My name is Iqbal Singh (fornerly aka Swami Shantam Prem).
I took sannyas in 1984, presently I don’t consider myself a part of the Resortist Sannyas Cult.
I am neither a sannyasin nor ex-sannyasin but a lifelong disciple of Cosmic wisdom and till now no other human being of our times has inspired me other than Master Shri Rajneesh. (I denounce the imposed name ‘Osho’).

The way the master tried to create a merger of East and West is simply far-out.
I am still in love with His thousands of people who gave their best to be a part of His Buddhafield, whether in Pune or Rajneeshpuram, USA.

Recently, a hugely successful Indian Hindu Guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, has compared Osho Rajneesh & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Both from Jabalpur, both created their niche in the western hemisphere, one could say ‘Export Quality’ Indian Gurus. The rise and fall of their work deserves to be studied in business schools: how followers destroy the work of charismatic Gurus.

Through this post in English, I would like that sannyasins of various countries who were part of Rajneeshpuram share their understanding, whether there is some essence in Sri Ravi Shankar´s confident assertion that Maharishi bailed out Acharya Rajneesh.

I would prefer that Raviji prove his accusations in this video with evidence or withdraw his lies.

One thing is clear, science must develop hi-tech lie detection devices. Youtube likes and clicks are creating foot-in-the-mouth syndrome in guru types.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb00JKCgv1w

Reply

19th January 2026 is approaching, the date when Osho Rajneesh left His body 36 years ago.

In between I don´t use the stolen word ‘Osho’ for the late master, nor do I believe in the bluffy assertion: “Never Born, Never Died”.

Still I love and appreciate the genius mystic who had a good intention to bring the world together, to make the people of various countries and cultures sit together for meditation and fall in love.

The purpose of creating this thread is to ask the long-term followers and friends of Master:
Do they still think Master was poisoned by American authorities and that poison became the cause of his death at the age of 58?

Let the thread grow and our enquiry for truth shine.
At the age of 62, my life philosophy is, ‘Truth Liberates, not the Gurus’.

Love,

Iqbal Singh
Full of gratitude for the late master. Rise and fall of His firm is quite an impressive piece in order to understand the business of New Age spirituality.

Childhood is a wonderful time. You experience things so directly, you are so in touch with your emotions, everything is new…when you fall off your little tricycle and scrape your knee, you start to cry and call for your mama, who kisses it and promises to make it better. As an adult, a fall off a bicycle occasions a quick dusting off and checking to see if everything still works and you haven’t broken an arm. Certainly no crying or calling for mother.

Similarly, being a sannyasin as a child has its own unique character. You see people, other sannyasins and even Bhagwan, from that childlike perspective. On the one hand you’re in close touch with your emotions and see things with a clarity, and on the other hand you lack a grown adult’s knowledge of the world, and of yourself and your motivations.

This means that the first impressions you form are a child’s impressions. You see things like the Dynamic Meditation happening from afar, or the therapy groups, which are intended to help an adult cathart away the difficult moments of their life. You see Bhagwan give his discourses, and your approach to him is like towards a grandfatherly figure.

I remember being in the Poona One ashram in 1979, sitting in my tree not far from the gate, listening to the music of the Kundalini meditation as I read my comic books. Graceful people clad in orange and red walked on the marble path. Good times.

But all good times eventually end. Say you grow up and inevitably leave the commune after some years, make contact with the wider world and learn the ways of society. You earn your own money for a while, get in touch with “normal people”, perhaps be in a position of authority within a team working on a project. You move job a few times, and see what it is to be a cog in the machine, a machine which does not care for you in the slightest. Then something happens, perhaps an illness or a break-up, and with a shock you are reminded of the spiritual path.

So to then learn the approach to Bhagwan as if he were as the name says, “the Blessed One”, requires a few new steps of learning. It requires seeing the world through the eyes of people who have had different experiences, a different start in life. And also a different approach to spirituality, one which is more broadly based in different traditions.

A little while ago in a Dutch book by Wolter Keers called ‘Being Free’ I came across a passage about how Hindus see the world, that there are people and then there are gods, and that being a god was like a temporary job which might last a few thousand years. But the enlightened ones, they are above even the gods, because the gods are just ordinary beings who have that job. So the Hindus see Westerners, who just casually approach a guru, as rather foolhardy.

So from that perspective, to have the view of Bhagwan as being a sort of grandfather, family, is not at all close to the mark. For a sannyasin child, to have grown up in that way, it requires a significant shift in perspective to approach him as a grown-up seeker. It feels less safe, like going naked before the Master and his disciples.

In a way it is easier first to start serious seeking with other gurus, to read the memoirs of other seekers and the written words of people like Nisargadatta and Eckhart Tolle, to gain a little understanding of where the people around you came from. If you can find accounts of genuine seekers to learn from, you can count yourself lucky. Eventually you might gain a sympathy with the wide range of backgrounds that seekers come from.

And with that comes a new sensitivity to your own guru, whom you grew up with. You circle back around, and find you never really left. And then you have to cope with society’s changes over the years, you find that society has become very critical of those gurus. The whole anti-cult movement has weaponised the societal distrust of anything that smacks of a special status. It motivates people to bring out their experiences and treat them as the worst versions of what they could be, to support the anti-cult narrative.

In the end, for me it is a heart question. Is there a connection, is there love there for the guru? When all the dust settles, when the negativity, arguments, he-said-she-said has worked its way through your system, do you still feel a warmth inside for the man and for the tradition? That is ultimately your guide of whether it is spiritually beneficial to continue down this path.

Sannyas was a period of warmth, celebration, upheaval, aliveness in my early life. And I find those principles still guide my steps today, that it is a rare bright spot in a world that seems filled with more than a fair share of madness.

All the best,

Nityaprem

I’d sworn to myself that I would never again read another Jack Reacher novel, but Lee Child’s writing is so addictive, I eventually succumbed to temptation. I felt a bit stupid about it, and after I’d finished the paperback, I went in search of a book that would be a little more intelligent and hopefully inspiring.

There aren’t any decent English bookshops in Ibiza, so I passed by the place where I usually pick up something to read. A little second-hand shop in my local town. There was a pile of old paperbacks in front of the shop window. I started to look through it and came across something unusual. ‘The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi’. The book was in very good condition, and I had the distinct impression that it had been waiting there for me to pass by and collect it. The person who had donated the book had obviously been to Tiruvanamalai because lodged between the paperback’s pages were various flyers and business cards from the holy city in India’s Tamil Nadu state. I paid the shopkeeper one euro and walked through the relentless heat to reach my car.

The sun dropped towards the horizon, and I went up to my roof terrace to enjoy the cool breeze blowing in from the sea. I started reading the Ramana book and entered a different dimension, the world of truth. Ramana wrote very little. He taught mainly through the tremendous power of spiritual silence. That did not mean that he was unwilling to answer questions when asked. So long as he felt that they were asked with a sincere motive and not out of idle curiosity, he answered fully, whether in speech or writing. However, it was the silent influence upon the Heart that was the essential teaching. Which reminds me of when Osho said that his message was not in his words but the silence between his words. A very important point.

The more I read, the more an unsettling feeling began to rise from my guts. I was struck by the undeniable fact that I was not the great seeker that I perhaps once imagined I was. Reading the profound words of the master, I felt like I was just a beginner, a novice. Once more, I thought of Osho. I recalled that at one point during my first darshan with Osho in March ’75, I felt like a scruffy schoolboy sitting at the feet of the headmaster, immaculate in his freshly pressed, high-necked, white cotton robe, manicured toes peeping out from the front of his brand new sandals with black velvet straps, that special balm he used filling my nostrils with its exotic scent. Osho looked down at me and chuckled.

That was something of note about Osho. He made the path to enlightenment look like an easy one to tread, a spiritual adventure to enjoy. He told us we were 10,000 Buddhas just waiting to claim our birthright. Over 50 years down the line, it hasn’t quite worked out like that. The handful of sannyasins claiming to be enlightened and satsang givers that I have met over the years all seemed a bit delusional to me. They simply did not cut the spiritual mustard. I am no longer interested in contemporary gurus like Mooji, Sat Guru, etc. Which isn’t to say that they don’t have something of value to offer, I’m just not drawn to them. Not enough of that spiritual magnetism that both Osho and Poonjaji generated.

At heart, throughout my over seventy years of living in this body, I’ve always felt like a child. I sometimes felt weird about this until Nisargadatta Maharaj pointed out that it is the child within that I should nurture. What a relief! Permission from on high to remain in my playful, childlike state and observe in shocked disbelief the insane world the grown-ups have created for themselves, clutching their mobile phones as they hurry down the bomb-cratered road to nowhere, making all their nowhere plans for nobody.

Returning to Ramana Maharshi, I have to confess that I take his word for what makes us what we are in essence, as God’s honest truth. Osho’s words I no longer listen to. Too many of them and so many contradictions carried upon them that I suspect this was a deliberate undertaking on his part to break people’s attachment to what he said and stop people from trying to construct some daft religion upon his words. You know, Osho said, ad infinitum. From what I know of Osho, there was an aura of silence around him that conveyed far more than words could ever do. Like Ramana, Osho’s transmission took place in silence.

In retrospect, I view Osho’s sannyas movement as a specialised garden nursery for human beings. Osho tended his germinating seeds and watched them sprout. Of course, not all of the plants were destined to grow into beautiful lotuses. As history has shown, there were some nasty weeds in Osho’s garden. This was not an entirely unexpected development. Osho was out to spread the word far and wide, he said ‘yes’ to almost everyone, and he knew Jesus’s parable of the sower.

It was Osho who first introduced me to the method of inquiry into oneself. During the seventies, he developed a group called ‘Enlightenment Intensive’ which was loosely based on self-inquiry. It was strictly for beginners, an introduction, one might say. But it was a start, and most of us were indeed beginners. And that was something truly remarkable about Osho. He got the spiritual mirrorball rolling all around the globe. No easy task.

It was thanks to what I’d learned from Osho that I was able to fully appreciate what Advaita, non-duality proponent and direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi, HWL Poonja, had to offer in Lucknow in 1991. And it was thus that I first truly entered the inner world of self-inquiry.

Now, 34 years later, Ramana Maharshi once more enters my life via a book. I have been sitting and meditating most mornings over the last year. The Ramana book is a tremendous guide on this level. And guidance on the path of self-inquiry is certainly something I need. Like a recipe in a cookbook, I will follow the instructions and see what kind of dish comes out of it.

Ramana says, “Grasping form, the formless phantom-ego rises into being; grasping form it stands; grasping and feeding on form it grows [spreads, expands, increases, rises high or flourishes] abundantly; leaving [one] form, it grasps [another] form. If sought [examined or investigated], it will take flight. Investigate [or know thus].” The ego is really just a construct of the mind; it has no real substance. It emerges as a “formless phantom,” coming into existence by attaching onto forms. Its existence relies on this continuous attachment to forms.

What this actually means is that the ego is a by-product of the operations of the mind. The mind is always active; it is constantly modulating and forming mental representations of senses and perceptions. In doing this, it assigns identity to this information, which creates a coherent narrative. Because of this, the ego is nothing more than a collection of these thoughts, sensations, and perceptions. It doesn’t possess any essence of its own. This is what is meant by the ego standing as it grasps form and growing as it feeds on form. Its existence is dependent on thoughts, sensations and perceptions. Because we don’t investigate into its nature, we mistakenly believe in a separate entity that claims “I see,” “I think,” “I feel,” etc. However, this ‘I’ is only just a narrative constructed by the mind from the mind organising thoughts, sensations and perceptions into a bundle of information.

Just like we may mistakenly perceive AI as an entity when it’s actually just the processing of digital information in a complex pattern, the ego can also be mistaken for an autonomous self due to the misperception of the mind’s processing of information. It is basically a ghost in the machine. There’s no actual “ghost” running the machine. Instead, it’s the machine itself operating in a way that gives the impression of an overseeing presence. In truth, there isn’t a separate entity controlling the “machine” of our body and mind system; what we experience as the ego or self is an emergent property of this system. The workings of our mental processes create the illusion of a self that appears to be in charge.

Since The Self or Consciousness is always present, these mental processes become intertwined with this fundamental awareness, which gives the appearance of a conscious entity that we experience as an individual conscious self. However, this entity has no reality of its own. It is not the same as consciousness, or is it the mind? This individual self is just a by-product of consciousness infused into the mental activities, but it does not possess consciousness independently, nor does it have the autonomous functionality of the mind.
The ego, like the misperception of a snake mistaken for a rope, cannot be directly changed or eliminated because it doesn’t have any real existence. It’s an illusion of the mind.

Recognising it as an illusion through investigation can help, but this doesn’t lead to its dissolution. The ego’s existence is tied to habits of the mind that become ensnared in identification with thoughts, sensations and perceptions. So, it’s also important to cultivate practices that help the mind untangle itself from these identifications. Practices like Self-inquiry or cultivating silence and stillness are beneficial because they help to quiet and return the mind to a more natural state, preventing it from latching onto and identifying with sensory objects and thoughts. These practices do not fight or destroy the ego directly but they help dissolve the ego’s foundations by changing the way the mind functions, which then leads to a state where identification with senses and perceptions falls away along with the ego.

Yes, that is quite a lot to take in. This article was my way of clarifying and condensing my intellectual understanding of the process. The real deal is to put into practice that understanding. I’m heading down to the coast for an open water swim. Before I enter the sea, I will sit and meditate in the shade for a half hour or so. Tourists wander by. Conversations waft up from the beach. Canned ambient music tinkles from a nearby luxury hotel’s swimming pool. Children cry in delight before diving into the warm sea. Meditation in the marketplace, indeed. To whom are these thoughts occurring? Me. And who are you? The ghost in the machine evaporates. Silence.

“Silence is also conversation.” (Ramana Maharshi)

Both set up communes of one sort or another, encouraging their students to live together and to work on their spiritual “stuff”. And both had a fall from grace, where their personalities were questioned and even attacked by their students. Andrew’s fall from grace was far greater. He lost his home and followers very much en masse, whilst Paul never truly faced the allegations that he was a sexual predator, but he never had the following that Andrew enjoyed. How disappointed he was by his failure to be recognised as a world teacher at all, I don’t know. I lost touch a long time ago.

Both teachers gained sycophantic followers, who even today cherish the teaching they afforded them and are full of thanks. It seems a feature of students of enlightenment that they raise their teachers to the status of almost demigod-like nature. I recognise my own deep gratitude to Osho and Barry Long whom I learned so much from, but I’ve also had the innate intelligence to critique their teaching. To make my own way rather than to stick with teachings that are now in some cases 40-50 years old.

With Andrew and Paul, I sense that they never moved on. They also didn’t live in the normal outside world, having to face the issues that we all have had, with worries about money, work, relationships etc. Like Da Free John and others, Andrew and Paul lived secluded lives, in Hawaii and elsewhere, where the ugly world was left behind, and their needs were largely taken care of. Money was never an issue, so they had no real need to reflect on financial and worldly concerns. Is it any wonder then that their lives and teachings have a quality of an intellectual abstraction? The same issue affected the East in many ways, in Tibet in particular, where monasteries became centres of debate but were surrounded by peasants whose lives were often poor and harsh.

In the recent obituaries of Paul and Andrew, I also noticed how profoundly lost many of their students appear to me. In Paul’s case in particular, many commentators observe the events of the 1980s with Paul as the pinnacle of their own lives. They reflect on the wonderful memories, with little or no mention of their own personal development since the 1980s. How have they integrated the teaching of Paul or Andrew into their daily life? I was especially struck by how many use words like “transition”, “ascension” and, of course, “passing” when talking of death. Death is taboo. After 40 years the word death is forbidden. Can you believe it?

Christopher Titmus, the Totnes guru of old, gives his critique of Andrew in a recent obituary, claiming how Andrew wasn’t such a bad fellow, made a few mistakes but was well grounded in the enlightenment business. No one has the guts to say Andrew was haunted, fragile and lost in theory, a sad figure who will be forgotten in a few years. Paul Lowe too is largely unknown outside his old sannyas circle and stopped formally teaching some years ago. His teaching could be summarised in a few words: love more, forgive more, and stay still. Nothing new there then. It may have been useful in the 1980s but surely we should have moved on?

What is yet to be discovered in any real, new way is how the notion of enlightenment, the teaching of it by easterners and the new western teachings, is very much removed from our daily experience. Barry Long, alone, seems to have recognised this, and made a lot of effort to integrate his understanding. All the while the non- duality brigade, who have gone from strength to strength, parrot the same old chestnuts: “Love, awareness, enlightenment, non-duality, oneness, God, the bliss of samadhi” – it’s the same tale time and again, but who’s actually making any progress?

Even Andrew in one of his very last videos, almost shrugging his shoulders, said, ”enlightenment’s a tricky business, isn’t it?” It was a simple confession that in 40 years he was as lost as ever!

The business of enlightenment has become a cancer of sorts. A cancer with no cure.

It’s the Rumble in the Zen Jungle!

A spiritual slugfest between two heavyweight gift-of-the-gab superstars!

SADHGURU in the right corner, with his trademark turban, warming up with some asanas and chanting.

OSHO in the left corner, clearing his throat with some “fuck you’s”, while bouncing lightly on his feet.

The ANNOUNCER (in a booming voice):

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Enlightenment Smackdown!

In the left corner, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee, the meditative mauler, the sultan of sexuality…The Rolls Royce Rebel…
OSHOOO!

And on the right, the motorcycle mystic, the environmental evangelist, the yogi with the beard of destiny…
SADHGURUUU!

Let’s get ready to Ruuuuuuuuumble…

The bell rings…Ding Ding Ding!

The Ref calls it, the crowd goes wiiiiil

**[ROUND 1 begins!: The crowd ROARS! OSHO circles Sadhguru, with a mischievous grin and throws a playful jab]**

Yo, Sadhguru, let’s settle this beef,

Who’s your daddy, who’s the chief?

You windbag, you clown, plagiarising my wit

Without copying me, you wouldn’t exist.

You’re stuck in tradition, with sanskrit rhymes

While I rewrote the rules, liberating minds!

**[SADHGURU ducks a jab, fires back]**

Liberating minds, in a hedonistic spree?

Building your empire with devotees’ money

Osho, you freak, cult king of the lost,

Rolls-Royce dreams at your followers’ cost,

Asleep at the wheel, Sheela burst your balloon,

Your commune’s over, so’s the honeymoon

{Ding Ding, end of round 1. The crowd ROARS! Osho bows theatrically}

**[ROUND 2: OSHO swings a hook, grinning wild]**

Sadhguru, you preach, but it’s all hot air,

Your Coimbatore ashram’s a PR nightmare,

I rocked Oregon wild, you rocked PR stunts,

Your Isha Foundation a charade and a front!

Inner Engineering? Sounds like a corporate drone,

I offer a path to be truly alone!

**[SADHGURU counters with a cross, voice booming]**

Yes, you’re alone, just like a ghost

A memory to some, but your legacy’s toast,

You tried to be Buddha but failed the test,

Now rest in peace, your karma’s a mess!

My Isha Kriya cleanses, removes the inner grime,

Your huffing puffing Meditation wastes everyone’s time!

{Ding Ding, end of round 2. The crowd’s roaring, gloves are smoking, and the rhymes are hitting harder than the punches!}

[ROUND 3: OSHO bobs, lands a quick jab, voice dripping venom]

Jaggi, you snake, get your scraggy ass kicked

My bliss and my silence is buddha level fit

I’m the rebel that you copy, so you’re talking crap

Free love ’n’ crazy meditations is an unbeatable act

I sponsor liberation, breaking free from every norm,

You’re peddling conformity, spiritual chloroform!

[SADHGURU parries, throws an uppercut, tone fierce]

Silence? Bliss? More like a pharmaceutical haze!

Popping pills and hippie crack for days in a daze!

Your horny little pecker craving more than namaste

Turning your devotees into gullible sex slaves

Rolls-Royces and diamonds, flash without shame,

Try explaining THAT in your enlightenment game!

{Ding Ding, end of round 3. The ring’s a battlefield, sweat and insults raining down.

Osho’s smirking, Sadhguru’s glaring, and neither’s backing off!}

**[ROUND 4: OSHO swings wild, landing a surprisingly effective jab to Sadhguru's beard.]**

Diamonds ain’t the problem, it’s the attachment, you see!

And hypocrites like you, who also love luxury

Your green-talk’s a scam, with your saintly facade

Your ‘Rally for Rivers’ a waterlogged fraud.

I’m the master of zen, you’re a master of spin,

Your wife’s silent grave knows the dirt you’re steeped in!

[SADHGURU stares daggers at Osho, momentarily stunned, then throws a wild haymaker, while Osho dances away]

Back at you! Vivek, did you treat her any better?

Another cover-up for your newsletter?

You claim to be enlightened, a god among men,

But you ended up deported, again and again!

They love me in America, you got stuck in Pune

I’ll knock you out cold, you bohemian buffoon!

{Ding Ding, end of round 4. Both gurus are glaring at each other, sweat is dripping, and the crowd’s losing it —two gurus, one ring, no mercy!}

**[ROUND 5: OSHO throws his arms wide, inviting an attack.]**

That beard’s impressive, Jaggi, like a spiritual hedge,

Hiding the truth ’bout your wifey droppin’ dead!

Her ghost still haunts you, with rumours of foul play

Now you’ve gone quiet, nothing to say?

I’ll uppercut your halo — watch your legacy split!

I’ll dodge your weak hooks and land truth on your lip!

[SADHGURU lands a glancing blow. The crowd gasps.]

Osho, you’re a joke, a guru gone rogue,

Bio-terror raps aren’t really in vogue,

I’m the yogi du jour and you’re a disgrace

Your message outdated, I’m setting the pace

I’m the sage of the now, I plant trees and education

I ease the suffering that plagues India’s nation!

{Ding Ding, end of Round 5. Osho winks at the camera as he returns to his corner, Sadhguru scowls, adjusting his turban. The crowd are on their feet!}

ANNOUNCER:
What a round! Both Gurus landing blows, both intellectual and physical!
What will the next round bring?

Stay tuned, I’m told something quite remarkable and unexpected is about to happen in PART 2!
Can you guess what it is, dear reader?

One of my first contacts with Bhagwan, as he called himself in those times, was a book a sannyasin Ma gave me as a present, with the title: ‘The Book of the Secrets’, Volume 5.

The first sentence in this book was:
“Life is not a problem but a mystery.”

Reading this, something happened: the feeling that he was saying exactly what I thought. Maybe he could express himself a little better than me, that was all.

Later I understood that it was not something in the words, it was an energy that opened inside me, a transmission.
It was a kind of resonance.

At that time I lived in a communal house with friends and my opinion was: maybe the others need a Guru, but certainly not me.

But surprisingly it was me who did fall in love with the Master.

So there was no seeking for me, it simply happened.

If I seek something, then I have a problem that needs to be solved. But there is no problem.
Life it beautiful as it is.

Now that a little time has passed and the mental dust has had time to settle, I feel it is worthwhile to revisit Maroesja Perizonius’ documentary ‘Children of the Cult’. I’ve been on the web watching this unfold, and wrote this from the point of view of a current-events journalist. So here, reporting to you from the front line…For me, initially it was a difficult moment to see the then-girls reflecting on their lives from a mature 50-plus years of age and calling their commune experiences sexual abuse, which of course it was. If you haven’t yet seen the documentary I would encourage you to go see it. The commune failed to protect its most innocent members when they were vulnerable.

Who was responsible is the most stringent question the documentary doesn’t attempt to answer. This has started many discussions, of which this is the barest outline. So, was Osho in part responsible, for encouraging free love and saying that the children would be raised by the commune, thus absolving the parents from a duty of care? Or was it Sheela and the rest of the Ranch hierarchy, for not providing proper schooling for teenagers while rushing to get Rajneeshpuram built, and choosing to ignore the problem when it was brought to their attention? Can we say the parents were free from responsibility? And perhaps also a little bit, all the ordinary sannyasins who chose to look away when twelve-year-old Sarito walked hand-in-hand with her very-much-older lover?

There are many standard excuses that get talked about in a conversation about these things, that it was a different time and that people were in search of spirituality and free love in the Indian subcontinent and that parents sought to give the children the freedom growing up that they never had. I find it hard to give much credence to these — if you were truly spiritual and in search of love, would you not love and care for those closest to you, your children? Sometimes love is difficult, it is not all a bed of roses, it is peeling the potatoes and scrubbing the toilets as well. Love is guidance and protection and care as well as hugs.

We also can’t lay the entirety of the responsibility on the group of predatory sannyasins who were after the teenage girls, although they must carry a large and personal share. The atmosphere and social mores of the commune definitely contributed, they enabled these events to take place, and however liberating free love might have been for the adults, it created a sexualised environment. It was said in ‘The Times’ interview with Prem Sargam that the cult groomed the children, and there is a measure of truth in that. And recent treatment of grooming gangs in the UK courts clearly shows a concept of shared responsibility between those doing the grooming and those having the actual sex.

Personally, I remember there was a kind of pressure to have sex. Though I was only thirteen at the time, I was aware of the kits put in every festival tent, of condoms and latex gloves. You heard storiesabout multiple couples making love in one tent. Sex was expected. My own first sexual experience was not until I was eighteen and a long way away from the Ranch, but there was a certain frustration of desire that stems from that earlier period.

Was the abuse widespread? From the many examples in the documentary I should say so, and from what I hear the film-makers had to cut material out, they had too much. At the time, I remember talking with one of the other boys in the Kids Trailer at Magdalena on the Ranch, about why there were no girls to play with. He told me, “Nah, they all have older boyfriends and spend their time with them.”

These things also do affect our later lives. Some of the then-girls that I have heard from have spoken of periods of hostessing, sex work and drug addiction as a direct result of too much sex too early. Some have not been able to pay for therapy, and the trauma has deep roots. These days there is a more sophisticated understanding of trauma, forty years later, but you have to search to find a therapist with whom you have a good connection — it all takes will, money and time. The childhood sexual relations also affect the ability to form healthy relationships later in life, which affects forming new families, and much else as well.

It is natural for the then-kids to now feel ambivalent towards Osho and the commune leadership, who have been concealing, denying and silencing these things, if you go by the reports in Sarito Carroll’s book ‘In the Shadow of Enlightenment’. They feel unheard, unacknowledged and unappreciated even now, after all these years. When asked what they want, first and foremost is the acknowledgement of their experiences and apologies from perpetrators and parents, and help with payment for therapy a second, and real compensation a third.

In response there seems to be a thunderous silence from more well-known sannyasins. Those swamis and mas who lead meditation retreats, are at the head of centres or national organisations, were therapists or used to be well-known and close to Osho, have not been saying anything at all. These are people that the sannyas community looks up to, who are listened to. Some public opinions from this group would be very welcome, even expected.

Should there be an enquiry, as suggested by Dutch journalist Lodewijk Dros in the newspaper ‘Trouw’? The Catholic Church managed to do a thorough investigation into abuse by priests even after all these years, dare the Osho International Foundation do less? If you say you own the rights to Osho’s name, publish his books and direct the activities of Osho centres worldwide, then I think this responsibility is also yours. I think if you manage his legacy, then you can’t have the benefits without also carrying the liabilities.

How we as the brightly-coloured, extended family of sannyasins, ex-sannyasins and post-sannyasins feel about Osho and the communes may yet carry some weight.

So, wherever we might be at in our individual perspectives, here’s an oppportunity to give thanks for all the good, amazing, wonderful stuff he made possible for us to experience.

I’ll make a start: Without exaggeration I can say that his dynamic meditation probably saved my life.

A recent post on SN pointed out that the recently surfacing scandals around the Osho movement, taking in Osho himself, are in fact part of a larger story of widespread revelations in recent times about the shadow sides of many “new religious movements”/”cults” .

The subsequent reactions of the contributors on SN has followed clear patterns that are also to be found in the reactions of the participants of all the other groups/religons/cults mentioned.

Fundamentally, there is a polarisation:
On one side, partcipants take on board the reports and attempt to re-assess their lives and position vis-a-vis the implications of the new information.
At the other end of the spectrum we find the hard core who flatly deny everything, cry conspiracy/persecution and proclaim their devotion to the leader all the more.

Take, for example, the case of Sai Baba where there are high ranking disciples who have publicly proclaimed that even if Sai Baba was a paedophile (and the evidence is really overwhelming) it would not change their faith as he was God incarnate and that would justify everything.

Followers of Trungpa and other more subtle philosophies claim that the master`s motives remain unknowable to our inadequate minds, therefore the fact that he was beating, intimidating, coercing and sexually molesting his disciples whilst out of his head on huge amounts of cocaine and booze is in fact an occurrence that is beyond our capacity or place to judge.

Clearly, the reactions of some Osho sannyasins are very similar.

What is fascinating is that these situations seem to turn ostensibly free-thinking, liberal individuals into extreme supporters of/apologists for paedophilia, sexual abuse, coercion, widespread deception and authoritarianism etc. Surely not places, one would suppose, that they had set out on their spiritual search to reach?