Explain to me a bit about the spiritual tradition of gurus and disciples - 2

[Guest guest]

, " jagbir singh "

<adishakti_org> wrote:

>

> Dear All,

>

> i received an email that read:

>

> " Dear Jagbir,

>

> Please could you explain to me a bit about the spiritual tradition

> of gurus and disciples; and how this all works in SY? Do all

> people need gurus for teaching and help; from my own experiences I

> think that they probably do? What I mean is, people really need a

> teacher for guidance along the path, someone very advanced and

> experienced to tell and ask about specific problems and personal

> situations and difficulties, a yoga master. Especially people from

> the Western cultures and from restrictive religious backgrounds

> need help understanding the Eastern concepts of spirituality, and

> need personal guidance at times. "

>

 

For part 2 i have taken " Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost

Truth " , a false guru Shri Mataji warned in the early 70s, many years

before the world knew what was taking place. At that time Osho was

at the peak of his guru business and few paid any attention to Her.

(Thanks Semira for this piece.)

 

i like the part where Osho " once undiplomatically proclaimed to the

American media that everything Jesus said was " just crazy. " " Any

guru - past, present or future - who does not recognize Shri Jesus

is still whirling in the wheel of rebirth. (Not recognizing an

Incarnation like Shri Jesus is plain ignorance, a red flag that tags

false gurus and should warn seekers/disciples. Explaining the

nourishing parables of Christ requires far more enlightenment and,

of course, Divine authority.)

 

No guru or religious institution till date has been able to reveal

and make comprehensible sense of the most secret of Jesus' teachings

as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi. Only a divine personality sent by the

Divine can do so. And the Comforter has fulfilled exactly what Shri

Jesus' promised to humanity, teaching us all that He could not two

millennia ago. Shri Mataji is indeed a Sadguru, and much more.

 

jagbir

 

 

-

 

Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth

 

Acharya Rajneesh was only 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 (see

picture of Rajneesh at his best). 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 what I considered to be 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 assumed that

everything he said must be true.

 

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 astounding power of telepathy and direct

energy transmission, which he used nobly to bring comfort and

inspiration to his disciples. Many phony gurus have claimed to have

mysterious abilities, but Rajneesh had them for real. Those who

came near soon learned of them through direct contact with the

miraculous. 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 meet another enlightened teacher known

to the world as Jiddu Krishnamurti (see photograph of J.

Krishnamurti). J. Krishnamurti could barely give a coherent lecture

and 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 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, Krishnamurti never committed any

crime, never pretended to be more than he was, and never used other

human beings selfishly.

 

Life is complex and multilayered and my naive illusions about

the phenomena of perfect enlightenment faded with 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 J.

Krishnamurti, who was recognized as enlightened by every high

Tibetan Lama and revered Hindu sage of the day. 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

innovative meditation techniques that worked with dramatic power

(see explanation and warning about Osho's Dynamic Meditation

technique near the bottom of the page). Rajneesh lifted thousands

of seekers to higher levels of consciousness and detailed Eastern

religions and meditation techniques with luminous clarity (see

Rajneesh leading group meditation).

 

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. When the man I knew as

Acharya Rajneesh suddenly changed his name to Bhagwan Shree

Rajneesh, I was dismayed. 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 name 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 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 room in

Bombay). His isolation became even more complete when he moved from

his small Bombay apartment to a large and luxurious 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 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, born out of his own ignorance and

gullibility (see Do you have a soul?). His psychic presence,

however, was 100% real and very powerful.

 

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. All living 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. It was his loss

of respect for ordinary truthfulness that destroyed his teaching.

 

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). 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 diseases are also often

highly sensitive to chemicals and smells. Rajneesh's poor health

and strange symptoms were a product of real neurological damage, not

some esoteric supersensitivity caused by his enlightenment.

Rajneesh had Type II diabetes, asthma, severe back pain, and most

likely fibromyalgia.

 

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 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). He took

the maximum recommended dose of 60 milligrams per day. Rajneesh

also inhaled nitrous oxide (N2O) mixed with pure oxygen (see Osho in

the Dental Chair), which he claimed increased his creativity (see

dangers of N2O). 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 powerful effects of drugs and

overconfident about his own ability to fight off their negative

effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction.

 

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 addicts while working at a

methadone clinic in the United States. Rajneesh had miraculous

mental powers, but he was an ordinary human being physically and

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 power. Valium

addicts often think the CIA or other unseen villains are plotting

against them, so it is not surprising that he imagined he was

poisoned by the United States Government. His reasoning power

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.

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, yet another classic symptom

of CFS.

 

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 Valium and an aggravation of his ME/CFS due to stress and

exposure to allergens.

 

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. "

 

" 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)

 

Upon his sudden death in 1990 there was much media speculation

that Rajneesh had committed suicide by drug overdose. 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 Vivek, his greatest love.

 

Vivek had taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a Bombay

hotel one month before Rajneesh's passing. Pointedly, Vivek decided

to kill herself just before his 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 wishes. 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 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 were in fact common symptoms of dysautonomia caused by

ME/CFS. 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.

 

The only proven cases of poisoning related to Rajneesh were

carried out by Rajneesh's own sannyasins in 1984. A sannyasin is an

initiated disciple, one who takes sannyas. There were 751 poison

victims, including women and small children, at ten different

restaurants in the small city of 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 the Rajneesh bioterrorism

newspaper story).

 

Rajneesh disciples poisoned salad bars with salmonella

bacteria, which was mixed into salad dressings, fruits and

vegetables, and the restaurants' coffee creamers. Forty-five people

became so ill they had to be hospitalized, thus 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. Michael Sullivan, a

Jefferson County District Attorney, also became ill after leaving a

cup of coffee unattended as Rajneesh sannyasins roamed the

courthouse. Rajneesh never bothered to apologize 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 (see

Rajneesh and Sheela's mugshots).

 

Rajneesh felt that teaching ethics was unnecessary because

meditation would automatically lead to good behavior. The actions

of Rajneesh himself 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 honest

ethical behavior.

 

Those unfamiliar with the Rajneesh story can read the book,

Bhagwan: The God That Failed, published by Saint Martin's Press and

written by Hugh Milne (Shivamurti), a close disciple of Rajneesh

during his Poona and Oregon years. 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. Both books are out of print but

secondhand copies can be obtained through Amazon.Com and

Amazon.Com.UK. There have been several 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 by name 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 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 and compulsive 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. As a

Westerner, I prefer more scientific terms and describe the Atman as

a highly evolved manifestation of time-energy-space, the TES (see

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 conscious state 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 phenomena 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 phenomena we called

Rajneesh, Bhagwan, and Osho, was only a temporary lens of cosmic

energy, not the full cosmos itself.

 

Rajneesh, as the Greek-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff (see

photo of Gurdjieff), often used the power of the Atman for clearly

personal gain. Both men used their cosmic consciousness to

overwhelm and seduce women, which was largely a harmless affair in

my opinion. Gurdjieff was ashamed of his own behavior in this

regard 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 super-mental 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 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 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 personal ambition, 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 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 plaque in

honor of local resistance to Rajneesh 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 (see

photo of Poonjaji), 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 superheros, and that we all share the same

cosmic being, no matter what our class and social standing.

 

The maverick anti-guru U.G. Krishnamurti (see photo of U.G.)

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 as 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 " worlds

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 counter attacked by

calling U.G. a " phony guru. "

 

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 have never

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 anti-democratic 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 because of 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 " mob-ocracy. " 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 local Wasco County elections, 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-drug mixture, but 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.

If Rajneesh sannyasins had only held truth above all instead of

obedience to guru above all, then no crimes would have been

committed and the commune might still be in existence today.

 

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 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 same disciple who administered nitrous oxide to Rajneesh

has spread negative rumors about Vivek, claiming that she was not a

meditative person, as himself. He also claims that Vivek committed

suicide because she was depressed about reaching the age of forty

and that she suffered from a hormonal imbalance. This same

sannyasin denied to me emphatically that he gave Rajneesh

irresponsible levels of nitrous oxide, but later admitted to others

that he gave Rajneesh one to two hour nitrous oxide " treatments "

every day for five months. That level of exposure is clearly drug

abuse with no legitimate medical justification.

 

The young Acharya Rajneesh started his life as a teacher who

condemned false gurus and 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 seemingly irreconcilable

contradiction is the real reason I write this essay. I love to go

into uncharted territory where others fear to tread.

 

When you combine man's natural tendency for selfishness with an

ivory tower lifestyle, you have a situation where ethical behavior

can appear to be optional. Combine the unhealthy atmosphere of self-

deification with a debilitating progressive illness that lowers IQ,

and on top of that add drug abuse, then you have a cliff that even

an enlightened man could fall from. That fall could happen only if

the enlightened man makes one wrong choice, one false move, from

both the heart and from the mind.

 

Bhagwan's wrong choice was to disregard 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 friend and ally.

 

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 superman he pretended to

be. No one is! His disciples deserved honesty, but he fed them

fairy tales " 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 cosmos. Ardent Rajneesh disciples didn't

heed 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.

 

While Rajneesh was a brilliant philosopher 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 medical sterilization procedures. Unfortunately, he did not

consider the demographics of population growth. The current

population expansion is largely a phenomena of poor third world

nations, not a problem originating in the USA, Canada, and Europe

where birth rates are actually falling. 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 medical sterilization fit into Rajneesh's business plan and

desire to create an army of followers who felt that " only the

relationship to guru is important. "

 

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

disciples 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.

 

During his earlier Poona days Rajneesh stated that we are

attracted to beautiful people because their outer beauty represents

the inner beauty of their souls, as it is the soul which creates the

physical body and mind. Science knows as fact that DNA creates the

body and brain, not any mysterious and immaterial " soul. " Outward

beauty does not even guarantee a sane mind. Ted Bundy, the infamous

serial killer, was quite handsome and charming outwardly, yet he is

estimated to have murdered between 35 and 50 women just for the

trill of it (see photographs of Ted Bundy).

 

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 the case even before he started

taking large amounts of Valium (see The Ridiculous Teachings of

Wrong Way Rajneesh). Rajneesh had no understanding of, or

appreciation for, 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 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 Americans " 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

mislead 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 phenomena 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 in the end.

 

" 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 effectively cover up their guru's flaws,

just as Rajneesh disciples are currently rewriting and censoring

history to cover up Rajneesh's great failings. Rajneesh was never

more infallible than any other human being. What we call

enlightenment is not a cure-all for faults and frailties that cling

to human animals even after they achieve maximum possible

consciousness, which is perhaps a more realistic definition of the

term 'enlightenment.'

 

The contradiction of corruption and enlightenment can occur

because the individual is only the lens of enlightenment, not the

source of cosmic power itself. The enlightened only allow universal

energy to pass through them unblocked, untouched, and

uncontaminated. In a way, no one ever really becomes enlightened

personally. Enlightenment happens at the place where you are

standing, but you cannot own it or possess it. All the words of so-

called enlightened men come from the human brain which interprets

the phenomena of enlightenment like a translator. The words do not

come from the enlightenment itself. By definition enlightenment

cannot speak. It is absolutely silent and beyond any need to

speak.

 

Rajneesh died addicted to Valium and he experienced all 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 with no excuses.

 

" Never give a sucker an even break. " W.C. Fields

 

Rajneesh lied when he said he had enlightened disciples. He

lied when he said he never made a mistake. At 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 the

therapy groups run by his disciples were not mainly just a money

making device. Rajneesh lied about breaking United States

immigration laws and only admitted the truth when he was presented

with overwhelming documented 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 he was not responsible for the

horrors of the Oregon commune 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 pre-knowledge (hopefully)

of the more serious crimes does not mean that he was not ethically

responsible for them. Rajneesh did not turn against 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

reason the commune existed. Rajneesh was surrounded by thousands of

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 further 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 l6, 17 or

20 hours a day " and of " taking food out of the mouths of people to

buy him watches and Rolls Royces. "

 

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. In a cowardly attempt to evade his own failings

he changed his name from Rajneesh 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 the 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 pre-

pubescent 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 (see photo of Osho wearing jewel

encrusted watch), and all in the name of egolessness and spiritual

surrender (see Jim Weaver's newspaper article on the Rajneesh

commune conflict).

 

Why did Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh own 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. Being a guru was his business, his only

business. Without that income, at least on the material level, he

was just a short, balding 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, unless of course he used his

intoxicating energy to gain power and money from his own disciples.

 

Just as rock stars become energized by screaming fans at

concerts, Rajneesh gained emotional energy and support from his

disciples. The energy transfer was a two-way street, not a totally

free one-way gift. 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 phenomena

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.

 

Consciousness needs entertainment to survive and Rajneesh used

his disciples as playthings for his own amusement. Rajneesh had no

bankable power of his own. 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.

 

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 he had very little first hand experience

with sex himself. During his Bombay era, Rajneesh often grabbed the

breasts of his 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 his desk where he spent most of his time.

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 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. 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.

 

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 young woman

was highly upset and forced by circumstance to have an abortion.

Rajneesh, protecting his image as a great guru, lied about his

involvement and claimed that she 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 anti-sexual and highly hypocritical Indian social

structure. Later on, after his position as a guru had become

secure, Rajneesh publicly bragged to the American media about having

sex " with hundreds of women. " All of Rajneesh's sex partners were

his own female meditation students who were used as his personal

harem.

 

All human beings are animals, specifically mammals. Scientists

now understand that human DNA is approximately 96% the same as

chimpanzee DNA (see news story). World history, Asian mythology,

politics, and the world of alpha male gurus makes allot 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. It 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 Stern, 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.

 

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 Brahman 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

demanded total surrender from his troops (disciples), just as Hitler

did. Rajneesh condoned illegal spying on his own disciples and used

informants to weed out the disloyal. Sheela, his personal

secretary, turned the tables on Rajneesh by bugging Rajneesh's

trademark high-backed chair. 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 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 semi-automatic assault rifles. Rajneesh

was never an admirer of the great Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi,

but he did have a unhealthy fascination with Adolf Hitler, as well

as United States General George Patton. According to Shivamurti,

Rajneesh watched the movie Patton over and over again on his big

screen television at his ranch in Oregon.

 

Perhaps Rajneesh's worst personal trait was that he could dish

it out but could not take it himself. 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 a late night comedy television show used the

footage sarcastically as a joke about " God " complaining.

 

During Rajneesh's appearance on the ABC television show

Nightline, Rajneesh gave evasive and dishonest answers to all of Ted

Koppel's questions and 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 the 93 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 the automobiles were owned by the commune, not by him.

 

Rajneesh pretended not to know that he was leaving the United

States to escape an impending arrest warrant, thus secretly

abandoning his disciples to face the music on their own. His own

sannyasins did not know he had left the commune until they learned

from the media of the arrest of Rajneesh and several followers at

the North Carolina airport. Their luggage contained a bag of cash,

a box of expensive jewel encrusted watches, and a handgun.

Rajneesh's defense was that he was innocently sleeping when police

boarded the private jet he had hired to escape to Bermuda. Rajneesh

said 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 on immigration fraud.

 

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. The NBC television show Saturday Night

Live climbed on the Rajneesh comedy bandwagon by doing a skit about

an auction with actor Randy Quaid selling off " the Bhagwan's " 93

Rolls-Royces. Years later the Fox Network cartoon show, The

Simpsons, 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.

 

" When it comes to gurus, take the best and leave the rest. "

Ramamurti Mishra

 

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 etc.,

and start screaming out loudly that " you stole Bhagwan's watch! "

His words and manner were so childishly irrational that he reminded

me of 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.

 

Some may be horrified that an enlightened man could become a

convicted felon, but that has not stopped me from seeking the

ultimate existential truth. Rajneesh's life is a lesson for us all

to practice what we preach. Rajneesh gave great advice, but he

could not heed his own wise words. He is also a reminder not to

take what people say very seriously. It is better to observe how

people live and put less emphasis on what they speak. Talk is

cheap. Actions are more costly and telling.

 

Do enlightened men have egos? In my younger idealistic years I

would have said the answer is no. Rajneesh, Gurdjieff, and even J.

Krishnamurti prove to me that they do. I became convinced that

Rajneesh had an ego when I saw him on television in chains being

transported from jail to an Oregon courthouse. In response to a

reporter's question he looked into the television camera and spoke

to his disciples saying " Don't worry. I'll be back. " It was not

what he said, but the look in his eyes that was positive proof for

me. I could see his ego in action, calculating and manipulating.

Once you see something that clearly no rationalizations can cover up

the basic truth. Rajneesh was magnificently enlightened, but he was

also profoundly egotistical.

 

For ordinary humans the ego is the center of awareness and the

Void is perceived only at the periphery. People look at a picture

taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and they see the Void as an

outside object, not as a personal identity. When you become

enlightened, either temporarily in a satori or permanently as a

Buddha, the situation is reversed. Now the Void is your center of

awareness and the ego is at the periphery. Ego does not die, it

just no longer takes the center stage of your attention.

 

Enlightenment is a functional disassociation of identity. The

human brain is a biologically created thinking machine that has

evolved for both personal self-preservation and the 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. The ego function is so vital for survival

that the human brain evolved with two potential ego mechanisms, one

a centralized ego and the second a larger and more diffuse backup

system utilizing less central portions of the brain.

 

If the body and brain becomes physically ill with high fever

and the centralized ego center is damaged, the backup ego mechanism

may temporarily take over its function. This is ego displacement

without enlightenment. The backup self-maintenance system keeps

sleep walkers out of danger and helps enlightened human animals find

food and the basics of life, so they do not physically die as a

result of their own deep meditation.

 

Enlightened humans do not feel their more diffuse ego and thus

they feel as free as space itself. In actuality ego is still

present and working, just as our autonomic nervous system keeps on

working whether we are aware of its function or not. You do not

have to consciously tell your heart to beat 70 times a minute

because it will keep on beating regardless of your awareness. The

brain function that controls heart rate is automatic (autonomic) and

does not need our consciousness to make it work.

 

Some enlightened human animals have become fooled by the

phenomena of ego displacement and thought they no longer had any

personal selfishness that could cause trouble. Meher Baba (see

picture) spent much of his life bragging about how great he was, yet

at his center he felt perfectly egoless. He once even proclaimed

that " No one loves me as much as I deserve to be loved. " In truth

Meher Baba was very egocentric and should have realized that even

enlightenment is no excuse for bragging.

 

The same fundamental misjudgment plagued Acharya Rajneesh. He

became fooled into thinking that he was above arrogance and greed,

but that was simply not the case. The ego is an integral part of

the structure of the human brain. It is not simply psychological,

but neurological and hard wired into our neural pathways (see the

scientific study of 'self''). The self-survival, self-defense

mechanism we call 'ego' cannot be destroyed unless the physical body

dies.

 

Even enlightened humans have to mind their manners and realize

that the Atman is the wondrous phenomena they should promote, not

their own fallible and 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.

 

Despite his corruption, his poor judgment, and his disastrous

last years, everyone who experienced Acharya Rajneesh's oceanic

energy still loves at least the memory of his magnificent presence.

Through it all, the good, the bad, and the horrific, Rajneesh's

vibrations were always powerful and positive. Visitors to the Osho

ashram in India often feel a giant wave of cosmic presence there.

That wave is but the vibrational remnant of what we once called

Rajneesh. The body has been turned to ashes, and Rajneesh himself

is gone, but the wave can still be felt. In the same way J.

Krishnamurti's presence remains a powerful force at Arya Vihara, his

former home in Ojai, California.

 

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

phenomena, 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.

 

It is because I value the truth above all that I write what I

believe are essential criticisms. If we cannot analyze our mistakes

then our suffering was a waste of time. The ongoing cover-up of

Rajneesh's frailties by his establishment disciples will only

destroy the possibility of learning from his tragedy. Osho

worshippers can destroy the tapes and physical evidence of his

insane behavior, but they cannot change what actually happened.

 

Even after returning to Poona, Rajneesh continued his Valium

and nitrous oxide use and seemed unable to learn from his mistakes.

Rajneesh had often branded his critics as " idiots, " yet in his final

years he himself did not have any sane voice inside himself to say

No! Enough is enough! Like a deranged alcoholic, Rajneesh could

not stop his destructive behavior and the quality of his judgment

dropped below that of even the most ordinary of unenlightened human

beings. Rajneesh had used the myth of Tantra to rationalize his

dishonesty and selfishness, and now he could not stop. He had

become a drug addict, plain and simple, and no amount of spiritual

rationalizations could alter that fact.

 

I miss Acharya Rajneesh, never Osho, because he was at his

finest when he had no manipulating political organization

surrounding him. When Acharya Rajneesh was just a man in an

apartment with one old Chevrolet, not dozens of Rolls-Royces, he was

more honest and true. When he became his own political

establishment things started to go wrong, and that is often the case

with men of great power.

 

The Rajneesh scandal exposed the unconscious slavery of Bhakti

Yoga and the underlying fraudulence and corruption of " lefthanded

Tantra. " What is needed is an honest path, built on self-

observation, self-reliance, and respect for truth. The days of the

know-it-all guru are over. It is time to realize the source of all

things directly.

 

Rajneesh's lifelong teaching had been that enlightenment was 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 was no reincarnation and that the

concept of reincarnation was a " misinterpretation. " 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 (see Do you have a

soul?).

 

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 eyes. 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.

 

Addendum - On letters I have received

 

Any thoughtful person can imagine the wide 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 personality 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 Osho followers have written me claiming to be

enlightened, and I hear reports that many Osho 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, claimed 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, Osho certainly did convey 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 restaurants in Oregon, that meditation groups have

gotten a very bad name around the world. The unrelated but equally

infamous nerve gas attack on a subway station in Tokyo by a Japanese

cult named Aum Shinrikyo worsened this situation considerably.

 

The attitude of many Osho sannyasins seems to be that as long

as they get their psychic kicks it does not matter who was hurt or

how unethical and disgraceful their own behavior was. In their

minds everyone 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 Osho 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.

 

Shivamurti's book, Bhagwan: The God That Failed, could have

easily been entitled The Man Who Became His Own Opposite, or The Man

Who Betrayed Himself. I often tell people that if they could go

back in time and kidnap the Acharya Rajneesh of 1970, then bring him

up through the years to meet the Osho of the late 1980s, that the

two men would be at war with each other. Acharya would have hated

Osho's pompous self-indulgence and Osho would have never tolerated

the young Acharya's brash criticisms. Acharya Rajneesh spoke of

freedom and compassion. Osho once said that he wished someone

would " shoot " (assassinate) former Soviet leader Mikael Gorbachev

because he was leading the Soviet Union to Western style capitalism

instead of his own imagined " spiritual communism. " His change in

teaching was remarkable.

 

I would like to think that the early Acharya Rajneesh would

have approved of my essay, but who can say for sure. For those who

suggest I am not being loyal to Osho, I counter that I am honestly

trying to be loyal to Acharya Rajneesh, the man I took sannyas from,

not Osho. The Acharya was a man I still deeply love and respect.

But that Acharya Rajneesh died along time before Osho was even born,

and the two men were as different as day and night.

 

My message to letter writers is to go ahead and write me. You

can vent your anger or thank me, but neither will have much affect

on me as I have heard it all before, from both sides. I can only

sigh and ask myself how Acharya Rajneesh, who started out as an anti-

guru extraordinaire, ended up as he did with this current crop of

disciples. Perhaps it shows that power can corrupt anyone and that

the means rarely justifies the ends.

 

In the end where is meditation in all of this? Color Puncture,

Tantric Tarot, encounter groups, and every phony crackpot scam in

the book is being peddled by Osho disciples for large sums of money,

but what about meditation? Then I think back to the day when the

just turned 40 year old Acharya wisely instructed a Japanese

disciple 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, Acharya Rajneesh's noble vision, has long been

forgotten by many, but not by me (see picture of Acharya Rajneesh

still young).

 

*Dynamic Meditation: (warning) This spectacular meditation method

was Rajneesh's trademark, and 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 stage 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 breath 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.

For once in your life 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, and is funny,

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 awkwardly held 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 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 himself could never have practiced the

freeze method even in his youth. Asking his disciples to do it

simply showed that he had lost touch with physical reality.

Rajneesh was a fallible human being, never a perfect God.

 

I advise students to only use the enjoyable early version of

Dynamic Meditation and not the pointlessly difficult freeze method

version. 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 go deep

into the ecstasy 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.

 

Christopher Calder - E-mail - my home page

 

Please feel free to copy, repost, or publish Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh,

and the Lost Truth.

 

Other Web pages at this site

 

Meditation Handbook

 

The TES Hypothesis

 

The Seven Stages of Consciousness

 

Call For a New Buddhism

 

Common Lies of the Phony World of Mystics

 

The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong Way Rajneesh

 

Do you have a soul?

 

Guest author Adithya K. on " The Brain and Meditation "

 

Useful outside links

 

http://www.religioustolerance.org/rajneesh.htm - A brief overview

of Rajneesh.

 

Osho in the Dental Chair - Parmartha's article in " Sannyas News "

about Rajneesh/Osho's use of nitrous oxide. The article neglects to

mention Osho's massive consumption of the drug Valium.

 

http://www.sannyasnews.com/Articles/OshoDentalChair.html -

Parmartha's article

 

http://www.resort.com/~banshee/Info/N2O/nitrous.dangers.html -

article on N2O dangers

 

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E. information

 

http://www.cfids.org/

 

U.G. Krishnamurti speaks more truth than any teacher I know of. I

have never met him and do not know if he is " enlightened. " -

http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/ug_video/index.html

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti A dry, publicly humorless teacher who was

uniquely lovable. His powerful vibrations can still be felt at Arya

Vihara, Krishnamurti's former home in Ojai, California.

 

http://www.kfa.org/ Krishnamurti Foundation of America

 

http://www.silcom.com/~jmsloss Lives in the Shadow with J.

Krishnamurti

 

Ramana Maharshi Every major religious group in India agreed that

Ramana Maharshi was enlightened.

 

http://www.ramana-maharshi.org/

 

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was a liar and drunk who many consider

enlightened despite it all.

 

http://www.gurdjieff.org/

 

The Secret Life of Swami Muktananda When I first went to India in

1970 I stayed at Muktananda's ashram in Ganeshpuri for several

weeks. It is interesting that Muktananda was very different from

Rajneesh, yet both men ended up committing many of the same

mistakes. Muktananda was not fully enlightened, inarticulate, and

his crude manner reminded me of Benito Mussolini. Rajneesh, by

contrast, was fully enlightened, highly articulate, and a master of

subtlety. In the end, given absolute power and treated as royalty,

both men became as corrupt as the Caesars.

 

http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/secret.htm

 

Swami Satchidananda Virtually every teacher I met or became

involved with had scandals, except for J. Krishnamurti, the 16th

Karmapa, and Swami Chidananda. Swami Satchidananda taught his

disciples celibacy yet forced himself sexually on his own female

disciples.

 

http://www.rickross.com/groups/yogaville.html

 

Suggested reading

 

Bhagwan: The God That Failed, by Hugh Milne, Saint Martin's Press,

the sordid details of a fall from reason and sanity. This book can

be bought second hand through Amazon.Com.

 

Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho

Rajneesh, by Satya Bharti Franklin, published by Barrytown/Station

Hill Press. Satya documents much of the strange corruption of the

Rajneesh cult and describes in detail the illegal sexual

exploitation of children at the Oregon commune. Her book is also

out of print but can be purchased secondhand through Amazon.Com.

 

The " God " Part of the Brain, by Matthew Alper, available at

http://godpart.com/ or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/. Alper

details the logical scientific argument that spirituality is the

product of genetics and bio-chemistry, and that God, soul, and

reincarnation are inventions of the human brain, used as a device to

relieve the tremendous stress of death awareness.

 

Rajneesh's (Osho's) books - Be warned that Rajneesh/Osho used words

as a device to influence and control people and 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 primadona television

newsman who thinks that he is the news story rather than the

important headlines of the day.

 

Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth

http://home.att.net/~meditation/Osho.html

[Bhagwan 0]

Dear friends,

Christopher Calder`s articule,which you seem to take as the truth,is just nonsense trust me.Osho gave hime the name `Swami Krishna Christ` which apparently he was very unhappy with,just as a joke.The article is full of untruths,and Calder`s own creations,such as Osho`s `addictions` of Valium,or Calder describing Osho`s symptoms of poisoning ,awhich killed him,as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,please be assured these symptoms of poisoning which killed him were not C.F.S,as I have suffered with the latter and I know the difference in his symptoms which were much ,much worse-and fatal.Also there is other nonsense in that article which is being taken as the truth by some,such as Osho becoming `corrupt`-nonsense! Trust me,Osho was a fully enlightened buddha who has contributed a lot to humanity and our future,although offending many,he has also helped to transform many,many peoples consciousness,and has left behind a rich amount of enlightened disciples ,some of which are also now teaching,around the world,and helping to spread his vision of love,light,and laughter around the earth.