Osho, bhagwan rajneesh and the lost truth. Biography of Osho (Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh) What did Osho leave after his death

Secrets of life. Introduction to the teachings of Osho

Life's mysteries

Foreword

I only met Rajneesh once, sometime in the early 70's, when he was living at the Woodlands near Camp Corner in Bombay. I read about him in the newspapers and met his disciples who dressed in saffron robes and wore medallions with his image around their necks. At that time his name was Acharya(teacher) rather venerable Bhagwan(divine) and Osho he became later. I had no strong desire to meet Rajneesh, but his followers convinced me that he was different from other spiritual mentors and that I could get answers to my questions. In search of answers, I visited many ashrams and listened to various gurus and priests. But I haven't heard anything from them. Most of their sermons talked about the fact that God is inside each of us, and if you look inside, you can find Illumination, Truth and Reality. There was no sense from this, it's like pouring from empty to empty. More than the teachings themselves, I was interested in the impact they have on their adherents. What makes them gather in crowds of thousands from all over the world to listen to sermons and live in the strictness prescribed by the rules of the ashram? What did they hope to get and what did they not get? I didn't have much trouble and went to see Rajneesh more out of curiosity than out of necessity.

I was given an appointment, and asked not to use perfume or cologne on the day of the appointment—I never use them—and also not to use strong-smelling soap in the morning.

At the appointed time I arrived at the Woodlands. I was escorted to a large, spacious office with many books and asked to wait a bit. Acharya. I went to the bookshelves. Most of the books were in English, some in Sanskrit and Hindi. I was struck by the variety of topics: from religion, theology, philosophy, history, biographies, autobiographies to humor and detective stories. I suddenly remembered that I had never seen books in the ashrams before. Some of them had libraries for students, most of them were books on religious topics or generalized sermons of the guru. Other mentors read almost nothing, except for the sacred Indian scriptures, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the epics; they did not attach importance to the study of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

And Rajneesh was interested in everything.

It turns out that while others studied their religions indirectly, Rajneesh studied the originals and created his own teaching. Jain Mahavira and Buddha knew nothing but Hinduism. I do not know what Zarathustra possessed when he elevated the flame to the symbol of purity. It is easier to understand the material on which the Jewish prophets built the basis of the Jewish faith: after all, it is known that both Christianity and Islam that followed it borrowed a lot from the Old Testament. Islam boasts that the prophet Mohammed was completely illiterate. The last of the great religions of India, Sikhism, is largely built on Vedanta. None of the early teachers claimed to be erudite. Rajneesh was, perhaps, the first of the great gurus who carefully studied the doctrines of other religions and could rightly say that he is the only specialist in comparative religion. This fact alone inspires respect for him.

Rajneesh entered. He was a man in his forties, of medium build, with a thin, yellowish face. He had a sparse, wavy beard with gray around the edges. On his head was a knitted woolen hat, and he was dressed in a kind of light orange robe that reached to his ankles. I was most struck by his eyes - large and mesmerizing. With a radiant smile, folding the palms of his hands, he answered my greeting: "Namaskar."

We sat down.

- How can I help?

He spoke softly, with a thick Indian accent.

“Not many,” I replied. - I do not have problems.

"Then why did you come here?" You are wasting your time. And mine too.

Not the most favorable start for a dialogue. I blurted out:

- I'm interested. I want to understand why so many people seek you. What are they looking for here?

They have problems and I try to solve them the best I can. If you don't have any problems, then I can't help you.

I quickly came up with a problem.

I am an agnostic and do not believe in the existence of God. On the other hand, I cannot overcome the fear of death. I know death is inevitable, but I can't believe in reincarnation or Judgment Day. For me, death is the end. Dot. However, I am afraid of her, afraid of dying. How can I overcome this fear that is always present in the depths of the mind?

He paused for a moment before answering.

“You are right, death cannot be avoided, and no one knows exactly when it will come. Remind yourself of these truths, do not be afraid of the dead and dying. Your horror of death will decrease, it is not so terrible. This is all you can do to help yourself.

I saw the point in this: for several years now I have been visiting crematoria and cemeteries, sitting by the bodies of dying friends and relatives. For a while it did help overcome the horror of death, but it always came back. When we met, I didn't know what he thought about the theory of birth, death and reincarnation, otherwise I would have kept asking questions. I was not thrilled by his answer to my question, but I left with the knowledge that there was a man who did not try to impress me with the abstruse jargon so characteristic of gurus, swamis, acharyas and mullahs. I could easily talk with him, we were on the same wavelength. I wanted to know more about his life and teachings.

I happened to meet a young attractive Italian Grazia Marciano, a devoted follower of Rajneesh. She was about twenty; she had gray eyes and copper hair. She wore a wide orange shirt and lungi, and tied an orange ribbon around her head. On the neck is a medallion with the image of Rajneesh. Whenever she came to my office, she brought some literature about Rajneesh and his teachings and managed to spark my interest in him. I have nothing more to say about Grazia. I'd rather talk about Rajneesh.

He was the eldest of eleven children of a cloth merchant. He was born on December 11, 1931 in the small town of Kuchwada in the district of Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh. His childhood name was Chandra Mohan. His parents were Jains, so his full name was Chandra Mohan Jain. As a child, he lived with his mother's parents for several years. The boy was developed, studied well, but did not obey well: the teachers, tired of his antics, constantly complained to the director of the school. Chandra Mohan Jain loved to argue and seek the truth. The illness and death of the grandfather traumatized the young soul. There were no doctors nearby, and the patient was taken on a cart for a long time to the nearest city, where there was a hospital, but the old man died on the way. Rajneesh was shocked. Later, he very often recalled this incident.

In 1953, Rajneesh received a degree in philosophy from the Jain College at Jabalpur. Thanks to a deep study of many religions and prolonged meditation, he comprehended the great esoteric secret, achieved enlightenment. He wrote down the exact date of this event - March 21, 1953. He was only 21 years old.

In 1958 he was appointed professor of philosophy at Jabalpur University. He combined teaching with preaching in various cities of India. Huge crowds began to gather at his lectures, for he was talking about things that no one had talked about before. He had a hypnotic voice and accompanied his bold sermons with parables to illustrate his thoughts, as well as many anecdotes, shattering religious dogmas that had been considered sacred for centuries. Thousands of men and women, mostly educated people, applied to his faith. In 1974 he created the first commune in Pune. By that time, his fame as a guru had spread throughout the world. Foreigners flocked to Pune to listen to him, to study his system of meditation, and became his disciples. They received new names, wore orange clothes and medallions with his image.

A look at the charlatan Osho Rajneesh - from the standpoint of the religion of Orthodoxy

Cult of Rajneesh(Osho) "Quinton hovered in the skies of the East, where it is more terrible than in the underworld of the West."

(G.K. Chesterton)

According to the famous Orthodox researcher of sects Mikhail Medvedev, “the cult of Rajneesh is one of the most destructive for the consciousness of adherents. The technique of internal growth in the cult lies in the fact that the spiritual growth of the adept is directly dependent on the approach and attachment to the personality of the guru. All this is coupled with the idea of supposedly personal gain.

Other names: "The only religion."

Management: The founder of the movement is Rajneesh (Osho).

One of the most active followers of Osho Rajneesh in Moscow - Popova Natalya Pavlovna (born 1951).

In Russia, an organization called the Osho Movement is widely known.

Her followers study the teachings of the Indian philosopher Bhagavan Shree Rajneesh. The first organization appeared back in 1991 in Ukraine in Kiev, then it appeared in other cities of the CIS countries, including Russia. What are the followers of this organization doing? This is meditation according to the Osho system, the treatment of various diseases and astrology.

The question immediately arises, what is "Osho"? Translated from Old Japanese: "o" - with great respect, love, gratitude, harmony; "sho" - expansion of consciousness and blessings, existence.

This organization is included in the list of religious groups and destructive religious organizations of Eastern orientation. You should be careful and thoroughly study the information about the activities and reviews of knowledgeable people.

Also, this movement appears under a different name " The only religion". Calling himself "Oh founder of the One Religion» Rajneesh was an enlightened master for some and a notorious destroyer of ancient Indian traditions and beliefs, a "spiritual terrorist" and "sex guru" for others.

In Moscow, one of the most active followers of Osho is Popova Natalya Pavlovna. Osho centers are usually led by sannyasins dressed in red and orange robes. These movements were formed in 22 countries, including the USA, India, England, France, Canada, Japan, Russia and other countries.
In Russia, in such cities as Moscow, St. Petersburg and Voronezh, they have been operating since 1996 under the name " Tantra Yoga «.

It is authentically known that the cult (represented by Popova N.P.. and other members of the group) conducted classes at secondary school No. 984 in Moscow. There is no exact data on the number of followers in Russia. It is only known that there are about 35 followers of Rajneesh in Voronezh.

Center locations

Headquarters of the Shosh movement - OSHO Commune International, 17 Koregaoh Park, Poona 411011 MS India.

Osho Centers, led by sannyasins dressed in red and orange, have been formed in 22 countries, including the USA, India, England, France, Canada, Japan, Russia and other countries.

In Russia - in St. Petersburg, Voronezh (in force since 1996 under the name " Tantra Yoga") and Moscow.

It is known that the organization (represented by Popova N.P. and others) conducted classes at secondary school No. 984 in Moscow.

The number of adherents of the fraudster Guru Osho Rajneesh

By 1984 Guru OSHO Rajneesh collected about 350 thousand followers, whose average age was 34 years.

There are no exact data for Russia. It is only known that in Voronezh there are 30-35 followers of Rajneesh and their number throughout the country is steadily growing.

The followers of Osho in Russia are now much more orthodox Christians in all of India. Osho was a living Buddha who came to earth. Osho's teachings have always caused a storm of passions of love and acceptance, as well as attacks and rejection. In any case, there are no indifferent people to Osho.

People united by the same views often communicate with each other, hold joint events. The Russian portal of Osho even appeared in Russia. It contains a lot of interesting information about the Osho system, about his history. People can communicate with each other via the Internet. Also there you can see announcements about new camps, trainings, various seminars or just about rest for all like-minded people.

Even an ordinary person who does not share Osho's views, you can go and see all the materials located there. If you are just interested, you can take part in one of the camps Osho adherents and get to know the people and the teachings better.
There is also a dating service, there are many photo reports about ashrams and travels.

Dynamic Meditation in India - humble soviem without debauchery

Doctrine of Osho Rajneesh

Rajneesh teachings is a mixture of Tantrism with self-made revelations and the delirium of Rajneesh himself. , which occupies a special position in Hinduism, is the path of permissiveness. Before Christianity spread to India, Tantrism reached a level of brutality, cruelty, sorcery and prejudice, often incomprehensible to modern consciousness. In its grossest forms, it includes .

Osho teachings- The topic is complex and far from unambiguous. This teaching captivates both ordinary citizens (oh, who among us does not dream of love - huge and all-encompassing?), And famous people. So, for example, in the media, there is information that Osho Rajneesh is fond of the teachings. She stated at a press conference in Yaroslavl that she would learn slowness and a special look at the surrounding reality from Osho.

However, this is not surprising, because Osho Rajneesh, the founder of the doctrine of meditation as a universal method of comprehending life, spoke many times in his speeches about homosexuality. These thoughts have been transformed over time, and at the moment are most accurately reflected in the lectures. "About men: all about the modern man «.

Proceedings of Osho(books without a logical idea and meaning, as well as outright plagiarism and census of old books) are actively purchased by gays and lesbians in retail outlets belonging to the brand " Indigo". So what is it all the same: unbridled sex without restrictions or the great love of everyone for everyone and everything?

However, the followers and faithful students of Osho Rajneesh are fierce opponents of the point of view that this is a doctrine of sexual tolerance and permissiveness, they believe that sex, correctly understood and accepted in the soul, is very, very far from promiscuity.

The central role in the teaching is played by "dynamic meditation" (three phases of intense movement and catharsis result in two phases of calm and relaxation).

« Founder of a single religion» urged his followers

"stop time by plunging into the moment."

He preached "liberation from one's own "I", from conscience. He said that you need to live without thinking about anything, without burdening yourself with thoughts about the past, or the future, or about the family, or about daily bread. And as the only way to do this, he pointed to his system, including meditation, chants, ritual dances, similar to the dances of the first hippies.

“I became my own universe,” Rajneesh explained.

After intense meditation, he was seized by a kind of cosmic despair or an urge to commit suicide: become a god or die! Over time, all questions dissolved and left, and a “great void” was created in his brain. He says that on March 21, 1953, he fell into a featureless, bottomless abyss of nothingness. Obviously, that's exactly what happened. Rajneesh fell into the bottomless abyss of his manic pride and devilish seduction, under the influence of drugs and experienced syphilis.

“I became non-existent,” he admitted. “I felt a huge presence around me in my room… a strong vibration… a huge explosion of light… I was drowning in it… That night the door to another reality opened… the real Reality… It was nameless… but it was there.”

At that moment, something completely alien took possession of Rajneesh.

He himself described it this way:

“That night I died and was born again. But the one who was born had nothing to do with the one who died… The one who died died completely, nothing was left of him… After the explosion, there was only emptiness. Whatever happened before, it wasn't me and it wasn't mine";

“That night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. This experience shakes you to the core. You can never be the same after such an experience, it will bring new visions into your life, new qualities ”;

“On that day, the twenty-first of March, a person who lived many, many lives, millennia, just died. Another being, absolutely new, not at all connected with the old, began to exist ... I became free from the past, I was torn out of my history, I lost my autobiography. That night I died and I was reborn. But the man who was reborn had nothing to do with the one who died... The man who died died totally; there was nothing left of him ... not even a shadow.

Possessed Imp

The experiences described by Bhagavan Rajneesh are very reminiscent of the process of demons entering a person. The person obsessed with them really becomes completely different. It is obvious that Rajneesh experienced a diabolical initiation that night. Later, members of his family admitted that he was no longer the same person that he used to be.

Just possessed by the Devil - Guru Osho Rajneesh

Researcher Tal Brook claims that Rajneesh is indeed possessed by the devil. He has the quality of a complete possession, a kind of antichrist who is "really connected to the other side of the universe."

Brook tells the story of Ehart Flozer, one of Rajneesh's faithful disciples, who recounted encounters - gang rape, forced sexual partner exchanges, forced homosexuality, abortions, countless deaths and suicides in the Poona community. Female favorites such as Laxmi, Rajneesh's number one witch, were thrown into the streets of India penniless. Others tell stories of satanic communities, spiritual vampirism, souls being robbed of the will to live, countless suicide victims.

“She was crazy about him, crazy with this Rajneesh,” the old nun explained, speaking of Isabella, a Spanish girl from a noble family. - But Rajneesh used her and threw her away. She was a fragile bird and he crushed her... But she continued to believe in Rajneesh, repeating that it was just a test of her devotion... She ended up in a lunatic asylum in Pune... mumbling all sorts of nonsense... God! I tell you - he is the devil! .

Rajneesh said: "Meditation is a state of pure consciousness without any content." To achieve it, he directly called on his followers to rage - he advised every morning to jump with their hands up, shouting: “Hu! Hu! Hoo!", recommended making faces in front of a mirror, imagining yourself without a head, buzzing through your nose, walking on all fours around the room and growling like a dog, sucking milk from a baby bottle, and generally "be an astronaut of your inner space" .

In the stories about the cult of Rajneesh, it is really about the kingdom of darkness, as it were. They are somewhat similar to the stories of the orgies of the ancient Druids in England, when a huge horned god, sitting on a throne, like the embodiment of evil, contemplated the dirt-covered altar. These people who exalt themselves as God are like little antichrists, and whose

“the coming, according to the work of Satan, will be with all power, and lying signs and wonders, and with all unrighteous deceit” (2 Thess. 2:9, 10).

Any traditional religion brings light, kindness with it, but Rajneesh, realizing to whom he sold his soul, associated himself exclusively with death. He later recalled:

“Loneliness gripped me from the age of 7. Loneliness has become my nature. This death has become for me the death of all attachments. Whenever my relationship with someone started to get intimate, that death stared at me. From that day on, every moment of consciousness of life was invariably associated with the consciousness of death.

To match his inner nature, he spent his gatherings. Meditation at the Rajneesh Ashrams includes specific dances where participants are blindfolded, undressed, and put themselves into an ecstatic trance. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta gathered for his lectures, ending in mass shaking and ripping off clothes. Many times, such "dances" in Rajneesh groups, for example in the USA, ended in group sex.

Here are the words of the adept Rajneesh Ma Prem Paras: “Once you begin to question the mind, sooner or later you will fall into the abyss of meditation.” It is into the abyss of madness and the power of demons that the followers of Rajneesh break down.

Whatever the defenders of this kind of “spirituality” may say, it all very much resembles the ritual rites of Satanists.

Those who did not accept his teachings were declared narrow-minded and stupid, while Rajneesh attributed the halo of a “misunderstood genius” to himself: “Many great mystics behaved like fools, and their contemporaries were completely at a loss: how to figure out their life - and the greatest wisdom was present in her. To be wise among you is really foolish. Nothing will come of this venture; you'll only create a lot of trouble." This is a very comfortable position in relation to critics. Since you criticize me, it means that you have not yet grown up to my level, which means that you are narrow-minded and unspiritual individuals. But this is pure swindle and megalomania!

The Fake Teachings of Sex Guru Bhagawan Osho Rajneesh

How real the teachings of Rajneesh do not correspond to those false sugary pictures from his life that his followers paint for us can be seen from his following passages:

"Easy life. Don't complicate it with pretense. Nobody urinates. So only in textbooks. Everyone writes - this is life. Love blossoms out of the dirt of sex. Compassion comes from the dirt of anger. And nirvana is from the dirt of this world ”;

“Considering yourself a rooster is crazy; but to consider yourself a human being is even more crazy, because you do not belong to any form ... You belong to the formless ... And until you become formless, nameless, you will never be mentally healthy ”;

"You came to me. You have taken a dangerous step. It's risky, because next to me you can get lost forever. To come closer can only mean death, and nothing else. I am like an abyss";

“I can only help you become nothing. I can only push you into the abyss... into the abyss. You will not achieve anything, you will simply dissolve. You will fall and fall and dissolve, and the moment you dissolve your whole being will experience ecstasy”;

"When I initiate you into sannyas, I initiate you into this nameless, homeless death";

"A real, perfect person ... has no attachments."

Like other sectarians, Rajneesh predicted a very imminent approach to a worldwide catastrophe: “This crisis will begin in 1984 and end in 1999. All types of destruction will reign on earth at this time - from natural disasters to suicide by the achievements of science. In other words, floods not seen since the time of Noah, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and everything possible will be given to us by nature ... There will be wars that put humanity on the brink of nuclear war, but Noah's ark will not save it. Rajneeshism is the Noah's ark of consciousness, a corner of calm in the center of a typhoon... The catastrophe will be global and inevitable. It will not be possible to hide from it only in my teaching.

In early 1984, Rajneesh expanded on his prediction of an alleged catastrophe to come, noting that Nostradamus' prophecy would be fulfilled and AIDS would kill 2/3 of the world's population. At the same time, he declared to his followers: “I will not say that the Rajneeshists will survive the catastrophe, but I can say with absolute certainty that those who survive will be Rajneeshists, and the rest will be monkeys (that is, not grown up to the level of the Rajneesh “superman”, - ed.) or commit suicide. In the end, the rest don't matter."

Unlike other gurus who preach self-denial, Rajneesh immediately became known as the sex guru of India, preaching complete renunciation of oneself through absolute indulgence to one's desires. He frankly calls for premarital sexual relations, "open" marriages and the destruction of the family, free sex. "Suppression is not a word in a sannyasin's vocabulary," was his ad in Time magazine. Rajneesh encouraged tantric (sexual) yoga, ecstatic dancing, stripping, and even drug use as a means of meditation. Sterilization of women as an anti-pregnancy remedy is also a common practice. “The path to desirelessness lies through desire,” Rajneesh instructed his followers.

“Develop your sexuality, don't repress yourself! he called. - Love is the beginning of everything. If you miss the beginning, there will be no end for you ... I do not inspire orgies, but I do not forbid them either. Everyone decides for himself."

Rajneesh wrote: “When in meditation you have a moment of enlightenment, a glimpse of some kind of ecstasy, let it happen, let it penetrate into the depths of you and delve into it yourself.” Usually, when Rajneesh's henchmen were brought to a state of ecstasy, people committed such indecencies that they were later afraid to remember. But they just believed Rajneesh and followed his advice.

The “love” preached by Rajneesh in practice turned out to be the most unbridled sex without any restrictions, including group sex. That is why he was nicknamed the "sex guru".

However, the students and followers of Rajneesh vehemently object to this view. Thus, Swami Satya Vedanta wrote: “Bhagavan does not teach 'free sex' or sexual tolerance as misunderstood. On the contrary, he declares in no uncertain terms that sex, properly understood, has nothing to do with promiscuity.

The resolution of this dispute can be found in Osho's quote on the topic of sex, which quite clearly and unambiguously reflects the clear position of Rajneesh on this issue:

“Sex exists everywhere, it is nothing, it is not at all mysterious. If you want to understand sex, it is enough to understand animal sex, and everything that is applicable to sex in animals is also applicable to man. In this sense, a person is nothing more";

“There is nothing sinful about pure simple sex ... There is no need to hide it behind the beautiful word “love”. There is no need to create a romantic fog around him” (, p. 5);

“It has to be a pure phenomenon: the two feel at this moment that they would like to connect on a deeper level, that's all. No obligation, no duty, no obligation in this. Sex should be full of play and prayer” (, p.6);

“I give you complete freedom. My efforts are here only to help you go beyond that; thus, if you are homosexual, you must go beyond homosexuality; if you are heterosexual, you must go beyond heterosexuality” (, p. 50);

“A baby in a crib plays with his genitals, and the mother comes in and removes his hands. Now this is a shock to the child; he becomes afraid to touch his own genitals. And it's so nice to touch them ... it's so relaxing. By touching them, the child achieves a non-sexual orgasm; it's just a pleasure. The natural urge to touch the genitals, to play with them is so beautiful” (, p. 55);

“When sex becomes connected, merged with comprehension, a completely new energy is born - this energy is called Tantra ... Real Tantra is not a technique, but love. This is not a technique, but a prayer… You can stay in a tantric connection for hours… The mantra is focused on a different kind of orgasm… A tantric orgasm can be called an orgasm of the valley” (, p.70-74);

“Normal sexual orgasm looks like crazy, tantric orgasm is a deep, relaxed meditation… Tantric love act can be done as many times as you want… Just keep playing and don’t think about sexual intercourse at all. It may or may not happen” (, pp.76-77).

Not only the preaching of freedom of sexual life attracted Rajneesh. “Every sannyasi,” he wrote, “must make a great contribution, for we are trying to realize a great dream in which all religions can meet, in which the earth can become our home - not divided into nations, races and skin colors.” This dream will be realized by the followers of Rajneesh - "enlightened" or going to "enlightenment".

The Ashrams of Rajneesh became nurseries and incubators for the "new people of the new world". And, of course, only Guru Bhagwan will help them show the path to "enlightenment". "Everyone has the potential to become God... God is a state of consciousness... it is a way of enjoying life right here and now." "Enlightenment" is a leap into the unknown, and in order to make it, you need to surrender with your whole soul to Bhagwan, remove the mental barriers in front of him.

"When you become a disciple, when I initiate you... I'm just trying to help you find yourself."

Osho propagated the ideal of a new man as a person capable of enjoying a full-blooded physical life and at the same time reaching the heights of the spirit. He called such a person Zorba-Buddha, choosing Buddha as a symbol of the soul, and Zorba as a symbol of the body (Zorba is the hero of one of the novels of the Greek writer Kazantzakis, endowed with a huge potential for love of life).

The pseudo-guru said: “Live the life of a Zorba completely, and you will naturally enter the life of a Buddha… The Zorba is only the beginning… The Zorba is an arrow. If you follow it correctly, it will lead to the Buddha ... Sooner or later, when you allow your Zorba to achieve full self-expression, there will be nothing left for you but to look for something higher, more perfect and majestic. ”

Osho taught his students not to suppress the Zorba. Live intensely, he urged, reject nothing, accept and explore everything: matter and spirit, soul and body, love and meditation. “Go deep into all the experiences of life,” Osho said.

Assuming the strange title of "Man of the Planet" Rajneesh repeatedly spoke hostilely about traditional religions: "We are making a revolution ... I burn old scriptures, destroy traditions ... Shoot at me, but I will not convert to your faith." He called all orthodox religions "anti-life."

“I am the founder of a single religion,” Rajneesh declared, “other religions are a hoax. Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha simply corrupted people... My teaching is based on knowledge, on experience. People don't have to believe me. I explain my experience to them. If they find it right, they accept it. If not, then they have no reason to believe in him.

Representatives of new religious movements in Russia are literally obsessed with the requirements of respect for their organizations and teachings. At the same time, in most cases, they themselves consider it quite acceptable to offend the religious feelings of believers of traditional religions, who make up the majority of the Russian population.

What Rajneesh said and wrote was in no way respectful. This is nothing but insults and incitement of inter-religious hatred:

“Any religion that sees life as meaningless and teaches you to hate it is not a true religion. Religion is an art that shows how to live life. But these shops, which have appropriated the name of religions, do not want the person to become truly religious, because then there will be no need for a priest”;

“All the religions of the past are for the sake of life, none for the sake of the living, none for the sake of laughter. No religion perceives a sense of humor as a property of religiosity. That is why I say that my religion is the first religion that considers man in his totality, in his naturalness, perceives man as a whole, as he is. Holiness doesn't mean something sacred to me, but something accepted in its entirety... It's the first religion that doesn't reject anything from your life. She accepts you as a whole, as you are, and finds ways and methods to make the whole more harmonious ... ";

“All religions have become politics. They use religious terminology, but there is politics behind it all. What is Islam? What is Hinduism? What is Christianity? They are all political groups, political organizations doing politics under the guise of religion... The Temple is no more. The temple has disappeared, it has become politics”;

“Christian priests have been trained for two thousand years, but not a single Jesus has come out of them, and not a single one will ever come out, because you cannot teach to be Jesus. You cannot produce Jesus in a factory. And these are factories, these theological colleges. There you release priests, and if these priests are downright boring, dead - burdensome - then it is not difficult to understand that the whole religion will become the same ... Of course, these Christian priests are dead, everything is planned for them ”;

“A truly religious person cannot be a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist. Religion is absolutely useless. Well, what is the use of the temple? What is the use of the mosque? Why do we need churches? ;

“If this land ever reaches true religiosity, then we will stop teaching Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism - for this is one of the most serious sins in the world.”

He also had bad relations with Hinduism. In India, he is better known as "Ngariya" Rajneesh - a fierce teacher who destroyed ancient myths and beliefs, traditions and teachings. “I teach extreme rebellion,” he declared. “If we want to change society, we must be extremely honest and truthful, we must speak out against it.” Many years ago, at the Second Hindu Religious Congress, where the head of Hinduism, Shankaracharya, chaired, the views of Rajneesh caused the strongest irritation of the representatives of the main currents of official Hinduism, who after that diligently dissociated themselves from him.

Characteristics of Pseudo-Guru Osho Rajneesh

The infamous destroyer of ancient Indian traditions and beliefs, "spiritual terrorist" and "sex guru" Rajneesh was born on December 11, 1931 in a Jain family, adherents of one of the ancient religions of India, in the remote village of Kuchvada in the province of Madhya Pradesh, in Central India. His parents named him Rajneesh Chandra Mohan.

Later, this person became known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh (or Rajneesh), which translates as "that blessed one who is God", or Osho ("oceanic", "dissolved in the ocean"). His disciples called him: "acharya" ("teacher") and "bhagwan" (which means "holy man" in Sanskrit).

Rajneesh was the eldest of his five sisters and seven brothers. His childhood was overshadowed by the fact that his father, unlucky in business, was often on the road. Rajneesh's father was replaced by his grandfather, to whom he was very attached.

He spent the first seven years of his life with his grandparents, who gave him complete freedom to be himself. The death of his grandfather, whom he loved very much, had a profound effect on his inner life.

From early childhood, Rajneesh, who declared that he came to enlightenment, completing the fast he started 700 years ago in another life, was obsessed with the idea of death.

“Death took a long look at me before life began,” he muses. “Loneliness has become my essence.”

A Hindu astrologer told Rajneesh's parents that the boy would "die" every 7 years until he was 21. It is then that he will finally experience sudden enlightenment. When Rajneesh was 7 years old, his grandfather died; At 14, he almost drowned himself. To the ups and downs of fate, he actively added his own stupidity - he threw himself from high bridges into swift whirlpools, where a rotating funnel of water sucked him in, and then carried him back. In such a strange way, he wanted to prove his theory of "cooperation with divine providence in all things."

Osho Rajneesh - communes and communism

In his youth, his greatest passion was reading, but he read quite specific literature for the future guru. During this period he was dubbed a communist (!), because he intensively read Marx and Engels. He even organized a circle of young people, where communist ideology was regularly discussed and opposition to religion expressed. He and his friends believed that socialism would solve all of India's economic problems. At this time, he is an atheist, openly criticizing religious rituals and blind faith in holy scriptures. But gradually there was a disappointment in socialist ideas. Rajneesh realized that he would not receive any dividends here, and announced to his associates in the Marxist circle:

"Only a revolution in consciousness, and not in politics, can bring peace and happiness."

This transition from infatuation with communism to the birth of the idea of creating one's own religion took place sometime between 1945-1950.

Rajneesh was the son of relatively wealthy parents, so he could afford to get a good higher education. In 1957 he graduated from the university and received a diploma with honors, a gold medal and a master's degree in philosophy. After that, he taught philosophy at two Indian universities from 1957 to 1966.

Later, he also tried his hand at occult magic, telekinesis and yoga breath control. He began to travel a lot in India and preach. He wandered on foot and rode a donkey, telling everyone how they can change and be transformed in order to survive. According to his student, who later found the strength to leave this sect, Eckart Floser, in an interview with Forward magazine, Rajneesh's sermons were not very successful, and by 1970 he was nothing more than a tired, poor man, who, however, was very much mistaken, believing that he owns a certain gift and power.

Since 1969, Rajneesh began to initiate his first students, giving them new names and a medallion with his image. In Bombay he decided to create a group of people whom he could begin to teach. Gradually, he overgrown with his students, the room where he lived, no longer contained them.

I am looking for spiritual students, seekers and the rich, please do not disturb the poor!

Then in 1974, Rajneesh moved to the rich Indian city of Pune (120 miles south of Bombay). During this same period, he organized his own neo-Sannyasin international movement. A commune began to form around him, attracting more and more people from the West, "searching for spiritual truth." By the mid-70s, the pseudo-guru was already hosting traveling VIPs, movie stars such as Diana Ross, and even Ruth Carter Stapleton, Jimmy Carter's sister. His bright scarlet-robed sannyasin followers flooded the streets of Poona to the delight of local shopkeepers. A rapidly growing community of 7,000 people soon formed. Countless others made regular visits.

In 1981, Osho came to America, where his followers bought a huge ranch and founded the commune of Rajneeshpuram.

Subsequently, Osho ashrams were formed in other places in India, as well as in 22 more countries, including the USA, England, Germany (in Cologne, Munich, Hamburg), France, Canada, Japan, Russia and a number of other countries. Rajneesh's sermons found their addressees. Up to 50,000 people per year passed through the Pune School of Song and Meditation alone, where the movement is headquartered (OSHO Commune International, 17 Koregaoh Park, Poona 411011 MS India). By 1984, Rajneesh gathered about 350 thousand followers, whose average age was 34 years.

Rajneesh's tape-recorded speeches were published and replicated in the form of many books and pamphlets, which were then distributed throughout the world.

Osho Rajneesh Pseudo Guru Centers

Today, more than 500 Rajneesh meditation centers operate around the world. The international meeting place for the followers of this movement is the International Osho Commune in Pune, governed by an elected committee of 11 women and 10 men.

The Osho Commune-owned Multiversity offers hundreds of workshops, groups, and courses presented across its nine departments:

Osho School of Centering,
Osho School of Creative Arts,
Osho International Health Academy,
Osho Meditation Academy,
Osho School of Mysticism,
Osho Tibetan Pulsing Institute,
Osho Transformation Center,
Osho School of Zen Martial Arts,
Osho Academy of Games and Zen Training.

Belonging to the Osho movement, at least until 1985, was symbolized by a kind of clothing (sunrise colors: red, orange, pink), a wooden chain on which hangs an amulet with the image of Osho and a new name.

Osho movements in the CIS and former USSR countries

In the CIS countries, groups on meditation, astrology, and psycho-training have been created in organizations of the Osho movement. In Belarus, Rajneeshists operate in Minsk, in Ukraine - in Kiev and Odessa, in Georgia - in Tbilisi, in Latvia - in Riga.

In Russia, Osho's followers created their own organizations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh (operated since 1996 under the name Tantra Yoga, 30-40 followers), Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar and other cities.

In Moscow, the Rajnishevsky Meditation Center "ATMA" operates under the leadership of Soldatov A.V. and Kosikhina V.S., Osho Moscow Center, "Eastern House" under the leadership of Marikhin and other groups of followers of Rajneesh.

Rajneeshists are also actively infiltrating Russian schools. It is known that the Rajneeshists some time ago conducted their classes at secondary school No. 984 in Moscow.

Osho Center conducts regular seminars. In May 1997, the following programs were offered to those who participated in the “Touching Tantra” seminar: “practical tantra yoga, pair exercises, breathing techniques, various tantric techniques, working with chakras, working with the body, ... overcoming barriers in choosing partners, overcoming difficulties in communication between a man and a woman, ... Tarot cards.

Since recently, the Yamskoye Pole Moscow club has been hosting a “meditation disco” every Sunday, where you can not only dance, but also roll on the floor, make faces, yell, jump, bark and whistle. The disco is held by the head of the association "Eastern House" Swami Anand Toshan (in the world - Igor Marihin). Toshan completed a course of study at the Multiversity in Pune and received a spiritual initiation - sannyas. After that, he returned to Russia and began to translate the books of Rajneesh into Russian. Then, together with several friends, he traveled around the country, preaching the teachings of the Master at seminars and lectures. Toshan called his group “Osho Gypsies”, because he had to spend several years “on wheels”. Having recruited followers, Toshan founded the East House center, which includes an Indian dance school, an art studio, meditation training and an Osho disco.

Rajneesh assigned a large role to ecstatic dance - spontaneous movements without worked out steps and memorized positions.

“The body is forgotten, only movement remains. Feel like a tree in the rain in a strong wind.

Therefore, everything is allowed at the Osho disco that does not interfere with others. You can, for example, remove everything from yourself. Or, conversely, wear the most exotic clothes. The role of the DJ at the console is performed by Toshan himself. He looks at the dancers and, depending on their mood, puts on certain music. He did not forbid arranging sexual orgies during such "dances".

As reported in the press from the founding of the Pune center, some visitors to the commune returned with stories of sex orgies and drug use in the Osho communities. Some researchers believe that the word “orgies” is hardly applicable to Osho’s practices, since Rajneesh does not divide the manifestations of life into positive and negative, like many Hindu cults, in Osho’s doctrine, the concepts of good and evil are blurred.

One of the spiritual practices widely used in the Rajneesh cult is the so-called "dynamic meditation". It is explained that allegedly with her help

“the consequences of previous life experience are removed, energy is acquired.”

Each session begins with chaotic breathing to the beat of a drum. Due to the hyperventilation of the lungs accompanying such breathing, a person gets drunk from excess oxygen. He is advised to scream, roll on the floor, make any involuntary movements. The special state experienced by the person is explained as something mysterious, possible only due to some secret that the guru possesses. In fact, according to Professor Dr. Margaret Theiler Singer (University of California), this phenomenon has a clear physiological explanation and is nothing more than a trick.

In the cult of Rajneesh, professional psychotherapists worked together with the guru. Leaders inspire people that the person himself is to blame for his previous painful condition, since he was allegedly inadequate in his behavior. After a few days of "cure" people lose the ability to think for themselves, they become people without their own biography, "existing here and now." Now they are ready to accept the "new doctrine". Gurus are especially emotionally perceived by female followers, they are the majority in the sect. The religious rite looks something like this. Rajneesh shouts out the words: “Life! Death! Despair! Happiness!". They mix, and ultimately it means - "nothing". This mumbling brings students into a trance, similar to meditation. In this state, a person has practically no prudence, a person is out of reality.

Among the meditation practices offered to adepts developed by Osho, there is one called “Die Consciously”.

Becoming a sannyasin (monk) in the cult of Rajneesh, a person completely loses his own will. Therefore, sannyasins can only exist in groups, obeying the will of the leader. The cult of Rajneesh, at least for his American followers, is characterized by a special fanatical devotion of adherents, even against the background of other destructive cults. For example, when Rajneesh hinted that a woman burdened with children could not achieve enlightenment, many female sannyasins were sterilized right there in the Laguna Beach cult center.

In his cult rites, Rajneesh often brought his adherents into a state of nirvana (translated from Sanskrit as "bliss", "enlightenment") with the help of drugs, and individual meditation sessions in the ashrams of the "holy man" ended in fights and stabbings. There were cases when sectarians, maddened by Bhagwan's lamentations and drugs, broke each other's arms and legs.

Psychiatry and psycho followers of Osho Rajneesh

Psychiatrist Betty Tilden(Great Britain) believes that without the help of medicine, the adherents of the Rajneesh cult are not able to return to normal life. The psychotherapists who worked for Rajneesh were cold, calculating and ruthless people. For Rajneesh, the life and health of his followers were worthless:

“I am not interested in your possibilities. If you feel bad, then it should be so. All this is done in the name of love ... ".

According to a journalist from Munich, he is familiar with a dozen former followers of Rajneesh, who were completely mentally destroyed after they left the sect. Here are just two examples of such consequences.

Hamburg musician, 26 years old. Cannot find contact with reality, instantly forgets everything he just said, says, "he has absolutely no energy."

Nurse from Berlin, 29 years old. Suffered from "withdrawal". After leaving the sect, she could not think consistently and committed suicide.

Those who have joined the destructive teachings and practices of Rajneesh eventually become a kind of zombie. A thirty-year-old Perm doctor - a follower of Rajneesh - once said: “My inner experience, the spiritual joy I experienced, testify that the path to true freedom lies through the liberation of a person from the voice of conscience. The voice of conscience in a person is the voice of the devil, which once again confirmed that this organization can be quite confidently classified as potentially the most dangerous in terms of possible participation in the organization of anti-social actions, including terrorist acts.

And this is not surprising, for Rajneesh achieves the complete elimination of all doubts and the mind itself from his followers:

“The mind is like a disease… When there is a mind, you are always caught. The mind rapes you, forces you, you are its prisoner... Meditation is throwing the mind out, it is freeing yourself from the burden. You don't need to carry all your excrement with you, otherwise you will get dumber and dumber";

"The mind is the deadest thing in you... The mind is as dead a part as the hair... The human mind is a monkey";

“Both the one and the other: both the hair and the mind are dead, do not carry them around. It will be wonderful! Make sure that dead particles do not accumulate in you ... Mind is a dead part of you, it is excrement ”;

“Meditation is nothing but emptying, becoming nothing. Emptiness should be your path, goal, everything. From tomorrow morning, start emptying yourself of everything that you find inside ... - everything that you find, just throw it away. Everything that turns up, indiscriminately; empty yourself";

“When the mind is needed, use it like a mechanical device; when you're not using it, set it aside and forget about it. Then become useless and do something useless - and you will begin to live a full happy life ”;

"If you become aware, ugliness, ugliness appears."

Many of his followers "hooked on the needle", becoming drug addicts. “Among my patients were many people from the entourage of Bhagwan, who healed in Pune,” said Professor Claude Olivenstein, director of the Marmotan drug treatment center in Paris. According to the words of the former guru's ward, Time magazine, there were cases when sectarians, mad from the rituals of the sect and from drugs, broke each other's legs and arms.

Mikhail Medvedev and Tatyana Kalashnikova, researchers of the harm of meditative practices for human health, wrote: “In the Hindu-occult immersion in the supersensible and in the Christian spiritual life, we have, according to the remarkable researcher of the history of religions L.A. Tikhomirov, “two completely different psycho-spiritual processes that from beginning to end they follow different paths.

A person who follows the path of yogic-occult practice first plunges himself into somnambulistic passivity and causes the soul to disintegrate into separate parts. Having brought himself into a state in which no action is possible, he imagines, by an effort of his disintegrated will, to force the secret of his content from the supersensible. This is the practice of false images and visions, in which the human spirit is even more blinded and drawn into the trap of unusual sensations, from which it cannot free itself. All occult-yogic paths, despite their external diversity, are united in their spiritual essence. Tal Brook, a former initiate of another neo-Hindu guru, Sathya Sai Baba, after visiting Pune, described his impressions as follows:

“The object of horror and adoration in the media, Rajneesh created the image of a “new man” who rejects all norms and traditions. Man, according to Rajneesh, is a hedonistic god who does not depend on anything (except from the inner voice of Rajneesh) and is free to give the cosmos any appearance depending on his desire. This is the dominant pleasure-seeker, existing in himself, owing nothing to anyone. The family is cursed, children are a burden. Till " neosannyasin"has money, he's wildly having fun. Then interest in him disappears. Murders, rapes, mysterious disappearances, threats, arson, explosions, abandoned children" Ashram members begging on the streets of Pune, drugs are all par for the course for the marvelous hybrids in red who consider themselves the audacious pioneers of a new meaning of "love".

The Christians working in the Pune Psychiatric Hospital will confirm everything that has been said, not forgetting to mention the high level of mental disorders associated with the fact that the ashram has taken political power into its own hands and there is no one to complain about it.”

In early 1981, there were reports of a threat to Rajneesh's life. A strict regime was introduced in the ashram, everyone entering was searched for weapons. A store was set on fire, and an explosion occurred near the ashram's medical center. According to the cult, the attack on the guru in February forced the ashram administration to speed up the search for a new headquarters that had already begun.

India Today

According to India Today magazine, "Police and authorities in Pune are unanimous in their opinion that the incidents were instigated by followers of Rajneesh" because "the last two weeks of investigation have shown that the Rajneesh Foundation is up to its neck in unpaid taxes, misappropriation of donations for charitable purposes , thefts and in criminal cases against members of the sect, the investigation of which had not been completed by the time she left the city.

In 1981, the government of Indira Gandhi stripped Bhagwan's ashram of the right to be considered a religious organization. The US Consulate in Bombay issued a visa to Rajneesh, and on June 1, 1981, having sold the property of the ashram and taking 17 of his most devoted students with him, he secretly flew to New York. After Rajneesh left Pune, his adherents spread throughout the West, setting out to establish "holy cities" throughout Europe, which were planned to be self-sustaining and which were supposed to become an alternative to society, being examples of "sannyas". In the US, efforts have been made to create a model of a "holy city" run by the "teacher" himself. On July 10, 1981, the Chidvilas Rajneesh Meditation Center in Montclair, New Jersey, purchased the Big Magdy Ranch from an investment company in Amarillo, Texas, for $6 million (of which $1.5 million was in cash). Its territory near Madras (Oregon) covers more than 100 square miles. The center was also able to lease 14,889 acres in the same area from the American Bureau of Land Management.

Soon, two hundred followers of Rajneesh from 16 European countries gathered in Big Magdi to enthusiastically welcome the teacher in his new home in September. After some time, the intentions to build "the first enlightened city in America" under the name of Rajneeshpuram (the city of Rajneesh) were made public. On November 4, 1981, the Vasco County Commission voted by a double margin to hold a referendum in May 1982 on whether the Big Magdi farm could be considered a city. In such cases, only local residents vote, and in this case, the followers of Rajneesh, and it was not difficult to predict the result: 154 votes for the appearance of the city of Rajneeshpuram and not a single one against.

Big Magdy Ranch

In a short time, in the dusty steppe of Oregon, not far from the provincial town of Entelope, on the abandoned Big Magdy Ranch ranch, an oasis of Western civilization was created: an airfield, a comfortable hotel with a casino, shopping streets, restaurants. Roads were laid with special buses plying along the routes indicated by the “holy man”. This "miracle" was created by the work of 6,000 adherents of Rajneesh, as well as with the money of 500 thousand so-called adept-tourists, who live far from the guru, but who regularly came to Oregon to communicate with their leader and transferred impressive sums to his account.

From the beginning, the cult's attempts to create a paradise in the Oregon desert met with fierce opposition. The legitimacy of the new city was questioned for two reasons: firstly, the separation clause of the state and church was violated, and secondly, the decision of the Vasco County Commission on the referendum violated state land use laws. There was a threat of dismantling most of the buildings. As a precaution against the decision to dismantle Rajneeshpuram and to show that the organization has influence among municipal services and authorities, the Rajneeshists officially occupied the nearby township, deciding to rename it from Entelope to Rajneesh.

Taking advantage of the fact that, according to local law, it is enough to live in the state for 22 days to get the right to vote in local elections, the guru decided to increase the number of voters in Entelope at the expense of his followers. In New York, San Francisco and other major cities in the United States, Bhagwan's supporters began to invite alcoholics, vagabonds, and drug addicts to the ashram. All this continued until the election of the mayor of the town. The operation "share the dwelling with your neighbor", carried out by Rajneesh, thus gathered 3,500 people in the city of Rajneesh. Bhagwan's followers voted for the right person's guru and Enteloup was renamed Rajneesh.

Most of the forty original inhabitants of Enteloope, mostly elderly, were subjected to constant surveillance by the police force of sannyasins, were taxed in favor of the sect and were forced to see a nudist beach established by the city council full of Rajneeshs in the city park. They chose to give up and leave the city. The city grew as the followers of Rajneesh bought up existing houses and built new ones.

Rajneesh Foundation International

Meanwhile, the American Immigration Service continued its investigation on suspicion of violating immigration laws and relevant criminal regulations by members of the organization " Rajneesh Foundation International". More than 30 Rajneeshists, including the leadership, were suspected of fictitious marriages of US citizens with foreign citizens. By the way, the residency requirement of Rajneesh himself was also in great doubt, and the American Immigration Service hoped to prove that he received a visa by exaggerating the severity of his illness.

Homeless people and alcoholics, having done their job, could leave. The order to disperse the suspicious company was given to the personal guard of the guru, and he was guarded by a whole detachment of specially trained militants armed not only with small arms, but also with helicopters (there was even at least one combat helicopter with missiles).

Osho at the head of the killers or revived nightmares - the messiahs of Rajneesh

However, the vagabonds were in no hurry to leave the city of Rajneesh proclaimed by them. They were not going to work for the guru either. Reluctantly, the guru was forced to agree that they remain among his flock. But soon strange events began to occur in the vicinity of the newly-made Rajneeshpuram-Rajneesh. Several times the state police had to investigate crimes very similar in style: people seemed to fall asleep, killed by an unknown poison. Moreover, all the victims were from among the recently appeared adherents of Osho, who took part in the vote. Their corpses were found in different places, but not in the Rajneeshpuram e.

The police understandably suspected the guru and his associates. Sensing danger, Rajneesh did not find anything more witty than to withdraw from secular affairs and take a vow of silence. I must say that he didn’t really deal with “secular affairs”, because he had an army of sectarian slaves.

While Rajneesh retired from the affairs of the commune, taking a vow of silence, a group of his closest assistants committed lawlessness. Major financial scandals in the leadership of the organization became known.

Sheila Silverman

For four years the pseudo-saint was silent. His faithful follower Shila Silverman became the mediator of his communication with the world. She ran the ashram effectively with a hard hand, regularly collected tribute from the sectarians and, of course, provided publicity for the reluctant silent man who continued to issue pamphlets calling for "freedom through sexuality."

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Sheela personally led the ashram army, numbering about 100 people in its ranks. When the surrounding farmers tried to call on the inhabitants of Rajneeshpuram to observe Christian morality, or at least the elementary norms of human society, Sheela threatened to kill fifteen farmers for every one follower of Rajneesh, declaring that soon the whole of Oregon would be called Rajneeshpuram: “To achieve this, I am ready every bulldozer going to the demolition of this world, paint it with your blood!” . Under the influence of public opinion, the police, and then the FBI, opened a case against the Bhagwan sect. Rajneesh decided to speak, but it was already too late.

About four dozen FBI investigators were investigating directly in Rajneeshpuram. They discovered arms depots, laboratories for the production of drugs, which were regularly added to food for sectarians. During the searches, they found a carefully camouflaged underground passage for the escape of the guru in case of emergency.

On October 27, 1985, the FBI arrested Rajneesh at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Bhagwan's own plane had landed to refuel. Rajneesh and eight of his associates allegedly flew to Bermuda.

Exposing the chief priestess of Osho - Sheela Silverman

Shortly before the exposure of the "high priestess" Sheila Silverman, who sensed that clouds were gathering over her, considered it good to move with her personal guards and her next husband to Western Europe. While the pseudo-saint sounded the alarm and gathered his thinned ranks, Sheela withdrew $55 million from the ashram's Swiss bank account and disappeared. What kind of accusations Bhagwan did not put forward against his recent associate. He yelled that Sheela had tried to poison the life of the "saint's" personal doctor, made an attempt on the life of the guru himself, killed vagabonds, whose bodies the police found in the surrounding fields ... The "high priestess" was also not inactive. When Interpol tracked down Sheela and her gang in Stuttgart, Silverman willingly told about all the ins and outs of Rajneesh's real activities.

A brief trial of Osho and his sect

The brief trial, held in Portland, Oregon, ended on November 14, 1985. Rajneesh was found guilty on two counts of the federal indictment. The US government structures decided to deport Rajneesh from the country, so he received a purely symbolic punishment: ten years of suspended imprisonment plus a fine of 300 thousand dollars. The criminal pseudo-guru was ordered to collect all his belongings and leave the territory of the United States within five days. The FBI supervised his departure.

In mid-1986, Rajneesh returned to India. Within a few months, the community in Pune had resumed and expanded its psychotherapeutic and meditation programs, which was reflected in the word "Multiversity", which Rajneesh chose as a common name for his teachings and practices.

By the end of the 80s, Rajneesh's health had deteriorated significantly. In the last months before his death, if his health allowed, Rajneesh went out to his students for "meditation of music and silence", and then they watched videos of his previous conversations.

Religions of the world. Encyclopedia for children. T.6., Part 2. - M.: Avanta +, 1996.

Religious Habitat: Assessing Threats and Seeking Protective Measures. - M.: Publication of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, 1998. - 176 p.

New religious organizations in Russia of a destructive, occult and neo-pagan nature: a Handbook. - The third edition, supplemented and revised. - Volume 4. Eastern mystical groups. Part 1 / Avt.-stat. I. Kulikov. - Moscow: "Pilgrim", 2000.

SECTANT OSHO. CAUTION - DANGER!

This is probably why, for a start, you generally need to say who Osho is, because not everyone can know this.

Osho. short biography

Chandra Mohan Jain(December 11, 1931 - January 19, 1990) since the early seventies, better known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh (that blessed one who is god) and later as Osho (oceanic, dissolved in the ocean) - a famous neo-Hindu guru and mystic, inspirer of the neo-orientalist movement Rajneesh, preacher " philosophy of "total liberation", calling it the Sanskrit term "sannyas".

Criticism of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi and traditional religions made Osho a controversial figure during his lifetime. In addition, he defended the freedom of sexual relations, in some cases arranged sexual meditation practices, for which he earned the nickname "sex guru".

Osho is the founder of the system of ashrams (religious communities) in many countries. The ashram, according to the descriptions of the disciples, was at the same time "an amusement park and a lunatic asylum, a pleasure house and a temple."
During his stay in the United States, he founded the international settlement of Rajneeshpuram, several residents of which, until September 1985, committed serious crimes, including a bioterrorist act (infected more than 750 people with salmonella).

During the four years that Osho lived there, the popularity of Rajneeshpuram grew.
So, about 3,000 people came to the festival in 1983, and in 1987 - about 7,000 people from Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.
A school, post office, fire and police departments, a transport system of 85 buses were opened in the city.
Between 1981 and 1986, the Rajneesh movement amassed about $120 million through various meditation workshops, lectures, and conferences with attendance fees ranging from $50 to $7,500.
By "the end of 1982, Osho's net worth reached $200 million tax-free."
Osho also owned 4 aircraft and 1 combat helicopter. In addition, Osho owned "nearly a hundred (numbers vary) Rolls-Royces."
Reportedly, his followers wanted to increase the number of Rolls-Royces to 365, one for each day of the year.
In 1984, the Federal Bureau of Investigation "brought a criminal case against the Rajnesh sect" because in Anteloope "arms depots, drug laboratories were discovered on the territory of the center of Rajnesh."

On October 23, 1985, Rajnesh was arrested.
“The call for complete freedom, coupled with very liberal views on marriage and sexual relations, has caused public outrage throughout the world.
Osho disbanded his ashram in Oregon and publicly stated that he was not a religious teacher and stated that the "Rajneesh Bible" was published without his knowledge.
Also, his students burned 5,000 copies of the book "Rajneeshism", which was a 78-page compilation of the teachings of Bhagwan, who defined "Rajneeshism" as "a non-religious religion."
After being deported from America, Rajneesh was denied entry by 21 countries or declared him "persona non grata".

In a number of countries, Osho's organization was classified as a destructive sect and cult and was, including in the USSR, banned.

Teaching.
Osho's teachings are extremely eclectic (largely borrowed from other philosophical systems).
It is a chaotic mosaic composed of elements of Buddhism, Yoga, Taoism, Sikhism, the Greek philosophy of Sufism, European psychology, Tibetan traditions, Christianity, Hasidism, Zen, Tantrism and other spiritual movements, as well as their own views.

He himself spoke about it like this: “I don’t have a system. Systems can only be dead. I am an unsystematic, anarchic stream, I am not even a person, but just a certain process. I don't know what I told you yesterday"
Many of Osho's lectures contain contradictions and paradoxes, which Osho commented as follows:
“My friends are surprised: Yesterday you said one thing, and today another. What are we to listen to? I can understand their bewilderment. They just grabbed the words. Conversations are of no value to me, only the spaces between the words I speak are what is valuable. Yesterday I opened the doors to my emptiness with some words, today I open them with other words.

“The ultimate goal of the religious practice of Rajnesh is to achieve a state of enlightenment and total liberation. The ways to achieve this state are the rejection of stereotypes of culture, upbringing, traditions, the rejection of everything that society imposes. At the same time, "the destruction of 'social barriers and stereotypes' should occur during communication with the 'teacher', and the acquisition of inner freedom through the practice of 'dynamic meditation' and sexual orgies presented under the guise of Tantrism."

Despite hundreds of dictated books, Rajneesh did not create a systematic theology. During the period of the Oregon commune (1981-1985), a book called "The Rajneesh Bible" was published, but after the dispersal of this commune, Rajneesh stated that the book was published without his knowledge and consent, and urged his followers to get rid of "old attachments", to to which he attributed religious beliefs.

Osho also used a wide range of Western concepts. His views on the unity of opposites are reminiscent of Heraclitus, while his description of man as a mechanism condemned to uncontrolled impulsive actions stemming from unconscious neurotic patterns has much in common with Freud and Gurdjieff.
His vision of the "new man" transcending the limits of tradition is reminiscent of Nietzsche's ideas in Beyond Good and Evil.
Osho's views on the liberation of sexuality are comparable to those of Lawrence, and his dynamic meditations are indebted to Reich.

Osho calls for doing what comes from feeling, flows from the heart: "Never follow the mind ... do not be guided by principles, etiquette, norms of behavior."
He denied the asceticism and self-restraint of the classical yoga of Patanjali and stated that "the craving for violence, sex, money-grubbing, hypocrisy is a property of consciousness", also pointing out that in "inner silence" there is "neither greed, nor anger, nor violence", but is love.

He encouraged followers to throw out their base desires in any form, which found its expression "in convulsive shudders, hysterical behavior."
It is considered likely that for this reason, the Rajneesh ashrams became the object of criticism for anti-social activities: promiscuity (promiscuous, unrestricted sexual intercourse with many partners), accusations of delinquency, etc.
Osho promoted free love and often criticized the institution of marriage, calling it the "coffin of love" in early conversations, although he sometimes encouraged marriage for the opportunity for "deep spiritual fellowship."

“I am the founder of a single religion,” Rajneesh declared, “other religions are a hoax.
Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha just corrupted people...
My teaching is based on knowledge, on experience.
People don't have to believe me. I explain my experience to them. If they find it right, they accept it. If not, then they have no reason to believe in him.”
Osho's talks, recorded between 1969 and 1989, have been collected and published by followers in the form of several hundred (more than 600) books.

Sexual Practices and Tantra
Osho became famous as a sex guru in the 1970s because of his tantric teachings (an Indian radical teaching about sex; one of the mystical tantric practices, the main content of which is the intimacy of partners) about the "integration of sexuality and spirituality", as well as from - for the work of some therapeutic groups and the encouragement of sexual practices among sannyasins.
Osho believed that tantra influenced his teachings to the greatest extent, along with Western sexology, based on the writings of Wilhelm Reich. Osho tried to combine traditional Indian tantra and Reich-based psychotherapy and form a new approach:
"All of our efforts up to now have failed because we have not made friends with sex, but have declared war on it; we have used repression and lack of understanding as ways to solve sexual problems... And the results of repression are never fruitful, never pleasant, never healthy."
Tantra was not the goal, but the method by which Osho freed the followers from sex:

"The so-called religions say that sex is a sin, and tantra says that sex is only a sacred thing... After you have cured your disease, you don't continue to carry the prescription and vial and medicine. You drop it."
Osho believed that only through intense "experiencing sexual emotions" is it possible to "understand their nature" and liberation from sexual "passion-weakness".

According to eyewitnesses, there was a problem of emotional violence in the Osho movement, it was especially pronounced during the functioning of Rajneeshpuram.
Some people were severely injured.
They returned with tales of "sexual perversion, drug dealing, suicide", as well as tales of physical and mental damage from Poona's programs.
But even among the people who were injured, many were positive about their experience, including those who had already left the movement. In general, most of the sannyasins assessed their experience as positive and defended it with arguments.

New person
Osho neo-sannyasins reject the past and the future, living here and now, but do not reject sex and material wealth.
Desires were to be accepted and transcended, not denied. Once the "inner flowering" has taken place, the drives, such as the drive for sex, will be left behind.
Rajneesh called himself a "guru for the rich" and said that poverty is not a true spiritual value.

Rajneesh sought to create a "new man" that combined the spirituality of Gautama Buddha with an interest in the life of Zorba, embodied in the novel Zorba the Greek by Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis. By Zorba, Osho meant a person who “is not afraid of hell, does not aspire to heaven, lives fully, enjoying the little things of life ... food, drink, women. After a hard day's work, he picks up a musical instrument and dances for hours on the beach."

The new man, according to Osho, will no longer be trapped in institutions such as family, marriage, political ideologies and religions...
(Wikipedia)
In full: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki....8%F8%29

For example, quotes about love, but when you look at the source, some kind of strange love turns out.

He says "enjoy, live here and now," and even though the grass does not grow there.
The result is promiscuous group sex, elevated to the rank of "meditation" in the ashrams and outside the ashrams.
And since children come from "pleasure", he offers sterilization, which is actively, and, as they say, under pressure from the leadership, was practiced in ashrams.
And it was called "freedom". And where does love, it is not clear at all.

And where is the illumination? Really blinding. But by the way, no one was forced into Osho's disciples and into these ashrams. People came to him voluntarily. And even most people rated their experience as positive and defended it. Probably to each his own. For me, this is a sect, in which there is no smell of freedom.

As Osho teaches - one must do, but not be a "doer". There is movement. Perpetual motion. But this is a movement from one stage to another, from one milestone to another milestone. There is action. And action means a result. There is no result - the action loses its meaning.

All this is trite. Indeed a mosaic of many teachings.

No comments.

"Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of visiting the ashram in Pune around the year 80:
"Murders, rapes, mysterious disappearances of people, threats, arson, explosions, abandoned children of the Ashramites begging for alms on the streets of Pune, drugs - all this [here] is in the order of things ...
Christians working in the Pune psychiatric hospital will confirm everything that has been said, not forgetting to mention the high level of mental disorders due [in particular] to the fact that the ashram has taken political power into its own hands and there is no one to complain about it"
(Martin W. op. cit. p. 288).
But this is the outside.

And here is the internal, that is, the teaching:
"Rajneesh preached the freedom of fornication and perversion, while calling the family and children an unnecessary burden. He said:

"There is nothing wrong with pure simple sex..."
Who is arguing with this? And there is. Intimate relationships are not sin or immorality.
But promiscuous sex (or fornication according to the church), as a source of contagious diseases and many human misfortunes, is certainly condemned by both society and religions.

And further:
"No obligation, no duty, no obligation in this. Sex should be full of play and prayer" (Osho. Sex. Quotes from conversations. M., 1993).
In this regard, "when Rajneesh hinted that a woman burdened with children could not achieve enlightenment, right at the cult center in Laguna Beach, many female sannyasins were surgically sterilized" ...

“Develop your sexuality, don’t suppress yourself!.. I don’t inspire orgies, but I don’t forbid them either” (“Parismatch”, 11/08/1985. Quoted from: Privalov K. B. S. 35).

Then:
"Visitors to the commune in Pune returned with stories of such sexual orgies, as well as perversions, drug addiction and drug trafficking! "Rajneesh. (Barker A. op. cit. p. 244).

He promised "a tit in the hand", and even a cranein the form of freedom, enlightenment without any labor, without any restrictions, on the contrary, through the cultivation of the basest passions and vices that only exist in a person.
There is no God, there is no morality, there are no prohibitions, obligations ... but everything that brings pleasure and wealth is allowed. Those who had a need for any of the above went to his ashrams, because his ideology allowed them to justify themselves, primarily in their own eyes, and not feel like moral outcasts or freaks in their environment or society.
Also, I think he had hypnotic powers. The internet is full of videos of his performances.
Complete demagoguery, but the people are spellbound. You don't have to be a great specialist to look at their faces and determine that the audience is, some more, some less "influenced".

"Love yourself.
Don't judge yourself. You have been condemned so much, and you have accepted all this condemnation. Now you keep hurting yourself..."

What an attractive ideology for many, a kind of "sweet candy" for morning tea.
No matter what offense you commit (after all, they don’t condemn for good), no matter what harm you cause, no matter how scum you are, “do not condemn yourself ...”, but “be yourself and enjoy ... "

Conscience, repentance are counterbalances and stoppers to non-commitment, including repeated, of something subject to condemnation (and this is always evil done to someone / something and someone's pain), they, therefore, sideways, forget about them and do whatever you want, at least walk over the corpses, if only you feel good at the same time and the main thing is "do not condemn yourself", so as not to interfere with yourself "enjoy", but "be yourself".

And who would doubt that with such a formulation of the question, the ashrams will burst with those who wish.
But what about enlightenment? It does not fit into this scheme.

Zombies based on meditation techniques and breathing exercises

The Only Religion of Osho Shri Rajneesh

It originated in India, in 1970, based on the philosophy of Zen Buddhism.

Not without spiritual trepidation, I begin the story about the teachings of the great teacher Osho Shri Rajneesh, which I followed for several years.

Like most religious teachers of the East, Osho expounded his teaching, referring not to any earlier schools and philosophies, but to his own spiritual development experience. At the end of the sixties, the Master came to the conclusion that all beliefs existing on Earth are false, and it is time for people to open their eyes to the one and only true religion.

Thanks to the great prophetic gift, Osho was able to gain a large number of followers and in 1971 founded his first ashram in Pune. Until 1981, up to fifty thousand people a year passed through this school, which once again testifies to the high spiritual saturation of the new teaching.

In 1981, the government of Indira Gandhi banned the sect under the pretext that drugs were used in the ashram of Osho Shri Rajneesh to achieve nirvana, and during meditation there were fights and stabbings. The teacher was forced to move to the United States, where he was elected mayor of Enteloope, Oregon. There he founded a new ashram. Soon, rumors began to circulate in the district about strange deaths among the homeless beggars and vagrants of the town, as well as rampant sexual orgies within the walls of the sect. Under the pressure of "public opinion of free America" Osho was arrested, and he, in order to avoid the escalation of the conflict, publicly announced the dissolution of the sect. To heighten the effect, five thousand brochures specially printed for such an occasion were burned in front of journalists and television cameras.

On November 14, 1985, in Portland, Oregon, after a high-profile trial by Osho, Shri Rajneesh was sentenced to ten years in prison ... probation, and quietly released on all four sides.

On his grave in Pune, India, there is a white marble slab with a laconic inscription: "Never born and never died, just visited this land from 1931 to 1990", and the teaching continues to live and develop in almost the entire civilized world and traditionally Buddhist countries.

The basis of this scandalous religion is Zen (Chan) Buddhism, and when giving recommendations for self-improvement, Osho often directly refers to well-known representatives of various Zen movements, as well as Confucian philosophers. The main differences from traditional schools are the use of motor meditation techniques and the theory of “reasonable egoism” created by the teacher.

It was the stay in the sect of Osho Shri Rajneesh that showed me the whole abyss that separates those who convince people to abandon sectarianism and those who are in sects. So, about the teachings of Osho on the part of popularizers it is said at the following level:

“He preached liberation from one's own “I”, from conscience. One must live without thinking about anything, without burdening oneself with thoughts of either the past or the future, or the family, or daily bread. And the way to this is in meditation, chants, ritual dances, similar to the dances of the first hippies, only you need to hang the image of a guru on a wooden chain around your neck ... But, as Rajneesh taught, one cannot do without love in this world. “Develop your sexuality, don't repress it! he called. “Love is the beginning of everything. If you missed the beginning, you will not have an end ... "And he added:" I do not inspire orgies, but I do not forbid them either. Everyone decides for himself"

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

Discovered by the personal experience of Christopher Calder

"Meditation cannot be turned into a business"Acharya Rajneesh, 1971

When I first met Acharya Rajneesh in his Bombay apartment in December 1970, he was only 39 years old. He had a long beard and large dark eyes. And he looked like a living portrait of Lao Tzu. Before meeting Rajneesh, I knew several Eastern gurus but was not satisfied with their teachings. I was looking for an enlightened guide who could bridge the gap between East and West and bring to life the real esoteric secrets, without which I considered myself just a chest stuffed with Indian, Tibetan and Japanese culture. Rajneesh was the answer to my search for these deep meanings. He described to me in vivid detail everything I wanted to know about the inner worlds, and he had the power of vast existence to back up his words. I was 21 years old, I had very naive ideas about the life and nature of man, and I believed that everything he said must be true.

Rajneesh spoke at a high level of intelligence. His spiritual presence poured out from his body like a soft light that healed all wounds. As I sat next to him during our small gatherings, Rajneesh took me on a quick vertical inner journey that almost seemed to push me out of my physical body. His presence inspired everyone without any effort. The days I spent in his Bombay apartment were like days spent in heaven. He had everything, and he gave everything for free.

Rajneesh had amazing telepathic abilities and astral projection, which he nobly used to bring comfort and inspiration to his students. Many false gurus have claimed to have the same mystical powers. But Rajneesh really possessed them. The Acharya never boasted about his abilities. Those who became close to him soon learned about them through direct contact with miracles. One or two amazing occult journeys were all it took to turn doubtful Western skepticism into reverent worship and devotion.

A year earlier, I met another enlightened teacher known to the world as Jiddu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti could hardly give a coherent lecture, but he was constantly scolding his audience, bending the small base minds of listeners in every way. I liked his frankness. His words were correct. But his subtle, grumpy nature was more of a hindrance in passing on knowledge to others.

Listening to Krishnamurti was like eating a sandwich made of bread and sand. I got great satisfaction from these lectures if I could completely ignore the words, only silently absorbing his presence. This technique enabled me to become so expansive after the lecture that I could hardly speak even hours later. Krishnamurti, being fully enlightened and uniquely attractive, was noted in history as a teacher with very poor verbal communication abilities. And, in contrast to the highly endowed oratorical Rajneesh, Krishnamurti never committed any crime. Never did he claim to be more than what he was, and never did he use other sentient beings for his purposes.

Life is complex, it has many layers, and my naive illusions about the phenomenon of perfect enlightenment have dissipated over the years. It became clear to me that enlightened people are just as error-prone as the rest, ordinary people. They are expanded human beings, yet imperfect. And they live and breathe with the same mistakes and weaknesses that we, ordinary people, must analyze and eliminate.

Skeptics ask how I can say that Rajneesh was enlightened, given all his scandals and terrible public image. I can only say that the spiritual presence of Rajneesh was as strong as the spiritual presence of Krishnamurti, who was recognized as enlightened by the high Tibetan lamas, being the Hindu saga of today come to life. I sympathize with the skeptics, because if I did not know Rajneesh personally, then I would never have believed it either.

Rajneesh promoted the enlightenment package in both positive and negative directions. He was the best of the best and the worst of the worst at the same time. He was a high teacher in his early years, mastering unusual, innovative meditation techniques that worked with great power. Rajneesh has raised thousands of seekers to a higher level of consciousness. He detailed Eastern religions and meditation techniques with radiant clarity.

When former university professor Acharya Rajneesh suddenly changed his name to Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, I was terrified. The famous enlightened sage Ramana Maharshi received the name Bhagwan from his disciples in a spontaneous outburst of love. Rajneesh simply announced that everyone should henceforth call him Bhagwan - a title that can mean anything from the divine to God. Rajneesh got annoyed when I politely corrected his incorrect pronunciation of English words after lectures. So I felt I couldn't tell him what I thought of this new name, that it was inappropriate and dishonest. This name change marked a watershed in Rajneesh's level of honesty and was the first of many lies that followed.

"One wrong move, one big mistake."

Rajneesh lived like in an ivory tower, leaving his room only to give a lecture. His life experience rested on admiring admirers. Like most human beings who are treated like kings, Rajneesh has lost contact with the world of the common man. In his artificial and isolated existence, Rajneesh made one fundamental error in judgment that would later destroy his teachings.

"You told them the truth, but what I tell them (these useful lies) is better for them." Bhagawan Shri Rajneesh 1975.

Rajneesh considered that the majority of the population of the Earth is at such a low level of awareness that they can neither understand nor bear the real truth. And then he developed a policy of spreading useful lies in order to inspire his students, and, from time to time, shock them with unique situations specially created for their personal growth. This was his way down and the first reason why he will be called by many historians another false guru. Which, no doubt, he was not.

Acharya, Bhagwan Shri, Osho... all these powerful names taken by Rajneesh could not hide the fact that he was still a human being. He had ambitions and desires, sexual and material, just like anyone else. All living enlightened people have desires, all enlightened people have public lives that we know about, but they also had private lives that were kept secret. But the vast majority of enlightened people do only good to the world. And only Rajneesh, as far as I know, became a criminal both in the legal and ethical sense of the word.

Rajneesh never lost the last ultimate truth of Existence or being. He only lost the usual concept of truth, which any normal adult could easily understand. He even rationalized his constant lying as "the tantra of the left hand". And it was also dishonest. Rajneesh lied to save face, to avoid taking personal responsibility for his own mistakes, to gain as much personal power as possible. This lie had nothing to do with tantra or other unselfish acts of kindness. In this world, fact is reality. And Rajneesh distorted the facts daily. Rajneesh was not an ordinary crook, like many others. Rajneesh knew everything the Buddha knew, and he was everything the Buddha was. It was only his loss of respect for ordinary truth. This is what destroyed his teaching.

Rajneesh's health began to deteriorate as soon as he was in his thirties. Even before he reached middle age, Rajneesh had occasional bouts of weakness. During his early years in college, when he was supposed to be at the peak of his physical strength, Rajneesh often had to sleep 12-14 hours a day due to his unexplained illnesses. Rajneesh suffered from what Europeans call myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and Americans call chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The classic symptoms of this disease are apparent fatigue, bizarre allergies, recurring low temperature rises, photophobia, orthostatic intolerance (inability to stand for a normal period of time), and hypersensitivity to smells and chemicals. Doctors now call it "multiple chemical sensitivity." People with post-traumatic stress syndrome and other neurological diseases suffer from similar intolerance to smells.

Rajneesh's known chemical sensitivity was so strong that he instructed the guards to sniff people for bad odors before they were allowed to visit his headquarters. Rajneesh's poor health and strange symptoms were the product of real neurological damage, not some esoteric super-sensitivity caused by enlightenment. Rajneesh also had diabetes, asthma and severe back pain.

Rajneesh was constantly sick and weak from the time I first met him in 1970 until his death in 1990. He was unable to stand for long periods of time, suffering from dizziness due to damage to his autonomic nervous system that controlled blood pressure. The low stress threshold associated with neuralgia and low blood pressure caused chronic fatigue, brain hypoxia, and could lower IQ due to lack of oxygen supplied to the brain. He found himself with a cold or something almost weekly. In fact, he suffered from only one chronic illness with cold symptoms that lasted for decades.

In recent years, Rajneesh has been using strictly prescription drugs. Basically, it was Valium (diazepam), used both as an analgesic and as a means of combating dysfunctional disorders of the autonomic nervous system. He took the maximum recommended dose: 60 milligrams a day. He also inhaled nitroxide (N 2 O) mixed with pure oxygen (O 2 ), which helped with his asthma and brain hypoxia, but was useless in changing the quality of his judgments. Naively expecting the super-miracle of taking Western drugs and overly trusting his own ability to combat potentially negative effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction. His downfall and humiliation soon followed.

Rajneesh was a physically ill man who also became mentally corrupt. His addiction to drugs was a problem he created for himself, not the result of a government conspiracy. Rajneesh died in 1990 and the official cause of death was heart failure. It is possible that Rajneesh's physical decline, which worsened during his incarceration in American prisons, was due to a combination of side effects from taking Valium and an increase in his chronic fatigue syndrome when exposed to a large number of allergens.

There has been speculation in the American media about the fact that Osho allegedly committed suicide by taking a large amount of medication. Since no one admitted to injecting Osho with a lethal dose intramuscularly, there was no hard evidence to support this suicide theory. However, here's a scenario that could be absolutely irresistible: a suicide provoked by Rajneesh's constant illness and his grief at the loss of Vivek, his greatest love. Vivek took a lethal dose of sleeping pills in a Bombay hotel a month before Osho left. Notable is the fact that Vivek decided to kill herself right before Osho's birthday. Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh himself tried to commit suicide in the Oregon commune several times: thus, keeping his students in constant tension, he demanded obedience from them and the fulfillment of all his desires. On his last day on Earth, Osho is said to have said, “Let me go. My body has become hell for me."

The rumor that Osho was poisoned with thallium by US government operatives is a fiction, contrary to facts that cannot be denied. One of the obvious symptoms of thallium poisoning is severe hair loss for up to seven days after poisoning. Osho died with a huge beard, with no particular signs of baldness inconsistent with his age. Those symptoms that Dr. Osho began to suspect as a result of thallium poisoning were actually characteristic of chronic fatigue syndrome. These symptoms include ataxia (uncoordinated movements), numbness, tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) while standing, paresthesia, tingling sensations, dizziness, irritable bowel syndrome, which manifests itself in alternating diarrhea and constipation.

True, there were other proven facts of poisoning associated with Osho. But they were carried out by his sannyasins. A sannyasin is an initiated disciple, one who has taken sannyas. The victims were completely innocent people in an Oregon restaurant: two commissioners from Wasco County, members of Rajneesh's staff, who were poisoned by Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary. Sheela had a habit of poisoning people who either knew too much or were simply out of favor with her. Sheela spent two and a half years in federal prison for her crimes. While Rajneesh pleaded guilty only for violating immigration laws and, having received 10 years probation, as well as a fine of 400 thousand dollars, was deported from the United States.

Rajneesh decided that ethics was not necessary for his teaching, since meditation automatically led to "good behavior." But the deeds of Rajneesh and his disciples prove that this theory is wrong. Osho taught: you can do whatever you like, because life is a dream and a joke. This attitude has led to a resurgence of classic fascist beliefs in a superman who can rise so high and become so strong that he no longer needs such old-fashioned values as honesty and morality.

People not familiar with the history of Rajneesh can read Bhagwan: The Fallen God written by Hugo Milne (Shivamurthy), a close disciple of Bhagwan in Pune and Oregon. It was published by the San Martin Press and reprints of this book can be found through Amazon.Com and Amazon.Com.UK. I can confirm many of the facts that Mr. Milne mentions about Rajneesh's life in Bombay and Pune. And, although I have no first-hand facts about the tragic events in the Oregon commune, but, associating with sannyasins, I tend to conclude that Mr. Milne is citing absolutely reliable facts. Hugo Milne deserves a lot of credit for a well written and interesting book containing genuine factual material. Not in all cases, however, my opinion is the same as Mr. Milne's. First, Rajneesh did not suffer from hypocardia, as Mr. Milne suggested. Rajneesh had a real neurological illness, possibly inherited, which he mistaken for frequent infections. Rajneesh was unusually afraid of bacteria only because he did not have comprehensive information. I fully agree with Mr. Milne that Rajneesh suffered from megalomania, however, I would add that Rajneesh had a simply Napoleonic obsessive and obligatory personality type.

Mr. Milne also suggests that Rajneesh used hypnosis to manipulate the students. Rajneesh had a remarkably melodic, naturally melodic and hypnotic voice that any public speaker would need. However, in my personal opinion, the power of Rajneesh came from his vast energy field of universal cosmic awareness, for which he was a channel, a kind of lens. The Hindu call this the universal energy phenomenon of the Atman. As a Westerner, I prefer scientific terms and describe the Atman as a highly manifested manifestation of time, energy and space, or TES (TES Hypothesis).

“Enlightenment is not something you own. It's what you channel as a channel."

In whatever terms you try to describe the phenomenon of enlightenment, it is a scientifically accurate, scientifically proven fact that a human being has no power of his own. Even the chemical energy of our metabolism is occupied by the Sun, which sheds light on the Earth, and the light converted by plants through photosynthesis is the food we eat. You can buy your bread at the supermarket, but the caloric energy it contains comes from thermomolecular actions taking place deep in the center of the nearest star. Our physical bodies use the energy of the stars. Any spiritual energy that we conduct comes to us from far away, from all sides of the Universe, from the oceans of galaxies that go to infinity. No human being owns the Atman, and no one can speak on behalf of time, energy, space.

The void has no ambition and no personality. Therefore Bhagwan Rajneesh can only speak from his own animal consciousness. Animal consciousness may want recognition in the whole world, but the void itself does not care, because it is not motivated. The phenomenon we called Rajneesh, Bhagwan and Osho was only a temporary lens of cosmic energy, not the cosmos itself.

Rajneesh, like George Gurdjieff, often used the power of the Atman for apparently personal purposes. Both men could use their cosmic consciousness to suppress or seduce a woman. Which, in my opinion, was unworthy. Gurdjieff was ashamed of his weakness, repeatedly trying to stop this practice, which was a combination of ordinary male potency, but backed up by the power of oceanic spiritual energy. Rajneesh went even further, using cosmic energy to manipulate the masses and to acquire a quasi-political status that takes him beyond the boundaries of honesty and responsibility to his students. In Oregon, he even told the media, "My religion is the only religion." Diplomacy and modesty were not his spiritual priorities.

Gurdjieff, as far as I know, never went to the extremes of Rajneesh's self-forgiveness. Gurdjieff wanted his students to be free and independent, with the combined ability of clear mental reasoning and meditation. Rajneesh, on the other hand, seemed to believe that only his thoughts and ideas were of value, since only he was enlightened. It was a great error of judgment, and it opened a basic crack in his character.

Rajneesh honestly earned his abilities by doing intense inner work. Unfortunately, when he attained the ability to fully conduct the emptiness of the Atman, he could not apply the necessary wisdom of self-restraint to himself. His human mind rebelled against Asian asceticism, which, as he said, had already been mastered by him for many lifetimes - and this mistake led Rajneesh to the fact that he could not use the power he took up only for the good of other people.

"Power is the ultimate voluptuousness." Henry Kissinger.

After leaving India, Rajneesh created a commune in Oregon from his own overbearing mind. He made himself the last dictator. His portrait was placed everywhere, as if in a bad dream inspired by Orwell. The atmosphere of totalitarianism was only one of many reasons why I did not stay in the Oregon commune. I was interested in meditation, not in a huge concentration camp where human beings were treated like insects with no mind. Rajneesh always emphasized that his students should follow his orders without question, and they did just that, even when Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary, ordered crimes that Rajneesh himself would never personally approve of.

If you deprive a human being of reason, then you will create a situation that is very dangerous and destructive for the human spirit. You cannot save people from their egos by demanding total surrender from them. The anti-democratic technique of blind obedience did not work well in the practice of Hitler and Stalin, and in the case of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh. Germany, Russia and the Oregon commune of Rajneesh have all been destroyed by authoritarian rule. Differences of opinion are always healthier, acting as an effective counterbalance to the blind ignorance of aspirants to the title of chief. Bhagwan never understood this historical truth and called it with contempt - "mobcracy". Rajneesh was an imperialist aristocrat. He was never an open, open-minded Democrat, and his disrespect for democratic processes was very clear in Oregon.

In an attempt to disrupt the local elections in Wasco, Rajneesh brought in buses of his sannyasins and about 2,000 homeless people from major American cities in order to artificially change the voting process in his favor. Some of these new voters were mentally handicapped and given drug-laced beer to keep them in line. Reliable sources claim that at least one, and perhaps more of these brought street people, died due to an overdose of a mixture of beer and drugs. As far as I know, these allegations have not been fully proven. Rajneesh's voter fraud attempt failed, homeless people returned to the streets. They were just used. If the sannyasins of Rajneesh had the truth above all else, then no crimes would have been committed and, perhaps, the commune would not have disintegrated.

Rajneesh used people, behaved ambiguously, betraying the trust of his own students. Only betrayal caused the suicide of Vivek, his longtime girlfriend and companion, and Rajneesh even lied about her death, slandering his greatest love with the explanation that she allegedly had chronic depression due to internal emotional instability. Vivek was never depressed in the years I knew her, she was the most radiant woman of all. Vivec was like a flower filled with light. Her only method of meditation was to be close to Bhagwan, absorbing his vast spiritual presence. When her only method and only true love fell into madness, she, being in great sorrow, took her life. Rajneesh drove her to suicide because she could neither understand nor accept his mental decay and collapse. Rajneesh lied about her death in order to avoid responsibility for his own strange behavior, which was the hidden cause of Vivek's frustration and despair. The same student who gave the nitroxide to Osho also spread negative rumors about Vivek, stating that she was not as meditative as he was. The same person said that Vivek committed suicide not because she was depressed, but because of a hormonal imbalance associated with her fortieth birthday. The same sannyasin assured me that he did not give Rajneesh an irresponsible level of nitroxide, but he later admitted to others that he had given Rajneesh one or two hours of nitroxide doses every day for five months. This level is a dangerous case of overdose.

The young Acharya Rajneesh, who accused false gurus, ended his life as one of the most cunning guru cheaters the world has ever known. It was difficult to understand that he was enlightened both when he fought like a puritan against other gurus, and when he, having become a guru, was mired in self-justifications. This difficult to understand contradiction is the real reason why I am writing. I like to conquer unexplored territories where others are afraid to go. We know that morality recedes from a person who is imprisoned in the tower of his egoism. If you combine an unhealthy atmosphere of self-deification with a progressively debilitating disease that lowers the level of the mental quotient, add to this an overdose of drugs, you get a cliff from which even an enlightened person can fall. Just one wrong step, wrong movement - and the fall is inevitable. Bhagwan's wrong choice is a rejection of the truth in favor of what he considered to be a useful lie. Just once you make a wrong move that leads away from direct adherence to the truth, and you will lose your way. And one fact that you have given up is that it knocks the ground out from under your feet, and you find yourself in an ocean of lies. Little lies grow into big lies, and hidden truths become your enemy, not your friend. Rajneesh overestimated himself and underestimated his students. Those who were in the true quest for knowledge could easily handle the truth. They were already motivated and did not need propaganda. But Rajneesh was a high guru for a very long time: not only in this life, but in previous lives too, so he saw his portrait in grandiose frames. And he really was a historical figure, but an imperfect superman, for whose role he claimed. Nobody is perfect. His students deserved honesty, but he fed them fairy tales to give them faith.

Jiddu Krishnamurti was more honest than Rajneesh, constantly repeating that there is no authority due to the very nature of the Cosmos. The ardent disciples of Rajneesh did not heed Krishnamurti's warnings and blindly believed in a man who claimed to be all-seeing, knowing all the answers and even proclaiming once that he had never, not once in his entire life made a single mistake. But it is clear that Rajneesh made as many mistakes as any other human being. Clearly, his basic enlightenment was no guarantee of functional pragmatic wisdom.

Rajneesh was both a great philosopher and a child lost in the world of science. He was so worried about worldwide overpopulation that he persuaded some of his students to undergo sterilization. Unfortunately, he did not take into account the demographics of population growth. Population growth is a feature of poor Third World countries and is not a problem in the US, Canada, or Europe. North America and Europe now have an increase in population only due to legal and illegal immigration from third world countries. The fact that his European and North American students limited their reproductive abilities only added to the imbalance, and many of them now regret their act.

Rajneesh said 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 avoid the nuclear nightmare by building underground shelters and reduce the spread of AIDS by having his students wash their hands and rub alcohol on them before eating. A more reasonable indication was that he told his students to always use condoms. Rubber gloves and instructions for their use also appeared in everyday life of sexual life. Rajneesh encouraged his sannyasins to spy and spy, demanding the names of those who did not follow his orders.

Rajneesh called himself the only great mind of the universe, and this misfortune was intensified by his lack of normal life logic. And this happened even before he started taking large doses of Valium. Rajneesh did not understand or appreciate the methods of science. If he thought that something was true in his head, then it became true.

Rajneesh could create huge philosophical utopias and feed his students with invented worlds of spiritual travel. But these dreams could not stand the practical test of truth. In the world of science, you need to prove your case based on experimental data. In the world of philosophy and religion, you can say whatever you want without worrying about evidence. If the masses like your words, then those words will be sold, whether they are fact or fiction.

Rajneesh ruled his Oregon desert empire like a true commander, with his own army and puppet government. His vision and ideas, both right and wrong, were accepted without question as the words of the Lord God himself. Osho's disciples were judged on their ability to surrender to his will, and any other views were dismissed as negative and unspiritual. His followers had to either obey commands, sometimes very strange ones, or be expelled from the mini-nation that Rajneesh created in the Oregon desert.

Rajneesh's inability to reason became even more pronounced during and after the scandal in the Oregon commune. After being imprisoned and then deported from the United States, Rajneesh vehemently declared that Americans are "subhuman". He ignored the fact that he was a Hindu, so he was found guilty of violating immigration laws, that Sheela was also a Hindu by nationality, that she ordered the most serious crimes that brought his empire to ruins. Even when he was in his fifties, Rajneesh still lied to get his way, to be in the spotlight. And by 1988, suffering from drugs and dementia-causing illnesses, he was pouting like a child, grieving over the loss of an expensive car collection and diamond-encrusted watches.

Rajneesh's students thought they were following a reliable and authoritative enlightened master. In fact, they were being led in the wrong direction by an enlightened animal man who often made mistakes and who, inside, in his heart, was still a little boy.

Rajneesh not only misrepresented himself, but he misrepresented the very phenomenon of enlightenment. The idealized fantasy of perfect enlightenment cannot and never has existed in the real world. The universe is too big and too complicated for everyone, for anyone who would like to become its master. We are all subjects, we are not masters. And those who claim to be perfect masters end up looking even bigger fools at the end.

“Nature does not use anything as a model. She is only interested in improving and improving individual individuals. She is trying to create perfect individuals, not perfect beings,” says Krishnamurti.

The famous and illustrious masters of the past seem perfect to us now only because they have become more than life myths. The amount of time that had passed since their deaths allowed the disciples to effectively cover up the mistakes of their gurus. And this is what we are seeing now, when the students of Rajneesh are rewriting and censoring history, hiding his greatest mistakes.

Rajneesh has never been more perfect than any other human being. What we call enlightenment is not a cure for the mistakes and weaknesses that human animals have even after reaching the highest possible level of awareness. This is perhaps the most realistic vision of the phenomenon of enlightenment. The ultimate truth of existence is silent, beyond all words. Rajneesh embodied this truth until his death. And, coming to his ashram in Pune, those visitors who are open to meditation, they will definitely feel this gigantic wave of awareness. This wave was associated with the human body, which we call Rajneesh. The body turned to dust, but the wave - you can still feel it. In the same way, Krishnamurti's presence can still be felt in Arya Vihara, in his former home in Ohio, California.

“What you tell them is true, but what I tell them is a useful lie. It's good for them." Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, 1975

A contradiction between corruption and enlightenment can arise because the brain is never enlightened, and enlightenment never says or does anything. And it can even be said that no one can actually become enlightened. Enlightenment happens exactly where you stand, but you cannot own it. All the words of the so-called enlightened person come from the human mind and body, which both translate and interpret the phenomenon of enlightenment. Words do not come from enlightenment itself. By definition, enlightenment cannot speak. It is absolutely silent and requires no words. And our beings are multi-layered. Some traditions describe these layers as seven bodies. The first is the physical body, and the seventh is the nirvanic body, the one from which everything is born. It doesn't matter what you think of them. They exist, and the purely mental layer is always there if you have a physical body. And this layer can be affected by diseases and chemical influences.

Osho died suffering from a Valium addiction, experiencing all the negative symptoms of drug addiction that manifested itself in incoherent speech, paranoia, bad decision making and a decrease in overall intelligence. At some point, his paranoia and inaccuracy of judgment were so great that they led him to the conclusion that a group of German occultists was casting a malevolent spell on him! Physical debility plus drug abuse, it was more than his mortal brain could bear. His greatest mistake: disrespect for the most ordinary truth of life - it was the last fall of Osho, and for this he must bear full responsibility.

Bhagwan was lying when he said that he had enlightened disciples. He lied when he said he never made mistakes. Later, he was nevertheless forced to admit the possibility of errors, as the list of miscalculations increased to a huge size. He lied when he said that the therapy groups his students run were not there to make money. Rajneesh violated immigration laws and denied it in court. He lied, saying that he was allegedly adopted, all in order to obtain permanent resident status. Bhagwan Rajneesh was not a murderer or a bank robber, but he was indeed a big liar. The funny thing is that all this lies were unnecessary and unproductive. Honesty is the best policy of reality.

One of the biggest lies of Rajneesh was that an enlightened person allegedly does not receive anything from his students. Rajneesh wanted people to believe that everything he did was a free gift of pure compassion, and he personally did not receive anything from the disciple-guru relationship. The fact that Rajneesh received a lot from his students is absolutely proven: money, power, sex and titles of constant adoration. Being a guru was his business. His only business. Without this income, at least on a material level, he would have been just a short, bald Indian who simply could not work. Rajneesh's real enlightenment could not pay his bills or give him the material benefits he desired, so he began to use his spiritual energy in order to gain power and money from his students.

And just as rock stars receive energy from their fans at their concerts, so Rajneesh received emotional energy and support from his students. Energy transfer occurred in both directions. It wasn't a free gift just one way. When Rajneesh was imprisoned, the American television network showed an internal surveillance tape of the cell where he was. Rajneesh looked bored and visibly annoyed, just like anyone in a similar situation. He didn't look haunted or enlightened, not at all. In my opinion, this video exposes the hard truth about the phenomenon we call enlightenment.

The realization of emptiness is not sufficient for anyone. All sentient animals, enlightened or not, need the interaction and comfort of the material world in order to be happy and content.

The mind needs entertainment to survive, and Rajneesh used the students as toys for his amusement. The Rajneesh had no power of his own. He could only achieve material power by manipulating others. The equation was simple: the more students he attracted, the more power and prosperity he received.

Rajneesh in many ways was just an ordinary person. And sexually, he was even more than ordinary. Claiming to be a great tantrist in his youth, and even later, he gave ridiculously bad sexual advice to his students, being himself a man of little experience. During the Bombay period, Rajneesh often grabbed the breasts of his young students. There was a time when he asked a married couple to have sex in front of him. They wisely refused this request. Rajneesh often asked young women to undress, supposedly so that he could feel their chakras. And only after Rajneesh began to have sex regularly, this "spiritual need" to feel the chakras of his students mysteriously disappeared. I know that Rajneesh touched the breasts of two women I know and asked to undress another one. I soon began to realize that he, like many other Indian gurus, cuddlers who occasionally wrote about in the newspapers, on a human level, he was just an ordinary, not very sexually developed Indian man. My friend who underwent chakra palpation was so upset that she never returned to the ashram to see him again. He told her: "Do not be afraid, you are mine now." That grasping statement chilled her as much as the sexual exploitation. The young woman studied Indian music, where she was also sexually exploited by a famous Indian musician. She knew firsthand what Indian men were like. And Rajneesh was just as disappointingly predictable.

But Rajneesh had so many treasures within - the ones that I craved - light, energy and an expanded state of existence! But he also contained a lot of things that I did not want and did not respect.

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

Unfortunately, Rajneesh also lied when he stated that he was not responsible for the horrors in the Oregon commune, shifting it to Ma Anand Sheela and her people who committed most of the crimes: murder, poisoning, assault, robbery, arson, interception of telephone messages. But the fact that Rajneesh did not personally order or did not know in advance about the most serious crimes does not mean that he is not ethically responsible for them. If a teacher picks a drunken sailor and puts him behind the wheel of a school bus, which ends in disaster, then the teacher is responsible. Rajneesh knew what kind of person Sheela was. And he chose her precisely because she was corrupt and arrogant, and not in spite of it. In a cowardly attempt to avoid admitting his own mistakes, he changed his name from Bhagwan to Osho, as if changing his name could wash away his sins. Some may be horrified that an enlightened soul is capable of being a person condemned for crimes. But this fact did not stop me from searching for the last truth of Existence.

The life of Rajneesh is a lesson for all of us. It is necessary to practice what we pray for, and not take it as a mere idea. Bhagwan gave excellent advice. But he could not follow his wise words himself. His life is a reminder that words often lie, especially when taken too seriously. It is better to observe how people live and pay less attention to what they say. Talk is cheap. Things are worth more. And more is reported.

Does an enlightened person have an ego? When I was a young idealist, I would say no. Rajneesh, Gurdjieff and even Krishnamurti prove to me that they have egos. I am now convinced that Rajneesh has an ego when I saw him on TV being transported in chains from prison to an Oregon courthouse. In response to a reporter's question, he looked into the TV camera and said to his students, "Don't worry, I'll be back." What matters is not what he said, but what was in his eyes. It became proof for me. I was able to see his ego in action, calculating and manipulating. When you see this clearly, no amount of rational reasoning can hide the underlying truth.

Rajneesh was both infinitely enlightened and deeply selfish. For the average person, the ego is the center of awareness, and emptiness is only attainable on the periphery. People look at a picture taken with a space telescope and see that the void is an external object, and not some kind of personal entity. When you become enlightened: temporarily, if it is satori, or permanently, like a Buddha, then the situation unfolds exactly the opposite. Now you have emptiness at the center of awareness, and ego at the periphery. The ego doesn't die, it's just not in the center of your attention anymore.

Enlightenment is a functional disembodiment of that identity that is rooted in the development of the subtle body and in the functions of the physical brain. The human brain is a biologically engineered, thinking machine that evolves for both personal self-preservation and human survival. The ego is the selfish motivating force needed to protect the body's living cell colony. If you didn't have an ego, you couldn't think, talk, find food, shelter, and clothes. The functions of the ego are so vital to survival that the human brain has developed two potential ego mechanisms. One is the centralized ego and the other is the larger, diffuse, supportive system that uses the periphery of the brain. If the body and brain become physically ill from the heat and the focus of the centralized ego is destroyed, then the ego-support mechanism can temporarily take over the functions of others. It is the substitution of the ego without enlightenment. This additional self-supporting system keeps lunatics from danger and helps the enlightened animal nature of a person to find food and everything necessary for life. So they don't physically die as a result of their own deep meditation.

Enlightened people do not feel their diffuse ego and therefore they feel free like the cosmos, like emptiness itself. In reality, the ego is still present and works just like our autonomic nervous system, whether we are aware of its functioning or not. You don't have to constantly remind your heart to beat 70 times a minute. It beats regardless of your awareness. The function of the brain that controls the heart rate is automatic, autonomous, and does not require consciousness.

Nature has also provided human animals with a strong, almost irresistible sexual urge to ensure reproduction. Because of the great importance and power of sex, most of the gurus had an active sex life, a fact that is often kept secret for purely political reasons. In his younger years, Rajneesh lied about his intense sexuality. But, to be honest, it can be understood in the context of the fiercely anti-sexual, critical Indian culture. It wasn't until his position as guru had solidified that Rajneesh publicly bragged about his sex with hundreds of women.

The sexual life of Rajneesh did not interest me, and I do not see any fault in the fact that he had the same sexual desires as any man. I, however, find fault in the fact that he was dishonest and cruelly selfish. When Rajneesh was living in Bombay, a young woman became pregnant after he aggressively and uninvitedly seduced her. The woman was very upset, circumstances forced her to have an abortion. Rajneesh, defending his image as a great guru, claimed that she invented the whole story. Furious, the young woman contacted the American embassy. This incident was the beginning of Rajneesh's future problems with the US government. Most of the close disciples of Rajneesh for some reason believed the young woman, and not the enlightened guru in years. Similarly, many years later, many will believe a young White House intern, not a president with a gray head. President or enlightened: both high positions are not a guarantee of morality.

All human beings are animals, namely mammals. Human DNA is known to be at least 98% identical to chimpanzee DNA. The history of Asian mythology, politics and the world of male gurus - everything will manifest much more hidden meaning if you remember this scientific fact. Our most primal, subconscious, motivating forces come from the animal world, of which we are still a part.

Some enlightened animal people have been deceived by the phenomenon of ego shifting. They thought they no longer had any selfish motives that could cause problems. Meher Baba spent most of his life bragging about how great he was, and at the same time, in his center, he felt as if he was completely devoid of ego. In fact, he was very selfish and should have understood that even enlightenment does not excuse boasting. The same fundamental mistake was made by Acharya Rajneesh. He was deceived into thinking that he was over boasting, but in reality this was not the case.

Even enlightened people should watch their manners and understand that the Atman is that amazing phenomenon that they should promote, but not their own temporary personality. Ramana Maharshi had the right approach in this matter, and that is why he is still loved. Ramana Maharshi promoted Atman, the universal cosmic consciousness, but never promoted his own mortal body or mind.

Everyone who has experienced the ocean energy of Acharya Rajneesh continues to love him, including myself. And just because I value the truth above all else, that's why I write, believing in the need for criticism. If we cannot honestly analyze our mistakes, then our suffering is a waste of time. The fact that the official students of Osho continue to hide the truth prevents us from learning a lesson from the tragedy.

I miss Acharya Rajneesh, but not Osho, because he was the best of the best until the moment he decided to surround himself with a manipulative political organization. When Acharya Rajneesh was just a man in his apartment, the owner of an old Chevrolet and not a dozen Rolls-Royces, then he was more honest and truthful. When he became part of his political establishment, everything went wrong, as happens with people who wield great power.

And the ocean can become a drop if there is an ego in the drop. I believe that the ego is an integral part of the structure of the human brain. It's not easy to imagine psychologically, but anatomically it looks like it's wired into our neural pathways. The self-protective mechanism, which we have simply called the ego, cannot be destroyed before the death of the body.

Huston Smith, a well-known author, a professor of religion, believes that no person, tied to his perishable shell, can achieve the final transparency before his death. And only at the moment when the last shell breaks, you are completely free. I believe that the ego steps aside and becomes less of a problem for most enlightened people, but it is never completely destroyed as long as the physical body is present.

The scandal with Rajneesh exposed the unconscious bondage of Bhakti Yoga and the hidden deceit, the corruption of questionable tantra. We need an honest road built on self-observation, trust in the truth and self-reliance. The days of the guru who knows everything are over. The time has come to realize the source of all things directly.

It would be wonderful to believe that an enlightened person is perfect in every way. It would make life easier and sweeter. But that would be fiction, not fact. And yet, Bhagwan's tragedy gave me more hope. If you had to become a perfect person first, and only then enlightened, then who would be able to achieve the goal? If we realize that enlightenment is the gradual development of consciousness, then the goal becomes achievable. It only takes time. If we work for hundreds of years, associating our birth and death solely with this goal, getting closer to it every day, then I believe that the seeker of enlightenment will reach it in time. All the enlightened ones I have known or read about have all talked about it, each in their own way. And I know that this fact can be trusted.

An afterword on the feedback I received in response to the publication of this work.

You can well imagine all the variety of letters that I received. Approximately half of the letters came from former students of Rajneesh, who generally agree with my comments, expressing their gratitude for the fact that I set this going. Those who agree tell me that I did everything right.

There are other letters from his students, many of whom have never met Osho in their lives. These letters contain threats of violent death from several German sannyasins, as well as anonymous and illiterate warnings of impending troubles. It is interesting to trace the similarity of most cults in this example: if you are against, if you do not profess the central line of the cult, then you are, at best, an ignoramus. But here's what's really important: Meditation has nothing to do with cult organizations, politics, or business, but for many, meditation is a secondary issue. For them, the main thing is heroism and blind adherence to the memory of the deceased guru. Why not go to the source of all gurus and all religions through your own meditation? There is an old Zen saying - one should not be attached to anything that can be lost during a shipwreck. Of course, this also applies to gurus.

Several Rajneesh sannyasins have written to me saying they are enlightened. I have heard such statements before. One wrote that he was the new Osho and invited him to visit. On the page of this new Osho on the Internet, his heroic photo was posted, as in a correspondence for pleasant acquaintances. Another man, who had never met Osho personally, reported that reading Osho's books helped him get rid of all mental illnesses and achieve enlightenment himself. He also gave me obsessive instructions on how to rewrite my essays to make them less critical. And he suggested that Osho's hypocrisy was only a means to convey enlightenment to others. No doubt he managed to convey his hypocrisy to others. One young woman who grew up in a Rajneesh commune in Oregon asked me how she could make money teaching Osho's meditation techniques. I replied that she should go to an employment agency and get an honest job. Meditation and business should not be confused. There are too many money-hungry gurus out there now.

I got a shock when I discovered that many of Osho's students don't care about the crimes that have been committed and don't care about the lies and bigotry of their own movement. They don't seem to realize that as a result of the bacteriological attack carried out by the Rajneesh sannyasins in the Oregon restaurant, the meditation groups got a very bad reputation all over the world. The unrelated but equally infamous Aum Senrikyo (Japanese cult), with her nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway station, further aggravated the situation. It seems that the attitude of many Osh sannyasins is such that as long as they themselves are not physically kicked, it does not matter to them who was hurt, and how unethical and ugly their behavior is. According to them, everyone in the world is responsible for the situation in Oregon, except for themselves. As a result of their nonchalant attitude, many Americans have the impression that if a meditation group has opened an ashram near them, then it's time to buy a gun and a gas mask.

The amount of historical revisionism and propaganda I heard from some of Rajneesh's students reminded me of the efforts of the Maoists during the sixties. If you start believing in a perfect man, the god of the universe, then anyone who dares to criticize him, you will call a devil. And all the subtleties of his teaching become lost to such disciples, who, as one, declare that in my works they see only hatred and rage. And, of course, they do not notice this hatred in themselves, directed at everyone who does not share their own narrow beliefs.

I remember how one of the students of Rajneesh spoke out with anger about the fact that the Dalai Lama visited Rajneesh at the ashram only once, without taking advantage of a second invitation. For her, now the Dalai Lama is an ignoramus, and only because his free will and free choice have shown themselves so. The level of opposition to a different opinion as a result of ordinary narrow-mindedness among the followers of the Rajneesh cult is so great that I cannot understand how many outwardly intelligent and reasonable people can live in such a small mental space, barricading themselves against everyone who thinks otherwise.

The last time I visited the Rajneesh Ashram in Pune in India was in 1988. I saw in reality the congress of the German Brownshirts. Osho was still very popular in Germany, thanks in part to his commentary in Stern magazine, where he was largely perceived as a pro-Hitler. I personally do not believe that Osho was a serious supporter of Adolf Hitler. I think he was just playing with people's minds. But his position was quite clearly stated. And enough sympathy was given to the case with Axis, so that many Germans were even afraid of his words. Those who lost their loved ones during World War II were greatly shocked.

Even in Bombay, at the beginning of his teaching, Rajneesh made nonchalant statements that could be interpreted as pro-Hitler and pro-fascist. In recent years, due to drug abuse and mental decay, Rajneesh declared: “I fell in love with this man - Adolf Hitler. He was crazy, but I'm even crazier." I don't believe Rajneesh really meant it. I believe he was joking. But he had a loss of common sense, because you can not joke about loving a man who has killed millions of people. Mel Brooks - he can get away with it, because he is Jewish and his relatives were killed by the Nazis. But this is unforgivable for a spiritual person who has hung his portrait everywhere for worship. Such a speech confirms the fact that the drugs have destroyed the quality of his judgment.

During my last visit to the ashram in Pune, Osho was silent, angry with his students. He wanted them to stage demonstrations against some Indian officials who spoke negatively about him. Wise enough was the decision not to create a new confrontation. This display of intelligence in his flock annoyed Osho, and as punishment he stopped speaking in public. Therefore, I could only see him on videotape, where Osho emotionally pompous and factually incorrectly told how the US police stole his collection of women's watches encrusted with diamonds. He said that they would never be able to wear it in public because his sanshins would see the watch on their wrists and start shouting loudly, "You stole Bhagwan's watch!" His words and mannerisms were so childishly irrational that it reminded me of Jim Jones. This Osho was a far cry from the serenely divine and magnificent speaker I had met a few years earlier.

Why were Osho ninety Rolls-Royces? Why does Saddam Hussein need dozens of palaces? These desires are the product of the basic animal mind of two men who grew up in poverty. Enlightenment does not care about symbols of power and potency. There is no point in looking for hidden esoteric explanations for compulsive behavior. Is there some occult reason why Elton John spends about $400,000 a month on flowers? Is there any secret spiritual reason why Osho owned dozens of expensive women's watches? Universal cosmic consciousness is completely neutral and does not need to own anything, impress anyone, or dominate anyone. Consciousness does not drive a car and does not answer what time the clock shows.

Shivamurti's book "Bhagwan: The Fallen God" can easily be titled like this: "The Man Who Became His Opposite" or "The Man Who Betrayed Himself". I often tell people that if they could go back and kidnap Acharya Rajneesh in the 70s and then transport him through the years by arranging for him to meet Osho in the late 80s, the outcome would be that these two people would start war against each other. The Acharya would hate Osho's pompous self-forgiveness, and Osho would not tolerate the Acharya's belligerent criticism. The Acharya spoke about freedom and compassion. And Osho once said that he wished Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev would have been killed for leading the Soviet Union to Western capitalism instead of leading it to a fictional spiritual communism. The change in his teaching was noticeable, I must say.

I would like to think that the early Acharya Rajneesh would have approved of my writing. But who can say for sure? To those who suggest that I am not loyal to Osho, I will say that I honestly try to be loyal to Acharya Rajneesh, from whom I took sannyas, but not to Osho. The Acharya was a man whom I deeply love and respect. But Acharya Rajneesh died long before Osho was born, and these two people are as different as day and night.

You can express your rage or gratitude - it won't affect me. I can only sigh and ask myself, "How did Acharya Rajneesh, who started out as an anti-guru, end up the way he ended up with his huge bunch of students?" Perhaps this is proof that power corrupts and that the means rarely justify the ends.

After all, where is the meditation in all this? I see Colored Acupuncture, Tantric Tarot Readings, encounter groups and other nonsense in every book. Osho's students are peddling all this for decent money. So what about meditation? And my thoughts go back to the day when the Acharya, who was only forty years old, wisely advised a Japanese woman that meditation cannot become a business. But in reality, the corrupt means have gone so far and so out of hand that the original pursuit of good ends, the proud vision of Acharya Rajneesh, has been forgotten by many, but not by me.

Dynamic Meditation: (warning). This addictive meditation method was Bhagwan's trademark and remains a remarkably effective means of naturally expanding awareness. Bhagwan never did this technique himself because he himself was meditation. He developed this method simply by observing his students who randomly fell into spontaneous bodily movements during his early meditation camps. When his ability to judge began to deteriorate, he unfortunately changed the 3rd and 4th stages of meditation to mindless torture. A correct and more effective meditation technique has four stages, each of 10 minutes.

Stage #1. Begin standing with your eyes closed and breathe deeply and quickly through your nostrils for 10 minutes. Let your body move freely. Jump, lean sideways, or use any physical movement that helps get more oxygen into your lungs.

Stage #2. The second ten-minute stage is cathartic. Let everything be total and spontaneous. You can dance or roll on the ground. Once in a lifetime, screaming is allowed and encouraged. You must act in such a way that all the rage that is hidden in your inner safe comes out along with the blows to the ground that you make with your hands. All repressed emotions from your subconscious need to be released.

Stage #3. At this stage, you are jumping up and down shouting "Hoo!-Hoo!-Hoo!" without stopping for 10 minutes. It sounds very silly and it's pretty funny, but the loud vibrations of your voice travel inward to the centers where your energy is stored and push that energy up. During this stage, it is important that the hands are free while in a natural position. Do not hold your arms above your head, this can be medically dangerous.

Stage #4. The last 10 minute stage is complete relaxation and silence. Lie on your back, get comfortable - and let things happen. Be dead. Surrender completely to space. Enjoy the tremendous energy you have released during the first three stages. Become a silent witness of the ocean that flows into a drop, become this ocean.

Bhagwan changed the 3rd stage of this method, and his students began to hold their hands above their heads while shouting “Hoo!”. Even worse, he canceled the 4th stage rest, and his students were now standing still like statues, with their hands up in the air. This method is not only inconvenient, being a kind of torture, but it can be dangerous for medical reasons. When you stand with your arms raised above your head, you increase your orthostatic stress levels. This means that your heart has to work even harder to push blood through the vessels. It can easily happen that you die in this position or have a heart attack if you suffer from coronary insufficiency.

Freezing in place in a stationary posture makes deep relaxation impossible because your mind is in complete control of the movement functions. This keeps your consciousness on the surface, and thus conflicts with the purpose of the exercise. And the purpose of the technique is to have three stages of intense activity, followed by a stage of deep relaxation and total allowance to occur. Bhagwan himself would never have been able to practice the freezing method, even in his youth, and asking his students to do so showed that he had lost his last contact with physical reality.

I advise practitioners to use only the pleasant early version from dynamic meditation, and not the mindlessly difficult freezing method. This wonderful technique was designed to grow and change together. After a few years of such practice, the first three stages of meditation should disappear, become unnecessary. And then, as soon as you enter the meditation hall and take a few deep breaths, you immediately fall into the ecstatic state of the 4th stage.

Bhagwan wanted it to be a flowing technique, to give health and joy. Those new students who want to experiment with Rajneesh's dynamic meditations should read the Cathartic Dance Meditation section of the Meditation Handbook. There are detailed caveats and details that you need to read before you start experimenting with this wonderful technique.

Christopher Calder

P.S. a small note criticizing this article by Calder.

Childhood

Osho was born on December 11, 1931 in Kushwad (Central India). The family loved him very much, especially his grandfather, who gave Raja, which means king. He spent all his childhood at his grandfather's house. His father and mother took him in only after the death of his grandparents. Before school, he was given a new name - Rajneesh Chandra Mohan.

From an early age, he was interested in spiritual development, studied his body and its capabilities, and constantly experimented with various methods of meditation. He did not follow any traditions and did not look for teachers. The basis of his spiritual search was an experiment. He looked very closely at life, especially at its critical, extreme points. He did not believe in any theories and rules and always rebelliously opposed the prejudices and vices of society.

Enlightenment

March 21, 1953 Osho was 21 years old. On that day, enlightenment happened to him. It was like an explosion. “That night I died and I was reborn. But the person who is reborn has nothing to do with the one who died. It is not a continuous thing... The person who has died has died totally; there was nothing left of him... not even a shadow. The ego died totally, completely... On that day, March 21st, a person who had lived many, many lives, millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not at all connected with the old, began to exist ... I became free from the past, I was torn out of my history, I lost my autobiography. At this point, Osho's story actually ends. The man, whose name was Rajneesh Chandra Mohan, died at the age of 21, and at the same time a miracle happened: a new enlightened person was reborn, completely free of ego.

University years

After that, Osho's outer life did not change. He continued his studies at Jabalpur College in the Department of Philosophy.

In 1957, he graduated from the University of Saugar with honors, a gold medal, and a master's degree in philosophy. Two years later he became a lecturer in philosophy at Jabalpur University. He was very loved by students for his humor, sincerity and uncompromising pursuit of the truth. During his nine-year career, Osho traveled all over India, often traveling fifteen days a month. A passionate and skillful debater, he constantly challenged orthodox religious leaders. Addressing an audience of 100,000, Osho spoke with the conviction that comes from his enlightenment, he destroyed blind faith to create true religiosity.

In 1966, Osho left the university chair and devoted himself entirely to spreading the art of meditation and his vision of a new person - Zorba-Buddha, a person who synthesizes the best features of East and West, a person who is able to enjoy a full-blooded physical life and is able to simultaneously sit silently in meditation, achieving heights of consciousness.

Osho is a master practitioner.

He Created Incredibly Effective Meditation Techniques
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Bombay

In 1968, Osho (Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh) settled in Bombay and soon the first Western seekers of spiritual truth began to come to him. There were many therapists among them, representatives of the humanist movements who wanted to take the next step in their growth. The next step, as Osho said, is meditation. Osho experienced his first glimpses of meditation as a child, when he jumped from a high bridge into a river, or walked along a narrow path over an abyss. There were a few moments when the mind stopped. This caused an unusually clear perception of everything around, one's being in it and complete clarity and separation of consciousness. These experiences, experienced repeatedly, aroused Osho's interest in meditation and prompted him to look for more accessible ways. In the future, he not only experienced all the meditations known from antiquity, but also came up with new, revolutionary techniques designed specifically for modern man. They are called "dynamic meditations", they are based on the use of music and movement. Osho brought together elements of yoga, Sufism and Tibetan traditions, which made it possible to use the principle of energy transformation through the awakening of activity and subsequent calm observation.

Osho (Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh) first showed his morning dynamic meditation in April 1970 at a meditation camp near Bombay. On that day, everyone was dumbfounded and fascinated at the same time. Indian journalists were amazed to see the participants yelling, screaming and tearing off their clothes - the whole scene was fatal and very intense. But how strong was the tension in the first, intense stage, just as deep was the relaxation in the second part, leading to complete peace, not achievable in ordinary life.

Osho explained:

“For ten years I have continuously worked with the methods of Lao Tzu, that is, I have continuously studied direct relaxation. It was very easy for me so I figured it would be easy for anyone. Then, time after time, I began to realize that this was impossible... Of course, I said “relax” to those whom I taught. They understood the meaning of the word, but could not relax. Then I decided to come up with new methods of meditation that first create tension - even more tension. They create such tension that you become crazy. And then I say "relax".
What is meditation? Osho Rajneesh talked a lot about meditation. On the basis of his conversations, many books have been compiled, in which all the objects of meditation are considered in great detail, from the technique of execution to explanations of the finest internal nuances.

Pune 1

In 1974, Osho moved to Pune, where, together with his students, he opened an ashram in the beautiful Koregaon Park. Over the next seven years, hundreds of thousands of seekers from all over the world come there to experience Osho's new meditations and listen to his talks. In his conversations, Osho touches on all aspects of human consciousness, shows the innermost essence of all existing religions and systems of spiritual development. Buddha and Buddhist teachers, Sufi masters, Jewish mystics, Indian classical philosophy, Christianity, yoga, tantra, zen...

Osho says about his books:
“My message is not a doctrine, not a philosophy. My message is not verbal contact. It's much more risky. It is nothing more, nothing less than death and rebirth…”
Many people from all over the Earth felt this and found the strength and courage to touch this source and begin their own transformation. Those who are finally established in this decision take sannyas. The sannyas given by Osho is different from the traditional one. This is neosannyas. Former sannyasins - people who completely devoted themselves to spiritual practice, went to monasteries or secluded places and studied with their Master, minimizing contact with the outside world. Neo-sannyas Osho does not require this. Neo-sannyas is not a renunciation of the world, but rather a renunciation of the madness of the modern mind that breeds division between nations and races, depletes the Earth's resources into weapons and wars, destroys the environment for profit, and teaches its children to fight and dominate others. Modern sannyasins, Osho's students are in the thick of life, they are engaged in the most ordinary things, but at the same time they regularly engage in spiritual practice and, first of all, meditation, combining material life with spiritual life, synthesizing Zorba's love of life and the height of Buddha's spiritual consciousness . This is how a new man is formed - Zorba the Buddha, a man who will be free from the madness of the modern mind. In Osho's words, "the new man is the only hope for the future."

One who becomes a sannyasin receives a new name, as a symbol of commitment to meditation and a break with the past. The name, usually derived from Sanskrit or Indian words, contains indications of a person's potential or a certain path. Women receive the prefix Ma - an indication of the highest qualities of female nature: to cherish and take care of themselves and others. Men receive the prefix Swami - which Osho translates as "self-mastery".

Osho met with his students every day, except for periods when he was unwell. His conversations went very well.

Rajneeshpuram

Rajneeshpuram is the city of dreams. In America I had a beautiful commune of five thousand people,

living happily without the shadow of class struggle. There was not a single beggar. Not a single child was born in five years. They worked hard, they meditated, and at night they danced, played flutes, played guitars. It was a dream turned into reality.

We have transformed the whole desert.
It was not a small place; it was one hundred and twenty-six square miles... a vast desert. We built dams, we had our own buses, our own cars - all our own. We had our own hospital, our own school, our own university.

And what happened to America? Why were they so worried about us, an oasis in the desert? The nearest town was twenty miles away. We weren't interested in anyone else. We enjoyed ourselves.

How it was - a chronicle of events

1981 Osho suffered from diabetes and asthma for many years. In the spring his condition worsened and he sank into a period of silence. On the recommendation of doctors in June of this year, he was taken to the United States for treatment. Osho's American disciples bought a 64,000-acre ranch in Central Oregon and founded Rajneeshpuram. In August, Osho arrived there. In the four years that Osho lived there, Rajneeshpuram was the most audacious experiment in creating a transnational spiritual commune. Every summer, up to fifteen thousand people from Europe, Asia, South America and Australia came to the festival organized there. As a result, the commune became a prosperous city with a population of five thousand people.

1984 Just as suddenly as he stopped speaking, Osho spoke again in October. He talked about love, meditation, and human bondage in a crazy, heavily conditioned world. He accused priests and politicians of corrupting human souls, of destroying human freedom. From the very beginning of the experiment to create a commune, federal and local authorities tried to destroy it in any way. Documents subsequently confirmed that the White House was involved in these attempts.

In October 1985, the American government accused Osho of violating immigration laws and took him into custody without any warning. He was kept in handcuffs for 12 days in custody, with no bail. In prison, he suffered physical damage. According to a subsequent medical examination, in Oklahoma he was exposed to a life-threatening dose of radiation and was also poisoned by thalium. When a bomb was found in Osho's Portland prison, he was the only one who was not evacuated. Worried about Osho's life, his lawyers agreed to admit a violation of the immigration law, and Osho left America on November 14th. The commune broke up. The US government was not content with violating its own constitution. When Osho, at the invitation of his students, went to other countries, the United States, using its influence in the world, tried to influence other states so that Osho's work would be disrupted wherever he arrived. As a result of this policy, 21 countries banned Osho and his companions from entering their borders. And these countries consider themselves free and democratic!

In July 1986, Osho returned to Bombay and his disciples again began to gather around him.

Return to Pune

In January 1987, as the number of people visiting him grew rapidly, he returned to Pune, where the Osho International Commune had by then been formed. The daily wonderful conversations, meditations, holidays began again.

New names

In December 1988, OSHO goes back to bed with a serious illness that requires the presence of a personal doctor around the clock. Three weeks later, Osho reappears in the meditation hall and makes a startling statement. In her letter, a Japanese clairvoyant says that Gautama Buddha lives in the body of Osho. Osho confirms that this is true and declares his decision to renounce the title of Bhagavan. In addition, for the first time in many months, he takes off his sunglasses, which protected his eyes from camera flashes, and gives them to one of the students. Within a few days, he chooses a new name for himself and settles on an option that sounded in response to a reporter from United Press International.

Gautama Buddha took refuge in me. I am the host, he is my guest. This does not mean conversion to Buddhism. I am a buddha in my own right, that's why he decided to use my body to finish what he didn't have time to do. He waited a long time. For twenty-five centuries he has been a wandering cloud looking for a suitable body.

I am not a Buddhist. Gautam Buddha also did not set himself the goal of creating Buddhism, an organized religion. He never created it. The moment truth is turned into an organization, it immediately becomes a lie. Organized religion is just implicit politics, covert exploitation of people by the clergy, and it doesn't matter what the priest calls himself - shankaracharya, imam, rabbi or priest.

Gautama Buddha left no successor behind him. His last words were: “Don't put up statues for me, don't write down my words. I don't want to be a symbol, I don't want to be worshipped. And most of all I fear that you will become imitators. There is no need to become a Buddhist, because potentially each of you is a Buddha.”

And I also want to declare: I do not teach Buddhism. For that matter, I don't teach any "-ism" at all. I teach how to become a buddha.

And my people don't belong to any organized religion. They are independent, independent seekers. They are my companions and friends, not students.
By the way, I would like to recall the prophecy made by Guatama Buddha twenty-five centuries ago. He said, “When I come back again, I won't be able to be born from my mother's womb. I will have to take refuge in a person with a similar consciousness, the same level and under the same open sky. And they will simply call me Friend.”
The word "friend" implies great freedom. Buddha doesn't want to be a guru, he wants to be just a friend. He has something to talk about, but he does not want to bind others with any harsh conditions.
By the way, this is helpful, because some sannyasins are confused now. They do not know how to distinguish the words of the ancient Gautama Buddha from my own words. Gautama's prophecy clears up the confusion.
Although he has taken refuge in me, I will not call myself Gautama Buddha. Let me be called, according to his prophecy, "Buddha Maitreya." This will show the difference, there will be no more confusion.
On the fifth night after the unusual visit, Osho appears in the meditation hall with a new statement.

Gautama Buddha left due to some inconsistencies in the lifestyles of the host and guest. These four days were very difficult for me. I hoped that Gautama Buddha would understand what changes had taken place in the world over two and a half millennia, but he never succeeded. I did my best, but he is too peculiar and disciplined ... Twenty-five centuries have made him hard as a stone.

And therefore, even with the most unremarkable trifles, difficulties arose. He only sleeps on his right side. He is not used to the pillow and just puts his hand under his cheek. He considers a pillow a luxury.

I told him: “This cheap pillow is not a luxury. Sleeping with your head in your palms is a real torment. You think that you need to sleep only on the right side, but what was wrong with the left? Personally, I have a different principle: I always try to treat both sides of things equally.”

He ate only once a day - and demanded it from me. In addition, he was used to being fed only by alms and kept asking: “Where is my alms bowl?”

Last night, exactly at six o'clock, when I was taking a hot tub, he suddenly became terribly indignant, because he considered it a luxury even to bathe twice a day.

And I told him, “You have fulfilled your prophecy. You are back. But four days was enough for me - now goodbye! Stop wandering the earth, dissolve in your blue sky.

During these four days, you have already understood: I am doing the same thing that you wanted to do, but I am doing it in accordance with the dictates of the times and current conditions. But no one will order me anything. I am a free person. I gave you shelter with all my love, I received you as a dear guest, but do not even try to become the owner here.

All these days my head was pounding. I haven't had a headache in thirty years. I completely forgot what it is. But all my attempts to improve relations were in vain. He was used to doing everything his own way and could not even understand that times had changed.

So now I'm making an even more important, historic statement: I am just me.

If you like, you can call me Buddha, but this will no longer have anything to do with Gautama or Maitreya.

I am a buddha myself. The word 'buddha' simply means 'awakened one'. And now I declare that henceforth my name is Shri Rajneesh Buddha Zorba."
Soon "Shri Rajneesh Buddha Zorba" again deprives himself of all names and says that he will remain a man without a name. However, his sannyasins are confused, they do not know how to address him, and therefore they offer the title of Osho, which in many Zen parables is used as a respectful, respectful address. Osho agrees and supplements this word with a new meaning, linking it with the concept of "ocean" (ocean) by William James. He later says that it's not a name at all, but just a healing sound.

Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Self

For several weeks after the “visit” of Gautama Buddha, Osho seems to be overwhelmed with new reserves of strength and energy. The conversations are getting longer - a couple of times he spoke for almost four hours without a break. Osho's speech sounds noticeably livelier and more energetic. In several series of lectures, he links Zen to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Walt Whitman, compares it to Christianity, and even recommends it to Gorbachev as a simple path from communism to capitalism. However, in February 1989, after two lectures in a new cycle called The Zen Manifesto, Osho falls ill again and does not appear in the meditation hall until early April. The Zen Manifesto was the last series of his talks.

The Zen manifesto is absolutely necessary because all the ancient religions are now falling apart. And before they die completely, and mankind does not go crazy, Zen must be spread throughout the earth. New houses need to be built before the old ones fall apart.

Now you don't have to repeat the mistakes of the past. You lived in a house that did not exist at all, and therefore suffered from rains, cold winters and a burning sun, because the house existed only in your imagination. This time, it's time for you to enter your real home, and not hide in man-made temples, under the shelter of far-fetched religions. Hide in your own existence. Why be someone's exact copy?

This is a very important time. You are lucky that you were born in this era, when the old loses its validity and reality, when it just hangs around, because you are afraid to escape from this prison. But the doors are open! In truth, there are no doors at all, because the whole house where you live exists only in the imagination. Your gods, priests and holy scriptures are all in the imagination.

This time you must not make the same mistake. Humanity must make a qualitative leap, move from an old, rotten lie to a fresh, eternally young truth.

This is the Zen Manifesto.
Osho says his last words to the assembly of sannyasins on the evening of April 10, 1989:

You are now the most blessed people in the world. To remember yourself as a buddha is the most precious experience, because in it is your eternity, your immortality. It is no longer you, but the Universe itself. You are one with the stars and trees, the sky and the ocean. You are inextricably linked to all that is. The last thing the Buddha said was the word sammasati. Remember that you are buddhas! Sammasati.

Inner Circle

On April 6, 1989, Osho chooses the so-called "Inner Circle". This group includes twenty-one students from those who are engaged in the practical management of the community. This is not openly announced, but later he clearly explains to the members of the group that their goal is not the spiritual leadership of the community, but purely practical concerns about the availability of the fruits of his labor. In the event that someone from the “Circle” dies or for some reason refuses to continue work, another person is chosen to take his place by secret ballot. The group makes all its decisions only by general vote.

Tradition cannot be avoided. It's not in our power. After death, you no longer have the power to influence people. And therefore, it is better to give clear instructions to trusted people in advance than to leave everything to the mercy of the ignorant.

Care preparation

On the evening of April 10, at the end of the lecture, Osho tells his secretary that his energy has changed dramatically in quality. He explains that nine months before death, the energy moves into a period of preparation for death, just as nine months before birth, the energy of a person begins to develop in the mother's womb. Osho's next lecture was supposed to be the beginning of a new cycle called "The Awakening of the Buddha."

On May 19, at a general meeting in the meditation hall, it was announced that Osho would never speak before an open meeting.

On May 23, it was announced that Osho would start coming to the meditation hall in the evenings. When he appears, music plays and everyone can have fun with him. The holiday is replaced by silent meditation, after which Osho leaves. After his departure, recordings of his conversations are shown in the hall.

Osho University was founded in June-July. It is made up of many "faculties" covering the seminars and programs offered by the community. Among the departments of the University are the Transformation Center, the School of Mystery, the School of Creativity and the Arts and the School of Martial Arts. Everyone is asked to come to evening meetings in white. This rule is established during the traditional Indian holiday in honor of the enlightened Teachers, which is held on the July full moon. The community has been celebrating this holiday for a long time.

On August 31, in the former Chuang Tzu Hall adjacent to his house, the arrangement of a new bedroom for Osho is being completed. He is directly involved in the decoration of the new room, which is decorated with marble and illuminated by a huge chandelier; floor-to-ceiling windows overlook a wild jungle garden.

On September 14, Osho returns to his former bedroom. The new room is given to the meditation therapy groups Mystic Rose and Out of Mind. The new indoor and air-conditioned glass corridor, built specifically for Osho to walk in the garden, is now intended for Vipasana, Za-Zen and other silent meditation groups.

On November 17, Osho gives instructions on what to do when he leaves this world. He also asks for a group to translate his books from Hindi into English and leaves detailed instructions for the work of the Inner Circle.

On December 24, the English "Sunday Mail" publishes an article stating that Cardinal Ratzinger, that is, the Vatican, is responsible for the deportation of Osho from the United States.

On December 17, Osho's doctor announces that from now on he can no longer participate in evening meditations in the common room, but will briefly appear only to greet the audience. When Osho enters the hall, everyone sees that it is already very difficult for him to move around.

On January 18, Osho remains in his room and does not appear at the evening meeting, but conveys through assistants that he will attend the meeting invisibly.

Osho leaving the body.

January 19, 1990, at five o'clock in the evening, Osho leaves his body. Before that, he refuses the doctor's offer to carry out urgent medical intervention. Osho says: “The Universe itself measures its time”, closes his eyes and peacefully leaves. The doctor announces death at 7 pm, when everyone comes to the meditation hall for the daily meeting. After some time, when the sad news spreads throughout the community, Osho's body is brought to the hall, where a ten-minute farewell takes place. He is then carried in procession to a nearby pyre site. A farewell ceremony is held throughout the night.

Two days later, Osho's ashes are transferred to the Chuang Tzu Hall - the very room that was to be his new "bedroom". There he held talks and met with sannyasins and visitors for many years. By the will of Osho, the ashes are placed "by the bed", that is, on a marble slab in the center of the room, which was really intended as a support for the bed. Nearby, they strengthen a tablet with the words that Osho himself dictated a few months before:

Osho - never born, never died
He was often asked the question, what will happen when he dies? Here is Osho's response to Italian television:

“You ask what will happen when Osho dies. He is not God and he does not believe in any prophets, prophecies, or a messiah. They were all selfish people. Therefore, whatever he can do at this moment, he does. What happens after he leaves, he leaves to the will of existence. His trust in existence is absolute. If there is any truth in what he says, it will survive.”

Every day you sink deeper and deeper. Remember that no matter how far you go today, tomorrow you can go a little further. It may take two years, five, ten, twenty or thirty years, but you will certainly become buddhas. For me, you are already buddhas, it remains only to muster up the courage and admit it to yourself. Thirty years is not needed to become a buddha, because you are already buddhas. It may take thirty years to put aside the hesitation, the doubt that you are really a buddha. Even if I say this, all the buddhas try to convince you, but deep down you still doubt: “God, am I really a buddha? How can this be?” But one day you will see it for yourself. No one can convince you of this, you can only be convinced by yourself.
Osho chair

Detailed Letter on Osho's Retirement