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In 2007 Christopher Hitchins wrote a book called “God is not Great”. Sadly it is still widely read and quoted. In that book was a Chapter on Osho indicating a number of falsehoods. Krishnaprem who was the Press Officer in Pune one at the time of Hitchin’s visit, and met him a number of times in that visit replied to his Chapter on Osho in the telling letter below. Hitchins never replied. Sadly since that time Krishnaprem has died, but his words have even more resonance. One wonders if Hitchins was so far away from the truth where Osho is concerned, how far he may be away from the truth in the rest of his lazy book. (Parmartha: Editor Sannyasnews ).

Christopher Hitchens
I am writing in relation to a particular chapter in your book God is not Great – the chapter entitled There Is No “Eastern” Solution. I wish to point out, more to your publisher than to you – who should be aware of the fabrications and fallacies it contains – of how dishonest this chapter truly is.

Let’s get right down to it.

You say you donned “orange garb” to attend the ashram of a “celebrated guru”, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh “in order to help make a documentary film for the BBC” which, you also say, “did have a standard of fairness and my mandate was to absorb as much as I could.”

I remember your visit well. At that time I was ashram Press Officer. I am also blessed with near-photographic memory recall, and here is what I remember about your visit “to absorb as much as I could”:

I was in the press office with my colleague Vadan when one of the receptionists ushered you in. You informed us the BBC’s Tony Isaacs, whom I had met, had asked you to script a show on us for The World About Us. You certainly weren’t wearing orange.

For the next hour or so, Vadan and I filled you in on ashram activities. By morning tea time, I noticed one of your hands was shaking. I asked if there was something I could get for you.

“I have a little confession to make,” you said. “This is the first time in ten years I haven’t downed a fifth of scotch by this time. What I really need is a drink.”

“Apart from the bar at the Blue Diamond Hotel,” I said, “I doubt if you’ll find a bottle of scotch for miles.”

“Some in my room,” you muttered. “So if you chaps don’t mind, I’ll toddle off now and come back tomorrow.” You held up the literature we’d given you.”Enough homework to keep me busy until then.”

The next day we waited for you, but you didn’t show. The following day either. By the third afternoon it was apparent you weren’t coming back at all. So much for absorbing as much as you could.

Secondly, you say we were urged “to part with all material possessions,” and that this money went to purchasing a “fleet of Rolls-Royce motorcars.” Absolute fabrication. How deeply you delved into the Pune commune is clear from this single statement. Where was the fleet housed on that overcrowded six acres? The only time there was a Rolls-Royce on that property was at the very end of our first stay in Pune when, following an assassination attempt on Osho by a Hindu fundamentalist, we imported a metal detector and an ancient bullet-proof Rolls. The fleet came a lot later, in America.

Next, you talk about the film by Wolfgang Dobrowolny – or Veet Artho as we knew him – that was shot in “secret.” More invention on your part. Laxmi, Osho’s secretary and the Foundation’s managing trustee, fell for Veet Artho’s sweet talk and, despite repeated and vociferous warnings from me and others that it would come back to haunt us, gave him permission to shoot footage of an encounter group in which physical expression was allowed – an initiative of encounter group leader Teertha which Osho immediately instructed be dropped as soon as someone got hurt.

Laxmi’s mandate was, as she put it, that “word (of Osho’s availability in Pune) must reach all the corners of the world” and in her naivety (she’d never been outside India) she thought people would see how liberating it was to free themselves from repressed emotions and traumas and flock to Pune. It came as a shock to her to learn that the majority of people back in the 1970s, when faced with a reflux of suppressed emotion or childhood pain chose, rather than dealing with it, to have another fag and pour another couple of stiff drinks.

By the way, Dobrowolny never owned the rights to the film. They were retained by the Foundation, and the BBC’s use of the footage was illegal.

I also found your insinuation extremely offensive that a “German princeling of the House of Windsor” met a shady end as a result of participating in a therapy group. Vimalkirti, as we knew him, collapsed suddenly one morning, doing his daily martial arts exercise routine on his own, from an aneurysm in the brain – hereditary I gather. He was taken immediately to an intensive care facility at Jehangir Nursing Home in Pune where he died, without recovering consciousness, a few days later. There was nothing suspicious, as you imply. Imagine how his wife, who is still involved with our worldwide community, and his daughter will feel when/if they read what you’ve written. Shame on you.

Finally, I find it odd that of all the supporters of organized religions on the vast Indian spiritual scene, you pick the one man who consistently criticized the religions for the damage they have done – through promoting blind belief, blind faith and generating blind fear – down the ages. Osho’s attacks on Mother Teresa of Calcutta (is that where you got the idea for your book?) and her boss, whom he called “The Polack Pope” are well documented. His series of talks in America so often focused on the dangers of Christian fundamentalism that today they seem prophetic. Among the last series of talks he gave in public, two titles come to mind — Christianity, the Greatest Poison and Zen, the Antidote to All Poisons – as well as a series illustrating where Nietzsche and other atheists missed the boat, God is Dead: Now Zen is the Only Living Truth.

To illustrate your premise that “there is no Eastern solution,” why pick a mystic who, his entire life, through discourses and books, tried to alert mankind to the fact, as you say, that “religion poisons everything.” And why pick one who left his body in 1990? Did he have that big an impact on you, or was it because you couldn’t be bothered updating the “research” – and I use the term facetiously – you pretend to have conducted 30 years ago?

In closing, permit me a footnote. After your completely unprofessional behaviour and lack of integrity in Pune all those years ago I often wondered whether I would have a chance one day to tell the truth about your visit and to expose the shallowness of the effort you put into the documentary for the BBC.

Whether anyone else but you and your publisher read this letter, I am pleased that, at long last, I’ve had an opportunity to say what really happened. It’s comforting to know that even after 30 years, chickens still come home to roost.

Jack Allanach/Krishna Prem
cc: Jonathan Karp, Publisher and Editor-in Chief, TWELVE
cc: Osho International Foundation, Bahnhofstr. 52, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland
cc: Osho International, 80 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011

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A Living Master ?

I read on “Sannyas” news this funny comment: “I need deconditioning from sannyas conditionings, perhaps I should try ‘family constellation therapy’ to see why I belong to this dysfunctional crazy crowd of individual freaks. It must be my grandfather’s fault.”

Of course our grandfathers were at fault and we have to love and hate them for that. Because it happened; That’s all, and there is no more than that….. We don’t own life.

If we look around, not any living creature on this planet owns life. Life owns us, all of us and every cell and thought of us. So let’s behave in accordance with that. Don’t deny what love is, but neither don’t deny what suffering is. Both colours make the painting. Only one colour makes life ugly and really boring. The depths of love you learn in the struggle, rarely in the hug. Accept life, and enjoy being part of it by living who you are, and just learn from that.

That’s also why cults don’t work. They think they can control life by suppressing parts of it. There is no cult on this planet that accepts life as it is. Oshoites, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist, they all try to make that new perfect being or whatever. Just by mutilating life..

I suspect that life plays a trick on us. We have to think that life is about us and that we are the only star in that movie called. …“I”…

When we go inside, what do we find: Normal-“I’s”, Spiritual-“I-s”, I don have a Ego-“I’s”, Criminal “I’s”, I’m de master-“I’s”, I’m not an I-“I’s”, Enlightened-“I’s”, Beyond enlightenment –“I’s”, Suffering-“I‘s. I help you “I’s”, I feel lonely-“I’s I don believe you-“I’s”. All these I’s have one simple thing in common: me me me.

It is probably a trick of life that animals like us have to think this way, and I must say it has some logic. Awaking in the morning we all have to solve that one and only problem: Where do …“I”… get my first coffee today? And nobody can suppress the split second aversion when this coffee is not there. We need all kind of tricks to avoid, that we beat someone up for that. Kids normally say: “You have to die”. That’s honest. We just think it… or even worse, we become Oshoites, Christians or what so ever to repress or to fly from it…

Love and hate is just the way life is. We are part of that. So feel: feel stupid, proud, be sad, love, hate and be relaxed about it. Show hate in love and love in hate. Accept that we are involuntary programmable robots on this 3.5 billion year old merry go round.

Our granddads did what ever they had to do and that’s okay by me. They also had no choice and that programmed us. This is it. There is no other story.

This is it. . There is no delete switch in the brain, which accepts or suppresses the story. And remember nobody will love “you”, because you simply aren’t there. So breathe slowly… relax and love - and show your feelings of reprisal. We need contact to be alive and learn.

We have to love and hate granddad and if not, we end up as that lonely empty cockroach in the woods, happily eaten by the ants. Ants are always happy. Being social they surely are part of some cult, you know. But … when there is a living master… ….. …..

Vigyano (Michiel) Dorenbosch, Netherlands.

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Dear Reader of Sannyas News,
Underneath you find an open letter to the newspapers (today 12th of March) about the attitude of the management team of the Osho Resort in response to what happened after the German Bakery terrorist blast (tomorrow it is now exactly one month ago).
Warm regards,
Drs. Michiel Dorenbosch (Vigyano), Netherlands

OPEN LETTER:

Osho Resort: much hugging but where is the heart

Just one month after the German Bakery blast, as a witness of what happened there it was heartbreaking to read that the numbers of killed kept growing for so many days. Gladly there were also sparks for pride. For example - because of all those including sannyasins who risked their lives to help the injured of the blast to nearby hospitals (knowing there might be a second blast). Two, pride because of the doctors and nurses and all others, some sannyasins, who helped tending the injured and those who died.

At the same time I got more and more shocked about the way the management of the Osho Resort reacted to all this. Still they haven’t shown any sign of compassion or tribute to the grief of so many. The only public statements made were about their own interests and safety. In contrast to many others there was no warmth, no compassion, not even a minute of silence to give space to what happened outside.

It becomes even worse. An Italian sannyasin who asked on the evening of the blast to turn down the disco music to inform the crowd about the disaster that was happening, was expelled from the resort on the authority of the Chairman on the grounds of “violating the rules”. There is so much hugging in this resort, but I wonder where is the heart when it really matters? .

A member of the Resort Board when asked about this, answered: “What is it about? … It is a little café on the corner which was hit because it was not protected. Well, we were not hit as resort because we were well protected.” And a comparable attitude came across from another board member, the former physician of Osho, when questioned about the administrative systems of the resort. A Taiwanese sannyasin badly injured in the blast explicitly asked us to call his wife at home. That night the reply at the resort-gate was: “We won’t interrupt the video of Osho or disturb the White Robe meditation for this” According to the physician, the next day, there hadn’t been any hurry to that call because at that moment it was in the middle of the night in Taiwan. “We are not going to phone Granny when a bomb explodes” he stated.

As a sannyasin I am ashamed about this team (“the inner circle”). Are these the men and women, “the chosen few”, to guard Osho’s heritage? Not able to share emotions and grieve when it happens in the real world, just along the road, but outside of their world of courses, trainings and meditations?

Looking back it may be less astonishing to some. I understand, the Chairman, the Canadian Jayesh (Michael) O’Byrne, never appeared in public during the 20 years he is in this position to be a leader. Is he and his crew capable at all, to stand for the love and all the other things that visitors, sannyasins and workers invest in this resort?

I feel ashamed to see this team, self locked and lame when normal human emotions are called for. An inner circle which seemingly forgets that the resort is a guest in this young and proud nation of India, and whose people are so hit and disturbed by this terrible event.

That’s maybe why I feel the urge to apologize publicly on behalf of this “Inner circle”, the caretakers of Osho’s heritage, who apparently get lost in their businesses, personal fights and interests, meanwhile loosing the most precious thing they had…their heart. The only thing that really can keep this heritage alive, spiritual, humane and even economical.

I think this team has to learn again and freshen up its ranks. If not, this story will end up by itself. Probably as an empty heavily armed fortress, an unsafe place to be, physically, and not only that, an unsafe place for the soul also.

Drs. Michiel Dorenbosch (Vigyano) Netherlands

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A damp snow falls…

(Swami Deva Rashid worked in Poona One as Osho’s personal vegetable gardener. On the Ranch he spent a lot of time in the Pot-Washing room and the Fire Tower. In Poona Two, till the Master left the body, he was that body Guard, an Editor and all jobs in between. Now he lives in Devon, England with Nisheetha, keeps bees, designs buildings and landscapes for sacred use, has published two volumes of poetry, written a book about the pathless path we all are treading and hangs out with a tribe of grandchildren. And mostly, by choice, he does a lot of nothing.)

A damp snow falls across the English fields outside my room obliterating distinctions. Inside i stoke the cooking range and put potatoes in the oven. Who know what magic and what mysteries these years with Osho have accomplished.

Three weeks ago i was in Sydney’s baking heat, visiting my daughter and her family. My marriage to that daughter’s mother ended forty years ago. I tried another marriage after that. Since then, however, i have lived in communes and alone and with a partner. So living with my daughter for six weeks, i was visiting again the building block of our society – the family.

In this family i watched, with pain and fascination, the hang-ups, fuck-ups and dysfunctions of my parents and my grand-parents manifesting in my daughter and my grandchildren.

Like all my war-time generation, I grew up in loneliness. I always knew the aching void, the constant drag of not being whole and adequate. I married young – too young – to mitigate the pain. I got it wrong and married yet again; still the hunger, still the fear.

Thirty years or so outside the family, thirty years or so with Osho, help with inner clarity and a non-judgemental witnessing. However in the early days of the visit, i wasn’t quite so clear. I talked things over with my lady back in England. She helped me formulate a guide line for myself; ‘don’t interfere, never offer insights or advice unless invited to’.

Thus i stood outside the tensions and contentions of a couple and their daughter and five sons. Thus i stood alone. Sure i cooked and cleaned and played and read the children stories, sure i went on shopping expeditions with my daughter and bush hikes with my son-in-law. And sure i took an hour or so a day to sit, to burnish the aloneness. That way i didn’t get identified or cast into a role – despite a lapse or two.

And free of roles you don’t need others to support or vindicate you. You don’t get caught up in the daily struggles of control or freedom, what is right or wrong, inclusion and exclusion. You stay alone without being lonely.

To round off my two months Australian visit, i spent ten days near Byron Bay. Friends had lent me an isolated house beside a river in the Rainforest. It was here that i realised – again – the gift and the vision that Osho has given us. He made us do the work. Over and over again he contrived and conceived situations to confront us with our multitudinous dysfunctions, all the while commenting on how the wise ones of the past had offered solutions to such issues.

One disadvantage of my age is the need to pee three or four times in the night. It breaks the sleep patterns. At three in the morning i remembered the Jacuzzi. I slid back the lid and slipped into the amniotic waters of the tub. I lay under the great dome of the sky, of the Milky Way and the Southern Cross, the known and unknown constellations of our galaxy. I lay like a new born baby.

Consciousness whispered deep inside me. Something vague at first. It built a vision. In that majestic setting i was no longer this old body in a hot tub, but a voyager in time and space. I travelled to the timeless time when space and form were of an utter density, what physicists call a singularity.

I watched in vision as the Big Bang happened. In one colossal micro-moment singularity expanded into plurality. I watched photons, protons, neutrons and electrons streaming from the centre of the nothingness. I watched the fires and gasses grow, explode and cool and form into a thousand million galaxies and nebulae, red-dwarfs and quasars, suns and worlds and elements and chemicals – becoming rock and ocean, swamp and protozoa and amoeba, fern and flower and fish, amphibian and bird, beetle and man.

All this.

This fruit tree leaning from the house, this body in a hot-tub and the hot-tub and the water in it, the cicada buzz of the forest at night, the trees arching up to the sky, the stars bending down to the dark line of hills. All this - one stuff.

We are all one stuff.

Our loneliness is a delusion. We heard Osho say it over and over again; we are not separate from all that is – just as islands are not separate but all part of one landmass; all joined under the sea.

Sleep that night came deep and sweet. And the very next day Nature gave me a gift of confirmation;.

I hiked up through the rainforest following a small stream to its source below a cliff at the foot of a waterfall. After walking for an hour. i came to where this stream had flooded recently, become a torrent, washed out its banks and undermined a few magnificent old trees. There was an open patch, a glade, the size of two tennis courts.

I went round visiting each of the old uprooted trees and some of the remaining standing ones. There were trunks that soared up 30 metres without a bend or a branch. Some others were of the fig family, sending down a web of aerial roots that had enclosed the original trunk many times over. I had a long, long hug with a Western Red Cedar - oh my brother!

Turning to head on back up to the trail i was leaping from rock to rock when my attention was taken by something white. I stopped, balanced precariously on the rock immediately above the object.
In the cicada silence of the forest i heard myself gasp. I saw that a snake was subduing a wallaby – or, as i later found, a four foot (1.2m) Diamond Python was about to eat a 6kg Pademelon.

As i watched i thought to myself - there’s no way that snake can swallow that animal. Its body is six times the diameter of the snake’s body and twelve times the diameter of the snake’s head.

We are all one stuff, one impeccable production of 4 billion years of evolution! Of course the python knew what he or she could swallow. She knew that her skull and jaws can open up four ways and that her skin is extremely elastic.

For the next hour i watched and photographed her progress. Once, as i walked around her, she disengaged her mouth and warned me off. I got the message, said goodbye and continued up the mountain.

Lying down naked in the pool under the cliff while a rainbow cloud drifted down to me, i knew again – we are all one stuff. Python, pool, giant fallen tree, homo sapiens, galaxy. Where can loneliness come in?

Just a figment of the mind!

Even as i close this piece of writing i hear the judging voices of my childhood mutter; “who do you think you are? you’re not so great a guy! you’re not the only pebble on the beach!”

Yes yes!

I am the only and the all – and the snowdrops pushing through the virgin snow.

An issue of the mystery and the magic.

This article first appeared on Osho World.

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Transcend Terror argues the founder of the German Bakery

Klaus Gutzeit started the original German Bakery many years ago in Pune, at the suggestion and request of some of his sannyasin friends, who sure knew he could bake from previous times in Goa! The news of the blast on Feb 14th in Pune reached Klaus in the calm of the hills of Himachal Pradesh. Despite now being 64-years-old he immediately packed his bags and set off for Pune.

“I was shocked and it was important for me to be there,” said the nomadic German. “On the first day we opened the German bakery years ago in Pune when Osho was alive, there was a mad rush. After that we have never looked back,” he recalled.

“I thought it would help them a little on seeing me, being with them in their moment of grief…also I thought I should give them my support,” said Gutzeit, who is now in Goa, the place where he learnt he had it in him to be a successful baker. He was shocked by the devastation he saw but says terrorism can’t be allowed to win. “When I think about it, I’m filled with anger and sorrow. But we have to live with it and look forward with optimism. We can’t let terrorism win, the human will is much stronger than that,” he said.

The Bakery is now run by a local family, the Kharoses, but Gutzeit got to meet his old Nepalese friend Gopal, who has been in the bakery for 20 years. “I gave him my moral support. I am too old now to be of any real help to him,” said Gutzeit, lovingly called Woody by his friends. “I hope there will be a new German Bakery soon. There is so much moral support and demand for it.”

Woody, a school drop-out, who describes himself as a “simple traveller, doing writing, painting, and photography”, arrived in India in 1970 at the end of a road trip that took him one and half years. He never left.

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