Nitya Prem suggests…President Jimmy Carter, former President Ford, Henry Kissinger, a priest and a hippy were in a plane together. There was a storm, and the pilot rushes into the passenger cabin. He says, “We’ve been hit by a lightning bolt and the plane is going down. The co-pilot and crew are dead. Here are four parachutes, sort out among yourselves who gets them.” With that he bails out. Jimmy Carter speaks first: “As President the fate of the free world is on my shoulders. I’m sure you’ll agree I should survive”, and he dons a parachute and jumps. Ford speaks next: “Well, I never did anyone any harm, and I have a golf date next week,” and he bails out with a parachute. Then Kissinger says, “I am the smartest man in the world, I should live”, and he jumps out. The priest then says to the hippy, “I have had a fulfilled life and am not afraid to meet my maker, go ahead my son”, to which the hippy replies, “But Father, there are two parachutes left, because the smartest man in the world just jumped with my rucksack.”
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I find this funny and think that this could also have been said by Osho in a given situation:
“I don’t give a flying flamingo what your view is…” – John Bercow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNk8ii00IXk
Just imagine how he could have delivered it – and to whom….
Interesting topic:
Why did Osho use jokes for his teaching?
One needs a very high developed intelligence to explain this.
Maybe Dominic can do?!
Well, I think it certainly livened up the discourses, it folded a few surprises into the lectures and got people to wake up, it energised people. Maybe in a way it’s like enlightenment, the punch line in a joke, when you “get it”, could be like the moment of enlightenment.
But I think also jokes are a source of joy, and Osho was big on joy. It’s an art to make people laugh, and he was pretty good at getting his timing right. I think the discourses would have been rather dry without the jokes.
If you ask me, NP, I would say these little jokes are a preparation for the ultimate joke.
Something like cleaning the throat.
You know what I mean?
I see you offering the banana of flattery to the ‘speaker’ (best Krishnamurti impersonation) and his monkey mind.
Don’t be a broken Haiku, Satchit.
Have a go yourself, with your highly developed clown chakra!
Don’t worry, nobody will eat you, because you’ll taste funny!
You know. Dom, I’m not a native speaker.
I tried hard to be funny, but I always failed.
This is my destiny here.
You “always failed”. Hey, that’s no joke!
Well, here at the Osho Comedy Club, laughter is the best medicine, after opiates and sex of course, for a healthy immune system.
You must have tried translating, still no luck? You may have bad karmady, or it could be genetic, or you might be German!
On the subject of genetics
New discoveries within our DNA:
The surprising discovery by the Russians explains many “paranormal” phenomena…Russian scientists reprogrammed human DNA using words and frequencies. Genetics has finally explained previously mysterious phenomena like clairvoyance…intuition…recovery…the “supernatural” light…Aura… and so on.
The discovery was made by Russian scientists who dared to enter DNA territory that Western researchers couldn’t explore. Western scientists have limited their research to 10% of our DNA, the part responsible for building proteins. They considered the remaining 90% of DNA as genetic “waste”.
On the contrary, a group of Russian scientists, led by biophysicist and molecular biologist Pyotr Garyaev, decided that so much of DNA could only contain valuable information. To explore the mysteries of this unexplored continent, they teamed up with linguists and geneticists to conduct an unusual study aimed at testing the effects of vibration and words on human DNA.
They discovered something completely unexpected: Data is stored in our DNA the same way it is stored in a computer’s memory. Furthermore, it turns out that our genetic code uses grammar and syntax rules in a way that is very close to human language! They also discovered that even DNA base pairs structures follow rules of grammar and syntax. Seems like all our human languages are just verbalizations of our DNA.
Changing DNA with spoken words and phrases!:
The most surprising discovery a group of scientists has made is that living human DNA can be modified and rearranged by spoken words and phrases. The key to changing DNA with words and phrases lies in using the right frequency. Using modulated radio frequencies and light frequencies, the Russians have been able to influence cellular metabolism and even correct genetic defects. Using frequencies and language the group did amazing results. For example, they have succeeded in transferring patterns of information from one DNA set to another. Eventually, they were even able to reprogram cells for a different genome, without scalpel, without making a single cut, they turned frog embryos into salamander embryos.
The work of Russian scientists provides a scientific explanation for why suggestion and hypnosis have such a powerful effect on people. Our DNA is naturally programmed to “respond” to words. Esoterists and spiritual leaders have always known this. All forms of suggestion and “thinking energy” are largely based on this phenomenon.
The study conducted by Russian scientists also helps explain why these mysterious methods do not work equally well for all who use them. Because a good ‘communication’ with DNA requires the right frequency, people with developed internal processes are more able to consciously create a ‘communication’ channel with DNA.
People with developed consciousness will need fewer devices (for using radio or light frequencies). Scientists believe that with the development of consciousness, people will be able to achieve results merely by using their words and thoughts.
DNA and intuition: How intuition works and why humans can now use it:
Russian scientists also discovered the genetic basis of intuition — or, as it’s also known, “hypercommunication.” Hypercommunication is a term used to describe a situation where a person suddenly receives information from an external source, not from their personal knowledge base. Nowadays, this phenomenon has become increasingly rare. This is probably due to the fact that the three major factors that inhibit hypercommunication (tension, anxiety and brain hyperactivity) have become extremely common.
For some living beings, like ants, hypercommunication is closely “woven” into their daily existence. Did you know that when the “Queen” of ants is physically removed from the colony, her “subjects” continue to work and build according to plan? However, if she is killed, all work stops immediately. Obviously, as long as the “Queen” of ants is alive, she has access to the consciousness of her colony members through hypercommunication.
Now that Russian scientists have discovered the biological foundations of hypercommunication, people will likely be able to make up the lost skill, they can learn how to use it again. Scientists have discovered that our DNA can create what’s called “magnetic worm holes”. These “wormholes” are miniature versions of the bridges that form near-extinct stars (they’re called the Einstein-Rosen Bridges).
The Einstein-Rosen bridges connect different regions of the universe and allow for the transmission of information beyond space and time. If we could consciously activate and manage these connections, then we could use our DNA to transmit and receive information from the universe’s data network. We could also reach out to other members of the network.
The results of Russian scientists and researchers are so revolutionary that it is simply impossible to believe. At present we already have isolated examples of people using certain methods, at least to some extent. For example, those who excel in healing or telepathy. According to many scientists who are actively interested in Russian DNA research, the results of these studies reflect important changes occurring with our Earth, Sun and Galaxy. These changes affect human DNA and the development of human consciousness in ways we can only fully understand in a distant future.
Yeah. Shaktipat is also said to be DNA changing.
However, this might be more difficult to integrate. And one still has to grow on one’s wisdom level.
Imo then the DNA changing via ‘the word level frequency’ seems to be more of a ‘co-operative effort’.
I fear many of the souls here haven’t appreciated the joke, Lokesh.
Very clever….
Dom, there are different kinds of laughter. There is the laughter of the herd. Do you belong to the herd?
And there is the laughter of the depth. Do you have depth?
Everything and nothing, Satchmo.
Yes, Dom, you are the new man, the ubermensch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCDxHc7AUYA
I hope not, I might end up in a mental asylum with syphilis and nihilism!
Interesting video, Satchit, I may have to look more deeply into Nietzsche.
Satchit, don’t give NP more to research, study, analyse, memorise and quote from! His head will explode!
Yes, NP, Nietzsche is interesting.
I was surprised that the expression “be a joke to yourself” is original from him, not from Osho.
Osho spoke a whole book about him.
Title: ‘Zarathustra, A God That Can Dance’.
From Quora…I quote:
“When you segregate the joke from the other content of the discourse, you are missing something more valuable and just settling on jokes…Jokes were a desert after the meal. Jokes were to bring back people from the silent peaks/valleys/mountains/oceans and bring them to the mundane world again, so that they don’t become egoistic personality again. They remain earthly, and grounded.”
Maybe worth considering?
What kind of humourist was Osho?
The one with the funny jokes that made everyone laugh or the one who made fun of Nivedano?
Although rumours describe me as too witty and light-hearted, I am aware of the centrality of suffering in spiritual research, certainly as I was born a stone’s throw from the Vatican State, with all those crosses and almost no guitar, but also because I am aware that a Buddha, at least in two cases, was born out of Zorba’s pain.
If in the first case described by history, of such human flourishing, the definitive existential outcome is enclosed in the phrase “Appo Deepo Bhava”, in the second case, 2500 years later, understanding seems to have taken a further step, not understanding for the sake of understanding but understanding for the sake of the fun that process itself can give: “Be a Joke into yourself.”
I have a subtle perception that the latter could trigger hermeneutic controversies, making a comedian tourist from the Iberian islands very passionate, nothing to do with John Cleese, different humour, other islands.
When the comedian is faced with an audience that is caring inside a hypocritically inverted representation of reality, affiliative humor, designed to strengthen social bonds, simply isn’t possible, unless the comedian decides to help reinforce the lies of that representation. Better exile.
But luckily there are other types of humoir, and not all of them have positive effects on the immune system.
For example, in an upside-down society where a minority of “successful people” are justified in laughing at the “failures” of the majority, aggressive humour is absolutely welcome, with its
depressive effects on the immune system, quite the opposite of what is claimed by those who think that words/names we use in communication have no personal effects.
Recently I have demonstrated enough, I hope, as a measurable phenomenon, that if laughing is good, being laughed at is bad. I think also that Parmartha would have understood my very pure intentions.
I’m not sure that the solution to avoiding the negative personal effects of aggressive humour is to respond to it with self-defeating humour; I don’t think it would be funny, at least for the one who is forced to defend himself …no, better use the hammer, imvhv.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULfqhCNHQPA
Above the Gateless Gate at the Ashram, if your chuckle chakra was open, you might have read the inscription, “Abandon All Seriousness Ye Who Enter Here”.
Now Osho was the OG dealer for happy hormones.
Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins, Oxytocin.
You want it, we got it!
Passing through the gates you would soon be swimming in a cocktail of neurochemicals, no ashram has ever seen, I think.
Laughter, dancing, singing, moving, expressing, playing, creating, hugging, bonding, sexing, meditating, groups, relaxing, etc. every activity had the potential to deliver a packet of natural highs.
The jokes, although fed to him by a team of researchers, were delivered with great timing, a little sweet reward and release, after sitting through a long discourse meal.
I don’t remember any jokes except that they were often racy, except for the fuck tape, which was uber cool to share with non-Sannyas friends, for the shock value.
A Guru, blowing up the image, of how a ‘holy man’ is supposed to behave.
Joke telling is a bit corny and dated these days to my ears, I wouldn’t want to relive it, comedy has moved on, and being in a large group of devotees made all the difference at the time.
Eckhart Tolle can be quite funny, when he’s on form, but it’s more observational humour about the ego, that is woven into his talks, and warms the audience to him.
Dominic says, “joke telling is a bit corny and dated these days to my ears.”
Oh, I don’t know, I still mine Osho’s talks for good jokes. Whenever I come across one I lift it and send it to a bunch of friends and girlfriends via whatsapp. Even people who don’t know Osho’s discourses can appreciate his jokes.
Who would have thought, NP? You have a “bunch of girlfriends”, how Sannyas is that! Don’t worry, I won’t tell Buddha
Yeah, we men do sometimes need a dose of feminine energy. The whole male-female thing is a kind of social conditioning, roles which people take on. One of my uncles loves to fix things, show his manliness in that way, it’s become well-known that whenever he comes around you need to give him some odd jobs around the house. I learned a lot from him.
I was just reading some of the past history of sannyasnews.org, and came across this post, which I very much enjoyed…
On reading Osho’s ‘Last Testament’
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/7922
“To conclude. I had a visit from an old sannyasin friend the other day. I first met Anand in Kandahar in 1972. He was headed for Goa…on a horse. A true rebel, he was always in trouble with the ashram administration in Poona One. I think he got away with his wild celebrations at Laxmi Villas because Osho saw him as a true representative of the rebellious spirit of sannyas. Rock and roll! I asked Anand, who has a very down-to-earth approach to life, how he viewed his seven years in Poona One. He laughed and said, “It’s history now and I am glad that I was a part of it.” A view all of my old sannyasin friends share.
I mentioned reading ‘The Last Testament’ and some of the bullshit Osho was coming out with at the time. Anand laughed again and said, “Man, I remember going to Buddha Hall for a discourse. Sometimes there would be a couple of thousand people there. When the talk was over I listened to what people were saying. Nobody saw or heard the same thing, man…everybody is different and sees things they way they see it…not one person the same. People are too hung up on words, man. Osho always said his message lay in the space and silence between his words. Most people don´t want to hear that and instead go around talking in their sleep, repeating what Osho said, blah, blah, blah!”
Anand tugged at one of his dreadlocks and added, “This whole life is a school, man. You come here to learn something and, when you learned it, it´s time to move on. Osho was a great teacher of how to go about doing just that in the best way possible. Celebration, man! He even wanted us to celebrate death. How cool is that, man?”
Amen.”
Well said, Lokesh, a feather in your cap. Thought it was a good summary of Osho’s discourses at the time, he was a bit full of mind I think in that time. But still that’s why I enjoy listening to the discourses, to hear the sound of his voice and maybe a bit of the quality of the silence between the words. It takes me back to the Buddha Hall.
And I didn’t know you wrote fiction, I might have a look, although I did notice you are not the only Luke Mitchell as an author on goodreads.com.
NP, I sent you an email with links to Amazon. nl.
I have read Lokesh’s trilogy books.
Highly recommended. Intriguing and often touching interwoven stories of spiritual journeys, head trips, real life and trips to the East.
Once started I almost could not stop reading…….
Collecting 93 Rolls Royces to one-up materialistic America. I still laugh about that.
Let’s face it, Osho was a fucking funny, enlightened guy who has given us a very playful attitude towards life and spirituality.
Yeah, especially the guys who didn’t get it…you still come across people who don’t understand that it was an exercise in the absurd, a cosmic joke.
There also were the jokes about “Father Murphy’s Ass” – the ass being a donkey in race.
“Father Murphy’s ass shows.”
“Father Murphy’s ass out front.”
The full joke (worthy mention as one of the funniest):
Father Murphy, an excellent horse trainer, was pastor of a remarkably poor parish. Deciding that he might as well apply his skill to the parish, he decided to train and race a horse so as to acquire some money for the church. The Church, however, being poor, had no money for a horse, so instead, Father Murphy settled for a donkey.
So excellent, however, were Father Murphy’s horse-training skills that he was able to get the donkey in third place, leading the next day to the racing-page headline,
FR. MURPHY’S ASS SHOWS.
The next race, what’s more, Father Murphy’s donkey was able to land first place, provoking the headline,
FR. MURPHY’S ASS OUT IN FRONT.
At this point, the Archbishop grew involved. “Father Murphy,“ he declared upon summoning the poor pastor, “something needs to be done about this donkey!”
“But, your Grace,” he replied, “it’s winning so much money for the parish! Next race we can have him win, again, and think what that will do for our finances.” Father Murphy, however, was wrong on this point, for the next race saw the donkey in merely second place, with the suitable headline following,
FR. MURPHY’S ASS BACK IN PLACE.
At this, the Archbishop was enraged. “Father Murphy,“ he thundered, summoning the priest again, “I will not stand for this! It’s a disgrace to the entire archdiocese, and I want that donkey out of your hands!”
“Yes, your Grace,” responded a dejected Father Murphy. “After today, I’ll deal with him.“
“Very good,” answered a soothed Archbishop, “I’m glad to— what do you mean ‘after today’?”
“Well,” explained Father Murphy, “you see, I have him in a race this afternoon, so—”
“Then cancel the race! Get your infernal donkey out of it!” interjected the Archbishop.
“Very well, your Grace,” replied Father Murphy, leading the next day to the racing headline,
ARCHBISHOP SCRATCHES FATHER MURPHY’S ASS.
Father Murphy was as good as his word, however, and the same day he sold the donkey to Sister Agatha. This choice, however, did little to pacify the Archbishop, as it involved the headline,
SISTER AGATHA HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.
“Okay, all right,” fumed and incensed Archbishop to Father Murphy, “tell Sister Agatha she has to get rid of that donkey. Not shuffle it around, not vend it to someone else in the archdiocese, just get rid of it.”
So Sister Agatha sent in an ad for the donkey to the newspaper, leading to a big headline on the front page,
SISTER AGATHA PEDDLES HER ASS.
Another, less amusing headline announced the Archbishop’s funeral three days later.
Thanks, NP, for searching…I was toooooooo whatever….
Clever joke, indeed!
Weird content?
Just a great Bollywood movie (“PK”) with depth. Enjoy!
This funny alien can’t understand human language yet. He tries to communicate by holding hands and reading the mind of the partner – preferably women for some reason…
They all think he is nuts and trys to abuse women somehow, so they will send him to a prostitute – later on. There he learns to talh Hindi!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd4wsdUMorY
The hunt for the idiot who never laughs seems to have begun.
After the last dialectical battle about the quality of laughter, “laughing at” vs. “laughing with”, now here begins to thicken a mainstream sentiment about the quantity of laughter, imagining a dichotomy that does not exist in nature, but perhaps only in psychopathology, who “always laughs” and who “never laughs”.
Maybe it’s coincidence, but I’ve read stories of many professional comedians worn down by the obsession with making people laugh, mostly with aggressive comedy, as Will Smith could testify, finding nothing funny about his wife’s alopecia.
I hope no one here is foolish enough to use alcohol and drugs to get their 5 minutes of fame as a comedian.
In my opinion Osho didn’t use drugs to entertain his audience, the fact that in a 2 hour show he dedicates 5 minutes to jokes doesn’t make him a comedian.
In my opinion, if laughter is the flower of awareness, suffering is its root. Without awareness of the tragic human condition, laughter is more of a sneer, perhaps the sign of a process of avoidance, typical of a certain humour.
Veet, it seems to me you’re making the scientist’s mistake, of trying to take laughter apart into “sneers” and “laughing at”. Is it not better to just accept laughter as the moment of surprise of the mind, where suddenly the joy of the heart shows and we get a glimpse of the core of being?
Yes, tragi-comedy can be fun at times. There are quite a few movies based on this, like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. It’s a fine art form, but I prefer the clean feel of the tragic over some of the other shadings. Laughing at can also carry an edge of ill-will, ridicule which I don’t like and find unsympathetic.
Nityaprem, given that making people laugh is more of an art than a science, I’m not sure which scientist’s mistake you’re referring to, because from my point of view a science that knows how to unite the elements is the same one that knows how to analyze, then separate them. There is no implicit error in science, but possibly only in its applications, methods or intentions.
If it is true that one way to turn off laughter is to analyze and explain what generated it, then it is possible to analyze and understand why not everyone likes to laugh at the expense of others.
I like to celebrate existence, of which laughter occupies the right space, contrasting the aspects that prevent it, that is, which prevent the flow of energy within myself and therefore towards the outside.
For example, I like toxic things like coffee, wine, sweets, tobacco, etc. I could observe and analyze these toxic elements to defuse their centrifugal force, if I still have superior things in my heart to celebrate, or I could choose to linger in their pleasure because that’s all I have or can aspire to.
Simond said, “In the case of Osho, who was steeped in the mystery of the East, the idea that I should trust Him, as my own understanding developed, gradually faded.”
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/6318
More of my wanderings through the sannyasnews archives, this time a topic on “the unimportance of time and physical presence with a master — after the initial link has been established.”
This article raised up some different thoughts in me, because a while ago on the edge of sleep I had a vision, of finding Osho’s hands opening wide in a gesture of welcome when I was looking at my hara. I do believe his presence is still out there, and that we will encounter him again, if we trust.
I do think trust, a deep trust, is a good thing. It is a heart quality, unlike doubt, which is of the head. If you want to deepen your experience of your heart, explore your capacity to trust. It was said by Osho that as long as we trust, things will take care of us. A trust relationship with a master, that is a beautiful thing.
I came across a beautiful story, I was reading ayahuasca experience reports, where a man had a vision of all the traumas of his past lives, and he was told by a voice in the vision to approach them with trust and forgiveness in order to bring healing.
Its worthwhile I think to live close to the heart…generosity, sympathetic joy, friendliness, all these things we can raise up, hold in esteem and when we chose to bring them out, heartfulness arises and you find yourself getting warm inside and perhaps wiping away a tear.
“I do believe his presence is still out there, and that we will encounter him again, if we trust.”
This is exactly what fundamentalist Christians also believe, too.
Except they claim it’s Jesus.
I wonder why you feel the need to believe his presence is still out there? You either know it is out there or you don’t know whether it is. There’s no need to believe in anything. Or you can if you’re a fool believe the world is flat. And if it’s out there, where is it? In the sky, in the seas, where?
As to encountering him if we trust? Why the need for a trust? You either have encountered him
(imagination) or you haven’t.
Trust and belief are in this sense just the same thing. Another form of believing, or hoping, or wishing, or needing .
Simond writes:
“I do believe his presence is still out there, and that we will encounter him again, if we trust.”
This is exactly what fundamentalist Christians also believe, too.
Except they claim it’s Jesus.”
What makes you believe that you know better than Christians, Simond? Have you had any experience of Christian mysticism?
Have you ever read anything about the Gnostics?
Christ- consciousness?
“As to encountering him if we trust? Why the need for a trust? You either have encountered him
(imagination) or you haven’t.”
So here, because Simond never had a connection to Osho, other sannyasins who have a connection to Osho are imagining?
Does Simond know better than other sannyasins?
And if they are ‘imagining’, then according to Simond, Osho was also lying, right? When he spoke about the connection.
I feel you are a little narrow-minded and presumptuous here, Simon.
Yes, I do know something better than some sanyassins – and I do know something better than Christians who talk about a presence and belief in Jesus.
Belief is simply an idea, and all ideas are false.
Osho knew that, he demonstrated time and time again, but he too was somewhat confused by ideas of connection. Yes, you might have strong feelings of connection but ultimately they are part of your imagination.
I too felt a love for Osho, which at the time I most likely also interpreted as a connection; I certainly had a trust in him as well. I still honour him, am humbled by him, but there is no trust or connection any more. I have no need for him, so no need for an emotional connection.
I don’t think Osho was lying, but he was uninformed about connection.
Simond: “I too felt a love for Osho, which at the time I most likely also interpreted as a connection; I certainly had a trust in him as well. I still honour him, am humbled by him, but there is no trust or connection any more. I have no need for him, so no need for an emotional connection.”
You felt that you loved him, and you trusted him, but you never developed a connection with him.
Otherwise you would still have a connection with him now.
It is not a question of belief or doubt, or imagination. In this case it is something you don’t really know what you are talking about. An experience you haven’t had, that’s all.
And you say: “and I do know something better than Christians who talk about a presence and belief in Jesus.”
No, you really don’t. You have an idea of Christians which does contain elements of truth, the blind belief. But you have not encountered any Christians who are less common, have more experience of what we call ‘Christ Consciousness’.
Osho knew exactly what he was talking about, was not confused at all. Just you lack experience.
I think Osho knew much more about connections of the heart than we do. He often talked about how sannyas was a matter of love.
We had a chance to spend time with him in this life, ask our questions, enjoy his presence, love his being. It was a question of saying yes to Osho and to sannyas, a question of feeling.
A connection with Osho now is very much a personal matter. Those who know just know and smile.
“Nothing is said…Nothing is heard…and the hear r r t starts dancing with the….”:
https://www.sannyas.wiki/index.php?title=Nothing_Is_Said
Pune Two music.
Hello…can I help?
Shanti is free to trust me if he wants.
Donations are welcome, go to my Holy Ghost patreon page.
Be blessed, not stressed!
Simond says, “I wonder why you feel the need to believe his presence is still out there?”
I don’t feel the need, Simond. I am merely reporting that I encountered him in the realms between waking and sleep, and that I know he is still out there.
In these places the heart is more important than the head, whether your heart is true and you can still trust, or whether the head is so encrusted with traumas and scars, and has grown cynical. Personally I am neutral in this, not entirely undamaged by the world but in touch with my inner child.
Trust is a special quality, which allows you to be open to things that your defences would otherwise dismiss. My experience is that if you trust, good things will happen.
There is a fundamental problem here with all forms of bhakti yoga, devotion to a guru or anything else, whether for or against.
It is inherently dualistic, identifying with a separate self, a ‘me’, and thus projecting a world of subject and object, of multiplicity of forms and beings.
It needs balance.
Using the metaphor of the ocean, you believe yourself to be a separate wave, having or not having a connection to another, perhaps bigger more ‘special’ wave.
Whereas waves are just the activity of the ocean, and everything is wet in the Osheean.
“Realms”, “Visions”, “connections”, “trust” is all mind stuff really or states of consciousness, like dreams are, passing waves happening in consciousness.
When sannyasins went to Papaji or Ramana or Nisargadatta or others, they got the missing piece of the puzzle. It was a paradigm shift, not just another experience.
It can be easily misunderstood as a form of duality, especially by those who have become familiar with advaita teachings.
The reality is that it is actually a merger, of consciousness, between the Master and the disciple.
The Master begins to merge with the consciousness of the sannyasin. Then they are together, day in, day out, wherever the sannyasin may be.
The presence of the Master nourishes and fully supports the spiritual journey of the disciple. His consciousness also uplifts the consciousness of the disciple, massively. What could happen through consciousness meditating alone is multiplied many times more after being to merge with the consciousness of a Master. What would take four years of meditation alone can happen in two days.
Eventually, if combined with meditation, this leads to the transcendance of the mind and of duality.
The consciousness of the Master is actually also the consciousness of the Whole, the Ocean, of Source itself.
Dominic wrote: “When sannyasins went to Papaji or Ramana or Nisargadatta or others, they got the missing piece of the puzzle. It was a paradigm shift, not just another experience.” That was only for those sannyasins who had not been already connected to Osho, or felt the need for a living master.
Yeah, right.
It’s not dualistic and it’s not a connection.
If you look into the mirror, do you have a connection to the mirror? No.
It’s like the saying of Jesus:
“Me and my father are one.”
Yes, devotion to a teacher, guru or deity, can be a doorway I suppose, to their own inner guru. The way you describe it sounds a bit theoretical: “What would take four years of meditation alone can happen in two days” – something hyperbolic, heard or read in a book for devotees, rather than your actual experience.
Your needle seems stuck on the finger, rather than the moon it’s pointing to, imho, as it is for most of the ‘true believers’ that come here.
Nor do they seem a very happy or thoughtful bunch really, just getting identified with an ideology or guru like a drug, which can happen in advaita circles too, or any other ‘faith’ bubble.
If it was really working for you, you wouldn’t need to get so fired up and defensive, like Lokesh says, it belies an insecurity.
‘Meditation’ is important but can be over-emphasised as it’s not a ‘doing’, trying to ‘merge’ or
get somewhere.
You “know” so many things, which are impossible for you to know, like “Osho knew exactly what he was talking about, was not confused at all.” Or Veeresh being ‘enlightened’, which undermines your arguments and makes you look like a fanatic, who if born in the ME, might end up as a jihadi listening to the words of the prophet.
Good post Dominic. I could not agree more.
Coincidentally enough, in my spare time I have returned to editing and tweaking the manuscript to ‘The Best and Worst of Sannyas News’. It is shaping up nicely for a fully revised edition. It deserves that.
I have been reading through some of Shanti’s comments and I have to be honest and say that some of them are excellent, thoughtful and well-written. I can only conclude that he has taken a wrong turn of late by becoming a bit fanatical and holier-than-thou. Hopefully, he sorts himself out and lightens up.
Good to hear! Let’s hold him in our prayers and perform an exorcism next week. Got any free days?
Dominic wrote : “ Yes, devotion to a teacher, guru or deity, can be a doorway I suppose, to their own inner guru. The way you describe it sounds a bit theoretical: “What would take four years of meditation alone can happen in two days” – something hyperbolic, heard or read in a book for devotees, rather than your actual experience. “
Actually it is from my experience, not read from a book as you theorise.
Your needle seems stuck on the finger, rather than the moon it’s pointing to, imho, as it is for most of the ‘true believers’ that come here.
‘Devotion frees’, one of the sutras from the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra.
With an authentic Master such as Osho, a merger can happen with consciousness as I wrote above.
You put:
“Your needle seems stuck on the finger, rather than the moon it’s pointing to, imho, as it is for most of the ‘true believers’ that come here.
Nor do they seem a very happy or thoughtful bunch really, just getting identified with an ideology or guru like a drug, which can happen in advaita circles too, or any other ‘faith’ bubble.
If it was really working for you, you wouldn’t need to get so fired up and defensive, like Lokesh says, it belies an insecurity.”
Not really sure what you’re coming from here, but arguing with Lokesh or expressing more positive views on here is not being “fired up and defensive”. What do you expect on a ‘Sannyas’ site carrying Osho’s photo? ‘Welcoming all sannyasins’?
If I wasn’t grateful for working with Osho, why would I bother?
“You “know” so many things, which are impossible for you to know, like “Osho knew exactly what he was talking about, was not confused at all.”
I have verified that Osho , knew what he was talking about from my own experience. It is not impossible to know at all. It is exactly as he said, when talking in spiritual terms. And this has also been the case with other masters I have come into contact with.
The other assumption is that the inner connection with the Master is a form of ‘Bhakti yoga’, which implies outward rituals of devotion and blind yea-saying.
I think for some Westerners, feeling ‘bhaktified’ (a phrase recently used by Klaus), where from outward group actions, trust and beliefs that they participated in, went along with, perhaps from a time when they were taking part in Sannyas ashram activities, much younger, more open and trusting.
Later perhaps they spent hours sitting on the cold marble floor of Buddha Hall in Pune Two but did not feel the connection that some had.
If the connection with Osho never happened, which of course, naturally, this is not going to happen for many, in later years, if one becomes more cynical, starts doubting more, perhaps a little bitter, then one may look back and feel as if they have grown out of those actions of their youth.
If they are foolish, the ego will attempt to assert itself by believing it is superior to other sannyasins who still trust or who are deemed as ‘devotees’.
Thousands of years of spiritual search have placed the master at the top of the pyramid in India, the outer actions result in garlands of flowers being placed around the guru’s necks, or on the photos, in the eyes of the Indian society the guru is closest to the Truth and has reached the highest stage of life, enlightened or not.
By the way, Advaita Vedanta gurus Nisargaddata Maharaj and Ranjit Maharaj were both very devotional to their Master, Siddharameshwar Maharaj.
In fact, Nisargaddata said that he has started teaching only because his Master had asked him to – years after he had departed his body. And I think Ranjit Maharaj also claimed to still have a connection with his Master in his seventies, long after the death of Siddharameshwar Maharaj.
However, if real connection with Master happens it does not have to have anything nothing to do with whether any of these outer devotional symbolic acts happened first or not. Only then can you say “fuck you” to your master and not care about the consequences. His presence is still beating in your heart. But, some kind of devotion , or love for the Master helps the connection to happen. In my experience, anyhow.
“Between the master and the disciple – if the rule of the game is followed rightly – devotion arises. That is the fragrance, the river that flows between the two banks of the master and the disciple. That’s why it is so difficult for the outsider to understand. But I am not interested at all in the outsider understanding it, it is a very esoteric game. It is only for the insiders, it is only for mad people. That is why I am not interested even in answering people who are not insiders, because they will not understand. They do not have that attitude of being in which understanding becomes possible.”
Osho: ‘The Art of Dying’
Shanti,
Again, you make assertions with little or no back-up. I don’t think you realize it.
I don’t mean to be mean, but are you educated, did you go to college?
You say, “What I wrote was that with an authentic Master such as Osho, a merger can happen with consciousness as I wrote above.”
How do you know he was an “authentic Master”?
Apart from “occasionally watching his videos”, how much time did you spend with him, up close and personal, and for how long?
Or is it enough to watch a few videos and have some kind of astral connection?
Given all the eye-openers on SN and elsewhere about the man behind the podium persona, one would have cause to temper these simple idealized snapshot portrayals.
You say, “What would take four years alone can happen in two days.” Do you have an enlightometer that tells you this? How can you compare or know?
You say, “I came into contact with a Master and my consciousness grew very high, very quickly, completely effortlessly.”
Are you talking about Osho or someone else, as you seem to have ‘connections’ with several or many masters?
Then you say, “This was before my more recent experience with Osho.” And later, “I know Osho knew what he was talking about from my own experience. It was exactly as he said, when talking in spiritual terms.”
What experience? When, how, what, where? Vagueness heaped upon vagueness.
You say, “I had also come into contact with enlightened sannyasins who I became aware were very much with his Presence, as it were.”
Which “enlightened sannyasins”? How do you know if anyone is enlightened, without at least being enlightened yourself, and even then?
You say, “It is true, I do have a lot of certain knowledge.”
A little doubt, humility and critical thinking never seems to enter your mind, just a lot of wishful thinking, vague experiences we never learn about, and Shanti saying, “It’s true because I say it is.”
Re Swamishanti says:
15 January, 2023 at 6:33 pm
Swamishanti,
Just a short throw in…
I put ‘bhaktified’ in quotes as I did in no way mean it as a judgement ‘better or worse’.
It might be due to my life’s circumstances that I feel more ‘sober’: child of now 10 yrs. at school, health and years fading etc.
More in a sense of ‘It’ happens to everyone in a different (with or withouth bhakti, with the master teacher near or far, under a tree or no tree) way. Methinks, this is important to keep in mind. Know yourself.
So I do cannot say that I fully understand what’s happening in my process….
The book titled ‘I am not as thunk as you drink I am’ comes to my mind: hint to soberness. And Osho said: “Spaghetti always come first.”
Keep the spirit.
Dominic you wrote:
“ Shanti,
Again, you make assertions with little or no back-up. I don’t think you realize it.
I don’t mean to be mean, but are you educated, did you go to college? “
I don’t see anything ‘mean’ about it. Yes, I was educated, here we are talking about spiritual experiences, which have no relevance to what kind of formal education or training we have had.
The assertions I made don’t really need any back up, just because they come from my own direct experience and therefore my own authority.
You’re asking me a lot of questions, Dominic, and I’m not going to give you my life story. You’ll have to wait until my autobiography comes out.
It is your prerogative to continue your doubts.
Many people will not want not to share their intimate experiences with their Master online, at least not in this particular environment.
Although those with genuine interest in Osho can find first hand stories here and there. There are other Osho sites in which first hand accounts can be found.
“How do you know he was an “authentic Master?”
You know. Either you get it or you don’t.
“Apart from “occasionally watching his videos”, how much time did you spend with him, up close and personal, and for how long?
Or is it enough to watch a few videos and have some kind of astral connection?”
I visited his communes whist he was in the body, since 1981, and lived in some sannyas communal houses, and have been close enough to him, to appreciate him. His presence is beating in my heart.
@Klaus:
Jefferson Airplane
Thunk:
https://youtu.be/JRNRVe0kgC0
Oh, so the JA have been suffering from wandering mind too!
Even artists are not saved….
To be fair, regarding the JA ‘arguing with a German’:
On that level it would have been hard for the German, too!
Ah, Bark, by JA. Now we’re talking.
One of my favourite albums of all time.
‘Thunk’ is more like an interlude before the last song of the album ‘War Movie’.
If you’ve never listened to Bark, please do. Everyone should at least once in their lifetime. Before the ‘Earth Moves Again’:
https://youtu.be/KnnXKsZbTUo
Uhhhhh, just listened.
Straight to my heart.
Thanks!
I wonder how Shanti can take his supposed connection to Osho so seriously when Osho himself said that he didn’t believe in Oriental guru systems. In fact, he disavowed any connection to guruhood, saying that the very notion of a guru-disciple relationship is an affront to human dignity.
He explained that since his emphasis had always been on just being oneself, the act of refusing to be anybody’s disciple is precisely what being a disciple of Osho is all about.
Nice one, Lokesh. Checkmate!
Get out of that, Shantipoos!
I don`t take it `seriously`, at all, Lokesh. In fact I would have preferred to keep quiet about it.
But, there have been comentators here who were writing for years, and are ignorant and have convinced themselves that sannyasins are `delusional`, `imagining`, etc., simply due to lack of any experience on their part.
I like a historically accurate version of Osho, therefore from what I write is a simple statement of fact.
Is has not only been verified by my own experience but by many others.
“…the act of refusing to be anybody’s disciple is precisely what being a disciple of Osho is all about.”
You can refuse to be anyone`s disciple but this has nothing to do with sannyas or being Osho`s disciple, which is a very intimate affair.
I am fairly familiar with Advaita and the writings of Ramana, Nisargadatta and Poonjaji, I’m a bit of a fan actually. But my experiences on the edges of sleep have shown me that the reasoning thinking mind is in many ways incomplete without the heart. My intuition says, the heart is more important for me to explore.
The Advaita metaphor of the waves and the ocean is beautiful, and the corresponding thinking around the atman and the brahman is quite elegant. But it hasn’t resulted in any great revelations, for me it is just thinking, new concepts added to the mind’s store. Even there I recall a saying of Nisargadatta, where he answered the question of how he had achieved, and he said “by trusting my guru.”
I think Osho’s discourses show that different sannyasins had different paths, and he gave advice for different directions as appropriate to the questioner.
Perfectly correct (Anand Yogi, where are you?).
My impression, NP, is you are a bookish fellow, always quoting or outsourcing to what somebody else said.
You can get stuck there, and it’s the booby prize. Your intuition with the heart sounds wholesome. Advaita can be dry and heady, and we don’t want clones. Remember, we are explorers not followers, it’s your unique journey, your unique mash-up of wisdom and inspiration, especially today with so much available.
You say:
“The Advaita metaphor of the waves and the ocean is beautiful, and the corresponding thinking around the atman and the brahman is quite elegant. But it hasn’t resulted in any great revelations, for me it is just thinking, new concepts added to the mind’s store. Even there I recall a saying of Nisargadatta, where he answered the question of how he had achieved, and he said “by trusting my guru.”
A basic understanding is useful, but how to realise it, you’re saying?
Indeed, a challenge for all.
Nis didn’t achieve just by trusting his guru. It was by trusting what he told him to do, to focus on the “I Am”.
I’m not suggesting you do that, as you say it’s different strokes for different folks.
There was a group around Osho that pointed to this core question “Who am I?”, the enlightenment intensive, otherwise this didn’t really happen much around him, in my experience.
Frankly, I don’t read Ram, Nis, Poonja, or Osho. There’s more modern, down-to-earth stuff, if I’m looking for inspiration, especially on youtube.
I find the oldies are a bit too high falutin’ and dated for my taste, talking from a very high absolutist perspective that comes with asian cultural baggage. Osho bridged the gap and offered a more integrated approach, but still wanted us all focused on him, maybe some remnants of ego still there. Oh dear, I shall get some hits for that….
The reason I like to use quotes is because often someone else came up with it first, or said it better. Your own thoughts are just as worthwhile, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give credits to those who came before.
I’ll gladly own up to the title of ‘a bookish fellow’. One of my most treasured moments on the Ranch was sitting in one of the big yellow buses near Magdalena and having a friend recommend to me The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien as a book I should read. At night I snuck into the library trailer and obtained the three volumes, which had a big impact on my life and mind….
I must admit, I am drawn to the bhakti type like Ram Dass. It is somewhat at odds with my independent upbringing and mind. The Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah once said, “The heart is the only book worth reading”, which struck me as wise.
That made me laugh.
A typical example of your writing. In one short piece you manage to reference Tolkien, Ram Das and Ajahn Chah.
Quite right, why do any of these gurus bother to speak, they could simply reference the Dhammapada, the Gita, the Upanishads etc?
Why has existence bothered to create a Nityaprem?
Everything has already been said, the same songs sung, but the moment is always fresh and unique.
If I compared myself to the greats all the time, I’d be mute, and my guitar would be firewood.
I suspect that deep down there might be a negative belief of “I am not worth it, others are better than me”, driving it all. Most of us have it to some extent, compensated for in different ways. Should we buy into it?
Well, I don’t talk entirely in quotes, and that is just as well. When I have something genuine to say I come out and say it, and I’ve been told that I’m quite good at capturing exact meanings.
Perhaps you have a point about negative beliefs, but it’s more often the case that I want to pass on the things that made an impact on me, and I use quotes and references to do that. Maybe I’m a bit of a name-dropper, aha.
It’s like a shortcut. I give you a quote of Ajahn Chah, you might get interested and download the 850-page pdf of his Complete Talks, and find yourself motivated and benefited.
But I can write quite flexibly, I have been known to indulge in an odd bit of freeform verse. It’s just that my creative juices don’t always flow as freely as I would like them to. Clarity seems to be more my thing, without the exuberant protrudences which motivate most real creatives.
And why has existence created a Nityaprem? Obviously existence would be incomplete without my incomparable Being. I think it was Nisargadatta who said, existence could not be without even one of the human beings alive today. We all have a role in completing All That Is.
NP,
You say, “I’ve been told that I’m quite good at capturing exact meanings…Maybe I’m a bit of a name-dropper, aha.
It’s like a shortcut. I give you a quote of Ajahn Chah, you might get interested and download the 850-page pdf of his Complete Talks, and find yourself motivated and benefited.”
That’s a humblebrag with name-dropping, both afflictions of status anxiety, combined with quote peddling and sects trafficking, luring unsuspecting people with quotes, with the hope of full blown “Complete Talks” addiction!
Do these ploys of the ego to boost self-esteem work, or turn people off?
You go on to say, “And why has existence created a Nityaprem? Obviously existence would be incomplete without my incomparable Being.”
Lovely, finally some humour coming through, but then, oh no! “I think it was Nisargadatta who said…” and the name-dropping, quote dependency and peddling returns, so that I will be hooked into reading all 558 pages of ‘I Am That’!
Dominic says “have you no shame?”
I never pretended to be a spiritual teacher, all I do is point at what worked for me. My small contribution to the Great Late Sannyas potluck.
But it seems to me everyone here has some sort of an axe to grind, we’re all talking at cross-purposes. Which is fine, as long as there are some lessons resulting from the frictions.
I don’t think a quote dependency is indicative of status anxiety, after all even Osho would quote at great length and tell ancient stories of dubious provenance. It’s just a way of spicing up what would otherwise be a dull recitation of opinions.
But thanks for giving me a different look at what motivates my writing style, that kind of alternative to self-inquiry is valuable.
I was joking with you, NP, maybe it didn’t come across very clearly. Riffing off what you said, “I give you a quote of Ajahn Chah, you might get interested and download the 850-page pdf of his Complete Talks”, as an image of a spiritual dope dealer, giving you a little taste, in the hope of getting you hooked.
Don’t take it personal.
I know for myself, when I ‘name-drop’ there’s ego and insecurity behind it, maybe I’m hoping to impress someone, embellish my personality a bit. It feels different energetically to something just coming up naturally in a relaxed way in conversation.
If I was to do it habitually, it would be a red flag. When people try to impress you with anything, it means they are looking for likes, for validation, that’s natural. We all do it to some extent, as we are social creatures but the exaggerated use of it suggests they are not getting the bulk of it from their own being, imo, if that makes sense.
Is it an attractive behaviour? Not for me, not in myself, or others, underneath I pick up insecurity aka ‘status anxiety’.
When a teacher does it, it’s contextual, you have come to them to learn and listen, although in general quotes will be a tiny percentage of what they have to offer.
If it’s 50% of someone’s postings on social media, it’s a red flag to me.
A test of anything you’ve learned and assimilated, is the ability to communicate it in your own words. It will resonate with authenticity and not just vicarious knowledge or parroting.
When meeting people in 3D, they will be impressed by your Being ultimately, even at an unconscious level.
That’s why I think Osho said somewhere that he didn’t want “his people” to go out and proselytise, but just to share their Being, and others will notice something has happened, and be drawn or not.
In any case, carry on doing you, (how could you not?), just a little reflection on my part.
I did get the joke…honest…I do have a sense of humour! I do!
Maybe I will try writing some comedy, just to build up my funny muscle, which will obviously be required around here….
Ah no, NP, don’t try…be a hollow fruitcake and bring offerings to Dionysus, god of fun. Nietzsche was a fan.
I’ve seen flashes, you have potential, and neuroplasticity is real!
Just put some Dutch clogs on and clomp around the place, gets me laughing.
He didn’t get the joke, had to pull his beard.
@ NP
For me “trust” means, trusting my energy.
Can also happen that I trust my doubt.
What else shall it be?
Now, now, Satchit, you’re trying to slip out of the issue at hand. Do you want to be an Osho disciple or not? If you go on trusting in your energy instead of in Osho, who knows what happens to you, you may end up popping like a firecracker….
Nityaprem,
there is no difference.
Osho now lives in the heart of his people. So trusting myself and trusting Osho is the same, get it?
Cheers.
Burn the firecrackers!
Hmmm, trying to wriggle out of real commitment, eh, Satchit?
It’s totally up to you in the end, but it sounds a bit hypocritical to me, considering how you position yourself on SN.
Real commitment, to whom?
Osho is dead.
If you want to say it nice, you can say he has dissolved into his
people.
Certainly it’s up to me.
It was always up to me. Taking Sannyas, doing this, doing that.
There once was a fellow called Satchit
His posts were epigrammatic
He thought they were cute
And witty to boot!
He just couldn’t stop, ‘twas a habit!
Haiku Satoris #3
Sannyas News Welcomes
All Sannyasins And Exes
For A Brouhaha
Haiku Poetry
Just Count It On Your Fingers
(Unless You Can’t Count)
Who Wrote This Rubbish?
Oh I Did. Actually,
It’s A Masterpiece!
Buddha’s Dead, Osho Too
Time And Life Kills Everyone
Tea And Toast And Jam
White Robe Sexisthood
Metal Detector, Sniff Test
Zen, Like Cold Marble
Help Me! I Am Trapped
On Social Media. In
A Wild Wild Country
Nice writing…ahhhhh the words: Brouhaha….
After the Haiku, the Limerick!
A forum called Sannyas News
Periodically went through the blues
With less left to say
About a man from Bombay
Who left after lighting a fuse.
There once was an ashram in Pune
Some called it a Rajneesh Commune
It was famous for sex
And super special effects
Like making the followers swoon.
Instant poetry.
Very perfectly good!
You could transfer your creative writings into a book, most certainly.
I would read it, 4 sure.
This joke I recall:
An old lady was talking to her priest about her pair of parrots. “It’s terrible, Father, the things they say. I can’t show them in polite company.” The Father thought for a second, then said, “I may have a solution for your problem, I too have a pair of parrots, they are very religious, why don’t we put them together for a while?” The old lady thought this was a wonderful idea, and readily agreed.
The two pairs of parrots were put together in a cage, the priest’s parrots with little rosaries. “Hello, we’re hookers,” said one of the old lady’s parrots. One of the priest’s parrots said to the other, “Time to put away the prayer beads, Frank, our prayers have been answered!”
Nityaprem said:
“We had a chance to spend time with him in this life, ask our questions, enjoy his presence, love his being. It was a question of saying yes to Osho and to sannyas, a question of feeling.
A connection with Osho now is very much a personal matter. Those who know just know and smile.”
Lokesh said:
“I mentioned reading ‘The Last Testament’ and some of the bullshit Osho was coming out with at the time. Anand laughed again and said, “Man, I remember going to Buddha Hall for a discourse. Sometimes there would be a couple of thousand people there. When the talk was over I listened to what people were saying. Nobody saw or heard the same thing, man….”
It would seem that the relationship with Osho has always been personal, as the dewdrops on different flowers can release different essences into the air by evaporating in the heat of the sun.
Lokesh said, “Osho explained that since his emphasis had always been on just being oneself, the act of refusing to be anybody’s disciple is precisely what being a disciple of Osho is all about.”
Osho often spoke about uniqueness and the futility of trying to walk in other people’s shoes. After my long wanderings in Buddhism I agree with him on that, and the most valuable advice I have gotten on the path have been about what parts of myself to explore, and to heed the advice of the inner teacher.
I find it difficult to relate myself to anyone calling themselves a Master or a guru, this is a cultural thing I think. I prefer teachers or spiritual friends. But I have come to realise that a stubborn independence is also not beneficial, it is pride, ego, unforgivingness, sheer pig-headedness. It is a very male thing, and it means that one is far away from qualities of trust, surrender, from the female principle.
It is another thing that society wants to imprint on you, that atomic, singular existence of which that feeling of proud independence is a result. The Advaita approach to this is quite beautiful, we are all waves on the ocean, and there is ultimately no separateness. The thing to remember is not to do yourself, your own expression, a violence by trying to be someone else.
I think that is where Osho was heading — that in this life, we are our own unique expression of the whole, and we should develop that with love, joy, creativity, celebration. There is no need to sit next to a guru and chant bhajans all day long.
Yes, NP, the word ‘master’ is a tricky one. Mastering oneself is commendable. Being the master of others is something I am not sure about. I only had a brief period in Poona One where I referred to Osho as my master, and that was it. I understand that being a master with disciples is not a negative thing, just as a master carpenter might take on an apprentice.
I’m not so sure that being a Master is not negative, it raises my intuitive hackles. It puts me in mind of authoritarianism, power trips, and too many bad fantasy fiction novels. At best it is a poor choice of word. If one is going to object to the Guru-Disciple relationship as below the dignity of man, then I personally think the Master-Disciple relationship is just as bad.
I think of Osho as ‘the wise old fellow in the robe up on podium’, a teacher, a spiritual friend. That to me is a far more respectful position than that of Master, which carries too many negative and hierarchical connotations.
All things considered, Osho was in many ways an authoritarian figure, albeit a benevolent one.
And now a few words from Erin…
#$@&%*! !@#$%^&* @#$%&!) #$@&%*!
Yes, I find that word ‘Master’ ugly and creepy, when used in a Guru context, unless I’m using both words, master and guru’, a little tongue-in-cheek.
It’s a visceral reaction that makes me want to shake someone using it and wake them up, or get the hell out of Dodge. I’m picturing ‘zombies’ who have have had their brains eaten and want to munch on others.
There have been just too many scandals and abuse, for it not to be tainted, which is clearly reflected now, to me, in how contemporary teachers present themselves, who keep those honorifics at arms length.
Whereas, I have no problem calling someone with a particular skill, a master carpenter or musician etc.
Although any humble genius would probably not call themselves that, and say they still had much to learn.
In Osholand, like in other cults that went awry, in last century’s golden age of cults, people were controlled and did foolish things, in the name of ‘surrender’ and being in a state of mindless ‘no-mind’.
Jumping from the frying pan of conventional society into the fire of pyramidical ‘enlightened spirituality’ wasn’t a rescue mission, as it turned out.
As always, buyer beware.
I think it depends, relatively few modern westerners will connect to the Master-Disciple relationship, but maybe Indians will. Osho talked about many flavours and approaches, this was one more in the mix. The danger was that people would every other week try and shoehorn themselves into a mode of mind that didn’t suit them, thinking I’ve got to be a great bhakti, I’ve got to be like a Zen master! It was all 35 years ago now though, the world has moved on.
You’re spot on, Dominic, about modern Western teachers avoiding titles like ‘master’. People like Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira and Adyashanti are more quiet-spoken and humble. I appreciate that about them, they don’t put themselves on a pedestal so much.
The question is, have western disciples proved themselves ready for spiritual independence? If you think you don’t need a master, you will have to cope on your own with your negative impulses, without someone to call a halt to your excesses.
Good points.
For sure, devotion is alive and well in India and elsewhere.
In every village, in every town, there are temples and shrines, burning with candles and incense, and the sound of chanting, that has been reverberating for thousands of years to Krishna, Shiva, Kali etc with no sign of that slowing up. It is woven into the fabric of life there, as is the the Guru tradition.
I enjoy singing along to bhajans and kirtans, as I did in Buddha Hall. The way of devotion is the way of the heart and of communion with others, bypassing the mind and releasing joy and celebration.
Although, as a more sophisticated westernised middle class grows in India, so does guru scepticism, with all the scandals there we don’t even hear about.
When Amma comes to town in London, there is no shortage of westerners yearning for a hug.
In Tiru every evening westerners go to Ramana’s ashram for Puja and to perambulate his shrine.
During the day you might climb the mountain to sit in Ramana’s caves for hours, if you survive the aggressive monkeys trying to steal your bag for bananas.
They overlook the large ancient Temple compound of Tiru, where you might go, with a million other people, to celebrate Shivratri through the night, with colour, lights, smells, music, theatre, food and poor elephants.
Eventually, under this devotional onslaught on your heart and senses, as was in Poona, you will cave in and roll over, to emerge a Bhakti, bowing and namaste-ing your way to the infinite…at least for a while.
In the West now, devotional singing has become popular in yoga centres too. And Someone like Mooji and others encourage a devotional set-up.
So I guess it will continue in the mix in the spiritual supermarket, this wanting to worship something bigger than ourselves.
The only problem being that it is easily exploited, and has been throughout history.
Modern teachers like “Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira, Adyashanti” and others, are more my cup of tea now, without all the razzmatazz of old-style gurus, who are “quiet-spoken and humble”, and practical and contemporary. You can also comment on their youtube channels and forums. ‘Masters’ tend to create slaves, spiritual or otherwise, as they never stop being human, oddly enough. A bit more freedom of speech in Oshoville might have saved the day.
Also, I think, once you’ve caught the nondual bug, your devotion becomes more equally directed to the ‘Ocean of Being’ rather than any special big wave, offering salvation or hypnosis!
You can do both, of course, if so moved.
As for your last comment re “western disciples”, it’s very generalised. Everyone is on a unique journey, and one’s ‘school of life’ is the main gig imho.
If you want individual help, there’s plenty of it online now.
Since Covid it has spiralled, so that most teachers offer it in different formats, which is how they make money too, and some are psychotherapists.
So there’s no shortage of help as far as I can see.
I don’t know about “spiritual independence”, sounds like an oxymoron to me, since ‘Brahman’ is running the show!
If you feel you need a ‘master’ or a drawn physically to be with someone, sure, why not? You might gain benefit or need to live out some illusions and delusions
Osho had no master, nor did Buddha, nor did Ramana, and Papaji saw him only very briefly. There as many ways as people, no?
I enjoy listening to Swami Sarvapriyananda, a brilliant mind, humorous, humble and joyful and he’s in a lineage, as are some others I like.
In fact I’ll listen to anyone I like, philosopher, musician, neuroscientist, therapist, comedian, the person at the checkout, the trees, the flowers, the sky etc, and during that time they are my guru!
You say, “If you think you don’t need a master, you will have to cope on your own with your negative impulses, without someone to call a halt to your excesses.”
Sounds like Mara, sending you a worry demon, or search for a parent for a wayward adolescent!
You’re going to have to do that anyway, master or not.
When you’re away from a teacher, or a retreat, or the structure of an ashram carrying you, you tend to fall back on your default conditioning anyway.
After the ecstasy the laundry.
You’ll have to figure it out by yourself eventually, I mean, ‘how to be happy’. Everything else is dependency and, you guessed it…impermanent.
I have to admit, devotion is still a mystery to me. I feel it, but I don’t know why. It sometimes puts me at odds between mind and being.
The spiritual path for me has been a search for being better than merely well. I’ve always been a reasonable and happy person, and seem to have lived my life by many of the guiding principles of the Buddha without even knowing it!
Maybe I will just take a step back from learning from teachers, opening myself up to all these differing teachings is something I have found tiring and lately confusing at a deep level beyond the mind, where I feel my intuition rests.
I agree with you that Advaita Vedanta has important things to say, the metaphor of the waves and the ocean is a good way of pointing. Getting used to being part of a larger Whole, as we are inevitably part of this Planet Earth as well feels very right to me.
Dominic said, “If you feel you need a master or are drawn to physically be with someone, sure, why not?”
What’s easy is just to read the books, or watch the YouTube videos. And I tend to take things easy whenever possible.
But I also keep in mind Lokesh’s comments where he was talking about the time he visited H. W. L. Poonja, that he felt he was the real deal, as good as Osho, and that the other teachers he met were poor imitations by comparison to those two.
At the moment I don’t feel anything unfinished when I think about spiritual teachers. If I were to continue to listen to Osho it would be more for the familiarity than to learn anything. I feel more of a creative impulse right now.
So far, my most powerful ‘spiritual’ experience, outside of psychedelics, was in Lucknow, which was confirmation of what all the advaita talk was about.
Personally, I found it very helpful to have at least one or two experiences like that, otherwise I might still be running on faith to some extent.
Nor can you beat the real deal of being together with other seekers and finders and teachers, and for many years I frequented the Satsang scene when it was at its peak.
It seems to have tailed off in the last years, and covid or the post-covid we have now, seems to have habituated people into staying at home and going online much more for their spiritual fix, though it’s not the same.
Still, whatever you frequent, without continuing personal practice and understanding, any group, retreat, or teacher is only going to help temporarily, before the mind’s power of endarkenment returns, imho.
I think Osho had more of a Buddhist perspective on life, I believe the Jain tradition he grew up in does too. Whereas Papaji, who met Ramana, was a Krishna devotee from a Hindu family, and perhaps Vedanta came more naturally to him. I’m no scholar though.
In Vipassana, you watch ‘objects’, mind, body, breath etc. In advaita, the emphasis is on turning attention back on itself, to the watcher, to the ‘I Am’, not so much to the flow of experience, but to the knower of them.
This is radical, because it brings into question our normal view of ourselves, as a separate person, located in a body, and a world out there, into an awareness or field of being, in which the universe or Maya happens. Very similar to a dream, in which the movie and all the characters are happening in the dreamer’s mind. Both approaches can complement each other, of course.
In Lucknow, there were plenty of Buddhists and Sannyasins. It seems the Vipassana community, curious and frustrated with the shortcomings of their own practice, came there simultaneously as the Osho one, which brought a lot of liveliness that I think Papaji enjoyed.
Similar to Osho, he liked to laugh and giggle a lot. The clarity that comes with an undivided mind must make life seem quite comical and people’s trips more transparent.
The closest I’ve been to Poonjaji has been through the poems in the Satsang book ‘The Truth Is’ (which you can download as a pdf), but he is one of my favourites. I especially like his directness and his clarity, and he has a certain jolly energy, for sure.
The part of his teaching where he says, if you give me just a few seconds…one second…half a second…of your undivided attention, then there is a glimpse there. It doesn’t take long.
It’s a contrast with Osho, who gives long talks and destroys your questions, but seems to be engaged in hypnotising you to wash clean your energy.
You could argue both men were in the business of transforming people, but they did it in very different ways. Osho’s transformation was caught up in the commune, in the discourses, in therapy, in meditation. Maybe that’s more lasting.
I really enjoyed this docu, ‘Call Off The Search’, about Papaji:
https://youtu.be/dBIK-VFvDhA
Well, nothing lasts, NP.
Everybody’s journey is unique. We wore uniforms and malas to identify ourselves, but underneath we were heterogenous individuals, even more so after Osho passed.
In the last years, as the world became more polarised, I realised what different and often opposite views sannyas-related people all shared on hot topics like Trump, Covid, vaccines, global warming, Islam, open borders, racism, globalism, socialism, etc., not to mention all the other spiritual teachers.
I wonder if Osho had still been alive, if he would have picked up on the post-90s non-dual trend.
It’s not as if his work and communes didn’t or couldn’t evolve, whilst just outside the Poona ashram, satsangs were being held after he died.
Even though Osho embraced western humanistic psychotherapy, which was very lucrative for the communes, his main emphasis was on the perennial philosophies of eastern thought, as was Papaji, going back to the Upanishads and Vedas.
I only compare them as examples of the progressive path and the direct path, vipassana and non-dual enquiry.
As far as “long-lasting”, for all intents and purposes, Osho’s communes are in the minor leagues now. They still exist to some extent, but who goes to Poona anymore?
But yes, his work goes on in the form of meditations, groups, books etc.
So does Papaji’s, and his influence on subsequent teachers, and all the cross-fertilisation between the two.
I have woken in recent years to the fact that Osho’s popularity has grown massively in certain areas of the world since he left the body.
Yes, there are not as many communes worldwide as there were back in the 80s, yet the movement is still very much alive, yet not at all centred in Pune, spread out, sannyasins with a diverse selection of views and walks of life as you suggest, and various teachers.
There are as many, likely more sannyasins than when Osho was in the body, more people taking sannyas every year, and although sannyasnews in its little bubble is certainly no longer in touch with it, there are ‘sannyas’ communities spread around the globe.
Who knows, perhaps in the next life you may be again drawn into Osho Sannyas and don the orange/maroon and the mala.
Just over the last few days I have noticed some videos popping up on YouTube, Indians protesting outside the Pune Resort regarding issues such as the lack of MahaParinirvana celebration, wearing of mala, entrance to the Samadhi etc., on the BSR media tv channel:
https://youtu.be/Yl4fNijkDA8
In ‘The Truth Is’ Papaji repeatedly says things like “beware a teacher who asks you for money” and it strikes me that Osho was less than perfect in this. I really like Papaji’s approach of stay a week or two for satsang, hear what is there, experience it and go. It’s super direct and clean.
Whether Osho’s way to create an impact through many books which last beyond his death will work out into a long-lasting movement is anyone’s guess.
dominic:
21 January, 2023 at 7:32 pm
and Nityaprem:
22 January, 2023 at 8:05 am
Your posts gave me a lot of things to ponder and reflect upon. Already did so in the last few days…
David Crosby died and I listened to songs of my youth….got quite a bit swept away.
My spiritual journey started in practice in a meditation centre in Rangoon. No guru trip at that time. Just intense practice day in, day out. Reporting to the teachers 10 minutes per day and listening to 1 hour evening talk daily.
So, the chance of ‘going forth’ in the times coming is always there. Be it as a sannyasin, a Sufi student, a meditator in this or that style. Or even joining a meditation order. In the next life.
Keep up the spirit.
NP said:
“In ‘The Truth Is’ Papaji repeatedly says things like “beware a teacher who asks you for money” and it strikes me that Osho was less than perfect in this.”
The truth is, bald-headed Pappaji was simply parroting from a traditional Hindu mindset, he could never really move out of that comfort zone.
Osho, like Gurdjieff, knew that if you ask for a charge, then only those who are most authentically interested in your work and ready for transformation are going to bother coming to you – and that’s the people you want if you are an authentic Master.
Gurdjieff used to ask for silly sums of money to purchase one of his own written, unpublished books – say $100.
Osho always attracted large crowds through his talks and magnetism, and he had to find ways to separate the wheat from the chaff.
If Osho’s whole ashram would have been completely for free in his lifetime, it would have attracted all kinds of idiots, millions of people.
Plus, Osho knew that those charges could be used for his future commune projects and to make really beautiful and luxurious environments, which reflected his vision; he needed big money.
NP:
“I really like Papaji’s approach of stay a week or two for satsang, hear what is there, experience it and go. It’s super direct.”
It appeals to those with a more Christian mindset, but resulted in a lot of people having quick breakthroughs, which were not permanent enlightenments.
Experiences of the Atman, but not the Paramatman.
Perfectly on the money, Shantibhai, those 99 Rollers and bling are not simply going to pay for themselves! Ridiculous!
As you say the Atman is not where it’s at, man. Whilst the luminous light of the Bra man (large D cup) is clearly reflected in your Caravanserai posts.
Only the enslaved mindset of a Christian could say otherwise.
Certainly you have chosen the perfect authentic Master, who is not totally “bald-headed”, to have facilitated your Paramatman and permanent enlightenment, and victory is yours!
Jai Bolo Osho ki jai!
Swamishanti said: “It appeals to those with a more Christian mindset, but resulted in a lot of people having quick breakthroughs, which were not permanent enlightenments.
Experiences of the Atman, but not the Paramatman.”
So what would you say of Osho’s success rate? There are a lot of therapists out there who are kind of “enlightened for commercial reasons” but really in terms of people with their own voice and their own message I haven’t come across anyone yet.
Papaji didn’t do too badly I think, he gave people something they could work with and develop.
NP said:
“So what would you say of Osho’s success rate? There are a lot of therapists out there who are kind of “enlightened for commercial reasons” but really in terms of people with their own voice and their own message I haven’t come across anyone yet.“
I think Osho actually did exceptionally well, much better than many people realise.
Several of his earliest Indian disciples became enlightened, and out of the thousands of people who came later, yes, there have been many success cases, sannyasins became enlightened in Pune One, at the Ranch, and also later. There were sannyasins who were intimately connected to Osho before the Ranch, during the Ranch, and after he left the body. Some of the Indian enlightened sannyasins used the seven bodies system, which Osho explained in several talks, and grew beyond their original awakening.
The majority of them kept quiet about their experience, with only a few sharing with others while Osho was in the body.
And others have become enlightened later after he left his body.
Often those who are teaching are keen to keep quite a low profile, and prefer working with people who they feel are ready. Osho on the other hand seemed to fulfil a particular, larger purpose, a worldwide work, helping to work towards a global transformation.
I feel he may have appeared on the earth at the right particular moment in time, a fully enlightened being of rare attainment, with also the capacity to communicate exceptionally well, his popular books and talks a testament to that.
You say, “There are a lot of therapists out there who are kind of “enlightened for commercial reasons” but really in terms of people with their own voice and their own message I haven’t come across anyone yet.”
I don’t know of any therapists who are “enlightened for commercial reasons” – I recently realised that there was some negativity on SN directed at the Humaniversity from one of two disgruntled people who participated, that may have given some readers a bad impression of Veeresh or the Humaniversity.
That is the power of the media, it can easily influence people one way or another.
With therapy, there will always be a few people who had an unhappy experience, yet I personally have known quite a few people who have spent time and even lived with Veeresh and thought he was a special guy, and I know people who spent time at the Humaniversity and were transformed by the processes they took and were grateful.
I don’t know if Veeresh was fully enlightened, but obviously somewhere and he had transcended the mind.
Swamishanti, you seem to talk a lot of stuff from vague sources and hearsay.
Aside from Veeresh and the Humaniversity, can we come up with one acknowledged sannyasin who is enlightened and teaches?
I think Papaji actually did rather better than Osho, giving rise to quite a few disciples who had an experiences of varying depth and went out to teach. Mooji is probably the most successful but there are a number of others (Gangaji, Mudhakar, Dolano and more).
NP:
“Swamishanti, you seem to talk a lot of stuff from vague sources and hearsay.”
No, not at all. I talk from people I have met, my experiences and the experiences others ha veshared with me.
“Aside from Veeresh and the Humaniversity, can we come up with one acknowledged sannyasin who is enlightened and teaches?
Yes, there are many. But one has to be really interested to find them.
“I think Papaji actually did rather better than Osho, giving rise to quite a few disciples who had an experiences of varying depth and went out to teach. Mooji is probably the most successful but there are a number of others (Gangaji, Mudhakar, Dolano and more).”
Not really. Papaji was lucky to find himself with quite a few sannyasins in the early ‘90s, who he could give a satori to. That’s all. Many of them prematurely believed they were enlightened.
Apparently (from what I’ve read from Lokesh at least), he wasn’t interested in people staying around him much. Lokesh seems to think that is a good quality, but if you do that, then you are not really taking responsibility for the disciple. Obviously if you were to talk to others around Papaji, you would get other stories and probably find people who stayed for years. I know that one sannyasin married Papaji’s daughter, as I read from his obituary on Oshonews last year.
Anyhow, no doubt he helped some get enlightened, for sure.
The thing is it’s all Source, really, working through Osho and Papaji, awakening people in its own time, and its own way.
I’m glad you replied tonight as I’ll be away from the Swamishanti SN desk a few days.
Swamishanti said, “it’s all just Source, awakening people in its own time.”
I agree, and I don’t think Osho particularly took responsibility for the people he gave sannyas to either.
At least Papaji said, “You should acknowledge the guru, the lineage you come from.” Unfortunately, a lot of western disciples aren’t very comfortable with that and don’t display photos.
I’ve seen huge pictures of Ramana Maharshi displayed prominently in Papaji’s satsang hall. That seems to me more respectful, more appropriate.
Shanti says, “I don`t take it `seriously`, at all.”
That may be true. We only have Shanti’s word for it. I know that appearances can be deceptive. Nonetheless, after reading many of Shanti’s comments over the past few months they did come across as being overly serious in terms of what he was saying and how he was representing himself. End of story.
Then Shanti goes on to say the following: “I would have preferred to keep quiet about it.” This begs the question: then why didn’t he? Nobody is forcing him to write on SN. It is his choice. That is, unless he somehow feels compelled to write, because he believes something wrong is going on and he can make it right by saying what he does. Beats me.
Shanti concludes with the following: “You can refuse to be anyone`s disciple but this has nothing to do with sannyas or being Osho`s disciple, which is a very intimate affair.”
What has to do with Sannyas and or being Osho’s disciple is surely a matter of personal opinion. After all, this is what Shanti is doing, expressing his personal opinion, yet I can’t help but feel he wants his opinion to be ‘THE OPINION’.
Being in an intimate affair with Osho today has to be personal, taking into consideration the man has been dead for over thirty years. It’s that alive presence again. The holy ghost. Talking of ghosts I distinctly remember Osho telling me that any relationship with him would be one-sided, him being a hollow bamboo…a pure enlightened nobodyness.
Maybe there is a difference between having a relationship with Osho or having an affair with him. I’ve really no idea about that. I have enough of a job relating in my life without bringing in holy ghosts with a special spiritual presence that wants to be with me all the time.
Okay, tea break over. Back to work.
The holy ghost…tee hee…you have a gift for wordplay, Lokesh. Because in a way that’s exactly what we are talking about.
But if in a near-death experience you are going to see all your loved ones again, and once you really loved Osho, don’t you think you’ll see him there again standing amongst ex-lovers and family members? It makes perfect sense to me.
If death (or near-death) can summon these people from the Whole to guide you to your after-life, then why not Osho?
Just read obituary of Ronald Blythe in ‘The Guardian’:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/15/ronald-blythe-obituary
He wrote about the countrylife in old times. He lived to be 100 years old.
It is not very far-fetched to compare one’s own life to his: my grandfather and grandmother on my father’s side grew up in small villages in a tough place. They met as farmhands for a local farmer. They gave their first daughter for adoption as they could not afford to raise her themselves.
After marrying they moved to a city (now 35,000 inhabitants) where my father and his elder sister were born. My grandfather delivered coal to the households in this city on his own 2 horse carriage.
Today, we are discussing here the (possibly) last few steps before enlightenment. And listen to our favourite music pieces of the 60s or whenever.
We have come a long way.
I wonder what those who talk about a paradigm shift are referring to, maybe to just leaving the Osho wave to surf the wave of Papaji, Ramana or Sarvapriyananda?
Is parroting the Indian sages with “All is One” enough to end conflict and polarization, when the waves disappear and the ocean remains flat calm?
What would stop a surfer from feeling gratitude, devotion or trust for the Papaji wave?
And what would prevent an Osho surfer from having an intellectual and detached approach to his wave?
Is it so true that the advaita approach solves the ethical problem of behaviour, simply because it declares the victim and perpetrator are the same thing?
Is Osho really associated more with devotional Yoga than with Jñāna Yoga (knowledge)? And why not Raja or Karma Yoga?
Were the advaita masters, referred to by former sannyasins here, all waveforms with sensitivity, intellect and knowledge superior to that of Osho?
It appears to me that Bhakti Yoga does not require a great intellectual commitment, for Being it is enough to know that everything is Brahma, precisely as an advaita black belt would say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbTaIDYTb0
Veet Francesco,
Via this comment I am coming back to one of your comments about “What is controversial?”
You stated something like “do the current leaders and meditation and satsang masters really deliver the quality” in what they deliver?
That is indeed worth checking for oneself. The chance – at the beginning – always seems to be 50/50. Then you try. Then you feel.
Then you see. Should I stay or should I go?
Up to each single person. My guess. Sometimes there are errors, too.
I agree with you, (Prasanto), 50%.
Fair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shanti says, “The truth is, bald-headed Pappaji was simply parroting from a traditional Hindu mindset, he could never really move out of that comfort zone.”
Thus says someone who never actually met Poonjaji.
The truth is that Poonjaji was not really a traditional Hindu at all, and neither was his mindset. He tended to wear Muslim-style clothes and was well travelled. His comfort zone was quite a humble one by most standards, both physically and psychologically speaking.
He settled in Lucknow for two reasons: He was unwell and Lucknow was kind to him after he was forced to leave Pakistan in 1947.
During the early nineties, when I was in Lucknow, there was quite an influx of sannyasins travelling up from Poona to check out what was happening around Poonjaji. I can remember one morning he got out of a car to enter the satsang house. Due to the influx of sannyasins many were namasteing him with joined hands like they were accustomed to doing with Osho, a very Hinduistic practice. Papaji paused for a moment and studied the scene. He appeared slightly puzzled by this new development. He gave a quick namaste and then went inside.
I have a close friend who lived for several years with Poonjaji. According to him, Papaji was not at all interested in accumulating money. Rich seekers offered donations to build an ashram, which he refused. The small pension he received from the army was what he lived on. He was quite frugal.
The other day, I read something Shanti wrote about how Osho is more popular than ever. I don’t know if that is true or not. It’s not important. What’s important is to realise that a guru having a lot of followers equates to very little. Lots of fake gurus gathered many followers. Some truly enlightened people had a handful of followers.
That Shanti believes having a lot of followers is important, and he does or why else proclaim such a thing on SN, it’s surely an indication that his take on things is quite superficial.
When someone asked the beedie wallah how to recognise enlightened people he said that often they live quiet and peaceful lives. He did not mention anything about gathering a lot of followers, other than to say that it might be a good idea to avoid such a person.
The idea that people do not appreciate a thing unless they pay for it was very much promoted by Osho. That is understandable. I do not think it is an absolute truth by a long shot. To take it as the absolute truth is an indication of stupidity, or in Shanti’s case self-inflicted brainwashing.
I’ve no idea if Poonjaji was enlightened or not. The same goes for Osho. I am certain that I learned a lot from both of them. I’m grateful for that and paying or not paying for it had nothing to do with it.
Lokesh chirped:
-“The truth is that Poonjaji was not really a traditional Hindu at all, and neither was his mindset. He tended to wear Muslim-style clothes and was well travelled. His comfort zone was quite a humble one by most standards, both physically and psychologically speaking.”
He was absolutely a traditional householder Hindu guru, Lokesh. His master was Ramana Maharshi, the traditional Hindu sage, whose picture was on his wall along with the Hindu symbol of Om, and Ramana’s methods he followed. Wearing Kurta doesn’t mean anything in an area with a strong Muslim influence such as Lucknow. Although I have seen photos of Poonja in jumper and jeans and trainers.
“I have a close friend who lived for several years with Poonjaji. According to him, Papaji was not at all interested in accumulating money. Rich seekers offered donations to build an ashram, which he refused. The small pension he received from the army was what he lived on. He was quite frugal.”
Oh goody. So what? So he is more appealing to those with a Christian conditioning that only the poor can enter the temple of God?
Poonja wasn’t interested in larger projects such as building communes for meditators with luxury facilities. He wasn’t interested in presenting a new vision, such as Osho’s ‘new man’ or ‘Zorba the Buddha’, with the acceptance of materialism with spirituality. That’s why he remains conventional, acceptable to the status quo, unthreatening and a traditional Indian Hindu householder guru.
“The other day, I read something Shanti wrote about how Osho is more popular than ever. I don’t know if that is true or not. It’s not important. What’s important is to realise that a guru having a lot of followers equates to very little. Lots of fake gurus gathered many followers. Some truly enlightened people had a handful of followers.”
Well, yes it is true. I have become aware that Osho’s popularity has increased manyfold since he left the body.
Lokesh carries on: “That Shanti believes having a lot of followers is important, and he does or why else proclaim such a thing on SN, it’s surely an indication that his take on things is quite superficial. When someone asked the beedie wallah how to recognise enlightened people he said that often they live quiet and peaceful lives. He did not mention anything about gathering a lot of followers, other than to say that it might be a good idea to avoid such a person.”
Here there may be a misunderstanding, I never indicated that I believe that a guru having a lot of followers is important.
In fact, I believe that gurus who have a lot of followers, such as the founder of ISKCON, Sri Prabhupada, were low-grade, crappy and unenlightened. He gave a certain dogma for his followers to parrot, and encourage as many other people to get into as possible – the result is a large group of largely unintelligent fanatics who also are deluded into believing that they are very special and above all other groups. Well, a lot of what they have been taught is a load of old rubbish. It’s not really their fault, just how they’ve been trained. Although their books do contain certain fragments and pieces of spiritual knowledge which some sannyasins will lack, depending on their own life’s particular training.
Buddha had ‘buddhi’ – intelligence- his statues depict him with long ear lobes which is a sign of ‘buddhi’- I also have quite long earlobes- yet many Buddhists have become fanatical and dogmatic, and lost their intelligence.
I appreciate that Osho also wasn’t concerned with having a lot of ‘followers’, which he could have very easily done if he hadn’t pushed people out of their comfort zone.
Osho’s growing popularity I do not see at all as a bad thing as far as the planet is concerned.
Reading Osho generally results in people meditating, which ultimately means more people becoming enlightened, as well as a sharpening of intelligence. He was also careful not to leave a dogma. His vision of Zorba the Buddha is also refreshingly break from the old idea that you had to be anti materialistic, to be enlightened.
Shanti is constantly harping on about Osho’s ‘New Man’ or ‘Zorba the Buddha’, while being a perfect incarnation of an old man and absorba the bullshit.
‘Zorba the Buddha’ and the ‘New Man’ meant that it was no longer necessary to hammer nails into your penis, to struggle with the body to get enlightened – unless you want to, of course. It didn’t matter whether you lived in a cardboard box or enjoyed driving a Ferrari.
It was ok for your girlfriend to be a Jamaican dancehall queen such as Lady Saw who sang
‘I want to fuck you with my heels on’ https://youtu.be/o8KDsSHVSnk, just as much as a Tibetan Buddhist nun who preferred celibacy most of the time.
Lokesh said, “Osho is constantly harping on about Osho’s ‘New Man’ or ‘Zorba the Buddha’, while being a perfect incarnation of an old man and absorba the bullshit.”
It’s interesting, when the New Man came he took a different form than most were expecting. The Woke movement, indigo children, trans inclusiveness, a softer form of malehood, these are all things I’ve come across more lately.
I think every era has its own New Man, it seems to change every 20-40 years or so. If you look back in history, the 1910’s generation had a different character than the 1920-1930 generation, which was different from the post WW2-generation.
Certainly there seems to be a trend that the patriarchy is disappearing in the West, that is a good thing I think. Technology is also having tremendous impacts on education. And if you look at things like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, the role of AI is only set to increase. I was having a talk about philosophy with a chatbot called YouChat, and it was like talking to an oracle, and an incredibly knowledgeable and occasionally quite developed person.
At the risk of straying into politically charged territory there’s a lot of woke brainwashing going on, and a lot of anti-male, anti-white, anti-patriarchy nonsense, which is not a good thing.
And Osho had some really rubbish ideas too which he never practised. For example…
“The world, the whole earth is ours. Wherever we want to be, it is nobody’s business to prevent us. Let there be freedom of movement. Let all the races, all the nations get mixed. And once the boundaries are not there, they will get mixed, they will spread all over the world – all kinds of races – and it will be a great experiment in crossbreeding. We will have better generations to come.”
This is la la kumbaya land. Good fences make good neighbours.
A bit like a multi-millionaire singing from his mansion, “Imagine no possessions…” or “All you need is love…” while being violent at home.
“Lokesh said, “Shanti is constantly harping on about Osho’s ‘New Man’ or ‘Zorba the Buddha’….” ”
The ‘New Man’ concept harks back to the time of Christ, and perhaps even further back.
During the 20th century, Mr G and Mr O were talking about the New Man but had no qualms about saying that the idea came from The Gospels. As in…“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
It’s maybe a step up from being a born-again Christian to being a born-again sannyasin. I really don’t know. I’m more interested in who or what it is that was born in the first place. The Beedie Wallah pleaded “Not guilty” to being born. That’s a good one.
Lokesh said, “I’m more interested in who or what it was that was born in the first place.”
There are a few people who talk about that, a guy called Michael Newton wrote a book called ‘Journey of Souls’ where he uses past life regression techniques to peer into the spaces between lives.
In Buddhism there is a koan which goes, what is your face before your parents were born? Raises a few interesting questions, you were the glint in the glint in your four grandparents’ eyes.
Personally, it makes me wonder whether the arising of a new wave on the ocean of consciousness is just a new expression of water that existed all along…nothing is created, nothing is destroyed.
Now for a short musical interlude… something a bit more modern than Jefferson Airplane which the old fogeys around here seem to favour. The track is called ‘The Calling’ and has distinct spiritual overtones.
https://youtu.be/4vxQ-ROStfU
If consciousness is neither created nor destroyed, then that which we are is also neither born nor dies. So the Beedie Wallah saying he wasn’t born makes a kind of sense.
It goes back to what we are. We are not the body, we are not the senses, we are not the mind… Papaji says we are sat-chit-anand, Truth-Consciousness-Bliss. And he may well be right. Certainly the mind does its best to give us what we want, so be careful what you wish for.
Just experiencing that we are not the body is a pretty big step. We are usually so bound to experiencing everything from the viewpoint of the body, so used to thinking of our head as the seat of our being, that it gets to be a habit.
“If consciousness is neither created nor destroyed…”
An experience is needed, otherwise it remains something like mathematics with a lot of ifs.
“An experience is needed”. You’re right about that, Satchit, except that it’s the ‘space’ in which all experience happens.
Your experience is always changing, whether ‘external’, through the senses, or subtle and internal, your thoughts and feelings.
What knows all those changing experiences? What doesn’t change, even as the body and mind change?
It’s not an object, so it can’t be grasped or understood, but all objects appear in it. The eye can’t see itself.
Attention is normally locked onto form and thinking, so we give some back to Being, the ‘I Am’, as medicine, with the least amount of effort. It’s never not here.
~ Thus Spake Domthustra
“The eye can’t see itself.”
That’s wrong.
The experiencer can be experienced.
By all means, Satchit, tell us how the experiencer can be experienced, if that which senses cannot be sensed.
But, NP, you have read so many books.
You must know what a spiritual experience is, don’t you?
I know what a spiritual experience is, and plenty of info comes in through the senses. But about the experiencer I know nothing.
Your “wrong” is right, Satchit!
I can see from your avatar that your eyes are crossed in Shambhavi Mudra, and able to see each other, as your third eye opens, and you go into bliss.
I tried it, but it gives me a headache, and they got a little stuck!
It’s rare to see this being expressed in a Hollywood movie. Well, here it is, the blanket truth, the big picture…
https://youtu.be/hSdrwqLUpD0
In popular song form, Leonard Cohen comes closest imo. He spent time as a zen monk and visited Ramesh in Bombay. Parmartha chose one of his songs for his funeral.
https://youtu.be/2AMMb9CiScI
Let me put it this way: no book of Osho’s has ever inspired me to read it more than once. I’m now on my third reading of Papaji’s ‘The Truth Is’, and I’ve read Nisargadatta’s ‘I Am That’ at least twice, and I don’t feel I’ve exhausted either of those books.
I’m still fairly new to non-duality, think I read my first book about two years ago, never yet made it to a satsang. But I will definitely try it out when a teacher I like comes visiting the neighbourhood.
Excellent, you’re on the Highway to Hell…I mean the Self.
If I may be so bold, to take a turn at being the dope dealer.
There are hundreds of books and teachers, my current YouTube hit list includes the teachers you already mentioned, like Eckhart, Rupert, Adyashanti, plus Sarvapriyananda, Sunny Sharma, Simply Always Awake, Alex Shailer, Your Higher Self, Batgap, and…better stop there.
You’ll find your own way. There’s never been a better time to awaken, at no expense, from the comfort of your own home.
It’s good to balance understanding with practice, otherwise it stays stuck in the head, and all these people have excellent guided meditations.
Remember, they’re all just waves, like yourself, in the Ocean of Being, and all characters in a movie, playing on the screen of your Awareness.
Tat Tvam Asi.
I know Batgap, they do excellent interviews. I will check out some of the others once I’ve finished re-reading Papaji.
I find it interesting how Osho seemed to pull people in, give them sannyas, and keep them in the movement while sending them back out in the world. To be dressed in red was a real statement for a while, it made clear what you stood for.
The Advaita movement doesn’t do anything of the sort, it just allows people to come together in satsang, meetings in truth. There is no real outward sign of their feeling.
NP, you are incorrect in drawing the following conclusion:
“The Advaita movement doesn’t do anything of the sort, it just allows people to come together in satsang, meetings in truth. There is no real outward sign of their feeling.”
1991 in Lucknow was one of my last great experiences in a gathering of spiritual people. So was the 50th anniversary of Woodstock bash in Las Dalias, Ibiza. But that was different.
In Lucknow there were hundreds of wonderful people attending Poonjaji’s satsangs. A real gathering of the spirits. One morning, Poonjaji was reading out a six-page letter from someone in California. The old boy was a slow reader and the letter was full of spiritual cliches. It was tedious listening to it. Halfway through the letter, Poonjaji removed his reading specs and addressed the congregation seated before him. He said something along the lines of, “This is the great difficulty of the master. Trying to wake people out of their sleep of ignorance. It is so difficult.”
He fell silent and a tear ran down his cheek. A tsunami of emotional energy washed over the satsang. It brought me to tears. It was so human, so real. And deeply moving. Everyone present felt this.
Therefore to say, “There is no real outward sign of their feeling” in relation to the Advaita movement is a clear indicator that you have no idea what you are talking about, because it is simply untrue.
Let’s face it, bald-headed Papaji with his small satsangs in his living room is a thing of the past.
One of the best things to come out of Papaji may have been helping to create Mooji, who has developed a commune in Portugal, helped to get set up by some(one or two?) Osho sannyasins, if I remember correctly.
I’ve heard some good reports.
Of course, large communes need money to help set them up. Osho spoke about a futuristic vision of living in communes without money, but that was after they were already well established.
By the way, for issues of hair thinning, I reccomend using Jamaican Black Castor Oil mixed with coconut oil.
Rajneeshpuram offered a communal home and work for lots of street people.
I have to congratulate Prince Harry for his recent revelations and criticism of the establishment of the monarchy.
Personally, I now think that the monarchy should be abolished, which would save a lot of money, and that Buckingham Palace should be turned into a home for London’s street people.
‘Cardboard Box City’ – The Levellers: https://youtu.be/s_Md3VNAjA0
“Rajneeshpuram offered a communal home and work for lots of street people.”
What is your point here, Shanti? They weren’t shipped in out of compassion and full-hearted generosity, they were used fror a particular political purpose and shipped out as soon as they were no longer of any use.
Are you advocating such exploitation? If so, it doesn’t really fit with your anti-monarchy line, does it?!
Well, SD, actually I just added in the line about the Rajneeshpuram to add ‘context’ to the comment…as it was deleted by the mod a couple of weeks ago – yet the mod recently allowed some political comments without any context to the thread.
Watch the moderation isn’t politically biased, please.
But yes, indeed I believe that the street people were shipped in by Sheela in order to help manipulate the local election campaign.
But they got free beers and haldol and a good time.
MOD:
Re “Watch the moderation isn’t politically biased, please” – do you mean that the mod should make sure your particular preferences are published, Shanti?
SN wasn’t created to be an arena for political debate although a lot of comments have recently been allowed in this thread that wouldn’t normally make it, to maintain discussion and interest, due to a lack of alternative articles in the pipeline.
MOD wrote:
” “Watch the moderation isn’t politically biased, please” – do you mean that the mod should make sure your particular preferences are published, Shanti?”
No – in fact I have rarely written any political views here. All I wrote was a comment where I expressed positive appreciation for Prince Harry speaking and writing out recently and then wrote that I consider the monarchy a waste of money, and suggested that Buckingham Palace, which I happened to walk past yesterday, which has many large bedrooms and which costs taxpayers an awful lot of money to light and heat each year, not to mention the other huge palaces and properties used by the royals, could be used instead to help those in need of somewhere to live, a very large number of rough sleepers which has doubled since the Tories retook power in 2010 – and shared a song. Perhaps the royals could live together with some of them for a while.
This is hardly political.
You trashed that comment, and on the other hand have recently allowed some far-right views from Dominic, Lokesh to make a comment on Nicola Sturgeon, as well as publishing your own views on capitalism.
MOD:
Shanti, to claim that advocating the abolition of the monarchy “is hardly political” is an astounding lapse on your part. If you limit the scope of ‘politics’ to party political policy and ideological concerns, and which one should or should not be in power etc. etc., imagining the monarchy is somehow outside, above and beyond all that, and is therefore irrelevant and relatively easy to get rid of, ignores the enormous weight of history and the huge symbolism of the institution and the embedded power structures that have created and supported it for so long. Its abolition would therefore be a deeply political act. (Which, of course, doesn’t necessarily imply that it will never happen, maybe even sooner than later, who knows? But if it does then it’ll be one of those ideas whose time will have come).
Your original comment wasn’t allowed as it was irrelevant to the discussion, just popping out from nowhere, as it were, as you yourself acknowledged yesterday by introducing a comment with another irrelevance, albeit one about questionable goings-on at the Ranch!
Why not make similar objections to Veet Francesco’s rather prolifically expressed political views, to which, by the way, my pro-capitalist point was a means to restore some balance to the matter in question, not necessarily indicating any particular rigid ideological stance. (I’ll get back to Veet F when I’ve the time and energy).
As for Dominic’s and Lokesh’s posts, I’ll have to check back and see, so I’ll fit that in when I can. But I do feel you’ve a tendency to feel unnecessarily ‘victimised’, always on the look-out for perceived injustices.
SN needs new topics, so why not contribute an article or two? The sort of instances of perhaps controversial off-topic meanderings that you cite tend to occur when a particular topic has essentially run its course, as I mentioned yesterday.
Salmond, Sturgeon, Harry Kipper, Jeremy Trout? If you ask me, there is something fishy going on.
MOD:
Yes, it is a political issue for those who wish to abolish the monarchy.
Personally, I don’t take it that seriously, and it was just something that I began to think about over the last several years.
And I can see that the majority of the country is largely in support of the monarchy. I think they are stupid and in their sleep, they feel they need the royals for entertainment value, therefore it is unlikely to happen for some time.
Although Princess Diana may have been considered a threat to the establishment of the monarchy, and some allege that this is why she died the way she did.
She certainly believed she was a threat to them. In fact, just nine months before her car crash she wrote a letter to her butler claiming that “This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure or some serious head injury…” and she felt that the security forces were watching her all the time.
Whatever the truth of the matter, I don’t know.
And no, I don’t feel “unnecessarily victimised”, I was just pointing out that you didn’t allow my comment two weeks ago, yet since you did allow others to make comments that were no more relevant than mine.
No need to keep going on about this, anyhow.
About Veet’s comments, no, I have no problem with them, as they are just what he wants to talk about.
Hey,
The back and forth in the last few comments actually sounds very “down to earth” to me…
Coool.
Whatever topic is coming up is just something someone wants to talk about. Fair.
I had some German saying running through my mind:
“Sobald wir über den Berg sind geht es nur noch abwärts. Bis zum nächsten Berg.”
English something like:
“Once we are over the hump it is all downhill. Until the next hump.”
Or:
After every ascent there’s a descent.
As true mountaineers we certainly know this by personal experience.
“Salmond, Sturgeon, Harry Kipper, Jeremy Trout? If you ask me, there is something fishy going on.”
Looks like we’re off the hook! That cold fish, Wee Krankie the Dafty, Queen of Scotland, has resigned!
Break out the double malt.
Dear Mod,
I would like to nominate you for sainthood, as you have the patience of one, and for your work with care in the Sannyas community.
Let’s face it, central London without Buckingham Palace might feel a little…empty perhaps. But, if the Royals were evacuated or moved for a share-a-home programme in another palace with the homeless (which, no doubt, would do them a lot of good), Buckingham Palace could be done up with neon-coloured flashing lights and special effects…inside could be used as a music venue…Abida Parveen could be invited to perform…free music festivals in the gardens…
A brilliant spectacle…they could replace existing marching palace guards with robotic ones…that could be something beautiful and wild all at once…a psychedelic museum…Prince Harry said he used to secretly smoke pot in his room… Ringo Starr said that the Beatles once shared a spliff in the toilets during s sixties visit to the Queen – like something “really heavy and loaded with dynamite…”(dub syndicate): ‘No Lightweight Sound’: https://youtu.be/6hkvlnu_E98
NP, when you say “the advaita movement” you’re referring to the neo-advaita gatherings in the West, I believe.
Advaita Vedanta is as old as the hills and draws from the Vedas, Gita, Upanishads. There are several different schools in it, and they don’t all agree, just like Buddhism, so that you get duelling non-dualists.
There are Sannyasin orders like Vivekanda’s who wear orange robes.
It didn’t start with Papaji or Ramana or Nisargadatta, who helped popularise it to westerners.
I think the robes was more of a marketing angle for Osho, and people grew tired of it eventually.
Remember, after Oregon, when for a short period he told followers they could wear what they liked, and everybody cheered. He felt offended by that, and returned to a halfway house position, robes in the ashram, civvies outside.
Who now wants to be bothered with all that malarkey, except for Indians and a few nutters (not mentioning any names!).
The advaita scene is very varied, and there are gatherings where people do the ‘holy white’ dress code, and Mooji has malas I believe.
You say, “It made clear what you stood for” – did it? Superficially, perhaps, to the outside world.
Sannyas was a broad church, some folks were serious spiritual seekers, others were there more for the ‘Zorba’ aspect, the sex, drugs and partying, and everything in between.
Dividing people up into in-groups and out-groups is passé for me, unless you’re in a monastic order.
Some like to do it, I don’t have a problem with that, but advaita is looking at something deeper and more universal, so that a uniform wouldn’t really fit its ethos.
Plus, the internet, rather than streetwear, markets everything to us these days, so there’s little need to be sashaying down Camden high street in orange togs, to get attention.
Dominic said, “I think the orange was more a marketing angle for Osho.”
Maybe it was, but at the same time it also put a group of visible spiritual seekers out there on the streets in the West. That is not a small thing, and hasn’t been repeated since. It was a sign of those times, an opening up of spirituality and making it clear that it was good to discuss it.
Interesting that there used to be orders of sannyasins, I was not aware of that, although I did know that Advaita Vedanta was quite old.
I’m in two minds about monastic orders: on the one hand they allow spiritual seekers to congregate and seek solitude, and quite a few seekers even from America and England go to places like Thailand to become monks for a while. On the other hand, there’s vows and all that, of which I think, “If it doesn’t come from within, what is it worth to impose it?”
It’s true that I tend to avoid big cities and certainly don’t sit in the Starbucks on Oxford Street to enjoy the chanting. But even then, I have seen an Osho sannyasin on the trains here more recently than I have a Thai Forest Order monk or any of the others. Could be chance I suppose
I’m generally in favour of the new forms of spirituality, think it’s a good thing to shake the secular societies up a bit. LSD and mushrooms definitely have their part to play.
I don’t see monastic robes as a uniform, more as a statement of intent and commitment. Same with the sannyasins in red or orange.
Shocker, NP, are members of the Osho tribe still conspicuous in the wild in the West? Didn’t know that.
Are you also doing your bit then to “shake the secular societies up a bit” by dressing up?
It’s a fair point, “robes as a statement of intent and commitment. Same with the sannyasins in red or orange.”
From the inner perspective, it’s meant to symbolise that, from the outer view it will mean different things to different people: interesting, colourful, inspiring, traditional, brainwashed, groupthink, that cult from ‘Wild Wild Country’, or I’m-too-busy-with-my-life-to-even-notice. It will be a spectrum.
Still a uniform though, imo, which is, “an identifying outfit or style of dress worn by the members of a given profession, organization, or rank.”
Recently, The Hare Krishnas have had a bit of a makeover and are reaching out and hosting regular events like kirtans, in their ‘civvies’. This is clearly working for them, imo, and is less alienating than the shaved head and robes look.
In general, not looking like a ‘weirdo’ to western eyes will create less of a barrier to getting your message across, imo. Mindfulness didn’t really catch on until it got secularised.
But it’s all good, I don’t have any skin in the game, and also….
Dominic said, “Shocker, NP, are Osho sannyasins still conspicuous in the wild..?”
Well, she was wearing a mala so it was a pretty safe bet. We had a fun conversation on the train from Leiden to Haarlem. I don’t wear orange myself (neither did she) so I made the contact.
But it’s interesting that the Hare Krishnas have also taken a step back from public wearing of robes. I know they have a centre in Amsterdam, but I’ve never visited there.
Well, the Hari Krishnas who preach in the street, trying to push copies of the ‘Bhagavad Gita As It Is’ – not a particularly intelligent interpretation , taking most of it completely literally , and without understanding a lot of the mystical elements, – are hardly inconspicuous. They are still shaven with the recognisable tuft of hair at the back.
I see them regularly, just the other day in fact, and avoid engaging in conversation with them.
Remember, if you choose to drive them over, grand theft auto style, you will likely get chased by the police. “If you can`t do the time, don`t do the crime.”
I don’t even know if all of my comments have survived the “awaiting moderation” because I can’t find them anymore in this chaotic mess…so I can’t see if anyone cares at all and reacted…I am lost in this jungle and give up again…maybe this is the set-up DEVICE…
?
Rewind:
Does anyone of you comment or reply on that small window at Caravanserai ? (That’s here for me – now). Or do you only (re-) act directly on that special chapter, thread, main article? How do you search for newest postings? How to comment or reply with the best flow? The routines here are weird … and I am confused as always – technically speaking.
Today:
I guess again one just follows the latest group-thread or topic always opended by Satyadeva – no matter if it might fit there or not…
Replyng means your words will pop up somewhere in the middle of the thread and no one finds it – just the writer above?
I tried to post an event, it simply disappeared…
I commented on something like ‘Wild Wild Country’ – not to be found anymore…
I am too stupid / or just moderated / or the board is heavily broken…
House Of Mirrors….
MOD:
Veet Tom, the SN site is certainly in a poor technical condition, mostly, I’m told, due to using an outdated Word Press model that we have no means of repairing or updating. Eg, at the list of articles Satyadeva is credited as being responsible for every one despite having written none of them – impossible to rectify, apparently, and I hear SN is living on borrowed time, with more such dysfunction bound to occur.
If you have trouble finding the latest posts check the time written at the top of each post.
If you reply to a post it should be automatically placed directly below the one you’re responding to.
No point trying to put something in a current topic if it’s not relevant to that topic or to what’s been said before, unless it’s particularly interesting.
Certain posts of yours have been deleted, eg the two you sent today, as they weren’t considered relevant or interesting.
I’ve taken to checking daily in the articles where stuff is still being added, and then I use my browser’s search function to search for posts with today’s date.
About psychedelic era content you may (again) dive into this one:
Psych-Out 1968 (Director’s Cut 2015 Blu-Ray Edition) [HD] 1080p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHcNjetHydM
As comments have been deleted I will leave this board for ever.
Sannyas here again as an old-fashioned powered system by some mod and his followers is so old-school – no tear remains left.
By head-oriented writiers who don’t care enough about their freedom.
We had this before…Bye bye….
Veet Thomas
MOD:
Veet Tom, your posts were left out as they weren’t relevant to the topic, and such music only posts are restricted anyway unless directly relevant to the discussion.
How is it that other paths are dismissed squarely as ‘religious nuttery’?
Swami Videha is a versatile meditation teacher of different paths and offers his teachings all under Osho’s guidance:
https://www.oshonews.com/2023/01/25/atisha-the-seven-doors-to-meditation/
Swami Nirodh before meeting Osho had blissful experiences when chanting Hare Krishna Mantras:
https://www.oshonews.com/2023/01/23/nirodh/
Note: I do not personally know any of these above guys and did not participate in any of the courses offered.
….
Are they really, Klaus? Osho talked in a positive way about many religious paths, like the Sufis, the Tao, Zen and others. I don’t see any need to talk about them derogatorily. There are even aspects of what he did not talk positively about, such as Christianity, which I have experienced in a good way: look at Anthony de Mello.
One of my favourite Osho sayings is, “Learn from the Buddha, but don’t be a buddhist.” I think you can extend that to many religions, they left us many great teachers but you don’t have to get involved with the orthodox power structures and priests that have congregated around their legacies. You don’t have to fit in, and you certainly don’t have to give them authority over you. In a way, all organised religion is religious nuttery.
I think the greatest responsibility we have is to our own evolution. For some people that starts with doing the Dynamic and throwing out all the rubbish. For others it is to live the one-ness, to realise that we are water as well as waves on the ocean of consciousness. The thing to watch out for is when you stop being creative.
I like Swami Videha’s approach, it seems many-sided from the short write-up of his event on Osho News. It’s nice to see that people haven’t stood still in the time after Osho’s death.
NP,
Could not have summed it up more nicely. ::))
I also would quote Lokesh here:
“Take the best. And forget the rest.”
The problem with “taking the best” is that it requires you to survey the whole field — knowing what is the best is not always easy. Which is why I’d say just absorb what resonates, whether that is Chuang Tzu or Zen; when you come across it accept it and see what your inner wisdom has to say about it.
When I said, “Take the best. And forget the rest”, it was said in the context of relating to gurus and spiritual teachers.
Taking the best means to extract what nourishes and casts light upon that which one needs to understand. To forget the rest implies that there are often elements around such people that one certainly does not need and are therefore best forgotten. This is not always the case, I was speaking in general.
Osho provides a good example. He spoke about sex and how it should be taken as something sacred. Yes, that makes good sense. Then we hear about his behind-the-scenes hanky-panky with his female disciples. Forget it, other than to realize that gurus do not always practiSe what they preach.
On that line we can move into Osho’s take on using drugs. He was basically anti-drug in his public stance and told people to drop drug use and start meditating. Good advice. Then Osho develops a taste for nitrous oxide and prescription tranquillizers, for whatever reasons he may have had. Forget it, other than to remember that talk is cheap and silence is golden. You can’t believe everything you see and hear, now can you?
In my opinion, first one has to know something, so that one can forget it.
Myself when I was at school I did know how to speak French.
Now I have forgotten.
So the question for me is:
What do we know?
As a result I must say, we don’t know.
We don’t know about enlightenment, how it functions. And we don’t know if Osho or somebody else was enlightened, if enlightenment exists at all.
We don’t know what happened behind the scenes and why he took drugs.
So forgetting only makes sense if I know.
If I don’t know, it makes no sense at all, at least for me.
Let’s see I’ve got this.
“There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know.” Then there are the forgotten known knowns, the forgotten known unknowns etc. As for enlightenment, we don’t know what it is….
https://youtu.be/pOUilsuZj1E
The best of Donald Rumsfeld…
Plus a Tibetan saying:
There are things that can never be known.
Ergo: We strive for the things that can be known.
No use striving for things that cannot be known.
@Lokesh
Great clarification here.
However, that is – more or less – how I took it.
When we find out about things one did not know before, it is better to stick with the positive experience one has got.
And not burden oneself.
To balance the yin and the yang a bit:
The best of Condi Rice.
The era of gurus behaving badly seems to have peaked last century.
In the digital age it’s hard to imagine such egregious behaviour not being outed for very long.
But some still like to keep it old school.
John de Ruiter, who drew sannyasins into his orbit, is back in the news.
“Take the best and forget the molest?”
Don’t think so, your Stariness.
True to form, it’s the old, “I was shagging them for their enlightenment” defence.
Karma’s a beatch!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11679911/The-staring-cult-leader-charged-sex-attacks-four-female-followers.html
John de Ruiter has come free on bail:
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/john-de-ruiter-makes-first-court-appearance-book-author-says-women-in-oasis-have-been-traumatized-1.6249935
I would say that he seems, imo, to be very lucky that ‘the ghost is making this kind of suggestion’. And is not challenging him with, mmmmhhh; beautiful guys and/or ‘ladymen’…
Would he still do ‘it’ with the latter? If not, why not?
An astute observation, Klaus!
Why is the spirit telling John de Ruiter to only “spiritually enlighten” multiple attractive women, and not telling him to enlighten men in public toilets as well?
Doesn’t sound like a very compassionate, inclusive spirit to me, more of a patriarchal, neanderthal throwback!
Poor John is the real victim here.
The culprit, the spirit, should be the one in the dock, if ghostbusters can track him down.
Dominic
2 2 23, 12:19
Actually, my wondering is:
“Where is wisdom in this happening?”
A person in no-mind.
A ghost (picture? vision?) appears.
Stays a while.
Makes suggestions.
No-mind listens.
Krrrkkrrkk.
No-mind/mental workings?
No-mind acts bc impulse.
‘Wisdom’? Not suppressing this suggestion-impulse?
No-mind chooses suitable – straight – subjects.
Oh dear.
No-mind does not suffer any consequences.
Turmoil is for the lesser souls.
Lovely.
If no-mind just watches the funny mental object it might pass away 4 seconds later.
Equanimity.
But who am I to know better for others?
Klaus said, “where is the wisdom in this?”
You could say that the energy of life in a guru moves towards expression, even when that expression is sex, on the general principle that sex is zesty fun enjoyed by both parties.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work out that way with the traumatised ladies….
God, reading the ‘Daily Mail’…no wonder Dominic’s moved back into the sheep herd.
Those poor women have got it into their heads that it was something ‘bad’ just for having it off with him – and afterwards.
It’s difficult when you are surrounded by the collective unconscious expectations of the herd mentality of the society, news propaganda machine, fake news, the old skool religious expectations of either celibacy or monagamy which are well out of date.
Good to see that spiritual teachers are experimenting more with tantric energy experiments, polygamy, group sex, the wife included.
Now, now, SS, calm down, all that ranting can’t be good for your blood pressure.
It seems the topic of sex abuse (which may have contributed to one woman’s suicide) gets you quite aroused, and fantasising about every which way to get it on.
It’s a mystery why Osho called you Shanti, or was he having a laugh? Maybe it was a typo for Shag-ti.
Hopefully, it’s all working out for you, at least in your mind, and women are tearing your door down, for those “tantric energy experiments”.
Seems you need to find some ladyfriends who share these voracious sexual appetites, SS.
A lot of women are happier with serial monogamy, even in sannyas circles.
Lokesh said, “He spoke about sex and how it should be taken as something sacred…”
The best I’ve heard it said is that sex is the energy of life.
Lokesh said, “…and then he developed a taste for nitrous oxide and prescription tranquillizers.”
It seems to me that maybe the example worth following was that of the Vedas and its mystery ‘Soma’, or the reference to light-filled herbs as a path to enlightenment. Certainly psychedelics are much talked about but seem to be largely beneficial, if you take them as a teaching substance with proper preparation and aftercare.
NP said:
“Lokesh said, “…and then he developed a taste for nitrous oxide and prescription tranquillizers.” It seems to me that maybe the example worth following was that of the Vedas and its mystery ‘Soma’, or the reference to light-filled herbs as a path to enlightenment. Certainly psychedelics are much talked about but seem to be largely beneficial, if you take them as a teaching substance with proper preparation and aftercare.”
Sure, psychedelics , and the legendary soma, have been used or experimented with historically on the path to enlightenment, and indeed, by some masters, such as Osho, even afterwards.
But in Osho’s case, it appears to have happened spontaneously by his introduction to nitrous oxide from his dentist – a highly addictive drug.
And it wasn’t what Osho was doing to attain enlightenment.
Osho was already fully enlightened some 30 years before, already ‘dead’, as it were, before he decided to create his books dictated on nitrous oxide- which were originally intended as an obvious device from the master to shock sannyasins with included photos of himself sitting in the dental chair.
Whilst sannyasins worked hard and fought legal battles at the Ranch, attempting to make Osho look respectable as possible by collecting letters of support from around the world, Osho was engaged in making himself look unrespectable. Sheela and the management managed to block the publication of the books for several years as he was officially meant to be in silence at that time, and perhaps for PR reasons.
But Osho had no qualms about his reputation at that time. There was no ego which wanted to big itself up. On the contrary, he appears to have been doing the opposite.
Not only was Osho enlightened before his arrival at the Ranch, he had actually merged with and helped several sannyasins to become enlightened, at least one seventh body enlightened, before he even arrived in the US.
As he later said of those enlightened sannyasins, “their energies will be used.”
As far as tranquillisers are concerned I believe he already had been introduced to those before Rajneeshpuram – for medical reasons.
I think that was one of the most beautiful things about the story of Osho’s life, the way he came out and spoke under the influence of drugs at the Ranch now and again.
Personally, I believe think he did end up overdoing it a bit with drugs at the Ranch, especially during the last couple of years. I don’t blame his doctor or dentist. Perhaps it was unfortunate it happened, it may have made him a bit complacent at the Ranch and caused many too doubt, but it appears to have been the way Existence wanted it to play the story out, as it were.
And on the positive side, the nitrous books may have helped his movement not to become an organised religion; he didn’t want that, he didn’t want to be too respectable. Although his work continues through some of his enlightened disciples in their own way and that’s how I expect he would have wanted to it to be.
I think that was one of the most beautiful things about the story of Osho’s life, the way he came out and spoke under the influence of drugs at the Ranch now and again.
I think all paths and religions are an attempt to put the great unknown, the ocean, into a bucket.
It cannot be contained, and is prior and beyond any formulations.
The nature of human culture and wandering is to mix and cross-fertilise with other cultures.
Osho hybridised Eastern spirituality with the western human potential movement, then sannyasins interbreed with neo-advaitins, bhaktas and other groups.
There may be superficiality in all of this, but also good fruits, with the internet pushing this evolution into warp drive.
Seeing the good, the bad and the ugly in all paths is legitimate.
Osho did that with others, it’s also legitimate to do that with the Sannyas movement.
Bhakti Yoga or devotion to a Guru appeals to some, perhaps it is the simplest way, but if you mistake a wave for the ocean, you might get stuck surfing only that wave, unable to enjoy the energy of other waves, pushing you forward, when that one is gone.
It seems to me that sannyasins have a kind of quiet within, a mixture of Osho’s silence with celebration, creativity, joy and love. There was something kind of blissful over those years.
Even in Papaji’s book, ‘The Truth Is’, there is a long chapter about the satguru where he explains about the guru within, and the need for a physical guru if you feel you are the body (which most of us do).
Sometimes I think that meeting Osho, even so early in life, was a lucky chance. To meet a living guru and to be initiated by him was special, even if his teaching was another attempt to put the ocean in a bucket.
In a way, I think Osho’s discourses on the world’s religions were almost like a new starting point for religious thought, a clearing out of the old, a fresh take. Those times in the Buddha Hall, sitting on the cold floor waiting for him to come in….
“Wanderer, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.”
Dominic said: “Osho hybridised Eastern spirituality with the western human potential movement, then sannyasins interbreed with neo-advaitins, bhaktas and other groups.”
It’s a melting pot, where all kinds of Indian and eastern influences mix with western thinking. It still goes on, one of my cousins has been getting into spirituality and she has found a teacher who has been to Poona but never took sannyas, and who now teaches “personal coaching with consciousness learning”, which is very close to teaching non-duality. It’s a kind of merger of teaching spirituality with personal coaching, which you can charge money for, a bit of teaching the teachers if you will.
The interviews at BatGap are a kind of cutting edge of evolution here, but the question is, is it going to concentrate or diffuse? There is a need to make a living, and not everyone can be a group leader or a therapist, and I can see some people not being really pure about it, treating spirituality as a side gig.
It’s all good, evolution is picking up speed.
5 years ago, in the dark ages, we thought there were only 2 genders, now there’s a 100 plus to choose from! Who knew?
Have you noticed, how non-duality teachers on YouTube are getting younger?
Soon they will be throwing a tiktok tantrum that Brahman, in the form of their mommy, is restricting their livestream, until they’ve done their homework. Mommy will have to back down of course, knowing her little enlightened one has hit 200,000 subscribers, and making a nice income from her Satsang.
It’s an amazing time to be alive, where everything is everywhere, all at once, for the price of a click.
I’ve heard good things about that movie, I may spend the 10 euros to add it to my collection. Such is the price of a click, indeed.
But I am taking a bit of a break from non-duality in particular and spirituality in general. It makes my head ache too much, which is not a good sign. Instead today I have been reading a few Ayahuasca trip reports, it’s a fascinating substance which seems to be a great way of working with your buried stuff.
Even though it looks like Osho had a penchant for certain questionable drugs, he was quite positive about their mind expanding benefits, unlike other gurus like Krishnamurti who disapproved.
Most of those, I suspect had little or no experience, and were/are talking through their butt cheeks.
Psychedelics and plant medicine use is happening under the radar in the West, but with enough research and data, it could get legalised in the near future and benefit more people.
Pari, who ran this site with Parmartha, before he also died, wrote his second book about his trip reports.
https://o-meditation.com/2012/06/12/the-attraction-for-drugs-is-spiritual-osho/
Yes, it appears he got well into the properties of nitrous oxide, as it were. Whatever the downers, I expect he just enjoyed the high and probably binged on them now and again, more than he needed to, and asked for high doses just for fun around that time.
I tried watching that movie but could not get into it. Is it any good?
I suspect not, the bad reviews on imdb have put me off bothering for now. It’s free to watch on amazon prime, or elsewhere if you’re a buccaneer. I just liked the scifi multiverse concept and the title which sums up our new global digital interconnectedness, and the relative nature of space/time, according to nondual thinking, and ‘quantum mechanics’, which I’m sure we’re all familiar with
Last thing I’ve been watching is ‘The white Lotus’ which is a clever dark comedy series set in a luxury hotel spa in Hawaii. At one point a guest gets a healing which involves chanting the Gayatri Mantra, which shows how this stuff is percolating into the general culture.
I’ve recently come across a condition they call “la claridad” in South America, which translates as ‘the clarity’. It seems to be a special kind of ego inflation related to the feeling of knowing the truth, it manifests as a conviction that you have special knowledge. These are some hallmarks…
* Messianic discourses, sermons from the mount, guru-downloads
* A sense of knowing it all, having seen it all, everyone else’s words seem inferior
* a sense of having a deeper knowledge and wisdom than others, usually without being able to express it clearly
* Judgement toward others’ experiences or methods of self-expression when actually not having understood the depth or value of the communication (clipping the signal).
* Conviction of having gone through experiences ‘deeper’, ‘greater’, ‘more powerful’ than anyone else
* Having been confronted with an ‘unveiling’ which separates one from the crowd
* A flighty employment of various concepts to bludgeon other people into conceptual submission (this can be ‘logic’, ‘reason’, the gospels, or often a kind of airy, lofty ‘spiritual sophisticate’ slant on things…).
It made me wonder if perhaps a lot of gurus suffer from this. It might well be associated with a lot of spiritual revelations? Some of these things even Osho exhibited….
“Some of these things even Osho exhibited.”
I think you’re onto something, NP. Gurus and their enlightened egos, or even their followers getting inflated egos, from being so special for picking the bestest and most sexually free guru that has walked the earth (in their minds).
Can’t think of anybody like that here though, can you?
Arpana sent me this: “Nityaprem unwittingly describes Lokesh:”
“* Messianic discourses, sermons from the mount, guru-downloads
* A sense of knowing it all, having seen it all, everyone else’s words seem inferior
* a sense of having a deeper knowledge and wisdom than others, usually without being able to express it clearly
* Judgement toward others’ experiences or methods of self-expression when actually not having understood the depth or value of the communication (clipping the signal).
* Conviction of having gone through experiences ‘deeper’, ‘greater’, ‘more powerful’ than anyone else
* Having been confronted with an ‘unveiling’ which separates one from the crowd
* A flighty employment of various concepts to bludgeon other people into conceptual submission (this can be ‘logic’, ‘reason’, the gospels, or often a kind of airy, lofty ‘spiritual sophisticate’ slant on things…).”
Poor Arpana, seems like Osho is not the only one who haunts him. I’ve hardly written anything on SN in a month, yet here I am being accused of a lot of misconstrued nonsense by PC Plod Arpana, who hasn’t written anything on SN in around a year.
A little while back Shanti was raving on about how my comments were putting off potential new commentators on SN. Then he starts posting cheapo pin-up photos and images of sadhus sticking nails through their sex organs. Makes you wonder who he thinks he is trying to inspire.
Now he posts some mumbo jumbo written by Arpana, supposedly interpreting NP’s descriptions of me, which, all things considered, would require an imagination composed of industrial knicker elastic to stretch that far.
After complaints about my comments from Shanti, Veet and Satchit, I thought, okay, leave SN’s pages to them and see what they come up with. Veet and Satchit have pretty much disappeared and when Shanti appears once in a while he does so only to confirm in writing that he’s lost the plot. Spouting all his spiritual knowledge while actually living the life of a pretty nasty piece of work, who will use anything that comes his way to show me up as the thoroughly evil person I am for exposing the farce that constitutes his so-called spiritual search.
Judging from his Caravanserai posts, Shanti’s saving up to get a sex robot from Aldi, programmed for swinging and “tantric energy experiments” soon as they’re available.
Lucky for some there are no IQ requirements for SN or for taking Sannyas, when all you can manage is to copy and paste, or have unoriginal thoughts, worthy of a seventh day Adventist, waiting for the second coming of their Lord.
Dominic said, “Can’t think of anyone like that here, can you?”
Well, now that you mention it, there do seem to be a few characters around here who exhibit some of these traits. La claridad seems to be pretty common.
The way in which I came across it was looking through Ayahuasca stories, which I don’t think a lot of Indian gurus will have taken. The vine (as it’s called) seems to have a propensity for administering a swift hallucinogenic butt-kicking to people who come in with too much ego.
It’s amazing when you consider that Ayahuasca, a teacher plant, seems to be able to see into your mind and soul and show you your traumas, the things where you could have done better or been more loving. It’s a very amazing body of reports.
When you listen to the stories of Graham Hancock, who has been working on himself with Ayahuasca for nearly 20 years, and who says, really, love is at the heart of it, it’s really special. Of course that’s a long journey, coping with the places where we have been unkind to ourselves, to others.
All these medicines for the soul have been around since forever, fast tracking human evolution, I reckon.
You’re in a good place in Nederland, to go for a swim in the ocean of love, with some shameless shamans, and write your own trip report.
Dominic said, “All these medicines for the soul have been around since forever, fast-tracking human evolution.”
That’s very much akin to what Graham Hancock says, that some 40,000 years ago there was a major shift and suddenly art became an important factor in human thinking. He bases this on cave art, and thinks there was a shift in human diet which included psychedelic plants. Much the same as Terence McKenna and his ‘stoned ape’ theory.
But the whole dominator culture seems to have been born after that time, the psychedelics seem to have kept it at bay.
I may try out a ceremony with psychedelics, there seem to be enough people organising them locally. First going to do some more research though.
NP,
Last week I watched the 3.5 hours documentary ‘The History of the Eagles’.
There they described how they drove to Joshua Tree in the night and just before sunrise they munched peyote mushrooms. The effect set in right with sunrise. Glenn Frey described how he was lying on his back and staring into the sky becoming more and more blue and light. Then an eagle sailed right above him turning his head and they locked eyes.
That’s how he knew the name of the band.
https://my.mail.ru/mail/nesmeyanov1963/video/5809/2456.html
Find your vision on a shroom trip.
You’re a fungi, Klaus, but isn’t peyote a cactus?
I know we’re all just prisoners here of our own devices, but I’m getting a peaceful easy feeling from your description of their peyote sunrise. Take it easy….
You can see clearly I am no expert…it is in the docu….
Peyote ‘knobs’???
“Don’t let the sounds
of your own wheels
drive you cra-a-a-zy…!”
Or you might end up a desperado “on a dark desert highway”…
https://youtu.be/sxq1nNlhtO0
Haha! And all of this is happening on A Horse with no name in America….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocLCLMZO6dc
Classic! ‘Cos we were Born to be Wild…
https://youtu.be/egMWlD3fLJ8
…and free to live all our Love in the 21st century
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksHWlETqu0I
Participation in a ceremony costs a couple of hundred euros.
A 15g box of psilocybin truffles costs seventeen euros fifty cents in the local smart shop.
Plus the difficulty of transport and so on, seems there is a bit of a disconnect in the value space.
I’ll take 10 boxes. I’ve got the T-shirt to prove I’m doing it for Psyence!
Regarding Lokesh’s latest complaints, it seems to me that no one has ever treated him with the same cynicism and at times, possibly malice, with which he and his faceless accomplices have treated other SN commentators.
It doesn’t seem wrong to me to devote yourself to reading a little after you’ve written enough, or to do neither and enjoy the silence that follows the fading of the words, when you finally no longer distinguish between “my” and “your” words. But I’m not a writer, no problem with the blank page. And after all, never a moving thought for the day off of our MOD?
For me there are significant silences, deep roots of words that I don’t suspect where and when they will flourish.
It is no coincidence that after decades we are still here immersed and inspired by the same silence (thanks or despite Osho, but still around him), throwing ourselves into disputes about the ripples that his words have caused the ocean below.
Who needs sleeping pills when we have Veet’s comments to put us to sleep?
Being able to sleep at a certain age is no small thing, but I’m not asking for fees.
It’s not easy to say interesting things when responding to Lokesh’s unfounded complaints, especially by renouncingh using the idiomatic phrases of which my mother tongue is rich.
It seems that here he feels invested with the role of tourist village entertainer, he interprets silence as something gone wrong in his work.
Since the policy has changed in this tourist village, he is no longer able to make people laugh like he used to.
Deep crisis, for those who must be clear about which victim in the audience to sacrifice before going on stage.
I was talking about significant silences, Lokesh’s one could be.
Because now it depends on how he will resolve the question of whether or not he still feels part of the game created by Osho: deciding whether it was (and still may be) a co-operative game where everyone wins (win-win) or if it is a selfish game about smart vs dumb.
I remember in various Osho groups, between Pune and Miasto, people who at first glance were very much disliked me or I felt hostile.
Then, as perhaps no one here ignores, love in the end almost always prevailed, and when this rarely did not happen, however, the foundations had been created for it to happen in the future.
For me, that ability to respond to situations in a creative way is the profound sign of having come into contact with a profound dimension of being, increasingly difficult to find in worldly and unprotected environments, and especially in these anxious and hurried days.
It takes time and space to get to know each other’s walls that prevent love from flowing from heart to heart, this Forum does not meet the conditions to build trust, we can only try not to widen the distance, especially between Osho and his potential lovers.
It is possible that Lokesh will not be able to overcome his crisis and this Forum will shut down, end of the game “I win, you lose”, all the others will have won.
It is possible that Lokesh will try to play a cooperative game, challenging Anand Yogi’s spirit.
There are many other possibilities but I have to run to the gym.
Veet, I don’t dislike you. I would have to know you better to dislike you and that is something I’m not interested in. I do not find what you write on SN to be very interesting at all. You sound like you are stuck in some old sannyas paradigm that most sannyasins broke out of decades ago. I suspect this is because you never really were involved in sannyas when it was really happening and just got into the game in the last few minutes. Apart from that I find most of your comments dull.
You speak about “love…flowing from heart to heart” but most of what you say sounds like it is coming from the head of a headbanger.
I’m heartbroken, I can’t entertain Lokesh.
I don’t even think I meet his fashion tastes, it’s possible that he changes his wardrobe with the ease with which he changes his existential paradigm, or buries a Master.
Veet, it’s an old game of Lokesh that he judges others as not good enough, makes them inferior, being not really into Sannyas and so on.
What can we learn from this?
We can learn from this that we are not touched by these judgements, even if they come from the King of SN-island.
Good, grasshopper, you are learning wisdom.
Now you must thank Sensei, for his Ti-ching, knowing you will never defeat him, in Tongue-Fu fighting!
https://youtu.be/Jqk2mw8DrEA
Yes, Satchit, when we could be touched by the drama of a man who believes that the only love he can get is out of his performances. Sad.
Veet, if he wants to perform, let him perform. I am not disturbed by things I cannot change.
Certainly his performance has not the flavour of an innocent grasshopper, it’s more cockroach style.
Veet says, “I can’t entertain Lokesh.”
Try not to worry about it, Veet, even if you do feel a little nervous. You see, you are the last person I would look to for entertainment. Even Grasshopper Satchit has got you beat on that level. Yes, it is that bad. I suggest watching Tommy Cooper vids on Youtube. Maybe you might get some pointers there…just like that.
Never mind, Satchit is your buddy. We all need friends…even stupid ones.
Mod, this comment was in response to the short one by Lokesh, where he said my comment made him sleepy.
I don’t know if we all here have the possibility to delete comments that have already been published, i.e. not pending.
It would be another asymmetry that here may have encouraged domineering attitudes.
MOD:
Only three people have ever had such access, which has been very rarely used.
If you want to delete one of your posts then ask the mod.
@MOD
If one of the three guys deletes a comment after addressing someone else who has already replied to the deleted comment, this could be a way of provoking, by throwing the stone while hiding the hand.
Making someone’s comment appear out of context with these little tricks makes me a little nervous….
MOD:
Yes indeed, Veet F, and how about if he also deletes the other’s comment – without bothering to inform the mod? You get all sorts here, you know, no standards, no respect for authority…World’s gone upside down…Me, I blame the parents….
Sorry, MOD, it’s possible you’re friends with these people, and not just in the horizontal dimension of the Zorba.
Years ago I read a sharing (perhaps on ‘Osho Times’) in which one spoke of the vertical friendships experienced in the world of Osho, of how the old friendships with those who were not part of it suddenly appeared not very vital, nourishing or creative, as if wrapped from the nostalgia of the missed opportunities.
But I think I feel more nostalgia, of the same type, for friends from Osho’s world who over the years have closed themselves off in their life as a couple, facing the practical difficulties of obtaining all those comforts that help spend time together.
It happened also to me, to lose contact with the vertical dimension, within me and with the Sangha; shit happens, but I never thought that the solution to my mourning was to live a one dimensional life.
MOD:
“Sorry, MOD, it’s possible you’re friends with these people, and not just in the horizontal dimension of the Zorba.”
To allay your suspicions, Veet F, I’ve never met any of them and I only ‘know’ one of them via email, who is not the one who also deletes others’ posts.
Yeah, good old mum and dad. MOD, good to see you inject a little humour into Veet’s mumblings. Poor guy is feeling a little nervous. Hardly surprising seeing as how he is as mixed up at the 21st century. Deary me.
I just got an email from OSHO International which was the February 2023 newsletter which referred to a piece on the website which said, “politics is a fraud, a hypocrisy”. The interesting thing was this webpage collected a whole bunch of question and answers by Osho, each answer was a quote selected from a talk with a link to where you could read the rest of the talk.
It’s the first time I have seen that format, I thought it was well done and it made sense in terms of displaying the larger narrative about Osho’s thought on politicians and spirituality, and how they touch. Good stuff!
They decided to send me, without asking, the French version and the German version as well. Too much spam, so I unsubscribed. An own goal by Osho International once again.
Not a joke in itself is this video of a German comedy with sannyasins:
‘Ein Sommer in Orange’ – ‘A summer in orange’ (dated 2011, German director is Marcus H. Rosenmueller)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3do920
But there are jokes in it!
The story is that someone inherited an old farmhouse in German Bavaria and offered it to run a sannyas commune in it.
For the opening, an already fabulous “therapist from the American commune” is invited.
And the stories unfold all around this: ups and downs and round again, effects on the children, very touching scenes, miracles, Nazi police etc etc.
Sentimental recognition.
Have fun.
Today I felt sad and disappointed without a clear reason, for the first time in years. I’d always felt positive and clear-minded about the source of my emotions, but today I’m left wondering whether I haven’t been forcing that positivity somehow.
Moods are a strange thing, in a way to be truly sensitive to life’s currents you need to leave yourself free to experience them I believe. Maybe it is enough for some to be a happy-go-lucky chappie, it certainly gives you some protection from life’s vicissitudes, but I am more pleased to know there is still some mystery to my moods.
I found for a while that most of my moods came from ego, that it was my ego which was hurt from not being able to do something, or having to spend time looking after elderly relatives and not doing more important things. That meant I was free to ignore such moods, and just take flight on the positive. Until today’s little reminder.
It’s like a meal of potatoes, instead of white rice from the Chinese takeaway. Not everything has to be nice and fluffy, sometimes other moods feed the soul.
“sad and disappointed”
Hmm, must be somewhere a goal, is there?
Even happiness can be a goal.
Sure happiness can be a goal, but chasing a goal is very likely to bring unhappiness. You will be continually putting the moment of satisfaction — the attaining of the goal — in the future, and you will be living towards that, rather than being in the present.
Be Here Now
Be Now Here.
Nowhere and everywhere..
“Be Here Now”
Relax, you are already here.
A wee snapshot of life on the funny farm…
Lovely shot, Dominic.
Does anyone know what is up with the LoveOsho podcast episodes? You can still see them all listed in the Apple Podcast app, but when you try to play them back you get an error, and the LoveOsho youtube channel also seems to have gone offline.
Looks like they got deleted.
Met the lovely couple behind this, who seemed very devoted to Osho.
Then they went travelling, and started a new website with a book and growth and meditation services, which I can’t remember the name of now.
Why they took the podcasts and website down, I don’t know.
Maybe they joined another cult or are starting their own!
Just kidding of course. Don’t crucify me, please!
Are you sure this is a real photograph? I know sheep can talk. Plenty of evidence here on SN to support that. But I’m not sure if that grass in the bottom right-hand corner is artificial or not. It might have been photoshopped.
It’s the real deal, Swami G!
Lucky I had my iPhone with me for authenticity’s sake!
I’ll tell you briefly what happened:
I was reading Osho’s ‘Last Testament’ where he talks about how he contradicts himself because “the past is a graveyard”.
At the line where he says, “At the last moment I can say, “All this business of enlightenment is simply bullshit.
Forget all about it” – and perhaps a few people may get enlightened only when I say that.”…
I had a spiritual awakening and passed out!
When I woke up, I was in a green field surrounded by sheep that could talk!
When I asked them who they were, they said they were called ‘Sheeple’ and lived in a place called ‘NohMynd’, which was very peaceful, as they didn’t have to think a lot, if at all!
I asked who their leader was, and they told me he had left his body behind and was in another dimension, but could be accessed through his medium Baa-Shanti.
He would then tell them what to think and believe, which was great, as it saved their brains a lot of energy, which could then focus on eating and sleeping and staring into the distance.
I asked where I could find Baa-Shanti, and they told me he was on top of the hill and couldn’t miss him, ‘cos he was really horny.
I said “What?!”, they said “No, not like that, actually he’s an incurable romantic with a vivid imagination, you’ll see. He’s also great fun and a mentalist, in fact a completely self-realised funbaamentalist.”
Anyway, to cut a long tall story short, after a chat with Baa~Shanti, which seemed to go on for ages, I passed out again (he seems to have that affect on people).
When I woke up, I was back home, sitting on my couch, with a cup of Truffle Tea in my hand!
True story!
Jai Ram!
You must be very proud!
I wonder where the baby comes out from… I think I know.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Anger as trans inmates revert to males when they leave Scottish prisons.
Concern after new research suggested that men who changed their gender to female in jail are switching back to their birth gender after release.“
Alex Salmond has claimed that Nicola Sturgeon risks damaging the independence movement over her mixed-gender revelation. Ms. Sturgeon has been under pressure following controversy over her transgender status.
It’s a shame because those interviews were a valuable record of how people ended up with Osho, and what kinds of backgrounds led to people becoming sannyasins. I quite liked listening to an interview once in a while.
NP, from what you’ve read, have those who ended up with Osho found something better (or believe they have) or are they living in renegade limbo?
Most of the sannyasins and ex-sannyasins that I know are happier, less mainstream and pretty independent people, compared to most. They seem to find ways to expose their joy.
None of them that I know live in renegade limbo. Most still treasure their relationship with Osho, and don’t worry about Osho International or the Pune resort.
I’m looking at a small sample of about 10 people though.
NP, it has to be understood that you are living in Holland and therefore in a more liberal and permissive society. Exposing one’s joy, in, say, the UK, it is highly likely that one would be imprisoned for this.
Unless, of course, one is a football fan, where joy is considered acceptable, even essential (if scoring and winning) – as is ‘hatred’ of teams other than one’s own favourites, and anger/depression if your team misses chances to score and loses.
Sounds like a perfect recipe for bipolar people.
Thanks, NP.
Exposing your joy and your junk in Holland is perfectly legal, as are whacky backy coffee shops and trippy truffles. Combining them all, while riding a bike along the canals, sounds like a fun day out!
Oops, perhaps I should have written “engage with their joy”? Just for the British and their curious sensitivities?
Equally suggestive, NP.
“Excuse me, I’m going to engage with my joy! Back in a few minutes.”
British schoolboy humour, thinking everything is about masturbation…Joy is serious business, Dominic, as any psychotherapist will tell you.
Not only, NP, it’s all about the joy of sex, as any analyst will tell you!
Freud sure had a dirty mind, he has a lot to answer for! I think Osho had it right, sex is like a sneeze, joy and creativity and celebration are much more important.
The loveosho podcasts…they will be back. Watch this space.
Can sheep hypnotized on television with the funny story of foolproof science (in making money through people’s fears) judge someone as “sheep”?
A brain free from clots, an immune reaction to m-RNA serums that produce spike proteins, would be able to distinguish between a community held together by love from one united by fear of a virus created by a business committee.
It seems that the brave old Scots have locked themselves up in their small bourgeois world, they watch TV with their wife/husband and judge the enthusiasm of their peers as childish, those who keep in their heart, amidst the fragrance of roses, the last words of a friend: “I leave you my dream.”
It seems there are still young Scots who won’t bend over backwards to pick up sweets dropped on the street by strangers.
https://rumble.com/v26x8la-john-watt-truth-be-told-london-21.01.2023-oracle-films.html
https://covileaks.co.uk/about-us
I sheepishly might agree, Veet, if I could understand you better.
I’d say images like that are also propaganda, and although vaguely amusing for the amount of wrong ideas in them, mostly talk to people who have drunk the conspiracy theorist cool-aid.
The world is full of people and organizations trying to get a foothold in your belief system. My advice would be, throw them all out, especially all forms of news, and start with a blank mind, and just sit and listen to nature.
I have a conspiracy theory that nature wants to eat me, unless I can learn some lion whispering.
Say cheese…
NP, it seems to me that your mind is not so “blank”, if you sense the danger of “people and organizations trying to get a foothold in your belief system”.
Your system of defences against “people and organizations” should also be part of your belief system, otherwise you would believe it would be ineffective to “throw away all belief systems, especially all forms of news, and start with a blank mind, and just sit and listen to nature.”
So, is it possible to face reality without believing that our way of doing it is the most appropriate?
Who or what determines that one belief system is more appropriate than another?
Your belief system leads you to believe that there are no conspiracies where public institutions serve private interests, while there are others who believe that this is possible, as the relationship between the WHO (UN) and the Rockefeller family demonstrates.
I’m with you, Veet.
Trust no-one.
Very funny; but most conspiracy theories make no sense when you think about them…
Whoa, Fallacy alert! Data please.
You get today’s sweeping statement award with clogs on.
Well, take the whole chemtrails business. All aeroplane trails in the sky seeding chemicals?! Anyone who knows about planes knows they are very weight-conscious and they’re not going to be carrying thousands of extra kgs. of material to spray into the atmosphere…and where are the nozzles on a regular airliner for this? It makes no sense.
Oh, come on, NP, wake up and smell the Douwe Egberts!
Those mind control chemicals are obviously working.
How do you explain this cockpit photo then?
Anyway, truth is stranger than fiction. Here’s a few examples.
https://www.rd.com/list/conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/
Well, if you aim a shotgun blast into an aquarium chances are you will hit a few fish. The US government gets up to lots of dodgy stuff.
“Well, if you aim a shotgun blast into an aquarium chances are you will hit a few fish.”
Shocking image, bit too Tarantino for me. Poor fabulous fishies, surely they would all die. Aquarium lives matter!
You seem to have a cognitive bias against conspiracy theories. Admittedly the phrase has a negative connotation, that predisposes people to belittle them. You might argue that ‘loading the language’ like this is part of the conspiracy.
Surely, one should appraise each theory on its own merits, on a spectrum from unlikely to possible and probable, if one is interested. This will take mental effort, a rare resource for many.
Bringing it all back home, as an example, and based on witness reports, did Osho abuse drugs and misuse his power to have sex with female followers? Fake news or highly probable?
And by the way, I drink only the finest Lavazza Qualita Oro Italian espresso grind. None of your basic Douwe Egberts snelfiltermaling for me.
But you’re right, conspiracy theories should be looked at on their merits. You’ll find many contain a grain of truth, but only a grain. And that’s why I don’t think they are worth getting excited over…microchips in covid vaccines indeed. I suppose that’s why we have a worldwide chip shortage.
Speaking of tools of domination and conspiracies, I wonder if it is possible to influence electromagnetically, remotely and selectively, the gaseous layers that cover the planet, changing the natural evolution of climatic events.
Who knows if it will also be possible to make these layers of air vibrate with the right power and frequency to induce a resonance with the most superficial layer of planet earth?
https://rumble.com/v28u9lk-tomographer-who-worked-for-haarp-explaining-how-the-technology-can-cause-ea.html
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1114131/middle-east
Except that I’m so far liking your new prime minister, Veet, the firebrand Giorgia Meloni.
https://youtu.be/VdfNSF-U6zc
Pretty good speech if you ask me.
My impression, NP, is that you tend to sink into the meaning of words, as if they had a saving power.
Probably even the sound of a word in itself, in this case Lady Aspen spelled even three of them (god, motherland, family), has its own value but I believe that basically words are tools, like fingers that point to something between the earth and the sky, between the inner and outer world.
As Osho teaches, before judging it is important to understand the context of what is said or done, intentions, good or bad.
The eighth economic power in the world, those who in Italy hold wealth and means of production, do not entrust their fortune to a passing one, she was the last option left in the institutional political panorama (after the gatekeepers who have followed one another) for an electoral base which today in this country struggles to reach 50%…
She has been on the political scene for about thirty years, almost an uninterrupted electoral campaign, alongside the “controversial” center-right leader Cavaliere Silvio, a well-known expert on the traditional family…
The first word with which the so-called conservative faction, maybe not only in Italy, likes to fill its mouth is “God”, above all to contrast the Muslim ethics in matters of customs in the treatment of women and girls, Jewish male newborns are of no interest…
The best electoral assists for the political right wing are the news stories of Pakistani girls killed by their parents, the fault is that they fell in love with Italians with Italian roots.
Then, practically, despite the proclamations and blah blah, the NGOs continue undisturbed to supply the industry of the north of the country with cheap manpower, thanks to Soros who continues to dictate the emigration policy and its social, cultural and economic consequences, financing taxi ships and center-right wing Italian politicians, and more.
Like those who preceded Lady Aspen in these last 40 years (although for geopolitical reasons Italy has limited sovereignty since WWII, in fact the first real attacks on national interests by the globalist agenda started with the end of the political control of the Bank of Italy in favour of the “rationality” of the financial markets and related boom in public debt…), the action of her leadership on the matter of national interests vs. global interests is disavowing everything she said before her election as leader of Italy.
Look for her statements, in the context of the “before”, on monetary sovereignty, her fiery words against French colonialism through monetary seigniorage, her critical stance on vaccines during the lockdown, her comedy on fuel prices, etc.
The context of “today” is that she denied what she stated earlier, playing on words without context, typical of the renegades who also wallow in this Forum, therefore: she never said she wanted to abandon the Euro currency, her government continues to finance vaccines, defends national interests by sending weapons to Ukraine to wage geopolitical war against Russia on behalf of the USA, the price of fuels have not only not decreased but even increased, when she meets Macron she never misses an opportunity to telepathically remind him how much she’s worried about African children digging in French mines…
https://rumble.com/v1wai1s-italian-pm-giorgia-meloni-rips-into-this-countrys-exploitative-hypocrisy-dm.html
https://rumble.com/vpf0ha-giorgia-meloni-e-leuro.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYMUibdBoic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Qad-pu-Go
https://rumble.com/v1mix1o-giorgia-meloni-speaks-truth-to-macron.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzdANW43rPQ
And Veet, what are you going to do to stop the Rockefellers and the WHO collaborating? Is it actually useful to know this? Is it even illegal or immoral?
@NP
“…what are you going to do to stop the Rockefellers and the WHO collaborating?”
If it is true that the way of doing is being, then just being is enough, on the top of the Himalayas or on the barricades…as long as you have at least these two options it means that you are not a slave, at least not completely.
“Is it actually useful to know this?”
Was it useful to vaccinate yourself? If it wasn’t, maybe you would like to know why; useful to know then.
“Is it even illegal or immoral?”
An economic system has no conscience, the capitalist one encourages the predatory spirit, almost no law in the jungle.
” on the top of the Himalayas or on the barricades…as long as you have at least these two options it means that you are not a slave, at least not completely.”
It might be worth looking to see how much mentally maintaining the “on the barricades” option is just a way to help one feel more like a ‘heroic fighter against oppression’ than “a slave”, rather than being any genuine practical alternative; in other words, how far it’s really just another ‘head-trip’, a comforting, perhaps self-important fantasy as an antidote to feeling socio-politically impotent.
As for the capitalist system, as well as its flaws why not also acknowledge how it’s liberated the creative practical genius of man, providing more widespread wealth and material well-being than has ever before existed in this world?
Besides, nothing much is likely to radically change unless and until more humans become or begin to become more spiritually conscious.
There’s a time for everything, and nothing can stop an idea whose time has come (who said that?). Some patience might well be required, otherwise we’ll almost certainly create even more chaos.
“Was it useful to vaccinate yourself?”
Yes, I think it almost certainly was.
Can I prove this?
Apart from not having had covid, no.
But can you prove that it wasn’t?
@Satyadeva
SD: “Was it useful to get vaccinated?
Yes, I think it almost certainly was.”
It appears to me that people inoculated with these experimental vaccines get sick and infect as much or even more than non-hypochondriacs. But above all, was it useful to expose who immediately seemed not to be the target of the covid? Don’t you feel responsible with your choice of having contributed to pandering to the propaganda by Big Pharma, which is causing myocarditis and pericarditis in children?
SD: “on the barricades option is just a way to help one feel more like a ‘heroic fighter against oppression’ than “a slave”, rather than being any genuine practical alternative; in other words, how far it’s really just another ‘head-trip’, a comforting, perhaps self-important fantasy as an antidote to feeling impotent”.
I don’t understand which “genuine practical alternative” you are referring to, I hope it doesn’t coincide with your “feeling impotent”. But if you are interested in knowing how I feel, try asking me instead of proceeding with your divination method, guessing my astral picture.
SD: “As for the capitalist system, as well as its flaws why not also acknowledge how it’s liberated the creative practical genius of man, providing more widespread wealth and material well-being than has ever before existed in this world?”
As I already told NP a few comments ago, the words must be contextualized: today’s form of global capitalism is not the same as when the nation states still had a role in the allocation of resources.
If in a certain phase capitalism has favoured the things you say, I can only be pleased about it, just as I can only regret the failed promises made by other economic/social systems.
“Lenin considered that the concrete analysis of a concrete situation was the most substantial and vital element of Marxism. Great theoretical teaching for the organization and political action compared to those who – foolishly – take up Marxist-Leninist texts brandishing them like a bible.” (Marco Rizzo)
SD: “There’s a time for everything, and nothing can stop an idea whose time has come (who said that?). Some patience might well be required, otherwise we’ll almost certainly create even more chaos”.
I don’t know if you would have called the Jews who rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto in ’43 impatient, at the time it seemed that nothing would stop the idea of Nazi order.
I don’t even know if today you would call the kids on the Palestinian barricades chaotic, resisting the idea of Anglo-Israeli order.
I agree, Satyadeva. Quite a few people seem now to be jumping on the bandwagon that the vaccines were part of some conspiracy, but back in the day when the hospitals were filling with covid sick and dying it was a different matter. The covid illness seems to have run its course.
I find Dominic’s THE NEW NORMAL diagram to be most informative. Many unfortunate people, including regulars on SN like Veet and Satchit, have been victims of brain blockers. The world needs to hear about this, and thanks to SN and Dominic’s tireless efforts word is out.
Note the “OBEY” logo on the sheepie’s tee shirt. THE OBEY MEANING IS ROOTED IN THE DO-IT-YOURSELF COUNTER-CULTURE OF PUNK ROCK AND SKATEBOARDING, BUT IT HAS ALSO TAKEN CUES FROM POPULAR CULTURE, COMMERCIAL MARKETING AND POLITICAL MESSAGING. FAIREY STEEPS HIS IDEOLOGY AND ICONOGRAPHY IN SELF-EMPOWERMENT. WITH BITING SARCASM VERGING ON REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY, HE GOADS VIEWERS, USING THE IMPERATIVE “OBEY” TO TAKE HEED OF THE PROPAGANDISTS OUT TO BEND THE WORLD TO THEIR AGENDAS.
Remember, you read it on Sannyasnews first.
Pshh, that’s prime codswallop, Lokesh! Complete with a poster that dates back to Planet of the Apes! There is nobody wanting you to obey anyone, really.
But perhaps I’m talking from the perspective of having had two sannyasin parents, and not being part of any so-called religious community, or being part of the civil service, or some such crazy institution.
People try to convince you to buy their stuff all the time, but obeying? That demand seems to have gone out with the kings and queens of the Middle Ages.
“…and not being part of any so-called religious community.”
So you think being a sannyasin is not being part of a religious community?
Compared to being part of a Protestant church, such as my grandparents were, the sannyas community is a very lightweight kind of ‘religion’ which asks you no more than you are willing to give.
Och, NP, you’re just saying that because you are disobedient and like exposing your joy.
Not really, NP, people are being ‘cancelled’ or harassed for not supporting the trans agenda.
Teachers face dismissal if they don’t go along with it, or use the ‘pronouns’ their students want.
We have entered a new era of left wing ‘woke’ propaganda being pumped into our heads and institutions.
Cultures can regress as well as progress. Welcome to the asylum.
https://youtu.be/OshNahVo9-c
Funny thing is, most of the asylums have now been closed. Apparently, “care in the community” is cheaper and better for the patients.
I remember reading ’1984′ at school, not my favourite book by a long chalk. I much preferred Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’.
Each era has its own concerns, today it’s trans and woke.
Joke for the day…
A senior citizen called her husband during his drive home.
She said, “Herman, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on Interstate 90. Please be careful!”
Herman replied, “It’s not just one car. There’s hundreds of them!”
Coincidentallly, I just came across this on social media. I do not find it funny because I found myself in the same situation this morning.
You see? A good joke is worth telling a few different ways.
I came across a post by a Shaman a few days ago, where he talked about how much negativity he was seeing on being back in the States. He asked the spirit of ayahuasca for guidance, intending to see what he could do about it. He was told:
“The river of negativity has flowed forever, and will flow forever. It is not your place to do something about it. But what you can do is clear a little space on the banks and make a dock, which can be seen by those who float past on the rafts of their bad habits, and might inspire them to change their ways.”
I thought this was very inspirational. What do you think you might do to convince people to live a better life? Buddha’s teachings say that living a more virtuous life will also lead to greater joy and happiness.
Osho didn’t often speak about living a better life, but I think a lot of sannyasins live more wholesome lives than most people. Perhaps by example, by being the change we wish to see in the world, the Sannyas movement has made a difference.
Of course, that means being visible, and I think a lot of sannyasins are not particularly visible.
“Buddha’s teachings say that living a more virtuous life will also lead to greater joy and happiness.”
Fact is, a virtuous life is mostly a life of control and suppression.
Satchit said, “a virtuous life is mostly a life of control and suppression.”
Is it? I don’t think so. The five precepts of the Buddha for laymen are, “no killing, no stealing, no lying, no sexual misconduct and no intoxicants”. The first four come naturally for me, and barring one or two beers a month I don’t do too badly at the fifth. It would be a major shock for me to murder a human being or even an animal above the size of an insect.
The factor of the Noble Eightfold Path that describes Right Livelihood says, “no trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, and poisons”, and I have successfully avoided those in my working life. It’s a small burden not to work at a butcher’s or a liquor store or a gun store, and you do your fellow man a favour with it.
Of course there are people for whom honesty is a major effort, but you should be asking yourself, would you really want to associate with such people? It’s unhealthy. The people you surround yourself with determine your mental climate, it can either make your life easier or a whole lot more difficult.
There is a sutra where Buddha and Ananda are sitting together, and Ananda says to the Buddha, “Surely, good friends, good companions are half of the holy life.” And the Buddha replies, “Say it is not so, Ananda, for indeed, good friends, good companions are the whole of the holy life.”
Maybe you can tell me what “sexual misconduct” means, NP.
Making love with your wife?
Don’t you even have eight precepts in Buddhism? What’s with them?
I imagine it means rape and sex with kids, maybe marital infidelity as well depending on who you ask. Seems straightforward to me.
“Marital infidelity”?
Seems Buddhism is against the freedom of the individual.
Why else does it interfere if two persons want to make love out of their free will?
Really there is not much difference to the ten commandments of Christianity in my opinion.
Marriage is still the form of serial monogamy most practised in the world. And if two people vow to be together, then others shouldn’t interfere with that. So if some Buddhist thinkers hold that marital infidelity is against the precepts, I’m ok with that. People should be clear on what they’re getting into and out of.
I know Osho’s views on marriage, he didn’t hold it in high regard. I certainly think sexual freedom has made big strides, with various relationship styles now practised in the West such as the living-apart-together and the open relationship.
Marriage is not the ‘until death do us part’ variety anymore, it’s turned into something more practical.
I always did like Osho for not giving rules.
These so-called precepts are nothing but rules how to live in a community.
There is nothing spiritual in them.
O. should have given one rule – at least:
“Do not poison other people’s salad bars.”
8 precepts are given for the people taking part in a (buddhist) meditation course or retreat.
For sannyasins Vipassana group ran something like this here:
https://www.sannyas.wiki/index.php?title=Vipassana_(group)
quote
“…without interruption or distraction of any kind.”
unquote.
My idea is that someone who has cleared his mind out does not need precepts.
Where should the idea of hurting or killing others come from then? Even right livelihood may come easy at that point.
What people do in their relationships?
Up to their wisdom level.
This:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/disinfo-black-ops
Imv, is not right livelihood.
Rather a wasting of a lifetime. But impacting other people’s lives.
Add
Conclusion:
Rules do not make saints.
No rules do not make saints either.
Satchit said “These so-called precepts are nothing but rules how to live in a community.”
Its not quite as simple as that. The precepts are things you should be doing anyway if you were a virtuous person, but not everyone does them: some people kill their own chickens, for instance.
Some people need a reminder, a place to start to get their life on the rails. Ultimately the precepts are gifts that you give to the world: not lying means you will try to tell the truth to people you meet, that is a very wholesome thing to do. Not stealing means you are safe to keep the things you feel attached to, I won’t try to take them away from you. That safety is an important commitment.
We are talking about things a long way below the level of a saint, these are things every ordinary human being can achieve.
Certainly, NP, ‘shoulds’are needed in life.
If the light is red, one should not cross the street!
But I doubt that they will work in spiritual growth.
NP,
Yeah, it is actually very basic to be a naturally good person.
I do not know anyone in my surroundings who is actively doing ‘bad deeds’.
The only persons I know who were actively lying, deceiving and cheating were doing so professionally: (investment) bankers and visa officers. I.e. financially very secure persons.
“Yeah, it is actually very basic to be a naturally good person.”
I can agree with you Klaus, this comes from the heart.
The more people are connected to their ‘nature’, the more appropriately they will respond to any situation.
This is wu-wei, or acting spontaneously from the ‘Tao’.
If you aim to live out of the present, you cannot bring anything there with you. No teachings or concepts or ideas, it is all clutter from the past and food for the mind and undermines trust in doing the right thing.
If you need to be told not to steal, lie, kill, rape, then you are already lost and maybe life in an institution with a code and penalties is necessary to protect others.
Has any amount of preaching worked? Where’s the data?
If it’s your karma to be in the small percentage of sociopath humans in the world, that you will be.
Buddhists eat meat, because cultural conditioning trumps precepts every time.
Is it always wrong to kill? No, if you need to do so to survive or protect (Ukraine). Is it always wrong to lie? Not really, we all have filters, when “discretion is the better part of valour.”
Is it always wrong to drink alcohol? Very debatable. Stealing? What if you’re starving?
Also, ‘preaching’ from authority, whether Christian, Buddhist, Communist, or whatever, rather than peer discussion, does more harm than good.
Dominic, 1:58pm
Very well put. Imo.
Circumstances matter a lot.
I will be going to Bangladesh in summer (July-September). Will certainly see exceptional circumstances and brave people.
‘Peace, Love and Understanding’ – Nick Lowe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBwrW9-QgPM
(Peter Tosh: ‘Love, Wisdom and Overstanding’)
Nevertheless, many prisons have buddhist spiritual representatives who teach meditation, virtue and so on, and some inmates find themselves benefitted thereby. Don’t you think these people deserve a second chance, Dominic, rather than being “lost”?
“Don’t you think these people deserve a second chance?”
Many have probably already had a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. chance.
Violent offenders 64% recidivism, Theft 72% recidivism, 95% of offenders are male.
Criminals are an extreme category, but if you think a pep talk on being virtuous might work, give it a go. How do Buddhist reps track their success rate?
Ideally, prevention is better than cure. Meditation and good parenting taught at home and in schools would be preferable.
Moreover, people need to feel free to discuss around these topics and form their own ideas, instead of being preached to, as in ‘the Buddha or Jesus said this or that’, which, to be honest, we don’t have an effing clue what they said. We also need to use our own language, instead of out-of-date, fuddy-duddy Buddhist language like precepts, wholesome, virtuous person, sexual misconduct, intoxicants, noble eightfold path etc. It’s like somebody (not mentioning any names) swallowed a Buddhist bible and the temptation to want to convert others is too great, because it would be ‘good for them’. It’s the same old missionary position you find in any religion, which all fall very short of the high standards they try to set for others.
Certainly wouldn’t want to convert you, there aren’t enough sannyasins anyway. While there are plenty of buddhists.
One thing sannyasins definitely do better than buddhists is celebrating, and that’s good for the soul too.
As far as I know, a lot of what buddhist practitioners do in jails is about meditation. Which I believe is healthy for most people.
“Certainly wouldn’t want to convert you, there aren’t enough sannyasins anyway.”
So you just want more people to convert to Sannyas, got it, lol.
There is only the now, and it doesn’t come with a label, Buddhist, Sannyasin, Shamanist etc.
In the Now you’re not even a person, never mind a group identity.
You’re an awareness, you’re the ocean of being having a festival of experiences through all the different waves waving.
If you believe you’re a separate wave, you just project a fragmented reality on everything, called Maya.
You forget yourself and you suffer, and the ego thinks it knows best and tries to change the world to conform to its vision of Utopia, more of this and less of that, and it’s very unstable, changing its views as the wind blows.
Fool’s gold – the real gold is to know who you are, and it’s not that hard, you just have to want it, because you tried everything else.
Everything else makes mischief, sooner or later.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Also Sprach Domathustra.
Dominic:
19 February, 2023 at 1:50 pm
This tweet stimulated these songs in my mind:
“Kyrie eleison” – Mr Mister
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NDjt4FzFWY
“Is it love” – Mr Mister
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWxxRlVNM30
and
“Mr Boombastic” – Shaggy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNwSpoXnvWM
Then I remembered this news broadcast of sometime:
“Today a young man on acid realised
that all matter is merely energy condensed
to a slow vibration, that we are all one
consciousness experiencing itself subjectively,
there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream,
and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Here’s Tom with the Weather.”
(Bill Hicks)
Enjoyable.
Klaus,
Classic Bill Hicks, pretty much sums it up!
Now Don with the weather (in my head)…
https://youtu.be/Pw79PnIOoZI
Ahh, Donal’ Fagan.
“But tell me what’s to be done,
Lord, ’bout the weather in my head….”
Fantastic. No other word.
Utube comment:
Recneps Gnitnarb
Recneps Gnitnarb
2 years
“Steely Dan is scientifically proven to make you 17.86% cooler just by listening to it.”
“Steely Dan is scientifically proven to make you 17.86% cooler just by listening to it.”
Ha ha, yes, uber cool for cooler times, when life seemed longer and easier, and family and friends not gone.
Before the threatening skies and the end of the innocence…
https://youtu.be/S5WRWus7xDA
I’m not convinced virtue signalling works, if it’s not the cart before the horse. I think it depends more on your nature and state of consciousness what you will do or not do, as in the story of the scorpion and the frog.
When I was first starting out on this ‘spiritual journey’ malarkey, I got into the FWBO or Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. Should have been called Friends of the Western Buddhist Gay Groomers Order.
Turns out its leader, Sangharakshita, was an inveterate liar and groomer of vulnerable young male acolytes. Two of whom later committed suicide.
The fish rots from the head down, and a pattern of ‘sexual misconduct’ and other abuses ran through the boys’ club, which seemed oh-so-very pure and just “good companions” on the surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triratna_Buddhist_Community#2016_abuse_report
http://www.ex-cult.org/fwbo/fwbofiles.htm
Well, I think everybody is looking for more happiness, less suffering. If you can offer people a path to that, then you may be able to effect some change… The point about virtue is, it makes you feel better about yourself, more wholesome, holistic.
I agree there is always a risk of abusive people high in the hierarchy, power does corrupt as they say. Look at Rigpa and its leader Sogyal (no longer a Rinpoche), for a recent case that got some publicity. But virtue doesn’t have to come from an organisation.
The other thing I’d say is that Satchit picked up on “virtuous life” but the original comment was more about avoiding a life full of bad habits and negativity.
There is a lot of self-help material out there which is popular and which works. Books, websites, videos, courses. All of which seem to attract an audience and make a profit. Of course it’s often like a specific problem like alcohol or smoking, not necessarily about the problem of negativity, but I think there’s room for it.
On the subject of Osho’s best jokes, here is one that I have not heard anyone mention in a while.
Paddy, an Irish seaman in the nineteenth century, is on a weekend’s shore leave after a year at sea. He heads straight to the nearest pub and gets completely drunk. He wakes up in the morning lying in an open sewer. He has a terrible hangover. His money is gone, but he finds sixpence in his filthy trousers pocket. He heads for the nearest brothel.
He says to the madame, “What can I get for sixpence?” The madame says the only thing available is ten minutes with Mabel up in the attic.
Paddy climbs four flights of stairs and enters Mabel’s room. He tells Mabel he only has sixpence to spend. Mabel says, “You’re out of luck. It’s that time of the month. Tell you what, though, you can fuck me up the arse for sixpence.”
Paddy looks at Mabel. She is extremely fat. Although Paddy does not smell so good, Mabel has a glass eye and a stink coming off her that would have staggered a pig. He asks Mabel if there are any other services available for sixpence. Mabel takes out her glass eye and says to Paddy the sailor man, “You can fuck me in the eye socket.”
Paddy pulls down his filthy trousers and fucks Mabel in her empty eye socket. When he is finished he says to the fat prostitute, “That was amazing. Next time I’m in port, can I come and see you again?”Mabel says, “No problem, Paddy, I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
Here’s a joke from John Bender but you’ll have to guess the punchline…
From ‘The Breakfast Club’ movie, a nice piece of creative work which includes a soundtrack from Simple Minds – must watch once in a lifetime:
https://youtu.be/7OFROViP0J0
“I will not be made a fool of!”
Very funny, SS! I forgot what a good film that was.
Yeah, absolute classic. I think the track written for the movie and performed by Simple Minds also makes the movie.
Another ‘80s classic with Emilio Estevez, was Young Guns. Which also featured an old sannyasin, Terence Stamp.
The most recent movie I watched at the cinema was M3GAN. Which was a bit scary. A black comedy.
I also appreciate the first two Terminator movies, Terminator 2, is one of the best movies of all time. In my opinion. Make sure you watch T2 at least once in your lifetime, folks.
I most recently watched ‘The Joker’, a story about the origin of Batman’s nemesis. It was pretty good at portraying him as a likeable guy with mental health issues for whom everything goes wrong until he snaps. Good movie. And in a way, it casts Batman as the rich kid with all the toys, while The Joker is the hero of the working classes, which is an interesting new way of viewing it.
But generally I am not a fan of fear-based movies, even action like ‘The Terminator’. I prefer something more gently paced, like the recent ‘Drive My Car’ or ‘Living’.
Regarding recent comments on politics between Swamishanti and Satyadeva:
It is difficult to say where the topic that defines the Buddha ends and where the territory of the Zorba begins, and vice versa.
As the Tibet issue demonstrates, sometimes the Buddha has to get involved in politics if he doesn’t want politics to get involved with him.
In a Forum dedicated to the news of how Sannyas evolves in everyday life, it is difficult to ignore the historical/political events in which Osho’s lovers/friends are immersed, in their zorbic dimension.
The society in which we live has laws, btw not by Osho, which by regulating economic life determine a certain degree of freedom and happiness, not recognizing that the horizontal dimension of the Zorba can influence the vertical dimension of the Buddha opens up the possibility that the spiritual life, with its philosophical practices and insights, has no practical application.
Then the question arises: how to evaluate the goals achieved by the so-called spiritual masters? And why, then, all this fervour for the dark side of the guru’s toilet? Is social life just an accessory for a spiritual seeker or is it an integral part? Is struggling politically to create the minimum social/economic conditions necessary for Buddha to flourish in contradiction with spiritual practice?
Interesting is Satyadeva’s idea that every idea has its own personal time, like a light bulb that goes out losing its usefulness for human life…but not all light bulbs are burnt out, it depends on the man pressing the switch or screwing the light bulb in the right room you want to light up, there are light bulbs that have been lit for millennia (illuminating the human heart) others that periodically light up in warlike flashes.
But it seems that for SD the chandelier counts more than the light bulb, there are some glorious ones with an “enormous weight of history and the huge symbolism of the institution and the embedded power structures that have created and supported it for so long.”
Yes, I believe that to mark the discontinuity with a mercantilist mentality that in the UK has lasted for 800 years, a human political act is needed, turning off the light bulb or crushing it, instead of insisting on the idea that light bulbs burn out by themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_massacre
P.S:
Not being a subject of the United Kingdom it will not be my political action to help switch off or break the light bulb at Buckingham Palace.
Oh good, thanks Veet F, I was getting a bit worried for a while there…
I have twice tried to reply to your earlier post (9.45am today) but somehow lost both attempts. Suffice to say that if you think I was implying the British monarchy to be “glorious” you’ve misunderstood. I was simply pointing out that it’s going to take a lot more than a few people with a radical republican agenda to topple it, so deeply entrenched in the British psyche that it is. Still, some of its members are doing a decent enough job of undermining its standing from the inside so it might be on the way out eventually, despite the huge general inertia of the public, the majority of whom wouldn’t want a change. We just don’t do ‘revolution’ over here.
As for “an idea whose time has come”, that’s not from me, as I indicated when mentioning it, it’s from Victor Hugo: “Nothing else in the world…not all the armies…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo, ‘The Future of Man’.
However, just because for some an idea seems an obvious imperative doesn’t mean it’s inevitably bound to come to fruition. It would seem a critical mass of people need to accept it before it becomes reality.
Hazbeen and Me-again get roasted on South Park. Hopefully the kiss of death for these two grifters.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jCxu4VTwSy8?feature=share
Here’s most of that South Park episode, if anyone’s interested, with a little voiceover because of youtube policy.
A wry commentary on today’s entitled victim mindset.
https://youtu.be/UmD7ZKNiKCI
Ordinary people seem to find monarchies comforting. It’s certainly true that when republics get organised, the state seems to take on the role of the monarchy, with a suitably grandiose president, so I’m not sure you gain anything there. Here in the Netherlands we have had both types, the Netherlands was a republic for a long while from the 1500s to 1795, when the French invaded. After Napoleon’s period from about 1815 onwards it was a constitutional monarchy, which is still relatively popular today.
As far as sannyas and politics is concerned, in any state where there is freedom of religion there shouldn’t be so much of a problem. It’s more an issue of individual politicians getting in the way sometimes.
As for the English and revolution, it was always the Barons and the large land holders who seemed to make trouble for the Crown. That’s all gone in modern times, you have to go back to Cromwell in 1653 to see major changes in the state. Unfortunate that the ideas behind the Magna Carta didn’t come to a fuller fruition.
But I think we live in interesting times, as technology may make possible some new forms of state for the first time in several thousand years.
Ordinary people seem to find democracy comforting, with all that freedom of being able to go to church and pray to find a job with a decent salary. A life lived to outrun the bills doesn’t leave much time and energy to celebrate, but in a democracy at least you have the freedom to choose a sad and serious religion and make sense of the shitty life you lead, by atoning.
Oh I don’t know, Veet, a lot of people these days seem to be interested in choosing their happiness. But then the Netherlands is one of the more secular countries in Western Europe, the Christian religions together, while still the largest religious stream. are under 50% of the population, and there are more “something-ists” than Catholics, the next largest single denomination.
This may remind sannyasins of something:
Nick Lowe – ‘Sensitive Man’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCeMiP2zgtM&list=RDtCeMiP2zgtM&start_radio=1
Nice one, with Marc Maron.
Also reminder, to ‘be in the world but not of it’, otherwise all you will hear is…
https://youtu.be/AeTfQw1dIx0
Dominic,
Dr. Bombay easily gets me out of doom and gloom and the weltschmerz and feeling blue (my daugther had her maxumim favourite cuddly toy donkey poached out of the pocket of her jacket in school 2 days ago…).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBwrW9-QgPM
‘Calcutta Taxi Taxi Taxi’
Today I’ve been reading some Jean Klein, an Advaita teacher who uses almost no Advaita terminology. Very clear message though, pity that he died in 1998. But he left us some nice books.
Quote for the day:
“Taking oneself to be a person is a habit just like any other. It is the desire to be distinct from one’s surroundings, different from others. The person exists when it is formulated as a thought, so we can see that it is nothing but memory.”
(Jean Klein)
Taking oneself to be not a person is a habit just like any other, It is the desire to be not distinct from the surroundings, not different from others. The surroundings exist when it is formulated as a thought, so we can see that it is nothing but memory.
Advaitism seems very popular on SN; imv, it is overrated more than the Måneskin*, its single thought is to remind us that since everything has an opposite, in the end only Brahma, the synthesis, remains. Memorize it.
* “the Maneskin”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC9sg6MpDc0
Quite right, Veet, but it’s not just the advaitins, all these gurus and teachers are at it, talking the same bollocks, how we’re not the ego, the false self, the body, the mind, on and on.
This Osho fellow was one of the worst, couldn’t stop yakking about it. So glad you’ve seen through it all and don’t take it seriously, smart follower that you are.
“Bindiya, nobody is a person, although everybody believes that he is a person. Nobody can be a person, because we are not separate. We are like waves in the ocean. No wave has a personality. Yes, it has a form, but it is not separate from the ocean. It is one with the ocean, you cannot separate it from the ocean. You cannot take the wave away from the ocean; it will disappear, it will not be a wave at all. It can only be a wave in the ocean, with the ocean. It is not separate, it is part of the dance of the ocean. It has no personality. Yes, it has a certain individuality because it is different from other waves – unique it is! – but it is not separate from the Existence. And it is not separate from other waves either, because they are all joined together in one ocean.
When I say I am not a person, Bindiya, I simply mean I am not separate from Existence. I am one with the trees and one with the rocks and one with the earth and one with the sky. I am a presence not a person, and so are you, and so is everybody else. To believe in the person is to believe in the ego.“
Osho, ‘The Guest’, Ch 14, Q 3
Thanks for the Osho quote, Dominic…“I am not a person, I am a presence”, I like that very much.
Advaita Vedanta seems to be popular with some of those who quote Osho and most of those who don’t. Maybe it’s a place to find some common ground?
I find Advaita to be much directer than Osho, Osho takes a question and often discourses for half an hour, while an Advaita teacher may offer three or four sentences. I find Osho to be restful and hypnotic, while Jean Klein requires you to be attentive to every sentence or you will miss what he is talking about.
I find it interesting too that Jean Klein talks about the “ease of being” that comes over you after you stop identifying yourself with being a “person”, and get a glimpse of nondual nature. He says a deep physical and psychological relaxation comes over you.
Reminds me a bit of being in the lecture hall with Osho….
It’s true, Osho goes on and on and on.
So do Buddhists who feel obliged to give long, by the book, soporific dhamma talks.
Advaitins in general have a more focused repertoire.
They start with the basics: who are you?
If you don’t get first principles sorted, you can do all the mindfulness you want or other meditations, and you might feel better, but you’re still swimming around in the same paddling pool.
The greatest hindrance for nondualists is that it remains a purely mental understanding, another belief system to adopt, which could be the worst of all options.
People believing they “don’t exist, it’s all an illusion, nothing matters”, yada yada, a la Tony Parsons. This is disastrous, and leads to dissociation, joyless nihilism, depression, etc.
So watching endless videos, reading books and not practising, is just feeding the mind’s momentum and addiction to thinking, to mental objects.
Doesn’t matter if they’re spiritual thoughts or what’s-for-dinner thoughts.
Our human minds can’t ‘get’ the subject of our experience, the ‘I Am’, like it can the objects of experience.
It’s beyond its capability, so you have to let go of trying to figure it out, and relax back into what you already are.
There’s nothing to manufacture, because your ordinary awareness, when not glued to objects, inner or outer, is already it.
‘Enlightenment’ is not the exotic, super hard, lightening strike we’ve been sold or been chasing.
There are a few ways to go about realising this, it’s all out there, but less time spent reading and more time ‘practising’ would help.
It could even end up being relaxing and joyful!
“‘Enlightenment’ is not the exotic, super hard, lightening strike we’ve been sold or been chasing.”
Sounds very enlightened, Dom.
Reminds me of this little book, long ago:
‘The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment’.
So the waves are not responsible, only the ocean?
This will make a lot of criminals happy.
Yes, it’s your get out of jail free card, Satchit. You sound super-excited!
In your defence, just ask the judge to read ‘I Am That’, to bring him up to speed, before sentencing you.
It’s what Ramesh Balsekar said, when he was caught with his pants down and his hand in people’s wallets, “I’m not the doer”, while he watched his reputation circling the drain.
Fact is Dom, people don’t understand enlightened ones.
People have their ideas what is good, what is bad.
But the enlightened one has no choice. If the whole wants him with his ‘pants down’ then his pants are down. He has no will of his own.
What has happened with Ramesh also happened with Osho.
How do you know this, Satchit?
It’s not a question of ‘how’, SD.
Either you know or you don’t know.
And you need not be enlightened to know this, just a taste of it in your mouth is enough.
Satchit, from what we’ve been discussing, from the perspective of the ocean, there are no ‘enlightened ones’, only actors, in a movie called The Enlightenment Game, flickering on the screen of awareness.
From an absolute perspective, you might say there is no good or bad, just the appearance of happenings and characters, like in a dream.
But there are consequences, or karma, action and reaction.
Also there are qualities imo, related to an awakened state like empathy, compassion, peace, happiness, etc.
If you are a guru exploiting others for self-gratification or control, you’re in a delusional egoic mind state, imo.
Our natural responses to ‘good qualities’ in people, are reflections of our essential Self.
We don’t like to be controlled because freedom is our nature.
We warm to kindness, because oneness is the background to life.
We are attracted to happy, peaceful people because…satchit-ananda.
With greater awareness comes greater ‘choice’, not to succumb to our ‘lower nature’.
If the guru succumbs to his lizard brain, because “he has no will of his own”, many people will equally be repelled by him, through no will of their own…Consequences.
Important not to get too theoretical about all this, it’s a mind field, and just trust the flow and one’s instinct.
Dom, how can there be self-gratification if there is no self?
The judgement comes from other egos with their moral standards.
What else?
What, you mean an enlightened man having sex, out of wedlock?
Shock, horror, and with multiple partners!
This is unnaceptable for the moral police.
It moves him into new territory outside of his herd mind,
Sheep policeman he doesn’t study tantras, no Ashtravakra Gita.
The herdsman police, or Lokesh, Buddhists, religious programmed man…attempts to police Osho and unconsciously projects his police mind onto Swami Arpana.
So here we go again, the moral policeman takes out his truncheon.
No surprise, that talk of a lizard brain would draw out the pansexuals on their favourite topic.
I wonder what pans they’re currently dating. Saucepans? Frying pans? Bed pans?
Satch, of course there’s a self. Go and bang your head on the wall, if you’re not sure!
We can forget the ethical debate. We wouldn’t want to offend any unrepentant sinners amongst us!
Let’s just say, in the real world there are consequences.
If you’re a guru or preacher or politician, your brand and your message, is likely to take a nosedive if you’re caught abusing the trinity of sex, power and money.
It’s just practical facts, whether you consider it fair or not, or society wrong.
Consensual sex is one thing, exploitation is something else.
We all have our unique standards on the relative plane, and they also change personally and culturally with time.
Variety is the spice of Life. Luckily there are laws to try and protect innocent egos from any immoral no-selves.
Dom, I am a bit disappointed in you.
I thought you were more intelligent.
Re “bang your head on the wall”:
Feeling pain is not the proof that there is a
self.
Every baby can feel pain.
Re the self, I think there are multiple levels on which to think about this. There is the body, a local bundle of thoughts and senses, so on that level a self exists. But what we are is something other….
NP, you can ask Osho or you can ask the scientists.
The self is created at the age around 3 or 4, not before.
I’m certainly not going to ask a scientist about the self, they have very little to say about what they can’t measure.
You should not be so doubtful, NP. Osho was also a friend of science.
I suggest a book about development psychology.
Generally I have found science to be merely one way of looking at the world — safe and correct, but also sterile and devoid of love.
It is better to learn a bit of science and then to let it go, and instead follow a path with more heart.
I found the whole “not being a doer” fascinating. You could say that the content of people’s minds is predetermined by what they read, their circumstances and other people. So in that way, you might not be a doer after all.
That doesn’t mean you are going to escape the results of your actions, a deterministic criminal might be caught by a deterministic cop and sentenced by a deterministic judge to 10 years in jail.
In all that, you only think that you are a doer, while in fact there is no such thing as free will and you are just going through the motions with all your emotions and prevarications just predetermined parts of your role on the stage of life.
“The thought of ‘I am the doer’ is the bite of the poisonous snake. To know “I do nothing” is the wisdom of faith.
Be happy.” – Ashtavakra Gita 1.8
Would you call it faith, SS? It seems to me either it is or it isn’t so, and either way you will have to keep thinking and letting the world do its thing.
The not identifying with the mind is key…if you can feel, I am not the mind, I am not my thoughts, then by definition you are not the doer, because thoughts trigger actions.
Is it faith?
The idea that ‘God is the only doer and I am Twat’ – er, I mean ‘That’ – this idea is part of ancient Indian faith as it appears in ancient Indian spiritual texts, which were originally Sanskrit chants or songs, ‘gitas’, long before they were written down.
But these ancient teachings came from the understanding of enlightened ones.
“You are not the body, nor is the body yours, nor are you the doer of actions or the reaper of their consequences.”
Ashtavakra Gita
And I have also heard talks from enlightened Indians who are not advaita teachers who have said that part of their awakening process was the very real realisation that everything is illusion, unreal, ‘maya’, and that they are not the doer.
Everything that happens is part of God’s play, or ‘leela’, is the ancient Indian understanding.
The Hindus weren’t as crazy as I thought. The longer I look at it, the more sensible points I uncover in Advaita.
Have you ever heard of ‘Lectio Divina’, Dominic? It’s a process of meditative reading of spiritual texts, where you start by reading, then you meditate, then pray, then contemplate. It’s a way of allowing these things deep inside. I’ve found it to be helpful.
Jean Klein also talks a lot about the ego, the mind and awareness which stretches beyond the mind. What we are cannot be conceptualised by the mind, it can only understand what we are not. I’ve found him to be exceptionally clear in removing obstacles within the mind.
On the subject of enlightenment he says that with understanding come moments of insight which reorganise parts of the mind. It is a flash of vision, which convinces you of what you really are and changes you, releasing all kinds of creative energy from inside.
Yes, a bit like guided meditations from teachers, which have become very popular on the internet. A few lines, a few words, to guide one’s attention back to Source.
Understanding is important, but only goes so far, then the mind hits its conceptual buffer zone. It wants to go beyond, but the red light comes on and says “Access Denied”!
What lies on the other side has to be approached with silence, letting everything else go.
Clarity, insight, creative energy comes, from taking a dip in the Ocean of Being.
In practical terms, just as a guide, meditate twice a day if possible.
Ideally a minimum of 20 mins each, or whatever you can manage, returning attention or the mind back into its source.
30 day challenge, see what happens!
“It is an experience encountered where there is neither somebody experiencing nor a thing experienced. Only this reality is spiritual. All other states, “highs,” whether brought about by techniques, experiences or drugs, even the so often exalted samadhi, are phenomena—and carry with them traces of objectivity. In other words, as what you are is not a state, it is a waste of time and energy chasing more and more experiences in the hope of coming closer to the non-experience.”
( Jean Klein )
Ah, finally we are getting unreal.
No hype this or hype that. No getting carried away. Deflation.
Purrfit.
“He who longs to know his true nature must first understand his mistaken identification with objects: “I am this,” “I am that.” All identifications, all states are transitory and consequently unreal. Identifying the “I” with this or that is the root of ignorance. Ask yourself what is permanent throughout all the stages of life. The question “Who am I?” will be found to have no answer. You cannot experience what is permanent in a subject/object relationship, as something perceivable. You can only formulate and explain that which you are not. What you fundamentally and continually are cannot be put into words or reasoned out. Being is non-dual, absolute and constant, ever present whatever the circumstances.”
( Jean Klein )
Fact is, if there is no doer, all is a happening.
Kinda…the universe is being recreated every moment by the Global Awareness. According to Jean Klein. Isn’t that amazing and funky…?
Dominic said, “What lies on the other side has to be approached with silence, letting everything else go.
Clarity, insight, creative energy comes from taking a dip in the Ocean of Being.”
I’d agree with that, but Jean Klein’s book has shown me that what’s in the mind is not unimportant. You can spend your time in conflict, anger, greed, or you can choose to look for clarity, which will open you up to insight into what you are.
Meditation is not everything. I’ve tried many forms, everything from mindful body scans to vipassana. What I did for quite a while was shikantaza, just sitting. Until I started reading Papaji, who said “no teaching, no teacher, no student” and said you don’t need any meditation.
Since then the ‘Lectio Divina’ has been my favourite method, to be with the books of enlightened teachers and go deeply into them. I’ve found Jean Klein to be very clear, very refreshing. Reading him caused a kind of experience in my waking mind, and the next day a kind of release of energy from sleep, but it hasn’t lasted.
Each book is a new journey, changing my consciousness while I find things that spark my recognition of what is true. Each of these ‘sparkings’ I examine, because often it points to wrong beliefs in my past, something to be dropped and new doors to be opened.
It seems to me that the nature of human beings is more dual than the other way around, as natural is the struggle to survive and the instincts that support it.
I think that if you don’t survive first then you can’t live long enough, and relaxed enough, to try to transcend the phenomenological gravity that envelops essence.
Imv, among the things that burden man’s dual nature the most are losses/defeats, from bodily integrity to emotional integrity, yes, loved ones who have left/abandoned us.
I don’t think that the dual nature of man is extinguished forever as soon as a smart person intellectually discovers the non-dual modality, whose choice, possibly, as typical of big heads, would fall into the dual modality.
In short, once again I believe that the head could be a big weight which, especially in a geriatric context like this, ends up crushing the heart, and not just the prostate.
Our human nature is not extinguished by rediscovering the non-conceptual nature we had as children, before our minds got conditioned.
Non-dual pointers are just medicine, which might not be necessary in a more enlightened society.
Both sides of the coin, the human and divine, are the Shiva and the Shakti of life, the form and the formless, dancing like sweethearts, madly in love with each other!
Quote for the day:
“The man of knowledge adds something new every day. The man of Tao lets go of something every day.”
( Lao Tzu, ‘Tao Te Ching’ )
Speaking of the law of Karma and the consequences of sinful or criminal actions, I ask the ex-sannyasins, expert and infallible Judges of other people’s sexual nights, what fault The Invisibles would have committed:
https://rumble.com/v1zjboe-invisible-the-documentary-that-everyone-must-see.html
“Hypertension is a state of mind when you have been become too much focused on rationality and you have forgotten your feelings. Hypertension comes out of an imbalance; too much trust in reason is the basis of all hypertension. People who live in their heads become hypertense. Relaxation comes through the heart. One should be capable of moving easily from the head to the heart just as you move out of your house and inside your house. One should be fluid between head and heart. These are the two shores of the river that you are. You should not cling to one shore, otherwise life becomes lopsided.
The West suffers very much from hypertension, because it has forgotten the language of the heart, and only the heart knows how to relax, because only the heart knows how to love. Only the heart knows how to enjoy, celebrate. Only the heart knows how to dance and sing. The head knows nothing of dance, the head condemns dance as stupid. The head knows nothing of poetry, the head condemns poetry.”
Osho, ‘I Say Unto You’, vol.2, ch.4
“One should be fluid between head and heart.”
Means one should move from the head to the heart, but also being capable to move back from the heart to the head.
I agree that’s the ideal, but it isn’t always equally easy. Sometimes we find that we cling to some aspect of head or heart, and we create problems for ourselves.
Jean Klein also says that once you stop identifying with mind or body you become deeply relaxed in both areas. I think Osho’s analysis of hypertension is more for people who identify with the mind.
Inside the cave, anatomy of an advaita.
Something doesn’t convince me about this idea of “areas” of the heart or of the mind (why not also of the body?) with which the fool identifies himself, from time to time, victim of an illusion that prevents him from seeing the ultimate reality, Brahma.
As if this were referring to the possibility of being relaxed in a bunker on the hill, observing a neutral bloodless metaphysical reality below, of which the wise man chooses not to identify himself, in any of the parts.
Since the churches no longer push opium as they once did, today we have stadiums left, to anaesthetize us from a wind of adverse events, but how can we fail to recognize that the function of phenomenal reality is to provide the place for the game of identifications? Of which most of them are not the effect of an endogenous process but rather from how others look at us.
Like all games, for the purpose of entertainment, victory or survival, it would be important to understand what is at stake and know the rules, also to understand how, if and when to transgress them, but I don’t think it is possible to identify reality, with its “areas”, without identifying our selves.
This onto-existential process happens with the tools (body/mind) and sensitivity (heart) that we have/are.
One can choose not to support a soccer team but one cannot choose not to be the victim of a bunch of drunk hooligans who identify you by the language you speak or by the colours you happen to wear. In this case it is possible that in the future the victim will identify the danger with the colours of a flag, with a certain sport or with alcohol.
There are degrees of identification and circumstances that decide the enjoyment or agony of the game of reality, be it war or a football match.
In this Forum the most widespread sport is to judge the role and playing field of others, by those who choose not to play any game, relaxed from the top of their ivory tower.
Churches pushing opium is a move away from consciousness, not towards it. Similarly, football matches tend to carry many people away, not into the here and now.
When one is aware of not being the body, not being the mind, one operates under far fewer constraints, with more aliveness, while not being carried away. It is more like body and mind are freed to operate in joy and laughter.
Or at least that’s what my being is telling me when fed a wholesome diet of good food and literature. You are of course totally welcome to keep watching angry anti-vaxxer films.
NP, you say, “Similarly, football matches tend to carry many people away, not into the here and now.”
Why concern yourself with this? I’m quite sure many cool people enjoy to watch sports and appreciate doing so in the here and now. It’s really none of your business.
NP, happy to know that if you suffered from iatrogenic pathologies you wouldn’t get angry and you wouldn’t seek comfort in a church or stadium, limiting yourself to negatively judging those who do, after having met them in line for vaccination.
Your faith in medical SCIENCE is so total that in 1930s Berlin you would have been a pro-eugenics hooligan. In case you wouldn’t identify yourself as a Nazi, because after all you have all the credentials to already be identified as a peaceful right hand Buddhist, but you should explain your identity problems to historians.
There are worse things than football hooligans. But Veet, why do you make these unpleasant comparisons of people? Just because they disagree? Or are you trying to start an argument? You seem to do a lot of projecting…
Is there even such a thing as an identity? Our personality seems to be almost entirely down to memory of past events. Perhaps you should inquire further.
Hahahahaha! Who needs enlightenment when one can play piano lik. K? Lemme introduce Dr. Brendan Kavanagh on the Rock’n Roll piano here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFqb14TMkDA
To lighten up some aimless and maybe pointless analysing going on.
Mind you: aimless and pointless analyses are good things!
There is a free download here of the “Map of the Journey” (i.e. to Nirvana…) by U Jotika Sayadaw from Myanmar:
https://www.holybooks.com/a-map-of-the-journey-by-sayadaw-u-jotika/
For those thinking in the system of “12 steps to Heavaaan”.
Sssshhhhhhh:
Starting with Step 10 is great reading…imv.
Quote from Step 10:
“But after a while just watching the mental and physical process is very tiring, not just boring; it is a kind of being trapped in the process. We don’t want to see it anymore; we are really tired of it. But there is no other way to escape from it, other than paying it even closer attention, looking at it even more closely.
Looking at it with deeper and stronger attention the mind becomes more calm and quiet. Mindfulness and samædhi become stronger, and then the mind becomes very detached, which is called sakhærupekkhæ-ñæa.
You are still watching it very closely but with a totally detached mind, a totally detached attitude, a total dis-identification. You don’t see it as a self, but with total detachment, with total equanimity, but very strong attention.”
Now some ACDC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtMGoU9NcMo
Yessir, stopping immediately with analysing.
NP asks me: “why do you make these unpleasant comparisons of people?”
In the metaphysical reality in which NP wallows there should be no possibility of any comparison but I don’t understand why he underlines the unpleasantness of a comparison. If it were a compliment, wouldn’t it still be about the same identity he says he can live without?
Okay, I went overboard and let temptation rule. Possibly due to moodiness.
Take the best of the impulse – and throw away the rest…..
Addition:
There certainly is a lot of “ex” in me. ex Id entities of this and that and whatever.
My contributions to sannyas are small indeed: what I put out here into SN I do and did with some verve and engaged spirit.
Like others, I have specialised fields of experience and knowledge. So that is what I can honestly write about
- possibly to the benefit of the elders as well as to newcomers to sannyas or whatever.
It is my contribution to the world ‘not changing’.
Others make their contribution to make (better) changes to this world. Fair enough.
Keep up the spirit.
I “wallow” in metaphysical reality? It seems you have me mistaken for someone else, good sir.
Anyway, even Osho occasionally did metaphysics….
If we are talking about contributions to Sannyas, mine are as small, if not smaller, than yours, Klaus. But we get to be a light in the world in our own way, spreading whatever wisdom we can.
NP,
Appreciate, especially “…in our own way….”
Can’t be different.
I can ‘walk a few miles in the shoes of someone else’, but still come back to do/write things my way.
It is learning about onself and one’s re-actions. I take it as an opportunity.
That’s true, Jean Klein also says that we live out of reaction, and that only by being conscious of that can we come out of it.
You certainly keep learning about where your triggers are, and what you still need to let go of.
Coming back to the Nazi comparison Veet has effectively expressed in writing here, (mis)using his freedom of speech.
Nobody else has come to draw the line.
The loathsomeness Veet’s comments are transporting in my perception is enough for me.
C U sometime.
I suggest skim-reading Veet’s comments, and doing a second pass of reading more carefully only if he actually appears to be saying sensible and not loathsome things.
All the best, Klaus, we will have to lift a stein of Hefenweize together sometime….
The Kogis have been consulting the bubbles…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftFbCwJfs1I
“Nobody else has come to draw the line.” (Klaus)
I wonder by what standard Klaus would draw the line of political correctness of words/thoughts, not even being sure where he would draw the line of good/bad deeds.
Disagreeing with him on where to draw the line on therapeutic freedom, I think Klaus is very scared of lab viruses by Fauci, maybe we wouldn’t even agree on where to draw the line at Guantanamo, the fear of Islamic terrorism, “thanks” to the Twin Towers, continues to justify many emergency measures, including the political correctness which forbids making alternative hypotheses to such casus belli, with all those storms in the desert that followed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
Ex-Prasanto believes he is doing a very useful job in what remains of Osho’s world in this Forum, as can be understood from the precise direction of his comments. A true lion, a purebred rebel.
His motto is: “Leave the world a little more the same as you found it, and remember to take the prostate pill.”
Still, he has a heart full of beautiful and delicate things to share. I can’t tell him “I love you” too often without creating an identity crisis in him; after all, human love has a dual nature, the absence of hate would be fair enough.
Been there? Done that? Got the t-shirt?
Maybe you’re right.
Actually, it may be more kind of a non-identity crisis…
That can still be useful to you. Use me as a bad example: “Don’t do it as he does, he is BAD.”
Even Michael Jackson is screaming at me: “Bad!”
Nile Rodgers has the perfect advice for humans:
“State your mind all the time – you’re gonna feel fine.”
Can’t please everybody. So one gotta please oneself.
Cheers.
Bringing a little more Osho into the world is a good thing surely? It still seems to me that the commune was full of dancing, creative and loving people, and that Osho was encouraging this…The feeling of being a sannyasin was for a long time amongst the most beautiful things I knew. It was like being in love with Existence.
Yes. All my sympathies until the very end!
::))
Oh well,
David Lindley died last Friday, 3rd March 2023 at age 78.
Another great one gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95nWpn-atpI
There are the clear, deep waters of the oceans and the shallow, dirty waters of the politically correct ponds.
I believe that among the reasons for the success among former sannyasins of Brahmanism is the interpretation of the ‘wave and ocean’ metaphor now understood as ‘wave vs ocean’.
It seems that the profound (constitutive) nature of reality is a difficult puzzle, to be investigated with perceptive tools other than those with which we establish the identity, or otherwise, of the objects examined by the 5 senses, taking into account their qualities and quantities (proportions).
If in the invisible world, that borders on metaphysics, it is difficult to contradict the presence of entanglement that seems to bind all entities like electromagnetic waves, measurable with their vibrations, in the visible world of people, Zorba dimension, it is inevitable to use adjectives and therefore make comparisons with those who share much or little of the qualities perceived by the observer.
A philosopher who watched a Nazi criminal defend himself against court charges observed that “The deeds were monstrous, but the one who did them was quite ordinary, neither demonic nor monstrous.”
By specifying more about this quality that seems to belong to all Zorbas, Hannah Arendt clarifies the same concept: “What I really think now is that evil is never radical, but only extreme, and that it has neither depth nor a demonic dimension. It can invade and devastate the whole world, because it expands on the surface like a fungus. It is a challenge for the thought, as I wrote, because thought wants to go deep, it tries to go to the roots of things, and when it is interested in the evil is frustrated, because there is nothing. This is banality. Only the Good has depth, and can be radical.”
For all the Big Heads around who like to bask in their supposed intelligence, H. A. argues that it is not what prevents “evil”:
“The Eichmann trial gave many an opportunity to reflect on human nature and present movements. Eichmann was anything but abnormal: this was his most frightening gift. An inhuman monster would have been less fearsome, because precisely as such it made it difficult to identify with it. But what Eichmann said and the way he said it, only painted the picture of a person who could have been anyone: anyone could be Eichmann, it would have been enough to be without awareness, like him. Even before being unintelligent, he had no ideas of his own and did not realize what he was doing. He was simply a completely fully immersed person in the reality in front of him: working, looking for a promotion, rearranging numbers on statistics, etc…
More than his intelligence, he lacked the ability to question the consequences and impacts of his own actions.”
Sorry for the long quote but I don’t want to hurt anyone by accusing them of “political correctness”, which runs in the blood as an experimental serum in all kinds of fascism, Nazism, Christianity, Zionism, Islamism and sometimes socialisms, like rajneeshpuranism.
We have seen that, not only for me, in Zorba’s world, in addition to qualities, size matters.
The metaphor in question is perhaps misleading because the sea wave has an evanescent and ephemeral quality like the electromagnetic wave, and as I said, this is a quality that should be referred to the profound nature of reality, i.e. Essence, Buddha, God, etc. .
But if what Arendt says is true, that the actions of the villains/Nazis have no roots, then the metaphor to express the disconnected man with his deep nature, the ocean, should rather be that of pieces of ice in the shape of frozen waves on shallow waters.
Identifying ourselves with the non-dual nature of God for someone this could translate into a casually obedient behaviour, going with the flow, with the world perceived by the 5 senses by the majority.
Those who are too busy maintaining the posture that such an accomplishment requires usually react indignantly only when reminded that even a Buddha sometimes scratches his balls or his asshole.
I’m sorry if appearing loathsome is the only way to arouse them from their oceanicity, from their banality of good, remembering how even a sewer can produce a clearly visible and frozen form of wave, as happens with the banality of evil.
Is this your way of bringing a little more Osho into the world, Veet? I came across someone the other day who said that those who fail to empty their emotional selves when young will suffer with advancing years. It struck me as true.
For me, the Second World War and all its atrocities is a thing of history. I was born in the 1970s, the decades have passed. I don’t feel the need to wallow in it or give its participants more fame. I prefer to focus on the next turning the world needs, an increase in consciousness, a new man, more peaceful people.
I think such things as self-inquiry and mindfulness are genuinely quite useful for people to become more aware of themselves. If you really choose to examine yourself, you get hints that perhaps you are not who you think you are, that your image of yourself is perhaps idealised and you might have a shadow side. This might then lead you into shadow work, which various people in the US mainly have been writing about.
Ultimately you start coming across your traumas, and you start paying attention to possibilities for healing. Bodywork, breathwork, there are many approaches…remember to empty your emotional self. Let go of things, be the man of Tao who is in harmony with Existence.
Anyway… just my 2c for today
NP, I know you’re young and you think history doesn’t repeat itself, just ignore it and there would be no déjà vu.
About my way of “bringing a little more Osho into the world”, this depends on how Osho has brought light into my world, which is not made up only of emotional needs, as you seem to believe.
Thank you for your diagnosis, as usual you are very good to your fellow human beings, I’m sure that if I decide to follow your advice then you will give me the money to pay for the therapy. I know that anyone who has carried out financial operations betting on pandemics has made lots of money, just like those who are now betting on weapons that will kill Putin, the villain of the moment, are making money.
I’m afraid I’m not rich, Veet, otherwise I’d plough some money into developing sannyasnews.
But I think being rich is often an impediment to having a good heart, and if you ask me which I would rather have, money or a positive attitude, I’d take the latter every time.
Veet,
It is not about politics. So it is not about being politically correct or whatever.
It is about finding out about oneself.
And certainly about one’s assholeness part – or even parts. If that is where one is at.
Like it or not.
I understand your frustration, Klaus, you are annoyed that I can share in this Forum my disappointment in seeing that the religion of our time, TINA (acronym), has made converts even among Osho’s friends, a friendship that can only be betrayed in one way, by not being yourself.
That it is not the “politically correct” the cause of our communication difficulties is your point of view, I take it into account, I hope you do the same with mine.
My polemic about the Advaita approach, I hope you at least acknowledge my constructive intent (it costs me a lot to express myself in the language of empire), is that it is functional enough to make acceptable our splashing around in the postmodern pond, designed for us by market ideology through media devices.
The Indian standstill denounced by Osho, when it is enough to close your eyes not to see that we are in the middle of a landfill, is an option only if we have no legs to look for healthier places.
Giving up the dual approach at the basis of every logical mathematical process of a Zorba, for example the one that makes us choose between a mountain forest and a landfill or between an insect flour pizza and a traditional Roman one (unlike the Neapolitan one it has a longer leavening, therefore more digestible), risks making us experience the choice not to choose as a free choice, given that everything is fluidly One.
MOD:
Veet Francesco, what exactly does “TINA” (first paragraph) stand for?
VEET FRANCESCO:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative