Questions from SannyasNews. Answers from Jayananda, Sheela’s second husband who was with her for the Ranch period.
1. To what extent do you see Sheela as villain/ victim?
Sheela was a victim of stress and the ego. She did not start out as the person she became. The one that betrayed the ideas of the commune and of involvement of consciousness was a totally different person to the earlier Sheela.
2. Do you believe Osho used her, or was he working on her and getting something done that he wanted doing. Working on her and through her ?
Of course, Osho used all of us, as sannyasins, to work on ourselves and to serve the commune.
3) Do you have any insight into why Sheela had Osho’s room bugged around 1983/85?
She was resentful of Osho choosing to communicate with other members of the community. She want to control all aspects of his life and the commune.
4) Do you feel that Sheela was guilty of crimes as ordinarily understood.
Yes, her rational was it was for the better good of the commune. In reality it was to justify her actions. It was to cement her control - remove any impediment to her total domination of the community.
For example the poisoning of the Dalles - was in order to elect members of the community to the governing board of the county. This would have removed the hold on the community’s ability to issue building permits. This in its turn was brought about when she insisted on building the Hotel on land we had previously zoned for exclusive farm use. That action had caused the county and state to lift our ability to self rule. That further justified her planning and carrying out the burning of the county’s planing office where the proof of her actions were documented. This was of course very futile, as there were copies in numerous files resting in lawyer’s offices around the state.
the attempted murder of Amrito,(also Vevek)
She wanted through removing Amrito and Vivek to control Lao Tzu with her own people……
etc.
Can any of these crimes be put down to Osho’s promoting or instruction?
Not a chance.
5) Sheela had never had any executive position in ordinary life as we understand it, would it have helped if someone had been Secretary with previous experience of such organizational power?
NO
6) Was Osho’s apparent Trust in Sheela a family thing? Osho’s father and Sheela’s father having
had apparently some fairly close connection in the past?
NO
7) Do you feel like describing how it was to be Sheela’s husband, or was this just a perfunctory function? Do you consider her mental health as usually understood dipped badly from 1982 from your personal experience?
Long declining story. Worthy of comment which Niren documented via video which will be archived in Pune and perhaps in Oregon.
8) Do you have any insight over what happened with Sheela’s first husband?
He died in Pune in early 79. Later that year was when we got together. She was still grieving when I met her in November of 79.
9) Niren, Osho’s then lawyer during the Ranch period is gathering an archive of Sheela’s rise to power, and her years in power. Do you have any knowledge of where this will be lodged and can be accessed?
Certainly in Pune. Where else has not been decided.
10) Was the appointment of Sheela as Osho’s Secretary to replace Laxmi a sort of random happening based on Sheela’s ambition, or did Osho want to finish Laxmi’s tenure. She had seemed to do a good job up until her demise?
When Laxmi was unable to find land for an expansion of the commune in India he turned to Sheela and I. By spring of 80 he had turned over all Laxmi’s affairs to Sheela willingly, and with the belief the Sheela could be more helpful than Laxmi. (in America). He further kept Laxmi busy in India for as long as he could, until reluctantly she was invited to the Ranch. However he did not give her any work, but she was told to relax and enjoy meditation, and that it was not necessary to become involved in Commune affairs there.
11) Any Osho involvement in what happened?
During 1980,81,82 I often accompanied Sheela on her nightly visits to Osho. I sat in on many of these sessions. I heard about many of the sessions that I did not attend up to the end of the Ranch. In all this I never saw Osho’s hand or knowledge in what amounted to Sheela’s dirty tricks.
Her strident behaviour was related to, and known to Osho ,,, – but when she explained her actions and causes to Osho - she made it to appear that she was defending the community and sannyasins from threats coming from outside. When in reality it was her actions that too often were precipitating and magnifying the threats from the outside. When the outside world did not bow down to the demands and requests she was making, she would represent it to Osho as an attack on our community and or on sannyasins. Those who lived there and enjoyed the Ranch soon learned it was Sheela’s way, or the highway. The outside world never learned that lesson, and it turned out that we all had to hit the highway.
John “Jay” Shelfer
The only thing that seems inconsistent is point #5, where Jay states that nothing would have been different if Sheela had not been secretary. That seems inconsistent because otherwise he seems to be suggesting that the entire fault of the commune collapse rests on Sheela’s shoulders. That may be so, but then his answer to question #5 must itself be questioned.
anyone could have played the part of sheela
the aim has never been to achieve a ‘successful’ commune
what good is a commune that requires a babysitter?
if we want fault for commune collapse there is plenty enough for all of us
ranch was the perfect playground for a sincere person to let go into freedom
even the most naive, soon or late, had to begin to see for themselves
<3
helpful insights
thank you jay
Agni, what help have these ‘insights’ actually given you? Giving thanks you obviously appreciate something that I am unaware of. Would you care to clarify?
aloha lokesh
the communication was for jay
it wasn’t intended as general invitation to review the source of the gratefulness felt nor help received
things you may not be entirely aware of that i appreciate are jay himself, his integrity, generosity and hard work over many years, his light
his posting itself is one example
good luck
<3
Agni, what you don’t seem entirely aware of is that this is a public blog….not a message service to send love notes to those you admire. You also could have responded to my question about how Jay’s comments came to be ‘helpful’ in your eyes. Instead you wish me good luck. With what…more sincere responses than what you are able to deliver?
Word for today meditation…’flakey’.
if you check your post you requested clarification of something you were unaware of
my post was sincere best try
did not mean to rattle your cage so
the ‘good luck’ was also sincere and intended toward whatever it is you are after
this response too is in reply to your question
a public forum can be a place for constructive collaboration, including love notes; this is another one
i’ve answered your questions as helpfully as i reasonably can
how you take them is your freedom
maybe slowing down a bit, the sense of battlement will relax too
to clarify further, it is helpful for me to encounter jay posting information, something he didn’t have to take the time and energy to do; generous
we can go into more detail if you are here to share and learn
if it is about proving something there are many better candidates for you to engage
whatever the case, good luck!
‘did not mean to rattle your cage’ Agni, don’t flatter yourself.
Another word for today’s meditation…’Patronize’, as in to treat in a condescending manner
if words for meditation are of such interest perhaps ‘mirror’ is worthy of reflection
no need to reply unless last word syndrome is heavily in effect
If I need a clear reflection I have plenty of good friends to deliver it. After all, one definition of a good friend is a good mirror of yourself. It is therefore that I have no need to look towards someone who adopts such a patronizing stance as yourself for any kind of reflection. You sound to me like someone who has learned to talk the talk but your smugness betrays the fact that you are not walking the walk.
Unless I am mistaken, I met Jay in Koh Samui round about this time. I remember him as being a nervous and worried man, who had a vibe about him of being on the run and not wishing his whereabouts to be revealed. The island was a real backwater then that did not have an airport…good place to disappear if one wished it so. As I see it, this is just one more take on the ranch amongst many. The point being how involved was Osho with the nefarious acts taking place on the ranch? Osho was an extremely intelligent chap, capable of seeing right into the heart of a person. I experienced this first hand…he read me like a book. This quite naturally leads one to ask how it was possible that such a perceptive man could allow a bunch of power-mad fools to run riot on a commune he founded. In Poona One he often claimed he was aware of everything that was going on in the community and I witnessed first-hand very clear indications that this was in fact true. Then he goes to USA and is unaware of the ridiculous acts being carried out by people close to him, right under his oversensitive nose. Even if he was not psychically aware of the nego vibes, surely those who remained close to him must have informed him that something was amiss. I see it as history now. What one chooses to believe or disbelieve comes down to the individual. I believe that somehow Osho must have been alerted to the fact that things were going haywire but he was more interested in other distractions or simply became bored with the whole mess. I ask you what difference does any of this make to your life today? None at all…just another snippet of gossip for your mind to chew on, Time to move on.
I ask you what difference does any of this make to your life today? The same difference between a responsible human being and one who believes he can play with the life of thousands of his followers just because he is enlightened. There will be no future for the sannyas movement until this story,with the individual responsibilities involved ,get understood and explained clearly. But pheraps when the CIA put his dirty hands on something, to see clearly throught it became a hard task. Maybe there will be no future development for the whole sannyas experience….but that would be such a waste…..
YS, you say, ‘There will be no future for the sannyas movement until this story,with the individual responsibilities involved , get understood and explained clearly.’
You willl wait an entire lifetime if you are waiting on that. What you say is utter nonsense. The events described took place decades ago. Many sannyassins have come a long way since then. This is the future.
Reminds me of the monk who carried the chick over the river. His companion gives him a hard time about it as they continue on their journey. The helpful monks says, ‘I left her back at the river. You are still carrying her.’
aloha young sannyasin
there absolutely is no future for the sannyas movement, if there ever was such a thing, at least not since ’90
do you see anything of osho in oshointernational?
the sannyas experience is not a collective one, clearly no future development there and not a waste; freedom is necessarily solitary
what is it you want?
Amazing, how many more years are you guys going to spend talking about the ranch and what happened to the medina money, lets move on, this web sight is like watching grumpy old men on that tv programme, move on, make way for new people to come to osho, people that are interested in meditation, not Medina money or what Shiela did or didn’t do, it feels so so old, your time’s up guys, let the kids take over.
Strange comment Mister Tony. Why dont you use your sannyas name if you feel so involved.
The “Medina Money” has not been mentioned as far as I know on this site – ever… and we have been around in this form since 2000. So your comment really dates you, not us.
the Ranch issue is of interest to many, some of whom scared to publish their thoughts – still.
This article by Jayananda was actually suggested and midwifed by someone who has served Osho for over 30 years.
it all reminds me of the slightly harrowing passage in george orwells 1984,where winston smith goes looking for old people who can remember what life was like in the old days,to try and understand something about the true history of oceania.
he meets an old guy in a pub who strtes to come up with some memories.
at first winston is excited as it appears he is getting somewhere.
but as the old man babbles on,he realises he is just an old guy with dementia or amnesia and no use at all…..
its a hopeless moment…….
i love you frank!
youngman,
sounds like you have been spending a lot of time down at the YMCA.
not really frank….i am a young man but i’m not a christian.Your 1984GeorgeOrwell bullet came in the perfect moment, that’s what i love.
It seems you are a good shooter, probably you have some experience. By the way, 1984 was a masterpiece, I’m full of admiration for George Orwell.
Somehow it is not about Sheela but Parmartha, the ghosts of the past seems to be occupying his mind..
I wonder why he does not go to Basel and confront the woman face to face..
She is no more a queen, but the owner of a multi million franks worth old people´s home..
Amazing is the luck of the people, who are in the power..Just 10 % of the project budget in their private Swiss accounts can be quite helpful in the rainy days!
Shri Shantam, I don’t think it has anything to do with luck, more like business acumen and a willingness to deceive. Besides, having money does not bring happiness as a direct onsequence of having it. Still, it can help to soften the impact of living in what can be a hard and unjust world. Watching Sheela’s performance in Osho’s secretary etc left me with the distinct impression that Sheela was damaged goods. And thus the wings of karma carried her off to exactly where she is supposed to be…just like you and me. Isn’t it amazing?
One simple question to Parmartha and all those who poured their energy and resources into Rajneeshpuram….
Can you visualise, what would have happened in year 1991 onwards if everything would have gone as was planned, Let us say, Osho leaves His body in 1990, not in Pune but in His lotus paradise, Rajneeshpuram..
Shri Shantam, everything did go exactly as planned in the divine architect’s office. There is no need to visualize anything. Have you been participating in some kind of buddhist retreat. I suggest you stick to Green Taras.
Shantam, here my visualization:
the Sheela regime gets defeated from a “power to the red people” movement,spontaniously born in the streets of Rajneeshpuram. All the elite, the Hollywood crowd go to share their homes with the ShareAHome people; Vivek finally leaves Bhagwan’s room and gets a youngman as a boyfriend; Bhagwan come out and shouts “fucking idiot! Finally you get it! You are the only master for yourself, I’m simply a friend!” Then all the Rolls, the rolexes, the diamonds, the Rayban get confiscated and sold for building better houses for the community; to Bhagwan they give a small child’s electric car,that he can drive around safe and happy, sharing his smile with his not anymore disciples, who in turn give back to him a little nitrous oxide box set.
After a public apology for the past mistakes, Sheela is sent to volunteer in the local Oregonian christian association for the poor people as a punishment and finally all the sannyasin publicly admit how idiotic they have been on American TV, as a practice for transcending their ego, but because of the good friends, the fun and the bliss some of them live there forever! The End
i was up in court the other day.
i took the stand,charged with several offences.
i looked the magistrates straight in the eyes.
and said.
“look,you guys,
why do you insist on talking about the past all the time?
and you are just sooo judgmental..
relax a bit guys
what is gone is gone.
wake up….
there is only the present..”
they had no choice but to give me an unconditional discharge……
all that “osho was working on people” is questionable.
sheela and her cronies
vivek
hugh milne
for example, just went crazy and cracked
probably because of their existing serious unaddressed psychological problems.
caused by rape, drugs, addictions, death, low self image etc etc…
you can put it down to their egos or their lack of reception of enlightened energy or othe cultic explanations
but basically…being in the cult was ultimately bad for them.
it didnt cure them.it made them worse.
simple.
Well maybe Frank, but maybe they would have done even worse if they had not joined the “cult.”
fair comment.
but maybe it would have been even better if they had joined a different cult!
Very little thanks seen here to Jay who has bothered as he sees it to give history some witness. Cant be so easy given his close proximity to these events but could imagine he, like many of us, want to leave some record when the mortal coil is shuffled off!
Shantam, my aim all along has been to show that a devotional interpretation (Osho can do no wrong), just as a cynical interpretation of the Ranch period (Osho was behind it all) are both mistaken.
It has been my own view since 1985, but few shared it. I am glad that Jay, in trying to tell it how it was for him and being much closer to the main personalities, sees it much as I have for 27 years.
Sad to say it means that those (apparently few) people who saw it like me, made enemies from both sides….
I always liked history if it was well taught and related itself to the lessons of the present day. I see nothing wrong with it at all. The present, the future and the past are ultimately the same.
I see human lack of evolution as its endless stupidity in making the same mistakes decade after decade, century after century, etc. So winkling out the mistakes of the Ranch seems to me very relevant to the present.
I agree with Teertha about question 5. I dont understand Jay’s answer at all.
Clearly anyone with experience of proper executive power would not have been bombing court houses and poisoning water, irrespective of the problems. The art of senior management is being able to live with its often seeming apparent burden, without losing ones humour, and having enough self -awareness not to fall into any mental ill health from stress.
I would have still seen any conventional view of success (of the Ranch) as a mistaken path. On the other hand, it would have been good to disband at the time of our choosing, rather than collapsing from within in such a precipitate way.
Parmartha I don’t doubt your sincerity. What I question is why try to figure out exactly what happened, because you never will. Simply because Osho never really went into any of those matters on the level of his personal involvement with all that, other than to plead ignorant of all the illegal activities being perpetrated on the ranch and in the hood. He must have done a lot of backpeddling because he openly supported and enouraged Sheela right up until the bitter end.
You’ve obviously put Jay up on some sort of he’s a ‘somebody’ pedestal. ‘Very little thanks seen here to Jay who has bothered as he sees it to give history some witness. ‘ What exactly is the big deal about anything he says? As I mentioned earlier, I met the man when these stories were current. I did not feel any of it was particularly ‘important’, as you put it. He was, one could say, a good example of someone who enjoyed a relatively short period in a close zone to Osho and, as far as I could see, he did not have anything special about him. He was simply a guy seriously worried about some big shit hitting the fan at the time.
Parmartha, have you thought of writing a book? It would seem a natural thing for you. You have a historian’s temperament, as well as a wealth of background info here on sannyasnews that you’ve accumulated over many years. If anyone is in touch with various pieces of information connected to Osho’s story, you would be one of them. I would see any book that you would write on Osho’s life as being a kind of sequel or cousin to Paritosh’s book.
Gurdjieff’s disciples began to write about their master between 20 and 50 years after his passing, and that seems to be the time period when biographies or commentaries on prominent gurus begin to appear. I see it as a necessary part of the re-evaluation process, and something that can be helpful for others. But mostly it seems to be helpful for the writer, a type of summing up or evaluating of one’s life.
At any rate, that is why I write, to evaluate my understanding of matters. ‘Enlightenment’, if it is anything, is not an experience. It must be based on understanding, and anything that aids in that is useful.
As Lokesh says, we eventually have to ‘move on’, but a key to moving on seems to be totality of expression in some form. Writing can aid in such expression, especially in book, manuscript, or manifesto form, because it is not dependent on the reactions others may have to it. It is simply a blast of expression out to the universe.
Now that is something I can relate to. I spent six years writing two books, using sannyasins as fictional characters. I’ve written half of the third book that includes a lot about Poona One. Every week I get requests for the third book, but at present I have other more pressing engagements.
Writing books is, amongst other things, a labour of love and you won’t do it unless you feel you have to. The rewards are remarkable. It is such a fascinating process. I would be happy to do a bit of editing if Parmartha gets it together. I enjoyed writing about Osho, but prefered to place him in a fictional context. Partly because so much has already been written about him.
One friend, who recently returned from Poona, told me he met a young person there who was amazed that my friend had actually spoken to Osho on numerous occassions…a sign of the times. What is amazing about the Osho phenomena is how every sannyasin has a unique take on who or what Osho was.
There have been a lot of books written about Osho but almost all suffer from the ‘close in time’ problem, meaning, they were written so soon after Osho died (or even when he was still around), and thus lack the perspective that can be aided by a bit of time. Almost all are heavily polarized, between accounts by devotees (Maneesha, Vasant Joshi, Shunyo, etc.), and the disaffected ones with axes to grind (Milne, Strelly, Calder’s article, etc.). Very few have found some sort of objective middle ground — James Gordon’s ‘The Golden Guru’ maybe came closest, but like all the others, is rather dated. A major guru is a cultural phenomenon, affecting more than one generation, and so time is needed to gain some sense of perspective. This would seem to be the ideal time for writings on Osho to appear from that more objective place, something the Baby Boomer generation sannyasins might be capable of now, seasoned more by life, and yet still close enough to the memories and with clear access to information. Most sannyasins were Baby Boomers (born 1945-64), but three generations have appeared since then (Gen X, Y, and the ‘Always On’ Generation, meaning always wired in or online), and these will look to the ‘Geezer’ sannyasins for the big picture.
When Ouspensky was in his 60s he began favoring his nightly Scotch over self-observation. He spent his evenings brooding about the ‘good old days’ when Gurdjieff and he were young, and even went on record as stating that Gurdjieff’s system ‘did not work’ and that he and his students needed to ‘start over’. But even so his later books were still valuable to those who came after.
My favourite is Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological commentaries. A Scotsman of course.
PT.says:
“a key to moving on seems to be a totality of expression in some form”
absolutely bang on.
my observation is that this process is a naturally occuring one that happens to everyone in dreaming.
for me, that dreaming is night time dreams and day-dreaming,too.
in one way of seeing it, dreaming is a constant re-creating, re-drafting, re-editing of the dreamer’s life story.
the better expressed through the dreaming narrative, the more possible to move on.
to align and co-operate with this is the way to go.
the opposite of this is recurring dreams,which it is well understood,are indicative of being stuck at some point, “not moving on”- they are a bit like “writer’s block”, nothing new is possible ,just the same old story….
many spiritual enlightenment seekers would disagree with this and say that dreams are just mindstuff, the past, it pertains to your “ego”`s “story” and is quite worthless …and to be busy with this is just “the mind” etc.
i say,even our osho, the great champion of waking up, finally said
“i leave you my dream”
it may have been a lucid dream, yet it was still a dream.
and here we are, years later, still trying to play with it, interpret it….
following what 21st century neo-aborigines might call the “osho dreaming”…..
it`s re-creational,for sure….
Thanks Teertha.
The Life of Osho book of which the author Prem Paritosh did mention me as the Godfather, was a big effort. Many Saturdays back in the nineties. We only had money to print 1000 copies privately, though those copies sure got around.
Sure was a labour of love.
We received a high level solcitor’s letter about it from Princess Diana’s solicitor from OI, threatening us with some copyright prosecution which was also a bit hairy…
but it’s nice you and Lokesh sort of invite me into such a frame.
Self-publishing can be difficult. My first book was self-published; I shelled out $2,500 to print just 250 copies. They were shipped to me from Chicago and about 30% of them were damaged in transit, some severely. I decided then that that would probably be my last venture into self-publishing.
I got my copy of ‘Life of Osho’ at my local esoteric bookshop (in ’97, I think). I immediately recognized it as a unique book on Osho, and at this point it still remains my favorite, a great balance of sympathy with the recognition that one needs to think independently.
Yeah, just lent someone my Life Of Osho copy. I really enjoyed it. His second book ‘The Acid’ is also very good and at times hilarious, Sam is tripping on Hampstead Heath and daren’t look at his hands because he has turned into a mole. Classic. Spiderwize are a great >POD company in Scotland, for all you budding chroniclers out there.
And now for something completely outrageous. Nothing to do with the thread, but it does illustrate that some people are absolutely…..any comments?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4221310,00.html
`kin `ell,
that certainly gives an unnerving new slant on the old joke:
Q. how does an egyptian know his wife is dead?
A. sex is the same,but the washing-up piles up.
Quite.
Not just about Sheela, it will be even more interesting if Jayananda share his journey post Sheela phase. It must be a roller coaster ride for his emtions to think his wife has betrayed his master. I think it can be much more intense then just simple adultary!
Yes Shantam, good point.
I don’t find Sheela to be particularly interesting. I met her back in the time and saw her as a spoiled and petulant woman. There was nothing special about her whatsoever. What was special was the position she was appointed to and how she abused the power that came with that position. Same old, same old. I for one have heard more than enough about her.
I also think it is important to talk about the past. There was a period when I was trying to figure out what happened to Vivek and why. I was quite astonished how taboo that topic was. You cannot ask about Vivek basically. I felt almost like her story was even more shameful than Rajneeshpuram. How come the closest person to Osho took drugs, suffered from depression etc etc?
And it is very important to hear people directly involved rather than clever speculations of everyone else.
I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time with people who lived with Osho and most them are basically unshaken by any of the events. I find them basically free from Osho and his story because they are now free and this is the way.
Nice comment Chetna.
Many of those who were physically “close” to Osho were frankly in my view not particularly “advanced” in a spiritual sense. Having been around the block a bit even when I arrived in Poona in 1974, I did however see a number of sannyains who did seem quite moved on, and already showing the old incredible lightness of being. They were just in the darshans, in the street, in the dynamic… and not wanting any commune advancement or recognition… it was part of the reason I stayed.
Osho certainly choose Vivek as a caretaker/carer early on, and she reciprocated. She did not have to. I always sensed a certain insecurity around her, and certainly she was not at all interested in the spotlight, though she was thrown into it. Sadly being close to a master in a physical sense is not necessarily a spur to one’s own growth.
A string on the subject is appropriate, maybe you want to send something to start it off?
Well put, Chetna. I have a friend who was close friends with Vivek and she told me one or two things about her, although she does not enjoy gossiping about Vivek. It seems Vivek was bipolar. Thus the depressions. I reckon she was a lovely spirit who had some faulty circuits hardwired into her brain. This is a purely physical condition and a difficult one to cope with. One of my close friends on Ibiza went bipolar in his seventies. It is a tragic and sometimes devastating mental illness. Poor Vivek. Let her rest in peace. In my books she was a lovely person.
Rupert Murdoch told everyone today how he knew nothing of what his evil wire tapping editors were doing, and that he believes in truth…phew…just an ordinary bloke really…
and that the climate of news reporting intimidation and strategic world domination is just what happens when you get a few decent beery blokes together in the pub…..
..ahemmm…
well….
obviously the mindset of the commune had nothing at all to do with a wonky-wanky vision of being worked on by part-time authoritarians, who had got the psychobabble lingo down to the fine art of..’ if its growth , it must be good for you…’
and the editor of sannskynews international plc says the guvnor, Ruposh Murdosh never knew really how stupid we all were..
kisses…from the blue danube…
Thanks Lokesh for your earlier comments.
Frankly I think I knew what had happened back in 1985 more or less. My problem has been with many critics of myself over the years, both devotional and those who felt ripped off etc. as both groups seemed very angry with me for telling the truth as I intuited it.
That is why I tried to trailblaze the whole nitrous story cos I think it goes a long way to explaining why Osho was switched off in those days. The two stories fit together.
I dont think the “truth” is so elusive here, but so many have so much invested in Osho as some sort of all seeing God – or that he was a very black sheep indeed. I do think there is now enough evidence to say he was neither.
Yeah, Parmartha, I was briefly contemplating related topics over breakfast. Gurdjieff left quite a ‘legacy’ behind and he liked the birds and strong booze. Apparently, he expressed regrets towards the end of his life about his philandering ways and love of Armagnac. Point is, he, like Osho, did a lot of great things while alive and that is ultimately what counts. Osho never claimed to be a saint and that was something I really loved about him.
ol` georgie gurdjieff.
what a legend.
i`ll never forget that story about the journo who went to interview him.
he wa ushered to gurdjieff`s room in the suite of a five star hotel, where he found Georgie cavorting on the bed with two former Miss Worlds…
empty bottles of armagnac and champagne covering the table…
and twenty pound notes strewn all over the room….
the journalist asked:
“Georgie, where did it all go wrong?”
Too true, Frank…
Did you ever see that one he scored at Villa Park? Unstoppable! Sheer, unadulterated Magic!
They don’t make Masters like that any more….
georgie was a magi,for sure
he was unstoppable at the villa…
unstoppable at the prieure..
he banged them in wherever he went….
its only a pity he didnt get to strut his stuff on the world stage, like the red devils, (who he influenced so heavily) did in the 70s and early 80s
its difficult to tell,with all those birds and all that booze…
but it leaves you with a feeling of wondering what might have been…..
Georgie G, force of Nature – simply the Best….
Geeji rocks!
Osho never claimed to be a Saint…and lokesh loved it.
I wonder what kind of role He was playing?
Was Osho like some of those famous Indian actors who have played seven different characters in one movie.
Audience have the choice, when the character you don’t like is on the screen, just go for a pee. Benefit is that one finds enough space to relieve oneself.
When people from the skeptical background come, a master like Osho knows how to entertain them, after all, he is the son of a cloth merchant. In India they know from the face of the customers, what kind of stuff they are looking for, why to show silk to those who are looking for terrin.
Problem is not with Osho but (ex.)followers limted power to grasp all that was available.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……
Power of the myth is that it can produce bright colors pictures out of a bleak evening. Insetad of Jesus, it consoles breakaway Christians to think about Gurdjieff or Ramana, as the best on the market..
Few names are like those brand names which are discussed all the time but one does not find them in any shelf of any kind of store!
Power of imagination, that which one has not seen or met looks really gorgeous..By George!
It is interesting to note that Jayanand’s responses are in line with what Maneesha James wrote about Sheela in her books. I think Rajneeshpuram was a simple case of failure just because there was no concept called “checks and balances”, period. It was totally left into the hands of phasist. But Why Osho was so dumb? He is the one who delivered extemporaneous commentaries on everything and anything from communism to capitalism and democracy. I think surely Sheela lived ( in doing wrong things) beyond Osho’s expectations. Like once he said, ” I am enlightened doesn’t mean I know who is bugging my room”.
I absolutely agree with this: “Problem is not with Osho but (ex.)followers limted power to grasp all that was available.”
also i am absolutely agreeing with this.
as disciple and customer in masters skirt shop,i was always grasping all that was available.
everyday i was grasping some piece of cloth,sometimes the silk,sometimes the pigs ear….no matter…..
important it is to grab what is available at masters shop as he was pumping the energy,i was also pumping at every opportunity.
sadly,now pumping phase has gone,i am posing as plumber to fix others pumps when unfortunately my pump has rusted and failed in the 2000.
Prem, You have summarise the whole thing by saying, “there was no concept called “checks and balances”, period.
This concept was introduced by osho in Pune 2. That was the reason for its success, even 10 years after His departure.
Once the conecpt of “check and balance” was ripped off by the team of two, OSHO looks like that food grain market where mouses are making holes in the wheat bags.
Rajneeshpuram is a history which can not come back to life, Osho Pune has still the chance.
How do you define success in this case, Shantam? Afterall, Osho was fond of saying nothing fails like success.
Hello Everyone,
Here is my roving report for this weeks Sunnyside News
Well, here i am in Pune 6 or is it 4 or ..oh well who cares I’m here.
I’ve brought with me my sunnyside love-o-meter which you can claim for free too, if you fill out the form at the back of this page..
And boy is it freaking out here with a permanently tweeting electronic love-o-meter alarm…i swear it sounds like ”toot-y–toot-who-gives-two hoots”
It has been some time since I last was here, and… wowawiwa this place has changed. Gone are those obligations to the commune, gone are those growthful responsibilities to the wise edicts of hand me downs from therapists and their yapping acolytic dogmatist groupies.
Gone are those who would take you for all you could spend so as to make sure you fell slap bang in the middle and hit your head hard on the Path of Lovers …..thus needing all the first aid from the emergency kit. By the way each kit (0nly 99999 Rps), includes a tea bag, biscuit, a consolation mini book of hugs, a xmas cracker-type useful therapeutic one liner,….. and a legal injunction preventing you from actually openly admitting that gloating at another’s expense, for your own benefit,…. is NOT actually a meditation.
Gone are the relationship spray-on demystifiers, that used to cool you down in the gardens after a hot night of sharing.
Yes gone are all those ideas of letting go, letting in, watching your thoughts, watching someone else’s thoughts, watching out, watching a holy video on partner swapping or watching who just stole your brand new flip flops from the shoe rack.
Instead its demure, soulful, spacious, gracious, loving, and more importantly… protected by close circuit TV and civic policemen who look like they spend all their spare time in Ecstasy….(the greasy paratha and chips milk bar down the road, …not the state or even less the suggestion.)
Anyway here I am and first stop for me , is to find out exactly Who I am…What better way to do that than to sign up to the laugh cry and shut up 3 week blinder. Why yes I even recognise a couple of the trainers of the course.. if it isn’t those two most strangely disconnected individuals V…dhi and D..v..na…
Well whatever it is they’ve got I most certainly want.. The ability never to really engage anyone at all in a way that matters., is warm or transparent or self effacing..If it works for them, then I’m signing up…Boy does my impervious ego need a boost…. someone suggested i buy concrete instead of having these two oddballs to trust… but no i said concrete is not for me… i want to grow my own thick skin and ability to predate dementia by a few decades… sign me up….if its worked for them to get a black robe.. then its hey ho me hearties…
Talk about flip flops eh ? First I didn’t know who I was, then I did … now I was past caring… amazing…..well worth the money..
…Strangely too The ‘love o-meter’ had just died on me….maybe it was the batteries…
More next week….
lokesh,
i am defining the successing of osho corporation by ability of CEOs to deliver the retail goods to the customers.
in osho pumping days 88-90,i was getting high quality imported european goods 5 or 6 times a week.but since 2000,team of two have disturbed checks and balances,i have not been getting a sniff of imported goods.
in those great days i was getting silken underwear.
now i have had to go back to my goats hair chuddies because of whiteskinned citizens of her majesty.
i have not been getting it for years.
therefore i am campaigning very hard for ..er…osho`s vision.
Osho’s vision 20/20. Brilliant parody and very humourous. Great stuff…love it.
from success i don’t mean profit or the cut throat competition as life is a boxing match and to knock out the other is a goal.
Success means when someone has a vision to create headache medicine, it really works, like a farmer seeing his crop getting full yield.
Success means what Wright brothers did with their flying machine which became the base for aviation industry.
From 1990 onwards, ashram was attracting as many people as it was during the peak period of 1987 onwards. One could feel the vision getting true; meditation creativity, love. Few of the best artists Like Zakir Hussain and Hari Parshad Chaursia, Jagajit Singh etc. have given their performance more than once and without charging single rupee…
That was the time, storage business boomed in the area as many people were planing to come again and again. Working and confronting the day to day life, earning money and coming back for inner work and emotional confrontaions…
Few of the well known therapists have shared their skills with the same devotion as if Osho is all around.
Fact is most of the new expansion of Osho property was due to the money generated by these groups, present situation is such even for renovation they need to mortgage the property..
Failure of osho lies in the fact he was unable to grasp the mind of the west, the mind which frank is carrying or jayesh is carrying..
The people who were licking his ass in his life time now complaining about the stink…
Great!
i am very much agreeing on this point.
western mind,and the team of two, frank and the jayesh are personally responsible for failure of oshos vision.
western mind is unable to grasp enlightenment that has been taught in pumping stations of the east for many generations in same way as man putting tongue up enlightened asshole then calling facebook CEO mark zuckerberg to complain about wright brothers ability to enjoy nostalgia about pumping era (88-90) when starting storage business for headache medicine!
Shri Shantam, has it ever occured to you that you have a negative attitude? Probably not, because attitudes are formed by habit, once you habitually see things a certain way it moves into the unconscious and thus your conscious mind is no longer aware of it. That is where you are coming from and that is the stink you are smelling…your own unconscious shit.
‘Sheela had never any executive position in ordinary life as we understand it,
would it have helped if someone had been secretary with previous experience of such organized power?’
Jay said No to this question which seemed unsatisfactory. But from another angle is it? I reminded of the following:
‘Heaven and Earth are not humane
They regard all things as strawdogs
The sage is not humane
He regards all people as strawdogs’
Tao-Te Ching
Jay strangely may have been right with his answer. Would a ‘good’ secretary have made a difference and what is the difference we think we wanted?
Thanks for the post Roman. I can see your point – especially in advaita terms.
Nonetheless Osho’s work was very damaged by Sheela’s actions. Many who might have found their spiritual home with Osho never came near an Osho centre after1985 because of the bio-terror, etc.
I dont think that Laxmi was a good or bad secretary, but when I was around her a little it did feel she was like a hollow bamboo for Osho. Going to America itself in my eyes was a mistake. America is a very backward gun toting country. I experienced India, apart from the health thing, as gentle on the whole and, sensibility wise, so I was very disappointed when the Kutch thing did not come off. Had it done so, I am sure that Laxmi would have remained Secretary.
Parmartha,
I was thinking along those lines. Found your post about Saturday afternoons with Pari moving. Maybe there is a follow up as some have suggested. Easy to say though.
If you care to examine Jay’s comments closely there are are a few things to set you wondering and I’m not speaking about the obvious.
To be honest, I can’t be bothered going into it, because I find the subject matter boring. I don’t have the real need to put such things in perspective in relation to my own life. By the time all that shit was going down it was already obvious the rot had set in..even from a distance.
I can remember Osho saying something about how Indian gurus going to USA signalled their downfall. Although a genaralism that is not entirely true it was true in relation to Osho himself. He was thrown out of the country a convicted criminal. Happened to me once myself…one gets over it. as Osho did. I just wonder how much longer people need to turn over the same bit of ground until they realize the only one who can shine the light needed to clarify these matters has been dead for over 20 years. Part of Osho’s great legacy, one could say.
Lokesh,
David Hume, a Scotsman, is one of my favourite philosophers. He knew when things started becoming serious it was time to play billiards. A wonderful, jovial person with a great sense of humour. He knew how to cultivate friendship. Like Osho he gave his love generously. Cheers
Roman, Jay may have indeed been right with his answer, especially if he is a Taoist sage.
I made the assumption that he was not, however, hence my curiosity.
Dear Parmartha,
You mentioned that some people close to Osho were not very spiritually advanced, what absolute rubbish , spiritual advancment as measured by Parmartha, who are you, do you have a tape measure, are you an authority on “spiritual advancment” I say this as a joke, imagine what you will be saying on your death bed, what happened to the Medina money. Stop all this nonsense, and concentrate on your own spiritual advancment, whatever that means.
The matter of those who were ambitious to be physically close to Osho is self evident. If as I suspect you also were around at the time you must have been blind not to see it. Sheela was just the best example.
I have not mentioned the Medina money for over 20 years, but as you have…. be careful!
As I have posted elsewhere, I did see in 1974 in Pune some Osho sannyaisns who were not at all interested in commune politics, etc but who were clearly more on the way than me. My friendship with them and with Osho is still my “spiritual path”. It is not old, and it is not young. It simply is.
P.. there’s a chatathon fun charity talk-in being sponsored on this blog next week to talk about things we haven’t got…
i thought you might like to start it off with that favourite subject you haven’t mentioned for twenty years
i’m going to talk about my bald head and missing hair
and then we can all carry on for hours talking about oh i dunno.. enlightenment, past masters.. anything we haven’t got anymore..it should be a cracker…
tony said he’s going to donate a word that means the opposite of itself to the winner…an antonym of medina perhaps would be repayment…the same for ko hsuan.. although that might be accountants secretary.. (i’m not so good at guessing antonyms as tony is )
Thing is ,Tony, there were people round Osho who were to all external perceptions pretty dense. Of course out comes the nonjudgemental card…how ironic, seeing how to judge someone else’s judgements is a judgement. Life is a mystery to be lived…that way you will not ask any difficult questions. The sheep dip is second door on the left.
Tony — what if part of Parmartha’s ‘spiritual development’ involves assessing, evaluating, and even (gasp) judging certain things? How are you to know what one person’s spiritual development may entail?
“How do you define success in this case” – I look at it as by being united we can make a bigger impact. Now we are split. Even dodos are getting united . see below..
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru-spot/guru-sangamam-a-confluence-of-gurus/
http://www.spiritualgateway.org/contactus.html
Even though our paths are totally different from them, we need to see the point why they are trying to get united in India – to protect from non-spritual elements – explained in the first link.
If dodos can do it, then what we need to call ourselves..
Ehm…er…dodos are now extinct.
“How do you define success in this case”- Here is one version of our success / vision
http://zouddha.com/vision.php
Below is the elaborate version in his own words
http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_now/world_vision_osho.asp
I am sure you find something on these lines at Osho.com website also.
Zouddha…ehm…boring…too respectable. A cup of tea? Gimme a break. At the least a bottle of whiskey to lubricate social intercourse…or how about some DMT?
Boy says to Granny, ‘have you seen my pills labelled LSD?’
Granny replies, ‘Fuck the pills! Have you seen the dragon in the kitchen?’
Be thankful friends, Ranch has fallen like cardboard house. Think about the court cases related with the ownership about a township after Master’s departure.
Cannot believe?
Then read the link below about the wheeling and dealing related case in Mumbai High Court.
http://www.firstpost.com/india/hc-to-hear-on-osho-trusts-rs-50-cr-property-gift-on-24-apr-282251.html
I just drank a cup of coffee to wake up and now Shree Shantam is trying to put me to sleep again with a link to a lullaby about selling property to….,who cares?
Just in case those on this board dont understand the Medina money reference… which this guy Tony who mysteriously has come and gone, without saying who he is, has flagged up.
Medina was the UK Osho commune of around 180 members based in Suffolk around a large country house between 1981 and 1985.
In 1986 I was one of the six signatories to the Medina account. There was quite a lot of bread in that account, as I remember around £400,000 from the sale of the property. A substantial amount in those days.
My view and at least two of the other signatories was that the money should be used to foster some kind of UK presence for Osho, a new London centre for example.
However two signatories, Shabda and Simant went behind the backs of the other signatories and signed all the money over to OI…. I dont know what it says about them, and frankly many, not just myself who had contributed to the wealth of Medina felt ripped off.
I have not mentioned, or even thought of this for 20 years, but as this devotee guy Tony seems to have given me such a blast of unwarranted criticism, including a reference to that, for readers here it is worth knowing the story to show what lack of judgement, and even acquaintance with the non devotee disciples he has had all these years!
Swam,
I was living in Birmingham at the time, and Chinese whispers being what
they are, by the time the story had reached us,someone had gone off with the money, done a bunk.
He would, in a fairly spineless way, be hinting at that.
Don’t doubt your version for a minute.
Thanks for going into it.
Well it was true that Jayesh and John did go off with the money!
The story was a little longer than my original precis, Osho was, it was true being flown all over the world at the time to find a home for the new commune. It came to nothing because noone would take him including the UK.
Sometime in early 1986, Prem Joe took myself and a few other signatories to the Hilton in an old Rolls Royce! to meet Jayesh and John. Frankly neither before or since have I ever been in a Rolls Royce or the Hilton!
They both seemed genuinely tired, but clearly wanted to argue that we should unanimously give the Medina money into the OI account “for Osho”.
Well okay, but this would leave the UK Buddhafield with zilch. I explained this to them, but they seemed unconvinced and put devotional arguments to us to help pay for the world tour….
A short time later I heard that the 2 signatories mentioned before had given the money over without agreement from the other four. Sadly cheques could be signed by simply a minimum of 2 signatories, disempowering the other four…
Nice to see you back, Arps, have not seen you here for a while.
so there you go tony.
any more questions?
First you get the money, then you get the power and then you get the women. Tony Montana
What about this argument, P…
You took sannyas early. What was taking sannyas at that time? Here are some quotes from ‘I am the Gate.’
1. “I do not deny your being a disciple.”
2. “Once I have given you sannyas…I have become responsible for you… You have surrendered to me.”
3. “Initiation means you are ready to surrender, ready to trust.”
You may think that that is all devotional nonsense now, but that is what you signed up to in the 1970s. So when Jayesh and John, on Osho’s behalf, asked you for Medina money, as someone who had surrendered to Osho it was your duty to say Yes.
you are right john.
thats why the old days and the the ranch were the perfect innoculation for any further possible outbreaks of “surrender”.
that was then .
this is now.
now,if any old geezer with a beard tries the surrender routine on me now,he`s gonna end up with a knuckle sandwich.
thanks osho.
nice work
There is an error in the argument here Alok. I didn’t trust John and Jayesh. They produced no evidence that Osho had asked that the money be handed over, and I dont think He would have done so.
Sheela had often used the same argument, (Osho said to do it) , that’s why lots of the wealth that Medina produced was sent directly to the Ranch before September, 1985. Because of Sheela’s abuse of this strategy there was a clear reticence of a few of us who helped to create that wealth – whenever the argument was produced, and we were just acting as responsibly as we could to ourselves and those with whom we had formerly built a commune. The commune had been built on our surrender.
Life is complicated really, and not as simple as your deduction wants to indicate.
Okay, I can understand you did not trust them, especially given the history. But the money was used to finance the world tour, wasn’t it?
If I had been me, I would have tried to judge character, trying to assess if Osho needed the money; in the light of the world tour he presumably did. If it had been Amrito, I would have said yes, Sheela or one of her cronies….then No, Jayesh and John…..I do not know.
My opinion would tend to be….
Providing you think that the money is going to Osho and his entourage then the money should be given, irrespective of the effects on Medina ex-residents. That is because Medina sannyasins had surrendered to Osho in the process of initiation.
i agree with john.
everyone who surrendered shouldn’t complain, they were consenting adults
if you surrender your ego and think your ego`s gonna come up smellin’ of roses, then you need the lesson that can only be learned by surrendering your ego….
come on, it’s not rocket surgery!
The World Tour was a complete mistake and a disaster. A typical poorly informed executive decision by Amrito and Jayesh. Hasyo and John.
Because of commune isolation and nievety they wasted loads of cash on Lear Jets, etc when the only country really that could not refuse Osho was India, which proved to be the case in the end.
I had no sympathy then or now for throwing hard earned cash at that.
After leaving US and a stopover in Cyprus, Osho’s first destination was India. But US put pressure on India to stop Osho’s work. See extract and link below. It took a year or more before US took the pressure off and allowed Osho to continue his work in India.
“So now the American government pressure on Indian government is that `I should not be attacked directly but I should not be allowed my trained people to live with me, so the whole work can be destroyed.
I have been informed by very intimate sources to the (Indian) government that first they don’t want any foreigners to be here, so anybody who wants to be here cannot get a visa.”
from http://www.oshoworld.com/biography/innercontent.asp?FileName=biography9/09-03-litigation.txt
read your references, Alok.
See no mention of Osho actually being denied entry to India.
Certainly people like Hasyo were harrassed and debarred from India at the time, but you know India, there is always a way, and quite shortly after as I recall, Osho’s work was up and running again.
I still maintain the World Tour was a very expensive mistake.
Tony, I never got the money, and I never got the power, sometimes I got the women, tantra liked a bit of slumming.
But that Tony Montana,
he got the money but it made him lonely, he got the power but he got betrayed, and the women he loved – they ran away. I know what kind of life I preferred…
and you Tony, are you still wearing your white robe, and seeing Osho as an all seeing, all loving God….. the problem with devotion of any sort is that it has the kernel of fundamentalism wrapped inside it.
And to return more fully to the topic, my problem was that I mixed a lot in those years between 1985 and 1990, with all those who were left in the wake of the Ranch, looking this way and that. Even ran a sannyas disco in a pub in London which attracted all sorts of sannyasins and ran a magazine called Here and Now. …. but it was an either/or decade and there were only a few who saw it my way, and hence I made enemies from the devotees, and also from the disillusioned…. and you Tony remind me of those days, and those devotees knocking my door, and saying desist….
listen to the fool`s reproach
`tis a kingly title
—the proverbs of hell.
Parmartha, it seems you and many others are not understanding the thin line between devotion and blind faith.
Blind faith is like that act in oral sex, when the tongue lands little bit south from the airport!
Parmartha says “….. the problem with devotion of any sort is that it has the kernel of fundamentalism wrapped inside it.” And Osho says –“Devotion is the highest form of love”.
I think devotion is the inner experience and it is the most beautiful, and the fundamentalism comes in when that devotion is not a devotion at all, but another form of superiority game.
I think Westerners are wrong in assuming all devotion is rubbish. Since all that devotion has been scrabbled from Pune resort, the heart and love is no longer felt there. It is dry!
Other places of course, turned devotion into blind following. But there are balanced places which are run by balanced people.
I think, we sannyasins, should understand and accept differences of devotees with Osho and non-devotees. Both sides go to extremes (normal way of the mind). Until we grow into balance, this stupid split will always be there in our community.
Chetna,
Tony is a devotee. But he attacked me without due cause, and without even bothering to understand my approach. He also did it with a cloak of anonymity. That is typical totalitarian behaviour. Osho said many things, but the last thing he ever said publicly was “Be a light unto oneself”. That is difficult for a devotee. I don’t accept that the way of the heart is exclusively that of a devotee. A mature man or woman can have both aspects. A thinking man or woman and a loving man or woman are not mutually exclusive.
Those who say that those who were close to Osho physically have the sheen of some devotional and higher spiritual hue are clearly mistaken. The devotion of Sheela and Savita led in the end to betrayal.
In fact the devotion that leads to devotees saying that Osho was all-seeing, and all-knowing etc, was actually contradicted by the Master himself. As he said “In knowing myself doesn’t mean I know there is a bug in my room. “
yeah, Tony needs to heed the words of MC Buddha 10,0001:
“get a life unto yourself”
Thanks Parmartha, very honest, see it same. Guess, otherwise seeker becomes little foolish.
Devotion, the most intimate between Master and Disciple. For me, no commune and no other truth seekers are allowed tojudge what devotion means for the individual devotee. That is what happened, our own Ego and the Commune has exercised maybe out of unawareness, a form of psychological pressure. Result, many became relatively uncritically in the name of “Yes”. Our Sannyas conditioning has affected our judgment. Of course, this becomes, especially after the departure of the Master, more problematic for the individual. For me, each of us has to find his individual devotion, his Freedom; it can’t be a static Concept. We need to respect more the Individual, instead a Structure of a group with its concepts of Truth.
Osho taught through extreme opposites. From one to another, and then again and again, you may find your centre. So the devotionalism was his request from the beginning, and listening to your stories it seems to have been taken pretty seriously at that time. Then after all the belief surrendering got destroyed, partly from the failure of Rajneeshpuram and the rest he had burned over in Poona 2. I have my doubts that he had deliberately planned everything from the beginning, as if he built the last pyramid to make all the pyramids collapse, but some people say so. Anyway, the main teaching is his life,including his mistakes, and is very visible for the whole world!
youngman,
as he said,he was a hollow bamboo for existence.
even he did not know where the piece of music or the story would lead.
not being classically trained,he adlibbed it like a jazz guy…..he let go into it …
yet,existence wrote the story.played the tune…..
(same for everyone,like it or not)
the tune got a bit wild with a few notes not usually associated with classical meditation and the story had quite a few unsavoury characters and murky sub-plots.
it was existence that did it.
i dont blame him,he was,he said just a nobody.
so it was nobody`s fault,really.
Nothing wrong with devotion, just not a path for all. Seems like, along with the word surrender it scares the pants off a lot of westerners – wonder why? As for this ‘kernel of fundamentalism’, reckon that can sprout in anyone, nothing to do with the way of the heart.
Fundamentalism is shadow of language use is it not?
No understating without langiuage.
No understanding because of language.
Disclaimer.
I offer this only as a notion for consideration.
Not as part of a fundamentalism
Understating should be understanding.
Language should be language.
`kin `ell arpana,
sounds like you`ve got a copy of ludwig wittgensteins “tractatus logico-philosophicus” stuck in one of your orifices…
whassup?
Praise indeed from the grandmaster
of oroficioux illogicus
Arpana,
Fair enough.
‘I want the words
so simple and
true you think they
have come out of
your own mouth and
are breathing you.’
cid corman
Dharmen,
Nice point, ego theorists hate it.
‘As the night bird Chakor gazes all night at the moon: so
Thou art my Lord and I am Thy servant.’
Tagore.
Interesting to look at western mystics who endorse your sentiments.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry comes to mind.
roman,
“ego theorists”?
thats a good one.
do these guys actually exist?
i would guess that an ego theorist would make a pretty ironic buddhist.
whtyathink?
; )
Frank,
They are in every university which has a Psychology Department, Philosophy, Critical Theory, Literature, Film Studies, Educational Child Development, Gender Studies (Male, Female, Trans-Gender Ego’s), Cooking and The Ego, Race and the Ego, blah blah blah.
They meet at big conferences all over the world and relax by having heated arguments. They are very cultish and regard themselves as experts within their chosen fields. There are as many theories about the ego as there is the egos involved. It is a living I suppose. Someone has to do it. In room 31 they discuss the Cartesian ego, in room 28 the Freudian ego, in room 22 it’s the Return of the Ego. In room 101 it is facing the Fear. You then go to the Lacanian basement in room 22 where you dress up as your favourite ego and discuss the Ego Ideal and the Ideal ego. You also look at the Maternal Super-Ego and the Paternal Super-Ego. There is also the Symbolic Ego. One thing you never discuss is your own EGO of which there are quite a few of various sizes. Lets not forget the Jungian Ego and the mysterious Self. Also there are theories on how your Ego can be swamped by your Unconscious or Freudian Monsters of the Id. You get to watch Hitchcock films. You’ll discuss how you need a solid ego to not be swamped by the archetypes or the Collective Unconscious. Then there is a Sartrean ego, a Kantian Transcendental Ego and there are lots more but at the end of these conferences some scantily clad mixed Gender Ego’s leap out of a large Cake. Enough for today. Okay Frank?
wow,roman,
they sound pretty daft,these ego-theorists….
btw.my ego theory is much the same as oshos.
if you`ve got it, flaunt it to the max.
if you want it, have it.
don’t let the unconscious masses grind you down…
it`ll drop in the end,so dont worry about it, and `till then,
you`ve gotta look after number one,
`cos if you dont, who will?
know what i mean?
Parmartha, obviously you had a specific situation with someone which I cannot comment upon. Sounds quite bad.
I have met devotees that I want to run away from. They have gone nuts with their bowing down to Osho and his disciples.
“As for this ‘kernel of fundamentalism’, reckon that can sprout in anyone, nothing to do with the way of the heart.”- yes, I agree. With non-devotional sannyasins the common game is all religions are rubbish, I am the best, I know everything – which is so ignorant. Many religions have so much to offer, but a discriminating eye is needed.
To be truly devotional has certainly nothing to do with how many times you have bowed down today. If devotion is the highest form of love, most of us have not even started with the 1st condition – love.
re. “religions that have so much to offer.”
that reminded me of a religious experience i once had:
i happened along to the inauguration of a spanking new freshly constructed temple on the outskirts of pune some years ago.
altho` i am of the view that building a public toilet complex would have been a more worthy project,i decided to hang around and muck in a bit.
a large crowd of devotees (mostly dirt poor)locals were there.
the music was blaring at an apalling brain-damagingly distorted decibels.there were a few stalls selling stuff.
“what is this?” i shouted at the guy behind the stall pointing to some bottles on his table.
it was hard to continue the conversation with the screeching devotional music.
he shouted back:”medicine”
grimacing from the ringing in my ears i shouted back
“medicine for what?”
“head-ache” came the reply with no irony whatsoever.
Frank, sounds like you have a book to write also. Perhaps written with ‘Finnegan’s Wake’-style punctuation.
PT,
probably get about as many readers,too!
“finnegans wank” makes “beelzebubs tails” read like a marvel comic.
I am a non devotional sannyasin. But I have a lot of time for example for Advaita. I know there were many “devotees” of Ramana, but in modern advaita it is comparatively rare. Because Osho did not explore advaita that much, unlike Sufism and Zen, an interest in advaita sort of completes a modern sannyasin. I dont recognise your picture of the non devotional sannyasin, but we mix in different circles. Here on this site for example you will find mainly non devotional sannyasins, but they often speak well of Gurjieff, Rumi, Tony Parsons, Maitreya, and many others.
Osho may not have lectured much on Advaita, but his whole view was very much based in traditional Indian models of awakening, most of which have their roots in the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta. For example, the essence of Advaita could be said to be that our Awakened Self is already present, we are just ignorant of it, owing to the delusions of the constructed ego-self. We are essentially dreaming, or as one poetic expression of it has — ‘you are at home in God, dreaming of exile’. This was always Osho’s position as well.
Gurdjieff, for example, argued something very different — he said that this business that we already are the fully awakened Self, but are merely ignorant of that reality, is nonsense. He said that unless we work on ourselves, we never ‘gain a soul’, and will ‘die a dog’s death’. This was actually an echo of an ancient Egyptian teaching that said that unless we achieved a certain level of development while living, we will simply be devoured in the afterlife. No unicorns, rainbows, or fifth dimension of instant gratification awaits us. Much less some automatic recognition that we are already the ‘Awakened Self’.
Osho claimed that Gurdjieff was ‘lying’ in teaching that we have no intrinsic soul, but that his ‘lying’ was a device done out of compassion to urge his disciples to work on themselves. That may or may not be so. But unquestionably Osho’s overall teaching had strong points in common with Advaita, which may be why he spoke so highly of Ramana Maharshi and stated that he ‘hated’ Jung when the latter refused to visit Ramana while he was in India.
scratch a so-called “devotee” and undermeath, you will generally find a bigot.
this has nothing to with east/west polarity.
do you know the expression
“humble to god, haughty to man” ?
that’s what i have found in these “devotees”.
and if it is a “path”.
they can surely just go take a walk….
i`m not stopping them.
and as baba free baksheesh once confided in me, with a rascalous twinkle in his eye….
“just because i know myself.
it doesnt mean there isnt an elephant in the room”
Roman posted this Taoism earlier. I dont like it.
‘Heaven and Earth are not humane
They regard all things as strawdogs
The sage is not humane
He regards all people as strawdogs’
The whole point is that the sage is human, and if worth his salt has passed through many human experiences. So many people want to make great people like Jesus, Osho, Mahavira beyond human. Like saying that Mahavira never shat, and Jesus was born of a virgin, and Osho could “see through” everyone. All nonsense in my book.
Have some of you Taoist experts an explanation for this verse. Seems absurd to me.
Isnt that just another way of saying this?
The night I understood
this is a world of dew,
I woke up from my sleep
Retsuzan
B1789. D.1826
Parmartha,
This link unpacks the quote to some degree. There are translations which don’t use the term straw dogs.
Talking about an impersonal cold world. I was involved in a nasty car accident the other day and fortunately survived. It was a beautiful morning and the birds were singing. I was backing out of a driveway and suddenly, Bang! Some maniac appeared out of nowhere driving way beyond the speed limit. My car was pushed into another stationary car because of the impact. I stumbled out of the car, which was destroyed. Two seconds before, two seconds later and it wouldn’t have happened. So one tries to make sense of this randomness but there is no logic. I’m alive, not hurt and lucky to be here. Been in that place before and still don’t know what it is all about.
http://www.centertao.org/tao-te-ching/dc-lau/chapter-5-commentary/
Thanks Roman. Interesting link. I like taoism on the whole, but sure this one may have been mistranslated.
Sorry to hear about your accident. Your last sentence was the most interesting.
I’ don’t know what strawdogs are.
I Would say “Truth”.
Truth is Heaven and Earth, Truth regards all things, Truth is not Human, Truth regards all people.
Sometimes the words sound more beautiful then the reality.
Ramana and Advaita are those words from India. As i see, they are just few of the products in the superstore of Hinduism.
The beauty of Hinduism is that it produces nothing but gives shelf space to many copycat thoughts and ideas generated by other schools and religious beliefs.
Other religions are quite boring in that respect as they are like single brand showrooms.
Osho has tried his best to create a modern version of multi-brand store, but it has fallen in the hands of fools; the fools who are not able to decide whether butter is a milk product or only the cheese is…
Shree Shantam…’the fools who are not able to decide whether butter is a milk product or only the cheese is…’ Ehm..er..did you channel that whilst looking in a mirror?
Of all the fools whose words I’ve read on here Shree Shantam is the undisputed king. Had Osho lived in medieval times and held court in his castle, Shree Shantam would surely have been the court jester….ha ha ha…utterly idiotic numbskull. Thanks, Shree Shantam, for your brilliant comic utterances,
BTW, Shree Shantam, ‘The beauty of Hinduism is that it produces nothing but give shelf space to many copycat thoughts and ideas generated by other school and religious beliefs.’
This is common knowledge. Primary school level, pundit Shantam. Everyone knows that Hinduism absorbs ideas from other cultures. You are mistaken to say that Hinduism produces nothing. Many beautiful phenomena have manifested as a result of Hindu culture.
All the divisions you see are all on the surface of life, east/west etc. Part of the idea of following a spiritual life is to come in contact with the unity in life, not the idea of separation and division that you seem to be so obsessed with. Had you spent a tenth of the time you have wasted in focusing on the big white-skinned chiefs in Koregaon Park you probably would have become a lot more enlightened player than you are now. Had you spent a tenth of the time you’ve wasted on such pursuits asking yourself who or what it is that sees divisions in life you would stop wasting your time spent on drawing racial lines in the sands of time.
Osho has never claimed that He sees through but in between. A new guru has arrived who has broken all the previous records of gurudom success in terms of number of people and money generated.
If someone is interested in this new arrival, Google Nirmal Baba. In the name of third eye this man is creating storm in India.
One thing is clear, When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, has become an outdated saying.
New version is, “When the teacher is ready, he give ads. in the newspaper and TV”!
In your world perhaps, Shree Shantam, but not in mine. As a man believes so the world appears. It just looks like that to you because you haven’t got a clue what is going on…pity, because it is rather wonderful.
Dear SN bloggers, if you find sonmething beautiful it is natural to want to share it. I just watched a fantastic film that says so much about life and how interconnected it all is. Do please try and get a hold of this movie. I would be surprised to hear that anyone on here does not appreciate it greatly.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cafe_de_flore/
.
On the matter of surrender vs. inquiry, or more technically, bhakti yoga vs. jnana yoga (inquiry) — Ramana Maharshi used to recommend inquiry, but did allow that for one not cut out for that path, bhakti yoga (surrender) was good also. In inquiry, one seeks to realize the Self. In devotionalism/surrender, one surrenders to the divine, be that in the form of a symbol, or a living guru.
There was clearly a problem with the latter approach however, and it seemed to me that Osho was trying to address that problem near the end of his life. I recall him saying in Poona I, many times, ‘surrender to me’. But after the Ranch, that approach was dropped — in Poona II I recall him saying, ‘don’t surrender your ego to me — what am I going to do with all these egos at my feet?’ The whole emphasis on Zen, and meditation, in the last few years of his life seemed to underscore that point.
Ramana said that ‘total surrender’ to the divine is impossible in the beginning, but can eventually lead to a total surrender, which he claimed was good enough for dropping identification with physical form and ‘escaping rebirth’ (which I imagine can be understood as metaphor). But he always recommended vicara (inquiry) first. When Harilal Poonja went to him, he was having ecstatic visions of Krishna. Ramana basically told him to drop it and focus on his own consciousness instead — ‘find the one who seeks Krishna’.
In my view, the problem with devotionalism is that it can only really be done by a mature seeker. An immature seeker just ends up transferring unfinished parental business onto the ‘divine’ or guru — turning them into a glorified father/mother. In the Ranch years most of us were still relatively immature seekers, and so the devotionalism expressed then was probably not very mature. That could explain why so many of us fell hook, line, and sinker for the fiasco that happened under our noses.
Good post.The whole guru disciple relationship can be viewed as parental, in that you are placing your life in another’s hands because it would appear that they know what is best for you. There are pros and cons to this, which would be good material for a new thread. Whether or not one was a mature seeker during Ranch years does not mean that one couldn’t see something was going pear-shaped. I mean to say, idiots in pink toting machine guns was a clear indication that the scene was buggered. Let alone watching Sheela strutting her aggressive stuff on the international media. It was in essence the antithesis of why we’d joined the ranks in the first place. Peace and love etc. turned into war and conflict and it wasn’t because of Ronald Reagan’s America but rather the need for some bozos in orange to live out some very dumb role playing..
Sorry, Reply was on Teertha’s posting, wrong button.
“mature seeker during Ranch years” – only for that limited time, what was before and what after?
Making an “ism” out of devotion, feels as something virtuous is soiled. Is it a normal term in English?
The “total surrender” of Ramana I don’t like, either. It has something fascistic to me.
Seeing something fascistic in Ramana Maharshi. My, Preetam, that is quite an imagination you are carrying around with you. Could you go a bit further and give a concise description of what exactly about the man’s total surrender trip you see as being fascistic? As in a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism or, more simply put, oppressive, dictatorial control.
Sounds a bit more like Shree Shantam to me.
Yes…
Either someone surrender or does not surrender, both is anyway total. The extra “total” carries in my eyes the old conditioning as an overcharge, ambitioned and agressive surrender.
If Osho sayes “Total”, Freedom are meant. If i watch the Video of Ramana his “Total” smells of repress. Just my perception, can not see what the virtue of that man is.
By the way Lokesh, you gave an example of typical Sannyas psychological repression, which never had any effect on me: “that is quite an imagination you are carrying around with you.” That way we undercut our intelligence and people like Sh…. become possible and it’s still the same, because of that kind of suppressor never an enlightened Osho Sannyasin will be allowed. But, maybe from people like Punjaji – strange to me. I see lots of fascistic tendencies over the years within our commune. Tony on Top and the rest has to follow into total surrender of Tony Montana structure. Is Tony Montana a Freemason, hihi?
Is a little bitchiness allowed? Ra…. looks of a repressed nappy fasci(a).
Has nothing to do with repression, Preetam, and everything to do with trying to describe a beautiful peace-loving and enlightened man like Ramana as having facist tendencies. When you look at pictures of lilac-clad sannyasins toting machine guns, wire-tapping as in Stalinist Russia, absurd hierachial shenanigans and everyone thinking that Big Brother knows what’s best for them there you are closer to home in regards to fascism.
Both are fascist, but the commune just confused by itself.
Ra….. tastelessness isn’t humble and brilliant, for me a claim being outstanding above. A trick putting others down, showing how impure they are, by nappies.
I think you might have to do another post there, Preetam, explaining what this one means!
Satyadeva,
I guess you missed that discourse where Osho spoke at length about ‘being pure by nappies’.
insiders say ramana may have had a copy of “mein kampf” stuck down his pants.
there could well be some truth in it.
think….why did his chuddies have to be so big?
thats a question you never hear devotees asking.
“things are not what they seem”
‘Ism’ is just a figure of speech — like ‘sensationalism’, ‘factionalism’, etc. ‘Devotionalism’ means ‘that which pertains to devotion’. It has nothing to do with ‘soiling’ anything.
As for Ramana’s ‘total surrender’, he meant that as a metaphor for loss of ego-identification. A simple overview is here, read especially the fourth paragraph:
http://actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/ramana.htm
The whole guru disciple relationship can be viewed as parental, in that you are placing your life in another’s hands because it would appear that they know what is best for you…
In this sense it seems like Lokesh needed that Bhagwan daddy more than others in the whole of Scotland!
Who else would have spend 7 best years to build the career or professional life in Poona ghetto? This is another matter of fact that mystery school around Osho has not let anybody down, everybody got some kind of present to play and wake up!
I will be curious to know a single person who has spend more than 4 weeks in Pune and does not remember that time with pride and humility.
Those who spend the time with Osho in his physcial presence speak about Ramana as if they were in South India during sage´s life time..
Everybody who has read a little bit of porn knows quite well, description and dialogues in the story are much more thrilling than the real act..
What is true for sex is truer for Samadhi.
Jesus being alive through Bible and the Church gospels is another proof.
‘Everybody who has read a little bit of porn knows quite well, description and dialogues in the story are much more thrilling than the real act… ‘
Speak for yourself, Shree Shantam, because that sounds patently absurd to me. Come on, admit it, you really are a virgin aren’t you?
i personally have no problem with devotionalism as a path
but i genuinely dont like the music.
if i was stuck on a desert island,for example
i would never have any miten and premal or any of that wafty mantra stuff or bhajans too.
i cant stand it
give me “highway to hell” anyday
and i`m not even particularly into heavy rock.
‘ hey hey,my my… chuang tzu sannyasins will never die ‘- my favourite is ‘ a great affair ‘ not exactly hard rock but comes pretty close. Too hard to find these days?
No one here has mentioned much about Jayananda. He was an investment Banker by profession, and ran the small Chidvilas commune, called the Castle when it received Osho on his first stop in the States.
My impression is that he was quite heavily involved in the movement of Osho to the States. A move which I think was mistaken.
However one thing was sure, Osho’s health did improve greatly, not just in the deserts of Oregon (deserts always seem to improve the lungs of asthmatics).
– But it also improved as soon as he got to the Castle and it was not long before he was driving the highway. Does anyone have an account of the Castle period? I have not seen it written up anywhere but guess it has been somewhere.
Well, I heard that an exorcist had to be called in to get rid of a poltergeist in the castle. He could do nothing. Osho’s TV remote kept changing channels by itself. Turns out this was caused by ultrasonic beams being projected from a nearby airbase for Stealth fighters. A thin layer of lead sheeting saved the day and Osho was left to watch CNN in peace.
Devotionalism.
Might be interesting to be clear clear about what people mean by devotionalism, or is that another discussion.
As far as I’m concerned Osho is the Bees knees, but agree with frank about the music. All that cod hippy dippy spiritual new age stuff. No thank you, but If that’s your thing, don’t mind me.
so the “devotionalists” and the “gnostics” like different music…
its a bit like mods and rockers…
or goths and chavs…
keep on rockin` in the free world..!
The path of the devotee is called Bhakti Yoga. Lord Krishna encapsulates it best in the following statement. ‘Fill thy mind with Me, be My devotee, sacrifice unto Me, bow down to Me; thus having made thy heart steadfast in Me, taking Me as the Supreme Goal, thou shalt come to Me. (B-Gita 9.34)[43]
Although easy to be cynical about when observed from the outside, on the inside it is a tried and tested path to liberation and not for the fainthearted. I always enjoy to watch the Hari Krsna groups in the cities of the world, banging their drums, clashing their cymbals and singing their hearts out in the midst of a civilization that normally worships money. Me? Give me AC/DC any day of the week, you’ve been thunderstruck!
For the uninitiated, the following link shows evidence of the profound effect upon half a million devotees of the Rock God, as the divine energy is channeled through the high priests of AC/DC.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
as lord krishna said to arjuna in the bhangamad gita ch.6.66(trans: headbanger`s song)
“oh arjuna,fill thy mind with rock and bang thine head steadfastly in devotion before me.
shake thine ass and wave thine hair at the supreme goal,surrender to the baseline and with thine air guitar come unto me…”
and arjuna bowed down,and through his central parting spake the words:
“we are not worthy”
Lord Angus rules! But remember, it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ‘n’ roll.
Osho is now working with Primal Scream.
http://soundcloud.com/luke-mitchell/osho-meets-primal-scream
Having just re-read some of this string which I must say shows good discussion, I think there has to be a distinction between devotion and the way of the heart. For me they have never been the same thing. Devotion is often opinionated, and full of certainty. The Way of the Heart seems to me to be something quite different. In fact it has no opinions and simply falls in love with existence and silence and play. I think the phrase is from Sufism. It is worth bearing in mind that Sufis even today do not “initiate” everyone by any means. Osho used to initiate almost everyone who took a whim to take sannyas. Hence those who become disciples of Masters within the Sufi context have already passed some kind of examination by the Master or tradition. And the surrender is often time limited to the period of the discipleship.
I myself feel the Way of the Heart is totally right, and can be combined with discrimination, etc. A mature man or woman needs both sides, and as the old testament prophet used to say, a time for the head, a time for the heart, etc.
As for the rest, devotion and surrender need more careful definition here.
Sounds very much like the difference between emotion and feeling, the one invariably arising from all kinds of unhappiness, the other from a pure, one might say meditative space, uncontaminated by the past, hence by a trouble-making mind…(ie mind as servant rather than master, hence discrimination possible)?
I wouldn’t write off devotion as an authentic ‘path’, but I somehow think that pure devotion is a very rare bird in this benighted day and age…Still, I’ve come across a few people who seem to embody it and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.