For example, the men and women are still separated in the monasteries with all the predictably depressing results of closet homosexual activity and heterosexual power abuse. All hushed up with an efficiency that would make a Catholic bishop jealous! This is not just in the in the westernised scenes such as Shambhala and Sogyal Rinpoche, it’s across the board, and also rampant in the Dalai Lama`s own monastery, where the meeting took place.

Despite all this, sympathetic westerners, who include a lot of Osho sannyasins, have an idea, as reported in the article, that this man and his org have some special kudos or validity in saying how the world should be run and how kids should be brought up!

DL comes over as a nice ond buffer, for sure, and he trots out stuff like:
“So, my brothers and sisters, now we should be active to bring [about a] happy world, peaceful century, step by step” and “I think India should be more active regarding promotion [of] religious harmony.”

But then again, so do the Pope and his cronies.

I remember, back in `83, Osho sent a couple of female therapists to some world religious meeting where they stood up (on Osho`s orders) and confronted the Dalai Lama about the inequality of women in the religious orders and addressed him as “Your Phoniness” as opposed to “Your Holiness”.

Does that kind of yippy/encounter kick-ass stuff not apply now we are all in the nuage together, happily singing our mantras ?

I wonder what the SN punters think of all this (if anything)?

GEORGIE G versus RAMAN `THE MAINMAN` MAHARSHI

GEORGIE G

Yo! My name is Georgie G and I`m a rascal saint
I`m here to destroy your expectations, so celibate and sober I aint
I`m the most badass gangsta that ever got awakened
Homies who run with my possee get their egos crushed and shaken.
You might like to sit in your temple hypnotising sheep
But I tell you buddy, I`m out there waging war on sleep.
I`ve been in a few scuffles and taken a few bullets for the cause
So, time to wake up,`cos this lion roars.
The energy of my rhymes is gonna kill you like a yak
I`ll give you a conscious shock from which you won`t come back.
When I was born ,I hit the jackpot
My dad and granddad, they were top, they knew a lot
They both did the Gilgamesh rap-they was red hot,
That`s why my rhymes rock, they always hit the G-spot.
I`m gonna find your chief feature and then I`m gonna bust it
All you gotta do is surrender to me, kiss my ass and trust it.
When I catch my flow, it comes out sharp as Stormzy`s
My rhymes will mash your ego just like they mashed Ouspensky`s.
Hey Raman, what`s with the oversized banana hammock hanging off your ass?
You mumbling `who am I? ` Whassup? Been smokin too much Kerala grass?
And when`s the last time you actually had a job
Apart from getting free food by passing yourself off as God?
I don’t renounce the world or sit in a cave and shirk
I put on a clean shirt and I go out and do The Work
Sitting on your ass and talking to monkeys and goats,
Don`t you think it`s time you invested in some trousers and a coat?

RAMAN THE MAINMAN

Who is it that is asking? that`s what I want to know
Who`s behind the drinking, the smoking and the show?
Listen up: my name is Raman,I know exactly who I am,
I`m the most egoless atman in all of Hindustan.
When it comes to meditation,I`m the main man
If you think you`re gonna win this duel,you gonna get schooled
There`s only gonna be one winner here cos I`m totally non-dual.
You`re a honky from the Westside,I`m a mystic from the Eastside
Your brains are totally fried, I`m the guru here ,I`m the guide
You`ve gone down in history as a charlatan,but me-I`ve been deified
So fasten your seatbelt dude,I`m gonna take you for a ride.
I rap to peacocks and snakes, and all the monkeys listen
You rap like you`re Rambo going off on some manic mission.
You went to school with Stalin and I tell you bro, it shows.
So listen up psycho-killer, cos this is how it flows:
You`ve got an over-sized cranium that’s housing a tyrant.
But I don`t worry about your ego cos I`ll kill it with my silence.
Why not try your Stop! exercise when you write your next book?
Ease off the zernofookalniranian gobbledegook
You think that it`s `conscious` when you`re steamin` and getting laid?
When it comes to walking the path, bro, you`ve seriously strayed.
Cos `conscious` is me in my Tamil speedos basking in the shade,
You`re swigging too much Calvados and getting way too grandiose
You gonna overdose if you don`t bid the bottle adios.
Sitting round stuffing your face and toasting your 33 idiots and losers
Your mystery school`s a crammer for mountebanks and boozers.
None of them could ever make it as a fakir, a yogi or a monk
Your fourth way`s just an excuse for pretending to be drunk.
Tryin to be guru? What? You some kind of wigger?
Check this out,dude: Who am I ? Go figure.

GEORGIE G

What`s the dope with this weird trip you call Advaita?
Is it some kind of challenge to see who`s wearing the biggest diapers?
Me,I`m looking for 200 enlightened guys who can handle their drink
To bring this crazy planet back from the brink.
We need the right combination of God and the Devil
To get humanity back up onto the Seventh level.
But, being completely out of your mind and slumped on your behind:
I gotta say that ain`t no way to change the future of mankind.
And seriously dude, I don`t wanna sound rude
But your bod looks pretty weedy like you need to eat some food.
You should try out my movements: they`re harmonious for body and soul
But the only movements I can see you doing are squatting over a hole,
Wandering round the mountain and looking like a bum
You need to cut loose, get out and have some fun.
Man is really nothing but an unconscious mechanical machine
I fuel mine with plenty of booze, fags and caffeine.
Maybe you need to cut down on the pujas and all that vibhuti
Munch some kebab dosas and find yourself some booty.
Come over to Paris and I`ll show you a real good time
I`ve got a possee of hot western bitches and a cellar full of wine.

RAMAN THE MAINMAN

If you`re so keen to make improvements to the human race
You could start by shaving that bush off of your face.
It might impress some of your Westside idiots, disciples and sheeple,
But you look like a cross between Dr Evil and one of the Village People
If I want to do some intentional suffering, I`ll read Beelzebub`s tales
It`s the literary equivalent of lying on a bed of nails,
Even Osho said you could get all the good bits on the back of an airmail
It`s an classic epic for sure, a classic epic fail.
I know how to run an ashram, I don`t allow meat, fags and booze
Mine`s a sattvic holy scene run by proper pukka Hindus
The effect of trad religion is so nice and calming
I even got special seats for the high-class Brahmins.
I`m not surprised you went bust when you started your ashram
You should have stuck to your dodgy scams back in Kazakhstan.
Wasting all that energy running after those dollar bills
God gives me everything I need – I`ve even got my own hill.
Running on a treadmill looking for the next thrill
You seem to be suffering from the illusion of free will
Look: There`s no doer to do, so why not just chill?
Your chief disciple, Ouspensky, he didn`t want to linger,
He didn`t like the way you flashed your mojo, so he gave you the finger.
You wound up looking like a Sufi who had totally over-whirled
You need to come down to Tiru and check the view from the real world.
Listen up bro`, cos I`m the godfather of Advaita
“Who am I?” is my catchphrase and it couldn`t be any tighter
My legacy`s gone global and things couldn`t be brighter
Step down, Mr G, you`ve gone and sung your tune
You`re well past your sell-by date, you`re food for the moon.

GEORGIE G

It`s true that writing Beelzebub made me feel pretty down
But at least I didn`t waste all my life in the same one-horse town
I`ve met more remarkable men than you`ve had hot dinners
So, don`t diss my work, you fakir, cos I`m a total winner.
I was wandering round the mystic East and grooving with Yazidis
While your disciples were sitting in the slums and smoking Ganesh bidis.
You went and started an epidemic of western satsang junkies
Chasing the banana of enlightenment like a bunch of frigging monkeys.
My way is for true seekers who want to learn the law of seven
Not join your wacko fan club with the likes of Mooji and Cohen.
Don’t mess with my essence if you know what`s good
I`m still the main man of the Sarmoung `hood.
This whole scene could just get a whole lot rougher
When I start to lay in to your blocked kundabuffer.
So don`t gimme no more holy bull, mister Hindu caveman
I don`t need to hear no more ashram atman batman flimflam
I`ve got your number in my enneagram,
And I`m owning you in this rap slam
Your catchphrase may have caught on from Japan to San Fran,
But I tell you,mine`s the realest, man.
Why? Cos life is only real when I AM.

People in meditation circles bang on about the mind.
“You`re in your mind” has clear pejorative tones.
It`s a kind of new age sin. The trouble is, as has been the case with all human faculties and organs that have been declared sinful by religionists down the ages, we`ve all got one!
If you ask how to deal with this thing (or “think”), the experts will answer by saying things like: “You need the mind but it must be the servant but not the master.”
That`s an interesting metaphor, but how does this work? How to distinguish the master from the servant? How to identify them> Are they wearing different hats or uniforms or speak with different accents ,like characters out of “Upstairs Downstairs”?
How do you get the wonderful benefits of agriculture, modern building techniques, central heating, medicine, family planning, easy travel, surfing the net,blogging and a host of other mind-created things without sliding into the flipside and becoming the insane, neurotic, monkey-minded,unenlightened mind-fucking servant or even slave of the mind?
Well, you have to meditate, then you will go beyond the mind, then eventually you`ll become enlightened. That`s the standard answer.
But what about the unfortunate folks who haven`t made it to join the elite,the one-in-a-million or billion spiritual aristos who have slipped into no-mind and either literally or figuratively taken their seat on the podium, what about the lumpen proletariat of meditators,the rag-tag hoi polloi of breath-watchers who have bought the lottery ticket but their number hasn`t come up yet?
What kind of dream is that?
What happens when you meditate but you don`t get enlightened?

Swami Frank

Cancer

Osho says,  controversially perhaps:

“When the mind becomes very tense, so tense that it is intolerable, it starts affecting the body tissues. That’s why cancer exists only when civilization becomes very, very sophisticated.
Cancer is basically a psychological disease; it is basically a disease of the mind, not a physical one. When the mind becomes very tense, so tense that it is intolerable, it starts affecting the body tissues. That’s why cancer exists only when civilization becomes very, very sophisticated. In primitive societies you cannot find cancer. People are not so sophisticated. The higher – by ‘higher’ I mean complicated – the more sophisticated, the more complex a society is, the more cancer will happen. […]
Cancer has to disappear. Cancer can exist only in a certain neurotic state of mind. If the mind relaxes, sooner or later the body will follow and will relax.
It is because of this fact that scientific investigation has not yet been able to find a cure for cancer.”

Osho, Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 2, Ch 14

Surely this flies in the face of scientific discovery?
For example, much cancer is caused by exposure to the sun (skin cancer)
Various bacteria and viruses cause it. This includes human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes cervical and other cancers; Epstein-Barr virus, which causes some types of lymphoma; and Helicobacter pylori, which grows in gone-off food and causes stomach cancer.
Radon, a naturally occurring gas accounts for a consistent percentage of cancer worldwide
Aflatoxin – produced by a mould that grows on peanuts and grains –  is a potent cause of cancer. It’s a significant cause of liver cancer in parts of Africa and Asia.
The list goes on.

Very few people these days argue against the idea that relaxation, improvement of diet, having a positive attitude etc. can be helpful in treatment of cancer (or other illnesses), although they used to back when Osho gave this talk.
Also, it is possible to assert that being tense or having a bad attitude can increase your vulnerability to disease, but this is still highly debatable
However, to posit neurosis/civilisation/mental tension as a sole cause?

I would be interested in what people think of this.

Frank

Osho praised R D Laing profusely. Amongst other things he said:
“The great Western psychologist, R. D. Laing, made a new discovery. Laing tried to demonstrate that there are many people in Western insane asylums who if they had been born some time in the past,in the East, would have been thought of as masts,fakirs and mystics..”

Laing, for his part, didn`t seem to reciprocate the compliment, and was even arrested for throwing a full bottle of wine through the Osho centre window in Belsize Park in 1985 whilst shouting “Orange wankers”. When asked by the cops why he had done it,he replied “Religious reasons”.
Was he a `mast` or just mashed?
Probably a bit of both.
Whichever way you look at it, the gap between being a mystic and blabbering in an asylum, or an exponent of crazy-wisdom or just outright crazy is, all-told, wafer-thin .

Frank

EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY

OSHO vs KRISHNAMURTI

OSHO.
My people call me Osho cos I`m master of my flow
I don`t have an ego so surrender to my mojo.
You read cheap detective novels and call yourself a world teacher
But I`m the Master of Masters and I groove to Freddie Nietzsche.
I`m like an orchestra compared to your solo flute
And when it comes to awakening- I devised the fastest route.
Your tin whistle`s ineffectual and your followers too intellectual
Your diction is impeccable but you need to get more psychosexual.
It`s like you`re riding on your head in a three-wheeled bullock cart
And I`m flying on a jumbo jet going straight to the heart.
I was the main man of a posse who was all dressed in red
You just had a bunch of straights who got stuck in their head.
While all your dudes were thinking about choiceless choice
I was living it large and cruising in my Rolls Royce.
When I went on a drive-by, I taught my disciples some respect
Those brothers didn`t diss me, they were perfectly correct.
My bitches were so juicy, they were the best class of floozies
And the guys didn`t take no shit cos they were packing Uzis.
Your whole life was a reaction from being owned by Annie Besant
No one pushes me around bro`, cos I`m a hierophant.
You Krishnamurtis became enlightened cos the theosophists said you should
I became enlightened cos I`m Bhagdaddy of the buddha `hood.

KRISHNAMURTI
Sir, I`m J. Krishnamurti, not that UG clone
I`m the only one that can give you freedom from the known.
Yes it`s true I wear a suit and my lectures are bone dry
But my rhymes are commentaries on living and I think they`re pretty fly.
Well,Mr Osho, I have heard all about your show
But your religionless religion sounds more like sex and drugs to go.
You thought it was something new hanging out and getting flirty
But `ve I been doin the rounds since way before 1930.
I spent my time with scientists, scholars and A-listers
But you were hanging with no-hopers and failed therapistas.

OSHO
You might have had it going on in back in the 40s and 50s
But I`m a rascal saint so I needed a gang of grifters
Your philosophy sounded deader than an ex-dodo
I needed a scene that had some extra mojo
You said you weren`t a guru and there`s nothing one can do
but I got `em goin with some loved-up voodoo.
Your disciples had less vision than Mr Magoo
Mine were in the flow like a hollow bamboo
Singing,dancing and shouting with a big “Yahoo!”
You were busy dissing sex and sayin it wasn`t cool
All the time you were bangin Mrs Rajgopal and taking her hubby for a fool
Me,I was on prime time TV talkin` `bout my endless lovers
While you were keepin your sexytime strictly undercover.
I cut loose from all that shit and proclaimed the new man
You act so uptight like you need an extra dose of bran

KRISHNAMURTI
Yes sir, you had those hippy dudes with their goofy smiles
And those sexed-up braless chicks dancing in the aisles.
But do you think I would give respect to the leader of a sect
Whose enlightenment got wrecked cos he didn`t give a feck?
You boasted about your satoris but your sartorials needed more meditation
Your outfits looked like something from the Star Trek Federation.
I got my shirts from Savile Row because I liked to show a bit of class
But your 80s shoulder pads looked like something out of “Dallas”.
I spoke like a gentleman and watched my Ps and Qs,
You told dirty jokes and cleared your throat with “Fuck you”s
When you led your chosen people out into the desert
That`s when I knew “This guy`s really lost it”.
Moses got his tablets straight from his god
But you got them on prescription from your own doc.
And your secretary -you thought you could control her
but she turned out to be a bharati bunny boiler

You tried to be the boss but even you couldn`t foil her
and your religionless religion ended in the hands of lawyers.
I retained my noblesse, remained egoless and unfazed by success, lived at the right address and stayed in the West
But you digressed and left a huge mess, puffin on the gas and talking about sex and following the sacred “yes” down the road of excess
And I must confess,when you started wearing the tea-pot head-dress I clearly got the message: nothing fails like success.

OSHO

You said I lost my enlightenment but you didn`t have a clue
I was glad I could stop pretending unlike poor old you
I don`t expect you to understand that it was all a device
Just like when I sent my posse to your gigs to knock you from your heights
You lost your cool composure like a red rag to a bull
While I just sat back and laughed till I`d had a bellyful.
You said that truth is a pathless land but you just talked and talked it
I started my own religion and then went out and walked it.
You railed against the evil of organisations and religions
But I got my dudes to go right out and live `em.
So, listen up to my rhythm and get the wisdom of my mission:
You`ve got to get into it to get out of it, if you follow my vision.
And that`s why I busted their egos with a taste of fascism.
Now they`re completely free of all that mental prison
And just floating thru the empty sky without the help of -isms.
So now, Mr K, just get out of my watercourse way
Your rhymes are giving me a headache and I`ve had enough for today.

Who won?                              You decide!

Gandhi  could have been simply played for laughs  at the expense of the unknowing dupes, in the style of Ali G or Borat, but amazingly,Kumare’s  disciples seem to benefit from his bogus presentation. Furthermore, Ghandi himself finds the adventure of playing the character of the guru surprisingly fulfilling as he forges(!!) what he describes as very deep connections with his students and struggles with the idea of revealing his true identity.

I found it quite touching as well as being extremely thought-provoking.

I would certainly unreservedly recommend watching it to anyone interested in the subject matter .

Has anyone here seen the movie?
What were your impressions?

I do wonder why so many take Osho`s statements on, for example,rape,politics,stalinism,terrorism,science,art,literature,therapy,tarot,music or whatever as the last word?
Seems fanatical at worst,but more realistically,a bit dim. As if having your own opinion will be “in the mind”,but parroting Osho`s somehow keep you in the clear?

For example, that they are wise, and that their wisdom is derived from their lives which have passed through myriad stages of having been unwise, duped, deluded, inflated etc… This is why they can look at the Resort,the Ranch  and other religious and psychological follies and declare that these new seekers are deluded or at least lost.

Well, dear old readers, I invite you to think back to when you were deluded and lost, a state that you may laugh at wryly now…  If you had met your older self telling you, for example  as the esteemed advaitist Lokesh does, that the seeker must forget accruing more experiences and focus on the experiencer.

Would you as a green nouveau seeker desperate to get a bit of action in the spiritual and material world been able to see the truth of it? Or would you have just ignored him as an obvious has-been old fart, pushed him aside and got on with some serious heavy-breathing, wacko living and energetically exploring your shadow ?
So this may raise the question: What is the wisest stance for the wise old man/fart who sees the folly of seeking?

If he declares the ego-shattering truth that there is indeed nowhere to go and nothing to do, does he run the risk of sounding like Peter Cooks fading rock star alter-ego, Eric Daley who proclaimed:
“I’ve slept with loads of women and taken loads of drugs, but if you think that by sleeping with thousands of women and taking thousands of drugs, you are gonna  have a good time, I`ve got this to say: “don`t”?

Or should the wise man keep schtum and let the young fools motor on down their roads of folly, and fall off their cliff edges and last resorts, even encouraging them in their foolishness in the knowledge that  they too, like him, will sooner or later find their true way home?

Frank

http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/programs/player/41-Rajneeshpuram

Do you feel it is a fair, even-handed report?
Was the ranch destroyed from within or from without?
or six of one,half a dozen of another?
visionaries thwarted by fascists?
or religious nutters going off on one?
a zen koan?
or a zen con?

Did it evoke a nice bit of nostalgia
or a cringe of embarrassment?
(at having paid into a terrorist attack on innocent people or maybe just the sight of those awful 80s hairdos?)
Did you learn anything from it?
or still a bit confused?

Do you even care?
after all,it was nearly 30 years ago.
are you too involved with  living in the present to bother about the past?

Osho described the ranch as a “mini fascist state”.
was that an aberration or is the whole master thing so predicated on total authority that it just can`t avoid fascistic tendencies?
Those top-heavy authorities seem to be still existent in every surviving Osho organisation.
is that as it should be to get the “vision” out?
Or does it represent a failure to grasp the “lessons” of the Ranch?