sannyasnews

BBC defames Osho

An ex-sannyasin, Michael Lyons, also known as Mohan Singh, has recently been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for rape and sexual assault by a London court.

This has been widely reported in the press. However BBC “journalist” Clive Coleman embellished his report about Mohan with the following words…

“It also emerged that in the late 1970s Lyons had been a follower of Osho, the spiritual leader otherwise known as the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who taught his devotees that promiscuity was the path to enlightenment. Osho’s followers famously vowed to buy him a Rolls Royce for every day of the year, but ran out of money after 93 days.” (Article here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10770395.)

This is of course false. Osho never taught that promiscuity was the path to enlightenment. It is true that in Pune 1, a few people were encouraged by Osho to indulge their sexuality in a promiscuous manner. I think Clare Solloway, a well known ex -sannyasin, says in a video that Osho told her partner, then Teertha, this. However Osho’s central teaching has always been meditation and awareness, and it is for each person to find his own way.

Osho’s Rolls Royces were purchased and donated to the Commune by rich individuals. Here is a quotation from Osho “Just the other day Anando was showing me one book published against me in Australia by a couple who have been sannyasins for three years and have been in the commune. But just looking at their ideas, it seems they have never seen me. They are saying that they were working, working hard, and with their work I was purchasing Rolls Royces.
You can see the absurdity: their work was not bringing any money. Their work was making their own houses to live in, the roads - which were needing money, not producing money. But in their mind - and for all those three years also - they must have been resentful.
Those Rolls Royces were not produced by the commune. They were presents from outside, from all over the world. And I was not their owner - I had given them to the commune. They were commune property, and I have not brought any of them with me; I have left them with the commune.” Osho, Beyond Psychology, chapter 24.

Do have a look at the article which is here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10770395

It includes a little video of a little man, presumably Clive Coleman, interviewing an ex-member of Mohan’s cult. I love Coleman’s feigned expression of concern in the video.

According to the BBC website “Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest.” What a laugh!

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“Do not build your house on the bridge”

Man it is hot in Mumbai in May. As much as I wanted to stay close to Osho in his physical body, I wanted out of India on that May day in 1973.

Shortly after I’d first met Osho in his Woodlands apartment in Mumbai, I had another meeting with him before leaving for the cool of the U.S. I was escorted to his room by his secretary, Laxmi, but once I got through the door, I was left alone with him and his caretaker Vivek. As good looking as Vivek was, I only had eyes for Osho as this was my first time seeing him privately since taking sannyas about three months before. He knew I’d come to say goodbye but when he asked me if I had anything to say, I became speechless. I was overwhelmed by my love for him and by his intelligence and felt if I said anything I would look stupid… yes I had memorized what I would like to have said… that I had a satori while doing the dynamic meditation… that the past was simply a memory, the future does not exist and his present to me is that I now live only in the present, but it is difficult to lie sitting in front of the truth.

I say all this because many new friends today ask me about my moments alone with Osho and how great it must have been but really all I knew about meditation up until that moment is that the Beatles’ music had changed for the better by going East and that was good enough for me to transcend myself as I couldn’t stand my present carnation. Conversely, sitting in my shit in front of Osho taught me more about life than 16 years of public education because it taught me to say and feel “I don’t know” with the energy I needed to move on with my life… which for me remains even today the definition of a miracle.

So when Osho asked me how my meditation was going, I can’t believe I quoted Groucho Marks and said, “Close but no Cigar” … I nearly passed out over my ridiculous, spontaneous statement… but to my amazement Osho loved it and turned to Vivek to smile his approval. While he glowed in my Groucho gaffe, I reached over and kissed his big toe… being so new to the East, I never knew of this tradition between a master and a disciple… I was more caught in my uptight Western male conditioning that I kissed another man’s foot… Osho quickly turned his gaze back to me and smiled… but from that moment on it was part of the instructions before seeing Osho alone not to touch his body….

And Osho returned his attention to me, “Just continue to be total… and do the dynamic meditation every day.” Remember in ’73, the dynamic meditation was king, Osho developed kundalini and other active mediations soon after, but his guidance seemed to me always to stay the same… to pick a meditation and do it daily until it fell away naturally.

And suddenly he asked, “How do you feel?”

While my mind was racing for an appropriate enlightened response, what came out of me was, “I feel lucky.”

Again he simply loved it.

He said something like that I should remain with him as long as this is how I feel.

Even today I ask myself, “How do you feel?” And invariably, I ‘here’ back from myself, “I feel lucky as hell.”

So now, Osho and I simply sat with each other in silence… with nothing to say. He didn’t say a word and I simply had nothing to say.

I couldn’t say anything for a good three minutes, and finally he did what my father used to do when he was bored with me, he looked at his watch – which in my father’s case was a signal for me to either get his interest or leave his presence. I had no concept of spirituality at the time, but I had some worldly sense… thanks to daddy. So I looked up at Osho and I said only one word: “California!”

And when I said that single word, he got truly excited. He began talking, and he talked to me for what seemed like an eternity about how many of his people who don’t yet know that they’re his people are now in California, and how his work would flourish there. And he began to plant a seed in me that one day I would open up a meditation center for him somewhere in that western U.S. state.

And all the while, he went on and on about ‘Californication’, I did tratak on his beard… and the seed was planted in my subconscious that I wanted to look just like him… and my beard starting growing just like that… spring comes and the beard grows by itself… well my beard grew and grew but I looked more like a ‘hairy krishna’ than an Osho.

I remember years later when I was in an encounter group in OSHO International Meditation Resort the rapist, I mean my therapist, said to me that my beard was growing straight out of me and was a wall between me and everyone I met. For me, a feeling of separation is a flu-like symptom. During lunch break, I shaved for about an hour and I haven’t seen my beard, or my need to look like Osho, since… it took a while to look and taste and feel and love myself… it felt like it took an eternity to be here now… and it’s worth the wait if you have the time.

And by now, Osho had said what he wanted to say about the west coast, and my ass was hurting from sitting on the floor, so we’d both finished for the moment when Osho dismissed me with a request, “Tonight I would like you to sit close to me at the evening discourse.” which was going to take place in an outside park in the Juhu Beach area of Mumbai.

Me being my lazy self, of course I showed up late and I would have estimated that 2000 Indian friends had shown up before me who also wanted to sit up close – something I’d never seen before. In ’73 there were only a handful of Westerners around Osho and I had no idea up until now that he had disturbed millions of traditional Indians and also attracted a hundred thousand new Indian friends to his fold at the very same time. So, sadly, I sat down in the back of the audience and Osho proceeded to speak for one and a half hours in Hindi, which I didn’t speak and didn’t understand and didn’t enjoy hearing. Plus I was sitting on the ground under a mosquito sky… and as any great man of silence knows, mosquitoes are the enemy of meditation. I challenge you right now to sit in India without Indian Odomos mosquito repellent and crack the Zen koan, ‘I am not the body’!!!

Towards the end of the discourse, at the moment I was about to leap out of my skin from bites and boredom, Osho said one line in English. And this line changed my life. He said: “Do not build your house on the bridge.”

It was like a Zen koan for me, which I meditated on for years until I had lived the meaning of that one sentence. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant by saying this but I distinctly felt that it was a message directly for me. Sometimes when Osho spoke to me years later in darshan, I often knew he was actually speaking to someone else who was also present. And conversely, when it entered me directly while he was speaking to someone else, I knew he was speaking to me – it would be something relevant to me in that moment and it always had a special kind of ring to it.

I don’t want to say what this one sentence meant to me, because it may have a hidden meaning for you and you may feel to meditate on this yourself. But I’ll give you a hint: I now understand that the journey is the goal and I always keep moving. When I am sad, I look into the sadness, eventually it passes…. I don’t build a home called sadness and live in it, decorate it with happy furniture and then put it on the real estate market and sell it to another fool on the hill… like, perhaps, you… when I looks into sadness, it disappears… ‘This too will pass’ as the Sufis say… sadness comes, sadness goes, happiness comes, happiness goes… only you, naked before the truth, remain untouched.

I hope we bump into each other on the bridge one day and share a cup of chai and gossip. And when we are satisfied, you go your way and I’ll go mine… it’s easier to walk across a bridge without all your possessions, emotional and physical, in your back pack. A cup of tea between two friends can be quite unburdening.

Go lightly into your life, love is, kp www.geeyouareyou.com

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The Execution of Gurupurnima by Osho International

The day of full moon in the month of July has been celebrated for centuries In India as GuruPurnima; Master´s full moon!

Basically, the word Master does not do enough justice to the word GURU. With Master one always gets the notion of control of someone over the others. Slave fits more with Master than Disciple. The literal meaning of GURU is someone who leads the human being from darkness to light. The occult meaning is someone who reveals the secret of that which is hidden and sacred. In ordinary parlance in India, people also use this word sometimes for their school teacher or college professor too, because the knowledge or wisdom is shared.

July is one of the Monsoon months. Cloudy sky, rain for the rice fields, and longing in the heart. In such an atmosphere; the Master is remembered as a sign of gratitude. One can say, Gurupurnima is a Valentine day between disciple/student and his mentor/guide/teacher.

Because of its very nature this Festival is beyond the grip of the ‘religious’. In all the traditions where the emphasis is not on prophets but on learning, Gurupurnima is celebrated through their personal style and flavour. As it is a non religious Festival, Osho when alive incorporated it too in His scheme of Festival days.

For more than two decades this festival was celebrated internationally by his sannyasins. Even today hundreds of Osho centres in Indian cities organise meditation camps on this day. In Pune, just 500 metres away from 17, Koregaon Park, a three day festivity has kicked off in a public auditorium.

Why doesn’t the resort management allow such festivals, they have never shared any logicial reason to support their strange behaviour. Psychologically speaking, maybe as it is ruled by ex Christians, The Shadow of Christian festivals and the dislike of them may overpower their psyche and result in this Head Stand. In this way, they want to prove Osho is a different kind of Guru and they are the unique disciples.

But again…why not celebrate Gurupurnima as a symbol of gratitude of being with such an extra ordinary Master - especially when it was the Master’s wish.

Shantam

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Osho Camp Dallas with Swami Anand Arun, July 2 -4 2010

Beloved Swami Anand Arun, Osho’s long time associate and medium, graced the USA with his presence once again at a packed house for Independence Day weekend at Zorba Studio. The fireworks began immediately with Swami Arun’s warm welcome and a series of Osho’s active meditations that merge healing breath, freeform dance, emotional release, silence, and stillness.

For the newcomer, Osho’s intense active meditations can work like a powerful cleansing of many hidden shadows that block the heart, hiding love from view. No matter how much we meditate at home, being in the presence of this Living Buddha and an active Buddafield of 60 or more celebrants has a way of energetically catalyzing deep sorrows, revealing unconscious forcing currents, and releasing deeply held patterns that squash the music inside of us. After hours of Osho’s Dynamic Meditation, Kundalini Meditation, and others, emotions are released, body armor dissolves, and at the end of 3 days, there is only bliss and silence in a loving, lighthearted community that is unparalleled anywhere in the USA.

What is essential to communicate to a newcomer to the world of Osho, is that it is very, very safe to be yourself in the camp environment, even if you feel angry, sad, frightened, confused, or ashamed. You can move freely in a dimly lit room. You can cry freely as others will also naturally be releasing any unconscious content that wants to arise for healing. Most of the time participants have their eyes shut, so it is a private yet supported emotional healing for everyone. Rest assured that the impossible-seeming emotion of grief will turn into gladness in a very short time. Healing happens at a Osho Camp, profound healing, profound insight, profound love.

Everyone loves Swami Arun who is natural, easy-going, and very humorous. He is so loveable that it is easy to forget he is a holy man but would never call himself that. A tireless engineer, architect, and international teacher of Osho, Swami Arun shared his special vision of creating a beautiful Osho International Village with a special facility where older sannyasins ready to take the death flight could do so consciously with warm, loving people by their side as well as topnotch medical care. Arun is so effective at manifesting his dreams that is only a matter of time before this first class facility is launched. Arun talked about how many sannyasins come from broken families and have no other support. Out of compassion, he dreamed this dream of better-than-hospice care, more a celebration of conscious dying to ensure enlightenment if possible and a beautiful reincarnation next time around. In one discourse, Arun shared Osho’s words that “Death is not in the future. Death has always been happening.” These words gave me a deep acceptance of how things really work on planet Earth. We should never be surprised by death since it started happening to us the moment we were born into this life. A special highlight of the camp was that several long-time sannyasins blessed us with their presence, those practicing over 20 – 30 years and bringing with them a visible lake of light. You can feel it and see it in them—the rewards of doing Osho meditations for many years—they are the silent, glowing ones.

My personal experience of Osho consciousness is refreshing and vividly unique with every camp. This time I felt a protective golden dome around me, where I could simply view an ocean of light in total silence. It seemed I was being healed of things that do not have stories or even names. After we drop the past, remnants in need of healing come from remote regions of the unconscious. The healing went so deep that I fell into silence and witnessed all the gorgeous people around me, just letting me be. This kind of trust in the process and tender-hearted community is unfathomable in Western society.

The over-arching message of the weekend was that throughout history Enlightened Masters have done so much for the world that it is now up to all of us to continue the work of consciousness and awareness so that we save and continue their work of evolution. Osho sees his sannyasins as the realized hope of the world. We are the ones bridging spirit and matter, East and West, money and meditation.

To find this heightened level of spiritual refreshment elsewhere, one would have to go to other Osho Camps or to the Himalaya to any of the 5 emerging Osho communes founded by Swami Arun, the latest in Pokara. In the country of Nepal, Arun has already initiated over 65,000 people into Beloved Master Osho’s discipleship, and has effectively garnered the support of every government leader and even the army.

Heartfelt thanks to Swami Anand Arun and Zorba Studio! Next stop: Atlanta! July 9, 10, 11. See www.oshoatlanta.com to sign up.

Ma Prem Geet

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What India meant by satsang corrupted by the interface
with the West : Shantam offers his view

Living in a small Indian town off the beaten track. Living modestly in a stable family, beautifully changing weather, starry nights and a cool breeze; therein comes the wow for all that it is.

In such places life is not isolated as in the big cities, people greet, meet and visit each other.
Once a week after the afternoon Siesta, by dint of ancient good habits, millions of moms and grand moms in thousands of small towns and villages gather around sensitive beings to listen to the deeper things of life, and share their daily life experience. Within a month or so, someone starts singing Bhajans to celebrate the atmosphere, and Satsang begins to happen.

These souls slowly gain recognition, they offer themselves to be present at times of grief in the neighbourhood and console people. Life feels meaningful in their presence, and such souls became known as signposts for existence itself.

For thousands of years this pattern has been going on, and preserving sanity in hard times. In psychological jargon, Satsangs were healing the wounds of collective pain, failure and depression.
No psychologists, no organised priesthood was there - and these sensitive souls served the people without hankering for any recognition.

But with the advent of traveling ease developed by the “restless west”, many western people started to find out these humble souls, and felt wonder, and also wondered about the source of their bliss.

It is like Horse goes to see Cows and feels wonder how peacefully they go on chewing grass day after day and no desire to run and jump and play Polo. Just happy to watch the shadow in the small pond and feeling like Basho. So beautiful and mesmerising! Such is the human nature, horse goes to the cow and want to learn the tricks of being here and now. And in this way, horse race shower the title of Enlightened beings to this saintly cows.

So “recognition” followed from those who came from outside India, and sadly from this flowed the first seeds of ego in these sensitive souls. They began to speak from the origins of Indian wisdom and life to people who have basically a different set of life problems, social environment and family norms, and to whom it was and is inappropriate and occasionally dangerous.

I have much admiration for those thousands and thousands of lay persons who chair small Satsang gatherings throughout India and serve their communities through their talks, gossips and simple presence.

But to see inflated Satsang givers, speaking about bloody ego and oneness and enlightenment, I have only one question, - do you know what it feels like to come from a broken family. Mom going for date with someone else other than dad. Then you have the children, and your own wife asks for divorce and the house, and than you get the news, your son is on drugs and your daughter is earning as a Page 3 girl.

That is the west, and also the India of 2030, and the modalities will have to change.

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Relationship is a Verb

I met Marcia on the hippie trail in the early 70’s, beginning in Venice, California. We traveled together to India on two one-way tickets as we didn’t have enough money between us to buy two round trip tickets… it was simply two one-way tickets to ride, or no way out… in any case, we were living on love. Our first home together in Mother India was under a cashew tree in Arambol, a then virgin beach in Goa, (remember I am talking the 70’s here), before heading north to the Himalayas. Right smack in the middle of the trail, we met Osho and our lives changed forever. Meeting Osho was a happy beginning for me, and equally an unhappy ending of my relationship with Marcia, now Krishna Priya. My gut told me that my relationship was in trouble. I went to Osho to get to the heart of the matter…

I booked a leaving darshan with Osho to say goodbye to him as my plan was to make a complete circle by returning to California to open a commune based on his meditations… Krishna Priya choosing to stay behind until my dream came true - then she would join me. Osho agreed with Krishna Priya, while I simply wasn’t sure which way was up… In front of a burning candle I rehearsed my questions to Osho on what I was going to ask about my relationship until all that was left of me was a wax wave on my wooden floor.

I hadn’t been apart from my beloved for two years and I was nervous about being without her. I wanted to ask Osho whether I could trust that she’d come and follow me to California… could I be sure that she wouldn’t fall in love with someone else? I was simply beside myself… by now I was even jealous of Osho as I was no longer the most important man in my woman’s life…

Darshan in 1975 was in Lao Tzu House on the front car porch. Ten of us were scheduled to sit with him one to one and I was going to be number ten.

It felt like an eternity before it was my turn. Finally he looked at the boy in the ninth position and his eyes were so big, they overflowed onto me and I thought he was gesturing me to come forward. So eagerly I got up. Of course it wasn’t my turn and he told me to have patience and I promptly sat down again.

I was so embarrassed I nearly died.

The ninth boy came to sit in front of Osho and as soon as he sat down, he began to cry. And he wouldn’t stop crying and Osho waited, and finally Osho broke the silence and said to him,

“What seems to be the problem?”

And the boy related this story: “I bought a brand new pair of sandals today and when I got out of Kundalini Meditation at five-fifteen, my sandals were gone!”

And then he burst into tears again.

Osho closed his eyes and when the boy stopped crying, Osho opened his eyes again and he said to the young boy, “I can’t help you with your loss, but what I can suggest is that tomorrow you go MG Road and you buy another new pair of sandals, and when you go to Kundalini Meditation, you take one new sandal off and you put it on the top middle shelf and you take the other new sandal and you put it on the bottom shelf on the far left.” And then he added: “No one ever steals one sandal!”

And then the boy’s tears turned into laughter, and it looked to me like Osho was very proud of himself. He was just beaming with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen in your life. Everyone else was laughing.

And then Osho reached out and held the boy’s hands, they stood up at the same time and, as if music began playing, Osho did a tiny dance with the boy, and then, still beaming, gave a Namaste salutation to his beloveds and walked out, and that was the end of darshan.

I felt like a sannyasin left out in the cold.

And to this day, I don’t know anything about relationship! So you my friend are on your own… I still don’t know anything about relationships except I have learned the hard way that relationship is a verb called relating.

I did, however, found the Geetam Sannyas Ashram in Lucerne Valley, California, for Osho in ‘75, which turned out to become the biggest meditation centre in the States, and my now ex-girlfriend never stepped onto the property once. It goes to show you never can tell… meditation, like love, is not what you think.

And just to point out that ‘not knowing is the most intimate’, Positive TV out of England has invited me to share my knowledge of relationship with its viewers… please feel free me check out on http://positivetv.tv/category/channels/celebrity-shorts/

“Attachment and love never go together; commitment and attachment never go together. Love goes with unattachment. Then love has a purity of the other world. Then love is absolute essence, absolute pureness, innocence. And then there is a commitment. That commitment is eternal.” Osho

Krishna Prem

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When the “Good” man fights, it then becomes a holy war. : Alok John takes a View

Most sannyasins and most Osho discourses veer towards pacifism rather than militarism. However in this striking (edited) extract from chapter 1 of “Krishna : The Man and his Philosophy” Osho appears to say that a major war will need to be fought against the forces of materialism. The discourse was given in 1970. Note the twenty year gap given in the discourse which takes us to 1990, the year, it could be argued, when the US defeated communism and became the sole superpower. You could argue that the US represents the forces of materialism. As for “out-and-out materialism” I would have thought popular writers like Hitchens and Dawkins endorse this view.

Anyway here it is…make of it what you will…

“In a way, the world is facing nearly the same situation India faced during the Mahabharat war. There were two camps, or two classes, at the time of the Mahabharat. One of them was out-and-out materialist; they did not accept anything beyond the body or matter. They did not know anything except the indulgence of their senses; they did not have any idea of yoga or of spiritual discipline. For them the existence of the soul did not matter in the least; for them life was just a playground of stark indulgence, of exploitation and predatory wars (the West?, Alok John’s interpretation). Life beyond the senses and their indulgence held no importance for them.

This was the class against which the war of Mahabharat was waged. And Krishna had to opt for this war and lead it, because it had become imperative. It had become imperative so that the forces of good and virtue could stand squarely against the forces of materialism and evil, so that they were not rendered weak and impotent.

Approximately the same situation has arisen on a worldwide scale, and in twenty years’ time a full replica, a scenario of the Mahabharat will be upon us. On one side will be all the forces of materialism and on the other will be the weaker forces of good and righteousness.

Goodness suffers from a basic weakness: it wants to keep away from conflicts and wars. Arjuna of the Mahabharat is a good man. The word ”arjuna” in Sanskrit means the simple, the straightforward, clean. Arjuna means that which is not crooked. Arjuna is a simple and good man, a man with a clean mind and a kind heart. He does not want to get involved in any conflict and strife; he wants to withdraw. Krishna is still more simple and good; his simplicity, his goodness knows no limits. But his simplicity, his goodness does not admit to any weakness and escape from reality. His feet are set firmly on the ground; he is a realist, and he is not going to allow Arjuna to run away from the battlefield.

Perhaps the world is once again being divided into two classes, into two camps. It happens often enough when a decisive moment comes and war becomes inevitable. Men like Gandhi and Russell will be of no use in this eventuality. In a sense they are all Arjunas. They will again say that war should be shunned at all costs, that it is better to be killed than to kill others. A Krishna will again be needed, one who can clearly say that the forces of good must fight, that they must have the courage to handle a gun and fight a war. And when goodness fights only goodness flows from it. It is incapable of harming anyone. Even when it fights a war it becomes, in its hands, a holy war. Goodness does not fight for the sake of fighting, it fights simply to prevent evil from winning.

By and by the world will soon be divided into two camps. One camp will stand for materialism and all that it means, and the other camp will stand for freedom and democracy, for the sovereignty of the individual and other higher values of life. But is it possible that this camp representing good will find a Krishna to again lead it?

It is quite possible. When man’s state of affairs, when his destiny comes to a point where a decisive event becomes imminent, the same destiny summons and sends forth the intelligence, the genius that is supremely needed to lead the event. And a right person, a Krishna appears on the scene. The decisive event brings with it the decisive man too.

It is for this also that I say Krishna has great significance for the future.

There are times when the voices of those who are good, simple and gentle cease to be effective, because people inclined to evil don’t hear them, don’t fear them, blindly go their own way. In fact, as good people shrink back just out of goodness, in the same measure the mischief makers become bold, feel like having a field day….”

(Osho, Krishna, The Man and his Philosophy, chapter 1)

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Tarisha

This Article was first published in Viha Connection magazine

Osho Leela is the home of 30 people, living and working together to create a center for transformation where visitors of all ages come and experience a new way of living through connection, meditation, and celebration. It is a doorway through which people can discover who they are and what their lives are about. People come here to strip themselves of their present dramas/lifestyle, undo what needs to be undone, fill up with fresh juice, and move on, empowered to do what really turns them on.

Osho’s vision is at the heart of Leela; it is the fire that brought a small group of sannyasins, headed by Dhyano Harding, together to create paradise on earth 14 years ago. Leela began its life as The Foundation for Joyous Living, home to the Humaniversity Therapist Training and a growing number of other groups hosted by the community. For four years the group rented a property in East Dorset, then gathered funds with the help of 30 friends and an ethical bank to buy Thorngrove House in North Dorset. Osho Leela had become a name in the world of personal growth and was attracting ever-growing numbers.

Thorngrove House in the beginning

I was living in London, looking for my career, after a three-year period when I created a community in Devon. Dhyano invited me to come and play music for the meditation weekends he put on each month. I would come, sing my heart out, bring out the music in other people, and return to London to continue looking for my career. Each weekend I felt my soul flowering a little more. Osho Leela was the soil, the greenhouse that enabled me to discover my true gifts. All my ideas of needing to become something (that I wasn’t) began to fall away.

A year later, having taken sannyas in Pune, I helped run Leela’s first music festival and, after a cold dip in the sea at Lulworth Cove the following day, I decided to stay. It wasn’t really a decision; it was the most obvious, uncomplicated falling into life. Music was at the core of what I could offer; but I became the office manager within a couple of months and continued from there. I have seen many people go through this kind of transformation, finding their joy, their passion for life.

Osho Leela puts on workshops and events every weekend of the year. There is a huge variety on offer, from singles’ weekends to Osho meditation retreats to conscious clubbing weekends to Awareness Intensives. For me, it’s all spreading the fire of Osho’s vision, because whatever happens here, the feeling created by our community life, the Buddhafield if you like, plays such a strong part in people’s experience. Yes, we introduce people to Osho’s meditations, perhaps only Dynamic or Kundalini, but they get a taste of Osho just by being here.

Osho's vision is at the heart of Leela

Twice a year we put on Osho festivals, one in May, which has recently been renamed India My Love, and the other in August, called The Ultimate Celebration. Both festivals focus on Osho meditations and include a sannyas ceremony. They always gather a big crowd of sannyasins, but not exclusively sannyasins. Alongside the meditations we have workshops, shows, live music, a kids’ club, and parties. With our camping and caravan park, we can welcome over 300 people here, so in the summer months all our events are big. Both these festivals have been going since we began and have retained a similar format. We do festivals well.

Festival music

Over the years we have added six more to our calendar: New Year, Easter, Biodanza, Dance and Voice, Tantra, and Healing. We make the majority of our festivals accessible to everyone, including families. Kids love to be at Leela. They feel such a freedom here, and it is safe for them to play and roam within our grounds. Twice a year we put on a teenagers’ program. It takes a little more encouragement to get the teens’ fire going, but recently their end-of-festival performances have been fantastic, and they have all participated.

A few years ago, Devaraj, both a director and general manager here, introduced a new weekend to attract younger people. He was keen to reach the 30-plus age group, so he created Puravida, a consciousness clubbing weekend event. This is a high-energy, three-day event with meditations, including Osho’s Dynamic and Osho Satsang; workshops, including Bioenergetics, Burlesque, and Biodanza; the Humaniversity AUM meditation; and all-night parties with top DJs. He puts on four a year, with each weekend having a theme, like James Bond, Celebration of Urban Culture, Balkan Gypies! Yes, Osho Leela is known for its wild dressing-up parties. We have a dressing-up cupboard that’s almost as big as our kitchen. These weekends usually gather a crowd of at least 70 people.

Although Puravida is aimed at the 30-plus age group, people of all ages come along. Our oldest participant was 80. The younger ones are more likely to come once, then move on to the next party event. However, now that we have more young folk in the community, it is becoming more attractive to the younger generation.

Puravida disco

The Humaniversity Training is central to the health and well-being of our community. Almost everyone in key positions has completed the four-year Therapist Training and the whole community participates in an AUM meditation once a week to keep relationships healthy, clear, and energized. Friendship is always the goal, and we offer support wherever we can.

The Leela Community

Dhyano always used to call us “the UK’s leading Personal Growth Center.” Who knows? Perhaps we are. What I do know for sure is that our numbers are continuously rising, the community is growing, and we are offering what people want: an oasis to replenish,love and grow.

tarishalove@hotmail.com; osholeela.co.uk

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The Dutch Humaniversity from the Inside

Ramses Shaffy (1933-2009) was a well-known Dutch singer and actor. He participated in Veeresh programmes and worked with theatre and creativity at the Humaniversity in the 80’s and 90’s. Here is a letter, translated into English, that Ramses wrote about one of his Humaniversity experiences which Sannyasnews saw as revealing as well as insightful.

It’s crazy to sit here on the balcony while life thunders on in Grada with hammering hits, outbursts of crying , hurricanes of laughter, ingenious creations and attempts to run away, marathon, though the ‘official’ daily routine or the ‘normal’ way of life, is still a marathon, breathtaking, maddening, loving, collapsing, rebirthing, straining hard work with yells of “Speed it up! Speed it up!” In short, driving us crazy from six in the morning –dynamic – until three at night – disco in the Boozeria. There is little sleep, ‘do that when you’re old’. I work in the kitchen like I’m in a fast forward movie, peel potatoes hysterically, run like a possessed person from the basement to the attic. This all under the supervision of German ‘Ma’s’ who are worse than Prussian generals in the first world war. I get pull up’s every second one after the other. That means you get the full load and you can’t react, only say thank you.

The next moment I am appointed ‘head of cleaning’. Now I also have to scream “Speed it up!” to sweet, innocent people who are already doing dishes with frantic speed.

I can’t do this. I become very unhappy and exhausted. I hear a voice from another part of the kitchen calling me with a German accent, that I’m not making a sound, that she doesn’t hear anything. That day I wanted to leave. The next day I had to record a song with Liesbeth and I found it hard to go back. I was afraid.

And as things like this turn out, returning to Grada was just fantastic, with fabulous sessions with Veeresh, Fellini-like transvestite parties, dead chique staff dinners and sometimes happy nights of love. I play in every Satsang on my grand piano (there is also one here)with a magnificent flautist, Helmuth, and a very poetic guitarist, Sambodhi.

I have a new name ‘Yes, but…’, for one month, for the time of the Bodhidharma group. Having the name is very confusing, because it’s often used in normal conversation, so I jump up again as a nervous deer, as I think someone is calling me. Its one thousand volts here, meetings happen continuously, often totally crazy with strange therapeutic assignments. I walked around, for instance, for one week with a sign around my neck with the text ‘Yes, but”, and had to explain this name to whoever happened to ask me what it meant.

We had 2 marathons of 48 hours without sleep and practically without food, hard work and sessions, of which dynamic was the mildest. It is about not falling back for one moment, every now and then comes, believe it or not, a Beer Break and it is surprising to dance in the disco with a glass of white wine after these forty eight hours, having the feeling that you can continue through another night.

Samadhi is so beautiful I can’t explain. The whole staff by the way is very intelligent and centered. It’s all about love. Bhagwan is here and he loves us. Where this all leads to is a true mystery. Boy oh boy, what did I get myself into?

Yesterday I rehearsed the ‘Stad liedjes’ again. I am so grateful that I lived there.

Goodbye, see you soon, one way or another. Bye,
Ramses AKA ‘Yes but’

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Honour Killings in the context of Osho’s India

India`s present day economic clout is growing very fast - but is the mindset of Indians changing at all?
Almost every week one sees stories of honour killings on the Indian Television and in the press. Sometimes the dictat to kill lovers comes from an allegedly feudal social structure - and often when the boy is from a lower caste than the girl´s family. (In just a few cases, the family members are educated and affluent) Any which way the rift between the Indian medieval mind and modern times seems too big to bridge.

During the last two weeks, the Indian psyche has been stirred by two such cases.

Brother kills sister’s husband for ‘honour’
http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1226092

Nirupama’s friends want justice
http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1226097

Both these cases have taken place in the Hindi speaking belt, (which it must be noted produced someone like Osho, who dared to challenge the taboos of Indian society). Because of Osho’s straight talking on such subjects as freedom to love, there was a paradoxical loss of so-called respectable reputation for Osho in India, and a loss of following amongst some self-serving Indians. In short on the sub-continent, instead of getting respect he was ridiculed.

Ironically enough, Osho’s talks on the Indian holy Scriptures are unbeatable. They could have earned Him half of the country as His disciples, but being a Sagittarius on the being level ,Osho was not a person to speak half truth. Osho´s prescriptions were too bitter for Indian society to swallow.

In this context I do wonder why the organisations representing Osho don´t take an enthusiastic interest in adopting those values Osho stood for. For example freedom to Love.
Why not offer these threatened young Indian lovers, often living in fear of their lives “refuge” and an open shelter within the Osho ashrams. But…. no…. the present day Osho organisations do not even issue a press release on such matters.

On this point both Osho Foundation and Osho World are mediocre brothers in arms. Surely given the centrality of this Honour Killing news in the Indian media of late they are both missing something that Osho himself would never have failed to comment on had he been alive.

In spite of Osho´s lion’s roar when He was with us, the neo-sannyas movement is now reduced to little more than a footnote of history. Is it too late to focus on the spirit, rather than the packaging and distributing of the preachings? When will Osho’s teachings be reflected in the actions of those organisations that now represent Him?

Shantam Prem

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