Osho’s Biography
Bhagwan Shree Osho, was also known as Rajneesh, or simply as Osho. He was born Chandra Mohan Jain in Kuchwada, a small village in Raisen district in the state of Madhya Pradesh, Central India, on Decembr 11, 1931. A professor of philosophy, he gave several public talks and won the hearts of many throughout India. He attained Mahasamadhi on January 19, 1990, in his ashram in Pune, in Maharashtra, India.
From 1958 to 1966, Osho, who went by the name of Rajneesh, was a Master of Arts in philosophy, and served as a professor of philosophy in the University of Jabalpur in the city of Jabalpur. In 1966, he left this post and began his tour of India, giving public talks at several places as a spiritual teacher. Throughout India, he conducted several meditation camps, and it was only in the 1970s that he settled down somewhat in the Shree Rajneesh Ashram in Pune. He had earlier been based off his apartment in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was known then.
According to the Gale Encyclopedia of Religion, which analyzed Osho’s draw among seekers, “Osho’s synthesis of spirituality with personal-growth psychology attracted significant numbers of Westerners, many in midlife transition. Sannyasins often received new names signifying their spiritual rebirth. These sannyasins were known as new or neo-sannyasins; they renounced living in either the past or the future, but emphatically did not renounce material or sexual indulgence. He developed unique meditations, many involving intense, emotionally cleansing activity preceding stillness.”
Before his samadhi, Osho pointedly made a move towards getting people to take responsibility for their own cleansing. He created meditative therapies so that people could take their personal and spiritual growth into their own hands.
Even today, meditation is an important part of all true Osho followers’ lives. These meditations are quite popular in schools, colleges, corporations, and wellness centers. Unfortunately, too many see Osho’s offerings as philosophy. The Gale Encyclopedia again: “Osho’s philosophical approach blends Western and Eastern traditions, with special emphasis on Zen Buddhism. Important themes include dropping the ego and its conditioned beliefs and integrating the material and the spiritual. The ideal human is Zorba the Buddha, a consummate being combining Buddha’s spiritual focus with Zorba’s life-embracing traits.”
Osho did not offer philosophy, just methods and techniques to experience life in its fullest. Indeed, this is the cornerstone of Buddha or even Zen. Unfortunately, too much study and scholarship have labeled these phenomenal mystical processes into philosophies to be read and understood.
Controversies Around Osho
A major reason that Osho was controversial in India and indeed the West, was his advocacy of sexual freedom and exploration. For example, note how Lonely Planet’s India Survival Guide from the 1980s, talks about him. This is in fact one of the more taciturn and unbiased reviews. “With India’s great importance as a religious center it’s no wonder that so many people embark on some sort of spiritual quest while they’re there. There are all sorts of places and all sorts of gurus. One of the best known would have to be Bhagwan Rajneesh and his orange folk but he has deserted Pune for greener pastures in Oregon. USA. The Pune ashram continues but on a much diminished scale.
Although Pune has a number of points of interest and can be conveniently visited if you’re heading from Bombay to Aurangabad (for Ajanta and Ellora) or to Goa, its major attraction to western visitors was the Shree Rajneesh Ashram The ashram became so well known that it was even included on the city bus tour, where, in a superb reversal of roles, Indians flocked to view westerners. Osho. however, has now shifted his ashram to Oregon in the USA and the Pune ashram is a mere shadow of its former self.
Although Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has shifted to the US, his ashram still continues in Koregaon Park, a relatively would be three or four thousand of his followers at a time in Pune, about a thousand of whom actually lived at the ashram. In all 90% or more of his Pune followers were westerners. The ashram is clean, neat and modern, with cool touches, like signs suggesting that you don’t waste time queuing for mail, rent your own mailbox’.
Osho is one of the most popular of India’s ‘export gurus’ and, quite probably, the most controversial. His followers are also highly visible since every Osho follower is always clad in orange from head to toe and wears a picture of their guru on a wooden bead chain around their neck.
Osho’s approach to the guru business has caused controversy from the start. It’s a curious blend of Indian mysticism and Californian pop-psychology. You don’t just meditate – you do ‘dynamic meditation’. Hyped up tales of tantric sexual rites have also fuelled the controversy and tabloid papers in the West are always happy to run a headline with ‘Sex Guru’ in it. Whatever the pros and cons, his followers all seem pretty convinced of his abilities, but nowadays you’ll find them in Oshoville, Oregon rather than Pune, Maharashtra.”
However, the greatest international controversy developed in the United States when he settled at the Big Muddy Ranch in central Oregon. From the summer of 1981 until the late fall of 1985, several thousand sannyasins labored to create the communal city of Oshopuram and a model agricultural collective. Their dream disintegrated because of financial, legal, and political conflicts, and Osho embarked on a world tour before returning to Pune in 1987. Two years later he took the name Osho, which means dissolving into the totality of existence, or merging with all life.
Why Osho Isn’t As “Accepted” as Other Movements
Many of these guru-disciple movements, such as those of Osho, of Transcendental Meditation and of Balayogeshvar, the boy-saint of the 1960s, have their support and recruitment bases primarily outside India. The most important of them has been the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) whose members are commonly known as Hare Krishnas and described as the ‘only tribe permanently settled on airports’ on account of their fund-raising activities there. ISKCON has solid Hindu roots. Founded by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada (1896—1977), a Calcutta bullion merchant turned Vaishnava monk, the movement gained a strong foothold in North America in the 1960s. Within fifteen years of Bhaktivedanta’s arrival in New York, the organization had spread throughout the West as well as Japan, and then reentered India to an enthusiastic welcome. Its teachings and practice are firmly based on the Gaudiya Vaishnavism of Sri Chaitanya, a sixteenth century Bengali saint regarded as avatar of Krishna by his followers.
Osho’s offerings are however very different from ISKCON. Osho is a realized master, while Prabhupada was one who delivered the message of Chaitanya. A elevated soul, but not an enlightened one. While ISCKON has refused to compromise with western lifestyles, Osho’s movement was quite unlike this. The core of devotees do not live in tightly controlled monastic communes, as with ISCKON, though they are generally totally vegetarian and teetotal, but not necessarily remain celibate until marriage. With other institutions, marriage was usually arranged by the institution. Not so with Osho.
ISCKON has also built large shrines at the key sacred sites of Vaishnavism at Vrindavan, the legendary birthplace of Krishna in Uttar Pradesh, and at Navadvip, the early venue of Sri Chaitanya in West Bengal. Though this is not the case with Osho’s movement which was not an off-shoot of any other movement. ISKCON and even until recently, Sathya Sai Baba’s movements were well-respected in India, which is not the case with other foreign-based movements like Rajneeshism, ‘3 H O’ (that is, Healthy, Happy, Holy), the Sikhism-cum-Trantrism of Yogi Bhajan in California, and even Transcendental Meditation of Mahesh Yogi. To put all these movements in the same sentence as Osho is quite a stretch, but this was just to make point on how ISCKON has managed situations.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, Osho’s high visibility, Indians do not generally acknowledge that this is a successful and imaginative transplant of a movement which had lain dormant since the Sfi traditions began in India. The initially anti-scholastic Osho leadership now actively encourages the study of Osho’s teachings.
Though shared by all neo-Hindu movements, the combination of eclecticism and idiosyncratic representation of Osho is epitomized by the Radhasoami Satsang and the Meher Baba Mandali. The first has a strong and affluent following among Punjabis and other North Indians, as well as a western audience which has been increasing recently. The self-consciously idiosyncratic spelling of soami for swami, the wearing of the Sikh turban by the members of one of its two schismatic groups, the acceptance of the writings of five out of the ten Sikh gurus, and the monotheistic, anti-iconic doctrine culled from the Sikh scriptures and informed in part by regional forms of north Indian bhakti traditions, indicate its eclecticism as does its esoteric meditational technique of shabd (sound) and nam (the inward repetition of God’s name) in surat-shabad-yoga. The preceptors of the movement are seen as divine incarnations, through whose aid and mediation salvation can be attained.
Osho taught the arousal of the kundalini, the coiled-up mystical energy imagined inside the body and blended with the divine energy (shakti) visualized as female. He effected this awakening by shaktipat (the descent of shakti) through personal initiation of the first generation of his disciples. Osho knew English, so the larger part of his present-day following is not Indian. In general, therefore, Hindu revivalist reform movements, which stress rural and general social uplift, better living standards, female emancipation and economic progress, de-emphasize individual, contemplative, mystical involvement are doing better. Those, on the other hand, which stress the psycho-experimental dimension of yoga, including esoteric and at times tantric elements, and are normally found in urban settings, de-emphasize social and patriotic work and secular ideological involvement. At one extreme of this scale, we must list the Arya Samaj, and perhaps the Ramakrishna Mission, which are focused on reform and social uplift and which view individual mystical pursuit with some misgiving. At the other extreme we should note Sri Ramakrishna himself, and more recently the traditions created by Sri Aurobindo, Meher Baba, Osho, Muktananda and a large number of less-known teachers and their followings.
Osho Centers
Many consider Osho to be a controversial spiritual teacher. But his teachings have touched the lives of millions of Americans, Europeans, and Asians. Many thousands of these have sought to pursue the spiritual path in its fullness, and are called sannyasins, having been initiated by Osho into Sanyas. The spiritual movement is centered at the Osho Commune International in Pune, India, at 17 Koregaon Park, where it was first established in the early 1970s.There are Osho centers in more than fifty nations. In the United States, the largest are Osho Academy in Sedona, Arizona; Viha Meditation Center in Mill Valley, California; and Osho Padma Meditation Center in New York City.
Centers are independent, and unfortunately, there are some conflicts between these based on what they choose to emphasis. Turf wars seem to be the norm among these many administrative setups. It is sad that Osho did not take the necessary time to setup the organization properly, so that more could benefit from his grace as a Guru. The ashrams do have common bonds though, such as common Osho meditations and teachings.
The Osho Meditation Resort in Pune began as the Shree Rajneesh Ashram and continues as the movement’s heart, housing a multiversity offering myriad courses on spiritual growth, healing, creative arts, and intimate relationships. There are also meditation workshops and programs emphasizing meditative aspects of sport. Osho Meditation Resort is an international center where a core staff hosts thousands of visitors annually. Both sannyasins and other seekers visit the resort center in Pune, read some of the more than six hundred books that have been transcribed from Osho’s lectures or have been written about him, communicate on the Internet, gather to meditate throughout the world, or enroll in Osho-based counseling and personal growth training.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is discord within the movement between those who regard Osho’s general teachings and methods as of primary importance and those who put primary emphasis on Osho himself as an embodied charismatic individual. This is a major dispute that could lead to a segmentation in which new centers, without connection to the Pune headquarters, incorporate and spread Osho’s teachings. Such schism may result in either continued growth and spread of the system or attenuation of the movement and its teachings. It is unfortunate that such a thing is happening so close in time to the passing of the Master.