“Anando will be my medium” (Osho)
I read Anando’s Osho: Intimate Glimpses in a few hours. I could not put it down until I had finished it. A week later, I still find myself thinking about it. It is a haunting book in the most beautiful of ways. The manuscript was transcribed from a series of video interviews, recorded during 2010 in Santa Fe by Bhikku and Waduda, and then edited. Before I go into my reflections on the book, a little background.
I wasn’t friends with Anando in Poona One and did not know her, apart from knowing who she was, but we did talk to each other a couple of times. When she arrived in Poona, during the mid-seventies, we lived in the same house. One sunny afternoon in the garden, we had a conversation about the overland to India journey, which, if I recall correctly, she’d recently completed and which I had done twice, and once in reverse, returning to bonnie Scotland without a penny in my pocket. I think that was about all we shared in common at the time, apart from living under the same roof.
Anando struck me as being squeaky-clean, a bit straight and very intelligent in a brainy sort of way. I’d already been living in Poona for 18 months, been through hell and back a few times, was currently hanging out in heaven and probably struck Anando as some Scottish Pict who was a few chips short of a fish supper. Time passed and over the years Anando rose in the sannyasin ranks to become one of the most well-known and most-respected devotees of Osho.
I read a lot, although I rarely read anything by Osho. I’ve read a few books by Osho disciples, none of which left much of an impression on me. The two exceptions are Hugh Milne’s bitter account of life around Osho, The God Who Failed, and Sam’s highly perceptive Life of Osho. Anando’s book, I already know, will live on in my mind and heart probably for the rest of my life. I am seventy so it won’t be that long.
So, one might, quite naturally, ask, why is Osho: Intimate Glimpses special? There are a number of reasons. Fate dictated that Anando be placed in a privileged position in regards having personal contact with Osho during the last stages of his life. It was not only a master and disciple relationship, they were quite obviously great friends. Anando succeeds in conveying the extent of that friendship in a concise, honest, touching, factual and unpretentious way in a fluent and straightforward style . Absolutely fascinating. Anando has managed to deliver insights about Osho where no other has succeeded in purely human terms. It is a deeply moving account of life with the master.
This is a very timely book because it delivers a message that will inspire many sannyasins during quite a grim period in human history. The stars shine brightest on the darkest of nights.
I have always wondered if Osho really was the victim of thallium poisoning. Anando does not lend her opinion. She simply reports how Osho felt about this and what he said in relation to being poisoned during his brief sojourn through the murky corridors of America’s penal system. It’s a pretty convincing account and I was left with the impression that Osho might well have been the victim of a vile plot to get rid of him. Will we ever know for certain?
Meanwhile, Osho is in the dental chair. Anando attended 115 sessions and the master liked the nitrous oxide turned up to the max. The descriptions of what was taking place in the dental surgery are completely MAD, could be masters and disciples or totally insane, depending on the reader’s perspective.
Here I learned something new. According to Anando’s report, Osho used laughing gas to tune into his disciples’ unconscious thoughts. Believe it or not, I can relate to this. During the early seventies, I reached a space in high dosage LSD sessions where I could clearly hear people’s thoughts. I experimented with my partner of the time by sending and receiving thoughts, instructing the other to perform specific physical actions. It worked 100%. Please don’t try this at home, unless supervised by an experienced psychonaut.
I found it noteworthy that Anando did not speculate about the possible negative physical side-effects of Osho inhaling massive amounts of laughing gas. She just reports live from situation room. I think people unfamiliar with Osho and his sannyasins would probably find this section of the book incomprehensible and speculate that everyone present had lost their marbles and maybe their teeth.
Osho loved his watches and Rolls Royces, and he was not in the least way attached to any of them. That comes across unambiguously in the book. So does the fact that Osho may well not have known about the extent of Sheela’s misdeeds and criminal activities on the Ranch. Anando does not mention anything remotely to do with Osho’s late night sessions adjusting female disciples’ chakras.
Osho’s ‘world tour’ on a Gulfstream jet comes across like fear and loathing in the cloudy sky. People in high places definitely felt threatened by Osho and went out of their way to make life very difficult for him. Of course, we already know that. But what you probably don’t know is that Laxmi was complicit in this also. I was surprised to hear that. I also wondered who was footing the bills for Osho and his inner circle’s transcontinental journeys and staying in luxury suites in five star hotels. No clues there. Must have cost a fortune. Osho was not rich. Legally speaking, he owned nothing.
From an early age books were important to Osho and this remained a constant throughout his life. Even more essential were his own publications, all 600 of them. A few interesting facts are delivered in relation to this. For example, Osho wanted his books to be published in hardback because they were meant to be read not just once but many times. A legacy for future generations. So, it was not just the space between the words that needed undivided attention but the messages communicated through his words. Interesting point. In Osho’s vision his words were definitely not just a device to distract our minds while the non-verbal was being transmitted.
And then there is Osho the man. Anando’s account of knowing the real man will touch even the most thorny of hearts. I loved those descriptions more than anything else in the book. I think there as many versions of Osho floating around as there are people who met him. Anando’s portrayal of Osho depicts the most compassionate of human beings, a man who enjoyed to laugh, joke and, according to her, play pranks. She also captures perfectly how it was to live near to the centre of the cyclone, a place where the master’s foremost task was to wake his disciples up from their unconscious sleep of ignorance. Without making too much of a drama out of it, Anando conveys very well how difficult it was at times to be around one of the twentieth century’s most enlightened and controversial figures.
All in all I highly recommend reading Anando’s Osho: Intimate Glimpses. As the book title indicates it gives glimpses into life behind the scenes with Osho, and thus sheds some light on some hitherto unknown areas of the master’s life. That said, I might add, it may well be the case that the more you know about Osho’s life the less you will know about who and what he really was and therefore he will forever remain an enigma, in the sense you will not be able to fully appreciate and understand him via the conduit of the mind. Anando makes it perfectly clear that being with the master was an affair of the heart. It might sound contradictory, but it’s good to bear that in mind.
Thank you, Anando. You’ve finally gotten around to fulfilling your role as Osho’s medium.
That`s an incredible synchronicity because I am also a medium.
At least, that is what it says on my underpants.
What does it mean then that mine say XXL? Do I get some form of bonus siddhi?
@Nityaprem
XXL?
Sounds like you have got some heavy karmas.
The good news is that you can drop them any time.
Master of Underpants.
Good that you don’t think that now you are Cavin Klein!
Ah, those are “the glimpses” around the corner…
I also read the book just a few weeks ago.
The stories around the dental chair were most intriguing to me, too:
How Anando writes that Osho has been working on the minds of all of those around him at the same time. Most masterful, indeed.
And that he liked being playful with everybody.
Actually, I like Lokesh’s extracts and highlights more than the book itself.
It seems quite amazing that someone of a Western background as an attorney and business person leaving behind successful careers did get so close to a person like Osho. But then again, the openness of Anando about her emotions during the journey seems fair and refreshing to me.
Hi Klaus, thanks for the positive feedback.
You say, “It seems quite amazing that someone of a Western background as an attorney and business person leaving behind successful careers did get so close to a person like Osho.”
I think ‘remarkable’ would be a more accurate adjective than ‘amazing’ in this case. In my case I did not leave behind a successful career to get close to Osho. But I did give up a very negative stance about gurus. I was firmly anti-guru when I first heard of Osho. Then, when I sat down at Osho’s feet on his front porch, that attitude was washed away in a tsunami of good homecoming vibes.
Today I am ambivalent about gurus, including Osho. On one hand, I see that people can become over-dependent on gurus, which leaves them walking around with a crutch for, in some cases, the rest of their lives. On the other hand, gurus can serve as a beacon of light in a dark world.
Just yesterday I said to my son, “There have always been gurus and what difference have they made to the world?” Not much in my estimate, the world is still a very dense place. But once again, on the other hand, I must be honest and say that in my own life meeting Osho, and to a lesser extent Poonjaji, benefited me greatly in my sojourn through the mountains and valleys of this world.
Remarkable – true!
The hint at the traps of the guru trip / support is valuable today. As it is possibly always.
On the plane to Bombay in 1981 there were 100s of sannyasins whereas I was a tourist; I sat right next to someone from Tuebingen, Germany. That was my first contact with and info about Bhagwan/Osho. Thus, my first impression was lively and impressive and very personal!
Also, imo the ‘helper on the path’ must not necessarily be (called) a ‘guru’; could also simply be a teacher of own experience. For instance, I would not call my meditation teachers ‘gurus’; it has always been clear to me that it is about practising, learning how to ‘DIY’ and then walk off again.
Besides, for me there never was the goal of gaining a livelihood out of the experience or knowledge gotten from such training(s).
I wish everyone a nice inner journey with good experiences with any kind of teacher on any path – including the psychonautic ones, too.
‘Guru’, at least in the western world, is a pretty loose word. Dictionary defines it as…guru…1.a Hindu spiritual teacher.
‘Spiritual teacher’ sounds fitting for me. Unhyped.
Though some taboo still in some places like on ‘seeing a psychologist due to depression’.
“Spiritual teacher” is the Dalai Lama.
What is a Master teaching?
Is he teaching anything?
Satchit,
Not all spiritual teachers are same, imo.
Some have more outstanding qualities in their respective ways. Some are also the teachers of teachers.
Thus probably some distinction in feeling, perception, categorization.
For instance, I take Christopher Titmuss as a masterly teacher as quite a few new teachers descend from his meditation retreats. Descend? Maybe not a very suiting word….
The DL, out of wisdom I guess, certainly won’t make any outrageous claims of his position. Which imo is a burden, too.
Cheers.
Yes, Klaus,
It depends on your nature. Some are attracted to one Guru, some enjoy the Guru hopping.
In front of the mirror it is all the same.
Very correct, Satchit.
For those in the end game.
For beginners it might be different. Those are the persons I feel for.
Knowing about obstacles etc.
Uppps, sorry, Satchit!
Actually, I had the ‘online meditation’ in mind, when hinting at the plight of the newcomers…
Does not fit so much to your comment!
I am not very woken up, yet….
I told myself I would never read another book about Sannyas, Osho sannyasins, Osho, by anyone, but I felt really drawn to Anando’s book, which was a moving and rewarding read, but I’m sure this time that is it. This was the last.
https://youtu.be/gdFQtbXAWdc
@ Arpana, I’m surprised that you are saying that will be the last book on Osho by sannyasins, for you. As SS has heard on the grapevine, there are many more interesting titles upcoming not only from Anando but also from others close to Osho such as another bodyguard (Prem Buddha) and household members such as Kendra. Personally I am looking forward to these books…
@Swamishanti
I didn’t mean the last to be published.
Was a slightly self-mocking remark about not reading any more of these books about Osho (I have no doubt I will. I enjoyed Anando’s).
Thanks for the detailed account and the memories, Lokesh, it is appreciated. There are a few other sannyasins close to me who have read the book and were impressed by it, though I’ve not yet had the chance of reading it myself.
I have read a few other books by sannyasins about their lives in the commune, including Hugh Milne’s ‘The God That Failed’, Sam’s ‘Life of Osho’, Tim Guest’s ‘My Life in Orange’, and Maroesja Perizonius’ ‘De Droom van Mijn Moeder’ (in Dutch). None of them corresponded that closely to my own experiences, so I accepted them just as some not-particularly-important people’s views on events, with dubious reliability of the narrators.
The thing is, having read a few of these books I am unconvinced that they add very much to the experience of sannyas. In hindsight I wouldn’t have wanted to miss getting a new name, walking around in orange, visiting the ashram, sitting at the feet of the master, listening to the discourses, however much it disturbed my later life. I still listen to Osho’s discourses most days.
Many of the books give either a negative account, or try to give a nuanced mind-driven analysis, without really coming to terms with what it means at heart to be a sannyasin. When you saw Osho you felt how clean and how radiant his energy was, and if you really were a sannyasin already you fell in love with that.
Yeah, read Tim Guest’s ‘My Life in Orange and thought he came across as a real moan bag. Poor me living in a beautiful community as a kid and where is my mamma, boo hoo.
Nityaprem mentions, with ref. to some of the Osho life stories he has read, “the dubious reliability of the narrators.”
This is certainly a point.
For example, the nitrous oxide stories have been historically played down in a variety of ways from outright denial to flimsy rationalisations by a whole bunch of people ‘in the know’ for many years, including Devageet the dentist, who changed his story several times.
Parmartha was pilloried and told by IC people that he was `risking his sannyas` (whatever that means) for mentioning and inquiring into them. Walls of silence have been maintained about many other really quite nasty and creepy matters for decades. Now Osho`s medium comes up with the “full” nitrous story. 30 years later.
Raises the question: Does the propagandist/public image/political element subtract from the credibility of the accounts written by close-up, faithful disciples?
Does the nitrous oxide story matter? If you look at the behaviour of yogis in India, they (by all accounts) also smoke prodigious amounts of charras, the gum resin of hemp. It seems to be mostly ordinary.
I remember a story by Terence McKenna where he related giving a high dose of LSD to a Tibetan lama and being told that what he saw was “the lesser lights of the bardo, the closest one can come without dying.”
NP enquires, “Does the nitrous oxide story matter?”
In the greater scheme of things definitely not. In relation to who and what Osho was, it matters on a few levels. Osho was firmly anti-drug use. Yet he obviously got into drug use himself, for whatever reasons. Actively telling seekers to drop drug use in favour of meditation and then getting into drugs himself is very contradictory.
Who was getting high? I think Osho was in great physical pain and used laughing gas to take him away from that pain. Plus the Ranch was becoming an increasingly serious place and he just wanted to have a laugh.
The mention of LSD in relation to tripping through the bardos is hardly breaking news. Suggested reading: ‘The Psychedelic Experience by Leary, Alpert and Ralph Metzner. This manual is divided into four parts. The first part is introductory. The second is a step−by−step description of a psychedelic experience based directly on the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’. The third part contains practical suggestions on how to prepare for and conduct a psychedelic session. The fourth part contains instructive passages adapted from the ‘Bardo Thodol’, which may be read to the voyager during this session, to facilitate the movement of consciousness.
Existentially experienced when used in conjunction with at least 250 mics. of pure acid. In time research into the bardos and LSD will pick up again. Very powerful and potentially life-changing.
@Lokesh wrote, “In time research into the bardos and LSD will pick up again.”
At the moment there is already a substantial psychedelic revival happening, with a lot of research going on with how psilocybin functions as a cure for depression or addiction and various new techniques such as microdosing. It seems that one dose of psilocybin under controlled conditions is as effective as six to nine months of antidepressant usage.
It’s just unfortunate that so many governments are so suppressive of anything that challenges accepted modes of thinking, like psychedelics. Many of the people who are taking part in university studies at the moment are rating their psychedelic experiences in the top 5 most transformative things that have happened to them in their lives, alongside, say, the birth of their children.
“I think of going to the Grave without having a Psychedelic Experience is like going to the Grave without ever having Sex. It means that you never Figured out what it is all about.”
(Terrence McKenna)
“I think of going to the grave without having a Psychedelic Experience is like going to the grave without ever having Sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about.”
(Terrence McKenna)
Speaking as someone for whom the psychedelic experience of LSD in my teens was a life-changing experience, I would still say that this statement of McKenna`s provides a glimpse into the messianic, delusional, arrogant and unhelpful aspects of psychedelia that enthusiasts tend to overlook. The sense of over-riding rightness, entitlement, knowing what is best for everyone on the planet and blanket condemnation of those that don`t go your way because you have ingested a powerful substance is a typical, tiresome and very common psychedelic ego trip.
As for “figuring out what it`s all about”, McKenna himself touted “Novelty theory” where he claimed he could see fractal patterns in the I Ching which predicted the end of time and was connected to the Mayan calendar and the coming transition of consciousness in 2012. Stoner nonsense, like most of his output, from a guy off his nut 24/7 for decades. Entertaining possibly, but `what it`s all about”? I honestly doubt it.
Psychedelic therapy is definitely going to go mainstream and corporate.
Whether that will cure the planet, free the people or just send more people further off their nuts into lala land as a load of guys rake in the cash, is subject of much online debate.
My money is on all four happening, plus some unintended, unforeseen consequences, too.
This kind of absolutism also does nor include the possibility of ‘seeing what it is all about’ without these substances. Imo.
We can observe the cannabis developments of which I do not have a clue. Lot of diversity in the products. Psychedselics’ use will require a supportive setting, too. Woohoo.
Yes, `set and setting` is an important part of it.
The main areas of interest and `successful research` science-wise in the psychedelic therapy world at the moment are Psilocybin for depression and MDMA for PTSD.
LSD doesn`t seem much of a focus.
I do remember having a bin liner full of magic psilocybin mushrooms up in the Welsh hills back in the day which a group of us munched our way through over a few months.
A few psychotic attacks here and there, for sure, and the occasional sitting blankly looking at the molecules in the wall wondering who would arrive first, the police, the disciples or the men in white coats.
But to be fair, I don`t remember anyone ever being depressed!
There must be something in it!
Frank,
The ‘shrooms were one of my only two experiences with such things.
Near Lake Pokhara there was a restaurant that offered ‘shrooms omelette’. After consumption a slow ‘lifting’ set in, carried me back to the garden where I did some kind of Tai Chi movements in view of the Machapuchare mountain – the sun rose in my heart – there was a glow all over. After a few minutes I felt tired, went to the hut and slept a few hours.
Positive indeed.
The other one is a different story. But ended with a long sleep as well.
“666 – is no longer alone…
Watcher of the Skies -
Watcher of all:
Come – and take your children home
Take them to a new Jerusalem!”
The Steve Hackett Band
‘Supper’s Ready’ (Genesis Revisited, Live at Royal Albert Hall)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZ9kb16djQ
Klaus,
I admire your bravery in admitting that you`re a fan of 70s prog rock.
I never got Genesis, but I did (don`t tell anyone) like Yes. I even had the YES logo sown onto my patchwork Levi loon pants. Lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GqDgYJb8I
Listening to Genesis songs for me can be a psychedelic journey…pictures in fantasyland… with the the guards of Maggog swarming around….
Yes, Yes is another one…but it was 11.45pm late last night already….
Genesis
Here is the reaction of a classical composer – Doug Helvering – to Genesis’s ‘Supper’s Ready’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfO7iplZVIM
There, he is also trying to figure out the meaning of these exemplary lyrics…
He does Yes, Frank Zappa and so many others, too.
@frank:
Agreed that McKenna’s intellectual output wasn’t the most well-reasoned. But then, reason isn’t everything, and he was an entertaining advocate for people getting a psychedelic education, as you yourself did.
I think it helps people realise that there is more out there than just this universe, it helps them to focus on something else than materialist pursuits, it helps them to be creative and many-sided.
Some good points about the psychedelic experience. I’ve read a couple of McKenna’s books and enjoyed them – he can be fun. I liked it when he got into mushroom HQ and asked what they were doing on the planet and the mushroom intelligence replied, “Things were good here when we arrived then the monkeys got out of control.”
I have read all of Leary’s books. Great guy and crazy pioneer. That said, he kinda messed things up for future generations due to his radical approach to busting the doors of perception off their hinges. Currently, things start off fresh and hopefully a bit more constructive in terms of research.
Still, ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ was fun in its time, but I am glad I am still able to drop in from time to time.
Yes, McKenna was something of a classic Blarney man who in past centuries would have been sitting in a pub regaling inebriated listeners with his tall stories about the little people in de bog and whatnot, fast-forwarded into the 20th century now ramped up on mushrooms and puff instead of whisky and Guinness, but still spinning far-out tales to his tripped-out crowd about the little people, who by now were from another planet!
I’ll have you know ‘Darby Mckenna and the Little People’ is a true story.
It is so it is.
@lokesh wrote: “I liked it when he got into mushroom HQ and asked what they were doing on the planet and the mushroom intelligence replied, “Things were good here when we arrived then the monkeys got out of control.” ”
Classic Terrence McKenna! The thing is, he was not just a ‘blarney man’, a lot of his observations had a fair measure of truth in them. I found him a breath of fresh air listening to his lectures on YouTube.
Here is an interview with Stanislav Grof who has been one of the first scientific researchers, together with Albert Hofman, into the effects of LSD application:
https://www.businessinsider.de/wissenschaft/lsd-und-ecstasy-in-der-psychotherapie-interview-mit-stanislav-grof-b/
Sorry, it is in German.
It states similar conclusions with regard to the different substances as Lokesh, Nityaprem and Frank already mentioned here.
S. Grof has written very interesting books on the landscape of the subconscious and the various discoveries to be made in a psychedelic – or holotropic (breathing method only, no substances)- therapy:
‘Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research’ (Paperback) – Stanislav Grof
‘LSD Psychotherapy (4th Edition): The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine’ – Stanislav Grof
Available at Abebooks.
One more recommendation:
‘Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy’ – Grof, Stanislav
Nityaprem asked if “the nitrous oxide story matters.” (28 March, 2022 at 9:15 am).
“If you look at the behaviour of yogis in India, they (by all accounts) also smoke prodigious amounts of charras, the gum resin of hemp. It seems to be mostly ordinary…I remember a story by Terence McKenna where he related giving a high dose of LSD to a Tibetan lama and being told that what he saw was “the lesser lights of the bardo, the closest one can come without dying.”
Nityaprem, the nitrous oxide story only matters because it caused some people too much doubt.
This was actually Osho’s fault as at a certain point on the Ranch he decided to go for a quasi Gurdjieffian ‘device’ and get a photoshoot taken while he was under the influence…in Parmartha’s words, from one of his older articles:
“Osho, (also something not always appreciated by devotees), like Gurdjieff before him, was always trying to get rid of people. Gurdjieff was keen to get rid of even high calibre ‘candidates’ such as Orage and De Hartmann, once he had seen they could not take the final leap. Osho was no different. Weeding people out was as important as attracting people. Some pupils of Gurdjieff were put off by his apparent daily addiction to alcohol, food and inattention to personal hygiene. Gurdjieff himself was pleased to get rid of them. If the picture of Osho in his space age type dental chair surrounded by pipes, even if it was furthering the work he could no longer do from a public platform, weeded out those who somehow missed him because of it, and maybe he felt it was all to the good.”
Like author of ‘Life of Osho’, Paritosh, and Parmartha, I have also given thought to this and would love to write more about ‘Notes of a Madman’ and my own theory about what exactly Osho intended to do with that, but I have not the time right now so it will have to be in a couple of weeks.
You rightly mention that Indian yogis use charas, hemp etc. And you mentioned the story of a Tibetan Lama who was given a high dose of lsd and saw the lesser lights of the bardo. This is interesting. In my understanding Osho already had the lights of the bardo, he was already dead as it were and literally ‘enlightened’ – full of that light. And that light of Osho has been perceived by sannyasins in various ways.
But perhaps more on that another time.
@ Frank.
Many years ago I discovered a pal of mine had been dealing in really heavy drugs, and I could fairly easily rationalise weed selling because I had smoked; and this guy was a great bloke, one of the best, straightforward, decent, down-to-earth. So this was one of many cognitive dissonances to impact on my young life, at a time in my life when I had a much more overbearing conscience than I do now, including the idea to judge another was immoral.
I recall hearing the mother of the Kray twins talking about her sons on the radio, and she said, ”I know what they did, I’m not making excuses for them, but they are my boys and I still love them.”
There is no way, in your ongoing life, you are constantly making absolute black and white decisions all the time about everything. Life away from writing, discussing at Sannyas News, is way more nuanced than that.
Frank, it was actually 20 years later that Anando published the story, based on interviews a decade earlier. It is a pretty crazy story and I have no reason to doubt Anando’s account. She has a no-nonsense style.
You ask, “Does the propagandist/public image/political element subtract from the credibility of the accounts written by close-up, faithful disciples?” It’s a good question and I would say it depends on a lot of factors.
Loke,
The publication date of the book is 15/7/2021. The interviews were in 2010. But I do not think that they were public.
Arps and Nityaprem,
Terrence McKenna, tripped-out Tibetan lamas, the Kray twins and their mum, dope-smoking yogis and Arps` drug-dealer mate, whilst, no doubt, a fascinating cast of characters, have nothing to do with what I wrote.
I was using the nitrous story as an example to point out the ever-shifting changes in the stories put out by `in the know` disciples (clearly for political/PR/image purposes/motivation) in order to illustrate the relevance of my question:
‘Does the propagandist/public image/political element subtract from the credibility of the accounts written by close-up faithful disciples?’
@ Frank
Has never occurred to me before, but everything to do with Osho, everything to do with anyone who has any kind of connection to him in any way, any conversation that takes place in any way, is filtered through varying degrees of conflict between subjective and objective, varying degrees of trying to be objective about our own subjectivity, and objectivity.
Frank, correct, the interviews were not public. They lay around for a decade before Waduda came across them and had a bright idea.
Mostly I took the stories ‘by people in the know’ with quite some grain of salt of my non-objective perspective.
Fact is that facts are difficult to be nailed down somehow.
Actually, Devageet was very clear on Osho’s nitrous oxide use, when he wrote on what was the old sannyasnews forum many years ago, I remember his discussion with Christopher Calder.
Like Anando, he also said that Osho was able to demonstrate that he could remain fully conscious under the influence of nitrous oxide…which was obviously in very high doses. He may not have wanted to write about the high amounts that were being used, but was very clear that Osho’s nitrous oxide use was not connected to any ‘loss’ of enlightenment, as has been wrongly interpreted by some unfortunate doubters. And I remember Devageet mentioning the Neem Karoli Baba lsd story.
I remember Devageet declaring that many people were not meditating on SN and were ‘mindfucking’.
Yet this was many years ago. As far as Anando is concerned, she actually mentioned that she had been present at the exact amount of dental sessions Osho had in Pune Two that was mentioned on SN over ten years ago.
Parmartha was apparently chastised by Amrito for a certain article he published in his paper magazine in the 1980s. And widely criticised for suggesting that Osho had developed a nitrous oxide ‘addiction’, at least whenever he had a private dental facility, and that nitrous oxide could have damaged his health. The accounts of those physically close to Osho seem to contradict this.
But I remember that P seemed want to point out that he was merely suggesting that nitrous oxide may have contributed to his demise in physical health at the end.
Feel like sharing this story here, those days I used to wear bandana in Bombay, so I continued wearing it in Poona too! Maroon in the day & white in the evening!
Sw. Manu invited me to work at the Welcome Centre and I did for nearly 3 months, then one day after lunch I was asked to attend a meeting in Krishna House where I was told I can’t wear the bandana to work, so I simply told them that I preferred to stop working.
Then the next day after morning discourse, Ayama, the co-ordinator of WC, came to me and said I could start work with the bandana.
Somehow I couldn’t, as Shashwat & me decided to travel. One of my ex-colleagues at the WC, Sw. Hans, told me the previous day that Zareen didn’t approve of the bandana, the next day that his girlfriend Chinmayo who was Neelam’s secretary at the time saidf that there was an IC meeting, between Zareen, Anando & Neelam regarding my bandana after I quit! And Neelam & Anando supported me.
Now this all feels so trivial but I am grateful for such events, if may say so.
In mid-December, when I came to know about this book, bought it, but somehow haven’t got myself to read it yet. Actually have not read any book for a very long time; shall read it when it happens!
“The objective and subjective are divided; there is a duality, a conflict, a struggle, a division. The person who is objective will miss something — he will miss the subjective. And the person who is subjective will miss something — he will miss the objective. Both will be incomplete. The scientist and the poet both are incomplete. Only the holy man is complete; only the holy man is whole. And because he is whole I call him holy.
By ‘holy’ I don’t mean that he is virtuous, by ‘holy’ I mean that he is whole. Nothing is left, everything is involved. His richness is whole: the subjective and the objective both have dissolved into him. But he is not just the total of subjective and objective, he is more. The objective is without, the subjective is within and the religious is beyond. The beyond comprehends both without and within and yet is beyond.”
Osho
The Art of Dying
Chapter 9
Chapter title: ‘I see what I need to see’
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2019.1705559
Arps, I do not really follow you here. Does your philosophical enquiry discourse/realisation/Osho quote around subjective/objective have anything to do with, or is in any way connected to my question:
“Does the propagandist/public image/political element subtract from the credibility of the accounts written by close-up faithful disciples?”
Frank,
You set me off on a train of thought about subjective and objective, in part because you wrote today, in a very considered, devoid of the inflammatory manner, to which Lokesh added a few non-inflammatory remarks about the issue of Osho and the use of nitrous oxide, which led me to observe the objective mixed up with the subjective.
The objective facts are, doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid the truth of this, Osho used a lot of nitrous oxide.
I first heard about this, began to pick up this objective information, early in 1986. I was not even vaguely put out by this information. I only remember this because the subject came up again at Sannyas News, the objective information kept coming up at Sannyas News and came up so often I became aware that my subjective responses to this information were nothing.
I am not saying those of you who find that information troubling are wrong, I am saying I wasn’t touched, so much so I ended up puzzled as to why I wasn’t touched given the number of you who most certainly were in various ways, and I can understand why. So now I’m just going deeper into my own unpacking of notions of objectivity and subjectivity.
“I’m just going deeper into my own unpacking of notions of objectivity and subjectivity.”
You`re having a laugh. That`s straight out of the random psychobabble generator. You can`t fool me, but nice try!
The endless books, the continued investigations into Osho, the everlasting conversations about who he was and how he affected those here, on these pages and very much elsewhere, are in themselves a fascination.
Any who knew of him, read him, heard him or saw him are somehow always asking questions of their reactions and responses. We may compare him to other so-called gurus and masters, judge him, praise him…and so it goes on.
I’m part of that group, less involved perhaps now, but still sometimes so touched by his words and energy.
I’ve not read many of the books mentioned, but did read Tim Guest, which was often a sad tale of a lost man. I read also the bodyguard’s book, very bitter in places.
My conclusion is not new or original, just a reaffirmation of how many were hurt by the whole episode and many gained much from the whole period. This seems to be the same with Life, some are lost on the way, others learn from one teacher and move on, some get stuck, some continue to benefit from the whole sannyasin scene.
Ultimately, we take from Life what we can, and if possible learn to value it, for every and each moment. Those doing this seem happier or at least more content than those who can’t, for some reason, learn to forgive their past, drop their pain and see life as a real ongoing mystery.
@ simond
I have developed the impression you are UK-based, but if you are not this might not mean much to you.
I recall at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s reign realising those who were against her were as caught up with her as were her supporters, that detractors and supporters danced around the maypole that was Margaret Thatcher, obsessively so in some cases. Which seems blindingly obvious once seen but was actually something of an epiphany at the time because this also took place at the same time as I was having problems regarding noise with a number of squatters who had moved into the flat above me, and dealing with them became even more of a dilemma when I realised that to even knock on their door was to become involved with them; and, I really did not, for various reason, want to be even slightly involved with them.
So I perceive to approach them and ask them to tone the noise down was a first step in forming a relationship with them (we are in relationships with those we despise as well as those we admire. Relationships form with friends and enemies).
P.S:
In the case of the squatters to some extent, the noise was my karma coming back on me because I knew they were no noisier than I had been at a similar age.
I’m not sure once again how this take of Mrs. T and squatters is relevant?
As to your suggestion about “karma coming back to me”, I’m always sceptical about the use of this word, it’s a confusing concept, very much an eastern one.
Often, as in your case, as some form of idea that when something happens, it’s “karma.” Usually with a tint of it being a punishment, or part of one’s learning, or some form of circular effect from one’s action or inaction.
I don’t preclude that some, like you, now believe in the concept but what does it really mean? It’s karma that someone is born disabled, or karma that you are punished for some action you took a minute, hour, day or year ago?
It can imply you have no choice, or it’s destiny. Very confusing, don’t you think?
There is a link between one’s actions and their effects, but it seems a lot more complex than the rather wishy-washy notion of karma.
I’d be loath to use the word, if you can. In your case, thinking it was karma that your squatters were noisy doesn’t help solve the problem, it just confirms you had noisy neighbours.
Yes, I’m a UK-based, Arpana.
@ simond
The Karma remark was a bit tongue-in-cheek actually, although I certainly came to Osho with ideas about sins coming back on me, but I don’t buy into the karma thing or ever give any consideration to the notion generally
I made a remark, which was completely off the cuff, to a friend of mine some years back, a guy who was in the early days of digging into Buddist chanting (Nam myoho renge kyo), that we spend our lives dealing with the consequences of decisions we and others have made or not made in the past, and he said that was the best definition of karma he had ever heard, which just makes me realise now I don’t really know what karma is.
If you like I’d go along with the notion of fate, but my notion of fate includes everything I might do spontaneously that takes me by surprise, and in fact, I am inclined to the view that we have a degree of free will, that we are slightly more than glove puppets.
P.S:
I’ve not really thought about this until this moment, waffling about karma is probably just another way, aspect of rationalising difficulties we are going through, as are so many ideas.
Arps, I recommend a Barry Long talk (on video) ‘Karma and How to Change It’ (50 mins., 1998). It just might clarify much of your confusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQTeGS2LlJw
Another option would be to hear ‘The Law of Life: Karma’ (67 mins.) which I find clarifies the entire topic, a revelation to me when I first came across it in 1984:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUwqWwct7Z0
@ SD
I used to frazzle enormously about free will and determinism at one time, and I don’t ever these days, which is connected to notions of karma it seems to me, and I have not considered the notion of “karma”, until today, for years. I will check the videos out though.
I associate Australians with beer and beaches and sharks, to be honest. ✌
Hi Sat,
I do love your comment to Arpana as to how these tapes ‘might clarify much of his confusion’.
I listened to the second video, which is profoundly deep and informative. I’ve known of Barry for years, but his talks will likely raise many questions as much as it may provide answers.
His whole teaching, in my opinion, was very helpful and he remains a source of inspiration. This recording was very specific to a single subject, but it covered so much of his thinking as to raise many further questions.
In the simplest of terms he summarised the law of karma as the recognition that “each individual is responsible for their own life”.
In my own experience that is so fundamentally true, but also mind-blowing. It means I can’t blame, can’t allow myself to be a victim, and can’t wallow in past pain. Simple. eh?
Yet so many teachers make claim to the simplicity of this statement without truly exploring it. In many cases such thinking is the source of all the positive, new agey, rational, money and success-oriented philosophy from the USA and elsewhere. After all, if it’s all just Me, I can do what I like and sod the rest of ‘em.
Barry didn’t mean it like this at all. But the misunderstanding around the idea of Karma and or “responsibility“ remains.
Thanks for sharing Barry’s videos, he was certainly light years ahead of the current crop of teachers out there, but interestingly has all but disappeared from the mainstream spiritual-cum- self-development world.
I’d say he’s too challenging for many, I’d also say he was rather confused at times, especially when it came to his over-sentimentality to women and his over-mythical talk of “God, Almighty” etc.
Still I am grateful to him in the same way I’m grateful to Osho. He was my next best step after graduating from Osho.
@Simond
I had a tiny little sense…that there is something of BL in you…positively.
Good transitions, not like black to white or white to black.
Although in the first vid BL seemed a bit staunch (good word?) to me…the last picture under the umbrella made up for this impression of mine.
With me it’s ins-and-outs….
‘positively’ meaning in a ‘good sense’ – no misunderstandings….
Thanks, Klaus.
BL sometimes comes across as a bit severe, and even acts a bit like a schoolmaster.
I think, like so many teachers, they get a bit frustrated at the slow pace of their students. It leaks out of them in many varying ways. It may have led Osho to the dentist’s chair to get high?
Simond,
Yeah, the patience thing I can relate to:
My Bangladeshi wife is taking another German language course…
Why should conjugating verbs be so arduous? Holy moly.
Simond, you say, “he was rather confused at times, especially when it came to his over-sentimentality to women and his over-mythical talk of “God, Almighty” etc.”
BL used to say he was “a romantic” concerning women, and in my experience no teacher has expressed their love for women, or perhaps more accurately ‘the essence of woman’, more fully or more often.
I’m not clear what you mean by “over-mythical talk of “God, Almighty” etc.”
Fun fact: It was only quite recently that I realised that when people said that BL was a “Western Master” it was actually because he liked watching old black-and-white westerns on the telly.
If you read sections of his writing and talks, he rather goes a bit overboard using phrases like the “Lord”, and “God”. It comes from his own Christian upbringing, I’d guess.
There are many references to these terms across much of his work. Ironic and confusing as he was no lover of the church or organised religions of any kind.
I’m looking forward to hearing what Arpana thought of his angle on karma
Last time out it was the Kray twins and their mum. Now we have Margaret Thatcher.
That`s some interesting archetypes getting unpacked in your subjectivity, Arps.
What they have to do with the objective world is anybody`s guess.
@ Frank.
I’m channelling you as Bhorat’s glove puppet.
https://youtu.be/53rCIbKHCeU
Ah, but Frank, if Yes are a positive subjective experience for you, how you can you account for the objective popularity of Genesis? Surely there must be a factual objective reality to the issue? Or have I simply gone subjectively insane, objectively speaking?
Simond, It`s quite a conundrum that I don`t think I will ever be able to fully unpack.
Which reminds me, I was unpacking a trunk of old memories from the attic when I found my old Noddy badge.
Yes, I must confess that I was also once a member of the Noddy club. I wore my Noddy badge with pride. It`s fair to say that Noddy changed my life. Without Noddy my life was meaningless. Yes, Noddy saved my life.
Admittedly, things got a bit sticky when all that stuff came out about Big Ears and his proclivities regarding some of the younger members of the club including Tessie Bear. And when the shit hit the fan about Noddy`s kinky sex habits and gargantuan drug intake and he and Postman Pat turned out to be heavily sexist racists, it certainly was a shock to some of the more moralistic and politically correct members who seemed to be on some kind of victim-supporting trip.
Speaking for myself, however, I must say that when Big Ears, Pat and Noddy got carted off in the back of PC Plod’s van along with the Kray twins for a long stretch on P Wing at the Scrubs, objectively speaking, it was clear what was going on.
Subjectively, however, I was surprised that it didn`t really bother me at all. I just thought ”You funny little Noddy!”
Of course, it is possible that at such a tender age I was brainwashed and that now, with my Noddy badge on my lapel, and it being the only medal I have received in my whole life, I can`t very well throw it in the bin. can I?
I always suspected Noddy was a junkie. I was more of a Rupert disciple. Into the mystic and all that cool stuff. Sooty and Sweep definitely had some weird shit going with Harry Corbett. The Wooden Tops never had anything much interesting to say.
Then I graduated to Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men. They were growing weed down at the bottom of the garden and nobody understood what ‘flub a dub’ meant until they listened to Lee Scratch Perry. Captain Pugwash?
Featured several rude character names, including Master Bates, Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy. And that Pugwash itself was Australian slang for oral sex.
@simond
Ultimately these books are just reminders of our own memories, a point of comparison which helps bring our own lives into focus and perhaps bring a new glimpse of Osho back to the present.
I think it’s a pity that Osho’s notoriety has overshadowed the sannyasin’s way of life as a contribution to modern society. Sannyasins are special people and often don’t get the credit they deserve.
But as you say, nobody gets out without a few traumas. It’s how you cope with them that makes all the difference.
When I am talking to others about meditation, spiritual paths incl. Bhagwan/Osho I often come around to express my admiration for people having such courage: going into something unknown, trusting their feelings, taking risks, all the mental plus physical effort required to walk the walk.
However, my guess is that a larger scale recognition from outside people depends also on whether quality can be seen in the efforts made by sannyasins. Which – guessing again – is difficult to see from the outside.
Certainly true. Often people are still judged by their standing in society: are you a professor, a company director, a member of the local council? The importance of spiritual people has kind of diminished, not least because many spiritual people see it as a form of spiritual materialism to put themselves across like that.
The lifetime journey that many sannyasins have gone through doesn’t show up on that scale but one would hope it would manifest as wisdom.
I see Anando does groups to silence the mind.
No mention of Osho. No more a medium?
“About Anando
Anando is one of the women on the ASHA Foundation, UK, list of 240 influential, inspiring women from all walks of life and from around the world who are outstanding in their fields. She has over 40 years of experience practising and working with meditations and transformative techniques. She worked closely with mystic traditions for many years where she developed her skills as a highly sensitive course leader. Anando was formerly a lawyer and business manager, so she understands well the tensions and stresses involved in everyday life. She has published books in English, Italian, Chinese and Taiwanese, with forthcoming editions in French and Russian, as well as a number of guided meditation audio works.”
@ Satchit.
Do you always let everybody know you have a connection to Osho?
I am not such a famous disciple as she is, Arps.
She must have her reasons. Maybe mentioning Osho’s name would scare off some customers.
@ Satchit
Just a thought: If being involved with Osho all these years and meditating etc. has had any meaningful impact upon her, she likely wouldn’t be seeing herself as a ‘famous’ sannyasin, a special sannyasin, certainly not Sannyas News ‘special’, no way.
Arps, how she sees herself is not my cup of tea. Here in Bavaria one would say it’s not my beer.
So you see: different folks….
Anando no more a medium?
Probably a case of middle-aged spread.
Anando looks well for her age, with not a bit of middle-age spread to be seen. I have joined her fan club and await my badge and pointed Anando club member’s hat.
You know, Anando openly admits that she had no idea what Osho meant by saying she would be his medium. I like that. Honest.
Makes you wonder if Osho was planting a few seeds for the movement for after he was gone. Somebody with a more Gurdjieffian rascal nature might have made a career out of a pronouncement like that….
Exactly.
Well, meditation in the corporate world makes spiritual exploration a question of quantity only:
https://insighttimer.com/work
“In 2020, our community meditated for 6 billion minutes, 6x more than Calm.”
Gotta keep moving.
The meditation apps are coming.
You might want to take a look at Sam Harris’s app ‘Waking Up’ if you’re looking at meditation apps. It seems expensive at first, but when you dig deeper you find they actually give away free memberships to those who can’t afford the 100 dollars a year subscription, and they continually add to the content.
Of course the introductory set of guided meditations is a bit meh, but it’s worth going to the effort for the rich set of peripheral content.
Thanks for the hint, Nityaprem.
I am looking at these more like a survey. But there can be learning anywhere!
Another one for your survey then: the Plum Village app from the followers of Thich Nhat Hanh. Lots of mindfulness and meditations, and free.
Thanks! I am curious to find out how they are doing the virtual taking care of the individual online.
Being someone who has been to temples, meditation centres, living teachers of various kinds I have no feeling for ‘online meditation’.
Especially if there are thousands of persons registering.
My experience is that a lot of online meditations are conducted through Zoom, so that people can have the impression of sitting together in silence. Often there is a little discussion before and after the session, but usually there is not time for real individual teaching.
@Klaus wrote: “For those in the end game. For beginners it might be different. Those are the people I feel for. Knowing about obstacles etc.”
It was written in a completely different context but it made me think. A book like Anando’s would be approached very differently by a beginner than by a seasoned sannyasin. After all, sannyas is an affair of the heart, and the words in books go into the mind, causing heartfelt reactions through our prejudices and preconceptions.
I’m not sure if I would recommend a beginner, or even an experienced sannyasin still in love with Osho, to read these books. Instead, why not read the poetry of Hafiz or Rumi, things which activate the heart?
Nityaprem,
Yes. It is a tuning-in. Falling in tune. Question for oneself is then:
“What am I falling in tune with or what can I fall in tune with?”
When the mind is silent.
To me, nature is the thing I can fall in tune with.
Stories with words can be true, twisted, emotional, interpreted…speculated upon.
Yesterday, I watched on the utube a ceremony on ‘Mahamudra instructions’ by Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche…a few minutes into the video eyes closed…I was gone…
So that is also something I can fall in tune with.
Or poems, as you mentioned. Or some writing that appeals.
And then action and all the rest come back….
Forgot the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpe5UGRK_qY
This can certainly be very boring to others…and mind starts wandering off to wherever….
Klaus, it certainly is a tuning-in…and then a dropping out into sleep, as happens to my father frequently these days, he listens to podcasts just before going to bed. The dude is now 74, so a little snoozing is to be expected.
Does it even make sense to be Osho’s medium? If he is dissolved into the universe, one can hardly expect to be able to call him into your body.
Maybe it is better if we are indeed expected to be lights unto ourselves, that with a little meditation, a little inspiration and a little perspiration we do our own thing.
Signed.
Well earned rest…as I guess we all took a lot of effort…at this age or that age…having caught this ailment or that ailment…etc.
Does it even make sense to be Osho’s medium?
Not really, but it makes perfect non-sense.
Osho uses the metaphor of radio waves to explain how mediumship works. This is a modern interpretation which would not have meant anything to people before the invention/discovery of radio waves (1899?). Before that, ie most of human history, ideas of mediumship would have been around the channelling of specific people, gods or animals.
Osho`s rap about mediums is fairly standard Theosophical/post-Theosophical psychic-world/ghosts/spirits stuff. That is, ancient ideas updated with modern scientific gloss.
I would say that the idea of being possessed by entities other than ourselves is very easy to feel for the simple reason that our idea about our “I” is quite limited. We don`t control our own physical functions or thoughts for the most part, they mostly happen outside our sense of “I”. Thus, to speculate that this is being done by entities, energies or frequencies is quite easy and believable as a result.
Reports of the experience of being taken over by an entity which then speaks through the receiver have been quite persistent throughout the ages. I have no doubt that some of these experiences are genuine although the opportunity for fraud in order to gain money, power and sex is rife in the psychic world. Whether the genuine experiences have value or what type of value they might have is, of course, another question altogether.
As for Osho and Anando. Towards the end, leading up to the medium story, Osho believed he was being attacked by black magicians, he was “accessing his disciples’ thoughts” through use of nitrous, he gave Devageet all that stuff about the Akashik records being in the teeth which Devageet didn`t take as a `device`, he made a business out of it. So mediumship post-death may have been something he believed in.
Barring that it was all a bunch of pranks and devices, which seems a stretched explanation to me, I think it`s fair to say that throughout his speaking/books Osho does reference/acknowledge the reality of much of so-called psychic/paranormal phenomena as being real.
It really depends how much you personally believe in spirits, entities, mediums, the paranormal and so on. It’s very counter to the scientific paradigm, you would have to go back to a dualist worldview where there is another, spiritual world and then it might hold water.
In a way everything that science has learned about the way the physical world works extends our view of nature, of the Tao, that-what-is. These kind of views of entities and gods do not really gel so well with that, the second is not a logical extension of the first.
I think as moderns influenced by science and rationality, maybe the way we see gods and entities is either as psychological parts of ourselves that are outside the remit of conscious control (in everyday parlance, we all might struggle with our `demons` or unconscious drives) or as representations, powerful happenings from outside ourselves like disease, natural disaster or societal pressures.
For example, maybe having anger issues or getting into a fight or even a war was once seen as struggling with possession by Mars or Wotan, the ghosts of violent ancestors or the devil himself. Maybe Eros is still playing mischievous havoc with us, but we might now see it as “relationship problems” or “sex-addiction” etc.
Our explanations of powerful forces often allude to supra-rational or even seemingly supernatural forces. “I don`t know what possessed me”, “What has come over you?”, “It just wasn`t like him to do that.”
This is a simple and workable way of looking at things and probably in tune with Taoistic attitudes.
Creating complex structures to explain everything in terms of hidden forces in the world, be it worlds of occult or gnostic forces and demi-gods or the theory of reincarnation make for interesting idea palaces, but are they really anything other than that?
“Our explanations of powerful forces often allude to supra-rational or even seemingly supernatural forces. “I don`t know what possessed me”, “What has come over you?”, “It just wasn`t like him to do that.” ”
Perhaps all such ‘psychic possession’ is not due to supernatural forces, but is the result of alive human beings being ‘invaded’, ‘taken over’, to a greater or lesser degree, by the ‘renegade’ emotions, not of ‘gods’ or ‘the Devil’ etc. but of previous humans who’d been unable to face up to, understand and hence gain control over/dissolve them, and which have consequently remained as a huge psychic ‘residue’ collected over many thousands of years, available to, in effect, enter and exploit the emotionally vulnerable (in the broadest sense of the word, not just the ‘mentally ill’, also the so-called ‘normal’).
In other words, it’s all part of the vast field of unenlightened human nature that feeds on human weakness. I might have suffered a bout of such ‘possession’ this afternoon when I allowed myself to be ‘taken over’ by rage – at the relatively trivial malfunction of an online site that refused to allow me to pay a very small sum to subscribe for a month – but after I’d had a poor night, after a couple of tiring days without enough food, ending with a belly problem last night.
(The above is an attempt to summarise Barry Long’s take on this, which of course he explains much more clearly, in more detail).
SD, that`s the kind of thing I was referring to.
Being inhabited by the confused, unenlightened energy of forefathers/previous unfulfilled humanity, possessed by archaic gods, being in the grip of a psychological complex, having anger issues or challenges, being in the grip of an archetype, being browbeaten by the madness of the tech world. What is the difference, really?
They are all ways of painting a picture of the same event. Any picture that has potential to help in seeing the event in a broader/different sense and thus giving some kind of way through is to be welcomed by us humans, for sure.
Yes, Barry Long comes away with very creative ideas about how more evolved humans influenced lesser evolved humans in the year dot, when chimera and great temples were built.
A relatively well-known Gurdjieff quote says, “It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.”
This could be taken to mean that we are in a situation whereby we are constantly possessed by different personalities, all of whom call themselves ‘I’. Some might be benign, some might not. Some may seem familiar, others not. Different situations can provoke the appearance of different personality types.
If one follows such an idea it is difficult to know when there is a case of real possession or not. When Jesus was requested to exorcise a spirit from one possessed, he asked, ‘Who are you?’
“My name is Legion,” came the reply, “for we are many.”
I reckon that is the position we are all in, although few would care to admit it. Leaving me with the question, ‘What possessed me to write this?’
Reminds me of the book of a German philosopher.
Title: ‘Who Am I and If So How Many?’
Lokesh writes:
“Different situations can provoke the appearance of different personality types.”
Different situations and different locations, too.
This appeals to me. Usually, when I write something about my personal experience here, most of the time I have in mind that the sharing will help me to integrate and better sort out the happenings.
I wrote on some other thread my feelings of overflowing love that came in 2021 during a namaz (Muslim prayer) at my relatives’ place in Bangladesh; which then was followed by the picture of Sayagi U Ba Khin emerging from my heart. So, this was a kind of (positive) possession, then.
Another experience was when I in 2009 went to Bangladesh for the marriage and I stayed at the hotel two days before, I had a dream of Mohammad and his grave in Medina and his companions. This may have occurred due to the inspiring location – Bangladesh – and my happiness due to the upcoming event.
Longer before, in the 90s, when meditating on my sofa in Germany I had pictures of a variety of Eastern teachers – some of whom I did not know before or even disliked – coming into my mind. All of them were standing or sitting and silently looked at me. Only Shirdi Sai Baba looked at me, turned around and walked away disappearing into the distance; this picture occured several times over the years.
During the Sufi work very often I felt the presence of my teacher as if he was hovering over me – and seeing how I was doing. My mind then greeted him saying, “Hello, Herr Doctor.”
This is similar to how I perceive Bhagwan/Osho at times: as if he is looking down on me, smilingly, knowingly.
Then the sensation/image passes away again.
No words were ever spoken.
In the vipassana period in Myanmar I had a few pictures of my adolescence of between 10-12/13 years. Then only physical pain for weeks and weeks. Then nothing.
Dynamics unexplainable by me.
Nowadays, I get immediate emotional reactions to challenging situations. There, the Barry Long explanation seems very fitting: accumulations of wherever, whoever, whenever. I just blast out my words, sometimes charged with emotion as I am not in a position to ‘keep it in’.
A few years ago I did some esoteric trainings “aura reading”, “finding one’s spiritual guide”, “mind journeys with priests of Atlantis”.
However, I felt very uncomfortable with the pictures conjured – like with the effort of the I creating them myself – which seemed like a senseless activity when resting in pure consciousness was the (better?) option.
Listening to the channellings of the coaches my gut feeling/reaction was “these mind creations have no meaning for me.”
What do I prefer for tuning in? That is my point: I prefer ‘turning off the radio’ when it feels funny.
I am wondering how the mediums ‘choose’ which kind of personality they are going to channel. They might get into a different channel just by chance or slight deviation…
Satchit might state that “it depends on your personal nature: some like to stay with one personality, others enjoy personality hopping.”
Cheers. Long comment.
Addition:
It seems that one can only in hindsight describe what one has perceived.
And then work it out, integrate it, transform it, sublimate it. Whatever.
OTI:
Different people around the world are claiming to be receiving messages from Osho as mediums. Others say they are “channelling” him. On his last day in his body, Osho specifically chose you to be his medium. In fact, his very last words are…”Anando will be my medium.” So what is your response to these reports?
Anando:
Yes, I heard there are some sannyasins in Switzerland claiming to be receiving messages from Osho. Osho speaks about this in ‘The Hidden Splendour’. In response to his old and much-loved disciple, Sarjano, who said that he heard a message from Osho.
Osho says:
“It is just your imagination, Sarjano…You love me, and you are so full of me that even if you speak in your imagination, you may hear my voice. But remember one thing: except for silence, everything else is your imagination – howsoever beautiful…My path is not the path of imagination. It is the path that does not use the mind at all. Imagination and projection and hallucination and illusion – they are all parts of the mind.
My simple approach is transcendence of mind. So only when you start seeing absolute nothingness, utter silence, can you see that I am very close by. In that silence you have heard me. In that nothingness you have seen me. But if you see something, if you hear something, then it is your imagination – you have fallen from the beyond, back into the mind.”
From an interview, OTI and Anando, 1991.
I`m not sure that it was imagination on the part of these guys in Switzerland who claimed they were channelling messages from Osho.
I would say it was more lack of imagination. I mean, trying to get sannyasins to listen to them by saying “We are getting messages from Osho”, it`s a pretty low-level, cheap psychic trick. End-of-the-pier level crystal-ball grifting.
No doubt they got some mugs to sign up to give them kudos, attention and money etc.
Oy vey.
Even lower-level if they actually believed the messages themselves!
Osho spent a lifetime talking about all and everything. Then he dies and needs to send some messages through someone. Makes you wonder what he omitted to say while alive that is so important that he now needs a medium.
Extracts from Anand Yogi`s new book: ‘Swami Bhorat: Intimate Glimpses’
“Only truly spiritually advanced individuals from the browned and hallowed turf of glorious India who can offer clear proof of their being mediums by presentation of correct holey underwear, such as Anand Yogi, can truly channel the essence of divine wisdom that comes from the beyond and the behind! Swiss and Italian baboons with over-active imaginations which are nothing but mind need not apply!
Due to diligent occult meditation practices over many lifetimes, Anand Yogi is more than capable of channelling both the Nine Unknown Men of Mighty Bhorat and Swami Bhorat himself!
Also, he has, under very hush-hush conditions, also, on occasion, channelled Osho himself! The transcripts of these communications which took place in the Bungabungalore Mystery School godown on April 1st 1999 are just now beginning to come to light:
“Oh, I forgot to mention it, but my last will and testament is written on the back of a 10 rupee aerogram stuffed down the back of my wardrobe where I shoved it one night after a particularly heavy session on the hippy crack.”
“You remember all that stuff about me being enlightened and so on? Well, it was all bollocks, I just made it all up. I was only in it for the cars, the watches and the birds. So long, suckers!”
Of course, these have never been released to the general public as the unconscious masses would not be able to recognise or decipher what a masterful device designed for humanity`s awakening they constitute!
Yahoo!”
Very fitting quote (@Satchit 9am).
If that is not clarity, then what is?
@Nityaprem 1st April 6.35pm:
“Does it even make sense to be Osho’s medium? If he is dissolved into the universe, one can hardly expect to be able to call him into your body.”
From my understanding of reading Anando’s book, it is pretty clear what Osho meant by “Anando will be my medium”. He was obviously talking about the book he asked her to write, his “Bible” with onion skin covering, which outlines his vision. He dictated her some of it and expected her to fill in the gaps.
This is what he meant by Anando being his “medium”. Anando hasn’t come round to finishing this book yet, perhaps she is waiting for the right time.
As far as Anando is concerned she has said that no one channels Osho, yet she has also been clear when talking about Osho’s Presence which is still felt by more experienced sannyasins. I will try to find the article.
Shanti, by “more experienced sannyasins” do you mean those who spent much time close to him and/or those who were at many discourses, darshans, perhaps even Ranch drive-bys, including those who have been sannyasins since the early days, or those who are more ‘spiritually evolved’, whatever their personal history? Or is there another category apart from these?
And are you yourself in any of these groups?
I meant sannyasins that are ‘closer’ to Osho. In the spiritual sense, not the physical sense.
Nityaprem, 1 April, 2022 at 6:35 pm:
“Does it even make sense to be Osho’s medium? If he is dissolved into the universe, one can hardly expect to be able to call him into your body.”
Check out this interview with Anando from 1991:
OTI: But Osho also says that people who love him will be in contact with him even when he leaves the body, doesn′t he?
Anando: Yes. But he is talking about his presence, not about “messages” for people. It is said to a group leader who asks whether he is deluding himself about being a vehicle for Osho – allowing his love and silence to pour through him when he works.
Osho responds:
“If you have loved me, even when I am not in the body there can still be a contact. For love it makes no difference.
That is a totally different phenomenon from someone claiming to be getting messages for people from Osho. As a vehicle for Osho, the sannyasin therapist is not claiming to be dialling Osho on the hot line and acting as a telephone operator. He is simply being who he is, and sharing whatever wisdom he has embodied as a disciple. If he is sincere he will say something like: “This is my understanding of Osho but don′t depend on me. Start your own search, read Osho′s books, watch his video discourses, do his meditations and discover your own connection with the Master.” So the therapist will not create any dependence by putting himself between the person and Osho; he will not say “I have a message for you from Osho.” Priests have been doing that for thousands of years because their whole business depends on it. But a meditator needs no intermediary.
Anando – Osho Times International (OTI) of May 1, 1991)
To get back to the subject a little, specifically the idea of a `medium`. Although Anando had no idea what he was talking about, he himself did discourse about such things:
Q: What is the difference between entering another body and psychic mediumship? How does one enter into a medium?
“Actually, the experiments are contrary to each other. In the former case, a person enters into another person’s body, while in the case of mediumship, the medium allows a person to enter his body. These are two different things. The technique of leaving one’s body and entering into another can be called the male technique; one has to enter another body. Mediumship is a female technique. Here, the medium will simply remain receptive and invite someone to enter his body. This is much simpler, and the souls invited by the medium will in most cases be bodiless. Rarely will an embodied soul ever respond to a medium’s invitation. The disembodied souls which are moving around us….
We are not the only ones sitting here; there are others present here as well. Since they are bodiless, their presence makes little difference to us. Their presence can be understood in terms of how the radio works. If you turn on a radio you can catch the Delhi station, but when the radio was not turned on, do you think the Delhi station was not transmitting or that the sound waves were not passing through here? They were, but we were not aware of them. There was no medium to connect us with the sound waves. The radio functions as a medium. It puts us in touch with the sound waves.
So the individuals who work as mediums function on the same principle as a radio does. They perform the act of tuning. Their presence makes it possible for any of the wandering souls to enter them. But these are all bodiless souls, and these souls are always eager to enter a body.
There are reasons for it. The biggest reason is that bodiless souls – we can call them ghosts – their desires, their passions are the same as those of any ordinary mortal, any embodied soul. However without being in the body, without the help of the body, the desires of these bodiless souls are never satisfied – they can’t be.
For example, a ghost wants to make love to someone; for that it needs a body. The ghost carries the desire but is helpless without the body. When it comes closer to a human body, the ghost passes through it. Our body offers no resistance to it. The spirit wants to be in the body, it longs to enter a body.
The spirit succeeds in entering the body when out of fear a person contracts from within. In a state of fear your consciousness does not cover as much space – you shrink. A vacuum is created in your body. In that fearful state the spirit enters the vacuum. Generally, people think ghosts are born out of fear, or that fear itself is the ghost. None of these beliefs is true. A ghost has its own existence. A person in a state of fear makes it possible for the ghost to manifest – he becomes the medium. And since it is the ghost that enters into his body, problems are bound to arise.
The mediumship you are talking about is the consequence of a voluntary invitation given to a soul. Someone on his own creates a space within and invites a spirit to enter. The sole technique of mediumship is that you create a space within and invite a spirit present in the vicinity to enter your body. Since this is done voluntarily, there is not much risk involved in it. And since it is done purposely one knows the method of calling the spirit as well as the device for sending it back. Nevertheless all of this is possible only if the medium is receptive, and it works only on the ordinary bodiless souls.
The risk increases if a soul that is already in the body is to be called, because if I were to call an embodied soul to enter a medium, the body of the man being called will fall unconscious. Very often, when someone falls unconscious, it is taken as an ordinary state of unconsciousness. But many times it is not the case – it is a situation where the individual’s soul has been called somewhere. Hence it is highly risky to treat the individual at that time – it is best to leave his body alone. But we have no knowledge of all this.
Up to now, it has not become clear to science when a state of unconsciousness is of the normal kind, and when it is caused by the soul’s moving out of the body. So the phenomenon is the same but of a different nature. In the case of mediumship the soul is invited in the body; in another, the soul is moved out of the body.”
Osho, ‘And Now And Here’, Ch 13, Q 6
Good to bring the thread back to the original theme…::))
Why would sannyasins need an intermediary to contact Osho?
Does this increase the energy available?
So many questions.
Maybe someone experienced in physics can calculate the effects and correlations for us?
Well, as e=mc2, and we know that e is energy, m is matter and c is consciousness, then we can work out from the fact that a dead body was found in 1884 to be 4 grams lighter than a live body, and consciousness has been estimated to be 45 conscions per unenlightened human, then we can solve for e to be roughly 7.7 joules, or enough energy to raise the temperature of a litre of water by 0.005 degrees. Involving a medium would double the amount of consciousness, and so raise the final energy output by a factor of 4.
(This was your daily serving of humbug on 1st April, 2022).
U lost me at e=mc2
April, April!
Klaus,
Anyone experienced in physics will tell you that Osho is dead and does not exist anymore. Therefore, any ‘energy’ supposedly felt or mediated from him is purely in the imagination.
@ swami anand anubodh 16 April, 2022 at 6:09 pm
Are you seriously suggesting there is no immediate energy in this?
https://youtu.be/-DGY9HvChXk
She died in ’59.
What is the literal meaning of “Strange Fruit”?
The “strange fruit” of the poem’s title refers to these lynching victims, the gruesome image of “black bodies” hanging from “southern trees” serving as a stark reminder of humanity’s potential for violence as well as the staggering cost of prejudice and hate.
Arpana
Is there something wrong with the link? Doesn’t connect here….
@ Klaus.
Here’s another version:
https://youtu.be/wHGAMjwr_j8
‘Strange Fruit’ – Billie Holiday
Got it now…lovely voice of Billie Holiday. Sad story.
@Anubodh, 16 April, 6.09pm
Ah, those worldlings.
I guess that imagination has to be helped along until one can see for oneself.
We are lucky to have such teachers.
@ Swami Anand Anubodh
Apart from that, imagination has its uses.
When I am asked for directions I can bring an image of the route to my mind’s eye, my imagination, and use the image to give directions.
When I am painting I see possibilities in my imagination and use those that feel right.
Imagination is just ”thinking” in pictures.
“I will be there, and if you meditate rightly whenever your meditation is exactly tuned, you will see me. So that will be the criterion of whether you are really meditating or not. Many of you will be able to see me more intensely than you can see me right now, and whenever you see me, you can be certain that things are happening in a right direction. So this will be the criterion. By the end of this camp, I hope ninety per cent of you will have seen me. Ten per cent may miss because of their minds. So if you see me don’t start thinking about it, what is happening, don’t start thinking whether it is imagination or a projection or am I really there. Don’t think, because if you think immediately I will disappear; thinking will become a barrier. The dust will come on the mirror and there will be no reflection. Whenever the dust is not there, suddenly you will become aware of me more than you can be aware here right now. To be aware of the physical body is not much awareness; to be aware of the non-physical being is real awareness.
You must learn to work without me. You cannot be here always, you will have to go far away; you cannot hang around me forever, you have other works to do. You have come from different countries all over the world; you will have to go. For a few days you will be here with me, but if you become addicted to my physical presence then rather than being a help it may become a disturbance, because then when you go away, you will miss me. Your meditation should be such here that it can happen without my presence, then wherever you go the meditation will not be in any way affected.
And this too has to be remembered: I cannot always be in this physical body with you; one day or another the physical vehicle has to be dropped. My work is complete as far as I am concerned. If I am carrying this physical vehicle, it is just for you; some day, it has to be dropped. Before it happens you must be ready to work in my absence, or in my non-physical presence which means the same. And once you can feel me in my absence you are free of me, and then even if I am not here in this body the contact will not be lost.
Osho
‘A Bird on the Wing’
Chapter 1: ‘Empty Your Cup’
But you remain in the past; the past goes on hanging around you, the hangover never ends. And rather than coming to the present, the hangover of the past pushes you towards the future. So either you are in the memories or you are in your imagination. These are the two ways to miss life; otherwise there is no need to miss life. Just drop out of memories and out of imagination. Past is no more, future is not yet; both are non-existential. All that exists is the present, the now. Now is God.
Enter the doors of the now and all is revealed — instantly revealed, immediately revealed. Life is not a miser: it never hides anything, it does not hold anything back. It is ready to give all, totally and unconditionally. But you are not ready.”
Osho
‘Ah, This!’
Chapter 6: ‘Try It My Way’
Anubodh,
You are trying to understand the phenomenon of what we call Osho with physics and you state that “Osho is dead and doesn’t exist anymore…Therefore, any energy supposedly felt or mediated from him is purely in the imagination.”
Anubodh, this simply demonstrates that you have not developed any consciousness through meditation. Superconsciousness can not be understood by contemporary physics. Enlightenment means that the physical realm, matter has been transcended. That presence doesn’t disappear when the body dies.
And this is insulting the intelligence of sannyasins who do feel Osho since he has left the body. It also means that you have zero trust in Osho who stated with confidence that his presence would still be available when he left the body.
SS, there are as many opinions on metaphysics as there are people. It seems to me there is very little point in debating it, it is highly subjective and based on what individual people feel and perceive. People tend to just talk about their opinions as if they are facts and that is not so, it is healthy to be aware of what are only opinions and treat them as such.
I remember Osho also saying that he would disappear like a dewdrop falling into the ocean. Now to me that means that as an individual presence he may no longer exist. Who can tell? Guess we will have to wait until we die to find out.
NP,
Osho was very clear about it and said many times that the connection would be there after he left the physical plane.
Enlightenment means going beyond death, transcending the physical dimension.
Authentic enlightened ones are well aware that the Presence and the same transmission will be there after death to tune into. Nisargaddata Maharaj also said the same thing.
If a seeker such as yourself has yet to develop any consciousness, then you have only your imagination regarding such thing.
And then you can project that others are just like you; similar to when a child covers his face with a hand, and peeks through the fingers and in his perception he believes that no-one else can see him as he is hiding his face.
What you are doing is a simple projection that everyone else is like you.
The reality of a conscious meditator is really quite different, the only thing you may be able to compare raising consciousness with may be a drug experience, if you have ever had any. But those drug experiences are always only temporary. With superconsciousness developed through meditation it is different, and ongoing permanent space.
This also shows a simple lack of experience on your part.
We all have different experiences, some have felt Osho’s presence after he left the body very strongly in Pune, some in other Osho centres. Others, such as Parmartha’s meditation circle in London, began to feel his presence with them there.
Some, such as myself, instantly recognised his presence many years ago around enlightened sannyasin teachers, yet this was a RECOGNITION – not any kind of belief. I had already visited Pune ashram twice when I was younger and instantly recognised that energy around those sannyasins years later. I was not expecting any such thing to happen. Yet in my case this was after years of deep meditation and living in superconsciousness and experience with other masters from traditions other than Osho.
The idea that when sannyasins talk about having a connection to Osho is simply belief or creative mind or a delusion is simply absurd and also insults the intelligence of those who mention that – and most will stay quiet and not talk about those things.
I suggest a simple experiment: for 24 hours, try to imagine that Osho is helping you and you can feel his presence. And you will see how ridiculous this idea actually is.
In my case, feeling Osho’s presence happened completely unexpectedly and was not the result of any kind of belief.
SS, I’m not interested in experiments with the imagination or projection. Such things are often not beneficial, leading to all kinds of shadows in the mind which are just maya, illusion. There is a difference between being receptive and quiet, and imagining and actively projecting.
If you felt something, and it was a spontaneous event originating from receptivity, then I am very happy for you. But I wouldn’t get attached to the experience, or go looking for a repeat. At best, these things are a blessing, at worst they can be the start of a period of mental instability. And what was good for you is not necessarily going to be good for someone else.
What you are doing is a simple projection that everyone else is like you. There are informed sceptics out there, people who follow the Buddha’s advice to test the teachings because Osho was not always correct in what he said, however talented and impressive he was. Just as there are people for whom meditation is not beneficial.
My personal experience of Osho was that he had a tremendous aura, a wonderful and clean energy, and he was a great speaker, but he was not infallible and sometimes got carried away.
Perhaps Barry Long put it truly and simply when he said that when someone you love dies they go inside you.
Re the BL statement:
He said it so simply, without the need for clever spiritualisation.
Which he illustrated by describing in detail his wife’s illness and death and the aftermath in his autobiography, ‘My Life of Love and Truth’.
@SD 11.18hrs
This is refering to…Sadhguru?
No, Klaus, to Barry Long!
Oh, thanks!
NP wrote:
“If you felt something, and it was a spontaneous event originating from receptivity, then I am very happy for you. But I wouldn’t get attached to the experience, or go looking for a repeat. At best, these things are a blessing, at worst they can be the start of a period of mental instability. And what was good for you is not necessarily going to be good for someone else.”
You misunderstand, Nityaprem. I mentioned some things, about experiencing Osho in the here and now – after he left his physical form.
It wasn’t a one-off experience, something that one could get attached to, or go looking for a repeat. We all have different experiences in the spiritual world, as far as connection to Osho is concerned, as I recall Anando saying in an Australian documentary ‘Bhagwan: The Spiritual Terrorist’, as I think that film is named, “everyone has their own individual connection with the Master”.
So some will experience Osho’s presence very intensely at certain times, for example Veena wrote about her experience of feeling Osho very strongly when she visited Bodhidharma’s cave in China, others feel his presence that comes and goes, a few sannyasins have written about this in their books, Osho’s bodyguard Devakant, for example, and other sannyasins are feeling his presence as an ongoing experience, all of the time. Ma Dharm Jyoti , Chaitanya Keerti, Yog Chinmaya, Osho’s enlightened bodyguard Vasant Swaha, and many others.
I also fall into this category for the last couple of years. It is not something that comes and goes, not an experience that I can get attached to. It is my experience all of the time. I am immersed in his consciousness all of the time.
You state, “At best, these things are a blessing, at worst they can be the start of a period of mental instability.”
Here, you are likely projecting from your own experience of mental instability. We all project, the mind often unconsciously imagines that others are in the same boat as ourselves.
In your case you wrote that you had a mental breakdown, and some period of mental unstability.
In my case, this has not ever been the case. And if someone has come into contact with Osho or another master it is in fact a great blessing, there is nothing for you to be afraid of. If someone has this inner connection to a Osho it will not lead to mental instability. This kind of thing is not understood by modern science.
The problem is just people’s lack of experience. Not everyone is meant to experience Osho in the same way, and even when some sannyasins/ex-sannyasins have developed some consciousness, if they don’t have that inner connection they may not understand that it is possible.
@Lokesh who wrote:
”I had a period of acute mental instability during 1975 in Poona One. It was a frightening experience. Like being on a bad acid trip that lasted for weeks. In retrospect, I am glad I went through that hellish time. Why? I suppose it taught me not to be afraid of the dark and that ultimately it is all good.”
I had a similar experience with TM before I discovered my connection to Osho.
Having had a number of years’ experience of TM, Arps, I find your report a bit strange as it never affected me so adversely, any discomfort usually being connected to a need to use the energy the practice tended to create rather than holding on to it. Just basic energy management stuff. Having said that, I do recall hearing that others have reported unwelcome upheavals from doing TM.
Do you think such disturbance might have been due to your not having confronted and dealt with certain emotional realities in your system, ie it was ‘just’ the effect of suppression (pre-sannyas/therapeutic catharsis etc.)?
@Lokesh said, “I see it as a plus to have undergone a mental breakdown”
I would agree, although not everyone develops themselves afterwards. It is the wounded healer archetype, the person who heals from a deep and personal knowledge of the injury. Shamans are often very familiar with it, because they are chosen because of suffering from “shamanic illness” in many traditions. It is seen as a predisposition towards contact with the other world.
Osho said many times:
Be aware of the power of imagination!
A follower of Krishna will see Krishna.
A follower of Jesus will see Jesus.
The power of imagination runs very deep. The ability to see oneself as superior is also pretty endless.
Religionists like Swamishanti tell us, inform us, remind us, declare to us how enlightened they are and how they are deeper and more conscious than the rest of us, through their highly developed meditation practises. In this way they confuse a memory of feeling Osho, ie their imagination, with reality.
In this sense their arrogance and superiority complex are precisely the same as those of Christians, who belief their God actually listens to their prayers, or fanatical Muslims believe in stoning to death those who don’t agree with them.
The tendency to mythologise, and to seek safety in one belief or another then provides the opportunity for fanaticism and war. Just look at Russia now, who use war and as a justification to cleanse the world of non believers.
Swamishanti and others like him are planting the same seeds of extremity; only this time they use Osho and his presence as the seed.
As I say, there is simply no end to human stupidity and ignorance
Simond wrote, “The power of imagination runs very deep.”
“The ability to see oneself as superior is also pretty endless. Religionists like Swamishanti tell us, inform us, remind us, declare to us how enlightened they are and how they are deeper and more conscious than the rest of us, through their highly developed meditation practices. In this way they confuse a memory of feeling Osho, ie their imagination, with reality.”
You are barking up the wrong tree here, Simond. Your situation is that you have developed some consciousness and consequently developed a massive ego trip, in which you imagine yourself to be highly developed (enlightened?) or perhaps you do not consider yourself enlightened, but you have created an ego out of whatever realisation you have had. This is very common.
However, your understanding of Osho is very myopic, this is largely because you are out of touch with the sannyas world for many years, spending time in this little bubble on SN has not taught you much. I respect you for using your pre-sannyas name, others here are still using their sannyas names on this site, despite believing that they were being conned by Osho and considering sannyasins who talk of experiences beyond their own understanding as £delusional”.
I can see how myopic your understanding of Osho is, and I could teach you, but for that you would have to ready to listen, and you are not. This ego you have developed out of whatever experience you have had likes to believe it knows best.
You put:
“The ability to see oneself as superior is also pretty endless. Religionists like Swamishanti tell us, inform us, remind us, declare how enlightened they are and how they are deeper and more conscious than the rest of us….”
I have never declared that I am enlightened. I have never stated that I am more conscious.
I get that you have developed some consciousness yourself, my point is that I understand Osho more then yourself, that much is obvious. It is not a claim of superiority, that is where you are going off track.
The fact is that you don’t really understand Osho because you never developed an inner connection with his Presence, his consciousness. You may have sat in Buddha Hall, got a lot out of his books, but you did not develop an inner connection and that is why you are very confused.
If you had developed an inner connection with Osho, you would not be accusing people of imagining anything today. You wrote: “In this way they confuse a memory of feeling Osho, ie their imagination, with reality”.
This is bullshit, Simond, no one is imagining a present day contact with Osho based on a memory. This simply shows that your own understanding of Osho is extremely limited, like that of Lokesh.
You may not realise why there are so few sannyasins writing on this site. The reality is because this kind of thing where Lokesh and yourself try to tell sannyasins that their experience is “delusional”, “fantasy”, actually looks extremely immature to more experienced sannyasins, and most sannyasins will not want to come on here because they would have to talk down to you.
They are much more experienced and have a greater understanding than yours, yet this makes people humble, does not produce the superiority complex that you imagine. Why would they want to come on here when people such as yourself are trying to suggest that they are deluded?
Sometimes sannyasins have come onto the site, and tried to explain to Lokesh, or others, where they are mistaken. These are sannyasins such as Dhyanraj, or Ozen Rajneesh, who have had an inner connection to Osho since the `70s, and there have also been others who have developed an inner connection to Osho since he left the body.
These people were ready to point out where you are wrong, ready to share their understanding, and knowledge, and that is understanding and knowledge born out of experience, not belief….
They were ready to teach, but others here were not ready to listen. Instead, these more experienced sannyasins were met with aggression, hostility, sarcasm and resentment.
You completely misread Arpana, Simond, he is not becoming angry with you because of any problems with his own life – the reality is that he has a connection with Osho, yet others here shit on him and try to tell him that he is “delusional”, “sentimental”, “imagining£, etc.
You are insulting the intelligence of sannyasins who are simply more experienced with Osho than yourself. Sannyasins have been made to feel unwelcome here. The site is now ignored by all Indian sannyasins, all Nepali sannyasins, and most UK sannyasins will avoid it.
Don’t kid yourself that you really get Osho. You may have developed some consciousness, but you never had any kind of intimate connection with Osho and that is how you miss.
You went on…
“In this sense their arrogance and superiority complex are precisely the same as those of Christians, who believe their God actually listens to their prayers, or fanatical Muslims who believe in stoning to death those who don’t agree with them.
The tendency to mythologise, and to seek safety in one belief or another then provides the opportunity for fanaticism and war. Just look at Russia now, who use war and as a justification to cleanse the world of non-believers.
Swamishanti and others like him are planting the same seeds of extremity; only this time they use Osho and his presence as the seed.
As I say, there is simply no end to human stupidity and ignorance.”
No-one is mythologizing, Simond. Inner connection with Osho is not make-believe. Only in your stupid mind which already believes it knows best.
I am `planting the seeds of extremity` in your mind! What crap! Now, sannyasins cannot talk about their experience with their own master on a `sannyas` blog. This is creating extremity??
What would you prefer, that ex-sannyasins such as yourself can try to deny sannyasins their experiences with their Master, are not allowed to mention Osho`s devices, no, it was just a con, he was a liar, too, of course . Anyone who loves Osho is an extremist…Simond, you are not living in reality. What you are doing with your mind is strange.
If you want to learn about Osho, you would have to be prepared to listen, to learn from more experienced sannyasins, even Arpana – spending time with sannyasins would also teach you. Listen to loveosho podcasts. These people are not fantasists. They just have more experience and greater understanding than your own limited version.
Of course, you want to kill Osho….be finished with it…drop it…this is all very well, but then what the hell are you doing putting so much energy into this site? This is not killing or dropping Osho, this is just hanging on to Osho, yet getting nothing out of it, and carrying your own delusion that you are superior – superior to those who get a lot out of him.
Good comment, Shanti.
You are a medium of Osho, well done.
“ you want to learn about Osho, you would have to be prepared to listen, to learn from more experienced sannyasins, even Arpana – spending time with sannyasins would also teach you. Listen to loveosho podcasts. These people are not fantasists. They just have more experience and greater understanding than your own limited version.”
What? Learn from experienced Sannyasins, “even Arpana”…
Poor Arpana won’t be pleased. Not the greatest of compliments there.
And as to learning from experienced sannyasins, that too isn’t easy any more. Most of the ones I know are in their 70s, creaking at their knees, and on the verge of dementia, or soon to be arrested for sexual offences from earlier years. Not the best of examples I’m sure you’ll agree.
Of course I’m being unconsciously – or is it consciously – sarcastic here?
According to dear Arpana there is a big difference, he knows that because he picked up the info from ‘Scientific American’ but then denies his own latest ‘copy and paste’. Very unkind and unchristian of me.
My silly mistake has been to expect disciples of a very great Man to have learned something beyond idolatry and hero worship; or to put it another, more simple way – to have actually learned something from him at all.
In some cases on this site, it’s clear that just hasn’t happened.
@ Simon
Certainly there is something to learn:
That a connection is needed. Either to Osho or to your real self. Otherwise you move on the surface and miss it.
@simond wrote:
“Religionists like Swamishanti tell us, inform us, remind us, declare to us how enlightened they are…”
Thanks, simond for that dose of insight, I think you’ve got it bang on the nose. I was making the mistake of taking Swamishanti seriously, and I couldn’t figure out why he was annoying me so much. It’s obviously my bad. But it’s both what he writes and how he writes that comes across as not genuine in an attempt to sound spiritually superior, such as when he says, “I could teach you”.
It’s laughable really.
@Ntiyaprem
When I said “I could teach you…” it was not meant in the context as a spiritual teacher. I simply meant in the context of the way Osho works with people , which I can see Simond doesn’t really understand.
I hear that Swamishanti has recently taken sannyas from Swami Bhorat at the Bungabungalore ashram!
And through his meditations and superior understanding of Osho`s vision, he has now also reached the heights of medium for wisdom emanating from the Osho lineage from Playa de los Locos, Oshococoon, Mexico!
At initiation ceremony in Bungabungalore ashram, in time-honoured fashion, Shanti banged his head hard on the floor at the feet of the master resulting in some very real effects to his consciousness that even the unspiritual, materialistic. psychological egotists like Simond and Anubodh could not deny the existence of!
Shanti is also a great teacher and disseminator of Osho`s vision!
He has taught the fools at SN much!
Not least that the Upanishads were written by Sid the Sexist, and that the ultimate longing for woman is to be raped!
Thanks to this important teaching, spiritual misogynists up till today who are incapable of having relationships can collect booby prize of thinking they are the spiritually superior sex! But for this it is necessary to be able to feel Osho`s energy!
It is not a fantasy! The advanced devotee meditator Shanti has had experiences that will blow your mind! But out of humility will not mention it!
For example, the western baboon who has read psychology books will think that having a connection with Osho is a fantasy because he is physically dead! But if Shanti is stimulating vital chakras off in lengthy meditation session to a picture of Marylin Munroe or Amy Winehouse, even though they are dead, energy explosion is very possible, in fact, given his state of consciuousness, inevitable! How does physics and psychology explain that? It cannot!
Listen to Shanti, he is a mystic and he knows his stuff!
Shanti started life as Jehovah`s Witness and now has made full journey from here to here and become Osho`s witness and a Bhorat witness and is now doorstepping and badgering the sinners at SN! It is an extraordinary spiritual tale!
Shanti`s spiritual awakening is indeed a remarkable day in the history of consciousness! Very few will be able to see it! Only those who have read ‘Autostimulation of a Yogi’ and listened to a few enlightened chancers on Youtube can grasp it!
Maybe only Arpana, Brian, Dhyanraj, a few hardcore hindus and Shanti can hope to understand!
Despite this, the true buddhas soldier on against all odds, braving cesspits of unconsciousness such as SN where buddha-murdering is a daily occurrence amongst those who have no connection to Osho at all!
With such heroes of consciousness and non-delusional teachers at the helm of Osho`s vision, what could possibly go wrong?
Yahoo!
@ frank
Heyho! This could be part of ‘The reminiscences of the unknown searcher’ – experiences on the ‘journey from the known to finally not knowing anything at all.’
So good to have Sw. Bhorat who can put all of it into fiery words!!
Is it any wonder why women aren’t exactly thriving on SN, when this sort of image is uploaded?
MOD:
Agreed. Thanks, Simond, it’s now deleted.
@Swamishanti
Hi, you are in good shape! I liked your descriptions and the wording of what you experience. And how transcendence goes beyond words and pictures (coming from memory and mind) and (gross) feelings, indeed.
Whatever is seen or experienced there cannot be denied by someone who has not been there. People may judge, up to them. If one feels challenged one has to see for oneself what to express – or rise to the occasion.
Paths vary. Even religionists may transcend. ‘Nothing’ is possible. The old Toyota ad – “Nothing is impossible” – imo is wrong here.
Cheers.
Actually,
“Whatever is seen or experienced there cannot be denied.”
Full stop.
Cheers, Klaus. Time for a break for me from SN for while. I won’t be able to answer anything for a couple of weeks. Have fun.
Shanti always says stuff like, “I must take a break now”, “I will be busy for a while so won`t be able to answer.”
To me, it`s pretty obvious that he doesn`t really want a reply as the only reply possible to such pretentious, mendacious crap as he`s pumping out is not going to be a very positive assessment of his trashy, transparent little attempt at a spiritual ego-trip.
Like his fellow self-proclaimed Osho consciousness devotee mates Brian Rajneesh and Doperage, he just wants to pontificate and fire off stuff about how much he understands and how he`s more connected to Osho than them and that they are killing buddhas and all the rest of the Jehovah`s Witness on crank, new-age, bible-thumping bullshit.
It`s a pathetic attempt to be someone `spiritual`.
Who he thinks he`s fooling apart from himself I don`t know.
As he`s in awe of them, he should probably follow Dhyanraj to Brian Rajneesh`s jungle bootcamp and get “a good kicking” like his hero Dhyanraj did. It might wake him from his “Autostimulation of a Yogi” fantasy, but I wouldn`t bet on it.
@Frank 4.05hrs
Yeah, I have read about the inner and outer journey of whatshisname? Rajneesh. Actually, I was quite immersed in his ‘Tears of a Mystic Rose’ book and in observing his vipassana journey.
But I certainly would not go to the Mexican jungle and have no desire to be “a student” there.
There is a quote of Peter Ustinov fitting a little here:
“Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.”
In a way I feel rather independent and good on my own nowadays, too.
Frank, it’s pretty obvious that you are jealous because Shanti is enlightened and you not.
@satchit 7.43 pm
At least, Swamishanti seems to have had ‘spiritual experiences’ as described by Barry Long in the book mentioned in the thread.
Transient as those may be: impermanent – impermanent.
Imo, these are part of the individual journey, aren’t they?.
How could one be free in the end without those?
Gee whizz! What a day this has been for whistleblowing, even though our chief whistleblower, PC Arpana, is made conspicuous by his absence.
Satchit’s revelation about Frank being jealous of Guru Shanti’s enlightenment has, once again, shocked me to the very core of my being.
I am reaching a point that I no longer know what to believe. Guru Shanti is also made conspicuous by his absence. I feel that this is suspicious and as Osho was once heard to say, “Follow your suspicions as this will one day reveal the truth about all the lies created by mankind down through the ages. Lies have no permanent hiding place.”
But Lokesh, ‘absence’ is natural.
An enlightened being thinks twice:
Shall I throw my pearls before the swine?
And the swine don’t listen.
So ‘absence’ is natural.
And certainly it will hurt a few unenlightened egos.
But one can one do? It is how it is.
Quite so, Satchit, it is how it is or, conversely, it is how it isn’t. Reminds me of something Grandmother MacGrew used to tell me as a child in the Scottish Highlands. She’d give me a jam sandwich, pat me on the head and say, “A little lion like you doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of a sheep. Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning. Now, off you go and play with your pals.”
Satchit talking about enlightenment, ego, mind etc:
A guy standing with only heavily brown-stained (front and back) underpants on, crap dribbling down both legs, pontificating about the importance of hygiene and boasting about his dress-sense.
Crikey, Frank, I dig the imagery. Satchit may well be The Catman of Greenock. Follow link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-x5O6QEejg Namaste.
Oh, sorry, Frank, you have so many ugly pictures in your mind. I cannot help you. Maybe a shrink can help?
Golly, Satchit, don’t you think you are being a bit hard on poor Frank, suggesting he may be in need of Psychiatric help? How can you be certain that this is not a projection on your part? I suggest you take a few deep breaths and consider the negative impact your harsh words might be having on Frank. After all, we are all one.
His blessings….
Lokesh, I know that Frank and you are an old couple.
Did you not marry lately?
If yes, congrats and His blessings ….
Good grief, Satchit. Marry Frank? I have never met Frank and I am not gay. Is this another of your projections or have you perhaps got things a little mixed up and mean PC Arpana and Guru Shanti should get hitched? I certainly hope that is the case. I might be mistaken, but I suspect you are just being rude. Mind your manners!
Oh, you are not married?
I’m surprised, because you support each other continuously.
Anyway, it’s not so serious.
Satchit saying it’s not so serious is a typical sannyasin avoidance tactic and a pretty lame excuse for calling Frank and I homosexuals. I think the correct thing to do would be for you to deliver a sincere apology to both of us for your rude and homophobic behaviour.
Apology for what? For irony?
But Lokesh, you as a Master of irony must know how it is.
Btw, thinking about changing home?
This is classic ‘Osho of the East’, where he dissects a question or subject about which he too knows very little.
Indeed if you read him carefully, he admits openly, “But we have no knowledge of all this.”
His exploration of the subject of souls and mediumship has a logical train of thought. He’s clearly looking within himself for an answer rather than parroting texts, or simply telling us what he’s read or been told.
As a result it makes a touching, meaningful case for the existence of ghosts, the power of mediumship, etc. but it is essentially still just a case, or an argument or a theory. As he admits, he doesn’t truly know.
I find the case for unembodied souls waiting, looking for a body, a compelling one. It makes sense if we acknowledge just how powerful a motive or impulse we each have to live. To be alive. Even with the experience of terrible pain and suffering, we seem to be drawn to life, even to repeat the experiences and lessons of living. So, it makes sense a soul without a body is likely to have the same impulse, drive or motivation.
And it’s always a great question to ask oneself, “Where were you before you were born”? It’s an expansive question.
But as we read Osho or anyone on these sorts of subjects it’s always important to step back from the mystification and drama of the subject. We love a bit of glamour, we love a romantic tale, and these sorts of discussions feed our need to feel special. We can see how far mankind has gone down this path, with its love of ritual, mumbo-jumbo, or over-simplified spiritual “philosophy”.
Be reminded of the old adage, “those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know”. Even if, what you can’t help loving about Osho was his drive to discover and explore all aspects of the Mind.
On occasions Osho also fell into the trap of speaking of what he didn’t know. Even in worldly terms he started to make prophecies around AIDS, the end of the world etc. Much of which was total nonsense. I’d just suggest we also make sure not to take anything he said for granted, but to maintain a healthy sense of doubt and personal enquiry into anything we are told.
Klaus enquires, “Why would sannyasins need an intermediary to contact Osho?”
Good question.
Osho declared that it was his last life. I took that to mean he was going to merge with Existence. He would no longer be separate from Existence etc. He would exist no more as an individual entity. Therefore if someone feels they are tuning into the one it is not Osho as such because he no longer exists. Of course, this contradicts so many other things he said…whenever three sannyasins are together he will be present, hold the locket and you have a direct line to him etc.
Some folk seem to like giving the one a name: God, Osho, Jesus, whatever floats your boat. Then we have Anando being his medium. What to make of all that? Personally, I just get on with the daily act of living and try to bring some awareness into the process. I read something by Ramana recently that ran along the lines of ‘the less mental activity taking place the better’, or something like that. In other words, don’t think too much, just be.
Klaus also asks, “Does this increase the energy available?”
I would say that there is already enough energy available. Most people don’t want their share, too busy dreaming about a bigger tv and a million and one other material things, so there is an excess of energy to tune into and you do not need a tv for that. You just need to get on the right frequency and away you go.
Klaus concludes, “Maybe someone experienced in physics can calculate the effects and correlations for us?”
Yeah, maybe, I do not know in terms of physics. Could be consciousness is quantifiable and once again that brings us around to the fact most people do not want their share, so plenty to go around. Just get meditative, less identified with the mind, stay quiet…you catch my drift, for sure. In between you can watch a movie on tv, or tune into SN…better. At least SN is interactive.
Okay, got to go or I will miss the latest episode of ‘Peaky Blinders’. Yeah, life is so full of contradictions, isn’t it?
Lokesh,
Some questions were rhetorical…
Like your takes: ‘get on with daily life and be connected to what is already available.’
“The less mental activity – the more awareness.” (Ramana)
Yes – the sum is always 100%:
0% of this – 100% of that. And all figures in between.
Latest press release from Bungabungalore Ashram:
Certainly, the matter of mediums is little understood by depraved westerners who think too much!
The less mental activity taking place the better! Otherwise baboons start to question facts that have been self-evident to the mindless sages and rishis for yugas such as the fact women `s deepest longing is to be raped and that alive as well as dead masters should be able to enter bodies of female mediums at will for the spiritual advancement of all!
There are so many things happening in the world of which the western mind knows little and understands less! For example, to those who have the occult eyes to see from meditating deeply on the matter and who have been in touch with secret occult societies for many lifetimes, it is clear that the Nine Unknown Men of Mighty Bhorat are once again exerting enormous influence on world affairs!
After successfully masterminding spread of Covid through Kumbh Mela in order to speed up journey to ultimate moksha for millions, and previously, for the ultimate good of mankind, inhabiting bodies of Hitler, Krishnamurti and Shantam, the Nine Men are now in complete control of the body, mind and faculties of Vladimir Putin!
Putin is a medium for the Nine Men! This is tremendously significant! Firstly, it has allowed the Nine Men to instigate important changes that will have enormous repercussions on the history of consciousness!
For example, many asked, why would Russia be so keen to take control of Chernobyl area? Answer is simple for any true meditator! It has been utterly necessary to liberate Chernobyl Electroshock hospital from clutches of evil western powers who want to murder Buddhas! This institution has been providing perfect calibre disciples for world teachers such as Swami Rajneesh and Sadhguru for some time!
This important inner mind engineering headquarters has been seen as an enormous threat to the western hegemony! If world is full of disciples whose minds have been eliminated or completely wiped, sit looking into space with blank expression, miming occasional beatific grin and periodically spouting word-formations that are beyond the understanding of the logical mind, how can cogs of the evil capitalist machinery hope to keep turning?
Now that the objective has been reached, the West foolishly thinks Putin is retreating but in fact, one of the most important aims of the Nine Men has been completed!
Thanks to the links created between Putin and Zorba the Buddha Modi and recent visit of foreign minister Lavrov to India, he has secretly sent many of the liberated inmates to India where their training can be continued and brought to fruition in various ashrams around the country, thus safeguarding the dream of a 1000 Yuga era of superconsciousness!
Also on table is discussion about time-honoured ancient public-toilet technology from India which could need to be imported to Russia if sanctions bite hard enough!
The West could have prevented all this! The western mind is to blame! If the western mind had been able to accept Swami Rajneesh, Arun and Sadhguru as latest avatars in the glorious lineage of enlightened ones in the first place, all this could have been prevented!
The warning signs and messages were there!
Rajneesh and Putin both parading around with no shirt on showing world their breasts and even Dhyan Raj getting in on the act was certainly a red light and, incredibly, not enough to make the West wake up from its ego-dreams! Enlightened graduate from Chernobyl Electroshock Hospital, Swami Ali`s trips to Salisbury cathedral and Stonehenge in order to create a linkage of meditative spiritual power points around the globe were also totally misunderstood by the Western mind which is nothing but mind!
Also, Arun and Rajneesh felt that re-establishment of Soviet Union would make their 1970s and 80s sannyas with mala and red clothes play look more authentic!
Do not be fooled by absurdities published in mainstream media! The truth can only be known by accepting truth from masters such as Swami Bhorat!
Come to Bungabungalore ashram immediately! To this end, Swami Bhorat loves to sample one of his favourite philosophers, also, sychronistically, big in Russia:
“Spiritual seekers unite! You have nothing to lose but your minds!”
Yahoo!
Nothing quite like a bit of good news from Bungabungalore Ashram to brighten up the dark night of the soul.
The all-encompassing and certainly hard-hitting truth is sent to us by the chief inhabitant of the Bungabundalore Ashram who is indeed “Mr. Boombastic”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNwSpoXnvWM
@frank
Pretty funny, you caused me to go look up Swami Rajneesh, he seems a very dodgy fellow.
@Nityaprem.
I apologise for that!
He and quite a few of his followers were regulars on SN for a while some years back.
Absolutely mental.
“Anando’s portrayal of Osho depicts the most compassionate of human beings, a man who enjoyed to laugh, joke and, according to her, play pranks.”
Yes, maybe the whole enlightenment story is a prank.
Talking about ‘ghosts’ can be a prank.
‘Osho’s last life’ can be a prank, because maybe it’s the last life for all of us.
Calling Anando a ‘medium’ can be a prank, at least it gives her a special position.
Many pranks on a day like today: April fools day!
If enlightenment is a prank, Mahaparanirvana Master`s day should be re-positioned in the calendar to 1st April.
Probably an interesting article in ‘The Guardian’ today on fMRI research of the functioning of memory in the brain and the brain areas affected most:
“Memory isn’t just an act of retrieval, but a process of constant reconnection and reconstruction, Yong continued. Memory is therefore liable to be reshaped and re-formed, even if we try to resist reshaping and re-forming it. There is a cruel irony in this activity, of course. While we fight for memory to be unyielding and true, we are constantly reframing it in the contexts in which we are living at that moment – a revelation I found deeply unsettling….”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/03/music-memory-and-my-dad-songs-memory-jude-rogers-sound-of-being-human
Cheers, Klaus,
The article says: “While we fight for memory to be unyielding and true, we are constantly reframing it in the contexts in which we are living at that moment – a revelation I found deeply unsettling….”
I would say it`s only unsettling if one has a kind of filing cabinet idea of memory, which is something like: one searches through the filing cabinet until one finds the correct memory and that is it.
Memory is always related to the person remembering in the present. To think one will have a pure memory that excludes the observer is probably like the error made in science before the observer effect was taken into account, ie the disturbance of/influence on an observed system by the act of observation.
Memory and imagination in reality are probably as inseparable as we are to our environment.
Maybe sometimes we as the observer can remain more impartial and access a more exact memory but it`s quite uncertain. The spiritual world too, is taken with this kind of thinking and often proposes a kind of Akashik CCTV idea of reality, where everything that has happened is recorded on some master tape for all eternity.
I suspect reality is probably much weirder than that. Forgetting is most likely stronger than remembering, but we don`t think about that so much as it is not something that we can actually deliberately will.
Hi Frank,
Yeah, it is quite unclear to me what one could glean from memories as they are wired together with events and persons and feelings and emotions important to the individual person – according also to this article and research.
It is the forgetting of/the un-wiredness.
Being a medium could have been meant also in the sense of showing an example of the way of being Bhagwan/Osho pointed to.
Not any new story or old message. One more guess.
Cheers.
There is a saying, the future is not yet here, the past is dead and gone, only the present is here. Yet the past and the future are manifest in the present, and a skillful person can read them a little. That is our everyday understanding…memory is both our record of the past and that which allows us to project into the future.
So to a person who is losing his memory the world starts to look quite different. Just something to think about as 40% or so of aging people eventually suffer from dementia. So if you have a book you wish to write, sooner is better than later.
I recall hearing a real-life account of a man who’d completely lost his memory, including of the most recent happenings, large or small, in his life. However, one thing he did remember was his love for his wife, which he showered on her whenever she was nearby. That story was a teaching-in-itself.
Nityaprem,
40% sounds a bit pessimistic.
Now, where did I leave my Alzheimer Pilsner?
It’s even worse…
“61.4% of those aged 65 or over in the UK estimated to have dementia have a coded diagnosis of dementia as at 31st January, 2021. A decrease from 62.4% on 31st December 2020.”
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/recorded-dementia-diagnoses/january-2021
Nityaprem,
The 61.4% figure relates to coded diagnosis which denotes diagnosis rates not percentages of population.
This is from Gov UK NHS site:
“How common is dementia?
Research shows there are more than 850,000 people in the UK who have dementia. One in 14 people over the age of 65 have dementia, and the condition affects 1 in 6 people over 80.
The number of people with dementia is increasing because people are living longer. It is estimated that by 2025, the number of people with dementia in the UK will be more than 1 million.”
One in 14 is about 7%.
One in 6 is about 16%.
A classmate from my primary education class had the hippocampus removed due to a tumour. He is now in rehab just 40 minutes from my place.
For him, talking about meditation, full-body awareness in a guided meditation, experiencing equanimity is very helpful: it reduces the stress of having to function ‘in a normal way’. It helps him feel ‘ok’ in spite of the incapacitating situation…
He said he never felt like that before after a short guided meditation of about 20 minutes.
Besides, I myself had a quite similar situation and feelings…haemorrhage etc…so we are on similar ground of no inferiority/superiority…
How meditation could work with dementia I have no knowledge and no experience, though. Possibly not well as brain cells are all hit by the disease.
@frank
The article is pretty clear on what percentage of UK over 65s can expect to encounter it.
https://www.dementiastatistics.org/statistics/prevalence-by-age-in-the-uk/
Now that was probably way too generalizing…
Maybe better:
If what we glean from the past leads to hubris, unclarity and more confusion, then maybe it might be better to drop (parts of) it.
Dropping the past sounds good, but isn`t it a bit like trying to deliberately forget something where the very thought shows you haven`t forgotten?
Some people drop the past, some don`t.
Is it down to willpower, `grace`, luck, `karma` or maybe they just run out of energy and can`t be arsed to carry it about anymore?
Yeah, you are right…Who would do the dropping?
When it is there, it is there….
‘Dropping’ the past might not be the best term. Drop the ego, drop the mind, drop your pants. The past has a life of its own. You can’t just drop it. Because it is almost impossible to do so, barring some brain injury or illness. Osho did not drop his past. He enjoyed talking about his past so much that he published books about his glorified and doubtless exaggerated exploits, which made for good reading. ‘Glimpses of a Golden Childhood’ is one of my favourite Osho books.
The past constantly influences us and not always in a negative way. Surely experience is based on the past and we need that experience to navigate the present in certain instances.
The problem arises when we get bogged down in the past. A simple example of this is our judgements of people. Someone rips you off 20 years ago and that person is branded as a ‘thief’ for the rest of their life by you. Surely the possibility exists that this is a wrong judgement based on the past, because people must be allowed the chance to change over time…in a positive way. We all want that freedom, unencumbered by the past. You know the vibe. You meet someone you once knew 30 years ago and you get the sense they keep you in a frame formed thirty years ago. It is so confining. In that kind of scenario, ‘letting go’ of the past is a better expression.
On another level altogether, hanging out in the past can blind us to what is taking place around us and in us in the present moment. Complicated. If you were in the Ukraine, walking down a street littered with butchered corpses, one might want to escape to a better place in one’s mind to avoid the horror of the present. If it is a beautiful day where you are perhaps it is best to ignore the past and enjoy where you are here and now.
I read the Guardian article about musical memories. Maybe that is why I listen to the evocative music of the Sixties era. Sounds so much richer than a lot of what is being produced today.
Nothing quite like a blast from the past to stir the old memory banks.
There is not much difference between ‘dropping the past’ and ‘letting go’.
Because in both cases the ego/personality is trying to do it.
For being in the Here-and-Now the future needs also a dropping.
Satchit declares, “For being in the Here-and-Now the future needs also a dropping.”
His insights never fail to shock me to the very core of my being.
Good that it shocks you to the core, Lokesh.
Because those with a simple mind understand only the surface.
“Those with a simple mind understand only the surface.”
Another pearl of wisdom from the brilliant Satchit. All that is missing is a photo to go with it. Here it is…
Nice photo, Loco.
Carnival in Ibiza.
Did your wife make it?
Re ‘dropping the future’, you’ll surely agree, Satchit, that there’s a place for deciding what one wants, making plans, personal ambition, etc., the ‘trick’ being as far as possible not to deny present reality by ‘living in one’s head’ (and ideally, not getting too attached to outcomes)? Easier said than done, especially when you’re young – but that’s the game, isn’t it?
The perhaps even more challenging dimension to being in the now, where one chooses to witness one’s hitherto unconscious and/or denied negative characteristics, is memorably detailed in Anando’s book (pages 48-55) where she recounts a time in 1988 when Osho ‘hit’ her hard in successive discourses after she’d walked away from her secretary/caretaker role with him after also refusing to present the topics for his (then twice-a-day) talks, Maneesha being unwell. She was faced with her nasty stuff like jealousy, anger, self-important pride, even mistrust of Osho, and came through that ordeal, not without a hell of an inner struggle, into a new clarity, a ‘new Now’, a testament to her commitment to self-inquiry. I found that episode moving, inspiring.
Her ensuing note to Osho is quite something, as is Osho’s public statement where he says “Before enlightenment, you all have this barbarous mind…And it is okay. What is needed is an awareness that these things are within you. Nothing has to be done. Just watch them and they will wash out…But what do people do? They repress them. They pretend that others may be jealous, have anger, but we don’t…Once you encounter it, the only secret to be learned is to witness them…Just witness, as if you have nothing to do with them. Witnessing is the greatest device found by all the past enlightened people. It cuts through all the rubbish like a sharp sword….”
Might be well worth recommending these 7 or 8 pages to anyone wanting to know more of what meditation (and a master) are about. Perhaps that (and the rest of the book) help to indicate what Osho meant by saying Anando would be his “medium”.
@SD
Re: ‘dropping the future’:
Easy is right.
Loke,
That’s a balanced view.
I went overboard with the dropping…
Not getting entangled with it too much, not overindulging as an escape, not building the ego on it…something like that…This then seems valid for future thinking and imagining, too.
Maybe it is wisdom that makes the right balance.
Hi Lokesh,
I forgot to mention that I’ve ordered the book, as a result of your intriguing review. So thanks for the inspiration
Although it is nowhere near my top 50 it is a good and easy read. I hope you enjoy it.
We need a piece on your top 50, Lokesh!
Yes, Simond, as soon as I wrote that I thought, what are my top 50 books? I would really have to work on that one.
Off the bat: In Search of the Miraculous, Meetings With Remarkable Men, The Magus, Birdsong, The Psychological Commentaries, DMT Mystery Scool in Hyperspace, The Tibetan Book of The Dead, The Psychedelic Experience, Kidnapped, High Priest, Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, The Beloved…the list goes on.
It`s an interesting exercise.
Another one is to remember one`s biblio-biography. That is to say, to make a list of all the books that you liked/were influenced by/identified with in various ways etc. throughout your life. Starting, memory willing, with earliest childhood.
The trouble with best 50 favourite books is that it might not allow for distinctions between books you maybe loved at the time but find them not so good now, and others, which might still be companions. The biblio-biography can more easily take that into account.
Seeing links between your literary tastes and your life could be a kind of introspective therapeutic exercise. Or more likely reveals to us the spontaneous bibliotherapy that we have attempted to give to ourselves over time.
For myself, forget the likes of Osho, Nietzsche, Gurdjieff, Kazantzakis, I Ching, Shakespeare and the rest of the poseurs, the greatest tome of all time is clearly, bar none, ‘The Best and Worst of Sannyas News’!
OmG.
“best 50 favourite books”:
This functions only if not drinking too much Alzheimer Pils.
‘The Best and Worst of Sannyas News’! That is a really heavy book…750 grammes at least.
Talking about influential books: In ’74 in Goa I read ‘The Way of the White Cloud’ and I can honestly say it changed the direction of my life big-time. I wonder what I would make of it today.
I was a big reader as a kid, my favourites were Greek mythology. I would drink salty water and throw up to dodge school so I could lie in bed reading. I was big on Commando comics also…then I graduated to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
I was heavily into historical novels as a young boy and remember Stig of the Dump and the Jungle Book with a sense of nostalgia, plus old comics like the Beano and the Commando picture booklets, which glorified the Second World War.
The Mustard Seed was my first Osho book and it changed my worldview. As Frank suggests though, books which meant a lot at one time don’t have the same power years later, and The Mustard Seed is one of those. Osho’s writing still occasionally inspires and delight me.
I read very heavily years ago, loved travel books in my 20s, read all sorts of spiritual books, but whereas once I kept books, treasured them, privately thinking what a clever chap I was; some while ago I got rid of most of them.
At the same time I got rid of all my photos, most of my music collection.
There have been moments of regret, but only fleeting and sentimental moments, largely the effect is freeing. Or it has been to me.
It came about because the need for the past, the sense of identity that the past, with books, records, photos provided, isn’t there anymore. This process of leaving the past behind was a gradual process though it was marked by times of deliberate action – when I got rid of all my old diaries and journals in one go.
The freedom such gestures provide doesn’t always come easily, but I recommend anyone has a go.
I still find myself in bookshops, sometimes for long periods, picking up books and enjoying the variety and scope, especially in non-fiction. There is a thrill in looking, but I only seldom buy. My interest peaks just reading the back covers, but I then realise that I’m unlikely to ever read the book, and often just skimming through the book is enough.
Let’s see. A biography of favourite books, what a fantastic idea, @Frank.
I used to read a lot when I was younger and was heavily into science fiction, it would take some effort to even write up a favourites list of that.
Fiction, here is a grab from the bag: The Lord of the Rings, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Great Book of Amber, Startide Rising, The Player of Games, The Alchemist.
Non-fiction, a few titles: The Tao Te Ching, In the Buddha’s Words, The Prophet, Falling into Grace, The C++ Programming Language, Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing.
Not sure what good it does anyone, other than to give a glimpse into the history of my mind, but it was a fun exercise to come up with a few.
The contents of books have definitely changed my life over the years. Often they have been entertainment, but they have also informed my thinking, often for the better but sometimes also for the worse.
Ahhh, The Beano, Valiant , Biggles and ze Englischer Commando comics. Aaaargh!
I remember a life-changing moment when an older and more worldly-wise kid came in and said: “These warmags are out of date, the Germans aren`t our enemy any more now, the Russians are.”
( I imagine he is probably a government policy adviser by now). I think I got a bit more sophisticated after that, moving on to Tintin and Asterix and stuff.
That probably wasn`t the greatest literary start to life but there were the Greek myth stories and the Knights of the Round table which pulled me in, but Aesop`s fables got kind of stuck in my head.
As a youngster, films and even some TV was probably more life-changing. Robin Hood was a hero. Also, for some utterly unfathomable reason, my mum and dad took me and my older brother along with them to see Lyndsay Anderson`s ‘If…’ with Malcolm MacDowell in the late 60s.A real/surreal classic of the era where some schoolboys rebel and end up shooting the headmaster, I was only 12, I don`t know how they got me in there to start with. I came out of the auditorium with a clear answer formulated in my mind to the question in the tagline: “Whose side will you be on?”
I think my top 50, influence-wise, would not necessarily reflect any great literary sophistication. The BIT guide Overland to India would be in there. Although I never really got sci-fi or fantasy genres, occult spi-fi like Autobiography of a Yogi and Theosophical type stuff would have to be in there,too. 1984, Down and out in Paris and London, Up the Junction, Jung, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Watch out Kids, I Ching, Cheiro`s Book of Numbers, Osho/G/Ouspensky stuff. More recently, Julian Jaynes, Alan Watts, Freddie N and Viz. Plus a few much more obscure authors. A bit of a mishmash.
One last one, ‘The Guide’ by R.K. Narayan, a 1958 tale about a tourist guide who comes out of jail in India and becomes a guru by accident. I love that one plus I think that a couple of ideas in Osho`s ‘Memories of a Golden Childhood’ might have been lifted from R.K.Narayan.
Like Nityaprem, whether it was all for better or for worse is a complicated and tricky question to address. Probably impossible to answer.
We also shouldn’t forget influential video games, if we’re going to count films and tv, although that’s maybe more my generation than yours.
I can remember quite well the first 3D games, and the first real simulations, the first games with in-game physics engines, the first massively multi-player online games.
But while games are great entertainment, and will be remembered as great “moments” in growing up, there so far haven’t been any that have been illuminating in the same way that the best books have been. Which I think is a shame.
@Frank
Haha – TinTin and Asterix are what I would have posted, too…”Morituri te salutant” is my best Latin phrase…
Greek mythology is also on my list.
Then, probably #1 is ‘The Way of the White Cloud’ – however, by Lama Anagarika Govinda; also his ‘Meditation and Multidimensional Consciousness’.
Osho’s ‘Hammer on the Rock’ got me started.
Gurdjieff’s ‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’ I saw as a movie in the hippie tent at the Glastonbury festival…
Travel books still get me hooked in their atmospheres: by bike to India, stuff like that.
As I moved several times only a few books travelled with me….
@Lokesh
It’s funny that you should mention P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, I was recently asking my father about his favourite books, and that topped his list too. So I found a pdf of it on the net, which I am now reading.
And I have to say, I’m finding it a bit of a mixed bag. Some of it seems very interesting, such as Gurdjieff’s account of how men are mostly asleep and the effort of self-remembering, and other parts of it seem complete fiction, such as the idea of how the Moon is eating the souls of everything that dies on Earth, or the weights of different planetary bodies in the universe. So far the book seems about 1/3 pretty good and 2/3rds complete balderdash.
Admittedly I’m only just coming up to the halfway mark in reading it, maybe I will add to this later. But I wonder what made such a great impression on you?
“A great impression” would be stretching it a bit. More a case of finding a few diamonds in a big puddle of mud.
Man is food for the moon could be true.
We live in the dark. What do we know from our micro-keyhole perspective of the universe? Nothing much.
I keep my battered copy of ‘The Miraculous’ by my bed and return to it once in a while. I like the section on different types of incarnation. ‘The Laws of Manu’…gimme a break.
Keep going. It is a good book. Loved Mr O’s description of visiting the Sphinx…those were the days when the world was still being discovered.
Letting go of the past. Today I had a big CD cleanout. Hundreds of CDs in the bin including the entire Blue Note collection.
I have been throwing things out, or selling stuff at a local street market for more time than I care to admit due to the fact that I will be moving to a new place in the not too distant future. Letting go of my music collection bit by bit has been a biggie. These days you can have thousands of songs on a tiny stick…amazing. Same can’t be said for furniture, carpets, statues, masks and paintings, including an Osho original. No pockets in shrouds for sure and I am quite enjoying getting down to what things I actually value.
Seems that by staying in one place for some time one gathers a whole pile of things you do not really need and yes, it is good to get free of them. More you have the more you have to take care of, as the saying goes.
I know friends with too much money and property and their life is so strongly influenced by that. Always busy, inevitable problems and they actually complain about it and look for sympathy, which makes me think of Luis Bunuel’s ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’. Great title for a film but back then I could relate to ‘If’ more.
I lived in the sugar cane fields up the back of Koregoan Park for years. I built my first hut with 100 rupees I had borrowed. I eventually became quite well off building huts, running a restaurant called Shree’s and opening the Caravanserai disco. Man, those were good times(see attached photo), carefree fun and like those lilies in the field I cared not for the morrow. It is a great background to have under your belt.
In tough times I drum up the good old days by recalling times in India when I was rupeeless, yet I had never been happier in my life. Just being alive was more than enough. Yahoo!
Lovely pic!
‘Sgt Pepper’s lovely and lively hearts club band’.
Shine on!
Yeah, nice pic.
Looking back at G and Ouspensky, they now seem a bit like a prog-rock outfit who had moments of brilliance, from the stunning debut ‘The Struggle of the Magicians’ through to the all-time classic ‘Food for the Moon’, but also cranked out too many forgettable over-done concept albums that didn`t quite make sense.
From ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine:
“One of the first supergroups, with Georgie Gurdjieff as the shiny-headed, mustachioed frontman, the already legendary Pete Ouspensky on lead guitar, DeHartmann on keyboards and Mme. Ouspensky on bass, they rocked Europe and broke the States, too, with their uniquely powerful mix of modern and classical styles and use of bizarre devices.
In their pomp they had it all: the cars, the clothes, the chateau in France where they held legendary parties. Charismatic babe-magnet, self-proclaimed Georgie seemed to be able to sink more booze than any man alive and with tales of endless groupies he generated a bad-boy image that the press couldn`t get enough of.
With musings such as: “Angel can only teach one thing, Devil can teach everything”, his reputation for embracing everything including the dark side was only rivalled by the contemporaneously legendary Magick Al, frontman of rival band ‘The Thelemites’. But the pressure got too much, and as is usually the way, egos got out of hand and the band got torn apart as the members angrily cited artistic and creative differences, and arguments about song-writing credits were never resolved.
It was always going to be difficult to top ‘Food for the Moon;, so with a depleted band and without the virtuoso guitar work of Pete Ouspensky to hold things together, Georgie`s solo efforts floundered and never reached the heady heights of their heyday. ‘Beelzebub`s Tales to his Grandson’, with its incomprehensibly bizarre lyricism, joined the ranks of the more bloated concept albums of the era such as ‘Tales from Theosophic Oceans’.
However, Georgie G`s more stripped-down spiritual proto-punk offering, ‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’, fared better and is credited by many with kick-starting the Rascal Saint genre which has continued to generate cult followings around the world ever since,
And Georgie Gurdjieff continues to be remembered fondly to this day by all those who are remembering themselves.”
I do get the drift…
Perfect amalgamation of the heyday persons and times! The ‘Rolling Stone’ will have to strain itself to get there!
To be remembered forever. God willing!
Do you think Gurdjieff will stand the test of time? At the moment he seems to be very much a fringe figure, not so many people are familiar with him beyond his name.
If I look at a youtube channel like Samaneri Jayasara’s, which are guided meditations from the works of masters from the not too distant past, I see Advaita teachers like Ramana and Papaji, I see Dzogchen teachers like Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, I see Nisargadatta and his master Siddharameshwar, I see Krishnamurti, Rumi, and Hakim Sanai. But no Gurdjieff or Osho.
https://youtube.com/c/SamaneriJayasara
Well, Nityaprem, all these you list are of the East, and as we know, Osho, with the help of the U.S. (and other) government(s) and the media (not to mention mistakes made by both him and his organisation) has been thoroughly discredited in certain circles, so much so that sannyasins (eg Anando) who want to attract a wider public to their courses and workshops very often leave out their connection to him in their publicity material.
He and Gurdjieff were and still are just too controversial, too disreputable for much of the spiritual as well as the general public’s consumption, although Osho’s doing well in a few countries. Gurdjieff may well always be of interest to only a tiny minority but I think there’s a chance that eventually Osho, with all his books, cds and videos, and the large numbers he has attracted, will be a much greater influence than he is now, as the range of his work is so vast.
As BL used to say, once an idea or a body of work is well and truly planted ‘in the human psyche’ via the people who’ve received it there’s no stopping it, although it may well take time, even generations – maybe too much time…unless increasingly perilous world crisis somehow speeds up this process….
Thanks @satyadeva…The problem with Osho being discredited in certain circles is that quite a few people stop looking before they take in the wider body of his work.
For every book of an Anando which tells some of the truth there seem to be two books of a Lily Dunn, writing about how her estranged sannyasin father’s long downfall started with his connection to Osho.
I would love to be a fly on the wall in a few hundred years when they are teaching about gurus from the 1970s and 80s and what role they ascribe to Osho then.
NP says, “I would love to be a fly on the wall in a few hundred years when they are teaching about gurus from the 1970s and 80s and what role they ascribe to Osho then.”
That’s a very optimistic idea. If there are any human beings left on this planet a few hundred years from now I very much doubt any of them will be teaching about gurus from the 1970s and 80s, they will be too busy baling out their leaky ark.
I expect old skool supergroups like Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and DeHartmann.(GOD ) will remain underground cult favourites for hardcore fans for some time to come, but I doubt they`ll ever be Top of the Pops.
Also, I guess that the riffs, motifs and innovations of the pioneers of the rascal saint genre (the legal ones at least) have probably been sampled and co-opted by so many other groups by now that there are so many ways by which they can enter the pop consciousness.
@Lokesh, who wrote about future generations in their leaky ark:
You might find this educational…
https://youtu.be/LxgMdjyw8uw
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
“I would love to be a fly on the wall in a few hundred years when they are teaching about gurus from the 1970s and 80s and what role they ascribe to Osho then.”
It’s true that Osho has widely been misunderstood – at least in the West.
He once said that it would take 200 years for his work to be understood.
As far as being “a fly on the wall” in 100 years is concerned, it will largely depend where you would be , which religious inclination, and in which classroom.
But I have learned over the last few years that Osho is actually immensely respected and popular, especially in India and Nepal. He will be a major influence there in the future.
That much is obvious.
There is also still considerable interest in Osho in other areas of the world.
Apparently Osho has become popular in China, but the government there has been aggressively blocking everything connected to Osho online.
SS has learned that the largest Osho WeChat site, with some 200,000 users, was recently closed by the government and wiped completely clean.
The context of that is that the Chinese authorities control and censor everything to do with religion from outside their borders. Mostly Christianity and Islam, numbers wise, but caught up in that are the western NRMs, Krishnas, Moonies, Osho etc.
Not just religion, but politics, Facebook, Instagram etc. etc etc.
Also religion from inside Chinese borders is often censored. The Falun Gong come to mind, for example.
Gurdjieff will stand the test of time, but only ever as a fringe. The masses will never understand him. He himself was very clear that his message was limited to those ready to hear a deeper, profound and more difficult truth. This will never be appealing to the masses.
Osho’s appeal is far wider but he too is only a fringe character. Even amongst sannyasins his message is often ignored, misinterpreted and misunderstood. He did the best he could do given the circumstances and the times in his attempts to widen his appeal to as many as possible, so it’s inevitable he made mistakes and his message became confusing.
Perhaps in the East the teachers you refer to will live longer in the mind, but remember for most people (East and West), the so-called spiritual path is a means to avoid the real human questions of Life.
We avoid relationships, we avoid emotions, we fear our feelings, and we are at most, tribal and primitive in our reactions. We pretend we wish for salvation but largely avoid any real honesty about our nature.
Once we acknowledge this, we begin to make some form of progress, and that acknowledgement is only made by the few, not the many.
Simond says:
“his [Osho's] message became confusing.”
Maybe you can tell what you think his message is?!
Ah, good! It`s quiz night at the ‘Finger and the Moon’ enlightenment theme-pub again.
Hang on, I think I know the answer to that one:
“Be a jerk unto yourself”?
Ahem…err..the message is there is no message?
I will have a go too…
Take in equal measures meditation, jokes, gibberish, personal relationship advice, sly jabs at politicians and priests, wise sutras, and pointers about acceptance, living and samadhi; mix in a kitchen blender and garnish with music, laughter, and bliss; and then you have Osho’s teaching.
His message is still ‘I Am the Gate’.
Funny that the book is on my shelf, felt good to read a few pages, very impressive, the eternal wisdom.
In the ‘Glimpses’ book (page 135) Anando is clear:
“He wanted nobody to interpret his message, nobody to even say what his message is. He has said everything in his books and in his videos. Everything is there for people to make their own interpretation, to reach their own understanding of his vision. And that will always be personal to each individual.
And Osho is so contradictory so there is no way anyone can say, “This is Osho’s message” because for sure he would have said the opposite somewhere else. He is always speaking in a context, so you can’t take his words out of context and say they are definitive. Although some would-be Osho priests do try and do that!”
‘Rolling Stone’ considered ‘I Am The Gate’ to be one of the top ten offerings of all time.
“Behind the bold Jesus-inspired call to initiation lay an unparalleled eclectic mix of a wild-fire pioneering peon to transcending the mind in a Hitlerian occult blitzkrieg, a call to surrendering to the wisdom of global esoteric planetary overlords and masters of the universe, a blast of punk with old-farts such as Krishnamurti given short shrift, all rolled up in the bold announcement that the 70s were an open door the like of which hadn`t been seen for 25 centuries since Buddha released his aeon-changing ‘Dharma-pada-in-a-Gadda-Da-Vida’.
Gospel meets psychedelia meets apocalyptic death metal with a touch of glam and the clear message that fans had to make way for Homo Superior.
One of the finest albums of all time. ‘Food for the Moon’ is most likely eclipsed by this one and even Pete Ouspensky`s legendary four-dimensional keyboard solo in ‘Tertium Organum’ fades into obscurity by comparison.
Not forgetting that this masterpiece introduced the world to the important work of the Nine Unknown Men of Mighty Bhorat, and I think everyone will agree that that has made the world a much better place.”
Frank 12.09hrs
“…has made the world a much better place.”
This addition is clearly sarcastic, innit?
I think in this context, the Nine Unknown Men are like the roadies.
Nobody knows who they are, but without them the show doesn`t go on and the message doesn`t get out to the people, man….
@ SD
When I say his message is ‘I Am the Gate’, this does not mean that this is his only message.
There are at least 108 different other messages.
“Drop your ego” and, and….
@simond:
I’m always inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. Yes, gurus are supposed to be more highly developed, but any guru is still going to be interacting with the world through his mind, and minds are fallible.
If you listen to the personal stories told about any recent God-man, there seem to be feet of clay included in the package. Which does not surprise me at all.
Fallible minds and other vital organs tend to be fallible, too.
Frankly, so-called god-men need to get the heave-ho.
Wise-men would be enough to get along with.
Any “godmen” making big claims such as celibacy, for example, should have an electric tag stuck on their dick and CCTV installed in their bedrooms in order to provide scientific evidence.
We have the tech, so why not use it?
The Rolling Stones categorically stole his words in their song, ‘Satisfaction’, and no credit was given!
“There is a cosmic law which says that every satisfaction must be paid for with a dissatisfaction.”
Clever piece of creative writing from Frank. Great stuff!
Lokesh (re April 5, 5.18pm)
Good decision I think you are making at simplifying early in order to make a good transition and accommodate well in another environment!
My parents both were in their 80s when they moved from a big house to a ground-floor apartment with a small garden near the city centre of their new hometown. They are finding it quite difficult to make new friends, get along with new doctors, a different kind of mentality around…However, they enjoy the wonderful nature and the easiness of care of the apartment (house manager, cleaning etc.).
Have a smooth transition! Cheers from here.
Thanks, Lokesh, in this photo what reached me is so much joy, playfulness, relaxation, trust and awareness, around you
Not only Anando, everything that is alive is a medium of the ocean of Existence.
Thumbs up from me.
There can be surprises, too, about what or who….
For me, this vid offers some of the greatest insights of all time into the phenomenon of mediums and mediumship:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yltqeoOdt0Y
Oh, Da Ali G Show!
I am a great fan of this…especially of this one, too:
Ali G Show – Religion | Uncensored
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBJwg2-wX0w
I don`t know how he does it. Keeping a straight face, never flinching and never breaking character.
I think that from the stories I have read about Gurdjieff playing different parts to people for various reasons, that he must have had some of the same skills as SBC.
@frank, 2.25pm
Well, the gift first of all seems to help the medium itself. As long as the “other world” is not one more place in your own psyche in a case of channelling words and pictures.
Then again, every cook must be able to answer the question, “Is medium well and fully cooked?” before handing out meals for consumption.
Consumers/users clearly must be aware that certain disclaimers and non-guarantees apply in the world of mediums.
Hahaha, there he does it again quite up-to-date:
Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G) Class Day | Harvard Commencement 2004
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUCy75CA3Aw
Sorry, got sidetracked…but “we all come from the same place….”
I watched the Ali G vid. Both fun and scary. An interdimensional jealousy situation? Are people really that stupid?
I read up a bit on Edward Cayce. Pretty convincing.
My wife once did a session with a clairvoyant. The guy told her all sorts of things about her past that would normally be pretty much impossible to know.
People want to believe in something higher and that need takes many forms. You can see it in the sannyasin world. Some sannyasins honestly believe that Osho is working on them. I find that difficult to relate to because it has so much that is dependent on reinforced belief. Osho was not a believer.
The difficulty is knowing who is a genuine medium and who has a disorder of the psyche such as bipolar or other psychosis. People with delusions can be surprising combinations of capable and highly inventive and completely off the wall…
There is also a fair bit of overlap between these, look at the YouTube vlog “Bipolar or Waking Up” for instance. Or the wounded healer archetype, or shamanic illness. There is a long history of a connection between a breakthrough of the psyche typified through some kind of a trial or illness, and a gift of being able to communicate with the other world.
Not to imply that Anando was a type like that, from all reports she is relatively sane.
@Nityaprem,
In your opinion, what does “a gift of being able to communicate with the other world” look or appear like, and what kind of value does it have?
I would say it would look very ordinary, just someone who gets hints from the other side without much show or razzamatazz. It could be valuable based on who he connects with, but most often these things are about emotions, not enlightenment.
In psychic parlance “the other side” is generally held to mean the spirit world where the disembodied souls hang out. Is that what you mean?
In your view, is it these ghosts or spirits that are giving ”the hints”?
It’s not my gift, so I don’t know what the world looks like to someone like that. I prefer to leave it vague, rather than try guessing or putting forward some imaginings. If you really want a detailed explanation I’d suggest you find a reputable medium and send them a list of questions.
Nityaprem, you were talking about “a gift of being able to communicate with the other world” and you write of “knowing who is a genuine medium” in a way that indicates that you know about such things, but pressed, I don`t really get the impression that all this area is something you really know much about.
I’ve met a few people who have a genuine gift, and I have met others who have a mental vulnerability, and I have done a lot of reading about what is on the boundary line. I’ve given a few pointers here about what I found, but if you really want to know you should do your own research.
Nityaprem, I am not seeking information in a generalised sense, I am curious about the things you are specifically saying.
For example, you say, “I have met a few people with a genuine gift”. What I am asking is what constitutes, in your opinion, this genuine gift, and how did you come to know it is genuine?
Without those kind of back-up elaborations, these kind of statements seem somehow meaningless.
@frank
That’s fine by me, let them be meaningless. I don’t mind sharing the odd anecdote but I’m not going to lay out the details of my personal life to satisfy the whims of the SN regulars.
Nityaprem,
Ok, don`t panic, I`m not asking for your girlfriend`s phone number or your underpants size (medium?)!
Just found this one by Prem Buddha on Satsang Circle without a teacher:
“Satsang Circle – The New ‘Group’?
In ’98, Satyam Nadeen came to London to give a weekend workshop. A workshop resembling a weekend- long satsang, but with one major difference: there was no teacher.
In ‘From Onions To Pearls’ one of Nadeen’s basic ideas is that about 1% of the world’s population is in the throes of what he calls ‘The Shift.’ This is an abrupt and dramatic acceleration of evolution as more and more people start to wake up. It’s violent, and can be frightening. Everything we took ourselves to be is vanishing.
For Nadeen the traditional master/disciple approach has been outflanked by the sheer size of this crisis and so what he did in his workshop was simply to subtract any fixed teacher from the satsang. Everyone in succession could take the chair and talk about their personal experience of this ‘Shift.’
https://home.online.nl/prembuddha/s.circle.html”
Everyone came to sit “in front as the teacher” and answer questions….
Klaus,
It`s a great idea to illustrate and experience the theatrical nature of satsang meetings.
Sitting in the chair and sitting on the ground are two entirely different roles, but most people will manage to pull off either to a greater or lesser extent if they have to.
It`s like when you have films with untrained kids like in `Slumdog Millionaire`, people say how amazing it is that kids can act without training.
I don`t think it’s so amazing when you think about it. Acting is like language. It`s innate and it’s a survival mechanism.
People are surprisingly good at it.
Being enlightened on a chair is not even a very complex part. You don`t have to be Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep.
Sit there, move slow, if at all, not much emotion. Nod occasionally. Don`t blink too much. Go `mmmm`, look interested, maximise presence. Chuck in a few zen one-liners and away you go.
Frank,
Actually, besides the idea of non-hierarchy, I got focused on these features:
Providing a cell-like structure on the grassroots level (strong enough to resist any tendency to hierarchisation – big maybe).
i.e. not very formalised, no invitation flyers with keywords and fees, no compulsively fixed repetitive dates.
Stick to the ABC of group dynamics, that groups to be effective should remain small
i.e. agreement of just a few persons to start off together, not a founder-leader-tradition etc.
Satsang circle can be a response to a society edging everyone further and further into isolation,
a (last-ditch) attempt to reinvent friendship…
But then again, this may have no appeal to anyone, as people have their (more or less strong) preferences.
I can see it as a kind of drama workshop, which would probably fulfil all the things you mentioned and might well produce a good mix of fooling around and wisdoming around.
But I think hardcore enlightenment-seeker types tend to want to hang out with some big guy at the top of a pyramid with some kind of established cred who will give them something special.
Frank,
Thanks for replying.
That’s exactly my feeling, too…needs someone special, otherwise no appeal….
But then I would also ask how much of the specialness of the guy in the chair is created by their position and the respect people have, that is to say by the structure and performance of the whole social hierarchy set-up with its rituals and assumptions.
People talk about the energy of the guy in the chair.
Have you ever been in a situation where everybody is focused on the speaker and you want to get out and make your way along the row and out of the door? There is a huge pull to not do it! What is that energy? It`s not spiritual, it can happen in a theatre or cinema, for example. That`s a human thing related to groups and crowds, an example of the power almost tangible of group energy.
As far as being wise when given the opportunity, I remember a group therapy session I was in in a rehab context. We were doing an exercise where people gave feedback to the others, how they felt and experienced them. There was an 18-year-old girl there who had always lived at home with her parents and didn`t have much life experience it seemed. Everybody was taken aback by the level of insight into other people`s motivations and strategies that she had, she was the sharpest person in the room of people who were for the most part a decade or three older than her. I guess that was the moment I stopped being impressed by therapy/guru types who could “see right through you”.
It`s just a function. If you put a bunch of people in that situation (the satsang circle sounds the same kind of thing) then a surprising amount might do rather well as a guru.
If this is so, the results will show how important role-play and the opportunity to do so is in these processes.
Yes. People tend to project their own ‘grandeur’ – which most of us may have left uncompleted – on the great person up front.
We don’t just project negative things onto others, but also positives.
Sometimes the torque in a situation/workshop/retreat/online forum is too low – and we keep spinning. Sometimes the confrontation’s torque is too high – we cannot cope (here I remember a personal meet-up with Artur: standing just 1 meter away – I felt the universe, Shiva, whatever – and almost fell over).
Sometimes it is fluctuating in between, according to the shape of the day.
Having both feet on the ground – earthiness can/must certainly oppose the fleeting feelings of being in the air with the head way above the clouds.
Finding the right torque – the challenge of the day – is how I can put it.
Being with the flow – whatever that is.
Frank,
I appreciate your comment.
Highly suitable.
@ Frank and Lokesh.
Could the pair of you be displaying more spiritual ego if you tried? Talk about spiritually superior.
You’ve just rubbished most individuals who show any interest in ”spirituality” while bigging yourselves up as usual.
The degree of assumption the pair of you make about all these individuals absolutely stinks.
What is your opinion, Frank?
Is it all role-playing?
By guys like Osho, Gurdjeff, Sadhguru, Jesus, Rinzai, Chung-tsu, Lao-tse?
Sadhguru in amongst this group of giants, Satchit?!
Why not Sadhguru?
He also plays the Guru-game and has more clicks on YouTube than Osho.
My point isn’t about popularity, the number of followers or of those curious or ‘interested’ it’s about stature, worth, which I don’t think are indicated by the number of clicks on youtube, do you?
While I don’t doubt that Sadhguru might help many at some levels, I find something rather ‘creepy’ about him, he’s not someone I feel I could trust, even at times to the extent that I suspect he’s not what he presents himself as being, ie that he’s just ‘acting a part’, that he’s a phoney. But I might be mistaken of course.
@ Satchit
I have wondered if, certainly in Poona 1, Osho wasn’t acting the part of Guru, Spiritual type. (He would never have dressed in jeans, docs and a sweater because that would go against the image. The expectations of those who came to him).
Seems to me he dressed like an Emperor, an eastern potentate in Oregon, and that was deliberately going against the expectations of how a spiritual individual should dress. (This is conjecture).
Didn’t he always wear a robe, even while a young student or as a professor?
@SD
Certainly, but the point was more about speculating on that dramatic shift in the way he dressed, after Poona One.
The issue about wealth was not as much in play in Poona One as was so during Oregon time, and certainly, as far as I’m concerned personally, Poona One was about meditation, there was never any meaningful connection for me at that time about meditation and wealth, on the contrary, and Oregon seemed to be much more a statement about meditation and wealth.
A few years after Poona One, post-Oregon, and just after the very small firm I worked for went bankrupt, I had an ‘epiphany’, understood, despite being so hard up, although I was managing because I’m very resourceful with money, that I may have been at the bottom end of the wealth scale in the UK but still wealthier than 90% of the rest of the world, a sobering moment which I have never forgotten and I am considerably better off now than I was then although still very good with money.
He wanted to attract much interest in the richest country on Earth – and undermine the popular historical connection between spirituality and poverty. (Although I suppose the huge wealth of the Catholic Church was and still is an exception to this ‘rule’. But is the Pope (and likewise, the heads of other religions) necessarily regarded as a wealthy man?
@ SD
Yes, Sadhguru doesn’t impress me. Still he is an example of a Guru.
He could have gone for Meher Baba`s Doobie Brothers look…
…but he went more for the look of his other youthful favourite, Tagore.
PC Arpana blows his whistle and says to me and Frank, “Talk about spiritually superior.” Okay, I will.
The PC often thinks myself and others are coming from a position of spiritual superiority. In my case he has said so on several occasions. I can assure you that I do not feel superior to anyone, spiritually or otherwise.
So where is the PC’s “superior” issue coming from? My guess is that unconsciously he suffers from an inferiority complex and projects that onto others, viewing them as people who see themselves as in some way superior.
@ Arps
Yes, the emperor dressing was in my opinion also a means to get more attention in the media. It was part of the Rolls Royce thing. And certainly one could attract more rich people with the fashion style.
Btw, in my opinion you take Lokesh and Frank too seriously.
It is an Ego-Arena here, I don’t see anybody who is egoless.
Oh, have to go for the beer. Tonight Champions League in the Allianz-Arena!
Come on, Villareal!!
@ SD
Catholic wealth is hoarded rather than circulating, and circulating wealth has the potential to create more, In the best and worse sense.
There’s a discussion. What is wealth?
@ Lokesh
Calling me “PC Arpana” is both ad hominem (Again) and you projecting onto me, AGAIN.
You, Lokesh, police sannyas news and browbeat others into silence if they say anything that doesn’t suit your agenda.
I agree. You are not superior.
Arps, has it ever occurred to you that such perceptions might possibly be largely confined to you and perhaps even not shared by any other readers here?
You might declare (‘emotions-in-orbit’) “I don’t care, that’s how I feel, that’s my truth”, but in stating, “You, Lokesh, police sannyas news and browbeat others into silence if they say anything that doesn’t suit your agenda”, you’re involving others, not just yourself, so doesn’t it make sense to consider their views (or their silence), not just your highly personal responses?
@ Satchit
You don’t take Lokesh seriously enough. He is a very special and important individual.
Enjoy your beer.
@ Arps
Lokesh is not more
important and special than you and me.
Everything else is dreamstuff, Maya.
@ SD.
Yes, I agree with you.
Doesn’t mean I’m wrong though.
@ Satchit.
Oh yes he is. (British joke about pantomimes).
Frank, 1:14 hrs
There is another person looking similar to Rabindranath Tagore which is Hazrat Inayat Khan, Sufi with a veena…can’t find picture quickly…smartphone typing….
@satyadeva wrote on 12 april at 1.20 pm
Villareal knocked out Bayern in the QF of the Champions League last night, that was a bit unexpected. I hope it didn’t put Satchit off his beer.
Frank says, “But I think hardcore enlightenment-seeker types tend to want to hang out with some big guy at the top of a pyramid with some kind of established cred who will give them something special.”
I have to agree. As to what a hardcore enlightenment-seeker type is exactly I would say they come in many forms. Some are in fact sincere and a few of them find what they were looking for in some form or another. For the majority, I would say that there exists a need to be special, or they might just be lost. Then there are the ones who, in relation to the world, are often failures. Being a serious seeker compensates for this by giving the feeling of having achieved, or are on their way to achieving, something more than material success.
This ties in with Osho’s ideas about needing to have attained material success to understand that it is a booby prize in the game of life. One can only truly understand the emptiness of material wealth once one has it in one’s hands etc. As to where I stand in relation to this I cannot say for sure. I suppose that is why most days I do some physical work on my land, because nothing quite beats completing such tasks, turning around and looking at the finished job, and experiencing the feeling that I have done my bit to make the world look a little more beautiful than the way I found it.
I suppose that could be boiled down to an overall meaning of life. Wherever you find yourself, try and make the world a little more beautiful than it was before you arrived.
Lokesh,
Yeah. Very fitting to one’s everyday situations….
The problem with the idea that only the materially rich person can see through the shallowness and thus become spiritual has led these days to the very common occurrence of the materially successful person getting to the point where they feel they need something more, then decide to make it big as a spiritual person. This is counter-productive as these types of people have the means and the energy to become successful gurus/spiritual therapists/youtubers etc. This has had the effect of fuelling newage spiritual, in my opinion, shite, as the ultra-capitalist wet-dream where there is basically little or no real product other than the merch.
Yoga/alt health/spiritual modalities of all sorts is a massive, massive billion dollar baby business. People used to downshift into this sector to get a more peaceful life, now they are upshifting into newage careers because not only is it lucrative but the fame, adulation, etc. is irresistible.
To boil it down: What are the things that are needed?
A basic grasp of the knack of meditation. A curious attitude towards life. A sense, as you say, of the value of trying to decorate the world in a positive way. Someone to share your thoughts and feelings, whatever they are. Ways of keeping the body in decent shape health-wise. A bit of a sense of humour.
They don`t sound really like things that you need to pay billions of dollars for, to me.
It`s like paying an arm and a leg for a T-shirt with a designer label that is not even as good quality as one from Primark!
Spiritual materialism to see through.
Quite often when seeing some new, glitzy, shiny, slick spiritual marketing homepage advertising low-threshold access to online seminars I feel these people have actually said “Goodbye” to the individual.
But then again, ElRon Hubbard says, “help is in everything.”
Yes, Frank, once more, I agree. Especially in the East, I have met many people who had nothing much in the way of material wealth, yet they were happy and in some cases were what I would deem to be spiritual people.
I understand the logic behind Osho’s take on needing to have experienced wealth to know it is a booby prize etc., but I never agreed with that 100%, in part for the ideas you outlined.
Thanks for the link to Prembuddha’s website, I found a few really interesting tidbits like an old interview with Alexander Smit, a disciple of Nisargadatta.
Yeah, good. There’s always something to find.
The Satyam Nadeen story is from 1998!
I got my copy of this short book yesterday and read it through in a sitting. I don’t really have many observations to add to Lokesh’s.
The story about Laxmi was new as Lokesh mentioned and it highlighted the jealousy and power struggles around Osho before and after he died.
Anando didn’t come across very much in the book. Yes, the fun and practical jokes that she shared with Osho provided a sense of how she, unlike others, were able to relax and have some fun around Osho, but many disciples retained an awe and therefore a lack of real intimacy around him.
The many devices to teach those closest to him were largely based on them dealing with their so-called “unconscious”, but even here she was short on any real detail and short on much insight into what she or others really learned.
A lot of the book was devoted to a wider history of the commune, the poisoning, the harsh treatment meted out to Osho and the key staff around him, from the US and Indian governments. Much of this is already detailed in other books, so was largely unnecessary
The key elements of what Osho spoke to her or the long conversations they had are not detailed at all. It’s all rather vague and unintimate.
She was in many ways simply his servant, at his beck and call and rarely details what his teaching meant to her.
Clearly she felt loved and deeply honoured to look after him, but was as mystified by him after all the years with him as others appeared to be. As Lokesh hints, no one got close to him, no one really challenged him. There was too much reverence and distance from the man himself.
She refers, as a result perhaps, to his frustration at one point with the inane, repetitive questions he was being asked around relationships.
She referred a couple of times to the fine instinct he had for trouble brewing, in the need for a quick getaway from the Ranch, before it was to be literally invaded by police; and a second time his decision to quickly leave India for Katmandhu, before an arrest warrant could be served. Both incidents touched me, as examples of his innate and instinctive trust. A trust I’d define as being ‘out of time’ and worry. A particular example of how being truly present and awake provided him with the ability to respond fast and with no thought.
I’m surprised, Simon, to hear you say, “The many devices to teach those closest to him were largely based on them dealing with their so-called “unconscious”, but even here she was short on any real detail and short on much insight into what she or others really learned.”
What about the time she tried to ‘run away’ from her responsibilties and was publicly chided by Osho in two successive discourses, which she described in some detail as a hard but transformative experience? (Pages 48-55, see my post of April 4, 9.28pm).
Also, you say, “As Lokesh hints, no one got close to him, no one really challenged him. There was too much reverence and distance from the man himself.”
This seems to have been the case, although Anando and Vivek, for instance, didn’t always just put up with his foibles. And how often do disciples of anyone ever “really” challenge their master as you’re implying they should? What would you have wanted to say to him, to challenge him about?
(I may well be way off track here, but do you think this preoccupation might possibly stem from your relationship, if there was one, with your father?).
“No one got close to him….”
There is a simple reason for this:
From his side is no relationship possible.
It’s the result of egolessness.
Some good and relevant comments from the regulars. Thanks, Klaus, for your personal comment.
Then we have Satchit. If he was pulling everyone’s leg, I would have to say he is very clever. I think it might be the case that he is not and all that spiritual tripe he serves up is meant to impress. As daft as a fridge magnet and truly one of a kind that there are quite a lot of out there. Fortunately, I live a quiet life and don’t have to meet them.
Satchit is probably a fridge magnet magnate.
Also available:
“Every day is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”
“When we step beyond our limitations we become more unlimited.”
“Alcohol is the answer. But I can`t remember the question.”
“Drink. You`ll never use all those brain cells anyway.”
“I was hoping for a battle of wits, but you appear unarmed.”
“I thought growing old would take longer.”
Etc….
Good that you are funny, Frankie, because it’s not a very serious affair.
But you forgot to mention the fridge that visited this planet.
Don’t know where it is now.
Never born, never died.
Lokesh, you often wrote here that Osho is the most remarkable man you ever met.
Fact is also that you did sit many times in front of him.
Tell me one thing, what did you see when you looked into his eyes?
Benign intelligence.
Yes, I saw Nobody.
It was probably just a reflection.
It is always a reflection.
What do you expect from a mirror?
“What do you expect from a mirror?”
An image that is the wrong way round, but gives the impression that one has seen oneself from the outside.
A photo or a video is more accurate in this respect.
Irony,
the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
Hi Sat,
No, I’m using the benefit of hindsight, a wicked tool really.
If I’d been Anando, at that time I’d have been in awe, and unable to ask the real questions, I would have been in fear.
So my observations of Anando or anyone else are profoundly unfair, as I’m sure I’d have been as weak as they were.
What I’ve discovered since is how students or disciples are a reflection of their master and vice versa. How tied they are together; the master dependent on the disciple and vice versa. The master can only inform those who are able to hear and the teacher is dependent on the ability of the student’s capacity to listen and understand.
Osho was largely dealing with children of the 1950s. Lost, educated and conditioned by parents who were ignorant of self-reflection of almost any kind. Dynamic was invented for repressed kids, like me. In this sense Osho was limited in his ability to teach, and he did a great job in stretching some of us out of our infantile behaviour.
Anando was an expression of that like I was. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have challenged his whole notion of Master and disciple. I’d have challenged his ideas of commune, I’d have asked him more directly about the eastern idea of meditation, I’d have challenged his notion of enlightenment, Buddhafields and all. I would have challenged his ideas that we should separate ourselves with red clothes and malas, I’d have challenged his notion of “bliss”.
I’d have asked him about how his notion of no mind and how no thinking was possible, when you have to live and breathe and work for a living in the West. I’d have doubted with him how his ideas of “celebration and love” and “music” appear deeply limited as real solutions to our existential problems of loneliness and despair.
But remember, I couldn’t ask him these questions because I was young and naive. He didn’t answer them for me because I wasn’t ready to ask them. We were tied together in a mutual ignorance.
The tragedy is I couldn’t ask these questions. I was just a young fool. And the impression I have is that most of his followers were young innocents too. Such is life.
Only later as I met and interacted with BL and others did I gradually find the verve to be honest, and to ask of them and of myself the more honest, real questions: What is loneliness? Why can’t I find love? What is the dark void space within me? Why is relating so difficult? What Is death?
Osho doesn’t really tackle these questions. He’s not intimate, he speaks of a far-off place that he lives in but the rest of can only aspire to, so how do I get there? He speaks of meditation as a means but from practising it I never achieve the peace he proclaims.
If I’d have dared we would have explored these questions, with honesty; with a vulnerable humility on both our parts to provide a better understanding of his position.
Such direct communication is rare with a master, usually the student is incapable as I have been of asking such straight questions. My impression is he would have been able to help so far, but he too would have been perplexed by how his state of “enlightenment” was possible in the West.
As to your final question, forgive me if I’m not sure of your meaning? How my relationship with Osho is related to my father is a bit lost on me. Whilst I had little interaction with my own father, I don’t see my preoccupation with Osho as particularly affected by this. Of course, like many, in my 20s as a sannyasin I projected onto Osho. He was a man like no other, serene, beautiful with all the answers…and I was a young man looking desperately within and without.
For a while he offered solutions but after some years it was clear to me (and to many others) that I had taken what I needed and now would go on, learning elsewhere. I never feel let down by him. He never failed me. We parted as friends, respectful of our pathways.
@Simond
Hey, very personal reflections.
These are similar to what I had in the back of my mind at the time, too.
Where is real meditation? Effectiveness of attitudes and actions of ‘the group’ setting itself apart – and imo slightly worse: above?
We were still individuals in a mundane world…
Same level friendship certainly was not possible in the beginning – for most of us.
But then again, as you also express, Osho did not let me down.
Nowadays, there are many ways for an individual to explore, reflect, experience, practise. Blazing the trails.
I found a pattern in myself with regard to family: I was searching to be part of the ‘perfect family’ consisting of mother, father, three kids…indeed ‘found it’ outside two times. Phew.
Interesting post, Simond.
For myself, disciples` accounts of their master are like seductive women`s clothing: designed to show just enough to remain alluring but ultimately to keep the most secret parts covered!
Not unlike the rest of Life, in its way, Frank. The allure keeps us coming back for more, yet always leaves a subtle sense of the charade never been quite enough.
You only have to read of the many NDEs to notice how often people comment about how they felt drawn to come back, even though they may have also commented how the “other side” was “perfect”. Even those who also suggested they didn’t want to come back always actually did return.
The allure of human existence is very strong.
As to any biography, you’re also right to say that they rarely ever provide as full a picture of the inner life of the writers. That too may simply be a consequence of the challenge of writing about oneself.
Simond,
Aside from any considerations of the inherent difficulty or maybe even impossibility of accurate (auto) biography(inner or outer), there are other problems. For example, that the political/self-preservation/peer pressures on disciple-authors whose whole world/identity is still predicated on the group, will have a significant, if largely unacknowledged, influence on the narrative produced.
@frank, who wrote, “For myself, disciples` accounts of their master are like seductive women`s clothing: designed to show just enough to remain alluring but ultimately to keep the most secret parts covered!”
I am still reading Ouspensky’s ‘In search of the Miraculous’, which is yet another tale of how the writer took up with a master. In a way it is propaganda for Gurdjieff’s teachings, in that he lays it all out in a fairly accessible manner. Some of it is indeed seductive, in how he talks about self-remembering and group work and the so-called ‘schools’.
But it seems to me that there is still a lot of dancing around the core facts. Some books like Nisargadatta’s satsang books are a lot more direct in their pointing, and this directness appeals to me a great deal.
I once came across a quote, “judge a master by his success rate.” In that light, no teacher except perhaps the Buddha seems to be good.
How do you judge the Buddha’s success? By the lives of his warrior monks, or by his male-only monasteries, or by the everyday servitude of practising Buddhists who light jossticks and pray at temples laden with gold, whilst the poor people work and serve their Buddhist master priests?
The success you describe can surely only be judged by your own success or that of those of whom you have fully tested, in your own experience?
Simond
10 April, 2022 at 10:17 pm
The ‘success rate’ of the Buddha imo is no different to the success rate of any other spiritual group, I guess.
The composition of the inmates of Buddhist monasteries imo does not differ from the composition of societies in general.
Same as with the composition of governments which seem to be a reflection of the population – or even a misrepresentation.
In 2006, I spent a few weeks meditating in a Buddhist monastery in the Southern Shan State in Myanmar. The monastery was run by the head nun who invited me to stay for lunch during my retreat there. This meditation centre had more nuns (around 40-50) than monks (around 10).
So, even though your observations might be fitting in general the occasional exception is missed.
Certainly, there must be more awareness of the oneness of all people in these surroundings, too.
Guesstimates say that “possibly around 1-3% of the meditators in this tradition” actually experience samadhi or similar states in their practice. The bigger portion experiences restlessness, worry etc.
Might be the same with other Buddhist – Muslim – Christian – Sannyas – or any other style practitioners, though.
That’s also a reflection of the current (?) state of the world in general, too:
https://www.oshonews.com/2021/10/25/the-affairs-of-the-world/
@simond
The sutras of the Buddha contain many instances of the enlightenment of a disciple, and sometimes tens or hundreds at a time. He is the only teacher that I know of whom you might say that he had many enlightened disciples.
Whether the rest of his tradition has done as well after he passed away is a lot more debatable. Some say that some of the monks of the Thai Forest Tradition are enlightened. Who knows?
I would like to add
Webu Sayadaw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webu_Sayadaw
U Pandita Sayadaw
https://www.lionsroar.com/sayadaw-u-pandita-burmese-meditation-master-dead-94/
@Nityaprem 11th April 11.32am:
“The sutras of the Buddha contain many instances of the enlightenment of a disciple, and sometimes tens or hundreds at a time. He is the only teacher that I know of whom you might say that he had many enlightened disciples.”
I would argue here that Osho had not only the same spiritual power and capacity to transform disciples as Gautama the Buddha – but also produced many enlightened disciples, not just in his lifetime, but also since.
Of course, Buddha was confined to the state of Bihar in his lifetime, whereas Osho, being born in this day and age, had a worldwide following.
Where Buddha had two main lines, one in Tibet, one in Japan, Osho will have many more lines worldwide.
With the benefit of hindsight I would have done this and that. Repent! Repent!
Osho is not a therapist.
And he is not your uncle either.
Meditation is not a means, it is the end.
Satchit,
You sometimes offer posts with one-liners or simple sayings.
Such posts may contain a glimpse of wisdom, but I don’t get a sense of your journey, or a recognition of the real challenge you have faced to express such simple wisdom.
Indeed they sometimes appear to me as platitudes, quotes from Osho, or in essence, as borrowed information.
In this case, you suggest “meditation is the end”. But offer no insight into how this knowledge has come to you, or how you are applying it now.
There will be contributors on this site who would truly benefit from your experience and insight, to whom you can offer real help, if the realisations you have gained were expressed in more detail.
Osho published 600 books, spoke at length for many years, and answered so many of the same style of questions, rarely concerned that he was repeating himself tirelessly.
His humility and grace to assist others was revealed at length not by one-liners, or platitudes, but by as honest an investigation as he could muster.
Moreover, his journey to realisation was filled with immense hard work, great challenges and pain about which he spoke at some length, but is often forgotten by his disciples. It did not come about by meditation alone, but through the fire of trial and error in Life and through experience and learning.
Why not use how he lived, as a real example to others, by contributing fewer platitudes and one-liners, and sharing your knowledge more widely?
Simond, an interesting post. No doubt sincere, although somewhat naive.
You say to Satchit, “There will be contributors on this site who would truly benefit from your experience and insight, to whom you can offer real help, if the realizations you have gained were expressed in more detail.”
That sounds absurd to me. Satchit has nothing much to offer other than one-liners. It should be clear to you by now that Satchit is a bit stupid. To imagine that he could in some way offer “real help” is ridiculous. He can’t even help himself by sharing something real about himself, so how is he supposed to help anyone else?
You speak about Satchit sharing the realizations he gained expressed in more detail. What realizations? The guy has expressed nothing that remotely hints at revealing any kind of realizations he has had. All he does is parrot a load of spiritual cliches and when fun is poked at him for doing so he does not even realize it.
I think you are expecting too much from someone who has little to offer other than tired one-liners, which he will continue to deliver, lost in a fantasy that he has arrived somewhere worthwhile. The guy is a joke.
Loco,
Satchit is this, Satchit is that!
Did you have wet dreams of me last night?
Thank you for your attention.
Oooooh! Satchit, your word for today is ‘Tetchy’.
You ask “Did you have wet dreams of me last night?”!
That is adolescent speak, which is obviously your forte.
Thanks, Lokesh, I certainly am naive sometimes and I also try and reach through my own prejudices and judgements to the other person, to see if I can draw out any innate intelligence. I also can be very direct and to the point but it’s something I need to work on a bit harder!
Such a ploy has its place but so does your own direct, no holds barred instinct.
As Arpana likes to say about me, I’m a “rescuer“, one of his psychobabble theories that he parrots out to explain the complexities of personality. He thinks that’s some form of crime, whereas I don’t see myself fixed to one or another position. But there’s no doubt I have a tendency to avoid conflict, which can be a weakness.
In the case of Satchit, I’ve seen from his response that he can’t engage in anything other than simplistic ideology and platitudes.
@ Simond
My attitude to you has changed a lot since you began posting here. I’m pretty certain you’re all right, and I also suspect I’d enjoy talking to you face-to-face.
However, you do come across as a bit preachy, or that’s how I hear you.
That last post of yours to Satchit sounded like a sermon to a rather silly boy who you were addressing kindly in the hope of moving on a bit.
Don’t fall into the trap of criticising others because they deserve criticism and then treat being criticised in return as further evidence of failing on the part of said individual, or to put it another way, don’t be a Lokesh.
Simon,
I’m on the path of self-acceptance or you can call it also no-self-acceptance.
So, if an one-liner comes – good.
If something else comes – also good.
This statement “meditation is the end” you can find many times in his 600 books, seemed you were not aware of it.
As for your idea of taking Osho as a model for my own life:
The zen master says, enlightenment is as difficult as climbing up the highest mountain.
His wife says, it is easy as tapping on one’s own nose.
The daughter says, if you think it is difficult then it is difficult.
If you think it is easy, then it is easy.
Now, this was almost a multi-liner!
Simond says to Satchit:
“There will be contributors on this site who would truly benefit from your experience and insight, to whom you can offer real help, if the realisations you have gained were expressed in more detail.”
Sounds like a line that Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder would have delivered to Baldrick!
Joking apart, Simond, I am sure that Satchit is extremely knowledgable and has great awareness around things of which you are totally ignorant, like who won the Bundesliga last season and which supermarket has the best deal on Alzheimer Pils and tinned sausages this week.
@Simond
You don’t understand Satchit because he is insightful and you are a scholar, and have no insight.
Two different languages.
Experience versus intellect.
That’s why Lokesh doesn’t understand Satchit, and Lokesh isn’t even as developed a scholar as you are, Simond, is even less insightful than you are.
Satchit “is insightful”. PC Arpana is never going to rise in the ranks with insights like that, no matter how hard he blows his whistle.
@Lokesh
Picking the right one-liner requires a certain measure of insight, even if you rarely end up displaying much of your own input.
@Nityaprem
11 April, 2022 at 1:47 pm
I think that is true. As most of the time one is searching these quotes spontaneously, intuitively. Synchronicity, too.
In fact, you might say that talking in wise one-liners shows a certain amount of inner development, even if not exactly great verbal gifts.
Yeah, but are they even wise?
For example, Satchit`s latest: “This is an ego-arena.”
What does that even mean?
It`s all part of a language that `spiritual` people speak.
I call it Vague-speak.
A mixture of homilies, cliches and never quite clear statements that spiritual types kind of hypnotise each other with in their `conversations’.
If you try to get clear by asking clear questions about the fuzziness, they usually duck for cover and get even vaguer or more cliched or get offended.
You need not play stupid, Frank.
An arena is a place to fight with the other.
A place to show the other that one is more clever and cunning than the other.
A place like SN.
If that’s all SN is, Satchit, then the site has failed to fulfil its purpose and might as well shut down now. But is that all it is for you?
@Satchit
That`s a very jaded and nihilistic viewpoint. You miss the fun, the laughs and the swapping info. Pity. Your loss.
@ frank.12 April, 2022 at 3:56 pm
Parodying yourself now! Wow! So cool!
@ SD
No, it’s not all, but lately much and it’s my perspective.
I have no problem to fight in an arena if somebodycalls me “a joke”.
But it’s good to call a spade a spade.
Nice-land is somewhere else.
Didn’t Osho once recommend, “Be a joke unto thyself!”? Or was that someone else parodying his “Be a Light…”?
SD,
I think it was Buddha that said:
“Be a light unto yourself.”
Osho said, “Be a joke unto yourself” and Swami Bhorat said:
“Be a jerk unto yourself.”
.
@ SD
Yes, be a joke unto yourself!
But you know the difference between you yourself calling you a ‘jerk’ and somebody else calling you a ‘jerk’?
Or is it the same for you?
Could be similar, could be very different, depending on the context and who and how the other person is. As so often, it depends….
(Pity about Bayern last night – but did you suffer disappointment (through expectations) or take it with consummate detachment? And, in either case, did the beer help?).
@ SD
Yes, it was a bit shocking. The others had just one chance.
At least this year will be the 10th Championship in sequence here.
Also not bad.
And you still are fan of the Gunners?
Yes, Satchit, I remain a ‘Gooner’ but without being a fanatic!
Yes, Arps, you are right.
Simon thinks too much.
Lately he wrote something about how he would ask questions to Osho again if he were here.
My God, these questions are all already answered in his 600 books.
And it was never a thing of answering questions.
@ Satchit. 11 April, 2022 at 11:35 am.
I said much the same to myself when I read his post.
He lives in a fantasy past.
@ Arps
Yes, fantasy world.
Good that he is now a disciple of El Loco. He can work on him that
he becomes a bit harder.
There were already rumours that her real name is Simone.
@ Satchit. 11 April, 2022 at 2:05 pm
Now now Don’t resort to ad hominem. Don’t be a Lokesh. ʱªʱªʱª(˃̣̣̥艸˂̣̣̥)
Satchit says:
“her real name is Simone”
Arps, what with his sexist 8 year-old`s sense of humour and his obvious state of no-mind, he probably thinks ad hominem is Latin for homophobic abuse.
You can see why he sticks to the zen oneliner thing as he is so dim that if he actually says anything off the bat he gives the game away.
@ Frank
Your fallacy is ambiguity and…
Oh dear.
Someone has pressed the random psychobabble generator on button again….
@Frank
Do you actually accept the notion individuals have egos? (Genuine question, because if you don’t then no discussion is possible, and then before that discussion can take place we have to be clear our ideas about what is ego are the same).
I see ego as all those ideas we unconsciously have about ourselves that tell us we are special above all others; but as awareness develops one starts to have embarrassing moments of recognising the stupidity of those ideas in an uncomfortable step-by-step way, which eventually leads to a more matter-of-fact acceptance.
Obviously, when talking about everybody having an ego, I mean with the exception of Lokesh.
Arps,
That sounds like a very English path to enlightenment, via progressive levels of embarrassment.
I can just see a suitably mortified and awkward Hugh Grant playing Major Crashingbore-Smythe of the Theosophical Society at the moment of his enlightenment proclaiming:
“I`m dreadfully sorry old boy,I don`t want to cause a silly fuss but I`ve just done the most awful boo-boo, and dash it all if I haven`t just gone and transcended my bloody ego, damn it. Sorry.”
@ Arpana
Skip the word ‘Osho’.
Divine Existence is with us all the time.
@Satchit
I am still, albeit much more subtle than at one time, about relationships.
I am a long way from full transcendence of relationship.
Arps says:
“You don’t understand Satchit because he is insightful and you are a scholar, and have no insight.
Two different languages.
Experience versus intellect.”
Arps, funny as it is, come on, this very English-humour, BlackAdder-esque, irony-heavy ribbing of Satchit has gone far enough.
Ease off the poor guy, Arps, and let him drink his beer, shout for his team and be proud of his collection of parrot-droppings.
@ Frank
Meta Irony. I think. Meta tongue in cheek. Meta ribbing.
Keep up the good work.
And you say in a previous post how I’m alright and you’d like a pint with me, in the next I’m devoid of insight, I’m a dullard scholar with an over-intellectual, sermonic, Christian style.
I wouldn’t care for a drink with me!
How come you’ve changed your tune?
@ Simond
My neighbours, the absence of whom a large unfillable hole in my life would leave, are unlikely to know what the word ‘insight’ means.
@ Simond
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
@ Simond
Come on. You don’t seriously send in those posts psychoanalysing various individuals and it doesn’t cross your mind you might get pushback.
@Simond
You’ve psychoanalysed me and found me wanting. The same with Satchit; and obviously you’ve psychoanalysed Lokesh and found him not wanting.
I don’t agree with your diagnosis about any of us.
@ Simond
You and Lokesh have got serious problems about approval and disapproval to resolve. Lokesh much more so than you.
@ Simond.
I’d still buy you a pint and packet of pork scratchings though. I reckon you’ve got a good heart.
Frank commented ”Arps,
That sounds like a very English path to enlightenment, via progressive levels of embarrassment.”
I am very English in some ways. What can I say?! Although you didn’t answer the question.
Arps, I`m not answering your question for two reasons:
1. Because I don`t want to get into a psychobabble philosophising mindfuckfest with you about the nature of the `ego`.
2. Because I think you are a cunt with an inferiority complex.
Awww, Frank. Yur such a schmoozer.
@simond on 10 April, 10.11 pm
Coming back to this a few days later, it strikes me that your post raises a number of interesting questions. How do we best help our fellow-travellers on a site like SN?
With a quick Zen hit, as is Satchit’s method? Or with a prolonged personal anecdote? Do people really learn from stories? What exactly brings insight?
Osho used to mix things up: a sutra or question to start off a discourse, anecdotes and analysis, jokes, even a guided gibberish meditation at the end. The effect was often mesmerising or hypnotic, you got carried away on his words. But generally he answered just a few questions per discourse.
Satsang with Nisargadatta or Papaji was quite different, judging from their books. Short, incisive answers to questions, and often a kind of dialogue.
So can we say there is one best way to make posts on SN? As long as you contribute enough to show something about who is talking, it seems it is likely there will be someone who picks up some of the intent.
Nityaprem,
Do you come here to help your fellow-travellers at SN? Do you use the site to receive help?
In your view is everyone at SN in need of help? What kind of help do they need? Does everyone need the same kind of help, or have different needs?
Hahaha, there are a few ‘open goals’ there, friend Arpana. But I am not going to rave about anyone.
I think we all still need help, any seeker on the spiritual path is in need. Maybe we can provide a little help for each other, if there is enough kindness, as the Dalai Lama would say.
I hate to disappoint you, Nityaprem. I left them open, and you didn’t take the shots.
Never forget, goalies can kick the ball back, as the Rev keeps discovering to his upset.
How to help fellow-travellers on the road?
First of all, is anyone here looking for help? We might help some old lady who is struggling across a busy road but what sort of help is anyone looking for on these pages?
At an unconscious level I’d say we all are looking for help in terms of a real reflection.
But to provide or receive a real reflection is rare, and how do I judge what anyone really needs or wants? Those seeking the deeper truths about the human condition are, in my experience very rare. Most look to support and confirm their existing prejudices or beliefs. Some have taken positions on Osho or any other subject and seek to defend themselves regardless of any exploration at all. They are already too wounded by the circumstances of their own lives.
This can be easily recognisable on these pages, where opinions are bandied about with ease and some contributors give and take offence at those they have taken a personal dislike to. There is then little opportunity for much real exploration of ideas at all.
In other ways this forum is a place for simple entertainment and the chance to laugh with or at others. No one is seriously looking for help at all. Many contributors here have taken this view of the forum.
At a deeper level I’d say we are all looking for help of a real kind. We all fear loneliness and isolation, and in an ideal worldwe would naturally assist each other. However, as a result of our own unresolved fear we criticise others and project onto them all those aspects of our mind we are unconscious of.
Many of us deeply fear asking for help of any kind at all. At the most simple level, how many men, for example, will even stop their car and ask for directions when they are lost? It’s too vulnerable to be seen to not know. How deep the fear runs in us.
I’ve tried to see beyond prejudices and to be honest to the unconscious need in myself and others for assistance. I know I’ve needed help. I went to Osho for help. I read books, met other teachers and have always recognised I needed help. I need real reflection, I’m largely unafraid to ask for help.
I came to this forum knowing that my contributions are an attempt to get reflection, which as I say is just another word for help. In the same way, I’ve experimented with offering my understanding to others, or tried to explore with others on this forum, with varying degrees of success. Some are willing to explore, others are simply judgemental towards me. I’ve found the whole experience to be humbling at times and overall I have gained confidence, learning much about myself and others. Even when I’ve been attacked it’s been an opportunity to face the criticism head on.
Osho offered his help and solutions with as much humility, grace and intelligence as anyone I’d ever known. It was his passion and life’s work. Yet even he tired towards the end, as I’ve observed every teacher and master to follow the same pattern.
Frustration at his disciples’ slow progress, and with it a questioning of his own methods and techniques, seems to be an inevitable consequence of any teaching method.
I too, am still in the process of seeking and learning; working with the people around to discern how we can assist each other in this challenging world.
A very sensitive and constructive post @simond. Humane and considered.
I would go a little further and say it is not a reflection that we are seeking, but more a portrait by the hand of a master painter, that which is going to show us something about ourselves that we didn’t know before.
When I got into studying Buddhism I did so knowing that in fact I knew very little, and so I have tried to adopt the “beginner’s mind”, open to more learning and flexible. That’s the way I approach forums as well, each forum is a unique world with colourful inhabitants.
But even considering that not many are there to learn, is it not ok for the forum’s birds of wondrous plumage to just strut their stuff? I think it is in large part leela, play.
A considerate post of Simond.
As we go along we learn. On this forum also. I wrote on some other thread that when I signed on here for the first time, I got such a shock that I asked kind Parmartha to please cancel my login.
Then I came back quite some time later – and slowly, slowly found more confidence in my comments.
Later on, connection to the thread contributions was such that I had very clear dreams about “the situation”.
Learning by – sometimes painful – experience! So goooood.
@Nityaprem
It depends for what kind of help you search.
For psychological help it is better to go to a therapist.
For normal help you can stay in this madhouse for a while and enjoy the different flowers in the garden.
I a little bit vaguely remember that there has been this question before:
“Can healing happen on – or through – SN?”
The overall conclusion seems to have been:
“Don’t overstretch it.”
My guess is that commenters just express themselves as it comes in the moment. Or even after a few hours-days-weeks-years of reflecting on what has been going on.
Psychological help isn’t really what I was looking for. I once visited a psychological centre and did a whole battery of tests over several days to see how sane I was, and the result came back as “inconclusive”, so it seems psychology also doesn’t have much to say.
No, I was thinking more about shared experiences in the spiritual search. What has been beneficial, what hasn’t.
@ NP
The question is also:
Why do you need help?
Are you not capable
and old enough to walk alone?
Listening to other stories are still other stories.
@satchit
Do you think there is such a thing as perfection? Is it a goal to reach complete understanding?
Life is a process of continual learning, the universe never ceases to change and teach.
Others’ views on these things can help sharpen your own discernment.
@NP
Certainly you can listen to the story of others – it’s your freedom.
But ‘the Way’ is no computer game.
@NP
That is how I see it, too.
Discerning.
In the last days I reflected/felt that the Buddhist term Upekha (equanimity) is/implies/translates as trust on the feeling side: being able to take everything as it comes/is etc.
Trust being different to love, openness, compassion, empathy.
being different or complementary to…
There is an imo lovely video on this by Yuan Tsue – The Early Days of QiGong (youtube)…have no link -smartphone typing….
@NP
What can happen in the practice?
What do others experience?
Is that similar to my path/inner state?
What are helpful conditions?
Sitting/walking/moving – what is skillful and fitting my practice?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpKu08lwpYk
‘Already free’ – awardwinning documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4m-qlgsj2k
@satchit
I came across this quote the other day: “enlightenment is the complete end of resistance to what is.” Which I thought was a pretty good definition of the Way.
The problem with listening to the stories of other people is the tendency to identify and accept them as your own experience. Which for non-fiction can have benefits, but can also be dangerous for fiction.
@Klaus, who wrote “What can happen in the practice?
What do others experience?
Is that similar to my path/inner state?
What are helpful conditions?
Sitting/walking/moving – what is skillful and fitting my practice?”
Helpful conditions are those which contribute to calm of the mind, like a partner who is easy to live with and work which suits you. Calm of the mind contributes to other positive factors such as insight and equanimity.
Unfortunately, the stories of people on SN do not tell you very much about their state of mind, most of the time they seem to be busy being clever, which is just play. So the question of what they experience is rather difficult to answer.
What I have found helpful is shikantaza, just sitting.
@Nityaprem who wrote:
”I came across this quote the other day: “enlightenment is the complete end of resistance to what is.” which I thought was a pretty good definition of the Way.”
I am powerless to resist asking the question, how can you know that? Although I must add, really strikes a chord with me as well, backed up by an awareness that so much I once treated as a problem I now take in my stride.
（*＾～＾*）ゝ☯ ✌
@arpana who wrote “I am powerless to resist asking the question, how can you know that?”
There is a certain internal response in me that goes “wow!” When I see a quote like that with which I resonate, it’s like a smell of something tasty that I know will lead to good things.
In this case, it is knowing that resistance is almost always the clinging to something else, that is deemed to be important. Resistance is a long way from the way of the Tao, the watercourse way.
@ NP
Yes. There is another quote which says:
“The way is created by walking.”
This is the reason that I said it is not a computer game.
In a computer game you can always ask the fellow-traveller:
“Where did you go at the crossroads?
Did you take the first road or the second?”
And he may answer, “Don’t take the first, that is a dead end!”
Get it?
@satchit 15 April, 2022 at 9:33 am
To connect to Osho is to move away from a life of imitation, although I guess imitation goes on at the start, which is sannyas conditioning, into a trial and error life, a life transcendent of fear of making mistakes, and if meditation is part of that, Osho with us all the time.
@ Nityaprem who wrote:
”There is a certain internal response in me that goes “wow!” When I see a quote like that with which I resonate….”
That sense of resonance is so powerful, fulfilling; and part of it is a complete absence of doubt, certainly in that resonant moment.
@Arpana who wrote, “That sense of resonance is so powerful, fulfilling; and part of it is a complete absence of doubt, certainly in that resonant moment.”
I can usually step back from that, become the observer only. I think of it as a sign that my heart approves of these teachings, that there is something true in them for me.
Quotes or interviews will sometimes have this quality for me, and that will usually cause me to dig a little deeper.
I love the way Osho used to manage with so many human judgements, good and bad. Anando got so much by his friendship, I got so much by her smile.
Hi, Veet Francesco!
Long time no see – I hope you are fine….
Hi, Klaus,
I feel more and more pissed off with this Italian government led by a businessman, and almost totally supported by a parliament that no longer represents the will of the Italians (more than 50% have not been vaccinated or have not taken the third dose, booster; more than 60% do not want to send weapons to the Ukrainian pro-Nazi government).
Here we have passed from one emergency to another, progressively more and more serious, justifying that there is no time to waste in identifying the political and legal responsibilities of the choices made in the previous emergency. At this rate, your namesake will arrive at its purpose in no time and the Rottenshit family may feel a little less under siege https://rumble.com/v10b1jn-exclusive-klaus-schwab-tell-all-interview. html
Yesterday I was in Rome demonstrating against this heterodirect government (at minute 2.02 from behind speaking with Prem A. https://rumble.com/v10eu91-spigolature.html). Since this dystopian nightmare began, those who have not succumbed to the hypnotic narrative are mobilizing and organizing, but it is not easy, the other party has unlimited means, can interfere by diverting or corrupting all that is good we can build, but until at least formal democracy remains, which (perhaps?) will allow us to vote next year, we must resist the temptation of violent shortcuts.
Meanwhile, participation seems to be waning. People are tired, without money, worried and ready for the worst, while there is an abnormal increase in sudden deaths even among young people. Large squares like that of San Giovanni filled in two events against the health dictatorship are giving way to smaller squares with a few hundred people, like yesterday.
With an hour’s drive we arrived at Piazza Santi Apostoli … no, with an hour we would have arrived by train, but without the green pass we are forced to use the car and spend half an hour to find parking, in Via Bissolati. But it’s always nice to walk around Rome, yesterday against expectations it didn’t rain, at moments the sun came out and there was a light warm wind. We were 3 sannyasins and another friend who does not have a good memory of the sannyasins known in some chaotic event of the 70s, I avoid talking about Osho with him, even though he believes that he would have had a good relationship with the bearded one, if isolated from the disciples .
Reaching the car after the event, this time we allowed ourselves a digression from the outward itinerary, passing through Via Nazionale.
Sharing with Prem M., an unvaccinated (suspended without salary) music teacher, we reflected on the theme of politics, the one often despised by Osho, against which he invited to rebellion, the one of the Italian sannyasins who reached Osho at the end of the 70s, with still the echoes of Gladio’s bombs in the ears, or that of Sheela, with the shameful story about the homeless, etc … it is clear that politics is a space of conflict, concerning the attempt of the parties to change the balance of power among the social classes, it is also clear that while we are with our eyes closed and enjoying the inner ecstasy someone may have other needs, and I am not talking about that time in Pune when I went home barefoot. It’s time to forgive, for all ants like us, and to look up to whoever is shaking the terrarium.
Lokesh has nothing much to offer other than self-aggrandising babble. Should be clear by now he’s a bit stupid. To imagine that he could in some way offer anything real, any intelligent insight, is ridiculous. He can’t even help himself. He has nothing real to share.
The idea Lokesh has ever had any realizations worth having – what realizations? The guy has expressed nothing that remotely hints at having understood anything worthwhile. All he does is a parrot a load of self-aggrandizing personal cliches and when called out for doing so he wets his pants
He has nothing to offer over and above his own cultish attitude to his own nonsense which he will continue to deliver, lost in a fantasy that he has arrived somewhere worthwhile. The guy is a joke.
PC Arpana has returned to plodding the beat on SN’s murky streets. He has a new pea in his whistle but unfortunately, the whistle is still emitting the same old squeak. In this case copy and pasting someone else’s comment and somehow adopting it as his own. Plagiarism is something he learned from his limited contact with Osho.
Even worse he feels he has to defend poor wee Satchit, who actually knows how to stand up for himself perfectly well. Of course this ties in with his ingrained pattern of only having something to say if he is on the attack, or rattling on about earthshaking revelations about his personal life, like being traumatised after a TM session, great yogi that he is. Peep, peep!
ad hominem
You attacked your opponent’s character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument.
Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone’s case without actually having to engage with it.
@ Frank
And ad hominem…
Hi,
As a tennis umpire (or is it referee?) I would have called “out” to some of the comments put up.
But then again, we are not playing tennis here, but rather it is “Zennis”.
And I not an acting umpire, either.
So, let the game roll on. Cheers.
MOD:
We were contemplating similar action, Klaus, although such ‘rallies’ can also have considerable ‘entertainment value’ besides being against official SN policy, strictly speaking, and eventually tending to become repetitiously tedious. Perhaps the trick is not to take them too seriously?
However, it’s possible that in the past some potential contributors might have been dissuaded from coming here due to fear of being ‘ambushed’ by ‘regulars’, which is why abusive remarks were banned. And that might be the case now so we’ll keep the situation under review.
I trust that’s a boring enough, ‘on the fence’ response….
Mods,
No, I did not intend to be serious as I can see the benefit of ‘serve and volley’ and being playful….
So it is.
Besides, we have got to the power to deal with it.
True. Isn’t it?
…
…..
There is a small amendment to
“Thou shallt not kill”
Thou shalt not kill (except when it is necessary).
Where’s that priest when we urgently need him? You know, the one from the movie, ‘The Exorcist’.
PC Arpana’s face has turned lime-green. He is floating above his bed. His helmeted head is spinning on his neck. He is blowing his own whistle. No, it has nothing to do with his TM trauma flashbacks, but rather possession. He has become obsessed with that most foul of demons…just to mention his name can bring the roof down…’Lokesh’! Aieeeee! PC Arpana has become this monstrous beast’s channel in the hope that he can overtake Anando in the medium stakes. He’s doomed, I tell thee, doomed? Out demons, out!
Lokesh demonstrates his mastery again, of Ad Hominem.
I say, it’s ethics in your inbox time. This is not necessarily a case of ad hominem – credibility is about whether or not we should believe whether a person is telling the truth, not whether the arguments they make are reasonable ones or not.
@ Lokesh 11 April, 2022 at 4:40 pm
I definitely agree with that.
Welcome to the official YouTube channel for OSHO.
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https://youtu.be/UcyhPck_0Tg
They’re only audio…you might as well visit oshoworld.com if you want that.
@ SD
Do you think maybe I’m misreading him telling me I’m a cunt because I had a hard time with TM when he knows someone who did it and didn’t have a hard time, when he hasn’t done TM or, as he admitted only the other day. hasn’t meditated for years?
Do you think maybe I should just set my own life experience and insight and understanding aside and accept that he knows more about absolutely everything than I do?
Arps, in response to your two questions, maybe this extract from ‘Can We Trust Our Feelings and Intuition?’ might be worth looking at. If you don’t want to watch all 25 mins. then I recommend around 5 or 6 mins. from 15 mins. in…(Also the last bit, from 22 mins. to the end). But the whole video is good, I reckon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci8ZAj6Z8C4
SD, you got me listening to the old garden gnome.
Yeah, he talks a good game but he is also having a laugh at the stupidity of people who get offended. How is that also not a subtle `ego` satisfaction of him being better than them that he is laughing at and criticising?
He also appeals to the same sense of superiority when he says, without producing any evidence, that “People here (in the audience) are more conscious than the average human.”
Just accepting we all do it is good. Toning it down is probably a good idea, too, but condemning it runs the risk of making people either sneaky and faux-religious or feel inadequate or a toxic combo of both.
Good points, Frank, ok, although I’m surprised you haven’t acknowledged the humour of his verbal portrait of all those “offended” people on the internet, which I found a telling slice of absurdity.
It`s true, he has turned into a bit of a comedian since I last watched him.
I would have said that he needs to deadpan it a bit more, but maybe not, as the spiritual comedy crowd don`t seem to mind him sniggering at his own gags…
Scrolling down the comments…to be fair, when I first came across him I would never have guessed people would be one day calling him “cute” and “adorable”!
SD, I followed your ET link and listened. Good practical advice.
@SD
He’s just another pundit saying there is a perfect way to live and if you get a wag on you are not perfect.
Who wants to be perfect? Whose way of being perfect should we follow?
I like this.
https://youtu.be/1Pkbk2JCPgU
Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Lokesh.
Obviously doesn’t apply to you.
Just everyone else in the world.
I don’t see this as an attempt to be “perfect”, Arps, but as a way to avoid creating unnecessary suffering for oneself and others. Arising from seeing and understanding the effects of so-called normal responses and thus being able to choose an alternative, if one wishes. In other words, as the result of meditative scrutiny.
But ok, so you prefer to “get a wag on” (never heard that expression before!). I’m not clear though exactly what this means, eg in terms of how you view the ducks’ behaviour, as you say you like the description yet it appears you also tend at SN to maintain a certain negativity, nurturing grievances against and seemingly fixed negative attitudes towards perceived enemies, ie the normal way of the human mind noted here by ET, rather than following the way of the ducks who don’t internally prolong conflicts once they’re over.
Or have I misunderstood you?
@ SD
You do me an injustice.
I have been known to crack a joke.
The exorcist has failed to show up, even though PC Arpana is frantically blowing his own whistle and cracking lame jokes that nobody finds in the slightest bit amusing. Osho was, according to the PC, working on him but to no avail. He is still obsessed/possessed.
SD,
Here’s a short vid that looks at ET from a different perspective…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPr5mm7R1u0
Also…
Osho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibovb2aibKA
And,
Swami “Quick! Burn the evidence and clean the blood from this axe”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhSX0N38xtI
Well, Anubodh, I’m not too impressed by Dr Grande, who seems to want to give an impression of being an unbiased academic researcher but whose analytical brain isn’t quite sharp enough to look at his own personal prejudices and how they skew his presentations, to understand that it’s not all about “beliefs”, and to even make sure he gets all his facts straight. With ‘intellectuals’ like that, who needs tabloids to spread garbage?
These sort of anti-cultists have no understanding of anything, ridiculing anything that isn’t materialism of one kind or another
I’m no fan of ET but he’s genuine, if rather doddery.
SD,
The youtube recommendation algorithm pushed Dr Grande’s vids at me after I had clicked on the ET link you posted.
I thought it was useful the way he brought you up to speed on background info. I didn’t know that ‘The Terminator’ used to be a chicken farmer. Dr G has obviously found a comfy niche for himself on YT.
I noticed he’s not averse to using techniques of manipulation himself, putting in the mind of the viewer a fictional image of Sannyasins happily being shot by Osho, or throwing themselves under his RR, can only be to exaggerate how subservient they had become (I recall when Osho used to cruise around Buddha Hall in that old Merc, I was more tempted to shout: “TAXI!” than to throw myself in front of it).
It seems in Dr G’s world fantasy evidence can count against someone.
Anyway…A refreshingly different view of Rajneeshpuram…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qUTn7ZEEHY
“…found himsel a nice niche on the internet….”
The same words I would have used like:
“This Dr.Youtube found himself a nice niche on the internet.”
Working from your own sitting room reaching the whole virtual world. Good for this man.
Thanks for clarifying and for this video, Anubodh, probably the most outrageously positive public comments on Rajneeshpuram ever!
Re Dr Grande, one thing he omitted from Osho’s pre-guru life was that he was the all-India debating champion in his early 20s. Didn’t want to create a too positive impression, perhaps?
Here’s a really cute picture of SD riding to the rescue of Lokesh.
Here’s a more realistic view of the situation.
@ Satchit
The Way is most certainly not a computer game, but whilst “travelling” on “the Way”, dealing with the more ‘worldly’ aspects can be very much like a computer game.
What are these “more ‘worldly’ aspects”, Arps? Do you mean ordinary stuff like work, paying the bills, shopping, watching tv, etc. etc?
@SD
Yes, but wider than that.
For example, working in situations, speaking personally, when I was the only individual who didn’t drink and do drugs, and more particularly, hadn’t for years. (More specifically, since I discovered my connection to Osho and Sannyas, although I had already given up drink and drugs).
Ah yes, aspects of what BL used to call “the monastery of the world”, where one is tested by tricky circumstances ‘out there’.
@SD
What I found is that it very much depends on being sensitive to the body, listening to what your body is telling you. If you drink too much and you don’t feel good, then you are unlikely to do it again. Even a single glass of wine causes me to react these days, so I prefer to drink alcohol- free beer or wine.
@ SD
What went on in Oregon was hugely to do with competitiveness and winning and losing, dominance and submission and issues around status in a very conservative sense, it seems to me; strong aspects of a computer game. (Internally and externally).
Every guru is a trap. Every leader is a tyrant. Every teacher confuses. The disease of the century is called “independence”. Contact with your own soul is reduced to weak light. If we were in touch with our deep heart, which is the royal place of the spirit, we would not accept any leader, no teacher, no guru. We would be independent. Wake up. Watch out.
Touches of Krishnamurti…truth is a pathless land and all that.
But still we come back to discernment. There are an awful lot of words out there, spoken by men and women who may or may not tell the truth. Ultimately it’s all artifice, shadows of the truth only. Watch out for when the heart speaks, about people or about words.
Correct, NP, it is a KM quote. Never been a fan of KM but I do appreciate him.
@ Nityaprem. 16 April, 2022 at 8:12 am
Occurs to me it’s also about trusting our own perceptions, without becoming identified, and is very in the moment.
My strongest memory of this happening is reading the following in 1981
THE TENTH SAYING
JESUS SAID: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A MAN TO MOUNT TWO HORSES AND TO STRETCH TWO BOWS; AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A SERVANT TO SERVE TWO MASTERS, OTHERWISE HE WILL HONOR THE ONE AND OFFEND THE OTHER.
Everybody is already mounted on two horses, everybody is stretching two bows — not only two but many. That’s how anguish is created, that’s why you are constantly in anxiety. Anxiety shows that somehow you are mounted on two horses. How can you be at ease? Impossible, because the two horses are moving in two directions, and you cannot move anywhere.
With one horse movement is possible, you can reach somewhere. With two horses movement is impossible, they will negate each other and you will not reach anywhere. And this is the anxiety — that you are not reaching anywhere. Deep down this is the anguish: that life is slipping out of your hands, time is becoming less and less, death is coming near and you are not reaching anywhere. It is as if you have become a stagnant pool, just getting dryer and dryer and dying. There is no goal, no fulfilment. But why is it happening? — because you have been trying to do the impossible.
Try to understand the mind as it functions in you, then you will be able to understand what Jesus means. You want to be as free as a poor man because only a poor man can be free — he has no burden, he has nothing to protect, you cannot rob him. He is unafraid. You cannot snatch anything from him because he has nothing; with nothing, he is at ease; with nothing as his possession, nothing can be stolen from him. Nobody is his enemy because he is not a competitor at all, he is not competing with anybody.
You want to be as free as a poor man, as a beggar, but you also want to be as secure as a rich man, as safe as an emperor. The rich man is safe, the rich man is secure, and he feels more rooted. Outwardly, he has made all the arrangements, he is not vulnerable: he has protections against death, you cannot murder him so easily, he has an armour. And you would like to be free like the beggar and to be secure like an emperor — then you are mounted on two horses and it is impossible to reach anywhere.
You love a person, but you want the person to behave like a thing, completely in your hands. But you cannot love a thing, because a thing is dead and cannot respond to you. So if the other is really a person he cannot be possessed, he is like mercury: the more you try to keep him in your fist, the more he goes out — because to be a person means to be free. If he is a person, you cannot possess him; if you can possess him, he is no longer a person and you will not be able to love him. Then he is just a dead thing. Who can love a dead thing?
You are mounted on two horses. You want a person like a thing, which is impossible! A person has to be free and alive, and only then can you love him. But then you feel difficult, you start possessing, and then you start killing him; you are poisoning. If he allows you this poisoning, sooner or later he will be just a thing. So wives become decorative pieces in the houses, husbands become just watchmen — but love disappears. And this is happening in all directions.
Osho
‘The Mustard Seed’
Ch. 10
Here is another:
There is a very famous Taoist story — I love it tremendously. The story is about an old Taoist farmer whose horse ran away:
That evening the neighbours gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse returned but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbours came exclaiming at the good fortune. He said, “Maybe.”
And then the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbours came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “Maybe.”
The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg, the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbours came in to say how fortunate everything had turned out, he said, “Maybe.”
Osho
‘A Sudden Clash of Thunder’
Chapter 3: ‘Why Should I Grieve Over Him?’
I haven’t read The Mustard Seed, so that passage is new and fresh for me, I like it very much. It rings very true to me, about the nature of love.
The “maybe” story I have come across before, its a good lesson in equanimity and not making your mind up too soon.
@ Nityaprem.
I read the two horses’ story in about ’81, which took my breath away at the time, in part because I, not very wittingly, was torn between the idea if I lived alone I was avoiding the difficulty of living with others, and if I lived with others I was avoiding the difficulty of living alone.
Purely by coincidence, I came across an article, in a magazine sometime later, I am fairly certain produced by Parmartha, penned by a guy, one of our merry and not-so-merry band, trying to rationalise having a room of his own, on the grounds that wasn’t spiritual, although I equated ‘spiritual’ with solitude and isolation in those days.
NB:
I haven’t a ******* clue what spiritual/not spiritual are anymore.
@Arpana who wrote “I haven’t a ******* clue what spiritual/not spiritual are anymore”
That gave me a good laugh, because I was in exactly that position a few days ago. I was looking at the website of the No-mind Festival in Sweden, and I read this…
“Come and experience a week full of personal development, dance, movement, spirituality, meditation, shamanism, yoga, creativity and intimacy during No Mind.”
Now, it’s supposed to be a spiritual festival but grouping all this stuff together and calling it spirituality? It confused the hell out of me, but then I tried to come up with a good definition of ‘spiritual’, which is not easy without being tautological or circular in some way.
A happy Easter, everybody…any excuse to celebrate!
Pune is unhappy with Anando’s book.
See
https://www.oshotimes.com/osho-news/misleading-content-in-anandos-book-osho-intimate-glimpses/
Ho hum. I wonder how anyone could waste their time reading all those comments. Takes nit picking to a whole new level and is ultimately…boring.
I read a while into this elongated rebuttal of Anando’s book, finding myself marvelling at the absurdity of the review.
What is it about spiritual types that they love bunking the ego?
The obsession with drawing out all the evils of ego becomes the stick to attack. In the review it’s Anando’s ego that leads her to lie and exaggerate her role, and it’s the reviewer’s job to “out“ it for the rest of us to see.
If these are the best representatives to defend Osho, and to maintain and expand his teaching, it’s no wonder it’s all going to pot.
@ Simond
This is a bit of a daft remark about ego. Your ego is at work here, letting us know how superior you are.
And you didn’t notice the egotism of the remark by Lokesh.
AD INFINITUM.
Clearly your understanding of the ego is vastly different from mine, Arpana.
It’s not, first of all, something to fear, but something to understand.
If you read the review the writer focuses on Anandos ego as a means to put her down.
It’s his fear and horror of the ego that allows it to become a problem, not the ego itself. So he castigates her, wrapping up any issues or differences nice ‘n’ simply as her “ego problem”.
You, likewise, focus on Lokesh as this big ego, with whom you constantly must battle. I don’t see Lokesh’s ego as a problem at all. Indeed it’s ego which has driven him to explore his own mind as effectively as he has.
I’d suggest you engage and allow yourself to look at your own judgements and fears more honestly. It’s a scary process looking at oneself in the mirror, I know.
In an earlier post you asked Sat about how to respond to being called a cunt. This felt like humble, genuine and honest way to start the process of being more honest to your reactions. Asking others is scary, dangerous but also very .productive
@Simond.
Re. my post to SD., I was being sarcastic.
I agree with you up to a point about ego. Seems to me a huge part of the problem with ego is non-acceptance, and so it becomes entangled with conscience.
I suspect we have an unwitting relationship with what we perceive as ego, the more judgemental we are.
Not accepted because of expectations.
Why be sarcastic? What’s the value of cynical, sarcastic remarks? Do they make you feel better? Stronger? Cleverer?
They always come back to bite you, in my experience.
You’ll never feel valued or loved or heard whilst you try and be cleverer than the next fellow.
There’s always someone smarter, wittier than you, so there’s always going to be this see-saw of feeling good about yourself, followed by later feeling put down, and bad about yourself.
Rise above it all, know that cheap, cruel feelings just hurt.
When did you ever see Osho behave with sarcasm or cynicism? If he had a judgement he expressed it, but it wasn’t done with the intention to hurt. It was done to inform the other.
@ Simond
Why not be sarcastic on occasions?
You have a very Christian, binary view of life.
I have a pretty positive attitude to SD. He’s a robust individual. Not a saint either.
@ Simond
You always talk as it were in a “nice” way, all mixed up with veiled anger, bitterness, resentment, sarcasm, malice, spite and unctuousness; because you set such store by being nice.
Take a leaf from your hero’s book. He’s not nice. Apart from when someone says something he approves of. He tells it as he sees it. Why is it okay for him to tell it as he sees it, but not okay for me to do the same (not that I’m going to stop)? You’ve both got to try hard and accept not everyone sees you and/or him as an authority figure. Not the end of the world.
PC Arpana asks Simond, “Why not be sarcastic on occasions?”
I would say because sarcasm usually reflects an intellect that isn’t too sharp. Humour takes many forms. Sarcasm is probably one of the least developed forms of humour.
The PC would do well to obseve the fact that his guru, Osho, who according to the PC is working on him, was never prone to using sarcasm. He was far too sharp to stoop to sarcasm. Besides, in general, nobody likes overly sarcastic people, because they are unpleasant to be around.
@Arpana
Sarcasm is often just a defensive mechanism, hitting out at something perceived as a threat.
Ego on the other hand derives from incorrect my-making, identifying things as ourself which aren’t really that. Usually an idea, which when threatened is treated as a threat of oblivion.
Sarcasm involves constructing or exposing contradictions between intended meanings. The most common form of verbal irony, sarcasm is often used to humorously convey thinly veiled disapproval or scorn. “Pat, don’t work so hard!”, a boss might say upon catching his assistant surfing the Internet.
Early research on sarcasm explored how people interpret statements and found that, as expected, sarcasm makes a statement sound more critical. In one laboratory study, participants read scenarios in which, for instance, (1) one person did something that could be viewed negatively, such as smoking, and (2) a second person commented on the behaviour to the first person, either literally (“I see you don’t have a healthy concern for your lungs”) or sarcastically (“I see you have a healthy concern for your lungs”). Participants rated sarcasm to be more condemning than literal statements.
In a similar study, participants were encouraged to empathize either with a person behaving in a way that could be construed as negative or with a second person commenting on the first person’s behaviour. Both perspectives prompted participants to rate sarcastic comments by the second person as more impolite relative to literal comments.
(‘Scientific American’)
@Nityaprem
Conscious sarcasm is not the same as unconscious sarcasm.
@ Loco
Does this mean you suggest that your intellect is not too sharp?
Because you are also not bad in sarcasm.
Old Scotch twat said Osho was never sarcastic.
Osho referring to Morarji Desai as ”old piss drinker” isn’t sarcasm? Really?
Beloved Satchit enquires, “Does this mean you suggest that your intellect is not too sharp?”
Not at all. Just like Osho I am never sarcastic. I also never call people names. That is the practice of conceited fools like PC Arpana, due to his having been traumatised in his youth by a TM session that went kaput. Thanks to Osho’s presence in my life I am above such tedious behaviour.
Namaste. His blessings….
Hi Arpana,
I can’t always find the thread on the site to follow your comments, so this is a bit out of place, but you made a valid accusation about how Osho could be sarcastic himself about Desai and also how you feel Lokesh can be sarcastic at times as well.
I agree, Osho could also be cruel, or sarcastic, ridiculing people like Desai. I can’t speak for Osho except to suggest too that he was angered by the vitriol of the attacks upon him and he also focused on the hypocrisy of people like Moraij Desai.
Sometimes you call a spade a spade and Osho had a licence, as I saw it, because overall his generosity was so clearly evident.
He did, however, resort to anger and impatience, as well as very clear judgment of others.
Without a full explanation, all I can say is that he gets away with it. Osho gets away with it because he’s so obviously generous most of the time. It’s like he’s earned the gratitude from me because he’s so deeply persuasive in his judgments. But I also see his limitations, and it’s important to recognise these and not to put Osho on some sort of pedestal. This allows you to see him, warts and all.
.
In a similar way, let me be clear, Lokesh isn’t my hero, I can see faults in him, but he has earned my respect because he too gives himself. He’s not perfect, who is? But he writes articles for Sannyas News, he provides largely intelligent and reasoned opinions and I sense his heart is good.
He can be cruel in some ways, to you, in particular. But in his judgements about you, I feel he’s also trying to help.
He attacks you with an intention to show you something, it’s not malicious intent. It’s a challenging balance, he doesn’t always get it right in my book. He sometimes lacks the sensitivity to recognise how your attacks on him don’t mean he needs to be attacking back.
But he gets away with it. Just as Osho did, because he demonstrates to me how his heart isn’t loaded with malice and jealousy and pain.
You, on the other hand, are wounded, you’re seeking justice and retribution because you haven’t yet realised that the pain Lokesh stirs up in you acts like a mirror.
Once you start to admit you “don’t know,” you don’t have all the answers; you begin a process of self-revaluation.
It’s my experience that there are people who have a wisdom I don’t possess. As soon as I see it, I’ve learned to stop. To listen. To drop my opinions. To forget all I think I know. To ask others.
All of which is the beginning of the process to know oneself or to understand one’s self.
@simond
18 April, 2022 at 7:30 pm
Wow. To me, that sums up quite a lot of the back and forth on this thread.
Your wording is agreeable indeed and it is formulated such that everyone reading can apply a check of one’s own reactions.
There.
@Simond. who wrote on 18 April, 2022 at 7:30 pm.
You live in your head.
Best laugh I’ve had all day.
ʱªʱªʱª(˃̣̣̥艸˂̣̣̥)
Yes, Swami Lokesh, you are a good disciple.
Just like your Master you are a very moral man.
You never lie and always tell the truth.
Beloved Satchit, thank you for your kind and perceptive comment. It touched the very core of my being. You are my hero. Namaste.
@Arps
Maybe you can explain what’s the difference between ‘conscious sarcasm’ and ‘unconscious sarcasm’ ?
Is the result not the same?
@ Satchit 20 April 2022 at 8:47 am
Unconscious is reactive and leads to unexpected consequences or more reactiveness.
Conscious is deliberate and mischievous, as often as not in my case; and as often as not doesn’t provoke a reaction; and if response, reaction happens, it runs down very quickly.
Once again, I’d like to think Satchit is being smart, but I doubt he is. He asks the following absurd question, “Maybe you can explain what’s the difference between ‘conscious sarcasm’ and ‘unconscious sarcasm’.” If you do not know the answer to that you are for sure the classroom dummy.
Then he compounds the absurdity by asking, “Is the result not the same?” What result and for whom? Sarcasm is a clear definition. Perhaps Satchit is being sarcastic…but I doubt he even knows how to be sarcastic.
@ Arps
I doubt that there is so much difference between ‘consciously’ and ‘unconsciously’.
Maybe it is just a spiritual dream that things should become better.
For example, now war is going on in Ukraine very consciously.
Yes, obviously, Satchit, if you mean that Putin & co. decided to invade Ukraine, which has chosen to fight back! Although, as Arpana implies, it would appear that the Russians felt they had little or no choice – due to their, shall we say, ‘restricted’ consciousness.
Would you agree that from a deeper perspective the Russians’ aggression indicates a profound unconsciouness – you know, the sort of fearful/paranoid/selfish/greedy/self-aggrandising-driven motivation that has ruined countless lives over the millennia, both in and out of wartimes?
Arguably, all based on a perceived need to compensate for a sense of inadequacy arising from …. (I’ll let you complete the rest!).
@ Swami Loco
You are funny as usual. Is it sarcasm or do I belief it that you are “a good disciple”?
Tell me if you have found out!
Btw, I miss Frankie.
He has such a sharp intellect.
If you have his number: call him, we need a new article!
How about conscious sarcasm simply meaning one is aware that they are being sarcastic, as opposed to unconscious sarcasm being delivered from a position of being unaware of being sarcastic? That is, after all, the difference.
@ SD
Seems saving lives is not the goal.
Otherwise it would be a better idea to surrender to the aggressor.
Thanks, Alokjohn, for the link…
A song comes to mind:
‘Games People Play’ – The Spinners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umVLFDLocJc
It might take the memory powers of a super-elephant to remember all the details…Madrid, Lisbon…NewYork, Rio, Tokyo….
Oh dear.
Actually, didn’t Frank ask in another thread something in this regard:
“Can accounts/descriptions/recountings/memories put down by followers/disciples/leaders who might have their own personal interest and certainly subjective view always be trusted?”
My guess is that there are always more facts to the occasion and there are certainly other views also.
Just like it can be seen here.
@AK
Thanks for posting.
If interest continues into the future, historians will have such a great time with the well documented birth throes, and ongoing squabbles, in fact, so many details may work like none at all. All this information and opinion passed as factual may well act to obscure the ”truth”.
PC Arpana thinks, “Historians will have such a great time with the well-documented birth throes, and ongoing squabbles.”
I doubt historians will ever be focused on the goings-on in the world of Osho. Currently, there are so many world-changing events taking place that it is difficult to keep up with them in the present let alone looking back in retrospect trying to figure out what on earth was going on. Piecing together the story of Osho and his merry band of misfits and all the tittle-tattle going on back in the eighties would hardly rate in the ranks of historical importance. To imagine it would requires a serious case of myopia.
Lokesh resorts to an AD HOMINEM attack on 18 April 2022 at 8:56 am (the entire post is ad hominem really) and at the same time reads the future whilst decrying what he sees as my doing so.
Myopic PC Arpana, have you ordered your milk bottle bottom thick future vision specs yet?
Seeing as how we are on the subject of sannyasins and their efforts on media, here is a wee review of Sheela’s Netflix docu. Old hat, I know, but what will that army of historians in the year 3000 AD make of it?
It was in the 2018 docuseries, ‘Wild, Wild Country’, which traced the rise and fall of Osho’s Rajneeshpuram, that Ma Anand Sheela first appeared as the fiery, unapologetic personal assistant to ‘Bhagwan’ Rajneesh. It portrayed her as the most consequential person in his empire, commanding over three lakh disciples.
Three years later, she is back in another documentary that features her as a petite senior citizen visiting India, 35 years after she first left Gujarat, madly in love with “Bhagwan”, who would later call her a “bitch and murderer”. “I was afraid that once she goes to India, she may not come back alive,” her sister, Meera Patel, says in ‘Searching for Sheela’. “And now, we are at the end of the line, and she should go visit. Whatever happens, happens.” In the documentary, a camera follows Sheela’s every move from the moment she sets foot in Delhi — be it through the extensive line-up of interviews, hobnobbing with socialites or posing for selfies with fans outside packed auditoriums. A “mildly scandalous” ‘Koffee with Karan’ episode is the first stop, where she explains that though Osho was in love with her, their relationship was platonic.
Produced by Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Entertainment, the documentary is nothing more than a public relations exercise for Sheela that lacks depth and conviction. “Somebody has to take responsibility to erase the misunderstandings that the media has created over the years. Existence has given me the opportunity and I will take the challenge,” says Sheela.
In 1986, Sheela was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment by a US court on multiple charges of assault, wiretapping and trying to poison an entire town, among other crimes. She also pleaded guilty for her role in the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack. However, in ‘Searching for Sheela’, these find only passing mention. There are no direct questions to her about her crimes that would give insight into the hot-headed, foul-mouthed, rebellious woman of the 1970s and 1980s.
When a youngster at an evening soiree with Sheela musters up the courage to ask, “What drove you to do the sort of bad stuff we hear about?” she retorts, “Why, do you want to do crimes also? Do you want to learn that from me? Were you there? Had you seen anyone do it?” Sheela then pauses, throws her hands in the air and continues, “After 35 years, people are still talking about it. No matter where I go, people only ask me this.”
‘Searching for Sheela’ glorifies a murderer who has served her sentence. At interviews and soirees, the 70-year-old is surrounded by wine-sipping, well-heeled people who are dumbstruck by her grit and gumption, and clap for her vague answers to questions. After watching the documentary, we still do not know who the real Sheela is, except that she is now the result of a carefully scripted public image of sobriety, self-restraint and social service.
It is interesting. Sheela stood at a historic crossroads when Rajneeshpuram was built, and she screwed over the ideals of the commune. She was not worth a drop of the sweat spilled by the pipe crew, or the tent cleaners, or the cooks in Magdalena Cafe. That’s a burden she is going to have to carry.
@Nityaprem, 18 April, 12:05
“That’s a burden she is going to have to carry.”
That is my impression/feeling, too.
No amount of publicity and self-importance will undo it.
@ Lokesh
Egotism is defined as the drive to maintain and enhance favourable views of oneself and generally features an inflated opinion of one’s personal features and importance distinguished by a person’s amplified vision of one’s self and self-importance. It often includes intellectual, physical, social, and other overestimations. The egotist has an overwhelming sense of the centrality of the “me” regarding their personal qualities.
PC Arpana, thanks for that, but I did not request a detailed description of your current inner state.
To be honest, I find all this ego jive tiresome. I much prefer awareness.
This morning I was drinking coffee from my favourite mug. I suddenly flashed on someone I really do not like. I became totally identified with the thought. A negative fantasy played out on the screen of my mind as I sipped hot coffee. I placed the almost full mug of coffee on the table and let go of the handle. The mug missed the table, fell on the floor, smashed to pieces and made a real mess to the extent that I will have to repaint a section of the wall. I froze and took in what had happened.
Message learned. Stay present in the moment…do not think negative thoughts.
@lokesh.
Great news regarding your negative thoughts.
Better late than never.
‘Better late than never,’ said the snail to the tortoise.
@AJ
Recall coming across a story about a 19th century historian, whose name escapes me, who gave up writing history books because of an incident that occurred near where he lived, after which, in an attempt to piece together what had happened, he heard so many conflicting versions he decided he was deluding himself as to the value of the books he was writing on history.
That’s hilarious. If there is such confusion in the minds of men, how then can we expect to create clarity on the course of history?
Reminds me of the Akira Kurosawa movie ‘Rashomon’
@ Nityaprem
I attempt to keep this story in mind. Not always successfully.
In a great king’s court, the scholars of the court started debating about God. And the king was no ordinary king — he was REALLY a king, the king of the inner world. His outer kingdom was just accidental; it had happened accidentally to him.
One great king was dying. He had no son. Before his death, he made a will that “Tomorrow morning, whosoever enters into the town, the first man, let him become the king.” And this was just a coincidence — this sannyasin was the first to enter through the gates, so he was made the king. That was accidental. Before that he had already become the king of the inner kingdom.
In his court, they were discussing God. And the king started laughing, and he said, “Listen. Collect all the blind men of the town.” And all the blind men were collected, and the king said, “Have you all seen elephants?”
And they said, “Yes.”
And then a great argument ensued. One blind man said, “An elephant is like this,” another said, “The elephant is like this…” and their statements were very contradictory. Because one blind man had touched only the trunk, and another blind man had touched only the ear, and the third one had touched only the leg, and so on and so forth. Their descriptions were different, as different as they could be.
And the king said to his scholars, the court scholars and pundits, “Listen: these blind people cannot agree on what an elephant is. And they all have seen something of the elephant! What about you? At least they have seen something — one has touched the leg, another has touched the trunk… and you have not even seen a PART of God and you are arguing. You are more blind than these blind people! And whatsoever you are saying is all nonsense. You can quote scriptures — that is not going to help. Unless you have seen, nothing is going to help.”
Osho.
‘The Perfect Master’, Vol 2
Chapter 1: ‘Once Upon a Time’
It is funny if people accuse others of having an ‘ego’ and forget that they have one by themselves.
@alokjohn
I have to say, I find Anando (on short acquaintance) more credible than some rebuttal written by a random Poona goon who doesn’t even have the courtesy to try and stay impartial. It smells like a propaganda piece, a hatchet-job for the faithful.
@Nityaprem. 18 April, 2022 at 11:51 am
”They” sound fearful to me.
@ simond, from
18 April, 2022 at 7:30 pm
“To trust others”
I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with supposedly wise people, and I have to say, just trusting is not a scenario I would recommend, except where people have been proven to have your best interests at heart. A lot of clever and wise people still give answers which from your perspective may not be ideal…
A case in point: a lot of traditional buddhists believe that what the buddha prescribed according to their particular teachings is the best path for people, and will recommend you do that. Fine if you want to be a buddhist, otherwise maybe not so good.
I sign your comment.
One always has to ask oneself:
“Does this really apply to me? Does it really fit me?”
And then decide for oneself. Or leave it open, also possible, like ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
@Nityaprem 18 April, 2022 at 8:57 pm
You are relaxing into trusting your own perceptions and trusting your capacity to handle what follows.
Once that begins to happen trusting others is irrelevant.
That’s much better!
Congrats to everyone who gets there….
Hmmm, my experience has been that it’s better to be somewhat cautious when getting to know people. It gives somewhat fewer surprises later on.
Nityaprem 20 April, 2022 at 7:19 am
Did you come to that through experience?
I agree with you but I have been very extrovert and sociable.
Had a 160 people at my thirtieth birthday party, now hell would freeze over before I attended a party.
〷●‿●〷
I spent some time as a counsellor for those with mental health difficulties. You never knew what kind of person would sit down at the table with you, and a certain caution was definitely called for. Mostly they were very nice people, but there were those with delusions and anger issues.
NP, are you sharing this because you suspect PC Arpana suffers from mental health difficulties involving delusions and anger issues or is it just a coincidence?
Lokesh, it is honestly just a coincidence. It’s an example of where care in accepting a new acquaintance into your heart would serve you well. Further, I suspect you are being consciously sarcastic in your answer….
Yes, NP, you have done well by following Osho’s wise advice to follow one’s suspicions. Again and again this has brought you to the truth.
Yes, trusting others is dangerous, but dropping one’s opinions, getting utterly lost and confused by others is always a good thing. Scary, of course, but ultimately beneficial.
Simond said,
”dropping one’s opinions, getting utterly lost and confused by others is always a good thing.”
That’s an opinion, just in case you hadn’t realised.
( 〃 ´ 艸｀)
@ Satchit
I would be surprised if the Russian invasion of Ukraine has anything to do with consciousness.
In response to the post of 20 April 2022 at 10:33 am
That’s tautological, which if nothing else is stylistically short.
Doesn’t answer Satchit’s question.
Respectfully, I don’t expect brevity from you.
Anything done unconsciously is from habit.
Consciously is in the moment and spontaneous.
PC Arpana, surely it is up to Satchit to decide if his question has been answered or not. Not you.
The following video has nothing to do with the subject at hand but is too good not to share:
https://youtu.be/ALPgvs5CT60
@Satchit who wrote:
“I doubt that there is so much difference between ‘consciously’ and ‘unconsciously’.”
That’s a dismissal of Osho’s teachings, who, as I understand it, is working to move his people beyond unconsciousness into ever higher states of consciousness.
It’s a dangerous claim that my words are a dismissal of Osho’s teaching, Arpana.
It would mean you know what Osho’s teaching is and me not. This cannot be true, can it?
What is the difference if you knock out somebody consciously or unconsciously?
In both ways the guy has to visit the hospital.
@ Satchit
I still live in the world of framing*.
Congratulations on having left that behind.
*framing:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Framing_(social_sciences)
@SD
A more personal answer is that I have a sense of what Sannyas is about, Osho is about, which is being constantly updated, on account of how I am not beyond that (Reference point / Model) but I am not identified with that to the point of dogmatic certainty.
Nice trumpet skills that man. Good find, Arps!
@ Nityaprem.
Yeah. Fantastic piece! On a loop now.
You’ll love these…
https://youtu.be/Eco4z98nIQY
https://youtu.be/XjWEkWAq6z4
https://youtu.be/BP2jz7UCiig
https://youtu.be/uUw-vMjzuPM
The Rev. said:
”You, who post from the ‘Scientific American’ to explain what sarcasm is!”
To which I replied.
“Did I? I haven’t seen that. Could you be more precise?”
Re the rest of your post:
Nice to hear you get a bit snarky.
Nice Christian is so boring.
I refer you to your post of http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/9900#comment-109208
Another one of your copy-and-paste jobs, where you refer to higher authority again and again.
For the football lovers, this docu from the series on the Greatest International Sides of All Time specifically about the Brazil World Cup team of 1982 gave me a lot of pleasure this morning…
https://youtu.be/dmwRB3f6ui8
@swamishanti wrote:
“In your case you wrote that you had a mental breakdown, and some period of mental unstability.”
Where did I write this? You are making things up…
@Nityaprem : let me refresh your memory. You wrote this in your thread, the last one:
“ First, a little personal history:
After a successful (and very un-spiritual) career in software development, I had a breakdown which led to me losing my job and needing a long time off to recover.”
You had a breakdown, which led to you losing your job, and needing a long time to recover.
It was a physical breakdown, from repetitive strain injury, to be precise.
“First listen, get in tune with the waves, and when you feel that now you are completely silent and receptive, then imagine that you are those waves. That is the second step. First: don’t be aggressive; become receptive. And when you have become receptive, then just melt into those waves, start imagining that you are those waves.”
The master is giving him a device so that he can forget his self, the ego. First step is receptivity, because in receptivity ego cannot exist — it can exist only in conflict. And when you are receptive, suddenly your faculty of imagination becomes tremendously powerful.
Receptive people, sensitive people, are imaginative people. Those who can see the greenery of the trees, just without any aggression on their part, not even a subtle aggression on their part, who can just drink the greenery of the trees, who can simply absorb it as if they are sponges — they become very creative, they become very imaginative. These are the poets, the painters, the dancers, the musicians — they absorb the universe in deep receptivity, and then they pour whatsoever they have absorbed into their imagination.
Imagination is the one faculty you have which comes closest to God. God must have a great imagination — mm? — just look at His world! Just to think! — such an imaginative world, with so many flowers and so many butterflies and so many trees and so many rivers, and so many people. Just think about His imagination! With so many stars, and so many worlds
— worlds beyond worlds, non-ending…. He must be a great dreamer.
In the East, Hindus say the world is God’s dream, His imagination. The world is His magic, His imagination. He is dreaming it. We are part of His dream.
When the master said to O-nami, “Then you imagine yourself as those waves,” he was saying, “Then you become creative. First you become receptive and then you become creative. And once you have dropped your ego, you become so flexible that whatsoever you imagine will happen. Then your imagination will become your reality.”
Osho
A Sudden Clash of Thunder
Chapter #5
Chapter title: Listen to the Waves
YESTERDAY WHILE SITTING IN ZAZEN I FELT MYSELF GET HIT WITH A STICK ON MY HEAD. BUT PRADEEPA THAT TIME HAD NOT HIT ME. ALSO TODAY DURING THE LECTURE I GOT HIT TWICE ON THE HEAD BUT NO STICK-HITTER WAS AROUND. IS THIS MAGICLESS MAGIC?
It is sheer imagination, and on the path of meditation imagination is the greatest pitfall. Be aware of it. You can imagine so deeply and you can believe in your imagination so intensely that it can appear more real than the real.
Imagination is a great force. On the path of meditation, imagination is a barrier; on the path of love, imagination is a help. On the path of love, imagination is used as a device: you are told to imagine as intensely and passionately as possible. But on the path of meditation the same thing becomes a barrier.
Imagination simply means that you visualise a certain thing but you put so much energy into it that it almost becomes real. Every night we all dream. While dreaming, every dream looks real. To come to know in a dream that this is a dream will be the end of it; then you will find yourself awake. The dream can continue only if you believe that it is real. And even people who are very skeptical, doubting, of the scientific attitude, even they go on believing in the night, they go on believing in their dreams.
Every morning you find that it was just imagination but again every night you become a victim to it. And again when the dream unfolds you start believing it. On the path of meditation that hold of the dream faculty has to be loosened. Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples. ‘Unless you can remember in a dream that it is a dream, you will never awake.’ This whole world is a dream — a dream is a private world, the world is a common dream. If you cannot awake while dreaming, it will be impossible to awake while you are awake, because now the dream is very big, and it is not only your energy that is creating the dream, it is the energy of all. It will be difficult. If you cannot come to see that something in your dream is false, when you alone are to decide and nobody else can interfere…. It is nobody else’s business. You cannot invite anybody else into your dream because it is so private.
Osho
Dang Dang Doko Dang
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Magicless Magic
@swamishanti
You cite a few cases of sannyasins talking about feeling the presence of Osho. That can be a wide range of phenomena, in psychology these things are well known to be transmittable especially when people are primed. Any standard therapist would be able to point that out to you. Therefore your ideas are at best very questionable.
You and your small group of people are welcome to believe in your metaphysics, but what you are doing, and which is most unwelcome, is pushing your suspect beliefs onto other people. Also you are advocating techniques which are very inadvisable like a 24-hour “imagination session.” It’s highly suspect behaviour.
In my case it is not a lack of personal experience. I have been a sannyasin for 42 years and was there in Poona 1 and on the Ranch. I met Osho personally. I’ve since listened to over half of all English discourses on a daily basis. Also in terms of an inner connection I am not lacking, and I can say that from experience. I merely hold views which are quite different to yours, so let’s hear from you what your history with Osho is like.
@Nityaprem wrote:
“You cite a few cases of sannyasins talking about feeling the presence of Osho. That can be a wide range of phenomena; in psychology these things are well known to be transmittable especially when people are primed. Any standard therapist would be able to point that out to you. Therefore your ideas are at best very questionable.”
NP, the connection with Osho of sannyasins that I have mentioned has absolutely nothing to do with what you are imagining it to be based on whatever you have read/studied in psychology – or from any therapist. (Unless it would be a rare therapist such as Veeresh who himself had an inner connection to Osho).
You can not understand the connection between a master and a disciple through any kind of psychology or science.
You should drop this idea because it is leading you in the wrong direction.
This also shows that you have yet to develop any consciousness and as of yet have not any intimate connection with any enlightened master. Which is not at all an unusual thing. But your mind is certainly pointing in the wrong direction if you try to explain these mysteries through modern psychology.
The best thing to do would be to listen, or read Osho when speaking on the master/disciple relationship. He knows his stuff.
You go on:
“You and your small group of people are welcome to believe in your metaphysics, but what you are doing, and which is most unwelcome, is pushing your suspect beliefs onto other people. Also you are advocating techniques which are very inadvisable like a 24-hour “imagination session.” It’s highly suspect behaviour.”
Not sure at all what you mean here, NP. My small group of people? Pushing my suspect beliefs onto other people?
All I have done is written very little about the relationship between Osho and his sannyasins. And here this was mainly because some people were attempting to deny others their experience. Which is quite a bizarre thing on a Sannyas site.
I could write about mystical experiences I’ve had which would completely blow your mind. But I generally keep these things to myself.
“Also you are advocating techniques which are very inadvisable like a 24-hour “imagination session.” It’s highly suspect behaviour.”
I suggested that you attempt to try to imagine that you can feel Osho’s presence for 24 hours. That would simply show you that this is not really possible.
These things, when they really happen, happen spontaneously and out of the blue and when they really happen you will know that imagination could not create these kind of things.
“In my case it is not a lack of personal experience. I have been a sannyasin for 42 years and was there in Poona 1 and on the Ranch. I met Osho personally. I’ve since listened to over half of all English discourses on a daily basis. Also in terms of an inner connection I am not lacking, and I can say that from experience.”
NP, it is obvious that you do not have any inner connection with Osho. If you had this connection you would know and would never try to explain these things with psychology or physics, which is out of its depth with mysticism. You would also not be concerned about any kind of ‘mental unstabilty’ as Osho is a very safe and helpful energy and presence.
In my own case, I visited Pune a couple of times for several months at a time, I was initiated as a sannyasin 41 years ago but it was after Osho left his body that I became seriously interested in meditation. I was earnest but at first I did not really get anywhere apart from the various health benefits associated with dynamic and kundalini meditation as well as experimenting with other techniques of meditation from ‘The Book Of The Secrets’ and others.
It was years later that I began to have real spiritual awakening but this began quite spontaneously and was probably a continuation from another lifetime. After that, meditation became effortless and very easy.
I won’t go into the details here and actually , I need to have a break from SN for a couple of weeks now , but, I am still on the path.
@frank, who wrote: “I hear that Swamishanti has recently taken sannyas from Swami Bhorat at the Bungabungalore ashram!”
Very funny, frank! You definitely have a talent…
In the end, who can say what is possible or impossible for a great man like Osho? Not me. My feeling is, talking about special connections with Osho is bound to stoke up the ego, bringing to life various attachments, and it’s better for those who feel these things to keep it private…Of course, if they feel the need to advertise mediumistic skills, I’m sure we can all have a good laugh about it.
@Nityaprem wrote:
“My feeling is, talking about special connections with Osho is bound to stoke up the ego, bringing to life various attachments, and it’s better for those who feel these things to keep it private….”
Most people do keep these things private, NP, and that’s how a master such as Osho has remained largely hidden. The thing is, there are some idiots who did not have those experiences who believe that such experiences of a master and disciple like this, are purely imaginative, or produced from the mind, which would also mean that Osho himself was lying when he spoke of such things.
In the East these spiritual phenomena and the connection between a master and a disciple is understood even by the common man from thousands of years of spiritual experimentation.
Those who doubt these experiences or believe that Osho was an energy phenomenon that was only linked to his physical form are naive Westerners.
I myself have studied NLP and I am therefore well aware of the power of the mind.
Fortunately, I also have experienced meditation and consciousness and therefore I understand phenomena that are not yet understood by science.
I hear that Swami Bhorat is very pleased with Shanti`s progress as his disciple.
“Perfectly correct, Shanti!
In the East many spiritual phenomena are a understood even by the common man from thousands of years of spiritual experimentation!
For example, the holy books of Bhorat are clear that one should never defecate into water! Therefore it has been understood that to simply let go just on ground wherever is far more spiritual!
You, who have experienced this with sloshing and squelching underfoot and squishing up between the toes, have certainly had real experiences and experienced what idiotic, naïve westerners and science itself could never understand!
Also the common man of mighty Bhorat, like yourself, by being steeped with the wisdom of mighty Bhorat and Sid the Sexist of the Upanishads, has understood perfectly well for thousands of years that woman`s greatest longing is to be raped! Some idiots believe that the yogis and rishis of mighty Bhorat, including Osho, were lying when they said this!
See the madness of the mind which is nothing but mind!
Hopefully, a great adept like yourself, Shanti, with your advanced understanding, is keeping the vision of the East alive on the streets of middle England by fulfilling the highest longing of the local women on a regular basis and avoiding the attentions of the local constabulary who are enforcing the absurd laws of naïve and spiritually ignorant and doubting westerners!
Hari Om
Yahoo!
Perfectly correct!
Hilarious, Swamishanti, condescending and spiritually superior in one.
You know, I think every sannyasin should spend some time on SN and reflect for a while on what they see and how it causes them to react. For a lot of sannyasins Osho is a very loaded topic because most people have a lot invested in him and his status. It’s like a giant encounter group, watch to see who and what pushes your buttons, and then look within to discover how you react, where you feel defensive, what annoys you.
The Thai buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah once said “everything that irritates you, that is your teacher.” And he was right, because when we follow our irritation within we can see our ego, the things we cling to, which causes suffering for ourselves and others. It’s a very spiritual process.
You may find yourself unexpectedly quite attached to your identity as a sannyasin, as a man of consciousness, as a disciple of Osho. It’s all stuff to let go of, the causes of dhukkha, suffering in the mind.
Golly! Frank has shaken me to the very core of my being with his latest comment about Guru Shanti.
Frank asks, “Who Shanti thinks he`s fooling apart from himself I don`t know.”
Well, Shanti fooled me to the point that I almost dropped sannyas and bowed down at his feet. Fortunately, Frank’s comment came at the right moment and I realised that I’d been fooled by Shanti’s enlightened words and fools rush in where hells angels like me should not tread.
Why PC Arpana did not blow his own whistle to stop the evil conman, Shanti, is anyone’s guess. Probably playing with his mouldy old truncheon, but still, it is a dereliction of duty. The PC is supposed to patrol SN’s streets and keep people safe.
Thank you, Frank, for your timely comment. It saved me from once more being conned by another phoney guru. You’d think I would have known better by now, but I fell for Shanti’s evil game. Namaste. His blessings…Not Shanti’s, of course.
Well, imo the jesting should not be taken as insults.
Are we not in the business of raising consciousness, instead of going low?
My 5 cents, here.
Did you all see Ma Prem Sangeet’s reply to Amrito’s long article in the ‘Osho Times’? She does not mince her words, so to say. Both here on sannyas wiki:
https://www.sannyas.wiki/index.php?title=Osho:_Intimate_Glimpses_-_reviews
Dear, oh, dear. All these big-shot disciples all hate each others` guts and have been at each others` throats like rabid rats for decades.
These same folks regularly publish articles about how sick the world is and how meditation and awareness can stop war etc.
Religion, eh? Bloody hell!
All this ‘setting straight of records’.
Very personal records. Amazing.
In cult terms the cult leader makes sure that all his close followers fight and compete amongst each other constantly and ensure they do not become too close to each other, only close to the leader. Divide and rule. Osho did this by constantly giving different mixed messages to different of his lieutenants privately and in public, keeping them permanently on edge. All in the guise of `devices` and `hitting their egos` etc.
Decades later they are still battling it out like demented and entitled children fighting viciously for their bit of their controlling father`s deliberately confused inheritance. Right down to fighting about a will.
All on top of a pile of sex and power abuse stories.
Sad. Dark. Toxic.
I don’t find it very spiritual, to say the least. I’m inclined to take Anando’s account as according to her memory, but I don’t believe a word of Amrito’s rebuttal, it looks like so much spin to me, a real politician’s work.
Maybe you’re a bit too inclined to underestimate or ‘kill the guru’, Frank? What would be the point of a “divide and rule” strategy for Osho? Was he concerned that there might be a coup to displace him? Sounds highly improbable in the contexts of Pune One and Two.
Isn’t it likely that just because ‘inner circle’ people living and working close to Osho were not only high-status types but ‘privileged’ to be there he made sure they faced difficulties? If to get these ‘leading-lights’ people to see themselves creating conflicts with others, including their own power-trips, it sounds ok, doesn’t it?
Although whether that worked or not is another matter.
I recall Veena, in her ‘A Seam for the Master’ book, describing how Osho would often deliberately put seemingly unecessary pressure on her and the others who looked after his clothes etc., eg changing his mind at the last moment, in order to create stressful situations to test them, giving them the opportunity to grow through facing and dealing with whatever came up in them. In that department the strategy seemed to work well.
SD, you ask: “What would be the point of a “divide and rule” strategy for Osho?”
Absolute power over his disciples` lives. How else to rely on them supplying pantiless girls and keeping schtum?
The whole `devices for their own good` fantasy is for thickos like Satchit who should probably be better off sticking to beer and football.
This happens in normal communication: one person talks and two listeners understand different things.
But certainly Frankie boy must make a toxic drama out of it!
Yes, Satchit, although in normal terms one might expect someone of Osho’s stature to ensure all concerned with running his movement understand clearly what he’s saying. And should that not be the case then he could be regarded as incompetent, a poor judge of character, or simply uninterested.
I’m suggesting that the point, perhaps, is that he deliberately engendered conflict in order to test his team’s capacities, to provoke them, giving them opportunities to see themselves as they were, thus undermining tendencies towards complacency, self-importance, arrogance etc. that are always temptations for people in positions of power and perceived privilege.
Yes, SD, I can go with your idea that he was deliberately engendering conflict for his people’s growth.
If this is the case then it is in my opinion a case of all or nothing, of totality. It includes putting Sheela in her position, Erin, and whatever his actions have been.
Gurus, eh?
More Godfather than grandfather.
Girls, guns, gangsters, (hippy) crack dens and the Cosa-nnyas Nostra.
It’s enough to make you guruphobic!
Thankfully, the interneta vaccine booster shots are giving immunity to the Guruna virus.
Unless you’re a clinically vulnerable, zombies-ate-my-brainz, kind of a person.
It’s just en-lighten-tertain-ment at the end of the day. Be a light unto yourself, ‘cos everybody else is taken. This has been fact-checked!
Must have been a lot of pressure, for all involved, the Osho show….
Yo! Bhagdaddy was the daddy. Enlightenment wuz the drug and he wuz the dopest dealer.
When he went on drive-by he blew his homies away an then invited their bitches to his candy shop to lick his lolly pop.
Yo! Bad to the bone. Maximum respec`!
I feel you missed this image to illustrate your point, frank
Booyakasha!
For real!
Yo! Big up Yaself, Frank and NP. Check it.
Lil O$$ho was da OG, da bomb, big willie-style, wid da bling an’ da rollies, straight out of Poona-ni!
After busting out some E-rap, he’d chillax wid sum fit eaters wettin’ his wang, ‘cos he took responsi-liberties an’ didn’ believe in mahogany.
Respek!
Yes, Ayatollah Bhagdaddy was the supreme ruler of The Sannyas Caliphate and in no need of a divide and rule strategy. He had one of the biggest harems and luxury collections in recent history…a veritable king of kings. Everything he did was a device for our awakening. Unfortunately, none of those devices actually worked.
Yass, like I always sez…mo’ money, mo’ bitchez, mo’ problemz!
There is a saying that one should judge a guru by his success rate in awakening others. In that case, one might say Papaji could be the supreme guru of recent times.
Maybe, NP, although would the sannyasins who ‘awakened’ under his inspiration have ‘made it’ without first having come to Osho?
Quite a few of the ones I have heard about have no history with Osho, but I haven’t done any research to find out whether there is an effect or not.
I suspect that really enlightened beings will have freed themselves of a lot of the ideas of their teacher. What I’ve observed is that every person who has really experienced something has their own unique way of communicating it.
SD,
I agree, Osho is also part responsible for unleashing these enlightened ones on the world.
Money for nothing and the chicks for free by sitting on your ass being a narcissist was always going to be an attractive franchise.
It`s a free market thing, business is business and isness is business.
@ NP
Seems Papaji declared many enlightened who have not been. It’s an old game.
Osho has done it too.
Give me a Mercedes Benz and I declare you as enlightened!
Ah yes, those good old games: Give me a Merc and I`ll declare you enlightened. Oil my Lingam. Slide up my greasy pole of enlightenment. Snakes and Ladders. Scrabble for my attention. Cult-do. Tantric Twister. Strip Poke-her. You scratch my back and I won`t scratch yours because I don`t exist.
Endless hours of fun for all the dysfunctional family!
Papaji was not in the least bit interested in wealth and its trappings, at least by the time I met him. People offered money to build an ashram and he turned them down. He lived off a small army pension and seemed to manage perfectly well on that.
Satchit’s idea that “Give me a Mercedes Benz and I declare you as enlightened!” is pure bullshit. I never heard of either Osho or Poonjaji seeking a financial reward for declaring anyone enlightened. Osho declared a handful of people to be enlightened. For what reasons I have no idea. Although he once declared a friend of mine enlightened and it turned out to be a joke. It was actually quite funny.
Poonjaji declared quite a few people enlightened and later declared that he did that to get rid of those people. I have no idea if he was telling the truth.
‘Enlightenment’ in our times is something I can do well enough without. We have been told that enlightenment can only be understood by those who have attained it, so what is the point of seeking something if you do not know what it is? You might find it and not recognize it. Satchit might be enlightened for all we know, which would mean it is something to be avoided unless you don’t mind making a complete fool of yourself.
Then you have people like U.G. who declared that enlightenment was the biggest catastrophe that happened in his life. Who needs that?
What’s wrong with you, Lokesh, that you did not get the joke?
Everybody who has a clear mind knows that the Mercedes Benz is not the right car for the deal.
Lamborghini for enlightenment!
And you should not parrot others: “that enlightenment can only be
understood by those who have attained.”
Think about it, if this would be the case there would be no desire to meet Bhagwan or Papaji for you.
I did read that Papaji met only three enlightened ones. Seems a rare flower.
Happy full moon!
“And you should not parrot others: “enlightenment can only be
understood by those who have attained.”
Think about it, if this would be the case there would be no desire to meet Bhagwan or Papaji for you.”
Let’s get real here, Satchit, that’s just nonsense. Wanting to meet such people in no way implies an understanding of where they’re at in consciousness, it simply indicates having been unusually impressed and wanting to be helped to find a similar state in oneself.
Yes, there are some, very few, who might already be ‘well on the way’, but the vast majority might have had occasional rare glimpses of something like such freedom, such love, eg from a drug trip, deep intimacy, special unexpected moments, spontaneously generated and impossible to deliberately replicate, or, we’re told, have some inner pull towards such teachers through ‘previous lives’, but that’s a considerable distance from understanding ‘enlightenment’.
And if you’re going to declare that you’re an exception, a ‘special case’, then, given current evidence , I’m afraid you’re deluding yourself.
Yeah, can be nonsense, must have a lunatic phase right now.
Or too much Alzheimer beer!?
Ok, SD, now the hangover is gone.
When I think about it, it’s not so difficult “to understand” enlightenment.
First, a few satoris are needed.
Then you mix it with ‘that’s all a play’.
And voila, you have already a good enlightenment soup.
But certainly there are still a few more secrets needed, everybody has to find out for himself.
The thing is, enlightenment is quite parrot-able. As you say, you can create a nice “enlightenment (word) soup.” For every person who is the real article, there are nine conmen.
Well said, NP.
Yes, NP, enlightenment is a very mean thing.
I don’t think it is “a mean thing”, just that one should be careful in selecting a teacher. Among Tibetan buddhists it is said one should observe for twelve years before accepting a guru.
Well, perhaps that might have something to do with the disciple’s readiness as well as the guru’s ‘rightness’ for the disciple.
But in these times such a suggestion seems an anachronism, doesn’t it? Twelve years? Much of this world could be obliterated in 12 minutes! Everyone’s in a rush, silently yelling, “Hurry, hurry, hurry, we’re running out of time!” While the masters (if there are any left) urge, “Realise the ‘timeless’ before it’s too late!”
My God, talk about ‘not-so-quiet desperation’…
Or am I just talking about myself?
Isn’t that why Osho gave sannyas to everyone who came to him, realising that there was ‘no time to lose’, as it were, that time was of the essence? It was (and is) an emergency: The deepest realities of Life and Love had to be awakened and spread far and wide. Everyone qualified, more or less whatever state they were in, simply by virtue of being a human being.
That’s why he called it ‘Neo-Sannyas’, a deliberate break from tradition, fit for this chaotic, ‘Godless’ age and its offspring and co-creators, we equally ‘Godless’, chaotic people.
@NP
My experience is that the heart selects the teacher, even if some call it a cliche.
And the heart is not always careful.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say ‘the emotions’ rather than “the heart”, Satchit “heart” suggesting a more profound feeling reality than emotions that come and go and are intrinsically unreliable.
SD, I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess why Osho gave sannyas to everyone who showed an interest. But he created a very visible movement which had a wide scope, which was maybe more relevant than the spiritual goals that were opened to the individual.
If you were really interested in enlightenment, you might have got more from a few minutes with Papaji than from a dozen long Osho lectures. But that would involve being an independent seeker, and most of the people with Osho were “his sannyasins”.
Surely all depends on the individual’s readiness, NP? There’s a time to be one-on-one with a master like Papaji, and there’s a time to be part of a community listening to a master’s public talks (and participating in other beneficial activities).
While in Pune One you could enjoy both, the lectures and the darshans (and the rest). And many sannyasins went to Papaji and other teachers, having been well prepared by their time with Osho.
@satchit, who said “My experience is that the heart selects the teacher, even if some call it a cliche. And the heart is not always careful.”
I think there is some truth in that, but it is also said that in the end all gurus are the same guru. How exactly the heart selects is hard to say.
Yesterday I spent an hour looking through old photographs of Neem Karoli Baba, Ramana, Nisargadatta, and Papaji, and I could feel something special in all of them.
I think one has to be aware when a teacher has something to impart to you, and when not. Ram Dass once said of his guru Neem Karoli Baba that he taught him to love. Rupert Spira said that being close to his teacher Francis Lucille was like being a dry piece of wood next to a flaming piece of wood; a transmission happened, he was illuminated.
Yes, I can imagine what you mean, SD.
The question is also:
Who is “careful”?
Is the mind careful because it wants to avoid trouble and better wants to move with the known?
If I would have been careful in the past then I would have never taken Sannyas.
Only the heart takes the jump.
But on the other side, who knows where I would have been in this parallel universe?
@ NP
Certainly all Gurus are the same.
The heart seeks for a mirror in this all-is-the-same-ness.
Essentially the same, perhaps, Satchit, but their ways can be and usually are very different. Not to mention their person-alities!
Exactly, SD.
Some sit, some talk, some dance, some laugh.
Some play the good guy, some play the bad guy.
So what about the 12 years of observation? What about false gurus? Is it possible for the heart to be misled?
My impression is the heart is not wrong. If it tells you this is the person, then it’s up to you whether you pay attention.
The mind can mislead you. It can project, the desire can cause you to hope falsely.
“The mind can mislead you. It can project, the desire can cause you to hope falsely.”
That’s an example of what I mean by emotion-driven preferences and decisions, NP.
And it can be a tricky thing recognising what comes from the heart and what is from emotion. In Sannyas the difference often wasn’t made clear, so at times the scene tended to resemble a swirling vortex of hyped-up emotionality, with Osho himself encouraging sannyasins to “have an emotional relationship with me”.
That’s the way he worked, inevitably, I suppose, considering the culture he came from.
Yeah, I remember that, Osho declaring a few people enlightened and them mostly going, “What, huh, me?” It was pretty funny.
I saw a video interview with U.G. on Youtube not so long ago, it was quite interesting. You got the feeling that he was quite an angry man.
It’s true, many people declared some sort of enlightened awakening after time spent with Poonjaji. I would take that with a pinch of curry powder.
Sitting around with the man it was not so difficult to enter a no-mind kind of space. If inclined, one could take that space into the world and offer it to the unenlightened as enlightenment. Seems to have worked for a few Poonjaji disciples. I find the whole thing questionable. Whatever floats your boat. I prefer swimming in the sea.