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).

Real spirituality, real freedom and real heart-love is invaluably precious, sublime, wholesome and holy, not at all mediocre or muddled as Rajneesh and so many others have made it and exploited it for personal profit.

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I first read a few of Rajneesh's earliest little books and a favorable biography (The Awakened One, by Vasant Joshi) circa 1978-1982 while in graduate school researching spiritual and psychological traditions. In the early 1980s I also saw a short film of excerpts from one of Rajneesh's talks, and was able to see first-hand his hypnotically slow, coy, seductive, and provocative manner of speech and body language, with his strange way of hissing the "s" sounds at the end of many of his words. I wasn't very impressed with Rajneesh, especially compared to some of the really tremendous spiritual masters i read about and/or met in person. I enjoyed Rajneesh's wild sense of wacky humor, often hilarious!—though author Tim Guest says that Rajneesh cribbed many of his best jokes from Playboy magazine, and too many of his jokes, alas, were slurs on ethnic and racial groups or just "juvenile scatological humor," as journalist Rohit Arya has assessed it, such as Rajneesh's long comedic essay on the "magical" word "F---," and his concluding, quite silly, probably sarcastic admonition that one wake up each morning and say "F--- you" five times (the entire routine from 1984, read by Rajneesh from a script, is viewable at www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D7rWLzloOI&feature=related).

I appreciated the occasional good spiritual insight or well-turned phrase in Rajneesh's brash and eclectic teachings on awareness, witnessing, dis-identification, self-inquiry, inconclusiveness, and spontaneous action without the doer-sense. Such teachings were clearly influenced in most of the essential points and even the specific vocabulary by the talks and writings of Indian sage J. Krishnamurti, the Zen and Taoist masters, and other true sages whose books Rajneesh had extensively read (along with popularizers like Alan Watts whom Rajneesh had also read). But there were, alas, colossal problems with many of the teachings and personality characteristics of this so-called "spiritual master" or "Divine Incarnation." Just on the level of the teachings, it is clear that Rajneesh, who admitted that his favorite activity in childhood and adolescence was "to argue" (he once won an all-India debate contest), often delighted in expressing a spiritually unconventional viewpoint, regardless of whether it was truly enlightening. Rajneesh is lauded by followers and fans for his "brilliance" and "originality," but to questions on diverse topics he often responded just in a cleverly contrarian and quirky manner that is far more sophistry than sophia/wisdom. Much of what Rajneesh presented can promote an unrestrained "feel-good spirituality," but does it truly liberate one from the grossest and subtlest forms of attachment, aversion, and delusion? As for his own so-called "enlightenment" and personal example, it has been more than sufficiently documented by his closest former disciples that this dear soul Rajneesh suffered from all kinds of attachment, aversion and delusion. May we all be awake to the one Divine Reality!

My distinct impression (and there is always the slight possibility that i and other critics could be wrong!) is that Rajneesh was just another shooting star in the spiritual firmament, one of those strange but rather numerous fallen yogis who attain some glimpses or periods of a certain kind of "enlightened freedom," open up to become a channel for some unusual and palpable energies (leading mesmerized disciples to think they are in the presence of Divinity), but then sooner or later such figures become imbalanced and egocentrically full of themselves—proud, megalomaniacal, narcissistic, and/or disturbed by one or more other mental-emotional-psychic pathologies.

Further on at this long webpage, I will let others report more fully on Rajneesh's multiple pathologies. But one of the most unsavory elements I myself recall in Rajneesh's teachings is not just his sophistry for sophistry's sake, but his penchant for severely criticizing and dismissing the ideas of the great sages like Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha and Sankara (founder of Advaita Vedanta tradition), while in the process completely misrepresenting the teachings of the Buddha, Sankara and others. I thought this was extremely dishonest and corrupt, especially given that Rajneesh had been an academic earlier in life, a philosophy instructor at the collegiate level in India. He should have known better. It's immoral and base to misrepresent to your students the subtle views of illustrious figures and then to criticize these misrepresented views, thereby elevating yourself to a higher status than the persons criticized. In his talks and dictated writings, Rajneesh often utilizes this dishonest trick, lying in various ways to insure that his followers would see him as spiritually superior to every other figure who had ever appeared in religious history, including the Buddha, Sankara, Jesus, and many others.

Rajneesh's early talks (reproduced in the earliest Indian books and booklets) and later works are filled not just with some useful wisdom but also laced with ridiculously inaccurate, broad-sweeping generalizations about religion, society and human nature, and a quirky mix of self-effacing, feigned "humility" with self-inflated boasting. For instance, by his own account, he had attained the state of complete Enlightenment while sitting under a tree on March 21, 1953, though he "kept it a secret" for many years afterward. And he claimed, "I am the beginning of a totally new religious consciousness" (Ma Prem Shunyo, Diamond Days with Osho, 1992, p.217), and further bragged to the press during his time in Oregon that "I have had sex with hundreds of women" (nearly all of them disciples, thus violating an ancient ethical code for Gurus) and claimed that only his poor health kept him from having even more sex. What's more, he trumpeted that he was "the world's greatest lover" (a boast certainly disputed by some of his female disciples who knew him intimately). When he came to the USA in 1981, he claimed, "I am the Messiah America has been waiting for" (Hugh Milne, Bhagwan: The God That Failed). And so on.

What is one to do with many passages from Rajneesh like the following rather typical excess of demented hyperbole and distorted history, delivered during the height of his fame? "I say to you: forget God and forget the kingdom of God. I give you here and now. I say celebrate, because this life is a gift of existence to you.... I want it to be emphasized that this is the only religion. All those of the past were sick, pathological. They have made the whole world sick, and they are still doing it. They call it 'service to humanity.' Only the retarded and utterly mediocre people can believe in God." Rajneesh later even called Jesus a "crackpot" who "was trying to save the world but couldn't even save himself" (Hinduism Today, Sep. 1985, p. 3), though on other occasions he admitted that Jesus was an enlightened being, albeit not as enlightened as himself. Yet elsewhere he could be heard saying things like, "Reverend Jim Jones [of the Guyana mass-murder tragedy] and his people is really the logical conclusion of Jesus and the Christian theology." (from the "Osho: Absolutely Free to be Funny" interview with Rajneesh at www.youtube.com/watch?v=otGQqO2TYMI&NR=1)

On other occasions, Rajneesh's psychopathology was on display when he called both Gandhi and Hitler "violent torturers" in his ludicrously clumsy attempt to present the larger truth that we need not ever be too hard or self-mortifying toward our own bodymind: "To torture oneself or to torture others, both are diseases—the very idea to torture. Somebody is an Adolf Hitler, he tortures others; somebody is a Mahatma Gandhi, he tortures himself. Both are in the same boat—maybe standing back to back, but standing in the same boat. Adolf Hitler's joy is in torturing others, Mahatma Gandhi's joy is in torturing himself, but both are violent. The logic is the same—their joy depends on torture. Their direction is different, but the direction is not the question, their mind has the same attitude: torture." (Tao: The Pathless Path, 1977) "Both were great saints. The only difference was that Mahatma Gandhi had the Jaina characteristic very much developed in him... so he tortured himself. Adolf Hitler had the Mohammedan characteristic developed in him: he tortured others, he didn't torture himself. But both tortured. Whom they tortured is not of that much significance." (Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, 1980) I submit that anyone who can ignore the different historical impacts of Gandhi's and Hitler's actions (Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns and Hitler's killing of six million Jews, Gypsies, et al.) to make these glib statements, let alone express great admiration for Hitler in other public talks, has serious mental problems.

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RAJNEESH'S BIOGRAPHY

There was much, much more dysfunction to Rajneesh's personality and behavior, as pointed out by several of his former close disciples and other observers. We'll start from the beginning.... Born on December 11, 1931, to a Jain family in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, central India, we see Rajneesh's dysfunction beginning in childhood, with a rebellious, contentious personality, which turned into a talent for debate: "As far back as I can remember, I loved only one game—to argue. So very few grown-up people could stand me." (Sue Appleton, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: The Most Dangerous Man Since Jesus Christ, 1987, p. 15) Later in life Rajneesh would often say that he liked to say things that would disturb and shock people for the sake of "waking them up," etc., and this tendency seems to have started with his argumentative nature in childhood. Earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in Philosophy, and allegedly achieving his spiritual death-rebirth "Enlightenment" along the way in 1953 after experiments in death-defying fearlessness, beginning in 1957 he taught for three years at Raipur Sanskrit College then for six years at Jabalpur University in India. But he resigned in 1966 to further a lucrative ministry he had begun in 1960: a traveling provocative speaker, garrulous social critic and mesmerizing shaktipat-guru, going by the name Acharya ("Teacher") Shree Rajneesh. He became notable for his trendy meditation camps for upper-class Indians, his over-generalizing diatribes against Gandhi, religion, convention, repression, etc., and his racy talk about sexual openness, love, "total freedom," "the mysterious presence," dynamic meditation, etc. (His first major book was provocatively titled From Sex to Superconsciousness.) He confessed that he often liked to stir up controversy, "even if just for fun." Rajneesh may have earlier attained a certain fearlessness, but this is not necessarily full enlightenment—many sociopaths also operate from "fearlessness." Rajneesh obviously was not desireless, and still had lots of egoic attachments.

This aspect of his dysfunction emerged more explicitly when he crowded with his followers into a Bombay apartment in 1970, stopped traveling, and instituted a strange new religious movement of anti-renunciate, often ill-behaving "neo-sannyasins." He next ostentatiously re-titled himself Bhagavan/Bhagwan, "Divine One" or "Blessed Lord," in May 1971, and then established an extremely counter-cultural growth center at Poona/Pune in March, 1974. This so-called "ashram," located in the affluent Koregaon Park suburb of Poona, was often crammed with up to several thousand paying residents and visitors (increasingly most of them westerners). It included much open sexual experimentation on the part of Rajneesh and his followers, including sex between adult males and female minors, and sex among many of the pre-pubescent children who had the misfortune to grow up in this new anti-family society. "We had a feast of fucking, the likes of which had probably not been seen since the days of Roman bacchanalia," later wrote Hugh Milne (Rajneesh's bodyguard). Rajneesh sanctioned several and later dozens of psychotherapy growth groups and encounter groups at the Poona center, run by assorted European and American therapists, the new "high priests" of Rajneeshism's blend of avant garde spirituality and pop psychology. In the more "advanced," no-limits, high-risk groups, there was massive experimentation not just with sensuality and subtle energies, but also more dangerously with anger, physical violence and sexual aggression (e.g., slapping, fighting, rapes), though the violence was finally banned by Rajneesh in January 1979. Meanwhile, a frail, asthma- and allergy-ridden Rajneesh daily and nightly talked and talked and talked, in English and in Hindi, on a wide range of topics, from the high-flown and happy to the pedantic, pedestrian, goofy, gossipy, bitter and bizarre. Followers slavishly turned the tape-recordings and "33 million words" into scores of money-making books. Rajneesh fled India in June 1981 to evade paying taxes and to escape persecution from Morarji Desai's conservative Janata Party and flak from Poona's offended residents (in 1980 a conservative young Hindu had tried to murder him by throwing a knife). It is important to note that Rajneesh's rise to fame in India in the late 1960s and 1970s was not just due to his maverick style, personal appeal, easy philosophy, and the notoriety of the sexed up atmosphere at his hedonist ashram, but also largely due to the organizational efforts and social connections of his first disciple and secretary, Ma Yoga Laxmi, the extremely well-connected daughter of a prominent wealthy businessman and close friend of many of the longtime-ruling Congress Party leaders, herself a rising political figure in the mid-1960s. Without Ma Laxmi, it's unlikely Rajneesh ever would have become quite so famous or powerful.

Coming to the USA on the dubious pretext of needing emergency medical treatment, Rajneesh spent the summer of 1981 at "Rajneesh Castle" near Montclair, New Jersey, created by his replacement secretary and occasional lover, the married Indian woman Ma Anand Sheela (b.1950). Rajneesh adopted a pose of public silence until he finally broke it with renewed talks in late 1984. In the meantime, the "Bhagwan" moved out west to a 64,000-acre ranch in Oregon's Wasco County (near the mid-point of Oregon's northern border), procured by Ma Sheela, where he resided with his lovers and his hundreds and then thousands of mainly American and European red-clad neo-sannyasin followers from late 1981 until late 1985. The commune-complex came to include the newly built Rajneeshpuram city and the taken-over tiny town of Antelope, 20 miles away. But Rajneesh's situation, and the situation of his trusting disciples, eventually turned from a "love-in" to a nightmare. The Rajneeshpuram commune had certainly made some remarkable strides (with all that free labor by several hundred and then a few thousand inmates working 12-16 hours daily) in developing within two years an admirably self-sustaining infrastructure on the dilapidated old Big Muddy Ranch: state-of-the-art reservoir, sewage system, telecommunications center, urban style residential spaces, 10-megawatt power substation, 85-bus public transportation system, airstrip, 88,000 square-foot meeting hall, 3,000 acres of cleared farmland, dairy and poultry farms, a post office, school and meditation university, fire and police departments, shopping malls, restaurants, discotheque, visitors' hotels, etc.

However, under monstrous Ma Sheela's ruthless, power-hungry tendencies (with Rajneesh's silence giving consent and authority), the Rajneeshpuram commune, "the ultimate Me Generation boarding school," as journalist Frances FitzGerald called it, with its utopian idealism about "authenticity" and "spontaneity," and gentler, kinder group therapy approach, became by late 1983 an embattled camp, patrolled by heavily armed guards, and increasingly obsessed with rigid authoritarian rules and regimentation, and compulsory financial contributions and assorted money-making schemes, local and worldwide. "The commune was transformed into something indeed resembling a repressive, fascistic, totalitarian theocracy" (E.P. Wijnants), "the closest thing to an Eastem Bloc experience in the United States" (Lewis Carter).

The criminally-behaving Ma Sheela and select leading members of the neo-sannyasin throngs embroiled themselves in awful controversy, with open hostility, multiple lawsuits, and even murder plots and terrorist crimes against local Oregonian residents and government officials. This included the worst mass bioterrorism incident in U.S. history—751 Oregonians sickened at ten restaurants in The Dalles from deliberate salmonella poisoning by Ma Sheela's cronies in order to steal a 1984 county election for the Rajneeshees by keeping non-Rajneeshee citizens from the voting booths. The attack crippled the local economy as fear spread. And the restaurant poisoning was just a first step: Sheela's troops planned to poison the town's water supply, and in their bioweapons lab they experimented with creating a live AIDS virus for use against civilians in nearby towns. In 1985, Sheela's inner circle conspired to kill the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Charles Turner, after he was appointed to head a federal grand jury investigation of the commune.

Evidence indicates that a xenophobic local Christian populace and a covert federal government activity had exacerbated the paranoid mindset of Sheela and commune-leaders with an early and ongoing campaign of harassment and litigious resistance to the development of Rajneeshpuram. But, as journalist Rohit Arya has written, Rajneesh's disciples in Oregon "continued the obnoxious behaviors they had learnt in Pune when dealing with the locals and they got everybody's unremitting hatred as a consequence. They were in the heart of the Bible-belt of America and they did everything they could to give offence." Ma Sheela and her crazed crew, who were spying on fellow commune members through wiretapping, at one point even began to target many inmates of Rancho Rajneesh, and a mass lethal poisoning of hundreds or thousands of neo-sannyasins was almost carried off one night, their lives spared only by an accidental mix-up and last-minute canceling of the diabolical plot by Sheela.

One of my pro-Rajneesh correspondents, Sandra Johansen, admits that a dear woman friend, a member of the "inner circle" around Rajneesh at Rajneeshpuram, thought that a now "unenlightened" and very reclusive Rajneesh completely "lost it" during this time in Oregon. He finally began to speak again in late 1984, but he seems to have done very little to counter Ma Sheela's policies, except to begin creating a new bloc of neo-sannyasin supporters as a rival power-base. On September 15, 1985, Sheela and her minions suddenly left the commune for refuge in Europe; Rajneesh later that day held a press conference, accusing her and her followers of stealing millions of dollars and attempting to murder him, his doctor, his dentist, his girlfriend, and some local politicians. He now publicly repudiated the "Rajneeshism" religion that Sheela had formally instituted in his name and even repudiated his own role as guru, for he had insisted two months earlier that he did not have "followers, only fellow travelers." He also asked the FBI to conduct an investigation into Sheela's activities (she would later serve a jail sentence). Many observers think that this public declaration by Rajneesh was mere "damage control," and assert that he had approved of most of Sheela's policies the entire time. This assessment is contested by other observers, who want to put all the blame on Sheela and her co-conspirators. Yet the big question remains: why did Rajneesh ever pick the cold-hearted Ma Sheela as his secretary in the first place, train her in heavy-handed authoritarianism, and continue to let her have so much organizational power in the Rajneesh Foundation International?

The U.S. government finally kicked Rajneesh out of the country in late 1985 for multiple counts of immigration fraud, the most benign of several serious charges against him. (After trying to flee the country, Rajneesh was jailed for 12 days, fined $400,000, given a 10-year suspended sentence, and ordered to leave the country and not return for a minimum of 5 years.) After being rejected by 21 other countries, the old tax evasion charges were settled in India and in 1986 Rajneesh returned with those disciples still faithful to him (many of his most trusted aides had left) to his six-acre ashram in Poona, India, where he ruled a renewed, burgeoning kingdom.

In Dec. 1988 Rajneesh said that he should no longer be called "Bhagwan," that he was not God Incarnate, that "the joke was over," and that he was actually hosting the Buddha's soul (another bad joke), hence he was now to be known as "Rajneesh Gautaman the Buddha" (Star Telegram, Dec. 29, 1988), though four days later he ejected the Buddha's austere spirit, and renamed himself "Zorba the Buddha" to honor his own pleasure-mongering tendencies. In late 1989, he renamed himself "Osho," derived from a Japanese term meaning "the whole man" and also from William James' term "oceanic experience." These re-namings were evidently at least in part intended for PR purposes, to make the public forget his sordid past as Rajneesh.

Just a few months after taking his new name, "Osho" died from heart-failure on January 19, 1990 in his 59th year, his passing celebrated by 10,000 ashram residents. His Poona II ashram had grown from 6 to 32 acres, and become known as Osho Commune International, "the most Western and opulent of all ashrams in India," as author Roger Housden saw it. By the late 1980s the open promiscuous sex and frequent nudity of earlier years with Rajneesh was abandoned (after his growing concern over the international AIDS crisis) in exchange for a somewhat more demure lifestyle. The Osho Commune International has more recently been turned by the ruling members of the Inner Circle into a "de-Osho-ized" Osho Meditation Resort luxury spa, with most of the ubiquitous Osho Rajneesh photos taken down. A displeased group of mostly Indian followers have left to set up their own lucrative operation, Osho World, up in Delhi. Meanwhile, a highly profitable merchandizing machine continues to spew out "Osho" products, many consumers not realizing that the whitewashed Osho books, tapes, DVDs, CDs, etc., feature the notorious cult-leader formerly known as Rajneesh. The Indian government now promotes the Osho sites as a magnet for tourist revenues.

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Resources on Rajneesh:
A well-done British television documentary on Osho Rajneesh from the late 1980s is Scandal, viewable for free under the title Osho: The Man Who Was God, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4Ck8pLuyu0 (one of around 900 video clips on Rajneesh viewable at YouTube). A well-researched short history of Rajneesh and his movement is Elizabeth Skane's 8-page article on "Osho (or Rajneeshism)" for Sociology 257, Spring 1999, posted at religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/rajneesh.html. Much more extensive analyses of the pros and cons of Rajneesh's personality and leadership dynamics can be found in the largely excellent collection of essays, Osho Rajneesh & His Disciples: Some Western Perspectives (Harry Aveling, Ed.), Motilal Banarsidass, 1998, with especially worthy contributions by Ronald Clarke (on Rajneesh's colossal narcissism), Susan Palmer (on his love of adulation for his "performance" but his abdication of pastoral responsibility), Carl Latkin (on social control and intergroup conflict at Rajneeshpuram), and others. See, too, four earlier works: Susan Palmer & Arvind Sharma (Eds.), The Rajneesh Papers: Studies in a New Religious Movement, S. Asia Books, 1993; Lewis Carter, Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram: A Community without Shared Values, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990; Bob Mullan, Life As Laughter: Following Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984; and Frances FitzGerald, Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures, Simon & Schuster, 1986 (the long, very informative section on Rajneeshpuram was published in two parts in The New Yorker magazine, Sept. 22/29, 1986). See also work by scholar Judith M. Fox, Osho Rajneesh (Studies in Contemporary Religion Series, No. 4), Signature Books, 2002; Hugh Urban, "Zorba The Buddha: Capitalism, Charisma and the Cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh," for the academic journal Religion, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 1996, pp. 161-182; and an untitled paper by Dr. E.P. Wijnants posted at soc.world-journal.net/Rajneesh.html (on Rajneesh and his community's failed, paranoid attempt to enact the Nietzchean "superman" ideal). See also the 20-part investigative series on the Rajneeshees by The Oregonian newspaper, beginning on June 30, 1985; journalist Linda Ilene Solomon's article "Dance Into Darkness," New Age Journal, Nov/Dec, 1992; and the explicit 1980 documentary film on Rajneesh and Poona One, "Ashram" by former German Rajneeshee Wolfgang Dobrowolny.

Of the numerous other, less scholarly books—pro, con, and mixed—see James S. Gordon, Golden Guru: The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Stephen Greene Press, 1987 (by a NIMH psychiatrist); Hugh Milne, Bhagwan: The God that Failed, St. Martin's Press, 1987 (by a former personal bodyguard-disciple); Rosemary Hamilton & Rosemary Lansdowne, Hellbent for Enlightenment: Unmasking Sex, Power, & Death With a Notorious Master, White Cloud Press, 1998 (Hamilton was Ma Nirgun, Rajneesh's cook for a time); Satya Bharati Franklin, The Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Story of the Perils of Life With Rajneesh, Station Hill Press, 1992 (by a very close early disciple and "ghostwriter" of some of his books in English, author of a 1981 book praising Rajneesh as God incarnate); Sue Appleton, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: The Most Dangerous Man Since Jesus Christ, Germany: Rebel Publ. House, 1987 (largely favorable); Kate Strelley (with Robert San Souci), Ultimate Game: The Rise & Fall of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, HarperCollins, 1987; Tim Guest, My Life in Orange: Growing Up With The Guru, Harvest, 2005 (on the damage done to children in the Rajneeshee movement); etc. Beyond the several "pro-Rajneesh" websites, see also critical websites on Rajneesh such as the fairly extensive file of materials assembled by cult expert Rick Ross at www.rickross.com/groups/rajneesh.html, and the long essays by former early disciple Christopher Calder (see below).

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CRITICS AND FANS SPEAK OUT ON RAJNEESH

It is claimed that, at the peak of his fame in the early 1980s, Rajneesh had 200,000 followers, around 5,000 of whom lived at Rajneeshpuram in Oregon in 1983-5 (swelling to 15,000 during the special summer activities), the other followers attending some 600 Rajneesh centers and communes worldwide, a number that dwindled to about 20 active centers by the late 1990s. Some followers were initially attracted to Rajneesh as "the Divinely-realized Guru." But no small amount of his allure was due to his seductive manner of speech and body language, his provocatively outrageous and contrarian speech content, his reputation from 1968 onward as "the sex Guru" (telling people they'd become more spiritual through unrepressed and extensive sexual exploration), and his later notoriety as "the rich man's Guru" (in justifying his accumulation of 93 Rolls Royces, costly designer watches, and other expensive toys).

Many Rajneesh followers, especially of more recent years, may not know the full details of their teacher's pathology as it emerged over time. And, to repeat, many Rajneesh disciples do know of these details, yet still love Rajneesh and are grateful for their time with him and his teachings. We leave readers to sort out for themselves whatever they wish to believe about Osho Rajneesh. The following facts and opinions are data for better assessing the enigmatic phenomenon that was this man Rajneesh.

Research psychiatrist James S. Gordon, MD, in the early 2000s serving as chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (WHCCAMP), interviewed Rajneesh several times and talked with many neo-sannyasin close disciples over some 15 or more years of deep participation-observation within the Rajneesh movement, in both India and the USA, from the early 1970s to at least 1989. James Gordon's involvement in the movement and his positive views of Rajneesh are far more extensive than he has publicly admitted (as shown by E. Patrick Curry), thus Dr. Gordon is one of the most interesting and credible critics of Osho Rajneesh. In his book The Golden Guru: The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Stephen Greene Press / Viking Penguin, 1987/8), Gordon has a lot of positive and apologetic things to say of Rajneesh, his teachings and his techniques.

But Gordon has also emphatically and critically written (in a book-excerpt published in Utne Reader in March/April 1989): "Rajneesh... failed to live what he knew and taught. He ignored what he did not care to deal with in himself, tried to silence or obliterate people or situations or points of view that threatened or contradicted him. From the time he broke his 'silence' in October 1984, he said again and again, 'I am just an ordinary man... ordinariness is blessed.... Gods are projections.' But every day he continued to act more special, more controlling and godlike, more removed from the flux of life and from his own and others' ordinary humanity. In the end, Rajneesh became the kind of man, the kind of religious leader, he had always derided. If indeed his ego had once dissolved and melted like a drop into the ocean, it seemed over the years to have renewed and enlarged, and in his isolation it grew gross with his attachment to power and luxury and position. He became more power-hungry and more deceitful than any of the politicians he attacked,... more sanctimonious than the saints he derided. On his [Oregon] ranch, surrounded by armed guards, dressed up and doped up, imperious and imperial, he resembled Jim Jones far more than Buddha or Krishna or Jesus. He was unwilling to learn or change, or to admit that there was anything to be learned or changed." In his book and in a subsequent article for The Washington Post, Gordon speaks of the "Bhagwan's" policies of pressured sterilizations of female disciples, and Rajneesh's knowing tolerance of things like female disciples engaging in prostitution in order to remain at his commune in Poona, drug running by certain disciples for the same purpose, and the physical, emotional and verbal violence occurring as an acceptable technique in the psychotherapy groups held at the Rajneesh ashrams and remote centers.

Author Sandra Johansen, a disciple of Rajneesh for six early years (and then a disciple of Papaji), working on a novel that centers on a figure closely modeled on Osho Rajneesh, has written me several emails in order to provide me a subtler, richer, and overall far more positive assessment and appreciation for the "enigma" that was/is Rajneesh. While she agrees with many of Rajneesh's critics on numerous points of criticism of Rajneesh's flaws, and even remarks that she thinks Osho "lost" his "enlightenment," she also believes there is a larger view of the man needing to be seen. From what she writes, it is also evident to me that Rajneesh's person and his teachings could be easily viewed as an example of what i have elsewhere called the "Sensual Ecstatic" spiritual temperament, which is far more Dionysian than Apollonian in its characteristics (see my model of the "Twelve Spiritual Temperaments"). With Sandra's permission i've put together some of her different remarks about her erstwhile teacher into one passage:

Sandra Johansen writes:

"I believe a lot of what is written by [critics like Hugh Milne, Christopher Calder, Julian Lee, et al.] is in fact true but there is also a lot about Osho that would have cast the now deceased 'Sex Guru' in a somewhat more favourable light.... I personally met Osho on over a hundred separate occasions and I could not honestly claim to be an expert on him. If nothing else the man was an enigma and without doubt the most remarkable man I've ever met in my life and I've had the good fortune to have met a number of remarkable human beings. My rule of thumb for understanding anyone is how much I understand myself.... The divine spark that ignites the love in my heart has proven to be all that's needed even when passing through the darkest of life's valleys. It hasn't always been so but it is thanks in part to Osho that I am where I am now and if our paths were to miraculously cross again I'd thank him from the bottom of my heart for those wonderful things he taught me about what it is to be human.... One of the things I enjoyed about Osho was his acceptance of who I was as a unique being. He helped me on the way to understanding that God (dog spelled backwards) had appeared as me and there is nothing more to be done.... He helped me to witness life as a fascinating drama. In return existence has gifted me at times with a thoughtless state which is neither this or that....

"You know miracles happened around Osho on a daily basis in Poona One. Nothing cheap like producing watches or holy water. Real miracles like giving eyesight to the spiritually blind and helping people who were crippled not only to walk but to dance as well. Really that crazy guy did that just by being who he was.... I watch people put Osho down and I smile remembering how I watched the toughest of egos melt like butter in his hands. What a rogue he was. A rogue who could steal your heart with a gentle word or a smile. He was very much like Lord Krishna in that sense. Gopis weren't subtle nerve endings they were cowgirls with big breasts who loved to dance around their master. Osho was having sex with his female disciples. Wow— could he do that and still be enlightened? Easy. If Osho's in hell I won't mind joining him because boy did that man know how to throw one hell of a party, bring on the dancing girls, get the boys in the band to strike up a tune and by god we'll have a good time. I see it as the most fundamental of life's duties for us to celebrate existence, for it is indeed true that out of this world that the lotus of enlightenment grows.

"Osho walked utterly alone. Despite the hulla balloo about his fleet of gleaming limos he lived very simply. I remember being in his room, it was minimalistic to the max and as cold as a fridge. He lived in that air conditioned cell for years. When in it I closed my eyes and my brain lit up like it was plugged into the national grid.... Osho was in many ways a God Child not a God Man. I loved that about him. That mischievious playful quality that endeared him to so many. I loved it so much it has become a part of me.... The old guru idea like the Hindu dream of Yogananda is a comfortable one, with the wise men cast like benevolent uncles. Osho wasn't your uncle because he wasn't nice. Yet somehow he understood something of the beyond which so few even glimpse because they don't want to change. To view him as a charlatan was easy. Perhaps this is why people like C [Christopher Calder, a very early disciple turned critic] prefer to see him as such for to see him as the tremendous, wild, uncontrollable, playful, mind-blowing phenomenon that Osho was requires guts. It requires setting the judgmental mind aside and just blowing on those winds of crazy freedom. Most of our fear is tied in with radical change. As a consequence people tend to want to trash new information and paths rather than assimilate what's on offer. I once came close to completely letting go of my limited ego-self forever. I believed that is what I had been searching for but as I drew close to the edge I faltered and looked back. I saw that I wasn't quite ready to let go of everything. It was quite an awakening. Guess who brought me there - Osho. He chuckled and smiled at the shock on my face and then said, 'Very Good.' Sometimes the experience of spiritual power can be terrifying even if it chuckles.

"In the early days of Poona One many of the people at ground zero were hippies who'd come to the end of the psychedelic experience and were ready to take a step towards the thoughtless state which is not an experience but an experiencing. In many ways Osho was a hippie philosopher but unlike the hippie dream which capsized in a sea of unsupportable excess his dream worked - up to a point.... Osho saw a church forming around him and seeing as how he wasn't the churchy type he got around to demolishing it. What a carry-on ensued, Rolls Royces, Rolex's, let me feel your chakras darling, hey! why don't we poison the hillbillys?, oh goody lets get addicted to drugs, no enlightened master ever did that before even though good old Gurdieff liked his cognac. And then the mother of all stunts: Osho... loses enlightenment. What a teaching.... Recently a close friend had dinner with a key player from the [Oregon] ranch and Poona. She left the ranch and was pretty disillusioned with Osho, she thinks he seriously lost it in Oregon and she would have been in a position to know as she had a lot of personal contact with him during that troubling time...."

[Sandra speaks of seeing Rajneesh back at Poona One ashram, during the nightly darshans:] "There he sat, as patient as a Buddha, listening to people talk about their chakras opening and all off that nonsense kind of stuff that people think is spiritual. Of the six years I hung out around him the most common questions that his disciples asked concerned their love relationships. How can you imagine that feels when you're crying from the rooftops that aloneness is God and the ones closest to you ask 'Osho, I'm having relationship problems.' I'll tell you how it feels, it feels like get me another Rolls Royce quick - a red one. I could write a book about it and that's why I'm in the process of doing just that."

(—here end the composite excerpts from Sandra Johansen)

In a few places in Sandra's emails, not just in the last paragraph cited above, Sandra has written of the "utter aloneness" and "agony" and "woes" of the enlightened, who must patiently endure the unenlightened questions and tendencies of their hapless, hopeless students, and that this is why someone like Osho Rajneesh "acted out" on occasions with his desires and needs. But as I finally pointed out to Sandra in one email:

"Closely look at truly stupendous beings like Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, Bhagavan Nityananda, Mata Amritanandamayi, Anandamayi Ma, Anasuya Devi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and many others (not just from Hindu tradition). The authentic and really vast, profound enlightenment they underwent extinguished all problematic sense of separative self that could feel 'agony' or 'aloneness' (except in the ultimate sense of Kaivalya - Aloneness / All-Oneness). Rajneesh even had a longtime girlfriend [Ma Yoga Vivek / Christine Woolf], as i understand from reading Calder and others, so he had a close personal beloved with whom he could privately share his angst. So this entire argument sounds a bit to me like 'special pleading' on behalf of someone who wasn't fully free from the beginning, and who predictably began to have some psychological and emotional problems rooted in a subtle, insidious sense of self. All the inflation and aggrandizing of that self (by himself and others) could not stave off a certain 'crash,' and then had to come the compensations (as you specified in an earlier email: the Rolls-Royces, etc.).... I know this sounds harsh, but we really need to distinguish between the fully enlightened on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those individuals like Rajneesh who have powerful glimpses of real awakening, kensho/satori experiences (in Zen language), but then fall back into their egoic samskaras [binding attachments-aversions] and karma-producing tendencies. It seems like it was just assumed far too early (by both Rajneesh and his followers) that he was 'fully enlightened,' not just a very talented, experienced, insightful, charismatic guy who'd made some spiritual breakthroughs into fearlessness, exhilaration, etc. And on the basis of this idea that he was 'fully enlightened' everyone got into some trouble; though, as you say, all sorts of good things happened too! I could starting naming for you dozens and dozens of figures similar to Rajneesh who claimed (or had others claiming) that they were 'fully enlightened,' but none of these have authentically lived from that Holy Wholesomeness beyond the needy self."

Sandra then responded, writing, in part:
Absolutely great e-mail.... Yes I am pleading on Osho's behalf, he was such an adorable sweetie pie. Yes, he probably was not fully enlightened. Yet through it all the enigma of who he was shines through.... One question comes up for me. How do you determine if a person is enlightened or not?

So I wrote back to Sandra a note of clarification:

>How do you determine if a person is enlightened or not?

Sandra, such a truly enlightened one has dropped the binding samskaras, the problematic attachments and aversions. The Buddha's models of the "seven enlightenment factors" and, especially, the "ten fetters" are very detailed sets of further criteria. Note that fetters 4 and 5 are comprised of "samskaric attachments and aversions"; the even subtler fetters (6-10) are restlessness, pride/conceit, attachment to subtle-form (heaven) realms, attachment to nonform realms (i.e., certain states of consciousness, not awake to Consciousness Itself), and, finally, the root ignorance of any sense of separate self. Evidently Rajneesh was not free of several of these ten fetters (e.g., recall his self-inflated narcissistic boasts, the attachments to sex and expensive toys, the delight in stirring up controversy for the sake of controversy, elevating himself above earlier sages [Sankara, the Buddha, et al.] by misrepresenting and criticizing their views, etc.). Going further, where, really, was the truly heroic self-sacrifice and the love/compassion? (—we've heard of too many incidents reported by former close disciples of the lack of these traits). And where was that "all-seeing" "functional omniscience" reported of the Buddha and, more recently, of Ramana Maharshi, Mata Amritanandamayi, and several others? Maharshi, persistently asked if he was omniscient, finally responded: "I know what i need to know when i need to know it"—and numerous, numerous stories of paranormal knowingness have been reported of him and beings like Amritanandamayi, et al.

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As an example of the premature claims of enlightenment, back in 1970, Rajneesh disciple Swami Yoga Chinmaya (Kriyananda), who helped Rajneesh teach classes for rich Indian businessman at various meditation camps, extolled Rajneesh in the following enthusiastic words, words that in retrospect seem quite overblown: "Acharya Rajneesh is an Enlighted One, who has become one with Infinity, the Totality. He is NOT, but the Infinity breathes through him. He is not a person but the Divinity personified. Transcendental Truth shines every moment through him.... He is not living in Cosmic Consciousness, but has become the Cosmic Consciousness itself.... He lives beyond Cosmos, beyond Being—in No-Being, in No-thingness, in Great Void—Nirvana." ("Acharya Rajneesh: A Glimpse," preface to Acharya Rajneesh, Flight of the Alone to the Alone, Bombay, 1970)

But listen to former disciple Julian Lee, who has written (at www.Celibacy.info) of Rajneesh's deeply problematic personality and teachings: "Rajneesh/Osho is the worst thing that ever happened to spirituality in the west. He rode herd over a mob of naive, idealistic spiritual seekers, but definitely lacked the traits of an enlightened master. Enlightened masters are not drug addicts. They do not turn Dharma on its head— like calling 'sannyasins' ["renunciates"] those who adopt a path exactly opposite of Indian sannyas. They generally don't get arrested and have their mug shots taken, and ignomiously deported— especially the Indian saints. (Christ was one notable historical exception to this rule.)... More to the core, an enlightened master does not encourage his disciples to abandon time-honored moral norms— especially the dharma concerning sex restraint. Osho was basically a kind of pimp who used the base desires of average people, along with their beautiful hunger for real spirituality, to build a financial empire and a following of worshippers who would do whatever he asked. When I think back about that 'baby boomer generation' of sincere spiritual seekers— all those intelligent, skilled young men and women of European descent like me— it makes me so sad. What a harvest of potential saints that was! How much good might have arisen if all those young, idealistic westerners could have fallen in with a legitimate spiritual master— say, a Vivekananda or a Ramakrishna. We will never know! I look at them today, and their condition, and they have missed the boat. Thousands of sincere western seekers were misled and harmed by the novel teachings of Osho. I have seen many of them in the aftermath. They always lack the satvic glow that comes from yogic sex restraint; they look like spent rakes aged well beyond their actual years. Even in their age— when they might show some spiritual attainment— many still crave sex, and all the ordinary base things. Despite Osho's 'indulgence technique,' they never got over sex addiction and lust. This was one of the Big Lies that Osho told: That by indulging your sex desire you would transcend it. The great sages of Yoga spoke the real and opposite truth: You get over sexual lust not by feeding it, but by restraining it until you encounter the higher thrill of meditative bliss. Meanwhile, it is only that renunciation— the storing of the sexual energy— that enables one to contact the transcendental bliss. This has been the message of the sages through all time, including Lord Buddha, who was frequently ripped off by 'the Bhagwan.' Osho's teachings, though sprinkled here and there with mystical truths, were dead wrong in the most basic ways, and ultimately spiritually destructive. The proof is in the pudding. Christ said that one can know a true Master by the 'fruit' that emerges from him. Through his disciples Osho gave us moral and family breakdown, drug addiction, a disturbed childhood for many, and crime— even terrorism. Osho set Yoga back in the west perhaps hundreds of years. The saddest thing is what happened to all those children of Osho followers. Osho wanted them to grow up not knowing who their Fathers were; raised by a mob, with no particular person as Parent. I can't think of anything much more ignorant, or more cruel. Krishnamurti was right: Osho was a criminal."

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Sociologist Dr. E.P. Wijnants reports: Dave Frohnmayer, the Oregon Attorney General who had written his Harvard honors thesis on Nietzsche and Lenin, said at the time [of the huge controversy over Rajneeshpuram in Oregon in the mid-1980s] that he saw in Rajneesh the same “individual self-aggrandizement,” the same “relativity of truth,” the same “disengagement from ethics,” that he had discovered in Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman. Rajneeshism to him was a teaching that did not encourage compassion, or what the Buddhists called Karuna, the selfless love for all sentient beings. To Frohnmayer it encouraged guilt-free indulgence, individual self-aggrandizement, and a smugness about being on a spiritual path. Given the above, this came to be coupled with a supercilious, disdainful and, indeed, hostile attitude towards other people. (http://soc.world-journal.net/Rajneesh.html)

Hugh Milne, formerly Shivamurti, one of Rajneesh's several closest associates in the 1970s, wrote in 1987 about the callous attitude of Rajneesh concerning his own ashrams in India and in Oregon: "He had little compassion or regard for the feelings of others. There were to be many deaths in the ashrams, both from suicide and from hepatitis and other diseases that could have been cured with proper medical attention. Rajneesh never gave enough money for food in the ashrams, and was not concerned when we worked too hard or slept too little." (Milne, Bhagwan: The God that Failed, 1987, p. 105)

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Paul Ramana Das Silbey visited Rajneesh’s Poona One ashram in India in Oct.-Dec., 1978, which at that time had about 800 residents, and he later expressed his concerns in a widely-read article, "Meetings with Remarkable Masters," for the publication Yoga Journal, July-August, 1979, Issue #27, pp. 36-43 (his section on Rajneesh and Poona One is located at pp. 37-9). Ramana Das was/is no prude, nerd, or scold, but was a traveling singer of Hindu devotionals, and later himself a practicing left-hand tantricist.]

[Here begins an excerpt from the Ramana Das article, "Meetings with Remarkable Masters," with some italics and boldfacing added by Timothy:]

After three months at [Neem Karoli] Baba's ashrams and temples in Northern India—full of his personal directives, guidance, and love, the moment came to travel south. Part of my trip had been set aside to visit the Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, and I timed my arrival to match the opening of the October English Camp. Every month, the ashram runs a 10-day intensive camp, to demonstrate the various Rajneesh techniques; one month the language is Hindu, the next, English. Although I came to Poona with a generally positive feeling about Rajneesh from some exposure to his tapes and books, and some participation in high-energy events at the San Francisco [Rajneesh] center, the reality that confronted me here caused me to totally reassess my previous experiences after two or three days.

There are no visitors quarters in the Rajneesh ashram. His popularity has created a mob scene, forcing most of his disciples and all newcomers to seek housing in the areas close by the ashram. However, the gates open early and close late, so everyone has a chance to hear Rajneesh in the morning, experience his meditation techniques during the day, participate in the ongoing groups (which make up the core of the teaching), and relax to pseudo-California mellow rock music in the evening.

Upon entering the ashram, I was quietly but thoroughly watched by ashram guards. I passed through the fortress-like wooden gates, into an entranceway with a huge hotel, chandelier, and entered the grounds. The disciples, or “sannyasins” as they are called, who work at the ashram, do so seven days per week and eight hours per day So, amongst much bustling around, I found out that in order to speak with Rajneesh, one must already be a sannyasi or be ready to become sannyasi. In other words, one can only speak with master if he is part of the master’s group, or anxious to join it. Since I wasn't that anxious, I simply paid for attendance in the group, and made an appointment with the staff head who assigns both visitors and sannyasins. Two of my, groups, the Enlightenment Intensive and Centering, I called "window-dressing" groups since they seem to be assigned to everyone entering the ashram for the first time. Both of these were nonviolent groups, designed for a quick experiential "hit," or for a pleasantly surprising instant effect, an unexpected moment of awareness. Other groups were purportedly deeply spiritual experiences, like the Zazen and Vipassana groups. However, the concentration normally required by these two disciplines seemed to break when the members joined the rest of the ashram to hear Rajneesh give discourse each morning. But the majority of the groups, such as the one I took Sarjana or creativity, dealt with energy, how it moved in each person and between persons.

Rajneesh has become a symbol for "letting go" and exploring all taboos, and I learned that the "meat and potatoes" of most groups were sex, sensuality, fantasy, repression, anger and violence—his leaders, his groups and his ashram all reflected this approach to enlightenment. As for unselfish, unconditional love, it was a quality and a vibration noticeable only by its lack of manifestation. To quote from one of the soothing mantras sung each night over and over again to the beat and melody of the Western ashram house band: 'Nothing is wrong, wrong cannot happen, wrong cannot exist.' And so it went at the ashram. As I stayed around the ashram in the succeeding weeks, many enlightening experiences [ironic use] touched my being.

There were: slave and master couples who toured the compound playing out their respective roles; the group where you could take home your slaves for the night (and where the lady in question had three males at her beck and call, until the morning); the sensitive young man who was roundly beaten up by a woman in his group because he reminded her of her younger brother; and so on.

What was more disturbing to me than this mutually-accepted "acting-out" society of orange residents, was the fact that the "responsible” guru, Rajneesh, was condoning and encouraging these forms of behavior, something that many people around the world would take as an endorsement of gross sex and violence. I also noticed that cathartic behavior and its reinforcement through Rajneesh's techniques carried over into a sannyasi's "regular" life. It was always surprising to hear how some sannyasi friend (who seemed so saintly, calm and centered) beat his girlfriend up each morning apparently with her consent, or how Western sannyasins went into the streets of conservative Indian towns tongue-kissing, crotch-fondling, et cetera [the cross-cultural equivalent, as some Indians lamented, of Catholic monks and nuns having full intercourse on the public streets of towns in Europe or America!-- Timothy].

Anyway, I did get to hear Rajneesh every day at early morning discourse and even sit in silent, private darshan with him a couple of times, after completing the groups I had signed up for. It was interesting that many of his sannyasins fell over and went to sleep when he started speaking. Although I was always firmly led to a position in the back of the room, I had very direct eye contact with Rajneesh each time since so many of the people in front of me melted away as his talks progressed. His discourses were full of power, charisma, and planned direction. No spoken or spontaneous questions were allowed. I felt that the atmosphere that surrounded him—paranoid guards, rigid planning and conformity to a prepared format—was nothing like the flowing “in the moment" beingness he advocates strongly in his books and tapes. So I guess the right words for the scene in Poona are contradiction and inconsistency. Sannyasins would glibly explain this away as a wonderful technique to destroy the ego, and at a certain level that’s probably true. It seemed to me that many people with internal chaos and unfulfilled desires were attracted to this Poona ashram. They were offered group expression and acceptance that they could not get anywhere else.

The ebb and flow between high-energy and vacuousness represented a world of emotional extremes where ashramites alternately repressed and blocked their fantasies, then allowed them to blossom in astonishing displays. I saw Rajneesh as the Walt Disney of the ‘80s, and Poona as his Disneyland where, for the price of a general admission plus an extra charge for specific "rides,” each customer could get his or her share of “emotional” entertainment. One night it struck me—as Rajneesh was giving his benign darshan in the back of the ashram, as the house band was playing danceable chants, as an enlightenment intensive group was asking “Who am I?” on the top of one building, while the violent encounter was beating its way along in the basement. Here I was in Hollywood East, Rajneeshland, on location for the greatest Hollywood movie of all time, starring a Charleton Heston-like god-image, replete with a groovy score, sex and violence, scads of beautiful and diaphonously dressed, long-haired ladies dancing and twirling in sensual abandon, all manner of group experimentation (centering around energy, sex, anger, and the other ‘deadly’ sins), and an audience that had become part of the action by coming to the ashram to experience this supercosmic circus at first hand! How much more three-dimensional could a producer get?

I also came to feel that the group titles were selected by a publicity agent, keyed for their timeliness and audience appeal. Perhaps this year or next, there would be groups with such catchy titles as "Death," “Ritual Sacrifice and other Ancient Group Experiences," "Cannibalism and Other Forms of Food Recycling," and possibly, "Parents and Children—the only group where all can be explored together."... * [see following note]

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* Yoga Jounal Editor’s note: According to a press release from the Rajneesh Foundation, dated March 18, 1979 and entitled "No More Violence in Rajneesh Therapies":

"No physical violence between group participants is now permitted in any of the therapies at the Shree Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, India. As of January this year [1979], specific instructions have been issued to all group leaders to no longer allow participants to use fighting as a means of discharging repressed emotions or for any other purpose. The violence was stopped following an indication from Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh that it had fulfilled its function within the overall context of the ashram as an evolving spiritual commune. Bhagwan also indicated that there will come a point in the development of the commune at which therapy groups will be discontinued altogether. He explained that it was a question of intelligence. Psychotherapies were needed only because the thousands of people coming to his ashram from the West were not yet intelligent enough to heal their own psychological wounds. "Instead of healing them, instead of opening them to the winds and to the sun, you go on hiding them," he said at a recent discourse in his ashram. "You need psychotherapists to help you open your wounds to the sun so that they can be allowed to heal. I am allowing all kinds of therapies in this commune. In fact, in no other place in the world are so many psychotherapies available--sixty in all. Why am I allowing these therapies? Just because of you, because you are not yet ready to release your intelligence. As the commune goes deeper and deeper into inner realizations, therapies can be dropped. When the commune has really bloomed, there will be no need of any therapy. Then love is therapy, intelligence is therapy. Then living day to day, moment to moment, aware, alert, is therapy."

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[Ramana Das’ article continues:] An interesting aspect of the ashram was the international flavor of its visitors and residents. As I understand it, when Rajneesh was getting started several years ago, many of the people close to him came from the West, particularly California. These people had been part of the human potential movement, and were attracted to his teachings of surrender, flow with the moment, "do it," and his interest in all the techniques being developed by that movement (encounter, sensory awareness, body movement with guided fantasy and music groups, for instance. However, when I was visiting the ashram during October, November and December of 1978, it appeared that many of the residents came from Europe—people who had never experienced the freedom and openness of California living, people who were coming and letting go of years and years of accumulated "impurities" via the process of these groups. There were also psychotherapists from a variety of schools who were practicing individually at the ashram. (Incidentally, all the money taken in by the groups and the individual work goes directly to the ashram.) Anyway, the cast consisted more of Germans, Danes, Swedes, French, Italians and Japanese. There were no Africans and only an occasional black Amenrican visitor. Obviously Rajneesh's brand of psychology and spirit appeals mainly to a well-heeled segment of the world’s population.

Of course, a guru can be explained as the reflection of his disciples, and, in this case, of increased worldwide expressions of sex and violence. So it's not surprising that the "orange cult" exists and grows. It was also interesting that Rajneesh spent many moments of his discourse time belittling his detractors, gloating over his growing army of orange sannyasins, demeaning political leaders, cracking ethnic jokes, and speaking little about world peace or the alleviation of human suffering....

[Ramana Das goes on to speak of his idyllic times at Ramanashramam and at a 10-day Buddhist vipassana meditation course at S.N. Goenka’s Igatpuri center, and meeting in early 1979 a true “living master” of spiritual wisdom, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj of Bombay. In implicit contrast, he also notes how everything is free at Neem Karoli Baba's ashrams, at Ramanashramam, at Igatpuri, and around Nisargadatta Maharaj—all quite unlike the case with Poona One and Rajneesh.]

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Former Rajneeshee neo-sannyasin Christopher Schnelle wrote on March 3, 2006, at the Rajneesh discussion site rebelliousspirit.com/osho-webzine/103/sharing, in a cogent response to a pro-Rajneesh email of Jan. 29 by Harry Manx, a.k.a., Swami Krishna Prasad:

Hi Harry, [...] If I read your message correctly then you are saying the following: Osho may or may not be a fake guru. Those who oppose him are stuck in the past and too much in their head. As a result these people miss out on all that is beautiful in life – playing, crying, smiling, singing. You love Osho, he inspires you and if a person is intensely and totally devoted then this person is glowing with love and bliss – regardless of whom that person is devoted to.

That’s nice and a beautiful illusion. The issue is very straightforward: What is more important – truth or feeling good? You clearly answered that feeling good is more important for you than truth. That is very much your right, however I personally feel thoroughly uncomfortable basing my life on a lie just to feel good. I am doing the opposite – I accept whatever is true, no matter how uncomfortable, painful or embarrassing. [...]

I am writing about Osho because his lies and his deceit caused an enormous amount of pain for a lot of beautiful people. Most of these beautiful people have no idea that a sophisticated fraud was perpetrated on them and blame themselves for their deteriorating mental and physical health. Many of my sannyasin friends have great trouble sustaining this illusory happy fog and are taking more and more desperate measures to continue feeling good. This hurts.

Back to your message: You are courageously conceding the possibility that Osho deceived people [...] but then you use two of the best strategies with which Osho defrauded us all:

• The first one is that those who oppose Osho are too much in their head.
• The second strategy is that WHO is saying something completely overrides WHAT that person is saying. In other words an enlightened person can speak the most appalling rubbish and it is still much more valid than a lesser person speaking total truth.

Osho defrauded some of the most beautiful and intelligent people on the planet. Therefore his fraud had to be sophisticated. The best trick he used in his fraud was telling everybody “Use your mind in the world, but go beyond the mind in the spiritual”.

In other words, “Don’t use your mind around me. If you use your mind, you are in your head and you are missing out on the spiritual.” Osho mainly targeted and attracted very intelligent people who have strong minds. Osho here used the same strategy as the Catholic Church – create an unsolvable conflict within people and then they are easy to control. [...] The church demanded people feel guilty about perfectly natural things like sex and the church said that the only way to free yourself of this guilt is by adhering to the church’s commands.

Osho’s “Go beyond the mind to be spiritual” had exactly the same effect. It’s ok to point out that the mind has serious limitations and many mental habits cause misery. However it is outright fraud to say that the only way to be spiritual is to ignore the mind. This creates a conflict with truth, because the mind is needed to recognize untruth. If the mind is ignored, the person becomes unable to distinguish between truth and lies. [...] The more intelligent the person, the stronger the mind and the stronger the conflict. Every time sannyasins used their intelligence, they felt guilty. The smarter they are the bigger the conflict.

The second nasty trick Osho used was “Only an enlightened person can speak truth, anybody who is not enlightened cannot speak truth, no matter what they say.” [...] I think every sannyasin concedes that Osho sometimes spoke the most appalling rubbish, for example when he spoke about science. However, his strategy leads to sannyasins accepting anything Osho says, no matter how untrue and ignoring anything Osho’s detractors say, no matter how true.

Osho managed something amazing with these two strategies: He managed to lie and lie and lie to us sannyasins. We didn’t expose his lies because we didn’t use our reasoning abilities (our minds) and we valued his lies more than any truth because an enlightened person’s lies are more valuable than another person’s truth.

The best frauds are those where the victim says “I wasn’t deceived” and where the victim even actively fights anybody pointing out the fraud. Osho’s fraud is one of those. None of this would matter if those lies didn’t cause such enormous damage to so many intelligent and sensitive people.

Harry, you are doing well. Many other sannyasins are not doing well. There is the enormous death rate through cancer – too high for a middle aged population. Many sannyasins work as healers and most of them fit the ‘wounded healer’ syndrome. Many others’ health has collapsed. Many sannyasins are involved in things that are even more harmful, like Deeksha [i.e., the Oneness Movement started by the so-called "Kalki Bhagavan" and "Amma" of Golden City Temple].

Osho was a sophisticated and nasty fraudster with a grudge who intentionally misled and hurt his followers. His grudge was that deep down he knew that his teachings were a sham and he could not bear to see genuine seekers. It is a tragedy that so many people did not know and still do not know that they have been hurt in this way.