We have been lucky for sure.
So far so good!

The difference might be being initiated “into the old boys networks” or into the transcendental, transpersonal.

I should say that to a great degree we – of our 1-2-3 generations – have been and possibly still are quite lucky to have (had) access to quite a number of far-out teachers and methods.

What strikes me about the therapy groups was how many similarities they had with the rite-of-passage initiation rituals or ceremonies of tribals and aboriginals.

Briefly, these: The group of initiates were secluded in a small, tightly controlled space for a set time-frame.
Fear and awe were strongly generated around the process, the participants felt it deep inside.
These kind of ritual initiations were to mark the changing from child to adult, so the fear is about the inevitable destruction of the old identity in order to make way for the new one.
The violence was integral and controlled and choreographed by the elders. This included deliberate humiliation and physical violence (much more severe in tribals, usually including blood-letting, cutting, circumcision and other forms of what we would call torture).

All these things create cognitive dissonance (eg being knocked about by those who are responsible for your welfare is disorienting). This in itself leads to powerful desire for connection.
All this strongly induces of a sense of communitas in the initiates-`we are all in the same boat and in it together.`
Finally, the birth into a new identity and mature membership of the tribe. This is a ritual death and rebirth.

The sense of unity at having passed trough tribulation and come out the other side, forming strong bonds between participants. Bonds of affiliation and conformity.

Mircea Eliade, the anthropologist, claimed that the aims of all these rituals were also:
“that the ritual death finally led to conquest of the fear of real death.”
“to reveal the deep meaning of existence to the new generations and to help them assume the responsibility of being truly men and hence of participating in culture.”
And to reveal “a world open to the trans-human, a world that, in our philosophical terminology, we should call transcendental”. That is “to make the initiate open to spiritual values.”

So, cultish brainwashing in the name of “amateurish” abusive cod-therapy leading to broken bones and PTSD?
Or divinely ordained rituals to put you in touch with truth and inevitable enlightenment?

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I would say.

Depth psychologists have been very keen down the years on the idea that modern societies have not the neccessary rituals and ceremonies to care for the psychological and spiritual welfare of its members and that such a thing is needed.

Maybe the therapy thing was part of this need bubbling up from the depths?

Mind you, it did happen at the school I went to. New boys underwent initiation rituals. We had to pass through various trials, and the older boys organised stuff. I mention it because I remember we each had to climb up through a series of wooden and metal rafters of a high ceiling-ed room. It was dangerous, quite a drop onto a hard floor. I was skinny and quite athletic so I managed it ok. The kid after me was a fatty . He got stuck. He couldn`t get through this hole and there he is suspended in space with his ass sticking out…so all the older kids battered him with a variety of objects and threw stuff at him, laughing. I can see the guy`s face now screaming for mercy in fear of his life.

He never stepped out of line again, I can tell you. If you met him now and asked him about his schooldays I would wager a penny to a pound he would say something like “It was the making of me, Best years of my life.”

He seemed to have gotten a lot things started – at Esalen etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Price

Still, at least he paid me some respect in his letter.
“As such it owes more to the SS than to Esalen.”

And he was probably right. And the groups were toned down later.
But Osho had spoken about masters beating and hitting disciples in certain situations since the early seventies.

Remember the story of the man visiting the Zen master Matzu, and asking “what is no-mind?” and the Zen master just grabbing him and throwing him out of the two storey window. And then jumping down himself and beating the man’s chest.

And not just Zen masters too. Some Indian fakirs have been known to sometimes hit people or throw stones at them to knock them out of the mind or just get rid of people.

“There is a fakir in a small village called Saikheda near Gadarwara. You never know how he will receive you when you go to him. He may use four-letter words to you, he can do anything weird and crazy. Maybe he will stand up in the presence of his visitors and start pissing. You would be utterly shocked. That creates what is called a space of disorientation in you. Or he might even attempt to beat you physically. And he can chase you for miles and miles in this attempt.

But people who understand him benefit very much just from visiting him. Those who don’t understand him dismiss him as a madman. And he has nothing to do with those who don’t understand him. But he certainly helps those who care to understand him.”
(Osho: ‘In Search Of The Miraculous’, Vol. 2)

But then again, Teertha was no master, he was a group leader.

They were experimental groups. But of course Osho would have known about the physical confrontations just from observing that Frank’s front teeth were missing when Frank came for his evening Darshan after the group.
Unless Frank pretended that he had slipped over in the bathroom.

But Osho liked to bring everything up to the surface to be healed, although not sending everyone to Encounter, but also with his other active methods such as dynamic.

By the way, if anyone fancies a free encounter group with just the violence in a not so loving environment, you could always head down to Albert Sqaure in East London:

https://youtu.be/IN_n7psz8YM

(And if you’re lucky, you may well just get a shag too, if you visit the local pub in Albert Sqaure).

Funny thing is, if the “Not my work” story is true, maybe Bhagwan came to agree, as those groups were toned down not so long after these incidents.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b874746ee1759f1941f0935/t/5bb295398165f58ece133cd2/1538430267431/1978+Esalen+letters.pdf

As for Poona 1, I was only there for 2 weeks before Osho left for the US. I didn`t really fit into the scene then. My self-identity at that time was not bound up with ideas of psychotherapeutic growth. In fact, in my young mind at the time, the words ‘Psycho’ and ‘Therapist’ were in the same file as ‘Police’ and ‘Customs Officers’ i.e. people to be avoided at all costs. I didn`t want to end up in the same ward as R.P. MacMurphy and taking orders from Nurse Ratchet.

My trip at that point was more of a kind of barefoot bum it and slum it round India on no money as a kind of extreme adventure sport. Up-their-own-arse westerners who had flown to India in order to drone on about their feelings and opine about their level of enlightenment whilst drinking bottled water and eating imported cheese were the worst kind of spoilt, pretentious milksop ponces, subservient suck-offs and lily-livered losers I could imagine!

It was only later that I became one myself.

That`s life for you. It always gets you in the end.

Osho`s vision of a taste of fascism, under auspices of dream team Swami Arun and Sheela can expand into full totalitarian thali with all you can eat far-right rotis, Stalinist sabjee and lashings of demagogic desi ghee! All under protection of Zorba the Buddha Modi`s Saffron Schutzstaffel!

Hari Om!
Yahoo!
Make mighty Bhorat great again!

I repeat my question:

Have you done groups in Pune?

Or are you more the kind of spectator type?