Christopher Calder’s Criticisms of Osho Answered

“Osho, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the Lost Truth” by Anthony Thompson.

Mr. Calder, according to his own information, became a disciple of Osho back in 1970`s during the time that Osho resided in the Woodlands apartments in Mumbai, then Bombay. He came to India in November 19 1970. Osho gave him the name of Sw. Krishna Christ “I was Rajneesh’s second Western sannyasin just behind Ma Yoga Prem. Check out a first addition copy of “The Silent Explosion.” I came up with the title and wrote the introduction. My sannyasin name was Swami Krishna Christ.” (Calder 2006). He did not particularly appreciate the name and he complained to Osho about it. Here is an excerpt from a letter from Osho to Sw Krishna Christ, in answer to his complaint about the name, reproduced from “A Cup of Tea” (letter 327):

The ego is the seriousness, the disease, and the tao, the egoless existence,is the bliss, the ecstasy. That is why I have given you a name so absurd! But I have given it to you knowingly. I have given it to you so that you may never be identified with it.The name is so absurd that you will have to remain nameless and nobody behind it, and the name is such that not only others but you yourself will be able to laugh at it. Swami Krishna Christ!

His name then was Walter Pfuetze. In 1971 his adopted father took a group of students to Woodlands Building in Bombay and met Achayra Rajneesh face to face. That is why his name was listed in early books as Swami Krishna Christ, aka “Walter Pfuetze.” He changed his name in 1976 to Christopher Calder because he did not like German names. Besides he was British and was interested in the artist Alexander Calder. Somewhere along the way he got disillusioned and disappointed with Osho and wrote fiery articles against him

I am not a disciple and I do not consider Osho my Master, but I cannot hide my admiration for the old man. I think his contribution to expanding human awareness has no parallel in human history. There have been other masters, but no one has been so effective in reaching so many people during his lifetime as Osho did. Also, his insistence on laughter, enjoying life and humour as religious qualities makes him stand alone in the world of mystics. Finally, he helped to liberate, sexually and from social conditioning vast numbers of spiritual seekers that would have, otherwise, ended up ranking with some ascetic, repressive guru, and thus contributing with more repression and self-torture to this world.

Osho´s Sayings
Mr. Calder quotes Osho on many occasions. The way he does this is malicious and clearly his intention is not that of an expert detached observer, but that of a resentful lover. His intention is to create an image of Osho that becomes a pass way for his own feelings of anger and hurt. To be hurt or angry is Mr. Calder’s prerogative. However, to twist facts, quotes and ideas to spread the understanding that we are facing an evil character is just a manipulative and indirect way of giving an outlet to his own personal vendetta.

In my understanding it is utterly nonsense to pick up a few statements from Osho’s more than 8500 hours of talks and evaluate him based on that. I can’t believe that a person like Calder, who claims to know him since ages, can do it. And a funny thing is, Osho himself never denied being contradictory, on the contrary he glorified it. So, to this day to take a quote from Osho means nothing in itself. You can get the man to advise you on gardening, wallpapers or sex. Out of a whole chapter referencing a quote means nothing. Calder quotes (without a direct book or chapter reference) that Osho loved Hitler. I have searched the entire library of his talks and that quote is nowhere to be found. Supposedly he took this quote from the discourses “I am the gate”. And certainly Mr. Calder appears as one of the Editors of the first edition. No where he said “I loved Hitler”. What he says is something that is of public domain, and that is that Hitler had an alliance with Tibetan esoteric groups. In fact the Tibetans supported the third Reich. Where do we think “the swastika” came from? It is an old esoteric symbol used both by Jains and Tibetans. The Nazis just turned it around.

The only thing that I have found is an interview in Der Spiegel. I have seen the video (The Last Testament, july 19, 1985), and Osho says to both journalists, Erick Widdeman and Reiner Weber, when he is asked about Hitler “I love the Man. He was Crazy”, jokingly to see their reactions. To what both German journalists look shocked. Later he adds that “he considers the man to be completely immoral and a murderer”, and he compares him with Mahatma Gandhi. Not to speak positive about Hitler, but to show how immoral Mahatma Gandhi was, in his view, for being against technology in a poor country like India and preaching celibacy and self-torture. Now, the article in Der Spiegel, edited of course, shows Osho comparing Hitler and Gandhi as saying both were great men. “Hitler was like Gandhi” can be read as the article heading. That is the way how things get distorted by the yellow press.

I have found some other Osho quotes about Hitler and Gandhi and his arguments about it. “Just think: if Adolph Hitler had been a cripple or had amoebas or was continuously getting hepatitis, the world would have been saved. In fact, Adolph Hitler was against smoking, against alcohol. He was a pure vegetarian like Mahatma Gandhi. In fact, both men have many things in common. Both believed in going early to bed and both believed in getting up early in the morning. Both believed that vegetarian food is great. Both believed that smoking is bad, alcohol is bad. Both were great saints! Both were equally dangerous and psychopathic. The only difference was that Mahatma Gandhi had the Jaina characteristic very much developed in him — he was only ten percent Hindu, ninety percent Jaina — so he tortured himself. Adolph 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. They both were enjoying torture. … “(1980, Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing)

To torture oneself or to torture others, both are diseases — the very idea to torture. Somebody is an Adolph 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. Adolph Hitler’s joy is in torturing others, Mahatma Gandhi’s joy is in torturing himself, but both are violent. The logic is the same — their joy depends on torture. Their direction is different, but the direction is not the question, their mind has the same attitude: torture. You respect a person who tortures himself because you don’t understand the logic of it. Adolph Hitler is condemned all over the world and Gandhi is worshipped all over the world, and I am simply puzzled. How is it possible? — because the logic is the same. (1977, Tao: The Pathless Path)

In addition, there are of course innumerable times where Osho describes Hitler as a pygmy, as occupying the lowest rank a human being can sink to, etc.. Misquoting Osho, or quoting him out of context, is one of the favourite and most despicable pastimes of Mr. Calder.

A quote of two lines means nothing out of a context nowadays. As an example: Osho said “esoteric means bullshit” from the talks “From Bondage to Freedom” in 1985. And “everything that is valuable is esoteric” from the talks “Beyond psychology” in 1986. Osho himself once said “You need not agree with what I say; you can only agree with me directly. There is no need to come through what I say. I say a thousand and one things and I contradict myself everyday. If you start agreeing with me you will go mad! You can’t agree; nobody can’t agree with a what I say. You can only agree with a few points but those will not be all that I say. Contradiction is my method. I go on shattering. I go on shocking, offending people; that is my method, to shatter people’s beliefs” (Osho, 1980, The Open Secret).

Therefore, I think Osho’s words need to be taken not as a comprehensive philosophy, but rather as a seductive invitation to self-explore and understand the nature of mind, body, emotions, and the role of meditation in this search. Besides, the discourses were given many times as responses to individuals, and in several occasions he was answering not only the question but the questioner himself/herself. I can remember his speaking against the women’s lib movement to a radical feminist and then saying the exact opposite to a male chauvinist south American. Or talking about god to an atheist and then saying it was a lie to a catholic priest. (“The Ultimate Risk”, 1980 by Satya Bharti)

The “Cult” Story
Mr. Calder speaks of the sannyas movement referring to it as a “cult”. I do not agree with his statements of Osho´s movement being a cult. This is why: Some of the pre-requisites to have a cult is to have a systematic body or set of beliefs – a complete belief system that explains everything in terms of itself. As Mr. Calder’s knows, and has consistently argued, Osho contradicted himself a lot. It is practically impossible to create a cult out of his words. The only consistent idea in his talks is that of awareness and meditation. The rest is simply not systematic enough to do anything with it. If you are going to join a sect, you need to have something to believe…some promise of paradise or future enlightenment. You don’t join a sect that tells you that “you are already a Buddha, enlightened” (from “The heart sutra”) and that you just “need to come back home. However you are, you are beautiful the way you are” (from “The Goose is Out”).

My understanding is that Osho´s work was mainly deprogramming people against their self-constructed ideas about love, spirituality, growth, relationships, etc. In fact if you want you can find statements where he speaks of karma and reincarnation and then another statement where he says there is no soul, no reincarnation (see “Reincarnation a Misconception” discourse given in 1989) , and that karma is just a way of social control. He speaks of god and then says there is no such a thing and it is just a” teddy bear” for fearful people.

Second, you need rituals that people, old and new, can join to. And nowadays there is nothing like that. Even the celebration of his death and birthday, and his pictures, or the “sannyas giving” have been removed as official celebrations in the Osho resort in India. Anyone can go there and verify and see if there is any “blind cult” happening.

Third, a cult does not admit dissent, and Mr. Calder and I have been writing and discussing on a sannyas owned website quotes he took from Swami Anand Parmartha´s (Editor/Sannyasnews) article. There are also discussions criticizing Osho on sannyas websites. Sannyasins tend to be variously free, open minded, closed, fanatics, or careless… as any human being can be. But there is no official enforced dogma on believing or agreeing on anything. The proof of this is that sannyasins are the single group of spiritual seekers that you can find practically at the feet of any master, or new therapy or mind expanding method. You can see them in shamanism, ayurveda, Kalindi´s, Diamond logos, work, etc, etc, in addition to their ranking with different therapeutic schools.

Fourth, you need someone to believe in, some saviour, and Osho himself advised his disciples not to believe in him unless it was their direct experience. And repeatedly he told his disciples he was “no saviour or prophet or only begotten son of god, just an ordinary human being, like you” (Osho 1985, Interviews with the Press). Or “a Master is not someone who has achieved anything. a Master is someone who has discovered that there is nothing to Achieve”(Dying for enlightenment, 1979, By Bernard Gunther)

My research shows that Osho was no ” Deepak Chopra”. The man was a rebellious iconoclast who did and said what he thought was his truth. He demolished the Catholic Church, Islam and any form of organized religion; he spoke against mother Theresa, Gandhi (precisely for being against technology, which Osho strongly advocated, not as Mr. Calder’s affirmation in his article).

Osho, was a man who saw no use for rituals, discipline and all the self-torture that is going on in the name of renunciation or spirituality. The development of self-awareness was his flag. Moreover, he spoke against Indian traditions. Reason enough for the attempted murder against him in early eighties in Poona, by a fanatical Hindu during a public talk.

He thought of the meeting of east and west, of materialism and spirituality. “Zorba the Buddha”, he called his “new man”. And certainly he did not live the life of an ascetic. But beyond all, he helped his disciples and friends to be independent and rebellious individuals.

Mr. Calder’s Sources
Most of his sources, as I said before, were the books written by two angry ex-disciples Sw. Shivamurti (Hugh Milne) and Ma Satya Bharti. I have personally interviewed some people mentioned in Milne’s Book and they have reassured me that many stories of his book are complete fabrications, like the story of the mango uses in tantra groups and the fact that he was Osho´s personal bodyguard. Milne was not Osho´s personal bodyguard. He was Laxmi´s. (Osho´s secretary at the time). Osho´s bodyguard was Sw. Vimalkirti. Milne was just guarding the Darshan sessions when Osho spoke to his disciples. He was the ashram osteopath, and had somehow a special position in Poona one, which was not where he found himself later in The Ranch in Oregon. He had to drive a bulldozer and obey the orders of Ma Anand Sheela, Osho´s new Secretary. He was the one who reported to have seen Osho inhaling Nitous Oxide in his house. He failed to see that that was the anesthetic being used in a dental session and not the recreational endeavor of the master. Actually, Hugh Milne´s book should have been called “The Secretary who failed”, because all the problems reported in the book were with Sheela not Osho.It is interesting to note that Hugh Milne (sw. Shivamurti) had psychiatric problems. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and ended up consulting witches and trying to kill himself. (Milne 1986)This is Mr. Calder´s source, and key witness, together with the introduction to one of the books that Osho dictated from the dental sessions and under the effect of this anesthetic.

When I confronted Mr Calder with the quotes from Devageet, he just wrote that “Devageet was a crazy man” and so was I. Therefore my disagreeing with his second-hand information made me into a “fanatic cult follower”. The other source of information is the Book “The Promise of Paradise” by Satya Bharti Franklin. He was an early disciple who wrote two previous celebratory books about the life in the ashram and his experiences with Osho. In this book, he speaks about the rumours of Osho touching, or having sex with his disciples early in Bombay. That is where Mr. Calder, together with Milne´s stories constructed the idea that “ ( He ) stated that he made love to his young female disciples because it would ensure their enlightenment in a future life” (Calder 2007).This is sheer invention. Mr. Calder is not a witness to this account. Unless, of course, he was holding the camera while the master spoke this words and had sex in the privacy of his bedroom. I strongly doubt Mr. Calder was invited as a voyeur to such sessions.

I do not think that Osho was celibate, moreover he admitted not to be so, but still I have not find one single disciple to testify to have had sex with the man. I have however found accounts of people who heard other people saying they had sex with him and I have no reason to doubt that. Again, he did not preach celibacy. In fact he considered it a disease. A quote of Osho himself speaking about his sex-life. It is in The Last Testament, Vol. 1, 22 July 1985 pm in Jesus Grove, and goes like this: Q: HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CELIBATE? A: Right now I am celibate, but if my health gets better I am not going to be celibate. I have never been celibate. I do not do anything against nature. Right now I am celibate not because celibacy has any value, but just because I am sick. I don’t have any energy to make love to a woman and do all the gymnastics, no. I have enough energy to talk to my people, to talk to you. If I get healthy again, I promise you, I will not be celibate.

The Sheela Story
Both Milne and Bharti had serious conflicts with Sheela´s fascist style in the Commune in USA. They both assumed that Osho was behind her actions. In fact she usually said that the “order comes from the chief” to convince someone to do something they felt their consciousness would not allow. So people thought it was a “devise” from the master. Now, Osho and his personal staff have clarified that many “orders” did not only not come from Him, but were deliberate moves on Sheela´s part to expand her power to areas where it was weak, such as the inner circle of the personal staff around Osho.This area that was not under her command in the commune. In fact the attempted murder of Osho´s doctor was a move in this direction.Many people were expelled from the commune in Oregon and big international and prosperus communes like Medina in England and Sushila´s in Autralia, were closed down because they were too successful and independent from Sheela ´s regime. Osho knew nothing about it (we must remember he was not speaking in public or having personal contact with his disciples) and to all of them it was said that it was Osho´s order.Sheela´s fascist style developed over time as a response to the intense antagonism that the commune created around them . There were 17 state agencies trying to get them out of there; the sign announcing the nearby commune was used as shooting target by the local resident of the area; the hotel they bought in Portland was bombed, and even there is convincing evidence that the CIA hired someone to kill Osho. All this has been documented in the books “Passage to America” by Max Brecher and, “The way of the heart” By Judith Thompson, and “Rajneesh garden”, by Dell Murphy. Also, it can be checked in Juliette Forman´s account of the time and Ms Appletton´s Book. I do not justify Sheela´s behaviour and I think she was criminally minded. But it certainly creates a context to view what these guys were facing. For a complete story of Osho´s commune see: http://www.ashe-prem.org/two/davisson.shtml
Also, in his article, Mr. Calder joins, or at least holds morally responsible, Osho´s arrest and deportation from USA with Sheela´s crimes. What he fails to see is that all those crimes, the salmonella poisoning, the intent of murder of Osho´s doctor, Devaraj, and the plot against the attorney general, the bugging of the commune, including Osho´s own room, were crimes committed by Sheela and her associates. These crimes were exposed by Osho, and it was him who invited the FBI to investigate them in his own commune. This ultimately lead to the capture of Sheela and her friends in Germany. If he had kept silent, no one would have ever guessed or known about them. We should know that the salmonella poisoning in The Dalles was attributed to “improper food handling” by the authorities. Now this is referred to by the media as “The only American case of Bio-terrorism”. We could argue that Osho had a poor eye for choosing his secretary or that she changed over time, or that he should have been more involved in controlling what she did in his name, but we can not accuse him of crimes that include him as a victim, such as the wire-tapping of his own room. To think of Osho as omniscient or infallible is nothing but a god-like father projection. He was a human being. Wise, awake, but a human being. He himself said when a journalist asked him “if he was enlightened, how he did not know about theses crimes?”. His answer was “enlightenment means I know myself. It does not mean that I know that my room is being bugged” (Osho, Interviews with the press, 1985)
Osho´s factual “criminal” records As far as criminal records is concerned, Osho´s criminal records (as Mr. Calder mentioned to me) and reasons for his deportation are just two charges of immigration fraud. He was accused, First, of arranging sham marriages. And second, of lying on the tourist visa application, in the sense that he stated he did not intend to stay in the States and later he tried to stay.

It is just not possible for Osho to have arranged any marriage due to the fact that he did not see any disciples in private. Marriages were certainly arranged to allow foreign sannyasins to live in the commune. But these are the sole responsibility of the people involved. To hold Osho responsible for this is just stupid. it is like charging the Pope for any Catholic staying illegally in Rome. n relation to the second charge,according to his attorney, Niren, and the research he did, no one in the whole history of the United States has been even prosecuted for such an “offence” and, what to say about the half a million dollar fine that he was forced to pay for his release. To come to the US on a touirist visa with the “hidden intention” of eventually applying for a permanent one is not a ” crime” that anyone, ever, has been charged with.

The attorney general said when he was asked why Osho was not accused of the same crimes as Sheela that “I did not have any proof whatsoever linking Rajneesh to Sheela´s crimes.” And “all we wanted was to dismantle the commune”. And he forgot to add that the complaint that lead to Sheela ´s arrest was filed by Osho himself.

athompsonphd@hotmail.com

(This is a shortened version of a longer article which appears at http://beyond-truth.blogspot.com/2008/02/lost-case.html)

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65 Responses to Christopher Calder’s Criticisms of Osho Answered

  1. shantam i singh says:

    I think many of us have heard the satire from Osho where he mentions about two old ladies who could found dozen of obscene words in the complete dictionary. christopher Cadler is one of their kind. This man will not enjoy the solitary path leading to a nice view but will complain about few cigarette buds or empty beer bottles on the way. Ego clashes, naked ambitions and lust covered with Tantra were always part of sannyas movement, but this does not demean the essence of the whole work.
    Once i enquired from Mr. Cadler,” Can he tell me just two names in the world of spirituality where he finds the feet are not of clay. Just two names, who he thinks, have contributed more than Osho, just two names where his critical mind drops.”
    It was around three years before. His answer was,”People i admire are very private. They are not in public domain. And he criticizes this old man as He is taller than all, in the market.”

  2. Kartar says:

    Everyone is naturally, inherently, and incontrovertibly egocentric. No one can see the world from any perspective other than his or her own nor fully escape the tendency to perceive the world through the filter of his or her own self-interest. Some are more egocentric than they need to be to protect their own well-being and their egocentrism often harms other people.

    And, even when we recognize that our views may be contaminated by our egoistic perspective,we have extreme difficulty separating the actual events from our interpretations. C.Calder is a prime example.

  3. Heraclitus says:

    It is difficult for devotees, notwithstanding disciples, to find a proper interpretation of the famous “Cup of Tea” book made by Osho in letter 54: “Buddha. Jesus.Lao Tzu – it is easy to be their heir, but Genghis Khan, Taimur and Hitler: they are also within me”. and later in the same letter:
    “Nectar and poison – both are mine”.
    Well….. of course one can go along with the writer of this article, Osho may well have been writing to one particular person, and yes Osho certainly talked against the tyrants that have run this world in many other places.
    But… Osho would not be alone amongst mystics to talk about being “beyond good and evil” and therefore treating both, as somehow arrows from the same bow, which to “transcend” one has to go beyond. Dangerous talk from a common sense perspective, but enough for me to “pause” when I hear discussion around this point.
    To be sure, Mr Calder is up shit creek. But is the writer of this article far behind, if the mysteries (which he may want to penetrate), lie beyond good and evil, as ordinairily defined?

  4. premsalami says:

    So what if Osho played with nitrous oxide and got high, and pissed people off by having too many carsHe was free, and awake.Shiva enjoyed smoking hash,gurdjieff enjoyed drinking loads of cognac,ramana maharshi,enjoyed chewing betel,,Jesus drank wine and Nisargatta smoked beedies.Why doesnt Chris Calder just find another master if he wants to be free and stop moaning about Osho?

  5. frank says:

    when mystics talk about being beyond good and evil.
    surely they are talking about going beyond the llimited and dualistic perspective of the conscious mind?

    or maybe thay are saying :get blasted,drink yourself stupid,raise a bit of hell,kick a bit of ass and fuck you…
    if you are unenlghtened,you deserve everything you get,loser…
    ?

  6. frank says:

    hi heraclitus,
    as regards letter 54 in a cup of tea.
    osho did appear to be the heir of laotse and chuang tse with his laid back wit and exagerated characterisation of the world.
    but,excuse me,i never heard of him disembowelling anyone with his bare hands,massacring thousands and putting their heads on stakes,burning whole cities alive ,and the only gas chamber he was involved with was a laughing gas chamber!

    a few geezers feeling sick in a salad bar and sticking a poison pen up the doctors` arse are not quite in the same league.

    devotees and disciples may be able to find “proper explanations”,
    but how about poetic license?

  7. Heraclitus says:

    Sure Frank you are right. I am myself not sure why Osho wanted to compare himself to Genghis Khan, etc… maybe to press some buttons here and there and keep people awake.
    Must admit that it disturbed me when I first read it years ago.
    On a related point I am aware that “conventional society’ is very afraid of mystics and what they stand for. So much so, that they often seek to kill them. When they do so they find their excuses, like accusing them of consorting with the devil, (even when they heal) and “corrupting” the youth – they executed Socrates for that “crime”! Maybe this is why in the public mind mysticism is somehow associated with the powers of what they call darkness.
    What do you think?

  8. frank says:

    mystic is a bit of a dodgy word in englsh.
    dictionary defs usually include:occult.obscure,otherworldly,hidden,mysteries etc. -all spooky stuff!
    not to mention mist,misty,miss,mush…
    its all very slippery and indeterminate,hard to pin down and insubstantial.might not even really exist.
    its enough to turn any right-thinking,rational,straight,square,upstanding,regular guy a bit nasty and violent just thinking about it.

  9. Michelle Moore says:

    I just exchanged a few emails with Mr. Calder. I provoked him first by expressing the same sentiment as in the article here – that he sounds like a scorned lover, rather than an impartial observer of events. His second response to me was a sly insult regarding the absence of my name signing my emails to him. It was nice to read this article later, which mentions his name change(s) which shows the real importance he places on names…

  10. Anthony Thompson says:

    I would like to give the new adress where my whole article can be found:
    http://truthaboutosho.blogspot.com/

    greetings
    Anthony

  11. amrito says:

    haha finally you appear Anthony!! thanks for your article, I needed to make your words available because alot of the links you had were too long!! I tried contact you as well, o well, you’re here! I will frwd your blog.

    Love,
    Amrito

  12. kandi says:

    he is a r vry egoistic…n does not understand the meaning of what osho is trying to say from his words… does not understand hw v r blessed by havin such a holy man lik osho….it does not mater who osho is…or wat he was…all dat maters r his words which are of immence importance…osho has shown us the right way -of not blindly acceptin what other ppl say…no matr who it is…he has shown us dat path of questioning nd trying to find out by ourslf what life is and what god is…if he has evr cld himslf God…dn he hs also tld us at d same tym dat v ourslf r god…but the onli difference is dat he knos d fact nd v do not…

    he says dat osho had loads of drugs…but dosnt he realise osho is d same person who hs tld us to live life in all possible ways….to explore it in all possible ways…nd what makes you feel dat some one takn drugs mst b a bad person….n who is he to decide who is good and who is bad…!!U do not evn kno wat is good nd wat is bad…wat mite b good 4 u mst nt be good 4 othrs…so den shud othrs go on makin such stupid websites like u hav made n strt criticisng u instead…!
    u hv also criticised him of havin hd sex wid many girls…..!!y ??cnt he hav sex…!!he hs equal rites of havin sex as much as ur pop had wen he thought of creatin u…nd instead osho has nvr discriminated sex…instead he hs encouraged it…nd explained d beauty of it….n i gss u r still a virgin nd havnt had sex…mayb dats y u dnt kno d beauty of it…
    if u hav nethn 2 say in reply pls go ahead…bcz i vl b sureli able 2 clear all ur doubts..bcz i hv been vry close to him…more than mst of dem hav

  13. The first time I read Calder I fell from the sky – Osho urinating in the halls, Osho taking 6mg Valium, Osho making love to gals…my god ! I was waiting for a long time that someone will come forward to blast his lies…we should all be very-very grateful to Mr. Thompson.

  14. umberto carrara says:

    Well reading these pages and the calder pages it seems that everybody is trapped into accusing defending. Blindly somehow trough faith. 35 years are gone, the guy is gone, the beliefs have been established even if you don’t see them, the conditioning, thing like aids are viewed as in1989 , oshotimes is a regime paper, censored, oshoism decadentism is rampant and if you want to believe, you just believe what you want. Sheela was the villain, osho the saint who sacrificed himself for us. So hilarious to hear all this and still people believing in fairy tales , no courage to move further, without the osho stick or lantern, a lantern that never led anywhere but right back to ego and bondage, all the mass of sannyasin today are stuck and do not where to turn, so they do not turn, they keep going like gremlins down a cliff…..enlightement on the death bed, what a joke! what a cheat, still working today, people gulping it down like fois gras goose! halleluya!
    yes you might have had great experiences and memories, but what else? the horror of those kids in pune 1, the horror of the ranch, prisoners happy in their camps, carrots wavers for a enlightened future……
    take care boys
    umberto

  15. Anthony Thompson says:

    What is an intelligent, witty, critically minded person like you umberto ( I always thought the name was Humberto), discussing with blind cult followeres like us. …taking the time to write in these kind of places.
    Come on! the man is dead, 35 years have passed… get a life.
    Some unfinished bussiness … perhaps?
    At least be honest to admit you are still hooked.
    regards ‘
    anthony

  16. Rohan says:

    Hey Heraclitus,

    Osho was never in favour of good or bad. But he was more interested in neutral which he also called as pure existence beyond any good or evil. Everything spreads from the heart he knew that.

    People always confuse with the term “god”. they think its something which beyond their understanding. Yes its true its beyond understanding but still its inside them only. Osho knew that the god is settled in of everybody’s heart. What is god its pure existence which is neither good nor bad / evil. It is just the bodily or more particularly egoistic attachment and its relations with mind and brain makes a person good or bad for the society. Still the person, his life and his pure existence remains as it is. It never changes.

    If we see it as just a pure existence / life then god is in everybody. There is no exception. Its there in gengis khan and hitler, its there in gandhi also, in buddha also. Only thing differs is the nearness to the existence. Highly egoistic people take decisions which are harmful for the society which makes them evil, but still they have existence.

    Osho was interested in only one thing that was man’s existence which is universal, which is the only truth and which is in everybody thats why if he is heir of buddha he is also the heir of genghis khan. Because existence doesnt know the good or evil it is just pure silence, shunya, god or parabrahma whatever you can call. And its just man’s ignorance about it that makes him gengis khan or hitler. also its man’s desire to become existence itself which makes him buddha, jesus or krishna.

    Rohan

  17. Vishal says:

    I am neither a follower nor an opponent of Osho. But I can critically say that he was an intelligent man. He was charismatic. He was magnetic. A few things that he said were right. I do not agree with everything he said. Well, he was a human being. Even Jesus, Moses, Mahomet were human beings. They were criticised too. Osho was not infallible. Even the so called prophets were not infallible. Even though they were spiritual.

    Well, I believe Osho was a threat to religions. Religions are great businesses. Christ is dead, but many so called custodians are doing good business out of it. Same for all religions, without any exception.

    So Osho was ruining that religious business. He was a threat. So, he had to be expelled from the competition. And hence a plan was set up to get rid of him.

    I myself can set up another school of thought. And I am sure that religious leaders will try to challenge me. It is like opening a new chain store! Anybody can do that.

    I believe that Osho was a man, but his mental faculties were impressive. In this world, either you are a ‘good’ man or a ‘bad’ man. If you are an intelligent man, you are ‘bad’. If you are a nincompoop then you are ‘good’. This is the golden rule. The Mob rule.

    One thing I do not agree with Osho is the idea of talking about reincarnation. I do not believe in that. It is not true. But he could have talked about spiritual reincarnation which is true; it might have been misunderstood by people. But physical reincarnation is nonsense.

    He said all religious are bogus. He was right. All religions nowadays have gone to Dogs. He said that Jesus, Lao Tzu, Mahomet, Buddha were enlightened. He was right. He said that being vegeterian was aesthetic. Well, I do not agree with him. I guess pregnant women need non-veg food. Those who are sick as well need non-veg food. Ok, I agree that slaughtering is bad, but it should be done in such a way so as to inflict a low degree of pain to the animal.

    Cycle of death and re-birth is quite problematic view of Osho. The big bang theory has proved that the universe had a beginning and it will sooner or later come to an end. This planet will not last forever. The geostationary model has been proved to be incorrect. The planets in the solar system will not last forever.
    If there is a beginning and an end, this means that there must be a secret behind it. It can’t be a matter of chance. Osho’s brain couldn’t have been created by Osho himself. The laws of this universe are so precise that simple error of 0.0000000001 % would cause a whole destruction of the entire universe. Osho’s heart could have have come in this universe by chance. His whole body couldn’t have come here by chance. A human body is highly sophisticated.

    I believe there is an architect who has designed this Universe. I dot call him God or Creator. I prefer the word engineer or designer. There is a designer. Just like the tailor who used to design the very clothes of Osho. Likewise, a designer designed the body of Osho and every human beings. I strongly believe that Osho knew that a Designer or Engineer was here. But, since the idea of this designer was in itself associated with bogus religions, Osho might have said a ‘healthy’ lie to go to the other extreme. Buddha never affirmed or denied God. He took birth when blindfaiths and superstitions were associated with God. So, a new approach had to be used. I guess Osho imbibed his strategy to get people from the abyss of blindfaith and obscurantism. I belive Osho was a spiritual liar. At times a lie is more helpful than 1000 truths.

    The musical soundless sound ‘OM’ is a fact. I myself can hear that sound. It sounds like a small bell that rings unceasingly. It sounds like ‘chin chin’. I agree fully with Osho on this point. He said those who wish to listen to that could try physical exercise such as yoga, or karate or music so on. It is true. He talked about chakras in spinal chord. This is something true. Even martial artists of Japan approved that. In martial jargon, the word ‘Ki’ is used. The inner force. Oyama (founder of Kyokushinkai), who was one of the greatest martial artist of the world in fact exploited this very inner force to kill around 50 bulls with his hands. He could kill anyone with his fist. That force is known as Dan Jun in Japanese. Martial Artists say that it is located just below the navel. Kung Fu so on uses that inner force too. Osho talked about that inner force. He is 1000% right. Osho talked about meditation. All martial artists practise meditation.

    Oyama himself used to practise meditation. He used that power of meditation to challenge all his opponents in combat. He defeated all of them. All martial artists know about that. Osho is right when he talk about that inner spiritual energy. Anyone who has had the opportunity to see a martial artist in Japan, would realise that there is an inner energy that allows that martial artist to fight or break slabs of ice so on.

    I guess he should not have used the word Bhagwan. Had he used the word Osho uniquely he would have been a spiritual hero. Big mistake. Those who are enlightened are always humble. Wisdom means humility. But Osho was challenging. Had he been alive, I would have come to meet him and challenged his views. Just too bad, he is no more.

    He said to listen to music so on…not bad idea. Celibacy was a disease. I agree with him. But promiscuity is a disease too. Sex can lead to spirituality. Yes, he is true. But love is important for that to happen. Quite problematic. His views are not very specific.

    In short, he was a man. He himself said that evolution can never stop. So, I believe his enlightenment did not reach the highest level. Because according to Osho, himself! spiritual evolution is infinite. I guess even had he lived for over 1000 years, he would have never reached the end. End does not exist.

    I am someone who practise martial arts. In Martial Arts, there is no such thing as ‘ I have known everything’. Oyama once said that before his death, that there are certain techniques that I have not yet mastered well. It is like a circle.

    Enlightenment is a like a circle as well. Those who think that Osho reached the highest level and final level of enlightenment are Big Fools.

    He might have reached a certain level. Because Spiritual Enlightenment is infinite. It is oceanic, to quote Osho himself!

    If Osho said that he reached the final and last level of enlightenment, then He was either ignorant or he was a liar.

  18. Swami X says:

    It doesn’t matter how often an individual reads a “holy” book if they read it with the same fixated understanding and never change. It is my understanding that all of these people disgruntled with Osho had their own issues, often projections of wanting a “guru” to be like Gandhi and when Osho spoke in contradictions and behaved in ways that didn’t fit in with their idea of what a guru should be, they collapsed. They were weak, slave-minded people who thought they were free by “giving up” on society but when they went to Osho they had never given up their slave mind and instead just made Osho the slave master. They might have been attracted to his “different” ways at first but once they couldn’t hold onto anything solid as a philosophy or teaching, they collapsed
    because they had never put in the time to work their own leg muscles, instead always relying on someone else to hold them up and when Osho said, “I am not here to hold anyone up,” they collapsed atop of their atrophied legs.

    Christopher Calder wrote something like, “Osho said he had no respect for Jesus.” This is just asinine. I have read multiple 300+-page books where Osho talks about his tremendous respect for the man. This clearly suggests Calder has taken one silly statement out of context, probably a joke, and making it into a definitive philosophy. He could just as easily say, “Osho hates Polish people” based on his many Polish jokes and he would be just as off in his assessment. This not only shows Calder’s lack of understanding of the man, Osho, but also his lack of sense of humor.

    Osho answered one student who questioned his own loyalty to Osho that the student never loved him but only his words and his arguments. He said over and over that he is NOT teaching philosophy, that he is NOT his words, NOT his arguments. I understand and connect with the man deeply and so I can hear him say things that on the surface that may be “wrong” or seemingly “angry” or “biased” and know them to either be tools or just having fun. Calder does not have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. He could have spent 20 years with Jesus and would probably write a piece about the dirty hippie who called himself God.

    Christopher Calder is one of those sad people who has metaphorically sat on a meditation cushion for 20 years the whole time daydreaming about women and food and sports cars and then proclaims to “know” meditation because he has “put in the time.” I read his words and see him as a child, no matter what his chronological age.

    Swami Asananda, “Swami X”
    http://rebelyogi.com
    AsanandaX@yahoo.com

  19. SK says:

    I have come across OSHO just recently after going through different authors such as Eckhard Tolle, and Ramana Maharshi. I was just amazed at (and easily related with ) what he had to say in Ashtavakra’s Mahageeta, Krishna’s Bhagwad Geeta, about Meera and Kabir, about Jesus, about Pythagoras, about Socrates, about Gurdief, about sufism,etc. etc. … just mindbogling and inspiring. I am just glad to have come across OSHO during a rough phase in life.

    When I learnt about the Oregon incident it made me feel bad for OSHO. And then when I was reading Mr Calder’s website I again started feeling weird about OSHO. I am glad I saw this blog and different clarifications.

    OSHO has done a great service to humanity by explaining/debunking so many wide varieties of religious beliefs. I hope that people forget about Oregon incident or the RollsRoyces and start enjoying life as OSHO suggests. It’s funny that recently when I was expressing my excitement about what I have learnt from OSHO to some of my American/Indian friends they ridiculed me and ridiculed OSHO’s amassing RollsRoyces and overall Oregon incident.

    On the topic of Gandhi, I see OSHO saying so many nice things about Gandhi – such as his praise for “Experiments with Truth” as a good book for reading during self-realization instead of blindly re-re-reading or by-hearting Geeta.

    One thing to remember is that no one will know the real truth since that time has long passed and those beings are no more. We have no right, no authority or no right tools to judge their actions. Focus on building the right ground for your own enlightenment and meditate/interpret all different teachings (including OSHO’s) to help grow yourself.

    Live a happy life! Stay aware!

  20. NP says:

    I am kinda agree with Vishal & S.K.
    I have listen Osho, most of his Hindi lecturers & he is amazing how he can explain about all the characters. Command on the Hindi language is great. But I would suggest all of you to listen UG Krishamurti, you may find some different view about all the enlightenment & spirituality.
    The Way you see it life from where you see it & that is how one can explain & other can interpret…..
    It’s suspense, that is why it’s fun in philosophy of life. No one really has known the god/creator & no one can/will knows, some of them try to pass their experience but most of them fake about enlightenment.
    Enjoy

  21. Abhirup says:

    hay i’m very sorry 2 say all of u that Osho has done various misinterpretation about various gurus who had done a massive contribution for the humanity recently i;ve read some osho articles in which he misquoted about Swami Vivekananda he said bluntly that through Swami Vivekananda no one can reach to Ramakrishna, more over he quoted that Vivekananda’s sayings about Ramakrishna was a misinterpretation etc, Since he was an intellectual and Ramakrishna was emotional to there forms a polaraty and what all nonsence… how come he can quote all these about somebody without knowing properly about him . i’m saying this because i’ve myself read Swami Vivekananda and life of Ramakrishna to his core realities and found nowhere such intellectual and emotional relation at all. I cannot expect such foolish remarks from so called baghwan Rajneesh to whom once i used to respect a lot…

  22. Dr P says:

    It’s interesting in this article that Osho basically says the opposite of what people want to hear (telling the priest that god doesn’t exist, telling the atheist that god does). If this is the norm, then how would one discern truth (from the heart) from fiction/lies?

    He says that Ghandi was violent, and goes on later to describe his own (Osho’s) style: “Contradiction is my method. I go on shattering. I go on shocking, offending people; that is my method, to shatter people’s beliefs”.

    So his method then is (disguised) mental violence? The auto escape hatch out of any argument is the doctrine of “contradiction”. No statement of his can be falsified or debated, because they are essentially meaningless.

    Strange that you can defend Osho by saying he can’t be quoted, because he contradicts himself so much, and then go on to use various quotations of his in other areas as if those particular quotes are somehow special and hold true. It allows you to pick and choose, you can make him into whatever you want. If we accept the contradictory nature, then Osho boils down to meaninglessness. ie. In Osho’s world, words mean nothing, they are just used as weapons.

    “He said over and over that he is NOT teaching philosophy, that he is NOT his words, NOT his arguments”. This doesn’t hold up from someone who made a living calling himself a teacher. Consider a man who lies, his defence is “I am NOT my words!”. A man abuses others mentally (to “shatter” them), his defence is “I am NOT my actions!”. A man who lives an opulent lifestyle and says “They are NOT my possessions, I just did it to get you ["idiots" he says] interested!”.

    To me his output (teachings, methods, books etc), appears to be bogus, and a claim to have been operating on a “higher level” would also seem to be spurious.

    Chaos ahoy!

  23. Yashwant Kulkarni says:

    Hi,
    Few times Osho has criticized Islam. On the contarary, in one of his lectures he said that “when I am nearing to die, I would speak about Islam & Mohammed Paigambar, because these peoples (Muslims) are such a barbarous..”

  24. Viktor says:

    Sir, your articles on Rajneesh were interesting, unbiased and fair, I would say. Do you have any info, that Rajneesh, on his deathbed, said something very similar to: “thank God I no longer have to keep up the pretence of being a guru”; and that this was videotaped by his followers? Reply highly appreciated. Many thanks. Om Shanti, Viktor Nowicki.

  25. Bodhi 'Gay' Dharma says:

    Hi

    I just read Christopher Calder’s article on the web. All I want to say about Osho is that I have read many books by Osho and am impressed and have learned a lot from him, but he is no GURU

    A true Guru speaks little, points the way and kicks your ass and makes you go down your own path ALONE!!

    My Guru taught me meditation and Martial Arts………….. and the fee was an envelope on a table in which I was free to put whatever amount of cash I wanted, I was also free to leave by putting an empty envelope into the collection box, nobody in the class would have known it was my empty envelope

    When i went back for the ‘next level’ my Guruji kicked my ass by saying if you truly meditated twice a day like I told you to, you would not be here asking me to take you to the ‘next level’!

    This is a true GURU, one who is on his or her own path and simply points you in the right direction. Anyone who talks and talks and ‘hand holds’ you is a FAKE like Mr Rajneesh AKA Bhagwan AKA Osho AKA GOD AKA
    Rajneesh Chandra Mohan Jain……….incidentally the man was from the same place where my forefathers come from

    Spiritualism/Meditation can only be found in profound silence……………..find a Guru who can show you the way to Silence and then go into your own silence

    Christopher Calder is as much as a fake as Osho as he is using his meetings with Osho as a way to give himself some kind of cult status……..much like those so called Martial Artists who supposedly trained under Bruce Lee……….besides he comes across as a Pompous Colonial Victorian closeted racist individual who uses ‘science’ (which is purely physical) to explain Cosmic Consciousness

    Anyway I have made enough noise now, I got to go back to silence

  26. APURAVA says:

    i dont care what osho did or not did…He made me alive and gave me a direction which apart from osho no present or past master would have given…..

  27. Alok says:

    Hey Christopher Calder or what so ever your name
    i read your artical

    Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth i just wana to ask one question that you only mentioned that
    in below

    “Rajneesh knew everything that Buddha knew and he was everything that Buddha was. It was his loss of respect for ordinary truthfulness that destroyed his teaching. ”

    There are two thing
    1. Ordinary person like us can not reconize a buddha only if you are budhha then only you can say like above.

    2. If you comment is right then there is no question of ordibnary or morality a Budha is not bound for any thing like that so why you are crying so much.
    ALok

  28. Ex Anand XXX says:

    My God, what happened to Osho’s dream that people start becoming apologetic like that? Anthony writes just like a creationist would write when confronted with good evidence for evolution.
    Osho may have been really cool and everything, but sure we know that he said that he “loved Hitler”. Only sannyasins tend not take this very seriously. Didn’t Osho “for fun” used the Hitler salute when the Bunte people were in Pune? Are you “against Osho” when you think that he either did not know what he was doing then or that he knew it but thereby simply showed that his taste was lacking? 8 million died in the Holocaust, and he thinks that it is very “zen” to shock people with reference to Hitler. Perhaps some of you think that that was very clever and cool – but what about awareness and compassion? I find the whole attitude behind that worse than all which Calder describes. The idea that people go to Pune and get therapy for non-existent ailments, but have no problem in laughing hysterically about their “Master” using the Hitler salute drives the message home: self-obsessed seekers of egolessness.

    And what about Osho? Sure did he use absurd amounts of laughing gas, and sure he did know what went on on the farm – just read the accounts of people who have been there and involved, such as Shanti Bhadra.
    Perhaps Calder is overstating his case, but he has a case.

  29. Ex Anand XXX says:

    sorry, typo: I meant to say: “what went on on the ranch”, not the farm. Just in case one of the clever guys starts picking out this one.

  30. peter says:

    Yes, Calder is talking as if he knows everything. He doesn’t criticize only osho, he is saying jesus, buddha all are wrong. He is saying osho is mad, but osho is the most intelligent man in the history of humanity who spent his life in raising the human consciousness in every way. Osho surpassed all the other religious teachers like buddha, with high level of criticism of bogus religious. Fact is normal people cannot analyze Osho Intelligence. Osho had provided solutions to all the problems of humanity.

  31. Ex Anand XXX says:

    Peter, postings such as yours are exemplary for cultist thinking. Point taken, thanks.

    Even if you believe that Osho was so incredibly intelligent – isn’t there also a question of how you use your intelligence? Krishnamurti for one seems to have been fairly intelligent, too, but he was less dependent on being worshipped by endlessly repeating cheap songs (Oh blessed master Bhagwan, you are the sun of my heart. And I love you, love you, love you, ad nauseam), by having his pictures everywhere, and so on.

    Perhaps Osho was clever (I hesitate to call it intelligence), but he clearly had a deficit somewhere – otherwise why the absurd need to be worshipped like that?
    And don’t be kidded – he really handpicked the ktisch songs that were sung in Poona and the Ranch. He was master of ceremonies from beginning to end.

    Anyway, for all the dependency he created and mind games he played, it all boils down to how successful Osho was. I.e., by his own measures: how many people became enlightened by Osho. True, he had a habit of declaring dead people as enlightened – but living ones?
    Does that tell you something?

    Furthermore, if you really believe that normal “ordinary” people cannot judge Osho’s intelligence, how do you know that he was the most intelligent man ever? By whose standards? By his fruits? The fruits are: followers who claim not to be followers, and zero awakened ones. Great mind.

  32. Kaloshna says:

    Thanks, Ananda. It is quite a relief to read something rational here.
    After being with him for quite some time, here’s my take on it: Osho put us into a deep sleep, being the surrogate awakened one for those who follow him. Whatever he said, what he DID was that he kept us under him. It was wonderful, charming, fun, hilarious, and everything. But it was a game, and he was the one who played it to his advantage. What we do not usually consider is how many people were lost on the way – and I mean really lost. Like those who left the ranch without anything, those who were sterilized on Osho’s direct “advice”. These we have forgotten.
    But those who remained … are they off any better? I have my doubts. They are still following him – even, as you say, they claim that they don’t: the perfect prison is the one which gives you the illusion that you are free.
    I find it saddening that so many otherwise nice, creative, rebellious people would have stayed with Osho. That they’ve come to him, I find great. I was among them. But to stay around after the whole show is over and Osho is gone (20 years now!) – there’s one word for that: stuck in the past. Imprisoned.

  33. Abington heights highschool Student says:

    Hey does anyone have any info on this Christian Calder? It would be very helpful. If you could just leave a post it would be great, thanks.

  34. Ex Anand XXX says:

    He was one of Osho’s first Western disciples, formerly known as Sw Krishna Christ. He was in Poona I, I don’t know about the Rancho Rajneesh.
    But don’t take his word for it; many of the old-timers, such Deeksha, Shanti Bhadra, Savita, Shivamurti, etc. will be able to confirm, or even add to, what KC is saying.

  35. People are free to believe anything they want to believe, and many people want to believe some very silly things.

    Anthony Thompson brags that he is a “scholar” and an “expert” on Rajneesh-Osho, but Anthony never even met Rajneesh face to face, only viewed him from a distance. Does going to a Rolling Stones concert make you an expert on Mick Jagger? Anthony’s words are so full of misstatements of fact and illogical assertions that he is hardly worth responding to. Just one example: Anthony falsely claims that I state that Osho’s death was caused by nitrous oxide use. I, nor anyone I know has ever said that, only that Osho’s well documented drug use contributed to his dementia, not to his death. There are no legitimate medical uses for nitrous oxide other than for anesthesia. Osho inhaled nitrous oxide for months on end, a fact that his own dentist, Devageet, has publicly admitted. Osho loved nitrous oxide so much he had nitrous oxide tanks and spigots installed by his bed at the Oregon Commune, a fact verified by the police, the press, and various political leaders who were given tours of the ranch after Osho fled his own commune to avoid being arrested. Anthony contradicts himself right and left, and he dismisses first hand observations of Osho by people who actually knew Osho and who lived with him for years. Anthony is a very confused Osho enthusiast interested in covering up the truth, not in finding the truth.

    Devageet is like Anthony in that he admits Osho’s drug use on occasion and then denies it on other occasions. He can’t keep his story straight or rational. Both men use bizarre excuses for Osho’s drug habit. On one occasion Anthony insinuated that Osho’s drug use was OK because he could “tolerate” the drugs. Is that a sane argument? Obviously, Osho could not handle the drugs any more than Charlie Sheen. Devageet once told me that Osho was not addicted, but Osho’s “body needed it” (the nitrous oxide). No one needs nitrous oxide unless they are being operated on, and no operation lasts for months or takes place in a bedroom.

    Devageet gives courses on past lives, but Anthony denies reincarnation. Osho’s entire teaching was based on reincarnation, so Anthony is enamored with a guru whose teachings he does not even believe in. Anthony goes to great length to deny Osho’s sexual relations with his own disciples, an effort that makes no sense at all given that Osho publicly bragged to the U.S. media that he had sex with “hundreds” of women. Both Anthony and Devageet have serious arguments within themselves. They do not need me to argue with, because their own inner conflicts are enough for anyone to deal with.

    The simple fact is that all religion is a hoax, and all gurus are false. Life is proven to be a cellular, biological based phenomena, not a spiritual phenomena. Mysticism and religion are soothing myths created by human brain cells to help lessen our fear of death. A common problem is that people are fooled by cosmic consciousness. I was fooled in my youth by this grand and pleasurable phenomena just like so many others. Cosmic consciousness is a completely natural, ordinary and inevitable human brain event, not a “spiritual” or other-worldly experience, and it is absolutely unrelated to intelligence, wisdom, honesty, and virtue. There is only one world, and all that we see, feel, and know is in our brains, not in our souls, because there is no soul. When you meditate, the only thing you will ever find is more and more brain cells. All of the religious and “spiritual” experiences you may have had are products of your own imagination, superimposed on top of the natural phenomena of cosmic consciousness. You read a mystical book and then your brain creates an experience to fit the myths detailed in the book. You can have a “spiritual experience” from taking peyote, but how can taking a drug awaken a spirit? It cannot because there are no spirits, only brains.

    Rajneesh was born with a highly unusual brain. He had tremendous psychic (brain) energy, but no “spiritual energy” because there is no such thing. What he was had nothing to do with past lives because there are no past lives. His rare DNA made him “enlightened,” not any great effort in meditation. Consciousness is just a physical brain function, and the quantity of consciousness you have is largely dictated by your genetic code. You can enhance your consciousness through meditation methods in the same way you can enhance your muscles through exercise, but no amount of effort can turn a man with ordinary DNA into a Buddha. Buddhas are born out of dumb luck, not created by great effort, and their existence can be predicted by the laws of probability.

    Meditating is a safe and healthy way to get high, but nothing more. The problem comes when people lie about meditation in order to turn it into a business. Those who claim to be perfect masters who gained enlightenment from past life effort are deceiving their own disciples. Rajneesh-Osho was a self-deluded man with an old-school Indian brain that believed in all the ancient Hindu and Buddhist religious myths. His cosmic consciousness did not make him smarter, more wise, or more egoless than anyone else. All of the so-called “enlightened ones” had and have fully functional egos, many much bigger than normal. Ego is absolutely essential to human life, but Rajneesh was a extreme narcissist who had far more egoism than he needed just to survive. A human without an ego would be like a computer without an operating system, dead and useless. Imagine trying to build an autonomous robot capable of fending for itself without an ego function. It would be impossible. The machine needs something inside it that cares if it lives or dies, that gives it motivation to act in its own self-interest. That thing inside us that cares is the “ego.” Just because the ego function becomes hidden and is taken off your desktop display (your consciousness) does not mean that it is gone. Meher Baba, another “enlightened” Indian, was even more egotistical than Rajneesh. Both men were fooled by the essential ego function that had become hidden and even enlarged through meditation. Meditation pushes the ego function off your desktop display, making it a hidden, stealth program. Our brains are computers that operate both in analogue and digital fashion. Our DNA, which creates our bodies and our brains, is a naturally created digital code. Nature is pretty smart to build these organic, living machines we call humans.

    I rarely think about Rajneesh or any of my former gurus these days because they are all dead and gone. I am concerned about our nation’s latest false guru, Barack Obama, who is leading our country in entirely the wrong direction in regards to energy and agricultural policy.

    See “The Renewable Energy Disaster” at: http://renewable.50webs.com/

    Every day enough men, women, and children die of malnutrition and related illness to create an unbroken chain of corpses over 24 miles long. What is most important now is the security and affordability of our food supply and the availability of affordable, clean energy, not religious leaders who are irrelevant to our struggle to survive on this planet in a sustainable way. Meditation is a highly enjoyable hobby, but we would be wise not to make it into a religion. Our survival on this planet requires thoughtfulness and critical thinking, not blind obedience to any spaced-out guru, living or dead.

    You can find all of my nonprofit, amateur editorials at:

    http://meditation-handbook.50webs.com/

    Cheers, Christopher Calder

    • swamishanti says:

      Just noticed that my comment in reply to this comment by Christopher Calder, which I made in 2020, has been altered and edited. This isn’t surprising to me as people are using Christopher Calder, a highly unreliable source, to undermine Osho across the internet.

      I will also need to check whether my comment appears as I wrote it in 2020, in Lokesh’s ‘The Best and the Worst of Sannyasnews’ book, which I haven’t read yet, and as I suggested to Lokesh to include this particular thread in the book in the first place, as I had commented on it.

      And this is not the first time I have noticed that comments on this blog are missing or have been deleted. This time I will take a screenshot of my comment. SS 22/09/23

      Christopher Calder wrote:

      “ Devageet gives courses on past lives, but Anthony denies reincarnation. Osho’s entire teaching was based on reincarnation, so Anthony is enamored with a guru whose teachings he does not even believe in. “

      Devageet and Anthony Thompson are not the same person, so what is Calders point here?

      Christopher Calder, despite claiming to have spent years around Osho, doesn’t seem to have even grasped the point that Osho as a ‘guru’, went out of his way not to produce a dogma.
      Therefore Anthony Thompson doesn’t have to believe in past lives even if Osho did. That freedom is there.

      Christopher Calder continues:

      “ Anthony goes to great length to deny Osho’s sexual relations with his own disciples, an effort that makes no sense at all given that Osho publicly bragged to the U.S. media that he had sex with “hundreds” of women. “

      Actually , that is not the case. Osho never stated he had had sex with “hundreds of women”.

      What he said was:

      “ Love becomes just like any game: playing cards, playing tennis…I have loved many women, and I am the first enlightened person in the world who is being absolutely truthful to you. You could have never found out whether I am celibate or not. I thought, although I have not said I am celibate, you would consider me a celibate…

      But one fact I have proved absolutely and forever – that making love does not destroy enlightenment.
      On the contrary, it makes it richer, more beautiful – new flowers in it, new colours in it, new fragrances in it, new laughter, new smiles. The whole idea that the enlightened man cannot make love is absolutely wrong. “

      (‘From Death to Deathlessness’)

      “ All these people were fulfilling the desires of their followers. I don’t care a bit what you expect; that is your problem. I am going to shatter all your expectations of me. I am totally a free man. I don’t care even about whether you think me enlightened or not. I am, why should I care..

      …and I have loved many women – my enlightenment has not changed. I have created a historical event! In the future, no enlightened man should be expected to be celibate. I have risked much.
      But in a way, after enlightenment something is transcended – it is not sex, but sexuality. After enlightenment I have not been able to look into the eyes of any woman with sexuality.

      It is nothing on my part, I cannot take the credit for it. The whole experience of enlightenment has changed many things. Even making love to a woman is now totally different, absolutely different, has no connection with the love when I was unenlightened. It was not love, it was just a biological, chemical, hormonal attraction. It was just a kind of slavery; it was a need, and you were possessed by the need. That need has disappeared. Now making love to a woman is just pure fun – and I have never heard that after enlightenment fun is transcended. “

      (‘From the False to the Truth’)

      ***************************************************************************************

      Osho having sex with disciples, is a big problem for Christopher Calder, he has a very Christian conditioning. Thus he also dissaproves of mixing materialism with spirituality, doesn’t get ‘Zorba the Buddha’, and wouldn’t approve of tantric traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism and others.

      Calder continues:

      “ Both Anthony and Devageet have serious arguments within themselves. They do not need me to argue with, because their own inner conflicts are enough for anyone to deal with.”

      As far as Devageet is concerned, Calder doesn’t know what he is talking about. I have met Devageet and his eyes were crystal clear, he had some depth of awakening, and certainly no such ‘inner conflict within himself’.

      This looks like a very clear case of projection on Christopher Calder’s part, his own inner conflicts and problems with Osho.

      Swami Devageet was one of Osho’s devotees who was completely transformed through his contact with his Master. Like several other sannyasins, Devageet experienced a quantum leap in consciousness when Osho left his body. I remember when this guy Calder was on this site years back, when there was a different forum, Devageet came on here to argue with him and tried to explain the difference between Osho’s body and His consciousness.
      He also shared that he was still in contact with Osho’s presence still, years after Osho had left the body.

      I have written this before in 2020 but, clearly it was too threatening to someone who has edited my comment.

      **************************************************************************************

      **************************************************************************************

      Calder continues:

      “ Devageet is like Anthony in that he admits Osho’s drug use on occasion and then denies it on other occasions. He can’t keep his story straight or rational. Both men use bizarre excuses for Osho’s drug habit. On one occasion Anthony insinuated that Osho’s drug use was OK because he could “tolerate” the drugs. Is that a sane argument? Obviously, Osho could not handle the drugs any more than Charlie Sheen. Devageet once told me that Osho was not addicted, but Osho’s “body needed it” (the nitrous oxide). No one needs nitrous oxide unless they are being operated on, and no operation lasts for months or takes place in a bedroom. “

      Osho’s drug use is a big problem for Christopher Calder. Not for Devageet.

      Devageet was quite open about Osho being introduced to nitrous oxide, in fact he himself introduced it to Osho, has written a book about it. He hasn’t denied it. In fact he discussed it on here years before he wrote his book, on the old chatboard.

      And he has also written that he never noticed any difference in Osho’s silence, his tranquility. That was nothing to do with nitrous oxide use which was more like an addictive entertainment for Osho than anything else.
      When I spoke to Devageet in the UK he told me that Osho was given nitrous oxide sessions, then looked at me and asked ‘you have doubt?’ I understood what he meant and how many were confused by the whole nitrous oxide thing which caused doubts. Devageet certainly had no doubt but he witnessed Osho first hand, before and after he introduced nitrous oxide as part of his dental treatment, and noticed no change in Him.

      Christopher Calder writes, “Osho loved nitrous oxide so much he had nitrous oxide tanks and spigots installed by his bed at the Oregon Commune, a fact verified by the police, the press, and various political leaders who were given tours of the ranch after Osho fled his own commune to avoid being arrested.”

      This is simply not the case . I have read all of the police files and the FBI files and their is simply no reference with regards to nitrous oxide spigot points or tanks at all in any part.
      The same goes for the press and ‘political leaders’ .

      I mean, the idea of Osho having nitrous oxide rigged up to his bed is completey ridiculous . According to Nirupa, who lived in Osho’s house and cleaned his room for years she said she never saw any nitrous oxide ‘spigot points’. All witnesses to Osho using nitrous oxide say it happened while he was sitting in his dental chair.

      After all, Osho had his own dental theatre attached to his trailer home at the Ranch, which they even made wanted to make bigger at one point,bringing in more sophisticated equipment, according to Devageet’s book , something that Sheela wasn’t happy about and tried to postpone, but the work was eventually carried out and dental room was enlarged.

      And he also had a dental room in Lao-Tzu House back in Pune.

      When questioned about the source for the ‘spigot points by the bed ‘ story by Anthony Thompson, Christopher Calder couldn’t provide any source except for one American newpaper article (in the Oregonian?) in which it was claimed a US senator, Jim Weaver, visited the Ranch in 1986 and saw the nitrous oxide spigot points by the side of the bed.
      However, in the same article it was claimed that Osho had left the Ranch at the same time as Sheela- clearly not accurate . He actually left six weeks later after exposing her crimes to the world media and inviting the FBI to investigate.

      The whole story sounds highly suspect to me. It is mentioned in the FBI files by some of Sheela’s cohorts when questioned about their plans to murder Devageet and Devaraj that Sheela was telling them that she was concerned they were giving him nitrous oxide , however no-where is nitrous oxide spigot points by the bed mentioned, and I can’t imagine someone who cared as much about Osho’s physical health as Vivek did , consenting to ‘ giving him a hit’ before bed.

      Besides- actually inhaling nitrous oxide for recreational use doesn’t require spigot points anyway- I’ve seen it done, with a very large canister – all you need is a few balloons .

      • Lokesh says:

        One thing is for certain, Osho did consume a lot of laughing gas. It is an old topic and a bit worn out, but just for the record I will share the following. On the ranch, Mexican Rupesh, the brilliant percussionist and an old friend, RIP, had a part-time job as Osho’s gas delivery man.
        Like many Mexicans, Rupesh was quite lazy, except when it came to playing any kind of drum. The steel gas bottles were so heavy Rupesh complained about their weight and the fact that he sometimes had a call for a fresh bottle of gas at inconvenient moments. By Rupesh’s account I reckon the old man inhaled a truckload of nitrous. So what? Everyone has their pleasures, no matter how excessive.

        What always puzzled me about Osho’s story with the jumping jack flash is why he got so into what is in essence a bit of a cheap and not so interesting high. Back in the seventies I did the gas enough to know that prolonged use brought on a terrible headache. It has been said the excessive use of nitrous can cause neurological damage. Here on Ibiza, during the tourist season, laughing gas is sold in balloons at retail outlets. Most of the people you see using the gas never strike me as being too bright.

        If you have never tried nitrous before your first inhalation will be sensational….expansion of sensory input, feel-good factor etc. Wow! Wears off quickly and on that level is pretty harmless. Research has also found that it increases suggestibility and imagination, particularly sexual fantasies. Why someone who claims to be enlightened would do loads of it is anyone’s guess. After all, Osho claimed to be nobody, so who was it that needed to get high.
        During the early 1800s, there arose in England a fashion for inhaling nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, after it was discovered that its use ‘was attended by a highly pleasurable thrilling’. For the next half-century, it would be the drug of choice for young people. One learned body, the Askesian Society, was for a time devoted to little else. Theatres put on ‘laughing gas evenings’ where volunteers could refresh themselves with a robust inhalation and then entertain the audience with their comical staggerings. It wasn’t until 1846 that anyone got around to finding a practical use for nitrous oxide, as an anaesthetic. Goodness knows how many tens of thousands of people suffered unnecessary agonies under the surgeon’s knife because no one had thought of the gas’s most obvious practical application.
        One of the above comments is from Jagmohan Singh. He says, ‘Osho taking 6mg Valium, Osho making love to gals…my god! I was waiting for a long time that someone will come forward to blast Calder’s lies…we should all be very-very grateful to Mr Thompson.’
        Jagmohan obviously has a need to keep Osho up on some lofty pedestal and maintain his personal projection about the master being some kind of saint. Osho was no saint and never claimed to be. Osho used valium, as do 60,000,000 other people worldwide. So what? I’m sure he had his reasons. It is now certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Osho did in fact have sexual relations with a number of his female sannyasins. No crime in that. All of the women were consenting adults. Some might see this as a fundamental betrayal of the trust a female places in her guru. They might be right. But Osho was and still is to a certain extent, known as ‘The Sex Guru’. Is it really so difficult to believe that he enjoyed sex with different women? He never hid the fact that he was not a celibate. Now people like Jagmohan make out like it was impossible that Osho was having sexual relations with ‘the gals’. This is an all too typical example of someone projecting onto a master their idea of how a master should behave. Osho served to destroy all preconceptions about how an enlightened man should or shouldn’t behave.

        • frank says:

          Christopher Calder is an odd one. He wrote some interesting stuff but he always sounded to me like he was a bit on the spectrum.

          He`s into UFOs now, according to his site:
          http://meditation-handbook.50webs.com/CrazyWorldofUFOs.html

          • swamishanti says:

            He certainly is an oddball – and not only because he believes that someone’s consciousness is something to with the size of a person’s brain; and that was why Osho had such as huge consciousness – because of the size of his head. You could try pointing out to him that there are always fully enlightened Indians with small bodies and big bald heads around somewhere – but I suppose that he would just try to use that to justify his belief that consciousness is all connected the size of a person’s brain. But he talks nonsene:

            “Rajneesh was born with a highly unusual brain. He had tremendous psychic (brain) energy, but no “spiritual energy”, because there is no such thing.”

            If he has not experienced “no such thing” – no spiritual energy – then how has he really experienced Osho? Only as a man with a body. And that is where he misses.
            He has not experienced Osho as a consciousness. He believes that consciousness is just something produced by the brain. He doesn’t get the beyond the body/mind, beyond life and death part.

            Another quote:
            “What is most important now is the security and affordability of our food supply and the availability of affordable, clean energy, not religious leaders who are irrelevant to our struggle to survive on this planet in a sustainable way.“

            Yet he is one of those who is writing global warming denial ( of which his country the US is the worlds biggest contributor ) and he is against green renewable energy and prefers nuclear power , like Trump. I get the impression he supports the Republican party’s policy (ie leaving the US out of any climate change agreements and continuing to pollute the planet.) I wouldnt be surprised if he was a propagandist for one of the powerful individuals or the US corporations that are determined to undermine public faith in the scientific evidence for climate change.

            • satchit says:

              “Rajneesh was born with a highly unusual brain”.

              Would mean he was some freak of nature. Any proof for this?
              His photographic memory?

              • swamishanti says:

                He certainly was born with some highly unusual cognitive capacities – I agree with Calder on that one. I mean, the photographic memory – his abilities to speed-read five to ten books per day and amass a tremendous amount of knowledge whilst not being bogged down by it all, thanks to his silence.

                Was he born with an unusual brain because he was meant to be a World Teacher?
                Barry Long was impressed with Osho’s brain and said it should be studied by science.

                Adi Da Samraj was another guru who really believed that he was meant to be the World Teacher of the last century, and there were quite a few people that believed that, including Ken Wilber. Adi Da pales in significance compared with Osho as far as the amount of people he was able to reach and teach, ending up on his island in the Pacific with just a small group of disciples.

                Still, things can change and you never know what can happen in the future. Just look what happened with Jesus. Started off with just twelve followers, walking on those dusty roads, was ridiculed for declaring himself the Messiah that the world had been waiting for, and persecuted and murdered. But then look what happened – the religion that followed him spread around everywhere and even ended up persecuting other religions and non-believers.

                The same thing could potentially happen with Adi Da, I suppose. And , unlike sannyasins who don’t go around preaching and converting people , because Osho insisted he didn’t like that , and he didn’t want to be a messiah, any saviour , etc , the current followers of Adi Da at Adidam are really quite different – because Adi Da declared himself to be an Avatar. So, more similar to the early Christians perhaps. Plus , a very sexually liberated form of spirituality is bound to go down well in the future times, after centuries of heavy Christian sexual repression.

              • frank says:

                Wasn`t that `big cranium` idea just a bit of a gauche intellectual way of saying he was a bighead?

                I think he got the idea from one of the biologist Lyall Watson`s books where he theorised about a very large prehistoric cranium he found on the beaches of Namibia. Watson theorised that he was part of a hominid group called the Strandlopers, `Beachwalkers` who according to him had such big craniums and brains that resulted in such an expanded consciousness, that for them, life was enough just walking up and down the beach, eating a bit of fish, watching the sunset, collecting a few shells. They were so blissed out that they couldn`t really be arsed to get any complicated shit going on.

                As a result, unfortunately they got wiped out, probably by some pinhead yobbo version of humans from inland who, owing to their small heads, didn`t have such expanded consciousness and as a result still thought that kicking ass and grabbing other people`s stuff was the best game in town.

                • swamishanti says:

                  Er…if you mean Barry Long, I have heard that he did consider Osho enlightened (he certainly also attracted a lot of sannyasins in the 80s) and was apparently quite impressed with Osho’s intelligence and intellectual capacity and said something in a satsang along the lines that his brain could be worth a scientific study in the future:

                • satyadeva says:

                  Yes, I heard BL refer to Osho as “a great master”, although he made it clear their ways were very different (thankfully).

              • satchit says:

                The question is also:

                What was first, the hen or the egg?

                Was “enlightenment” the result of his “highly unusual cognitive capacities”?

                Or were his “highly unusual cognitive capacities” the result of “enlightenment”?

        • swamishanti says:

          I agree that Osho probably consumed a fair amount of the nitrous oxide – but how much, the exact frequency of the sessions and how often over the Ranch and Poona 2 period, isn’t clear… Anando has written a new book, ‘Osho: Intimate Glimpses’ . Apparently in Pune Two the ‘sessions’ were taking place when Osho had become too ill to go to discourse, he was working on his disciples present during the sessions.

          But the way I expect it was is that Osho was actually able to consume massive amounts of the gas in one session, much more than the normal person. So I see it slightly different from Anthony Thompson.

          I have observed people inhaling balloons of nitrous oxide straight from a huge canister to get high, and they were quickly completely off their heads for a while and often wanted more when they had come back down – until they had had several balloons. Sometimes people will pass out after inhaling several balloons, although there would still be plenty of gas left in the canister, enough for hundreds more hits.

          Often kids these days are taking nitrous oxide in small silver pellet-size metal canisters, which come in packs of around a dozen hits. I often see a few empty used ones lying around outside in the wild ,or by the side of a road , like little empty silver bullets. Doing it from large canisters straight from balloons provides a bigger hit, more like something from large parties and raves where people are on hand, selling it to lots of people in one night.

          In Osho’s case, I gather that he was introduced to nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic in a dental context by Devageet somewhere around 1981/82. Nitrous oxide was still being considered safe to use in dentistry back then, and the gas is also known to have a cooling effect on the lungs, which is partly why Devageet suggested it, as Osho was highly asthmatic.

          And then, Osho decided that he wanted to bring out a book consisting of Devageet’s notes, including some photos of him sitting in the chair under the influence, and used this situation as a Gurdgieffian style device when Shiva was invited in the dental room for the photo- shoot – the session published in ‘Notes of a Madman’.

          The thing was, I understand that Osho pushed Devageet and co. to give him an absolutely massive dose of nitrous – keep pushing the dial higher and higher – which was far bigger than any normal dose – which was in fact dangerous and made Devageet concerned for his safety – Osho kept telling him to have no fear – he had always loved danger – and Devageet had said at one point that Osho demonstrated that his awareness and consciousness was untouched by the gas, that he was able to function normally, with his cognitive abilities intact, still able to speak, albeit much more slowly, but, under a such a large dose of nitrous oxide that would have made a normal person completely unconscious.

          Anando has also written that Osho was experimenting , trying to find something that could make him unconconsious – yet never did.
          There is also the story of Neem Karoli Baba being fed a massive dose of acid by Ram Dass- enough for several people, and showing that he was able to function perfectly normally.

          Osho dictated three books worth of material from the sessions at the Ranch – which were said to be taking place twice daily at one point.

          However, how frequently – and how often really isn’t clear.

          My guess is that he was just able to handle a massive amount of it that would have other people flat out on their backs, and that was giving him a massive high, as Osho had a highly sensitive and expanded nervous system.

          I get the impression that whereas 10 large canisters might last a heavy recreational user a couple of years, Osho would’ve gone through them in 10 days or less.

          However I also gather from reading reports and listening to the podcasts of some of those who were involved in treating his body in Pune 2, such as Anubuddha and Dr Indivar, that Osho was also into natural approaches to healing such as a acupuncture, massage and Ayurvedic herbs and was also wary of toxins and the side effects of pharmaceutical and chemical drugs.

          I do think the addiction story is over-exaggerated – after all, Osho spent a year on the World Tour with no access to nitrous oxide and Devageet was not even around for most of the time. Yet his demeanour in his discourses remain unchanged and he appears as sharp as ever.

          Also, I think where some people doubt and wonder if Osho was ‘using’ the gas to get out of his mind – those who know better know he didn’t need to do that, much less advertise this with a photo-shoot and a book!

          Sometimes you can find people who are not enlightened yet or just think that they are and they are still able to move out of the mind – without needing the use of any drugs. For those living long-term with him, and those involved in his dental sessions and use of nitrous oxide, were aware that he was in a constantly blissful state of being, living in his proximity was blissful enough, and his enlightenment was unchanged. Not to mention sannyasins who had a non-physical connection to his Presence. If if there was any change at all from the seventies to the eighties, I would that guess his enlightenment had matured more than anything else.

  36. Lokesh says:

    There is also the story of Neem Karoli Baba being fed a massive dose of acid by Ram Dass – enough for several people – and showing that he was able to function perfectly normally.

    Yeah, everyone has heard the story. It changed the way many people looked at acid back in the day.

    For all we know. the baba could have palmed the capsules and had a laugh about it. People tend to see what they want to believe.

    • frank says:

      We`ve been over all this before. But re Osho`s drug-taking habits, remember that in his own words (to be found in ‘Autobiography of a Politically Incorrect Mystic’) he describes how he did experiments with chloroform where he took a large dose and went into a kind of trance to show one of his friends what the Bardo was like.

      Plus, he explained how in his late 20s he had continuous blinding headaches over a long period and a doctor friend prescribed him sleeping pills to at least get some sleep. The young Rajneesh found that the sleeping pills helped to get rid of the headaches. He explained that the drugs “balanced the left and right sides of his brain”, thereby curing the headaches. An idiosynchratic view, for sure, of the effects of what was most likely in those days some kind of barbiturate.

      It may be worth noticing that there is cross tolerance due to similar function on the brain between barbiturates and benzodiazepines of which Valium is historically the most common. That means, that when, as is claimed, Osho started to take Valium for his back pain later on in Pune 1, he may have already had some tolerance to it, making taking larger doses easier (or more desirable?) to move into. In any case, he certainly would have recognised the `hit` on the stuff, which is quite similar. Thus, having had a positive experience of it years earlier would have been positively disposed towards using it.

      At that time, it is very possible that his doctor was not aware of the dangers of these kind of drugs, indeed the same craziness continues today even in the days of the net where such info is easily available.

      A case in point here is the recent cautionary tale of Jordan Peterson. Who, you ask?
      Jordan Peterson is a Canadian academic and psychologist who in recent years, due to his kind of anti-pc stance and other `radical conservative` stances on a host of issues (for some, me included, uncomfortably alt-right) shot to international fame, becoming a philosopher/guru, touring the world, gaining a huge following and becoming a massive influence on (mostly younger) people, appearing on tv, selling books, YouTube etc. etc.

      Last year he disappeared suddenly. He ended up in Russia, getting detoxed. It turns out that he had got heavily addicted to benzodiazepines which the doctors had prescribed him for depression. He claims that he only took them for a year or two in good faith and trusting his doctor, not realising what the dangers were. (For a psychologist who had written papers about addiction, this sounds a little improbable to me). This opens up the debate about how a man who had touted the values of Stoicism and `traditional men being men` kind of strength turned out to be a guy who couldn`t face reality without a handful of pills, but my point here is this:
      As a result of his use of prescribed medication he is now completely physically fucked. He has suffered neural damage and has difficulty walking and doing basic tasks and may never completely recover.

      Even if Osho was not addicted to these drugs for a long period, or took them in a `medically acceptable` manner it is well within the realms of possibility that they severely damaged his health, and that this happened without he or his doctor really clocking what had happened.

      Where the Nitrous fits into all this is another story.

      • swamishanti says:

        Yeah, I remember Osho telling the story of how a doctor friend who he was staying with had given him `a small yellow pill` when he suffered from headaches sometime in the sixties and Osho seemed to rate it highly in its effectiveness.

        Not sure whether this would have been valium or barbiturates. And I remember the story about the experiment with the chloroform.

        I don`t know if Osho ever really got addicted to valium as Amrito would have known he would have become physically dependent on it after four weeks of daily usage.

        I am reminded of Sai Baba of Shirdi, a fakir whose teachings combined mystical elements of Hinduism and Islam.

        Apparently he would smoke a chillum which he filled with tobbaco and hash and, it was said that he sometimes added a bit of opium for his physical pains.

        He was an opponent of religious orthodoxy – Christian, Hindu and Muslim – and opposed all persecution based on caste or religion.

        When the wondering fakir first arrived in Shirdi, the villagers thought he was mad and children would throw stones at him which he would throw back.

        But later, the villagers grew to respect him, after he was said to have demonstrated some siddhis , including lighting up a lamp when there was no oil available with just water , where he was staying in an old dilapidated mosque. His miracles began to attract attention and he became famous.

        Sai Baba’s disciples and devotees claimed that he performed many miracles such as bilocation, levitation, materialisations and healing.

        One of the stories of these miracles involved an incident when the Baba was sitting under a tree and needed a light to fire up his chillum. He asked around but no-one had a light. Then, it is said that he took a stick and plunged it deep into the earth, and then pulled it out – the stick miraculously had a red hot coal on the end of it. Then he used the hot coal to light up his chillum and have a smoke.

        • frank says:

          Shanti,
          That`s a useful siddhi to have, lighting a chillum when everyone`s so blasted that they`ve forgotten their matches. I wish I had reached that level of consciousness. Guess the Baba must have had other handy siddhis too, like manifesting hash, opium and baccy. Tbh,I think used to actually have that one although I seem to have lost it in the last few decades.

          You say, “I don`t know if Osho ever really got addicted to Valium as Amrito would have known he would have become physically dependent on it after four weeks of daily usage.”

          That was a point that I was making. It`s quite possible that Amrito was not aware of this in
          Pune 1.

          Literally millions of people have become addicted to Valium over the years simply by following doctors’ orders, taking them for much longer that 4 weeks. This means that the docs involved could only have been either uninformed or careless or bent.

          • swamishanti says:

            I doubt that Amrito would have not known that. Every doctor is taught that, and even if Amrito was a crap doctor, and I’m not saying that he was, I really don’t know, he was still educated at the Royal College of Physicians-

            In Osho’s words:
            “Dr. Amrito’s own research… And he is a genius as far as medical science is concerned. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in England. He is a rare individual…. He has the highest qualifications.”

            I don’t think that people became addicted to it because they weren’t warned not to take them for too long – I think it’s more like Grace Slick said in an interview that I read recently, when talking about different drugs, that sometimes she and her friends would take valium and “sometimes it would take days to get off that stuff.”

            People use it for coming down off other drugs but it can be kind of moorish and could go on for several days if you can be bothered to binge on it – but several weeks, I don’t know.

            I know that doctors used to give it out as a “mother’s little helper” in buckets to housewives back in the sixties, along with barbiturates, but they must have wisened up to that pretty quickly if loads of people kept coming back for more and got themselves physically hooked. And I’ve heard nowadays it’s hard to get hold of barbiturates and quaaludes.

            Ah – this has reminded me of a track by Suede: https://youtu.be/s3v7wH6CTYo

            • frank says:

              It was known that benzos (most commonly Valium) were addictive when abused ie raising the dose continually (like when you are an alky and you drink more and more over time) from early on in their existence in the early 1960s.

              However, not until 1978 was it ascertained that they could become addictive to those following the prescribed dose and not bingeing. Even then, it was not recieved with open arms.
              Prof Malcolm Lader(full article below, if interested) was the man behind this realisation:
              “We knew from the start that patients taking markedly increased doses could get dependent, but thought only addictive personalities could become dependent and that true addiction was unusual. We got that wrong. What we didn’t know, but know now, is that even people taking therapeutic doses can become dependent.”

              So Amrito was at the RCP when?
              He took sannyas in `78 or so?
              He would not have been taught that at his time at the college.

              https://www.benzo.org.uk/lader2.htm

              • swamishanti says:

                Well, I’ve heard that several doctors have been sued by previous patients who became valium addicts over thirty years ago; apparently the doctors were accused of ignoring guidelines or not giving enough warnings about physical addiction or side-effects to the patients.

                1978: From what I have heard, Vivek was now in a relationship with Amrito, as well as continuing to work full-time as Osho’s caretaker and living very close to him, just in the bedroom next to his. Her new relationship with Amrito may have brought him into his role as Osho’s personal physician. Although he was also working as the general ashram doctor for some time.

                I doubt that Osho was ever really taking valium every day.
                Perhaps he was taking it sometimes for several days at a time, how are we are to know?
                But I expect it would make the body feel a bit wasted after being used every day for a while, and Osho was extremely sensitive. I doubt that he could be bothered with lots of valium hangovers every morning.

                There is also a talk he gave when he was back in India (or was it Nepal?) shortly after he had been deported from the US, where he is stating that Amrito doesn’t want to give him any sleeping pills and is ‘on the same old trip,’ ie that he wants him to have a break, so he will just have to put up with his pains. And he mentions that he wasn’t able to get any sleeping pills whilst in jail.

                So I doubt that he ever was really physically addicted to valium.

                Valium cold turkey is said to take longer than heroin withdrawal and also is more dangerous.
                Calder’s claim that Osho ‘died addicted to valium’ is not supported by any of those who were physically close to Osho.

                Even his claim that Osho was using 60 mg. of valium a day at the Ranch is unsubstantiated and he got that from Sheela, who told this to a German newspaper when she was holed up on the German west border. But I would be wary of a lot of her claims. Even the US authorities regarded her as an unreliable source of information and didn’t want to use her as a witness against Osho. Although, they really didn’t have any evidence to be able to do that anyway. Even the claims of Immiegration fraud , would have easily been defeated in court, according what a couple of Osho’s hired immigration lawyers had told Max Brecher.

                Also, it was claimed by a couple of her gang when they spoke to the FBI that Sheela herself was being prescribed large doses of valium and amphetamines to keep her going at the Ranch, and sometimes morphine, by her nurse and closest ally Puja.

                Stories of large drug prescriptions going into Lao-Tzu house, ie 5,000 valium ordered from Mexico – one of Sheela’s claims, may or may not be true.

                And who knows, if Amrito or Vivek themselves may have been impartial to a couple of Valium’s.
                Or if indeed there is any substance to the story, then it’s most likely that some valium was ordered in bulk because that is the best way to order drugs when you want a good price, just like anything else.

                If you’re going to hold a party it works out better to order a crate of beers or a barrel rather than a couple of six-packs. For example, when Amrito and Hasya had their marriage bash , perhaps they ordered in a couple of boxes of champagne, and some downers from Mexico.

                Who knows? We certainly don’t and can only guess.

        • swamishanti says:

          By the way, you can also try this out if you like:

          https://www.yoursaibaba.com/

          It’s a bit like choosing a tarot card online.
          Ask Sai Baba a question and pick a number.

          I tried it once years ago when I was drinking quite a lot and I got the message: “Stop drinking liquor.”

        • swamishanti says:

          By the way, talking of Siddhis , there was another American teacher who gave satsang in the 1990’s , and passed away in 1997 . His name was Robert Adams.

          Robert claimed that from as far back as he could remember, he had had visions of a white haired, bearded man seated at the foot of his bed, who was about two feet tall, and who used to talk to him in a language which he did not understand. He told his parents but they thought he was playing games. Robert would later find out that this man was a vision of his future guru Sri Ramana Maharshi. At the age of seven, Robert’s father died and the visitations suddenly stopped.

          Robert said that he then developed a siddhi whereby whenever he wanted something, from a candy bar to a violin, all he needed to do was say ‘God’ three times and the desired object would appear from somewhere, or be given to him by someone. If there was a test at school Robert would simply say ‘God, God, God,’ and the answers would immediately come to him; no prior study was necessary.

          One day he tried to use the siddhi whilst sitting his final term maths exam which he hadn’t bothered studying for at all but instead had an awakening. He then spent years with Ramana Maharshi and several other gurus, including Nisargaddata, Neem Karoli Baba, and others , but Ramana was always his favourite: https://o-meditation.com/more-masters-mystics-and-misfits/robert-adams/

          Like Barry Long , Robert Adams also considered Osho to be enlightened, which for him was a rare thing.

          “Robert almost always refused to comment on whether he thought one or another teacher was enlightened. I remember asking him once about Rajneesh, because he had the bearing, far off look and soft voice of Robert. Robert nodded and said yes, that he was. All of the other times I asked any such nonsense questions about anybody, he would say no. For Robert, enlightenment was a rare, rare thing.”

          (From interview with Ed Mezuka) :
          https://o-meditation.com/2010/09/20/robert-adams-on-enlightenment-and-gurus-ed-muzika/

          • frank says:

            “Robert said that he then developed a siddhi whereby whenever he wanted something, from a candy bar to a violin, all he needed to do was say ‘God’ three times and the desired object would appear from somewhere, or be given to him by someone.”

            Fuck me, if that`s not a red light for a scammer alert, I don`t what is.
            Robert Adams was a grifter. Another fake wannabe guru hustler piggy-backing on Ramana Maharshi`s rep.
            People at the Ramanashram are categorical the guy never stayed there. Bidi Baba likewise.
            His siddhis were blagging, gaslighting and `borrowing` money.

            Shanti, maybe time to wise up, bro`?

            • swamishanti says:

              If what people have claimed, that they don’t remember him etc., that some of what he has written or said isn’t true – well, that sounds remarkably similar to Christopher Calder.
              Perhaps this page is the perfect place for his story to appear then.

              However – I wouldn’t write him off so easily. Anyone can write or edit the wikipedia page, and Poonja – and several others who spent a lot of time at Ramanashram seemed to think he was authentic.

              The wikipage also mentions, “In 1992, Ramana Maharshi’s nephew V. Ganesan had a chance encounter at an airport in Los Angeles, where a student of Robert Adams approached him to ask if he would like to attend Satsang. V. Ganesan eventually met Robert Adams on multiple occasions and acclaimed him to be a fully realized Jnani. H.W.L. Poonja, a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi who was a vehement critic of most contemporary teachers, liked Adams’s teachings enough to read them out during several of his own Satsangs.”

              I don’t know enough about the guy. Just read about him very recently and discovered the story of the siddhi, which seemed apt after mentioning Sai Baba of Shirdi.

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