Mind the Gap
It seems that Swami Amrito (formerly Osho’s personal physician, and deputy Chairman of the “Board” that runs Osho International), etc is now blogging in the Huffington Post (India). We are sure this will interest some of our readers!
His article linked below is signed as John Andrews M.B.,B.S. M.R.C.P , a name he has previously used.
His blurb says: A lifestyle blog with a difference. A blog that is about only one thing: how to be yourself. A blog from a meditators’ perspective, exploring the essential questions of how to fulfil our potential. How to live a life of love and laughter?
You can read an example called “Mind the Gap” at
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/oshotimes/mind-the-gap_4_b_8106686.html
I think the introduction of this string: “It seems that Swami Amrito (formerly Osho’s personal physician, and deputy Chairman of the ‘Board’ that runs Osho International) etc. is now blogging in the Huffington Post (India)” is a bit misleading.
I have checked the news site. John Andrews M.B.,B.S. M.R.C.P has written only one piece, posted on 26/09/2015, 23:10 IST
Blogging is present continuous. One article written around 6 months ago is maybe past participant. Most probably, doctor was trying to check the water and thinking it will revive the interest in Oshotimes.
MOD: SHANTAM, Oshotimes OR ‘Osho Times’?
Perfectly correct, Doctor J. Andrews!
If you say it loud enough you`ll always sound precocious!
Andrews is perfectly correct: it is absolutely necessary for everyone to enter no-mind as soon as possible and get out of conditioned mind!
All conflicts about holy shrines, words of the profit and sectarian battles and struggles of control over the so-called truth are nothing but mind!
In Kal Yuga, mankind has fallen so low that enlightenment has to be decided by lawyers! And aside from religion, the rest are simply drowning their sorrows with fags, booze and young chicks!
How fortunate we are, as inheritors of Osho`s vision, to be exempt from these ugly habits of the unconscious masses!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Skol!
In the blog it is written as “Oshotimes, become a fan – a lifestyle blog with a difference!’ To keep the original flair of doctor and his team of paid designers, I have mentioned in the same way.
SP,
Not really.
All the blog leaders look like his work to us, just in the last one he has introduced the John Andrews name.
Dear SN team,
You write: “All the blog leaders look like his work to us”, followed then by the politics of which of the names is used. I wouldn´t say that. After reading the content, to which I, as most of the others here, might be able to subscribe, I got into another flow.
Had a little deeper look into a portrait and an open chat with the Huffington Post founder, a Greek woman, living in NY now, and by now a millionairess, and her meeting with some employees of the Google company (2014), sharing some of her coaching capacities.
The young people from all over the world being (mostly) headhunted for this exclusive, elitist Californian Silicon Valley village have been very impressed and one could see that and could hear that too.
For me, it was one of the more very concentrated lessons about the Big Data we are all happening to disappear into right now, especially in the blogging business. And with it, the way our personal contributions are administrated (making money with it and out of it – some very few getting a loan for their contributions, yet less and less indeed, mostly just for the “joy” (delusion) to play a role in existence on the planet that might count. Intentionally to “change” the course of politics of everyday living “for the better”).
What was to be seen in the young faces present at this performance, one could see many beautiful young (pretty stress-free) dreamers, yearning to give their very best, to go for change with the energy: “We can do it”.
Had then another research about some background and development of the media business of (just) that media firm worldwide, an economic comet (since 2008) and I felt sick in my stomach.
Btw, the Greek lady looked very smart and was very charming, and gave the impression of a deep- rooted humanness and compassion and awareness for the audience, and could have been one of ‘our black-robe facilitators’, very much so.
However, my eyes got hooked into something in between her body language, which gave to me a kind of impression of what it might be if you develop into being a ´selfie´ of yourself.
And don´t misunderstand me, I am not saying here that we can avoid such calamity (in my eyes); I am going with eyes open in everyday conditionings.
And I don´t want to say here that good words don´t count. It´s just nagging me from an unknown source that so very few humans are profiting from the success!
This lady said, times before, she had lived in economic London, being for years together with a man, very skinny, she said, and talking for years ´philosophy´ through and through. After quitting that relationship she moved to NY, to bring that into action – economically. That she did efficiently, one can say.
Can´t help it, my stomach is revolting and most of you might not bother a bit.
Madhu
P.S:
I don´t care about with what name John Andrews is posting, but I DO care about developing into an algorithm and some economic aspects of a ´Wellness-Industry´ taking us on board.
“This Greek lady”, the founder of the Huffington Post was briefly a sannyasin, Madhu, and was in a relationship with a Times journalist (Bernard Levin) who reported favourably on Osho in the late seventies. She sold the publication some years ago, as far as we know.
But Maybe that’s why you were unconsciously attracted to her…!
Dear SN team,
By your response I am finding out that you didn´t really read what I wrote – sorry for that
Madhu
MOD: Madhu, please give relevant details as we don’t know what you refer to here.
(And rest assured we very carefully read every post, especially yours!).
Thanks, moderators.
Looking deeper (not only the vid with the Google Company event tapped into quite a deep issue of mine, unresolved and maybe unresolvable:
The cunning aspects of priesthood in whatsoever area. Also the stuff we call ´economics’ or ´media´.
For example, I wrote about ´pretty pale stressed´ faces in the audience, but on the way to the ´edit´, I then read ´stress free´; that changes a lot, doesn´t it?
I have not been ´attracted´ to the lady in front, but it took me quite some time, when seeing the vid, to get through that ´foggy feelgood-wall´, so to say, induced by her apparently compassionate open-mindedness.
I am not free myself to ever again get hooked (stuck) in patterns of all kinds, and sometimes I am desperate that we can´t simply sit together (in the bodies).
Would make it easier (imagination?), especially when we don´t come from the same ´mother-tongue´.
Madhu
P.S:
Dawn is on its way here, but the city never really sleeps, pretty much unhealthy stuff…hearing the trains go by in the near located station and the buses are already crowded.
MOD:
Madhu, you didn’t actually write “pretty pale stressed”, you actually wrote:
“one could see many beautiful young (pretty stress pale) dreamers, yearning to give their very best, to go for change with the energy: ´We can do it.”
This was confusing, but given the seemingly positive description we changed it accordingly.
Thanks, moderators.
Skimmed the article…a rehash of the same old same old. Yes, it does make sense of the nonsense. I think the expression ‘no/mind’ needs to be dropped and replaced with…Any suggestions?
Lokesh, why don´t you create your sect and start a new terminology better than the previous ones? Market is wide open.
Yes, Shantam, offers are pouring in. Problem is, I could not be bothered with all that nonsense. After all, look what happened to Osho.
You don´t need to follow Osho model. You can start up in the line of Punja Ji. That style fits also with your energy. If you remember, I have told you in your home, “You look like Punja Ji.”
Shantam, more people have told me I look like Anthony Hopkins, but that does not mean I have to become an actor. Besides, Poonjaji told me that whenever I see a crowd gathering around a spiritual teacher that I should beware of that person because it is not a good sign.
Poonjaji himself made it a practice to inform people he did not want them hanging around him, because what he had to share could be shared within a few days, then they could get out of the way to make space for others. I liked that about him.
Poonjaji,
Popular with sannyasins and famous for “popping” people out of their heads by using advaita talk in his house in Lucknow. More and more sannyasins flocked to see him in the nineties, after Osho had left his body,” and “Once you pop, you just can`t stop” became the new catchphrase.
He just liked to try and pop people out of their heads and then send them away, but this ended up with a lot of people thinking they were enlightened prematurely and setting themselves up on the satsang circuit.
He even told a couple of people that they were enlightened, and sent them away, but then became angry with them when they started teaching other folks.
Shanti, have you been to Punja Ji?
No, I have never been to Lucknow.
SS, your interpretation is obviously not based on any real experience, but rather what you picked up from quite a distance. You could google Poonjaji and find out a bit more and even then I find myself asking, why bother?
It is the same with Osho. You can read all his books and still not really have a clue about who and what he actually was. People like Osho and Poonjaji are a presence. If you have not sat beside them and felt the transformative power of that presence you are, to all intents and purposes, left in the dark.
You say, Poonjaji just “liked to try and pop people out of their heads”. The only “pop” going on is your pop culture descriptions. The problem I have with that is that such descriptions have a tendency to quickly erode and in a way tarnish the profound life-changing experience that can actually happen around such men or women, if it happens one gets close enough to them for such an occurence to take place.
The notion that being around apparently enlightened people can transform you is an ancient one. Pop culture is a fad, a passing phase in cultural patterns that are widespread within a population and has little to do with man’s timeless quest for salvation and freedom from the limitations imposed by limited ego self. Can you dig it?
I never sat with Poonjaji, but the word on the street was that there were busloads of sannyasins heading up to Lucknow and Poonja was popping them off on a daily basis, like peas in a pod.
However, there where also some of his disciples that stayed with him for years. The close disciples.
As far as Osho’s presence is concerned, I felt it in Pune, and have felt it more since he left the body.
The difference seems to be that while Poonjaji liked to “pop” people out of their heads, and then spit them out, Osho always used to make fun of any disciple whom he felt had declared enlightenment prematurely and then set up shop on their own.
“As a person I don`t egyisst”, he used to say, “I am just a presence…a very living presence…the day I came to know myself the person has disappeared.”
As far as “Pop art” is concerned (see pic.)….
This post with some polishing from the author can be used as a starting point of a new string. It is intelligently written and needs long discussion.
Swamishanti, was there someone you sat with or you are sitting with?
His most famous disciple is Andrew Cohen.
Cohen claimed, “You do what I say and I will lead you to enlightenment.”
Who would have believed that this was a complete, total, unmitigated lie?
Cohen never led anyone to enlightenment, and after experiencing an answer to Ramana Maharshi’s famous question, “Who am I?” I can see that Cohen is no more enlightened than George Bush or Vladimir Putin. But he is much more arrogant, egotistical and bad-tempered than George Bush.
Most religious leaders, and that includes Eastern-styled religious leaders, are charlatans who defraud their disciples and, whenever possible, manipulate them into giving huge amounts of money.
Ordinary confidence men who claim to be sharing get-rich-quick schemes are pretty repulsive, but spiritual confidence men who claim to be leading the way to Enlightenment and Bliss are much more repulsive.
Hello there, Warwick! We go back a looong way…How you doin’ these days down there in Oz?
Have you come across any teacher you regard as trustworthy, worth the time?
Warwick:
“His most famous disciple is Andrew Cohen.
Cohen claimed, “You do what I say and I will lead you to enlightenment.”
Who would have believed that this was a complete, total, unmitigated lie?”
But according to Andrew Cohen, his master Poppaji (sorry, Papaji) had told Andrew that he was enlightened, and sent him away from him – so I don`t really think that Andrew is to blame for believing that he was enlightened.
He may have been enlightened, who I am to judge without any experience.
By the time Papaji started blasting him for teaching, it was too late, Andrew had already set himself up as a teacher.
And many of the people giving satsang in the 90s had been ‘popped’ by Papaji, that it has become almost like a certificate: ‘Been to Papaji’.
The problem , in Pappaji’s eyes at least , seems to be that Papaji had ‘popped’ them out, and sent them away too early.
This contrasts sharply with Osho, who I remember once chastised someone whom he had declared enlightened, in Bombay, for leaving prematurely. “Enlightenment is just the beginning”, he said.
“Cohen never led anyone to enlightenment, and after experiencing an answer to Ramana Maharshi’s famous question, “Who am I?” I can see that Cohen is no more enlightened than George Bush or Vladimir Putin. But he is much more arrogant, egotistical and bad-tempered than George Bush.”
But how do we know that Andrew Cohen never led anyone to enlightenment? There are reports that he helped people to get out of their minds.
I remember the story of Marpa, who had an unenlightened master. He had great trust in the master and when the master told him to jump off a cliff, Marpa just jumped.
The master was not really expecting Marpa to jump, he became worried.
But Marpa was laughing. Apparently, Marpa`s trust was so great that he got enlightened, even with an unenlightened master.
Hi Warwick,
Well, well. Nice to see you making a contribution here.
Must be all of 20 years or more since I saw you once in England’s Lane, and then of course many more years when you were Prem Sagar and we lived in the same flat in Chalk Farm!
I think it is worth considering that unenlightened people might ‘push’ one, even more than enlightened ones, to the borders of explosion…assuming you agree that at least a few people were or are enlightened!
Some interesting quotes here from Osho re his perception of the differences between `awakening`, `self-realisation`, and `enlightenment`:
http://o-meditation.com/2011/03/17/flowering-awakening-self-realization-and-enlightenment-osho/
“How to live a life of love and laughter?” Doctor is surely going for it himself!
Watch this, if possible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-PVA-D78Kg&index=1&list=PLF44XsSXk0yGSJII8ZAecXcpyT7Vyqa4_
Thank you so much, Kavita, for sharing that vid about some contribution (2015?) to visitors to the Resort. Last words of it still in my ears: “How easy it is, to miss the whole plot…”
That´s true, isn´t it?
Thank you for sharing this – to my own surprise, I could play it without any technical (Apple) difficulties, not to speak of very soul-familiarity in the container of words.
And enjoyed!
Madhu
Yes, Madhu, & I enjoyed the vid too!
Good that he made new people feel so welcome.
Made that effort to make them realise they weren’t going to miss because they were new, that they weren’t second class. ✌
Yes, Arpana, he actually is in what he says and gives a good leg-up to getting attuned. Compare that to Brian’s delusive nastiness and I’d vote to increase doctor’s wages anytime.
Thanks Kavita, on behalf of the SN Team. Interesting video.
A few comments…
It seemed to us that this man is not some kind of drunkard! Which many who oppose him in India say he is.
On the other hand, like us all, inside every disciple is the wish to be the Master. He clearly is attempting to become this now!
Quite right, SN.
It’s just terrible how that Yogi spreads his yellow press all over the place after closing time on some issues.
Speaking of which, here is a photo of un-consciousness which is given in medicinal doses….
But the bloke does look like he’s just listening….
”A few comments…
It seemed to us that this man is not some kind of drunkard! Which many who oppose him in India say he is.”
SN, yes, I agree. Actually, it’s not just in India but I guess even outside India who oppose him.
”On the other hand, like us all, inside every disciple is the wish to be the Master. He clearly is attempting to become this now!”
Yes, I thought so too when I saw his passion!
I reckon anyone in that situation might have come across the same. He seemed reasonably down-to-earth and unselfconscious to me.
Thanks, Kavita, for posting those videos. I find them great! Did not post myself because some people in SN think I am a “plant” here from the Resort…what a nonsense!
@ moderators: Why didn’t you allow the photo I sent to PM?
MOD: It’s there, Tan!
After reading your post, Tan, I think you are more of an independent ‘bud’ than a ‘plant’ from the Resort!
Thanks, Kavita! Yes, we are. XXX
The good doctor makes a stab at invoking this elusive quality of consciousness…without actually spending any time describing it. He spends all his time moaning about the misery. As if the despair of a solution will force some sort of equinox and shift towards nirvana.
My bloody foot.
One reason why we can afford the blood, guts and misery, why it recurs as a tragic theme is that we are temporary.
However sad, miserable or fucked-up things get, we know for certain that the show will have a curtain call. So we throw dice. Burn the Amazon, elect idiots, waste time on the internet, sit around feeling marvellous. Eat chips. Do good deeds.
When I die, then to all intents and purposes the world is dead, over, finito. In big letters, one day I will see the words ‘THE END’. Yes, there will be a mess of a world to tidy up, but for me, it’s over, I won’t be returning to pay the parking ticket fine.
There will be credits, production team etc. and a moment to enjoy and wave “tarra”. Then it’s back to the very nothing of something of whizz, bang, bollocks.
It’s meant to be temporary, so get over yourself, Doc. And stop pretending that hand wringing equals giving a shit and selling it like a Bach flower remedy.
Just be yourself with or without “consciousness” – it’s less of a schizo approach and more permissive. It’s what being born is all about. You are free, but you have to pay rent etc. Now go and bother someone else on the yellow brick road.
Martyn says, “The good doctor makes a stab at invoking this elusive quality of consciousness…without actually spending any time describing it.”
Recently read a book with twenty of the world’s top minds trying to give their version of what consciousness is. Not one of them gave the same description. A bit like the blind men describing an elephant.
Life is so easy in a typical Sannyasnews way. By not moving the ass away from home sofa, wise old gentlemen have come on the decision, “Living doctor of their not-in-body master is teetotaller.”
A simple common sense says, even a chain smoker/habitual drinker won´t be put before a video camera to propagate something, anything, by any institution or organisation.
What is the ground reality? None of the sofa sitters would like to take the trouble to go and get first-hand experience. Question is, Kavita, who has posted the video, lives around half mile away from the beer bar of Osho Resort. Why not she goes one evening and checks how many pegs are gulped down by the top brass and how many packs of cigis are left empty?
This will be first-class spiritual and investigative journalism.
I just want to convey to my fellow bloggers, you are not sentimental fools but seekers of truth….
“Living doctor of their not-in-body master is teetotaller.”
Who said he is a teetotaller?!
I don’t need to go check this: “how many pegs are gulped down by the top brass and how many packs of cigis are left empty?” Why don’t you do it yourself since that is totally your interest?
In any case, aren’t we all here justifying ourselves, with/without our videos?!
Let me make it clear, Kavita, my ironical post was not directed at you. If it was, I would have said it honestly. The base was “sannyasnews says”, 2 February, 2016 at 8:30 pm.
When Parmartha writes as sannyasnews it creates the impression of an institution and not a person. And I expect institutions to rise above the personal prejudices and favours.
If someone like Amrito smokes or drinks won´t affect my personal opinions. I criticise only on policy basis, self- opinionated righteousness not based on democratic principles of life.
“If someone like Amrito smokes or drinks won´t affect my personal opinions. I criticise only on policy basis, self- opinionated righteousness not based on democratic principles of life.”
This is such dishonest humbug, Shantam, although you’re probably too dense to realise it.
You wrote, “Question is, Kavita, who has posted the video, lives around half mile away from the beer bar of Osho Resort. Why not she goes one evening and checks how many pegs are gulped down by the top brass and how many packs of cigis are left empty?”
So no judgment implied about the people concerned, the “top brass”? Wake up, ffs!
Then Shantam if you have a problem with Parmartha / SN , shouldn’t you deal with them directly , why involve me ?
Well, in this case, for me now I do understand that it is an intrinsic nature of being at the helm of an institution that it is probably difficult to distinguish between oneself & the institution, at times. This I see very closely, my mother is the chairperson of our housing society & I keep pointing this out to her as well. Even though she gets the point in that moment, she does miss at times.
I am sure we all can’t be aware all the time – human nature, isn’t it?
Shantam,
Amrito sounded 1000 times more coherent, intelligent, lucid than you ever have, or do, drunk or otherwise.
Arpana, I think you won´t take the courage to show your reactionary posts to any of your friends. They will find out who is throwing the ball and who runs to fetch it.
Shantam,
Mind you, appearing to be more intelligent, articulate, lucid, perceptive, discerning, informed, straightforward, decent and honourable (plus to have a degree of self-awareness) than you are, doesn’t take much.