The Enigmatic "Bhagwan," Osho Rajneesh

© Copyright 2007 by Timothy Conway, PhD. In response to a flurry of some two

dozen emails from a Rajneesh disciple, major additions pro and con were made to
this webpage (mainly from Aug. 30 to Oct. 25, 2011) in the early and middle sections
up to and including my biography on Rajneesh and all the way down to the
bibliographic resources section, about 70% into this long webpage.

It's clear that all selves are manifestations of just ONE REALITY, ONE SELF, ONE
AWARENESS. Some of these selves or persons beautifully display a garden radiant
with wholesome virtues.... While other selves, through some kind of Divine whimsy,
display lovely flowers mixed in with lots of weeds! Yet everyone is, at heart, quite
innocent, utterly Divine. What an amazing dream, this wild, wacky, woeful yet
wonderful life....
In the late 1980s, India's so-called "Bhagwan" or "Blessed One" Rajneesh (née
Rajneesh Mohan Chandra Jain, 1931-1990), back once again at his old ashram in
Poona, India, tried to make himself and his religious movement more marketable to
suit his longstanding global ambitions for this "first true religion," all other religious
movements having been "false," "sick," "failures" in his view. His attempts followed
a few years of very negative publicity after a nightmarish time of crime and hardship
in the USA (not a personal nightmare or hardship for Rajneesh, but certainly for
many other persons, as we shall see). And so, concerned about his image in the eyes
of his people and the general public, Rajneesh briefly preferred to call himself
"Zorba the Buddha" and then in October 1989, three months before his death, he
adopted a "healing," Zen-sounding name, "Osho."
The strategy has worked: today very few people who visit Osho centers, read or
hear Osho's words, and practice his heavily cathartic meditation methods know
much if anything about his problematic earlier life as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Indeed, it seems that a relatively small but growing number of people actually,
seriously view Osho as "India's greatest spiritual master since the Buddha," as his
organizers like to extol or hype him, which is quite a grandiose claim in the spiritual
marketplace. Yet a number of us see Rajneesh/Osho quite differently.... Frankly,
while he was a very intriguing and in some ways quite helpful figure within the
Divine dream, because of his very serious personal shortcomings and flawed way
of teaching, I just don't think Osho warrants mention in the same breath as evidently
far more authentic spiritual masters including Gautama the Buddha, Jesus, Antony
of Egypt, Atisha, Kobo Daishi, Milarepa, Jnaneshvar, Rumi, Chinul, Dogen, Bankei,
Hakuin, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Moshe Cordovero, the Baal Shem Tov,
Seraphim of Sarov (et al.), and widely visited and well documented figures of the
modern era like Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Narayana Guru, Hazrat
Babajan, Shirdi Sai Baba, Meher Baba, Shaikh al-Alawi, Padre Pio, Swami
Gnanananda, Bhagavan Nityananda, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandamayi Ma,
Anasuya Devi, Hsu Yun, Hsuan Hua, Taungpulu Sayadaw, Ajahn Chah, Songchol
Kun Sunim, Daehaeng Kun Sunim, Dhilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and many other
luminaries.
(A really thorough examination of all the crimes committed by a group of over 30
Rajneesh insiders, starting with his chief-of-staff Sheela whom he empowered to help
run his religion from 1981 to 1985, along with many other unsavory details about the
Rajneesh movement from the 1970s onward, is The Oregonian newspaper's
voluminous 20-part series in mid-1985 by Les Zaitz et al., "For Love & Money,"
and their 7-part followup in Dec. 1985, "On the Road Again," plus their updated 5-
part series in April 2011, "Rajneeshees in Oregon—The Untold Story," all articles
archived at www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/.)
About this man Rajneesh/Osho there was a lot of laughter, loquacity, occasional
eloquence, some real insight, and an immensely potent and hypnotic energy. But
sadly, there was also a lot of lunacy, immense dysfunction, and astonishing
selfishness, pettiness, megalomania, callousness and corruption. He was/is
remarkably interesting as a sensual ecstatic, intuitive mystic, unlicensed
psychotherapist of en masse primal scream-cry-laugh "dynamic meditation"
therapy, rebellious social-political-religious provocateur, successful self-
promoter, cosmic joker, and relentless iconoclast who simultaneously lured his
emotionally-dependent followers into making a big icon out of himself. Though
numerous Rajneeshees will claim, using vague or dubious criteria, that their guru
was "fully enlightened" (Rajneesh certainly claimed this for himself) and that he
enlightened them, too, with his counsels and his "special energy," the bulk evidence
indicates that Rajneesh/Osho left a mixed or even tragic legacy.
This legacy involved...
--very misleading or imbalanced teachings as well as quite helpful wisdom,
--some really bad advice along with genuinely good counsels,
--a slew of lies about himself and his movement,
--dozens of glaring errors in his discussions of world religions and other subjects,
--personal role-modeling of voracious materialist greed and conniving ambition for
fame and power,
--narcissistic ego-inflation along with authoritarian power-plays and lack of empathy,

--intellectual dishonesty and petty oneupsmanship tactics,

--a hypocritical inability to live what he preached (e.g., telling everyone to "go
beyond the mind" while talking for tens of thousands of hours from a heavily
opinionated and error-prone mind; preaching that the enlightened one lives in
tension-free ease viewing life as a play while he himself frequently used laughing
gas/nitrous oxide and valium to the point of incoherence, said some of his closest
people),
--a penchant by Rajneesh and his appointed leaders for deceitful spinning or
rationalizing nearly every time they were confronted on anything of importance,
--heavy solicitations and numerous scams by his appointed leaders to fleece his
followers and their families of as much of their money and possessions as possible
(especially from 1980 onward),
--crushing work-loads for exploited disciples (routinely 15-18 hours, 7 days a week),
at the Oregon ranch in USA from 1981-5,
--a commune at Poona, India and then one in Oregon often buzzing with ecstatic
excitement and groovy sensuality but also debauched by wanton sex (and countless
venereal diseases),
--a several-year period of violence at Poona and branch-communes worldwide
(resulting in bruises, blood, even broken bones and rapes) until it was banned by the
Rajneesh Foundation in 1979,
--and diverse criminal activity from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s in both India and
Oregon.

The crimes, as recounted by former disciples, included drug running, swindling

and prostitution by many ashramites to pay for their lengthy stays in India or funnel
money to the commune; extensive immigration fraud and tax fraud conducted by
Rajneesh and Foundation leaders in India and then the USA; currency and gold
smuggling when they moved to the USA in 1981; a slew of frivolous lawsuits
launched to harass and intimidate local Oregon citizens from 1982-1985; failing to
pay many of their loans in the USA; arson (one incident in India to defraud an
insurance company, another arson attack in USA to destroy county records),
racketeering, burglary, assault, conspiracy and illegal electronic surveillance (the
largest such wiretapping-bugging operation ever uncovered); criminal bioterrorism
sickening of some 750 Oregonians and attempted assassinations of select outsiders
and insiders in 1984-1985 by some of Rajneesh's top circle of people, led by his
authorized lieutenant, Ma Sheela; and intermittent poisonings of scores if not
hundreds of Rajneesh sannyasins from the late 1970s until Sheela and her "Dr.
Mengele" Ma Puja left in 1985. In all, just assessing the illegal activity in the USA
from 1981-1985 (not to mention earlier crimes in India), 32 Rajneeshees were
charged with crimes in Oregon; 23 pleaded guilty; 2 were convicted at trial; 4 still
remain fugitives; 8 served prison time.
The Rajneesh legacy also includes...
--deliberately divided and broken families,
--serial noncommittal relationships,
--sham marriages to defy immigration laws,
--mass abortions and sterilizations of women (many suffering from surgical
complications) and vasectomies for men all ordered by the guru,
--a few thousand very neglected children,
--and, for too many periods of time, neglect by Rajneesh of the spiritual welfare
and bodily-emotional-financial welfare of tens of thousands of young adults and
older disciples who had given to this mesmerizing little man so much of their lives—
their souls, minds, energy, money and years of labor.The majority of these disciples
never or only rarely complained, having been brainwashed to regard all the
manipulation, neglect and/or abuse as a "test," a "game," a "big joke" by the
Bhagwan and his elites.
May his soul and all souls be in supreme peace and clarity in the One Divine Self!
I heartfully apologize in advance to those faithful followers of Rajneesh/Osho for
spending so much time at this webpage focusing on the dark "shadow" aspect of
the clearly "two-faced" Rajneesh, largely leaving out my appreciation for his
brighter, lighter side. My heavy leaning onto the critical side is to balance out the
gushing praise of Osho to be found all over the Internet and on the covers for his
books, videos and other merchandise prominently on display in countless venues
worldwide.
Most disciples of Osho Rajneesh who want to talk about both sides of the man find
him a beautiful enigma, as well as a huge blessing in their life. I do not wish to
discount or minimize that. At the very least he got multitudes of people to
vigorously breathe, move, dance, laugh, cry, sing, feel, drop inhibitions, carefully
witness the bodymind, meditate, work hard and give great thanks to the Divine
Existence! While many of these persons will openly admit as true most of the
serious flaws and foibles pointed out by his critics who've dared to speak
publicly (such critics—including ex-Rajneeshee disciples Satya Bharti Franklin,
Hugh Milne, Deeksha/Maria Grazia Mori, James Gordon, Julian Lee, Kate
Strelley, and Christopher Calder—are quoted at some length at this webpage), the
faithful disciples nevertheless gloss over or rationalize away the problematic
aspects as being "irrelevant" or some kind of Gurdjieff-style "testing of
disciples' egolessness." They still prefer to express tremendous gratitude and
appreciation for all that they learned and received from Rajneesh over their months or
years with this "gifted" and "remarkable" man, as several of his devotees have
described him in their emails to me, a few of which i will reproduce later at this
webpage.
Many of these disciples and fans of Osho Rajneesh further wonder why anyone
should be at all interested to critique the unwholesome and unsavory aspects of
the long-deceased "Bhagwan," when the only thing really important in life, so they
say, is "living from freedom in the moment" and "living from the heart, not the head."
For the record, while Rajneesh himself very often made this artificial and
misleading distinction, he is also on record as more wisely saying: "My way has
been described as that of the heart, but it is not true. The heart will give you all kinds
of imaginings, hallucinations, illusions, sweet dreams—but it cannot give you the
truth. The truth is behind both [head and heart]; it is your consciousness, which is
neither head nor heart." (Quoted in P.T. Mistlberger, Three Dangerous Magi: Osho,
Gurdjieff, Crowley, p. 346)
Former disciple Christopher Schnelle, in a long post on March 3, 2006 for the
generally pro-Rajneesh forum rebelliousspirit.com, has written, in part, "What is
more important – truth or feeling good?... I am writing about Osho because his lies
and his deceit caused an enormous amount of pain for a lot of beautiful people.
Most of these beautiful people have no idea that a sophisticated fraud was
perpetrated on them and blame themselves for their deteriorating mental and
physical health. Many of my [Rajneeshee neo-]sannyasin friends have great trouble
sustaining this illusory happy fog and are taking more and more desperate measures
to continue feeling good." (The entirety of Schnelle's post is quoted in a later section
here.)
At the same forum, Christopher Calder, Rajneesh's second Western disciple in the
early 1970s, wrote on Oct. 19, 2005 and Aug. 18, 2007, "The Web is full of phony
Osho propaganda sites that simply ignore all the scandals and the history of the cult.
Most of the tell-all books are out of print and hard to find.... Will the next big cult
use germ warfare as the Osho cult did, chemical warfare as the Aum Shinrikyo cult
did? Or perhaps the next religious cult will graduate to nuclear warfare? Who
knows? If human beings never learn that blind and unquestioning obedience to one
'perfect Master' or leader is dangerous and anti-evolutionary, then we will only have
more disasters. [...] I am not saying Rajneesh was a complete fraud in the sense that
he had nothing to offer. I just draw a clear line between what was good about him
and where he went wrong, so that others in the future will not make the same tragic
mistakes."
Calder has also written: "Ask yourself this question. What does the average Mafia
crime boss or corrupt dictator want most? The answer is millions of dollars,
absolute power, a harem of women, and a daily supply of booze or drugs. Now ask
yourself what did Rajneesh want and get? The answer is millions of dollars,
absolute power, a harem of women, and a daily supply of drugs. Rajneesh used
myths of the occult and his natural ability to influence people to achieve the same
goals. He could look you directly in the eye and lie without flinching, and that helped
him become a financially successful guru."
PLEASE NOTE: Taking off from Calder's remark, I would like to add a crucial
observation.... Even more than the notable Mafia bosses, dictators and their ilk, who
often exude a formidable, palpable animal magnetism, Rajneesh / Osho was known
by his sannyasins to be surrounded by an extremely potent and influential
energy field that could put people into temporary altered states of consciousness
(ASCs) and even deep trances. But Rajneesh is certainly not alone in this. My M.A.
thesis in graduate school back in 1983 focused on the cross-cultural, widespread set
of phenomena associated with figures from religious history East and West, ancient
and contemporary, who are felt to be the source of this unusual energy that gets
variously called Shaktipat by the Hindu Tantrikas (bestowal of the Divine Shakti
energy), the Charismata Power of the Spirit by Christians (from Jesus and early
followers to medieval monasteries to modern-era Pentecostal and Charismatic
circles), the Baraka or Berekah blessing force around many Muslim Sufi and Jewish
mystics, the Wang empowerments around certain Tibetan Buddhist lamas, the Ch'i or
Ki energy around meditation masters and martial artists of China and Japan, the
Mana energy around Polynesian shamans and called by various names around other
shamans and shamanesses in indigenous tribes found worldwide.
What also became clear to me in my extensive research back then and over the
years since then is that such potent, palpable energy or vital force can come
through scoundrels as well as saints and sages. It's for this reason, for example, that
early and later Christian leaders ranging from St. Paul to St. John of the Cross were
very, very cautious before labeling such energy a clear, pure manifestation of
God. Jesus' criterion, "By their fruits you shall know them" became paramount, and
in many cases Christian sages were carefully watching and feeling with their own
charismatic power of "discerning spirits" to determine if the source of the
dazzling energy in themselves or others was Divine or demonic or somewhere in
between. The same kind of careful spiritual discernment regarding unusual potent
energies and miracles and other manifestations has occurred among the wisest
spiritual leaders of our sacred traditions, from the ancient time of the Upanishad's
sages and the Buddha to the present time. It's well known to the true sages that
powerful but ultimately confused, constricted discarnate entities regarded as
"demons" or "titans" (Skt.: asura, rakshasa, etc.) can create such electric
energies through human beings as a way of then "feeding" on the aroused
emotions and psychic states of the hordes of people who surround the human
channel. That's why many Zen masters often warned their students to simply regard
all unusual states and energies as makyo, distracting "diabolical phenomena," and
instead wake up to the Open, Infinite Awareness, the formless "Big Self" or
pristine "Buddha-Nature."
In concluding this point: Just because a charismatic figure is felt to be a powerhouse
of energy creating altered states of consciousness in people does NOT mean the
figure should be viewed as a perfected spiritual master or venerated as
"Divine," except in the larger spiritual view that all phenomena and beings and
worlds are manifestations of the formless, infinite-eternal Divine. Not to be capable
of wisely distinguishing "powers and principalities" is to be vulnerable to delusions
and pitfalls.
In the case of Rajneesh, therefore, we can surely affirm that he was somehow a
source or a channel, especially from the mid-1960s until some time in the 1970s
(after which it's hard to determine whether it was Rajneesh or the group-energy
of thousands of people responsible), for a very powerful Shaktipat energy that
created dramatic effects in numerous persons around him. But what was the
long-term effect of all this energy? Yes, there was evidently and undeniably a lot
of good! But there were also a lot of "not-so-good" consequences dark and
painful. So, to reiterate Jesus' statement: "By their fruits you shall know them."
Now, for an alternate, "bigger picture" context, in a hopefully-clarifying
threefold model I have presented elsewhere (click here to read more extensively),
we can say it is 1) Absolutely true that "nothing is really happening," that all
manifestation is "dream-like" and ultimately "empty" because there is only God, only
Absolute Being-Awareness-Bliss, the One Alone, the all-transcending and
unmanifest Spirit. 2) A step down from this strictly nondual "Absolute-truth level"
(paramarthika-satya) of the ONE Alone to the "blessed many" is what we might call
the "psychic-soul" truth-level in which "whatever happens in the manifest worlds is
perfect," because all souls are sooner or later coming Home to perfect virtue and
Divine awakening from soul-hood into Spirit, so that there's fundamentally nothing
"wrong" or "problematic." 3) Finally, more pragmatically and usefully, there is the
mundane, "conventional-truth level" (vyavaharika-satya) involving the play of
opposites, crucially including justice-injustice, true-false, good-evil, appropriate-
inappropriate, skillful-unskillful. All three of these levels (Absolute truth, psychic-
soul truth, and mundane conventional truth) are simultaneously true within this
overall Nondual (Advaita) Reality. One level is Absolutely True, the other two levels
are "relatively true" or "experientially true" within the play of the many.
Losing the capacity to distinguish these three levels is a mark of great folly, not
enlightened wisdom. And so, for instance, to excuse or overlook injustices
occurring in the Rajneesh movement or elsewhere on this planet because
"whatever happens is perfect" or because "this is all a dream, there's only God"
is a tragic confusing of levels, and makes a mockery of the courageous work of all
those who have ever endeavored to bring truth in place of lies, healing in place of
harm, justice in place of injustice.
Hence, at this long webpage, various voices will be heard speaking intelligently
and yes, critically, of someone who maintained for many years that he was the
"fully enlightened One" (and, for a limited time, "the only enlightened One"),
before he himself said it was all a role, an act, a "big joke." This webpage exists
for the sake of truth and accountability, setting the record straight, and also as a big
cautionary for all those sincere persons who might currently or in the future be
seduced by similar charismatically glamorous preachers and hucksters posing as
the Enlightened One.
Real spirituality, real freedom and real heart-love is invaluably precious,
sublime, wholesome and holy, not at all mediocre or muddled as so many have
made it and exploited it for personal gain.
Rajneesh stated numerous times to the world media in the mid 1980s that he wanted
people to either love him or hate him—even the hatred, he said, would be a useful
energy that would ultimately bring people to Rajneesh. In my own case, I certainly
don't hate Rajneesh. I love him like a brother, albeit a wayward brother in his
very flawed personal expressions. Verily "his" real Self, "my" real Self, and
"your" real Self is just THIS ONE SELF, the I AM THAT AM, Unborn Being,
Open Awareness, Infinite Shapeless Formless Aliveness that delights in playing
as all these shapes and forms. What a spectacular Divine play! Rajneesh is one very
quirky expression of this play.
=============
I first read a few of Rajneesh's earliest little books and a quite favorable biography
(The Awakened One, by Vasant Joshi) from 1978-1982 while in graduate school and
in India for several months in 1980-1 researching psychological and spiritual
traditions and meeting authentic sages, saints and adepts. In the early 1980s I also
saw a short film of excerpts from one of Rajneesh's talks, and was able to see first-
hand his hypnotically slow, coy, seductive, and provocative manner of speech
and body language, with his strange way of hissing like a snake the "s" sounds at the
end of many of his words, and often widening his eyes into an intimidating glare. I
wasn't very impressed with Rajneesh, especially compared to some of the really
tremendous spiritual adepts of past and present whom i had read about or met
in person (see the rest of this website). I did enjoy Rajneesh's wild sense of wacky
humor, often hilarious!—though author Tim Guest (who grew up in several
dysfunctional Rajneesh communes) says that Rajneesh cribbed many of his best jokes
from Playboy magazine, and too many of his jokes, alas, were ugly slurs on ethnic
and racial groups or just tiresome "juvenile scatological humor," as journalist Rohit
Arya has assessed it, such as Rajneesh's long comedic essay on the "magical" word
"F*ck," and his concluding, quite silly and likely sarcastic admonition that one
should wake up each morning and say "F*ck you" five times (the entire routine from
1984, read by Rajneesh from a script, is viewable at www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6D7rWLzloOI&feature=related).
In the very interesting book, Life of Osho (1997), by "Sam" (the late
Paritosh/Chris Gray), which is suppressed by the official Osho movement
because it's by far the most candid of the pro-Osho books, "Sam" claims that
Rajneesh's crude, nasty joke-telling dates from around 1980 and continued into the
late 1980s. Sam/Paritosh neatly rationalizes it as being Rajneesh's way of destroying
his own image in the eyes of followers so that they would not keep him on a pedestal.
"Osho started to play the part of charlatan. This was the time he started to tell whole
slews of dirty jokes in the lecture. Osho had always used jokes in discourse, both as a
means of making a point and as a rhetorical trick to inject a momentary burst of
energy. But by the end of old Poona [the first ashram] he had sannyasins researching
them for him, and he no longer made any attempt to 'tell' them; he just read out whole
batches of them.... They were frequently quite filthy – racist, sexist, and unfunny...
When you think how famous Osho was becoming, how people were crossing half-
way round the world to hear him speak on 'spiritual' life, this barrage of diabolically
unfunny dirty jokes was becoming something more than an oratorical device. The
whole performance was bordering on Dada [i.e., surreal].... In retrospect you can see
that Osho was already trying to undermine his own Church – to undermine the reflex
of worship on which it was built. 'Will you make a religion out of my jokes?' he
asked, in one of his lectures from early 1981. The answer, of course, was a
resounding yes; - and the dirty jokes were to be no more than the first of a whole
series of 'devices' on which he embarked, and which were designed to sabotage any
attempt to make him spiritually – or socially – acceptable." (p. 121)
This is all nicely rationalized by "Sam"/Paritosh, but the fuller truth is that
Rajneesh/Osho, while undercutting himself on occasion, also found various ways
(as we shall learn) to keep himself up on that pedestal as the "enlightened
master," well above his kow-towing followers in spiritual status.
Rajneesh often seemed to be like a naughty little boy running wild in the theater of
universal consciousness, "indulging his beingness," as great sage Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj might put it. That's why neither myself nor any savvy spiritual friends or
mentors took Rajneesh seriously in the late 1970s into the 1980s, and none of us felt
any draw to go see him or his followers at either Poona in India or Rancho Rajneesh
in Oregon.
When I started reading his works in the late 1970s, I appreciated the occasional good
spiritual insight or well-turned phrase in Rajneesh's brash and eclectic teachings
on awareness, witnessing, dis-identification, self-inquiry, inconclusiveness, and
spontaneous action without the doer-sense.
Yet such teachings were clearly influenced in most of the essential points and even
the specific vocabulary and phrasing by the talks and writings of Indian sage J.
Krishnamurti (1895-1986), the ancient Taoist and Zen masters, and other sages
whose books Rajneesh had read, including popularizers like Alan Watts and the very
curious character G.I. Gurdjieff (c.1872-1949). In Sam/Paritosh's Life of Osho, he
finds extensive similarities in the situational approaches used by Rajneesh and the
Greek-Armenian mystic and trickster figure Gurdjieff. (Christopher Calder finds
Rajneesh compares unfavorably to Gurdjieff due to his far heavier amount of self-
indulgence and narcissism.) Rajneesh bogusly insisted to one interviewer,
"Nobody has been an influence on me—neither a teacher, nor a professor, nor a
saint, a religious leader, a political leader." (The Last Testament, vol. 1, ch. 23) Yet
elsewhere he admitted to an interviewer, "I am immensely connected with the
Gurdjieffian system of thought." (Ibid., vol. 2, ch. 28) Not just ideas, but Gurdjieff's
practice of "testing the disciple," no matter how rudely or harshly, was a major
element in Rajneesh's approach to fellow human beings. On other occasions he
openly admitted his great love for the teachings of Taoist sages Lao-tzu, Chuang-
tzu and various Zen masters and poets like Basho. He would never fully admit the
influence of Jiddu Krishnamurti, but evidence of that influence is available in
abundance from Rajneesh's early preaching career.
Because Rajneesh, except when explicitly commenting on a text, rarely credited
his sources, many of his disciples then and now think this was Rajneesh/Osho's
"great wisdom" expressing so eloquently about "choiceless awareness,"
"freedom from the known," "the wisdom of insecurity," "living and flowing in
the now," "just being nobody, not becoming anybody," etc., when in fact he was
simply borrowing or pilfering other people's phrases and passing them off as his
own thoughts. (By the way, those first three phrases, oft-used in early Rajneesh
talks, come straight from J. Krishnamurti.)
But there were, alas, even more colossal problems with many of the teachings and
personality characteristics of this so-called "spiritual master" or "God-man," as many
thought him to be. (Rajneesh in 1985 clearly disavowed the "God-man" title.) Just on
the level of the teachings, it is clear that Rajneesh, who admitted that his favorite
activity in childhood and adolescence was "to argue" (he once won an all-India
debate contest), often delighted in expressing an unconventional viewpoint,
regardless of whether it was truly enlightening. Rajneesh is lauded by followers
and fans for his "brilliance" and "originality," but to questions on diverse topics
he often responded just in a cleverly contrarian and quirky manner that is far
more sophistry than sophia/wisdom.
When, in Summer 1985, he was grilled over three months of nightly interviews with
different members of the local and foreign media as to what he was teaching and
promoting, Rajneesh often stated that his goal was to help his people get free of
all religious, nationalist, and other narrow programming, throw away the past,
and, through inquiry and witnessing, to doubt everything until they had arrived
at the basic truth of unconditioned consciousness and awakeness. And that this
could then be lived through a life of work-as-worship, creating, dancing, singing,
platonic love, sexuality, and simple meditation on existence and gratitude for
existence. It's a lovely vision, even though Rajneesh often surrounded this simple
basic ideal with a lot of demented diatribe.
Much of what Rajneesh promoted over the decades was an unrestrained,
uninhibited "feel-good spirituality," heavily oriented to what I have elsewhere
categorized as the "Sensual Ecstatic" temperament in a schema of 12
temperaments. This sensual ecstatic orientation and the fulfillment of various
desires is still quite evident at the re-named Osho Meditation Resort in Poona, India,
which enjoys a reputation of being the most sensual "party commune" in all India,
maybe in the entire world.
But does this path of fulfilling desires truly liberate one from the grossest and
subtlest forms of attachment, aversion, and delusion? Many of his disciples still
faithful to him in spirit will argue "YES!" Many of the rest of us beg to differ and say
"BE CAREFUL!" The illustrious, venerable sage, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi
(1879-1950) of Tiruvannamalai, South India, made it clear over the years to different
questioners that trying to reach desirelessness by indulging desires (even if
witnessing the desires during the process) is like trying to put out a fire by
pouring kerosene onto it. Ramana, Nisargadatta, the Buddha, and many other
authentic sages and texts have warned that indulging desires and other tendencies
like anger, violence, etc., only etches a deeper groove of unwholesome samskara
habit-patterns or tendencies in the deep psyche. This is not the way of genuine
freedom, but further enmeshment in the problematic attachments and aversions
which fuel the delusion of a separate self and drive the unconscious rounds of rebirth
(samsara) in the Divine dream-play of life.
To his credit, I surmise from certain things Rajneesh said that he himself, in clearer
moments, knew that people must let go their attachments to be truly free, truly
awake, which is why he often puts such a strong emphasis on witnessing whatever
state is arising. And yet, and yet... Because he so often also spoke of desirable
persons and sensual experiences as object-like entities to be enjoyed by "the new
man," it seems he was also repeatedly and insidiously seducing his listeners right
back into the limited dream of "pleasure me with goodies."
Rajneesh/Osho wasn't constrained to only express what I term the "sensual ecstatic
temperament." He occasionally taught India's ancient sagely way of nondual
(advaita) realization through the traditional approach of deconstructive wisdom,
radical witnessing and thorough self-inquiry based on top of his dubious
psychotherapy of relentless catharsis or release of "layers of repression." So, at least
in his emphasis on nonduality, he was certainly also of the "intuitive mystic"
temperament, as I have outlined it in that 12-fold schema.
Unfortunately, it's evidently the case, at least toward the end of his teaching career in
the late 1980s, Osho fell headlong into an extreme form of the 'no self'" delusion,
a debased misunderstanding of the Buddha's "not-self" (anatta) doctrine about
the aggregates/aspects of personhood (all-too-common among many
"sophisticated" Buddhists who've never thoroughly studied the Buddha's own
teaching). This deluded attitude denies any functional individuality, morality,
law of karma and its rebirth consequences. The Buddha himself, the world's
greatest ancient sage of deconstructive wisdom, always upheld sila or virtuous
morality (it's the basic part of the Buddha's "triple training" also including meditative
samadhi and prajna wisdom). And the Buddha adamantly warned that this
extreme "no self" position such as taught by Rajneesh and others is none other than
the heresy of nihilism (the polar opposite of the "eternalism" heresy, the belief in the
permanent, eternal existence of an entity-like "soul"). The Buddha's "Middle Way"
teaching is far subtler than either nihilism or eternalism.
The fact that Rajneesh/Osho often did not usefully distinguish (as did the Buddha,
Nagarjuna, Sankara, Ramana Maharshi, and other consummate sages) between an
Absolute Truth-level teaching and a conventional or pragmatic level of instruction
does not speak well for the supposed spiritual or intellectual "brilliance" that Osho's
followers claim for him.
There's something else quite noticeable about Rajneesh in contrast to the truly
impressive sages of our era and the past. He's always presuming that he is
spiritually awake and everyone else is spiritually asleep (except some of his neo-
sannyasins). One can find countless examples of this arrogant hubris in his talks and
interviews. And he allowed disciples to likewise print outlandishly over-blown
praise of himself. For instance, back in 1970 Rajneesh disciple Swami Yoga
Chinmaya (Kriyananda), who helped Rajneesh teach classes for rich Indian
businessman at various meditation camps, extolled Rajneesh in the following
inflated words, which in retrospect look ridiculously bogus: "Acharya Rajneesh is
an Enlightened One, who has become one with Infinity, the Totality. He is NOT,
but the Infinity breathes through him. He is not a person but the Divinity
personified. Transcendental Truth shines every moment through him.... He is not
living in Cosmic Consciousness, but has become the Cosmic Consciousness itself....
He lives beyond Cosmos, beyond Being—in No-Being, in No-thingness, in Great
Void—Nirvana." ("Acharya Rajneesh: A Glimpse," preface to Acharya Rajneesh,
Flight of the Alone to the Alone, Bombay, 1970)
Even though by 1985 Rajneesh was publicly denying all such claims and projections
about himself, calling himself just "an ordinary man," he nevertheless still maintained
that he was "awake" and "you are not awake, you are asleep." And to committed
disciples like his caretaker-girlfriend Vivek (who once asked him point blank at
darshan about this), he still insisted he was their "master," not just their "fellow
traveler." Perhaps Rajneesh was publicly talking to the press in this new, "humbler"
vein because the truth had gotten out about his big attachments to expensive toys, his
drug usage, his earlier sexual misconduct with female disciples, his depression (we
hear that he was contemplating suicide at several points in the early 1980s), his poor
choice of Sheela as authoritarian head of his new religion of "godliness not god," and
his inability to muster up the energy to properly lead his huge flock of followers.
It seems that Rajneesh exploited this oneupsmanship stance of being "the Awake
One" to whom everyone should "surrender" as a license to say and do whatever
he wanted, because whatever he said or did could then be rationalized as a
"shock to wake you up," as he often said (e.g., in many of those interviews with the
world media in Summer 1985, as recorded in The Last Testament). All of his foibles,
his outrageously bigoted or childish public statements, his personal fascination with
collecting Rolls Royces and fancy clothes, pens, watches and jewelry—the entire
load of malarkey could all be rationalized as the Great Awakened One's way of
"shocking you into awakeness out of your longstanding sleep."
Authentic sages, however, don't spend so much time focusing on everyone else's
"unawake" sleep condition and then presuming to have the license to awaken you.
No, true sages quite lovingly and magnanimously see that YOU are already none
other than the One Self in Your True Identity, Your Real Nature, prior to the
rising-passing bodymindego identity. In other words, the generous basic assumption
of authentic sages is that YOU (the Supra-personal YOU) are actually "always
already Awake" as the Self-same Open Awareness. "I am Awareness, You are
Awareness, there is just this One Awareness."
But for Rajneesh, the chronic presumption was "I am awake, you are asleep,"
and that "you have a really big layer of repression and conditioning that you
must work on for several hours each day by performing my dynamic
meditations and witnessing." This is a Gurdjieffian model, and, as noted,
Rajneesh admitted that his approach was strongly related to Gurdjieff's work. I really
do like it when Rajneesh speaks often of the need for clearing out old, limiting
programming from the personal consciousness, and that he is not going to try to
re-program you with anything, but rather leave you to be inspired and motivated and
energized by Existence Itself.
However, the authentically nondual, sagely traditions declare that, whereas the
liberation of the personal consciousness is indeed all about freedom from
unwholesome, defining, binding samskara tendencies of attachment-aversion-
delusion, the deepest, timeless Truth (an Absolute-level teaching) is "YOU ARE
THE SUPRA-PERSONAL REALITY, the Unborn, Changeless, Absolute Being-
Awareness-Bliss. YOU are NOT the bodymindego and its old conditioning." To
clarify further: a sage certainly sees the need for the personal consciousness to be
purified, refined, liberated and awakened, but all of that is part of the phenomenal
dream-life, the play of manifestation... YOU, the real YOU, the Supra-personal or
prior-to-personal, unmanifest Reality are ever-pure, ever-free, ever-awake OPEN
AWARENESS, ORIGINAL ISNESS, BOUNDLESS, SHAPELESS, FORMLESS
ALIVENESS. There's nothing fundamentally "wrong" with WHO YOU REALLY
ARE.
But Rajneesh had not mastered the art of spiritual instruction whereby he could speak
on both the level of Absolute Truth (paramarthika satya) and the conventional level
(vyavaharika satya). And so he dupes a lot of people in his talks with the one-sided
chronic presumption that they are asleep and he is the Awake One, the Blessed One,
the incomparable "Bhagwan." This is a oneupsmanship tactic, and it puts people in
a deferential "kow-tow" relationship to him. It's that presumption that Rajneesh
was awake and enlightened and that just about everyone else on the planet was
NOT which led multitudes of people to give up so much of their time, energy and
money to serve him and and be used by him to further grow his movement.
Along this line, Rajneesh's claim that he was not going to "re-program" you with
new conditioning after he had "unprogrammed" you turns out to have been a false
claim given the massive devotional focus on the person of the "perfectly
enlightened Bhagwan" and the need to "surrender" to him that was reinforced
by himself and by his elites in the Rajneesh communes at every turn.
The staunch defenders of Rajneesh play a nasty game of trying to accuse any of the
"Bhagwan's" critics of suffering from "Ego." They rationalize, like their teacher, that
whatever Rajneesh did was "to provoke you," in the same manner as a Gurdjieff
"mystery school." But there's a huge presumption of "entitlement" here on
Rajneesh's part. As the old quip goes, "who died and made him God??" By what
right does Rajneesh get to "provoke" everyone whenever and however he wants
but he and his elite sannyasins are NEVER to be provoked by anyone else?
Rajneesh sannyasins always insist that "Rajneesh was fully enlightened," therefore he
can do whatever he wishes and it's automatically "enlightened behavior." But such
chronic rationalizing badly "begs the question," two major questions, actually:
1) Was Rajneesh really "fully enlightened" and demonstrating a real enlightenment in
his interactions with others? and 2) Does supposed "enlightenment" give anyone the
right to lure in, exploit and mistreat followers, or have those followers mistreat other
persons?
The latter (twofold) question can definitely be answered "No" by any reasonable
person of sound ethics. And the authentic spiritual traditions would fully agree.
On the question of Rajneesh's own alleged "enlightenment" and personal example, it
has been documented by some of his close former disciples that this dear soul
Rajneesh/Osho suffered from all kinds of attachment, aversion and delusion. And
so by the Buddha's own definitions of enlightenment—e.g., his "7 enlightenment
factors" and his progressive model of freedom from the ten fetters (Rajneesh
seems stuck on several of these fetters, such as sensual desire, ill will, passion for
form, conceit, and certain kinds of insidiously subtle ignorance), and other
models of enlightenment established in several Buddhist, Vedanta, Tantra and Taoist
traditions, NO, Rajneesh was NOT enlightened.
We'll briefly look at the testimony of just one important figure here: a seriously
disillusioned Italian disciple, Deeksha/Maria Grazia Mori. She ran the posh
restaurant and then also the main canteen at Poona One in the mid-to-late 1970s, and
next to Laxmi was Rajneesh's top fundraiser and certainly his top moneymaker at the
ashram; Deeksha/Mori was second or third highest "power broker," after Laxmi and
then Sheela. Rajneesh publicly praised her in no uncertain terms at Poona, at least on
one occasion calling her an incredible "Zen master" (Kate Strelley, The Ultimate
Game, p. 259), given Deeksha's unusual capacity to catalyze immense change and
creativity in people around her, taking better care of many Rajneesh sannyasins than
the ashram did, but also testing people's reactivity and their equanimity. (E.g., once
Deeksha deliberately ripped Kate Strelley's dress right up the seam, then immediately
took her arm-in-arm to go buy Kate an extensive, expensive new wardrobe.) In June
1981 after Rajneesh came to the USA, Deeksha/Maria finally had twice-daily close
contact with him and served as his personal shopper. For the first time she directly
experienced his voracious materialist demands—for Rolls Royces, expensive hats,
clothing, watches and jewelry, as well as witnessing his other deluded tendencies like
cruelty and manipulation. She left a few months later, shortly after the move to
Oregon: "I realized that he was a jerk. I realized that he was not enlightened," as
she told reporters for The Oregonian (part 6 of 20-part series, July 1985).
Around 1986, Deeksha's friend and fellow former sannyasin Satya Bharti Franklin,
chief editor and ghostwriter for Rajneesh in the early years of Bombay and Poona,
heard much more sordid revelations from Deeksha/Maria: "Her years with
Bhagwan (whom she now pointedly referred to as 'Rajneesh') had been a mistake....
In three hours of impassioned conversation, she told me countless anecdotes about
drug deals, bribes, and hit lists of [Rajneesh] sannyasins who were to be 'taken care
of' if they ever defected. 'We can't do what he wants!' she'd protest vehemently to
Sheela after their daily meetings with Bhagwan in New Jersey [at the castle near
Montclair, where he first settled in the USA in June 1981 before heading to the
Oregon ranch-commune in late August]. 'Don't worry,' Sheela would laugh back,
unperturbed. 'We'll claim we were brainwashed if we're caught. They won't be able to
touch us. I'll have proof that he was behind everything,' showing Deeksha the
recording devices she hid on herself whenever she was with Bhagwan. For all his
professed love of Jewish people, Deeksha confided to me bitterly, Bhagwan was
virulently anti-Semitic. 'Jews are so ugly,' he'd remark after private conferences with
rich Jewish sannyasins at the castle [in New Jersey].... 'Such ugly noses Jews have.'...
'His adulation of Hitler was disgusting,' Deeksha insisted. 'He used to boast to
Sheela and me that he'd succeed where Hitler failed.' 'He wants to take over the
world.... He'd swallow valiums and quaaludes by the handful, close his eyes and
babble away to himself about how the world would be at his feet soon. Presidents
and prime ministers would come to him. He'd be the power behind them.... He used
to say the same thing in India. That Tibetans would come to him; the whole of China;
Europe would be at his feet; Christians, Muslims, Jews.... The man's a
megalomaniac.' The Bhagwan whom Deeksha saw in daily intimate encounters at
the end of Poona and in New Jersey was coarse, avaricious, cruel and demanding.
He wasn't the Master she'd fallen in love with [in the early 1970s]. She'd witnessed
him beating [his longtime female companion] Vivek.... 'He's an impotent, dirty
old man,' she [Deeksha] insisted, claiming she'd been one of many women he'd had
sex with in Bombay [in the early 1970s]. 'A voyeur,' allegedly ordering various
ma's [female disciples] to make love to Vivek while he watched. 'Ask Kavi
[Franklin's pseudonym for a member of Rajneesh's private household at Poona and
one of his chosen "mediums"] if you don't believe me.'... Despite my resistance to
Deeksha's words, they had the unmistakable ring of authenticity." (Satya Bharti
Franklin, The Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Story of the Perils of Life
with Rajneesh, 1992, pp. 323-4)
Further testimony from Deeksha comes from other sources, combined in Uday
Mehta's Modern Godmen in India (p. 121): "Rajneesh was becoming increasingly
violent, coercive and deceitful. She [Deeksha] admitted that, even in Pune,
Rajneesh encouraged and permitted 'everything,' including prostitution and
even drug dealing, as long as it brought him money. Deeksha claimed she had
seen Rajneesh beat Ma Vivek badly. She also knew that the ashram hierarchy had
instigated the [arson] fires at the [Poona ashram's Rajneesh book] warehouse and
clinic.... In the US, she was horrified by the glimpses of her guru during her twice
daily private meetings with Rajneesh. She saw his real face, and found it
frightening and dangerous. Often, she said, 'he was high on valium and
incoherent. At times he seemed to be praising Hitler, whom he called a "genius,"
and Goebbels, whom he declared the "greatest practitioner of mass
persuasion."' When he was lucid, reportedly, he taught her and Sheela to
maneuver [manipulate] people, to create 'buffers, little Sheelas, little Deekshas.'
She felt that they were being tied more closely to him by knowledge of criminal
activity. Despite this disillusionment, Deeksha continued [for a short time] to stay at
the [Oregon] ranch. The decision to drop the guru and the commune was quite
difficult and equally painful as she had invested over ten precious years of her life
and donated large sums of her money to Rajneesh and his commune. All her friends
were there, even her mother was a sannyasin. In Pune [until June 1981 when
Rajneesh left] she had hoped that things would be 'better' in Oregon and perhaps she
might be of help in improving the situation. Within a short time, Deeksha realized
that Rajneesh was 'bored' with helping people to live the spiritual life. She felt
things would never change.... She felt it was time for her to leave. Sheela warned her
on her departure, 'Remember that if you create trouble, I can take care of you [harm
you] in twenty-four hours.' After she left, rumors reached her that she was accused of
stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Sheela's Swiss bank accounts [which
was untrue]. In her distress, she had gone to J. Krishnamurti for help. Krishnamurti,
it seems, told her that 'what he (Rajneesh) is doing to people in the name of
spirituality is criminal—you have made a great mistake in giving him [your] power
for twelve years, but understand this: No man has power except the power his
followers give him. That is why he needs people around him all the time, and the
more the better.'"
I do not wish to stigmatize Rajneesh, who is, I will tirelessly repeat, a manifestation
of the One Divine Self, as all persons are. But when one-sided, grandiose claims
are incessantly advanced that Rajneesh/Osho is the "Enlightened One," "the Blessed
One," when he himself and his followers audaciously call him a "second Buddha,"
when one of these followers even deceitfully published in the 1970s a bogus account
of the XVIth Karmapa of Tibetan Buddhism extolling Rajneesh as a second Buddha
(see below), and so forth, we need to point out what is obvious to many former close
disciples and any neutral observers of the recorded facts and stories about the man:
his supposed "enlightenment" is quite suspect. Many more facts presented at this
long webpage should set the record straight and expose the gargantuan presumptions
of Rajneesh and his avid promoters from the 1960s down to the present day.
On the bogus allegation that Tibet's illustrious XVIth Karmapa acknowledged
Rajneesh as some kind of great "Buddha," listen to the entire story as reported by
P.T. Mistlberger in his generally pro-Osho book, The Three Dangerous Magi: Osho,
Gurdjieff, Crowley (2010, pp. 433-4):
"Inevitably his [Rajneesh's] stature was at times overblown. A good example was a
strange legend that began circulating in the 1970s that Osho [Rajneesh] had
been recognized by the 16th Karmapa of Tibet, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1924-
1981). A disciple of Osho's, Swami Govind Siddharth, claimed to have had a private
audience with the Karmapa (who is head of the Karma Kagyu sect [descended from
Milarepa, Marpa, Naropa and Tilopa in the 12th to 13th centuries] and roughly
second in overall stature to the Dalai Lama in Tibetan spiritual hierarchy). According
to Swami Siddharth, the Karmapa had recognized Osho [Rajneesh] from his
photo in Siddharth's locket as being 'the greatest incarnation in India since the
Buddha and a living Buddha,' adding that 'Osho speaks for the Akashic records
also, the records of events and words recorded on the astral planes.' It sounds
dubious—Tibetan Buddhism does not recognize terminology like 'astral plane' or
'akashic records'—these terms are Theosophical and Hindu terms. A close disciple of
the 16th Karmapa, Lama Ole Nydahl [his earliest and longtime Western
emissary], commented on Swami Siddharth's claim: 'Disciples of Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh... had just published a book with a few humble claims [—ironic use by
Nydahl] that were new to us: that Karmapa had pronounced him the greatest
Bodhisattva of all time, the man to bring Buddhist tantra to the West. Karmapa,
who did not even know him [Rajneesh], was as diplomatic as possible [in denying
that Karmapa had made such claims], but the guru's disciples [i.e., Rajneesh's
disciples] were not very pleased with his [Karmapa's] reply. Once again I could
only shake my head at the enormous naiveté of people in spiritual matters. It is
shocking how readily they give up both discrimination and common sense.'" (Lama
Ole Nydahl, Riding the Tiger: Twenty Years on the Road: The Risks and Joys of
Bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West, Nevada City, CA: Blue Dolphin Publ., 1992,
p. 127. Rajneesh sannyasin Siddharth’s fabricated account of the alleged message
from the Karmapa is to be found at www.sannyasnews.com/Articles/Lama
%20Karmapa.html.)
SUMMING UP THUS FAR:
My distinct impression, based on all the evidence I have examined both pro and con
(and there is always the possibility that i and other critics could be wrong on certain
things!), is that Rajneesh was another shooting star in the spiritual firmament,
one of those strange fallen yogis who attain periods of a certain kind of
"enlightened freedom." Such persons become a source or maybe a "channel"
for unusual and palpable energies, which lead mesmerized disciples to think they
are in the presence of Divinity. But then sooner or later the supposed "Divine
energy" diminishes, goes away or turns sour, and such figures become
imbalanced and egocentrically full of themselves—narcissistic, proud
megalomaniacs, and/or disturbed by one or more other mental-emotional-
psychic pathologies about which the Sacred Traditions have always cautioned.
Numerous such "fallen" figures abound in the annals of literature.
Much further into this webpage, I will let others report more fully on Rajneesh's
multiple pathologies, e.g., Chris Calder and Ronald Clarke utilizing diagnostic
criteria from the mental health field to diagnose him as a narcissist, also suffering
from a Napoleonic complex, as Calder maintains. Though, for the record, some of
Rajneesh's faithful disciples, also trained in the mental health professions, deny that
Rajneesh ever deserved to be characterized by these diagnoses. Swami Anand
Parmartha, for one, wrote to me saying, in part, "I also am fully trained in the
conventional mental health field, and as qualified as C. Calder to comment.... I do not
share his views at all." (Email on March 17, 2012)
Before we get to that section, I'll share numerous further concerns about
Rajneesh's "quirks," to put it mildly, and then we'll move through a critical
biographical account of his life, his "enlightenment" experience, his
relationships and his activities...
May we all be simply awake to our Original Awakeness as the one Divine Reality!
While wading through those extensive Rajneesh interviews with the media from
Summer 1985 (compiled in book form as The Last Testament: Interviews with the
World Press, 1986), I was struck by a "meta-communication" tactic that he
regularly deploys to put himself above these journalists, somewhat akin to that
other oneupsmanship tactic of his that I discussed earlier: his arrogant attitude
consisting of I'm awake, you're asleep, therefore I get to say and do anything to
shock you into awakeness. The tactic I want to briefly analyze here is this: Rajneesh
repeatedly elevates himself above the implicit "fair play" rules of language by
frequently saying, when confronted by a journalist on some outrageous
statement he's made, that he's "not serious" and "always joking" and that he
"has no responsibility for anything."
This is a very nifty though very naughty or really nasty strategy whereby Rajneesh
appropriates for himself an exalted, special realm "above the law" of
meaningful discourse. He thereby frees himself from the human conventions of
decency, taking license to say (and do) whatever he wants without accountability,
beyond reproach. Because if any journalist tries to call him on his extensive bullsh*t,
he can always fall back on the rationalizing defense, "I was only joking," or "I'm not
serious." If this is so, why then should anything he says be taken seriously? Why
are any of his talks printed into all those hundreds of books and making tons of
money for the Rajneesh/Osho corporations over the decades?
Rajneesh's way of using or abusing language was, I submit, a naked "power grab,"
another way of giving himself power over others. You see, if any of his rank-and-
file commune members tried to communicate this way in their everyday work tasks,
business dealings and more meaningful social interactions, the entire commune
would rapidly break down in dysfunction. If humans don't mean what they say, if
their "word" doesn't count for anything (and Rajneesh overtly boasted "I am not a
man of my word"), then how can we trust one another to be reliable on anything? So
even though Rajneesh often tried to insist that he was not on an elite pedestal,
that he was "not special," his selfish appropriation for himself of an elite and
irresponsible realm of unique language-use insures that he always gets to be
treated specially, beyond reproach. Well, we can reproach him for that. Rajneesh has
outrageously said that if he were in Palestine 2000 years ago he would have crucified
Jesus at the outset of his ministry.... Being a far less severe person, if I had been at
Rajneeshpuram nightly in Summer 1985 with Rajneesh and the visiting journalists, I
would have simply liked to blow a referee's whistle each time he pulled this
oneupsmanship stunt and penalize him for his "fouls." The punishment? Take away
and give to poor communities one of his 93 Rolls Royces every time he spoke like
this. Within a month, they'd all be gone.
One of the most unsavory elements I recall from my early reading (back in 1980) of
Rajneesh's teachings is not just his massive and unacknowledged borrowing of the
ideas of other sages (chiefly Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff and the Taoist and Zen
masters), and his sophistry for sophistry's sake, but his penchant for severely
criticizing and dismissing the ideas of great sages like Gautama Buddha, Jesus and
Sankara (founder of Advaita Vedanta tradition), while in the process completely
misrepresenting the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, Sankara and others.
I thought this was extremely dishonest and corrupt, especially given that Rajneesh
had been an academic earlier in life, a philosophy instructor at the collegiate level in
India. He should have known better. It's immoral and base to misrepresent to your
students the subtle views of illustrious figures and then to criticize these
misrepresented views, thereby elevating yourself to a higher status than the persons
criticized. In his talks and dictated writings, Rajneesh often utilizes this dishonest
trick, lying in various ways to insure that his followers would see him as spiritually
superior to every other figure who had ever appeared in religious history. It's just
another sly tactic whereby Rajneesh gets to be seen by followers as very special,
someone to whom you should defer as above you in status.
Rajneesh's early talks (reproduced in the earliest Indian books and booklets) and later
talks are filled not just with some very useful wisdom and occasional brilliance (yes,
there's some really good stuff one can find there!), but also unfortunately laced with
gross historical inaccuracies, bungled definitions of key terms from India's
sacred traditions, ridiculously, childishly broad-sweeping and inaccurate
generalizations about religion, society and human nature. I'll go into more of this at
some length in a moment.
But here let's observe that strange Rajneesh mix of self-effacing, feigned "humility"
("I am just an ordinary man who happens to be awake") with self-inflated boasting.
For instance, as Rajneesh in the late 1960s shifted from being merely a provocative
preacher and workshop leader on psychology, politics and religion and moved into a
more overtly spiritual role as de facto "Guru" to hordes of "disciples," he needed to
legitimize that role with a claim to being "Enlightened." And so he began to tell
certain individuals that he had attained complete ego-death and Enlightenment after
meditating in his room and then under a tree on March 21, 1953, though he somehow
"kept it a secret" for at least a decade afterward. He only publicly announced it in
1971 after he had begun calling himself and/or letting others call him "Bhagwan" or
"Blessed One." And he sometimes claimed that only one Enlightened Master exists at
any particular time, and that, of course, he is "the One" for our era (Hugh Milne,
Bhagwan: The God That Failed, 1986). When Rajneesh first arrived in the USA in
1981, descending from the plane he declared (as recalled by former disciple Milne),
"I am the Messiah America has been waiting for." In August 1985, to a Dutch
journalist who remarked (perhaps facetiously), "You are a very wise man," Rajneesh
replied, "Of course. The wisest who has walked on this earth." (The Last Testament,
vol. 1, ch. 24) He also often boasted: "I am the beginning of a totally new religious
consciousness" (e.g., Ma Prem Shunyo, Diamond Days with Osho, 1992, p.217).
Here's another typically self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing claim: "I am the beginning
of a new man, absolutely discontinuous with the past. I have nothing to do with Jesus,
Moses, Abraham, Krishna, Buddha. To me they are all dead and of no use for the
future new man. In fact they are the barriers for the new man to be born. I am
fighting against all those fellows." (The Last Testament, vol. 1, ch. 4) On August 11,
1985 he boasted: "I am the only alternative in the whole world against all the
religions and against all the politicians. Against all nations and against all races
[i.e., narrow identifications] I am the only alternative. I stand for the simple human
being—I don't want him to be German... African... American or Russian, I don't want
him to be Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Mohammedan. All these are
meaningless. History is full of all this nonsense, and because of this, man has stopped
growing thousands of years before. I want man to be completely clean of the past, so
he can become available totally to the present and to the future.... I am taking over
the world. There is no other way for humanity to survive." (Ibid. vol. 1, ch. 25)
In Oct. 1984 one of his own publications, the Rajneesh Times, quoted him: "Ours is
the only religion, first [true] religion in the history of the world. All the others are
just premature experiments which have failed. And we are not going to fail. For the
simple reason because we don't have any belief that can be proved untrue. We don't
have any dogma that can be criticized." ...Except of course, the dogma that Rajneesh
was fully enlightened, that his "new, true religion" will genuinely liberate you, that
all previous religions were sick, false failures. And so on with other pompous
statements.
From his earliest years of public preaching, Rajneesh often spoke grandiosely about
how he was doing various kinds of "special work" with disciples' bodies, minds,
cakras or energy fields, a big lure to bring in even more disciples and let him do
whatever he wanted with their bodies and psyches. There were multiple ways this
"license to manipulate you" was reinforced in the disciples' psyches as a form of
brainwashing. For example, in the big lecture space at Poona, India, where he talked
daily from 1974 to early 1981, a huge 20-foot-long banner behind him
proclaimed: "Surrender to me, and I will transform you. That is my promise –
Rajneesh." (Milne, p. 68)
Just how much transformation occurred is debatable. We do know that in key ways
Rajneesh took advantage of and exploited his followers through the social power of
his self-elevated status. Not just continually taking the focus of their attention so that
his narcissistic needs for recognition could be fulfilled. And not just their "slave
labor" so that his mission could expand exponentially on their unpaid hard work. He
also wanted voluptuous, young female bodies... He crossed a big line in becoming
sexually active with his women followers. He bragged to the media in Summer
1985, "I have had sex with hundreds of women." Almost all of them were disciples,
thus Rajneesh violated an ancient unwritten ethical code for spiritual guides, an
explicit taboo for anyone in the modern era's helping professions. And Rajneesh
claimed that only his poor health kept him from having even more sex. What's more,
he trumpeted that he was "the world's greatest lover," a lying boast evidently
disputed by some of his intimate female disciples. Hugh Milne, Rajneesh's chief
bodyguard, driver and osteopath, in his tell-all book, Bhagwan: The God that Failed
(1986), recalls: "Though Bhagwan placed so much emphasis on the physical side of
sex, he was by all accounts hardly the world's greatest lover himself. Like so many
who set themselves up as sexologists, his own sex life left much to be desired. Many
of the women Bhagwan slept with [note the implication of a considerable
number of such women] told me that far from practising what he preached and
making sex last for an hour or more, it was often all over in a couple of minutes.
Most of his sexual pleasure seemed to lie in foreplay and voyeurism rather than
in active performance. He also had couples make love in front of him, a definite
case of voyeurism." (p. 118) Recall the account of Deeksha/Maria Mori, for one,
confirming this recollection by Milne.
Though a few Rajneesh fans have insisted to me that he was "above sex" or
"mainly celibate," we have the testimony of numerous disciples and Rajneesh
himself saying otherwise. In The Last Testament, Rajneesh is distinctly quoted as
saying in Summer 1985: "I have never been a celibate. If people believe so, that is
their foolishness. I have always loved women – and perhaps more women than
anybody else. You can see my beard: it has become grey so quickly because I have
lived so intensely that I have compressed almost two hundred years into fifty." (Vol.
1, ch. 27) "Right now I am celibate, but if my health gets better I am not going to be
celibate. I have never been celibate.[...] I am sick. I don't have any energy to make
love to a woman and do all the gymnastics, no. I have enough energy to talk to my
people, to talk to you. If I get healthy again, I promise you, I will not be celibate."
(Vol.1, ch. 5) "When I said that I am not celibate because I am not unnatural, a few
sannyasins were shocked. They started writing letters to me, and I informed them that
they cannot have any expectations about me. I can do anything I want. We don't have
any contract that I will follow your expectations or you will follow mine." (Vol. 1, ch.
19) The word from some sources is that Rajneesh did not engage in sex with any
women in the last years of his life, i.e., from sometime before these 1985 revelations
up to his death in 1990. But from his own lips we hear that he had been sexually
active with lots of women and women disciples evidently from the 1960s up to at
least the mid or late 1970s. Hugh Milne tells of the "special nightly darshans" for
numerous young women, "about which so much was rumoured, and which were
euphemistically known as 'energy sharing.' Bhagwan would have one woman with
him until midnight, then have four hours' sleep, after which another woman would
come to him." (Milne, p. 84)
So either Rajneesh was far more carnal than most of his disciples thought or else
he was lying about his many sexual exploits. And if he was a liar (and we know
that he lied about other things, see below), then why trust Rajneesh on anything? But
on this issue of his extensive sexual activity (adept or not) it seems he was not lying,
as Milne and Maria Mori and others have gone on record to state from their own
experience and/or the testimony of their direct personal contacts.
We'll look beyond Rajneesh's boasts about his sex-life to examine further his inflated
sense of superiority as a religious leader, and his pathological need to denigrate
all other paths. What is one to do with many passages from Rajneesh like the
following typical excess of self-serving hyperbole, sweeping generalizations and
distorted history, delivered during the height of his fame? "I say to you: forget God
and forget the kingdom of God. I give you here and now. I say celebrate, because this
life is a gift of existence to you.... I want it to be emphasized that this is the only
religion. All those of the past were sick, pathological. They have made the whole
world sick, and they are still doing it. They call it 'service to humanity.' Only the
retarded and utterly mediocre people can believe in God." The obvious implied
conclusion: Why believe in the transcendent-immanent God, the formless,
changeless Divine One, the Source of all the worlds... when you can instead believe
in Rajneesh/Osho as the highest good and supreme font of all wisdom?
Rajneesh especially hated the religion of Christianity. Many times he called Jesus
a "crackpot," someone who "was trying to save the world but couldn't even save
himself." Earlier in Rajneesh's teaching career he occasionally implied that Jesus was
an enlightened being, albeit not as enlightened as himself. But Rajneesh's admiring
stance was a scam, for he subsequently revealed that those positive things he said
about Jesus were only to lure in Christian followers among the Westerners: "I
wanted to catch hold of Christians, and I got them! I have my devices—I may be a
madman but I have my methodology." [Q: "Do the ends justify the means?"] A: "Yes.
[...] I have to do my business, too. I have every right. So, how to get customers? I had
to plan devices. And the natural way was—the simpler way—that anything that is
wrong in Jesus, throw it [blame it] on his disciples. And anything that can be seen as
good, can be polished, given a more contemporary ring, bring it above and give the
credit to Jesus. [...] Now I have got my people—from all sources I have caught them,
from Buddhists, from Hindus, from Christians, from Jews. From every land, from
every country, from every race, I have caught hold of those who can now listen to me
directly, and I don't need any Jesus, any Buddha, any Mohammed to stand between
me and my disciples. So I am kicking them out." (The Last Testament, Vol. 1, ch. 21)
Elsewhere Rajneesh could be heard saying things like, "Reverend Jim Jones and his
people [of the Guyana mass-murder tragedy in 1978] are really the logical
conclusion of Jesus and the Christian theology," an idea he expressed several times
to the media in Summer 1985 (See The Last Testament vols. 1 & 2, passim). Given
that numerous persons in Rajneesh's commune in India and then in Oregon
VERY NEARLY DIED from one or more poisonings through the years
culminating in many events in 1984-5, poisonings committed by his own chief of
staff Sheela and her confederates, what are we to conclude given the logic he
expresses here about Jim Jones, Jesus and Christianity?
Rajneesh was a savage and very one-sided critic of Christianity, especially from
1985 onward, and really piling it on in his last lecture series in 1989, calling it
"poison" and many other epithets. I've deeply studied the early and later history of
Christianity, along with other religions old and new, and I could easily tell you of
the many serious sins of institutionalized "Churchianity," as i could also point
out serious shortcomings that have manifested within other religious traditions and
institutions. But Rajneesh errs badly when he insists that Christianity has always
only been about "transcendence" and is hateful of the body. He seems to be
completely unaware of the wider, subtler meaning of the "Incarnation" doctrine
and immanentist theology espoused in early Christianity, which served as
antidote to other-worldly heresies like Manichaeism and certain schools of
Gnosticism. The reason that multitudes of people flocked to the early churches of the
Jesus movement was because of the courageous and extensive serving of the
bodies as well as the hearts and souls of the poor, the needy, the sick, the
orphaned and the widowed (the Rajneeshee movement compares very unfavorably
along this line). This tender loving concern for people's welfare in this world and the
next is a very "immanent," not just "transcendent" focus by the Jesus-loving Jews and
later generations of what became known as "Christians." Moreover, Rajneesh is
completely unaware of the beautiful Christian theologies harmonizing the
immanent and transcendent Divine Reality as found in the teachings of John
Scottus Eriugena, St. Francis of Assisi, the Beguine women, Meister Eckhart, St.
John of the Cross, and many others.
While critiquing Rajneesh's view of Jesus and Christianity, let me adduce some more
evidence of Rajneesh's self-serving ignorance, which will serve as a good example
of his tendency to misrepresent illustrious figures so that he can look better by
comparison. So, for example, Rajneesh often quite wrongly states that Jesus
claimed he was the "only son of God." Rajneesh apparently failed to include any
books of New Testament scholarship in the 150,000 books he boasts of having read,
because scholars have been quite clear since the late 1800s (Albert Schweitzer, et al.),
and certainly since the renewed wave of N.T. scholarship from the 1950s onward,
that Jesus never ever said such a thing about himself, it was an idea invented by
later Christians and put into the creeds.
Rajneesh also was ignorant in not knowing or not wanting to acknowledge the
proper context of a statement attributed by the gospels of Mark (15:34) and
Matthew (27:46) to Jesus on the cross: "My God, my God, why has thou
forsaken me?"—which, if Jesus indeed said it at all, was a quote from the opening
verse of Psalm 22 in the Hebrew Bible. This psalm subsequently soars in an exultant
tone full of praise and thanksgiving to God. Instead, Rajneesh often misleadingly
used this line to argue that Jesus, like the rest of the spiritually unenlightened
hordes, "did not know about God, [did] not know about what happens after
death. Naturally, you start believing in somebody who pretends to know. Neither
your popes know about it; nor Jesus Christ knew about it. Even on the cross, he
shouted toward the sky: 'God have You forsaken me?' He was a [mere] believer [not
a true knower]—just illiterate, uneducated. And the people who were following him
were also of the same grade, third rate." "Jesus on the cross was waiting for the help
to come, and finally got disappointed and shouted, 'Father, have you forsaken me?' A
great doubt must have arisen in him, a great question. Nothing is happening, and he
was believing all these years that God would come to save him, his only begotten
son. Nobody came. Jesus Christ must have died in utter disillusionment. I don't
have any illusion. I cannot be disillusioned." (The Last Testament, vol. 1, ch. 1)
Elsewhere during interviews with reporters in Summer 1985, Rajneesh ranted: "Not a
single thing has come out of Jesus which has helped humanity in any way." (Ibid.)
"He was just a carpenter's son. Maybe he knew something about wood, but about
God he knew nothing." (Vol. 1, ch. 25) Q: "Do you feel that Jesus was enlightened?"
A: "No." Q: "Why not?" A: "For the simple reason that he was talking nonsense. No
enlightened person can talk such nonsense, that 'I am the only begotten son of God.'"
[But Jesus never said this.] (Ibid., vol. 4, ch. 21, Dec. 1, 1985) "His whole life—and
it was not a long life, only thirty-three years—is full of incidences in which he proves
himself arrogant, aggressive, violent, egoistic. And if his followers turn out to be the
same on a larger scale, he is responsible for all that. No sane person can say, 'I am the
only begotten son of God.' [Again, Jesus never said this!] [...] He is a crackpot. And
that's what Jews thought of Jesus. In fact they never crucified a messiah; they
crucified only a crackpot. [The Jews did not crucify Jesus, the Romans did—another
Rajneesh gaffe.] And Christians have proved perfectly well that Jews were right to
crucify this man, retroactively. The two thousand years of Christianity give evidence
that that man was worth crucifixion. Jews were right: that man was dangerous. He
was himself insane and he was creating insanity in other people. [...] He should have
been crucified three years before. Because he started teaching only when he was
thirty. If I would have been there, I would have suggested crucify him right now."
(Ibid., vol. 2, ch. 3)
Rajneeshees like to think that their "Bhagwan" was such a great intellectual and that
he knew so much about the world's religions. However, I have come upon one
glaring factual error after another in Rajneesh's talks and interviews, like the
aforementioned ignorant statements about Jesus, and so I have to conclude that he
was woefully uninformed about many of his topics and would have done far
better to keep his mouth shut rather than spew erroneous opinions
masquerading as facts.
His followers, going on Rajneesh's own boasts, dubiously claim that he had read
150,000 or more books from the 1940s to 1981 (when his vision became poor) with
his masterful "speed reading" and alleged "photographic memory" capacities.
Frankly, I wish he had instead slowly, carefully read just about 200 books,
starting with some basic fine books on the world's religions such as by Professors
Huston Smith and Ninian Smart to have a much more accurate understanding of these
religions. And the same goes with his reading on psychology, philosophy, politics,
world history and other topics. (On Rajneesh's love-affair with collecting books, see
Pierre Evald, "Osho Lao Tzu Library: The Reading, Library and Publishing of India's
Greatest Bookman," www.pierreevald.dk/osho.php.) By the way, Rajneesh's first
secretary Laxmi, closer to him than anyone for years, said that Rajneesh read only
thirty books a month while at Bombay, whereas other disciples seem to think he
was reading 30 books a week or even per day, hence the evidently grossly inflated
idea that he had read 150,000 books in 40 years, when the real number was likely
only one-tenth that amount if we use Laxmi's figure. Even then, from eyewitness
reports it seems that Rajneesh often spent more time illustrating the inside front page
of his books than he actually spent reading them.
Just perusing The Last Testament interviews between Rajneesh and world media in
Summer-Fall 1985 (including some of his own Rajneeshee media personnel), I
encountered so many falsehoods and lies, that I began noting down some of
them. I've already included a few of Rajneesh's egregious errors concerning
Jesus. The following whoppers on other topics are just a very small, partial list,
and don't include the rest of this entire book of interviews or thousands of other
Rajneesh talks, some of which I examined decades ago and likewise found to contain
lots of glaring errors. Furthermore, I daresay any objective reader going through The
Last Testament book of media interviews will come to the same conclusion as this
reader: Rajneesh comes across in these interviews as much more often than not a
ridiculously insincere, proudly ignorant, heavily contentious, raging contrarian
and bombastic blowhard. In his lengthy nasty rants and rigidly adversarial
diatribes (usually quite devoid of any nuance or empathy), he sounds like an
authoritarian strongman. And in his obsessions of being persecuted and delusions
of grandeur, he sounds like someone on the verge of full-blown paranoiac
schizophrenia. (The Last Testament, volumes 1 & 2, can be read online at
oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_Osho/The_Last_Testament_Volume_1/Osho-The-
Last-Testament-Volume-1-00000001.html and
oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_Osho/The_Last_Testament_Volume_2/Osho-The-
Last-Testament-Volume-2-00000001.html. Part 4 of the 6-volume collection, most of
which has never been published, is also available online as of Sept. 2011; this Part 4
contains interviews with the press in India and elsewhere after Rajneesh's deportation
out of the USA.)
Let's just examine several of the many blunders and errors in the thinking of
this supposed "prodigiously great mind" that claimed to have read over 150,000
books (?? sic) by 1981....
So, for instance, Rajneesh erred badly in saying, "For twenty-five centuries there
have been no Buddhists [in India]. They had to escape because Hindus were killing
them." (Vol. 1, ch. 1) Which is of course completely false on two counts. The
Buddhists were heavily persecuted by Muslims, not Hindus, and the Muslim
persecution occurred from the 11th century CE onward, not 2,500 years ago.
Rajneesh also ludicrously stated: "Buddha has given 33,000 rules of conduct." (Vol.
1, ch. 21) In fact, the Patimokkha in the Pali Canon for Theravada Buddhists presents
a set of 227 rules for vowed mendicants, many of them technical variations on a
theme. The Buddha always insisted on observing the spirit of the rules, not becoming
obsessive about them. The Buddha commonly taught just 5 rules of conduct:
abstaining from harming living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and
intoxication. Come to think of it, these would have been very quite useful for
Rajneesh and the dozens of criminally-behaving disciples to follow.
Rajneesh also fumbles badly when, in his simplistic distinction about the Buddha
representing spirituality and Zorba representing materialism, he goes on to blame
India's modern-era poverty on the Buddha (and other ancient Indian spiritual
masters), an opinion not at all supported by historical facts. "The spiritual masters
in the East have been emphasizing only one thing: that the world in which you live is
only a dream. [...] That's why the East is poor. Gautam Buddha is responsible for it.
Because Gautam Buddha and the people like him in other religions emphasized only
the other world, this world was neglected, ignored. [...] If I had been there at
Buddha's time, I would have predicted that what he was teaching would result in
poverty, sickness and death to the same people who were influenced by him." (Vol. 1,
ch. 22)
Rajneesh, "the world's greatest reader," apparently didn't read any books about the
history of his own motherland, because India was, relative to other regions of the
world, exceptionally wealthy and flourishing for many centuries after the rise of
Buddhism as an influential force within society. It was the invading fanatic
Muslim hordes from Mahmud of Ghazni onward (1100 CE) and then especially the
Mughals from the 1500s onward followed mercilessly by the British and other
Europeans from the 1700s on who stole so much of India’s wealth for themselves,
disfranchised and punitively taxed her multitudes of inhabitants, and made India one
of the poorest per capita nations of the modern era. Historian John Keay and others
have pointed out that, in the centuries before and after Christ, Buddhism promoted
trade and manufacturing and Buddhist monasteries served as caravanererai stations
for the merchant and artisan classes. "Not only did Buddhist doctrine encourage the
investment of resources which would otherwise be wasted on [Vedic and Puranic
Hindu] sacrifices, it also denied caste taboos on food and travel which made trade so
hazardous for the orthodox. Monastic establishments thus became foci of inland
trade." (India: A History, p. 127) Keay and other historians have noted that by the
Gupta era (4th-6th cent. CE) India was the greatest, most prosperous civilization in
the world. By the time of the Muslim invasions of the 10th-11th centuries onward,
India's science, wealth and robust economy were widely discussed and envied
throughout the West, which is why the Muslims wanted to invade and plunder. Even
then, India was still wealthy by the time of the European opportunistic mercantile and
military incursions. So Rajneesh is quite wrong that "the Buddha is responsible
for India's poverty." And the same holds for the rest of East Asia influenced by the
Buddha and Buddhism.
Rajneesh also bogusly declared: "Patanjali is five thousand years old." (Vol. 2, ch.
25) Wrong! Virtually all scholars of any worth will say that Patanjali's pithy text
Yoga Sutra was composed sometime between 200 BCE and 200 CE, or around 2,000
years ago, not 5,000 years ago. Rajneesh also numerous times over the years
mentioned that India’s Vedas and Vedanta texts go back "5,000 years," or even
"10,000 years," when in fact scholarship clearly shows that the oldest oral text, the
Rg Veda of the Aryan pastoralist tribes, is no more than about 3,500 years old at the
very earliest, and the Vedanta texts (the oldest Upanishads) not more than 2,800-
3,000 years old.
Rajneesh always claimed to be a man of scientific approach, yet on Aug. 29, 1985 he
made a huge gaffe in stating: "These two words 'here now' contain the whole
existence and after Albert Einstein there are not even two words. It is one reality
[spacetime], space and time are four dimensions of the same reality. Time has three
dimensions, space has one dimension, here has one dimension, now has three
dimensions." Oooops!—that's quite backwards—basic physics describes three
dimensions of space and one dimension of time. The fact that he states his idea in
two different ways shows that this was not just a momentary mental lapse. I surmise
that Rajneesh thinks "time has three dimensions" because there is past, present and
future. But that does not make time three-dimensional. Space as we conventionally
experience it is three-dimensional (the three axes are forward-backward, left-right,
up-down), but time is one-dimensional, i.e., it flows forward, rendering "the future"
into the fleeting present then turning it into the past. It would be one thing if Rajneesh
was an uneducated peasant before he became a religious leader, but in fact he was in
academia teaching philosophy for 9 years, and claims to have been "the world’s
greatest reader," and yet he bungles this really basic idea in physics known to any
high-school science student.
He erroneously said on numerous occasions that "Hitler killed one million Jews,"
when it should be SIX million Jews. This fairly standard figure has been known
since as early as 1945 (when Rajneesh was in his 13th year), coming from none other
than senior SS official Adolf Eichmann. Almost all documented estimates since then
by Holocaust scholars put the number of Jewish deaths under the Nazis to be between
5.6 million and 6.2 million, with most estimates clustering at over 5.9 million. And
many scholars think that is a conservative number. So how is it that Rajneesh keeps
using the figure "one million Jews"? Maybe it has a lot to do with his noted anti-
Semitism, revealed in private slurs to close insiders and to his sannyasins and the
public in his endless telling of racist jokes. When Sheela was once asked by NBC tv
reporters about racist comments Rajneesh had made about Jews, she replied with a
hideous "joke" (probably one of Rajneesh's) about the holocaust: "How do you get 4
Germans and 500 Jews in a Volkswagen? Simple; two Germans in the front, two
Germans in the back, and 500 Jews in the ashtray."
Rajneesh ridiculously and callously said about the world's multitudes of poor
persons (and repeated the same idea numerous times), "Those who are poor are
themselves responsible for their poverty. They have believed in idiotic religious
ideologies which have made them remain poor [by not allowing abortion and
contraceptives]." Q: "And you don't want to help them?" Rajneesh: "They have to
suffer whatsoever they have done." (Vol. 1, ch. 24) It is quite evident from many of
these tiresome rants that Rajneesh was ignorant concerning the well-documented
deliberate economic exploitation of poor developing nations by the rich, powerful
nations and transnational corporations via their institutions like the IMF, World
Bank, other banks and "aid" agencies and via socio-political injustices (e.g., covert
CIA imposition of Western-friendly dictators)—all of which are clearly the
primary causes for most of the terrible poverty in the world the past 60 years.
Rajneesh also ignores the well-documented fact that most agrarian families in the
Third World bear lots of children to serve as extra hands to bring in larger harvests,
though this quickly becomes a liability during times of famine (famines often caused
by USA dumping of heavily subsidized "socialist" grain in these same regions).
Rajneesh is also terribly ignorant of how Third World families often have more
babies just to insure that some will actually survive into adulthood, given that several
million children die tragically each year due to the preventable diseases typhoid,
cholera and dysentery from lack of potable water sources. At least a few times (as
quoted in The Last Testament), Rajneesh, an advocate of euthanasia (assisted suicide
or mercy-killing), goes too far in stating that Third World governments should do the
destitute masses a favor by finding a gentle, painless way to put them to permanent
sleep in a "good death" to get them out of their misery. But why not speak out about
the real roots of the injustices wrought on the poorer nations' peoples, instead of
blaming the poor? Rajneesh, to his credit, often railed against the obscenely inflated
military budgets of the USA, the Soviets, India and China as a cause of world-
poverty, but this is as far as he went in his superficial analysis, one that he repeated
tiresomely over and over (like many rants on other topics) to different journalists.
Rajneesh misrepresented science in claiming that eugenics and test-tube babies
would improve the human race: "It is better to give the birth of the child to a test
tube, where we can choose the best semen, the best egg from the woman," breeding
especially for intelligence and good health. Rajneesh also dubiously declared it is a
"proven fact" that children are better off being raised in a commune by
numerous adults than in a nuclear family by parents. "Family is one of the most
criminal institutions in history, because it gives the child a very limited area of
growth." "It is the family which creates tremendous problems in the children's minds.
It gives them all their sickness, all their superstitions, all their stupid ideas,
theologies, religion, political parties. It enforces on the child. The child has to be
freed from the family. If you want a new man... then the family is an ugly institution,
its time is over. It should be replaced by the commune. And then it is very easy: the
commune takes care of all the children. There will be the father, the mother. They can
meet the child, the child can come to them. But basically it is the responsibility of the
commune to take care of the children. The children will have many uncles and many
aunts, and they will have more opportunity for human contact with different types of
people. They will be immensely enriched. Our children are very impoverished. They
know only one man, one woman, and they know the constant quarrel between the
two. The woman is nagging the husband, the husband is beating the woman. [...]
That's why no son can ever forgive his father, and no daughter can ever forgive her
mother. They destroyed their lives. It is absolutely a psychologically proved
phenomenon." But, contrary to Rajneesh's typical sweeping anti-family
generalizations, this is NOT an "absolutely... psychologically proved
phenomenon." In fact, the majority of developmental psychologists argue for the
importance of a stable nuclear family unit in a child's formation of a functional
identity. Reading the late Tim Guest's harrowing and very sad tale of growing up a
lost, neglected child in a series of Rajneesh communes from 1980 to 1985, from his
fifth to tenth year, clearly exposes how untrue and unwise are many of Rajneesh's
statements about child-rearing (see My Life in Orange, 2004).
Rajneesh said on numerous occasions that monogamous marriage is unnatural for
the human being, "I am in favor of dissolving the very institution of marriage. That
is the ugliest institution that has happened to man." He said that married men and
women should therefore go out and feel free to have lovers whenever they want,
ignoring scientific evidence for the benefits of altruistic pair-bonding among
humans and in nature as discovered by anthropology and socio-biology. "Q: Is
marital fidelity worth anything? A: Nothing—just nothing. Q: You don't think it might
be good for some, not good for others? A: No. The very word 'fidelity' is ugly, dirty."
(Vol. 1, ch. 30) Along this line, he was for early unrestricted, promiscuous teen sex
among boys and girls from age 14 onward, along with frank sexual education,
sterilization and/or free birth control and STD protection, as the "healthiest" course
for their development. In sum, against a considerable body of evidence from the
social sciences, he was adamantly anti-marriage and anti-longterm relationships,
favoring serial sexual liasons whenever anyone felt the urge to do so. No wonder
there were so many broken relationships among his followers.
He very often and quite wrongly claimed that homosexuality was started by religious
monasteries that insisted on celibacy, ignoring the fact that, for instance, there was
rampant homosexuality in 5th century BCE Greece 900 years before the rise of
Christian monasteries. So, for instance, Rajneesh said, "Homosexuality is a
religious disease. It has been born in the monasteries of all the religions, so if
anybody is responsible it is Jesus, it is Buddha, it is Confucius and that kind of people
—the whole lot is responsible, because they all insisted on celibacy. And to make
celibacy possible, they separated monks and nuns and they created the ground for
lesbianism and homosexuality. And the pope should be immediately imprisoned, the
shankaracharya of India should be immediately imprisoned, because they are still
propagating celibacy, they are still creating homosexuals." (Vol. 2, ch. 26) He often
incorrectly said that homosexuality doesn’t occur among animals in nature,
ignorant of evidence to the contrary. Rajneesh also several times ignorantly argued
that homosexuals should be "converted" into heterosexuals to escape their
"perversion." He was ignorant of later scientific studies showing some differences in
brain structures between hetero- and homo-sexuals. Rajneesh erroneously declared
numerous times that homosexuality was the source and cause of AIDS. About AIDS
he also held numerous erroneous beliefs, presenting them as proven facts: "AIDS
[has] no cure. The person is sure to die within two years. The person can contaminate
not only by sexual intercourse, but by kissing. If his saliva comes in contact to you,
you can get it." False. And I report all this as an exclusively heterosexual male
concerned about Rajneesh's quite evident homophobia.
I could go on and on with this litany of Rajneesh blunders....
-------------
Rajneesh not only spewed ignorance on myriad topics under the sun. He also told
insidious lies about himself and his movement. I've already quoted a few of these
untruths, such as his line, "Nobody has been an influence on me," when in fact his
ideas right down to the verbatim phrasing have been plainly and heavily influenced
by J.Krishnamurti, G.I. Gurdjieff and others.
Again, the following will not be an exhaustive list, but just the tip of a big iceberg....
He often lied about how his movement started, implying that it was all very
organic and spontaneous: "I started on the way alone. People started coming to me
and it became a vast caravan which is now spread all over the world. And people are
still coming. I have not made it, it has happened. It was not a planned thing, not
something considered." (The Last Testament, Vol. 1, ch. 23) "I have functioned from
this innocence continuously. I am not a man who plans. I trust existence so much that
planning means distrust. I know the existence has helped me up to this moment, and I
have never done anything." (Vol. 2, ch. 1) "If everybody is awakened, there will be no
planning and there will be no need for planning. People will spontaneously function.
For example, I have never planned my life." (Vol. 2, ch. 2) But such statements in
his case are plainly not true. As we shall learn in our biography section on him,
Rajneesh was a calculating publicity hound and actually hired a team of
publicists and they planned, plotted, schemed and organized from early in his
preaching career to get more and more publicity for him, more and more public
recognition, and thereby a much bigger following. He was also addicted to having
hundreds of glamorous photographs taken of himself to promote his mystique. (See
Milne, Bhagwan: The God that Failed, p. 56: "To foster his own reputation in those
days, Bhagwan had an enormous number of carefully lit studio photographs taken of
himself. These were dramatically staged and lit to give an appearance of spirituality
and religious awe.") And he explicitly ordered his sannyasins to do a lot of
outreach work to bring in hordes of new followers, especially rich ones. Early
Western disciple Satya Bharti Franklin, to cite just one case, documents Rajneesh's
demands on her in 1972 to "bring many of the rich people you know to me" and
"go back [to the USA], start a center. You have much work to do for me in
America.... Many people will have to be introduced to me." (The Promise of
Paradise, pp. 54, 57)
He said numerous times during his media interviews with the world press in July-
September 1985 that his movement was doing no harm in Oregon, when in fact
poisonings of local citizens and officials had clearly been conducted over the
prior year by Sheela and her people, and several assassination plots were
hatched by them, all of which Rajneesh later openly admitted in his September 16
press conference for the world media soon after Sheela and cohorts left the commune.
And according to several insiders, Rajneesh knew that criminal activity was
going on for months before his media interviews. On one occasion he falsely
claimed, "We are nonviolent. We don't want to do any harm to anybody," yet he also
went on to say, "but we are not Gandhians, that if you do harm to us, we will give
you the other cheek. We are not Christians." (Vol. 1, ch. 27) These are very strange
words when it was some of his own elite followers harming others: committing
individual and mass poisonings, plotting further terrorist actions, and carefully
planning several assassinations, not to mention numerous frivolous lawsuits that the
Rajneeshees launched to harass local Oregonians. And Rajneesh evidently knew
about most of these actions. In what is truly one of the most remarkable
exposures of Rajneesh's callousness about all of this harmful activity in his
name, The Oregonian reports in Part 5 of their 2011 series the contents of a 1985
voice-recording of Rajneesh by Sheela during one of their private conversations:
"She went to the guru for help stiffening the resolve of those [Rajneeshees]
participating [in plotting and enacting the criminal activities]. She returned with a
tape of her conversation. Although the quality was poor, the commune insiders
heard Rajneesh say that if 10,000 had to die to save one enlightened master, so be
it." This account was paralleled in roughly the same words as remembered by two
other disciples, Ava Avalos and David Knapp, during their testimony to a grand jury
and to the FBI, as we shall hear in the biography section on Rajneesh.
Rajneesh repeatedly boasted to the press from August 1985 onward that one million
neo-sannyasins were devoted to him (including about 200,000 underground in the
USSR), when the real number worldwide was no more than 30,000 sannyasins at
its peak, said his secretary Sheela after she left the movement, and no more than
100,000 in the opinion of top fund-raiser Sushila. And the combined evidence from
local sources at the biggest Rajneesh centers, documented rather extensively later at
this webpage, clearly suggests that the total number was much closer to 30,000 than
to 100,000.
He said that his sannyasins were free to leave the Oregon commune at any time
and that they would be loved and respected. Then why were many of them, as
reported to journalists, having to sneak out of the commune in the back of trucks or
incognito? And/or going into hiding when they left, afraid of reprisals? Two of
Rajneesh's several closest insiders left in the early 1980s, the aforementioned Italian
disciple Maria Grazia Mori/Deeksha and Britisher Hugh Milne/Shivamurti. Milne has
written about Rajneesh's parting words for those who left Rajneesh back in Poona or
in Oregon, "Bhagwan said things like 'Wherever you go, I shall haunt you.' He
informed disciples who were about to leave that henceforward they would have
no peace." (p. 19) Which sounds more like a threat than a blessing. Both Deeksha
and Shivamurti were scorned by the Rajneeshees for leaving in 1981 and 1982,
respectively, and later talking to The Oregonian reporters in 1985. Rajneesh himself
then "showed his immense love" for these two prominent former disciples by
scathingly denigrating them to a global journalist as "retarded" and lacking the
"intelligence" to understand him; "they could not understand a single word of mine,"
"their minds are not more than thirteen years of age." Mori, his top money-maker and
fund-raiser, and whom Rajneesh had often publicly spoken of in glowing terms at
Poona, was now said by him to be "illiterate," and of Milne, a highly successful
osteopath in England before he came to Rajneesh: "What intelligence he has got? If it
took him ten years sitting by my side [...] to discover that I am a dishonest man... then
do you think I have to answer anything?... Unconsciously they must be hoping that
some expectations will be fulfilled by me, and I don't fulfill anybody's expectations."
(The Last Testament, vol. 1, ch. 25)
Is this the "nonjudgmental love" emanating from the Bhagwan's "boundless
Buddhafield"?
Rajneesh often maintained the conceit and deceit of the narrow-minded, parochial,
authoritarian cult leader who draws a sharp boundary between "all-good"
insiders and "all-bad" outsiders. All of his people—the ones who stay with him,
anyway—are "good," "exceptionally intelligent," "spiritually mature," "my people
have no greed, no [selfish] motive," "my people are free and unprogrammed," "my
people represent humanity's future." But anyone who leaves him or who is an
outsider uninterested in joining his movement is then slandered by Rajneesh as being
"unconscious," "unintelligent," "retarded," "sick," and so on ad nauseam. Reading
through the dozens of Rajneesh interviews with members of the press in Summer-Fall
1985, one is struck again and again by the incredulity in these reporters' comments
and questions over how Rajneesh whitewashes, exalts and gloats over "my people,"
"my one million [sic] sannyasins" as everything good and noble, loving and harmless,
while xenophobically painting everyone outside his throng as inferior, stupid, inept,
unevolved, immature, blind, and of course "unawake" and "unenlightened." What
Freud identified as identification and projection, two of the several "defense
mechanisms against anxiety," appear to be heavily at work here in the petty
psyche of Rajneesh.
He said that his commune was egalitarian and non-hierarchical: "There is nobody
higher, nobody lower; there is no hierarchy." When in fact there were clearcut
hierarchical chains of command and the elites like Sheela and her gang and
Rajneesh's own circle of caretakers had far better working conditions, living
conditions and various other privileges and powers compared to the vast
majority of the commune members who lived in ongoing fear about being
demoted or exiled or excommunicated. Likewise at the smaller Rajneesh branch-
communes around the world, there definitely existed a pecking order of power and
privilege.
Rajneesh deceitfully said, "I had never come here [to the USA in June 1981] with the
intention to stay" (Vol. 1, ch. 23) when in fact he and Sheela had deliberately
planned for his "new commune" to be moved from Poona and re-located to the
USA, since he couldn't grow his land-holdings in India and the government was
hounding the ashram on tax-evasion and other matters. Rajneesh had to lie about
his stay in the USA because he and his followers had flagrantly violated
America's immigration laws.
He said several times that his Rancho Rajneesh commune in Oregon was not in
financial trouble and that they were utterly self-sufficient and thriving. For instance, a
reporter in 1985 asked "if the commune is in financial trouble...." "No, there is no
trouble." (Vol. 2, ch. 29) Which was completely false, for they were in heavy debt
by that point in time. Likewise, Rajneesh stated: "We have never faced any
economic need, otherwise my Rolls Royces will not [keep] on growing." But he was
wrong—the Rolls Royces were "mired up to their axles in debt," as Les Zaitz of The
Oregonian reported.
Many, many more lies could be documented if one had the time and inclination to
slog deeper into the mass of Rajneesh's recorded verbiage.
-----------
Another typical Rajneesh behavior in many of his talks and interviews was to start
throwing nasty epithets like "retarded," "stupid," "insane," or "sick" at
someone or some group whose views he didn't like, while he was trying to advance
his own idea and using the scapegoated person or persons to unfavorably contrast
with his own trumpeted position. But his own position would in fact change over
time, even morphing into what he had earlier criticized so venomously. This has led
to some rather ridiculous juxtapositions noticeable to anyone who was paying
attention over the years. As just one of many possible examples of this silliness,
which i ran across while reviewing some old talks, he judged J. Krishnamurti and the
Theosophy movement which spawned him a real "failure," "dead," "meaningless,"
because, in Rajneesh's view, J.K. "denied surrender" and instead promoted the
terrible idea of being "an individual" (which, in J.K.'s actual connotations for that
term, meant someone who had realized the "undivided" wholeness). But in 1985
while Rajneesh was in Oregon defending his followers to the world media, he often
declared that his disciples were superior to those followers of other teachers and
religions because, well you guessed it, "they are true individuals!"
On other occasions, Rajneesh's psychopathology was on display when, for instance,
he called both Gandhi and Hitler "violent torturers" in his ludicrously clumsy
attempt to present the larger truth that we need not ever be too hard or self-
mortifying toward our own bodymind: "To torture oneself or to torture others, both
are diseases—the very idea to torture. Somebody is an Adolf Hitler, he tortures
others; somebody is a Mahatma Gandhi, he tortures himself. Both are in the same
boat—maybe standing back to back, but standing in the same boat. Adolf Hitler's joy
is in torturing others, Mahatma Gandhi's joy is in torturing himself, but both are
violent. The logic is the same—their joy depends on torture. Their direction is
different, but the direction is not the question, their mind has the same attitude:
torture." (Tao: The Pathless Path, 1977) "Both were great saints. The only difference
was that Mahatma Gandhi had the Jaina characteristic very much developed in
him... so he tortured himself. Adolf Hitler had the Mohammedan characteristic
developed in him: he tortured others, he didn't torture himself. But both tortured.
Whom they tortured is not of that much significance." (Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing,
1980)
I submit that anyone who can ignore the different motivations and historical
impacts of Gandhi's and Hitler's actions (Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns to enact
social justice; and Hitler's killing of six million Jews and millions of other
"undesirable" persons) just to make these glib statements, let alone sometimes
express great admiration for Hitler in other public and private talks, has serious
mental problems.
Rajneesh's fans will say that "he was only being provocative in saying these things."
Which is a big rationalization—and guess who taught them to make endless
rationalizations like this?
=============
RAJNEESH'S BIOGRAPHY
There was much, much more dysfunction to Rajneesh's personality and behavior, as
pointed out by numerous former close disciples and other observers. And certainly,
too, some very positive, interesting phenomena characterized the man and his
ministry. (Alas, as the reader has surely noticed, this webpage must lean in an
imbalanced way toward being so critical of the problematic aspects of Rajneesh's
views and actions simply because there is such a dearth of healthy criticism on the
Internet and instead so much whitewashing of his image and rationalizing of his
behavior.)
We'll start from the beginning.... Born on December 11, 1931, as the eldest of 11
children to a Jain couple in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, central India, he was given
to his maternal grandparents from an early age so they could have the pleasure of a
youngster in their life. We then see Rajneesh Mohan Chandra Jain's dysfunction
beginning in childhood, with a very smart but headstrong, rebellious,
contentious personality, which soon turned into a talent for debate: "As far back as
I can remember, I loved only one game—to argue. So very few grown-up people
could stand me." (Sue Appleton, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: The Most Dangerous
Man Since Jesus Christ, 1987, p. 15) Later in life Rajneesh often shared that he liked
to say things that would disturb and shock people for the sake of "waking them up,"
etc., and this tendency seems to have started with his argumentative nature in
childhood. One very poignant incident in particular might have provoked this
contentiousness: at age 7, his maternal grandfather died with his head in the boy's
lap as they traveled along slowly in a bullock cart on a long journey to the nearest
doctor. The passing profoundly effected Mohan Rajneesh, provoking a fierce
determination to find the deathless Reality beyond conventional human experience
and thought.
Besides arguing and debating, clearly his favorite activity in his youth was voracious
reading. Rajneesh had taught himself English in his early teens so he could read
Western works. He claims to have read nearly all the books at the library of
Gadarwara (the town where his parents lived and to which he moved after the death
of his grandfather), and he began to buy his own collection. To say he was an avid
book collector understates the obsession—by 1981 he says he had amassed
150,000 books. He would often read all night before taking a swim in the nearby
river. It was from the sandy banks of that river that Rajneesh had earlier, before he
began the obsessive collection of books, collected countless river rocks and
pebbles, filling his room to overflowing with them. We thus see in his childhood
another problematic attachment or samskara tendency: the clearly obsessive urge to
collect things, starting with stones and books, later in life trying to collect as many
people around him as disciples, and from them, in turn, collecting more books,
expensive pens, hats/caps, robes, towels, luxury watches, and Rolls Royces. In
Summer of 1985 when he was speaking to the foreign press, it's clear he wanted to
collect nations and have the entire world at his feet as his possession.
Rajneesh started elementary school a few years after the norm, and so was usually the
oldest child in classes, which might have led to that obvious superiority complex
that marks so much of his public speaking. Because he argued with his teachers so
often, from elementary school to college, he was often thrown out of classes and so
also likely developed an outsider complex, as well. And he rejected the activities of
his peers: "I never played with any children. I never could find any way to
communicate with the children of my own age. To me, they looked stupid, doing all
kinds of idiotic things. I never joined any football team, volleyball team, hockey
team; of course, they all thought me crazy. And as far as I was concerned, as I grew I
started looking at the whole world as crazy." (The Last Testament, Vol. 1, ch. 20)
In his late teens, he ran many miles a day and meditated in a little temple built up
about 20 feet above the sandy riverbank. He often liked to defy death or injury by
walking along the temple ledge, sometimes goading his terrified buddies to do the
same. (Likewise in later decades as a spiritual taskmaster, Rajneesh would, says
former disciple Hugh Milne, "push people to their limits, limits which he himself can
handle, but it's not done with consideration or compassion.")
After a stint with the youth branch of the Indian National Army during India's
struggle for Independence after World War II, during which time Rajneesh became a
socialist and an atheist, he went on to college, earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in
Philosophy in 1955 and 1957, though he was expelled more than once, says
Rajneesh, from his first college at Jabalpur because of that uncontrollable urge to
debate everyone. More positively on the topic of his independence, we note that he
strongly defied his parents in choosing for himself the subject of philosophy at
college, just as he also firmly chose his own life-path by rejecting his parents'
agenda to get him married. (Rajneesh's parents later became grateful students under
their son and lived at his commune at Poona.)
It was only in 1971, when Rajneesh had adopted full-blown the role of Guru,
that he retrospectively identified a new element for his Vita, namely, that he had
actually achieved his complete spiritual death-rebirth "Enlightenment" back on
March 21, 1953, evidently in his little room late one night, after several years of
emotional torment and what he himself has termed a nervous breakdown.
Sam/Paritosh (Chris Gray), in Life of Osho, has assembled material on the
terrible emotional-spiritual darkness that Rajneesh says he underwent before
coming to this enlightenment. We quote this section at length:
[From Life of Osho, pp. 101-5:] What he later came to understand as "enlightenment"
was not the product of any "religious" practice or way of life – in fact it took place
quite outside any religious context at all. At the time he thought he was going mad...
Osho only talked about this once, in an early set of Hindi lectures, translated as
Dimensions Beyond The Known. As a teenager, he said, he had been plunged into an
intense adolescent crisis. Nothing seemed worthwhile any more. Nothing made
sense. He tried to explore meditation, he hung out with sadhus, but none of it helped.
“I doubted everything” he said. “I could not accept anyone as my teacher... I did not
find anyone whom I could call my master... I wanted to respect, but I could not. I
could respect rivers, mountains and even stones, but not human beings.”
[Dimensions Beyond The Known, p.148]
He read everything he could lay his hands on in his home town, then at 19 went to the
big city, to Jabalpur, to study philosophy at the university. While he was a student
there his confusion got worse and worse, until finally he had a complete nervous
and mental breakdown. “It was all darkness” he said. “In every small matter there
was doubt and nothing but doubt. Only questions and questions remained without
any answer. In one respect I was as good as mad. I myself was afraid that anytime I
might become mad. I was not able to sleep at night. Throughout the night and the
day, questions and questions hovered around me. There was no answer to any
question. I was in a deep sea, so to speak, without any boat or bank anywhere....”
[Dimensions Beyond The Known, p.150]
“For one year” he said “it was almost impossible to know what was happening....
Just to keep myself alive was a very difficult thing, because all appetite disappeared.
I could not talk to anybody. In every other sentence I would forget what I was
saying.”
He had splitting headaches. He would run up to sixteen miles a day, “just to feel
myself,” he said. Whole days were spent lying on the floor of his room counting from
one up to one hundred and then back down again. [James Gordon, The Golden Guru,
p.24]
“My condition was one of utter darkness. It was as if I had fallen into a deep dark
well. In those days I had many times dreamed that I was falling and falling and going
deeper into a bottomless well. And many times I awakened from a dream full of
perspiration, sweating profusely, because the falling was endless without any ground
or place anywhere to rest my feet. Except for darkness and falling, nothing else
remained, but slowly I accepted even that condition...” [Dimensions Beyond The
Known, p.151] At some point he finally gave up. This was his introduction to that
state of ‘let-go’ which was to play such a key role in his later thinking; and from
this moment, things started to happen very quickly. “The past was disappearing, as
if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had
dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else’s story I have heard and somebody told
it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I
was losing my autobiography... Mind was disappearing... It was difficult to catch
hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away...” [The Book, vol.1, p.457]
One night shortly afterwards the process reached its climax. Osho fell asleep early in
the evening, in the little, box-like student’s room where he was living. Abruptly he
woke at midnight. “Suddenly it was there, the other reality, the separate reality, the
really real, or whatsoever you want to call it – call it God, call it truth, call it
Dhamma, call it Tao, or whatsoever you will. It was nameless. But it was there –so
opaque, so transparent, and yet so solid one could have touched it. It was almost
suffocating me in that room. It was too much and I was not yet capable of absorbing
it.” [The Book, vol.1, p.458] He rushed out of the room and into the open air. He
walked through the streets of Jabalpur until he came to a public garden. Finding it
locked, he climbed over the railings and sat down under a tree he found there, a
maulshree tree, to which he felt strongly drawn. There he spent the night, sitting in
meditation, and whatever it was that he spent the rest of his life trying to
communicate happened to him... settled, and stabilised. Trying to describe this twenty
five years later it was still the negative aspects of the process he stressed. It was not
that he found God, it was that he lost himself. God was what remained. “A sort of
emptiness, a void, came about of its own accord. Many questions circled around and
around. But because there was no answer, they dropped down from exhaustion, so to
speak, and died. I did not get the answers, but the questions were destroyed.... All
matters on which questions could be asked became non-existent. Previously, there
was only asking and asking. Thereafter, nothing like questioning remained. Now I
have neither any questions nor any answers.” [Dimensions, p.151]
Here's another quote from Rajneesh about what he claimed to have experienced
20 years earlier on that night in March 1953. If it indeed happened as he
described, it's definitely a beautiful mystical experience! Many of us, including this
author in his mid-teens in early 1971, have undergone quite similar, radical, life-
changing release of the old self and opening to a vaster, subtler, richer Life-
Energy-Spirit.
But critics, even including longtime former close disciples, suspect that later on
Rajneesh wasn't able to consistently live from this kind of open Awareness or
vast Self as he became more interested instead in fostering a cult of being "the
enlightened one." It's also clear from the following account that, as Zen masters
would say, the 21-year-old Rajneesh experienced a potent period of
breakthrough enlightenment called "kensho" or "satori," but he was by no
stretch of the imagination now fully, firmly established in anuttara-samyak-
sambodhi, supreme, unexcelled, irreversible Awakeness—free of problematic
attachments and aversions. Subsequent events over the years make this only too
clear—and a disillusioned, depressed Osho late in life admitted it.
Just before 21st March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A
moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you
can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then
what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the
search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting
something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose – out of nowhere. It
was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It
was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air – it was
everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it
was so near and so close. Near about twelve [midnight] my eyes suddenly opened – I
had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence
around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around
me, a great vibration – almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I
was drowning in it. It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The
walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became
unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality. The
whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was
disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere,
as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and
somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted
from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what
Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.
(From: The Discipline of Transcendence, 1978)
Obviously this was only a temporary state, because Mohan Rajneesh's sense of
himself (quite a grandiose sense of himself) and a world of boundaries and
distinctions eventually returned in major fashion. But along the way a period of
intense sleep and zoned-out mindless trance characterized his life for two to
three years. Based on the evidence that follows, I suspect that sages like Ramana
Maharshi and his spiritual son Annamalai Swami would call what Rajneesh went
through a laya state of tamoguna, the "quality of inertia-dullness" (tamas). This is
not the clarity of Atma-Bodha or Awareness-Awakeness as the Self of all selves,
the Source-Host for the body-mind-world, but rather a literally thoughtless,
mindless state of non-functionality.
Sam's Life of Osho (pp. 109-110) does a good job of filling in the details of what
(little) happened in the next few years after his "Enlightenment":
What did he do? For a long time... he literally did nothing at all. He stayed on as a
student at Jabalpur university, but just lay on his bed all day long. “I slept during the
night, morning and afternoon continually. Whenever there was a chance to sleep I
did not miss it.” [Dimensions Beyond The Known, pp.166-7] He never cleaned his
room, or bothered about food or chores. When he woke up he would just go on lying
there, staring blankly at the ceiling. This is all from the same account in Dimensions
Beyond The Known: “In those days I used to go on lying upon the cot, vacantly
watching the ceiling above.... I did this without any effort, because while lying down
on a cot what else is there to do? If the sleep was over, I would just go on looking at
the ceiling without even blinking the eyes. Why even blink the eyes? It is also a type
of doing. It is also a part of activity. I just went on lying there. There was nothing to
be done. If you remain lying down like that, just looking at the ceiling for an hour or
two, you will find that your mind becomes clear like a cloudless sky – just
thoughtless. If someone can make inactivity his achievement in life, he can experience
thoughtlessness very naturally and easily.” [Dimensions Beyond The Known, pp.169-
170] The most he got together was to turn up for some of his university lectures –
sleeping through as many of those as he could, while he was about it. ... His
marathon let-go, which if I understand his account correctly lasted between two
and three years, ended abruptly. Osho returned to normal daily life, and one of the
first things he did was to set up that rhythm of [speed] reading a dozen or more
books a day, with which he was to continue for more than twenty years.... This is
the behaviour of someone who is calmly and systematically preparing for
something they have decided to do.
With this burst of intellectual energy toward the end of his student days, Rajneesh
finished school and then, beginning in 1957, he lectured for three years at Raipur
Sanskrit College then for six years at Jabalpur University in India. Among other
things, he defied Indian taboos and university policy by having his male and female
students sit in mixed rather than segregated assemblies and he encouraged them to be
open about their feelings towards each other. Rajneesh resigned his associate
professorship in 1966 to further a lucrative ministry he had begun in 1960: a
traveling provocative speaker, garrulous social critic and mesmerizing shaktipat-
guru, going by the name Acharya ("Teacher") Shree Rajneesh.
A revealing overview of how Rajneesh ambitiously worked to attain his initial
stage of fame—using hypnosis, sensationalism and outrage, and assorted other
promotional and publicity-seeking techniques—comes from a team of ace
reporters for The Oregonian newspaper in Parts 2 and 3 of their in-depth 20-part
series commencing June 30, 1985 ("For Love & Money: Rajneesh—An
Oregonian Special Report," by Les Zaitz, Jim Long & Scotta Callister, archived
in full at www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/index.ssf/rajneesh_story_archive.html).
Here's a lengthy set of excerpts from this report, mostly the work of lead author Les
Zaitz, who was targeted for assassination by the Rajneeshee "dirty tricks" cabal in
1985 after this series came out:
[From Part 2:] "Rammoo Shrivastava, a newspaperman who had met Rajneesh in
Jabalpur, said the guru was an impressive speaker but he practiced hypnosis—a
common orator's tool in India—and was not considered a spiritual authority in
Jabalpur. 'What Rajneesh teaches in yoga and in meditation is Kindergarten One
class,' he said. However, Shrivastava said Rajneesh became the darling of the
relatively well-to-do Jaina community. Rajneesh's parents were adherents of the Jaina
religion, a sect with strict rules about asceticism. Shrivastava linked Rajneesh's
popularity to his teachings that rejected taboos and absolved guilt. 'He knew
what the rich people want,' Shrivastava said. 'They want to justify their guilty
consciences, to justify their guilty acts.'
[Elsewhere, the reporters quote a former disciple: "Rajneesh gives you the
opportunity to sin like you've never sinned before. Only he doesn't call it sin," ex-
sannyasin John Ephland wrote in an article for the Spiritual Counterfeits Project of
Berkeley, Calif. "The path to desirelessness is desire."]
"Rajneesh also gained a Romeo's reputation in Jabalpur. 'That's why his character
was suspect—his activities, his movements among the girls,' Shrivastava said.
"But Rajneesh's other activities seemed calculated to advance his career as a lecturer.
He took breaks and university leave to go on tour, building his reputation outside
Jabalpur. Friends and family members said he traveled by rail or by car, often with
supplies of written materials to distribute [and promote his own name]. [...] Rajneesh
traveled frequently to the big city—Bombay, a seaport of nearly 7 million people that
lay 560 miles southwest of Jabalpur. [Easier here to amass the really big crowds.]
"Along the way, he recruited several Jaina businessmen to support his fledgling
movement. They formed Jeevan Jagruti Kendra, the forerunner of the Rajneesh
Foundation, in 1965 to finance the guru's activities, freeing him from the need to
collect academic paychecks. Rajneesh selected the trust's name, which translates as
'Life Awakening Center.'
"One of his early supporters in Bombay was Ishverlal N. Shah, who first heard the
guru speak in 1963 and took the sannyasin name Ishver Samarpan in 1967. Rajneesh
stayed with the Shah family on several occasions and eventually asked Samarpan to
work in the movement. Today, Samarpan runs the Aum Rajneesh Meditation Centre,
as well as his own exporting and construction businesses [...]. Over the years,
Samarpan bore witness to Rajneesh's driven pace [full of ambition]. He recalled
the guru's lecturing as many as five times a day and then talking with students late
into the night. 'He would go to bed at one in the morning. He told my wife, "If
anyone comes to inquire, please get me up,"' Samarpan said. Samarpan and others
bought billboard space and newspaper ads to promote the guru.
"Rajneesh began speaking at meditation camps across the Indian countryside in 1964
and resigned from the university in 1966 [some say that the university fired him] to
concentrate on his lecturing. Although he liked playing to crowded lecture halls and
parks, he didn't forgo smaller audiences. Friends said he addressed any local Rotary
Club or other group that would have him.
"Rajneesh relished controversy, which brought larger crowds to hear him and
attracted Indian news media attention. Himmatlal H. Joshi, an early follower who
is not related to Rajneesh's biographer, Vasant Joshi, said Rajneesh kept track of
newspaper and magazine coverage—just as his press office does in Oregon today
—and noted the play given a story or picture. 'He knew how to pose for
photographers,' said [one editor]."
[From Part 3 of the article series:]
"Word spread through lecture tours and meditation camps, advertised on billboards
and in local newspapers, and his following grew. On a 1967 trip to Baroda, a city of
467,000 that was 220 miles north of Bombay in the Western Indian state of Gujarat,
Rajneesh attracted the attention of Chandrakant N. Patel, who later took the
sannyasin name Chandrakant Bharti. Bharti, the owner of a handicraft shop and now
operator of the Sanjay Rajneesh Meditation Center in Baroda, claimed credit for
introducing ticket sales to Rajneesh lectures. He said that Rajneesh, concerned
primarily with drawing large crowds, worried at first that the proposed one-
rupee fee would scare off customers. Bharti reassured Rajneesh, however,
saying, 'This is my experiment in how to get money.' The experiment succeeded,
filling 1,000 seats. Soon, Rajneesh would be lecturing for two rupees a head in
Bombay, then five rupees a head in Poona, Bharti recalled."

---------

And so we learn that Rajneesh became notable for his clearly narcissistic drive to
be seen and heard by as many people as possible; his trendy, heavily cathartic
meditation camps for rich, upper-class Indians; his attention-getting, over-
generalizing diatribes against Gandhi, Mother Teresa, orthodox religion,
convention, repression, socialism, etc.; and his saucy, racy talk about sexual
openness, love, the need for "a new explosion in you, an explosion of joy," "total
freedom," "the mysterious presence," "dynamic meditation," "the esoteric 'Ashoka
nine' group working behind the scenes," "my special way of working with you," etc.
His first major book, a Hindi work released in 1968, was provocatively titled
Sambhog Se Samadhi Ki Aor, or, as it was translated in its English edition, From Sex
to Superconsciousness—the word "Sex" deliberately intended to create notoriety and
draw attention to himself. He confessed that he often liked to stir up controversy,
"even if just for fun."
Rajneesh may have earlier attained a certain fearless nonchalance much of the
time, and this served him well whenever he would stir up the public with his
outrageous statements. But this is not necessarily full enlightenment—many
sociopaths also operate from an evident "fearlessness." Rajneesh, as we shall
see, was not desireless or in peaceful contentment, and still had lots of egoic
attachments and colossally selfish ambitions.
Before proceeding further with his biography, I should pause to further consider the
controversial "Dynamic Meditation" and other "chaotic" or "active" meditations that
he put together for his followers. For instance, a day with Rajneesh started early in
the morning with everyone gathering to perform the intense "Dynamic Meditation",
involving a heavy aerobic workout and even heavier arousal of the nervous system
and subconscious mind: 10 minutes of aggressive, nonrhythmic, rapid and
dissociative hyperventilationist bellows-breathing accompanied by vigorous
movements; 10 minutes of Rajneesh's recommended "going totally mad" cathartic
emotional venting (crying, screaming, moaning, laughing, singing, etc.),
accompanied by vigorous pumping, jumping, jerking, shaking movements; 10
minutes of loud shouting as deeply as possible of the old Sufi syllable "Hu! Hu! Hu!"
(in the original version it was "Who am I? Who am I?") while jumping up and down
as vigorously as possible, "letting the sound hammer deep into the sex center," as
Rajneesh always urged; then flopping down and staying in complete stillness when
the command is given, calmly and meditatively observing whatever can be observed
in oneself for 15 minutes. (Near the end of this webpage former disciple Calder
explains how, evidently by around 1974, Rajneesh had made some very
unfortunate, dangerous changes to the Dynamic Meditation routine such as
keeping the arms up in stages 3 & 4, which made it torturously uncomfortable and
even medically precarious for persons with undiagnosed heart conditions.) Several
other meditations which were invented, borrowed, or pieced-together from other
traditions by Rajneesh likewise strongly emphasized vigorous initial movement—
shaking, jumping, dancing, whirling—followed by a calm phase. By the mid-1970s, a
faithful follower of Rajneesh would be cumulatively spending nearly an hour a
day in such required states of hyper-arousal or intensive physical and emotional
self-stimulation. (In the "Mystic Rose" meditation he created in the late 1980s, a
person was to spend three hours daily for one entire week laughing, then one entire
week crying for three hours daily before spending a week calmly witnessing the
body-mind. His "No Mind" meditation invented around the same time involved ten
minutes nightly in forcibly speaking gibberish while "going completely crazy" before
a 20-minute witnessing period.)
An important question to be raised here is this: what are the long-term effects
on a Rajneeshee sannyasin's nervous system, hormonal system, and physical
organs in having to perform such unnaturally aggressive manipulation of his/her
organism (i.e., the shaking, jerking, and hyperventilating bellows-breathing) for
such a substantial amount of time each day in these "chaotic" or "dynamic"
meditations? The same could be asked about the sannyasin's deep psyche and
subtle energy field under the relentless daily emotional catharsis that Rajneesh
demanded of his people. Critics of the various forms of "Primal Scream" therapy,
for instance, have charged that, by so frequently engaging in and indulging one's
anger and hostility, one insidiously conditions oneself to become a really angry,
hostile person. In other words, excessive and repeated catharsis of disturbed
emotions will only tend to make one even more prone to suffering from those
emotional complexes.
Likewise, when Rajneesh in several of his daily meditations encourages people to
"go totally crazy, completely mad" in the cathartic phase of the meditation, one
wonders if he primarily succeeded in creating a lot of really crazy disciples? The
extensive record over the years of Rajneeshee crime, violence, immorality, deceit and
rampant display of Freudian defense mechanisms against anxiety (denial,
rationalization, projection, identification, reaction formation, etc.) leads one to
suspect that the guru who fancied himself the world's greatest psychotherapist
really did NOT know what he was doing to his trusting followers. Worth bearing
in mind as we continue our tale of Rajneesh and his supposedly wonderful "new, true
religion"....
In July 1970, Rajneesh crowded with his followers into first one then eventually
another expensive Bombay apartment, the first one a 4th floor unit in the CCI
building on Marine Drive, the second one in the Woodlands on Malabar Hill. He
stopped touring, though he still conducted a ten-day meditation camp once every
three months. He also instituted his cultus of anti-renunciate neo-sannyasins or
"new renunciates." It was in early Oct. 1970 that he began initiating a number of
Indians as formal "sannyasin" disciples; within a few months he began to initiate a
handful of Westerners, too, and then from 1972 onward dozens and later multitudes
of them. He asked these formal disciples to dye their garb orange (later it would
be red, maroon, and other "sunset colors"), gave them new Indian names, and
also gave them mala bead-necklaces to wear, containing a locket with his image.
He loftily stated: "The picture only appears to be mine. It is not. No picture of me is
possible." Rajneesh also gave out little boxes with his own nail and hair clippings,
further promoting the cultic fascination over the idea that his energy field was vast,
inclusive, and accessible to his initiates, i.e., suggesting that this was no "ordinary
man," but someone "very special." He allowed his disciples to hype him as the
supremely enlightened one, a veritable God-man. Recall again the report from
Milne: "To foster his own reputation in those days, Bhagwan had an enormous
number of carefully-lit studio photographs taken of himself. These were dramatically
staged and lit to give an appearance of spirituality and religious awe." (Milne, p. 56)
In May 1971, at new heights of self-promotion, the nearly 40-year-old Rajneesh
ostentatiously re-titled himself Bhagwan, the "Blessed One." Defenders say that
some of his Indian disciples had begun to call him by this lofty title, but he quickly,
gladly accepted it and officially pronounced it to draw in even more followers. By
1972, according to disciple Yoga Chinmaya, there were 3,800 of his sannyasins in
India, with 134 outside India, including 56 from the USA, 16 each from Britain and
Germany, 12 each from Italy and the Philippines, 8 in Canada, 4 in Kenya, 2 in
Denmark and one each from France, Holland, Australia, Greece, Sweden, Norway
and Switzerland (Neo-sannyas International: Visions and Activities, Life Awakening
Movement Publications, Bombay 1972)
Besides seeing him at the big public talks in Bombay and vicinity and the well-
attended 10-day camps at Mt. Abu and elsewhere, a growing little flood of visitors
also poured into his first-floor suite of rooms (and sometimes the exterior beautiful
gardens for bigger events) at Bombay's Woodlands Apartment building on Peddar
Road in the affluent Malabar Hill region, often disturbing the neighbors with their
dancing, yelling and laughing. His secretary Laxmi informs us, "The busiest hours
were eight to eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon to eleven in the night."
Close early Western disciples Satya Bharti (Jill) Franklin, Hugh Milne, Chris
Calder and others heard from young women of having their breasts groped and
vaginas fondled by the Bhagwan (Franklin experienced this herself, see p. 33 of
The Promise of Paradise), before Rajneesh graduated to having full intercourse
with some of them during "private darshans." After being with one woman up
until midnight, then sleeping for 4 hours, he would bring in another one at 4 a.m.,
says Milne. The women were urged to keep quiet about all this, but some later spoke
out. Recall Milne's and Maria Mori/Deeksha's revelations, that Rajneesh was a big
voyeur, asking attractive women to strip for him and having couples perform coitus
for him under the guise that he was "healing their energy" (likely he was also trying
to learn new sexual techniques for himself).
Rajneesh engaged in such behavior at least up until the point of 1973, when he came
into the most intimate relationship of his life, though it would become more distant in
the mid 1980s and then end quite tragically. She was a petite and very shy young
English lass, Christena Woolf (1949-1989), viewed by Rajneesh as the
reincarnation of his childhood girlfriend Shashi, who had died when he was 17. In
this life 18 years his junior (both were born on Dec. 11), Christena / Ma Yoga
Vivek rapturously heard the guru lecture in Hindi to a huge crowd one night in 1971
in Bombay and was entranced and enchanted by him at a subsequent meditation
camp at Mount Abu. (In 1978 she described the overwhelming experiences with her
Bhagwan in a long interview for the ashram publication Sannyas News; archived at
www.sannyasnews.com/Articles/vivek.html.) Vivek then became his closest
companion, his caretaker and lover when Rajneesh invited her to live with him in his
quarters two years later in 1973, tenderly helping turn around his worsening allergies
and asthma attacks. She displaced Kranti, a young Indian woman who had been his
previous close companion and evident lover ("the sharer of his bed all these years,"
one disciple told Franklin) since Kranti joined Rajneesh on his early preaching trips
to Bombay. The Oregonian, in Part 2 of their 20-part series in July 1985, states:
"Reportedly his widowed cousin, [Kranti] trailed him like a shadow in those [early]
days, friends recalled." But now in the apartments in Bombay, Kranti couldn't share
Rajneesh with Vivek and so left, viewing the matter as "the end of a long love affair."
Rajneesh wanted some farm communes built in India to accommodate his increasing
number of followers, now including more and more Westerners, who were attracted
by his "sex guru" image and to whom he clearly catered, surely dreaming of new
marketshare in foreign lands (recall Satya Bharti Franklin's quoting Rajneesh in the
early 1970s telling her to "bring rich people to me" and "many people will have to be
introduced to me"). Two rural projects were attempted, but neither came to fruition,
after extensive efforts by some hard-working Indian and foreign followers.
Milne/Shivamurti was involved in one of the projects, at Chandrapur, 425 miles east
of Bombay. He told The Oregonian reporters of how the Rajneeshees got a skeptical
reception. "The farm belonged to some rather distant relatives of Rajneesh, who were
of course saying, 'You're following Mohan?" Milne recalled. "The one who really
expressed his feelings said, 'Mohan Rajneesh, he's still doing this hypnosis?'"
Rajneesh, Vivek, his all-accomplishing secretary Laxmi and company established an
extremely counter-cultural and very lucrative psycho-spiritual growth center in
the affluent Koregaon Park suburb in the northeast section of Poona/Pune, to
where they moved in a grand procession the 75 miles southeast from Bombay on
March 21, 1974, a day celebrating Rajneesh's enlightenment (one of the three grand
commemoration days around Rajneesh, the other two honoring his birthday on Dec.
11 and the traditional Hindu "Guru Purnima" day in July). This Shree Rajneesh
Ashram, comprised of two big British Raj mansions and adjoining land and
buildings, was bought with funds from the wealthy Greek shipping heiress Ma Yoga
Mukta (Catherine Venizelos). It was soon crammed with hundreds and later up to
several thousand paying residents and visitors—especially more and more affluent
Europeans and Americans, to whom he obviously pandered.
Their so-called "ashram" at Poona, which came to have new land-holdings and
several new buildings, rapidly became more like a wild amusement park, a
"madhouse-carnival" as one journalist called it, offering a gamut of gratifying,
grotesque and sometimes terrifying experiences for the body and psyche. It
wasn't just the cathartic phases of the various chaotic or dynamic daily meditations
that Rajneesh demanded of his disciples. If these nouveau "active meditation"
sessions were all that occurred, the Poona commune would have still been a pretty
tame place, despite all the unusual jumping, shaking, hollering, crying, moaning and
acting out by its denizens during their daily catharsis periods.
But much open sexual exploration on the part of Rajneeshees also occurred,
including group sex, partner swapping, and sex with and among children. Former
Rajneeshee Catherine Jane Paul aka Jane Stork has revealed in her 2009 book
Breaking the Spell that around 87% of residents had a sexually transmitted
disease. Women who became pregnant were told by the Bhagwan to abort and
sterilise, Stork says. She and her teenage daughter were both sterilised. "He used to
speak so lovingly about children, yet behind the scenes everybody's getting sterilised.
There were no children born in the ashram." Numerous women were physically
damaged by botched abortions and sterilizations performed too-quickly by local
quack doctors. Rajneesh also strongly recommended vasectomies for the men, one-
fourth of whom obeyed. All for the sake of Rajneesh's ideal of sexual freedom. "We
had a feast of f*cking, the likes of which had probably not been seen since the days of
Roman bacchanalia," wrote Milne. Satya Bharti Franklin remembers, "The ashram
was Peyton Place in burgundy: an x-rated movie." (The Promise of Paradise, p. 127)
There were disturbing cases of sex between adult males and female minors as
young as 10, and sex among/between many of the pre-pubescent children, who
were sexualized far too young in their impressionable lives. Franklin relates: "One
six-year-old ashram girl delighted in grabbing men's genitals through their robes.
Another offered to suck the penis of every man she saw in the public showers." (Ibid.
p. 108) This behavior would continue later at Oregon, as well as at branch communes
in Europe and elsewhere. Tim Guest recalls his brief time at Rancho Rajneesh in
Oregon in summer of 1984 when he was a 9-year-old lad: "Many of the... kids lost
their virginity; boys and girls, ten years old, eight years old,... with adults and other
children. I remember some of the kids... arguing about who had f*cked whom, who
would or wouldn't f*ck them.... I kept away from these kids. [...] The sannyasin
determination to be open about sex meant it was part of our lives from the start." (My
Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru, pp. 198, 133)
Many former disciples have rued the misfortune of the children who grew up in
this new anti-family society, where often you had 100 mother surrogates but were
largely abandoned by the mother with whom you longed to bond. Tim Guest's
autobiographical account as one such child growing up lost and lonely in various
Rajneesh communes (My Life in Orange) is particularly poignant and harrowing in
this regard. But the attitude at Poona and later at Oregon was, So what? The
Bhagwan had many times declared that the family was an obsolete, "ugly" social
institution. Many former sannyasins now think that view is "Bullshit!" as Satya
Bharti Franklin would write in 1992: "I'd listened to his litany on the subject for
years. The nuclear family was repressive, dictatorial; the best thing that could happen
to children was not to live with their parents. What unmitigated bullshit it was! The
love and support I'd felt from my family in the last two weeks [after someone
murdered her son in San Francisco] was more real than anything I'd experienced in
Oregon [at Rancho Rajneesh] in five years.... I couldn't believe I'd once expected
Bhagwan to wake me up. He was living in a dream world himself...." (Franklin, pp.
338-9)
Stork, Franklin and others have written about how deliberate moves were made by
Rajneesh and ashram leaders to fragment families and drive a wedge between
husbands and wives, parents and children. This is an old trick used in
dysfunctional cults to make sure that members are primarily focused on the guru,
not one another, and so that people will not form deep bonds with each other that
might take priority over the bond with the group leader. Many former Rajneesh
sannyasins went on to experience rich lives of deep interpersonal connection
with spouses, children and parents, combined with a genuinely deep spirituality,
far more satisfying and reliable than the artificial, euphoric "highs" experienced
on the roller coaster ride with Rajneesh. But many disciples couldn't break the
attachment. That's why, at Poona in the 1970s, and then in the 1980s at the Oregon
ranch, many of them were willing to break the law to raise the significant sums to
stay near Rajneesh. As the French magazine L'Express put it, "Utterly dependent, the
disciples are ready to do anything to prevent the umbilical cord that ties them to the
Master from being cut. Smuggling, swindling, prostitution: whatever is necessary."
(quoted by Win McCormack in Oregon Magazine/The Rajneesh Files, cited by
Strelley, p. 227)
A new threshold of notoriety came in 1975-76 when Rajneesh sanctioned the
institution of several dozen psychotherapy growth groups and encounter groups
at the Poona center's "University," the first Indian guru to mix spirituality with
psychotherapy groups. These became, along with selling of books and tapes, colossal
money-makers for the Rajneesh ashram. Kate Strelley estimated the numbers for the
period around 1980 (see The Ultimate Game, pp. 242-3): "At any one time, there
were something like 55 ongoing groups, each with something like 40 participants,
who were paying at the very least something like $100 per person." The Rajneesh
ashram had "no overhead for all this" and "was not even paying the group leaders."
Moreover, the number of groups would increase significantly when an extra 4,000 to
5,000 visitors came in for the big celebration days each year. The groups were run by
a new power clique of assorted European and American therapists, most of them
unlicensed, the "high priests" of Rajneeshism's blend of avant garde spirituality and
pop psychology, then and now nearly 40 years later. The chief therapists were
Britishers Teertha / Paul Graham Lowe (thought to be the one who would succeed
Rajneesh someday) and Somendra / Michael Barnett, both of whom had been with
Rajneesh since 1972.
In the "advanced," no-limits, high-risk groups, some of which were "marathons" 24
hours or even 48 hours long (with little or no food or sleep), there was massive
experimentation not just with nudity, sensuality, sexuality and subtle energies, but
also more dangerously with anger, physical violence (pushing, slapping, punching,
fighting), kinky sex and sexual aggression to the point of including rapes, though
the violence was finally, belatedly banned by the ashram leadership in January 1979,
shortly after the Jonestown mass suicide tragedy. Rajneesh said that the violence
"had fulfilled its function," whatever that function might have been—certainly
not to promote empathy, kindness, or compassion. Rajneesh dubiously stated,
according to the ashram press release announcing the ban, "Psychotherapies were
needed only because the thousands of people coming to his ashram from the West
were not yet intelligent enough to heal their own psychological wounds." Journalist
Frances Fitzgerald commented, "Perhaps it was only fair for Rajneesh to blame his
disciples when the therapists were laying all the responsibility on him." Even after
the ban on violence, the word-of-mouth buzz continued that Poona's version of
psychotherapy surpassed in intensity anything allowed at Esalen, est, Lifespring,
Arica or elsewhere in the West, which made it a big draw for jaded persons
worldwide seeking new thrills. And this was the supposedly supernal "Buddha-
field" that Rajneesh had engendered for his "Divine" energies to radiate and enlighten
the cosmos.
Sociologists and journalists like Frances Fitzgerald, author of a widely-read, lengthy
2-part series on the Rajneesh movement for The New Yorker ("A Reporter at Large:
Rajneeshpuram, Parts 1 & 2," Sept. 22/29, 1986), have endeavored to contextualize
the Rajneeshee therapy groups within the variegated "human potential movement" of
the late 1960s onward.
All of this activity was rationalized by Rajneesh himself as being "Tantra,"
when in fact Rajneesh had never been initiated by any guru of any bonafide
tantra traditions of India and made to undergo the requisite disciplines to see if
he had in fact fully transcended self-obsessive egocentricity. In a brief 2010 article
Charles Carreon coined the term TIDS, "Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome," to
describe the destructive exploitation that transpires under the bogus use of the term
"tantra" by certain predatory cult leaders; see www.american-buddha.com/tids.htm.
Therein he notes: "Once a sufficient critical mass of students adopts this belief, it sets
in motion a whirlpool of self-reinforcing behavior that exerts the psychological
gravitational force of a black hole, sucking in large numbers of vulnerable souls."
Rajneesh's other trick was adducing fabulous tales from the past (e.g., fictional
teaching stories of really wild behavior invented centuries later about historical
adepts like Tibet's Tilopa and Marpa, and Ch'an/Zen masters Bodhidharma and Lin-
chi) to claim that what he was doing was just part of a long, hallowed "Crazy
Wisdom" tradition. Alternately, he seemed to think that what he was doing was
justifiable as the kind of "experimental work" that Gurdjieff had conducted.
I call what Rajneesh was doing neither Tantra nor Crazy Wisdom, but
unconscionable manipulating and unproven experimental meddling with
spiritual aspirants' vulnerable bodies, life-force, hearts and minds. No wonder
that so many Rajneeshees of the time struck many of us as having noticeably
dissipated, frazzled energy fields, their attention very attached to a superficial level of
the senses and emotions... India's old Upanishad wisdom that Absolute Spiritual
Reality (Nirguna Brahman) is transcendent, formless and "subtler than the subtlest"
was completely lost on them as they were put through the wringer day after day,
month after month, following their guru's dubious directions that this ordeal was the
way to enlightenment. Reports from numerous former respected sannyasins such as
Satya Bharti Franklin, Avibha Kate Strelley, et al., indicate that far too many
Rajneesh sannyasins swung from euphoric highs down into dark, destructive
patterns in their relationships, behaving in cruelly authoritarian, violent, fascist
manner, not just at Poona during the heyday of the most extreme forms of therapy
groups, but later in Oregon, and all along for many years at local branch-communes
worldwide.
Meanwhile, a frail, asthma- and allergy-ridden Rajneesh daily and nightly talked and
talked and talked, rambling on for hours at the daily morning lecture, in English one
month and in Hindi the next month, and during the evening talks in English, on a
wide range of topics, from the high-flown and happy to the pedantic, pedestrian,
goofy, gossipy, bitter and bizarre. Followers slavishly turned the tape-recordings
and "33 million words" into scores of money-making books. The English-language
books became the ashram's biggest money-maker and for that mercenary reason
Rajneesh eventually began to lecture only in English, causing a number of non-
English speaking Indians to leave the ashram. At the evening darshan discussions,
Rajneesh allowed questions but usually replied by switching topics. Former disciple
and therapy group leader Michael Barnett/Somendra recalls that the questions "would
make you feel as if you were participating. In fact, nobody ever participated in
Poona. There was only one person, really, in Poona." More signs of narcissism and
megalomania. Of course, Rajneesh himself said he often dodged questions to see if
disciples could wait indefinitely with a "living question" for a "living answer."
The Oregonian series furnishes another good synopsis of the power behind the Poona
Rajneesh Ashram scene: "Aside from lectures and darshans, Rajneesh remained
cloistered with a group of favored disciples in Lao Tzu House, a secluded building [a
sprawling old British Raj mansion] at the [garden surrounded] back of the Koregaon
Park compound. He rarely left the ashram. Yet Rajneesh remained the movement's
mastermind. 'He knew as much as any head in an international corporation can
know of everything that's going on,' recalled Milne, who as chief bodyguard was a
member of Rajneesh's inner circle. Former disciples said Rajneesh sent some
disciples off to create or run satellite centers around the world and instructed others to
conduct therapy groups. He chose the ashram's department heads and occasionally
pitted them against one another. Although he delegated office duties to Laxmi, he
was known to countermand her decisions." (Part 3, July 1985) It gets even more
insidious than this, for he often used his secretary Laxmi and later her
usurper/replacement Ma Sheela to mess with people's psyches. Satya Bharti
Franklin recalls, "he'd tell people one thing in darshan in Poona, then instruct
Laxmi privately to arrange the opposite; she'd amused us for years with stories
about his games. Pressing people's buttons, she called it: a spiritual exercise. I still
wasn't ready [at the time] to see it as manipulation." (Promise of Paradise, p. 316)
It is important to pause here and note that Rajneesh's rise to fame in India in the
late 1960s and 1970s was not just due to his big energy, authoritarian tactics,
maverick style, personal appeal, easy philosophy, and the notoriety of the sexed
up atmosphere at his hedonist commune, but also largely due to his early team
of publicity hounds and the organizational efforts and social connections of his
first secretary and first among his neo-sannyasin disciples, Ma Yoga Laxmi
(Laxmi Thakarsi Kuruwa, 1933-95).
Laxmi, a charismatic, austere woman who had met him in 1968, when she was in her
mid-30s, experienced some kundalini arousal and kriya experiences under his
shaktipat energy (detailed in her short autobiography, The Journey of the Heart: A
Story of a Disciple with a Living Master). The extremely well-connected daughter of
a prominent wealthy businessman and close friend of many of the longtime ruling
Congress Party leaders, she herself was a rising political figure in the mid-1960s.
Without Ma Laxmi and her financial wealth and VIP connections, and those
wealthy Bombay businessmen promoting Rajneesh as a new guru "commodity"
with their publicity machine, it's unlikely that Rajneesh, even with that
powerfully mesmerizing personal energy and sensationalist approach to
teaching, ever would have become quite so famous or powerful a magnet in
luring so many people to this "new kind of religion."
There's another factor at work here bolstering the rapid rise of Rajneesh and his
mixed-up teachings and grab-bag of psycho-spiritual techniques: the modern era's
widespread spiritual illiteracy and emotional neediness and alienation that could
easily be exploited by someone as sharp as Rajneesh. Sociologist Uday Mehta
points out: "It is not surprising to find that Rajneesh could get away with several
gross contradictions and inconsistencies in his teachings [e.g., trying to transcend
desire by indulging it; trying to combine the Zen teaching of our pristine Void-nature
with western depth psychotherapies' emphasis on thick layers of repressed
subconscious material]. This was possible for the simple reason that an average
Indian (or for that matter even western) listener, knows so little about religious
scriptures or various schools of thought, that it hardly requires much effort to
exploit his ignorance and gullibility. Rajneesh in this respect is not the only one.
Most of the [pseudo] godmen in this as well as other countries have managed to
thrive by taking advantage of the innocence of their average followers and playing
upon their psychological needs of dependence, and the emotional insecurity and
sense of alienation, frustration and anxieties, all of which are becoming so
widespread in modern society." (Modern Godmen in India, p. 151)
Back to our narrative: from 1976 to 1981, in the market for a much bigger spread,
Rajneesh "drummed up the fervor with utopian visions of a 'new commune'
where sannyasins could live in harmony with nature. 'New commune' became a buzz
phrase." (The Oregonian, Part 3) The Rajneesh Foundation became even more
hungry for funds and forced many now-penniless sannyasins to go back to their
families and ask for money. Two separate relocation schemes were hatched: one to
a farm in Kutch, in northwest Gujarat; the other to a desert fortress in the mountains
at Saswad, 21 miles south of Poona in Maharashtra. Both projects were eventually
aborted, after much contentious hassling between the Foundation headed by Laxmi
and the outside officials and local people. Former disciples like Milne recall
extensive infighting among Rajneeshees over these projects, too. As with the re-
location attempts earlier in the decade, many disciples who had been conscripted into
very difficult, back-breaking working conditions in mercilessly hot environments saw
all their work go to naught. In fact, the Saswad fortress was where Laxmi and her
assistant (later her usurper) Sheela exiled "trouble-making" sannyasins from the
Poona ashram, i.e., anyone who raised any questions or in any way threatened the
egos of the office elites.
Rajneesh was finding new ways to enjoy himself. In 1978 he instituted the
"mediums," twelve women picked to be channels for his special shaktipat energy or
"grace" to flow out more fully to the community and the world. Rajneesh insisted all
the women had to have ample breasts though he added three leaner women. "He also
had Vivek instruct the mediums not to wear anything under their darshan robes at
night, allegedly putting his hands under their gowns when the lights went out." (Satya
Bharti Franklin, p. 131) Photos from that era and a segment of the 1980 documentary
film "Ashram" by Wolfgang Dobrowolny show the "mediums" dancing around him
in passionate ecstasy during the nightly, restricted-group "energy darshans." As
the "Ashram" film shows, Rajneesh would sometimes get up from his chair to
forcibly drive his fingers into the "third eye" ajna cakra forehead area of a disciple
(or simultaneously two disciples) for extended periods of vigorous rubbing, evidently
to raise their kundalini energy or create some kind of experiential state for them. So
much of the Rajneesh religion was merely about creating unusual states and then
inwardly witnessing these states.
On May 22, 1980, during the morning lecture, a conservative young Hindu stood up
and threw a knife toward Rajneesh, ostensibly trying to kill him. The whole
event was bogus, staged. In her revelatory book The Ultimate Game (1987), Kate
Strelley/Avibha, privy to many secrets in her elite position working directly with the
top ashram office personnel during this time, reports the truth of what happened:
"Bhagwan remained seated calmly through the incident.... Actually, his ability to sit
without flinching through a potentially fatal attack came from the fact that he knew it
was a set-up. The guy was paid to do it. He was beaten by the Ashram guards only to
convince the Poona police that this was the real thing. The incident served to increase
fear for Bhagwan's safety and devotion to him." (p. 215)
From March 24, 1981 for a full five weeks, the "Bhagwan" stopped seeing anyone
publicly beyond his elite private circle. On April 10 it was announced that he had
taken a vow of silence and would no longer speak, "the ultimate stage of his work."
He appeared for the first time in his new, speechless mode on May 1, 1981 to 6,000
disciples, for a one hour silent darshan, featuring occasional chanting, readings and
music by the disciples. And that's how he appeared to them for the next month. He
had done something similar back on June 11-20 of the prior year, 1979, when asthma
attacks prevented his being able to speak. (In Summer 1985, with his first large-group
talks and press interviews after a 4-year silence toward anyone outside his closest
circle, Rajneesh declared several times to the press: "I have been silent as a device to
get rid of all those people who were hanging around me because of my words. Their
approach to me was intellectual, of the head, and my work is concerned with the
heart.")
And then, with no advance warning to the ashramites who had surrendered their lives
and dissolved most or all of their assets to come live under his supposed "caring love
and compassion" (usually at his behest to leave everything and stay at Poona),
Rajneesh with a chosen entourage of 15 disciples suddenly fled India, flying to
New York on June 1, 1981, to evade paying millions of dollars in taxes and to escape
persecution from Morarji Desai's conservative Janata Party and flak from Poona's
offended residents. (On the tax issue, the Indian government could find no evidence
that the Rajneesh Ashram was doing any charitable work for any outside
community, and so was not eligible for special tax breaks accorded to charitable
organizations.) A few thousand disciples were left in the lurch... most didn't learn
until a few months later that their guru was going to re-locate the ashram to an
incipient new commune, Rajneeshpuram, in central Oregon, USA.
In our narrative, we shouldn't leave India without mentioning a corrupt housing
scam that was pulled on many sannyasins by ashram elites. As Kate Strelley
explains, hundreds of European and East Asian sannyasins had been suckered by all
of Rajneesh's "new commune" talk to purchase a future dorm-space for US$10,000, a
shared cottage for $25,000, or a small bungalow for $50,000 in the still non-existent
"new commune," which everyone had assumed would be in India. "Because the
Rajneesh Ashram was a 'nonprofit' organization, and because people trusted that they
were dealing with Bhagwan, the money that changed hands was listed as a
'donation.'... No one dreamed back then that it would be established in a country they
couldn't live in [the USA, because of visa restrictions]." (The Ultimate Game, pp.
234-5)
The housing scam was exactly the kind of corrupt situation that Rajneesh and his
organizational heads so often threw back in people's faces: this was a "test" of your
spiritual state, your "detachment" and "disidentification" and whether you were
"sufficiently surrendered to Bhagwan." Thus, as Strelley often points out in her
insightful analysis of Rajneesh Ashram group dynamics, the ashram always found a
way to turn sannyasins back onto themselves, exacerbate their self-doubt and
shame, and keep them in a deferential, disempowered state. And if you dared to
stand up and speak out even mildly about an injustice or an abuse, you would be
demoted, punished, and/or exiled altogether, your precious mala and access to
the ashram and Bhagwan taken away. Strelley notes that most people coming to
the ashram did so to escape the corruption of the conventional world. Little did they
realize they would find even more corruption here.
Coming to the USA in 1981 on the dubious pretext of needing emergency medical
treatment (official agencies were told that Rajneesh was on the verge of death unless
he got help), a suddenly very healthy Rajneesh spent June, July and August at the
luxurious "Rajneesh Castle" near the Chidvilas Rajneesh center of Montclair, New
Jersey, created by his new secretary, the married Indian woman Anand Sheela
(Sheela Silverman; née Sheela Ambalal Patel, b.1949). Sheela had replaced Laxmi
in the last year at Poona while Laxmi was mainly elsewhere in India looking for land
for the "new commune." The Rashneesh castle was a 30-room, Rhineland-style affair
at 22 Crestmont Road on 15 acres atop a hill overlooking the town of Montclair.
Remember that we have a window onto the great "Bhagwan" at this time from
Deeksha/Maria Grazia Mori, a member of the closest inner circle around him, until
she left the movement in late 1981 and went into hiding. The Oregonian reports (Part
6 and Part 13, July 1985): "In Montclair, Rajneesh dealt with Mori daily as Sheela
and others searched the United States for a potential commune site. He sent Mori on
shopping trips to New York to buy hats, watches and material for clothes, and he
talked at length about the Rolls-Royces he wanted to add to his collection. [...]
Rajneesh told her exactly what [cars] he wanted. 'One Rolls-Royce, green with
interior blue. One blue with interior gray. And the gold, with a diamond in the
ashtray,' Mori said. 'He would talk hours how he wanted the Rolls-Royces.' [...] Mori
grew increasingly disillusioned. 'This is the greatest shock of my life, because then I
realized that he was a jerk,' Mori said. 'I realized that he was not enlightened.'"
And recall Mori's much more serious allegations of anti-Semitism, cruelty and
coarseness, etc., given to her friend Satya Bharti Franklin and other journalists, as
cited earlier at this webpage.
Rajneesh continued his public silence until he finally broke it with talks to small
invited groups in October 1984 and then large-group talks commencing in July 1985.
In the meantime, there was so much that happened on which he should have been
publicly speaking to explain what in the world was going on with his "religionless
religion"....
In late August 1981 Rajneesh moved out west to the 64,000-acre Big Muddy
Ranch procured for nearly $6 million by Ma Sheela in high-desert terrain
mainly in Oregon's Wasco County, 160 miles by slow-going road southeast of
Portland. He initially hated the site: far too dry, not enough greenery. But that soon
changed as his worker bees frenetically labored around the clock to plant lush
gardens and lawns with imported peacocks along with costly 30-foot-high trees
brought in to surround Rajneesh's new private compound, complete with an
indoor Olympic-size swimming pool and not one but two luxurious bathrooms
which occupied him for 3 hours daily. Here he resided with his chosen few
beloveds in even more insular style than at Poona, while elsewhere on the property
a few hundred red-clad sannyasins toiled long and hard, joined by two thousand more
in 1982-3. Most of them were Americans and Europeans; very few Indians from the
Poona ashram could afford to fly to the USA. Until the entire experiment fell apart
amidst terrible scandals in early Autumn 1985, "Rancho Rajneesh" seemed so
promising. The commune came to include the newly built Rajneeshpuram city and
the aggressively taken-over tiny hamlet of Antelope (re-named "Rajneesh"), which
was 18 miles up a steep, winding road as the gateway to Rajneeshpuram. Both places
came to be spied upon and watched over by menacing-looking Rajneeshee guards.
The Rajneeshee "love-in" eventually turned into a nightmare, especially in the
three-year period after the INS finally denied him permanent residency status in
Dec. 1982. As The Oregonian summarily noted: "The Rajneeshees were taken to
court repeatedly for creating an illegal city, violating land-use laws, failing to repay
loans and, finally, for plotting murders and [committing] arson. In the end, the
commune collapsed in bankruptcy and members scattered throughout the world."
During these years, the group certainly made remarkable strides at the commune
with all that free "slave labor" by hundreds, then thousands of Rajneeshees faithfully
working 12-18 hours, 7 days a week, even during extreme heat and extreme cold.
(Work was euphemistically renamed "worship.") They developed an admirable
small-town infrastructure and beautiful landscaping on the dusty, dilapidated old
ranch, even if most of that development flagrantly violated Oregon's rural zoning
land-use laws. Though the Rajneeshees clearly broke the law in a pre-meditated way,
their argument that they improved certain sections of the land certainly holds
merit, because the group's best minds went to work on how to create an
environmentally sustainable human habitat using optimally eco-friendly technologies,
just as, for instance, they had grown their vegetables hydroponically back at the
Poona ashram and created special water filtration systems. Now along the John Day
River and adjacent canyons and hills they created an impressive state-of-the-art
reservoir, sewage system, 85-bus free public transport system, suburban style
residential spaces, telecommunications center, 10-megawatt power substation,
airstrip, 88,000 square-foot meeting hall, 3,000 acres of cleared farmland, verdant
areas with gardens and extensive tree-plantings, dairy and poultry farms, a post
office, school and meditation "university," fire and police departments, shopping
malls, visitors' hotels, restaurants, and disco-bar, casino and other delights to cater to
this most carnal of spiritual crowds. (A hotel, restaurant, and disco-bar were also
created in Portland to help raise funds.)
For a time the Rancho Rajneesh commune appeared to be "the ultimate Me
Generation boarding school," "a year-round summer camp for young urban
professionals... awash in the human-potential movement," as journalist Frances
FitzGerald extensively wrote about it, with its utopian idealism about "authenticity"
and "spontaneity," and a now much gentler, kinder group-therapy approach with lots
of hugging, positive attitude and humor. Alas, under the ruthless power-hungry
tendencies of Ma Sheela (with Rajneesh giving her complete authority), her formerly
more friendly personality aspects almost completely suppressed in the high-pressure
situation at the Ranch, the commune became increasingly oppressive for the
exploited rank-and-file sannyasin laborers. Patrolled by ever-more heavily armed
paramilitary guards and two police forces, it obsessed with rigid authoritarian rules
and regimentation, and compulsory financial contributions and assorted money-
making schemes local and worldwide (giving the lie to the idea that Rajneeshpuram
was organically self-sustaining). "The commune was transformed into something
indeed resembling a repressive, fascistic, totalitarian theocracy" (E.P. Wijnants),
"the closest thing to an Eastern Bloc experience in the United States" (Lewis Carter).
By 1984-5 the commune had also become an embattled camp fighting a kind of
"range war" with locals and the state of Oregon.
The ever more demented, criminally-behaving Sheela, her immediate underlings
Savita (Sally-Anne Croft) and Vidya (Ann Phyllis McCarthy), and a few dozen
other mainly female disciples selected by Sheela (and ignorantly lauded by Rajneesh
as a benign matriarchy), all embroiled themselves in awful controversy, with open
hostility and nastiness, multiple onerous lawsuits, and finally terrorist crimes and
murder plots against local Oregonian residents and government officials who
resisted the blatantly illegal development of the massive rural community. This
included the worst mass bioterrorism incident in U.S. history—751 Oregonians
sickened (according to the CDC) at ten restaurants in The Dalles from deliberate
salmonella poisoning by Sheela's cronies in September 1984 in order to steal a county
election for the Rajneeshees by keeping non-Rajneeshee citizens from the voting
booths. The salmonella attack, headed by Sheela's chief bioweaponist, Filipina
nurse Diane Onang / Anand Puja (a.k.a. "Dr. Mengele"), crippled the local
economy and inflicted much financial pain as fear spread.
It's also noteworthy that in October 1984, Rajneeshees bused in over 3,500
homeless persons, most of them black men, from across the country. Rajneesh and
his elite deceitfully framed it as a "humane activity" when it was actually to pack the
county voter rolls in favor of the Rajneeshees' political aims. Furthermore, without
their consent, Sheela's gang secretly gave the homeless persons the heavy
tranquilizer drug Haldol (spiking their beer and food with it) to better "manage"
these persons, since they clearly outnumbered the 3,000 permanent and visiting
(mostly Caucasian) sannyasins at the Ranch. One homeless man died from the
Haldol drugging. Later, over a period of months, most of these hapless persons were
unceremoniously dropped off at The Dalles without any money, many of them
dumped in the dead of winter without their warm jackets. This cost Oregon
taxpayers $100,000 to re-locate these persons back to their cities of origin.
Rajneesh hailed the entire debacle as a "great experiment" and, as usual, never
apologized for any distress caused to anyone (including his own rank-and-file
sannyasins who had to spend countless hours caring for these traumatized homeless
persons' poor bodily hygiene). Instead Rajneesh, ever the narcissist, boasted that
some of the homeless became his disciples.
The restaurant poisoning was just one element in a sordid Rajneeshee campaign of
terror: Sheela and Puja and their troops had originally planned to poison the town's
water supply, and in the bioweapons lab the sociopathic Puja also experimented with
creating a live AIDS virus and a typhoid virus for use against civilians in nearby
towns. In 1985, Sheela's "dirty tricks" squad within her inner circle of now 38
persons conspired to kill the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Charles Turner, after he
was appointed to head a federal grand jury investigation of the commune. It has only
recently become known that they conspired to kill the State Attorney General
(Dave Frohnmayer) and other officials. Also on the hit list was reporter Les
Zaitz, whose newspaper The Oregonian became the periodical of record for
investigating the activities of this cult gone mad.
That no one actually died from all of these assassination and bioterrorism incidents is,
to my mind, the biggest Divine miracle in the history of the Rajneesh movement,
in this case, God not working for the Rajneeshees, but against the cruel, callous plans
of Sheela's cabal while the guru either looked away or was strongly complicit by
pressuring her to expand the commune and overcome all resistance.
I note in passing that Rajneesh had often boasted to the world press in Summer
1985 that the primarily female leadership of his commune was so "superior,"
"compassionate," "intelligent," "reliable," and "harmless" compared to the old
patriarchies, and yet in retrospect we see that some two dozen of these women, the
so-called "Big Moms," led by chief ogress Sheela and sidekicks Savita and
Vidya, acted like little demons.
Excerpts from an important article series published in April 2011 by The Oregonian,
based in part on extensive evidence from Rajneeshee insiders not previously aired in
their 20-part and 7-part series in 1985, sums up and sheds further light on some of the
dark impulses of that time. The bulk of the following is from Part 1 of that series, I'll
add a few passages from Part 4 of the 2011 series:
"Hand-picked teams of Rajneeshees had executed the largest biological terrorism
attack in U.S. history, poisoning at least 700 [closer to 750] people. They ran the
largest illegal wiretapping operation ever uncovered. And their immigration fraud to
harbor foreigners [via hundreds of phony marriages to American citizens] remains
unrivaled in scope. The revelations brought criminal charges, defections, global
manhunts and prison time.

"But there was much more.

"Long-secret government files obtained by The Oregonian, and fresh interviews

with ex-Rajneeshees and others now willing to talk, yield chilling insight into what
went on inside Rancho Rajneesh a quarter-century ago.

"It's long been known they had marked Oregon's chief federal prosecutor for murder,
but now it's clear the Rajneeshees also stalked the state attorney general [Dave
Frohnmayer], lining him up for death.
"They contaminated salad bars at numerous restaurants, but The Oregonian's
examination reveals for the first time that they just as eagerly spread dangerous
bacteria at a grocery store, a public building and a political rally.

[...] "They set fire to the county planning office. [...] Sheela reasoned that Dan
Durow [Wasco County planner] couldn't act against the commune if his office was
destroyed." [...]

"To strike at government authority, Rajneeshee leaders considered flying a bomb-

laden plane into the county courthouse in The Dalles - 16 years before al-Qaida
used planes as weapons.

"And power struggles within Rajneeshee leadership spawned plans to murder even
some of their own. [As just one example:] The guru's caretaker [his female
companion Vivek] was to be killed in her bed, spared only by a simple mistake [they
had the wrong key to her room]."
"[...] [By early 1984] alarm among Sheela and her elite [had] deepened. She secured
their loyalty with privileges no one else in the commune had: private rooms, cars,
special clothing. Together, they perceived ever-increasing threats from outside and
from within. They feared their guru would be harmed by vigilantes or arrested by
authorities in what they were sure would be an unlawful act. They feared losing their
own special places in the sect. Their apocalyptic view wasn't shared by ordinary
sannyasins, who were focused on the daily work, meditation and devising a life
intended to be a global model. They didn't share in Sheela's paranoia, and some were
embarrassed by her public tirades. But most watched without protest. They knew
Sheela and her executive staff quickly punished doubters and challengers. Rank
and file could be moved without notice to a new home or job. One of the commune's
top lawyers crossed Sheela and soon found himself driving a bulldozer. The most-
feared punishment was banishment. Complaining sannyasins were told they could—
or must—leave the commune. To get there in the first place, however, worshippers
typically sold all their possessions, donated most of their money to the commune
and severed ties with outside families and friends. Most truly believed Rancho
Rajneesh was their home for life. Where would they go if that was taken away?"
(From: Les Zaitz, "Rajneeshees in Oregon—The Untold Story," The Oregonian,
April 14, 2011, Parts 1 & 4, www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/)
On this topic of many disciples' dependency on the communal group, one of the
things that became clear to insiders and outsiders concerning life at Rajneeshpuram is
that this supposedly "new religion" and "new society" was unjustly split
between an elite tier of members who enjoyed a number of perks and privileges,
including Sheela's cabal on the one hand, the circle of persons around Rajneesh on
the other hand, and then the rest of the "plebian" membership who were
performing the backbreaking labor to build the commune and make it work.
And the lines between the upper and lower tiers were fluid, all depending on the
whims, moods and biases of Sheela operating from her fairly luxurious command
center at Jesus Grove. She or her immediate underlings could include you in her club
or demote you into serf-like status in an instant. From 1982 on, Sheela had
actually excommunicated people from the movement altogether (like former
therapy "high priest" Michael Barnett and many others) if they crossed her or
disappointed her. This prospect of being banished terrified anyone who had given
all their resources to the community and made them extremely emotionally
dependent on the group.
Moreover, Sheela surrounded herself with some Rajneeshees who, in a "Lord of the
Flies" type scenario, quickly emulated her callous interpersonal style. Rajneesh's
dentist and inner-circle disciple Devageet recalls (in his 1985 grand jury testimony):
"she was surrounded by people who reinforced everything she said and were there to
make you feel insecure, insignificant, and wrong." It was not just for those at Rancho
Rajneesh that Sheela made life as edgy or downright miserable as possible. She had
also closed down many satellite centers and promising communes like the Sangam
Rajneesh Sannyas Ashram in the Provence Alps of southern France in 1982 (which
several dozen sannyasins preferred to the dry, dusty environs of the Big Muddy
Ranch in Oregon). These terminations of many branch centers were to insure that all
donations be funneled directly to the Ranch and central Rajneesh organizations, not
elsewhere.
Concerning the Rajneeshees' troubled relations with outsiders, the evidence indicates
that a number of Oregonians initially were very open to the communal experiment,
seeing the newcomers as not too different from America's tradition of pioneering
religious cults like the Mormons or America's early European settlers. Yet it's also
unfortunately true that a xenophobic portion of the local Christian populace and some
covert federal government activity had exacerbated the paranoid mindset of Sheela
and commune-leaders with an early and ongoing campaign of harassment and
resistance to the development of Rajneeshpuram after it became clear the community
was going to flagrantly defy zoning laws. However, as journalist Rohit Arya has
written, Rajneesh's disciples in Oregon "continued the obnoxious behaviors they had
learnt in Pune when dealing with the locals and they got everybody's unremitting
hatred as a consequence. They were in the heart of the Bible-belt of America and they
did everything they could to give offence." Sheela and her crazed crew had been
pressured by Rajneesh himself, in her daily meetings with Rajneesh, to clear the
way for further development of Rancho Rajneesh by whatever means necessary.
It was this pressure, say early sannyasin friends of Sheela, that drove her into
criminal insanity, replacing her evident good qualities that had endeared her to those
former friends in earlier good times.
The Oregonian reports in Part 5 of their 2011 series the contents of a 1985 voice
recording of Rajneesh by Sheela of one of their private conversations: "She went to
the guru for help stiffening the resolve of those [Rajneeshees] participating [in the
criminal activities]. She returned with a tape of her conversation. Although the
quality was poor, the commune insiders heard Rajneesh say that if 10,000 had to
die to save one enlightened master, so be it."
Gee—just how wonderfully enlightened is that sentiment? From a man who insisted
years earlier that his entire life and teaching were all about "love and compassion"?
Lest anyone think this incident is fabricated by Sheela, former close disciple Ava
Avalos recalled the incident, with an even more chilling twist to what Rajneesh
said, in her testimony as a government witness in the 1995 criminal trial of two
Rajneeshees, Savita (Sally Anne Croft), and Su (Susan Hagan) (pp. 707-8 of the
official court transcript, viewable at www.documentcloud.org/documents/73907-ava-
avalos-trial-testimony.html#document/p53/a14420): "Sheela would go and see
Bhagwan every morning and every evening. In the evening she would talk with him
and discuss ranch business and ask him what he would want done within the
commune. And I guess because so many of the people that were close to her in
that group [the "hit team" set up by Sheela] objected to the idea of killing
people, she went to him and asked him what he thought about the need to kill
people. [Q: And what did Bhagwan say?] Well, Sheela came back from the meeting.
She had taken a tape recorder so she could play us the message. [...] And the gist of
Bhagwan's response [was], yes, it was going to be necessary to kill people to stay in
Oregon. And that actually killing people wasn't such a bad thing. And actually
Hitler was a great man, although he could not say that publicly because nobody
would understand that. Hitler had great vision."
How can anyone hear such testimony and still think that Rajneesh was "India's
greatest spiritual master since the Buddha"?
Sheela also decided to spy on fellow commune members (not just on outsiders and
her own guru) through her penchant for bugging and wiretapping, and at one point
even began to target for death certain inmates of Rancho Rajneesh. Finally, a lethal
salad-poisoning of a dozen targeted sannyasins close to Rajneesh was nearly
carried off one night in 1985, their lives spared only by an accidental mix-up and
last-minute canceling of the diabolical plot by Sheela after at least one insider had
broken down weeping and begging her to stop all the murder attempts.
Hearing of all this criminal behavior and harmful intentions, we can only
marvel: So this was the "revolutionary new movement," the "true religion" of
the "unprogrammed, intelligent ones" in action, as practiced by Rajneesh and a
few dozen persons among his top leadership, the staunchly faithful who followed
for years their master's frequent injunction to "abandon the tired old morality,"
"live in the freedom of the moment," and "forget God while practicing
godliness."
Meanwhile, what was Rajneesh doing during his four years at the ranch? Not much
at all, certainly very little to monitor and insure the welfare of his followers who
had surrendered their lives to him. Hiding out at his remote, heavily guarded
compound with several close disciples, he still occasionally made time for selected
insiders and certain others outside the circle, especially if the visitors were potential
or actual big donors to the Rajneesh organization. He used to conduct evening
darshans in India to chat with new sannyasins, arriving and departing older
sannyasins, therapy group leaders, and office elites. But now he pretty much only saw
about 15 persons including caretakers, housecleaners, cooks and doctors. By this
point, certain longtime elites were initiating all newcomers into sannyas, either in
person or by mail. Rajneesh mostly avoided both newcomers and veteran sannyasins
until he finally broke his public silence in Oct. 1984 by starting to speak to small
invited groups, the videos played nightly to the rest of the Rancho Rajneesh
population. In July 1985, he began to speak to the press and to larger assemblies
of his sannyasins—those, anyway, who could spare the time and energy from their
14-18 hour work-days to listen to him.
When people wrote him letters asking for spiritual advice, it was Sheela and a
few other disciples, not Rajneesh, who actually wrote the replies, based on quotes
from published books of Rajneesh talks. Former office-insider Kate Strelley, in her
book The Ultimate Game (pp. 134ff.), tells of the elaborate coding procedure to
process these letters at Poona and then at the Ranch, so that people felt the answers
were coming straight from "Bhagwan." Rajneesh had other things to do.... Mainly he
slept 9-10 or more hours a day, including a two-hour nap in the early afternoon until
2 p.m. He also spent 3 hours daily in his "temple," his bathroom. And he swam a few
times a week in his private indoor Olympic-size pool to relax a disk problem in his
back, which also for some years had required a special chair at lectures and darshan.
Rajneesh gave the details of his daily routine in Summer 1985 to several different
reporters, although it looks like he's leaving a few things out. I'll piece together
passages from just two of these interviews, on July 25 and Aug. 9, 1985 (see The Last
Testament, Vol. 1, chapters 18 and 23): "I'm an absolutely lazy man.[...] so I am a
non-doer. In the morning I have to be awakened [by companion Vivek] otherwise I'm
not going to wake up. At six o'clock they wake me up, and then I take one and a half
hours in my bathroom relaxing in my bath. I love my bathroom the best; it is my
temple. They have made for me really beautiful, gorgeous bathrooms. And not only
one because I'm always for two of everything, not less than that, because if something
goes wrong in one bathroom I'm not going to miss my bath. A second bathroom has
to be constantly alert and ready. So for one and a half hours I enjoy in my bathroom. I
have the best bubble baths. I'm allergic to perfumes, so I can take only herbal bubble
baths. If you come to my bathroom you will be surprised to see what a treasure I have
got there: the world's best shampoos, hair conditioners, liquid soaps without perfume,
all kinds. It is really difficult every day for me to choose.... It takes my almost five
minutes to figure out what this combination will do. After my one and a half hours I
take one glass of juice; that is my whole breakfast. And then I go for my morning
talk, two and a half hours gossiping with my sannyasins. I don't have any gospel, I
have only gossips, and I laugh with them, enjoy with them. By eleven I'm back.
Eleven is my time for my lunch, and has been for my whole life. I have never missed
my lunch at eleven. At eleven-thirty [a.m.] I go to sleep. That, too, I have never
missed.... Then at two o'clock I have to be awakened again. I go for a drive that I
have always loved, and my sannyasins have made a beautiful road just for me....
Back at three o'clock, I rest just sitting in my chair. [...] For one and a half hours, I am
just sitting silently, doing nothing, and letting the grass grow [a reference to Zen
master Basho's haiku poem]. And it is growing. My grass is not green, it is red [the
sannyasins]. And it is growing all around the world while I am simply sitting in my
room, doing nothing. [Actually, the size of Rajneesh's movement was in decline by
this point; moreover, it turns out that many or most afternoons Rajneesh was
watching Indian and western films on video, not just sitting in meditative
absorption.]... Then again for one and a half hours, I am back in my bathroom for my
evening shower. Then I have my supper, and from the supper I come directly here [to
Jesus Grove] for the interviews. By nine, nine-fifteen, I will be back [at the private
residence]. Then my personal secretary [Sheela or one of her underlings when she is
off fundraising] has one or two hours—whatsoever she needs—for any advice for the
commune around the world, any letters to be answered. Mostly, they do them
themselves, unless they find something that needs my advice; then they bring it to
me." (ch. 23) [Q: "What exactly do you do in the bathroom for three hours a day?"]
A: "I just enjoy sitting under the shower, lying down in my tub. I change from hot,
extreme hot, to extreme cold, freezing water. That is immensely healthful to the
body. One and a half hours is not long. It goes so fast because I enjoy it so much. So
three hours go into the bathroom. Two hours, or two and a half hours in the morning,
I talk to my disciples. Then in the night, two hours, just the way I am talking to you, I
talk to some journalist, some author. So four or five hours I am talking [and as we
have seen, a lot of this was largely repetitive diatribe "gossip" material he would
spout on his usual topics, mostly non-spiritual rants]. Then I enjoy my food. I don't
like to talk even, because whatever I am doing, I want to do it totally. When I am
eating, then I just want to eat and relish every bite to the fullest. So one hour or one
and a half hours—because I take two meals, lunch and supper—and then I take,
before I go to sleep in the night, my whole life I have taken some special sweets
which are made only in Bengal, India. So in all, one and a half hours goes to my
food. Two hours I sleep in the day. I have napped as long as I can remember, and I
love to sleep because to me sleep is just meditation, as pure and as simple and as
relaxing. And whatever time remains in the night, I go to bed at about ten or eleven, it
depends on the interview. I wake up at six in the morning."
It turns out that Rajneesh didn't spend as much time in pure meditation in the
afternoons as he suggests in the above statements, which make it sound like he was
in thought-free samadhi for hours. No, he was usually watching videos. During
his silent period from 1981-4, no longer able to easily read because of eye problems
in 1981, Rajneesh sent several disciples on massive video-buying excursions. Milne
writes (p. 255): "The videos had now become so important to him that the sannyasis
whose job it was to keep him satisfied were flying to Portland or San Francisco
almost every day to provide new movies—an enormously costly indulgence."
Thereafter Rajneesh devoted himself in the afternoons to viewing his films,
repeatedly viewing "Patton," "The Ten Commandments" and other favorites,
especially favoring Indian cinematic productions. Trusted sannyasins who staffed the
"Edison" electronic-eavesdropping unit at the Ranch and were tasked with
monitoring the sounds coming from Rajneesh's private quarters were, writes Tim
Guest, "shocked at this glimpse into their guru's private life. Bhagwan missed India
[he said]; while the dream of a sannyasin city became a sump around him, he
watched videos of Indian films through the afternoons. In the evenings he and Vivek
argued. She shouted: 'You don't love me anymore, why don't you love me? Why don't
you make love to me?' The microphones picked up the sound of something thrown in
the kitchen. He threw something back—a book, a shoe—and muttered: 'Shut up,
woman. I am trying to watch television. Always you are moaning.'" (My Life in
Orange, p. 254).
On Rajneesh's troubled relationship with Vivek, Milne wrote (Bhagwan: The God
That Failed, p. 166) that by the early 1980s "Bhagwan still had a special relationship
with Vivek, but this was less close than it had once been. He used to boast that he
made life the hell for her, and this was certainly true." We have reports that
Rajneesh was troubled by her increasingly severe bipolar manic-depression
condition, and that he yelled at her and even badly beat Vivek on occasion (recall
Maria Mori's testimony). Former disciple David Knapp / Krishna Deva ("KD"), a
psychotherapist who was selected to serve as mayor of Rajneeshpuram town, recalled
to the FBI that "in 1984, Bhagwan expelled Vivek from the commune. Knapp said
she was sent to England and later Bhagwan finally agreed to allow her to return to
Rajneeshpuram.... Knapp also said that Vivek had apparently attempted to commit
suicide on at least two occasions while at Rajneeshpuram." And then, even more
shocking, according to Knapp, "Bhagwan told Sheela that he wished Vivek could
do the job right. Sheela interpreted this to mean that Bhagwan was really telling
her that it was okay to kill Vivek." (p. 35 of FBI summary statement of Knapp's
testimony; online at http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/73831/02-krishna-deva-
fbi-statement.pdf)
Rajneesh was pondering death in other ways. It was evidently after watching a film
on Nostradamus that in March 1984 Rajneesh "with great drama and precision
[prophesied] that two-thirds of humanity would die of the disease AIDS by the year
2000" (Palmer and Sharma, 1993), which is why he commanded followers to wear
condoms and plastic gloves when having sex. Among his other failed apocalyptic
prophecies, Rajneesh in 1983 incorrectly foretold the coming of horrors culminating
in nuclear holocaust and World War III by 1999.
Several close observers have declared that Rajneesh ingested a lot of nitrous oxide
or laughing gas to get high, twice daily according to Sheela in interviews she
granted the press in late 1985 (including Germany's Stern magazine and the U.S.
news program, "60 Minutes"). Sheela said he was daily taking 60 mg of the anti-
anxiety drug Valium (Diazepam); the normal dosage level is 2-10 mg given 2-4
times daily, i.e., from 4 mg to 40 mg per day, so Rajneesh was taking amounts of
Valium 50% above the maximum recommended dosage. Recall Deeksha/Maria
Mori saying that back in New Jersey in 1981 Rajneesh was swallowing handfuls of
valium and qualudes, and was often almost incoherent in his speech, obviously
under the influence of some kind of mind-altering drug. Former early disciple
Christopher Calder thinks Rajneesh was taking big doses of valium as early as the
late Poona One days, evidenced by incoherent, slurred speech and drugged-looking
gaze. Yes, though Rajneesh had always preached that one should be courageous
enough to face life without intoxicants and that the enlightened one lives in a state
of complete "ease" free from all "tension," enjoying life as a grand "play," he
himself was, on the basis of these accounts, quite dependent on heavy drug use
as a way to feel good about his life. Later we'll hear Calder discussing this
controversial topic at some length, but here are just a few excerpts from some of his
August 2007 emails to an Osho internet forum
(rebelliousspirit.com/osho-webzine/103/sharing), where certain disciples
vociferously protested the charge that Rajneesh used these drugs on more than just a
very few "medicinal" occasions. Calder posts: "Osho's drug use was documented by
the FBI. [...] The debate about Osho's drug use is over, except for the most insane
followers. Rajneesh was a drug addict, and I have received letters from dozens of
sannyasins who were at the (Oregon) ranch and in Poona who confirm this proven
fact. [...] Devageet [Rajneesh's dentist] years ago denied to me emphatically that
Rajneesh used N2O [nitrous oxide] except for dental surgery, and then a few months
later he publicly admitted on a Osho Web forum that he gave Rajneesh N2O for
months on end, and that Rajneesh used the drug because it 'increased his
creativity.' ... Many people at Poona saw the nitrous oxide canisters piled up at
Rajneesh's bungalow, and they knew what it was for. He was not having dentistry
done every day. Osho admitted his N2O use and talked about it openly. The FBI
had records of how much N2O was delivered to the ranch. The Valium was
smuggled in from Mexico. [...] All of Rajneesh's drug use was exposed by the FBI,
local Oregon law enforcement, and published in newspapers around the country.
People clearly saw the nitrous oxide spigots installed by his bedside. When you get to
the point that you have nitrous oxide spigots custom installed by your bed, you are a
very serious nitrous oxide addict, not just a casual user.... Ma Anand Sheela,
Rajneesh's personal secretary, publicly stated on the CBS news show 60 Minutes that
Rajneesh took 60 milligrams of Valium every day. Hugh Milne, Rajneesh's head
bodyguard, confirmed Rajneesh's heavy Valium use [as did Maria Mori], as did
Swami Devageet [Rajneesh's dentist]." (Devageet, according to one of my sources,
no longer says this about the valium usage.)
As for his other recreational activities, Rajneesh enjoyed driving his infamous Rolls
Royces around the Ranch and beyond. "Area ranchers and Antelope residents
collected a repertoire of tales about the free-wheeling guru driving at high speeds and
occasionally winding up in ditches." (The Oregonian, Part 13, July 1985) The
Oregonian reported Sheela's public claim to the press in late 1985 that Rajneesh was
like an insatiable child making incessant demands of her to expand his fleet of
Rolls-Royces beyond the 93 he already had (he wanted one for every day of the
year) and to procure other costly items. "He wanted to make it into the record
books as the man with the most [Rolls Royces], and it was costing the financially
shaky commune $200,000 a month [for these Rolls Royces were never "gifts" free
and clear, as the Rajneeshees claimed]." He also kept demanding a certain $4 million
diamond wristwatch, "telling her to divert funds from the commune's needs if
necessary." (Part 4, April 2011) David Knapp corroborated the general truth of the
latter part of Sheela's statement in his testimony to the FBI; according to the FBI's
summary document, "Knapp recalled a meeting between Sheela and some of her
people and three members of the 'Hollywood' group, including Hasya. 'Sheela was
opposed to Hasya purchasing [for Rajneesh] a Calista watch for 2.5 to 3 million
dollars.... At the meeting Hasya told Sheela that she could not say no to Bhagwan.
Sheela responded by telling her that it was important to learn to say no to Bhagwan.
As a result of this meeting... there was a follow-up meeting the next evening at which
all those present at the previous meeting [were there]. This meeting was an audience
with Bhagwan. At that meeting, Bhagwan stated that his secretaries in the past who
said no to him were let go. Knapp said that this indicated to him and Sheela that
Bhagwan had been informed of the fact that on the previous meeting Sheela had told
Hasya that she had to learn to say no to Bhagwan. Bhagwan went on to say that he
would have to find his own sources who would provide for his enjoyment."
(http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/73831/02-krishna-deva-fbi-statement.pdf, p.
21)
Tell all this to the impoverished thousands of Rajneeshees who labored on behalf
of the guru to grow his class-free "utopian" commune, not to mention destitute
people in great need all over the world....
One of my very pro-Rajneesh correspondents, Sandra Johansen, admits that a dear
woman friend, a member of the "inner circle" around Rajneesh at
Rajneeshpuram, thought that an "unenlightened" and very reclusive Rajneesh
completely "lost it" during these four years in Oregon. Certainly he was
unconscionably remiss in his role as "Bhagwan" and spiritual preceptor or
"guru" by abandoning all pastoral care for his followers, instead allowing
Sheela and her dirty-tricks squads to hijack the movement. For just over 3 years,
until he began to give discourses once again, he was only available to the vast
majority of his followers at Rajneeshpuram via silent drive-by blessings, granting the
briefest sight of himself ("car-shan" darshan as some joked) while riding out from his
enclosure in one of his Rolls Royces every day at 2 p.m., waving to his adoring
throngs lined along the roadside, regardless of extreme weather conditions. Satya
Bharti Franklin writes of a dictum from Sheela one day, based on a concern of
Rajneesh, demanding that people look and act ecstatically happy along the
roadside otherwise they were not to attend the drive-bys. As noted, Rajneesh finally
began to publicly speak again to small invited groups in Oct. 1984, much more
regularly to his sannyasins at large in Summer 1985. But he seems to have done
very little to counter Ma Sheela's policies, except to begin creating a cadre of
supporters around him ("the Hollywood group") as a rival power-base to Sheela's
group.
On September 14-15, 1985, many top officials in the Rajneesh organizations abruptly
resigned, starting with Sheela. She and three of her minions suddenly left the
commune for legal refuge in Europe; seven more top insiders defected the next day.
On Sept. 16, Rajneesh held a press conference, accusing Sheela and her "fascist
gang" (his own followers!) of stealing millions of dollars and attempting to murder
him, his doctor, his dentist, his girlfriend Vivek, and some local politicians. He now
publicly repudiated the "Rajneeshism" religion that he had led Sheela to
formally institute in his name in 1981 (for tax-exemption purposes in the USA
and to help him stay in the country under the "religious worker" category), and
he ordered a communal burning of 5000 copies of the Book of Rajneeshism, the
religion's basic text, along with burning of Sheela's robes.
He even explicitly abdicated his own role as guru or master, for he had
ridiculously insisted when he began to speak to the public two months earlier that he
did not have "followers" or "disciples," only "fellow travelers" and "friends." Which
raises the big question: why was he initiating them into discipleship all those
years and urging them to surrender everything to him? He told everyone that
they could stop wearing the red robes and mala necklaces. Some did, whereupon
the ultra-narcissist Rajneesh expressed disappointment, and so most of the
followers resumed wearing them. Rajneesh also asked the FBI to conduct an
investigation into Sheela's activities, but from spoken and written testimony it's clear
to former disciples David Knapp, Kate Strelley, et al., that Rajneesh and his people
dissembled and lied in order to put all the blame on Sheela and her cabal. Sheela
served with Ma Puja just a 2.5-year jail sentence from mid-1986 to Dec. 1988; for
some years now she has been wanted on newer charges that have emerged from that
era, but she has legal immunity living in Switzerland (where, as Sheela Birnstiel,
widow of a Swiss sannyasin she hastily married for strategic purposes, since 1990 she
has run two homes for the mentally and physically disabled).
Many observers think that Rajneesh's public denigration of Sheela was mere
"damage control," and assert that he had approved of most of Sheela's policies
the entire time and was himself an accessory to the crimes and was thus
scapegoating Sheela and her protégés, "the 38," when he castigated them to the
media. This assessment is contested by other, pro-Rajneesh observers and authors,
who want to put all the blame on Sheela and her co-conspirators. Yet evidence to the
FBI and revealed in print by The Oregonian in 1985 and newer evidence from
over the years reported in 2011 suggests Rajneesh was far more complicit than
previously thought, such as that secretly taped remark from Rajneesh: "if
10,000 had to die to save one enlightened master, then so be it." And recall the
confirming court testimony from Ava Avalos that he spoke of people having to
be killed and then he went on to praise Hitler in that context.
Here's more evidence, from the FBI summary of the testimony received from
David Knapp/Krishna Deva, in 1985: "Knapp said that Sheela told him and others
that Bhagwan said on several occasions that 'a master's life is worth a million other
lives.' Bhagwan said, 'Life is meaningless unless one is enlightened.' His message
was that if a million died to save one enlightened master it is okay. (p. 35) The FBI
further learned from Knapp: "Knapp said that Sheela and Bhagwan had a close
relationship. He described the relationship as one where Sheela saw Rajneesh every
evening. Knapp said that the relationship was such that everything Sheela said
came from Bhagwan. Whenever Sheela spoke, it was accepted by everyone that she
spoke on behalf of Bhagwan. Knapp informed that he was personally aware of
instances when Sheela went to see Rajneesh with one idea and returned, after
conversing with Bhagwan, with a different idea and that was the idea which would be
adopted. Knapp said he believed that Bhagwan was aware of everything which
occurred at Rajneeshpuram, with the possible exception of the conspiracy to kill his
personal physician, Devaraj, and the bugging of his personal room at Lao Tzu
[house]." (pp. 4-5) "Knapp also said that regarding Bhagwan's news conference
which occurred immediately after Sheela and her group departed Rajneeshpuram
[wherein Rajneesh briefly mentioned various crimes Sheela and her cohorts had
committed], Bhagwan was aware of all the crimes, not because he discovered them
after the departure of the group, but because Sheela kept him advised of what was
going on all along." (p. 38)
When Sheela appeared on the television news show "60 Minutes" after fleeing
Rajneeshpuram in 1985, she asserted that Rajneesh was responsible for "exploiting
people by using their human frailty and emotions." She called the religion simply
a confidence trick, and maintained that Bhagwan directed every criminal act she
did. (Paul Morantz, "Escape from Rajneeshpuram,"
www.paulmorantz.com/cult/escape-from-rajeneeshpuram/)
The Oregonian (Part 8 of 20-part series, July 1985) reports: "Asked in a [Fall] 1984
deposition if he relied on Sheela to take care of 'all matters, mundane or temporal,'
Rajneesh replied, 'Yes, and she is taking care of it perfectly,'" though it later
emerged that Rajneesh already knew of harmful, manipulative power-tripping by
Sheela from as early as May 1984, according to testimony given by his dentist,
Devageet. On July 20, 1985 in a press conference with the world media (The Last
Testament, vol. 1, ch. 3), Rajneesh replied to a reporter's query about Sheela: "I have
chosen her as my secretary because she has lived with me for many years, and I have
seen not only her physical beauty, but also her spiritual beauty. I have seen her
intelligence. I have seen that she can manage this whole commune of crazy people."
A reporter on Aug 11, 1985 asked him (Ibid., ch. 25): "Your personal assistant and
secretary, Sheela, has made tremendous waves here and in Australia recently on
television and press interviews and in those waves created, you've got some really
bad press. [...] Did Sheela act under your instructions or do you feel sometimes
that she's gone maybe sometimes too far?" "No. She never goes as far as I want.
She gets hit [by me] every time she comes back home, that this is not enough." In
the same interview, Rajneesh asserted: "Because I have trained Sheela I can trust
her, and she will remain in control."
Note that these four remarks came during the two years when Sheela was later
revealed to have been acting in wanton criminal fashion and Rajneesh was still
meeting daily with her and hearing of her plans and evidently goading her to be
more "successful" in growing the commune and resisting all outside interference
from Oregon's officials. The blurb on a 2009 book by a former cohort of Sheela's
sums it up well: "[At Rancho Rajneesh in the early 1980s,] he began promoting a
siege mentality among his followers, ordering them to amass firearms. He
encouraged his secretary Sheela to use drastic methods to take over local
governments and to punish the local communities who objected to their 'utopian'
city."
Kate Strelley/Avibha, a disciple from 1975 until she left the Ranch in 1982, working
in the elite office directly under Sheela from about 1977 on (remaining a long-
distance consultant to Sheela as late as Summer 1985), in her tell-all book, Ultimate
Game (1987), filled with all sorts of revelations, provides the following crucial
insight about "the sort of correspondence that Sheela kept in her 'S' or 'Sheela'
files.... The 'S' file would be used for Sheela's notes recording things that had
happened or comments on certain people and what they were up to. It also held all
the typewritten notes that Sheela had taken in to Bhagwan. When she fled the
Ranch in Oregon, she managed to take all these files with her, at least as far as
anyone can determine. These records include all Bhagwan's written directives to
her—including some that show, contrary to his protestations that he knew
nothing about what was going on, that he knew everything. In these notes she tells
him clearly what's happening, what they're up to, and asks him specifically for
direction. My guess is that these are [still in Sheela's possession somewhere]. I've
also heard that she has fourteen videotapes of her private sessions with him since at
one point they stopped writing down everything." (pp. 247-8) "Shortly after [Sheela's
flight from Rajneeshpuram to Germany in mid-Sept. 1985], Hasya [Rajneesh's new
secretary to replace Sheela] called me on Bhagwan's behalf [to come back to the
Ranch], and I went up there to try to help sort out the documents left in the
office. On that visit I realized that Bhagwan was totally corrupt. He had set the
whole thing up.... I said, 'That's it.' I knew the game—their game—was still very
much afoot. Through it all everybody was blaming Sheela, but I saw that it was
Bhagwan at the center of things. If I ever had any doubts, I no longer did. He must
have been the person who had contrived it all. The person who had been giving
directions from the start." (p. 376)
Catherine Jane Paul alias Jane Stork / Ma Shanti Bhadra, one of Sheela's top aides,
testified to journalist Richard Guilliatt ("It was a Time of Madness," The Weekend
Australian Magazine, June 17-18, 2006) that Rajneesh was far from being guiltless
and that he himself "orchestrated many events in his detailed daily briefings."
Stork denounced Rajneesh as a con-man; the guru denigrated her and other female
devotees associated with Sheela, placing all the blame upon them in order to clear his
own name. Former Rajneeshpuram mayor David Knapp, according to the FBI,
"became convinced that there was a cover up going on at Rajneeshpuram during
the investigation by the Oregon State Police, Oregon State Attorney General's Office
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in late September and early October 1985.
He based this opinion on the fact that [different sannyasins' names were being either
included or left out of certain accusations, which...] convinced him that the people
who were present at Rajneeshpuram were to be protected [by Rajneesh and elite
commune spokespersons] while all the ones who left were to be accused of
crimes." (op cit., p. 37)
For those who still want to exclusively point the finger at Sheela and cronies for
master-minding all the crimes, the big question remains: why did Rajneesh ever
pick the cold-hearted Sheela as his secretary and chief of staff in the USA, when
by her own admission she was never interested in enlightenment, only in
Rajneesh, and she never meditated nor did any of the therapy groups? Yes, she
had connections in the USA and knew the culture, having lived there as a young
woman. But why did he then train her in heavy-handed authoritarianism as
effective "Queen" of the realm, urge her to do whatever was necessary to
further develop the Rajneeshpuram complex in the face of resistance from
authorities, continue to let her have so much organizational power in the
Rajneesh Foundation International, and on various occasions vigorously defend
and support Sheela when reporters and then a sannyasin disciple tried to
criticize her? Back in the Poona years he had remarked that she had a "thief
mentality." But in a long statement he made to disciples and to the press after her
flight from Oregon in mid-September 1985, he basically said he gave her all that
unchecked power because she was "99% good" and was a very down-to-earth,
pragmatic person who could help him rapidly and efficiently grow his
organization. Which is evidently why, for so long, Rajneesh allowed the
ambitious ends to justify the miserable means. (For the text of Rajneesh's lengthy
accusation of Sheela but ultimate defense of her, see:
www.oshoworld.com/biography/innercontent.asp?FileName=biography8/08-25-
sheela.txt)
P.T. Mistlberger, in his interesting study of Rajneesh (and Gurdjieff and Aleister
Crowley), thinks that Rajneesh picked Sheela because she represented, in cruder
form, his own personality type of stubborn self-righteousness, bellicosity, and
lack of civility. We quote Mistlberger at some length:
"In the aftermath of the revelation of the criminal activities enacted by her and her
confederates... Osho's main argument was that he was not responsible for the actions
of others.... The fact remains that he appointed a woman with the character traits that
she had to an extraordinarily sensitive and important position in his organization.
Why? The only reasonable answer is that he did so unintentionally, and unwittingly,
precisely because Sheela was, at the deepest level, too close to him for him to see
who she really was, and what she was really capable of. By 'close to him' is not
meant a real intimacy.... Rather she was, to a certain degree, a reflection of him in
disposition... a close pattern-match with him on the level of certain character traits,
perhaps most notably being a strong attachment to being right about things and a
level of stubbornness connected to that, that goes far beyond being merely
endearing.... Anyone who has ever listened to Osho talk about his past will, if they
listen closely,... be struck by a few things. First and foremost is Osho's tendency to
portray conflicts between himself and others in such a light that always, without
fail, demonstrate Osho's righteousness. Time and again we hear stories of him
encountering someone, 'calling them' on something, and they sooner or later
admitting that Osho is right. He seems to have been the only man in history who
never lost an argument, was never wrong, or was never put in his place by anyone.
He always, without fail, is on the giving end of such encounters.... Osho seemed
always to have been at war with something or someone.... I have personally been
involved with several spiritual organizations and communities in addition to Osho's
and I can confidently state that sannyasins..., while they could be amongst the most
passionate, alive, intelligent and affectionate—were often as well (especially in the
1980s) amongst the most abrasive and unfriendly. Osho valued authenticity very
highly, and was contemptuous of 'English civility'—in a word, niceness—probably
more than anything. It has been argued that Osho's community was not warmly
welcomed by Oregonians in the early days (1981) of the commune. And while that is
unquestionably true, what is less commonly mentioned is that the general demeanor
of Osho's disciples was often itself anything but warm and inviting. Some of that was
an echo of Sheela's character and leadership style, but some of it was also the
natural outgrowth of Osho's teachings on the importance of exalting the self above
all else. Osho was fighting his whole life—through his college years (which included
expulsions), with professors, with religious leaders, even with other avant-garde
gurus. That he handpicked Sheela, also a pit-bull, for such a pivotal position, can
hardly be surprising. Thus it stands to reason that he bears some degree of
culpability in Sheela's criminal acts, even if only indirectly, and even if only
psychologically. She was his Devotee... a Moon reflecting the light of her Sun. His
decision to retreat into silence for over three years and allow a young woman in her
early thirties to assume command over such a vast and sprawling fellowship with
millions of dollars to play with, could have only occurred if he saw in her some
quality that reminded him enough of something within himself—even if he was
ultimately unaware of her more destructive potentials." (P.T. Mistlberger, Three
Dangerous Magi: Rajneesh, Gurdjieff, Crowley, pp. 291-3)
I recently ran into a quote from Rajneesh that makes all of this even more ludicrous.
It's from the Osho publication Theologia Mystica, which ostensibly should be
Rajneesh/Osho discussing a 6th century treatise by a Christian mystical monk
(Dionysius Areopagite). But Rajneesh, in typical fashion, felt compelled to ramble
onto other topics to suit his colossal ego. On one such tangent, he started attacking
Swami Vishnudevananda (a western missionary disciple of the famous Swami
Shivananda of the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh) for allowing himself to be
"deceived." One cannot read the following scathing words without thinking that
surely they must be turned right around and applied to Rajneesh himself if in
fact he was NOT, as he claims, aware of what Sheela and her group of his disciples
had been doing behind his back: "Somebody in Vishnu Devananda's own
organization has been deceiving him for years.... It is good that Vishnu Devananda
has confessed that somebody in his own organization was deceiving him, but what
does it show? It shows one thing: that Vishnu Devananda is a fool. If somebody in
his own organization, his own disciple can deceive him, then what integrity has he
got and what consciousness? He should drop being a Master, he should stop
initiating people. He has lost all right to."
By this very logic, Rajneesh's integrity and degree of "consciousness" should
likewise have been questioned in Fall 1985 and he should have "dropped being a
Master and stopped initiating people" for having allowed Sheela and her people to
deceive him, if in fact he was deceived at all and not utterly complicit. To reiterate, at
least several former disciples charge that he was VERY involved in many of Sheela's
planned activities and may have been largely directing them.
On the bigger questions of how this complex cult craziness reached this far at
all, not just with Sheela's power-trips but also with Rajneesh himself as
ambitious cult-leader surrounded by adoring multitudes of the deluded, whose
psyches were imprinted and controlled to insure that they saw him as their
bhagwan and master, it's worth interjecting here some more lengthy analysis, this
time from Satya Bharti Franklin. Recall that she was chief editor of Rajneesh talks
in the early to mid 1970s, ghostwriter of some of his earliest English-language books,
and author of two early books praising Rajneesh to the skies. But in her more sober,
critical account released in 1992, The Promise of Paradise: A Woman’s Intimate
Story of the Perils of Life with Rajneesh, Franklin candidly reflects on the man:
"Was he immoral or merely amoral—indifferent to anything that happened as
long as 'his work' benefitted?... Was he merely playing games for his own
amusement all along? According to his own accounts, he was a mischievous rascal
even as a child—rebellious and constantly courting danger. As soon as he got away
with something, he became more outrageous.... He may well have figured that if
a poor village kid could become a college professor, if he could travel all over
India lecturing to large enthusiastic crowds, why couldn't he become a guru?
Most gurus were phonies. He was intelligent and perceptive; he could get away with
it. He practically fell into the role: people were demanding it of him, begging to call
themselves his disciples. Reading every book on pop psychology and religion that he
could get his hands on, Bhagwan developed a repertory of powerful meditation
techniques that opened people up to mystical experiences. What ‘60’s drop-outs
used drugs to attain, Bhagwan created through hypnotic music, frenzied
dancing, intense catharsis and finally, at the [Oregon] ranch, exhaustive physical
activity. His most successful technique was Dynamic [Meditation], to which he
quickly added a final stage of celebration, turning catharsis into meditation into
rapture. People soon learned to associate their euphoric states with Bhagwan. In
Poona therapy groups they were told to look at a picture of him and 'surrender to it'
after they'd been through a particularly heavy emotional catharsis. What I'd chosen to
think of as a helpful spiritual technique could easily be seen as deliberate
imprinting. We were all advised to keep photos of Bhagwan beside our bed at night
so he could 'work' on us in our sleep. 'When you make love,' he went on to say, 'keep
my picture nearby. I will be there with you,' fostering a primal attachment to him
even amongst sannyasins who'd never met him personally. Once he arrived in the
States, Bhagwan seemed to up the ante and go one step further than he'd gone before.
If he could be a guru in India... why couldn't he be the richest man in the world in
America...? Why stop there for that matter? He could rule the world some day....
During his years of silence and isolation in Oregon, sannyasins turned Bhagwan
into an idol, an icon, a god—making him into Jesus Christ, the Buddha, the Wizard
of Oz—pretending he knew what was happening, that he was running the show
somehow.... He warned us, 'You have to find your own path, your own way.' Yet he
also told us to surrender to him and accept him as our Master; everything he
said he contradicted.... He talked about individuality, creativity, and freedom,
while in practice something very different went on around him.... In a TV
documentary on hypnotism produced by the CB, Bhagwan was compared to a stage
hypnotist, the Marines, the Moonies and Jesuits. To change people's fundamental
belief system, the film postulated, all you have to do is change their environment
and put them into one that you control. When their sense of identification is
shaken, an authority figure steps in to tell them what to do, think, feel, and
believe. 'Surrender and I will transform you. This is my promise' [Rajneesh's constant
message, inscribed on the big banner in Buddha Hall].... Bhagwan employed all the
methodologies of the others. It was a comparison that was as chilling as it was
irrefutable." (pp. 325-7)
------------
Despite the surrender of all their money and possessions and the massive labors
by the honestly hard-working sannyasins to create the long-heralded "utopia" at
Rancho Rajneesh, their Bhagwan and his new top circle of helpmates really
were not interested to stick around and stand up for it. Protecting the Bhagwan
came first. A leaked tip in late Oct. 1985 that federal agents were going to arrest
Rajneesh on immigration crimes led his rich new female secretary Prem Hasya to
furtively and quickly get the guru, herself, some of the entourage, a stash of cash and
over $1 million worth of Rajneesh's jewelry (watches, bracelets) and designer
sunglasses onto two chartered Lear jets with the intention of fleeing the USA for
Bermuda. But in the wee hours of Oct. 28, they were intercepted at North Carolina
changing planes and Rajneesh was taken away in handcuffs. Jailed for 12 days,
Rajneesh was charged with one count of criminal conspiracy (RICO), lying
about his intent to remain permanently in the U.S. when he first entered the
country as a visitor on June 1, 1981. He was also charged with 34 counts of
making false statements to federal officials (INS officers) in the process of
committing immigration fraud through illegally helping to arrange phony
marriages for favored foreign disciples. These were in fact the most benign of
several serious charges against him.
Authorities flew him in stages across country by a secret mail-plane: "He was hauled
back to Portland in handcuffs, booked into jail like a common criminal. He ordered
his lawyers to cut him a quick deal, and he was soon deported as a convicted felon,
guilty of immigration crimes." At the federal courthouse, he signed his plea bargain
for two counts of immigration fraud and his $400,000 fine was paid. Given a 10
year suspended sentence, he was ordered to leave the USA and not return for a
minimum of 5 years.
Rajneesh then directly flew with a small entourage back to India, arriving on Nov.
17, 1985. He stayed at luxurious accommodations in Delhi, then moved for a time to
similar digs in Manali Valley in northern India, before going on in Dec. 1985 to a
posh villa in Kathmandu, Nepal. He likely would have stayed here (there had been a
plan since 1980 to locate the "new commune" here), but the Nepalese government
denied visas for his attendants and visitors. Thus began what Rajneeshees
misleadingly call his "World Tour" over the next several months, which actually
saw 19 countries reject his request for legal residency and two more nations,
Greece and Uruguay, forcibly deport the guru and his entourage. After Greek
authorities, at the behest of Orthodox Christian bishops, ousted him from Crete
(where he gave his first ever public talk in Europe, to reporters on Feb. 19, 1986), he
was rejected by over a dozen European nations in early March. Uruguay extended
an invitation, and so he stayed for three months, giving lots of talks until forced
by U.S. pressure on the Uruguay government to leave in mid-June. A few more
unsuccessful attempts to settle somewhere, first in Jamaica and then in Europe,
culminated in a several week low-profile stay in a cottage in the woods outside
Lisbon, Portugal. But he was "discovered" here, too, and so Rajneesh, wanting to
resume his teaching work, finally returned to Bombay, India in late July, 1986.
He claimed that the repeated rejections were a behind-the-scenes plot by the U.S.
Reagan administration to embarrass him. But if you were an official in any one of
these countries, given the sordid criminal record of Rajneesh and his followers in
India and Oregon and his incessant anti-family, anti-religion, and anti-government
rants to the media, would you want to let them set up camp in your country? No
wonder he and his people were regarded by these governments as a "dangerous
influence."
Meanwhile, back in Oregon, as Rajneeshpuram in the USA rapidly collapsed in the
Fall 1985 aftermath of Rajneesh's expulsion, once again, a few thousand disciples
were left in the lurch, just as faithful disciples had been left hapless when Rajneesh
and his close companions had fled India for the USA on June 1, 1981. The great
"utopia," in financial ruin due to all the lavish spending the guru had desired,
devoured whatever monies they thought they still had: "The Rajneesh Financial
Services Trust in late November began turning away disciples who sought to
withdraw money they had deposited with the Rajneesh Currency Card
program. The cards, intended to promote a cash-free society, had permitted disciples
to buy goods and services at ranch businesses by charging against their deposited
funds. However, in the ranch’s closing days, cardholders were told they couldn’t
use the cards even to buy ranch assets." (From The Oregonian 7-part series, "On
the Road Again," Part 1, Dec. 30, 1985)
Having already given to the Rajneesh cult so much of their own wealth and
labor and their families' wealth, now what little money they had left to their
name was also vaporized by the corrupt leadership. Now mostly disillusioned,
few disciples tried to join Rajneesh on his ill-fated "World Tour," and not very many
saved up the money to go see him in India when he returned there in Summer 1986.
On Rajneesh's apparent abandonment of his self-sacrificing disciples, it's worth
pausing in our narrative to note an exchange between Rajneesh and Dieter Ludwig of
Germany's Quick Magazine, on Dec. 4, 1985, when Rajneesh was up with his small
entourage of caretakers in beautiful Manali, India, soon after being ejected from the
USA. Mr. Ludwig confronted Rajneesh with the following question: "Do you feel any
kind of responsibility towards your sannyasins who have lived in your commune;
invested money, sometimes their inheritance, and their working powers into the
projects of the commune? Do you find any responsibility for guidance or otherwise
for those now are confused and don't quite know where they stand (inaudible)?"
Remember that for many years sannyasins had seen the big 20-foot banner with
Rajneesh's clearcut message: "Surrender to me, and I will transform you. That
is my promise." A message that was plastered in many other places, such as on the
back of many book covers. And there were other explicit messages by Rajneesh in
lectures and in direct communications to a person during arriving or departing
darshans that Rajneesh would "care for you."
But in this interview with Ludwig, in a long-winded "me-thinks-he-doth-protest-
too-much" reply, Rajneesh declared something different to exonerate himself
from any responsibility or accountability: "...The whole history has been
dominated with the idea that you are responsible to somebody else. [...] Jesus
[says... ] 'If you have faith in me, then I will save you." [...] My attitude is totally
different. [...] I have never guaranteed anybody that, 'If you do this, then you will
enter into paradise.' I have never guaranteed anybody that, 'If you do this, then the
project is going to succeed.' I have only said to my people, that 'Whatever you do, do
if you love to do it, if you enjoy to do it. And your enjoyment is your reward. There is
no other reward beyond that. Whether the project fails or succeeds does not matter.'
So I never feel responsible for anybody, and I don't make anybody else feel
responsible for me. There are people who have given their whole inheritance. I have
also given my whole life. Who is responsible? They are not responsible because I
have given my whole life to them, and their money is not more valuable than my life.
With my life I can find thousands of people like them. With their money they cannot
find another me. [NOTICE THE COLOSSAL NARCISSISM HERE and the
deceitful statement that Rajneesh has "given his whole life" with the implication he
has given it to his multitudes of disciples, when in fact he spent most of his hours
enjoying himself in seclusion or in the intimate company of a few beloveds.]... It was
my joy. I loved it each moment of it. [OF COURSE HE DID—as a narcissist,
Rajneesh gained massive ego-stroking attention from being the devotional object of
his hordes of followers during his talks, darshans and drive-bys.] And I will continue
to give my life to my people, to the very last breath, without making anybody feel
guilty that he is responsible. Same I expect from them. I had never asked anybody to
give anything to the commune [NOT TRUE—he asked them to go home, start
centers, bring rich people and other people to him; and Laxmi, Sheela, Deeksha, and
Savita sure did a lot of high-pressure asking of people to give everything as an
enactment of how 'surrendered' they were!]. If they had given their whole fortune, it
was their decision, and they enjoyed the decision. Nobody was forcing, nobody was
persuading [NOT TRUE, SEE ABOVE]. They loved it, and they were rewarded
[HOW?]. So there is no question of responsibility. I don't feel responsible for
anybody. Neither anybody needs to feel responsible for me. Everybody is responsible
for himself. This gives you freedom, and this makes you authentically individual.
And my whole purpose is to make you absolutely individual [BY SURRENDERING
TO RAJNEESH?] [...] And this is my basic teaching, that your life should be
authentically your own. So whatever you do, remember, you are responsible for it.
Never dump your responsibility on somebody else. That is an ugly act. Only this way
we can allow people to grow into their real, natural potentiality. So I am not
responsible for anybody. I am only responsible for myself, and I am perfectly happy.
And those who have understood me, whatever they have done, will feel absolutely
happy for it." (The Last Testament, vol. 4, ch. 25)
Would you buy a new car from a dealership that offered you NO warranty and NO
promise of service of your vehicle in case anything goes wrong? In the case of
someone coming to Rajneesh, you along with thousands of other persons were
lured in by the grandiose claims issued by the Bhagwan and his publicists about
his supreme spiritual state and his powers and what he would do to heal and
enlighten you, and every day of your life with him you saw that big 20-foot-long
banner-promise at the lecture hall, "Surrender to me and I will transform you...."
Then, not just once, but twice, he and his elites ran away from you after you
were overtly pressured by them to give over all your money, possessions,
attention-energy, tens of thousands of hours of your time and free labor (12-18
hours a day). That is to say, after Rajneesh and his squad used you and exploited you
as far as possible.... In the process, Rajneesh gets all of his narcissistic needs met
by having you bow to him and worship him along with other disciples en masse;
and also having you build, expand, and fund his communal cult which he can
boast about to the media. And now, penniless and abandoned by the Bhagwan (after
he abruptly leaves you at Poona One and then again at the Oregon ranch), he tells you
that "you are responsible for it. Never dump your responsibility on somebody else.
That is an ugly act."
But you know what's really "ugly"? The deceitful scam that Rajneesh and his
sycophant cronies pulled on everyone who kept faith in him. I call it
reprehensible exploitation of fellow human beings in the name of "spiritual
growth." But if anyone complained or criticized Rajneesh or his cult cohorts,
that person was instantly cut down with a remark such as, "you're full of ego
and have failed Bhagwan's test. You're stupid and unawake and don't deserve to
be a sannyasin."
Returning to our narrative of Rajneesh's life, we see that for him and his elite
disciples, after Oregon and the "World Tour" debacles and frustrations, things
worked out pretty well. On July 30, 1986 he landed with close associates in
Bombay/Mumbai, where he dwelt for six months as the guest of an Indian
sannyasin friend at his large estate in Juhu suburb, using the hall with a
capacity of 200 persons as a base for giving daily talks and greeting returning
disciples. The Indian government settled the old tax evasion charges for just $3
million (USD) by confiscating certain Rajneeshee assets, and on Jan. 4, 1987
Rajneesh returned with his entourage to his six acre ashram in Poona,
something he had vowed never to do. Here in spruced-up, comfy quarters
Rajneesh ruled a renewed, more subdued, little fiefdom as a shrunken number
of old sannyasins outnumbered by new sannyasins made their way back to India
again and expanded the ashram's land holdings. The Bhagwan lectured twice daily,
though his old illnesses and the toll of drug use led increasingly to cancellation of
talks by 1988. Some observers think a bit of the life had gone out of Rajneesh in
being denied the chance to fulfill his utopian dream anywhere else in the world, and
now things were more strict at Poona. Uday Mehta relates how the concerned local
residents and police had joined together to constrain activities at the Poona II ashram,
in the form of "ten conditions," otherwise Rajneesh and company would have to
leave: "1) Daily discourses of only 2 hours and five meditations of one hour each. 2)
Discourses to be open to police officers and men accompanying them. 3) The
discourses must not be 'provocative' and against any other religion. 4) The number of
foreigners residing in the ashram to be restricted to 100 and their names to be
informed to the police, as and when asked. 5) The number of [non-residential]
foreigners visiting the ashram not to exceed 1,000. 6) No member of the ashram or
visitor to be allowed to carry fire arms. 7) Consumption of drugs and liquor
prohibited on the ashram premises. 8) Smoking of cigarettes during the discourses to
be banned. 9) Visitors and members of the ashram prohibited from indulging in any
'obscene' behavior in or outside the ashram. 10) Police officers to have the right to
visit the ashram any time of the day and night." Writes Mehta: "The fear of being
pushed out of Pune took its toll of the Bhagwan, who became just a shadow of his old
self." (Modern Godmen in India, p. 126) When Rajneesh and the sannyasins soon
defied a few of these, such as holding longer meditations and discourses, and
bringing in more daily visitors than the 1,000 maximum, a big brouhaha ensued, with
Rajneesh resisting police arrest in the middle of the night and causing a stir with the
government, which allowed him to bend those particular rules.
On Nov. 6, 1987, in a public talk Rajneesh announced something new about his
poor health: he claimed, all the way to his deathbed, that Christian fanatics in the
U.S. government had stealthily poisoned him with thallium and exposed him to
radiation while he was in jails in the USA. Former early disciple Christopher Calder
hotly disputes this, in an article I have quoted in full much further below in this
webpage. But here is a brief excerpt: "The rumor [started by Rajneesh and promoted
by disciples] that Rajneesh was poisoned with thallium by operatives of the U.S.
Government is entirely fictional and contradicted by undeniable fact. One of the
obvious symptoms of thallium poisoning is dramatic hair loss within seven days of
exposure. Rajneesh died with a full beard and no exceptional baldness other than
ordinary male pattern baldness at the top of his head [which he'd had since his early
adulthood]. Radiation poisoning, another fictional cause of his illness, also causes
dramatic hair loss. The symptoms which may have led Rajneesh's doctors to suspect
poisoning are common symptoms of dysautonomia caused by Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome [which, along with intense chemical sensitivity / autoimmune dysfunction,
Calder believes Rajneesh suffered from much earlier in his life]. Those symptoms
can include ataxia (uncoordinated movements), numbness, standing tachycardia
(rapid heart rate upon standing), paresthesia (sensations of prickling and itching),
nausea, and irritable bowel syndrome, which causes one to alternate between
constipation and diarrhea. All of his negative physical and mental symptoms were
severely compounded by his own self-induced nitrous oxide poisoning and heavy
Valium use. The only proven cases of illegal poisoning related to Rajneesh were
carried out by Rajneesh's own sannyasins."
Swami Anand Parmartha, a longtime faithful disciple of Rajneesh/Osho, has
affirmed his Master's longtime use of nitrous oxide (but doesn't think it detracts from
Osho's enlightenment); in his article, "Osho in the Dental Chair" (at
www.sannyasnews.org/sannyasnews/Articles/OshoDentalChair.html#Anchor-
49575), Parmartha also states: "I do not think the evidence that Osho received
thallium is very convincing, the symptoms do not really match those Osho was
experiencing. The 'official' line is, and he himself seemed to believe, that he had been
poisoned by thallium. However Osho seemed really quite well between late 1985 and
1987, in Greece, and was in fairly good shape in the Himalayas, the world tour, and
in Bombay for almost two years. Any in-depth biographer has surely to note that
Osho began complaining again of his symptoms in 1987, just when he would have
been reunited with his dental chair. Osho's 'symptoms' ... during late 1980 and 1981,
long before any claim that the US government had poisoned him, are also consistent
with a degree of nitrous oxide poisoning." But Parmartha is more likely to think that
Rajneesh's longstanding diabetes and his asthma, dating back to his early adulthood,
could easily have been the main causes of his bodily demise.
It should be mentioned here, too, that pro-Osho author "Sam"/Paritosh, on the
basis of allegations from Osho himself in Sept. 1985 and some of the disciples,
thinks that Rajneesh's crazed secretary Sheela and her evil sidekick Puja, who
poisoned so many other people, may have sickened him by poisoning his milk-
cow at Oregon. (See Life of Osho, pp. 229-31) But why should Rajneesh later
publicly blame his own appointee Sheela when he could re-direct the blame to the
Reagan administration and thereby play persecuted martyr to fullfill his
longstanding paranoiac tendencies?
In the early Summer of 1988, Rajneesh introduced two strange new meditations. 1)
The really intense Mystic Rose meditation entailed a full week of forced laughing
for three hours daily, then a full week of forced crying for three hours daily, then a
week of silent witnessing. 2) The hour-long No Mind meditation first stage is to
close the eyes, let the body jump, recline, pace, sit, kick, or whatever and speak, sing,
cry, shout, scream, or mumble complete gibberish: "allow yourself to express
whatever needs to be expressed within you. Throw everything out, go totally mad. Go
consciously crazy." Second stage is sitting erect, still, silent, witnessing as from a
distance all thoughts, etc. Third stage is lying down without any effort or control and
continuing the witnessing. Sam/Paritosh in Life of Osho observes: "Most Osho
meditations look completely crazy from the outside—but the No-Mind probably
looks the maddest. Buddha Hall was like a huge lunatic asylum. Hundreds of people
would be sitting on the floor, ranting and raving to themselves, crooning, clutching
themselves or waving their arms about, while Osho sat there watching impassively.
The Lord of Misrule." (p. 217)
Most of the hours of Rajneesh's days were spent lying in the double-curtained
darkness of his room, his "cave" as he called it, with the air-conditioning turned down
as usual to frigid temperatures. Rajneesh's longstanding preference for cold
temperatures may have had to do with an overheated kundalini condition with
his vital energy.
His main helpmates at this point were members of the power bloc he had formed in
the previous two years to rival Sheela and her gang. Living with him at Lao Tzu
house, they included his doctor, Swami Amrito, formerly Devaraj (Dr. George
Meredith), who, having thrice nearly died from Sheela's gang's poisonings in 1984-5,
became the chief spokesperson at Poona II; a British woman, Ma Deva Anando
(Susan Hafley), the Foundation's legal secretary, Rajneesh's favorite "medium" and
his primary caretaker at this point, Anando having replaced Vivek; his cook Nirgun
(Rosemary Hamilton); his editor, the Australian Maneesha James (with him since
1974, under the name "Juliet Forman" she later authored a trilogy of pro-Osho books
for the Foundation); and the formidable Paris-born millionairess, Prem Hasya
(Francoise Ruddy), from the so-called "Hollywood group" who were major players in
the financing of the Oregon development and boosting its "snob appeal" to lure in
other rich benefactors and disciples. (Then married to Dr. George, Hasya was
formerly the wife of Al Ruddy; they produced "The Godfather," a movie Rajneesh
liked, and she was promising to make a film on Rajneesh.) Hasya had taken Sheela's
place as executive assistant to Rajneesh and was the one who arranged the attempt to
sneak him out of the USA. Hasya had brought close to the guru one Anand Jayesh /
Michael O'Byrne, a very rich young real estate mogul from Canada and then
Phoenix, Arizona (where he was heavy into the Arica cult). Jayesh only came to the
guru in Dec. 1984 but in less than a year became Rajneesh's right-hand man.
Jayesh would be selected by Rajneesh to head the Inner Circle and the Osho
International Foundation in Poona after Rajneesh’s passing and, as we shall see, over
the last 20 years Jayesh has functioned as the hidden power behind the empty throne
of the continuing Osho commune.
In Dec. 1988 a series of heart attacks nearly killed Rajneesh. Around this time he
declared that he should no longer be called "Bhagwan": "I hate the word... I don't
want to be called Bhagwan again. Enough is enough. The joke is over." He now
claimed that he was actually hosting the Buddha's "Maitreya
consciousness"(another bad joke), hence he was henceforth to be known as
"Rajneesh Gautaman the Buddha" (Star Telegram, Dec. 29, 1988). Of course
Rajneesh announced this new title with the usual self-inflated hyperbole, talking
about how J. Krishnamurti had decades earlier refused the Maitreya Buddha's spirit,
but now that supernal Maitreya consciousness was choosing Rajneesh as the
enlightened instrument. Alas, just four days later Rajneesh claimed to have ejected
the Buddha's austere spirit and so he officially gave himself an old title, "Zorba the
Buddha," to honor his own sensual, pleasure-mongering tendencies. In Feb. 1989, he
once again changed names, accepting "Osho" as his designation from his
favorite medium, Ma Anando. In Sep. 1989 he officially shortened his name from
"Osho Rajneesh" to simply "Osho," and had all copyrights changed to this name.
These rather self-obsessive re-namings were evidently at least in part intended for PR
"image cleansing" purposes, to make the public forget his sordid past as
Rajneesh, the guru of sex, money and violent elite followers.
On that name "Osho," Anando recalled that Rajneesh had earlier said it was a title to
refer to Japanese Zen masters. The ashram announced that "Osho" came from a
Japanese term meaning "the whole man." Osho said it was also "a healing sound" and
derived from William James' term "oceanic experience." He remarked, "Oceanic
describes the experience, but what about the experiencer? For that we use the word
'Osho.'" Along that line, disciple Yoga Chinmaya stated: "An O in the beginning and
end denotes two zeros (voids), and between two voids, 'sh' means be silent."
In 1988, Rajneesh, now almost always dressed in fancy black robes and hats, flashing
lots of jewelry ("dressed up like a Christmas tree," quipped one author), began to
primarily focus his talks on Zen and various Zen masters, when not raving about
slave religion, world apocalypse, and the possibility of moving his commune to
Russia. Fully 28 books were compiled out of these Zen talks, which contain a lot
of useful wisdom yet too often have more to do with Rajneesh's own views than
anything discussing authentic Zen.
Sam/Paritosh in Life of Osho reports: "Osho gave his last lecture—the final talk in
The Zen Manifesto—in April '89, and after that he was never to speak in public
again. For the monsoon months, while the storms raged over Poona, he never left
Lao Tzu House. Reading between the lines I get the idea he was doing more and
more alarming quantities of nitrous oxide—having more and more 'dental sessions'
as they called it in the ashram. For Osho had his own dental 'surgery' in his house: a
deluxe dentist's chair in a room walled entirely in mirror; it must have been like
sitting in a jewel, with everything reflected to infinity. His tripping room. Perhaps
nitrous oxide was the only thing that kept the pain at bay. During one such session he
became convinced that his death was very close; and said that henceforward he was
coming to sit silently with everyone each night in Buddha Hall. This he did, and
for those last months evening satsang was a regular feature at the ashram. Osho
would sit in his chair and have the musicians play, louder and louder, wilder and
wilder, more and more discordant; then abruptly signal for the music to stop. The
ensuing silence would build up and up, until it was almost solid. Then he would have
the musicians start to play again, beating out the tempo with his hands and slowly
working up, like some demonic conductor, towards another crescendo... repeating the
whole performance two or three times, and perhaps providing a final encapsulation of
his Tantra: the royal road to silence lies through noise. For Osho could do no more.
Walking at all was becoming increasingly difficult, and by the end of the year his
doctor [Amrito] was looking after him full time. Only rarely did he see his secretary,
and then for no more than ten minutes at a time. 'I used to wake him up at 6.00 p.m.'
says [Ma Prem] Shunyo. 'He took a shower, came to Buddha Hall, and then by 7.45
p.m. he was back in bed.' (p.233-4)
In a strange twist to a strange life, in late 1989 Osho suggested that one or more
audience members at the evening gatherings (now collectively known as the White
Robe Brotherhood) were, he claimed, afflicting him with some type of evil magic.
Appointed disciples hunted at length but in vain to find the "culprit" among the
white-robed ashramites.
Finally the end came: less than a year after taking his final name and nine months
after his last discourse, the 58-year old Osho died from heart-failure at 5 p.m. on
January 19, 1990, in the presence of Jayesh / O'Byrne and Amrito / Dr. George.
They heard their guru's fearless, even nonchalant final intentions for the community
and then his last words. His transition beyond the pained body was heart-fully
celebrated by some 10,000 beloved friends. Amrito tearfully delivered a lovely
eulogy to everyone, followed that night by a procession of weeping, laughing,
singing, dancing and meditating sannyasins coursing their way alongside the
body of their master through Poona's squalor to the riverside burning ghat for the
cremation.
Rajneesh had occasionally expressed suicidal thoughts starting in the mid-1980s.
In fact, one of his ways of manipulating followers was to declare that he would leave
the body unless they made some new sacrifice or donation for his sake. But it seems
the heartache finally was too much, and perhaps not just due to the physical heart-
attacks or the purported "evil magic." Just 40 days earlier, on Dec. 9, 1989, a few
dozen Poona sannyasins conducted a hushed, secret nighttime cremation of the
remains of his former close companion Vivek (Christena Woolf; late in life known
as Ma Prem Nirvano). She had fallen from Rajneesh's grace some years earlier due to
mood swings apparently due to a bipolar manic-depression condition. By 1986 she
had been replaced in her major role as Rajneesh's personal caretaker by Ma Anando.
That same year she left Rajneesh's "World Tour" to go to Bombay with a new
German boyfriend, though she later came back to live near Rajneesh for periods of
time at Poona. Upon her death, Rajneesh and the commune stated that, suffering from
hormonal-caused depression, she had committed suicide with an overdose of
sleeping pills in a Bombay hotel several days before her 40th birthday and
Osho's 58th birthday. She was romantically involved with Jayesh at the time, and,
at the behest of Rajneesh, also in the final week of her first-ever group-process at the
commune, the Mystic Rose, having avoided these groups for many years and now
hardly participating at all in the Mystic Rose. For someone with manic-depressive
illness, the Mystic Rose process with its week of laughing three hours daily and
then an intense week of crying (before the final week of witnessing) would be
psychologically quite dangerous.
But maybe a big part of the reason for Vivek's ostensible suicide is that she was sick
at heart over everything that had happened, so many disappointments, so many
dreams dashed. Satya Bharti Franklin, a close friend of Vivek from the early years,
reflected that Rajneesh's "casual responses to her death made me more wary of him
than ever. His only known comment on the suicide-death of a woman who'd been his
loyal companion and disciple for over a decade and a half was that Vivek had always
been manic-depressive.... It [the evident suicide] was obviously an awkward situation
for Bhagwan to have to deal with [given how it might reflect on him and the
psychotherapeutic efficacy of his commune], but a bit more compassion on his part
seemed to be in order as far as I was concerned.... Unlike other ashram deaths over
the years, no community-wide celebration took place on the occasion of Vivek
'leaving her body.' Within days it was as if it had never happened.... Vivek's death
disturbed me immeasurably. One more cover-up.... A lame justification (manic-
depression) for an unfortunate event that might have opened up lines of inquiry into
what the hell Bhagwan was up to, and why. I didn't like it one bit." (Promise of
Paradise, pp. 345-6) (Note: on Vivek's troubled last years, see the remarks of
Anthony Thompson on Nov. 30, 2009 based on emails from key principals, and a
thread of other comments on the subject at sannyasnews.org/now/archives/466.)
May the souls of Osho, Vivek and all others be in tremendous PEACE and in great
LOVING HARMONY.
It is perhaps fitting to close this biography section with a sweet, lofty message uttered
by Osho near his earthly life's end, quite different in tone from some of the nihilism
he was spouting the last few years on no-self and impersonal nothingness:
"If you have loved me, I will live with you forever. In your love, I will live. If you have
loved me, my body will disappear but I cannot die for you... Even if I am gone I know
you will search for me. Yes, I can trust you will hunt for me in every stone and flower,
in every eye and star... And I can promise you one thing: if you hunt for me, you will
find me—in every star and every eye—because if you have really loved a Master, you
have moved into eternity with him. The relationship is not of time; it is timeless.
There is going to be no death. My body will disappear, your body will disappear—
that will not make any change. If the disappearance of the body makes any change, it
simply shows that love had not happened. Love is something beyond the body. Bodies
come and go, love remains. Love has eternity in it—timelessness, deathlessness."
(Osho, The Divine Melody #10)
===================

The Ongoing Osho Scene

Rajneeshpuram was closed down by the U.S. authorities in Fall 1985 and eventually
sold off in 1991 by the Rajneesh Foundation to a wealthy American, Dennis
Washington, for an acceptable price ($4 million) to pay off the Rajneeshees'
creditors. In 1998, the ranch was deeded to a Christian group who turned it into a
youth camp for Bible study, rather ironic, given Rajneesh's loathing for
Christianity. Meanwhile, the nearby hamlet of Antelope, Oregon was given back to
its traumatized residents in late 1985. One Rajneeshee at the legal proceedings had
the audacity to tell them to their face, "You still don't get it, even after all this
time! It's just a joke. It's all just been a big joke," in the amoral, rationalizing
and condescending tone typical of Rajneesh and his movement to abdicate all
responsibility and accountability.
All but a few of Rajneesh's Rolls Royces were sold off (most weren't fully paid for
anyway) to a Texas car dealer, and the remaining vehicles were sent to Rajneesh in
India. One correspondent has informed me about the Rolls Royces (in June 2016):
"My father was one of those who invested in them, and can state from first hand
experience that the rolls-royces were owned by a separate trust fund. My father's
share in the fund got repaid in full, with a small profit, when the ranch in Oregon was
closed." This was the first time i've heard this kind of statement.
Far more abundant are the stories of big financial losses by devotees from whom
millions of dollars were extracted as "donations" over the previous four years,
extracted so relentlessly by Sheela, Sushila (Susan Wallach), Arup (Maria
Gemma Kortenhorst), Maria Mori, and a few other top-dogs. In parts 16-17 of
The Oregonian 20-part July 1985 series, many details and instances are adduced for
such heavy-pressure extraction methods, giving the lie to Sheela's longstanding
claim, "We don’t solicit funds at all." (The Oregonian Part 17 states: "Former
sannyasins and others said that Sheela, Rajneesh and members of the Rajneeshee
elite have used a variety of methods to separate wealthy sannyasins from their
money, property and jewelry. 'Under the guise of enlightenment, love and
spirituality, they really have a scam to pull in people's money,' said Debra D. Olson,
[...] a sannyasin known as Amrit Debra until she left the movement in 1983. 'To me,
it's like the ultimate karmic crime.' At their most subtle, the fund-raisers link
donations to personal surrender and devotion to the master. At the other end of
the spectrum are the hard-sell sessions, liberally laced with cognac and promises
of private darshans with the guru himself.")
The USA and European movement thereafter had to take a much lower public
profile, given all the bad press as more and more disturbing details about the
dysfunctional cult came to light. Disillusioned former members were now "telling
all" to U.S. law enforcement officers, reporters and journalists. Several
revelatory books would be published over the next few years laying out far more
details.
But back in India new developments led by Jayesh/O'Byrne and his team
strongly revived the Osho "brand" and allowed Oshoites to come out more
visibly.
Rajneesh's Poona II ashram grew from 6 to 40 acres from 1986 to the late 1990s, and
in the 1990s had become known as Osho Commune International, "the most Western
and opulent of all ashrams in India," as author Roger Housden saw it. After Rajneesh
expressed growing concern over the global HIV/AIDS crisis, the open promiscuous
sex and frequent nudity of Poona I was abandoned at Poona II in exchange for a
somewhat more demure lifestyle, if you could ever call a Rajneeshee gathering
"demure." And that's how it stayed after his passing, lest Poona II incur the wrath of
local Indians as it had done from 1974-81.
Rajneesh/Osho's residence before he dropped the body was a house on the ashram's
expanded grounds. This is where his remains were interred, and it was soon
transformed into a stately white marble Samadhi [Rest] shrine, where many of the
faithful have often come to meditate on his continuing presence. The following words
were inscribed on his shrine: "Osho: Never born, Never died, Only visited this Planet
Earth from Dec. 11, 1931 - Jan. 19, 1990."
A lot of new construction occurred in the 1990s. Big air-conditioned black marble
pyramids for group meetings were built across the road from the original Poona
ashram. A large, black-marble swimming pool was sunk. The old waste-land in the
middle of Koregaon Park was extravagantly converted into 12 acres of lush gardens.
A New Age university campus arose to complement the luxury spa environs. With its
combination of sensual partying and meditative introspection amidst such posh
design, several journalists commented that the place far more resembled an American
southwest New Age resort (along the lines of something one might find in Palm
Springs, Sedona, or even Las Vegas) than it resembled either an Indian ashram or a
1960s-style rebel-hippie commune.
Though Osho pointedly remarked numerous times from at least 1985 onward that he
would leave no successor, in the last year of his life, he did appoint a core of close
disciples to take care of his work after he had left the body. The earlier-cited
"Osho Biography" webpage explains: "Osho himself chose the 21 members of this
inner circle who could contribute in the administrative work and who had different
areas of expertise. This committee was to make decisions unanimously. Members of
the inner circle were for life, only to be replaced after death by the remaining
members. After a while, the required unanimity making quick action impossible
according to some, a group of 6 people formed within the Inner Circle, called
'The Præsidium,' which, over time, became decisive in policy making; this led to
struggles within the inner circle whereupon many members left."
In fact, within about ten years the Inner Circle would no longer exist as such, only the
Præsidium had decision-making power, thereby disfranchising unhappy former
members of the Circle. This Præsidium, we have learned, was led by the
aforementioned young Jayesh / Michael O’Byrne, along with (for some years until
she left) Prem Hasya / Francoise Ruddy, his sometime lover, the one who personally
introduced him to Rajneesh and brought him right inside the new circle of power in
1985 because of his business acumen. Canadian journalist Ric Dolphin, in a
revelatory article on Jayesh/O'Byrne for the Feb. 1997 issue of Saturday Night
magazine (archived at www.n0by.de/2/rst/jayesh.htm), based on conversation with
D'Arcy O'Byrne, Michael's younger brother, writes of the successful attempt to
rehabilitate the Osho/Poona brand after the guru's death. "Jayesh and Hasya acted
as a sort of diplomatic front line, wining and dining Indian government officials,
smoothing over visa difficulties for Western sannyasins, and touring the globe to
raise cash and repair Rajneesh's tattered reputation." Jayesh and Hasya's PR
campaign worked wonderfully well to erase the memory of Rajneesh and put the now
"hallowed" name Osho on the map.
Reporter Dolphin finds that Jayesh/O'Byrne, while wielding immense organizational
power over the international Osho movement, is very reclusive, keeping a low profile
in terms of the Poona II scene. Instead, when not out courting favor with VIPs and
the international press on behalf of the movement, he has spent most of his time over
the years luxuriating in an expensive suite at Bombay's 5-star Oberoi hotel. (He
narrowly missed three times being killed by the dreadful terrorist attack on that
building on Nov. 26, 2008.) But Dolphin reports in 1997 what growth and financial
success the reinvigorated Poona II community had achieved within just several years
of Osho's passing, thanks to the efforts of Jayesh and the rest of the Præsidium:
"The obsessively secretive, Marlboro-smoking [and liquor-drinking] O'Byrne
has nurtured a phoenix. Aided by a team of middle-aged and mostly Western
professionals, O'Byrne has built Osho Commune International into a
multimillion-dollar organization. Poona II, as the commune is known, isn't exactly
what we think of as a commune. It looks like an Arizona resort, and even has a
swimming pool and fitness facilities. Still, the thrust is enlightenment, Rajneesh style,
which involves all sorts of meditations and therapies and New Age stuff at the
'Multiversity'—Craniosacral Balancing, Primal Deconditioning, Psychic Massage—
most of it for sale at very Western prices. During the November-to-March peak
season, there are as many as 8,000 people on a given day at Poona II. They're
German and American and Japanese and they pay anywhere from forty dollars for a
ninety-minute session to $5,000 for a three-month training course. The Multiversity's
per diem has been estimated at $80,000 by the London Independent, although the
commune denies it. But if you believe the commune's official annual attendance
figure of 100,000, and the average-money-spent-on-commune sum of $1,300, the
annual revenue taken in can be estimated at anywhere from $50 million to in
excess of $100 million. Most of this seems to be gravy. The upkeep of the
mortgage-free commune, I am told, is taken care of by the gate proceeds—80 cents a
day for Indians, $1.60 for non-Indians—and no-one is paid except for the Indian
labourers. (Indian labour costs about a dollar a day.) The commune itself is the
worldwide spiritual headquarters for Osho Commune International. There are
[said to be] 563 Osho Centers in sixty-four countries—including one in Vancouver
and two in Montreal. The Osho Centers are autonomous and self-supporting. They
pay Osho Commune International for the books (650 titles produced and translated
into forty-two languages on site in Poona) and other materials such as audio tapes
(3,000 hours in English, 3,000 hours in Hindi). The books and audio tapes, as well as
1,700 hours of video tapes, are also sold through various distributors around the
world, including in the emerging markets of Russia and China." (Ric Dolphin,
"Michael O'Byrne," Saturday Night, Feb. 1997)
Some of those numbers have grown since Dolphin wrote his long article back in
1997. Yet, as will be argued below, whereas sales and other revenues may have
increased, it's not at all clear that the Osho movement has nearly the number of
members claimed, for this is something about which they've routinely lied in the
past.
Sam/Paritosh's Life of Osho, written around the same time as Dolphin's article,
likewise discusses the success of Poona II, though he lamented the transformation of
the old rebel spirit of Poona I into something so slick, "a precocious version of the
leisure industry": "The formula has proved a winner. Every winter [Nov. to March,
India's mildest season] Koregaon Park is packed with far more people than were ever
there when Osho was alive. In fact in terms of pure numbers, the ashram must be
close to becoming the main tourist attraction in India. But what's really going on
there? Is this Osho's vision of a contemporary religious university, somewhere to
rival the Nalanda or Khajuraho of India's past—or is it, in fact, a blatant sell-out?
Oddly enough, it's really difficult to tell. On the one hand, without the Poona ashram
it's difficult to think that sannyas as a movement would have survived at all. Not only
has the ashram continued to pump out the books and tapes and videos, the groups and
trainings, it has functioned as a central meeting place for sannyasins from all over the
world. The sheer numbers of sannyasins and the variety of countries they are coming
from is something you can only grasp in Poona.... What's more, there's a whole new
generation of sannyasins. As he lay dying Osho had thrown his nets far wider than
ever before. In an interview his last secretary stated 'Osho said that he wanted the
commune to be multi-dimensional, much more so than in Poona One where the focus
was mainly on therapy.' He said, "Have everything here – whatever people want,
have it here."' [...] There's no denying the fact that the ashram still works. It still does
the same old thing. It sets you apart, and then it begins to mirror you. Somehow it
highlights, even caricatures, your reactions. It makes you witness.... Well, that's the
positive side of it. But as you wander round Multiversity Plaza, with its pyramids and
peacocks and electric waterfalls, there's no mistaking the whiff of something rotten in
the air. This is the successful cult; this is the streamlined religious corporation [with
corporate backing from Coca-Cola, et al.].... The set-up is basically fascistic." (pp.
240-1)
Over time, the Osho Commune International would be increasingly transformed by
Jayesh, Amrito, Anando and others on their Præsidium team (the "fascists," as
disfranchised outsiders saw them) into an aesthetically lovely but rather "de-Osho-
ized" Osho Meditation Resort introspective luxury spa, run by their Zurich-based
Osho International Foundation (OIF) (www.Osho.com) (the international
publishing division of OIF is based in New York). Most of the formerly ubiquitous
big Osho photos have been taken down.
A protest occurred within the Osho movement, having a lot to do with the cultural
differences between Indians and the Præsidium's almost exclusively non-Indian
leadership. The former charged that foreigners had taken over Poona II via a coup.
The faction represented mainly by Indian followers prominently included
Swami Chaitanya Keerti, longtime editor of Osho Times magazine; and Ma
Yoga Neelam, Rashneesh/Osho's India secretary, one of his caretakers when he
returned to Poona II, and also an original member of the 21-member Inner
Circle. This faction grew more and more displeased with the Præsidium's
iconoclastic removing of hundreds of Osho images from the Poona grounds and from
publications, and the increased Westernizing of the Poona site into a high-priced
clubby resort atmosphere. The two factions were also divided over the role of the
guru, the role of devotion vs. meditation, and the status of Rajneesh's old Buddha
lecture hall (Jayesh and co. demolished it to erect something else). Last but not least,
the Indians were outraged by Jayesh's "imperialist exploitation" from as early as
1992 in trying to trademark Osho's name and gain control of all his books and
art and access to his teachings and meditation techniques.
So the primarily-Indian contingent left to expand and promote their own less
lucrative operation, Osho World, up at the old Delhi Rajneesh center, with numerous
satellite centers, led by Swami Atul Anand and run by the Osho Friends
International, or OFI (www.Oshoworld.com). Predictably this triggered lawsuits
by Jayesh's Osho International group. Relations between the two groups soured as,
for instance, reported by Amy Waldman for the NY Times in Dec. 2002 and the
Oshoite "SannyasNews" site in 2009 (www.sannyasnews.com/Pages/Jayesh.html)
and as numerous other Osho internet chat-sites will attest. Legal battles ensued over
who had the rights to the "Osho" name and profits from book/media sales and use of
Osho's many meditation techniques in the USA and elsewhere. Jayesh's Osho
International group held the upper hand for years, and at various points banned many
Osho sannyasins, even Ma Neelam (who came to Rajneesh in 1969) and other
longtime Indian disciples, from visiting their master's Samadhi shrine at Poona.
Then a U.S. federal court ruling in July 2009 defeated Jayesh's legal hold, at
least in the USA, as Neelam triumphantly reported: "Osho's name and his
meditations are now free from the fetters of trademarks. After a ten year long battle
between OIF (Osho International Foundation) Zurich led by Jayesh and OFI (Osho
Friends International) led by Swami Atul Anand, Osho Friends International has
won.... Now the trademarks of Osho and his meditations in the US finally stand as
cancelled. [...] Jayesh should take constructive steps to get all the Osho trademarks
cancelled in other countries wherever he has applied. I am sure thousands of Osho
lovers would welcome this momentous decision and be delighted to seeing Osho and
his meditations now freely available all over the world. It is equally important to
recognize that this would save enormous amount of energy, time and money that he
has been wasting all along. The same can be used in doing such things as organizing
more and more meditation events around the world, publishing more books, specially
the unpublished ones which are not available in the market; making Osho’s name, his
photographs, his words, his meditations as widely available as possible. That will be
the positive way, the Osho way, of protecting the purity of Osho and his vision."
Despite the years of feuding between the two groups, Jayesh's highly profitable
merchandizing machine has continued to churn out "Osho" products worldwide
in diverse languages, many consumers not even realizing that the heavily
whitewashed Osho books, DVDs, CDs, magazines, etc., feature the notorious
cult-leader formerly known as Rajneesh. As Dennis McCafferty pointed out in a
short piece for Salon.com, "Old Bhagwan, new bottles," (Oct. 20, 1999), subtitled "A
'new' spiritual guru turns out to have a past that includes lavish spending, orgies and
bacterial terrorism": "To date, the published works of Osho have left readers with
little clues as to his former identity. So consumers may not know that they're actually
plunking down their cash for rehashed ramblings from the late Rajneesh, the
controversy-plagued spiritual leader kicked out of the United States after his legal
woes heated up in the mid-1980s. [...] In the current, uncorrected proofs of the three
new St. Martin's titles, for example, the brief 'About the Author' section makes no
mention at all of Osho's prior identity. [...] The photos identify him only as Osho.
[...] Last year, the New York Times featured a puff piece on Osho International's
Lexington Avenue office digs, describing Osho as a now-deceased Indian mystic and
making no reference to Rajneesh. A 1998 travel piece in Yoga Journal describing
the Pune attraction as a 'New Age Xanadu' did connect Osho to the Rajneesh name,
but blithely omitted mention of the salad bars or other unsavory details."
And so it goes. The Indian government, hungry for tax revenues, now promotes
the Osho Poona and Delhi sites as a magnet for tourist income. In the latter
1990s, the foreign press was warmly invited to Poona on junkets sponsored by
Jayesh (putting his former expertise as a real estate developer to very good use).
Predictably the press gushed all manner of praise and hoopla, as archived at the
Osho International website (where the Rajneesh name has been sanitized out of
existence and the former Osho Commune at Poona now known as the Osho
Meditation Resort is being pushed as the ultimate or even "only" one of its kind):
"Some people call it the 'Buddhafield' of an enlightened master. Others say it's the
world's largest spiritual single's club. One thing is certain: the Osho Commune
International—founded nearly 25 years ago by Osho is not your typical Indian
ashram. A New Age Xanadu that attracts thousands of visitors every day, the
commune is a self-contained personal growth conglomerate, offering an astonishing
variety of classes and workshops in everything from organizational development to
tantric sex. And if the courses don't interest you, you can spend your days romping in
the swimming pool, sauna, 'Zennis' courts, and bistro of the commune's 'Club
Meditation'" (Yoga Journal, June 1998). "The Osho Commune, founded in 1974,
claims to be the world's largest growth center for meditation and spiritual growth. It
attracts more than three percent of all foreign tourists to India—more than the Taj
Mahal—and is the most widely visited destination in the country. In January [1997],
celebrations of the 7th anniversary of founder Osho's death attracted record numbers
of visitors. (Asia Magazine). "Osho Commune International is a kind of spiritual park
—the world's largest meditation commune. Every year thousands of people visit this
luxurious commune.... A very comfortable paradise where you can stay a long time
with low-budget hotels nearby and very good food in the Commune, with meditations
free... The atmosphere is really like a fairy tale. A paradise where all your emotional,
bodily and spiritual needs are met. I can advise everybody to visit for a few days and
walk around that beautiful garden where everybody is friendly" (Elle, Holland).
"They have constructed pyramids of marble and a pristine Zen garden. Thousand of
men and women pour through the gate every day, from Europe, America, Australia,
and Japan" (Wall Street Journal). "A vista of gurgling streams, curving paths, and
quiet, shady corners ideal for meditating.... It may be the only community in India
where the tap water is totally safe for foreigners to drink. The grounds are
immaculate..." (Conde Nast Traveler).
It's quite clear that the repackaging of the Poona Rajneesh commune into the
Osho Meditation Resort has been a very successful venture. The "Virtual Tour" at
their website (www.osho.com/Main.cfm?Area=Magazine&Language=English)
shows a beautiful site, with lots of very happy, fun-loving, calm people (when not in
the throes of the heavily cathartic daily morning Dynamic Meditation and other daily
meditations involving an intensely cathartic, chaotic element) immensely enjoying
their rather posh party-resort, whether in meditative solitude amidst the bamboo
thickets or drinking, dancing and rocking out at the disco at night. Few who visit
Poona's OMR, unless they are psychically sensitive, will feel the grossly sensual,
dark, creepy vibes this place once had during the latter 1970s, as numerous
visitors then attested. (See, for instance, the heavily critical 1978 report for Yoga
Journal by India-lover Paul Ramana Das Silbey, which i have reproduced at length
later at this webpage.)
A revealing source of info for the OMR is the Osho International FAQs section
(Frequently Asked Questions) at their website: www.osho.com/Main.cfm?
Area=Magazine&Language=English. Among other things, the FAQs site tells us that
a negative AIDS/HIV test is required for entrance—implying a lot of sexual activity
still ongoing, that OMR "is an environment for adults; it does not have adequate
facilities for children and minors," that 50% of the visitors are there for the first time,
that you will be required to don a maroon robe during the day and white during the
evening meditation, that you can apply to take the vow of "sannyas" (the Osho
version of "renunciation" to become a full-fledged Osho disciple), that foreigners are
charged rather more than Indian nationals, that your overall costs as an international
will be about "600-2,000 USD / 450-1,400 EUR a month for food and lodging,
depending on your accommodation, plus eating out and shopping, and then whatever
courses and workshops you attend at the Multiversity."
==============
The question arises: How big did the Rajneeshism religion become in its hey-day
when Rajneesh/Osho was alive, and how big is the Osho movement today?
Sheela and other top leaders often lied about this in the past, giving one set of
numbers of adherents when wanting to boast of the movement's popularity, power
and prestige, but admitting in documents and other more private forms of
communication that the numbers were much lower. Recall that Rajneesh himself
was repeatedly boasting to reporters by August-September 1985 that he had
fully "one million sannyasins" in his new religion. In fact, as we shall see, it was
likely only about 30,000.
The Oregonian reported in Part One of their 20-part series in Summer 1985: "More
than four years ago, on May 15, 1981, the Indian trust known as the Rajneesh
Foundation issued a news release claiming 300,000 members. In September 1982,
Rajneeshee lawyers claimed 250,000. A month later, Sheela claimed only 200,000 in
documents submitted to the U.S. State Department. At about the same time, Sushila
[a globe-trotting Rajneeshee fundraiser] told the leader of a California meditation
center that the true figure was closer to 100,000 [see below—it was even lower]....
[Yet] The Rajneesh Times claimed 350,000 on Oct. 14, 1983—an assessment echoed
by Sheela in a court deposition on Feb. 27, 1984. Sheela's estimate hit nearly 500,000
last summer [1984] and a solid 500,000 later in the year."
This, of course, was another whopping lie, as Sheela herself would state to
Germany's Stern magazine in Fall 1985 when she and Rajneesh were trading public
accusations after she left. The Oregonian reported in Dec. 1985: "Sheela said the
movement's membership never had been as high as claimed, and certainly never as
high as the 500,000 to 1 million she and Rajneesh had announced. 'In reality,
there are about 30,000 sannyasins in the world, and of course that also includes
those who didn’t resign officially but threw away the mala secretly into the garbage,'
Sheela told Stern."
Surely these were not just empty criticisms by Sheela, for in the early 1980s, the
group's leaders claimed that 600 Rajneesh centers and communes existed worldwide,
but that number had dwindled to just 19 active centers by March 1985, according to
the Rajneesh Foundation's own statement. So, with the calamitous fall and dissolution
of the Rajneeshpuram complex in 1985, the real membership figure was likely far
lower than the 100,000 number confided by Sushila, i.e., more like the 30,000 figure
that Sheela finally admitted to the press. This is further confirmed when we hear of
the numbers of actual Rajneeshees in Switzerland, Germany, and California, three of
the most-populous regions for disciples outside of India and the commune at Oregon.
As stated by The Oregonian in early Summer 1985 even before that dissolution over
the assorted debacles, "The Rajneesh Times reported March 29 [1985] that the
supposedly independent European centers had consolidated into nine communes with
[just] 4,000 residents.... Artur K. Vogel, an editor of Zurcher Tages-Anzieger, a
Zurich newspaper, estimated that there were no more than 800 Rajneeshees in
Switzerland. 'They will tell you they have 10,000 or 15,000 members, but this is an
exaggeration,' Vogel said. Ulrich Muller, 34, of Stuttgart, a former sannyasin who
compiled a computerized membership list of the German movement, said there were
only 4,802 active members in Germany when the Rajneeshees were claiming as
many as 80,000. [...] California long has been a U.S. stronghold for the Rajneeshees.
Sheela, in an Oct. 5, 1982, affidavit, said California had more Rajneeshee activity
than any other state. But there were not more than 1,500 sannyasins in California
even then, including 300 in Los Angeles, said a former sannyasin who helped operate
the centers. With increasing centralization of Rajneeshee activities [at
Rajneeshpuram], the U.S. centers have toppled like dominoes."
Only about 2,500-3,000 neo-sannyasins lived at Rajneeshpuram in Oregon at the
peak in 1983-5. The number had briefly increased to 6,000 during the special summer
festival period in 1982, and swelled to 10,000 the following summer. In 1984,
attendance at the festival soared to about 15,000 on the deliberately spread false
rumors that Rajneesh was dying, but attendance was way down for the 1985 summer
event, jumping up to about 12,000 at the last minute only when it was announced that
Rajneesh would be speaking publicly (a big draw). Shortly after this, of course, the
entire commune crashed in Fall 1985.
Now, more than 20 years after Rajneesh died in 1990, with the Poona group de-
emphasizing the cultic image of Osho, it's unclear how many people could be said
to be Rajneesh/Osho's "disciples" or strict "followers." The two leadership
groups, the Osho International Foundation largely comprised of Westerners, and the
mainly ethnic-Indian Osho Friends International, have succeeded in almost
completely whitewashing Osho's name and legacy and so it's certainly easier to
draw people to Osho's works and the Osho centers without the ugly baggage of the
past. Rajneesh's former heavy borrowing of the J. Krishnamurti phrase
"Freedom from the known" definitely becomes a strategic asset here! The less
people know about the past, the better. Press reports from around the world
indicate countless people are being lured by fancy store displays and diverse media
advertisements into reading the books and hearing/viewing the CDs/DVDs of the
guru's recorded talks on "the only real religion."
To reiterate, that religion is certainly no longer spoken of as "Rajneeshism" as it once
was until Rajneesh himself banned the phrase in the aftermath of terrible crimes by
the Sheela gang. If or when a much-more visible, widespread religious movement
emerges again in the man's name via the labors of his many thousands of
missionaries and salespersons, it will be named some version of "Oshoism." For
publicity purposes, it has now been quite successfully shown that Oshoism is a
much more easily controlled and promoted commodity.
Be advised in advance: the people driving this Osho juggernaut, for both
religious and commercial purposes, are on record as stating that they want to
bring Osho's name and teachings and meditations to as many people as possible
on this planet. They don't take their plans lightly, and that's why it's useful to
set the record straight about just who was this man Rajneesh / Osho. For I
submit that he was neither a true spiritual master fully established in/as the Self
of all selves, nor was he a reliable spiritual guide or adept psychotherapist
promoting genuine freedom.
Certainly there was a lot of wisdom in what Rajneesh spoke and lived, at least some
of the time. But there was also real confusion, stupidity, selfishness, fraud, crime,
and dangerous evil, too. Not seeing the full picture is ignorance.
==================
Resources on Rajneesh:
On the rise and reign of Rajneesh (until Summer 1985), see "For Love & Money," the
book-length 20-part investigative series on Rajneesh and followers by Les Zaitz,
Jim Long & Scotta Callister, based on extensive interview material, for The
Oregonian, beginning on June 30, 1985, at
www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/index.ssf/rajneesh_story_archive.html (see the early
biographical material in Part 2). See, too, Les Zaitz, Jim Long & Scotta Callister's 7-
part followup series for The Oregonian in Dec. 1985, "On the Road Again," and
then the much more recent 5-part series with addenda, by Les Zaitz, "Rajneeshees in
Oregon—The Untold Story," starting April 14, 2011, both of these archived at
www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/.
Another very thorough journalistic investigation of Rajneesh and his movement into
the mid-1980s is Frances FitzGerald, Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through
Contemporary American Cultures, Simon & Schuster, 1986 (the long, informative
section on Rajneeshpuram was originally published in two parts in The New Yorker
magazine, Sept. 22/29, 1986). More scathing is Win McCormack, editor of Oregon
Magazine, in his edited anthology of pieces (mostly written by him) that the
magazine did from 1983-6, including his "Rajneesh Watch" columns, entitled The
Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult that Unleashed the First Act of
Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil, Tin House, 1987/2010. A well-researched short history of
Rajneesh and his movement is Elizabeth Skane's 8-page article on "Osho (or
Rajneeshism)" for Sociology 257, Spring 1999, posted at
religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/rajneesh.html. Much more extensive
analyses of the pros and cons of Rajneesh's personality and leadership dynamics can
be found in the largely excellent collection of essays, Osho Rajneesh & His
Disciples: Some Western Perspectives (Harry Aveling, Ed.), Motilal Banarsidass,
1998, with especially worthy contributions by Ronald Clarke (on Rajneesh's
colossal narcissism), Susan Palmer (on his love of adulation for his "performance"
but his abdication of pastoral responsibility), Carl Latkin (on social control and
intergroup conflict at Rajneeshpuram), and others. See, too, four earlier works: Uday
Mehta, Modern Godmen in India: A Sociological Appraisal, Bombay: Popular
Prakashan Pvt. Ltd. 1993 (Role of Religion in Indian Society, Series 1, A.R. Desai,
Gen. Ed.), pp. 83-153; Susan Palmer & Arvind Sharma (Eds.), The Rajneesh
Papers: Studies in a New Religious Movement, S. Asia Books, 1993; Lewis Carter,
Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram: A Community without Shared Values,
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990; Bob Mullan, Life As Laughter: Following Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. See also work by scholar Judith
M. Fox, Osho Rajneesh (Studies in Contemporary Religion Series, No. 4), Signature
Books, 2002; Hugh Urban, "Zorba The Buddha: Capitalism, Charisma and the
Cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh," for the academic journal Religion, Vol. 26, No.
2, April 1996, pp. 161-182; and an untitled paper by Dr. E.P. Wijnants posted at
soc.world-journal.net/Rajneesh.html (on Rajneesh and his community's failed,
paranoid attempt to enact the Nietzchean "superman" ideal). See Paul Morantz,
"Escape from Rajneeshpuram," Jan. 2011, www.paulmorantz.com/cult/escape-from-
rajeneeshpuram/, by an attorney who locked horns with the Rajneeshees in Oregon.
See articles by journalist Linda Ilene Solomon, "Dance Into Darkness," New Age
Journal, Nov/Dec, 1992; and by journalist Richard Guilliatt, "It Was a Time of
Madness," The Weekend Australian Magazine, June 17-18, 2006, pp. 22-8. An early
critical assessment by a journalist and social activist on the Rajneesh Ashram at
Poona in the mid-1970s is Sally Belfrage, Flowers of Emptiness: Reflections on an
Ashram, Doubleday, 1981. Among the several films on Rajneesh and his community
are an explicit 1980 documentary film on Rajneeshees at Poona, "Ashram," by
former German Rajneeshee Wolfgang Dobrowolny; a very sympathetic and
favorable 1989 film by Australian film maker Cynthia Connop, "Rajneesh:
Spiritual Terrorist," for the ABC TV/Learning Channel, viewable at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSyurKi6FKM; the much more critical/skeptical British
television documentary from 1989, "Scandal," viewable under the title Osho: The
Man Who Was God, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4Ck8pLuyu0; and the revelatory
2010 Swiss film by Philip Delaquis, GURU: Bhagwan, His Secretary & His
Bodyguard, with lots of critical interview material from Sheela and Hugh Milne, long
excerpts viewable beginning at www.dailymotion.com/video/xibw9o_osho-guru-
bhagwan-his-secretary-his-bodyguard-part-2_shortfilms.
Of the numerous less scholarly books—pro, con, and mixed—see, for starters,
Satya Bharati Franklin, The Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Story of the
Perils of Life With Rajneesh, Station Hill Press, 1992 (a well-written, balanced, yet
quite critical view of Rajneesh and his power-mad elites, by a close early disciple
from 1972 until she left Rajneeshpuram in Fall 1985, thus one of the most reliable
reporters from that 13-year crucial period; Jill/Satya was for years the chief editor of
Rajneesh's talks and the actual "ghostwriter" of two of his earliest books in English,
also the author of two early books praising Rajneesh as the great Enlightened One.
NOTE: new copies of The Promise of Paradise are available from Franklin through
Amazon.com). James S. Gordon, Golden Guru: The Strange Journey of Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh, Stephen Greene Press, 1987 (largely critical, by a NIMH psychiatrist
and former disciple). Hugh Milne, Bhagwan: The God that Failed, Caliban (UK),
1986, St. Martin's (USA), 1987 (scathing account by a very early former close
disciple and chief bodyguard and osteopath). Kate Strelley (with Robert San Souci),
Ultimate Game: The Rise & Fall of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, HarperCollins, 1987
(Strelley/Avibha came to Poona in 1975, only 15 years old, quickly invited to be a
top office insider under Laxmi, Deeksha and then Sheela, before leaving the cult in
1982; hers is a quite detailed and remarkably insightful view of communal psycho-
dynamics good and bad at Poona and other Rajneesh communes, and ultimately
reveals that Rajneesh was behind all the games and cons at Poona and Oregon). Sam,
Life of Osho, London: Sannyas, 1997 (candid account by Paritosh/Chris Gray, a
disciple from 1975 on, trying to see all sides of Rajneesh, but heavily rationalizing
some of his failings by seeing him as a left-hand Tantra guru who wanted to "play the
charlatan" so that followers wouldn't worship him; Paritosh's book is online in full at
www.satrakshita.com/Books/Life%20of%20Osho%20by%20Sam.pdf; note that
Paritosh was the main founder of the fairly objective pro-Osho website
www.sannyasnews.com). Charles Wright, Oranges and Lemmings: The Story
Behind Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Melbourne: Greenhouse, 1985 (very critical early
work by a former sannyasin for three years). P.T. Mistlberger, Three Dangerous
Magi: Osho, Gurdjieff, Crowley, UK: O Books, 2010 (well-researched and critical,
though ultimately admiring of the avant-garde, rebel manner of all three figures;
some 220 pages of this 714-page book focus on Osho). Juliet Forman, Bhagwan:
The Buddha for the Future (1988); Bhagwan: Twelve Days that Shook the World
(1989); and Bhagwan: One Man Against the Whole, Ugly Past of Humanity (1990),
Rebel Publishing ("Forman" is the very pro-Osho Maneesha James, Rajneesh's
disciple from 1974 on, and his editor for years after Satya Bharti Franklin was
demoted; this trilogy is the completely white-washed "historical chronicle" requested
of Maneesha by Rajneesh; her first tome covers the Poona I period and much of
Oregon; the second tome Rajneesh's last days in the USA; the third, his "world tour").
Rosemary Hamilton, Hellbent for Enlightenment: Unmasking Sex, Power, & Death
With a Notorious Master, White Cloud Press, 1998 (pro-Rajneesh account from
Hamilton, who was Ma Nirgun, Rajneesh's cook from late 1970s on). Vasant Joshi,
The Awakened One: The Life & Work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Harper & Row,
1982 (the authorized, uncritical early biography of Rajneesh, with no awareness of
the fall from grace before and certainly after the time Joshi wrote). Vasant Joshi,
Osho: Luminous Rebel—Life Story of a Maverick Mystic, Wisdom Tree India, 2010
(Joshi updates and expands his account from the prior book, but takes the devotee's
view of all the controversies, including the idea that the US govt poisoned Rajneesh).
Ma Yoga Laxmi, The Journey of the Heart: A Story of a Disciple with a Living
Master (by Rajneesh's first and longest secretary, from 1968 to 1980, his chief
lieutenant before Sheela took over; the book can be read at
www.satrakshita.be/Books/The_Journey_of_the_Heart.pdf). "Osho Biography"
page at www.satrakshita.be/osho_biography.htm, one of the best multi-media pro-
Osho websites, giving a rich introduction to the life of Rajneesh/Osho, complete with
very early photos of him (as found in Joshi's biography) and links to many videos,
etc. Sue Appleton, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: The Most Dangerous Man Since Jesus
Christ, Germany: Rebel Publ. House, 1987 (gives a favorable view). Jane Stork,
Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom,
Pan Macmillan, 2009 (formerly Shanti Bhadra, Stork's children were sexually
molested in the commune, and she was convicted for two attempted murders; she
views Rajneesh as a con-man). Tim Guest, My Life in Orange: Growing Up With
The Guru, Harvest, 2005 (a poignant autobiographical account of damage done to
children like Guest growing up at various Rajneesh communes; also contains some
good history of the movement); etc. Beyond the several "pro-Rajneesh" websites, see
also critical websites on Rajneesh such as the fairly extensive file of materials
assembled by cult expert Rick Ross at www.culteducation.com/groups/rajneesh.html,
and the long essays by former early disciple Christopher Calder (see substantial
excerpts below).
For Rajneesh's own words/talks, the entire archive is to be found at
http://www.osho.com/library/
=============
MORE CRITICS AND FANS SPEAK OUT ON RAJNEESH
Some followers were initially attracted to Rajneesh as "the Divinely-realized
Shaktipat Guru." But no small amount of his allure was due to his use of hypnotic
techniques, his seductive manner of speech and body language, his deliberately
provocative, outrageous and contrarian speech content, his lurid reputation
from 1968 onward as "the sex guru" (telling people they would become more
spiritual through unrepressed sexual exploration en route to sublimating that energy),
and his later notoriety as "the rich man's guru" (in justifying his accumulation of
93 Rolls Royces, costly designer watches, and other expensive toys).
Many Rajneesh followers, especially of more recent years, may not know the full
details of their teacher's pathology as it emerged over time. And, to repeat, many
Rajneesh disciples do know of these details, yet still love Rajneesh and are extremely
grateful for their time with him and his teachings. We leave readers to sort out for
themselves whatever they wish to believe about Osho Rajneesh. The following
further facts and opinions are data for better assessing the enigmatic
phenomenon that was this man Rajneesh (née Chandra Mohan Jain).
Research psychiatrist James S. Gordon, MD, in the early 2000s serving as chairman
of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(WHCCAMP), interviewed Rajneesh several times and talked with many neo-
sannyasin close disciples over some 15 or more years of deep participation-
observation within the Rajneesh movement, in both India and the USA, from the
early 1970s to at least 1989. James Gordon's involvement in the movement and his
positive views of Rajneesh are far more extensive than he has publicly admitted (as
shown by E. Patrick Curry), thus Dr. Gordon is one of the most interesting and
credible critics of Osho Rajneesh. In his book The Golden Guru: The Strange
Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Stephen Greene Press / Viking Penguin,
1987/8), Gordon has a lot of positive and apologetic things to say of Rajneesh, his
teachings and his techniques.
But Gordon has also emphatically and critically written (in a book-excerpt published
in Utne Reader in March/April 1989): "Rajneesh... failed to live what he knew and
taught. He ignored what he did not care to deal with in himself, tried to silence
or obliterate people or situations or points of view that threatened or
contradicted him. From the time he broke his 'silence' in October 1984, he said
again and again, 'I am just an ordinary man... ordinariness is blessed.... Gods
are projections.' But every day he continued to act more special, more
controlling and godlike, more removed from the flux of life and from his own
and others' ordinary humanity. In the end, Rajneesh became the kind of man,
the kind of religious leader, he had always derided. If indeed his ego had once
dissolved and melted like a drop into the ocean, it seemed over the years to have
renewed and enlarged, and in his isolation it grew gross with his attachment to
power and luxury and position. He became more power-hungry and more
deceitful than any of the politicians he attacked,... more sanctimonious than the
saints he derided. On his [Oregon] ranch, surrounded by armed guards, dressed
up and doped up, imperious and imperial, he resembled Jim Jones far more
than Buddha or Krishna or Jesus. He was unwilling to learn or change, or to
admit that there was anything to be learned or changed." In his book and in a
subsequent article for The Washington Post, Gordon speaks of the "Bhagwan's"
policies of pressured sterilizations of female disciples, and Rajneesh's knowing
tolerance of things like female disciples engaging in prostitution in order to remain
at his commune in Poona, drug running by certain disciples for the same purpose,
and the physical, emotional and verbal violence occurring as an acceptable
technique in the psychotherapy groups held at the Rajneesh ashrams and remote
centers.
In his paper The Narcissistic Guru: A Profile of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Ronald
O. Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Oregon State University,
argued that Osho exhibited all the typical features of narcissistic personality
disorder, such as a grandiose sense of self-importance and uniqueness; a
preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success; a need for constant attention and
admiration; a set of characteristic responses to threats to self-esteem; disturbances in
interpersonal relationships; a preoccupation with personal grooming combined with
frequent resorting to prevarication or outright lying; and a lack of empathy. Drawing
on Osho's reminiscences of his childhood in his book Glimpses of a Golden
Childhood, he suggested that Osho suffered from a fundamental lack of parental
discipline, due to his growing up in the care of overindulgent grandparents. Osho's
self-avowed Buddha status, he concluded, was part of a delusional system associated
with his narcissistic personality disorder; a condition of ego-inflation rather than
egolessness. (This summation of Clarke's findings is to be found at:
www.enotes.com/topic/Osho_(Bhagwan_Shree_Rajneesh)#CITEREFFox2002; the
paper by Clarke is part of the anthology by Harry Aveling, Ed., Osho Rajneesh and
His Disciples: Some Western Perceptions, 1999, pp. 55-89.)
Author Sandra Johansen, a disciple of Rajneesh for six early years (and then a
disciple of advaita teacher Papaji of Lucknow, India), working on a novel that centers
on a figure closely modeled on Osho Rajneesh, has written me several emails in
order to provide me a subtler, richer, and overall far more positive assessment
and appreciation for the "enigma" that was/is Rajneesh. While she agrees with
many of Rajneesh's critics on numerous points of criticism of Rajneesh's flaws, and
even remarks that she thinks Osho "lost" his "enlightenment," she also believes there
is a larger view of the man needing to be seen. From what she writes, it is also
evident to me that Rajneesh's person and his teachings could be easily viewed as
an example of what, to reiterate, i have elsewhere called the "Sensual Ecstatic"
spiritual temperament, which is far more Dionysian than Apollonian in its
characteristics (see my model of the "Twelve Spiritual Temperaments"). With
Sandra's permission i've put together some of her different remarks about her
erstwhile teacher into one passage:
Sandra Johansen writes:
"I believe a lot of what is written by [critics like Hugh Milne, Christopher Calder,
Satya Bharti Franklin, Julian Lee, et al.] is in fact true but there is also a lot about
Osho that would have cast the now deceased 'Sex Guru' in a somewhat more
favourable light.... I personally met Osho on over a hundred separate occasions and I
could not honestly claim to be an expert on him. If nothing else the man was an
enigma and without doubt the most remarkable man I've ever met in my life and I've
had the good fortune to have met a number of remarkable human beings. My rule of
thumb for understanding anyone is how much I understand myself.... The divine spark
that ignites the love in my heart has proven to be all that's needed even when passing
through the darkest of life's valleys. It hasn't always been so but it is thanks in part to
Osho that I am where I am now and if our paths were to miraculously cross again I'd
thank him from the bottom of my heart for those wonderful things he taught me about
what it is to be human.... One of the things I enjoyed about Osho was his acceptance
of who I was as a unique being. He helped me on the way to understanding that God
(dog spelled backwards) had appeared as me and there is nothing more to be done....
He helped me to witness life as a fascinating drama. In return existence has gifted me
at times with a thoughtless state which is neither this or that....
"You know miracles happened around Osho on a daily basis in Poona One. Nothing
cheap like producing watches or holy water. Real miracles like giving eyesight to the
spiritually blind and helping people who were crippled not only to walk but to dance
as well. Really that crazy guy did that just by being who he was.... I watch people put
Osho down and I smile remembering how I watched the toughest of egos melt like
butter in his hands. What a rogue he was. A rogue who could steal your heart with a
gentle word or a smile. He was very much like Lord Krishna in that sense. Gopis
weren't subtle nerve endings they were cowgirls with big breasts who loved to dance
around their master. Osho was having sex with his female disciples. Wow— could he
do that and still be enlightened? Easy. If Osho's in hell I won't mind joining him
because boy did that man know how to throw one hell of a party, bring on the
dancing girls, get the boys in the band to strike up a tune and by god we'll have a
good time. I see it as the most fundamental of life's duties for us to celebrate
existence, for it is indeed true that out of this world that the lotus of enlightenment
grows.
"Osho walked utterly alone. Despite the hulla balloo about his fleet of gleaming
limos he lived very simply. I remember being in his room, it was minimalistic to the
max and as cold as a fridge. He lived in that air conditioned cell for years. When in it
I closed my eyes and my brain lit up like it was plugged into the national grid.... Osho
was in many ways a God Child not a God Man. I loved that about him. That
mischievious playful quality that endeared him to so many. I loved it so much it has
become a part of me.... The old guru idea like the Hindu dream of Yogananda is a
comfortable one, with the wise men cast like benevolent uncles. Osho wasn't your
uncle because he wasn't nice. Yet somehow he understood something of the beyond
which so few even glimpse because they don't want to change. To view him as a
charlatan was easy. Perhaps this is why people like C [Christopher Calder, a very
early disciple turned critic] prefer to see him as such for to see him as the
tremendous, wild, uncontrollable, playful, mind-blowing phenomenon that Osho was
requires guts. It requires setting the judgmental mind aside and just blowing on those
winds of crazy freedom. Most of our fear is tied in with radical change. As a
consequence people tend to want to trash new information and paths rather than
assimilate what's on offer. I once came close to completely letting go of my limited
ego-self forever. I believed that is what I had been searching for but as I drew close
to the edge I faltered and looked back. I saw that I wasn't quite ready to let go of
everything. It was quite an awakening. Guess who brought me there - Osho. He
chuckled and smiled at the shock on my face and then said, 'Very Good.' Sometimes
the experience of spiritual power can be terrifying even if it chuckles.
"In the early days of Poona One many of the people at ground zero were hippies
who'd come to the end of the psychedelic experience and were ready to take a step
towards the thoughtless state which is not an experience but an experiencing. In
many ways Osho was a hippie philosopher but unlike the hippie dream which
capsized in a sea of unsupportable excess his dream worked - up to a point.... Osho
saw a church forming around him and seeing as how he wasn't the churchy type he
got around to demolishing it. What a carry-on ensued, Rolls Royces, Rolex's, let me
feel your chakras darling, hey! why don't we poison the hillbillys?, oh goody lets get
addicted to drugs, no enlightened master ever did that before even though good old
Gurdieff liked his cognac. And then the mother of all stunts: Osho... loses
enlightenment. What a teaching.... Recently a close friend had dinner with a key
player from the [Oregon] ranch and Poona. She left the ranch and was pretty
disillusioned with Osho, she thinks he seriously lost it in Oregon and she would have
been in a position to know as she had a lot of personal contact with him during that
troubling time...."
[Sandra speaks of seeing Rajneesh back at Poona One ashram, during the nightly
darshans:] "There he sat, as patient as a Buddha, listening to people talk about their
chakras opening and all off that nonsense kind of stuff that people think is spiritual.
Of the six years I hung out around him the most common questions that his disciples
asked concerned their love relationships. How can you imagine that feels when
you're crying from the rooftops that aloneness is God and the ones closest to you ask
'Osho, I'm having relationship problems.' I'll tell you how it feels, it feels like get me
another Rolls Royce quick - a red one. I could write a book about it and that's why
I'm in the process of doing just that."
(—here end the composite excerpts from Sandra Johansen)
In a few places in Sandra's emails, not just in the last paragraph cited above, Sandra
has written of the "utter aloneness" and "agony" and "woes" of the enlightened, who
must patiently endure the unenlightened questions and tendencies of their hapless,
hopeless students, and that this is why someone like Osho Rajneesh "acted out" on
occasions with his desires and needs. But as I finally pointed out to Sandra in one
email:
"Closely look at truly stupendous beings like Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, Bhagavan
Nityananda, Anandamayi Ma, Anasuya Devi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and many others
(not just from Hindu tradition). The authentic and really vast, profound
enlightenment they underwent extinguished all problematic sense of separative
self that could feel 'agony' or 'aloneness' (except in the ultimate sense of Kaivalya -
Aloneness / All-Oneness). Rajneesh even had a longtime girlfriend [Ma Yoga Vivek /
Christena Woolf], so he had a close personal beloved with whom he could privately
share his angst. So this entire argument sounds a bit to me like 'special pleading'
[defensive rationalizing] on behalf of someone who wasn't fully free from the
beginning, and who predictably began to have some psychological and emotional
problems rooted in a subtle, insidious sense of self. All the inflation and aggrandizing
of that self (by himself and others) could not stave off a certain 'crash,' and then had
to come the compensations (as you specified in an earlier email: the Rolls-Royces,
etc.).... I know this sounds harsh, but we really need to distinguish between the
fully enlightened on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those individuals like
Rajneesh who have powerful glimpses of real awakening, kensho/satori
experiences (in Zen language), but then fall back into their egoic samskaras
[binding attachments-aversions] and karma-producing tendencies. It seems like
it was just assumed far too early (by both Rajneesh and his followers) that he was
'fully enlightened,' not just a very talented, experienced, insightful, charismatic guy
who'd made some spiritual breakthroughs into fearlessness, exhilaration, etc. And on
the basis of this idea that he was 'fully enlightened' everyone got into some trouble;
though, as you say, all sorts of good things happened too! I could starting naming for
you dozens and dozens of figures similar to Rajneesh who claimed (or had others
claiming) that they were 'fully enlightened,' but none of these have authentically lived
from that Holy Wholesomeness beyond the needy self."
Sandra then responded, writing, in part:
Absolutely great e-mail.... Yes I am pleading on Osho's behalf, he was such an
adorable sweetie pie. Yes, he probably was not fully enlightened. Yet through it all
the enigma of who he was shines through.... One question comes up for me. How do
you determine if a person is enlightened or not?
So I wrote back to Sandra a note of clarification:
>How do you determine if a person is enlightened or not?
Sandra, such a truly enlightened one has dropped the binding samskaras, the
problematic attachments and aversions. The Buddha's models of the "seven
enlightenment factors" and, especially, the "ten fetters" are very detailed sets of
further criteria. Note that fetters 4 and 5 are comprised of "samskaric attachments and
aversions"; the even subtler fetters (6-10) are restlessness, pride/conceit, attachment
to subtle-form (heaven) realms, attachment to nonform realms (i.e., certain states of
consciousness, not awake to Consciousness Itself), and, finally, the root ignorance of
any sense of separate self. Evidently Rajneesh was not free of several of these ten
fetters (e.g., recall his self-inflated narcissistic boasts, the attachments to sex and
expensive toys, the delight in stirring up controversy for the sake of controversy,
elevating himself above earlier sages [Sankara, the Buddha, et al.] by misrepresenting
and criticizing their views, etc.). Going further, where, really, was the truly heroic
self-sacrifice and the love/compassion? (—we've heard of too many incidents
reported by former close disciples of the lack of these traits). And where was that
"all-seeing" "functional omniscience" reported of the Buddha and, more recently, of
Ramana Maharshi, Shirdi Sai Baba, and several others? Maharshi, persistently asked
if he was omniscient, finally responded: "I know what i need to know when i need to
know it"—and numerous, numerous stories of paranormal knowingness have been
reported of him and beings like Shirdi Sai, Amritanandamayi, et al.
----------------
There's more to hear from former disciples and outside observers on the topic of
Rajneesh and his movement....
Listen to former sannyasin Julian Lee, who has written (at www.Celibacy.info) of
Rajneesh's deeply problematic personality and teachings: "Rajneesh/Osho is the
worst thing that ever happened to spirituality in the west. He rode herd over a
mob of naive, idealistic spiritual seekers, but definitely lacked the traits of an
enlightened master. Enlightened masters are not drug addicts. They do not turn
Dharma on its head— like calling 'sannyasins' ["renunciates"] those who adopt
a path exactly opposite of Indian sannyas. They generally don't get arrested and
have their mug shots taken, and ignominiously deported— especially the Indian
saints. (Christ was one notable historical exception to this rule.)... More to the
core, an enlightened master does not encourage his disciples to abandon time-
honored moral norms— especially the dharma concerning sex restraint. Osho
was basically a kind of pimp who used the base desires of average people, along
with their beautiful hunger for real spirituality, to build a financial empire and a
following of worshippers who would do whatever he asked [Emphasis added].
When I think back about that 'baby boomer generation' of sincere spiritual
seekers— all those intelligent, skilled young men and women of European
descent like me— it makes me so sad. What a harvest of potential saints that
was! How much good might have arisen if all those young, idealistic westerners
could have fallen in with a legitimate spiritual master— say, a Vivekananda or a
Ramakrishna. We will never know! I look at them today, and their condition,
and they have missed the boat. Thousands of sincere western seekers were
misled and harmed by the novel teachings of Osho. I have seen many of them in
the aftermath. They always lack the satvic glow that comes from yogic sex
restraint; they look like spent rakes aged well beyond their actual years. Even in
their age— when they might show some spiritual attainment— many still crave
sex, and all the ordinary base things. Despite Osho's 'indulgence technique,' they
never got over sex addiction and lust. This was one of the Big Lies that Osho
told: That by indulging your sex desire you would transcend it. The great sages
of Yoga spoke the real and opposite truth: You get over sexual lust not by
feeding it, but by restraining it until you encounter the higher thrill of
meditative bliss. Meanwhile, it is only that renunciation— the storing of the
sexual energy— that enables one to contact the transcendental bliss. This has
been the message of the sages through all time, including Lord Buddha, who was
frequently ripped off by 'the Bhagwan.' Osho's teachings, though sprinkled here
and there with mystical truths, were dead wrong in the most basic ways, and
ultimately spiritually destructive. The proof is in the pudding. Christ said that
one can know a true Master by the 'fruit' that emerges from him. Through his
disciples Osho gave us moral and family breakdown, drug addiction, a disturbed
childhood for many, and crime— even terrorism. Osho set Yoga back in the
west perhaps hundreds of years. The saddest thing is what happened to all those
children of Osho followers. Osho wanted them to grow up not knowing who
their Fathers were; raised by a mob, with no particular person as Parent. I can't
think of anything much more ignorant, or more cruel. Krishnamurti was right:
Osho was a criminal."
On the topic of sexual activity, former disciples have remarked on the rather large
number of Rajneeshee women who fell to prostituting themselves or were
actually chosen and trained to do so in order to raise money to keep staying at the
Poona ashram and paying for the workshops and therapy groups. A top insider at the
Poona office, Kate Strelley/Avibha observes that "a large number of strippers
working from London’s SoHo to San Francisco’s North Beach were
[Rajneeshee] sannyasins. Later, when the Ranch was established in Oregon, such
sannyasins 'in the world' [involved in the sex trade] would send a part of their wages
to support the [Ranch] work. In those days, women might be told before they left
[Poona] that when they returned to, say, London, they should report to Kalptaru
Center there. This was the main center in England. Upon arrival information about
strip houses, prostitution rings, and other quick ways to make money would be
made available to them, unofficially, of course. Through Ashram programs of
'assessment' and 'programming,' such women would not only be assured of
feeling no guilt about what they were involved in—they could actually feel like a
devadasi, one of the traditional Indian temple prostitutes, dedicated to the service of a
god... and regarded as teachers in the art of love. Constant screening through the
Ashram offices [in India and Oregon] indicated who was best suited for [drug]
runs or likely to accept and thrive in fast-payoff [sex trade] operations not
necessarily condoned by society." (Strelley, 1987, p. 140).
In passing, we note further that when the Rajneeshpuram scene crashed in late 1985,
and Rajneesh wandered off with just a small, select entourage close to him on his so-
called "World Tour" until Poona II was established in Jan. 1987, many Rajneeshees
gravitated to Europe and places like the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza,
where, as some sociologists have noted, they became a bridge between the counter-
culture of the 1960s and the trendy "sex-drugs-rock'n'roll" club/rave party
culture of the 1990s onward. Such activities had begun in force back in 1981-2,
when many Rajneeshees, stranded by their guru's move from India to the USA, had
likewise set up several lucrative discos in Europe.
It was through these party venues that the Rajneeshees were able to smuggle and
sell a lot of drugs, especially the feel-good substances "Ecstasy" (MDMA) and
hashish. Only in the past dozen years has it become obvious to medical science that
even just a few doses of Ecstasy can have lifelong damaging effects on crucial
brain systems involved with producing and regulating neurotransmitters like
serotonin and dopamine, leading later in life to chronic major depression and
anxiety disorders.
-------------
Sociologist Dr. E.P. Wijnants reports: Dave Frohnmayer, the Oregon Attorney
General who had written his Harvard honors thesis on Nietzsche and Lenin, said at
the time [of the huge controversy over Rajneeshpuram in Oregon in the mid-1980s]
that he saw in Rajneesh the same "individual self-aggrandizement," the same
"relativity of truth," the same "disengagement from ethics," that he had
discovered in Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman. Rajneeshism to him was a
teaching that did not encourage compassion, or what the Buddhists called Karuna,
the selfless love for all sentient beings. To Frohnmayer it encouraged guilt-free
indulgence, individual self-aggrandizement, and a smugness about being on a
spiritual path. Given the above, this came to be coupled with a supercilious,
disdainful and, indeed, hostile attitude towards other people. (http://soc.world-
journal.net/Rajneesh.html)
Hugh Milne, formerly Shivamurti, one of Rajneesh's several closest associates in
the 1970s, wrote in 1987 about the callous attitude of Rajneesh concerning his
own ashrams in India and in Oregon: "He had little compassion or regard for the
feelings of others. There were to be many deaths in the ashrams, both from suicide
and from hepatitis and other diseases that could have been cured with proper
medical attention. Rajneesh never gave enough money for food in the ashrams, and
was not concerned when we worked too hard or slept too little." (Milne, Bhagwan:
The God that Failed, 1987, p. 105)
Catherine Jane Stork was formerly Ma Shanti Bhadra. Her children were
sexually abused in the Rajneeshpuram Oregon ashram; Stork herself fell into
such depravity that she tried to kill Rajneesh's doctor with an adrenaline shot
and plotted to kill the U.S. District Attorney. She authored Breaking the Spell: My
Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom in 2009 and that year
notably told one newspaper reporter she believes Rajneesh "trod the ground
somewhere between holy man, showman and conman. 'But I'm sure he didn't give
a stuff about doing good and helping people,' she says. 'He didn't care at all for
his people. They were just a nuisance, they were part of the show.'" ("Escaping
the Bhagwan," The Age [Australia], April 11, 2009, archived at
rickross.com/reference/rajneesh/rajneesh29.html)

-------------
Here is an especially revelatory account of the unwholesome scene around
Rajneesh in Poona in the late 1970s, a few years before it shifted to America. The
account is notable because the observer-participant was not some uptight, anti-Indian
outsider, but a sensual lover of Indian traditions of art, music, devotion and wisdom...
Paul Ramana Das Silbey visited Rajneesh’s Poona One ashram in India in Oct.-
Dec., 1978, which at that time had about 800 residents, and he later expressed
his concerns in a widely-read article, "Meetings with Remarkable Masters," for
the publication Yoga Journal, July-August, 1979, Issue #27, pp. 36-43 (his
section on Rajneesh and Poona One is located at pp. 37-9). Ramana Das was/is
no prude, nerd, or scold, but was a traveling singer of Hindu devotionals, and
later himself a practicing left-hand tantricist.
[Here begins an excerpt from the Ramana Das article, "Meetings with Remarkable
Masters," with, as usual, some italics and boldfacing added by myself:]
After three months at [Neem Karoli] Baba's ashrams and temples in Northern India—
full of his personal directives, guidance, and love, the moment came to travel south.
Part of my trip had been set aside to visit the Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, and I timed
my arrival to match the opening of the October English Camp. Every month, the
ashram runs a 10-day intensive camp, to demonstrate the various Rajneesh
techniques; one month the language is Hindu, the next, English. Although I came to
Poona with a generally positive feeling about Rajneesh from some exposure to his
tapes and books, and some participation in high-energy events at the San Francisco
[Rajneesh] center, the reality that confronted me here caused me to totally reassess
my previous experiences after two or three days.
There are no visitors quarters in the Rajneesh ashram. His popularity has created a
mob scene, forcing most of his disciples and all newcomers to seek housing in the
areas close by the ashram. However, the gates open early and close late, so everyone
has a chance to hear Rajneesh in the morning, experience his meditation techniques
during the day, participate in the ongoing groups (which make up the core of the
teaching), and relax to pseudo-California mellow rock music in the evening.
Upon entering the ashram, I was quietly but thoroughly watched by ashram guards. I
passed through the fortress-like wooden gates, into an entranceway with a huge hotel,
chandelier, and entered the grounds. The disciples, or “sannyasins” as they are called,
who work at the ashram, do so seven days per week and eight hours per day. So,
amongst much bustling around, I found out that in order to speak with Rajneesh, one
must already be a sannyasi or be ready to become sannyasi. In other words, one
can only speak with master if he is part of the master’s group, or anxious to join it.
Since I wasn't that anxious, I simply paid for attendance in the group, and made an
appointment with the staff head who assigns both visitors and sannyasins. Two of
my, groups, the Enlightenment Intensive and Centering, I called "window-dressing"
groups since they seem to be assigned to everyone entering the ashram for the first
time. Both of these were nonviolent groups, designed for a quick experiential "hit," or
for a pleasantly surprising instant effect, an unexpected moment of awareness. Other
groups were purportedly deeply spiritual experiences, like the Zazen and Vipassana
groups. However, the concentration normally required by these two disciplines
seemed to break when the members joined the rest of the ashram to hear Rajneesh
give discourse each morning. But the majority of the groups, such as the one I took
Sarjana or creativity, dealt with energy, how it moved in each person and between
persons.
Rajneesh has become a symbol for "letting go" and exploring all taboos, and I learned
that the "meat and potatoes" of most groups were sex, sensuality, fantasy,
repression, anger and violence—his leaders, his groups and his ashram all
reflected this approach to enlightenment. As for unselfish, unconditional love, it
was a quality and a vibration noticeable only by its lack of manifestation. To quote
from one of the soothing mantras sung each night over and over again to the beat and
melody of the Western ashram house band: 'Nothing is wrong, wrong cannot happen,
wrong cannot exist.' And so it went at the ashram. As I stayed around the ashram in
the succeeding weeks, many enlightening experiences [ironic use] touched my being.
There were: slave and master couples who toured the compound playing out their
respective roles; the group where you could take home your slaves for the night (and
where the lady in question had three males at her beck and call, until the morning);
the sensitive young man who was roundly beaten up by a woman in his group
because he reminded her of her younger brother; and so on.
What was more disturbing to me than this mutually-accepted "acting-out" society
of orange residents, was the fact that the "responsible” guru, Rajneesh, was
condoning and encouraging these forms of behavior, something that many people
around the world would take as an endorsement of gross sex and violence. I also
noticed that cathartic behavior and its reinforcement through Rajneesh's
techniques carried over into a sannyasi's "regular" life. It was always surprising to
hear how some sannyasi friend (who seemed so saintly, calm and centered) beat his
girlfriend up each morning apparently with her consent, or how Western sannyasins
went into the streets of conservative Indian towns tongue-kissing, crotch-fondling, et
cetera [the cross-cultural equivalent, as some Indians lamented, of Catholic monks
and nuns having full intercourse on the public streets of towns in Europe or
America!-- Timothy].
Anyway, I did get to hear Rajneesh every day at early morning discourse and even sit
in silent, private darshan with him a couple of times, after completing the groups I
had signed up for. It was interesting that many of his sannyasins fell over and went to
sleep when he started speaking. Although I was always firmly led to a position in the
back of the room, I had very direct eye contact with Rajneesh each time since so
many of the people in front of me melted away as his talks progressed. His discourses
were full of power, charisma, and planned direction. No spoken or spontaneous
questions were allowed. I felt that the atmosphere that surrounded him—paranoid
guards, rigid planning and conformity to a prepared format—was nothing like the
flowing “in the moment" beingness he advocates strongly in his books and tapes.
So I guess the right words for the scene in Poona are contradiction and
inconsistency. Sannyasins would glibly explain this away as a wonderful technique
to destroy the ego, and at a certain level that’s probably true. It seemed to me that
many people with internal chaos and unfulfilled desires were attracted to this Poona
ashram. They were offered group expression and acceptance that they could not get
anywhere else.
The ebb and flow between high-energy and vacuousness represented a world of
emotional extremes where ashramites alternately repressed and blocked their
fantasies, then allowed them to blossom in astonishing displays. I saw Rajneesh as
the Walt Disney of the ‘80s, and Poona as his Disneyland where, for the price of a
general admission plus an extra charge for specific "rides,” each customer could get
his or her share of “emotional” entertainment. One night it struck me—as Rajneesh
was giving his benign darshan in the back of the ashram, as the house band was
playing danceable chants, as an enlightenment intensive group was asking “Who am
I?” on the top of one building, while the violent encounter was beating its way along
in the basement. Here I was in Hollywood East, Rajneeshland, on location for the
greatest Hollywood movie of all time, starring a Charleton Heston-like god-image,
replete with a groovy score, sex and violence, scads of beautiful and diaphonously
dressed, long-haired ladies dancing and twirling in sensual abandon, all manner of
group experimentation (centering around energy, sex, anger, and the other ‘deadly’
sins), and an audience that had become part of the action by coming to the ashram to
experience this supercosmic circus at first hand! How much more three-dimensional
could a producer get?
I also came to feel that the group titles were selected by a publicity agent, keyed for
their timeliness and audience appeal. Perhaps this year or next, there would be groups
with such catchy titles as "Death," “Ritual Sacrifice and other Ancient Group
Experiences," "Cannibalism and Other Forms of Food Recycling," and possibly,
"Parents and Children—the only group where all can be explored together."... * [see
following note]
----------
* Yoga Jounal Editor’s note: According to a press release from the Rajneesh
Foundation, dated March 18, 1979 and entitled "No More Violence in Rajneesh
Therapies":
"No physical violence between group participants is now permitted in any of the
therapies at the Shree Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, India. As of January this year
[1979], specific instructions have been issued to all group leaders to no longer allow
participants to use fighting as a means of discharging repressed emotions or for any
other purpose. The violence was stopped following an indication from Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh that it had fulfilled its function within the overall context of the
ashram as an evolving spiritual commune. Bhagwan also indicated that there will
come a point in the development of the commune at which therapy groups will be
discontinued altogether. He explained that it was a question of intelligence.
Psychotherapies were needed only because the thousands of people coming to his
ashram from the West were not yet intelligent enough to heal their own psychological
wounds. "Instead of healing them, instead of opening them to the winds and to the
sun, you go on hiding them," he said at a recent discourse in his ashram. "You need
psychotherapists to help you open your wounds to the sun so that they can be allowed
to heal. I am allowing all kinds of therapies in this commune. In fact, in no other
place in the world are so many psychotherapies available--sixty in all. Why am I
allowing these therapies? Just because of you, because you are not yet ready to
release your intelligence. As the commune goes deeper and deeper into inner
realizations, therapies can be dropped. When the commune has really bloomed, there
will be no need of any therapy. Then love is therapy, intelligence is therapy. Then
living day to day, moment to moment, aware, alert, is therapy."
---------
[Ramana Das’ article continues:] An interesting aspect of the ashram was the
international flavor of its visitors and residents. As I understand it, when Rajneesh
was getting started several years ago, many of the people close to him came from the
West, particularly California. These people had been part of the human potential
movement, and were attracted to his teachings of surrender, flow with the moment,
"do it," and his interest in all the techniques being developed by that movement
(encounter, sensory awareness, body movement with guided fantasy and music
groups, for instance. However, when I was visiting the ashram during October,
November and December of 1978, it appeared that many of the residents came from
Europe—people who had never experienced the freedom and openness of California
living, people who were coming and letting go of years and years of accumulated
"impurities" via the process of these groups. There were also psychotherapists from a
variety of schools who were practicing individually at the ashram. (Incidentally, all
the money taken in by the groups and the individual work goes directly to the
ashram.) Anyway, the cast consisted more of Germans, Danes, Swedes, French,
Italians and Japanese. There were no Africans and only an occasional black
Amenrican visitor. Obviously Rajneesh's brand of psychology and spirit appeals
mainly to a well-heeled segment of the world’s population.
Of course, a guru can be explained as the reflection of his disciples, and, in this case,
of increased worldwide expressions of sex and violence. So it's not surprising that the
"orange cult" exists and grows. It was also interesting that Rajneesh spent many
moments of his discourse time belittling his detractors, gloating over his growing
army of orange sannyasins, demeaning political leaders, cracking ethnic jokes, and
speaking little about world peace or the alleviation of human suffering....
[Ramana Das goes on to speak of his idyllic times at Ramanashramam and at a 10-
day Buddhist vipassana meditation course at S.N. Goenka’s Igatpuri center, and
meeting in early 1979 a true “living master” of spiritual wisdom, Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj of Bombay. In implicit contrast, he also notes how everything is free at
Neem Karoli Baba's ashrams, at Ramanashramam, at Igatpuri, and around
Nisargadatta Maharaj—all quite unlike the case with Poona One and Rajneesh.]
------------
Former Rajneeshee neo-sannyasin Christopher Schnelle wrote on March 3,
2006, at the Rajneesh discussion site
rebelliousspirit.com/osho-webzine/103/sharing, in a cogent response to a pro-
Rajneesh email of Jan. 29 by Harry Manx, a.k.a., Swami Krishna Prasad:
Hi Harry, [...] If I read your message correctly then you are saying the following:
Osho may or may not be a fake guru. Those who oppose him are stuck in the past and
too much in their head. As a result these people miss out on all that is beautiful in life
– playing, crying, smiling, singing. You love Osho, he inspires you and if a person is
intensely and totally devoted then this person is glowing with love and bliss –
regardless of whom that person is devoted to.
That’s nice and a beautiful illusion. The issue is very straightforward: What is
more important – truth or feeling good? You clearly answered that feeling good
is more important for you than truth. That is very much your right, however I
personally feel thoroughly uncomfortable basing my life on a lie just to feel good. I
am doing the opposite – I accept whatever is true, no matter how uncomfortable,
painful or embarrassing. [...]
I am writing about Osho because his lies and his deceit caused an enormous
amount of pain for a lot of beautiful people. Most of these beautiful people have
no idea that a sophisticated fraud was perpetrated on them and blame
themselves for their deteriorating mental and physical health. Many of my
sannyasin friends have great trouble sustaining this illusory happy fog and are taking
more and more desperate measures to continue feeling good. This hurts.
Back to your message: You are courageously conceding the possibility that Osho
deceived people [...] but then you use two of the best strategies with which Osho
defrauded us all:
• The first one is that those who oppose Osho are too much in their head.
• The second strategy is that WHO is saying something completely overrides WHAT
that person is saying. In other words an enlightened person can speak the most
appalling rubbish and it is still much more valid than a lesser person speaking total
truth.
Osho defrauded some of the most beautiful and intelligent people on the planet.
Therefore his fraud had to be sophisticated. The best trick he used in his fraud was
telling everybody “Use your mind in the world, but go beyond the mind in the
spiritual”.
In other words, “Don’t use your mind around me. If you use your mind, you are in
your head and you are missing out on the spiritual.” Osho mainly targeted and
attracted very intelligent people who have strong minds. Osho here used the same
strategy as the Catholic Church – create an unsolvable conflict within people and
then they are easy to control. [...] The church demanded people feel guilty about
perfectly natural things like sex and the church said that the only way to free yourself
of this guilt is by adhering to the church’s commands.
Osho’s “Go beyond the mind to be spiritual” had exactly the same effect. It’s ok to
point out that the mind has serious limitations and many mental habits cause
misery. However it is outright fraud to say that the only way to be spiritual is to
ignore the mind. This creates a conflict with truth, because the mind is needed to
recognize untruth. If the mind is ignored, the person becomes unable to
distinguish between truth and lies. [...] The more intelligent the person, the stronger
the mind and the stronger the conflict. Every time sannyasins used their intelligence,
they felt guilty. The smarter they are the bigger the conflict.
The second nasty trick Osho used was “Only an enlightened person can speak truth,
anybody who is not enlightened cannot speak truth, no matter what they say.” [...] I
think every sannyasin concedes that Osho sometimes spoke the most appalling
rubbish, for example when he spoke about science. However, his strategy leads
to sannyasins accepting anything Osho says, no matter how untrue and ignoring
anything Osho’s detractors say, no matter how true.
Osho managed something amazing with these two strategies: He managed to lie
and lie and lie to us sannyasins. We didn’t expose his lies because we didn’t use
our reasoning abilities (our minds) and we valued his lies more than any truth
because an enlightened person’s lies are more valuable than another person’s
truth.
The best frauds are those where the victim says “I wasn’t deceived” and where the
victim even actively fights anybody pointing out the fraud. Osho’s fraud is one of
those. None of this would matter if those lies didn’t cause such enormous damage to
so many intelligent and sensitive people.
Harry, you are doing well. Many other sannyasins are not doing well. There is the
enormous death rate through cancer – too high for a middle aged population. Many
sannyasins work as healers and most of them fit the ‘wounded healer’ syndrome.
Many others’ health has collapsed. Many sannyasins are involved in things that are
even more harmful, like Deeksha [i.e., the Oneness Movement started by the so-
called "Kalki Bhagavan" and "Amma" of Golden City Temple].
Osho was a sophisticated and nasty fraudster with a grudge who intentionally
misled and hurt his followers. His grudge was that deep down he knew that his
teachings were a sham and he could not bear to see genuine seekers. It is a
tragedy that so many people did not know and still do not know that they have
been hurt in this way.

Extensive revelations on Rajneesh by very early disciple Christopher Calder

(formerly Swami Krishna Christ)
A former early British disciple of Rajneesh from late 1970 onward until August 1975
was Christopher Calder, née Walter Pfuetze, the last name coming from his
adoptive father, Paul Pfuetze, who was head of Vassar College's religious studies
department, and who took his son and others to India in 1971, where they met
Rajneesh in Bombay. It is quite notable that Walter, who changed his name to
"Christopher Calder" in 1976, was Rajneesh's second western disciple to be
ordained into his strange "neo-sannyasin" order of anti-ascetics, and was given
the name "Swamy Krishna Christ." Rajneesh had stated at the time: "The name is
so absurd that you will have to remain nameless and nobody behind it." In an email
posted on Sept. 8, 2007 to the Rajneesh discussion forum (rebelliousspirit.com/osho-
webzine/103/sharing), Calder wrote further about his position in the movement: "Ma
Satya Bharti [Franklin], Shivamurti [Hugh Milne] [—two other former disciples
turned critics], and myself were all early close disciples of Rajneesh. I lived at his
apartment right across the hall from him, edited his first hardcover book at his
request, and helped start his very first ashram in the USA, which was called
Samarpan, all at his request. All three of us, Shivamurti, Satya Bharti, and myself had
many, many face to face private meetings with Rajneesh over years, and we were all
disciples for years."
UPDATE NOTE: Satya Bharti Franklin wrote me in early 2022 to say about
Christopher Calder, "While I remember him well from Bhagwan's days in Bombay -
there weren't many of us westerners around - I can't recall ever seeing him in Poona,
which is not to say he wasn't there, but that if he was, he was just one of many
thousands of anonymous visitors. He wasn't in any way privy to insider information.
He mentions guarding Bhagwan's house at the [Poona] ashram, but as a resident of
the house, I don't recall ever seeing him there. I had to pass by the guards every time I
went into or out of the house, several times a day, and I sure don't recall him being
there. I don't believe he was at the [Oregon] ranch either. Chris seems to have done a
great deal of research... [but] he's not offering firsthand information as much as
speculation and supposition"--and, i would add, Calder has relayed observations from
fellow former disciples known to him as well as useful insights about the
dysfunctional cult that Rajneesh headed.
Calder has also assembled a number of the lies, falsehoods and failed predictions
spouted by Rajneesh at Calder's webpage "The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong
Way Rajneesh," at home.att.net/~meditation/wrong-way.html [Newer link:
http://meditation-handbook.50webs.com/wrong-way.html.]
Certain parts of the essay i would critique—for Calder appears unaware of the very
robust studies conclusively demonstrating the validity of certain ESP and PK
abilities, such as the US Army's remote viewing program and Robert Jahn and
colleagues' studies of ESP and PK at the PEAR Lab (Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research Lab), and many other studies and experiments showing the
reality of "nonlocal consciousness," reported in the pages of peer-review journals
such as the Journal of Scientific Exploration and the journals published by the ASPR,
the SPR, ISSSEEM, etc.
But Calder's essay has much pertinent information on Rajneesh, for instance: "In the
early days, Rajneesh did not publish hard cover books, only pamphlets that
contained the transcript of a single lecture. His first English hardcover book
(not a translation from Hindi) was The Silent Explosion, which was a collection
of lectures that I hand picked and combined into a single book. I came up with
the title and wrote the introduction for the first edition. A number of
Rajneesh's... early English hardcover books, published at a later date, were
ghost written for him by Satya Bharti Franklin, a female disciple from New York
City [who in 1992 wrote the exposé book on Rajneesh which i have cited
numerous times]. Much of Rajneesh's best material came from other authors, as
was the theme and title for my favorite lecture, Flight of the Alone to the Alone
[1970]. Rajneesh did an excellent job of combining words and information from
other authors, which is a common and accepted practice. The issue I have with
his teachings is that he often pretended to have first hand knowledge of facts he
obtained second hand, and he taught many things [concerning sex, psychic
powers, etc.] that he knew were false just in order to gain attention and expand
his guru business. Rajneesh fundamentally used words to manipulate people,
not to tell the truth."
Elsewhere in this same essay, Calder states: "Ask yourself this question. What does
the average Mafia crime boss or corrupt dictator want most? The answer is
millions of dollars, absolute power, a harem of women, and a daily supply of
booze or drugs. Now ask yourself what did Rajneesh want and get? The answer
is millions of dollars, absolute power, a harem of women, and a daily supply of
drugs. Rajneesh used myths of the occult and his natural ability to influence
people to achieve the same goals. He could look you directly in the eye and lie
without flinching, and that helped him become a financially successful guru.
Lies and fantasy sell better than telling the simple truth, so Rajneesh decided to
sell spiritual consumers what they wanted to hear. Rajneesh's own words and
life history prove that he had no great wisdom, and that he was subnormal in his
understanding of science, mathematics, ethics, simple logic, and common sense.
What Rajneesh did have was a tremendous power of presence and the gift of
hypnotic oratory. He fooled himself into equating his own raw consciousness
with intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence and consciousness are not the same
thing, and those with the most consciousness are not necessarily the most honest
and wise. Even common street drugs like LSD can induce a kind of distorted
state of superconsciousness, and hallucinogenic drug users are not known for
great wisdom, balance, and virtue."
+++++++++
At the rest of this webpage, i feature an even more thorough exposé of Rajneesh by
early disciple Christopher Calder in another, much longer essay. Calder has
some past experience in the mental health field (working for a time at a methadone
clinic for heroin addicts), so he brings a certain informed perspective to his
discussion of Rajneesh's drug-use. Normally, I would just provide a direct link to the
following essay at Calder's own website except that i find a few of Calder's remarks
about Rajneesh's early "enlightenment" questionable, deserving comment by myself
in brackets [ ]. I have added bracketed comments in a few other places, and corrected
a few spelling errors.
In the interest of fairness, i have also included in brackets some "rejoinder" points
by Anthony Thompson, PhD (b.1944), from his recent essay "Christopher Calder,
Krishna Christ, and his Lying or Misinformed 'Lost Truth'" (Aug. 22, 2007), posted
at dynamicbrain.net/christopher-calder-krishna-christ-and-his-lying-or-misinformed-
lost-truth. (Note: Calder and Thompson, et al., have had several rounds of
conversation on these points at rebelliousspirit.com/osho-webzine/103/sharing, see
especially posts of Aug-Sep 2007.) Thompson, from Chile, primarily speaks
Spanish; English is not his first language, so his essay unfortunately contains
hundreds of errors in spelling and grammar, which i have usually corrected here
whenever sharing his words and point of view. But Thompson's essay features much
more important gaffes, such as denying that Rajneesh was a cult leader, when in fact
a "cult" is originally and simply defined as "any social group around a perceived
charismatic authority figure"— and the really interesting issue is whether the cult is
benign and empowering, or is to some extent dysfunctional and dis-empowering.
Furthermore, Thompson can't seem to recognize Rajneesh's psychopathology in
calling both Hitler and Gandhi "violent torturers" in Rajneesh's misrepresentation of
the larger truth that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. "Both [Hitler and Gandhi]
are in the same boat... both are violent.... their mind has the same attitude: torture."
Thompson is silent on many criticisms leveled by Calder and other writers including
the aforementioned James Gordon, Julian Lee, Ronald Clarke, and Susan Palmer, as
well as Frances FitzGerald (see "A Reporter At Large: Rajneeshpuram, Parts 1&2,"
The New Yorker, Sept. 22, 29, 1986), Satya Bharti Franklin (The Promise of
Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Story of the Perils of Life with Rajneesh, Station Hill
Press, 1992), and Hugh Milne / Shivamurti (Bhagwan: The God That Failed, St.
Martin's Press, 1986). I assume from Thompson's silence that he is letting these
charges stand as criticisms of actual flaws of Rajneesh, such as Rajneesh's sexual
shenanigans with female students (violating an ancient ethic in the helping
professions), his irrational rantings and colossal over-generalizations, his
megalomania and narcissism, his authoritarianism, his mis-use of ashram funds for
his own pleasure (e.g., the 93 Rolls-Royce cars and many expensive ladies'
wristwatches), and so on.
For the record, Thompson candidly admits some of Rajneesh's flaws: "I do not agree
or like everything that Osho said or did in his life. I am aware that the man did not
compromise in any point ... and did not care about what people thought of him. I also
know that most of the time it was 'his way or the highway' with the people around
him and his ideas of how things had to be done. However, as a researcher of his
work, I feel compelled to clarify and refute the points and arguments used in Mr.
Calder´s article that I think are simply not true or highly misinformed. I am not a
disciple and I do not consider Osho my master, but I cannot hide my admiration for
the old man. I think his contribution to expanding human awareness has no parallel in
human history. There have been other masters, but no one has been so effective in
reaching so many people during his lifetime as Osho did. [This is a very debatable
point.—Timothy] Also, his insistence on laughter, enjoying life and humor as
religious qualities makes him stand alone in the world of mystics. [Actually, there
have been quite a number of very humorous, light-hearted, cheerful saints and
sages throughout history, East and West, from St. Philip Neri of Rome to Bankei
Yotaku of Japan to Anandamayi Ma and Anasuya Devi of India; Rajneesh was
certainly not "alone" in this.—Timothy] Finally, he helped to liberate, sexually
and from social conditioning, vast numbers of spiritual seekers who would have
otherwise ended up ranking with some ascetic, repressive guru, and thus contributing
with more repression and self-torture to this world. [Thompson here reveals his bias
against any gurus teaching self-restraint.—Timothy] I have researched this
subject for over 22 years now and I have interviewed a lot of current and former
disciples, visitors and friends on this subject. I have been 8 times in his commune in
India, now called Osho Meditation Resort. So, I consider myself an expert on this
theme: Osho´s life and work."
In an email to me, Thompson appreciatively and candidly writes of Rajneesh, in
part: "The man was an iconoclast, a rascal and a spiritual revolutionary. And I
appreciate the fact that he did not deny sex, enjoyment, laughter and materialism in
his vision of spirituality. I enjoy the fact that he accepted the whole human range of
experiences as doors to the beyond... so to speak. This is my vision and
Understanding. He was no god or prophet, but he was a master on his own right who
helped to transform a lot of people. So I feel inclined to stand up when i think he is
being treated unfairly. However, he was not flawless, he was very human, and
committed a lot of mistakes, as any human can do.... He was just a human being. And
as far as I am concerned, one of the most beautiful ones i have ever seen."
In the following essay from Calder, an essay that has been translated into Spanish,
German, French and Russian editions for the Web, I boldface or italicize a number of
Calder's remarks, as well as Thompson's and my comments, for greater emphasis and
readability.
+++++++++
Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh [1931-90], and the Lost Truth
© Copyright 1998 by Christopher Calder
[The following was originally downloaded from Calder's former webpage
http://home.att.net/~meditation/Osho.html, a link no longer active when checked in
March 2012. The essay has reappeared, with a few minor changes and several photos
displayed, at http://meditation-handbook.50webs.com/osho2.html.]
Copyright notice [from Calder]: Please feel free to copy, repost, or publish Osho,
Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth (© 1998 Christopher Calder). You may repost
or publish any of my essays without cost, but you must clearly state that the essays
were written by Christopher Calder, and you must not change any of my words or
their meanings. I prefer that those who repost my essays install a web link to my
home page, but that request is not a demand. This is a 100% free website, published
only for the benefit of other students of meditation.
"Meditation must not be made into a business." - Acharya Rajneesh, 1971
Acharya Rajneesh was 39 years old when I first met him at his Bombay apartment in
December of 1970. With long beard and large dark eyes, he looked like a painting of
Lao-Tse come to life. Before meeting Rajneesh, I had spent time with a number of
Eastern gurus without being satisfied with the quality of their teachings. I wanted an
enlightened guide who could bridge the gap between East and West, and reveal the
true esoteric secrets without the excess baggage of Indian, Tibetan, or Japanese
culture. Rajneesh was the answer to my quest for those deeper meanings. He
described for me in vivid detail everything I wanted to know about the inner worlds,
and he had the power of immense being to back up his words. At 21 years old, I was
naive about life and the nature of man and I assumed that everything he told me must
be true.
[Note from Timothy: Calder inserts here a late-1960s photo of Rajneesh with
followers, captioned "Acharya Rajneesh at his best." I have NOT reproduced this
image, nor several other photos in Calder's essay, nor his links to other essays
embedded within his essay.]
Rajneesh spoke on a high level of intelligence, and his powerful presence emanated
from his body like a soft light that healed all wounds. While sitting close during a
small gathering of friends, Rajneesh took me on a rapidly vertical inner journey that
almost seemed to push me out of my physical body. His vast presence lifted everyone
around him higher without the slightest effort on their part. The days I spent at his
Bombay apartment were like days spent in heaven. He had it all, and he was giving it
away for free!
Rajneesh possessed the power of direct energy transmission, which is known in India
as "shaktipat." He used this power nobly to bring comfort and inspiration to his
disciples. Rajneesh claimed to have the "third eye" powers of telepathy and remote
viewing as well, and for many years I believed that claim to be true. However, in the
1980s Rajneesh was unable to perceive the tragic events at his Oregon commune
which occurred directly under his nose, so those claimed powers are now a question
mark in my mind. Many gurus boast of having mysterious psychic abilities in order
to attract new disciples and new money. Rajneesh's habit of getting his helpers to
investigate visitors, so he could impress them with his knowledge of their personal
lives, adds to my current skepticism about the effectiveness of his "third eye." It was
a fact, however, that those who came near him did experience his incredible cosmic
presence. One or two face to face meetings with Rajneesh was all it took to turn
doubting Western skepticism into awed admiration and devotion.
One year earlier I had met another enlightened teacher known to the world as Jiddu
Krishnamurti [1895-1986]. J. Krishnamurti could barely give a coherent lecture, and
he constantly scolded his audience by referring to their "shoddy little minds." I loved
his frankness, and his words were true, but his subtly cantankerous nature was not
very helpful in transferring his knowledge to others. Listening to J. Krishnamurti
speak was like eating a sandwich made of bread and sand. I found the best way to
enjoy his talks was to completely ignore his words and quietly absorb his presence.
Using that technique, I would become so expanded after a lecture that I could barely
talk for hours afterwards. J. Krishnamurti, while fully enlightened and uniquely
lovable, will be recorded in history as a teacher with very poor verbal communication
skills. Unlike the highly eloquent Rajneesh, however, J. Krishnamurti never
committed any crime, never pretended to be more than he was, and he never used
other human beings selfishly.
Life is complex and multilayered, and my naive illusions about the phenomenon of
perfect enlightenment faded over the years. It became clear that enlightened people
are as fallible as anyone. They are expanded human beings, not perfect human
beings, and they live and breathe with many of the same faults and vulnerabilities we
ordinary humans must endure.
Skeptics ask how I can claim that Rajneesh was enlightened, given his scandals and
disastrous public image. I can only say that Rajneesh's spiritual presence was
identical to that of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who was recognized as enlightened by every
high Tibetan Lama and revered Hindu sage of the day. [Note from Timothy: but
neither Rajneesh nor Krishnamurti is considered to be anywhere in the same
league of spiritual mastery and real liberation as Sri Ramana Maharshi,
Anasuya Devi, Anandamayi Ma, et al.]
I do sympathize with the skeptics, however. If I had not known Rajneesh personally,
I would never believe it myself.
Rajneesh pushed the envelope of enlightenment in both positive and negative
directions. He was the best of the best and the worst of the worst. He was a great
teacher in his early years, with an innovative meditation technique that worked with
dramatic power called "Dynamic Meditation." Rajneesh lifted thousands of seekers
to higher levels of consciousness, and he detailed Eastern religions and ancient
meditation techniques with luminous clarity. [Calder: see explanation and warning
about Dynamic Meditation near the bottom of the page] [Note from Timothy: I find
FAR TOO MANY ERRORS in Rajneesh's writings to agree with Calder's
assessment of Rajneesh's "luminous clarity."]
One false move. One grand error.
Acharya Rajneesh was born on December 11th, 1931, in the village of Kuchwada in
central India. The term 'Acharya' means a religious teacher, and 'Rajneesh' means
moon. Rajneesh's actual legal name was Chandra Mohan Jain; 'Rajneesh' being only
an unofficial nickname acquired in childhood. Late one night in 1971, the man I
knew as Acharya Rajneesh suddenly changed his name to "Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh." The famous enlightened sage, Ramana Maharshi, was called 'Bhagwan'
by his disciples as a spontaneous term of endearment. Rajneesh simply declared to
the world that everyone should start calling him Bhagwan, a title that can mean
anything from 'divine one' to God. 'Shree' is an honorific term for Master, so his new
name could be translated as God Master Moon. Rajneesh became irritated when I
once politely corrected his mispronunciations of English words after a lecture, so I
felt in no position to tell him that I thought his new title was inappropriate and
dishonest. That change in name marked a turning point in Rajneesh's level of honesty
and was the first of many big lies yet to come.
Rajneesh lived in an ivory tower, rarely leaving his room unless to give a lecture, his
life experience cushioned by throngs of adoring devotees. [see photograph of
Rajneesh in his bedroom in Bombay] His isolation became even more complete when
he moved from his small Bombay apartment to a large estate in Poona, India, in
1974. As most human beings who are treated as kings, Rajneesh lost touch with the
world of the common man. In his artificial and insulated existence, Rajneesh made
one fundamental error in judgment which would destroy his teaching.
"What you tell them is true, but what I tell them (the useful lies) is good for them." -
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Poona, India, 1975
Rajneesh calculated that the majority of the earth's population was on such a low
level of consciousness that they could not understand nor tolerate the real truths. He
thus decided on a policy of spreading seemingly useful lies to bring inspiration to
his disciples and, on occasion, to stress his students in unique situations for their
own personal growth. This was his downfall and the prime reason he will be
remembered by most historians as just another phony guru. Rajneesh's teachings
were full of intentional lies and unintentional falsehoods, which were born out of
his own ignorance, gullibility, and Indian cultural conditioning. His psychic
presence, however, was 100% real and extremely powerful. [(note from Calder on
some linked essays of his:) see Do you have a soul? and The Ridiculous Teachings of
Wrong Way Rajneesh]
[Note from Timothy: As discussed in my lengthy essay which comprises the bulk
of this web-resource on Rajneesh, just because someone has an "extremely
powerful" "psychic presence" does not make them an authentic spiritual
master. Animal magnetism, asura-demon karma, and domineering body
language and facial expressions can also make one appear very "powerful" to
others in social groups.]
Acharya, Bhagwan Shree, Osho,...all the empowering names taken by Rajneesh could
not cover up the fact that he was still a human being. He had ambitions and desires,
sexual and material, just like everyone else. [Thompson in his essay does not deny
this.] All enlightened humans have desires. All enlightened men have had public lives
that we know about, and all have had private lives that remained secret. The vast
majority of enlightened men do nothing but good for the world. Only Rajneesh,
to my knowledge, became a criminal in both the legal and ethical sense of the
word.
Rajneesh never lost the ultimate existential truth of being. He only lost the ordinary
concept of truth that any normal adult can understand. He rationalized his constant
lying as "lefthanded Tantra," but that too was dishonest. Rajneesh lied to save
face, to avoid taking responsibility for his own mistakes, and to gain personal
power. Those lies had nothing to do with Tantra or any selfless acts of kindness.
What is real in this world is fact, and Rajneesh misrepresented fact on a daily
basis. Rajneesh was no simple con man like so many others. Rajneesh knew
everything that Buddha knew, and he was everything that Buddha was. [This is a
very questionable claim! The Buddha was quite evidently fully liberated from all
identifications, attachments and aversions, not just “enlightened” on a cognitive
level about Truth --Timothy].
It was his loss of respect for ordinary truthfulness that destroyed his life's work.
Rajneesh's health collapsed in his early thirties. Even before reaching middle age,
Rajneesh suffered reoccurring bouts of weakness. During his youthful college years,
when he should have been at a peak of vigor, Rajneesh often had to sleep 12 to 14
hours a day due to an unexplained illness. Rajneesh suffered from what Europeans
call Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), or what Americans call Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome (CFS).
[Thompson challenges this in his essay as a mere opinion by Calder, saying that such
a syndrome was never officially diagnosed by any licensed doctor. However, this
syndrome was hardly even known by 1990, when Rajneesh died, not to mention
earlier. That there was no official diagnosis from a physician does not mean that
Rajneesh, given his various physical symptoms, did not suffer from this ailment.]
His classic symptoms included the obvious fatigue, strange allergies, recurrent low
grade fevers, photophobia, orthostatic intolerance (the inability to stand for a
normal period of time), insomnia, body pain, and extreme sensitivity to smells
and chemicals, a condition doctors now refer to as "multiple chemical sensitivity."
Rajneesh's trademark chemical sensitivity was so severe that he instructed his guards
to sniff people for unpleasant odors before they were allowed to visit him in his
quarters. People with Gulf War Syndrome, MS, and other neurological and immune
system illnesses are also often highly sensitive to chemicals and smells. Rajneesh's
poor health and strange symptoms were a product of real neurological and immune
system dysfunction, not some esoteric supersensitivity caused by his enlightenment.
Rajneesh also had Type II diabetes, asthma, and severe back pain.
Rajneesh was constantly sick and frail from the time I first met him in 1970
until his death on January 19th, 1990. He thought he was getting a different cold or
flu every week. In reality he suffered from a chronic neurological and immune
system illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with flu like symptoms that can last a
lifetime. Rajneesh could not stand on his feet for long periods of time without
becoming lightheaded because he suffered damage to his autonomic nervous system
which controls blood pressure. This neurally mediated hypotension (low blood
pressure while standing) causes chronic fatigue and can lower IQ due to a lack of
sufficient blood and oxygen being pumped to the brain (brain hypoxia). In the 1970s,
Rajneesh often complained of becoming lightheaded immediately upon standing.
During the final few months of his life in Poona, Rajneesh frequently passed out into
complete unconsciousness.
Rajneesh used prescription drugs, mainly Valium (diazepam), as an analgesic
for his aches and pains and to counter the symptoms of dysautonomia
(dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system). At his peak usage, Rajneesh
took the maximum recommended dose of 60 milligrams per day, a dose so high
that it is usually only prescribed for the long term care of the mentally ill.
Patients who take Valium regularly build up a resistance to its effects over time, and
higher and higher doses are needed to maintain its stress relieving and hypnotic
effects. Rajneesh also inhaled nitrous oxide (N2O) ["laughing gas"] mixed with
pure oxygen, which he claimed increased his creativity. The nitrous oxide
probably did relieve the sensation of severe exhaustion and suffocation patients with
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often feel, but it did nothing for the quality of his
judgment. Naive about the power of drugs, and overconfident of his ability to fight
off their negative effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction. (See [the essays linked at
Calder's now defunct site:] "Osho in the Dental Chair" [written by Sw. Anand
Parmartha; this essay is now found at
www.sannyasnews.org/sannyasnews/Articles/OshoDentalChair.html] and "The
Dangers of Nitrous Oxide")
[Thompson challenges Calder's allegations of Rajneesh's drug addiction, but his
arguments strike this reader as feeble. In his book, Life of Osho, the very pro-Osho
author "Sam" acknowledges the heavy NO2 laughing gas use by Osho, if not also the
Valium, too.]
A number of disciples have claimed that Rajneesh was so intoxicated at his Oregon
ranch in the 1980s that he sometimes urinated in the halls of his own home, just as
heroin addicts and common drunks often do. I believe this to be true, as the last time I
saw Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh he was inebriated to the point of becoming physically
ugly. He had the same washed-out look and foolish behavior I had witnessed in
drug addicts while working at a methadone clinic in the United States.
[Thompson claims Calder could not have made a proper clinical assessment of
Rajneesh's psychophysical state, given that he was at this point in time not close
enough to be an "insider" or frequent observer of Rajneesh, but Calder makes a
convincing case in emails from early Sep. 2007 to the forum
rebelliousspirit.com/osho-webzine/103/sharing. Calder writes: "I knew Rajneesh was
on drugs even before then. I went to a party in Woodstock, New York, at the time
[1981] Rajneesh was in the process of moving from Poona to New Jersey, USA. At
the party a tape was played of one of the last, or perhaps even THE last discourse
Rajneesh gave before going into semi-silence [until 1984]. Rajneesh never stopped
talking completely; he only stopped giving public discourses for a time. The tape was
a nightmare! Rajneesh was rambling and disorganized, and his speaking and
thinking abilities were clearly impaired. I told my two friends at that party, Moonie
and Svargo, that 'It sounds like he is on Valium.' He was not making any sense at all.
Seeing him red faced, and 'drunk as a skunk'... (on drugs, not booze) at the Poona
ranch just made Rajneesh's drug use even more clear. He was not just temporarily
impaired for one or two lectures, as I had hoped. Rajneesh was a full fledged addict.
I have seen videos of him broadcast on television in Seattle where he was slurring his
speech, barely able to talk, and wearing sunglasses, and again, not making any
sense. His disciples were crazy to broadcast such tapes of an obviously drugged
man."]
Rajneesh had miraculous mental power, but he was an ordinary human being
physically and he could not tolerate the devastating effects of large doses of
tranquilizers.
On top of Rajneesh's physical illness, his massive intake of Valium caused
paranoia and greatly reduced reasoning skills. Valium addicts often think the CIA
or some other unseen villains are plotting against them, so it is not surprising that he
imagined that he was poisoned by the United States Government. His reasoning
powers became so damaged that Rajneesh actually considered moving to Russia to
combine his totalitarian form of spirituality with Russian communism, an idea no
sane man could possibly entertain. Rajneesh publicly called for the assassination
of Michael Gorbachev, because Gorbachev was moving Russia to Western style
capitalism rather than Rajneesh's own brand of "spiritual communism."
Historically, Valium has been the drug of choice for CFS sufferers as it masks the
unnerving symptoms of dysautonomia and helps bring sleep. Rajneesh suffered from
insomnia, another classic symptom of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Rajneesh was a physically ill man who became mentally corrupt. His brief
experimentation with LSD only made matters worse. Rajneesh's drug use and
addiction was a problem of his own making, not a government conspiracy.
Rajneesh died in 1990, with heart failure listed as the official cause of death. It is
probable that the physical decline Rajneesh experienced during his incarceration in
American jails was due to a combination of withdrawal symptoms from his Valium
addiction and an aggravation of his Chronic Fatigue Syndrome due to stress and
exposure to allergens.
[Thompson treats all of this as supposition; but Calder stands by his sources, and I
find them convincing.]
After Rajneesh's humiliation and downfall in America, he declared that he was "Jesus
crucified by Ronald Reagan's America." In truth, Rajneesh was a drug addicted guru
who self-destructed through his own wrong actions. Comparing himself to Jesus was
doubly dishonest, as he himself had no respect for Jesus. He once undiplomatically
proclaimed to the American media that everything Jesus said was "just crazy."
[Writes Jim Weaver:] "I went through the abandoned city of Rajneeshpuram and saw
things that were almost unbelievable. Ma Anand Sheela's headquarters, a group of
mobile homes pieced together, was a hive of secret doors and hidden tunnels, her
private room a command post with electronic listening gear tapped into every room
in the development. The Bhagwan's parquet-paneled quarters had nitrogen oxide
spigots by his bedside, and was surrounded by huge bathrooms with multiple
showers." - Jim Weaver, former Oregon Congressman [see Weaver's full article at
home.att.net/~meditation/Weaver.html]
[Thompson distrusts Weaver's account as biased, and thinks, based on conversations
with other Rajneesh disciples, that the "nitrogen oxide spigots" were actually for
therapeutic oxygen for Rajneesh's asthma. Calder knows several other very close
disciples and they have a completely different story, a story that Calder reports here.]
In the 1998 preface to Books I Have Loved, Rajneesh's (Osho's) personal dentist,
Swami Devageet, states that Osho dictated three books under the influence of nitrous
oxide. They were Books I Have Loved, Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, and Notes
of a Madman.
[Thompson says these books are really just "pocket books," filled with photos, the text
actually minimal, each dictation session readable in 2-8 minutes, so Rajneesh did not
require much time under the influence of nitrous oxide to dictate them. Thompson
quotes Devageet: "Osho never used nitrous oxide, I used it [on him], as his dentist,
during his dental treatment sessions." In other words, Thompson has Devageet
insisting that he was the only one who ever administered nitrous oxide to Rajneesh,
that Rajneesh did not administer it to himself.
But Calder replies in several of his August 2007 emails: "Devageet [[Rajneesh’s
dentist]] is a crazy person. Years ago he denied to me emphatically that Rajneesh
used N2O except for dental surgery, and then a few months later he publicly admitted
on a Osho Web forum that he gave Rajneesh N2O for months on end, and that
Rajneesh used the drug because it 'increased his creativity.' No one dictates books
while having dental surgery, and no dental surgery lasts for months. Rajneesh
[[also]] took 60 milligrams of Valium every day for years as well. Osho's drug use
was documented by the FBI. [...] The debate about Osho's drug use is over, except
for the most insane followers. Rajneesh was a drug addict, and I have received
letters from dozens of sannyasins who were at the (Oregon) ranch and in Poona
who confirm this proven fact. [...] Many people at Poona saw the nitrous oxide
canisters piled up at Rajneesh's bungalow, and they knew what it was for. He was not
having dentistry done every day. Osho admitted his N2O use and talked about it
openly. The FBI had records of how much N2O was delivered to the ranch. The
Valium was smuggled in from Mexico. [...] All of Rajneesh's drug use was exposed by
the FBI, local Oregon law enforcement, and published in newspapers around the
country. People clearly saw the nitrous oxide spigots installed by his bedside. When
you get to the point that you have nitrous oxide spigots custom installed by your bed,
you are a very serious nitrous oxide addict, not just a casual user."
See Swami Anand Parmartha's article “Osho in the Dental Chair” at:
sannyasnews.com/Articles/OshoDentalChair.html]
[Calder's article continues:] Referring to his own nitrous oxide use, Rajneesh himself
stated that "Actually oxygen and nitrogen are basic elements of existence. They can
be of much use, but for reasons the politicians have been against chemicals of all
kinds, all drugs." Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary, publicly stated on
the CBS news show 60 Minutes that Rajneesh took 60 milligrams of Valium every
day. Hugh Milne, Rajneesh's head bodyguard, confirmed Rajneesh's heavy Valium
use, as did Swami Devageet.
[Thompson tries to say that Milne / Shivamurti was the bodyguard only during
Rajneesh's darshans and that he was the "personal bodyguard," not for Rajneesh, but
for Rajneesh's first and longtime secretary, Ma Yoga Laxmi; Thompson suggests that
Milne later lost power and became angry and vindictive when Ma Anand Sheela was
appointed by Rajneesh as his personal secretary and Milne had to follow her
authoritarian orders at the Oregon Rajneeshpuram commune. But Calder responds
on Sep. 2, 2007: "Being Rajneesh's guard at his most vulnerable time of day, during
darshan when he met the public, makes Milne his personal guard. Shivamurti was
responsible for all of the guards, and he devised the security plan that protected
Rajneesh day and night. No one person could be on call to guard Rajneesh 24 hours
a day. Milne was the head guard. Even I guarded Rajneesh's bungalow gate in Poona
several nights, but that did not make me Rajneesh's top guard. Milne was that person
and everyone knew it."]
The FBI knew that Rajneesh was a Valium and nitrous oxide addict from their own
investigations, and that fact was published in newspapers around the USA, including
articles in "THE OREGONIAN" and "THE NEW YORK TIMES." There is no
doubt that Rajneesh became a drug addict except in the minds of passionate
Osho followers who don't want to admit the painful truth.
Rajneesh once jokingly refered to himself as "the rubber hose Buddha," because he
was always inhaling nitrous oxide through a rubber hose.
[Thompson would challenge this, saying that the rubber hose was for therapeutic
oxygen, not nitrous oxide, but Calder has already refuted this.]
Rajneesh did not seem to realize that becoming a drug addict not only devalued
himself as a teacher, but to some extent discredited the very concept of anyone
becoming a "Buddha." If even an enlightened Buddha needs drugs to get high, then
what value is there in becoming "enlightened" at all?
U.G. Krishnamurti: "People call me an ‘enlightened man’ -- I detest that term -- they
can’t find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I
point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my
life I’ve searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is
no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person
is enlightened or not doesn’t arise. I don’t give a hoot for a sixth-century-BC Buddha,
let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters,
thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has
created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God."
Upon his sudden death in 1990, there was much media speculation that
Rajneesh had committed suicide by taking an overdose of drugs. As no disciple
has confessed to giving Rajneesh a lethal injection, there is no hard evidence to
support the suicide theory. A compelling circumstantial case could be made for
such a scenario, however, with suicide provoked by Rajneesh's constant ill
health and disheartenment over the loss of [British female disciple, Ma Yoga]
Vivek, his greatest love. Vivek [née Christena Woolf, and claimed by Rajneesh
to be the reincarnation of his deceased childhood girlfriend Sashi] had taken a
fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a Bombay hotel one month before Rajneesh's
passing. Pointedly, Vivek decided to kill herself immediately before Rajneesh's
birthday celebration. Rajneesh had threatened suicide at the Oregon commune
several times, hanging his death over the heads of his disciples as a threat unless
they obeyed his orders. On his last day on earth, Rajneesh is reported to have said
"Let me go. My body has become a hell for me."
The rumor [started by Rajneesh in Nov. 1987 and promoted by disciples in their
books, articles and at Wikipedia] that Rajneesh was poisoned with thallium by
operatives of the United States Government is entirely fictional and contradicted
by undeniable fact. One of the obvious symptoms of thallium poisoning is dramatic
hair loss within seven days of exposure. Rajneesh died with a full beard and no
exceptional baldness other than ordinary male pattern baldness at the top of his head.
Radiation poisoning, another fictional cause of his illness, also causes dramatic hair
loss.
The symptoms which may have led Rajneesh's doctors to suspect poisoning are
common symptoms of dysautonomia caused by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Those
symptoms can include ataxia (uncoordinated movements), numbness, standing
tachycardia (rapid heart rate upon standing), paresthesia (sensations of prickling and
itching), nausea, and irritable bowel syndrome, which causes one to alternate between
constipation and diarrhea. All of his negative physical and mental symptoms were
severely compounded by his own self-induced nitrous oxide poisoning and heavy
Valium use.
The only proven cases of illegal poisoning related to Rajneesh were carried out
by Rajneesh's own sannyasins. A sannyasin is an initiated disciple, one who
takes sannyas. In the year 1984 there were 751 poison victims, including women
and small children, at ten restaurants in the The Dalles, Oregon. Rajneesh
sannyasins attempted to take over the Wasco County Commission by making so
many people ill on election day that they could elect their own sannyasin
candidates. (see Rajneesh bioterrorism newspaper story [weblink provided by
Calder])
Rajneesh disciples poisoned the restaurants' customers by contaminating salad
bars and coffee creamers with salmonella bacteria. Forty-five of the victims
became so ill they had to be hospitalized, making the case the largest germ
warfare attack in United States history.
Sannyasins were later suspected of trying to kill a Wasco County executive by
spiking his water with an unknown poison. A Jefferson County District Attorney,
Michael Sullivan, also became ill after leaving a cup of coffee unattended as
Rajneesh sannyasins filled the courthouse.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh never apologized to any of the people who were poisoned
by his own trusted disciples.
Members of Rajneesh's staff were poisoned by Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's
personal secretary. Sheela had the habit of poisoning people who either knew too
much or who had simply fallen out of her favor. Sheela spent two and a half years in
a Federal medium security prison for her crimes, while Rajneesh pled guilty to
immigration fraud and was given a ten year suspended sentence, fined $400,000, and
deported from the United States of America. As part of his plea bargain agreement,
more serious charges of racketeering were dropped.
[Thompson tries to exonerate Rajneesh by not only putting all the blame on Ma
Anand Sheela, but also by saying that the Rajneeshpuram inmates were facing
great negativity, hostility and threats of violence from certain local Oregonians
suspicious of any non-Christian groups. Thompson writes: "Both Milne and Bharti
had serious conflicts with Sheela's fascist style in the Commune in USA. They both
assumed that Osho was behind her actions. In fact she usually said that the 'order
comes from the chief' to convince persons to do something they felt their conscience
would not allow. So people thought it was a 'device' from the master. Now, Osho and
his personal staff have clarified that many 'orders' did not only not come from Him,
but were deliberate moves on Sheela's part to expand her power to areas where it
was weak, such as the inner circle of the personal staff around Osho.... Sheela's
fascist style developed under time as a response to the intense antagonism that the
commune created around them. There were 17 state agencies trying to get them out
of there; the sign announcing the nearby commune was used as shooting target by the
local resident of the area; the hotel they bought in Portland was bombed, and there is
even convincing evidence that the CIA hired someone to kill Osho. All this has been
documented in the books Passage to America by Max Brecher, The Way of the Heart
By Judith Thompson, and Rajneesh Garden, by Dell Murphy. Also, it can be checked
in Juliet Forman's account of the time and Ms. [Sue] Appleton's book. I do not justify
Sheela's behaviour and I think she was criminally minded. But it certainly creates a
context to view what these guys [the Rajneeshees and their leadership] were facing.
For further details see: www2.db.dk/pe/twotales.htm, or for a complete story of
Osho's commune see: www.ashe-prem.org/two/davisson.shtml. Also, in his article,
Mr. Calder joins, or at least holds morally responsible, Osho's arrest and
deportation from USA with Sheela's crimes. What he fails to see is that all those
crimes, the salmonella poisoning, the intent of murder of Osho's doctor, Devaraj, the
plot against the attorney general, the bugging of the commune (including Osho's own
room)-- were crimes committed by Sheela and her associates. These crimes were
exposed by Osho and it was he who invited the FBI to investigate them in his own
commune. Which ultimately led to the capture of Sheela and her friends in Germany."
Calder replied to this with an email on Sep. 2, 2007: "Rajneesh was directly
responsible for massive criminal financial fraud. Sheela was responsible for germ
warfare, drugging, and much more. Both were responsible for illegal wiretapping.
Rajneesh never apologized to his fraud victims, or to Sheela's germ warfare victims."
Moreover, as we have learned in the biographical section on Rajneesh, people like
David Knapp/Krishna Deva, former mayor of Rajneeshpuram, and Ava Avalos
have testified and Kate Strelley/Avibha has written that Rajneesh had a lot more
direction and complicity in Sheela's and cronies' crimes than Thompson or
other Rajneesh followers want to admit.]
[Calder continues:]
Rajneesh felt that teaching ethics was unnecessary because meditation would
automatically lead to good behavior. The actions of Rajneesh and his disciples
proves that theory to be completely false. Rajneesh taught that you should do as
you please because life is both a dream and a joke. This attitude led to the
classically fascist belief that one can become so high and mighty that one is beyond
the need for old fashioned values and ethical behavior.
Those unfamiliar with the Rajneesh story can read the book, Bhagwan: The God That
Failed, published by Saint Martin's Press [in 1987] and written by Hugh Milne
(Shivamurti), a close disciple of Rajneesh during his Poona and [earliest] Oregon
years. Except for Ma Yoga Laxmi, Rajneesh's first secretary, and Vivek, Rajneesh's
main girlfriend, Shivamurti probably spent more time in close physical proximity to
Rajneesh than anyone in Rajneesh's adult lifetime. Mr. Milne's book is largely
corroborated by Satya Bharti Franklin's book, Promise of Paradise: A Woman's
Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho Rajneesh, published by Barrytown/Station Hill
Press. [For both these books...] copies can be obtained through Amazon.com. There
have been many other tell-all books published on the same subject matter, but I have
not read them and I do not know the authors, so I do not mention them here.
Regarding Bhagwan: The God That Failed, I can verify many of the facts Mr. Milne
states about the life of Rajneesh in Bombay and Poona, though I have no first hand
knowledge of the tragic events at the Oregon commune. My contacts with people who
were there lead me to believe that most of the facts Mr. Milne presents of the Oregon
era are also highly accurate. Hugh Milne is due great credit for a well written and
entertaining book, which is a sincere effort at complete honesty. On a few occasions,
however, I differ from Mr. Milne's interpretations of what the facts he presents
actually mean.
Rajneesh did not suffer from "hypochondria," as Mr. Milne suggested. Rajneesh had
a very real neurological and immune system disease which he mistook for frequent
viral infections. Rajneesh became unusually afraid of germs only due to his
understandable medical ignorance. I fully agree with Mr. Milne that Rajneesh
suffered from "megalomania," however, and will add that the short-statured
Rajneesh had a Napoleonic, obsessive-compulsive, and extravagantly narcissistic
personality.
Mr. Milne suggests that Rajneesh used "hypnosis" to manipulate his disciples.
Rajneesh had a melodic and naturally hypnotic voice which would be a great asset to
any public speaker. In my opinion, however, Rajneesh's power came from the intense
energy field of the universal cosmic consciousness which he channeled like a lens.
Hindus call this universal energy phenomena the Atman [??—No, they call it "Prana"
or "Shakti"; Atman means "the Divine Self"--Timothy]. As a Westerner, I prefer
more scientific terms and describe the Atman as a highly evolved manifestation of
time-energy-space, the TES. [See Calder's weblinked essay, "The TES Hypothesis"]
Hugh Milne's book records a day when Rajneesh admitted, while under the influence
of nitrous oxide, that there is no such thing as 'enlightenment.' I cannot confirm this
event through other contacts, but I assume Rajneesh was simply stating what U.G.
Krishnamurti has said all along; that the storybook fiction we accept of a perfect
enlightenment, full of infallible wisdom, is a big lie. A powerful and expansive state
of cosmic consciousness does exist in humans who achieve it, but the way this
condition is described by the religious establishment is an egocentric fiction,
contrived by spiritual leaders to control the masses for their own personal gain.
Enlightenment is not something you own; it is something you channel.
Whatever term you use for the phenomenon of enlightenment, it is scientifically
accurate to say that no human being has any power of their own. Even the chemical
energy of our metabolism is borrowed from the sun, which beams light to the earth,
which is then converted by plants through photosynthesis into the food we eat. You
may get your bread from the supermarket, but the caloric energy it contains
originated from thermonuclear reactions deep in the center of a nearby star. Our
physical bodies run on star power. Any "spiritual" energy we channel also comes
from far beyond, from all sides of the universe, from the complete TES, from beyond
the oceans of galaxies, and onto infinity. No human being owns the Atman, and no
one can speak for the TES.
The Void has no ambition or personality whatsoever, so Rajneesh could only speak
for his own animal mind. The animal mind may want its disciples to "take over the
whole world," but the Void does not care because it is beyond any motivation. The
phenomenon we called Rajneesh, Bhagwan, and Osho, was only a temporary lens of
cosmic energy, not the full cosmos itself.
Rajneesh, and the famous Greek-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff [c.1872-
1949], often used the power of the Atman for clearly personal gain. Both men
used their cosmic consciousness to overwhelm and seduce women. Gurdjieff was
ashamed of his behavior and vowed many times during his life to end this practice,
which was a combination of ordinary male lust backed up by the potent advantage of
oceanic supermental power. Rajneesh went even further and used his channeled
cosmic energy to manipulate masses of people to gain a kind of quasi-political status,
and to aggrandize himself far beyond what was honest or helpful to his disciples. In
Oregon, Rajneesh declared to the media that "My religion is the only religion!"
Diplomacy and modesty were not his strong points.
To my knowledge, George Gurdjieff never reached the extremes of self-indulgence
of Rajneesh, and he even warned his disciples not to have blind faith in him.
Gurdjieff wanted his students to be free and independent, with the combined abilities
of clear mental reasoning and cosmic consciousness. Rajneesh, by contrast, seemed
to believe that only his thoughts and ideas were of value because only he was
"enlightened." This was a grand error in judgment and revealed a basic flaw in his
character. Unfortunately, when Rajneesh achieved the ability to fully channel [sic]
the power of the Atman, he failed to apply the needed wisdom of self-restraint. His
human mind so rebelled against Asian asceticism that he failed to ensure that his
borrowed power was only used for the good of others. Rajneesh was driven by strong
personal ambitions, not just compassion.
"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." - Henry Kissinger
Rajneesh left India in 1981, in part to escape paying a four million dollar Indian
income tax bill. As he disembarked from a 747 jetliner to take his first footsteps in
the USA, Rajneesh declared that "I am the Messiah America has been waiting
for." - [Milne, Bhagwan: The God That Failed] After a brief stay in a newly acquired
castle styled home in Montclair, New Jersey, Rajneesh bought the 64,000 acre Big
Muddy cattle ranch near the small town of Antelope in eastern Oregon for six million
dollars. [See Calder's weblinked photo of the plaque in honor of local resistance to
Rajneesh's invasion of Antelope, Oregon]
Rajneesh created his Oregon desert commune from his own powerful mind and
named it "Rajneeshpuram." He made himself the ultimate dictator, his picture
placed everywhere as in an Orwellian bad dream. J. Krishnamurti called Rajneesh
a "criminal" and Rajneeshpuram "a concentration camp under the dictatorship
of enlightenment." Poonjaji, Ramana Maharshi's famous student, refered to
Rajneesh as "a pig" for building himself up in the eyes of his disciples to
dishonest proportions. Poonjaji's position was that even the enlightened remain
human beings, not saints or superheroes, and that we all share the same cosmic
identity no matter what our class and social standing.
U.G. Krishnamurti [1918-2007], a famous maverick anti-guru, was even more
critical of Rajneesh. During the mid 1970s Rajneesh deemphasized his own
meditation methods and started selling Western style group therapies as a way
to gain income. It was difficult to make money from authentic meditation techniques
because they are all easy to learn and can be done alone, without the aid of a teacher.
One of the groups Rajneesh sold to students was the "Tantra" group, which was
basically just male and female disciples having sex with each other. U.G.
Krishnamurti publicly called Rajneesh the "world’s biggest pimp" because "He made
money from the boys and the girls and he kept it for himself." In 1971 Rajneesh told
me directly in a face to face meeting that U.G. Krishnamurti was "realized." After
much public criticism from U.G., Rajneesh counterattacked by calling U.G. a "phony
guru." [see Calder's weblinked photo of U.G. Krishnamurti.]
Guru wars aside, the totalitarian atmosphere of Rajneeshpuram was the main
reason I did not stay at the commune beyond two brief visits. I was interested in
meditation, not in a big prison camp where human beings were treated like insects
with no intelligence of their own. Rajneesh put such a high emphasis on his
disciples following orders without question that they did just that when Ma
Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary, gave absurd orders to commit
crimes which Rajneesh himself (hopefully) would never have approved of.
When you decapitate the intelligence of human beings you create a situation that is
highly dangerous and destructive to the human spirit. You cannot save people
from their egos by demanding "total surrender." The antidemocratic technique of
forcing blind obedience did not work well for Hitler, Stalin, or for Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh. Germany, Russia, and the Rajneesh Oregon commune were all destroyed
by authoritarian imperial rule. A diversity of opinion is always healthy because it acts
as an effective counterbalance to the myopic arrogance of those who would be king.
Rajneesh never understood this truth of history and referred to democracy
scornfully as "mobocracy." Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an imperial
aristocrat, never a generous and open minded democrat, and he put his
contempt for the democratic process into highly visible action in Oregon.
In an attempt to subvert a local Wasco County election, Rajneesh had his
sannyasins bus in almost 2,000 homeless people from major American cities in
an effort to unfairly rig the voting process in his favor. Some of the new voters
were mentally ill and were given beer laced with drugs to keep them manageable.
Credible allegations have been made that one or more of the imported street people
died due to overdosing on the beer and drug mixture, their bodies buried in the
desert. To my knowledge that charge has not been conclusively proven. Rajneesh's
voting fraud scheme failed, and the derelicts and mental patients were returned to the
streets after the election was over, used and then abandoned.
Rajneesh used people, spoke out of both sides of his mouth, and betrayed the
trust of his own disciples. This betrayal caused Vivek, his longtime girlfriend and
companion, to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Rajneesh
even lied about her death, slandering his greatest love in her grave by falsely
claiming that she was chronically depressed due to some intrinsic emotional
instability. Vivek was never depressed during the years I knew her, and she was the
most radiant women I have ever known. [see Calder's weblinked photo of Vivek]
Vivek was a glowing student of meditation, but her only meditation method was
being with Rajneesh and absorbing his tremendous energy. When her one true love
collapsed into insanity, she took her own life out of overwhelming grief. Rajneesh
drove her to suicide because she could not understand nor tolerate his mental decline
and collapse. Rajneesh lied about her death to avoid taking responsibility for his own
bizarre behavior, which was the underlying cause of Vivek's despair.
The young Acharya Rajneesh started his life as a teacher who condemned false
gurus, and he ended his life as one of the most deceitful gurus the world has ever
known. The difficult fact to comprehend is that he was enlightened when he was an
anti-guru puritan, and he was still enlightened when he was the ultimate corrupt,
self-indulgent guru himself. [??--This notion that Rajneesh was ever
authentically enlightened in anything more than just a cognitive sense of having
a certain understanding and animal magnetism is very questionable--Timothy]
Rajneesh destroyed his own teaching because he discarded truthfulness in favor of
what he thought were useful lies. Once you make that wrong turn, away from
ordinary straightforward truth, you have lost your way. No human being can
disregard fact on a regular basis without finding himself in a sea of turmoil, because
by discarding fact you discard the ground beneath your feet. Little lies grow into big
lies, and the now hidden truth becomes your enemy, not your ally and friend.
Rajneesh overestimated himself and underestimated his own disciples. The real
seekers around him could have easily handled the truth and were already motivated
without the need for propaganda. Rajneesh had been a famous guru for such a long
time that he came to see himself in grandiose terms. He was indeed an historic
figure, but he was not the perfect superhuman he pretended to be. No one is! His
disciples deserved honesty, but he fed them fairytales "to give them faith."
Jiddu Krishnamurti had been more honest than Rajneesh in repeating relentlessly that
"there is no authority" due to the intrinsic nature of the universe. Ardent Rajneesh
disciples didn't heed J. Krishnamurti's warnings and put blind faith in a man who
claimed to be all-seeing, to have all the answers, and who once in 1975 brashly
stated that he had never made a single mistake in his entire life. Clearly, Rajneesh
made as many mistakes as any human being. Just as obviously, his basic existential
enlightenment was no guarantee of functional pragmatic wisdom.
Rajneesh was a brilliant philosopher, but he was a lost babe in the woods when it
came to the world of science. Worried about worldwide overpopulation, Rajneesh
pressured his disciples to undergo sexual reproduction sterilization procedures.
Unfortunately, he did not consider the demographics of population growth. The
current population expansion is largely a phenomenon of poor Third World nations,
not a problem originating in the USA, Canada, and Europe, where birth rates are
actually declining. North America and Europe are only experiencing population
increases due to legal and illegal immigration from Third World nations. Having his
Western disciples medically sever their reproductive capabilities only added to this
imbalance, and many former disciples now regret they complied without question to
his thoughtless edicts.
Discouraging followers from having families is a common device of gurus to
keep disciples from spending money on children rather than handing their cash
over to the guru himself. Childless disciples make better workers and are
usually more subservient. Thus, sexual sterilization fit into Rajneesh's business
plan and his desire to create an army of followers who felt that "only the
relationship to guru is important."
Rajneesh was the son of an ambitious Jain businessman, and he was more like his
father than he ever realized. Rajneesh's enlightenment was overlaid on top of a mind
attuned to business and making money.
In the 1980s, Rajneesh declared that the AIDS epidemic would soon kill three
quarters of the world's population and that a major nuclear war was just around the
corner. He thought he could escape nuclear holocaust by building underground
shelters and slow the spread of AIDS by having his disciples wash their hands with
alcohol before eating meals. His more reasoned admonition was for his followers to
always use condoms. To enforce his sexual rules, which also involved elaborate
instructions on the use of rubber gloves during sexual encounters, Rajneesh
encouraged his sannyasins to spy on each other, reporting the names of those who
failed to conform to his orders.
The disaster of Rajneesh appointing himself the singular great brain of the universe
was compounded by his lack of real world reasoning skills, and this was apparent
even before he started taking large amounts of Valium and inhaling nitrous oxide.
Rajneesh had no understanding of the scientific method. If he thought
something was true, in his own mind, that made it true. Rajneesh could weave
magnificent philosophical dreams and addict his disciples to imagined worlds of
spiritual adventure, but those dreams did not have to stand any empirical test of
truth. In the world of science, you have to prove what you say is true through testing.
In the world of philosophy and religion, you can say anything you desire and throw
caution to the wind. If your words sound good to the masses, they will sell whether
they are fact or fiction. [see Calder's essays "The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong
Way Rajneesh" and "Common Lies of the Phony World of Mystics"]
Rajneesh ruled his desert empire as a warlord with his own private army and
puppet government. His visions and ideas, faulty or not, were taken without
question as the word of God. His disciples were judged by their ability to
surrender to his will, and any opposing views were branded as an unspiritual
lack of faith. As conditions at the ranch became progressively more unpleasant, a
number of sannyasins escaped by hiding in the back of outgoing trucks. Their
quest for freedom upset Rajneesh, who demanded that the disillusioned must
now ask his permission to leave. Rajneesh then dramatically threatened suicide
if others escaped by stealthful means.
Rajneesh's poor reasoning became even more apparent during and after the Oregon
commune scandal. After being jailed and then deported from the USA, Rajneesh
angrily declared America "a wretched country" and branded Americans as
"subhuman," ignoring the fact that it was he, an Indian, who pled guilty to felony
immigration fraud, and that it was Sheela, an Indian, who ordered the most
serious crimes which brought his empire to ruin. Even in his fifties, Rajneesh was
still lying to get his own way and still demanding to be the center of attention. In
1988, suffering from drug and illness induced dementia, Rajneesh publicly pouted
that his box of toys, his expensive car collection and jewel encrusted watches, had
been taken away.
Rajneesh's disciples thought they were following an authoritative "enlightened
Master." In reality they had been misled by a highly fallible human animal who was
still a little boy at heart. Rajneesh had not only misrepresented himself personally,
but he misrepresented the phenomenon of enlightenment itself. The idealized fantasy
of perfect enlightenment does not exist anywhere in the real world, and it has never
existed. The universe is far too big and complex for anyone to be its "Master." We
are all subjects, not Masters, and those who pretend to be infallible and all-knowing
end up looking even more the fool as history inevitably proves them wrong.
"Nature does not use anything as a model. It is only interested in perfecting the
species. It is trying to create perfect species and not perfect beings." - U.G.
Krishnamurti
The famous sages of old seem perfect to us now because they have become larger
than life myths. The long passage of time has allowed their followers to cover up
their guru's flaws, just as Rajneesh disciples are currently censoring history to
cover up Rajneesh's great failings. Rajneesh was never more infallible than any
other human being. Unfortunately, cosmic consciousness does not automatically
render greater intelligence, wisdom, and honesty.
Rajneesh died addicted to Valium, and he experienced all of the negative
symptoms of drug addiction, which included slurred speech, paranoia, poor
judgment, and dramatically lowered intelligence. At one point his paranoia and
confusion were so great that he thought a group of German cultists had cast an evil
spell on him. His physical disabilities and drug abuse were simply more than his
mortal brain could take. His biggest flaw, his disregard for the ordinary concept of
truth, was his ultimate downfall and for that crime he must be held fully responsible.
Rajneesh lied when he said he had enlightened disciples. He lied when he said he
never made a mistake. Near the end of his life he was forced to admit that he
was fallible, as his list of bungles had grown to monstrous proportions. He lied
by pretending that his therapy groups were not mainly just a money making
device. Rajneesh lied about breaking United States immigration laws, and he only
admitted the truth after he was presented with overwhelming evidence against him.
He lied by saying that he was adopted in a phony scheme to get permanent residence
status. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was no bank robber, but he was quite literally a
pathological liar. The ridiculous thing is that all of his lies were totally unnecessary
and counterproductive. As conventional and square as it may sound, honesty really is
the best policy!
Rajneesh lied when he claimed that he was not responsible for the horrors of the
Oregon commune. Rajneesh was responsible because he hand picked Ma Anand
Sheela and the people who committed the major crimes of conspiracy to commit
murder, poisoning, first-degree assault, burglary, arson, and wiretapping.
Rajneesh himself gave direct verbal approval for Sheela's illegal bugging and
wiretapping of his own disciples. The fact that Rajneesh did not order or have
preknowledge (hopefully) of the most serious violent crimes does not mean that
he was not ethically responsible for them. Rajneesh never turned against Ma
Anand Sheela until he started to suspect that Sheela was stealing money from him.
Just one month before Sheela fled the commune, Rajneesh spoke of her publicly,
stating that "I have been preparing her like a sword. I told her to go out and cut as
many heads as possible." Later, Rajneesh feigned innocence and claimed that Sheela
was controlling him in spite of the obvious fact that Rajneesh was the singular reason
the commune existed. Rajneesh was surrounded by thousands of adoring disciples
who would have gladly expelled or even jailed Sheela any time he gave the order.
Sheela did Rajneesh's dirty work, and the fact that she went farther in her
crimes than Rajneesh had planned does not exonerate him of all guilt. Upon
leaving the commune, Sheela stated that she was tired of "being his slave for 16, 17
or 20 hours a day," and tired of "taking food out of the mouths of people to buy him
watches and Rolls Royces." Rajneesh then publicly claimed that Sheela had extorted
millions of dollars from the commune. Sheela's response to his charge was that
Rajneesh had spent all of the money himself on his own expensive toys, and that
Rajneesh was bad at mathematics and "can't count."
Clearly, Rajneesh's insane purchases of dozens of bejeweled ladies' watches and
over 90 Rolls-Royce automobiles cost the commune many millions of dollars.
After her release from prison, Ma Anand Sheela continued to work for a living,
without obvious signs of enormous wealth. Sheela committed many crimes, but
Rajneesh himself was never "innocent."
If a teacher puts a drunken sailor in charge of driving a school bus, and the children
end up dead, then the teacher is responsible for their deaths. Rajneesh knew what
kind of a person Sheela was, and he chose her because of her corruption and
arrogance, not in spite of it. Rajneesh personally tutored Sheela in how to
control and manipulate his own disciples, and it was Rajneesh himself who
encouraged Sheela's infamous outbursts on the ABC television show, Nightline. In a
cowardly attempt to evade his own failings, Rajneesh changed his name to Osho, as if
a change in name could wash away his sins.
There is no publicly released evidence to suggest that Rajneesh ordered the germ
warfare attack on the ten Oregon restaurants. There is also no publicly released
evidence that implicates Rajneesh in the plot to have a sannyasin pilot fly an
airplane full of explosives into an Oregon courthouse in order to intimidate the
political opposition. Luckily, the sannyasin pilot who was asked to perform that
insane task was not as dumb as the plotters, and he fled the commune without
committing any crime.
Rajneesh was directly responsible for the twisted mix of totalitarian slavery and
libertine indulgence that the commune represented. According to highly credible
published reports, Rajneesh allowed middle aged men to have sexual intercourse
with prepubescent girls at the commune in the name of sexual freedom, yet his
disciples were not allowed to have a mind of their own and had to totally surrender to
the great Bhagwan's will.
Disciples were often forced to work 12 hours a day in cold and difficult
conditions, while Rajneesh himself experienced "groovy spaces" in his private
heated indoor pool and watched countless movies on his big screen projection
television, all the while enjoying his daily supply of drugs. Rajneesh showed his
divine love for his disciples by squandering millions in hard earned commune assets
on his car collection and expensive jewelry, and all in the name of egolessness and
spiritual surrender. [see photo of the flagrantly narcissistic Osho wearing jewel
encrusted watch]
Why did Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh own over 90 Rolls-Royces? Why did Saddam
Hussein own dozens of luxurious palaces? Those desires were products of the base
animal mind of two men who grew up surrounded by poverty. Enlightenment does
not care about symbols of power and potency. Looking for hidden esoteric
explanations for obsessive behavior is pointless. Is there an occult reason that Elton
John spends over $400,000 per month on flowers? Is there a secret spiritual reason
that Rajneesh had a collection of dozens of expensive ladies' watches? The universal
cosmic consciousness is completely neutral and without any need to possess, impress,
or dominate. It also cannot drive or tell time.
One of Rajneesh's most blatant lies was that "the enlightened one gains nothing from
his disciples." Rajneesh wanted people to believe that everything he did was a
free gift born of pure compassion, and that he gained nothing personally from
the guru-disciple relationship. In obvious provable fact, Rajneesh gained much
from his disciples: money, power, sex, and the titillation of constant adoration.
Just as rock stars become energized by screaming fans at concerts, Rajneesh gained
emotional energy and support from his army of sannyasins. The energy transfer was
a two-way street, not a totally free one-way gift. Being a guru was his business, his
only business. Without that income, at least on the material level, he was just a
short, balding, physically disabled Indian man who could not hold a job.
Rajneesh's very real enlightenment would not pay his bills or give him the material
luxuries he craved.
Consciousness needs entertainment to survive, and Rajneesh used his disciples as
playthings for his own amusement. Rajneesh had no bankable power of his own, so
he could only gain material power by manipulating others to do his will. The
equation was simple. The more disciples he attracted, the more power and wealth he
obtained.
During Rajneesh's incarceration in America, a television network broadcast a video
of Rajneesh caught off-guard by a security camera while he was being held in a
waiting room. Rajneesh looked bored and disgusted, just as any ordinary man might
be. He didn't look blissful or enlightened at all. In my own opinion that video clip
revealed the stark truth about the phenomenon we call 'enlightenment.' The
realization of the Void is not enough for anyone. All human animals, enlightened or
not, need social interaction and the comforts of the material world to be content.
Rajneesh, on so many levels, was just an ordinary man. Sexually he was even less
than ordinary. Pretending to be a great Tantric in his early years, Rajneesh handed
out ridiculously bad sexual advice at a time when he had very little first hand
experience with sex himself. During his Bombay years, Rajneesh often grabbed the
breasts of young female disciples. On at least one occasion, he asked a couple to
have sex in front of him so that he could watch. The couple wisely rejected his
request.
Rajneesh often asked women half his age to strip in front of him so that he could
"feel their chakras." To facilitate this practice, he installed an electric lock on his
bedroom door that could be activated from a button on his desk. Rajneesh groped the
breasts of two of my women friends and "felt the chakras" of a third. I soon began to
realize that like so many other girl grabbing Indian gurus who had made the
headlines, Rajneesh on the human level was just an ordinary sexually immature
Indian male. My lady friend who suffered the chakra feeling incident was so put off
that she never came back to see him again. He had told her "Don't worry. You are
mine now." That grasping statement had chilled her as much as the sexual
advance. The young woman was a student of Indian music and had previously been
sexually exploited by a famous Indian musician. She knew first hand what many
Indian men were like. Rajneesh proved himself to be predictably and disappointingly
the same.
After Rajneesh started having sexual intercourse on a regular basis, the spiritual
need for him to "feel the chakras" of his female disciples mysteriously vanished.
Rajneesh rationalized having sex with his female disciples by claiming that the act
would bless them so much that they would become enlightened in some future
lifetime. His admission years later that there is no such thing as reincarnation made
his sexual rationalizations appear even more ridiculous and self-serving.
Rajneesh had much inside him that I wanted: light, energy, and a vastly expanded
state of being. Regrettably, he also had much inside him that I did not want or
respect. I do not find fault with Rajneesh for having the same sexual desires that all
men have. I did find fault when he was dishonest and cruel for purely selfish reasons.
While living in Bombay, Rajneesh made one young woman pregnant through an
aggressive and unasked for seduction. The woman was highly upset and forced by
circumstance to have an abortion. In order to protect his image as a great guru,
Rajneesh lied about his involvement and claimed that the girl had imagined the
whole affair. The young woman told the American Embassy her story, and that
incident marked the beginning of Rajneesh's troubles with the United States
Government.
Nature has provided human animals with a strong, virtually unstoppable sex drive to
ensure reproduction of the species. Because of the overwhelming importance and
power of sex, most gurus, enlightened or not, have maintained active sex lives which
are often kept secret for purely political reasons. In his early years, Rajneesh lied
about his strong sexuality by claiming to be celibate. To be fair, this has to be
understood in the context of a rigidly antisexual and highly hypocritical Indian social
structure. Later on, after his position as a guru had become secure, Rajneesh
publicly bragged to the American media that he had sex "with hundreds of
women." All of Rajneesh's sex partners were his own female meditation students
who were used as his personal harem.
[Note from Timothy: it is a violation of international professional ethics for
anyone in the helping professions—teacher, therapist, etc., including "guru"—
to solicit sexual favors from clients-students-disciples.]
All human beings are animals, specifically mammals. Scientists now believe that
human DNA is approximately 93.5% the same as chimpanzee DNA. World history,
Asian mythology, politics, and the behavior of alpha male gurus makes a lot more
sense if you keep that unavoidable fact in mind. Our most primal subconscious
motivating forces come from the animal world, which we are still a part of.
The last time I visited the Rajneesh ashram in Poona, India, was in 1988. The ashram
was literally like a loud convention of German Brownshirts (storm troopers) by
that point. Rajneesh, alias "Osho," was still very popular in Germany, due in part to
his comments in the German magazine Der Spiegel, which were widely
interpreted as being pro-Hitler. Many young Germans, who were looking for a
strong and charismatic leader, were thrilled by his words. Those who lost loved ones
during World War II were justifiably shocked.
[Thompson tries to put Rajneesh's remarks about Hitler in context, but it is still
clear that Rajneesh, because of his emotional charge around the idea of self-
restraint of baser urges, cannot well distinguish between a Gandhi and a Hitler.
Thompson writes:
"The only thing that I have found is an interview in Der Spiegel. I have seen the
video ('The Last Testament,' July 19, 1985), and Osho says to both journalists, Erick
Widdeman and Reiner Weber, when he is asked about Hitler, 'I love the man, he was
crazy,' jokingly to see their reactions. To which both German journalist look shocked.
Later he adds that 'he considers the man [[Hitler]] to be completely immoral and a
murderer,' and he compares him with Mahatma Gandhi. Not to speak positive about
Hitler, but to show how immoral Mahatma Gandhi was, in his view, for being against
technology in a poor country like India and preaching celibacy and self-torture. Now,
the article in Der Spiegel, edited of course, shows Osho comparing Hitler and Gandhi
as saying both were great men. 'Hitler was like gandhi' comes in the article. This is
how things are distorted by the yellow press. I have found some other quotes [by
Rajneesh] about Hitler and Gandhi and his arguments about it: 'Just think: if Adolf
Hitler had been a cripple or had amoebas or was continuously getting hepatitis, the
world would have been saved. In fact, Adolf Hitler was against smoking, against
alcohol. He was a pure vegetarian like Mahatma Gandhi. In fact, both men have
many things in common. Both believed in going early to bed and both believed in
getting up early in the morning. Both believed that vegetarian food is great. Both
believed that smoking is bad, alcohol is bad. [Note from Timothy: These
equivalences by Rajneesh are meaningless, for countless hundreds of millions of
other people have also been against alcohol, smoking, meat-eating, and have been
early to bed and early to rise. Notice Rajneesh's unbelievable next assertion:] Both
were great saints. The only difference was that Mahatma Gandhi had the Jaina
characteristic very much developed in him -- he was only ten percent Hindu, ninety
percent Jaina -- so he tortured himself. Adolf Hitler had the Mohammedan
characteristic developed in him: he tortured others, he didn't torture himself. But both
tortured. Whom they tortured is not of that much significance. [Note from Timothy:
Tell this to the families of the six million Jews, Gypsies and others put to death by
Hitler.] They both were enjoying torture....' (1980, Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing) 'To
torture oneself or to torture others, both are diseases--the very idea to torture.
Somebody is an Adolf Hitler, he tortures others; somebody is a Mahatma Gandhi, he
tortures himself. Both are in the same boat--maybe standing back to back, but
standing in the same boat. Adolf Hitler's joy is in torturing others, Mahatma Gandhi's
joy is in torturing himself, but both are violent. The logic is the same--their joy
depends on torture. Their direction is different, but the direction is not the question,
their mind has the same attitude: torture. You respect a person who tortures himself
because you don't understand the logic of it. Adolf Hitler is condemned all over the
world and Gandhi is worshipped all over the world, and I am simply puzzled. How is
it possible? --because the logic is the same.' (1977, Tao: The Pathless Path) In
addition, there are of course innumerable times where Osho describes Hitler as a
pygmy, as occupying the lowest rank a human being can sink to, etc."]
[Note from Timothy: Thompson seems to think the above-quoted remarks from
Rajneesh somehow exonerate Rajneesh, but they indicate to me only a very, very
confused teacher who doesn't have any authentic spiritual wisdom. No one of any
spiritual maturity would, in order to teach disciples the larger point of avoiding
needless self-mortification, ever equate Gandhi and Hitler with the words "both are
in the same boat... both are violent.... their mind has the same attitude: torture."
That Rajneesh could say this is evidence of deep psychopathology, not wisdom.]
[Calder continues:]
Even in the early 1970s in Bombay, Rajneesh made careless statements which
could easily be interpreted as being pro-Hitler and pro-fascist. In one lecture on
"esoteric groups" he claimed that Adolf Hitler had been telepathically propped up by
an occult Buddhist group that Rajneesh himself was in contact with. During World
War II it is well known that a number of Brahmin Indian yogis and Japanese "Zen
masters" had supported the Axis cause and the extermination of the "inferior races,"
so Rajneesh's claim was not entirely surprising, if not totally believable.
In Poona, Rajneesh gave an infamous lecture in which he stated that Jews had
given Hitler "no choice" but to exterminate them [???!!]. In his last years
Rajneesh declared that "I have fallen in love with this man (Adolf Hitler). He
was crazy, but I am crazier still." Rajneesh said that he wanted his sannyasins
"to take over the world" and that he had studied Hitler to gain insight into how
to accomplish the task. For a man who portrayed himself as the world's smartest,
highest, and greatest soul, such remarks were proof to me that his drug use had
destroyed the quality of his mind.
Rajneesh's comments about Hitler could be discounted as obnoxious but largely
harmless hot air if it were not for the fact that he put many of Hitler's techniques
into practice. Rajneesh used Hitler's "big lie" method of mind control very
effectively, and he demanded total surrender from his troops (disciples).
Rajneesh condoned illegal spying on his own followers and used informants to
weed out the disloyal. Ma Anand Sheela, his personal secretary, turned the tables on
Rajneesh by bugging Rajneesh's trademark high-backed chair, a betrayal his "third
eye" never detected. The Oregon police later found Rajneesh's illegally taped
conversations, but due to rules of evidence they could not be used against him in a
court of law. The tapes were reported to be highly damning as to Rajneesh's
culpability in much of the commune's day to day illegal activities.
Rajneesh turned many of his disciples into the equivalent of armed Brownshirts.
I have received letters from several of Rajneesh's former security guards who
admitted they had fallen under the spell of fascism and now regretted their behavior
and attitudes. One wrote that he did not even know how to meditate, and that the
thrill of power was what kept him loyal to his great leader. In Poona, Rajneesh
guards beat up an annoying local resident, his hands held behind his back as the
guards pummeled him. In Oregon, Rajneesh guards were armed to the teeth with
handguns and military style semiautomatic assault rifles.
Rajneesh was never an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian pacifist,
but he did have a unhealthy fascination with Adolf Hitler, as well as the United
States Army General, George Patton. According to Hugh Milne (Shivamurti),
Rajneesh watched the movie Patton over and over again on his big screen projection
television at his ranch house in Oregon.
Perhaps Rajneesh's worst personal trait was that he could dish it out but he could
not take it. He constantly put his disciples through great physical hardships,
which resulted in serious illness and even death for some, yet he himself lived in
luxury and could not endure physical discomfort without complaining loudly like
a baby. After his arrest on October 28th, 1985, at the Charlotte/Douglas International
Airport in North Carolina, Rajneesh was interviewed by ABC television news. He
began his jailhouse interview by crying in a shrill voice about his less than royal
accommodations in the slammer. His high pitched whining was so weird and
annoying that Saturday Night Live, NBC's late night comedy television show, used
the footage sarcastically as a joke about "God" complaining.
During Rajneesh's jailhouse appearance on the ABC television show Nightline,
Rajneesh gave evasive and dishonest answers to all of Ted Koppel's questions, and he
behaved as an unusually pompous and inept politician caught red handed at illegal
activity. Rajneesh claimed that he was not responsible for any of the crimes
committed at the commune because he was "in silence." In proven fact, although
Rajneesh had stopped giving public lectures for a time, he had never stopped talking
to Ma Anand Sheela and other close disciples. Rajneesh was always the ultimate
authority at the commune, even though Sheela committed some of the most serious
crimes behind his back.
Rajneesh's favorite Rolls-Royce dealer stated that "the Bhagwan" had spent hours on
the telephone talking to him about his often weekly purchases of new automobiles.
All of his over 90 Rolls-Royces were paid for from general commune funds on
his direct orders, not "gifts" from outsiders as he would later try to claim.
Rajneesh was the only person who wanted the cars and he was the only person
allowed to drive them. After bankrupting the commune, he claimed that the
automobiles were owned by the commune, not by him.
In his Nightline interview, Rajneesh pretended not to know that he was leaving the
United States during his attempt to escape an impending Federal arrest warrant on
racketeering and immigration charges. Rajneesh's defense was that he was innocently
sleeping when police boarded the private jet he had hired to fly to Bermuda. Rajneesh
said that he thought Bermuda was just another American state, and that he was going
on vacation to rest and to escape "death threats." The authorities later learned that a
Rajneesh disciple with ties to the United States Justice Department had tipped off
Rajneesh about his impending arrest. His own sannyasins had not even known that he
had left the commune until they learned from the media of the arrest of Rajneesh and
several followers at the North Carolina airport. The sad fact was their great
"enlightened" guru had secretly abandoned his own disciples, leaving them to face
the music all on their own. The luggage of Rajneesh and his companions was
searched and found to contain a bag of cash, a box of expensive jewel encrusted
watches, and a handgun. [see pictures of the downfall of Rajneesh]
The Rajneesh cult had little luck winning over American television viewers. Ma
Anand Sheela disgraced herself on Nightline weeks earlier by bursting into loud
obscenities, forcing Ted Koppel to take her off the air. Saturday Night Live later
broadcast a skit about an auction with actor Randy Quaid selling off "the Bhagwan's"
over 90 Rolls-Royce automobiles. Years later, the The Simpsons, the FOX television
network's wildly popular cartoon show, produced a spoof of Rajneesh that depicted a
white gloved guru driving his Rolls-Royce down a muddy commune road as his
disciples felt joy at eating his road dirt. In the cartoon, the great guru tried to escape
the commune with bags of cash in a homemade peddle-driven flying machine.
During my last visit to the Poona ashram in 1988, Rajneesh was in silence because he
was angry at his own disciples. He wanted his sannyasins to demonstrate in the
streets against some Indian officials who had spoken out against him. Wisely, no one
was interested in creating a new confrontation. This spell of sanity among the flock
irritated Rajneesh, who canceled public talks as punishment. I was thus only able to
see him on video tape.
On the taped lecture, Rajneesh was ranting emotionally, and factually incorrectly,
about how the police in the United States had stolen his collection of jewel encrusted
ladies' watches. He said they would never be able to wear them in public because his
sannyasins would see the watches on their wrists at airports, train stations, etcetera,
and start screaming out loudly that "you stole Bhagwan's watch!" His words and
manner were so childishly irrational that he reminded me of the suicidal cult
leader, Jim Jones. This crazy old man, now called "Osho," was a far cry from
the serene, dignified, and highly eloquent Acharya Rajneesh I had met years
earlier.
Obviously, Rajneesh was not "egoless" as he had often claimed. The human brain
is a biologically created thinking machine that has evolved for both personal self-
preservation and survival of the species. The ego, which is a selfish motivating force,
is needed to protect our colony of living cells (the physical body) from danger and to
keep our cells replenished with food and water. If you did not have an ego, you
would not be able to think, speak, or find food, shelter, and clothing.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (fMRI scans) of Tibetan monks and
Hindu yogis have shown that during deep meditation the parts of the brain that gives
us a sense of location in time and space are less active. If you slow down the thought
process, and at the same time reduce the brain's sense of location, consciousness loses
both its content and its boundaries. You feel infinite, timeless, and empty. This
feeling of an infinite Void gives the false impression that ego no longer exists.
Egolessness is an illusion because the ego function is a fundamental part of the basic
physical structure of the brain itself. Ego cannot be lost unless your brain dies, which
will cause your entire body to die.
Many enlightened humans have become fooled by the reduction of the space
localization function of the brain and believed they no longer had personal selfishness
that could cause trouble. [Material by Calder about Meher Baba deleted here.]
Rajneesh... became fooled into thinking that he was above arrogance and greed, but
that was simply not the case. The ego is hard wired into our neural pathways and
cannot be destroyed unless the physical body dies. [see the scientific study of 'self'']
Even enlightened humans have to mind their manners and realize that the Atman is
the wondrous phenomena [sic] they should promote, not their own temporary
personalities. Ramana Maharshi had the right approach in this regard, and that is one
reason he is still beloved by all. Ramana Maharshi promoted the Atman, the universal
cosmic consciousness, but never his own mortal body and mind. [see Calder's
weblinked photo of Ramana Maharshi]
Rajneesh's spectacular energy was proof that he was enlightened in the Eastern,
esoteric sense of the word. The Eastern, esoteric definition of 'enlightenment' is an
energy phenomenon, gained only by those who are totally open to the infinite power
of the universe. The Western definition is simply to be a very wise man, which
Rajneesh, in my opinion, was not.
Even after returning to Poona, Rajneesh continued his Valium and nitrous oxide use
and seemed unable to learn from his own mistakes. Rajneesh had often branded his
critics as "idiots," yet in his final years Rajneesh had no sane voice inside himself to
say No! Enough is enough! Like a deranged alcoholic, Rajneesh could not stop his
own self-destructive behavior, and the quality of his judgment dropped to below that
of even the most ordinary unenlightened human being. Rajneesh had used the myth
of Tantra to rationalize his dishonesty and selfishness, and now he could not stop.
Earlier in life, Rajneesh had skipped out of paying a hotel bill, cheated a real
estate agent out of a commission, and obtained millions of dollars from his own
disciples through lies and fraud. In the end, Rajneesh had become a hopeless drug
addict as well, and no amount of spiritual rationalizations could alter that fact.
Rajneesh's lifelong teaching had been that enlightenment is a state of perfect
egolessness which brought about wisdom, compassion, and in his unique case, total
infallibility. In the last months of his life, Rajneesh, now renamed "Osho," finally
admitted that the ego could not be destroyed, only "observed." The very basis of his
demand for total surrender of his disciples was that the ego-contaminated followers
had to submit their will to the perfect Master, because only the perfect Master had no
ego and thus could do no wrong. If this were not true then why should anyone
surrender to another fallible and corruptible human ego?
Rajneesh even finally admitted that there is no reincarnation, and that the very
concept of reincarnation was just a "misinterpretation" of other phenomena.
This shocking admission meant that his previous frequent claims of being a
famous guru in past lives were pure fiction, designed to impress, manipulate,
and control his disciples. Rajneesh's main teaching was based on souls,
reincarnation, and achieving freedom from rebirth (moksha) through spiritual
practice. His massive drug intake seemed to act as a truth serum at times, allowing
admissions of truths that he had previously kept secret in order to remain in control of
his cult empire. The course of Rajneesh's life and his drug induced admissions
proved to me that his most basic teachings were wrong and a lie.
In his last days, Osho argued with his doctors to ignore their medical ethics and give
him even more nitrous oxide. Osho rationalized his drug addiction just as a teenage
boy might if caught smoking marijuana by his mother. The God "Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh" had fallen down to the stumble-drunk Osho, and a substantial
number of his disciples were so addicted to his artfully seductive words and false
image that they could not see what was happening right in front of their own
eyes.
In late 1989, in a final bizarre act, Osho ordered his dentists to remove most of his
teeth for no legitimate medical reason. If Osho had suspected that the mercury fillings
in his teeth were causing him health problems, he could have easily had the old
fillings replaced with modern white plastic dental fillings. Why Osho wanted to have
so many teeth removed is a mystery to this day. Needless to say, their removal did
nothing to improve his health.
In the years after Osho's death, the Poona ashram has been turned into a
"cashram" and is run for profit. Color Puncture, Tantric Tarot, encounter groups,
and every crackpot scam in the book is being peddled by Osho disciples for large
sums of money. I think back to the day when the just turned 40 year old Acharya
Rajneesh instructed a Japanese woman that "Meditation must not be made into a
business." The corrupt means have gotten so far out of hand that the original intent of
the ends has long been forgotten. It would be wonderful to believe that enlightened
men were perfect in every way. That would make life simpler and sweeter, but it
would be fiction, not fact.
--Christopher Calder
===========
[Calder's Concern on the Practice of Dynamic Meditation:]
*Dynamic Meditation: (warning) This spectacular meditation method was
Rajneesh's trademark, and it remains a tremendously effective tool for naturally
expanding consciousness. Rajneesh never did the technique himself because he didn't
need to. He developed the method simply by observing his disciples, who would
occasionally go into spontaneous body movements during his early meditation
camps. When his judgment started to decline, he unfortunately changed the third
and fourth stages of the method into a pointless torture test. The correct and most
effective version of this meditation technique has four stages, each lasting ten
minutes.
Stage #1) Start by standing with your eyes closed and breathe deep and fast through
your nose for ten minutes. Allow your body to move freely. Jump, sway back and
forth, or use any physical motion that helps you pump more oxygen into your lungs.
Stage #2) The second ten minute stage is one of catharsis. Let go totally and be
spontaneous. You may dance or roll on the ground. Screaming is allowed and
encouraged. You must act out any anger you feel in a safe way, such as beating the
earth with your hands. All the suppressed emotions from your subconscious mind are
to be released.
Stage #3) In the third stage you jump up and down yelling Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!
continuously for ten minutes. This sounds silly, but the loud vibration of your voice
travels down to your centers of stored energy and pushes that energy upward. When
doing this stage it is important to keep your arms loose and in a natural position. Do
not hold your arms over your head as that position can be medically dangerous.
Stage #4) The fourth ten minute stage is complete relaxation and quiet. Flop down on
your back, get comfortable, and just let go. Be as a dead man totally surrendered to
the cosmos. Enjoy the tremendous energy you have unleashed in the first three stages
and become a silent witness to the ocean as it flows into the drop. Become the ocean.
Rajneesh unwisely changed the third stage of the method to rigidly holding your
arms over your head while shouting Hoo! Even worse, he changed the fourth
stage to freezing in place like a statue with your arms still held awkwardly over
your head. This method is not only uncomfortable to the point of torture, it can
also be medically dangerous for those with an underlying heart condition. When
you stand with arms elevated over your head, you increase your level of orthostatic
stress. This means that your heart must work harder to pump blood that has traveled
down to your legs back up to your heart and on up to your brain. You could easily
pass out in this position, or induce a heart attack in individuals with coronary artery
disease.
Freezing in place makes deep relaxation impossible as it keeps your mind's
controlling functions fully operational. This holds your consciousness on the surface,
defeating the purpose of the exercise. The point of the technique was to have three
stages of intense action followed by a fourth stage of deep relaxation and
complete let go. Rajneesh could never have practiced the freeze method himself, not
even in his youth. Asking his disciples to do it simply showed that he had lost touch
with reality. Rajneesh was a fallible human being, not a perfect God.
I advise students to only use the enjoyable early version of Dynamic Meditation.
This wonderful technique was intended to grow with the student and change as the
student changes. After a few years of practicing the method vigorously, the first
three stages of the meditation should drop away spontaneously. You then go into
the meditation hall, take a few deep breaths, and immediately enter the deep
tranquility of the fourth stage. Rajneesh intended the method to be fluid, health
giving, and fun. Those new students who wish to experiment with Rajneesh Dynamic
Meditation should read the section on Cathartic Dancing Meditation in Meditation
Handbook for further warnings and details before experimenting with this powerful
technique.
========
[Calder speaks of Rajneesh's (Osho's) books:]
Be warned that Rajneesh/Osho used words as a device to influence and control
people, and he was not concerned with speaking the truth. In my opinion, less than
25% of what he said was actually fact, and his books belong in the fiction section
of bookstores next to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Much of his teachings
represented a kind of self-serving spiritual pornography; a mixture of false
ancient teachings and his own ambition-motivated distortions. At his worst,
Rajneesh came out with titles like The World of Rajneesh and Autobiography of a
Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. This is like a primadonna television newsman who
thinks that he is the news story rather than the important headlines of the day.
==========
[Calder has another webpage on Rajneesh posted at rajneesh.info/ (a site owned
by Julian Lee), with much of the same content as reproduced above. At this
alternate webpage, Calder has the following to say in his "Addendum":]
Addendum - On letters I have received
Any thoughtful person can imagine the range of letters I have received as a result of
posting my Web essay on Acharya - Bhagwan - Osho - Rajneesh. To date about half
of the letters have been from former Rajneesh disciples who generally agree with my
comments and who thank me for putting them on the Web. Those who agree tell me
they see "compassion for all involved" on my Web page and that I got it "just about
right."
The other letters I receive are from current disciples of the now deceased Osho, many
whom have never actually met the man in person. Those letters range from death
threats from several German disciples to poorly written and often unsigned insults.
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance also gets lots of hate mail, but from
many different cults, not just from one. It is interesting to see how most cults are
alike in this regard. The us vs. them mentality takes over and anyone who does not
tow the party line of the cult is deemed a villain.
Meditation has nothing to do with cults, organizations, politics, or business, but for
many meditation is a secondary issue. For them it is all about hero worship and blind
obedience to the memory of a now dead guru, which is a silly waste of time in my
opinion. Why not go directly to the source of all gurus and religions through your
own meditation? There is an old Zen saying that "One should not become attached to
anything that can be lost in a shipwreck." Certainly this admonition applies to gurus
as well.
Several Rajneesh sannyasins have written me claiming to be enlightened and I hear
reports that many Rajneesh disciples now make that claim. One man said that he was
"the new Osho" and invited me to visit his Web page. His page displayed a large
heroic picture of himself, much self-promotion, and an advertisement for prostitutes
in Russia who he claimed were practicing "Tantra." So for him "enlightenment" and
being "the new Osho" literally means to be a pimp.
Another man, who had never met Osho in person, seemed to claim that reading
Osho's books helped him get over his "mental illness" and now he was "enlightened"
himself. He then forcefully instructed me to rewrite my Web page to make it "less
judgmental" and suggested that Osho's hypocrisy was just a means to convey his
enlightenment to others. Well, he certainly conveyed his hypocrisy to others! One
young woman, who grew up on the Rajneesh Oregon commune, asked me how she
could make money out of teaching Osho's meditation techniques. I replied that she
should go to an employment agency and get an honest job. Meditation and business
do not mix and there are too many money hungry gurus out there already.
It shocks me to find that many Osho disciples do not care about the crimes that
were committed and are not bothered by the lies and hypocrisy of their own
movement. They don't seem to comprehend that as a result of the germ warfare
attack committed by Rajneesh sannyasins on a restaurant in Oregon that meditation
groups have gotten a very bad name around the world.
The unrelated but equally infamous Aum Shinrikyo (a Japanese cult) nerve gas attack
on a subway station in Tokyo worsened this situation considerably. The attitude of
many Osho sannyasins seems to be that as long as they get their psychic kicks
out of a cult that it does not matter who was hurt or how unethical and
disgraceful the behavior was. In their minds everyone else in the world was
responsible for the Oregon debacle except them. As a result of this careless
attitude many Americans now feel that if a meditation group starts an ashram nearby
it is time to buy a gun and a gas mask.
The amount of historical revisionism and propaganda put out by some Rajneesh
disciples rivals the efforts of Maoists during the 1960s and their state of mind is
similar. If you want to believe in one perfect man, a Pope of the universe, then
anyone who criticizes that Pope is deemed a devil. Thus all the subtleties of my essay
are lost on these disciples and all they claim to see on my Web page is "hate and
anger." Of course they do not see the hate in themselves directed at anyone who does
not share their own narrow beliefs.
One long time disciple of Rajneesh expressed to me how angry she was at the Dalai
Lama for only visiting the Rajneesh ashram in Poona once. So for her the Dalai Lama
is now a villain just because he did not want to go back for a second visit.
The level of intolerance and narrow mindedness in the Rajneesh cult is mind
boggling to me and I cannot understand how so many seemingly intelligent people
can live in such a small mental space, barricaded against all those who do not believe
exactly as they do.
[End of assessment of Rajneesh and his followers by Christopher Calder]
Enlightened-Spirituality.org © Copyright 2006 by Timothy Conway, Ph.D. Email:
conwayt324@gmail.com

SBI!