“Man is entering into a new phase; a new consciousness is to dawn. For at least ten thousand years, as far as consciousness is concerned,
nothing new has happened. There have been Buddhas and there have been Albert Einsteins, but we are still waiting for a Buddha who is also an Albert Einstein or an Albert Einstein who is also a Buddha.” Osho
Osho was born in Kuchwada, a small rural village in the state of Madhya Pradesh, central India, on December 11, 1931. He was the eldest of 11 children of a Jaina cloth merchant. Osho’s previous birth was in Tibet 700 years before his last birth in this life. Osho reminds us in one of his talks: The moment the child is born, you think, is the beginning of its life. That is not true. The moment an old man dies, you think, is the end of his life. It is not. Life is far bigger than birth and death. Birth and death are not two ends of life; many births and many deaths happen within life. Life itself has no beginning, no end: life and eternity are equivalent….
Life begins at the point of your past life’s death. When you die, on the one side one chapter of life, which people think was your whole life, is closed. It was only a chapter in a book that has infinite chapters. One chapter closes, but the book is not closed. Just turn the page and another chapter begins. The person dying starts visualizing his next life. This is a known fact because it happens before the chapter closes….
He adds: Your life begins far back before your birth, before your mother’s impregnation, further back in your past life’s end. That end is the beginning of this life. One chapter closes, another chapter opens. Now, how this new life will be is ninety-nine percent determined by the last moment of your death. What you collected, what you have brought with you like a seed that seed will become a tree, bring fruits, bring flowers, or whatever happens to it. You cannot read it in the seed, but the seed has the whole blueprint….If a man dies fully alert, seeing the whole terrain that he has passed and seeing the whole stupidity of it, he is born with a sharpness, with intelligence, with courage—automatically. Happy Ho organizes best Meditation and Tarot classes in Noida and Delhi NCR area in India.
Osho’s childhood days were full of a rebellious spirit, courage and sharp intelligence, questioning the social expectations and religious beliefs his family and teachers tried to impose on him. As a youth He experimented with meditation techniques from many different traditions. He says: I have meditated; I have come to a point where I can see my own past lives, and that’s proof enough. It is my knowing, my experiencing; it is nothing to do with Indian heritage, beliefs, or anything. I speak on my own authority.
He adds: I began as an intellectual—not only in this life but in many lives. My whole work in many lives has been concerned with the intellect—refining the intellect, sharpening the intellect.
Osho attained enlightenment in a garden in Jabalpur at the age of 21 on the fateful day of twenty-first March, 1953. For many lives, He had been working – working upon himself, struggling, doing whatsoever could be done to attain enlightenment. And it happened one day when He stopped all this and relaxed deeply into non-doing, no-effort.
Osho received his M.A. from the University of Sagar with First Class Honors in Philosophy. He was the All-India Debating Champion and Gold Medal winner in His graduating class. In 1957: Osho was appointed as a professor at the Sanskrit College in Raipur. And in 1958: He was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jabalpur, where He taught until 1966. A powerful and passionate debater, He also travels widely in India, speaking to large audiences and challenging orthodox religious leaders in public
debates.
1966: After nine years of teaching, He leaves the university to devote Himself entirely to the raising of human consciousness. On a regular basis, He begins to address gatherings 20,000 to 50,000 in the open-air maidans of India’s major cities. Four times a year He conducts intense ten-day meditation camps. He traveled widely and racked up controversies wherever he went. He was seized with a mission of awakening sensitive people from what he believed to be sleep-walking intellectual materialism.
However, his delight in controversy and his endless and uncompromising
attacks on any and every deeply-rooted belief that he feels is not based on truth or logic, soon make him an enemy of the establishment.
In July, 1970, Osho moves to Mumbai and sets up the first foundation to make his work and vision available – the Jivan Jagruti Kendra Foundation, which became Rajneesh Foundation in 1974, when Osho moved to establish his ashram in Pune.
In 1970, the 14th of April, Osho introduced His revolutionary meditation technique, Dynamic Meditation, which begins with a period of uninhibited movement and catharsis, followed by a period of silence and stillness. Since then this meditation technique has been used by psychotherapists, medical doctors, teachers and other professionals around the world.
Osho – at this time called Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh – began to initiate seekers into Neo-Sannyas or discipleship, a path of commitment to self-exploration and meditation which does not involve renouncing the world or anything else. Osho’s understanding of ‘Sannyas’ is a radical departure from the traditional Eastern viewpoint. For him, it is not the material world that needs to be renounced but the conditionings and belief systems that each generation imposes on the next. He encourages his sannyasins to celebrate life totally rather than abstain from life.
The 112 techniques are interpreted by him from the ancient Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Shiva’s 2000-year old tantric Book of Secrets.
1974 – 1981 Pune Ashram
During these seven years, He gave a 90 minutes discourse nearly every morning, alternating every month between Hindi and English. His discourses offer insights into all the major spiritual paths, including Yoga, Zen, Taoism, Tantra and Sufism. He also spoke on Gautam Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, and other mystics. These discourses have been collected into over 600 volumes and translated into 50 languages.
In the evenings, during these years, He answered questions on personal matters such as love, jealousy, meditation. These ‘darshans’ are compiled in 64 darshan diaries of which 40 are published.
The commune that arose around Osho at this time offers a wide variety of therapy groups that combine Eastern meditation techniques with Western psychotherapy. Therapists from all over the world are attracted and by 1980 the international community gained a reputation as ‘ the world’s finest growth and therapy center.’ One hundred thousand people pass through its gates each year.
1981: He developed a degenerative back condition. In March 1981, after giving daily discourses for nearly 15 years, Osho began a three-year period of self-imposed public silence. In view of the possible need for emergency surgery, and on the recommendation of His personal doctors, He traveled to the U.S. The same year, His American disciples purchase a 64,000-acre ranch in Oregon and invite Him to visit. He eventually agreed to stay in the U.S.
1981 – 1985 Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA
A model agricultural commune rises from the ruins of the central Oregonian high desert. Thousands of overgrazed and economically unviable acres are reclaimed. The city of Rajneeshpuram is incorporated and eventually provides services to 5,000 residents. Annual summer festivals are held which draw 15,000 visitors from all over the world. Very quickly, Rajneeshpuram becomes the largest spiritual community ever pioneered in America.
October 1984: Osho ends three and one-half years of self-imposed silence. July 1985: He resumes His public discourses each morning to thousands of seekers gathered in a two-acre meditation hall.
Sept. – Oct. 1985: The Oregon Commune is destroyed. the same year, September 14: Osho’s personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and several members of the commune’s management suddenly leave, and a whole pattern of illegal acts they had committed – were exposed by Osho himself. He invited law enforcement officials to investigate Sheela’s crimes. The authorities, however, see the investigation as a golden opportunity to destroy the commune entirely, which they had always wanted to do from the very beginning.
In the meanwhile, Osho started talking to the world media and his message was spreading all around the world in the fastest way.
Often, many people and journalists asked this question in the USA: Why
do you have a fleet of 93 Rolls Royce. In one of his talks, Osho tells
the secret: ‘The world is not interested in truth, the world is interested in something sensational. Truth is not sensational. The world is not interested in enlightenment, the world is more interested in Rolls Royces.’
‘There was no need for ninety-three Rolls Royces. I could not use ninety-three Rolls Royces simultaneously. But I wanted to make it clear to you that you would be ready to drop all your desires for truth, for love, for spiritual growth to have a Rolls Royce. I was knowingly creating a situation in which you would feel jealous. The function of a master is very strange. He has to help you come to an understanding of your inner structure of consciousness: it is full of jealousy. I want to provoke your jealousy, because that is the only way to get rid of it.’
‘My interest was to provoke the jealousy of the American so-called rich. The Americans think they are the richest people in the world. But I created a simple joke with ninety-three Rolls Royces and all their pride was gone.’
Osho is not a traditional master who gave birth to any new religion. He says: I teach religiousness, not religion. “This twentieth-century brings a new consciousness into the world, it is a quantum leap. Now you can see. Now you are no longer bothered by language and words. You can see deep into my eyes and you can see the same truth as is revealed in Moses or as is revealed in Baal Shem. I am proclaiming a new religion – the essential religion. In Islam it is known as Sufism, in Buddhism it is known as Zen, in Judaism it is known as Hassidism – the essential core. But I speak your language, I speak the way you understand, the way you can understand. I speak a very religionless language. I speak as if I am not religious at all. That’s what is needed in this world. This twentieth century needs a religion
completely free from all kinds of superstitions, utterly nude, naked.
“This century is trained in the ways of science, is trained very logically. Never before was any other human society so logically trained. I am talking about something which is basically illogical but I have to talk in a logical way. If you go to a Sufi he talks about the illogical in an illogical way. I talk about the illogical in a logical way. If you go to a Zen Master he simply talks in an illogical way. You will not be able to make a bridge between you and him. With me, the bridge is very easy. I go with you to take you with me
further.”
Osho is a genius who combines science with spirituality in such a way that world has never seen before–and he is never bothered about what the traditional think about him. According to Osho: The genius is one who does not allow society to reduce him to a robot: that’s my definition of a genius. Everybody is born as a genius, but people start compromising very soon. And when they compromise, their talents disappear, their intelligence dies. They go on selling their souls for mundane things, for useless things – useless in the ultimate sense; they may be useful here, but death comes and all those things are taken away with you. If you can die like Albert Einstein – mystified, with full wonder, with prayer in the heart, with poetry arising in you – you have lived rightly and you are dying rightly. And a man who
lives rightly and dies rightly is a spiritual person. Albert Einstein is far more spiritual than your Vatican Pope and your Shankaracharyas – far more spiritual.
To conclude, it can be said that Osho belongs to no tradition. “I am the beginning of a totally new religious consciousness,” He says.
