Here, an old friend of Sannyas News, Iqbal Singh (formerly Swami Shantam Prem) returns to declare his abiding love, appreciation and gratitude for Osho, and to re-open a specific question about the Master’s death in early 1990:
19th January 2026 is approaching, the date when Osho Rajneesh left His body 36 years ago.
In between I don´t use the stolen word ‘Osho’ for the late master, nor do I believe in the bluffy assertion: “Never Born, Never Died”.
Still I love and appreciate the genius mystic who had a good intention to bring the world together, to make the people of various countries and cultures sit together for meditation and fall in love.
The purpose of creating this thread is to ask the long-term followers and friends of Master:
Do they still think Master was poisoned by American authorities and that poison became the cause of his death at the age of 58?
Let the thread grow and our enquiry for truth shine.
At the age of 62, my life philosophy is, ‘Truth Liberates, not the Gurus’.
Love,
Iqbal Singh
Full of gratitude for the late master. Rise and fall of His firm is quite an impressive piece in order to understand the business of New Age spirituality.
Iqbal Singh enquires, “Do they still think Master was poisoned by American authorities and that poison became the cause of his death at the age of 58?”
The adverb “still” does not apply in my case, because I never held a fixed opinion about the cause of Osho’s death.
On the one hand, Osho suffered from a litany of medical complaints, didn’t exercise, and took loads of tranquillisers and canisters of nitrous oxide, which might have given him some form of temporary relief from his physical discomfort, but certainly would have been detrimental to his physical health.
On the other hand, I have listened to Osho’s description of how he was poisoned, and it sounded convincing. Then again, Osho sounded convincing when talking about many subjects, and he was not always telling the truth.
Perhaps one day some information will be released, which I doubt, telling how Osho was poisoned by American operatives, even though the U.S. targeted killing programme operates without meaningful oversight outside the executive branch, and essential details about the programme still remain secret, including what criteria the government uses to put people on CIA and military kill lists as well as how much evidence is required before it does so.
What I find most important about Osho’s death is the manner in which he died. He was cool about it. No matter what opinion one holds about Osho, there is no denying that he faced death in an enlightened way and set a marvellous example for all of us.
“What I find most important about Osho’s death is the manner in which he died. He was cool about it. No matter what opinion one holds about Osho, there is no denying that he faced death in an enlightened way and set a marvellous example for all of us.”
How you know? Have you been with him in his last hours?
Lokesh said “Then again, Osho sounded convincing when talking about many subjects, and he was not always telling the truth.”
That is right, it was a consequence of always using devices to move his disciples. It is a reason why one needs to be careful when reading Osho’s books. I am reminded…
“A beautiful story about Gautam Buddha…One morning a man asked him, ”Is there a God?” Buddha looked at the man, looked into his eyes and said, ”No, there is no God.”
That very day in the afternoon another man asked, ”What do you think about God? Is there a God?” Again he looked at the man and into his eyes and said, ”Yes, there is a God.”
Ananda, who was with him, became very much puzzled, but he was always very careful not to interfere in anything. He had his time when everybody had left in the night and Buddha was going to sleep; if he had to ask anything, he would ask at that time.
But by the evening, as the sun was setting, a third man came with almost the same question, formulated differently. He said, ”There are people who believe in God, there are people who don’t believe in God. I myself don’t know with whom I should stand. You help me.”
Ananda was very intensely listening now to what Buddha says. He had given two absolutely contradictory answers in the same day, and now the third opportunity has arisen – and there is no third answer. But Buddha gave him the third answer. He did not speak, he closed his eyes. It was a beautiful evening. The birds had settled in their trees – Buddha was staying in a mango grove – the sun had set, a cool breeze had started blowing. The man, seeing Buddha sitting with closed eyes, thought that perhaps this is his answer, so he also sat with closed eyes with him.
An hour passed, the man opened his eyes, touched the feet of Buddha and said, ”Your compassion is great. You have given me the answer. I will always remain obliged to you.”
Ananda could not believe it, because Buddha had not spoken a single word. And as the man went away, perfectly satisfied and contented, Ananda asked Buddha, ”This is too much! You should think of me – you will drive me mad. I am just on the verge of a nervous breakdown. To one man you say there is no God, to another man you say there is a God, and to the third you don’t answer. And that strange fellow says that he has received the answer and he is perfectly satisfied and obliged, and touches your feet. What is going on?”
Buddha said, ”Ananda, the first thing you have to remember is those were not your questions, those answers were not given to you. Why did you get unnecessarily concerned with other people’s problems? First solve your own problems.”
Ananda said, ”That’s true, they were not my questions and the answers were not given to me. But what can I do? I have ears and I hear, and I have heard and I have seen, and now my whole being is puzzled – what is right?”
Buddha said, ”Right? Right is awareness. The first man was a theist. He wanted my support – he already believed in God. He had come with an answer, ready-made, just to solicit my support so that he can go around and say, “I am right, even Buddha thinks so.” I had to say no to him, just to disturb his belief, because belief is not knowing. The second man was an atheist. He had also come with a ready-made answer, that there is no God, and he wanted my support to strengthen his disbelief and so he can go on proclaiming around that I agree with him. I had to say to him, “Yes, God exists.” But my purpose was the same.
If you see my purpose, there is no contradiction. I was disturbing the first man’s preconceived belief, I was disturbing the second person’s preconceived disbelief. Belief is positive, disbelief is negative, but both are the same. Neither of them was a knower and neither of them was a humble seeker; they were already carrying a prejudice.
The third man was a seeker. He had no prejudice, he had opened his heart. He told me, “There are people who believe, there are people who don’t believe. I myself don’t know whether God exists or not. Help me.” And the only help I could give was to teach him a lesson of silent awareness; words were useless. And as I closed my eyes he understood the hint. He was a man of certain intelligence – open, vulnerable. He closed his eyes.
As I moved deeper into silence, as he became part of the field of my silence and my presence, he started moving into silence, moving into awareness. When one hour had passed, it seemed as if only a few minutes had passed. He had not received any answer in words, but he had received the authentic answer in silence:
Don’t be bothered about God; it does not matter whether God exists or does not exist. What matters is whether silence exists, awareness exists or not. If you are silent and aware, you yourself are a god. God is not something far away from you; either you are a mind or you are a god. In silence and awareness mind melts and disappears and reveals your divineness to you. Although I have not said anything to him, he has received the answer, and received it in a perfectly right way.”
Perhaps one shouldn’t go to Osho’s books for the truth, but just to pay attention when the question resonates.
I’m not saying that Osho was not powerful and clear in many ways, but the fact that he was apparently not afraid of death is really nothing special. I’ve known many people who were cool with it.
In fact Osho was apparently paranoid at the end, talking about people targeting him sound waves from a distance, which is nonsense, a physical impossibility. Then there is the fact that he had Devageet pull out ten teeth, claiming that teeth contain the history of human aggression. He was obviously playing with far less than a full deck at the end.
From what I heard, he asked Amrito to euthanize him at the end. That doesn’t sound so brave to me: he didn’t want to see the process through to its natural end.
For that I do not blame him, though. Many people are now choosing assisted suicide, and I think that should absolutely be their choice. But in that regard his death was nothing special.
Bullshit arguments and fake news by an Osho doubter. Toby Marshall, as always with the need to spit on his false image… This way you hurt yourself or your better parts. Rest in peace when it’s time to leave your body to skip your beef with your former guru, if still possible.
Well said, but you also did the same when saying he consumed “loads of tranquillisers” Where did you get this from?
And the NOx he used during his sessions with the dentist, and maybe a little bit more for fun, but this also gets exaggerated, and why should anyone blame Osho for that at all?
People do mock others to feel a little bit higher and above the other. Natural daily ego-support. So what…Forget it.
If I were to hazard a personal opinion, based mostly on intuition, I don’t think the Americans poisoned Osho. I think it is more likely that his physical deterioration was due to prolonged use of laughing gas. He was always sensitive to smells, and I think his body slowly wore out from the misuse over the years.
The statement “never born, never died” is a quality piece of esoteric bluff, I agree with you, Iqbal. “Never born” implies an enlightened presence before birth, “never died” implies an enlightened presence after death. Well, who knows where the truth lies? However, even the Buddha only became enlightened at age 35.
The other thing I find interesting is that Osho very rarely employed his own parables or teaching stories. He always seemed to get his stories from other sources but would sometimes modernise or otherwise modify them.
“Never born, never died” is originally from Meher Baba.
He said it 1954.
Long before Osho started the disciple game.
The true original soul, being, nature…is eternal and never in time, it just takes a body for some time, when enlightened. Easy spiritual thought that does not need any argument or proof.
Honestly, whether he was poisoned or not doesn’t seem important to me. He clearly suggested he had been, and he wasn’t treated well by the authorities. They didn’t like him and were apparently threatened by him. Whether his so-called threat was real or not, he hardly figures as a threat these many years later. He is largely forgotten today, his books aren’t found much in bookstores and an ageing group of Sannyasins have little influence today.
Many I know of are either more lost and confused than they ever were; isolated in small groups, reaching out to each other with memories of days past. Mostly they reminisce and have forgotten his key message, if they ever really understood what his message was.
Osho was a mountain of a man, an extraordinary figure, self-realised, transcendental, but he made mistakes and was truly of his time. How could an Indian truly understand the West? How could he incorporate his own realisation with such young, ‘inexperienced of life westerners’?
He did as well as he could, and was bound by his own lack of knowledge, bound too by how little he was truly interrogated by his own disciples. Too often we accepted his words, but rarely challenged him to explain or to demonstrate his understanding.
We put him on a pedestal and later many blamed him, when we really need to look at ourselves and our own prejudices.
Let me reiterate, I too was at fault but I don’t blame Osho or myself. Living Life itself is the great teacher and those few real masters of old, like Osho, I’m forever grateful to. But his time has gone, and whether he was poisoned or not, it’s really of no importance to me or to the wider public. If we remember him at all, let it be because we have learned from him, and incorporated this understanding into our daily lives.
Simond writes, “Many sannyasins I know of are either more lost and confused than they ever were; isolated in small groups, reaching out to each other with memories of days past. Mostly they reminisce and have forgotten his key message, if they ever really understood what his message was.”
I cannot say I entirely agree with that. Once upon a time, there were hundreds of sannyasins living on Ibiza. Today, they are a bit thinner on the ground and older. Some are grounded and successful financially, others not so. Pretty much the same as any broad-spectrum sector in Western society. I rarely talk to any sannaysin who wants to reminisce about the good old days. Generally speaking, most live in close proximity to the here and now and feel blessed to have spent time around Osho. Understanding Osho’s key message? I think most older sannyasins are well aware about Osho’s key message regarding meditation. Osho put out many messages. Some of them a bit mixed.
NP posts an Osho quote from an Osho book, which does not really relate to what I meant when I wrote “Osho was not always telling the truth.” NP then concludes that “Perhaps one shouldn’t go to Osho’s books for the truth.” A bit of a contradiction there, counterbalanced by the end of his concluding statement advising readers to “just pay attention when the question resonates.” Which sounds a bit fluffy to me, New Ageism with cotton wool.
There were instances when Osho avoided telling the truth for the simple reason that it was more convenient for him to do so. This had nothing to do with it being a device designed to promote awakenings for his disciples or any of that nonsense. And everything to do with concealing who Osho the man really was. I’m cool with that, because he gave so much that helped people, including me. What more does one need?
Photo added to this article by Lokesh:
Screenshot from: ‘Ibiza – The Silent Movie’.
Scenes like this still exist in Ibiza’s summer season. What has changed is that dancers wear different coloured clothes, have better lighting and hold their mobiles aloft as they are bombarded with music that sounds like the soundtrack for a documentary about car assembly plants. I have not been to an Ibiza nightclub in over a decade, although the latest one, UNVRS, sounds like a pretty far-out place.
I have taken a deep dive into this. and here is what I know:
First, from someone working with the FBI at the time of Bhagwan’s arrest: they said that the government was very concerned that nothing happen to him while in custody. To that end he had constant medical checks. They did want to “soften him up” by giving him a taste of American jails, as their profilers had identified him as a coward who, despite his brave words, would cave if he faced real hardship.
The government’s main objective was to get him out of the States, as the profilers had also (correctly) predicted that the Ranch would dissolve if he were not present. It’s quite presumptuous to think that they would waste time with him back in India, where he was no threat to American interests.
The story of him being poisoned in jail is bollocks. Poisoning by thallium or some other heavy metal would lead to very specific pathognomonic (characteristic) symptoms. First, the onset occurs within 3-4 hours and is dramatic, often leading to death within a few days. If the victim survives they recover, though some hair loss, neurological or psychiatric effects may be permanent.
What does NOT happen is that symptoms appear months or years after exposure. This is only seen in chronic poisoning.
Acute symptoms include Mees lines in the fingernails and toenails and extensive hair loss. Neither of these was reported in the case of Bhagwan. If he had lost his hair and beard we would definitely have seen that.
It seems much more likely that his progressive neuropathies were a result of his heavy use of Nitrous oxide. Abuse of this gas leads to the inability to metabolize vitamin B12. A chronic lack of B12 is now known to cause the kinds of serious neuropathies Bhagwan exhibited.
It seems to me that the poisoning story was cooked up 1) to divert attention from the effects of his drug abuse and 2) to gain sympathy and turn the anger of his gullible sannyasins towards the USA, whom he hated because they kicked him out. I was told by his handyman that he often complained that America had ruined his work. He was pissed at them and that was his feeble attempt to get back at them.
I am a strong critic of American behaviour and imperialism, but this was all his own doing.
“They did want to “soften him up” by giving him a taste of American jails, as their profilers had identified him as a coward who, despite his brave words, would cave if he faced real hardship.”
If this truly sums up their attitude it doesn’t say much for the judgment of the US government (none of whom, together with other public critics of Osho, in America and India, had the courage to accept his challenges to a public debate) disregarding the fact of his poor health and his determination to carry on his work wherever he would be accepted. It merely demonstrates a bullying mentality arising from being in a position where they could legally impose force upon their perceived enemies. So I suggest it’s pretty clear who the cowards were.
In regard to the profilers who had identified Osho as a coward who, they concluded, despite his brave words, would cave in if he faced real hardship.
I think that the ultimate test of who and what we were in life comes when facing death. Osho, by all accounts, faced death fearlessly. Existence has its timing. When the time draws near for the US profilers to face their death, I doubt they will be remotely near the courageous and accepting state Osho was in when it came to saying a final farewell.
Time will tell when there is no longer time.
How are you sure that Osho was courageous and accepting facing death, and why do you think that the people working with the FBI will not be?
In fact the FBI knew of Osho’s plan to surround his house with a chain of women and children if they came to take him. And let us not forget that this is the man who told Sheela that it is OK to sacrifice ten thousand ordinary people in order to save one enlightened master.
Actually the National Guard refused to go in when the INS wanted to serve him papers because the FBI profilers had predicted 300 casualties. Given the number of guns on the Ranch and the plans to resist allowing them to arrest him and take him away, they thought that some sannyasin would almost certainly start shooting, which would compel the guard to follow their rules of engagement. They did not want that from either side.
They had a plan, which was to get him off the Ranch, away from all the guns. They knew that they had a mole, who was passing information back to the Ranch. They made sure that this person overheard them discussing their (false) plan to go in to get him. The Ranch panicked and flew him out, which is exactly what they had hoped would happen. They tracked the planes and arrested everybody in Charlotte, thereby avoiding a potentially bloody outcome.
Hi Toby, you are probably right about all that. Once the Ranch got going, my focus lay elsewhere, and I paid little heed to what was going on there.
You ask, “How are you sure that Osho was courageous and accepting facing death?” I’m not sure of anything much, including the circumstances of Osho’s death. I can only go on what I’ve heard over the years and, of course, I might be wrong.
What I find most disappointing is the betrayal of the love and trust of innocents, both by Osho and those populating his power structure. We thought he was an alternative to the sick institutions he criticized, and all the while he and his minions were doing exactly the same thing. We went from being under one spell to being under another.
In what ways (apart from aspects of his later sex life) did Osho exactly mimic the “sick institutions he criticised”, Toby?
On my request, Toby has started sharing his thoughts at sannyasnews.
It seems his posts are doing quite well.
I have asked him to write a bit of introduction, so that friends know a bit about the background.
Below is the biographical note from FB messenger chat:
I took sannyas in Poona in 1980. I was asked by Vidya to go to Oregon in 1981. I was at the Ranch from October 1981 until December 1985.
For two years, 1982-1984, I was the boyfriend of Ma Anand Puja and spent almost every night in Jesus Grove. I saw and heard a lot. I worked in security and with the wiretapping with Sw. Anand Julian and saw and heard a lot more. I was facing a possible 15 years of prison at the end, but was never called in front of the grand jury.
I also was present at the closed darshans, including the one that was censored in which Bhagwan said that he knew everything and was in control of it all and that Sheela was only doing his bidding. I was with him privately several times in my capacity as cameraman, and present at all the press conferences.
After the Ranch I began contacting old sannyasins privately to hear their stories. I have had extensive contact with Ma Anand Deeksha, who was one of his first western disciples, and who had extensive private contact with him.
Bhagwan wanted her to run the Ranch with Sheela and was training them together, but she saw his dark side and left just after the move to Oregon. She later worked with the FBI after Sheela threatened to kill her mother.
I was also a friend of Swami Asheesh, and I heard many things from him.
So you are positioning Toby as the man with inside knowledge, the ultimate critic.
Osho and his hierarchy certainly had their flaws, but at the same time he was only an open door for us to step through.
From what Toby has said so far it doesn’t sound like he still walks a spiritual path. Does he still meditate or have a regular practice?
I doubt that from the enlightened perspective betrayal is possible.
Who betrays whom?
There is only one consciousness, oneness.
Enlightement is as bogus as G spot.
Time to be real.
Well, Shantam, believing that might be one way of protecting yourself from feeling you’ve missed something despite your many years in Sannyas – and of feeling superior to the millions who tend to feel differently, whether sannyasins or not.
On the other hand, such a belief might be useful, a breath of fresh air for the psyche for someone (like you?) who was previously far too naive, too easily seduced by exotic-sounding tales of spiritual wonders (and unlimited ‘free sex’, lol).
Yeah, i can feel your pain, To(b)y boy. Any news about your boss Ma Anand Puja?
Hmm, you’d think the ‘enlightened’ thing to do would be to allow the authorities to arrest you and allow the crucifixion to happen, whatever form it might take.
After all, it has happened to many other enlightened masters….
But Osho was most definitely not in favour of “crucifixion”, either at one’s own or others’ hands. He was never going to take that path, and if you think that he ‘ought’ to have then you’ve misunderstood him and what he was about.
Well, it was a symbolic crucifixion only.
Ok, the “softening up” inflicted upon Osho wasn’t necessarily meant to kill him, but the way he was treated still smacks of deep prejudice, a total lack of understanding or even a wish to understand the man they were dealing with, the revenge of the ignorant on behalf of the equally ignorant: the typical mind-set of crucifiers down the ages.
I recall Barry Long stating that anyone with a high degree of presence who dares to challenge the worldly powers-that-be on fundamental levels, exposing the corruption, the violence, the sheer ugliness of it all, is going to face the risk of being crucified “in one way or another.” It’s simply ‘the way of the world’.
An excellent review of the story, Toby, makes a lot of sense to me.
It makes a lot of sense to me, too, that you’re rolling out the red carpet for someone who claims to have committed crimes at the Ranch. It’s up to your butler’s imagination to figure out on whose behalf.
Do you have a wife who’s a bit rude too?
Don’t you feel weird after the 7pm soup?
Don’t you wake up in the middle of the night with the urgent need to seek out the mouth of a woman who can ground you?
Don’t you feel like pulling your teeth out in the morning?
Do you trust your dentist who gives you funny gas, ignoring the addictive effects?
Good post from Toby. It makes sense in a world where common sense is in short supply.
There was always a bit of spin in Osholandia. Oh my god, what can be done about the master’s obsession with Rolls-Royces? I know, tell them that it is a device for their spiritual awakening. Great idea! And we can also add that it is a device to get rid of the wrong people. By the way, when are the homeless folk from New York due to arrive? We need their votes soon. You know. that kind of bullshit.
So, it makes sense that when Osho became seriously ill due to drug abuse to bring in the thallium poisoning story. Better to die a martyr to the cause than admit the old boy damaged his body due to abusing daft drugs. It really is that simple.
It was a tragic end to an epic story. Shame it ended that way, but there you go. Osho did his crazy dance and then went up in flames.
So, one might ask, where does that leave us?
I think Timothy Leary supplied a good answer to that question when he said, “Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities – the political, the religious, the educational authorities – who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing – forming in our minds – their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.” Amen.
“Do they still think Master was poisoned by American authorities and that poison became the cause of his death at the age of 58?”
Mind likes to speculate.
Fact is, we do not know.
Or, as Socrates said:
“I know that I don’t know.
.
Good posts by Simond and Toby Marshall. I think Simon is right to say that in the West Sannyas is in decline, with mostly older people still following Osho’s message. But it doesn’t take away from the essence of the spiritual search, for both young and old. That remains, except that young people now end up reading Sadhguru instead of Osho.
The great experiment of arriving at a global culture still goes on. The English language internet these days contains significant Indian outposts, and the meeting of East and West takes on new forms. In between the various halfway forms, we may find a few temporary places of refuge while around us climate change and war and economics and greed shape the world.
NP writes, “The great experiment of arriving at a global culture still goes on.”
For an experiment to take place, an experimenter must set it in motion. Who or what might that be?
Then NP concludes, “In between the various halfway forms, we may find a few temporary places of refuge while around us climate change and war and economics and greed shape the world.”
What a gloomy perspective. No mention of love, creativity, meditation or anything else that presents something positive about the human race and the way it shapes the world. Doom and gloom reign supreme as far as NP is concerned.
It may well be the case that our task on this planet is to nurture our consciousness so that one day the light of awareness can return to humanity en masse, thus pushing humanity up another rung of the evolutionary ladder, where the most loving meditators have no need to take refuge to survive. Ha ha!
Iqbal Singh said “truth liberates”.
“What civilization is six billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in? It’s not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us, the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us, and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.
This is something — and I don’t really want to get off on this tear because it’s a lecture in itself, but: Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience, and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you.
None of us are well treated by culture, and yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual, we understand the felt presence of experience is what is most important, but the culture is a perversion. It fetishises objects; it creates consumer mania; it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanise themselves by behaving like machines, meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you.”
( Terence McKenna, ‘Shaman Among The Machines’ )
TM says, “Meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you.”
Quite so. I was just watching an American TV series with my partner and I said to her, “You know, there are people watching this shit and probably base their lives on it by mimicking the postures and lines of the actors, some of whom are very good at what they do. It’s nuts! Hollyweird!”
“Truth liberates” does not mean to change one belief with another. It means drop the hearsay and the beliefs.
Yes..this i mean.
It is a baseline of my city´s university also, Truth will set you free.
I think ‘Truth liberates’ is part of stoicism, much deeper and more rooted than Rajneeshism or Oshoism.
No, it’s not stoicism.
It’s from Jesus in the Bible:
John, 8:32. “Truth will set you free.” (lol)
Oh, oh, here we go again on SN. Picking over Osho’s legless legacy.
My time with Osho drew to a close in 1981, after six marvellous years in Poona One. It reminds me of a line from a Grateful Dead song: “It’s all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.” Yes, that is how it seems to me now. A dream. Or maybe recalling a past life that you actually know you lived.
Getting into a debate about what Osho did or didn’t do holds little attraction for me. I knew him on a personal level and that is what remains with me, even taking into account stage presence and so forth. I picked up an expression, hanging out with Poonjaji in Lucknow: “The past is a graveyard.” And on many levels, he was right. The past is a graveyard for many, picking over rotten bones, leftovers from days long gone. Like some form of shamanic divination, reading the bones of dead animals. It’s open to interpretation, but who really knows? The shaman? How well do you know him? For me, that sort of activity is a dead end.
You may be content to “pick over Osho’s legacy”, Lokesh, but for me Osho was not the end of a journey but the start of one. There is life still in meditation, in a real connection with spirit, the vibrations of which can be found in many places over the world.
That for me was the gift Osho gave to us, a spiritual life that we might not otherwise have experienced — the grace of India. Certainly Holland does not have such a rich heritage in mysticism and spirituality, it is a nation of traders and merchants, not a place where even tea-sellers tell you about the adventures of gurus and gods.
“The meditator walks differently; he has a grace in every one of his actions. He also speaks differently. He does not bother about linguistics or grammar, his whole concern is to expose his heart, as far as is possible, through his speaking or through his non-speaking. His presence has a tremendous vitality, a freshness, a youthfulness. Even at the last moment of his life…his body may have become old, but he is young.”
( Osho, ‘The New Dawn’ )
None of us are exactly young anymore, even those who were children in the communes are now in our forties and fifties. But you can be young at heart, still following a spiritual path.
NP, I wonder how you can misinterpret a comment that concludes with “That sort of activity is a dead end” and then write “You may be content to “pick over Osho’s legacy” ”
Really, man, that lies in direct contradiction to what I wrote. I’m neither content nor interested in picking over Osho’s legless legacy. That kind of activity is, for me at least, an existential cul-de-sac. It leads nowhere.
Yeah, but in making the comments you are still picking, is what I’m getting at. And more to the point, as I was saying I think Osho’s legacy is more of a starting place than a dead end.
Again, NP, you misinterpret what I wrote, or perhaps you are just experiencing the need to be right.
Anyway, just for the record, it is normal to bring the conclusion at the end of a paragraph. The paragraph in question begins with “Getting into a debate about what Osho did or didn’t do….” The paragraph ends with “For me, that sort of activity is a dead end.”
Get the picture? End of story.
I do it on purpose, Lokesh, just to wind you up…
Just kidding, I had a bit of a brainfart moment. Take it easy.
You’re right of course…what we do is picking over old bones, and me not the least in that I am still reading Osho’s books and supplying quotes from them.
There’s quite a bit to ponder over, here.
Iqbal’s letter carries a little contradiction. On the one hand he says, “still I love and appreciate the genius mystic who had a good intention”, and on the other hand he asks, ‘what about the thallium poisoning story?’ Should the love not also mean you believe what Osho says?
Unfortunately, Osho has not always been correct in what he says. Whether that has been because he told untruths, or because he said things which he believed but which were not factual, I will leave in the middle. As Lokesh said earlier, he always sounded believable.
I think you can love him and forgive him, even while acknowledging the odd mistake.
Love and respect do not mean at all one becomes a blind follower.
The narcissistic patriarchy has no future in the master/disciple thing.
Spiritual masters must walk their walk, not youtubing content.
Life and times of Master Shree Rajneesh, the founder of Name change cult has his own shadow sides. They must be brought into light.
I feel this as a contribution for the evolution of Truthful Spirituality.
With ‘Wild, Wild Country’ and ‘Children of the Cult’ and Erin’s open letter and Deeksha’s ‘Dragon Lady’ podcasts, there has been quite a bit of exposure of the commune and Osho’s shadow sides. Is it really useful to focus on this even more?
It seems to me that Osho had light and dark, as do we all, and the best we can do is acknowledge both while we move on. I think Lokesh is right in saying we don’t need to keep picking over old bones, or expect perfection. Osho gave us a beautiful gift in connecting us to the spiritual life, but he is now gone.
It is up to us to walk our own paths from there….
Shantam, I understand your drama.
The CIA killed the patriarch who fucked the most beautiful girls you wanted to fuck, but at the same time, it also drove away the ugly girls you fucked and who were attracted to the patriarch’s garden.
Luckily, you still have the right-hand path. Ask for help from the sweet NP, an expert in hermit practices, or from some old friend of yours like K., whom you saved from the patriarch’s lust.
I’m glad you’re back on this forum, supported by a glorious member of the Seventh Cavalry/ICE. After all, what does one more dead Indian matter in the grand and mysterious scheme of existence? (As your friend, a master of Scottish cynicism exiled to Spain because in his country they can’t stand bullshit, would say).
Veet, it seems you were born with two left hands, leftists like you were happy to find in Master Shree Rajneesh the archetype daddy!
While reading your post, I remembered, where is faceless frank? He is the best in puns! I hope faceless frank is still alive and enjoying social security!
You’re wrong, Shantam, I practise autoeroticism, sometimes even when I’m in a relationship (read what Fromm says in ‘The Art of Loving; about the emancipatory power of sexual pleasure) and it’s possible to do — that’s good news for you — without feeling envious of the patriarch.
Presumably, Frank is still coming to terms with his intellectual arrogance; it’s too hard for him to come back here and admit he’s wrong about Big Pharma vaccines, as suggested by the increased mortality and heart attack rates among young people, not just in Italy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdfie7LeDEI&list=RDZdfie7LeDEI&start_radio=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozb1qpfnec&t=211s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9mxCxToKtU&list=RDb9mxCxToKtU&start_radio=1
Shantam I Singh
17 January2026 at 9.28 pm
“Love and respect do not mean at all one becomes a blind follower.
The narcissistic patriarchy has no future in the master/disciple thing. Spiritual masters must walk their walk, not youtubing content.
Life and times of Master Shree Rajneesh, the founder of Name change cult, has his own shadow sides. They must be brought into light. I feel this as a contribution for the evolution of Truthful Spirituality.
Agree with ”Love and respect do not mean at all one becomes a blind follower.”
Searched for the meaning of ‘truth’! Turns out there are four kinds of truth – Objective, Subjective, Normative & Complex. Seems most likely that if Osho/Master Shree Rajneesh could be the best representative of Objective or Complex.
What Shantam I Singh is saying is more from a Subjective or Normative perspective!
Spot on, Kavita, thanks for your research! Surely the Bible’s statement refers to the individual’s experience of ultimate Truth, aka spiritual ‘enlightenment’. If we think we’ve found such Truth and it doesn’t set us free then it ain’t the Truth!
Free fron what exactly might be worth pondering as well….
(ED: A reminder that you have just read a post from the ‘God of Truth’ himself).
SD, somehow could not relate to Koran, Geeta, Bible & such kind of books, like Shantam I Singh cannot relate to the current name / format of the Pune Commune / Ashram! Anyway, thank you for enlightening me about spiritual enlightenment!!!
Guess we all have our core conditioning intact which may be our natural instinct to survive / not survive!
I can understand not relating to the traditional holy books, I tried reading the Bible and the Koran but couldn’t find my way in either.
Perhaps try watching this Italian man’s videos? I found them very refreshing.
https://youtu.be/OjDLwg06tH4
Thank you, NP, seems you’re into Trekking!
Somehow these days I enjoy travelling & living in the mountains for 2 – 3 months in summer!
Where I can watch Himalyan Sunrise every day from my room. Btw, I am not into trekking!
This is Mussourie.
I used to go walking in the mountains with my dad, who is sadly no longer with us. To say I’m into trekking is an overstatement, I do go for the occasional walk…
Beautiful photo of the hills!
You are right, those are close-by hills which are visible, where the sun is rising from is the Garhwal Himalayan Range, which becomes visible later in the day!
Yes, walking, sometimes I tend to go overboard!
There is a nice municipal Garden in KP lane, # 6, since a while I go there, 6 days a week!
Yeah, that’s an amazing photo of the hills.
I visited Mussourie back in ’91 when I had to get out of Lucknow when martial law was imposed due to civil unrest in the region.
As I recall, Mussourie had a lot of displaced Tibetans wandering around, alongside uniformly dressed school kids. It was cold.
Lokie, the place where I stay is in a Tibetan Village called Happy Valley!
This is the place where the Dalai Lama was allotted the first refugee settlement from the Indian Government, there is a Tibetan Temple within walking distance from where I live, I go there for my morning walk.
That’s the Valley below the temple.
Kavita, you’re talking about surviving or not surviving, as if you remembered the last time you felt alive, though you’re still ruling out any connection to your name change.
I’m asking because perhaps, like me in the past, you eat industrial soy (one of its amino acids interferes with the thyroid), shutting down the thyroid (Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism…perhaps in Japan they were already eating transgenic soy 100 years ago) and it gave me chronic fatigue and headaches.
Fortunately, after 40 days of fasting, I resolved the intoxication, thanks to H.Shelton. You try it too, maybe you’ll ask me for a date to thank me…this would also help Shantam, stimulating his Beta Male, returning to the days of his best virility, when his mantra was “size doesn’t matter.”
Thanx Sw. Fo!
That is all I have to say to you!
If by “Fo” you mean some insult or resentment that would require too much energy to make explicit due to the consequences you would have to bear, I’m sorry for your egoistic entrenchment against my compassionate attempt to show you a path to physical healing, as a premise for a clearer vision of reality.
O compassionate one, how wonderful it is that you have such clear vision; may you be more compassionate and give all other beings your healing without any touch. ❤️
Oh, Kavita, now don’t overdo it by going to the opposite polarity. I know full well that I can’t do anything to remove the mountain of rubble behind which you avoid contact with your world, especially the Indian one.
The remains of that wall, which for a moment with Osho you had the courage and trust to lower, must have created wounds that have not yet healed.
I’m just telling you that I’m sorry to see the attempts of so many in this forum, like you, fail trying to rebuild the old wall of the belief system of the past, where, for example, touching is forbidden.
I think Veet Francesco has fallen in love….
Good to see you, Kavita.
In my understanding, all the four types of truth must be outstanding in the eyes of Cosmic Intelligence before we get that ultimate consolation prize of freedom from the wheels of life & death.
More than 99% followers and readers of Master Shree believe Shri Osho Rajneesh had crossed that threshold of never to be born again.
Incidentally, there is one chap I know personally who claims to be the reincarnated version of the late master.
One can check Bhagwan Shashi Vasudev on facebook, youtube.
We human beings, ever enlightened, must not take cosmic wisdom as granted.
Anyone can slip on Banana peel. Sycophancy is one such classic slip. Adoration is addictive.
Hello Iqbal, yes, good to see you too!
Wondering if your Cosmic Wisdom or Intelligence = Enlightenment! Guess enlightenment is also subjective!
Here in Poona there is one blue-eyed boy in Osho’s market! All are rushing to him these days! His name is Amit.
Somehow my curiosity, if it ever existed, has long died!!!
It seems, Kavita, late master has left many orphans in Pune, looking for every passer-by as a new daddy.
When someone leaves behind a lie of “never born, never died”, many die many deaths before redemption.
Not orphans but maybe prodigal children, in the sense of wasting time, not money!
Oh, Kavita, please tell us, what exciting things can be done instead of coming here for 15 years wasting time trying to support Shantam in redeeming the patriarch’s orphans?
That sounds good, Kavita. The fewer the questions, the closer we are to peace.
Peace!
NP, will you be part of the Board of Peace created by Trump to bring peace to Palestine?
Sitting between T. Blair and J. Milei, you can contribute, following Lokesh’s political line: Question authority, except that of those who take good drugs that show you who really holds power.
Kavita, I’d like to humbly point out that your self-styled and treacherous contribution in exposing the dark nuances of Osho’s private life should imply that for you there exists also a bright public side, only in relation to which your contribution would make sense…to be more precise, if you proposed contributing to exposing the nuances of your hero Shantam’s private life, do you think anyone would be interested?
No, in your character assassination, dear fragile Indian woman (a perfect follower of Sister Teresa of Calcutta) you proceed with a sarcastic judgment (the founder of the Name Change cult), which already contains a clear statement of aversion, invoking “Truthful Spirituality” and concluding, with your elementary school classmate, that your love for such a jerk, with all the shades of abuse of power that the leader of a fake cult is capable of, must not blind you…
You are not blind, you see perfectly well, and by proceeding with unfounded prejudices, you have very clear projections before your eyes.
If I’m wrong, you could make a real contribution by sharing any harassment you suffered from Osho; otherwise, have a chai with your favorite village idiot (I’m no longer available on this forum since I’ve been wandering around with a jackhammer) and ponder more detailed accusations.
In Italy, a faction of politicians representing us says that we should legally ban any kind of commentary (even a whistle) when a beautiful woman passes by; and if you ask for a date, you must ensure you have her sign a document on “rules of engagement” (how far you can go…hand contact, kissing, French kissing, oral sex, genital sex, anal sex, ejaculation, sperm retention…). This, in my opinion, creates further distrust in relationships between men and women, which have never been so simple.
More consistently, the conservative faction (the one inspired by Berlusconi, the king of moderation, in disputes involving prostitutes’ handbags) continues to oppose sex education in schools.
This is to say that the boundaries of what is permissible in the hormonal context of the survival of the human species are not fixed and eternal, as that emotionally constipated Simond would hope.
Therefore, Kavita, again, I invite you to be honest….
Thank you, Veet, for inviting me, even though these days I don’t take any invitations seriously!
Btw, I have always been honest to whatever that I face / encounter / confront.
Frankly, these days & particularly now, I don’t need to waste my energy on things & events that I find draining, just to let you know, your / anyone’s extreme projections / judgements drain me! This is as much as much I can respond to your Giuseppe Di Vittoriotism!
1.093
My invitation was just to be honest, Kavita. I could never sneak into Shantam’s chicken pen.
I’m glad you were never harassed during your years in the garden of the Master of Masters.
So, your feeling drained could be due to something else, for example, your Di Vittoriotism of helping alleged victims, directed by anti-cult organizations.
Perhaps it’s your contribution to creating a sect from scratch, led by a malignant narcissist, that sucks your energy.
I’m not saying I can rule out the possibility that the leader of such a community could be a malignant narcissist or a drug addict, but I am stating the objective fact, experienced with many others, of a collective deconditioning program that after many years has released and continues to release a great deal of energy, flowing into the circuit of the collective consciousness. Being a channel for this process doesn’t drain my resources at all, quite the opposite.
I don’t see how you can approach all this like a psycho cult, seeking out its dark nuances, to the point of draining your resources.
Before the worldwide success.
I’ve read nearly all the ‘Questions and Answers’ lecture series that Osho gave over the last few years, except only the world press series in Rajneeshpuram. Some of it resonated strongly, it made me sit up and take notice, but very little has stayed in my brain for a longer period. I’ve always had this with Osho’s lectures, whether I listen to them or read them they tend to disappear after a few days.
I guess I was looking for what Osho might say in response to my questions today. I’ve never formulated any, and I don’t have any that are urgent, but by reading the Q&A books I have come across just a few questions where I thought, I might have asked that. Those ended up resonating for me.
Has it inspired me or made me wiser? I think not. The stories have become my favourite parts of the books, and they stay with me the longest. But if I compare it to a recent enthusiasm, the Indian pilgrimages of the ‘Increasing Frequency’ channel on YouTube, then Osho’s books are more background noise now. They fulfil a certain curiosity for me, but the heart of my spiritual practice is elsewhere now.
I’ve begun taking a cold shower after I wake up, usually around 5 o’clock, in sympathy with the holy people in India taking a dip in the river. I’m still returning my attention to the breath, as often as I remember, with kindness and love. I meditate, once in a while, I try to leave the mind behind.
So has reading books been a success? I read spiritual books voraciously for a long time, in Buddhism, Osho, Gurdjieff, Tolle, Nisargadatta, Poonjaji, and lots of non-duality. But reading is too much of the mind to be a practice in itself. Even if you read with an eye to absorbing without thinking, letting the book work on you, it’s still not practice. It has enriched me, to a certain extent, though.
On sannyasnews, the usual puns: truth vs. gurus, Scots vs. bullshit…luckily the American government didn’t want anything bad to happen to a guru like Osho, who, not being Scottish, talked bullshit.
In fact, truth is self-sufficient, with its diaphragm and vocal chords, running swiftly across the ocean on its own two feet, to the country with the most freely and democratically organized power around its own government…no, its president…no, its own parliament…no, the media system…no, the security services…no, the private militias…no, the oligarchs…no, the Freemasons…no, the financial system…no, the fundamentalist Christian sects…
Yeah, who’s in charge in the US? Were those in charge all friends of Osho? Isn’t there a Scotsman around to point out this inconsistency?
My point is that, metaphorically, a hammer like Osho represented, for the imperialist/anarcho-capitalist model (embodied in those years by the leading nation, the USA), the same anti-ideological cucumber brandished by Max Stirner behind Karl Marx’s back.
It seems to me that other hammers, like Stirner and Nietzsche, before Osho, died accompanied by a certain smug general satisfaction, on the part of societies that for a moment felt the existential thrill of imagining living authentically, and that the alternative meant a loss of value of everything that had been achieved, materially, socially, and spiritually.
Osho’s uniqueness, his particular way of threatening the dominant ideology (without which people lack self-discipline in applying its codes) was, and still is, or would be (because “truth” in itself is a metaphysical entity that at most “liberates” a fart, between one thought and another, buzzing around in the heads of old and lazy sannyasins) that after the hammer he was able to build a taste of paradise on earth, which doesn’t even remotely resemble the American dream, because one must dream in order not to recognize the nightmare one is living in.
P.S:
MOD, the misunderstanding* arose because I was talking about hammers, but Osho, it seems clear to me that he was/is for you too not just a hammer but also a trowel.
Certainly, if we had stopped at the biased mainstream Christian narrative in the West, a few decontextualized quotes from Osho would have been enough to encourage the character assassination that continues to this day, even on this forum, by false flags and infiltrators who were so physically close to Osho that they could season his food with the finest psychotropic substances, by one of the many secret intelligence agencies funded by public money for private purposes.
*Ref. to Veet Francesco’s post of 4.27pm, Sunday, July 18, where he first wrote “inauthentically” (later changed to “authentically”):
“It seems to me that other hammers, like Stirner and Nietzsche, before Osho, died accompanied by a certain smug general satisfaction, on the part of societies that for a moment felt the existential thrill of imagining living inauthentically, and that the alternative meant a loss of value of everything that had been achieved, materially, socially, and spiritually.”
Yes, MOD, it also works as you suggest. I thought of someone’s fear of discovering they’ve spent a life based on a collective lie, while you thought of the excitement of imagining a life in the style of Zorba the Buddha.
MOD:
See Veet Francesco’s further comment, Tuesday, January 20, 10.41am
No, MOD, your suggestion doesn’t work.
The right word was the one used at the beginning: ‘inauthentically’.
Because the hammering of the philosophers cited doesn’t offer any enticing prospects for how to proceed on that mountain of ruins.
So, the two philosophers cited, like Osho, do question the existing value system of their times, but, unlike my Beloved Master (whom I remind the post-modern nihilistic unbelievers of my asshole, who abound in this forum), they fail to convincingly invite us to the art of inner ecstasy, to the trust that man gives his best when he has found/discovered his own integrity, the grace of knowing how to express, when reality demands it, his own hell and heaven, in the awareness of not identifying with Donald/Bibi nor with Yahweh.
Happy Osho Parinirvana Day! In ‘The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying’ it is mentioned that the Tibetans celebrate the death days of their enlightened teachers, as the moment of their complete enlightenment can only happen after they die. In a way, what we go through during life is only practice.
I don’t keep track of these things usually, but as we have a topic for discussing Osho’s death, it seems churlish not to mention it on the day.
Namasté and a good morning to you!
The article on OshoNews featuring an account of Osho’s death…
https://www.oshonews.com/2026/01/19/no-end-no-end-to-the-journey/
These accounts often have similar themes. In the celebration of Osho’s death they are marked by a depth of feeling, of joy, loss and sadness.
Such were the depths that many sannyasins experienced in the presence of Osho, alive or dead. In those last meetings of the White Brotherhood they danced and celebrated, in a similar way to those at a football match, who experience the rush of the crowd, and a feeling of togetherness.
I too have experienced such rushes, yet I never gave them much importance. Feelings of all kinds come and go, and I’ve always felt suspicious because I knew the rush was always only temporary. Indeed, I learned to distrust my feeling and to know it was alway only transitory.
In the same way that feelings of bliss and love arise in making love, so too all feelings should be honoured and felt, but with the knowledge that they aren’t the truth. Furthermore, the search for feeling and emotion becomes a disease.
In our current world emotion is lauded, praised and we have become addicts of the dopamine and yet we rush head on to more feeling, rather than develop the deeper place within us where there is no feeling. As far as I know, this is the only true place.
Good comment, Simon.
The question is: Who is Osho?
Who are you?
Is he the physical?
Certainly not.
There is the truth:
Never born, never died!
Simond said, “In our current world emotion is lauded, praised and we have become addicts of the dopamine and yet we rush head on to more feeling, rather than develop the deeper place within us where there is no feeling. As far as I know, this is the only true place.”
Eckhart Tolle wrote, “Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking” and this is my experience also. It is something about realising that the ground, the very root of life, is love and kindness, and that truth without these is only a shadow.
You’re talking about love and kindness, NP, feeling, while Simond is concerned with emotion. There’s a difference, which is too often ignored or glossed over, the two assumed to be within the same category. Barry Long made this distinction very clear, which was often far from the case in the sannyasin world.
If the root of life was love and kindness as you say Mr Eckhart tells us, why is the world so full of its opposite? Surely the root would flower to reveal the kindness and love within?
Why do you feel the need to quote anyone? You’ve been reading long tracts from Osho, listening to tapes of this and that teacher or guru for years, obsessively seeking answers and yet rarely offer your own understanding except in trite, simplistic bites or quotes from others.
I sense that your spiritual journey would truly begin if you threw all the knowledge that you have picked up to the bin, and felt the raw pain that might ascend into your consciousness. That would be that you know nothing, all your seeking has been a distraction. The pain of that discovery is visceral, full of feeling, dark, irrational, and contains no love or kindness in it. In my experience it’s the starting point, but by no means the end. A real authentic meditation becomes possible in such moments, not the sitting down version or the dancing around celebration versions that Osho offered.
Instead a quiet descent into your own mind, into darker feelings, even reminders of traumatic moments of the past. A meditation that takes you out of control, out of your comfort zone, out of hope and meaning. Here is where the real examination of who you are starts. It’s incredibly difficult but I can tell you that if you allow such a descent, a real Grace is provided, but not necessarily in a form you might recognise. It can arise in a fleeting moment, and is then gone.
But you can’t rely on grace, on kindness or on love, because these are just ideas fostered upon us by those who have never descended into themselves. Both the inner and outer world are filled with other people’s ideas, borrowed knowledge handed down in order to keep us from discovering our own mystery, and our own uniqueness and originality.
That’s what Osho and others discovered and what makes those, like you and me, drawn to him, as he exemplifies someone true to himself and therefore an example to us. We all stand on the shoulders of giants who, if they are true, act as pointers to the way.
NP, you have helped keep this site alive, it’s been active largely through many of your comments. I congratulate you on your determination and courage, but I hope you also might see that such activity has its price. The price is that you are distracted by your emotional need for confirmation from others, from a need to be liked or loved. This site will never provide this. It’s just an artificial talking shop, but out in the real world, away from books, is where Life begins, in relationships, in personal interaction and confrontation.
You’ve hidden far too long in the abstract world of books and other people’s ideas. You can rightly say that I’m just another contributor of ideas and you’d be right. I hope, however, that what I’ve written to you will be seen not as criticism or over-judgemental. Perhaps there is a mustard seed of truth in my words?
Why are you making such rambling remarks, Simond?
How do you expect to help young Nityaprem if, in the same comment, you managed to praise great masters like Osho while simultaneously sharing such a reductive and superficial view of what he offers, including the importance he places on catharsis and celebration?
I’m sorry for the hell you carry inside, which occasionally seems to threaten to surface, judging by your attitude toward emotions and feelings…but if, as you said, they are transitory, what, then, is your problem?
Simon, thank you for your heartfelt comments. I can tell that you care, and that you deserve an answer of some depth. I will try and do it justice, but in a way by caring you are already proving that in me you see a bit of yourself. Perhaps in seeking we are similar, or to the extent that we consider things deeply. That identity, that ‘I see you in me’ is a key factor in shaping love and kindness.
That you feel pain about your lost years of seeking I can understand. But I don’t think these things are a loss, instead it’s like manure spread on a field. It helps the crop of wisdom to grow. It’s more like going on a long journey — the person who returns is not the same anymore as the person who left.
If I needed to be loved, then neither Lokesh’s acerbic wit nor Satchits witless one-liners would provide that. Instead I put up quotes and pieces of wisdom I find, sadhana that helps me, practice experiences, all kinds of things to help spur the modern seeker to explore, read, do and be.
I think Osho’s greatest gift was that he introduced us to the spiritual life. He placed our feet on the path.
“I think Osho’s greatest gift was that he introduced us to the spiritual life. He placed our feet on the path.”
Maybe this is the case for you, NP, because you met him when you were a child.
I see it differently.
There is no path.
The path is created by walking.
There was a discourse I came across, I think it was in ‘The New Dawn’, in which Osho answered a question about how long it would take to become enlightened. He said, I say it only takes a moment, because if I say it takes a thousand lifetimes you would get discouraged.
As long as you have the idea of enlightenment in mind, there is a path to follow.
A thousand lifetimes?
He is joking about “enlightenment”.
For one it is the most difficult, for the other the most easy.
It depends what you think about it.
When one changes name months before death, its psychology is quite abnormal!
Only at sannyasnews one discuss such issues. To make the reach increase, time is ripe to create a Sannyasnews page at Facebook also. And it costs nothing.
The thing about making assumptions is that, if you believe something, you assume you are right about it to the point of becoming negative, nasty and destructive with people to defend your position.
I appreciate your honesty, Lokesh.
I’ve always thought Poonjia was overrated by the patriarch’s orphans, and that it was wrong to go to his grave and insult the former sannyasins gathering there, along with their puritanical back-up teacher.
Human beings literally dream things up in their imagination. When someone does not completely understand something or someone, they make an assumption. When the truth finally dawns on them, their dream bubble bursts, and they discover nothing at all was like how they thought it was. It’s an everyday thing.
One needs patience when dealing with people on this level, because it often takes a long time for the truth to dawn, especially when it comes to dogmatists.
Lokesh has long believed that after Pune 1, Osho had become particularly uninhibited in using the intellectual/moral/spiritual credit he had accumulated over 30 years of public speaking, among disciples and mere admirers, to satisfy his private desires: sex, drugs, and Rolls Royces.
His conviction is such that he has never hesitated to insult and mock those who didn’t share his convictions.
All of this fits into his description of a dogmatic attitude, expressed in the paternalistic tones of someone who seems to speak about humanity and not with humanity, feeling himself to be part of it.
The most obvious limitation of his thesis, based on hearsay, is that he had a very different idea/feeling of Osho from the public image the mainstream media portrayed of him after the Oregon “events.” Yet, finding the faction of the Master of Masters’ lovers, for him unbearably devotional — that is, tainted by emotions/feelings like gratitude/trust/ecstasy — he prefers, for an easy win, to make his opinion of Osho coincide with that of the mainstream media.
His emphatic rejection of the possibility that Osho was poisoned/drugged is another limitation of his judgment, because this implicitly means rejecting the possibility that the Master of Masters, along with his people, posed a threat to a barbarously medieval country like the United States.
As Barry Long once said, there’s no point in talking to, or reasoning or discussion with madness – so it’s unlikely Lokesh will respond to your absurd comment. On this occasion I’ll go against his advice.
Before the rooster crows an apathetic ass-kisser complains about finding too much madness among Osho’s lovers.
You might be surprised, Simon, that many people who by modern society are called mad and relegated to the care of psychiatrists are in fact colourful, inventive and many-sided individuals…admittedly, reasoning will not always get you very far, but appeals to their baser beliefs may move them.
NP, are you saying that you would be able to avert World War III by talking to the leaders of planet Earth?
Or are you saying that diagnostic manuals only apply to poor devils who have no power to prove their normality?
Who decides that Osho is a serial abuser?
Do you decide this or who has the power to make him wear a straightjacket and administer chemical castration?
“…barbarously medieval country like the United States.”
Those who live in the Assland always put countries and cultures down.
One should ask such both hands left, what is your contribution to make world a better place?
After the envy for the Patriarch of Patriarchs, here’s another of the 50 shades of your envy, Shatam.
Yes, UNESCO says mine is the most beautiful country in the world; I understand your envy.
My best contribution is when I’m connected to my essence.
I just noticed a piece on OshoNews about a new collection of oral histories of Osho called Oshara. Very interesting, I think there is room for another collection of these alongside ‘Love Osho’ and ‘Historias con Osho’.
Where the interest comes from to view these however is another question. In India and in Nepal there are more young people who are into Osho, and they might connect with these interviews, when they find them.
But we are now reaching the point where many of the original sannyasins are passing away, or suffer dementia, or severe hearing loss and can no longer participate. My stepfather, Swami Anand Yatri, spent many years prior to his Alzheimer’s and eventual death, trying to formulate a book called ‘The Master and The Fool’ in which he was trying to capture his experiences with Osho. It never got beyond a collection of notes.
It’s sad that so many of these stories about individual encounters with Osho will be lost. Personally, my story doesn’t connect so directly with Osho, we only met once in the last family Darshan ever held in Poona 1, and only exchanged a few words with the help of my father as an interpreter.
Stop swinging between the hammer and trowel, NP, you can’t demolish and build at the same time.
If you frequent this forum, go to the end and choose a side, stop mediating between those who love Osho and those who are angry with him and with themselves; not having the physique du rôle, you would be increasingly confused, to the point that someone who knows how to sniff out his energetic prey could apply some parameters to you from the DSM-5-TR.
You’ll end up looking like the Dutch Shantam…it happens, when the mind comes into conflict with the heart.
MOD:
“the DSM-5-TR” – translation, please, Veet F.
He is referring to the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual (DSM) version 5, a tome of American origin and considerable weight in psychiatric circles. It basically links symptoms to a diagnosis.
There is another article at oshonews which shows that in hindsight one can see how conformity hurt others:
https://www.oshonews.com/2026/01/21/love-life-of-a-cheltenham-lady/
Interesting lesson.
The need to conform to peers. At a certain age. Still.
All things must pass. Know yourself. Etc.
What conformism are you referring to, Klaus? Perhaps Pankaja’s? But what/when exactly?
When, as a young, unaware woman, she abandoned her family and lover to fly to India, seeking the awareness that gives meaning to life, as was the fashion in those years?
Or when she felt a special connection to the Sangha that she didn’t have with her biological family, to the point of doing things in service of the spiritual community that the traditional family couldn’t understand? (But have the Gautama children ever forgiven their father/mother? I hope so, to the extent that, from their need for care, they themselves found the courage to undergo the internal revolution necessary to walk the “solitary” path of their own fulfilment).
Or perhaps you’re referring to the conformism that Pankaja seems entangled in after watching a documentary that follows the now popular narrative of “me too”?
Pankaja said (in the article) “…convinced that the sannyas life was somehow better.”
I think that a lot of sannyasins were under that spell, that they left their old ways behind for a new style of living, including leaving their children. And that an attempt at reuniting later in life was likely to be troubled.
Here is the quote from the article which refers to my comment:
“When it came out I made sure to insist that on the cover they used my sannyas name and mentioned Osho. I wanted to be OK with the Sangha.
When my daughter read that article, she was terribly hurt and upset. It wasn’t until I saw ‘Children of the Cult’ about a year later that I suddenly realised that I was indeed in some sense brainwashed – trying to make sure that I was ‘OK’ with the Osho publicity machine, and totally unaware of how my own children felt.”
Thanks, Klaus, it was clear, mine was a rhetorical question.
Ah, in the end it is all rhetorical. Innit.
Klaus, a sincere, non-rhetorical question is asked when you want more information about an opinion that doesn’t seem sufficiently clear. That’s not the case here. You were very clear in accusing someone you don’t know of conformism.
When reading that short article, it never occurred to you that there might be an alternative interpretation, for example, considering the awareness, using such form of a light self-irony, with which those words might have been said.
It seems to me that you are one of the many tired and resentful ex-sannyasins who are being drained to the core by the machinery of our post-modern Western civilization and only regain some vitality when they apply the rediscovered critical sense of the good old days to searching for a new shade of brown in the Master’s underwear.
But be careful, if your leaders continue to buy expensive American gas, cutting off their balls along with Nord Stream 2, fearing that Russia wants to invade Europe, you’ll be busy with more exciting things than polishing a magnifying glass to search for biological residues, inspired by Simond’s motto: “Osho is gone, but his underwear is not.”
But don’t worry, the world doesn’t end in Berlin or Washington. There are former Indian sannyasins, in the midst of an economic boom, with time and money to invest in a malignant battle against what I believe could be a spiritual source/resource for a more conscious, relaxed, playful, joyful, and compassionate world.
What occurs to me is from your point of view simple speculation.
And a lot of rhetoric, for sure.
If not blablabla.
Enjoy.
I don’t believe, NP, that a parent, especially a mother, easily distances herself from her children. If she did, she wouldn’t be fully aware of the trauma this entails.
But are we sure that the closeness of an unaware mother is always a resource and not a danger to her little ones?
Perhaps awareness isn’t a switch that turns something on or off, but rather a dial on a flashlight that we can direct and adjust the intensity of its light.
Perhaps a mother’s awareness of not having spiritual nourishment to share with her own children and a husband is something that is deeply distressing and depressing, and only a mother’s strong love for her children can give the strength to seek that nourishment on the other side of the world.
It appears to me that living in Western civilisation there is a lack of soul in everyday life. It’s a merchant’s mind that is common here, a traders mentality that is fostered by science and mathematics. Osho also called it the Aristotelian mind, and it is still spreading.
Osho created a kind of enlightened divinities through his stories which were placed throughout his discourses, by talking about Gautama the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Kabir, kings and emperors. It was a mythology of meditation and the mind. When you have that, do you truly need a heaven? It was an alternative to the Aristotelian mind.
With an open heart and enough courage, we can go forth and enjoy the experiences of other religions as well. That is the beauty of Osho’s sannyas, we do not need to confine ourselves to the forms of one religion, but just as Osho discussed many religions we can enjoy and celebrate them with respect and care…
This I enjoyed this morning:
https://youtu.be/-xdLyAECY8U
Namaste and a fine day to you!
Thank you, Nityaprem, I agree with your post.
What you wrote motivates me even more to oppose those who try to create a layer of shit among Osho’s lovers/friends, and between Osho himself and future disciples.
I love you.
I found an article that I’m adding below, translated via Google, that discusses a field of science I didn’t know was epistimologically codified: Ponerology, or the science of evil.
I thought I’d ask SD for feedback via email, particularly on what seems to me to be the core of the author’s reflection (Marco Della Luna, coincidentally, the name might remind us of something: warrior of the moon), namely the importance of an ontological choice, made more or less consciously (without necessarily being a philosopher), which is the foundation of every human’s morality.
For the author, in fact, the difference seems to be in valuing one’s own individual “cause” or that collective of one’s own human race, in communion with all the rest, aligning this with the Buddhist approach.
There would be room for discussion about the significance of this ontological choice (i.e., what seems to have value in life, so that human consciousness can become aware of its existence), in the sense that, contrary to what M.D.L. seems to argue, it seems to me that the individual cause of someone who seems “destined” to a “noble cause” might not always be more wicked, toward themselves or others, than someone who feels “chosen” for a collective cause…and this, although my political vision prioritizes social justice over individual freedom…
It’s quite a paradox what I experienced during the pandemic, having been pushed to defend my “individual cause” of refusing compulsory medical treatment against the seemingly “noble collective cause” of the general good of the survival of the human race, a noble cause, however, decided on the basis of individual interests, a few “individual causes”…
What is certain is that today the dominant paradigm, the liberal one, which privileges the individual cause, seems to be in crisis…certainly not for the oligarchs who are now celebrating the high that the sense of omnipotence of the individual cause (Max Stirner) can provide, pursued to its extreme consequences.
I repeat, the article is translated by Google; if there are any idiomatic difficulties, I will try to correct it.
https://marcodellaluna-info.translate.goog/2025/10/03/la-matrice-del-male/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://marcodellaluna.info/2025/10/03/la-matrice-del-male/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls
simond says:
15 January, 2026 at 1:28 pm
The above post of simond is quite interesting and worthy of discussion.
Simond said, “How could an Indian truly understand the West? How could he [Osho] incorporate his own realisation with such young, ‘inexperienced of life westerners’?”
I think Osho very well understood the emptiness of soul of the West. It is one reason why he introduced us to the Buddha, the Jains, the Taoists, the Sufis and much more, to let us experience the richness of the soul of the East.
Simond said, “Living Life itself is the great teacher and those few real masters of old, like Osho, I’m forever grateful to. But his time has gone, and whether he was poisoned or not, it’s really of no importance to me or to the wider public. If we remember him at all, let it be because we have learned from him, and incorporated this understanding into our daily lives.”
I think it’s good not to cling, if you can. But for many sannyasins he brought joy and celebration to their lives, and we need an occasional reminder.
If someone has to change his name a few months before death, one can imagine how dirty one must feel to get rid of and restart.
Every single sentence was spoken by Shri Rajneesh, simply to accept ‘Osho’ shows master destroyed the critical thinking of his followers.
Rise and fall of Rajneesh and failed rebranding is a testimony how one could become the victim of one’s success. Sycophancy is quite a deadly art of destroying integrity.
Adoration of the western youth became fatal because the master had no real idea how the West works.
MOD:
Shantam, in your second paragraph the two statements don’t go together. Please modify!
Osho is a branded name, a clever trick to wash the sins of Rajneesh.
For me it is a street smart trick to befool humanity.
When people accept the honorific title Osho as a name, it shows lack of critical thinking.
Osho for Rajneesh and resort for commune, failed rebranding.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”
Master & his cult had the notion they are smart enough to have the cake and eat it too all the time.
Shantam declares, “Osho is a branded name, a clever trick to wash the sins of Rajneesh.” Reminds me of something JC was credited with saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Then Shantam draws the absurd conclusion that “It is a street-smart trick to befool humanity.” Really, man, I would be surprised if one person in a hundred had even heard of Osho.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
I think Master of the Masters was not just throwing stones but rocks on others.
Tell me, when did your Osho take the responsibility for his actions, when for Godliness sake, he walked his talks?
“Your Osho”? Now, Shantam is starting to sound like NP. I don’t have an Osho. Osho always sounded like the name of a packet of soap powder to me. You know, ‘OSHO’ brainwashes better than ever before. Wow! Look at all those bubbles…bursting!
Hilarious.
The best side of Lokesh!
P.S:
Call it destiny, Osho in Japan is equal to Acharya in India.
Yeah, Shantam, I know you enjoy a laugh. Those very serious people are a pain in the posterior, and in some cases downright dangerous idiots.
So, before any of the faithful jump on the bandwagon and start telling me I’m an infidel because I said Osho brainwashed people…I did not say that.
Mind you, Osho probably did brainwash people because many people have dirty brains that need a good wash to rid them of all those stupid and ugly thoughts that are clogging up the brain’s capillary ion channels that process matching blood flow to neuronal activity…OSHO will sort that out in a flash. Then again, as one can easily detect in the hallowed pages of SN, there are people around who have brainwashed themselves, and unfortunately this has developed into a bizarre form of self- harm. By the looks of it they picked up the wrong packet at the local New Age supermarket and swallowed KRAPPO instead of OSHO and as a result ended up talking a load of shite.
One should always check Trustpilot in regards what kind of brainwasher is best for you. It’s a personal matter.
Me? I don’t need brainwashing anymore. My brain is gleaming and full of loving, compassionate and holier-than-thou thoughts and occasionally host to pure nothingness. Why is that? I use HOLYMOLLY. I buy it at Aldi’s spiritual accessories counter. Cheap as chips!
NP writes that, “Osho introduced us to the Buddha, the Jains, the Taoists, the Sufis and much more.”
Perhaps, NP, you would come across better if you changed the “us” to ‘me’.
Osho did not introduce me to the Buddha, the Jains, the Taoists and the Sufis. I was aware of them long before I had met Osho. This helped me appreciate more what Osho had to say about them.
You are making the mistake of believing that your experience is the same as everyone else’s. It is not.
Simond is correct when he says, “Living Life itself is the great teacher.” I learned a lot from Osho, who was part of life; living that life taught me much more. Osho agreed with this idea, and I recall him saying so.
NP concludes by saying that we need an occasional reminder to celebrate life. Again that “we”. I know many people who celebrate life without the need for reminders.
I know who I mean when I say “we”, it is a subset of everybody that apparently doesn’t include you, Lokesh.
Of course, NP, you are right again. Well done.
NP, here is some information that illustrates how millions of people like myself were attracted to eastern mysticism long before Osho took centre stage.
Nothing screams 1960s counter-culture like the cover of Axis: Bold as Love. It was appropriated from Viraat Purushan-Vishnuoopam, an image so famous in India that its ubiquity can only be compared to that of images of Jesus Christ in the Western World. This time, instead of Vishnu, the Hindu god, it is Jimi Hendrix, the hippy god. There’s a reason why it was banned in Malaysia – it is bold, blasphemous and trippy. Whether Hendrix intended it or not, it reads as a colossal middle finger to mainstream America, replacing Christianity with Hinduism, and the white and holy Jesus face with a Black, Cherokee psychedelic rockstar – all just a few years after the end of Jim Crow. Instead of a traditional religion, it represents the cult of flower power: the creed of peace, love and a lot of LSD. And the whole thing was an acid-dipped mistake.
Though it can be perceived as a statement about the hippy lifestyle and is analogous to its relationship with Eastern faith, the flamboyant cover of ‘Axis: Bold as Love’ was really just a giant mistake. Hendrix said that “the music in Axis is based on a very, very simple American Indian style,” and he wanted to pay tribute to his Cherokee roots on the album cover. However, his record label confused his reference to India with the South Asian country, and Roger Law placed the image of Hendrix and his bandmates on that of an Indian religious poster.
Hendrix claimed: “The three of us have nothing to do with what’s on the Axis cover.” The image used on the cover, a Hindu devotional painting called Viraat Purushan -Vishnuoopam, depicts the Supreme God Vishnu, with Krishna in the centre representing mankind, the evil deities to the left, and the good deities to the right, representing the balance between good and evil.
The cover art, albeit a mistake, accurately represents the hippy ethos. In fact, its accidental nature is akin to that of the counter-culture’s obsession with Eastern religion; though a genuine spiritual endeavor for some, for many hippies and rockstars, Indian iconography was little more than a psychedelic fad, a natural by-product of the hippy lifestyle. The counter-culture movement, as it descended from movements such as the Beats and Transcendentalism, both of which were greatly influenced by Eastern faith, shares many core tenets with Indian religion. Beyond just the practice of meditation and yoga, the idea of spiritual liberation is central to both cultures.
The ultimate objective of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism – deliverance from the endless cycle of rebirth – is only attainable by overcoming all earthly desires. The hippy emphasis on nonconformity, on “dropping out” or liberating oneself from the evils of mainstream culture, and the inner peace that follows, sounds a lot like the Indian beliefs of moksha and nirvana. The Indian emphasis on asceticism is echoed by the counter-culture’s renouncement of all things mainstream; to embrace the hippy lifestyle was to abandon one’s ties to the most conventional of American values.
Most “hippies” were white, middle-class young adults, who, because of economic prosperity, had all the time in the world to protest and do drugs. Representative of a societal, generational tension, they rebelled against the values of their parents: segregation, the Vietnam War, an obsession with materialism, traditional gender roles, homophobia, and the Western way of life. Instead, they sought a lifestyle of peace, love, sex, and drugs. Thanks to the emergence of birth control pills, the availability of Mexican marijuana, and a huge number of baby boom youth, the flower power movement took America’s youth by storm. At that time, psychedelic drugs such as LSD were legal, and were the perfect outlet to transcend consciousness and explore spirituality. From their purple haze came a fascination with meditation, yoga, astrology, Native American mysticism and Eastern religion.
Half a rejection of their parents’ values, and half the perfect supplement to an acid trip, hippies were fascinated with Eastern religion, primarily Buddhism and Hinduism. The 1960s counter-culture is often considered as the heir of the Beats. The term “Beat Generation” was coined in 1948 to describe an underground youth movement, and was a rebellion against all things traditional, conservative, and conventionally American. They passed down their interest in Eastern religion, particularly Zen Buddhism, to the hippies. A 1970 article in Time Magazine describes Zen Buddhism’s core tenets of “inward meditation versus doctrine, of emphasis on the visceral and spontaneous as against the cerebral and structured, of inspiration rather than linear ‘logic’ ” – all the things that would fascinate a hippy on shrooms.
Hippies were also drawn to Hinduism, inspired by Indian teachers and gurus who taught in America as early as the 1890s. Some of them, including Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom the Beatles lived with in India in 1968, became celebrities, and encouraged Americans to experiment with yoga, meditation, and mysticism. Although Indian gurus advised them against it, hippies used marijuana and hallucinogens as a gateway to spiritual enlightenment. Thus, the hippie obsession with Eastern mysticism was more a fetisization than a genuine religious movement. Soon, hippies from all over burned incense, had Buddhas in their houses, listened to Indian music, wore mala beads and colourful Indian-style clothing, became vegetarian, and meditated. Like the Hendrix album cover, Eastern mysticism in counter-culture was simply the product of a lifestyle of peace, pot, and peyote.
Another staple of the counter-culture movement was psychedelic rock. There was literally an entire music genre in the late 1960s that was devoted to drugs – the strange psychedelic noises in the middle of songs, the use of electronics, the deafening sound of feedback, and the loud, roaring electric guitar. Its birthplace was the Golden State, where the early Grateful Dead performed at Ken Kesey’s Acid Test multimedia “happenings”. The movement spread like a wildfire from San Francisco across the country and over to Europe, absorbing some of rock’s greatest bands: Jefferson Airplane, Quiksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother and the Holding Company in San Francisco; the Doors and the Byrds in Los Angeles; the Velvet Underground in New York City; the Yardbirds (and later Led Zeppelin), Jeff Beck, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Rolling Stones, Donovan, the Kinks, early Pink Floyd, the Who, and the Beatles in England. This music was not only inspired by psychedelics – some of the most famous songs of the era, such as the Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and ‘With a Little Help from my Friends’ were a love letter to them.
San Francisco was the Mecca of the counter-culture movement. Not only was it the birthplace of psychedelic rock, but it famously attracted about 100,000 people to its Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood for the Summer of Love in 1967. There, music, hallucinogenics, free sex and political activism flourished, as the hippy lifestyle, for the first time, was brought into the global spotlight. However, “‘the ultimate high’” and “the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippy era” took place not during the Summer of Love, but months earlier at a fundraiser for a Hindu organization.
Mantra-Rock Dance started as a local benefit to raise money for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or Hare Krishna, and its first centre on the West Coast, smack in the middle of Haight-Ashbury hippieland. ISKCON was founded by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a guru in the school of Vaishnavite Hinduism, which worships Krishna as its central deity. Within a few years, his group was a spectacle on the streets of New York with their signature yellow robes, shaved heads, street dancing and chanting, classes, and free food for the community.
In 1966, he chose Mukunda Das to spearhead the establishment of a San Francisco temple in late 1966. So, in an effort to fundraise and gain followers, he decided to indulge in San Francisco psychedelia and host a rock benefit at the temple. Of course, this decision invited a lot of controversy among the group. They preached abstention from alcohol and drugs, celibacy and monogamous marriage, but they knew everyone there would be drunk, high, sexually active and polygamous. However, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg convinced Prabhupada that “there was a spiritual hunger that he could fill.” Prabhupada agreed.
Within days, psychedelic posters for the event lined the streets of Haight-Ashbury and the nearby colleges. The flier, designed by Harvey Cohen, one of the first Hare Krishnas, is second only to ‘Axis: Bold as Love’ with its psychedelic imagery: Prabhupada sits at the bullseye of a purple spiral floating above a pink spiral. In crooked purple letters reads: “Bring cushions, drums, bells, cymbals, proceeds to opening of San Francisco Krishna Temple.” Performing at the benefit were the Grateful Dead and Big Brother & The Holding Company with lead singer Janis Joplin, two of the Bay Area’s most popular psychedelic bands, and Moby Grape, a then little known band whose performance that night would earn them acclaim and a record deal. When Prabhupada arrived on the West Coast, the San Francisco Chronicle asked him if he would let in the hippies, and he said, “Hippies or anyone – I make no distinctions. Everyone is welcome.” By 8 PM on Sunday, January 29, hippy heaven was open for business.
3,000 hippies flocked through the doors of the Avalon Ballroom for $2.50 per person and into psychedelic Narnia. Also in attendance was a lot of marijuana and a lot of LSD, courtesy of Harvard acid enthusiast Timothy Leary and his buddy Owsley Stanley III, the manufacturer of notoriously potent LSD, who were handing out hundreds of hits in the crowd. Satsavarupa Dasa Goswami, Prabhupada’s biographer, sets the scene:
“Almost everyone who came wore bright or unusual costumes: tribal robes, Mexican ponchos, Indian kurtas, ‘God’s-eyes’, feathers and beads. Some hippies brought their own flutes, lutes, gourds, drums, rattles, horns and guitars. The Hell’s Angels, dirty-haired, wearing jeans, boots and denim jackets and accompanied by their women, made their entrance, carrying chains, smoking cigarettes, and displaying their regalia of German helmets, emblazoned emblems and so on — everything but their motorcycles, which they had parked outside.
At about 10 PM, following a trippy Hindu light show and a meal of sanctified orange slices, Prabhupada made his entrance. His biographer described: “He looked like a Vedic sage, exalted and otherworldly. As he advanced towards the stage, the crowd parted and made way for him, like the surfer riding a wave. He glided onto the stage, sat down and began playing the kartals [ritual finger cymbals].” Allen Ginsberg introduced and welcomed Prabhupada to the stage, but somewhere along the way spoke of chanting as the perfect descent from their high and a way to “stabilize their consciousness upon re-entry.”
After Prabhupada addressed the audience, Ginsberg led them in the Hare Krishna chant, which, after a few minutes, broke out into a full-on flash mob. Prabhupada was the first to begin dancing. He was soon followed by the members of the bands, who accompanied it with their instruments. The crowd played along with their instruments and danced into the night. Afterwards, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother & The Holding Company played hours past midnight.
The event was a smashing success. Not only did it raise $2,000, but membership skyrocketed at the temple and Prabhupada rose to national prominence, going on speaking tours across the country and establishing dozens of temples. Soon, members of the ISKCON San Francisco Team were sent to London, where they famously befriended George Harrison and the Beatles.
In February 1967, Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, saw a newspaper ad for Transcendental Meditation classes. Boyd, who was seeking spirituality in her life, began attending the classes, and her husband soon joined her. In August, the Harrisons and the rest of the Fab Four sat in on a lecture in London by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement. Boyd wrote in her memoir, ‘Wonderful Tonight’, “Maharishi was every bit as impressive as I thought he would be, and we were spellbound.”
That same group, alongside Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful, then attended a ten day conference of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in Bangor, Wales. It was there that the Fab Four announced that they would finally say goodbye to drugs. “It was an experience we went through. Now it’s over and we don’t need it any more,” said Macartney. However, while they were at the conference, they received news of the tragic death of their manager, Brian Epstein. As a result, Maharishi invited the Fab Four to live at his ashram in Rishikesh.
The Beatles, their wives and girlfriends, along with singer Donovan, actress Mia Farrow and Mike Love of the Beach Boys arrived in India around February, 1968. The ashram was a lot like one of those “socialist summer camps” Alvy Singer rambles about. It was built in 1963 on a fourteen acre plot in the forest. There were six long bungalows, each with five or six double rooms, and flowers and greenery all around. George Harrison and John Lennon were there to meditate. They were fascinated by Maharishi’s words, and were finally able to sit back and relax after years of drugs and fame. Paul locked himself in a room for five days to meditate and wrote hundreds of songs. George did not fool around when it came to his spiritual journey. Paul Macartney recalls, “‘He was quite strict. I remember talking about the next album and he would say, ‘We’re not here to talk about music – we’re here to meditate.”
After a long day of lounging, meditation and songwriting, all the musicians would play together. Their photographer, Saltzman, wrote,”The weeks the Beatles spent at the ashram were a uniquely calm and creative oasis for them: meditation, vegetarian food and the gentle beauty of the foothills of the Himnalayas. There were no fans, no press, no rushing around with busy schedules, and in this freedom, in this single capsule of time, they created more great music than in any similar period in their illustrious careers.”
That great music he was referring to, of course, was the White Album. Sophomore Sarah Abenante, a Beatles fanatic, is struck by the diversity of their 1968 masterpiece record. Their longest record, it shows just how versatile the group is. Recent graduate Lucas Cohen describes it as groundbreaking. Their first album after their psychedelic period, the Beatles’ 1968 masterpiece was the brainchild of all the artists on the retreat, not just the Fab Four.
Donovan was not only a friend to the Beatles, but he was a mentor. Harrison was in awe of Donovan’s descending chord patterns, which he then used to write ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. Donovan taught John Lennon his fingerpicking style on the guitar. In his 2005 autobiography, Donovan wrote: “‘My new pupil went to it with a will and he learned the arcane knowledge in two days.” He employed this new style on ‘Julia’ and ‘Dear Prudence’.
The latter was about Mia Farrow’s little sister, Prudence Farrow. George and John were worried about her, and wanted her “to come out and play” as she spent hours in her room meditating with the door locked. Mike Love, when he heard McCartney playing the acoustic guitar to what would be ‘Back in the USSR’, said to him, “You know what you ought to do. In the bridge part, talk about the girls around Russia. The Moscow chicks, the Ukraine girls, and all that…If it worked for ‘Califronia Girls’, why not for the USSR?’
The people that inspired ‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’ were an American college graduate and his mother, who, on elephant back, shot and killed a tiger on a hunt. It wasn’t just the ‘White Album’. Donovan’s ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’, a staple of the psychedelic era, was written in India. Some of the songs written there landed on Abbey Road and in the Fab Four’s various solo careers; Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’, McCartney’s ‘Junk’ and ‘Teddy Boy’, and George Harrison’s ‘Circles and Sour Milk Sea’.
George Harrison practised Hinduism, specifically Hare Krishna, until the day he died. In 1966, he travelled to India to study the sitar, and it was there that he met Maharishi for the first time. Beyond just an escape from the drugs and the stardom, he needed to see God to believe it. In the introduction to Swami Prabhupada’s book Krsna, “If there’s a God, I want to see Him. It’s pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way, you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you.”
When he died on November 29, 2001, at age 58, he was surrounded by images of Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. In his will, he left 20 million British pounds for ISKCON, and wished for his body to be cremated in the Ganges in India, a holy site in Hinduism. His faith was very evident in his music, as seen in the albums ‘The Hare Krishna Mantra’, ‘My Sweet Lord’, ‘All Things Must Pass’, ;Living in the Material World; and ‘Chants of India’. His most popular song, ‘My Sweet Lord’, equates “Hare Krishna” with “Hallelujah.” In 1969, the Beatles produced the single ‘Hare Krishna Mantra’, which Harrison performed alongside the congregants of the Radha-Krishna Temple. He has songs with references to the Bhagavad Gita, to Prabhupada, to yoga, and the list just goes on.
Evidently, the Beatles’ interest in Indian religion was not merely a fad. Unlike Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and T he Holding Company, the Beatles did not think of Hinduism as just an acid trip. They did not appropriate Indian iconography for a psychedelic aesthetic, or to make a statement about the hippy lifestyle. Nothing about their interest in Hinduism was tokenistic. It was 100% spiritual and creative. All of this music, regardless of whether or not it explicitly mentioned religion, was created with Hinduism as the backdrop. It is no coincidence that they were perhaps at their creative apex at that ashram; they meditated, reflected, and liberated themselves from the troubles of their lives. Thus, the Beatles’ relationship with Hinduism is representative of the portion of the hippy population that did genuinely adhere to Eastern faith: the population who didn’t just wear Indian clothing and pick and choose a few traditions to fit a trend.
It is no surprise that many hippies were attracted to Indian religious traditions – with a tablet of LSD, these connections were not only potent, but likely felt otherworldly. However, therein lies the contradiction between genuine devotion to Eastern tradition and psychedelic rock. The obsession with Eastern imagery in the rock and roll world was little more than a fad and a giant trip. Not only did it fit the hippy mantra, but it was the ultimate psychedelic aesthetic. The Rolling Stones used an image of a Buddha on the poster for their infamous Altamont Speedway Concert, which had no relation to Buddhism whatsoever. All Roger Law needed to do was put Jimi Hendrix’s face on Krishna’s and replace the blue background with pink and gold to make it a staple of the psychedelic era. Likewise, Mantra-Rock Dance, though part of a genuine religious movement, was hosted with the expectation that people would go there to get high and maybe donate along the way. For rock stars, the use of Indian iconography was of religious significance, not to Buddhism or Hinduism, but to hippy-ism and everything that it represented: peace, love, nonconformity, and, above all, drugs.
Of course, many hippies, like myself, came to a point that helped us move beyond the psychedelic movement and get on a search for something more abiding than taking another trip on acid. And so it happened that thousands of disillusioned hippies arrived at Osho’s well-manicured tootsies. It is a point to note that in the early days of Poona One many ex-hippies formed the western hardcore of the sannyasin movement.
Axis Bold As Love…
Good old times.
It seems to me that Lokesh is confusing cause with effect; “hippy culture” is an oxymer, a phenomenon actually induced by a social control experiment by various security agencies, aimed at controlling a youth movement that risked fueling a global awakening of consciousness, a genuinely cultural phenomenon.
“…The figure of Ronald Stark, however, raises decidedly fewer doubts, even though he is undeniably enigmatic. The oldest testimony about him is that which the scientist Tim Scully reports in an interview with the journalist Martin A. Lee (14), centred on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a hippie and pro-psychedelic organisation founded near Los Angeles in 1966. Stark had been a member since 1969 after William Mellon Hitchcock, Stark’s emissary who presented himself as being involved in a large French LSD operation, arranged a meeting with the organisation’s leaders. According to Scully, Stark showed up with a kilo of LSD, boasting of speaking fluent Italian, French, German, Arabic and Chinese, of owning several corporations as well as lawyers ready to conceal the Brotherhood’s real properties.
In 1971, he opened an LSD production laboratory in Brussels, which he operated for two years under the guise of a biomedical research center. He produced 20 kilos of LSD (50 million doses), which was then distributed mostly to the United States through the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood would soon cease to exist due to increasingly suffocating FBI operations, and Stark’s chemical assistant in France, one Richard Kemp, was arrested only in 1977 by Scotland Yard, which determined that he was single-handedly responsible for half the world’s LSD production in the mid-1970s.
On February 15, 1975, a certain Terence William Abbott was arrested at the Grand Hotel Baglioni in Bologna, later revealed, through his own notes, to be the false identity of an American citizen: Ronald Stark. What was he doing in Italy? The notes reveal his activities concentrated in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Lebanon…”.
https://rivistapaginauno-it.translate.goog/anni-settanta-operazione-blue-moon/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp
“In the 1960s, the Tavistock Institute, in collaboration with British intelligence and the CIA, piloted an experiment on the spread and use of drugs, especially the artificially produced type, LSD, as part of that socially destabilizing phenomenon known as “counterculture.”
They were supposed to block the awakening of consciences, and what better than drugs?
Money poured in from the Ford Foundation, the British Centre for Environmental Studies, the British Ministry of Defence, Harvard University, the Social Science Research Council of Great Britain, the CIA, etc.
Obviously, these techniques of social control spread throughout the world, and Italy, as always, became an open-air laboratory of choice.
From the lysergic acid dioxide (LSD) of the 1960s and 1970s, they infiltrated the masses of young people with the devastating drug heroin… The rest is history. A sad story!
Today, our levels of consciousness, our cognitive abilities, and our drive for revolution are so low that drugs are no longer needed; social media, OnlyFans, and TV are enough”.
https://disinformazione-it.translate.goog/2025/01/06/droghe-controcultura-e-controllo-sociale/?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=it&_x_tr_pto=wapp
According to Oxford Languages, culture means:
1) What contributes to the intellectual and moral development of the individual and to the acquisition of an awareness of his or her proper role in society.
2) The complex of spiritual experiences, artistic and scientific achievements, and social, political, economic, and religious institutions that characterize the life of a society at a given historical moment: Greek, Latin, and Arabic culture; medieval and Renaissance culture; Enlightenment and Romantic culture; eighteenth-century French culture; Western culture; contemporary culture.”
Given that Lokesh writes a long (and repetitive) post under the pretext of responding to something Nityaprem didn’t say, NP said that Osho made the teachings of past Eastern masters understandable and relevant; he didn’t say he did so before Western kids, subjected to a social engineering experiment, found the iconography of Eastern mysticism amusing and colorful.
It would be more correct, therefore, to speak of a “hippy subculture” and then try to define its qualities according to three social typologies.
In today’s globalized social landscape, there is a tendency to define a subculture (for incels, ravers, gabbers, rappers, metalheads, mods, skinheads, punks, new wave, emo, dark (goth), casuals…) as “cultures of taste”, “Subcultures have elastic and permeable boundaries, and are embedded in relationships with the cultural industry and mass media that are not based on independence and conflict but rather on interaction and intermingling”, unlike in the past when the authorities perceived them as a threat to the status quo.
The boundaries for defining whether the hippie subculture was more or less homogenizing are unclear to me, but it can be defined as a subculture with respect to two opposing tendencies: as a form of criminal deviance for recreational purposes (and fuck the social consequences) or as a conscious form of political resistance.
But if, as Lokesh says — and I have no doubts about this, to distrust his long experience in the field — a subculture’s primary activity is the consumption of laboratory drugs (of uncertain origin…) the hippie movement can only be defined as an anti-political subculture, leaving decision-makers to sleep soundly.
As for the creative aspects related to drug use… the artists cited were great even before their abuse, and the counterfactual of what they could have created sober and after the many overdose deaths is missing.
Regarding the most pertinent example given by Lokesh regarding the relationship between the hippie subculture and Eastern spirituality, it boils down to the case of an artist very dear to me, George H.
Here too, the Beatles and GH were already appreciated worldwide, when their less bourgeois external distinguishing feature was their slightly long hair. Are we sure that their encounter with Indian spirituality through Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation or Prabhupada’s devotional yoga is the same thing Nityaprem was talking about regarding the spiritual tradition spread by Osho?
It doesn’t seem so to me at all.
In fact, I believe that, besides there being no positive relationship between the hippie subculture and spirituality, there can be no spiritual tradition that uses a mixture of meditation and LSD in the same chillum.
I would ironically agree with Lokesh on this, I mean the relationship between “hippy culture” and search for a more exotic God, as an example of how drugs counteract conscious choices…when one of the accusations he leveled more than any other against Osho’s disciples in this forum is their devotional approach (he shouldn’t overlook the fact that the Hare Krishna movement is a black belt in this).
I certainly have no reason to doubt that George H. was searching for the true God, replacing the less colourful one he was taught in church, with his son getting into trouble.
But how can this be considered spiritual progress, pointing to the beauty of the artistic production, inspired by that indian period, as evidence?
Especially when Lokesh chronicles the Fab 4′s Indian period as a phase of breaking the pop stars’ routine, sheltered from the temptations of chemical shortcuts.
“A historical era is a broad period of time, usually characterized by specific cultural, social, or political characteristics, used to structure human history. The traditional Western division includes four macro-periods: Ancient (up to 476 AD), the Middle Ages (476–1492), the Modern Age (1492–1789), and the Contemporary Age (from 1789 to the present)”. Google
Let’s see what’s true in Simond’s thesis: “Osho is among the few real masters, but his time has gone, and whether he was poisoned or not is really of no importance to me or to the wider public. If we remember him at all, let it be because we have learned from him and incorporated this understanding into our daily lives.”
Nityaprem responds to Simond that “he (Osho) introduced us to the Buddha, the Jains, the Taoists, the Sufis, and much more, to let us experience the richness of the soul of the East.”
For a Simond eager to distance young Westerners from the teachings of one of the true masters of the past, there is a Nityaprem, likely much younger than Simond, grateful that a contemporary Master like Osho has made the richness of Eastern culture accessible to him.
Nityaprem is speaking of a Master who, until 36 years ago, made accessible, in a simple and profound way, the cultural tradition that unites the stories of men who, over the millennia, on diverse paths and in diverse circumstances, have reached the pinnacle of human consciousness, a beauty that still moves us today.
Simond would like young Westerners today to avoid contact with all this, while he himself, 50 years ago, drawing heavily from that spiritual tradition, felt completely at ease with his own era.
It’s a real puzzle to imagine in which era Simond wants to place his own human story;
My comment is probably useless, in a few years he will be gone, perhaps poisoned by vaccines, who cares, I will be gone (perhaps stabbed in the back by a Sikh in the service of a retired CIA member… who cares), we will all be gone… finally without emotions and feelings, silent, peaceful, but finally stable, in the same place, watching the flowers from the roots.
Sunday Thought for Contemplation:
The moment you deduce lies in guru talks, be thankful, God wants to save your soul.
Shantam, you too, like your friend who thinks he’s chosen a “hippy culture” when in reality it’s the result of a social experiment, are confusing cause with effect.
It’s not you who deduces the guru’s lies, but God who deduces your lies by making you smell the beautiful girls around the guru.
She doesn’t lie, she doesn’t lie, she doesn’t lie…vagina….
Shantam, I have contemplated your Sunday thought.
The idea that you have a soul that needs saving by God sounds to me like pure fantasy. It reeks of Christian indoctrination, wherein we are all born into the world with sinful natures due to the sin of Adam. If you believe that antiquated nonsense, I daresay you are capable of believing anything.
Today it isn’t the seventies anymore, in most cities there is a plethora of yoga teachers, mindfulness instructors and meditation practitioners. These techniques from the East have become popular in the West, often through the recommendations of psychologists and therapists. A young person’s first contact with Eastern religion is much more likely to be a yoga studio or a religious diversity class at school than a Jimi Hendrix album cover. Interesting to learn about the history of the album cover though.
I find it encouraging that some parts of the multi-cultural society today are expressing themselves in a mix of useful streams of knowledge and practice. It’s a good thing, although admittedly Western yoga is often much closer to a physical discipline than the Eastern yoga, which is a complete spiritual system.
This is because of a certain distrust of Eastern spirituality which still is prevalent in the Western scientific mind.
NP drops a revealatory bombshell that shook me to the very core of my being: “Today it isn’t the seventies anymore.”
A real shocker, I am sure you will agree. How NP deduced this mind-blowing piece of information is anyone’s guess. All I know is that in order to digest his revelation I am going to take an Aspirin and have a wee lie down. Keep ‘em coming, NP.
Lokesh said, “How NP deduced this…”
I was indoctrinated by man-made artefacts all around me, brainwashed I tell you. Everyone in his right mind will tell you the time is always “Now”!
Just as I suspected!
Don’t let me hold you. Detective Shantam is requesting your CV.
For God’s sake, don’t let him know you ran NASA for several years.
Nityaprem,
Just curious to know, have you ever worked, did any job for survival?
Sure. I was a freelance graphic designer and illustrator for a while, then I had various jobs in the computer games industry as a software developer, lead programmer, and so on. My family was not rich, simple fishermen on my mother’s side, my father was an engineer and later a teacher.
I just wrote this article for OshoNews…
https://www.oshonews.com/2026/01/26/a-neurodiversity-journey/
It felt like it was time to start this conversation about Neurodiversity in the Sannyas space, where for a long time it has been somewhat taboo. At the moment there is more of a discussion going on, especially in the States, and it is good to bring it out in the open.
Especially because we as sannyasins have a unique viewpoint and can appreciate the old indigenous wisdom about realms beyond the visible. The scientific perspective is very limited, very focused on this body, this life, this world. But my experience is there is more, much more out there.
Good morning to you….
Congratulations on your article in Osho News. It’s good you share the more vulnerable side of your character. In doing so you come across more openly about the more real challenges you have and perhaps still are facing.
There’s a great new film about Tourette’s Syndrome called ‘I Swear’ that expresses the real difficulties these people face. What I noticed was how the anger, swearing side of their characters revealed their instinctive, no filter response to situations. It is more more real than the polite society can handle, which is perhaps why the condition has arisen in the psyche. Our world is filled with lies, half-truths and cover-ups, and it’s no wonder it is getting worse.
In my experience everything has to get much worse before it can get better
Thanks, Simond. It took me a while to decide to write the article, but once the thought had taken hold it eventually became inevitable.
So far, the response has been pretty encouraging, which is a good thing.
Interesting article, NP.
Are these different voices and identities not all mind-created?
Playing their role on the stage?
They were at one point, Satchit…
But slowly it’s become clear there were always certain elements which had a reality, and I have been able to pick out a handful of experiences which were ‘solid’.
What you mean by ‘solid’ and reality, NP?
I know for some people it may be very solid when they talk with angels.
Halleluja -
Jesus liberates you!
Talking of Tourette’s…
Hi NP,
I read your article, and, apart from anything else, it struck me as totally lacking in any semblance of a sense of humour. Even a smidgen of irony would have humanised your writing a little. Of course, your subject matter is sincere/serious in nature, and therefore, there’s nothing funny to laugh about.
You write, “You can’t take anything with you when death comes, except only a measure of spiritual development.”
How exactly do you measure spiritual development? It could be the case that there is no need for development. What kind of development do you envisage other than various permutations of what you have thought and read?
Were you living on a remote island, with no access to the world, books, internet, etc., would it even occur to you that there is something spiritual that needs developing? I doubt it.
I understand that you are not living on a remote island, but I’m sure you will catch my transcendental drift.
The idea that there is something lacking or wrong with the way you are right now is the blowtorch that is scorching humanity’s arse.
Well, if there is nothing wrong about what people are doing today, what about Trump’s ICE thugs in Minneapolis indiscriminately killing people? Or what is happening in Israel? Or the Russians firing rockets at Ukrainian heating and power infrastructure in the middle of winter? I think many people still have a lot of development left to do.
The ‘Walk for Peace’ which the Buddhist monks are making in the States is a more bodhisattva initiative, they are showing the way and motivating the public.
If you didn’t detect any humour in my article, you must have skipped over the bit where I said that amongst the voices I heard back in 2011 there were “several aliens and one who professed to be God.” I thought that was pretty funny!
NP writes, “Well, if there is nothing wrong about what people are doing today, what about Trump’s ICE thugs in Minneapolis indiscriminately killing people? Or what is happening in Israel? Or the Russians firing rockets at Ukrainian heating and power infrastructure in the middle of winter?”
I read the news today, oh boy…
NP, I did not say, “there is nothing wrong about what people are ‘doing’ today.”
I said, “The idea that there is something lacking or wrong with the way you are right now is the blowtorch that is scorching humanity’s arse.”
All those atrocious facts you mention are all happening because of the idea that there is something wrong with the way something is in people’s lives. ICE…A president working on behalf of disgruntled voters, who have the idea that immigrants are destroying the USA etc. Israel will not be happy until Israeli settlements are built in the Gaza Strip. Russia invades Ukraine. Why? Because of an idea that says something is wrong with the situation unless it is made right. All these things happen because someone or a group of people believe in the idea that something is wrong in their lives and will be until something is rectified.
P.S:
Your sense of humour needs some work. In your article you wrote, “Even when I started sleeping better, these voices didn’t go away, and I distinguished about ten different ones, including some aliens and one professing to be God. It was an eventful time.” There is no indication at all that you are joking. Plenty of mentally ill people hear such voices, and it is not in the least bit funny.
Hmm, I would consider that a lot of people obey the dictates of tyrants and demagogues, people who take it upon themselves to form the free speech of nations and direct the course of its thinking. Soldiers march willingly to obey crazy dictates, people in the intelligence agencies obey the orders to find dissidents, editors and propagandists constrain journalists.
These people need to take a long look at what they are doing. To be part of such state apparatus is in my eyes a crime against humanity. Osho was a rebel, he was not part of the establishment. I think in this, people could take more of a leaf out of his book, and sharpen their intelligence. There is such a thing as personal responsibility for the way people live their lives and what they choose to enable… it is not just Trump and Putin and Netanyahu who are responsible, but everyone who obeys their orders.
And on the subject of humour, there is something absurd about talking to aliens and God via the voices in your head. It is inherently funny, even if you can’t see it.
Was it not the Nuremberg trials of the officials of Nazi Germany which said, following orders is not an excuse for doing that which is inherently wrong and a crime against mankind? It seems the people of the modern age have yet to learn this principle.
People have to learn meditation. To learn a principle is not enough.
Meditation and spirituality have to be taught at school.
This is the only possibility whereby the New Man can come.
Once again, NP is right. Well done. Perhaps this has something to do with taking sannyas in 1978 at the age of six. The screen blurs, and we move back in time…
“Daddy, daddy, I want to be a sannyasin when I grow up! I want to wear orange clothes and stick out like a sore thumb. But above all else, I want to be right all the time!”
“Grasshopper, come and sit with me for a moment, and consider this. Once you form a belief, you subconsciously seek out evidence that supports it and ignore or discredit anything that contradicts it. This is called confirmation bias. Ting-a-ling. Can you hear a bell ringing, Grasshopper?
Ding-dong! Now, this bell is loud enough for everyone to hear because the urge to be right isn’t just stubbornness, it’s something deep in us. It is something that once helped our ancestors stay alive. Back in the good old days of sabre-toothed tigers, being wrong could mean real danger. But today, now that sabre-toothed tigers are extinct, at least in the Netherlands, that same instinct can keep us stuck, defensive and disconnected. When we realise it’s just an old survival programme, not a personal failing, we can start to let go of it. Because in today’s world, growth comes from being courageous enough to say, “Hey, man, I might be wrong,” and still remaining open to new possibilities. Ding-dong!”
Perhaps you read too quickly, NP. Lokesh didn’t say everything was fine; he said it’s the conditioning idea that there’s something wrong or lacking in every human being that results in the general dissatisfaction that leads to small and large wars to compensate for this internal hell.
So Lokesh himself must recognize his ability to see/interpret, as in this case, the reality he described as a consequence of his inner development, a constant work of consciousness in seeking, elaborating, and absorbing the symbolic and rational codes needed to tear away the veil that stands between us and what exists — that is, with what we need and value.
Otherwise, he would be right to consider the effort and quality of our research unjustified.
I take the liberty of criticizing the development of your research, NP, regarding your judgment that places Russia on the side of the aggressor compared to Ukraine/NATO/USA/Ukrainian Bandera nationalists.
Nityaprem, I invite you to further develop, outside the mainstream, the analysis of the events on Maidan Square, the role of Victoria Nuland in the coup against the legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the persecution of the Russophile and anti-EU population.
Thanks, Nityaprem, I enjoyed your article.
I appreciated your honesty and awareness, which is your ability to respond to a mind problem that isn’t very common in the sannyasin context — in fact, I’d say quite rare.
You call it a taboo; this is interesting for a community that has made expressiveness, even in the most bizarre forms, its trademark, starting with the language and appearance of its spiritual leader.
So, yes, crazy, but a community aware of its own madness, which must be acknowledged, teased, exaggerated, brought out, understood…observing the whole process.
But what happens in the “normal world” when something from our mind suddenly and unexpectedly erupts in the midst of our ordinary daily life?
Outside of a protected context like an Osho therapy group, or in the safety of one’s own Sangha, open to listening, supporting, and embracing you?
I think it’s normal to feel panic.
Upon closer inspection, I think it’s normal to feel panicked by the knowledge of living in a context that would have no understanding for the madness of a community drunk on soft and playful trust and widespread compassion.
It’s somewhat reminiscent of the abandonment complex and similar mental mechanisms, where the mind is highly skilled at creating precisely those situations in which we would feel most exposed with our wounds.
Those voices are symbolically the echo of all those people who called you, loved you, sang with you, the effect of a catharsis directed inward from a mind that seeks to gain the status of normality, to adapt to a society devoid of trust, warmth, colours, scents….
Thanks, Veet Francesco.
The thing is, the only time I have heard people in sannyas circles talk about serious mental health issues it has been about Vivek. But statistically you’d expect there were other people who experienced things like depression, mania or the onset of psychosis. It’s rare but not that rare.
Although perhaps you could argue that a lot of Osho’s work was about mental health…I was reading this article and it does suggest that:
https://enlightos.substack.com/p/explore-oshos-unconventional-views
BREAKING NEWS! This is Shite News reporting live from London’s Trafalgar Square, where an anti-guru demonstration is staged to take place. So far, only one demonstrator has shown up. He is wearing an orange turban and holding up a placard declaring “Truth liberates, not the Gurus.”
“Hello, sir, what is your name?”
“My most humble name is Iqbal Singh.”
“And what exactly are you protesting against?”
“Dirty foreigners who are destroying the truth!”
“The truth? I see. But what exactly is the truth, Mr Singh?”
“The truth is right now I am freezing my most holy bollocks off here in dirty Britisher weather, and I am therefore going to be making a retreat to a warm cafe, where I can be eating my vegetable samosas in peace.”
“But what about the demonstration?”
“Demonstration can be waiting for warmer weather. Namaste.”
One of the most honest and precise analyses/descriptions I’ve read from Lokesh in some time.
The commentary would have worked even if the roles were reversed, if Mr. Singh had the same biting irony.
Ultimately, the battle is the same: to kill the father through the Buddha, the raw nerve of every Oedipus.
Hi NP,
If you believe the world is going to change, or the wars in Ukraine or Israel or the actions of ICE can be changed you’re living in a dream world.
The world has been at war since the very beginning of humankind. It won’t ever end, even if one war runs out of steam, another begins.
Osho and others have spoken about this repeatedly, did you not hear them? He said this time and time again, over and over. You ignored his request to examine your own mind. It’s no easy task, I too did the same thing for years. I too didn’t listen, even when I believed I was. It’s such a profound, deep understanding that he was asking us to explore, not by believing him, but by exploring my own mind.
Your desire for peace, for resolution is only ever going to start when you stop deflecting your own pain onto the world. And first of all you have to know that all the pain of the world is yours.
Barry Long is excellent on this, read his book ‘Only Fear Dies’.
This is the only real spiritual journey, as I’ve tried to explore with you before.
The walk for peace by a bunch of Buddhist monks is a travesty. How can Buddhists talk of peace in their sexually repressed monasteries, or when Buddhist armies have been fighting each other and those of other religions since time immemorial. They are just hypocrites.
Explore how your hopes and dreams are simply the thinking of an immature mind who has never really examined the history of the world or his own psyche.
When you first admit your propensity for violence, and see how this is our own, yours and mine, only then can we ever begin to talk of peace.
I’ve often said that behind every Liberal is a fascist, the same applies to any religion. How do I know this? Scratch a Christian, take away something he values, mock his belief and then watch him (or her ) turn. Violence is hidden away behind the mask.
I am not unhappy about the state of the world, or the state of my own mind, although I did note (not without reason) that there still seem to be many people caught up in samsara.
I’m happy that people continue to value peace; many people have attended the monks’ ‘Walk for Peace’. And that what the Dalai Lama says about peace and kindness has a broad audience.
What is Samsara? Who are these people caught up in it? What’s your understanding of this eastern concept, bandied about by westerners as polite references to some eastern theology that they’ve picked up by reading books What’s it truly mean to you, and why do you suppose that I should know what it means?
As to the Dalai Lama and the broad audience he touches? Really? Where are and who are they? The DL is a representative of a dying Tibetan religion that enslaved peasants and is now reduced to flying from one peace conference to another. What’s he changed?
Talking vaguely about peace hasn’t changed much, has it? Valuing peace as you suggest hasn’t brought about peace, has it?
You say you’re not unhappy with the state of the world in this section, whereas earlier you spoke about Israel, ICE and Ukraine. Are you concerned and unhappy about these places or not?
Have you explored your own propensity for violence or are you just going to displace it onto ICE?
In my attempts to communicate to you or with anyone, I try to ask questions of them in order that together we might more fully understand each other. There’s little point in my doing so if you don’t try to answer.
Simond writes, “In my attempts to communicate to you or with anyone, I try to ask questions of them in order that together we might more fully understand each other. There’s little point in my doing so if you don’t try to answer.”
Precisely! I am left wondering why NP comments on this site if he is unwilling to address the questions raised by the comments he writes. It seems that some days he just wants to write a lot of half-baked nonsense that he does not stop to consider for a moment in his haste to broadcast his daily bulletins. Just the fact that the thoughts have entered his mind appears to validate them for him.
Oh dear! Who would have imagined this would happen after taking sannyas in 1978 at the age of six?
Very funny. But as Simond himself pointed out, there is no point in worrying about the world because wars will go on anyway, it seems to be the human condition.
And as far as me answering questions is concerned, why should I do that when you guys are doing such a fine job of answering them yourselves? Maybe you have learned something from Osho after all.
And the reason for my daily comments is not much more than sharing the beautiful things I come across — on the web, in Osho’s discourses, in the garden during my morning coffee….
NP writes, “And as far as me answering questions is concerned, why should I do that when you guys are doing such a fine job of answering them yourselves?”
Which brings us back to something Daddy said recently: “Once you form a belief, you subconsciously seek out evidence that supports it and ignore or discredit anything that contradicts it. This is called confirmation bias. Ting-a-ling. Can you hear a bell ringing, Grasshopper?”
NP concludes with the following: “Maybe you have learned something from Osho after all.” I’m quite certain that if NP realised how conceited this might sound, he would not have written it.
I try to write enough in answer to your various questions to make something of my opinions felt. You’re right that leaving the field totally clear does no one any good, but at the same time I am not Osho, I don’t have his brilliance or propensity to destroy questions.
I do believe in goodness and peace and kindness and love. There is a famous book here in the Netherlands, called ‘De Meeste Mensen Deugen’ which means something like ‘Most People Are Good’. I think you see it in the enduring popularity of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’.
Whether I think as Terence McKenna says, “we have the means to build a kind of human paradise on Earth, but we are led by the least among us, the least visionary”, I think there is a certain truth to that. People sleepwalk into letting the Trumps and the Wilders in power, because they are capable of lying themselves into a position of authority.
For me, war must not have an always negative meaning, like for example other words (always negative) that imply the absence of war, such as genocide or slavery.
I believe that if life is worth living, because of the things we love in it (human relationships, art, nature, etc.), we cannot remain indifferent to the hypothesis that the things we love are threatened by the first bully who passes by, therefore we need a structure, of means and armed men, to defend the collective goods necessary for a peaceful and evolved co-existence.
The ideological decision to never use defensive violence presupposes that pure survival is always preferable to the possibility of killing or being killed, and therefore there are no things that have a value to make life enjoyable.
Throughout history, there have been many bullies around the world, they have been faced with the maximum resistance of a war, with diplomatic agreements or with Gandhian non-violence, I believe that defensive strategies must take into account the level of bullying in question.
A lucid article about coming war, by Professor (moral philosophy) Andrea Zhok:
“In an interview with Newsnation, Donald Trump said in reference to Iran: “If anything [what???] happens, we will blow up the whole country. I have very precise instructions. If anything happens, we will wipe them off the face of the earth.”
This is exactly a direct threat of nuclearization of the country.
And if anyone believes that the American regime would have any scruples about doing so, they still haven’t understood anything about how things work from an American perspective. For their “pragmatism” morality is the condiment a posteriori after the exercise of force. Let us remember that the nuclearization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a military necessity to win the war, but was decided as a gesture of supremacy and a warning to other nations.
Well, there is a lot of talk about the problems generated in Iran by a theocracy, by a government that takes the Islamic religion seriously.
And maybe there is some truth.
There is a really serious problem for the Iranians.
The real problem of religious radicalism in Iran is not the veil, it is not sexual morality, it is not female oppression: it is moral scruples about the atomic bomb.
In fact, there is a fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which prohibits the production, storage and use of nuclear weapons, considering them contrary to Islamic principles, as they are weapons capable of causing indiscriminate destruction.
But in the world that the Americans have prepared for us from 1945 to today, the condition for being a sovereign state is to be able to nuclearize the adversary.
If Iran today were trivially in the military conditions of North Korea (which would be well within its capabilities) it would be safe from external attacks and could implement all the reforms for which the population is ripe, without the fear that they are levers for internal subversion.
It’s horrible reasoning, but if it’s the reality, looking elsewhere doesn’t help.”
But Simond, in your questions you conceal little answers. Your questions proclaim your general worldview, which seems to be that of a skeptic. Now I am much more an optimist, I tend to see the glass as half-full.
Don’t you think that all these questions should be set aside in order to meditate a little? The mind is a great cloud of noise, a big doing, much ado about very little…the world will carry on. Just pat the mind gently on top of its quivering snout, and enjoy that which is.
In these kind of moments I go to ‘just sitting’, which is watching the body and the mind while sitting, and doing only that.
NP, optimist or skeptic, both are ego-trips.
You have to dig a little deeper!
Funny, I also took sannyas in ’78.
You were six, I was 26.
One of the common misconceptions, which you and other meditator types fail to recognise, is that the Mind is your enemy.
So the idea that you should drop the mind is a faulty one.
How can I say this? Where’s my evidence?
Osho had a library of some many thousands of books. He utilised his mind to read and digest all manner of ideas.
He had an immense mind, was unafraid to enter complex, intellectual, scientific and religious thinking.
Yes, he also discovered something beyond the Mind, a place of emptiness, but he had used his mind to get there.
It’s widely forgotten that the Mind is the means by which we dissect, explore and make sense of our ideas, our conditioning, our feelings and our emotions, and is therefore a way to discover a freedom beyond it.
I’m not afraid of my mind, because I have also discovered its limitation. But that discovery did not come about because I avoided it or set the questions aside. Instead I continue to explore ideas of all kinds.
And I don’t think patting my self on the head will quieten it. That just lazy and seems to me to imply a fear of it.
You misunderstood something.
Nobody is against the mind.
This is your projection.
Goal is (if there is a goal at all), to understand the attachments of the mind.
Simond writes: “Talking vaguely about peace hasn’t changed much, has it? Valuing peace as you suggest hasn’t brought about peace, has it?”
No, I am well aware of my circle of influence. I have very limited influence over the world, besides my vote, which I use every four years. But I think showing one’s dedication to ideals is a valuable thing. I am not really an idealist, but neither am I a realist — I am aware that I dream, and that I am loyal to my dreams, even though I acknowledge their practical difficulties.
But I think if you don’t dream big then you have no chance of having your dreams become in some way a reality. The fact that they are distant shouldn’t stop you from having ideals. Like I watch the YouTube videos of an elephant sanctuary in order to see them free elephants from their chains and their working lives, because elephants are intelligent and social animals who deserve a good life.
Simond writes: “Have you explored your own propensity for violence or are you just going to displace it onto ICE?”
I have, to a certain extent. I realised some time ago that most of my violence is turned against myself, and when I am forced into a violent confrontation (with my fists) I tend to fight purely defensively. It has happened a few times.
I was a conscientious objector, because when I came out of University there was still a draft in the Netherlands, and you’d have to spend a year in the army. Which means I had to go in front of a board of examiners to justify my opinions, and I ended up doing a longer stretch of replacement service.
I found the spiritual journey does tend to confront you with your own violent impulses. I once told a voice in a half-dream state that I should be empty, and subsequently I found the voices removing my bliss, my advisors, my healers, all kinds of good things. I’m learning a lot about the structure of my energy and the peripheries of my mind. But often such a saying, which may have a spiritual Buddhist grounding, of ‘I should be empty’, turns against you if it isn’t executed with love, and turns out to also have a violent side. Often with the voices it is best to keep quiet (as Poonjaji was also fond of saying).
I’ve been reading the first few chapters of Barry Long’s book ‘Only Fear Dies’ and as you say, it is very good. What made a big impression was his writing on the personality, the emotional body and how it is formed from pain. It is not unlike what modern psychologists are saying about trauma.
This is not dissimilar to what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body. I have little experience with this as I have not felt a lot of emotional pain in my life. It’s also interesting that BL should say that behind all the masks and personality we are Joy. It reminds me of Buddhist sayings on the Buddha nature.
What makes you think all the pain in the world is yours, Simond? This is not my experience.
All the pain in the world is mine, NP, because only I experience it. I can’t experience anyone else’s pain, so whilst I project suffering on others, through my perception of it, it is mine and mine only.
Indeed, what I might perceive as suffering in others, they might retort that they feel no pain at all.
There is one I in the universe and that is Me.
It doesn’t sound like a great experience, I have to say. The mind can do many odd things, I wish you the best with this.
It’s very possible to go wrong in the spiritual journey, to end up in a place where non-dualism and negative worldviews combine to form a deeply cynical outlook. With BL in his book ‘Only Fear Dies’ the last few chapters are a bit like that, I feel he looks too far into things where knowledge becomes uncertain.
My personal answer to these things is ‘take only what works, and discard the rest’. A short horizon on the history of the world is very useful. And I never said to drop the mind — it is a good servant. But one shouldn’t spend too much time with it.
Simond writes, “When you first admit your propensity for violence, and see how this is our own, yours and mine, only then can we ever begin to talk of peace.”
Quite so. I think the Rolling Stones captured this insight when Jagger sang, “I shouted out, “Who killed the Kennedys?”
When, after all, it was you and me.”
NP declares, “Osho was a rebel; he was not part of the establishment. I think in this, people could take more of a leaf out of his book.”
Really? I agree that Osho was not part of ‘the’ establishment. But he was the head of ‘an’ establishment, which he created himself. He was the CEO of an elite group of disciples who controlled a polity, a group of people with a collective identity, who had the capacity to mobilise resources, a financial organisation, no less.
So, NP, why would going along with such a movement sharpen one’s intelligence? And if one went along with the polity’s moves, what does that have to do with being a rebel? If one rebelled against the Osho polity, one soon became an outcast.
Simond writes: “All the pain in the world is mine, NP, because only I experience it. I can’t experience anyone else’s pain, so whilst I project suffering on others, through my perception of it, it is mine and mine only.”
It seems to me that this is a function of your own stored emotional pain, that your empathy makes you see your pain and suffering reflected on other people. BL in his book talks a little about this, in the early chapters. It is good that you realise that it is a projection.
BL talks about dissolving the emotional pain body through the power of your attention. Maybe this is something that makes sense to you? It is one way to cope with it.
Another way is just to ignore pain and suffering, and to cherish and give attention to joy, peace and happiness. This is the way based on the fact that what you give your attention to tends to grow in your view. Occasionally pain reasserts itself, but then you just turn your insensitive areas towards it, you turn your back to it, and it diminishes by itself.
You’ll need to pay attention to what you choose to find important, investing importance into things and topics can bring suffering, but in the end very little is truly important. The seers say that all existence is but a dream…
A few things from the Barry Long book ‘Only Fear Dies’…
First, that the Earth contains no unhappiness, only the world on which we superimpose opinions and desires contains unhappiness.
I think that is a well-formulated statement… something like the awe we feel at the vastness of the Himalayan mountains which forces the mind to flee and convinces us that the mind is only a small thing.
Second, that we bear responsibility for that which we put forth, in terms of our energy, our writing, the products of our creativity. First of all to look after our happiness, because if we are unhappy much of the time it is difficult to express anything of beauty.
Third, that the personality is fake, unreal. That it is built up out of responses to remembered pain and pleasure, a conditioned thing.
“Second, that we bear responsibility for that which we put forth, in terms of our energy, our writing, the products of our creativity. First of all to look after our happiness, because if we are unhappy much of the time it is difficult to express anything of beauty.”
If this comes from our personality, then it has not much worth. Because it comes from one part suppressing the other part.
“The personality is fake, unreal.”
This is not entirely accurate. Everyone has a personality. Therefore, it has a certain reality. Of course, the personality is not really who we are because the personality is just an acquired mask, but it is certainly real. Losing personality can be a disturbing experience. After all, one has lived with it for most of one’s life. I’m speaking from experience, not from what someone has told me.
NP, what do you get from gathering all this book knowledge? Isn’t it a simple case of feeding your mind with more and more information? Knowledge is not worth very much. It is experience that counts. All this spiritual journey that you imagine yourself to be on seems to have a lot to do with whatever book you are reading. Copy-and-pasting mentally what is another person’s experience, in certain instances, as if it is yours.
Like writing that the world is an illusion. It may well be, but from what I gauge from your writing, you are nowhere near understanding what that actually means on an experiential level. It is for you simply a ‘spiritual’ mind trip.
I understand that you find all this spiritual information ‘interesting’. You often write that you are interested in this or that. What I see is that when you say you are ‘interested’ in something, it signals that you are not totally engaged with whatever that something is. You found ayahuasca interesting for some time, yet you never actually took it…so you do not really understand anything about such a mind-blowing concoction.
It is like selling a car. Someone comes round and kicks tyres and then says, “I’m interested.” Which means they might or might not buy it. If they go, “Wow! Great car and fantastic price”, you know you have a sale, because the buyer is obviously completely engaged.
You are of course entitled to an opinion, but you do not know what it is like to walk a mile in my shoes….
NP, the Funkadelics sang back in 1981, “You can walk a mile in my shoes / But you can’t dance a step in my feet.”
Of course, it is true. In your case, I see it as a cop-out. Once more, you negate answering relevant questions and instead tell me I’m entitled to an opinion, as if I didn’t know that already. Be that as it may, in this case, my opinion is based on my observations of what you have written here on SN. And on that level I will say a lttle more.
I do not think you are interested in receiving real feedback here on SN. Especially not feedback that says you are not so deep into things as you might wish to appear. I also don’t go for you ‘Mister Nice Guy’ number. You play it like that, but it only takes a wee push to make your claws come out and you get a wee bit nasty. No surprises there.
I will take the pressure off now, as you seem to be content to soak in your complacency. You might believe the world is a dream simply because you are dreaming. Really, none of my business. Good luck with that.
Feedback? Who do you think you are, to be qualified to provide ‘feedback’ on anyone else’s spiritual journey? Perhaps you see yourself as a modern-day guru? I don’t recall asking for any feedback, and I generally hold that unasked-for feedback is little better than proselytising.
Simond said he tried to engage with me on the subject, which I am open to, but I’m not keen on some kind of free-for-all psychoanalytic get-together with myself as the main attraction, with people trying to publicly prove who is the wiser. I’ve shared my email with Simond to take that discussion with him private.
I’m here mainly to try and do some good, to provide a little spiritual food for thought, to help motivate people. I had long since thought this forum totally unsuitable for any kind of deep spiritual discourse.
NP, you write, “I’m here mainly to try and do some good, to provide a little spiritual food for thought, to help motivate people.”
You also asked, “Perhaps you see yourself as a modern-day guru?”
Maybe that is some kind of reflection. A projection? An assumption? Could be a crude attempt at delivering a form of psychoanalytical feedback. I don’t know. But I do know that I have never at any point in my life imagined myself to be any kind of guru, modern-day or otherwise. A guru, according to Hindu tradition, is a being who has attained enlightenment (that is, he is more than just a religious teacher). Thanks to his state of consciousness, the guru is able to lead the disciple out of darkness and reveal the divine truth hidden within, through practices such as meditation and prayer.
Nope, that is definitely not a role for me. I’m much more suited to the role of Scottish skinhead…minus bovver boots and aggro. Besides, truth liberates, not the gurus.
Lokesh, you should accept that people are different.
NP wants to bring peace to the world and to SN, directly. I doubt that this will function. (Reminds me of the story with the farmer). Growth needs challenge.
And certainly he will not like guys like you and me, who enjoy the fight.
Too negative in his eyes.
This is also the reason he sometimes does not respond.
Om Shanti.
Halleluja.
Hi Satchit,
I gave your post due consideration, because it was addressed to me directly.
You begin with, “Lokesh, you should accept that people are different.” This sounds so gormless to me that I won’t say anything more about it.
You also write, “And certainly NP will not like guys like you and me, who enjoy the fight.”
That is an assumption on your part, as far as I am concerned. I am provocative, but that has nothing to do with a desire to fight with anyone. Which brings me to an important point.
Right from the get-go the sannyas movement was provocative. Osho got people to wear orange in a Hindu society where the colour signified renunciation. Next thing you know, we have braless Western women bouncing along MG Road in orange miniskirts. It was fun.
Osho wished for his people to provoke the divine in one another. So, there was always an element of provocation in Sannyaslandia. I am basically fun-orientated. I like a laugh. Here come the clowns Yipee!
As long as it is not harmful and the most serious casualties are people with bruised egos, I see that as healthy. If somebody on SN does not like what I write, they can ignore me.
It is important to remember that God is not your uncle, because he isn’t nice. God creates and destroys galaxies as a pastime. Maybe it gets boring for him living in eternity. Diversions, like doing the dance of Shiva, serve as a distraction.
Satchit, keep those one-liners coming. They are ridiculous.
Lokesh said, “I will take the pressure off now, as you seem to be content to soak in your complacency.”
Pressure tactics, huh. You show your real face at last, Lokesh. You are playing games on the forum, in order to find somewhere to vent bile from time to time. It’s not a very pretty picture, that darker impulse.
Much as you might like to believe otherwise, I really am Mr. Nice Guy deep down. And so are you. And Simond. But I realise that that means that in unscrupulous moments people try to take advantage, and so I make clear I do have the capacity to sting. A bit like a bee…;1
MOD:
;1 – please clarify, NP!
NP:
To sting, but only rarely. Bees die after they deliver their sting, I wasn’t planning to do that, seems a bit extreme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1J9Gl_3VLg
We heard Roxy and Brian while packing Osho books in the bookstore to ship away from Poona One. Was called: “Extra Work”
The truth about Sannyas is that only few took it for long.
The most lost or buried the love affair when he left the body.
Decades later, naturally the buddhafield has withered away.
The hippie-commune-dream/altered states vanished as well.
Some are stable with Osho…but don’t move back or forth, because the time for real changes and deep affairs has gone.
Some idiots find their past was a stupid foolery.
So see you in next life…or look here/now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJdbj5d1v64
Have you read this article, VeetTom?
Perhaps it might bring you something…
https://www.oshonews.com/2026/01/29/thank-you-master/
Unfortunately, I’ve just accidentally wiped out a post about my changing experience of Sadhguru so I’ll briefly summarise what I wrote this afternoon.
My initial impressions were not very positive, I regarded him as just another Indian guru, attempting to be a kind of clone of Osho, with nothing much to say that I hadn’t already heard before, and I found it hard to trust him or take him seriously. Although seeing him one day at an Arsenal match (English top tier football) where he was the guest of a friend of mine, easily recognisable from half the length of the stadium away, in his robes, hat and bushy white beard, led me to modify my view a little in his favour, realising he wasn’t stuck in an ashram, far away from the world – fair play to him, I thought!
However, when some time later my friend suggested that the guru might not be all that he’d previously thought he was, my initial feelings were confirmed, even more so when there were rumours that Sadhguru might have been responsible for his wife’s death (totally unproven, btw). So I inwardly consigned him to my ever-lengthening list of ‘false teachers’.
Then very recently by chance I came across a youtube interview where Sadhguru is questioned by a young man (about half my age anyway) who founded and runs Mind Valley, a prominent psycho-spiritual online site, and listened to it while doing an exercise routine at home. Surprised by finding it stimulating I completed listening the next day and ended up with a much more positive view of the guru.
Now I’m even considering taking his ‘Inner Engineering’ course, which is far from expensive, although I’ve doubts as to whether it would be worthwhile (“surely I’ve done that stuff before, haven’t I?”). But then again, doesn’t the teacher often turn up when the pupil is ready (and/or ‘desperate’, lol)?
Anyway, the point I’m making is that I realise I underestimated this Indian teacher, who seems to be “all right”, not the mediocrity I once thought he was.
Here’s the video that changed my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PACpvHgJ9HM
Hi SD,
I came to much the same conclusion about Sadhguru. He is not such a bad bloke, his Isha Foundation does good work, he has a sensible head on his shoulders. I’ve got his book ‘Inner Engineering’, which I thought contained a few good moments though he seems to focus mostly on yoga. He is much more open than Osho, much less into the master/disciple thing. Wish you the best of luck with his teachings.
Well said as well.
If we can grasp the enlightened being, we can see many of his fellow mirrors.
This is Osho’s gift to our understanding long before we can see it for ourselves.
Good morning, folks,
Today I wanted to talk a little about sadhana, or spiritual practice undertaken to lead to a goal. You can do many things as a kind of sadhana, the idea is more that it has a significance for you. The term is Sanskrit, and it applies to Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions mostly, although I use it more freely.
For instance, I came across a video about a sadhu in Varanasi who bathed every morning in the Ganges, the holy river. It is supposed to help one purify oneself. I found this beautiful and inspiring, and in sympathy with him I started taking early morning cold showers. So it had a spiritual meaning and goal for me, purity, and it is sadhana.
Now I find most rituals to be empty, and I’m not 100% sure why this touched me, but I feel this to be right. Perhaps because it has to do with a holy river, or because it involves a person. In any case it is worth paying attention to what you feel — your heart will not lead you wrong, and it is worth honouring the little pieces of sadhana in your life.
The video which I came across…
https://youtu.be/3S9xOws1BtI
“Your worry is something like a leaf on a tree being worried about security. The tree is taking all the care, providing all the juice to the leaf, bringing water against gravitation – high up, perhaps a hundred feet or two hundred feet – but the leaf is not worried. The leaf is unaware that she is only apart of a vast tree.
You are part of a vast existence. Don’t think of yourself as separate and immediately all your problems disappear. In other words, your ego is the only problem.
I am — that is the only problem.
I am not, existence is — that is the only solution.”
( Osho, ‘The New Dawn’ )
Osho was talking on how to approach the search for security, and I found the above a beautiful answer. I often find myself planning for the future, and something like this reminds me my plans don’t have to be perfect, a plan a little ahead is good enough.
Osho says, “Your worry is something like a leaf on a tree being worried about security.”
Yet Osho himself was worried about security. He had guards all over the place. In Oregon the guards were totting semi-automatic weapons.
NP concludes, “Osho was talking on how to approach the search for security, and I found the above a beautiful answer.”
It might be a beautiful answer, yet it is questionable.
The armed guards at the Ranch were about physical security, the very survival of the place and even the people there, which was a matter of worldly common sense, given the hostility from some quarters, but surely NP is talking about psychological security, being over-concerned, fearful about personal issues like identity, purpose, work and money, summed up by the question, “What will become of me?”
Of course, NP is talking about psychological security. That said, let’s consider the psychological security aspects in Osho’s life. “Don’t think of yourself as separate.” Yet Osho separated himself from people. It was almost as if he had become allergic to human beings. It was not as if he kept the doors to his house open to allow spontaneous visitors to pop in for a chat. Quite the opposite. Access to Osho was strictly controlled, even before he became world famous. This had nothing to do with physical security.
I enjoyed that about Poonjaji. I once went for a walk with him in a crocodile farm. No such social contact existed in Osho’s life, except for a chosen few.
I can remember running the gauntlet of sniffers before being allowed to enter darshan with Osho. One had to be careful of being in proximity to anyone smoking a beedie, or farting, in case a few molecules of smell clung to you. Osho, never the one to miss a business opportunity, had over-the-counter odourless shampoo and soap for sale in the ashram shop.
I’ve often wondered about the intensity of Osho’s allergic reaction to smells. In a relatively short time, he went from sitting at the centre of a cyclone of sweating people on celebration days, not batting an eye, to having to be protected against everyday odours, like a smelly armpit. I have never encountered such an extremely allergic person. Although I once met a man who would have died if he swallowed a single peanut.
“Your ego is the only problem.” Yet Osho, who claimed to be beyond ego, had a problem with smelly disciples. A problem is a problem, is a problem.
I think those things are fair to wonder about. In his time as Acharya Rajneesh he spent a lot of time around crowds of Indians of all types, it must have carried certain scents.
Just yesterday I saw a video on YouTube about people who ended up exposing their personality in such a negative way when they went on the Joe Rogan podcast that it hugely affected their popularity. This was the case with Neil Degrasse Tyson, who turned out to have a very carefully controlled media image but couldn’t keep it together during a 3 hour conversation.
Perhaps the carefully controlled access was Osho’s version of media control. It’s an interesting contrast with, say, Sadhguru.
I think such speculation casts an unnecessarily negative slant on Osho, who became increasingly physically frail as the years went by, which was obvious to those who were around in the later 70s and 8os.
Lokesh wrote:
“Your ego is the only problem.” Yet Osho, who claimed to be beyond ego, had a problem with smelly disciples. A problem is a problem, is a problem.”
This is just your opinion.
I have a different opinion:
I think it was only a small trick to find out if somebody was ready to surrender or not.
I think you’re another who’s creating a problem.
Yeah, Diksha told me that I was unsurrendered after I had been scrubbing a staircase with a toothbrush for six weeks. So I surrendered to the fact that I really wanted to go to Goa. I caught a southbound bus that evening and had a great couple of months on the beach.
The future is only a thought.
Tomorrow never comes.
https://soundcloud.com/luke-mitchell/osho-tommorow-never-comes
There was a lovely story I came across this morning, about a British-Canadian man who often visits India with his wife. He said, the unexpected always happens in India, and told about having breakfast in a place in the hills in India. Ordinary little restaurant, where he saw a man sitting outside by himself, and he struck up a conversation. Ordinary man, in a jacket and with a scarf, it was a chill morning. They ended up having a long and deep conversation about cricket. When he went to pay his bill, the barman told him, do you know who that was? That was Sachin Tendulkar.
MOD:
Sachin Tendulkar was one of the greatest cricketers of all time, an absolute genius of a batsman from a very young age.
Good morning, friends,
As a follow-on for my post about sadhana on 30 Jan 2026 at 7:24 am, I wanted to talk about ritual and why in the West many people perceive it as empty. It has a lot to do with the scientific mind and its belief that things that can’t be measured are unreal.
We do a lot of things for reasons that can’t be explained. Hindus choose to die in their holy city of Varanasi or bathe in the Ganges, Jain monks are naked, Christians take communion and get a sip of wine and a wafer of bread. The scientific mind sees these things as superstition, but I think the spiritual world has a definite reality.
To maintain a health, wholeness and harmony between our physical, mental and psychic bodies we need to pay attention to what elements of the spiritual world have meaning for us. You may have had a Christian upbringing and find that prayer resonates with you, for instance. It is a question of finding out what works for you.
This affects points and partial helper minds in the psychic body. It guides and invigorates, but can also work against you in cases where your understanding is limited. Osho, for example, advised Anand Yatri to do Sufi whirling at one point, saying it would be good for him.
My musings for the morning
MOD:
“partial helper minds in the psychic body” – Please explain, Nityaprem.
Well, it sometimes appears to me as if the psychic body contains partial minds, primitive mental organisms with a single goal which help it do things.
NP declares, “The psychic body contains partial minds, primitive mental organisms with a single goal which help it do things.”
What are “primitive mental organisms”? What sort of things do they do?
“perception of emptiness”
A key phrase of the ‘Weekly Words of Wisdom’ of Tibetan meditation teacher Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche (died in 2023) in a newsletter I am receiving.
Quote:
“An example of incomplete meditation is when the samadhi is clear, lucid, and luminous, and we have some sense of things being empty.
This subjective sense of emptiness is quite captivating, but it is not the same as a true understanding of things as they are.
There is a real difference between this passing sensation of emptiness and the utterly certain, penetrating, definitive knowing that things do not exist as they appear.
If this defect occurs, we need to examine our mind and see clearly and directly that things are empty of any inherent existence.
We need to understand with complete certainty that our mind lacks existence in its own right.”
(‘The Essentials of Mahamudra: Looking Directly at the Mind; by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Wisdom Publications, 2004, p. 175)
Methinks, that all paths to the understanding and seeing the inner have such an insight as the goal. As there are many hindrances and misunderstandings on the way there are teachers (gurus, masters, friends) who could help the practitioner to go on.
And find out this clear and certain understanding for oneself.
Discussing the things of the world can be intriguing, challenging and even interesting. Practising a spiritual sadhana, however, implies looking at such processings and understandings in depth.
We are encouraged to find out. For ourselves. And question whatever we perceive: is it clear, is it true, is it luminous?
Sannyasins – and so many other people – hit one another on the head with ‘mind-fuck’. Another keyword. As Lokesh was saying – roundabout – “we don’t need to seek refuge when we are the truest, strongest and greatest lovers.” Otherwise we are in the midst of words and appearances flying around like rockets in the sky of consciousness.
The memory of these weekly words flushed over me this morning when waking up. And I felt this sense of that stability. For a few moments. Then something else happened.
Chareveti, chareveti.
Hari Om.
Cheers.
Thanks, Klaus. You wrote, “Practising a spiritual sadhana, however, implies looking at such processings and understandings in depth.”
I think it is alright to trust one’s feelings and intuition in this. We don’t have to bring a full understanding of it to the rational mind, indeed such a thing is probably impossible. For me, sadhana is about feeling a connection with a spiritual practice, if you don’t intuitively feel it has meaning for you it is pointless to proceed with it.
What keeps it in the spiritual realm is the feeling of devotion and gratitude you bring to it day in and day out. I’m still young in my journey with this spiritual practice, but I have learned that some rituals speak to me and other things seem empty…pilgrimage speaks to me, while the idols in the temples seem hollow.
Sannyas has its own rituals, such as the White Robe Brotherhood, malas, the active meditations.
A ritual is defined as “a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.”
The White Robe ceremonies were ritualistic, yes, although as far as I know they’ve been dropped.
But wearing a mala wasn’t a ritual in itself and active meditations hardly qualify as “solemn” ceremonies, they’re more akin to any other structured processes or events, like sports, plays and concerts.
Intuition and feeling certainly are good indicators.
In the sense that ‘if one does not feel it, one hasn’t got it’. Love, peace, harmony, equanimity etc.
Intellectual understanding imo is always partial.
Or something in that direction…
As Peter TOSH sang:
“Love, Wisdom and over-standing are the only solution.”
Yes, ‘Where you gonna run’ by Peter Tosh, is one of his best songs:
“‘Cause what you’re looking for
It stay here with you all the time.”
Peter (Hubert MacIn)Tosh
‘Where you’re gonna run’
I heard that song the first time here from the live show 1984 in the Greek Theatre:
https://youtu.be/OQXAtAYiT3o?t=1908
What a wonderful show. I take Peter Tosh as an elder in the Rastafari-Tradition.
Halleluh-Yah!
On this morning’s NP’s Breakfast Show, our favourite SN anchorman writes, “The scientific mind sees these things as superstition, but I think the spiritual world has a definite reality.”
Yet surely one would agree that ‘superstition’ means believing something without knowing it to be true. And the strange thing is that there is also a scientific superstition. It sounds contradictory: how can there be a scientific superstition?
From a scientific point of view, we believe thousands of things to be right, but they are actually superstitions. Scientists are also superstitious, and in this age, religious superstitions are fading while scientific superstitions are growing. The superstitious mind has to be discarded, or else it will keep on breeding superstition.
Can you provide a few examples of scientific superstitions, please, Lokesh?
The question should really be delivered to Osho, SD, because the scientific superstition comment was copy-and-pasted from an Osho discourse. Unfortunately, Osho is no longer with us to the extent that he can answer your question directly.
It is good you ask because it made me stop and reflect for a moment. Scientific superstitions are usually revealed to be superstition with the passage of time. Once upon a time, people believed the world was flat because scientists told them it was flat. In the 1500s, Copernicus proved the Earth orbits the Sun using a predictive model. The scientific community of the time lambasted him because superstition made them believe that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Scientists and doctors once believed vapours caused illness.
If you take superstition as meaning, believing something without knowing it to be true, there are countless examples in the scientific community of days long past.
On a spiritual level, people believe all sorts of superstitious nonsense. I do not think you need evidence of that. Osho was dead against superstition.
On the other hand, when Osho lectured in Hindi he talked extensively about ‘tirthas’, places of pilgrimage, and their spiritual potency. There is a long series of articles about this on OshoNews.
So Osho may have been against superstition but he could be quite esoteric at times, and it can be difficult to know where to draw the line.
NP, ‘esoteric’ means intended for or understood by only a few people who have special knowledge.
‘Superstition’ is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural.
The two mean distinctly different things, so what is difficult when it comes to drawing a line between them? Could you please supply an instance where it might be difficult to draw a line between the two?
Hmm ya, esoteric knowledge such as Osho revealed about tirthas, like this piece on Varanasi (also known as Kashi in ancient times)…
“Hindus say that Kashi is not a part of this earth, but a place apart; the city of Shiva is separate and indestructible. Many towns will be built and will be destroyed, but Kashi will remain forever. Buddha went to Kashi, all the Jaina tirthankaras were born in Kashi, Shankaracharya also went to Kashi, Kabir went to Kashi; Kashi has seen tirthankaras, incarnations and saints, but all are no more. Not one of them remains, but Kashi does. The holiness of all these people, the benefit of their good work, all the achievements of their lives, their collective fragrance is absorbed by Kashi and it has acquired their life streams. This makes Kashi separate from the earth, at least metaphysically.
On this city’s roads Buddha has walked, and in its lanes Kabir has given religious discourses. Now it has all become a story, a dream, but Kashi has assimilated everything within itself. If someone with absolute trust and faith enters this city, he can again see Buddha walking on its roads, he can see Tulsidas and Kabir…. If you approach Kashi like this then it is not just an ordinary city like Bombay or London, it will take on a unique spiritual form. Its consciousness is ancient and eternal. History may be lost, civilizations may be born and destroyed, may come and go, but Kashi keeps its inner life-flow continuous.”
( Osho, ‘Hidden Mysteries’ )
A scientifically minded person might say that this is close to superstition — a city having consciousness. But I think that is what makes it esoteric, if you know the latest physics which says that the matter of the universe is made up of conscious quantum fields, then it sounds much less impossible or superstitious. See also the work of Federico Faggin.
Yes, the Osho quote illustrates your point well. Sounds a bit like myth-building. Yet, Varanasi is without doubt a special place. I have visited the city twice, and wrote several chapters about The City of Light in my second book:
“Over towards the city, a temple bell clanged with brass clarity, and at the stately rate of a million gallons a minute, the Ganges flowed by as quietly as the voice of God.”
I think Osho was in quite a few ways ahead of his time, as this quote also demonstrates. The idea of conscious cities, conscious caves, is not something you’d find often in the sixties.
My father used to go to such places. He went to Nepal, to a cave where Padmasambhava had meditated, in order to experience the atmosphere. At the time I thought, maybe it is possible that something special remains in the stones. But it might not be so unlikely.
And if we can find Padmasambhava in Nepal, or Buddha in Varanasi, then what might we find in other places? The Camino de Santiago is much travelled by spiritual people. Or is it only the most luminous figures who leave a trace?
NP asks, “Is it only the most luminous figures who leave a trace?”
What a thoughtless question. The most evil people also leave traces. In Auschwitz, even the birds don’t sing.
Not necessarily thoughtless. It depends on whether there is a natural bias. If the universe wishes to mother new minds in the same way that a mother elephant looks after its babies, then maybe there is.