN-Chat, described with…like…’a few London guys (swamis?) keeping discussion open for some critical, unresolved points in and of Sannyas-History’ is quite ´male´-oriented with its views, sorry to say.
Madhu
@ madhu dagmar frantzen 9:46 am
I’ve been waiting for you to comment on me changing my avatar, you paranoid freak.
Your problem is you expect the whole world, as does Shantam, to fit with you. Being with Osho has been a complete waste of time for both of you.
One apposite and paradoxical example was Bettina Goering,(Ma Anand Bettina) who ran away from home at 13, lived in the early Osho Ashram in Poona, India, and later in the Osho communes.
Her great-uncle, her father’s beloved godfather, was the infamous Nazi leader, Hermann Goering. Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, he headed the vaunted Luftwaffe airforce and was a leading architect of the “Final Solution” to exterminate Europe’s Jews.
When Bettina was in the Osho commune both her brother and mother took sannyas.
Ma Anand Bettina posted this somewhere in 2012; it shows how her mom took sannyas in Medina:
“It is the 4th anniversary of the death of our mom, Ma Elisabeth Goering.
I never published her obituary, partly from grief in the beginning, so here it is:
Ma Elisabeth Goering was born july 14th, 1918 and left her body peacefully, surrounded by her family, on Oct. 21, 2008.
In her sixties she was introduced to Osho/Bhagwan by her children, Sw Prem Kali and Ma Anand Bettina in Poona 1. Elisabeth took sannyas in Medina, England in 1982, she loved people and being in the sangha, in her home town of Wiesbaden (Germany), Poona, Medina or the Ranch.
She worked as a master tailor, a nurse and in her eighties, in Tanha’s Mode Oase, a sannyas friend’s fashion boutique.
She loved nature and spend much time hiking in the forests and mountains with her sister in the last part of her life. She knitted a million sweaters for her friends and family and was a very generous and courageous person. All her life she gave most of her things away, needed very little and left behind next to nothing.
She is missed by Bettina, Kali and her friends.”
I myself had forgotten this video. It is while searching Osho´s leaving the body photo, I stumbled upon it.
Issue is as valid as it was in 2013, when spontaneous feelings were expressed in a video format.
Fellow bloggers are welcome to criticize with their heart´s content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFmFL0rAvM
A SN boardroom response to Shantam’s video!
Perfectly correct, Shantambhai!
Do not be put off by the laughing western baboons who think that your heroic crusade and life`s work is nothing but the gibbering of spiritually challenged throwback to oldtime underwear/beard religion with mental problems on Prozac who hasn`t had a decent shag since 88-90!
They cannot understand the words and actions of one who is a direct descendent of Ashoka`s nine men who eats lives and breathes the wisdom of mighty Bhorat!
Do not let these western laughing hyenas distract you as you stroll by unaffected like mighty Dumbo the elephant!
Keep on with your zen meditations on Japanese porn and go further and deeper into your chosen koan of the sound of one hand flapping and let it be noticed all over the world through your incessant ejaculations on your keyboard!
Hari Om!
Yahoo!
Huan Ka!
Hi Yogi,
Thank God you haven’t had your lobotomy and are still with us…
“The sound of one hand flapping” – indeed, it is brilliant…you must have loads of near-enlightenment-experience….XX
We are not worthy.
Good cartoon, Arps!
When I saw this clip I related to my own sannyas & my mother, but I was not emotional at all when with my mother, in fact when she was mentally tortured & questioned by some friends & family for allowing me to go away to a characterless Guru, I told my mother at that time if she needs to she can come visit me and see for herself, my lifestyle in Poona.
She visited me, didn’t mind me living here as long as I was happy she said, but she didn’t like me living in a small space, sharing bathroom & toilet with other flatmates, so she decided to sell our house. I did her tell her it was her decision & that she can’t blame me later for her decision, because I quite enjoyed this new lifestyle and had no problem with it.
After few months of shifting, she took sannyas, joined the commune & took long leave from her government job & later, in 1997, she voluntarily retired.
Of course, living together with anyone is a challenge – no, actually, living itself is a challenge, I guess!
Kavita, that was an interesting post, which raises a few questions that I will not bother to ask. I am a bit preoccupied at the moment with somewhat pressing matters and I just pop into SN for a few moments’ distraction.
I inevitably cannot resist giving poor Shantam a bit of stick in what I see as a bit of slightly warped entertainment. It is so easy, whereas some of the other bloggers’ posts, like yours, require a bit more attention and time that I simply can’t afford. Anyway, thanks for that.
Thank you too, Lokesh.
“I just pop into SN for a few moments’ distraction.” That’s exactly what this has turned for most of us here on SN & I/we quite enjoy this distraction, don’t we?! Probably, missionaries shall not be able to taste that!
I mentioned the series in question some months back on SN. Not bad. There are a few glaring inaccuracies but apart from that it does capture the zeitgeist. So what? It’s history now.
Shantam, of course, uses the thread as yet another excuse to employ his hyperbolic rhetoric.
“The video clip is a testament to how a life-quality-enhancing idea died prematurely.” If taken as a projection of his own mind this kind of guff signals something dreadful.
Or how about, “So as a disciple, it is not a very big crusade on my part, but a small fight to restore master’s glory, his work”? Which leaves me wondering about the severity of the brain damage received when he fell out of his pram and banged his head in the Punjab as a chubby baby.
As it is, the series is worth a watch, because it is a good story. I reccommend ‘Bridge of Spies’, if you wish to explore Cold War madness to a deeper extent.
A short Story:
Disciple’s Mind
One fine day, a master with a naughtiness in his smile told to the closest disciples, “When I am gone, be careful, my chappals are not lost?”
Few days later master breathed His last.
The closest disciples gathered around the ashes of their master and felt a sense of responsibility. Till now, everything was happening smoothly. Master´s charisma was there. But now?
One long-term disciple suggested, ” e just need to continue like always but many, many times more careful. Master has instructed us even to take care of His chappals.”
To hear this made many other disciples furious, “Are you crazy? Don´t you see, life after the master is not the same as life before the master? We have to change and evolve with the time.”
The first disciple did not lose the patience but asked patiently, “Why you think master instructed in the last, “Be careful, my Chappals are not lost?” Does this not mean we have to preserve each and every article connected with the master?”
It really freaked out other disciples, You will remain always an Indian. Chappals means chappals and that is it. One pair we will keep here and the others will go into the safety lockers of Swiss Banks. Master´s guideline is our command.”
P.S:
This story is dedicated to the people who call themselves ‘sannyasins’.