Osho's Wild, Wild 70s
File under: Famous Dead Guys™
A columnist relates his experience with Osho in India in the early 70s:
I wanted to make that lysergic-induced pleasure permanent. And so I went to Rajneesh. He offered me a world of alternate morality - free love, free sex. Sex was used as a glue to draw in people and attain god. After two years there, I discovered that what he offered was nonsense. What he called a spiritual club was nothing but a fucking club. Why give it a spiritual name at all. Inside me I still remained ordinary. I could still feel jealous, I could still hurt others and be hurt myself. And so I gave up the mala and said I was leaving. Then that guru who spoke from the platform of unconditional love started behaving like a jilted lover - he said return the mala to me. I will see to it that you are destroyed.A tip of our tantric hat to Osho for his attempts to sustain such a large chakra-puja. Such wide scale transgression was certain to result in all kinds of transformation in the participants. Look at the author's own story. He dove in, and as a result, saw through. Osho's experiment was a success in his case, too.
Osho's getting miffled about the rejection was just his exposed humanity. That's what was cool about him. He didn't seem to try to hide his humanity when he was playing the avatar game. All his peccadilloes were out front, like his astonishing parade of Rolls Royce automobiles.
But he had management problems and it all fell apart. We're sorry we missed the fun.
posted by guruphiliac @ 6:25 PM
2 Comments:
Interesting. I think the people around Osho were funny, still are. From what I've seen and read, anyway. I think Osho attained the fruits of meditation. Stories from people who knew him before his guru fame - apparently unedited and free of starry eyed retellings - suggest that he spent much of his time in meditation and when not in meditation discussing the related subjects deeply with colleagues and friends. I do not think that Rajneesh was a hippy before he came to be the guru of hippies...
I think the game he allowed his people to play was pure amusement for him. If they wanted to play the pop guru game, he'd let them. If they wanted advice on how to come to their own realization in meditation, he gave it.
Much of his work still stands as fresh and inspiring, if a little tiring after a while with its inclusion of an unnecessarily wide variety of related perspectives, clearly an admirable attempt to make the subject matter clear and obvious to as many people as possible without losing any of the mystique.
My own opinion is that Osho should probably be seen for what he himself was, what he may have attained and claimed to have attained, sifting the bullshit he gave the dodo's from the truth he certainly shared at the same time. I've seen pictures of his parents and brothers, and one of his brothers is currently carrying on Osho's name in several spin off type spiritual groups. He has a similar beard and clothing and yet none of the grace, absolutely none (and no offense to him, he seems nice) and none of the immense personal magnetism and charisma of his brother, which I can only attribute either to natural born star-power he possessed of some spiritual attainment that fueled his life from the mid-60s when he began traveling and giving discourses on all things meditative spirituality.
I think we have an insight into the real Osho in the Oregon silence years, or however long he went reclusive and did not give daily discourses. From what I've read he mostly stayed in his room and wherever by himself, with a few helpers around, probably his girlfriend, etc. Just the simple man he'd been speaking of - the Lao Tzu who was just a nobody, minding his business in life until time to die. Osho as stage performer was literally that, he dressed for the part to complete the role.
Kumbha Melas are undoubtedly the most important gatherings in the lives of sadhus.... history of kumbh mela
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