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alokjohn posted an update in the group The Humaniversity: 12 years, 8 months ago
See the photo in Veeresh article on noticeboard. Very authoritarian
Is V sincere or a crook? Discuss.
For example in the interview ”All businesses are based on profit. We’re not. We’re based on love, friendship, communication, good things. The money comes as a result of that, it’s not our priority.”
But if you decide a group is not for you after just five minutes into the group, you do not get any money back.
From the interview ”The basic secret is that Osho is our spiritual guide, the foundation, and the direction of the Humaniversity. We want to advance his work in creating paradise on earth.” So why are Osho discourses and the standard meditations marginal at Egmond?
From the interview ”I know that we’re extreme, we demand change, and we want people to apply what they learn here…..Then there is another secret, and that is me. I’m ready and willing to use anything that helps people to change.” And who is to judge whether someone ”needs to change” or not. Humaniversity staff? Why should anyone accept their opinion? They are quite unqualified. All they use is the AUM and a few behavioural techniques.
Perhaps V believes this shit. Who knows? V often says quietly he is enlightened. That he says it quietly shows a political mind.
I like Veeresh. Haven’t seen him in years, but he’s alright in my book, which is black leather and has a skull and crossbones embossed on the front cover.
I do not dislike him.
But the AUM and the Humaniversity trainings have real effects. People become more aggressive, and often become manipulative, amoral, and bullies, at least to some degree. This helps them survive in England.
But I doubt this was what Osho intended through thirty years of teaching, through his discourses and meditations. If you listen to his discourses, it does not sound like he wished to create amoral manipulative bullies.
Hi Alok,
I am new at posting here but what you and others write about the Humaniversity is all very interesting to me. I did Humaniversity at least 20 years ago although I never went to the Humaniversity itself. The Humaniversity groups themselves are very interesting but yes there is a big problem with manipulation, amorality and bullying which cancels out most of what is good about the groups. The amoral thing that I dislike the most is keeping a person hooked on therapy to fill up the therapist’s pocket book instead of guiding a person to meditation. Can you expand on all this? You once gave an example at how at a Leela fund raising event, they collected a large sum of money off a woman who did have all her mental faculties(or something like that).
This was about ten years ago. Leela had a fund raising event in London. People were encouraged to pledge money which was to be collected later….lots of music and clapping….you can imagine the scene. Then my friend L pledged hundreds of pounds. Another friend asked Dhyano not to collect the money because L suffered from bipolar disorder, one symptom of which is excessive spending. Nevertheless a week or two later Dhyano and the late Prageet travelled to London and collected the money from
L.
A few days later L’s parents travelled to Leela and got the money back. At the time Leela was issuing fraudulent share certifictaes; I am guessing the parents had one of these and were able to use these certificates as leverage to get the money back.
I have seen amoral things amongst sannyasin such an event advertised in a faraway location. One would make a phone call to see how much such an event would cost and then get a price quoted. Once the person would arrive there, they would make him pay far greater than the quoted price. The person would accept paying more reluctantly because he spent a lot of money on gas to get there and he sees that a lot of his friends are at the event.
I have many more anecdotes.
I can well imagine such things happening.
Do you know much about Dhyano aka Chris Harding. It seems to me that did a stunt of walking barefoot over broken glass on You Tube. What is his background?
I think he was once in the army. I believe he made some money by smuggling alcohol across the English Channel.
Now we suspect that he is making money off gullible sannyasins
I think he is more or less retired now.
It is incredible how people can get away with murder when it comes to vulnerable such as L-it is incredible how people can lack empathy for other people’s pain and suffering just to make money and fill their pockets
I agree it is terrible. Sannyas was or is full of people like this. You can understand why there was such a disaster at the Ranch. I think many sannyasins follow the religion of Me-ism of Self-ism, ie they worship themselves, which comes from so called Humanistic psychology.
What happened at the ranch does not surprise me when I see type of sannyasins that I see today. Are you talking about narcissism? I think though that there are sannyasins out who understand Osho’s work but choose to be alone rather than be part of the me-ist or self-ist sannyasin community.
You thought that this event was fun from what you wrote in the past. You just did not like what they did to L.
Often there are events like this that have sannyasins with open hearts and the leaders of the event take advantage of these open hearts to do ugly things like selling fake certificates and ripping off L. I have experienced similar situations.
I preferred though small sannyasin gatherings where there were no therapist wolves around. I liked it where there were only ”grassroot” meditators.
Another thought: The positive thing about big events such as the Leela fundraising event is that there is a lot of strong energy and at these events one tends to run into sanyasins whom you have not seen for a long time. The nice thing about this is that a lot of sannyasins who can not go regularly to events because they are busy with work etc. will come out of the woodwork to show up at these big events.
The negative thing about these types of events is that these events are often run by amoral therapists. These therapists themselves are not interested personally in the people who attend these events. They just want these people to hand over money as donations and buy fake certificates and they do other malevolent things so that they can make an easy living. It is like wolves who are only interested in a farmer’s pasture only if there are sheep grazing on it.
That is why I usually prefer small gatherings.
According to you, is shouting at a person directly in his face so that the person goes into shellshock is a way at the Humaniversity to manipulate people?
I did the vile AUM twice in my life which is more than enough for me. Both times I got shellshocked like you did.
”is shouting at a person directly in his face so that the person goes into shellshock is a way at the Humaniversity to manipulate people?”
Quite possibly, though I do not know if it is part of a deliberate plan to fleece people. I think some (stupid) people there sincerely believe they are doing excellent therapy.
I enjoyed most parts of the AUM meditation except for the flaws that I mentioned and that I did not mention. Even though it seemed to be a wierd pastiche of steps from Osho’s meditations such as the ”running” stage from the Mandela meditation and shaking from Kundalini, it probably was inspired by Osho. I do not know. What though first raised a red flag for me for all this, is when I began to question the Aum Meditation leader for other activities that he was involved in including Aum Meditation he banned me from Aum Meditation. Then that is when I began to believe that these flaws were not honest errors waiting to be improved but rather that they were deliberately put there to fleece people as you say. For example, I did not see much therapeutic value in the ”porno dancing” and thanks to my friend, he made me see this. I think that it deliberately put there to take advantage of people who want just sex and are not interested in meditation. As I said, there was no follow up afterwards if a person found herself or himself alone during this stage to see therapeutically what was preventing that person to mingle with other people during that stage.
What confuses people deeply today is that there is a strange mix in the Aum Meditation. There are parts like the Namaste stage inspired by Osho and stages only there for commercial purposes such as ”I hate you” and ”porno dancing”.
I think that Veeresh started off with good intentions but later he became greedy and dangerous and people unfortunately have not noticed the change. When Osho first gave him blessings he was a good man but now he thinks that he is a guru himself.
I remember doing a group in Pune in 1989 and one fellow said that he was was recently at the Humaniversity. Later during the group, he shouted at another fellow right in his face and the other fellow looked shock. I had never seen anyhting like this before.
sorry that I did proofread: I meant shocked
At the Humaniversity, is it clearly stated in writing or otherwise that once a group starts it is 100% non-refundable?
I read it in their brochure. But I could not find it in their on line brochure today. They might have changed it.
As long as they make things clear about their refund policies, then I do not see a problem.