The Enigmatic "Bhagwan," Osho Rajneesh

The Enigmatic "Bhagwan," Osho Rajneesh

(Last revised on Jan. 1, 2008)

Concerning India's alleged Godman "Bhagwan" (Bhagavan) Rajneesh (née Chandra Mohan Jain, 1931-1990), who in 1988, to clean up his PR image for better marketability, briefly preferred to call himself "Zorba the Budddha" and then in October 1989 renamed himself "Osho," there was, sadly, immense dysfunction. May his soul and all souls be in great peace and clarity in the One Divine Self!

Many thousands of disciples of Osho Rajneesh find him a beautiful enigma, and while many of these persons will openly admit as true nearly all the serious flaws and foibles pointed out by his many critics who've dared to speak publicly (such critics—including ex-Rajneeshee disciples James Gordon, Julian Lee, and especially Christopher Calder— are quoted at some length at this webpage), these faithful disciples nevertheless gloss over the problematic aspects and still express tremendous gratitude and appreciation for all that they learned and received from Rajneesh over their months or years with this "gifted" and "remarkable" man, as several of his devotees have described him in their emails to me. (See below, further on.)

Many of these disciples and fans of Osho Rajneesh further wonder why anyone should be at all interested to critique the unwholesome and unsavory aspects of the long-deceased "Bhagwan," when the only thing really important in life is "living from freedom" and "living from the heart, not the head." Yet former disciple Christopher Schnelle, in a long post on March 3, 2006 for the generally pro-Rajneesh forum rebelliousspirit.com, has written, in part, "What is more important – truth or feeling good?... I am writing about Osho because his lies and his deceit caused an enormous amount of pain for a lot of beautiful people. Most of these beautiful people have no idea that a sophisticated fraud was perpetrated on them and blame themselves for their deteriorating mental and physical health. Many of my sannyasin friends have great trouble sustaining this illusory happy fog and are taking more and more desperate measures to continue feeling good." (For the entirety of Schnelle's post, see further on, below.) At the same forum, Christopher Calder, Rajneesh's second Western disciple in the early 1970s, wrote on Oct. 19, 2005 and Aug. 18, 2007, "The Web is full of phony Osho propaganda sites that simply ignore all the scandals and the history of the cult. Most of the tell-all books are out of print and hard to find.... Will the next big cult use germ warfare as the Osho cult did, chemical warfare as the Aum Shinrikyo cult did? Or perhaps the next religious cult will graduate to nuclear warfare? Who knows? If human beings never learn that blind and unquestioning obedience to one 'perfect Master' or leader is dangerous and anti-evolutionary, then we will only have more disasters. [...] I am not saying Rajneesh was a complete fraud in the sense that he had nothing to offer. I just draw a clear line between what was good about him and where he went wrong, so that others in the future will not make the same tragic mistakes.."

In a clarifying threefold model I have presented elsewhere (click here to read more extensively), it is Absolutely true that "nothing is really happening," that all manifestation is "dream-like" and ultimately "empty" because there is only God, only Absolute Being-Awareness-Bliss, the One Alone, the all-transcending and unmanifest Spirit. One step down from this "Absolute-truth level" (paramarthika-satya) is what we might call the "psychic-soul" truth-level in which "whatever happens in manifestation is perfect," because all souls are sooner or later coming Home to perfect virtue and Divine awakening from soul-hood into Spirit, so that there's fundamentally nothing "wrong" or "problematic." Finally and more pragmatically, there is the mundane, "conventional-truth level" (vyavaharika-satya) involving the play of opposites, crucially including justice-injustice, true-false, good-evil, appropriate-inappropriate, skillful-unskillful. All three of these levels (Absolute truth, psychic-soul truth, and mundane conventional truth) are simultaneously true within this overall Nondual (Advaita) Reality. Losing the capacity to distinguish these three levels is a mark of great folly, not enlightened wisdom. And so, for instance, to excuse or overlook injustices occurring on this planet because "whatever happens is perfect" or because "this is all a dream, there's only God" is a tragic confusing of levels, and makes a mockery of the courageous work of all those who have ever endeavored to bring truth in place of lies, healing in place of harm, justice in place of injustice.

Hence, at this long webpage, various voices will be heard speaking intelligently and yes, critically, of someone who posed for nearly two decades as a "fully enlightened God-man." This webpage exists for the sake of truth and accountability, and as a cautionary for all those sincere persons who might currently or in the future be duped by similar con-men posing as God-men (or God-women).

More here.....

http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/rajneesh.html
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