Home | Articles | Features | Modern Teachers
Listings | Community Noticeboard | Chat Board
Editorial Bytes (January, 04)
The Real Mother Teresa
Osho would have been having fun this last fall. It seems that Mother Teresa has been beatified, and in a hurry! The old Pope is dying, so maybe that’s the rush! The old fool is besotted by the idealisation of woman, hence his addiction to the mother of Jesus, rather than the revolutionary mystic who sometimes found his own mother a hassle. Catholicism has hitherto stated that at least 7 years have to elapse after death before a Saint is declared, and there are supposed to be two accredited miracles. Also there is supposed to be a Devil’s Advocate, someone appointed by the Church to argue the case against any person proposed as a Saint, at a full Vatican hearing.
I’m not sure that any of these conditions have been met, however the truth is that Mother Teresa was certainly no Saint, but a reactionary self-serving publicist. People say she built hospitals with the millions given to her, but actually she built only nunneries in her name, and many of them. She thought that birth control was the work of the devil, no doubt to make sure her orphanages were full in the most overpopulated city of the world, Calcutta. Most odd thing of all was that she urged the poor to think of their poverty as a gift from God. Such rubbish! Catholicism has moved so far from the original inspiration of Jesus that one wonders whether all Churches, Mosques and Temples, based upon the great revolutionary mystics are in fact just forms of social control. Osho himself seemed to think so when he said of Rajneeshism that it was a Church in his name born and dying in his own lifetime, the gross example of which would stop any future nonsense after his death. Let’s only hope so.
Sex and the Holy City
The old Vatican fools are at it again spreading a palpably false story about condoms, a story now gaining strength, unfortunately in countries that can really do without such craziness from the priests. Priests are echoing the views of Cardinal Trujillo, a senior Vatican spokesman, in saying that condoms have microscopic holes in them through which HIV can pass. This view is held despite the full scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV. Of course what they are up to is to stop poor uneducated people from using birth control. The World Health Organisation has condemned the Vatican’s views. It says “These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed 20 million people and currently affects 42 million people.” It’s strange that in Kenya where 20% of the population are said to be infected with Aids that the Catholics have been particularly evangelical about not using condoms. The Archbishop of Nairobi has come up with the extraordinary statement that “Aids… has grown so fast because of the use of condoms”!
Out of Africa.
Thankfully one piece of very good medical science, and without the backing of the major drug companies, has become known in the last months, and coming out of Kenya. Fifty prostitutes from the Majengo slum area of Nairobi, who have been found to be resistant to HIV and never caught it, despite multiple daily exposures, have been studied with a view to creating a vaccine based upon research from them. It was found that all fifty had massive amounts of white blood cells perfectly honed to kill HIV infected cells. Out of this research a trial vaccine has been produced NOT using antibodies, as almost all vaccine research does in the West, but on a cellular basis. Because the Nairobi Doctors, led by Kenyan Omu Anzala have broken away from the paradigm of other vaccine research, and by concentrating on how some people find themselves naturally immune to the disease, it would seem a little optimism is not too foolhardy in this case.
How many Oshos are there in India.
Have a look at www.oshodhara.com ! Osho’s younger brother and two other of his associates are going about declaring themselves enlightened, which I suppose is fair enough. But to call oneself Osho does seem a little imitative to say the least of it! In addition it seems that Osho Shalindra, for that is the current name of Osho’s brother, feels that Osho’s work was incomplete and he and his associates are filling in the pieces. The feeling that Osho’s work was incomplete I do not share at all, but there you go, for those who never met Osho… he does look a little like him!
Meditation not Medication
Maneesha has headed up a well-organised site www.activemediation.com which also documents well the scientific evidence for the medical values of the active mediations of Osho. This is particularly welcome. I remember when I used to lead dynamic meditation some years ago that one would get questions aimed to undermine. For example that dynamic could give mental problems as well as solve them. Or that it lead to habits of hyperventilation, etc. It’s good to see scientifically documented the objective evidence for many medical indications of how dynamic and other active meditations help, and even get rid of conditions such as high blood pressure, depression, etc. This of course apart from the feelings of independent well-being they almost always create.
Parmartha