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The previous post was a letter of apology to Osho International Foundation (OIF) from the former Director of Osho Boulder Meditation Centre in the United States. Below Sangeet answers his main points. (Ed.)

Dear Jamie,
This is an open letter in response to your letter (of apology to OIF). I’m sorry to hear that you feel you have been out of integrity in recent years. I always hope that Osho’s people will have the strength and courage to be in our truth, in spite of any opposition we might face.

I understand that after Suvarna was subpoenaed (required) to testify in the US trademark case, and gave completely honest testimony, the people from OIF (the Swiss nonprofit) were instrumental in having all the board members from the Boulder centre banned from the Pune Resort. I can’t help but suspect that this “apology” of yours is really a way for you to get your ban lifted or is a response to some other pressure. By the way, after all the years you spent running the Boulder center with Suvarna, playing music with her, and (she thought) being her friend, you could at least get her sannyas name right in your letter. But then, you didn’t really write that letter, did you?

If your motivation for signing the letter is to get your ban lifted or to get someone’s approval I’m very sorry, because you must feel pretty rotten at some level for letting yourself down this way. On the other hand, I could be wrong, and if you really are sincere, then I congratulate you for coming into your integrity. Osho said we were all His successors but it is very difficult to pull that off. It is difficult to respect people with different points of view, yet I think it’s essential. Osho said this has never been done before, but He believes we can do it. I believe we can do it too.

For myself, I feel very much in integrity with my understanding of the situation. I heard Osho say that he did not want any religion, institution, or organization formed around His work. He spoke of religiousness versus religion and organism versus organization. I understood Him to say that an organization would be the ultimate threat to His work. Disciples at some point down the line always want to become respectable; they always want to be accepted. No one with an authentic religious teaching can ever be respectable, so authenticity has to be watered down. If we create an institution where people have the power to water down or suppress Osho’s real teachings, we’ve destroyed Osho’s work. It might not happen in our lifetime, but it will happen.

I heard Osho say to each one of us, “This has happened to every major religious teacher. Please don’t let it happen to My work.” I didn’t think much about it at the time, but 30 years ago, when I first heard Him ask this, I said in my heart, “Yes. I won’t let that happen.” When the time came for me to put up or shut up, I resisted. I had a life I wanted to live, blah, blah, blah. But in the end I knew I really wanted to keep my promise, and I would continue to keep that promise. (I think Existence listens in to promises made to the Master, and it’s pretty hard to weasel out.)

Near the end of Osho’s life I was working in His library one day when Anando came back from seeing Osho. She said that He had spent the whole session that day telling her why it was important that the Inner Circle and Presidium, which He was in the process of setting up, should never interfere with the centres. He told Anando how much damage Sheela had done to His work by interfering with the centres and said that it was important to the success of His work that the centres be left alone. Maybe it was delusions of grandeur, but I said to myself, “I’ll make sure that never happens again.”

By legal definition, if there really was an Osho trademark, as OIF claims, OIF would be required to exercise direct control over the centres or the word Osho would no longer be a trademark. That means that if OIF really didn’t control the centres and OIF ever wanted to enforce the trademark, it wouldn’t be able to. Without control a trademark would mean nothing. In the US case Vatayana testified under oath, several times, that OIF already actively controls all the Osho centres in the world. She specifically mentioned how she had personally exercised control over the Boulder centre.

Since this is exactly what I understand Osho to have asked us not to do, I have done everything possible to prevent this from happening. If you sincerely disagree, I have no problem with that.

I think it’s important to say that in the US trademark case the three-member board ruled unanimously, in a very strongly worded opinion, that there never had been an Osho trademark. OIF was really stretching to try and create the illusion of one. This is important, because if you aren’t trying to push the river, to create fantasy in the face of reality, then there’s no reason to be angry or vengeful if someone like Suvarna simply tells the truth. If you aren’t living a lie, there’s no reason to fear the truth. And let’s face it, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to try and prop up a lie. What a waste!

If you, the people from OIF, and other likeminded souls want to form some kind of a voluntary organization that will preserve what you think is a “golden” form of Osho’s teaching, go for it. No one is stopping you. Every religious or philosophical faction through time has always believed that its interpretation is “golden,” but that’s your freedom. This would at least be an honest approach to the issue of preserving Osho’s teachings, and there would be no need to try and intimidate anyone else into going along.

On the other hand, if you want to force legal control and your “golden” interpretation on other successors of Osho who choose to be independent, that’s not OK at all. Osho spoke about the difference between persuasion and coercion. Persuade away, but if you coerce, threaten, or bully, expect to find some of Osho’s people facing you and saying calmly, “Back off. This is not going to happen.”

In my understanding, Osho’s teaching is about individuals. It’s a wildfire burning out of control, because that’s the nature of truth. When the individual is consumed by the wildfire, that person’s own individual teaching happens inside. There’s nothing for anyone else to keep “golden.” In fact, there’s nothing that is anyone else’s business.

But that’s just me. If you disagree sincerely and respectfully about this, then I respect and support you in living your truth. I do not respect or support bullying, name-calling, threats, or intimidation.

So, Jamie, if your “apology” was just a wank to get back into the Resort or please someone else, that’s pretty pathetic. On the other hand, if you are sincere, then I hope you’ll continue to stand up for what you think is right. If we disagree forever, so be it. For me the most important thing about being with Osho is to live our integrity and truth—disagreement is not very important.
Love,

Sangeet 4/17/2010

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Sannyasnews think this letter, though a public document, has not been discussed, and is little known in sannyas circles. We will publish Sangeet’s reply to Vidoha in the next 48 hours.

TO OSHO GLOBAL CONNECTIONS, PUNE AND OSHO INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION

Dear Friends,
I am writing this letter of apology to all lovers of Osho and his work. I used to be a Director of the Osho Centre in Boulder, Colorado (USA) and in 1998 as part of Osho International’s work to protect Osho’s name and to keep his work 24 karat gold we were asked to sign a Letter of Understanding (LOU) reconfirming our basic understanding and support.

Rather than listening to the reasons for this document put forward by Osho Global Connections and Osho International we decided against signing the LOU because we decided that we should be “neutral”! It seems that I did not understand that OIF protects the Osho mark for all of us involved in the work.

Instead of supporting the people doing this work we did nothing, and in doing nothing we ended up actually supporting Neelam and Keerti and Sangeet, the people most responsible for bringing a legal action against OIF in the USA against the registration of the OSHO marks related to Osho’s active meditations. These same people are also responsible for the campaign to destroy Osho’s copyright. And my support for them was in spite of the fact that by my previous dealing with Osho International I had recognised the existence of that same copyright.

Sangeet and these people convinced one of our Board members, Ma Jivan Suvarna, to join in their legal action against the Foundation and she even gave testimony against the Foundation and the Inner Circle and its members. Suvarna also joined Sangeet, a former lawyer involved in Osho’s work, on the Board of Viha Connection magazine which for years had attacked OIF at every possible turn. I did nothing about this, no objection of any kind.

At no time did I make any attempt to reach out to anyone from Global Connections or Osho International to discuss the matter. I also want to be clear that never once did OIF or Osho Global Connections ever interfere in the operation of the Boulder Centre and, on the contrary. they only offered to support us in any way they could, listing us on Osho Centre lists website under places to meditate, keeping us informed of goings on in the Pune Resort and of Osho’s work going on around the world, and inviting us to the annual centre leader’s conferences in their office in Pune. Vatayana even travelled from Pune to visit our centre on 3 separate occasions and was always available to discuss our questions we had related in relation to the operation of our centre.

In addition, as Director I supported the use of lawyers to oppose Osho International in its action to defend the Osho trademarks. By our fence sitting and by refusing to sign the LOU we forced Osho International into a legal action against the Osho Boulder Centre adding more expense and work to an already expensive and time consuming litigation.

Countless times Osho Global Connections and Osho International contacted us to explain the situation and we continually avoided these contacts and in effect kept our heads buried in the sand. And we were always warmly welcomed into the (Pune) meditation Resort in our visits. And I knew by our behaviour that we were undermining the work of the Inner Circle by our inaction, and in spite of this support we then removed all references to the trademarks and copyrights of OIF from our website - information that we had up there for years before, and in doing so threw further support to Sangeet and company.

Finally I am embarrassed to say that some 8 years later I finally got the point that OIF, and Osho Global Connections and the Inner Circle are not in any way trying to stop people from doing Osho meditations or spreading Osho’s vision. On the contrary, as anyone who has walked into almost any bookstore can see. Never have Osho publications been more available in the world than now. And these people who we failed to support when they needed our support, work round the clock to make all this happen.

I have now resigned from the Board of the Boulder Osho Centre.

Once again my sincerest apologies to anyone who has been hurt by my actions and most especially apologies to Osho and his work,

Vidhoa Jamie (James St Clair).

Pune 4/02/2010

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(Editorial context)
The English Sunday Observer, a newspaper with what is called a “good” reputation, published a front cover story about Tim Guest (previously Yogesh) a couple of weeks ago. (March 28th). In the article Osho and his movement were derided in a scurrilous and misinformed way. A number of sannyasins took the time to reply, but nothing was published, and nothing acknowledged. We ourselves therefore publish Rashid’s reply to the article here which pins down the article for a number of falsities.

To the Editor, The Observer

Who needs to practice character assassination? Someone who feels wounded? Someone who feels threatened? Your writer Elizabeth Day had so many slurs and untruths in her cover story last week that perhaps she need to ask herself some questions.

Ms. Day makes her bedrock position clear when she belittles as “an escape” from “the very isolating pressures of capitalism” Tim Guest’s work as a writer on virtual communities and his mother Anne’s decision to take sannyas. Also she calls an interviewee “oddly out of kilter” for not adjusting to life outside the communes when he finds people “very guarded.” This prejudice is backed by lies: the boy did not hang himself: the coroner found misadventure: Osho did not give sermons from a dentist’s chair under nitrous oxide: he did not own any Rolls Royces or even have money of his own, nor was he an ascetic. She peppers her “story” with loaded cliché words like “bizarre ashram, strange commune, sinister, warped, sullied reality, etc”.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh also known as Osho is acknowledged by many as one of the most inspiring, insightful and enriching sages of recent times. In the seventies and eighties he was offering workable solutions to the flaws in our cultural, political, educational, environmental and religious practices that were then impending, and are now present, crises.

We all have a right, even a duty to be sceptical. Ms Day quotes a number of people saying that Tim Guest “wasn’t always quite honest” around drugs. Yet she takes his book at face value. What about researching a bit deeper? Has she checked what Osho actually said and did? Also, how about paying attention to what Tim Guest told his mother; “that he felt lucky to have had that kind of upbringing.”

I am in touch with many children, including my own, who were in the communes and have made for themselves bright and successful careers in the world. To generalise from the particular of one unhappy life in order to belittle thousands and titillate other thousands is, it seems to me, poor journalism and dishonours the Observer.

Yours Sincerely

Rashid Maxwell

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Terrorists behind Pune blast identified

Mumbai, Apr 7

The suspects behind the German Bakery bombing in Pune on February 13 face imminent arrest.

The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Wednesday submitted its report on the investigations into the blast, which killed 17 people, to the state home ministry, identifying the Indian Mujahideen (IM) as the perpetrators.

It also named the persons involved in planning and executing the blast, although details were not revealed to the media for obvious security reasons.

The report was formally presented by the newly appointed ATS chief Rakesh Maria to the home department which has forwarded it to the Indian Central government.

Only recently, the Central government froze over a dozen bank accounts of the IM suspects in Pune. The chief suspect is Mohsin Chaudhary, a Pune resident and one of the founder members of the IM. He has since disappeared from Pune.

The investigators are on a lookout for Mohsin and other IM terrorists suspected to be behind the blast. The others are IM founder Riyaz Bhatkal who had lived in Pune for four years before settling in Pakistan, Abdus Subhan Qureshi and Riyaz’s brother Iqbal Bhatkal. The fifth suspect is Mohammad Amjad Khwaja from Hyderabad, who was arrested in January by the Andhra Pradesh police. He had told investigators that he was shown videos of the Osho Ashram in Pune, which is close to the Bakery.

While the Bhatkal brothers are believed to be hiding in Karachi, a massive manhunt has been launched for Mohsin Chaudhary and Abdus Subhan Qureshi.

The blast in Pune was reportedly triggered as part of what is called the Karachi Project, planned by the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which was behind the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, and its front organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

The details of the alleged Karachi Project were revealed by the LeT operative David Headley to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, to whom the Indian investigators are seeking access for questioning him.

The charge sheet against Headley quoted him as saying that the brothers, Riyaz and Iqbal, were being sheltered by the LeT in Karachi. Headley himself had visited Pune twice and conducted a recce of the Osho Commune and other places in the vicinity. He had stayed at the Surya Villa, close to the German Bakery.

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The Natural Mind by Khabira

(This article first appeared In Viha Connection (http://www.oshoviha.org) and is republished with permission.)

Two years ago, I started studying psychology at the university again. I start with that statement because studying again is such a radical change for me. As a sannyasin, I used to think that the mind should not be nourished, not be used, that intellect and academics are stupid and misleading. I had started studying psychology at the university in 1977 when I was 17, and stopped it to go to Pune in 1978. Now, at the age of 50, I am back at it. What happened?

After going through years of commune experience, therapy, and meditation, I am starting to use the mind extensively again. I remember Osho saying to use the mind, but not be used by it. I seem to have forgotten the first part of the sentence for many years. Now, having become a naturopath and training in psychology, I know that any parts of the body-mind that are not used atrophy; they shrink and degenerate. When you do not use your muscles, they shrink, and soon they will not be able to carry you any more. The same goes for the mind: Pathways of nerves and junctions between nerve cells (synapses) that are not used degenerate, and soon will not be able to carry information any longer.

What is so bad about a mind that does not function very well? Well, in order to live an intelligent life, we need to plan, evaluate, and figure things out. And we’d better be able to do it well, otherwise we can easily mess up things. Also, mind does not get less through not using it; it just gets more stupid. Looking back, I see quite a few stupid things that I have done because of being stuck in what I now perceive as sannyas conditioning. The mind can get conditioned with anything. As long as we are not fully aware or enlightened, we have to be very watchful of what kind of stuff is put in the mind. And it does not matter whether it is stuff from the society or stuff from the sannyas community.

And sannyas conditioning is so much harder to detect because we are much more identified with it, thinking this is the way to Truth. The sannyas community creates a group mind of its own. Here is how Jack Kornfield describes this:

Unfortunately, the spiritual world can become as confining and narrow-minded as the rest of the culture; it seems that almost every religious community has its unconscious “group think”, its “in-group” behavior. (After the Ecstasy, the Laundry)

If having a mind is natural and it needs to be used, the only thing that can be done is disidentification. The need to disidentify from the mind, rather than not use it, got even clearer for me after I read the book Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) by Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson. In modern psychology, the need for awareness, which is called mindfulness, and acceptance is being recognized more and more. I used to think that whatever goes on in the West about meditation is only second class, not first class like what we did in Pune, but I am finding that this is not true. It is getting clearer to me how natural it is to have a mind, and that the natural function of the mind is planning and evaluating. This is why evolution has created a mind in human beings.

With evaluating, there is also judgment. I have been fighting against judgment for many years, thinking it is bad and should not be done. Now I am coming to a very different conclusion, that judgment is one of the things the mind does naturally, and will always do. My job is to disidentify, not take it seriously, and be clear and honest about it, rather than trying to reshuffle the furniture in the mind. If I try to reshuffle, things just get messed up even more. In my relationship, I am finding that disidentification works. Sometimes I may yell at my boyfriend, “You are an arrogant asshole!”, and he may yell back at me, “And you are a whining wimp!” And then we just laugh at each other, enjoying the strong energy that is dancing between us. He may even be right, I may be a whining wimp sometimes – so what?

Another advantage of using the mind extensively is that after exercising the mind for a few hours, the mind gets really tired and meditation comes more easily. Maybe this is some kind of Dynamic Meditation for old age? Rather than catharting through the body first, we can cathart through the mind before going into silence.

For anybody who after reading my article now says “but Osho has said …”, here are two quotes of Osho:

“I do not have any teaching. My life is that of a rebel. I do not have a doctrine, a philosophy, a theology to teach you. I have only my own experience of rebellion to share, to infect you with rebelliousness. And when you are a rebel you will not be a copy of me; you will be an unique phenomenon in yourself.”
Osho, The Rebellious Spirit #11

“And then you say, “I like your teaching.” Have you ever thought what is my teaching? The question of liking or not liking does not arise — there is no teaching at all! Neither is there a teaching nor is there a teacher. I am not preaching a certain doctrine to you, a certain system of beliefs, a philosophy or theology. I am not a teacher and I don’t have any teaching, because I don’t have any belief: no God, no heaven, no hell. Just this universe, which is not a belief — which is your experience, my experience, everybody’s experience.”
Osho, Om Mani Padme Hum #29”

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Sannyasnews has become aware recently that there is still widespread confusion about trademark and copyright issues around Osho amongst sannyasins. A big legal case in the United States made it clear last year that no-one could claim Osho as their own trademark.
However the copyright issue is still not settled at all, as far as we know. Below is the recent 2010 statement put out by Osho International on copyright.

Copyright© 2010, OSHO International Foundation
First Publication Copyright© 1953, OSHO International Foundation.
Copyright© - all revisions 1953-2010 OSHO International Foundation.
All Rights Reserved.

OSHO International Foundation is the sole and registered owner of all of the copyrights to all the published and unpublished words and works of Osho, as author in all mediums, including audio, video, electronic, multimedia, and written forms, which were the sole original works created by the Author, as well as photographs of the Author, and is the owner of the copyright to various derivative works and other writings, music, art, and other products created or otherwise associated with the Author.

The word “copyright” means the entire copyright and design right, visual rights, sound recording rights, and any and all analogous rights subsisting under international treaties and the laws of each and every jurisdiction throughout the world.

You may not copy, reproduce, sell, distribute, publish, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any material, works or intellectual property owned by the OSHO International Foundation without explicit permission.

OSHO International Foundation is actively publishing and licensing these works throughout the world. If you are interested in any of the material or works, permission for reprint or any other format of use or publishing or licensing:
For reprint information, publishing requests, copyright or trademark questions outside of India please contact:

OSHO International
410 Park Avenue, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10022
U.S.A
www.osho.com/oshointernational
E-mail: oshointernational@oshointernational.com
T. +1.212.231.8437
F. +1.212.658.9508

For reprint information, publishing requests, copyright or trademark questions inside of India please contact:

OSHO International Foundation
17 Koregaon Park
Pune 411001
Maharashtra
India
email: publishing@osho.net
Telephone: +91-20-5601 9999
Fax: +91-20-5601 9990

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