Imagination…

Lokesh examines the value and drawbacks of this extraordinary human faculty, together with an appreciative and critical look at John Lennon’s great song, ‘Imagine’.

(N.B: Apologies for some poorly spaced bits – computer issues).

The antithesis of a call to arms, John Lennon’s “Imagine” is one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring songs of all time. Released in 1971, deep in the heart of the Vietnam War…Read More


Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one


Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world



As 2020 draws to a close, I think I speak for all of us when I say that this time last year it was unimaginable things would turn out the way they have. Life is full of surprises, not all of them pleasant, I’m sorry to say, but that is life.

Imagination is in certain respects one of our greatest tools. To be more accurate, directed imagination. For example, if you wish to build a house from scratch it will require directed imagination to conceive it, otherwise one can order a stereotypical wooden house online, which really does not require much imagination and probably will not be as satisfying as creating your own wee house. This is where imagination serves you.

The other side of imagination involves what we call fantasy. I suggest that this form of imagination needs to be overcome because it leaves us in a zombie-like state, steals our presence and robs us of the present, the only place where life is actually happening. We all indulge in daydreams, which are very different from night dreams. If you do not agree I would take that as an indication that you have not woken up to the fact. I buy tickets for Euromillions and postpone checking the winning numbers, so I can dream a little longer about what I would do with the piles of money I am not destined to lay my hands on. Wish I had a car like that. One day I will live in a mansion on top of a hill overlooking the sea.

The list is endless, and it is all a waste of time, something, according to Osho, we should not waste because life is short and precious. Better to appreciate where you are right now because that is where you are meant to be. Imagine all the people living for today.

 

I read some Facebook posts today, oh boy, and came across one that ties in with the subject of imagination or, more accurately, imagination running wild. It began with someone asking how many people Osho had initiated into sannyas. One woman wrote back, “I don’t know, but I think everyone in the world should take sannyas.” My first thought was, “what the fuck?” I have no idea what this person imagines when saying everyone in the world should take sannyas and what taking sannyas today actually represents. Perhaps someone could enlighten me.

I came across another Facebook post delivered by a sannyasin group leader, promoting his latest online group, which he seemed to believe was very important because the world is moving through such a “dark time”. Of course, if you wanted to join the group you better have your credit card handy. Although sincere, I found this particular therapist’s take on things anachronistic, reminding me of Osho’s doom and gloom period, which lay in stark contrast with his trademark non-serious approach to life.
The world is indeed going through a strange time, and yes a lot of people unaccustomed to suffering are having a tough time of it,  but it is not nearly as dark a time as say during the Spanish flu pandemic, World War Two, or how about the conquering hordes from the east burning cities to the ground that just happened to lie in their path. Run, lads, here comes the Inquisition! Right, it’s not as dark as some need to make it out to be because, for one reason or another, it suits them. People prey on people’s misdirected imagination.
Meanwhile, the Age of Aquarius is actually dawning…”Mystic crystal revelation and the mind’s true liberation. Aquarius Aquarius!” The pendulum swings in the opposite direction. The truth lies somewhere in between. Did Osho have an overactive imagination, when declaring himself to be the master of masters? Did his sannyasins allow their imaginations to get carried away to the point of believing they were the chosen few, who took everything Osho said as gospel?

 

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can

Quite easily actually, but I doubt it was so easy for John Lennon, having been a multi-millionaire for twenty cash-a-plenty years, flying around in private jets, driving Rolls Royces, just like you know who, living in style in West Central Park, before Mark Chapman robbed the world of a musical genius right outside the luxury apartment block where the Lennons lived in one of the most senseless crimes ever. Poor John could not have imagined that happening, or maybe he did…”the way things are going they’re going to crucify me!”

 

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one

You may say I’m a dreamer / But I’m not the only one

Obviously, not everyone is willing to accept John’s message of peace, especially at the time the song came out, …

John delivers an understatement. We are all dreaming, that’s the problem. We need to wake up to the fact that we are all fast asleep to our true self, cutting Zs to the sound of Imagination singing “It’s just an illusion.”

 

“I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will be as one.”

Bit of a misconception there. We are already one. Cells in a membrane covering the face of the Earth. Why is up for debate. Are we part of a biological interplanetary communications system? Are we some form of planetary parasite? Then we are in trouble. George Carlin puts it best.  ’What would you do if you were the planet trying to defend against this pesky, troublesome species? Let’s see… what might… hmm… viruses! Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses. And uh… viruses are tricky; always mutating and forming new strains whenever a vaccine is developed. Perhaps this first virus could be one that-that compromises the immune system of these creatures.’ Mr Carlin had a great imagination, I’m sure you will agree.

 

It would be great if SN keeps going through these turbulent times, so let’s support it by delivering some intelligent and inspirational comments. Imagine. I leave you with a couple more lines from John Lennon:

 ”A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Let’s hope it’s a good one without any fears.”

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179 Responses to Imagination…

  1. frank says:

    ‘Imagine’ was the first LP that I ever bought.
    Being the 13-year-old that I was, I sat by the radiogram and played it over and over, endlessly.
    My poor old mum and dad, bless their souls, it was all downhill from there!

    Imagination is a faculty, a tool maybe.
    Like a blade, you can use it to build your house, cook your dinner and tend your garden or you can use it to do a bit of knife crime or slash your own wrists.

    You`ve got to mind how you go with it.

  2. Lokesh says:

    Yeah, imagine that.

    I was sitting by a well up the back of Koregoan Park the day John Lennon was shot. When someone told me what had happened I thought the world had gone to shit. John’s last words were, “help me.’

    • Klaus says:

      ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon was the hymn for us conscientious objectors to the military draft in Germany in the 1970s; in my case, from 1977-1979. It really made a felt impact on my conviction – and on those of some of my friends and classmates, I guess.

      I remember one classmate who was wearing John Lennon-style glasses and haircut: he was the one person who made the connection for me to go to India. He became a Sannyasin during these years; you might even have bumped into him on Ibiza as he went there to manufacture and sell energy balls together with his Indian wife. Today, we have no connection and I do not even remember his Sannyas name.

      Then again, the ‘Imagine’ song was giving us nice feelings; for me the ‘Heal the World’ song by Michael Jackson did something similar.

      Later on Prince took over with more sophistication and more integrity, imo, regarding personality – message – realisation.

      Prince and Tom Petty also left us under, imo, special circumstances: the opioid crisis case of the U.S. (see Sackler family and Purdue Pharma) and the misuse of fentanyle.

  3. frank says:

    Lokesh, you mention a Facebook ad for a therapy group where you “found this particular therapist’s take on things anachronistic.”

    Many of the ideas presented by Sannyasin group leaders are very dated and need an upgrade. Same with many so-called healers and helpers.

    Here`s a quote from a recent article about Ayurveda published on Osho News just recently:
    “Because Ayurveda treats the human being as an integral whole, including body, emotions, mind and soul, it far surpasses symptom – based allopathic medicine in its effectiveness to create a life of wellness and longevity.”

    This statement is typical of silly ideas touted by nuagers: “ayurvedic or homeopathic is better than allopathic”, “indigenous wisdom is better than modern city-dweller wisdom” etc. etc. It`s Anand Yogi/Swami Bhorat stuff and also where hippies merge with old-world religious authoritarians into a mutant conspirituality worldview.

    Yes, Ayurveda treats the body in a different way, more holistic, which can help the sense of well-being in positive ways that allopathic does not. But as far as longevity is concerned, this claim is nonsense.

    Antibiotics, vaccines, surgery/anaesthetic are just a few modern medicine interventions that without which, I am willing to wager that at least some of the people reading this article and their peers would not be still alive!

    What we need is wisdom and knowledge from wherever it comes.
    Do you think Ayurveda will come up with a way of controlling Covid?
    (I notice that Indian Guru business man Ramdev has been selling ayurvedic pills that he claimed cured Covid and they have made it to the UK).
    The world needs less scammers and chancers like this.

    To repeat, a lot of these therapists and healers need an information and intelligence upgrade.

    Here`s a meditation I ran into the other day that might be relevant:

    “Close your eyes, and pretend that you are an utter, irredeemable scoundrel. Absolutely self-interested. Concerned with your own status, your own progress, your own satisfaction. That you only care about helping others because it makes you look good and feel good about yourself. Just for a moment, let go of needing to be any different.”

    Maybe you found the game easy, or maybe it was confronting. Either way, it’s because some part of it rings true. We all hold these shadows — without exception. We are all human beings; no one completely transcends their operating system to the degree it’s no longer there. Being an indigenous narcissist is really nothing to feel guilty about.

    By owning our shadows, we can move beyond the binary of ‘good world/bad world’ and ‘us/them’ that so many ‘change the world’ tribes fall into.”

  4. Lokesh says:

    Good posts from Klaus and Frank.

    In general I find a lot of those sannyasin paradigms, first created in the mid-seventies, are now obsolete. What is cutting edge for one generation can quickly turn into old hat for the next.

    Facebook is where I see a lot of this. I have hundreds of sannyasin ‘friends’ and thus a regular parade of Osho quotes, Osho photos, and Osho imitators. It really looks to me like something belonging to another time. I find most guru trips obsolete, but not all. Osho did his bit and then left the world stage. Hats off to the man. He changed the world a little bit for the better and that is no small accomplishment. Life goes on and we must adapt to the times we live in.

    I think the new journey to the east has moved in the opposite direction. New generations of seekers head for the Amazon basin in search of a genuine shaman to initiate them into the mysteries of the sacred brew and magic pipe, much in the way that people once headed en masse to India to find their ‘real’ guru. The journey remains the same, with many pitfalls and charlatans along the way.

    I meet people on Ibiza returning from journeys to remote regions up the Amazon. Most of their stories are fascinating, and yes, for the most part they appear to have been through a deep life-changing experience, especially the ones who tried bufo, the closest you can come to death without actually dying. Personally, it’s not my cup of DMT, but I do respect these people’s search for truth. I’m not promoting the use of psychedelics, but I think it is a fascinating doorway to pass through.

    Almost 70 and I still, once in a tratan moon, take something that puts me in a very altered state. It’s not for everyone, but its good for me, because in throws me into the moment like nothing else and puts me in touch with that certain something that was never born and will never die. I could also say that it reconnects me to the fact that life is sacred, that humans are not a planetary parasite but rather a fantastic evolutionary effort. Life gambled by creating us and it is yet to be seen if it is a winning or losing throw of the evolutionary dice.

    I occasionally say to friends, “You do not need to travel to India anymore in search of the truth, you can light a holy fire in the woods where you are and get on the good end of a little something that will give a darshan as good as any guru can deliver.”

    Frank declares, “A lot of these therapists and healers need an information and intelligence upgrade.”
    Yes, I agree. I know a few old sannyasin therapists, would-be mini-gurus etc. and I just find the whole trip reached its sell-by date decades ago. I see that many of them simply keep their sannyas connection because it allows access to new clients, disciples etc. Yet, people still go for it. Could just be a case of everyone has to begin somewhere. None of my business. I just feel fortunate that I met a couple of pretty far out Indian gurus who, once upon a time, gave me the help I very much needed. Gratitude.

    • frank says:

      The thing with psychedelics and all dramatic life-changing experiences, be they human potential breakthroughs, blissing with a guru or a shaman or other `awakenings` of all sorts is that it`s easy to get pulled in to the high buzz which leads to a kind of messianic `I`ve got the truth` thing. Everything has fallen into place, you have `come home`, signs and synchronicities abound to light your path, you get lucky, something out there is looking after you, you`ve got pronoia, and you`ve got to get it out to more people. If that is mixed with a way of making a living and getting some kudos in a likeminded social scene, which, owing to the size of the spiritual scene these days is highly likely, you have a recipe for a big, big ride.

      We`ve probably all been through this in some form. It`s an inevitable part of the journey from here to here.

      Then, as you try to keep the feeling going, something in you subtly starts to notice that the very effort implies the fragility of the feeling. The feeling has to be bolstered up with more and more effort, more confirmation bias, more and more certainty. Doubts have to be put aside, this becomes a philosophical tenet. This is addictive, and of course, in this insecure world, runs the risk of a confrontational showdown with reality. The pronoia starts to slide and begins to dovetail with its twin, paranoia.

      Just as something magically `other` lifted you up above the sky, now something `other` is trying to pull you down to below the earth. Negative energies, dark forces, the greys, the unconscious masses, the feds, the crucifiers, the poisoners, the lizards, start to lurk at your door. It`s only a matter of time before you find yourself at the mythical crossroads and you see that the meaning in life which you have had in spades since your `awakening` only exists in contrast to meaninglessness which was kept at bay; and now the latter wants its day in the sun.

      If you`re a mini or maxi guru/group leader or a long-term groupie/disciple, what to do? The void of doubt nags at you but spiritual and therapeutic performance art is the genre you`ve invested your life in, what other qualifications have you got? If you`re high enough up the greasy pole of enlightenment, it pays the bills.

      It`s hard not to make a deal with the devil.
      So you pop another pill, ingest a new substance, get into a new `modality`, expand the `vision`, initiate another youthful disciple into tantra, issue more and more far-out proclamations, give yourself bigger titles…and so it goes….

      Disclaimer:
      Any resemblance in this piece to actual persons, embodied or disembodied, are purely synchronistic.

      • Lokesh says:

        Yes, well put, Frank.

        In my case it’s just a case of a wee reminder once in a while that there exists something bigger than me rolling along perfectly, thank you very much.

        I was introduced to a magic mix a few years back by a wandering shaman. My first go round was absolutely astounding. I was so amazed that such a substance existed and I had never even heard of it before that sunny afternoon. I asked the shaman, “Do many people know about this?” He replied that there were a few people doing it but they generally kept quiet about it.

        Last time I saw him he asked if I would be interested to have a hit of toad crystals. I really trust this man, but I passed the opportunity up. I have this hangover from the sixties about taking it all too far. I’m content with my wee reminders now and zen. I once paid the price of flying too close to the sun. I learned my lesson.

        All things in moderation.

        • frank says:

          Agreed.
          Best to find excess in moderation, as the saying goes.

          The closest I get to tripping these days is watching nonsense like this:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZlRt05RY9Y

          • Lokesh says:

            Yeah, I like Pink Floyd.

            • frank says:

              For sure, they were the biz.

              I can`t handle anything psychoactive these days.

              I went to a cacao ceremony a little while back, where we all sat in a ceremonial circle, drunk a mug of cacao, kind of whole pods brewed up in the old world way, before doing a bit of leaping about, mumbling, singing and whatnot. The cacao tasted like a kind of semi-chocolatey-flavoured vegetable/plant mash. Not haute cuisine, for sure, but it gives you a bit of a buzz, it`s caffeine and some other thing. I had difficulty sleeping that night and felt a bit knackered the next day. Past my limit! My younger self would have scoffed!

              What`s this shamanic cocktail you`re on about? It sounds very occult. Do you have to be one of the Nine Unknown Men of Mighty Bhorat to get your hands on it?

              • swamishanti says:

                Frank, like I mentioned on SN some time ago, Cacao is THE BUSINESS, and a useful tonic when it comes to Covid protection.

                I have been enjoying a cacao drinking ceremony most mornings for some time now, which often has me bouncing around the place like a monkey.

                I just drink it. (in my tea) . Thank God for the Mayans – who were the first known civilisation to grow cacao trees to produce their cocoa drink Xocoatl. And even used cacao beans as a form of currency.

                And I often add a bit of chopped ginger in the mix to spice it up and add to the flavour.
                Raw cacao contains ‘anandamide’, which is also known as ‘the bliss molecule’, which binds to the cannabinoid receptors in the brain, creating a sense of ease and happiness. Cacao is also rich in antioxidants, as well as theobromine which is antibacterial und effective at preventing cavities and protecting against tooth decay.

                Rich in dietary fibre and magnesium, recent UK study performed by the British Lung Foundation discovered that the theobromine found in cacao beans was quite effective at treating persistent coughs. It has been hypothesized that the theobromine acts on the vagus nerve, a nerve responsible for coughing fits, and may work better than codeine.

                Forget Ayurveda and listen to the SS!

                • frank says:

                  I had one of those Millionaire`s Tarts (no, really) that you can get in healthfood shops. It`s like a treacle tart but instead of treacle, you get a wadge of cacao. It`s quite tasty altho’ small and expensive, but that has a kick on it too. I had one for dessert and I ended up staying up late into the night writing my magnum opus, or that`s what it felt like, anyway.

              • Lokesh says:

                I’ll give you a clue. It isn’t cacao.
                Check out Nellie smoking DMT.
                They also check out cacao.
                https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/drugslabbnn

  5. frank says:

    To get back to the topic a little…

    It seems that some kind of “altered states” are necessary for good health and natural functioning, and without them, various mental illnesses, most commonly, a kind of pervasive low-level depression/anxiety creep in quite easily. These `altered states` have a large overlap with psychedelia and imagination.

    With the current mental health crisis that is being triggered worldwide by the insecurity and stress caused by the virus, it is only a matter of time before psychedelics are going to be widely used as psychological medicine. What kind of substances, in what context, dose etc. is and will be a matter of hot debate, but it`s going to happen.

    There are other ways to induce and satisfy what many identify as a need for healing “altered states”, although psychedelics work very quickly and powerfully. Meditation, hypnosis, dreamwork and variants are a few that operate in the same area. These can have similar effects to psychedelics, not least in the way of giving access to a sense of being that is “sufficient unto itself”. Therapeutically, this ounters the fear-inducing, grinding grey soullessness of the robotic, mechanical, compulsive, success and future- oriented, money/status-obsessed Sisyphean struggle to roll yet another pointless ball of dung up the hill just to watch it fall down again, ad infinitum.

    Imagination gets a bad rap in a lot of spiritual circles as it smacks of the sin of `the mind` or `not being in the present` and so on. But studies have shown that hypnagogic states, most commonly occurring when you are half-asleep, half-awake just before and after sleep but also happening in hypnotic, meditative and creative states, have extremely trophotropic effects on the body; that is, they are helpful to increasing the capacity or propensity for renewal of energy and balance in the organism. Like a visit to a restaurant restores your belly and hence your vigour, so these practices restore vital soul ingredients that have been lost or used up on the way.

    On another level, there can be an awe-inspiring unknowingness that occurs in all these `altered states` that counters the deleterious effects of the over-worked obsessive problem-solving brain.

    These states are naturally occurring in the system, but the emphasis on focused, conscious attention as being the only valid form of consciousness, which is such a strong modern cultural bias (and also oddly, is shared by many meditators) marginalises these states and blocks us from feeling good about this stuff, thus making us more unbalanced and feeling that something is missing, which it is and hence the need for the move toward re-accessing them.

    For me, this domain of creative imagination, psychedelia, hypno-meditation and so on, is valid, but, due to my personal history, I go for accessing it in non-chemical ways.

    For example, I`m very interested in dreams, I have kept a dream diary for 20 years. It`s not that I interpret them, although sometimes that is fun, it`s more that I like to keep in touch, interact and explore this bizarre surreal theatre that is arising of its own accord and going on for 2 hours every night and subtly most of the day, too. This satisfies at least some of my `altered states quota`.

    Hard-core awareness/advaita/buddhist types try to give the line that this kind of approach is all just a mind trip and so on. To me, that`s not really noticing what is actually happening. These chaps tend to be quoting an outside source, they are mostly like our old friends the Jehovah`s Witnesses quoting from their Bible, even if it is the Rajneesh Bible!

    I`m not dissing Osho here. Remember that the last meditation he created was the:
    “Reminding Yourself of the Forgotten Language of Talking to your Bodymind”, a classic hypno-imaginative meditation involving `memories of the future`, `talking to your body` and contacting `guardians` and so on.

    Shortly after he created that, he said: ”I leave you my dream” after a lifetime of saying that he did not dream.

    I like that because it probably shows one of the most important lessons of tripping or delving into depths and reaches of the universe and the innerverse:
    We really don`t have a clue what is going on and that is OK!

    • Lokesh says:

      Yes, good comment, Frank. Meanwhile, that old rebel rouser, SS, is skyed up on cacao and…wait for it…ginger. The sky is not the limit.

      • Klaus says:

        Have a go at these:

        TONY RIDDLE – BREAK DOWN TO BUILD UP:
        My Ayahuasca Healing Journey | London Real
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT_5ltFjH1A

        or
        TOM RIDDLE – worked worldwide for the UN, did ayahuasca ceremonies in South America and Africa, meditated in Thailand and India and and:
        https://thomasriddle.net/stories.html

        Extensive reading on his various ceremonies.

        Wild life!

        • frank says:

          This interview is on `London Real`. Its owner, Brian Rose, the interviewer, an ex-city trader, moved into alt-right media.

          Making a fortune out of peddling `plandemic` conspiracy bullshit, most notably with his hugely influential interview with David Icke.

          Rose is running as next London mayor. He`s sort of Trump on DMT.
          Everything`s folded into an `alternative truth that they don`t want you to hear` wrapper.
          A classic, probably the biggest example of the new overlap between psychedelics/newage and the Alt and Far Right.

          Hippies and new-agers in UK think this stuff is their stuff: DMT, libertarian, free-spirit heroes, anti-MSM, speaking truth about the `Elite`, etc.

          That`s how new-agers end up on anti-lockdown, anti-vaxx, covid-denying etc. `freedom` marches, shoulder-to-shoulder with Neo-Nazis .

          Welcome to the `new normal`!

          • Klaus says:

            Uiiiii. Didnt know that.

            Won’t support this.

            • frank says:

              I would think that this Tony Riddle chap would have done this interview in good faith as it was before Covid.

              Brian Rose started his project putting out alternative health/positive living/be the best/fulfil your potential type stuff and when the pandemic hit, saw the opportunity to get hits for his site and his biz by embracing conspiracy theories. He had Icke on his show and things went through the roof. After that he had a raft of other conspiracy nuts on the show. His hits have gone up from a few thousand before Covid to 2 million subscribers now, plus loads of crowdfunding from people who think they are protecting free speech.

              • Klaus says:

                Well, I didn’t want to promote the channel. Rather I wanted to hint at the ayahuasca experience. Especially under that second link of the Tom Riddle guy: boy, he did a lot of retching.

                • frank says:

                  Yes, the retching is a bit off-putting.

                  Here in the UK we already have well-established ritual traditions of drinking warm, brown, vile tasting brown liquids, going crazy and throwing up. I myself have witnessed these impromptu ceremonies outside pubs, nightclubs, parties and on the back of the nightbus on many an occasion.

  6. satchit says:

    People are funny.
    First they imagine that there is a heaven, then they imagine there is no heaven.

    With imagination maybe you can build a house, but you cannot find truth.

  7. satchit says:

    My Bhagwan, your Osho!

    Everybody has his own Bhagwan/Osho experience.

    The question, Shantam, is only, are you happy with your experience?

    Or are you unhappy and complain and imagine that it should
    be/have been different?

    • frank says:

      Please find 5 minutes to fill in our Gurucult Customer Services Survey.
      On a scale of 0-10 please rate the following:

      How satisfied are you by your guru`s overall performance?
      How do you rate the helpfulness and spiritual advancement of our disciples?
      Are you satisfied with the quality of products on offer?
      Please rate how important the following elements of the Gurucult are in achieving satisfaction:
      .Providing a religious excuse for being alive
      .Gora girls
      .Feeling like you`re really spiritual
      .Gora girls
      .Wearing a robe and feeling important
      .Gora girls
      .Avoiding reality
      .Gora girls

      How likely are you to be using Gurucult services again?
      How likely are you to recommend Gurucult to family and friends?

      Thank you for your time.
      Your enlightenment is important to us.

      • swamishanti says:

        How satisfied are you by your guru’s overall performance?
        Well, I must admit, he has exceeded my expectations.

        Providing a religious excuse for being alive?
        Thanks to my sannyas training I celebrate everything…even the small things…hearing the owl hoot at night…to relaxing in the bath and enjoying the colour of my bathroom wall…the wonder and pure amazement of this body…the cat carefully walking with awareness across the garden fence…with extra focusing of the feet today as there was snow on the fence…and from the smallest grassblade to the brightest star…we are Buddha Nature as we are…

        Gora girls?
        Well, as it happened a beautiful blond gora girl crossed my path in town yesterday…my thoughts were “wow…incredibly beautiful girl.” I admired her in part thanks to my appreciation of the world as taught by Sadhguru Osho Rajneesh…

        Feeling like you`re really spiritual?
        Yep, it may happen if you read Oshonews every day.

        Wearing a robe and feeling important?
        Nah, can’t say that I ever do that…

        Avoiding reality?
        Depends which reality….

  8. Lokesh says:

    Thank you, Frank, for posting the Gurucult Customer Services Survey. It was long overdue and I am happy to fill in the questionnaire.

    How satisfied are you by your guru`s overall performance?
    I have a number of gurus whose reflections I see are worthwhile. I’ll give them a collective foive.

    How do you rate the helpfulness and spiritual advancement of our disciples?
    Have not met many lately so it is hard to say.

    Are you satisfied with the quality of products on offer?
    Yes, I received a free mala decades ago and it still hangs on a nail in my garage.

    Please rate how important the following elements of the Gurucult are in achieving satisfaction:
    Providing a religious excuse for being alive?
    Yes, I smoked a cigarette this morning, which confirms I am still alive, I think.
    Gora girls?
    Sorry to say, I have very little interest in Gora Girls, except to admire them as they pass me by in the street.
    Feeling like you`re really spiritual?
    Ehm, no longer sure I am particularly spiritual, but there are days when I’m definitely confused.
    Gora girls?
    I think my memory is playing tricks on me because I seem to recall reading something about Gora Girls very recently, or else it is just my imagination playing tricks on me.
    Wearing a robe and feeling important?
    Gora girls?
    Golly, there it is again.
    Avoiding reality?
    Yes, I am very good at that. Do I get a prize?
    Gora girls?
    I think I am going to take an aspirin and have a wee lie down.

    • frank says:

      I`m sorry, we are experiencing a high level of calls and your call cannot be answered at the moment.
      Please continue to stay in the moment and one of our gurus will be with you shortly.
      Your number in the queue is…108.

      • frank says:

        Hello…my name is Sadguru.. thanking for being patient…how can I help you today?

        • Lokesh says:

          Hi Sadguru. My question is…is reality real?

          • frank says:

            Hello, you are speaking with Satguru, CEO of Neo-Hindu Reality Construction Company Ltd.
            As Director of Bhorat Real Estate Holdings Co. I have been in the reality-construction business, building spiritual homes for the spiritually homeless since the start of Kali Yuga. And take it from me, what we are experiencing here and now is nothing less than a Nandi market.

            Spiritual real estate is very real. Ask any guru who has an enlightened insight into realty. For investors and disciples, it`s a water-tight investment you can take with you when you leave your body and then trade it in for bonus karmic points in future lives, so yes, more real than your everyday Samsaric realty.

            Whether it`s a castle in the clouds, a room in an ashram with ensuite into the guru`s room, or just a humble bachelor bedsit cave with remote viewing over Arunachala you`re looking for, your search ends here. Speak to one of our meditative mortgage advisers and we`ll get you locked in with a great sadhana that`s just right for you.

            Special offer: Sign up now and receive 4 weeks free noodles and anti-Covid pills from Baba Ramdev.
            Terms and conditions apply.

  9. swamishanti says:

    Well, John Lennon was a bit of a ‘working class hero’.

    “Keep you doped with religion, sex and tv…
    And you think you’re so clever and classless and free…
    But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

    ‘Working Class Hero’:
    https://youtu.be/w_7_lEOaU10

    Another ‘working class hero’ was probably Fil Planet – the gorgeous lead singer of ‘Back To The Planet’ from South London – who played a mix of ska, dub, punk and a little bit of electronic dance music thrown in for good measure.

    I saw them perform at a couple of gigs back in the ‘90s, including a blistering set one Sunday afternoon at 1993’s Glastonbury festival at the NME stage, which was a lot of fun.
    In fact , here’s the end of their performance that sunny hot afternoon. ‘Teenage Turtles’:
    https://youtu.be/-XiFbwrPbVM

    I had their ‘Mind + Soul Collaborators’ album which was created after they were signed with Parallel Records in 1993 but I recently stumbled across a collection of some of their older taped stuff, which is now available on cd: ‘A Potted History’, some of which is alright if you like that kind of thing. Although some of the contents were mixed on just a four track, in their squat in Peckham which happened to be a large empty Department for Health and Social Security building -‘The Peckham Dolehouse’ which was a famous squat that hosted many live acts and put on many gigs and parties.

    BTTP have mixed in some trippy sound effects inbetween tracks, which I appreciate.

    ‘Your the Judge’
    https://youtu.be/NY6ks_zpO3E

    (opening track for ‘Starved by Ignorance’ : )
    https://youtu.be/O0EJJzSUk9o

    • Lokesh says:

      Do you remember Quintessence of “things going great in Notting Hill Gate, we all sit around and meditate” fame?

    • swamishanti says:

      John could get pretty grumpy though….
      :
      https://youtu.be/llTAFZIC-_s

      But he worked through some of his shit. Not through dynamic, but with Primal Therapy. Here’s his track about his parents from his ‘Plastic Ono Band’ album that he created during that phase:

      https://youtu.be/3D0nMzHjMR8

      • frank says:

        Angry worked for him too, sometimes…
        50 years since its release – not an out-of-date sentiment at all.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10YeFhYGVJU

        MOD:
        There’s a private message awaiting you via the Caravanserai page, Frank.

        • swamishanti says:

          Brilliant. Thanks for that, Baba. I think I might have to get the ‘Imagine’ album on cd actually.

          Another guy who had a bit of a temper and interacted with Lennon a little in the late sixties/seventies was Sid Rawle, who helped organise some free festivals, including the first Stonehenge People’s Free Festival in 1974 as well as promoting a free festival at Windsor in 1975 for which he was jailed for some time.

          In the late sixties, Sid and some other hippies had also been looking for an island where they had envisaged creating a communal experiment, where they could live freely.

          After hearing about their plans to raise enough money to buy an island, for a commune, John Lennon contacted and met Sid in London and offered him his own island of Dorinish to use for free, off the Irish coast.

          In 1970, Sid and a group of about thirty others moved to the island where they lived for around three years. But they had to deal with Atlantic storms and after a fire burnt down their supply tent the project was abandoned. Lennon did also contribute money towards some of Sid’s other communes and projects.

          All of this was years before Osho declared that his crew were interested in purchasing an atoll, a group of small islands owned by Marlon Brando in the South Pacific.

          This was when he was up in the Himalayas, after he had been deported from the U.S., in the talks given in the ‘Light on the Path’ series.

          Osho talked of the possibility of expanding the island with floating, Japenese style gardens and houseboats, and creating a commune on the island:

          “In my conception we can, for the first time, manage anarchism and communism both together. Just remove currency within the commune, and without any enforcement, without forcing people to be equal, we have brought a classless society. They will remain unequal; they will remain unique; they will remain themselves. And the commune’s function is to fulfill their needs. Their needs are different: somebody who plays on a flute needs a flute, and somebody who wants to play on a guitar needs a guitar.

          In every dimension people should remain themselves, but the dignity of humanity will be equal because they have equal opportunity – and no government, because government is not needed.

          There will be no need for any visas for anybody to come for as long as he wants to stay; there will be no need for any passport. At least we can create one place in the world where no nationality is recognized, no religion is recognized, no political boundaries are recognized. And perhaps that may give the idea to other people, that it is possible – and these are the same human beings, they have come from us. Just an absolutely clear-cut model is needed. “
          Osho: ‘Light On The Path’ # 3

          Perhaps it sounds like a vision not dissimilar to Lennon’s lines in ‘Imagine’:

          “Imagine there’s no countries
          It isn’t hard to do
          Nothing to kill or die for
          And no religion too
          Imagine all the people
          Living life in peace…”

          Sannyasins did visit the island to check it out , but discovered that there had recently been a hurricane and the area was prone to storms – thus impractical for what Osho had in mind.

          Here’s a photo of the Atoll:

          • frank says:

            I guess that ‘Imagine’ is JL`s best and likely best of all the post-Beatles albums.

            The atoll was “impractical for what Osho had in mind…”
            It`s hard to imagine a place on earth where it wouldn`t be impractical!

            • swamishanti says:

              Personally, I rate ‘Plastic Ono Band’ as good as ‘Imagine’. They would be in the number one slot. ‘Mind Games’ would go in second place, and the rest, third or fourth.

              Paul McCartney is a brilliant musician but I ‘ve never bothered with any of his solo stuff. The closest I’ve got to him outside of the Beatles has been eating Linda McCartney’s vegetarian sausage rolls and burgers.

              As far as the rest of the earth being impractical, I guess you’re right.

              But Osho did say once whilst still in India in Pune One, that “If I talk about the New Man in America I will be killed immediately, imprisoned. I will not be tolerated at all, because that means a danger to the whole American way of life.
              The American way of life depends on ambition, and my New Man has to be utterly ambitionless.” (Theologica Mystica 1980 )

              Perhaps it’s a shame that Laxmi didn’t manage to find the land for the new commune in Kutch, or manage to close the deal for the site up in Shimla that was lost at the last minute. Although Shimla is a very cold place.

              Osho did ask Laxmi to keep looking for land in India when he went to the US in 1981.
              But, going to the US in particular, had to be a mistake, or at least trying to stay there after they started getting all the hysteria from the conservative Christian groups (which was pretty much the whole time they were there) and the death threats from the cowboys, Ku Klux Klan, and other idiots.

              At least if they had stayed in India they wouldn’t have had to bother with all the guns and there would have been a lot less hassle.

          • Klaus says:

            Ah, just stumbled over the picture of the Brando atoll. Must have skipped it somehow.

            Imagine how this would have been as a buddhafield with the Master….

            We could have collected so many seashells, watched the fish and the turtles, enjoyed the sun and watched the clouds. Etc.

            https://thebrando.com/gallery/video-gallery/#

            • frank says:

              Brando started as the `Wild One`, became the `Godfather` but is most remembered for his role in `Apocalypse Now`.

              Sounds kinda familiar, somehow!

              • frank says:

                Beautiful place, sure enough!

                As you say, Klaus, it would have been nice to doze and enjoy the clouds and the turtles there.

                But I have a sneaking feeling that at some point some jobsworth would have probably sneaked up behind you and given you a shot of speed up the arse and sent you back to work in the toilets or the legal dept.

                • frank says:

                  Should have never let them out of the kitchen in the first place!

                  Thankfully, the whole white robe brotherhood (not sisterhood) is back in the firm grasp of responsible old white men!

                  And they are free to sit on their verandas drinking whisky and gin and pontificating about the world`s ills without having some awful old fishwife piping up and battering them with a rolling-pin.

                  It`s bloody reassuring that some core values still count somewhere in the world isn`t it?

                  Now, where have I left my pipe, slippers and Daily Mail?

                • Klaus says:

                  Guess you are right:

                  we would have had some different kind of apocalypse now.
                  People incl. sannyas people are driven – some are even actively driving themselves – to all kinds of amazing things. Izntit?

                • swamishanti says:

                  I imagine that the communal experiment, if it had have happened on the island, would have been largely free of the madness, unfortunate in-fighting and the violence of the Ranch.

                  As long as the US didn’t view it as too much of a threat.

                  A new phase, perhaps?

                  “Fratricide is only de first phase
                  With brudder stabbin brudder stabbin brudder
                  Dem just killin often one another…
                  But when you see brudder blood just flow…
                  Futile fighting then you know
                  The first phase must come to an end…
                  Time for the second phase to show….”

                  Linton Kwesi Johnson
                  ‘Doun De Road’

                  https://youtu.be/B7PqM4jytTc

                • swamishanti says:

                  And how much they did view Osho as a threat was demonstrated when they interfered when Uruguay was willing to allow Osho to have permanent residence and build his commune there.

                  The U.S. ambassador tried to scare the Uruguayan government by telling them that Osho was “extremely intelligent, an anarchist, and very dangerous because he can change men’s minds. He will destroy your whole society.”

                  When that didn’t work they threatened to cancel current US loans to Uruguay and that if Osho was allowed to stay, the six billion dollar debt Uruguay owed to the U.S. would be due immediately and no further loans would be granted.

                  That worked. And they certainly were opposed to the idea of Osho setting up a new commmune in other places in the world, and they wanted him back in India. ’I want that man back in India never to be seen of or heard of again.’ (U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese 1986) .

              • Klaus says:

                @Swamishanti

                Sannyas felt attracted to the U.S. and the happenstances following thereof. So, possibly on the atoll we might have run into “the Ed Meese of Tetiaroa”….

                According to Edgar Allan Poe, “history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZQB05fL9Cs
                “Ed Meese an unlikely recipient of honour”

                plus the “Wedtech scandal”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedtech_scandal

                Somehow the idea of “Sannyas vs. the shit-stem in God’s chosen country” was so grand that it could not have been fulfilled “sitting on a faraway atoll”, I guess.

                Republicans, my ass. But then again, I have my own history with the US of A and the “attractions of the lifestyles in the Western world.”

                ‘Pacha Mama’ centre is keeping a much lower profile.

                Peace.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Interesting vid, Klaus, thanks.

                  Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan – these were the kind of corrupt government arseholes that Osho, Sheela and the sannyasins found themselves up against whilst trying to establish Rajneeshpuram.

                  And as the video you posted shows quite a few officials in Reagan’s Republican government asked Reagan to remove Meese who they resented working under due to his “lack of ethical sensitivy”. When Reagan refused to do this, many of them resigned in protest.

                  And unbelievably for some, in 2019, Trump, the right wing/alt- right hero for some, decided to award Meese with the ‘Medal of Freedom’, the highest possible award he could give.

                  Also in 2019, in the UK, a chorus of derision and disbelief greeted the announcement that Ian Duncan-Smith, former Tory minister in charge of the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) had been nominated to recieve a knighthood by our very own blond-headed right-winger PM, Boris Johnson.

                  180,000 furious people signed a petition in protest of IDS receiving the knighthood, which appeared absurd considering the amount of protest he had recieved against his policies towards the country’s most vunerable.

                  IDS was the Tory goverment minister in charge of the DWP and the architect of the controversial welfare shake-up of 2010 and severe austerity measures that pushed thousands of the already poorest people in the country into further poverty, including declaring long-term chronically ill and disabled people “fit for work” – which resulted in hundreds of suicides and countless deaths due to the new draconian sanctions regime. (And the deaths literally were countless as the Conservatives have refused to count the number of deaths caused as a result of these polices).

                  This was discussed on SN in the past thread in 2017, written by Parmartha – when a sannyasin in London, Swami Vismaya, died of a heart attack after being declared ‘fit for work’ by the DWP.

                  As well as introducing the ‘bedroom tax’….whilst Ian Duncan-Smith himself was living comfortably rent-free in a £2 million Tudor mansion with at least four empty bedrooms, he introduced a new law which meant 660,000 of the poorest families living in social housing in the UK were now being forced to pay an average of £15 per week extra for any spare bedroom.

                  He is the highest-profile political figure to be recognised in the UK and receives the honour for “political and public service”.

                  Corrupt right-wing arseholes, eh?

                  And Trump tweeted a video of one of his supporters chanting ‘White Power’ to counter demonstrators during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the States last year. And refused to condemn the white supremists who supported him during his election campaign.
                  Which reminded me of this poem and performance from Linton Kwesi Johnson in 1984:

                  “Now tell mi someting
                  Mistah govahment man
                  Tell mi someting

                  How lang yu really feel
                  Yu coulda keep wi andah heel
                  Wen di trute done reveal
                  Bout how yu grab an steal
                  Bout how yu mek yu fuckin deal
                  Mek yu fuckin deal?
                  Eh?

                  Now tell mi someting
                  mistah ritewing man
                  tell mi someting
                   
                  How lang yu really feel
                  wi woulda grovel an squeal
                  wen so much murdah canceal
                  wen wi woun cyaan heal
                  wen wi feel di way wi feel”

                  Linton Kwesi Johnson ‘Making History’, live 1984:

                  https://youtu.be/WtVkLVOP9cU

                • swamishanti says:

                  And you mention Tyohar’s Pacha Mama commune in Costa Rica. Said by some to be one of Osho’s enlightened lineage.

                  According to Samdarshi, Tyohar is one of the few seeekers who he can count out on the fingers of one hand who have spent time with him and “attained to bliss.”
                  One of the others he mentioned had attained was Maitreya Ishwara.

                  He mentioned that Tyohar had spent time with him in the evenings meditating with him sitting on a nearby rock. And had gone on to become awakened, and had later invited him to Israel.

                  Well, the Pacha Mama commune looks lush and is said to be ecologically friendly. Only non-biodegradable shampoos and soaps allowed.

                  Apparently Tyohar is fond of Goa-Trance.

                  I would prefer it to a visit to Ozen’s Mexican commune any day, especially now it’s been revealed that Ozen is a fan of Trump and Reagan.

                  Apparently, PachaMama is a vegetarian community, and does not allow meat or fish products to be brought in from outside, including canned or dried items.

                  I was thinking about Osho’s paradise island commune project, if it had materialised – Osho’s communes were always vegetarian. But then, if it was to be fully self- sustainable I reckon it would be much more feasible to be going out fishing and making use of the riches of the ocean. Fresh tuna steaks and shark and all that.

                  But I know some would object to that. But much easier (and probably healthier, I guess) than spending hours ploughing and planting soya crops, for sure.

                  But Osho seemed to think we could have the island, as an experiment, completely out of the jurisdiction of any government.

                  Really not sure if the US would have approved of this at all.

                  “There are still islands which are absolutely without any control by any government. A few are very undeveloped, so it will be a difficult job to develop them. But there are three islands which are fully developed; one has even an airport – it belongs to an individual who is willing to sell it.

                  The situation is such – there are five miles of land which is lush green with big trees…immense beauty. It is almost an oval-shaped island. One part is above sea level. It has the greenery and on it the owner has made small houses.

                  From the outside they look like the houses ancient, primitive people used to live in, so they do not stand apart from the trees and from the greenery; they are part of it. But from inside they are air-conditioned and with all modern equipment. The island has twelve bungalows, one hotel for eighty persons, one airport where, morning and evening, the plane comes; we can have our own planes.

                  And the other part of the island is five, six feet under the sea. The owner has not done anything on that part, and to me that part seems to be the most important, because we can make a five-mile row of houseboats – like Kashmir – on that. And it will look far better than Kashmir because on Kashmir you can see the land; the boat is attached to the land, the land is underneath the boat.

                  You can see water all around and there can be boats for five miles. We can accommodate thousands of sannyasins in those houses. They are beautiful houses, and we can improve upon them. And between the two – the forest in front, the houseboats at the back – between the two is a big lake.

                  So small boats can move in the lake to provide small things for people on the boats. It is something absolutely ideal.

                  And the person is in a hurry to sell it. Perhaps he is financially broke, perhaps he is too old and now he has no energy for it. So most probably we will get it. “

                  ‘Light On The Path’ # 3

                • Klaus says:

                  Swamishanti,

                  IDS
                  I followed the story about the outsourcing of the disabilities assessments by the DWP (actually to a French consultancy company named ATOS…).
                  Disgusting, indeed.

                  JRM* is also one of those representatives of the British superclass…wow.

                  Ishwara Maitreya
                  Tyohar

                  When I connect to the picture of the late Swami Brahm Vedant of India, I get a lovely rush of soft soft energy, too:
                  https://www.oshonews.com/2021/01/14/bhram-vedant/
                  He lived in Madhavpur, Gujarat, India.

                  HeyHo.

                  *JRM: Jacob Rees Mogg

                • Lokesh says:

                  I visited Tyohar’s commune in CR. Nice scene. Got to hand it to Tyohar for getting such a great place together. Mostly young people when I was there many years ago. I met Tyohar a couple of times. Enlightened? I doubt it. He’s more into real estate than buddhahood.

                  Sandarshi, I found to be as dry as a stick. Met him at Maitreya’s place when he lived on Ibiza. Enlightened? I doubt it.

                  Maitreya. Super meditative vibes last time I saw him. Had an odd personality, but he was fun. Enlightened? I very much doubt it.

                  Osho? Met him many times. Enlightened? There is a strong possibility he was.
                  Poonjaji. Enlightened? I haven’t the faintest idea. Could have been for all I know. Very liberating force to be around, and like Osho he was a lot of fun.

                • Klaus says:

                  Lokesh,

                  Well, well.
                  We do not have to use the “E”-word, anyways….

                • frank says:

                  Talking about E…
                  I took 5 Es last night.
                  Toughest game of Scrabble ever.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Jacob Rees-Mogg. What a joke.

                  (His version of the song ‘Common People’ by Pulp):

                  https://youtu.be/V3TT1VE8Jq0

                  And an interview with British comedian Ali G where he discusses his upper class:

                  https://youtu.be/03SiNNYJu3g

                  Also,
                  IDS sings his own hit song ‘The Boy With No Food On His Plate’. Which sounds vaguely similar to a track by the Smiths:

                  https://youtu.be/bZymxDgawJQ

                • Lokesh says:

                  Yeah, Klaus, it is just that the expression “attained to bliss” sounds so corny.

                • Klaus says:

                  Lokesh,

                  “Attained to bliss” seems to imply “forever and for always”….

                  By the way, thanks for sharing your impressions of the guys based on real meetings!

                • swamishanti says:

                  We have these little chats now and again in which we seem to say basically the same things in different ways each time. (Lokesh).

                  Based on some experiences with Maitreya and Samdarshi I think they are enlightened, Osho also I have no doubt about.

                  Klaus mentions the late Swami Brahm Vedant of Gujarat who left his body recently in his ashram in Gujarat. I have no experience of him, seemed to be a popular guru and had a bald head with beard, which could be taken as a sign of enlightenment.

                  When I read some of the tributes to Brahm Vedant on the Oshonews site, I noted that one of the people who had visited and spent time with him in his ashram recalls that once:

                  “I also asked him what it was like to be enlightened. He told me that he did not feel enlightened but had had an opening at one of Osho’s camps and since that day had been able to answer people’s questions. He said that at that time – many years ago – he felt enlightenment a far greater thing.“

                  Which is interesting. What I thought Samdarshi meant when he was talking in the video about several people who had “atttained to bliss” – was that they had attained the ‘bliss body’- the ‘fifth body’ – in the seven bodies system.

                  So not necessarily full enlightenment but, nevertheless, a transcendence of the mind and the revealing of non-duality.

                  Maitreya himself, when describing his own journey, claimed that he had entered the fifth body permanently whilst sitting on a beach in Byron Bay with Samdarshi, after two years of passionate meditation. He had had previous openings, long satori states which had lasted for months, after meeting Poonja and Ramesh Balsekar, and had been deceived at the time that this was enlightenment.

                  However, in his story it took another two years of meditation before he had attained the permanent sixth body opening (which almost melted his nervous system) and then he knew that enlightenment was permanent.
                  And then he claimed the crown chakra opened fully , seventh body, sometime later whilst he was sitting one day in Germany.
                  All good fun.

                  And what I gathered from watching the satsang with Samdarshi in Goa was that Tyohar had not become enlightened whilst with him, that had occurred a short time later on a bus journey, but apparently Tyohar had told people that sitting with Samdarshi had greatly helped him along.

                  I’ve no experience of Tyohar so don’t know.

                  Apparently, he has a connection to Osho’s presence.

                  I guess a lot depends on how open we are when we meet a particular guru, as well as the depth of their awakening.

                  But there are certainly not many tales being told these days on this site from those who have spent time with Tyohar or Maitreya.

                • frank says:

                  I have been most blessed to have been moving around in spiritual circles for decades.

                  I feel deep gratitude for all the enlightened ones without whose grace and important lessons I wouldn`t be where I am today: nowhere.

                  Baba Free Baksheesh…taught me that change is a must, but notes are better.

                  Swami Maha Bananananda…taught me that enlightenment is like the clap, you`ve either got it or you haven`t. He didn`t just talk the talk, though, he tried his best to give it to me, too.

                  Swami Ghandoo…buggered me senseless.

                  Ma Tantrika Milfananda…had to shag her senseless.

                  Donghi Baba…
                  forced me to drop all my limited expectations about how an enlightened one should act.

                  Baba Free Lunch…had to buy him lunch.

                  Swami Bhorat…showed me that every enlightened one should have a catchphrase.

                  So when existence finally stubs out my ego like a fag-end on the ashtray of illusion, it`ll have all been worthwhile.

                  Hari Om!
                  Yahoo!

                • Lokesh says:

                  Apparently, Tyohar has a connection to Osho’s presence.
                  So have thousands of other people, me included. That does not make me special or mean I am enlightened. Truth is I am quite an ordinary man. I spent the day gardening then in the evening watched a boring movie with my partner and our son.

                  I think it is important to be honest with yourself about who and what you really are, Something I read recently in the Bardo Thodol really clicked with me that ties in with just being who you are. I have no complaints. Life is a trip and then your time in an earth suit is over for a while. Maybe you see the light and perhaps you do not. Then you return to spinning round.

                  I’m cool with that. I find a lot of the spiritual trips running in sannyas circles old hat. Embrace what life brings to you. Merging with your bliss body? I prefer a simple life. How do you recognize people who have attained? You probably won’t because they lead quiet and peaceful lives and almost certainly won’t come away with any spiritual speak.

                • Lokesh says:

                  Get the picture?

                • satchit says:

                  @ Lokesh

                  Not everybody who leads an ordinary life has attained.

                  It can be a way of rationalizing that the grapes are sour.

                  You know the fable of the fox and the grapes?

                • frank says:

                  Being busy, even obsessed with who has `attained` and who hasn`t, who is `ordinary` and enlightened or not and “what level they`re on” always strikes me as a kind of prurient, nosy-neighbour kind of thing for people who aren`t getting enough.

                  So-called seekers who indulge in it have the air either of a group of boy scouts discussing the relative merits of female celebrities and topless models in the newspapers, or a gang of teenage girls discussing the local talent:

                  “Wow! Look at the chakras on Mooji, he is hot!”
                  “Eckhart Tolle…nice ass, shame about the face.”
                  “I would just love to wake up next to Adyashanti in the morning.”
                  “Brian does it for me, he`s got his own jungle where he walks around topless all day, so I`ve heard…”
                  “ Ughh…gross! Give me Satguru, he`s welcome to raise his kundalini round at my place any day of the week.
                  “Is that a trishul in Arun`s robe or is he just pleased to see me?”
                  Etc etc.

                • frank says:

                  I can`t really relate to ideas like `moving permanently into the 5th body, 6th body or 7th body` etc. or `attaining` to certain pre-prescribed levels and so on. To buy into that, you have to buy into the metaphysical systems that claim to describe these things.

                  I have a reluctance to do this. There are several reasons for this, not least because it is so easy for people to make all these metaphysical claims that cannot be proven or disproven for physical/material/power gains, which they do with amazing and predictable frequency.

                  The idea that someone says that `so and so has moved permanently into the 6th body` in the same manner as you would say, `he`s just moved into a flat in Hackney` is extremely difficult for me to take entirely seriously.

                  In short, if asked for my opinion, I would probably recommend the use of large boulders of Himalayan rock salt to be taken in these matters.

                • Klaus says:

                  Ratings and Concepts

                  Phew, I crashed for two days in bed due to the second shot of herpes zoster vaccine side-effects. Holy cow.

                  I did not want to incite a ratings spree! Sorry for that. (For ratings go to: Sarlo’s Guru Rating Service.)

                  Rather, I wanted to hint at the varying circumstances and surrounding conditions at the places of meditation and therapy or ashrams of the guys mentioned (and those not mentioned..). With the aim of getting an impression or a feeling for them.

                  As I have been a householder/worker for many years and papa for 8 yrs. with opportunity for only the ocassional session or a personal retreat on a weekend I feel a desire for a more extended retreat. I am not seeking guidance, but am looking for conducive conditions (whatever these may imply).

                  Currently I feel some attraction to Samdarshi’s ashram in Rishikesh, also because it’s in India near the Himalayas. Mostly I am looking at some Buddhist Meditation centres like MBMC in Penang, Malaysia and (revisiting) Meditation Centres in Burma or Thailand. Recommendations welcome.

                  In any case, someplace accessible and – at the least – somewhat peaceful, where I can spend 1,2,3,4… months quietly. Keeping in mind that I am not the healthiest person and will not take excessive stress.

                  Until then I will carry on embracing everything on the way and will see how it pans out in due course.

                  4-5-6-7th body somebody anybody nobody.

                  We can discern our own experiences. Which we may still doubt.
                  Discerning the experiences of others? Hmm.

                • frank says:

                  Klaus,
                  Sounds rough. Get well soon.

                  You mention Sarlo. I emailed him once suggesting an idea to update his ‘Guru-Rating’ site. I suggested that he added to his ‘Guru Ratings; a ‘Sexguru-rating’.

                  There would be a star rating system, following the same format as his original ‘Guru Ratings’ but this version relating to each guru`s performance in the sack:

                  5***** The real deal. Genuine Mahamudra. Dissolves duality. Guaranteed ego-death. You won`t know whether you `re coming or going.
                  4**** High-energy tantric all-nighter. You probably won`t be able to walk straight for a couple of days after.
                  3*** Nice eyes, smooth talker, a couple of teeth missing. Benefit of the doubt.
                  2** Dubious philosophy, dubious personal hygiene, no romance and what was that red rash?
                  1* Bit rapey. All over before you could say `Limp biscuit`- maybe consider celibacy
                  -1 * Backdoor man. Definitely time for celibacy.

                • satchit says:

                  Frankie,

                  The idea to move into the 5th, 6th body is attractive for the Western Christian mind.

                  It has something exotic. People who are bored in believing in Jesus, now they change the shore and believe in Eastern ideas.

                • frank says:

                  I never believed in Jesus myself, but I can relate to the search for something more exotic.

                  I was set to be confirmed into the Church of England at the age of 14, as was the practice in the early 70s.
                  I had `lessons` with the chaplain at the school, who explained why fully signing up to the C of E was a good move. His thesis was that Jesus had to have been either mad, bad or good. He discounted the possibility of him being bad due to his actions being good, and he dismissed the possibility of him being mad as he was clearly sane, thus arriving at the mind-blowing conclusion that the only possibility left was that he must have been good.

                  Reeling from the sophistication of his theological arguments and astonished at him being able to keep a straight face whilst delivering them, I decided against Jesus, thus missing my one shot at everlasting salvation, not to mention losing the offer of the extra day of half-term that was being offered as a bribe.

                  A few years later I was sitting in a field with my mate Dave, smoking a spliff.
                  He said: “In India, they`ve got a religion where loads of guys wander around the place dressed only in the Indian version of underpants. They go to festivals, the mountains, the beach, wherever they feel like, and they kip anywhere, man. They`ve got long hair, beards and smoke dope all the time.”

                  To be fair, it sounded like a vast improvement on the C of E, so I got my shit together and headed over there to check it out.

                • Lokesh says:

                  Anyone who has entered into a coherent debate with Christians will know that they eventually pull out the ‘faith’ card. Then you are accused of not understanding faith, a form of reinforced belief. This has two main aspects. Well…three if you consider the idea to be a conversation stopper, feeling you have run into a brick wall.

                  On the one hand you have as a man believes so the world will appear. Christians believe that when they die they go to sit at the feet of the Lord in heaven. Maybe they will. I do not know. On the other hand, believing in something greater than one’s self is not such a bad thing, because it causes a sense of humility and a sense of scale to enters one’s life.

                  Whether or not Jesus existed as a historical character is up for debate. Personally, I appreciate quite a lot of what is written in the New Testament. There is plenty of space for esoteric speculation there. As for your average Christian, I personally find them to be a childish lot. That said, I have met a certain rare type of Christian who displayed signs of really being on to something genuinely worthwhile. “Judge thee not”. A bit ironic seeing as how such a statement requires a judgement to be cast.

                • frank says:

                  JC came away with a few good one-liners, but it`s when they start wheeling out the Old Testament that things get really ridiculous.

                  Murder, mayhem, child abuse, rape, unhealthy obsessions with mutilating body parts, and mysogyny abound. And it`s not even well-written, there are plot-holes in there that you could drive your chariot through.

                  It`s worse than Netflix!

            • Klaus says:

              Could have included the possibility of experiencing the non-experience, too.

              Far out.

              • satchit says:

                “Judge thee not” is not a judgement.
                It’s the door to the witness.

                • frank says:

                  Satchit,
                  Do you think so?

                  JC said:
                  “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

                  Sounds more like he is saying something like “People in glass houses shouldn`t throw stones” to me.

                  It`s a sort of practical/moral injunction.

                  By interpreting it as something to do with the `witness`, are you sure that you are not one of those Christians you were talking about who got bored of Christianity and developed a taste for a few exotic catchphrases from the East to throw into the mashup in order to come over as more wise and exotic?

                • satchit says:

                  No Frankie, it’s not a
                  moral injunction.

                  In the JC quote you came up with he speaks of the ego.
                  The content is, be aware of the ego!

                  What I think about you, you may think about me!

                  But ego is not all.
                  There is a force behind it.

                • satyadeva says:

                  That might not be the whole story. According to Guy Finley (whom I recommend checking out):

                  “The speed with which we are ready to “jump” on others for their missteps, is the rush of the false self racing to escape seeing its own limitations by attacking others for the same.” (Sounds similar to Satchit’s point but in the context of the talk from which this is taken, it provides further insight into “the false self” with which all of us are lumbered, unfortunately).

                  And…

                  “One reason that judging others so appeals to the self that sits in such judgment of them…is because the comfort found in sentencing others for their “defects” serves to convince us of our perfection.”

                • frank says:

                  Satchit, you say
                  “But ego is not all.
                  There is a force behind it.”

                  Aha! Now I know where you are getting your info from.
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GITb6rzpTWM&t=97s

                • frank says:

                  Hi SD,
                  The trouble with this kind of speculation, making sense as it undoubtedly does in certain contexts, is it tends to lead us either into the “it`s all your projection” hall of mirrors or into confusion by setting up false equivalences between different kinds of events.

                  An example that springs to mind was your heroic battle a while back against Brian and various brian-damaged members of his mini-cult.

                  You held your own admirably, certainly passing some quite severe judgments (correctly imv) on most of them along the way.

                  Did you really do it as a result of your “false self” or because you “found comfort in sentencing them for their “defects” in order to convince yourself of “your own perfection”?

                  Seems a bit of a harsh judgment in the context, as it came over more like a sane response to me. If anything, probably not `judgmental` enough!

                  How could remaining `non-judgmental` help in such a situation?

                • satyadeva says:

                  I guess it’s all a matter of exercising judgment – er, sorry, I mean discrimination, Frank. Maybe that at least partly depends upon having adequate time to consider the issue, looking at all sides, including one’s own preferences and prejudices, before reaching a conclusion, instead of indulging in spur-of’the-moment condemnation. Although spontaneous responses can also be unnervingly accurate, of course.

                  As with so many matters, it all depends….

  10. Lokesh says:

    Sounds ridiculous…Raja Ram, the flute player, is now in his seventies and is probably the best tech trance DJ in the world of Goa trance…his band Sphongle are cutting-edge psychedelic.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPTXTjXyI48

  11. Lokesh says:

    Raja Ram in more recent times. Great crazy guy. Hats off to him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYowY7tvBbY

    • frank says:

      Those guys need to quit the bubblegum rock and trip out a bit more.

    • swamishanti says:

      Well, a bird flew onto my window from a tree just this morning and it was an interesting-looking bird that I hadn’t seen around for a while. I thought to myself, that’s probably one of those birds that migrates here in the winter from colder climate. Yes, UK birds don’t only leave the UK in the autumn in large groups for the warmer climate in other places, but we also get a migration from the far North, the Arctic, Norway, Greenland, Russia, Iceland as well as Europe, birds who come to the UK in winter in search of slightly more reasonable temperatures, berries and fruit-bearing trees.

      Here’s Raja Ram with his orange hat on in his incarnation as ‘Grandad Psy-Trance DJ’:
      https://youtu.be/G5hNzujZK1w

      • Klaus says:

        Nice link to a wonderful live concert. Enjoyed it!
        Quite impressive Raja Ram.

        • swamishanti says:

          I listened to almost a full set of psy-fi from Raja Ram earlier on Spotify while was relaxing in the bath and I felt as if I was at a party. Boom.

          The tracks included some of his own material…
          The World of the Acid Dealer (1200 micro grams), the Bomb, Gateway, The Changa Zone( original remix), Let’s Smoke, Take A Trip, Alien Alert, The Ritual…

          The guy certainly knows his stuff in the world of psychedelic trance.

          • swamishanti says:

            Another English psychedelic prog rock band , the Ozric Tentacles- with a n occasional hint of reggae – which also had a really crazy flute player, ‘Jumping’ John Egan- and a couple of them went on to create the offshoot techno outfit ‘Eat Static’ . Ozrics seen here at Glastonbury in ‘93. I also happened to be somewhere in the audience for that one.

            https://youtu.be/pjRepfNezTs

          • Lokesh says:

            Any idea what th changa zone is?

            • swamishanti says:

              The Changa Zone appears to be a piece of trance recorded by a group of four musicians, including Raja Ram in Ibiza, during what they dubbed ‘The Changa Sessions’.

              Here’s some colourful info about the project:
              http://www.tiprecords.com/promo/TheChangaSessions/

              Raja Rama said :
              “These Sessions were recorded in Ibiza in Riktam and Bansi’s new studio in a secret location hidden deep in the centre of the island…for ten days the four of us were locked in the studio, entering another dimension. maybe it was…the twilight zone…but we all entered the Changa Zone and had a four way joint hallucination in 4 dimensions….”
              Raja Ram London 2015

              I guess you may know Raja Ram, Lokesh? Are you into psy-trance in any way?

              • Lokesh says:

                Yes, Ibiza is a small place. I’ve met Raja Ram a couple of times. Last time was at the local gas station. Had a quick chat, he’s a lovely guy and I would say quite humble about his considerable skills in the music world. He knows where it’s at.

                I do not like psy-trance at all. Okay if you’re out of your mind on a psychedelic dance floor, I suppose. Leaves my head like it’s been in a spin dryer. I do like some of Sphongle and would go so far as to say that it is cutting-edge psychedelic.

                Changa? Follow the link.
                https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Changa

                • swamishanti says:

                  I like Psy-Trance – if I’m in the right mood for it.
                  And ], it has to be good quality. There’s a lot of trashy stuff around, that’s why I appreciated listening to Raja Ram’s mix the other day.

                  Osho once said something like:
                  “Music is perfect when the listener falls into the same space as the musician who created it.”

                • frank says:

                  Warning: This post contains Orange Sunshine Old Folks Home-type rambles down memory lane.
                  If you want to stay in the here-and-now, look away now.

                  I spent eternities and hours dancing to techno/trance and the like but I can only remember the names of a few of the artists and tracks.

                  Does anyone remember the all-nighters down at the Pyramids in the early 90s?
                  That was fun, still going as the sun came up over the Mula-Mutha.
                  It`s all housing estates and high-rises down there these days.

                • swamishanti says:

                  I did not participate in any of those parties down at the Pyramids, but I heard about them.
                  Plenty of Goa Trance and old school German Techno, or so I heard.

                  So what happened- did the Ashram authorities shut them down?

                • swamishanti says:

                  “German Bakery earned notoriety particularly in the mid 1990s when it attracted the maximum number of junkies – the ‘flower power’ kind of people who raised many an eyebrow. The trigger for them to arrive here was the stern action taken by the Goa Police to banish beach parties. It raided one such party on the infamous Anjuna beach, which sent the junkies scouting for cover. Sure enough they found Koregaon Park as the next haven. They realised that they could easily camouflage themselves in this neighbourhood that had become home to hundreds of western sanyasins.

                  All they needed to do was to become sannyasins by procuring a Commune card. So, suddenly Koregaon Park was flooded with these ‘weirdoes’ who flip-flopped in their sandals and loose robes with their hair running down to their shoulders. Quite naturally, with German Bakery being a mere 100 yards away from the Osho Commune, it became a hotspot for this new crowd. For this new lot of fly-by-night visitors of the Osho
                  Commune, there was more to German Bakery than a mere affordable eating out joint. A blotch in Pune’s socio-cultural history came in the form of mass drug orgies held in the backyards of Koregaon Park – the first one in the open arena of River View Restaurant which is now called Pyramids.

                  Before that, Pune made its entry as a host of such drug affairs on a farm at Dehu Road, where on a full moon night around 3,000 western junkies and so-called Osho sannyasins gathered for a trance dance party that lasted for three consecutive nights….”

                  Taken from an article published in a tabloid ‘Intelligent Pune’, soon after the German Bakery Blast on February 13, 2010):

                  http://truecoloursofpune.blogspot.com/2011/02/hey-what-was-this-german-bakery-all.html

                  Looks a bit like the standard of journalism found in ‘the Sun’ or ‘the Daily Mail’ to me.

                • frank says:

                  At the time, I seem to remember that the Pyramids was only half-built. There was a swimming pool that didn`t have any water in it etc. Later the pool got filled and the place was a kind of leisure club and the dancefloor got used for other stuff, I think. Various satsang characters held their meetings down there, too.

                  The trouble you allude to started, I think, in ’95 when, as I remember, a bunch of ravers escaping from Goa, where the feds were turning up the heat, hit on the idea of organising raves somewhere out in the fields on the outskirts of Pune. Somehow, foolishly and bizarrely, the ashram got involved by selling the tickets at the welcome centre. The newspapers heard about it and in the ensuing scandal, 1960s kind of `drug orgy in K Park` stories appeared in the likes of The Illustrated Weekly of India and forced the ashram authorities to crack down on stoners and Goa types.

                  Devageet became a kind of Drug Czar, put his sherriff`s hat on and vowed to clean up the resort to get the Govt. off the ashram`s back. In the moral or at least practical panic, the glaring dramatic irony of the gasman becoming the drug lawman was lost on the righteous.

                  A procedure was put into place, with the deliciously neo-Orwellian moniker of “Buddha to Buddha” where new arrivals were interviewed and vetted by black-robed interviewers including occasionally Judge Jeffries himself. Some people foolishly let slip their thought crimes and paid the ultimate price; getting banned.

                  This might have been the era where wide-scale banning started to become the norm. Goa-freaks, self-proclaimed enlightened ones and their followers now had to watch themselves both in and out of Vipassana sessions.

                  I guess that`s about the Benidorm for Buddhas made it`s final shapeshift into a totalitarian Torremolinos.

                • frank says:

                  “Frenzied drug orgies”
                  Well, if I`m invited to a drug orgy, I absolutely insist on it being frenzied, or you can forget it!

                • swamishanti says:

                  Thanks for that.

                  I heard about the techno/trance parties that you were on about, and vaguely remember now hearing about some kind of trouble when larger numbers of ravers from Goa decided to start holding longer parties in the Korageon Park area, around ’95.

                  Really, there were still sannyasins enjoying both worlds, partying or holidaying in Goa and then meditating in the ashram.

                  Doesn’t seem like too much of a bad idea, all-night parties for the ravers, dancing like Zorba, and then coming and chilling out in Osho’s place, and meditating in the drug-free, Aids-free zone Buddhafield. Especially with a few satsang wallahs on the edge to spice things up.

                  Dolano is still living longterm in Pune and still giving satsang there as far as I know.

                  Although it’s always some of the locals that complain, although I can’t imagine it was the noise that bothered them, given their habits of sleeping with loud chugging mechanical air conditioning and air-coolers and clanking fans.

                  The Pune Ashram of the nineties was/is very popular with young Israelis, who were into the Tibetan Pulsing amongst other things and also very into their parties and the whole Goa Trance scene.

                  Up in the Parvati Valley, where there are a lot of psytrance parties, there is an area which has been dubbed ‘Little Israel’ due to the large amount of longterm Israelis staying there.

                • frank says:

                  Which reminds me, I have run into Ed, the guitarist and main guy out of the Ozrics a few times. He`s a nice friendly guy. In the 90s he was a pin-up but now he looks and walks like a shuffling, scruffy old tramp, you`d never guess he was a former rock god.

                  Well, it`s the way of all flesh, but also a reminder that the old FDOs can easily get out of hand.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Ah yes, Ed Wynne of the Ozrics.
                  My favourite Ozric Tentacles album is ‘Live Underslunky’( after recently listening to it again for the first time in many years.)
                  ‘Jumping’ John Egan contributes flutes and wild vocal effects , to a good set list of well played cosmic live tracks.

                  ‘Strangeitude’ and ‘Arborescence’ (which I have on both sides of a recorded tape) aren’t bad either as spacey rock albums go. Just been listening to Aborescence this evening and I felt like I was at a festival.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Yeah, apparently it was in fact George Harrison, a family friend, who encouraged a seven year-old Ed Wynne to first pick up the guitar.

                  Wynne’s father was a sculpter and had big names in music, such as Jimi Hendrix and Donovan, stay over at the house.

                  “My dad was commissioned to [bronze cast] the heads of The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania and, consequently, he became very good friends with them, especially George Harrison and Ringo. 
                  When I grew up, I thought, ‘I want to be one of those people. They’re having fun. I’m going to do that’
                  “George used to come around to our house for dinner and sit there playing guitar. And the house next door was rented by Donovan. That’s where I used to go after school, because it was more fun than what was happening in my house, generally. I mean that was fun, too, but Donovan had guitars and strange flavors of smoke in the room. It was all fascinating.”

                  (Except of interview with Ed Wynne taken from Guitarworld.com)

                  The family’s emphasis on art and music allowed Wynne to achieve a wide range of musical appreciation, including Gong/Steve Hillage, Hawkwind, Kraan, Shpongle, Frank Zappa.

                  Which may explain some of his psychedelic direction.
                  According to him, he plays the guitar better under a strong dose of acid, and, one of their most recent albums were created from the band just jamming all night under the infuence of some acid and seeing what came out of the taped sessions – and when it worked , then adding some samples and effects and remixing parts.

                  And earlier albums, went through a similar process. ‘Pungent Effulgent’ and ‘Erpland’ were recorded under a similar process in a studio in Wales. Erpland was completely conceptualized, written and recorded on magic mushrooms. It was autumn and they were recording right in the middle of Welsh fields that were absolutely full of them.

                  The Ozric Tentacles were first formed at Stonehenge in 1983. Apparently, they had just parked up their van, plugged in their amps and started jamming one night , by the fire , and gradually a crowd of people grew up around them.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Some footage of those techno/trance parties you were on about in Pune of the nineties in this sannyasin video diary here:

                  https://youtu.be/XvSWj2fUMcw

                • frank says:

                  Hi Shanti,
                  That footage looks like it was of the party(s) (or `frenzied drug orgies`?) in the fields that led to the media scandal. I didn`t attend.

                  The ones I was on about were in the Pyramids complex, probably earlier than `95, I guess. ’93, most likely. The dancefloor in Pyramids was a large proper polished flat stone/marble type space, like a meditation floor, suitable for bare feet – much nicer.

                  The party in the footage was somewhere nearby further down the river, more like ABC farm’s way, I think.

                • swamishanti says:

                  I remember the German Bakery in Pune and it wasn’t until I discovered more German Bakeries in other parts of India such as Varanasi and Mammallapuram that I realised that it is a chain of rather good quality restaurants run by Nepalese, who had been taught how to bake pastries and breads by a German fellow.

                  I haven’t bothered to visit Pune since the late ‘80s so I have not yet discovered the Pyramids. I heard that various teachers were giving satsang in some of those at some point.

                  Were they squatting those Pyramids or what? According to Maitreya’s own book, he was sleeping in an overdue rent-a-car up on Hampstead Heath in London at one point in the late ‘90s and living on just muesli and apple juice.

                • frank says:

                  The Pyramids dancefloor was part of an uncompleted health club at the time. It was used for the parties and lots of satsang artists. When finished it became a functioning club with swimming pool etc,
                  That`s all I can remember.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Yeah, I heard that Maitreya arrived in Pune without anywhere to stay and sneaked into one of the Pyramids one night and started sleeping there, and when the Inner Circle found out about it they felt sorry for him and started bringing him some chappatis each day.

                  And then he began giving satsang in the pyramid.

                  Only joking – but seriously- I am a little surprised that the Inner Circle did allow people such as Maitreya and Tyohar to hold satsangs in the Pyramids, especially as well as non-sannyasin teachers who had turned up, such as John De Ruiter and Aziz, as the Inner Circle state that Osho gave them clear instructions to keep his work ‘24 carat’ and in terms of Osho centres doing non-Osho things, Osho had said “It is fine for them to do whatever they want, but then do not use my name.”
                  (Osho: ‘Interviews with the World Press’).

                  And according to Anando and the Inner Circle, in the last nine months of his life he told them that in particular he didn’t want any association of his name with other enlightened teachers (from other traditions) even if they might be genuine.

                • frank says:

                  The Inner Circle didn`t have any jurisdiction over the Pyramids. They could only ban the satsang artists from entering the Resort.

            • frank says:

              I will guess that Changa is a zone in the Bardo where you experience ego-death by supping some botanical-infused Chang with some very, very High Lamas.

  12. Imagine…
    In next life we meet again some guru as charismatic as Bhagwan!

    • swamishanti says:

      Crazy. One thing I have learned is that superconsciousness, meditation and even enlightenment (and I have no idea whether Ozen is enlightened or not) doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have a mind that is particularly intelligent.

      I recently watched a video on YouTube featuring an interview with Swami Anand Arun and Ma Anand Sheela – I don’t watch much of Arun’s stuff, but I could not believe how keen his was to make the Westerners physically close to Osho – Jayesh, Amrito etc. – into the bad guys, the villains who, according to him, murdered Vivek and Osho, whilst Sheela, obviously enjoying all this, used the opportunity to assert her innocence in the whole affair , and at one point tried to make out that Osho’s real motive in calling in the police and the FBI which resulted in her spending some time in jail was to ‘save her’ from the evil Jayesh and Amrito.

      Despite the fact that it was actually Sheela who poisoned Vivek herself and attempted to kill her!
      I could not believe that Arun believes in this kind of crap! But there are plenty more Nepalese who go along with it and of course Sheela was encouraging them along. Old Shantam Prem was also involved in the interview.

      Isn’t it crazy how some of the Indians like to believe that it was the Westerners who Osho himself left in charge of the ashram and spoke highly of many times, who destroyed Osho and murdered him. But ‘when the cat’s away, the mice will play’ and those who hate the Westerners currently in charge of the Resort know better than Osho did, of course.

      (I am personally not a supporter of the IC or particularly in favour of the current Inner Circle policies. Neither am I a big critic).

      And now, despite the damage to Osho’s reputation that Sheela left behind with some of her actions in Rajneeshpuram, the poisonings and attempted murders of sannyasins and non-sannyasins, as she is an Indian by birth and she tried to get white skins Amrito, Devageet and Vivek out of the way, she is now goody- goody two shoes to some of the right-wing, brown skin Indian Nationalists?!

      • Klaus says:

        @Swamishanti

        This is an article in The Pioneer’ dated 05 Sept 2020, possibly referring to the interview you mentioned:

        “Osho drugged, killed by coterie”
        Saturday, 05 September 2020 | SP Singh | KATHMANDU
        https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/india/—osho-drugged–killed-by-coterie—.html

        There seems to be self-interest on various sides: the self-interested in something like “clean washing” as the (business) show one is cast into – or rather has cast oneself into – must go on.

        Oh dear. Babylon reproducing.

        • swamishanti says:

          I guess that Shantam Prem Iqbal Singh may have been involved in organising that Skype interview, which I watched by chance. And alluded to in a Kathmandu newspaper article which appears to be written by Shantam Prem.

          This kind of fantasy scenario, where Sheela claims to have been falsely accused by Osho, resulting in her spending time in prison, whilst the real criminals, the Westerners whom they despise Amrito, Devageet, Vivek and Jayesh – got away with it- suits their agenda.

          As now they can say that the Dalles poisonings , which made Osho and the Rajneeshpuram experiment so notorious, never happened, Sheela’s murder attempts and multiple poisonings of both sannyasins and US government officials alike.

          The problem with this is that several members of Sheela’s group who were involved in the crimes Osho exposed in 1985, have admitted their complicity in these crimes, and some have made it clear that Sheela did not want Osho finding out what they were getting up to.

          Also, some of them have made it clear that Sheela was insanely jealous of Amrito and Vivek for having so much close contact with Osho, and this was her real motivation for trying to murder them.

          Plus there are many accounts by sannyasins living and working on the Ranch who suddenly got ill after a meeting with Sheela in Jesus Grove, and later worked out that they were probably poisoned in a cup of tea or a cookie, etc.

          And the FBI discovered an entire library on poisons and biological warfare in the secret bunker underneath Sheela’s residence.

          The idea that Osho was a helpless, “drugged’ victim of those guys is also rubbish.
          They hardly would have been forcing him to take anything against his will and it is also clear from a talk Osho gave in Nepal in 1986 after his time in prison that his doctor Amrito was not keen on giving him sleeping pills all the time and that he had had a break for some time.

          Fortunately, there are other old longtime Indian sannyasins who have spent much more personal time with Osho than Arun ever did, such as Swami Ageh Bharti and Swami Chaitanya Keerti, who will plainly say that such allegations of foul play in Osho’s death and plans to murder Osho for financial gain are nonsensical.

          So there are still voices of sense from those older Indian sannyasins who are still alive to tell the tale.

          It is a sad thought that a whole new generation of Nepali sannyas children could grow up with a mythology that Ma Anand Sheela was a falsely acccused Indian heroine who tried to rescue Osho from the evil plotting Westerners, who were only interested in money and went on to murder Osho, who also ignored Arun’s valiant attempt to warn him of the danger.

          Still, this is the problem with all religions, when the Master leaves the body all kinds of mythologies and rituals are created.

          If Arun is connected with Osho’s presence as he is said to be, then I don’t see what the problem is for him. That should be enough for him, wherever he is, without the need to constantly moan and lament about the ashram as it was over thirty years ago.

          Without his constant venomous attacks and hatred for the Inner Circle who Osho left in charge of the Resort. He has created his own communes, why can’t he just be contented with that?

          And he has the freedom to wear orange clothes and still practise the gachamis as if he were still in the early eighties. Why exactly he stills keeps the ritual of the gachamis isn’t clear to me, when Osho himself discontinued the gachamis after the collapse of the Ranch.

          • Klaus says:

            Thanks for the clear stance.

            Facts matter. Clearly many of these facts cannot be wiped out.

            So, one can see where personal politics are starting.

            • frank says:

              I see Netflix is running ‘The Serpent’, a dramatisation of the life and crimes of Charles Sobhraj.
              Remembering him as the bogey-man of the old `hippy-trail` days, I revisited his life story.

              Psychopath, charmer, thief, con-artist, cunning manipulator, pathological liar, serial poisoner, serial killer who used coteries of followers to ensnare his victims. Finally imprisoned, served his time, then on release spent his time courting the media and selling his story. The subject of four biographies, three documentaries and a Bollywood film…and finally Netflix.

              I thought to myself, mmmm, who does this guy remind me of? The use of poison, the lies, the devoted henchmen, the jailtime, the endless redramatisation of his own story through media, ends up on Netflix…..

              Like Sobhraj, Sheela will never give up. Psychopath is the label that seems to be used for this kind of behaviour.

              Sobhraj was more murderous, but at least he didn`t pretend to have some kind of spiritual message.

              • frank says:

                As for Arun, I`m not surprised. His `Modi as Zorba the Buddha` rap gave the game away a long time ago.
                Creepy ayatollah looking to set up his own little theocracy/caliphate.
                Needs kaffars and infidels to gee up his followers.

              • Klaus says:

                Wikipedia has this info on Charles Sobhraj:

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sobhraj

              • swamishanti says:

                The psychopathy part does sound a bit like Sheela, doesn’t it?

                Sheela’s considerable skills at manipulation, like a Jedi mind trick, still work on the weak-minded.
                Some of those who hate the current management of the Pune Resort, particularly those who resent that he chose to have mainly Westerners living close to him, have also worked out that Sheela’s own story comes in quite useful for their own agenda, where she attempts to present herself as a some type of devoted hero to Bhagwan, doing anything to protect him from the evil Westerners who he is innocently trusting with his health, completely unaware, of course, as to their true, secret intentions to kill him and become wealthy in the process.

                I was surprised to see that Arun has not only bought into this conspiracy theory hook, line and sinker, but even more surprised that he is now declaring Sheela to be “madly in love with Bhagwan” – and he considers Rajneeshpuram a great experiment but seems in total denial of the crimes perpetrated by the Sheela cabal.

                In fact, he seems to feel that Sheela was injustly imprisoned – which also means he disregards his own Master who spent a lot of energy and time exposing the crimes to the World Press and the authorities, which led to her arrest and incarceration – for a relatively very short period of time, considering the serious nature of her crimes.

                He also probably hasn’t read some of the accounts of some of the members of Sheela’s own gang, who have clearly admitted their own roles and involvement in planning to carry out Sheela’s instructions, as well as actually carrying out some of the crimes that she was charged with and convicted for. Some of them actually said that it became obvious at a certain point that Sheela had gone too far down the road to madness and they were afraid that she would kill them.

                Arun also promotes Sheela’s book and seems to have swallowed her version of events without question.
                I am now pondering his mental state and whether he is quite a simple man. Osho once said of the guru Prem Rawat, that “he has a heart, but no head.”

                I am wondering if the same could be said of Swami Arun. Or, perhaps he is just a cunning politician who is using Sheela’s version of events as convenient ammunition in his crusade against the Resort Management.

                • frank says:

                  Both Arun and Brian show all the hallmarks of hardcore conspirituality.
                  What Brian is spouting on Twitter is pure Qanon.

                  Arun supports narratives that suit his political aim. The fact that his claims around Sheela are utterly fraudulent and absurd is of no interest to him.

                  It`s `spiritual` Trumpism, pure and simple.
                  This is not simple-heartedness, it`s pathological politics.

                • frank says:

                  It`s also classic fascism.
                  Steps:

                  Invoke a mythic golden age: mighty glorious fatherland/Ancient mighty Bhorat/Early Rajneesh/land of the free. And promise a way back to it. MAGA, join my cult.

                  Identify an enemy:
                  Preferably racially impure: Jews, blacks, baboons. goras…

                  Present `strongman` image to protect and defeat the threat of the enemy.
                  Wipe out people’sab ility to discern truth, pump out conspiracy stuff, rewrite history, misrepresent the present.

                  Basically talk emotionally-charged bollocks

                  Grab more power.

                  That`s pretty much it.

                  Brian and Arun are both quite clearly following these steps. Of course they’re small fry compared to Modi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan…

                  But they`re trying to ride the same wave.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Ah –
                  “Invoke a mythic golden age: mighty glorious fatherland/Ancient mighty Bhorat/Early Rajneesh/land of the free.”

                  I’ve heard that Arun has some problems with the later talks of Osho, after he had come out of silence again in 1984.

                  Now, I don’t know how true that is but it was only what Parmartha reported to have heard, but I can understand that those talks and some of the actions of Osho on the Ranch could present a slightly uncomfortable problem for those quasi-religious types like Arun.

                  After all, Osho was set on knocking himself off of the pedestal that his millions of followers had put him up on, and they would have kept worshipping him as a messiah if he had kept going with the simple white- robed style of Pune One.

                  But he destroyed people’s expectations by amassing the fleet of Rollers and also insisted on publishing books with photos of himself in the dental chair where he was high on nitrous oxide.

                  Some of this would have been threatening to some who were hanging around for the wrong reasons, and the serious followers who wanted to create a religion out of Osho, and it was all too much for some serious types who left.

                  All for the best as far as Osho was concerned.

                  But there were also other odd types such as Arun who hung around, yet who seems to hold on to a puritanical version of Osho (or ‘Bhagwan Shree’ as he often calls him) yet seems to believe that Osho was somehow ‘corrupted’ by the Westerners who were close to him, whom he now despises and even believes planned to murder him.

                  He misses his Master’s own devices to prevent his movement from becoming yet another holier-than-thou religious trip – and there are already plenty of self-righteous and uptight Buddhist and other religious types with their principles and ancient scriptures who can’t handle Osho at all yet have never encountered a living master.

                  But the talks Osho gave on the Ranch after he came out of silence are some of the best in my opinion and the Osho canon would be sorely missing without them.

                  He tried to destroy the possibility of his sannyasins creating an organised religion out of his words, and dropped using the word ‘God’ most of the time as he knew that the word ‘God’ always becomes polluted and abused after the Master has left the body.

                  Perhaps that is why those particular talks are threatening to Arun.
                  Also, the gachamis were dropped in 1985 by Osho, but Arun is still attached to those rituals and apparently is also practising pujas each day in front of images of Osho, Buddha and Krishna.
                  That is his freedom, of course =, and there is a certain beauty to the gachamis. But the gachamis were never a part of life in Pune 2.

                  “Rajneeshism is dead. I wanted it to be dead before I drop my body. This has happened for the first time… and I wanted it to happen because I wanted to be certain that only the fragrance remains, not a dead structure, because the fragrance cannot be represented by the priests and the popes, and the fragrance cannot create religions. It may once in a while touch a man and drive him almost crazy with joy…
                  But Gautam Buddha did not allow the religion to die before his eyes; he forgot that what he is teaching, the priests will distort. They will create a structure which will be absolutely against him.
                  Buddha has said, for example – his last words were, “Don’t make any statues of me. I am not a god. And do not worship me, because I do not want to be reduced into a lower status. You can love me, but you cannot worship me. Love does not need statues and temples.”

                  But the day he died just the opposite happened. It is very surprising; he was the only man in history who said, “Don’t make my statues” – and in the world there are more statues of Gautam Buddha than anybody else. There was a time when there were only statues of Gautam Buddha and in a few languages like Arabic, Urdu, Persian, the word ‘buddha’ became synonymous with statue. His were the only statues, so in Arabic and Urdu ‘budh’ – that is their way of calling Buddha – means statue, and ‘budhkanna’ means the temple where the statue of Buddha is stationed. This is just an example.”

                  (Osho: ‘Socrates Poisoned again after 25 Centuries’ (1988). Chapter 16, p. 222. Crete, 27.02.1986am)

                • frank says:

                  The guy in the vid has interesting wallpaper.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Not sure. Perhaps I should have used that last comment or suggested to use it as part of a new thread topic sometime in the future.

                • frank says:

                  Yes, why not?
                  It`s to do with Sannyas and is news in so far as it is recent.

                  I wonder what Arun will do in the Bardo when he encounters, as he inevitably will, the wrathful baboons from the Inner Circle waving their empty gin bottles at him?

                  I bet you he loses consciousness and ends up being reborn as a right-wing Hindu nationalist.

                • frank says:

                  I believe this is the same Bodhiccitta that wrote this comment (as reported on SN) on Michael Barnett`s obit. in ONews a while back:

                  “In 2012 I heard Swami Yoga Chinmaya say to me, “Bodhicitta, you are past the point where you can no longer make the mistakes that Somendra and people like him have made. In the fourth body many psychic powers become available and they can enchant and divert you for lives.”

                  I recall Osho saying Somendra was his Judas. If you review the 97 references to Somendra in the Osho library, a clear picture of the man, his desire for enlightenment, and his betrayal of the master will emerge.

                  His obit. should educate us disciples, not hypnotise us in the old mistakes of confusing an interesting energy experience with a true growth of awareness.

                  Like the Lord High Executioner says in the Mikado:

                  “My object all sublime, I will achieve in time,
                  to make the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime.
                  And make each penitent, unwittingly represent,
                  A source of innocent merriment, of innocent merriment.”

                  Better luck next time, Somendra.
                  Anand Bodhicitta.”

                  The punishment must fit the crime? The Lord High Executioner from Gilbert and Sullivan as back-up? Is this guy serious?

                  I am not a supporter of Barnett in any shape or form, but the language of punishment and apostasy is weird. Sounds like a member of some Sannyas Taliban!

                  Trying to use concepts like the `4th body` etc. to back up your opinion, (in this case simply put would be “Barnett was on a spiritual ego trip”) by bringing in a metaphysical system as back-up is always a red flag for me.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Well, I read some news the other day that Prof. Haim Eshed, a senior Israeli scientist who for nearly 30 years headed Israel’s space security programme has claimed in December last year that there have been secret agreements made between Extraterrestrials and the US in the last century, in which the UShas agreed to ‘allow’ extraterrestrials to conduct experiments on earth (remember all the abduction claims?) in exchange for some of their technology, and a joint US and ET base is already being developed undergroud on Mars, and a Galactic Federation is closely monitoring human affairs.

                  According to this scientist, the particular species in question doesn’t want to fully reveal their presence here yet, because it doesn’t think are ready.

                  And of course, the US government wouldn’t want to either, certainly as they would have to admit that they had signed agreements to allow these beings to experiment on their own citizens without their consent, as well as hiding the whole thing for years, as well as decieving the public with their own space programme.

                  Whether this particular Professors claims are true or not , their have been various other whistleblowers who have worked in various government agencies , a couple who have worked in Area 51 and claimed to have witnessed different types of crafts in hangars there with anti-grav technology.

                  I know that governments always have certain technologies , not necessarily extraterrestrial in origin of course , that they are keen to keep secret.
                  As soon as I heard that Trump had caught Covid 19 and gone into hospital last year, I knew that the worlds most powerful government would manage to bring him out of it ok, even though he was in the ‘at risk’ category. And he was released very quickly , within just a few days.

                  There have been claims that President Eisenhower met with several extraterrestrial races, some of whom were concerned about the use of atomic weapons. And many other stories and theorists.

                  And last year the US military officially released some footage of what they claimed was ‘authentic’ ufo saucer activity.

                  Perhaps they’re trying to slowly prepare the public.

                  UFO sightings are nothing new, of course. Whilst certain Wikipedia writers (probably ones working on behalf of the US government) have been keen to point out in the narrative that some of the close encounter and abduction claims to seem to likely be the product of fantasy, suggestibility , or inspired by science fiction movies, and claim as the in reality their have been sightings of UFO’s and spacecraft , plus claims of close encounters with otherworldly beings , since antiquity.
                  5,000 year old Aboriginal cave paintings of the ‘Wandjina spirits’ appear to depict alien visitors, which were believed to have come down and visited the earth from the Milky Way and created humans during ‘dream-time’ . The cave paintings ,of which there are many , do look very similar to some of the more recent common depictions of et’s that have emerged in the last century, the large heads, big black eyes , slim bodies etc.

                  Whilst thousand year old Vedic literature describe flying crafts which were used in warfare and which were said to be able to fly into the earths atmosphere, as well as outer space and other planets.
                  There are also other myths from other ancient cultures of ‘sky gods’ who visited the earth who were also time travellers.

                  In the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, archaeologists have found hieroglyphs that resemble the UFOs that are described in sightings up to the present day. Centuries later, we have the pre-Columbian gold artefacts found in Central America, which appear to be perfect models of flying crafts. Later, in the medieval period, there was an abundance of art produced which appear to depict UFOs in the sky.

                  And lots of sightings of space ships were recorded by historians in the classical period of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.

                  And in there were reports of celestial phenomenons in the sky in 1561 over Nuremberg and again in 1566 there were reports from citizens of Basel in Switzerland.
                  In 1668 in the Levoča Chronicles, the Levoča Hungarian Kingdom (Present-day Slovakia) , the chronicler describes a silver flying object in the sky.

                  Meanwhile in the 1800’s, there were reports UFO’s in Japan, Mexico and the United States, with numerous reports sightings of ‘mystery airships’ and attempted abductions that took place in a 2 year period around 1896-1897.

                  In 1909, strange moving lights and some solid bodies in the sky were seen around Otago and elsewhere in New Zealand, and were reported to local newspapers.

                  In the 1940’s , small metallic spheres and colourful balls of light were repeatedly spotted and occasionally photographed worldwide by bomber crews during World War II. These became known as ‘Foo Fighters’.

                  18 files released in 2010, by the MoD and the National Archives, via the Freedom of Information Act, include a wartime account claiming prime minister Winston Churchill ordered a UFO sighting be kept secret to prevent “mass panic”.

                  The files also include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent “mass panic”.
                  According to Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, apparently most of the wartime files of UFO sightings have been destroyed.
                  “But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.
                  “The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people’s religious views.”

                  And if you look into it, you will find a much more.

                  Whatever the case may be, none of any of this is going to help us to relax into our lives right here and now, help us with our meditation or enlightenment, or get us wherever we want to be.

                  Unless you want to devote all your spare time to trying to interact or channel types of advanced extra-terrestrials or researching conspiracy theories.

                  Ah, hang on a minute…I almost forgot that this is sannyas news, not ‘alien news’.
                  Well, there is quite a bit going on in Sannyas around the world, lots of interesting love Osho podcasts chats, online meditation events, new zoom chats and interviews with various long-time sannyasins, some on YouTube, and the other day I discovered this video from July 1998 Masters Day Guru Purnima live Kirtan performance in the Osho commune International in Pune.

                  Not new sannyasnews, but featuring bhajans sung by Swami Yashwant Dev, Ma Amrit Sadhana, and Osho’s brother Shailendra’s pretty young wife, Ma Amrit Priya:

                  https://video.oshoworld.com/index.php/2020/03/16/osho-kirtan_guru-purnima-29-july-1988/#fvp_79,5s

                  Quite a scene, then. I’m sure George Harrison would’ve enjoyed it.

                • swamishanti says:

                  The other day I also stayed up late and watched the ‘Snowden’ movie by Oliver Stone, an excellent biopic of Edward Snowden, the ex- CIA operative and whistleblower who leaked a lot of classified documents from the National Security Agency and exposed the extent of the illegal mass surveillance by the NSA and the CIA.

                  Snowden began questioning the ethics as he witnessed first-hand the dodgy tactics and workings of the CIA, and then in his role as a senior cyber strategist and expert in cyber counter-intelligence, where he realised the full extent of their massive surveillance operation which was using the ‘war on terror’ and the post 9/11 ‘Patriot Act’ as an excuse to track, spy and record the personal data of basically everyone, globally, by easily hacking into their pcs and smartphones and then reading emails, texts, using the webcam and camera etc.

                  After leaking lots of classified files whilst in Hong Kong, Snowden attempted to fly to Latin America via Russia, however the US government had charged him under the espionage act, revoked his passport, and he ended up landing in Russia where he was granted asylum and where he still resides today.
                  At first, Obama harshly criticised Snowden for leaking the files and claimed it had been “damaging to our intelligence capabilities” but later promised increased restrictions on data collection of American citizens.

                  However, you’d have to be kidding yourself if you thought that these same spying strategies to gather and collect information globally are not still being employed by the CIA and the NSA today.

                • frank says:

                  Yes, they are all at it, but I was more thinking about your new article..

                • swamishanti says:

                  I may write a piece sometime in the future.
                  In the meantime, more Indian bhajans.

                  This original composition, sung in Urdu, ‘Mere Hamdam’, was sung by Ma Amrit Priya and Ma Amrit Sadhana and recorded live after Osho’s last but one discourse, ‘The Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Oneself #10′ on 09-04-1989, pm, at Gautam the Buddha Auditorium, Pune:

                  “Mere Hamdam, Mere Dost, Mere Sathi, Mere Meet,
                  Mere Hamsafar, Mere Geet, OSHO…!” (my heart, my friend, my companion, my friend,
                  my fellow traveller, my song OSHO…!).

                  Can be listened to here, with Osho’s last words of the talk included:

                  https://www.sannyas.wiki/index.php?title=Mere_Hamdam

                  Almost every week in 1989, mostly on Saturday (not always) evening, Indian musicians used to play and sing before and after Osho discourses as Osho was entering and leaving.

                  Sw Yashwant Dev was the team leader of Indian musicians. The team included Ma Amrit Priya, Ma Amrit Sadhana, Swami Rajendra Bharti, Swami Jagdish Bharti, Swami Manish Vyas and many other friends who accompanied.

            • Klaus says:

              Drawing up “fantasy scenarios” not based on – known or unknown – facts could actually result in someone calling ‘slander and libel’.

              How is that going in India or Nepal?

              • frank says:

                I think I`m following this:

                A, underboss in regional outfit looking to become the global mainman, accuses chiefs of rival firm, B and C, (the Big Boss’s former right hand men) of murdering the Big Boss to get control of the operation a few decades ago.
                S, Big Boss`s ex-enforcer, who has already done time for attempting to murder B, teams up with A in a plan to nail B and C, claim back their turf and clear her name.

                Is it the tagline for a new Netflix gangster movie?

                No, it`s a device by which the world is going to be turned on to Osho`s vision of love, life, laughter, peace, meditation and consciousness!

                Lol

                • swamishanti says:

                  Don’t forget that gang members of the Big Boss Sheela’s gang, Puja in particular, weren’t only poisoning people’s food and drinks, they were also injecting people in the bum with amphetamines to make them work faster, as Bhagawati recounts:

                  “I joined the research bunch and we burned the midnight oil to a point that Puja would come now and then to plunge syringes loaded with Vitamin B into our bums to boost our energy levels. After a while of those crazy intense work hours, I had problems sleeping. I also couldn’t eat much, having lost my appetite. I lost weight. Rather than walking I felt myself sort of drifting through every day. (I only found out much, much later that Puja injected us with ‘uppers’ so we would stay awake and work through the night).

                  Read her full article here:
                  https://www.oshonews.com/2020/08/15/the-road-to-twinkiehood/

                • frank says:

                  That`s a weird story.
                  I struggle to imagine how anyone could fail to notice the difference between taking vitamins and shooting speed.

                • frank says:

                  My mate clever Trevor reckons it`s well-known in occult/meditation circles that a good shot of speed up the arse can be a powerful methitation, invoke a state of divine whizzdom, put you on the way of the purple heart, get you in touch with your base chakra and get you staring at walls like Bodhidharma on crack.

                  I think Ian Dury and the Blockheads were probably enlightened.

                  “From the gardens of Koregaon
                  To the mountains of Oregon
                  Hit me with your rhythm stick.
                  Hit me! Hit me!
                  Das ist gut! C’est fantastique!
                  It’s nice to be a lunatic.”
                  etc.

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoRQUnsQQfc

                • Klaus says:

                  @Frank 6 Jan, 5:34

                  In order to fully enjoy “love, life, laughter, peace, meditation and consciousness” it is always a good thing to have enough money in the coffers.

                  Entrepreneurship – especially in the real estate sector – and political “c”onnections (vitamin c+) are certainly very helpful to further the means.

                  However, speculating with “the wrong plot” can lead to a downward spiral – on all the envisaged goals.

                  Out the window!

                  In synchronicity, the Ian Dury song ‘Hit Me!’ also came to my mind during this imaginative thread.

                  Cheers.

                • frank says:

                  Dear Editor,
                  I would like to complain about all the stories that you have published about the raft of alarmingly dangerous drugs that members of your iresponsible and depraved cult have taken: Nitrous Oxide, Valium, Johnny Walker, Bombay Gin, Old Monk Rum and now Speed up the Bum.

                  ]It`s absolutely disgraceful!

                  Couldn`t you find any decent stuff to neck?

                  Yours disgustedly,

                  Albert Hoffman

                • frank says:

                  Klaus,
                  Yes.
                  Make sure you`ve got enough money in the coffers and don`t lose the plot.
                  Good advice!

                • swamishanti says:

                  Ian Dury was also one of those UK free festival-goers who spent some time in a bus. At least if he wasn’t, he had some friends who did and he wrote a song about it.

                  I know a couple of people who were there, including the guy with the red, yellow and green stripes on his bus, who told me that after driving around the field being chased by police for a while his vehicle ended up smashing into the back of a police van. He was later banned from driving within a five mile radius of the Stones.

                  But there were others who lost their homes and got broken bones. Another friend, Helen the Hat, who was only 19 years old when she was there at the time and ended up with post-traumatic stress disorder after having the windows of her vehicle smashed and being dragged out by her hair and beaten senseless by the Wiltshire police after Thatcher decided to put an end to the yearly Free Festival at Stonehenge in 1985:

                  https://youtu.be/TBHV1_bmVPw

                • swamishanti says:

                  And Helen the Hat can also be found discussing her experience with the heavy-handed police at Stonehenge 1985 at 19 years old in this short documentary here: https://youtu.be/wbE-bTW7CT4

                  By the way, the presenter of the documentary talks about concerns of possible archeological damage to the ancient site from the festival, but in reality digging earth toilets and making firepits in fields really causes no long-term environmental damage at all and all holes can easily be filled and the grass and the earth knows how to sort itself out and grow itself back again very quickly.

                  Really, Thatchers government were not remotely concerned by any environmental damage at all, but rather by the growing phenomenon of more and more young people taking to an alternative lifestyle on the road, and the growth of the free festival which was said to be doubling in size each year.

                  Another documentary, of historical interest re the English people’s Free Festival at Stonehenge, which took place there for ten years, and first-hand accounts of some of the survivors of the brutal police action of ‘the Battle of the Beanfield’ can also be viewed here: https://youtu.be/ct0HKeYbOQI

    • Klaus says:

      Oh dear, wasting one’s valuable energy on the politics of the rep-uglicans in the U.S. of violence clearly erases all credits previously given.

      Back to ‘zero’ for Mr Agarwal on my scale.

      • swamishanti says:

        Me too. However nice the Mexican property I don’t think spending time in the community of a Republican Party supporting guru who tweets in support of a fool who can’t take losing like Trump would be my cup of tea.
        One of his re- tweets:

        • swamishanti says:

          I wonder what Greta Thunberg would say about it…

          https://youtu.be/9do5DWA_hnI

        • Klaus says:

          @Swamishanti

          ‘However nice…’

          I would have chosen almost the same words to express my stance in this regard.

          As both RR and DT in my mind don’t have much or any light they for sure can only make people feel ‘the heat’ they certainly got.

          To what end? Waste of a life’s time.

          • swamishanti says:

            Reagan was a buffoon who once claimed that marijuana was probably the most dangerous out of all the other drugs:
            “Leading medical researchers are coming to the conclusion that marijuana, grass, pot, whatever you want to call it, is probably the most dangerous drug in the United States.”

            (He was =following on from Nixon’s anti-drug policy which had been to target the pot-smokers as they were seen by the government as being the most rebellious and anti-war types) and Donald Trump is a fascist and a hero for the American far-right.

            Soon Trump will be history and those idiots who bought into the online Quanon stuff and believed that Trump is some type of force against evil will realise that they have wasted time with mind-dreams which will be leading absolutely nowhere.

            • frank says:

              “those Qanan idiots who believed that Trump is some type of force against evil will realise that they have wasted time with mind-dreams which will be leading absolutely nowhere.”

              I really hope so, but I ain’t holding my breath!

            • swamishanti says:

              Ronald Reagan was simply copying Richard Nixon’s strategy of being particularly tough on pot smokers in their ‘war on drugs.’ During Nixon’s administration (1969–1974), the United States turned to increasingly harsh measures against cannabis use, and a step away from proposals to decriminalize or legalize the drug.
              That was because they had worked out that most of the anti Vietnam war demonstrators and rebellious types were often the pot smokers.

              ‘Operation Intercept’ was an anti-drug measure announced by Nixon on Sunday, September 21, 1969, resulting in a near shutdown of border crossings between Mexico and the United States. The initiative was intended to reduce the entry of Mexican marijuana into the United States at a time that was considered to be the prime harvest season.

              Jefferson Airplane wrote the song ‘Mexico’ about it. Performed here live:

              https://youtu.be/tsUMa3yeYYc

              And , would you believe it , the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick had actually once planned to spike Richard Nixon with a large dose of LSD when she felt she had the chance.

              In April 1970, Slick had received an invitation to attend a tea party at the White House being thrown by the president’s daughter Tricia. It turned out that Tricia and Slick were both alumni of Finch College, an all-girls school located in upstate New York. Tricia was a recent graduate and Slick, who attended under her maiden name, Grace Wing, attended in the 1957-58 school year.

              “I got an invitation in the mail. ‘Grace Wing, we cordially invite you to a tea…Tricia Nixon at the White House.’ And I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I think Tricky Dick needs a little acid.’”

              Slick invited her anarchist friend Abbie Hoffman as her date to the April 24 event. Hoffman was one of the most notorious members of the counterculture. He had recently been on trial for inciting unrest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, advocated dumping LSD into the Washington, D.C. water supply, and engaged in numerous anti-government demonstrations and pranks meant to draw attention to himself and his causes.

              The FBI and the Nixon White House had files on both Grace Slick and Abbie Hoffman, branding them as domestic security risks for their anti-establishment views and actions. But no one made the connection that the invited Grace Wing and the not-welcome Grace Slick were one and the same person.

              Slick and Hoffman showed up at the White House for tea on April 24, 1970. Slick had 600 micrograms of LSD powder in her pocket, more than enough to provide a powerful hallucinogenic experience for anyone who ingested it. Her plan was to tuck it under her long fingernail and simply gesture over Nixon’s tea cup during conversation and slip it into his drink.

              But the White House guards grew suspicous of Abbie Hoffman, who had been conservatively dressed and clean shaven without his beard. Grace tried to tell them that he was her ‘bodyguard and escort,’ but a White House Policeman would not permit him to enter the grounds, saying, that the event was ‘Strictly for females.’

              Mr. Hoffman then brought out a black flag emblazoned with a multicolored marijuana leaf and hung it on the White House gate.

              Grace and Mr. Hoffman then ran away across the street and were driven away by a member of the Jefferson Airplane.

              Even if Grace had managed to get into the White House and attend the tea party, she never would have had the chance to spike Nixon with the acid, as if happened, he wasn’t actually present for the event.

              The “black flag emblazoned with a multicolored marijuana leaf” would have been the flag of the Yippies, or Youth International Party. The Yippies were an informal party founded in 1967 who embraced free-speech and countercultural ideas, and who were known for pulling stunts and making outrageous statements.

              • frank says:

                The world`s a different place, now.

                “The US Food and Drug Administration is helping to speed up the process of researching and approving psilocybin, a hallucinogenic substance in magic mushrooms, to treat major depressive disorder (MDD).

                For the second time in a year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated psilocybin therapy — currently being tested in clinical trials — as “breakthrough therapy,” an action that is meant to accelerate the typically sluggish process of drug development and review. It is typically requested by a drug company and granted only when preliminary evidence suggests the drug may be an enormous improvement over already available therapy, according to the FDA.”

              • Lokesh says:

                I’m Facebook friends with Grace Slick. I always loved her voice and she had a lot of good things to say back in the day. I have observed her FB posts over the years and I am unimpressed. She seems to be stuck in some kind of golden years timewarp. I watched one televised interview with her and she took her false teeth out. Not a pretty sight.

              • swamishanti says:

                Here was Grace Slick and Abbie Hoffman outside the White House with those invitees to the tea party on 24th April, 1970:

  13. Lokesh says:

    Brian says, “NEVER EVER SURRENDER to FRAUD”.
    Ehm…exactly.

  14. Lokesh says:

    Thirty years have passed since Osho died, and yet sannyasins are still speculating about what ‘really’ went down on in the Ranch etc..Personally, I have given up on such speculations. There is no way of really knowing what went on behind the scenes in Osho world. Even if all was revealed what difference would any of it make to your life today? Very little, would surely be the honest answer.

    Rainy days rain away, let the sun take a holiday on Ibiza and a little diversion is always welcome in the form of books, movies etc. Currently watching ‘The Serpent’ and all I can say is that if you run into Charles Sobrage do not take him up on his offer of a drink by the pool.

    I just finished Morakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’ and in search of something else to read pulled ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’ off the shelf and began reading it for the umpteenth time. Just reading the introduction makes it worthwhile. Fascinating.

    Next thing I know, someone sends me a link to a vid on You Tube…It leads to a documentary about ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’. Then in the second episode of ‘The Serpent’ a hippie chick is reading ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’. My question is, is this some form of synchronicity, or is it just my imagination?

  15. Lokesh says:

    Evans-Wentz is the copy to go for. In the introduction there is a reference to Freud and his forays into the subconscious and how he figured it all came down to sex.

    The introduction speculates that he bordered on the Sidpa Bardo…the last bardo encountered before taking rebirth. Couples make love and the disembodied is attracted to one in particular. If the incarnation is to be female a special attraction to the male figure and vice versa.

    • frank says:

      Lokesh, you ask the interesting (and back on topic) question:
      Is this some form of synchronicity, or is it just my imagination?

      You need an imagination to even conceive of sychronicity.
      When things are interesting, events fall into place.
      As a writer you will know, for example, that it is widely experienced that whilst researching it`s very common to have just the right book fall open at the page related to the subject they are looking into, meet someone who happens to know something, get a letter, email, video `out of the blue` etc. not totally unlike your little vignette.

      In a way, you are picking linked events out of the myriad of outside occurrences, but the idea that the `outside`, the `other` itself is at times, somehow playing along, conspiring and responding in what appear `magical` ways is extremely difficult to dismiss.

      `Synchronistic` experiences seem to hint that the `inside`, us, and the `outside`, the `other`, the subjective and the objective are linked. Maybe this is because our separation of them is extremely arbitrary in the first place.

      Imagination is something like taking things from the outside world into memory. We `store` them, then we can use imagination to come up with some new idea that then can then be translated into `reality` as a new invention. This is physical as well as mental/internal.

      If you glance around your room,you will see that every object in there has gone through that process.

      The flip side is, of course, paranoia and negative conspiracies
      In that sense paranoia, anxiety and so on is just crap imagination, badly used.

      In the context of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I guess the letting go is a final turning over the whole imagination to the `other` (which was really running the whole show all along, altho` we only caught glimpses of it).

  16. frank says:

    “The introduction speculates that Freud bordered on the Sidpa Bardo…the last bardo encountered before taking rebirth. Couples make love and the disembodied is attracted to one in particular. If the incarnation is to be female a special attraction to the male figure and vice versa.”

    Do they have any idea what will happen to gender-fluid, non-binary meditators in the bardo?

  17. Lokesh says:

    Yeah, she is the one who stole the flying saucer from the Presley estate.

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