sannyasnews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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Alok John explores Liberal Democrat leader’s past

Following the inconclusive British election, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, can choose, albeit within political constraints, whether the Conservatives or Labour will govern.

It has been reported in the British press that, as a young man, Nick Clegg was a devotee of the Maharishi’s transcendental meditation for six years.

Osho had a poor opinion of TM, and I have put some of his quotations about TM below. One would have more confidence if Nick Clegg had done dynamic meditation for six years or even six days. But I suppose if he had he wouldn’t be about to get into bed with Conservative leader David Cameron (perish the thought!)

Here are the quotations :

“Question - What do you think of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Views on Transcendental Meditation
Osho - Transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation. But still what he is doing is good. What he is teaching in the name of meditation is only an ancient method of chanting. If you chant any word or any mantra continuously inside the mind, other thoughts stop because they don’t have any space. And this continuous chanting is a certain device of auto-hypnosis; it is not meditation. It does not lead you to any spiritual enlightenment, but it certainly gives you a good feeling of wellbeing and health. You will feel refreshed — just as you feel refreshed after a good shower; but a shower is not a transcendental meditation.
So there is nothing wrong with what he is doing. It cannot harm anybody. He is harmless, but he is misdirected. He is giving a toy which is not the real thing. If people enjoy toys — and many people enjoy toys — I have nothing against them. If they are happy, that’s perfectly good.”

“2. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls Transcendental Meditation is only transcendental stupidity! Certainly it is transcendental — it is no ordinary stupidity, it is very sacred! — but stupidity is stupidity, and when it becomes transcendental it becomes more dangerous, more poisonous.
3. And all these people, like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi teaching transcendental meditation, are giving techniques which mind feels perfectly good with. The mind can use it. But there is not going to be any growth. The technique is not bad, but it simply gives you an illusory feeling of well-being — as if you are evolving… and you are standing where you have been; there is no evolution, no growth. All these people are exploiting humanity by giving techniques — and this is the worst exploitation because it stops evolution. I am against all techniques.”

“ The West is unnecessarily making tremendous effort in analyzing the mind — utterly useless unless they accept a transcendental state. And that’s why again and again they get cheated by frauds.
For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is cheating the whole of the West by any stupid thing. First it was transcendental meditation, then people became fed up with it because it was not meditation; it was mind repeating a mantra. You were not going beyond the mind, so what is transcendental in it?
So his earnings became very low; he had to invent something new. So he has invented spiritual yogic flying. First he started by spiritual levitation: you can meditate and become so light that you will start rising upwards! — and you can find idiots everywhere… And people were paying four hundred dollars for learning spiritual levitation. In the first place what are you going to do by… even if you levitate, what purpose is going to be served by it? In the second place nobody was levitating; people were hopping….
The West is being exploited by all kinds of frauds for the simple reason that the West has not looked into the matter of meditation itself. So any idiot goes and says anything, and gathers followers because they don’t know what meditation is. Neither will chanting a mantra nor hopping nor levitation…
These things have nothing to do with meditation. Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle — the whole mystery of life.”

“And there are methods for grown-ups too, for example Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. It is just a lullaby – a little sophisticated. It is meant for grown-ups, for adults. It is a process of auto-hypnosis. The mother is no more there and your wife certainly is not going to sing a lullaby to you. She can freak out, but she cannot sing a lullaby! She can throw pillows at you, but she cannot sing a lullaby! She will say, ”I am not your mother!” And you cannot ask her either, ”Please sing a lullaby,” because that will hurt your male chauvinist ego.

So you start repeating a mantra. It has to be in some dead language which you don’t understand – Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Chinese, anything that you don’t understand. If you understand you will not get into it. If you understand, doubts will arise. If I say, ”Just repeat ’Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola’,” you will repeat it two or three times, and then you will say, ”What nonsense I am doing!” But a Sanskrit mantra is just like ”Coca-Cola,” nothing special in it. But you don’t understand so you believe that there must be some secret in it, some great mystery in it, and you go on repeating it. You are singing a lullaby to yourself; soon you will fall into sleep.

Transcendental Meditation and methods such as it have become more important in the West for the simple reason that the West is losing the art of how to fall asleep. People are suffering from sleeplessness more and more; they have to depend on tranquillizers. Transcendental Meditation is a non-medicinal tranquillizer. And nothing is wrong if you know that you are using it as a tranquillizer, but if you think that you are doing something religious then you are stupid. If you think this is going to lead you to meditation you are a fool, an utter fool, just a simpleton.

It is not going to take you into meditation because meditation means awareness. It is taking you towards just the opposite of awareness: it is taking you towards sleep. I am not against sleep – a good sleep is a healthy thing. And I prescribe TM for all those who suffer from sleeplessness, from insomnia. It is perfectly good, but remember that a good sleep has nothing spiritual about it. It is good for the body, it is good for the mind too, but it has nothing to do with the spiritual dimension. The spiritual dimension opens up only when you are awake, fully awake. And the only way to be awake is to drop all sleep and all dreaming.”

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GURU – Bhagwan, His former Secretary, His former Bodyguard: (and the stupidity of the human mind.)
A Review of the movie by Ramoda.

I had a chance this week to see the film GURU - Bhagwan, His Secretary & His Bodyguard.

Two former sannyasins Shiva (Huge Milne) and a former secretary of Osho during the early 80’s Sheela (Sheela Silverman) have teamed up with a group of Swiss documentary film makers who put this project together.

In short it seems to be a combination of two biographies - Sheela and Shiva - who decades after their involvement with Osho can still not let go; and need to justify their leaving by blaming Osho and his community, all for the public record. Over the last 20 years we have seen many attempts by Sheela to clear her name, and clearly she has not come to grips with her jail time for amongst other crimes, attempted murder – at least this she does not try to pin this on Osho – and in Milne’s case for the months he spent in a psychiatric hospital (not long after leaving the Oregon commune).

It was certainly one of the most boring movies I have seen in a long time. I would suggest to watch an Osho Talk instead; it will leave you in a much better space.

Shiva who talks with a voice as if he is on antidepressants, clearly never understood the point that Osho’s work is an ongoing process of change. He just could not get the point that “Poona 1” ended and that Osho like a real Zen master put his people to work in a new phase – “carrying water from the well, chopping wood” – the contemporary version of this was perhaps to build a city in the desert of Oregon – who knows. The film shows Shiva who dropped out of everything early and then created his own mini Poona 1 world – just this time creating himself in the role of a guru and healer with special abilities. Most of the last 25 years since he left the movement he has been busy with justifying why he left.

Sheela , like Milne has also recreated a community, this time unfortunately with mentally challenged adults, who are misused in this film as a background scenario presenting Sheela as the caring mom. Now she has surrounded herself with people who cannot question her, or don’t even understand how they are misused in this film for Sheela’s personal politics. It is pathetic to see that the institution for these handicapped people is filled with Pune 1 ‘Bhagwan’ photos and how Sheela explains that she is living Osho’s vision in this ‘commune’. Can it get more pathetic?

Unless the viewer is a sannyasin or has personal experience and some kind of involvement in the events at the time of this film, the film is without context– a wasted opportunity which has cost, according to the estimates, about 2-3 million US-Dollar – most of the money came from Swiss government film project funds and Swiss TV.

Two lost people who have completely missed the point of Osho, and cannot resist on the blame game, putting their poison out to the world. The political and personal accusations are not even worth mentioning here, nothing new, just the same old wine in a new bottle - an expensive film production.

The only redeeming feature is the archive footage of Osho, of joyful sannyasins and some footage from events and locations of the journey which seem to make up half of the film. Probably Sheela convinced the film makers to make this film about ‘her Bhagwan’ as she still calls him, frozen in the past. Shiva talks only about ‘Rajneesh’. Two people in a ‘Ground Hog Day’ time loop – a 25 year loop!.

The misunderstandings, minds and personalities of these two people put on display here confirm anything Osho ever said about Sheela and Shiva.

Osho said:
‘Shiva had been my bodyguard for years. Then he dropped sannyas. Then he started speaking, against me. He wrote articles in German magazines – Stern and other magazines – against me. But if he comes back and wants to be my bodyguard he will be again by my side. And I know perfectly well what he has done. That does not matter at all, it is his doing; he should be worried and concerned about it. As far as I am concerned, I have remained exactly the same. He can come again and be my bodyguard. Nobody else will accept him as a bodyguard, because that is the easiest place from which to kill a man…

… He has to take responsibility for whatsoever he is doing, whatsoever he has done; he has to take the whole responsibility for it. But it is none of my business to interfere in his doings. If he feels it right to write against me, perfectly good; if he feels happy to write against me, perfectly good. But for ten years he was sitting by my side. He must have a tremendously idiotic mind – in ten years he could not see anything wrong. It took ten years for him, and now, after dropping sannyas, he becomes suddenly articulate. So what was he doing for ten years – sleeping?

No, it is not against me that he is writing those articles. It is just to console himself that what he has done by dropping sannyas is right, because the man was wrong. He has to prove it to himself that “the man was wrong, that’s why I have dropped sannyas.” Otherwise it will continuously be a wound – that I loved him so much, trusted him so much, so unconditionally, and this is what he has done to me. I can understand his difficult situation. So writing against me, he is simply trying to cover up the wound that he has inflicted upon himself.’

– Osho (From Unconsciousness to Consciousness #6)

And of Sheela Osho said:

‘…the problem was that Sheela was never inclined towards spirituality, towards any inner growth, towards meditation…from the very beginning. If she would have been inclined, then I would have immediately detected the change. She was never a meditator, she never meditated. She has other qualities: she was very pragmatic, very practical, and very strong.

Sheela seems to be really insane. In fact all power-oriented people are a little insane. A sane person would not like to enslave anybody. Just today I have come to know that Sheela and her group tried even to poison my physician. They wanted to poison other persons who were close to me, for the simple reason that nobody should be close to me except Sheela…

… I was simply sad – sad that a woman from whom we expect a more loving heart, should think in terms of killing people. I was simply sad – sad for Sheela, that she must be in a mess. The very idea is sickening. I am not angry at her, because I can understand these things can happen to power-oriented people.

..Sheela never wanted anybody to be close to me in any way. She never wanted anybody even to talk to me, so that I don’t know what is going on. Three persons she was trying to kill. The people before whom she discussed the plan are here. One was my physician, one was my dentist, one was my caretaker.

First, my caretaker was given poison while she was visiting Sheela’s house and took a cup of tea – but nobody suspected. We thought some illness has happened. She was immediately taken to the hospital. She remained few days in the hospital, got well, and nobody even thought, nobody could even conceive that.

Then my physician one day was taking coffee at Sheela’s house and he came…. But because he is a physician, with the best qualifications from England, he could feel that there was some poison in the coffee. But everybody laughed at the idea that, “You must be mad! Who will put poison in your coffee and for what?”

He remained sick for few days and while he was sick, he was here in the medical clinic and Sheela’s accomplice in all these crimes was Puja, who was a trained nurse and knew everything about medicine, drugs, poisons. She injected him again with a poison. Since then he has been feeling weak, for no reason at all.

And third time, just in the last celebration – here in a meeting – a woman who was the third in Sheela’s group, Shanti B., she injected him while he was sitting in the meeting. And he immediately thought that something has been pushed. He took over his robe and called people to see: there was blood and something has been injected.

He was taken to the clinic, but he refused to go to this clinic, because now he was afraid. If these people can do it in a public meeting where fifteen to seventeen thousand people were present, what they can do in the medical clinic? And Puja was a dominant figure in the medical corporation. So he insisted to go to Bend. He was taken to Bend. His wife, Hasya, was with him there. …Today, one sannyasin has come on his own and he said, “I am an eye witness. In front of me, Shanti B. has injected Devaraj, but I was keeping silent: if they can kill Osho’s physician so easily – I am a poor sannyasin – they can kill me any time.”

- Osho (The Last Testament)

Here,15 years after Osho spoke these words … his timeless review of this film.

As for the film producers — a project like this with public funding could have been a fantastic opportunity to present to this messed up world a new vision of meditation and living on this planet with reverence for life — instead they have chosen to go the usual political way – the controversy – the usual political opposition and sensationally pushed up film presentation. Trapped in the usual mind pattern they are probably convinced they have done a great job.

It looks like we will all still have to wait a bit longer before a film is made actually presenting Osho’s vision through his own understanding rather than through countless misunderstandings of unenlightened people.

Until then, luckily we all can enjoy Osho’s books and talks in video and audio format. Just by looking for these quotes from Osho I found out that the complete OSHO Library with all his English talks is now available for free on www.osho.com/library.
Love,
Ramoda

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