The difference between what I understand to be Havel’s Bohemian rebellious legacy and sannyasins group-room based notions of rebellion is this – and I think it is an important one, so as there is no confusion between sitting in a comfy chair in watchful freedom, and being a heavy smoker with integrity and courage.
Each of these notions is bound up with what model of freedom is appropriate at any given time. Apparently and going by the facts of both Osho and Havel’s lives they both were outspoken and considered.. both were jailed, both had stories of oppression at the hands of authority, one from democracy’s vigilantes, one from communist thugs and grey bureaucrats.
For the sake of extrapolating a useful model of value from each of these men’s sincere lives I shall try to show the endemic failure of holding hard and fast to any notion or legacy that psychological freedom can be paid for or achieved when it is done in isolation and within spiritual safety zones for a singular aspired goal .. the goal of stillness or emptiness.
The idea that holding onto versions of therapised authenticity are ways of developing one’s voice, one’s station in life through growth and interchange at the commune group level… SOLELY so that one may become a witness at the end of the day.. and without which all human behaviour is partial, prejudiced , weak, agendized , questionable etc….is utterly the wrong legacy .. even if there is one from the social spiritual revolution that sannyasins would like to think of themselves as representing.
Over the years I saw the bearded hippie freaks become ,like me, balder fatter and less able to jump for long periods…this is of course unexpected but predictable. What was less predictable was that precisely those challenging routes of developing identity and self expression became ends in themselves … (like little self interested pockets of the type of fashionable Bloomsbury Group of the 1930′s .the daahlings and air kissers around Gurdjieff..)
Much of sannyas has become allied to how well your self esteem can sponsor the louche lifestyle of synthetic meditation centres with Italian growth Villas, Beach front investments, and Gucci clad primalistas.
By the late eighties I already saw that cosmospoiltan-magazine type ex-communards were building legacy identities for themselves; the Station wagons were rolling up at the front door of the Miasto communes.. I’ll never forget doing the no-dimension meditation in Buddha Hall to the sound of lipsticked middle aged women jangling their bracelets on every meditative arm movement back in the 90′s. …..What places Osho mediatation centres were becoming by then. No longer living together, communes fell apart and were re-born under the aegis of individual investors to tranquillise the neurotic weekenders with promises of two day visited yet profound liberation – which they then took back to their boutique private lives.
Now my point is this.. without a vision of comfy cushions and comfy chairs whilst watching the river flow.. none of this would have been possible. Not that rebellion should not be done from an easy space, with as much sense of an expanded mentality as one can gain benefit from, which some tibetan bells and deep hypnosis can provide( news flash: feeling great is great)…but that we don’t have those theta waves in the brain as the sole repository or intention of what human fulfillment is or should be.
The rebellion that Havel and anyone who had an opinion made in the 70′s was about was that the sanctity of personal solace or feeling good about yourself, was a by product of your rebellious inventiveness when faced with the absurdity of everyday life and the demands of conformity. You spread and shared that playful intelligence in whatever outlandish form you could think of. And it wasn’t meant to be purified through analysing one’s dysfunctional motives in isolation… as life and creativity and staying clear took on vibrant dynamic forms of external opposition and representation.The idea that a samizdat lifestyle wanted to become a cosmopolitan brochure one when it grew up was never going to be a serious idea.. ,a joke maybe, but not a reality.
The difficulty in making waves through a bunch of individualist individuals en masse was a ’68 pipe dream already dying or dead in the west by ’77 when I left school..(Punk and all that ). …but in Prague it took on new and vibrant forms of association between a few, speaking for many…. back then.
My point, if I can manage to come back to it, is this.
Many forms of interpersonal social rebellion have been systematically invalidated in the west through social and personal growth psychology, finding psychological motives, re-orienting the cause of anger, sadness, frustration so that it only has one address called ‘ Stuff’ ‘ and one solution called ‘Meditation’ and the fact that many loony tunes turn up to the ashram/resort/ centres to get healed or soulful or human is testimony to that; so as to get socialized, eventually ,through group therapy…We all find out sooner or later that is/ was because ‘dad and mum didn’t love me that we use the middle finger’.. apparently then according to the robed, rebelling becomes a simple act of bouncing up and down, sitting on cushions, and saying how good it is to feel good.. , breath, eyes, mind happyclapping, laughing,hugging etc etc.. before you step back into the Land Rover and go off back to some middle class job somewhere in some middle class suburb…
Its as if Osho people are now , after all the palaver of ranches and confronting the forces of darkness en masse in orange and having enough sharing caring feedback routines to transform all the worlds ills in a flash, behave like sanitized farmed Osh-triches….. knowing there isn’t going to be anything like the New Man or Woman they content themselves with meditative deodoriser and spray on solutions to passing the time. Cosmopolitan… the way of the white wash.
Havel on the other hand just said to strive to live in truth and love ..
…trust yourself to…you never know what might happen… even if its only little things that one can do…who knows from all of us.. they just might add up…. they did… in the magic fairytale town of Prague……
Never can thank you enough Mr President…sorry my attempt at this eulogy of your legacy, (in contrast to sannyas) seems so insufficient by comparison…..( I welcome further debate and this is maybe just an opener)
love ,
Swami Prem Martyn
One weakness in your argument Martyn is around the phrase “Much of sannyas”. I fully accept it is your experience that you had what seems a bad time tripping around various growth centres, etc in the years since Osho died, finding only frauds and charlatans, and but few truth seekers in the “Groups” world that you, after all, choose to inhabit.
But this is not in any way the whole of sannyas. In a way today (2011) a neo-sannyasin is defined as someone who chooses to call themselves one, and feels the Osho connection. My bet is that many of those never saw the inside of a group room, especially in places like India, China, Korea or even Japan. But there are thousands there who call themselves sannyasins, and why not?
My second point is that the end of any of these formal groups, or formal meditations is to throw you up on the shore of truly creating your own life, silence and stillness are part of that, yes, but not the whole bag. They are just steps on a ladder that you kick away when you have reached the first floor. Havel didn’t need that, but it still might have helped had he done such things. It helps that silence and stillness bit. Imagine Havel being able to do without all those cigarettes, and to find a little stillness to disturb his torturers in his Communist cell – he would still be with us now, and his great courage augmented further through his life which was a watershed in history.
“Havel on the other hand just said to strive to live in truth and love”.
Martyn- whose truth and whose love? Matter of P.O.V. Hitler loved ordering the killing of jews, africans, slavs(got his kicks, on autobahn 66). Genghis Khan loved killing anyone, anything, from his brother to barbarians. it’s all a cosmic psycho trip. head trip. what else can it be. Havel could be considered a masochist with his love of the smokes, knowing it would eventually kill him and disable him before his end. yep, a head trip, to find out what it’s all about, gotta go beyond the mind. i don’t think havel was able to do that, just my opinion. What is love? what is truth? 7 billion people using their minds to come up with 7 billion different answers.
Well Jc you might read stuff from Havel’s understanding of the use of language…he predated NLP by years….on language and identity…
of course its variable…thats what i quoted in the previous blog article.(the osh watches one)… the ambiguity of truth is contextual and individual.. but that doesn’t deny its potent potential or use.. otherwise if you ain’t living/speaking your truth whose am i going to address?Your neighbour’s? Bring him over….its xmas….
I’m not drawing abstract conclusions to justify closure on an historical part of my life neither creating a ‘thesis’ for coin tossing as to who’s right or not…
Its about a call to attention of an aspect of sannyas that whichever way you colour it was not and is not forum discussion but ‘feeling’ based.. with an agenda of distilling purity of feeling/consciousness composed of the learnt-behaviour ,self righteous, warbling ones, sublime voice tonality,(oh so passive and spiritual) effeteness, and unspoken investment and deference to individuals who play ‘consciousness raisers’ whilst hiding the shabby details of their own neuroses, whilst doling out neo neo neo super groups that have nothing to do with self revelation and accessibility, through having sat in osho’s front room, made him toast, been his toilet cleaner or who can pump dribbly music out of a loudspeaker for mood changes… its all unspoken and venerational.. and is designed for that with white jump suits to match….
and thus the ladder is spawned….
‘Much of Sannyas’ is not guess work on my part or even blindly refusing to account for others(hundreds thousands, millions??) who are not on my radar… …..its as you say my experience….. but /and fresh and still accessible…to what matters .. to me…
.. but./and/or my considered experience of the close to a score of communes I have visited or been part of….reviewed albeit through my personal lens..then the point is I don’t charge for my opinion and there is no cost or collective experience sold…. therefore when there is not a single espoused forum for dissent within any regularised Osh community.. then the direction of the debate should not ghettoise itself purely within the realms of how I’ feel’… but instead what is dysfunctional….. or did you not ever get a phone call from the ranch telling you to close sannyas news…. or else ? Long live the Party central committee censors…
especially when as you know I have provided precise elements, details, names of these instances which for one reason or another have not been worthy of your front page print.
I have a limited range of effect, but those who have also been close to me over the years know perfectly well these explanations which I put forward are not singular.. their example is widely repeated with evidence and consequences for what image sannyas generates.. It’s a religion for Gods sake !!
. And moreover if they, my explanations, are to be made redundant or invalidated what better way to do that than to say they are just feelings… maybe even imagined or irrelevant. Because sannyas was all about feelings.. then, there is only a catch 22.. until you get to unorthodox responses, challenging group leaders in mid flight. etc etc.. which you probably wouldn’t do after you’ve paid them in cash to help you… by doing that one is already swinging things toward their benefit and deference…of course everyone says how wonderful it all is …they paid… next time a group leader pays you to tell you how wonderful you are… give me a call… they do don’t they?
Anyways about Havel….you have a little bit of history there too P… which you may not know about….
back in 2008 You had given our friend N , scores of copies of old Osho Times….
I was in N’s flat in Prague at the time on my way to an English teaching school run by vegetarian directors…..
anyway…i got to look through them because i remembered an article in a 1989 edition about Havel…and there it was….
On west German TV in 1989 the Osho times reported that Richard Weizsacker the newly installed President of the East German People’s Democratic Republic had phoned Havel to ask what to do about the street protests. (Havel had by this early time already passed into power after the CZ commies.. it was all happening very fast… as i remember).
and on this German TV news item Havel replied to Weizsacker.. that
‘Each day he should laugh for one minute , cry for one minute and sit silently for one minute’
as reported in the Osho times , Osh said to the effect that ; ‘this was the new kind of politician who was the only hope for humanity’….i guess the ashram secretaries would have sent something to Havel in that regard too….
When i turned up at my veggy teaching school they were already (of course !) familiar and practising the no-dimensions meditation, which i continued to offer as part of the EFL learning curve, and we then all started laughing meditation as a beginning of the day exerciser.. which all the Skoda and IBM executives and Prague university profs who i was teaching really loved…..
So maybe Havel knew all about this mediational mulaarkey…at least by his later years.. obviously that old Dalai must have been there for some non flag waving reason too…and Havel’s new wife was notably catholic.. so the whole direction was going towards do-gooding with the foundation et al….
and previously in his life, when his health was damaged too in prison as you know then..
I’m not sure sitting in witnessed silence was de rigeur when doing punishment welding in the frozen czech prison yards under snow…in the 70′s… and by later years he had to fulfil the civic role he was destined for so he even started tempering his attitude with his role…..thus smoking and drinking would have been way down the list of things to pay attention to….and he would have been warned about that a thousand times anyway….
so i’m not sure the cure-all-meditaty whatsit would have fitted ….
still i’m not saying its either /or… just saying for sannyasins to be more street sussed and less daft would be a start…in more places than sannyarse news…
and for the legacy holders of Havel not to go down their meditation centres looking for merry pranksters , solely because its sold as rebellion….they’d end up doing breathing exercises and videos watching for world peace and being told that their girlfriend is ashram property in no time….
quicker than you could say…
Central Party Revolutionary Partisans Anarchist Cadre Meditational Brigade
with all of that said, ultimately what good did it do for the people of Czechoslovakia? A little comparison to Osho and sannyasins— so osho the brilliant and silent(inside) mystic.. also blabbed a lot, BUT what good did he really do? MAYBE and i mean maybe only a handful got to be silent inside, 99.99% it didn’t do bupkis, certainly not at Pune 1, definitely not at the ranch and Pune 2, and afterwards… Osho changed his mind and speeches so many times you could feel the breeze coming from sannyasins faces swishing back and forth. Havel… allowed the Czechoslovakian country be split in two.. they could have challenged themselves to resolve their ethnic differences, or if as you say, with Havel’s guidance it would have been a cake walk to work things out and live relatively happily ever after.. So this worship for Havel i feel is misplaced. He was more than likely a chain smoking narcissist, reciting poetry which he wrote and borrowed heavily from others, trying to live up to the sainthood that was granted him from goose stepping excommies.. Last i heard the Czech Republic and Slovokia are pretty fucking polluted and flat broke, on par with Italy and Greece. Maybe Havel and some good and clever words to say, but they don’t pay the bills, and i’m pretty sure his words bounced off of titanium skulls into the ether of positrons and anti-protons.
and they still eat meat- red meat mostly.
JC.. There is no downside to being intelligent….NONE..zero Zip Zippity Niente NADA..
or transparent…..
or curious…
or unformed
or engaging
or humane..
or admitting it…
or saying you don’t want to be
cos the then other person has a choice to engage you or not
its when you don’t repeatedly ‘expose’ yourself then the trouble starts….cos then there’s only win lose.. not win win…and the slob/hitler loses his ( slobs/hitlers way ) in having to keep maintaining themselves in opposition..its an effort…that really is a waste of time….will to power….and the hidden part of being slob.. a defeated one…
anything less than this, your open willingness, may create challenges which are less hesitant than yours….and less forgiving…
being unwilling and stopping is fine
so is having an alternative, when you get bored of being your previous self… think yo yo’s
but street hustlers only know hustle….nothing else…
if you bought a faulty human dignity product take it back to the shop and say the product only partially works, and you have had trouble using your god given welcome to the planet……
when extrapolating a threatening argument to justify our fears…re hitler etc….vegetarian hindus have violently rioted regularly in India against muslims……so, sure you can’t preform ethical reason or behaviour in people as a future guarantee….its not innate… .but any further veggy discussion requires two questions.
Do you give a shit?
Why not?
Its an ethical Havellian question too for other areas.
still i’m curious what role does Oshoness play in your tune…
Martyn (from Parmartha)
Interesting that N was showing those old Osho Times I gave him around in Prague back in 2008 – and that one really reached a target!
And yes you are right that I did get a phone call from Amrito about SannyasNews/then known as Here and Now magazine, but it was in 1986 post Ranch. (I expect you know this from N?). He said something that even now I regarded as odd. He said “I risked my sannyas” if I continued to publish. Actually he was not being honest, he was saying he would have me excommunicated as far as I understood it when I thought about it. I think excommunication was that one could not visit the Old Man, and maybe a circular sent round saying one was off piste!
And you are right, no-one or nobody has a right to say such a thing. I and only I should be the judge of such a matter. I actually felt that I was showing some genuine sannyasin rebellious spirit..
I continued to publish Here and Now for at least a year or so, and nothing ever happened. I got a letter through to Osho about this evading the Amrito people, Osho was then in Bombay, and received some innocuous reply through the Indians saying I was doing his work, but I should also listen to Hasya! (Amrito’s wife I think at the time).
As always Osho never gave a direction!
More than a bit whack. Anyone can, could take sannyas… – yet another sannyasin would threaten you with withdrawal of your sannyas.
(Poonam (English Medina Osho Commune leader 1982-85) threatened a friend of mine that Sheela would have his Mala.) – the mummy threatening the naughty child with the daddy! LOL
Even in Pune one, Arpana – which you seem familiar with people had their malas “confiscated”! For example I just noticed that someone just wrote over at Osho News in a reminiscence of Pune one:
“And there were all kinds of deadbeats, pot-heads, weirdos and crazies hanging out around the fringes of the sannyasin scene in Poona. Some of them had at some point taken sannyas, but more or less dropped it, a few had even gotten their malas confiscated. They’d get together at more seedy establishments like the Cafe Bund or the Sunder Lodge, smoking it up. ”
I find this very judgemental. I had a room for a while at Sundar Lodge! Some of those guys were a lot closer to Osho’s energy than the organisational mamas and papas of the ashram. Those organisers, as it proved in Orgeon, were much more mad! Any which way there should have been no tradition of confiscating malas, presumably something they wanted at one point to do to me, even though all I wanted to do was print the truth.
This by the way is a good example of why having at least one sannyas site like SN is important.
The articles currently on Osho News are by
Bodhena and called Adventures in Samsara.
They are not bad reminiscences but clearly from a middle of the road sannyasin. But there is no way anyone is invited to comment or criticise or correct on that “cosmopolitan” site. (Even though the software they use could easily be used in that way).
Hence his memoir amongst those who were not there historically gains an unchallenged, but untrue, authenticity. The truth was much broader than his carefully focused recollections.
Swam.
I was swimming in a little pool of my own I’ve started to realise. I’ve come to the conclusion I was like a kid in the first year at grammar, school, who hadn’t started drinking, standing outside the pub watching the fifth an sixth formers carry on. Occasionally picking up bits of gossip. Taking sanyass and meditation turned me from wild extrovert to monkish introvert. I kept myself so much to myself.
Parmartha.. Let me nudge your memory.. I was there in your house, near the door of your studio when you got the, or one of the, threatening phone calls, way back then….You turned to me and appeared very non-plussed ,shocked….
They could only say that then cos you couldn’t give it back to them as they were giving, so it was a power trip for them which you couldn’t win unless you stopped playing by their rules..Osho guidance or not, our mediaeval acquiescence was all a form of hope , ambition, devotion, manipulation….not very nice.. but like love affairs things go wobbly……and Osh knew the game very well…
Memory is always in the now..just like my consciousness…..
… nice i was able to use that article on Havel’s phone call with the czech laughing classes as a preamble of what the nations president was like…and it helped to overcome their initial puzzlement with the value of it….
Aha, Martyn. I remember you much more clearly from the Parliament Hill period which came later (88-90?), the earlier Glasslyn road period is sadly much less clear and I may well have been suffering from passing PTSD just at that moment!
Parmartha, I did not hear the conversation with Amrito, so I do not know the tone of it. But could not “risking your sannyas” mean risking destroying your relationship with Osho both on the “inner planes” and the “outer planes” as it were.
You write “I got a letter through to Osho about this evading the Amrito people, Osho was then in Bombay, and received some innocuous reply through the Indians saying I was doing his work, but I should also listen to Hasya! (Amrito’s wife I think at the time).
As always Osho never gave a direction!”
You sound like you got a direction to listen to Hasya. If I got a letter from Osho saying that, I would listen to Hasya. But maybe you thought the letter was not from the Old Boy.
Thanks Alok.
At that time (1986) I had the feeling that neither of Osho’s Secretariat’s understood what I was doing, or in the case of the Amrito camp there were differences of opinion within it about what I was doing. So in the end I thought I would carry on, as I was mature enough by that time to listen to my own voice. I also thought that if they really wanted to stop me then they would carry out their threat and ask for my mala back, and circulate the centres saying they should have nothing to do with me, as they sometimes did to others in those days. But…
nothing happened. A few high-up people, unlike Amrito and Hasya knew me personally, including Anando who I also wrote to at the time. The letter was never replied to, but I figure some of the myths re what I was doing could have dropped away through her.
For example, perhaps because of their monied background Hasya and Amrito thought that I was somehow “on the make”. As you and many who knew me personally would know, I am actually then and now by way of being an anti capitalist, and those first sannyasnews papers were on a model of Community work totally at variance with any money making. I supported the early magazines actually by running a sannyas disco at the time and never intended or did make a dime.
Later Devageet who also knew me a little has had some contact with me. At the time (1986) he told a mutual friend that he thought I was “Beyond the pale”, but when he left the Inner Circle himself he actually had a number of email exchanges, etc with me and as I remember sort of approved when I took up the nitrous story.
Kamala, Martyn’s lover in 1986 made an important point to me of Amrito’s intervention. She knew about the Dutch Rajneesh Times “asking’ Amrito whether they should or should not reprint I think something I had written and the answer was of course no. But as she said, we no longer have to ask anyone, we have simply to ask ourselves. That was the emancipation that having lived through the Ranch period gave us.
When Osho was denied access to the UK on the world tour I wrote to the Home Secretary an open letter which was published at the time saying how absurd his reasons for not allowing Osho into the UK were. When Amrito, Maneesha and others read it, I think they realised they had “rushed to judgement” about me, about both where I was coming from, and the quality of my journalism. Maneesha asked for permission to reprint the letter in her own book which was done.
So all in all, I think I made the right call, I think at the time they just did not understand me, now they realise that I was and am an independent thinker, and for example share their view of the development of the ashram and do oppose the “Indian” mind on all that.
Well okay, I just wonder if you considered the possibility that a copy of Here and Now was shown to Osho, that he considered that the magazine would “damage his work”, and that Amrito was just passing on Osho’s message. I appreciate you dislike Amrito et al, but if I thought he was relaying Osho’s message, I would hesitate to ignore it.
Just speculating, but maybe Here and Now damaged the work by “washing the dirty linen in public” thus alienating potential newcomers.
Alok,
by that time, 1986, the “movement” was in a total mess publicity wise, as it could not simply sweep under the table what went down on the Ranch. Those who became sannyasins after 1986, it has been argued, were of a special breed, and this argument I would agree with. They came to Osho knowing the difficulties of his organisation’s reputation, but fell in love nonetheless with the energy around him and trusted just that.
It was always a surprise to critics of Sannyas News and Here and Now around that time that quite a number of new people got to Pune because of the publication, some of that was by my personal recommendation at the time to enquirers.
errata correction of facts :
I mistakenly wrote Weiszacker (West German pres) when actually it was Hans Modrow who was the East German Chancellor and who spoke in person to Havel.
Martyn
happy Xmas to all our readers……
http://www.videobb.com/watch_video.php?v=RTeVlPxB2ArD
truth without humour isn’t truth at all…
and love without laughter is…sex with the wrong person…
if you watch the films of hitler, often he can be seen laughing or smiling, usually while talking to one of his SS men, petting his dog, or while getting good news from the eastern front. so, under your definition, hitler too was definitely in love, as i stated previously. his earlier mass rallies you can see the dickhead gazing intently up to the heavens, raising his hands, like he was praying.. he too was a very religious man…. under the traditional definition of religiousness. and he also was a vegetarian, as it’s widely known.. I’ll take an ordinary bloke who eats meat, swears, insults, who’s a little portly, plain looking with crooked teeth, who rolls out of bed late most days, but also uses some common sense and is a wee bit compassionate than any poet, or mystic….
JC .. there are so many rubbish aspects of what Havel did…i won’t name them just yet… but the division of the country is not up there on my list…..not remotely…
but the state funeral was utterly disgusting … the bland leading the bland with huge fat archbishops too .. nasty nasty stuff..political trash to the end….
as for your other arguments, the economic one this time….we perhaps might ask the Czechs for a vox pop interview on that…and if they looked to him for solutions, which in turn denied the validity of their mass candle lit memories…
great that you don’t venerate … he would be the first to crack a beer and light a smoke to chat over the discrepancy….
on a personality level :narcissism. definitely…his girlfriends or his wives would likely have had a lot to agree with you about his egoism..
masochist.. even if its true… so what.. thats (was)his problem …if you see that then…. since when did you copy someone out of a superiority complex to them.. ?
But its the credible if slight examples of ‘transparency’ and admission to others and oneself which changes everything.. and makes the road open to accessibility between people….(not even being egoless..that is also turned into ambition, because its a fixed place, a goal….. of not silent egoless huge egos)…….
accountability that’s what we can do as people… and if we don’t we remain two dimensional… heartless, power mad, defiant, religious… and nobody else gets to vibe off the real you..
ultimately its what you use to engender your own code of intelligent behaviour as ultimate or determining your life.. and thats often changeable in use… unless you live in utah , texas, wyoming etc etc when its always the same
…think tumbleweeds of human stupidity then think american mid west…Ghengis Khan would have never even bothered invading them….cos they really have nothing to offer.. and it would have reminded him too much of home….
and its transparency or calling to account…
so that if you are a bastard… american clint eastwood style .. you say ‘make my day’….and wait for someone to stop you .. if they can….now you may well extrapolate that to countless examples of human behaviour… but you know that human survival is as much dependent on someone somewhere now being humane as you being (god forbid) awful.. not because they thought about it… but because nurture is also part of the end result…when you take away everyday ignorant socially bred unaddressed manipulation…with crossed eyes and a hicksville accent..
its called inspired revelation.. with a tinge of uplifting romantic aspiration thrown in… and you do it because you can’t be otherwise…. you’re just not dumb that way….
but its up to you to make 2+2 make 5…
and i write because its a window of potential between people not because i underwrite the whole made up nostalgia trip of Havel’s death…
and ahemm .. as a prime example of what not saying what the agenda was, until later….
you get Osho admitting that he encouraged surrendering , and trusting in Pune 1 so that he could get the commune together and move into ranch style grandiosity, with a complete absence of frank unthreatening exchange between those who doled out therapeutic orders and those who swallowed them….
that nasty stuff has persisted in sannyas for years. its all language based and very tricky and insidious.. i have names and details…..
.. Veeresh even plays Clint Eastwood scripts to himself and his therapists as training manuals (ok i made that one up)….because its for the greater good… whenever someone asks you to sacrifice yourself for the greater good… watch out!!….and ask if they have sacrificed themselves first… then wish them good luck and run like hell….
Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian marxist philosopher, in this article from the London Review of Books some years back,
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n21/slavoj-zizek/attempts-to-escape-the-logic-of-capitalism
points out how easily Havel, the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela are appropriated by western capitalism. Zizek, the Elvis of cultural theory, no doubt will have more things to say since Havel’s death.
Like to briefly mention Christopher Hitchens – I never knew he attacked the sannyas movement even though I’ve been a sannyasin for over 30 years. I only found out here on this site. Terry Eagleton has often pointed out Hitchen’s superficial take on international politics and his Islamophobia. Hitchen’s was obviously not in the same league as Edward Said or Robert Fiske. Hitchen’s was willing to dine with the wealthiest and greediest on this planet according to Eagleton.
You said.
Hitchen’s was obviously not in the same league as Edward Said or Robert Fiske. Hitchen’s was willing to dine with the wealthiest and greediest on this planet according to Eagleton.
Only takes one person, to find fault and that means the individual is absolutely worthless.
Yeah. Oshos worthless as well. Some stuff happened round him that some people didn’t like. He must be useless and a fake then?
Oops. Did I say Osho was a fake? Hmmm …
Big difference between Osho and Hitchens. Osho took on the thugs who ran the ‘home of the brave’. He wasn’t into cultural hegemony. Hitchens strongly supported the war in Iraq and the ‘noble’ lies – straight out of Plato’s Republic- about the weapons of mass destruction. Frighten the masses and they become obedient. There is a character in the Republic called Thrasymachus who points out that justice is whatever serves those in power. The masses need to be fed their noble lies. Obedience follows. Socrates takes on the state of Athens. Familiar story? The virtuous meditative soul versus the corrupt politicians. I am also referring to Plato’s Republic because Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Iraq war, was a neo-conservative who studied under Allan Bloom at Chicago University. Bloom and his cronies were disciples of Leo Strauss. Everyone has heard of the term Straussians. Many Straussians have ended up in the White House in important administrative positions. They knew their Plato backwards and subscribed to the philosophy of noble lies. These are the people that Hitchens supported. At the time I marched down the streets of Melbourne with thousands condemning this war. ‘Hitchens’ had became a dirty word.
In the bleak winter of 83, when I was having a coffee in Antelope, after a long bus trip from Portland, I met a couple of ‘devotees of the noble lie’. They wondered, on hearing my accent, what language was spoken in Australia. One made this astute comment – ‘Didn’t you people fight against us during the Vietnam War?’. I thought I had landed on the moon. Later that same day I was to meet the Lord of the Full Moon. Laughter mixed with tears…
We all know why the US went into Iraq. Without control of the Middle East the Empire collapses. Christopher Titmuss, the Buddhist monk who has set up meditation retreats all over the world, goes regularly into the West Bank to offer some support to Palestinian families. (You can find an interview with Titmuss on Conscious TV online.)
Hitchens’ hero was Orwell. How ironic then that H sold out to Big Brother in the final chapter.
Sorry me old cock. Didn’t mean that to sound like a pop at you. More a gripe about generalised glass is half empty attitudes.
My Bad.
roman,
osho said:
“the lie of the awakened man is more true than the truth of the unawakened man”
how would you say that relates to plato`s idea of the “noble lie”?
Phew, what a question! First I’ll consult my tea leaves. I might also do a spot of Dynamic to shake up the energy a bit, though I’m not too good at the Hoo Hoo’s, but for you I’ll make an effort. I may need to go into retreat for a 3 month Vipassana meditation. Staring at a blank wall always helps. While I’m doing this you may want to light some incense, ring some bells and walk backwards around your room to create the necessary vibrations. Then and only then might I be able to give you the answer, and then and only then, might you be ready to receive my answer. Seriously Frank, do you come here often? We’ve got to stop meeting this way.
By the way I didn’t really write that heavy duty pedantic Socratic dialogue that inspired you to ask me this profound question which leaves me in a state of absolute aporia. I was channeling Madame Blavatsky. When she drops in again I’ll put the question to her. Stay tuned.
Good good, good vibrations- the Beach Boys 1964
In case Roman you dont have the reference or any other reader here this is where
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/538
we published Krishna Prem’s letter to Christopher Hitchins. It clearly shows that Hitchins was not up to doing a proper report of the ashram at the time, whilst other journalists such as Bernard Levin (of the Times) did a much better job. In fact it seems like he drowned any sensitivity to what was going on by hanging out in the Blue Diamond with a bottle of scotch. Yes and it is a surprise that so few people realised at his death that he was so off-beam and shallow on the seventies spiritual search. We saw nothing in the recent laudatory obituaries that indicated this.
hitchens was just a self important btitish public-school educated drunk.
thank god there`s no one like that at the resort.
Give the guy a break. Like criticising a camel for not being a thoroughbred race horse.
Thankyou,
What a forthright letter by Krishna Prem and what a genuine human being. I’m reminded of the occasion back in late 88 early 89 when I was in Buddha Hall and Maneesha had read something pertaining to what Krishna Prem had said about Osho. Something about Osho being a scoundrel. Osho made Krishna Prem stand up in Buddha Hall and apologize to all the sannyasins present for misrepresenting him. Now we all now that Osho thought very highly of Gurdjieff who has often been referred to as a scoundrel. So what was going on in Buddha Hall that evening? I still wonder. Another serious joke highlighting the love between a master and his disciples? The event certainly blew my mind. I’ll get a copy of Krishna Prem’s book.
that was an odd story,because didnt osho get the wrong krishna prem to stand up,
but the wrong krishna prem was too bowled over by the group energy to defend himself?
he had been reported by some prefects to osho for saying “i lie like my master”.
but he got the wrong guy so,far from being a gurdjieffian interlude,it was more of a complete cock-up,with people telling tales to daddy and the wrong guy gets it in the neck and the grasser gets brownie points.
and that`s enlightenment?
no doubt they will all write it up on osho news saying what a marvellous enlightening time they all had.
would you buy a used zen stick from that lot of nutters?
i reckon you`d have to be a pothead,pisshead or a wierdo of some sort,no?
Frankly, Frank I don’t remember, but perhaps American KP is reading this right now, lurking in the background, and maybe he ought to tell us what really happened that night. For the record. The akashic ones of course. Was he called into a special meeting at Lao Tzu later that same evening to explain why he stood up? C’mon KP, speak up, we know you’re reading this. Funny that we are so easily sucked in to the Zen trick idea isn’t it Frank. And yes, maybe I was…
i never was too keen on that whole zen thing.
a bunch of unmarried”celibate”blokes with shaved heads from an ultra authoritarian,macho militaristic culture holed up in a monastery in the mountains,stuffing themselves with porridge asking each other daft questions and giving even dafter replies, whacking each other with sticks,slapping each other chopping each others fingers off,killing guys for looking at girls,slicing up cats for kicks etc and the masters always got to beat up on the younger guys(and bog knows what else)….
pasta al funghi and a coupl glasses of red with your beloved by candlelight in zorbas and then back to hers for a few hours of tantra it wasnt!!
Thank god for Sannyas News. It is about the only sannyasin website that has anything interesting in it blogwise. All the others represent recycled garbage and tow the party line.
I’d like to wish all contributors a very good and prosperous new year and like to remind all of you that you are read by more than a few.
My prediction for the coming year is that this site will begin to gain the respect it deserves.
Let’s have some stats, Parmartha. How many people read SN? How many people read the Caravanserai?
Exact figures I leave to Dharmen to provide.
We have about 1100 hits every four weeks. My feeling is that Sagara has part of the truth. I know several old sannyasins who have said to me they “check” our site from time to time, but dont contribute, just to keep the truth on the straight and narrow.
I myself dont see it as just a “club” for half a dozen vocal people – as someone once said in describing the site.
Thanks Sagara. It helps to get some positive feedback once in a while.
SN & caravanserai is the best all – inclusive -interactive – site . . I feel ( I could be wrong ) its a lesser read site & even lesser writers . . maybe like you say ” several old sannyasins who have said to me they “check” our site from time to time, but dont contribute, just to keep the truth on the straight and narrow.” & the rest don’t contribute for the sheer fear of eventually being exposed . . anyway for now I am grateful for this platform / runway !
Respect for what? For making a forum for (ex)sannyasins to vent their endless frustration that Osho did not live up to their naive and un-qualified projections? And endlessly harping on the same tiredsome subjects. Osho’s alleged drug-abuse (the Calder/Parmartha theory) that – by the time – seems to have become an established ‘fact’ although neither C nor P have any substantial evidence or inside knowlegde. Endless moanings and complains about the ‘horrors’ of Rajneeshpuram, although most sannyasins at the time saw it as a privillige and ‘honor’ to be there and cried when they had to leave. And completely ignoring the agressiveness and hostility from the surrondings as well as from the American authorities.
A site where the only thing that’s taboo is positive talk about spirituality, meditation and growth. And the only place where you can find utter nonsense like this post by ‘Prem’ Martyn, comparing Osho (comparision is by the way always stupid) with a chain-smoker and war supporter like Havel whose ‘revolution’ did not not make any real changes except introducing the pseudo-freedom of market economy.
So my wish for the new year would rather be that ‘sannyasnews’ gets recognized as the fake and phony site it is, although ofc very genuine in its constant anti-sannyas, anti-osho views.
Normally I like to keep a positive, constructive tone when posting on the net, but the dishonesty and pretense of this site is an utter disgrace. Always reminding me of George Harrison’s words about the people who are “So hateful of anyone who’s happy and free, they live all their life without looking to see, the Light that has lighted the world”.
you talk about rajneeshpuram as if you heard it second hand.. i was there, i spent 13 months there… saw enough, even a redneck cowboy tried to run me over on election day.. went head to head with the “guardian angels” or “anals” as we used to call them.. had my encounters with sheela.. sure i had a blast otherwise, but almost all of us were naive, or afraid to speak out. our own fault.. but the nuts and bolts of the operation are arranged by only a handful of insiders(Sheela and her gang, plus osho) maybe a couple of others. 99.99% of us were not privy to their insane plans, you only found out if you were friends of the clique and then it trickles down. I had enough contact from those involved to know things were at least a little off kilter, that and stories from the Pune 1 days told me a bigger picture… Denial is a purely human attribute.. one thing existence should have wiped from our genetic structure before we evolved from monkeys.. another big goof by the Cosmic thing
If you hate this site so much, why do you spend energy observing, thinking, and commenting on it? Something must be drawing you to it, and I doubt it is just the energy of a Holy Crusade against blasphemous sannyasin websites. Remember, hate and attraction are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps deep down you also wish to have freedom to express some other side of you, one that is a little less sunny and bright, and more of the night.
Teertha – Are you the gatekeeper? Does Bodhi Heeren’s hair smell? Is he/she not allowed in? And what’s with the Cartesian dualities? Hate/Love. Sunny/Dark. Positive/Negative. Hate/Attraction. Are there only two sides to that coin of yours? Remember the discourse about the Gap? The space between – the space where meditation happens. Isn’t this platform about the Gap? About maybe creating the gap. A gap in-progress. Doesn’t the very name Caravanserai mean something like an inn where caravan’s stop – between journeying – before heading off again as solitaries – a place to refresh and exchange stories about their travels. To drink and laugh and cry and bemoan the perils of the desert landscape. To function indeed as the Gap. Outside the wind howls and the sand covers the tracks. Inside is the space to share whatever the journey has tossed into the paths of the traveller. And fights may happen. And song and regret and tears. For tomorrow the caravans pack up and head back out and the inn awaits their return as welcoming as ever.
‘Bodhi’ ‘heeren’ posted here because he couldn’t find the ‘ submit your post ‘ button on osho times or oshonews.. all he could find was ‘Submit’… which put him into a dreadful foaming ‘temper’ (circa 1980 ish) from which he could only ‘escape’ by being ‘temporarily’ negative.
As a solution and so as to create ‘positive’ ‘harmony’ I have decided ‘to’ (‘?’)offer him my ‘sincere’ ‘apologies’ (‘!!!???’ )in an old Pune commune ‘- ?$£%&*!!
– ‘style, kiss and make up ..which if i remember rightly goes like this…
ahemm…
I agree to sleep with his very pretty girlfriend under the pretext of taking risks, while he thinks I’m taking liberties, and his girlfriend spends half the weekend in her birthday suit finding her centre, whereupon she explains at length that she doesn’t care who’s more spiritual, or loving as long as the love of Pather therapist tells her its ok then it must be at £50 an hour.and if the knob works well… she’s easy…
Everybody then swaps feelings and partners way into the middle of the next month until they realise that they used the word ‘witness’ and ‘osho’ when what they actually meant was ‘knob’ and ‘legs akimbo’.. and ‘darn good oral work’
We all sit down and ponder heavily, while listening to a video on the ‘nan pong of ching chong’ simultaneously reciting our awareness mantra….’gosh’ ‘i’m now not under stress but in my heart, and fulfilling my life’s work, and is the pillow a bit too soft to witness properly with and i’m not making it up as i go along am I??? for my own benefit, unlike those non spiritual bastards who ..only …do… it …for …their own ummmmm..oh… bother .. (i’ll get back to you on that…needs a bit more excusing )
and .. ‘i’m in a spiritual brotherhood and whats yours is mine and whats mine is not as good as yours…but i can’t admit to that…’ …while taking the pretty ex girlfriend to the abortion clinic, because actually you’re not as big a shit as the laugh of pather said you were….not at all…….
BH…..aren’t you ‘ Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’….
I bet i get more collaborative revealing laughs out of my religion than you do from yours….
try that for a comparison….
Rajni- lay off the spiked lassies will you. you remind me of the drunken fool telling stories in his favorite pub all the while falling off his bar stool while trying drink his whiskey. The last train to Pune left some time ago, looks like you need to hitch a ride, careful though, too much story telling and they’ll leave you on the side of the road.
i’ll drink to that- Skol!!
BH . . if what you write / feel is positive . . then ( to me ) this site is probably the only site which is natural / authentic as much as maybe possible . . btw let me tell you that SN does not publish nearly half of what I would like to share . . as they (even though I dont feel / think so ) probably find it offensive / inconvenient / whatever . .
The alternative is there shall be no site where “negative opinions” can be aired.
This is a sannyasin site, not an Osho site. It is for new sannyasins, old sannyasins, ex sannyasins, sympathisers, someone who is now in love with Osho but will fall out with him in the future, someone who hates Osho now but who will one day fall in love with him… etcetera.
I agree there is a lot of nonsense on this site. But I think there needs to be somewhere to express doubts. Osho once said “Trust doubt.”
There have been many worthwhile discussions on this site.
Keerti, who sued OIF, came on the site once and there was a discussion about the intellectual property issues. There has been a good discussion about the Humaniversity which mainly teaches behavioural techniques, not meditation. It is very easy to take sannyas. Anyone can do it. There is a lot of psychotherapy around Osho and it is easy for therapists to exploit the vulnerable. There needs to be somewhere to discuss these things.
If the internet had existed in the time of Rajneeshpuram, I doubt that the ranch would have ended in the way it did.
If you have an open site where anyone can post you are going to get a lot of nonsense as people express their unconsciousness. The alternative is to go back to the past where people had no opportunity to express their doubts and criticisms. And I think of the two alternatives, that is the worst alternative.
Bodhi Herren,
I have only ever said that Osho choose to use nitrous oxide on a regular basis and given the references for that from his personal dentist, Devageet and dental assistants to back that up. The dental sessions could have easily been to wake his rather straight inner core of temporal disciples up. The three nitrous books are clearly dictated on the gas so it is a fact. A sanitised account of Osho’s life and interests may just appeal to your sort of consciousness but that may be something for you to look at.
There are those who have experimented with hallucgenics who hearing of Osho’s interest in that area may well find him much more interesting as a teacher/master.
I resent the association with Calder. He has very different views to me.
On your other point I have been a sannyasin since 1975 and continue to be one.
i think sannyasnews is just a club for “deadbeats,potheads,wierdos and crazies”who somehow managed to drag themselves off the floor at sunder lodge and cafe deloser and other dens of iniquity outside the gate and now are bitterly and negatively attacking all the good sannyasins like the guy who wrote that righteous article on o news,who instead of being negative and unconscious,were enlightenedly surrendering to the pilheads, pissheads,sexheads,gasheads, powerheads,crimheads,wierdos and crazies on the inside of the gate!
I liked it much better outside of the gate! I “enjoyed” living at Sundar Lodge. Strange this guy who reported we were “Deadbeats, potheads, weirdos and crazies” obviously did not venture there if at all. He would have found me, an ashram worker living next to Osho’s cowman (who milked the cow at 5am each morning), and really cute loving female sannyasins who got up for lecture better than me!
I never before heard Cafe Delight being referred to in that way he does…! It was perhaps the only place in Poona at the time any real discussion went on, discussion it seemed was banned by those ashram functionaries! And not only that, discussion that went on into the night!
its funny what the memory can do with some people.
that guy who wrote the article must have done the electro-shock enlightenment intensive or something…..
Did you know Sadhu and Butty, Dyann and his brother Bhavitt Swam?
Finally some sane comment from bodhi heeren. . .
chetna’s upset that her bubble has been burst by us, in telling the complete truth about sannyas sannyasins and osho…. oh me so sad chetna has head still stuck….
I am looking for one single sannyasin..new or ancient, famous therapists or managers; who has this much humility to say, ” Who knows i have not understood Osho properly.”
This arrogance, this false bravedo, to read or listen Osho a bit and think oneself as best disciple as well as aware human being is one of the cause, world at large ignores Osho and His people.
Sannyas needs an introspection..self analysation..self check….Disciples cannot live at the glory of perfect master nor the ex. disciples can put all their complexes on Osho`s head.
After all, Master is not a bus driver who will bring young and old, sick, healthy and drunkards to their cities.
Keep us informed as to how you get on when you actually get round to acting on these exhortations.
PS. (Move these words around to form a well known phrase or sentence.
Breath, holding, not, my.)
Not upset, Jay. I am reading this blog for that exact reason to see people’s experiences as I was not there. Although most of the time nonsense is going on.
Sannyasins and rebellion: Peter Sloterdijk, one of the best known European philosophers, spent seven years in India during the 70s studying eastern philosophy. He took sannyas and spent five years in Poona. ‘Neither Sun nor Moon’ is a recent publication in English. The books is over 300 pages long and he is being interviewed by Hans-Jurgen Heinrichs. Sloterdijk is an iconoclastic and provocative thinker. As the blurb on the backcover says, Sloterdijk ‘ is an extraordinary philosopher as much at ease with current French Theory as with Kant, Heidegger and Indian mystic Osho…’ Sloterdjik, in the interviews, compares Osho with the great intellectual and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, with Lacan coming off second best. If you want a light (as in not-light) read try the first of his trilogy ‘Bubbles’ which is the 21st Century’s answer to Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’. His 1983 publication of ‘Critique of Cynical Reason’ became the best-selling German book of philosophy since World War Two. Sloterdijk’s ideas reject the existence of dualisms. His books are published by Semiotext distributed by the MIT Press. For those of you who read German there are articles online where he talks about Osho.
roman,
the guy is a genius.
that`s what i call proper philosophy.
have you seen him live?…
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An epiphany as Joyce, the great lover of humanity, would say. Is Mary Poppins a dangerous Magi? No-one knows where she comes from but she raises everyone’s spirits. A better psychoanalyst then Freud. No maternal or paternal superego here, how refreshing and how unlike some who claim to have the ‘complete knowledge of Osho, sannyas and sannyasins.’
The chimney-sweeper reminds me of Brechts Threepenny Opera: ‘Do not run after luck too arduously, because it might happen that you will overrun it and that luck will thus stay behind.’
Did Osho say something about the object of desire eluding our grasp no matter what we do to attain it?
Appreciate your comments on Zen. I ‘m still in an aporia about Plato so I’ve left him in the cave.
Cheers
it’s one thing to be a brilliant thinker, another to be totally immersed in life.. stay away from brilliant thinkers, you will only end up babbling incoherently in some god forsaken university, all the while trying to shag some pretty little college girl, getting busted for sexual harassment and living the rest of your life peddling joke books on a nearby street corner.
jc is that what happened to you?
i always wondered..
the guys` philosophy sounds like a load of cobbled together mumbojumbo,more cant than kant,really.
but he managed to blag his way into academia,getting those clowns to pay his lunch while he mouths off about anything he likes.
respec` for that.
He was taught by the best and he was an aware disciple. I’ve met a few like him. Some disciples only spent short periods in Poona or Oregon but Osho knew them. I loved the way Osho would sometimes refer to Kant in some early discourses. There are some wonderful books in Osho’s library. I liked the way Osho marked passages in the books he read with scholarly neatness. Passages are marked with single or double dots depending on their importance. A humbling experience to see what Osho did read.
plato,kant,dick van sloterdyke,mary poppins….
wow man,you sure know a lot about philosophy…
me too..
i learnt most of it here…..
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Roman,you may well know that Deleuze the deconstuctivist disciple of Derrida was also a fan of Eckharte Tolle for when you reduce language’s universality there occurs the question…now what….I think we all pay lip service to these things especially as sannyasins when we would be better off refining our playfulness instead..mostly the playfulness of language is not used to its greatest effect..notice the heavy handed way that we all have to understand through reams of impenetrable guff how to become lightened in spirit etc..just rubbish…I’d go as far as suggesting that tip top therapists meditators modelled a huge amount of linguistic sincerity on the manner and intent of Osho’s delivery.Even here in SN there are those who just cannot create enough ludicrousy or ridicule ,so well used elsewhere in everyday life, to make sense of things to sponsor the ‘religious way’. So much is edited here from me in that vein that makes me wonder just what the intent of SN is ..as I’ve said before the minstrel is a much more potent force than the philosopher because the minstrel’s concerns are accessible where the philosopher’s and the religionist require vetting and collusion…there’s no room for hecklers …whereas in the minstrelsy all heckling is grist for the mill.
Woops I meant Derrida was a fan of Tolle…as Deleuze smoked himself into suicide ..way before Tolle burst upon the scene.As for Slavo Zisjsek, he sounds like a potty professor on speedc.
martyn
who are all these guys?
are they all characters out of “bohemian rhapsody”…..?
…..they do the fandango!!!
you are right of course.
any performer will tell you thatwhen the hecklers start,it means at least someone is paying attention!
hecklers give the performer a special opportunity to respond with wit.
if they just call the police or a lawyer,then the
chance is gone…..
and what he said about the drinking of tea : so important to brits and zenners alike..
Here’s what the late playwright had to say about drinking of the leaf:
‘When I was outside, I didn’t understand the cult of tea that exists in prison, but I wasn’t here long before grasping its significance and succumbing to it myself. . . . Tea, it seems to me, becomes a kind of material symbol of freedom here: (a) it is in effect the only fare that one can prepare oneself, and thus freely: when and how I make it is entirely up to me. In the preparation of it, I realize myself as a free being, as it were, capable of looking after myself. (b) Tea – as a sign of private relaxation, of a brief pause in the midst of the hubbub, of rumination and private contemplation – functions as the external, material attribute of a certain unbridling of the spirit and thus as a companion in moments of focused inner freedom. (c) The world of freedom considered as leisure time is represented by tea in the opposite – in the extroverted and therefore the social – sense: sitting down to a cup of tea here is a substitute for the world of bars, wine rooms, parties, binges, social life, in other words again, something you choose yourself and in which you realize your freedom in social terms. . . . I drink it every day. . . . I look forward to it, and consuming it (which I schedule carefully, so it does not become a formless and random activity) is an extremely important component in my daily ”self-care” program. From ”Letters to Olga.” ‘