Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth

                    
 "Meditation must not be made into a business." Acharya Rajneesh 1971

     Acharya Rajneesh was only 39 years old when I first met him at his Bombay apartment in December of 1970.  With long beard and large dark eyes, he looked like a painting of Lao-Tse come to life (see picture of Rajneesh at his best).  Before meeting Rajneesh I had spent time with a number of Eastern gurus without being satisfied with the quality of their teachings.  I wanted an enlightened guide who could bridge the gap between East and West and reveal the true esoteric secrets, without what I considered to be the excess baggage of Indian, Tibetan, or Japanese culture.  Rajneesh was the answer to my quest for those deeper meanings.  He described for me in vivid detail everything I wanted to know about the inner worlds, and he had the power of immense being to back up his words.  At 21 years old I was naive about life and the nature of man, and assumed that everything he said must be true.

     Rajneesh spoke on a high level of intelligence and his powerful presence emanated from his body like a soft light that healed all wounds.  While sitting close during a small gathering of friends, Rajneesh took me on a rapidly vertical inner journey that almost seemed to push me out of my physical body.  His vast presence lifted everyone around him higher without the slightest effort on their part.  The days I spent at his Bombay apartment were like days spent in heaven.  He had it all, and he was giving it away for free!

     Rajneesh possessed the astounding power of telepathy and direct energy transmission, which he used nobly to bring comfort and inspiration to his disciples.  Many phony gurus have claimed to have mysterious abilities, but Rajneesh had them for real.  Those who came near soon learned of them through direct contact with the miraculous.  One or two face to face meetings with Rajneesh was all it took to turn doubting Western skepticism into awed admiration and devotion.

     One year earlier I had meet another enlightened teacher known to the world as Jiddu Krishnamurti.  J. Krishnamurti could barely give a coherent lecture and constantly scolded his audience by referring to their "shoddy little minds."  I loved his frankness, and his words were true, but his subtly cantankerous nature was not very helpful in transferring his knowledge to others.

     Listening to Krishnamurti speak was like eating a sandwich made of bread and sand.  I found the best way to enjoy his talks was to completely ignore his words and quietly absorb his presence.  Using that technique I would become so expanded after a lecture that I could barely talk for hours afterwards.  J. Krishnamurti, while fully enlightened and uniquely lovable, will be recorded in history as a teacher with very poor verbal communication skills.  Unlike the highly eloquent Rajneesh, however, Krishnamurti never committed any crime, never pretended to be more than he was, and never used other human beings selfishly.

     Life is complex and multilayered and my naive illusions about the phenomena of perfect enlightenment faded with the years.  It became clear that enlightened people are as fallible as anyone.  They are expanded human beings, not perfect human beings, and they live and breathe with many of the same faults and vulnerabilities we ordinary humans must endure.

     Skeptics ask how I can claim that Rajneesh was enlightened given his scandals and disastrous public image.  I can only say that Rajneesh's spiritual presence was identical to that of J. Krishnamurti, who was recognized as enlightened by every high Tibetan Lama and revered Hindu sage of the day.  I do sympathize with the skeptics, however.  If I had not known Rajneesh personally, I would never believe it myself.

     Rajneesh pushed the envelope of enlightenment in both positive and negative directions.  He was the best of the best and the worst of the worst.  He was a great teacher in his early years, with innovative meditation techniques that worked with dramatic power (see explanation and warning about Osho's Dynamic Meditation technique near the bottom of the page).  Rajneesh lifted thousands of seekers to higher levels of consciousness and detailed Eastern religions and meditation techniques with luminous clarity.

Bhagwan leading group meditation

One false move.  One grand error.

     Acharya Rajneesh was born on December 11th, 1931, in the village of Kuchwada in central India.  The term 'Acharya' means a religious teacher and 'Rajneesh' means moon.  Rajneesh's actual legal name was Chandra Mohan Jain, 'Rajneesh' being only an unofficial nickname acquired in childhood.  When the man I knew as Acharya Rajneesh suddenly changed his name to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I was dismayed.  The famous enlightened sage Ramana Maharshi was called Bhagwan by his disciples as a spontaneous term of endearment.  Rajneesh simply declared to the world that everyone should start calling him Bhagwan, a title that can mean anything from 'divine one' to God.  'Shree' is an honorific term for master, so his new name could be translated as God Master Moon.  Rajneesh became irritated when I once politely corrected his mispronunciations of English words after a lecture, so I felt in no position to tell him that I thought his new name was inappropriate and dishonest.  That change in name marked a turning point in Rajneesh's level of honesty and was the first of many big lies to come.

     Rajneesh lived in an ivory tower, rarely leaving his room unless to give a lecture, his life experience cushioned by throngs of adoring devotees. His isolation became even more complete when he moved from his small Bombay apartment to a large and luxurious estate in Poona, India, in 1974.  As most human beings who are treated as kings, Rajneesh lost touch with the world of the common man.  In his artificial and insulated existence, Rajneesh made one fundamental error in judgment which would destroy his teaching.

Here is Acharya Rajneesh as he looked in the early 1970s at his apartment in the Woodlands Building in Bombay.  This photograph was taken in his bedroom, which was also used to greet disciples individually and in small groups.  Notice the high backed chair and towel in his lap, his trademarks.  In those days he died his hair black to cover his grey.  On the desk in front of him was a special button that automatically locked the door to the bedroom when he desired privacy.  Rajneesh once claimed to have read more books than anyone in the world.  Note the books behind him, a tiny fraction of his large personal library.

"What you tell them is true, but what I tell them (the useful lies) is good for them."  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh 1975

     Rajneesh calculated that the majority of the earth's population was on such a low level of consciousness that they could not understand nor tolerate the real truths.  He thus decided on a policy of spreading seemingly useful lies to bring inspiration to his disciples and, on occasion, to stress his students in unique situations for their own personal growth.  This was his downfall and the prime reason he will be remembered by most historians as just another phony guru.  Rajneesh's teachings were full of intentional lies and unintentional falsehoods, born out of his own ignorance and gullibility (see Do you have a soul?).  His psychic presence, however, was 100% real and very powerful.

     Acharya, Bhagwan Shree, Osho: all the empowering names taken by Rajneesh could not cover up the fact that he was still a human being.  He had ambitions and desires, sexual and material, just like everyone else.  All living enlightened humans have desires.  All enlightened men have had public lives that we know about, and all have had private lives that remained secret.  The vast majority of enlightened men do nothing but good for the world.  Only Rajneesh, to my knowledge, became a criminal in both the legal and ethical sense of the word. 

     Rajneesh never lost the ultimate existential truth of being.  He only lost the ordinary concept of truth that any normal adult can understand.  He rationalized his constant lying as "lefthanded Tantra," but that too was dishonest.  Rajneesh lied to save face, to avoid taking responsibility for his own mistakes, and to gain personal power.  Those lies had nothing to do with Tantra or any selfless acts of kindness.  What is real in this world is fact, and Rajneesh misrepresented fact on a daily basis.  Rajneesh was no simple con-man like so many others.  Rajneesh knew everything that Buddha knew; and he was everything that Buddha was.  It was his loss of respect for ordinary truthfulness that destroyed his teaching.

     Rajneesh's health collapsed in his early thirties.  Even before reaching middle age, Rajneesh suffered reoccurring bouts of weakness.  During his youthful college years, when he should have been at a peak of vigor, Rajneesh often had to sleep 12 to 14 hours a day due to an unexplained illness.  Rajneesh suffered from what Europeans call Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), or what Americans call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).  His classic symptoms included the obvious fatigue, strange allergies, recurrent low grade fevers, photophobia, orthostatic intolerance (the inability to stand for a normal period of time), insomnia, body pain, and extreme sensitivity to smells and chemicals, a condition doctors now refer to as "multiple chemical sensitivity."

     Rajneesh's trademark chemical sensitivity was so severe that he instructed his guards to sniff people for unpleasant odors before they were allowed to visit him in his quarters.  People with Gulf War Syndrome, MS, and other neurological diseases are also often highly sensitive to chemicals and smells.  Rajneesh's poor health and strange symptoms were a product of real neurological damage, not some esoteric supersensitivity caused by his enlightenment.  Rajneesh also had Type II diabetes, asthma, severe back pain, and most likely, fibromyalgia.  

     Rajneesh was constantly sick and frail from the time I first met him in 1970 until his death on January 19th, 1990.  He thought he was getting a different cold or flu every week.  In reality, he suffered from a chronic neurological illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with flu like symptoms that can last a lifetime.  Rajneesh could not stand on his feet for long periods of time without becoming lightheaded because he suffered damage to his autonomic nervous system which controls blood pressure.  This neurally mediated hypotension (low blood pressure while standing) causes chronic fatigue and can lower IQ due to a lack of sufficient blood and oxygen being pumped to the brain (brain hypoxia).  In the 1970s Rajneesh often complained of becoming lightheaded immediately upon standing.  During the final few months of his life in Poona, he frequently passed out into complete unconsciousness.

     Rajneesh used prescription drugs, mainly Valium (diazepam), as an analgesic for his aches and pains and to counter the symptoms of dysautonomia (dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system).  He took the maximum recommended dose of 60 milligrams per day.  Rajneesh also inhaled nitrous oxide (N₂O) mixed with pure oxygen (see Osho in the Dental Chair), which he claimed increased his creativity (see dangers of N₂O).  The nitrous oxide probably did relieve the sensation of severe exhaustion and suffocation patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often feel, but it did nothing for the quality of his judgment.  Naive about the powerful effects of drugs and overconfident about his own ability to fight off their negative effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction.  

     A number of disciples have claimed that Rajneesh was so intoxicated at his Oregon ranch in the 1980s that he sometimes urinated in the halls of his own home, just as heroin addicts and common drunks often do.  I believe this to be true as the last time I saw Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh he was inebriated to the point of becoming physically ugly.  He had the same washed-out look and foolish behavior I had witnessed in addicts while working at a methadone clinic in the United States.  Rajneesh had miraculous mental powers, but he was an ordinary human being physically and could not tolerate the devastating effects of large doses of tranquilizers.

     On top of Rajneesh's physical illness, his massive intake of Valium caused paranoia and greatly reduced reasoning power.  Valium addicts often think the CIA or other unseen villains are plotting against them, so it is not surprising that he imagined he was poisoned by the United States Government.  His reasoning power became so damaged that Rajneesh actually considered moving to Russia to combine his totalitarian form of spirituality with Russian communism, an idea no sane man could possibly entertain.  Historically, Valium has been the drug of choice for CFS sufferers, as it masks the unnerving symptoms of dysautonomia and helps bring sleep.  Rajneesh suffered from insomnia, yet another classic symptom of CFS.

     Rajneesh was a physically ill man who became mentally corrupt.  His brief experimentation with LSD only made matters worse.  Rajneesh's drug use and addiction was a problem of his own making, not a government conspiracy.  Rajneesh died in 1990 with heart failure listed as the official cause of death.  It is probable that the physical decline Rajneesh experienced during his incarceration in American jails was due to a combination of withdrawal symptoms from Valium and an aggravation of his ME/CFS due to stress and exposure to allergens.

     After Rajneesh's humiliation and downfall in America, he declared that he was "Jesus crucified by Ronald Reagan's America."  In truth, Rajneesh was a drug addicted guru who self-destructed through his own wrong actions.  Comparing himself to Jesus was doubly dishonest as he himself had no respect for Jesus.  He once undiplomatically proclaimed to the American media that everything Jesus said was "just crazy."

     "I went through the abandoned city of Rajneeshpuram and saw things that were almost unbelievable.  Ma Anand Sheela's headquarters, a group of mobile homes pieced together, was a hive of secret doors and hidden tunnels, her private room a command post with electronic listening gear tapped into every room in the development.  The Bhagwan's parquet-paneled quarters had nitrogen oxide spigots by his bedside, and was surrounded by huge bathrooms with multiple showers." - Jim Weaver (former Oregon Congressman)

     Upon his sudden death in 1990 there was much media speculation that Rajneesh had committed suicide by taking a overdose of sleeping pills.  As no disciple has confessed to giving Rajneesh a lethal injection, there is no hard evidence to support the suicide theory.  A compelling circumstantial case could be made for such a scenario, however, with suicide provoked by Rajneesh's constant ill health and disheartenment over the loss of Vivek, his greatest love.

     Vivek had taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a Bombay hotel one month before Rajneesh's passing.  Pointedly, Vivek decided to kill herself just before his birthday celebration.  Rajneesh had threatened suicide at the Oregon commune several times, hanging his death over the heads of his disciples as a threat unless they obeyed his wishes.  On his last day on earth, Rajneesh is reported to have said "Let me go.  My body has become a hell for me."

     The rumor that Rajneesh was poisoned with thallium by operatives of the United States Government is entirely fictional and contradicted by undeniable fact.  One of the obvious symptoms of thallium poisoning is dramatic hair loss within seven days of exposure.  Rajneesh died with a full beard and no exceptional baldness other than ordinary male pattern baldness at the top of his head.  Radiation poisoning, another fictional cause of his illness, also causes dramatic hair loss.  

     The symptoms which may have led Rajneesh's doctors to suspect poisoning were in fact common symptoms of dysautonomia caused by ME/CFS.  Those symptoms can include ataxia (uncoordinated movements), numbness, standing tachycardia (rapid heart rate upon standing), paresthesia (sensations of prickling and itching), nausea, and irritable bowel syndrome, which causes one to alternate between constipation and diarrhea.

     The only proven cases of poisoning related to Rajneesh were carried out by Rajneesh's own sannyasins in 1984.  A sannyasin is an initiated disciple, one who takes sannyas.  There were 751 victims, including women and small children, at ten different restaurants in the small city of The Dalles, Oregon.  Rajneesh sannyasins attempted to take over the Wasco County Commission by making so many people ill on election day that they could elect their own sannyasin candidates (see the Rajneesh bioterrorism newspaper story).

     Rajneesh disciples poisoned salad bars with salmonella bacteria, which was mixed into salad dressings, fruits and vegetables, and the restaurants' coffee creamers.  Forty-five people became so ill they had to be hospitalized, thus making the case the largest germ warfare attack in United States history.  Sannyasins were later suspected of trying to kill a Wasco County executive by spiking his water with an unknown poison.  Michael Sullivan, a Jefferson County District Attorney, also became ill after leaving a cup of coffee unattended as Rajneesh sannyasins roamed the courthouse.  Rajneesh never bothered to apologize to any of the people who were poisoned by his own trusted disciples.

     Members of Rajneesh's staff were poisoned by Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary.  Sheela had the habit of poisoning people who either knew too much or who had simply fallen out of her favor.  Sheela spent two and a half years in a Federal medium security prison for her crimes, while Rajneesh pled guilty to immigration fraud and was given a ten year suspended sentence, fined $400,000., and deported from the United States of America (see Rajneesh and Sheela's mugshots).  

     Rajneesh felt that teaching ethics was unnecessary because meditation would automatically lead to good behavior.  The actions of Rajneesh himself and his disciples proves that theory to be completely false.  Rajneesh taught that you should do as you please because life is both a dream and a joke.  This attitude led to the classically fascist belief that one can become so high and mighty that one is beyond the need for old fashioned values and honest ethical behavior. 

     Those unfamiliar with the Rajneesh story can read the book, Bhagwan: The God That Failed, published by Saint Martin's Press and written by Hugh Milne (Shivamurti), a close disciple of Bhagwan during his Poona and Oregon years.  Mr. Milne's book is largely corroborated by Satya Bharti Franklin's book, Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho Rajneesh, published by Barrytown/Station Hill Press.  Both books are out of print but secondhand copies can be obtained through Amazon.Com and Amazon.Com.UK.  There have been several other tell-all books published on the same subject matter, but I have not read them and I do not know the authors, so I do not mention them by name here.

     Regarding Bhagwan: The God That Failed, I can verify many of the facts Mr. Milne states about the life of Rajneesh in Bombay and Poona, though I have no first hand knowledge of the tragic events at the Oregon commune.  My contacts with people who were there lead me to believe that most of the facts Mr. Milne presents of the Oregon era are also highly accurate.  Hugh Milne is due great credit for a well written and entertaining book which is a sincere effort at complete honesty.  On a few occasions, however, I differ from Mr. Milne's interpretations of what the facts he presents actually mean.

     Rajneesh did not suffer from "hypochondria," as Mr. Milne suggested.  Rajneesh had a very real neurological disease which he mistook for frequent viral infections.  Rajneesh became unusually afraid of germs only due to his understandable medical ignorance.  I fully agree with Mr. Milne that Rajneesh suffered from "megalomania," however, and will add that the short statured Rajneesh had a Napoleonic, obsessive and compulsive personality.

     Mr. Milne suggests that Rajneesh used "hypnosis" to manipulate his disciples.  Rajneesh had a melodic and naturally hypnotic voice which would be a great asset to any public speaker.  However, in my opinion, Rajneesh's power came from the intense energy field of the universal cosmic consciousness which he channeled like a lens.  Hindus call this universal energy phenomena the Atman.  As a Westerner, I prefer more scientific terms and describe the Atman as a highly evolved manifestation of time-energy-space, the TES (see The TES Hypothesis).  

     Hugh Milne's book records a day when Rajneesh admitted, while under the influence of nitrous oxide, that there is no such thing as 'enlightenment.'  I cannot confirm this event through other contacts, but I assume Rajneesh was simply stating what U.G. Krishnamurti has said all along; that the storybook fiction we accept of a perfect enlightenment, full of infallible wisdom, is a big lie.  A powerful and expansive conscious state does exist in humans who achieve it, but the way this state is described by the religious establishment is an egocentric fiction, contrived by spiritual leaders to control the masses for their own personal gain.  

Enlightenment is not something you own.  It is something you channel.

     Whatever term you use for the phenomena of enlightenment, it is scientifically accurate to say that no human being has any power of their own.  Even the chemical energy of our metabolism is borrowed from the sun, which beams light to the earth, which is then converted by plants through photosynthesis into the food we eat.  You may get your bread from the supermarket, but the caloric energy it contains originated from thermonuclear reactions deep in the center of a nearby star.  Our physical bodies run on star power.  Any "spiritual" energy we channel also comes from far beyond, from all sides of the universe, from the complete TES, from beyond the oceans of galaxies and onto infinity.  No human being owns the Atman and no one can speak for the TES.

     The Void has no ambition or personality whatsoever, so Rajneesh could only speak for his own animal mind.  The animal mind may want its disciples to "take over the whole world," but the Void does not care, because it is beyond any motivation.  The phenomena we called Rajneesh, Bhagwan, and Osho, was only a temporary lens of cosmic energy, not the full cosmos itself.

     Rajneesh, as the Greek-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff, often used the power of the Atman for clearly personal gain.  Both men used their cosmic consciousness to overwhelm and seduce women, which was largely a harmless affair in my opinion.  Gurdjieff was ashamed of his own behavior in this regard and vowed many times during his life to end this practice, which was a combination of ordinary male lust backed up by the potent advantage of oceanic super-mental power.  Rajneesh went even further and used his channeled cosmic energy to manipulate masses of people to gain a kind of quasi-political status, and to aggrandize himself far beyond what was honest or helpful to his disciples.  In Oregon, he declared to the media that "My religion is the only religion!"  Diplomacy and modesty were not his strong points.

     To my knowledge, George Gurdjieff never reached the extremes of self-indulgence of Rajneesh and even warned his disciples not to have blind faith.  Gurdjieff wanted his students to be free and independent with the combined abilities of clear mental reasoning and cosmic consciousness.  Rajneesh, by contrast, seemed to believe that only his thoughts and ideas were of value because only he was "enlightened."  This was a grand error in judgment and revealed a basic flaw in his character.  Unfortunately, when Rajneesh achieved the ability to fully channel the power of the Atman he failed to apply the needed wisdom of self-restraint.  His human mind so rebelled against Asian asceticism that he failed to ensure that his borrowed power was only used for the good of others.  Rajneesh was driven by personal ambition, not just compassion.

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."  Henry Kissinger

     Rajneesh left India in 1981, in part to escape paying a four million dollar Indian income tax bill.  As he disembarked a 747 jetliner to take his first footsteps in the USA, Rajneesh declared that "I am the Messiah America has been waiting for" (Milne, Bhagwan: The God That Failed).  After a brief stay in a newly acquired castle styled home in Montclair, New Jersey, Rajneesh bought the 64,000 acre Big Muddy cattle ranch in eastern Oregon for six million dollars.

     Rajneesh created his Oregon desert commune from his own powerful mind and named it "Rajneeshpuram."  He made himself the ultimate dictator, his picture placed everywhere as in an Orwellian bad dream.  J. Krishnamurti called Rajneesh a "criminal" and Rajneeshpuram "a concentration camp under the dictatorship of enlightenment."  Poonjaji, Ramana Maharshi's famous student (see photo of Poonjaji), refered to Rajneesh as "a pig" for building himself up in the eyes of his disciples to dishonest proportions.  Poonjaji's position was that even the enlightened remain human beings, not saints or superheros, and that we all share the same cosmic being, no matter what our class and social standing.

     The maverick anti-guru, U.G. Krishnamurti (see photo of U.G.), was even more critical of Rajneesh.  During the mid 1970s Rajneesh deemphasized his own meditation methods and started selling Western style group therapies as a way to gain income.  It was difficult to make money from authentic meditation techniques as they are all easy to learn and can be done alone, without the aid of a teacher.  One of the groups Rajneesh sold to students was the "Tantra" group, which was basically just male and female disciples having sex with each other.  U.G. Krishnamurti publicly called Rajneesh the "worlds biggest pimp," because "he made money from the boys and the girls and he kept it for himself."  In 1971 Rajneesh told me directly, in a face to face meeting, that U.G. Krishnamurti was "realized."  After much public criticism from U.G., Rajneesh counter attacked by calling U.G. a "phony guru."       

     Guru wars aside, the totalitarian atmosphere of Rajneeshpuram was the main reason I did not stay at the commune beyond two brief visits.  I was interested in meditation, not in a big prison camp where human beings were treated like insects with no intelligence of their own.  Rajneesh put such a high emphasis on his disciples following orders without question that they did just that when Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary, gave absurd orders to commit crimes which Rajneesh himself (hopefully) would have never approved of.

     When you decapitate the intelligence of human beings you create a situation that is highly dangerous and destructive to the human spirit.  You cannot save people from their egos by demanding "total surrender."  The anti-democratic technique of forcing blind obedience did not work well for Hitler, Stalin, or for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.  Germany, Russia, and the Rajneesh Oregon commune were all destroyed because of authoritarian imperial rule.  A diversity of opinion is always healthy, because it acts as an effective counterbalance to the myopic arrogance of those who would be king.  Rajneesh never understood this truth of history and referred to democracy scornfully as "mob-ocracy."  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an imperial aristocrat, never a generous and open minded democrat, and he put his contempt for the democratic process into highly visible action in Oregon.

     In an attempt to subvert local Wasco County elections, Rajneesh had his  sannyasins bus in almost 2,000 homeless people from major American cities in an effort to unfairly rig the voting process in his favor.  Some of the new voters were mentally ill and were given beer laced with drugs to keep them manageable.  Credible allegations have been made that one or more of the imported street people died due to overdosing on the beer-drug mixture, but to my knowledge that charge has not been conclusively proven.  Rajneesh's voting fraud scheme failed and the derelicts and mental patients were returned to the streets after the election was over, used and then abandoned.  If Rajneesh sannyasins had only held truth above all instead of obedience to guru above all, then no crimes would have been committed and the commune might still be in existence today.

     Rajneesh used people, spoke out of both sides of his mouth, and betrayed the trust of his own disciples.  This betrayal caused Vivek, his longtime girlfriend and companion, to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.  Rajneesh even lied about her death, slandering his greatest love in her grave by falsely claiming that she was chronically depressed due to some intrinsic emotional instability.  Vivek was never depressed during the years I knew her and she was the most radiant women I have ever known.

     Vivek was a glowing student of meditation, but her only meditation method was being with Rajneesh and absorbing his tremendous energy.  When her one true love collapsed into insanity, she took her own life out of overwhelming grief.  Rajneesh drove her to suicide because she could not understand nor tolerate his mental decline and collapse.  Rajneesh lied about her death to avoid taking responsibility for his own bizarre behavior, which was the underlying cause of Vivek's despair.

     The same disciple who administered nitrous oxide to Rajneesh has been spreading negative rumors about Vivek, claiming that she was not a meditative person, as himself.  He also claims that Vivek committed suicide because she was depressed about reaching the age of forty and that she suffered from a hormonal imbalance.  This same sannyasin denied to me emphatically that he gave Rajneesh irresponsible levels of nitrous oxide, but later admitted to others that he gave Rajneesh one to two hour nitrous oxide "treatments" every day for five months.  That level of exposure is clearly drug abuse with no legitimate medical justification.

     The young Acharya Rajneesh started his life as a teacher who condemned false gurus and ended his life as one of the most deceitful gurus the world has ever known.  The difficult fact to comprehend is that he was enlightened when he was an anti-guru puritan and he was still enlightened when he was the ultimate corrupt, self-indulgent guru himself.  This seemingly irreconcilable contradiction is the real reason I write this essay.  I love to go into uncharted territory where others fear to tread.

     When you combine man's natural tendency for selfishness with an ivory tower lifestyle, you have a situation where ethical behavior can appear to be optional.  Combine the unhealthy atmosphere of self-deification with a debilitating progressive illness that lowers IQ, and on top of that add drug abuse, then you have a cliff that even an enlightened man could fall from.  That fall could happen only if the enlightened man makes one wrong choice, one false move, from both the heart and from the mind.

     Bhagwan's wrong choice was to disregard truthfulness in favor of what he thought were useful lies.  Once you make that wrong turn, away from ordinary straightforward truth, you have lost your way.  No human being can disregard fact on a regular basis without finding himself in a sea of turmoil, because by discarding fact you discard the ground beneath your feet.  Little lies grow into big lies and the now hidden truth becomes your enemy, not your friend and ally.

     Rajneesh overestimated himself and underestimated his own disciples.  The real seekers around him could have easily handled the truth and were already motivated without the need for propaganda.  Rajneesh had been a high guru for such a long time that he came to see himself in grandiose terms.  He was indeed an historic figure, but he was not the perfect superman he pretended to be.  No one is!  His disciples deserved honesty, but he fed them fairy tales "to give them faith."

     Jiddu Krishnamurti had been more honest than Rajneesh in repeating relentlessly that "there is no authority" due to the intrinsic nature of the cosmos.  Ardent Rajneesh disciples didn't heed Krishnamurti's warnings and put blind faith in a man who claimed to be all-seeing, to have all the answers, and who once in 1975 brashly stated that he had never made a single mistake in his entire life.  Clearly, Rajneesh made as many mistakes as any human being.  Just as obviously, his basic existential enlightenment was no guarantee of functional pragmatic wisdom.

     While Rajneesh was a brilliant philosopher he was a lost babe in the woods when it came to the world of science.  Worried about worldwide overpopulation, Rajneesh pressured his disciples to undergo medical sterilization procedures.  Unfortunately, he did not consider the demographics of population growth.  The current population expansion is largely a phenomena of poor third world nations, not a problem originating in the USA, Canada, and Europe where birth rates are actually falling.  North America and Europe are only experiencing population increases due to legal and illegal immigration from third world nations.  Having his Western disciples medically sever their reproductive capabilities only added to this imbalance and many former disciples now regret they complied without question to his thoughtless edicts.

     Discouraging followers from having families is a common device of gurus to keep disciples from spending money on children, rather than handing their cash over to the guru himself.  Childless disciples make better workers and are usually more subservient.  Thus medical sterilization fit into Rajneesh's business plan and desire to create an army of followers who felt that "only the relationship to guru is important."

     In the 1980s Rajneesh declared that the AIDS epidemic would soon kill three quarters of the world's population and that a major nuclear war was just around the corner.  He thought he could escape nuclear holocaust by building underground shelters and slow the spread of AIDS by having his disciples wash their hands with alcohol before eating meals.  His more reasoned admonition was for his disciples to always use condoms.  To enforce his sexual rules, which also involved elaborate instructions on the use of rubber gloves during sexual encounters, Rajneesh encouraged his sannyasins to spy on each other, reporting the names of those who failed to conform to his orders.

     During his earlier Poona days, Rajneesh stated that we are attracted to beautiful people because their outer beauty represents the inner beauty of their souls, as it is the soul which creates the physical body and mind.  Science knows as fact that DNA creates the body and brain, not any mysterious and immaterial "soul."  Outward beauty does not even guarantee a sane mind.  Ted Bundy, the infamous serial killer, was quite handsome and charming outwardly, yet he is estimated to have murdered between 35 and 50 women just for the trill of it (see photographs of Ted Bundy).  

     The disaster of Rajneesh appointing himself the singular great brain of the universe was compounded by his lack of real world reasoning skills, and this was the case even before he started taking large amounts of Valium (see The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong Way Rajneesh).  Rajneesh had no understanding of, or appreciation for, the scientific method.  If he thought something was true, in his own mind, that made it true.  Rajneesh could weave magnificent philosophical dreams and addict his disciples to imagined worlds of spiritual adventure, but those dreams did not have to stand any empirical test of truth.  In the world of science you have to prove what you say is true through testing.  In the world of philosophy and religion you can say anything you desire and throw caution to the wind.  If your words sound good to the masses they will sell, whether they are fact or fiction (see Common Lies of the Phony World of Mystics).

     Rajneesh ruled his desert empire as a warlord with his own private army and puppet government.  His visions and ideas, faulty or not, were taken without question as the word of God.  His disciples were judged by their ability to surrender to his will and any opposing views were branded as an unspiritual lack of faith.  As conditions at the ranch became progressively more unpleasant, a number of sannyasins escaped by hiding in the back of outgoing trucks.  Their quest for freedom upset Rajneesh, who demanded that the disillusioned must now ask his permission to leave.  Rajneesh then dramatically threatened suicide if others escaped by stealthful means.

     Rajneesh's poor reasoning became even more apparent during and after the Oregon commune scandal.  After being jailed and then deported from the USA, Rajneesh angrily declared America "a wretched country" and Americans "subhuman," ignoring the fact that it was he, an Indian, who pled guilty to felony immigration fraud and that it was Sheela, an Indian, who ordered the most serious crimes which brought his empire to ruin.  Even in his fifties Rajneesh was still lying to get his own way, still demanding to always be the center of attention.  In 1988, suffering from drug and illness induced dementia, Rajneesh publicly pouted that his box of toys, his expensive car collection and jewel encrusted watches, had been taken away.

     Rajneesh's disciples thought they were following an authoritative "enlightened master."  In reality they had been mislead by a highly fallible human animal who was still a little boy at heart.  Rajneesh had not only misrepresented himself personally, but he misrepresented the phenomena of enlightenment itself.  The idealized fantasy of perfect enlightenment does not exist anywhere in the real world and it has never existed.  The universe is far too big and complex for anyone to be its "master."  We are all subjects, not masters, and those who pretend to be infallible and all-knowing end up looking even more the fool in the end.

"Nature does not use anything as a model.  It is only interested in perfecting the species.  It is trying to create perfect species and not perfect beings."  U.G. Krishnamurti

     The famous sages of old seem perfect to us now only because they have become larger than life myths.  The long passage of time has allowed their followers to effectively cover up their guru's flaws, just as Rajneesh disciples are currently rewriting and censoring history to cover up Rajneesh's great failings.  Rajneesh was never more infallible than any other human being.  What we call enlightenment is not a cure-all for faults and frailties that cling to human animals even after they achieve maximum possible consciousness, which is perhaps a more realistic definition of the term 'enlightenment.'

     The contradiction of corruption and enlightenment can occur because the individual is only the lens of enlightenment, not the source of cosmic power itself.  The enlightened only allow universal energy to pass through them unblocked, untouched, and uncontaminated.  In a way, no one ever really becomes enlightened personally.  Enlightenment happens at the place where you are standing, but you cannot own it or possess it.  All the words of so-called enlightened men come from the human brain which interprets the phenomena of enlightenment like a translator.  The words do not come from the enlightenment itself.  By definition enlightenment cannot speak.  It is absolutely silent and beyond any need to speak.  

     Rajneesh died addicted to Valium and he experienced all the negative symptoms of drug addiction, which included slurred speech, paranoia, poor judgment, and dramatically lowered intelligence.  At one point his paranoia and confusion were so great that he thought a group of German cultists had cast an evil spell on him.  His physical disabilities and drug abuse were simply more than his mortal brain could take.  His biggest flaw, his disregard for the ordinary concept of truth, was his ultimate downfall and for that crime he must be held fully responsible with no excuses.

"Never give a sucker an even break."  W.C. Fields

     Rajneesh lied when he said he had enlightened disciples.  He lied when he said he never made a mistake.  At the end of his life he was forced to admit he was fallible as his list of bungles had grown to monstrous proportions.  He lied by pretending the therapy groups run by his disciples were not mainly just a money making device.  Rajneesh lied about breaking United States immigration laws and only admitted the truth when he was presented with overwhelming documented evidence against him.  He lied by saying that he was adopted in a phony scheme to get permanent residence status.  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was no bank robber, but he was quite literally a pathological liar.  The ridiculous thing is that all of his lies were totally unnecessary and counterproductive.  As conventional and square as it may sound, honesty really is the best policy!

     Rajneesh lied when he claimed he was not responsible for the horrors of the Oregon commune because he hand picked Ma Anand Sheela and the people who committed the major crimes of conspiracy to commit murder, poisoning, first-degree assault, burglary, arson, and wiretapping. Rajneesh himself gave direct verbal approval for Sheela's illegal wiretapping and bugging of his own disciples.  The fact that Rajneesh did not order or have pre-knowledge (hopefully) of the most serious and dangerous crimes does not mean that he was not ethically responsible for them.

     If a teacher puts a drunken sailor in charge of driving a school bus and the children end up dead, then the teacher is responsible for their deaths.  Rajneesh knew what kind of a person Sheela was and he chose her because of her corruption and arrogance, not in spite of it.  In a cowardly attempt to evade his own failings he changed his name from Rajneesh to Osho, as if a change in name could wash away his sins.

     There is no publicly released evidence to suggest that Rajneesh ordered the germ warfare attack on the ten Oregon restaurants.  There is also no publicly released evidence that implicates Rajneesh in the plot to have a sannyasin pilot fly an airplane full of explosives into an Oregon courthouse in order to intimidate the political opposition.  Luckily, the sannyasin pilot who was asked to perform the insane task was not as dumb as the plotters and fled the commune without committing any crime.

     Rajneesh was directly responsible for the twisted mix of totalitarian slavery and libertine indulgence that the commune represented.  According to highly credible published reports, Rajneesh allowed middle aged men to have sexual intercourse with pre-pubescent girls at the commune in the name of sexual freedom, yet his disciples were not allowed to have a mind of their own and had to totally surrender to the great Bhagwan's will.  Disciples were often forced to work 12 hours a day in cold and difficult conditions, while Rajneesh himself experienced "groovy spaces" in his private heated indoor pool and watched countless movies on his big screen projection television, all the while enjoying his daily drug supply.  Rajneesh showed his divine love for his disciples by squandering millions in hard earned commune assets on his car collection and expensive jewelry, and all in the name of egolessness and spiritual surrender (see Jim Weaver's newspaper article on the Rajneesh commune conflict).

     Why did Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh own 90 Rolls-Royces?  Why did Saddam Hussein own dozens of luxurious palaces?  Those desires were products of the base animal mind of two men who grew up surrounded by poverty.  Enlightenment does not care about symbols of power and potency.  Looking for hidden esoteric explanations for obsessive behavior is pointless.  Is there an occult reason that Elton John spends over $400,000. per month on flowers?  Is there a secret spiritual reason that Rajneesh had a collection of dozens of expensive ladies' watches?  The universal cosmic consciousness is completely neutral and without any need to possess, impress, or dominate.  It also cannot drive or tell time.

     One of Rajneesh's most blatant lies was that "the enlightened one gains nothing from his disciples."  Rajneesh wanted people to believe that everything he did was a free gift born of pure compassion and that he gained nothing personally from the guru-disciple relationship.  In obvious provable fact, Rajneesh gained much from his disciples: money, power, sex, and the titillation of constant adoration.  Being a guru was his business, his only business.  Without that income, at least on the material level, he was just a short, balding Indian man who could not hold a job.  Rajneesh's very real enlightenment would not pay his bills or give him the material luxuries he craved, unless of course he used his intoxicating energy to gain power and money from his own disciples.

     Just as rock stars become energized by screaming fans at concerts, Rajneesh gained emotional energy and support from his disciples.  The energy transfer was a two-way street, not a totally free one-way gift.  During Rajneesh's incarceration in America, a television network broadcast a video of Rajneesh caught off-guard by a security camera while he was being held in a waiting room.  Rajneesh looked bored and disgusted, just as any ordinary man might be.  He didn't look blissful or enlightened at all.  In my own opinion that video clip revealed the stark truth about the phenomena we call 'enlightenment.'  The realization of the Void is not enough for anyone.  All human animals, enlightened or not, need social interaction and the comforts of the material world to be content.

     Consciousness needs entertainment to survive and Rajneesh used his disciples as playthings for his own amusement.  Rajneesh had no bankable power of his own.  He could only gain material power by manipulating others to do his will.  The equation was simple; the more disciples he attracted, the more power and wealth he obtained.

     Rajneesh, on so many levels, was just an ordinary man.  Sexually he was even less than ordinary.  Pretending to be a great tantric in his early years, Rajneesh handed out ridiculously bad sexual advice at a time when he had very little first hand experience with sex himself.  During his Bombay era, Rajneesh often grabbed the breasts of his young female disciples.  On at least one occasion he asked a couple to have sex in front of him so that he could watch.  The couple wisely rejected his request.

     Rajneesh often asked women half his age to strip in front of him so that he could "feel their chakras."  To facilitate this practice, he installed an electric lock on his bedroom door that could be activated from his desk where he spent most of his time.  After Rajneesh started having sexual intercourse on a regular basis, the spiritual need for him to feel the chakras of his female disciples mysteriously vanished.

     Rajneesh groped the breasts of two of my women friends and "felt the chakras" of a third.  I soon began to realize that like so many other girl grabbing Indian gurus who had made the headlines, Rajneesh on the human level was just an ordinary sexually immature Indian male.  My lady friend who suffered the charkra feeling incident was so put off that she never came back to see him.  He had told her "Don't worry, you are mine now."  That grasping statement had chilled her as much as the sexual advance.  The young woman was a student of Indian music and had previously been sexually exploited by a famous Indian musician she had studied with.  She knew first hand what many Indian men were like.  Rajneesh proved himself to be predictably and disappointingly the same.

     Rajneesh had much inside him that I wanted: light, energy, and a vastly expanded state of being.  Regrettably, he also had much inside him that I did not want or respect.  I do not find fault with Rajneesh for having the same sexual desires that all men have.  I found fault when he was dishonest and cruel for purely selfish reasons.

     While living in Bombay, Rajneesh made one young woman pregnant through an aggressive and unasked for seduction.  The young woman was highly upset and forced by circumstance to have an abortion.  Rajneesh, protecting his image as a great guru, lied about his involvement and claimed that she had imagined the whole affair.  The young woman told the American Embassy her story and that incident marked the beginning of Rajneesh's troubles with the United States Government.

     Most of Rajneesh's close disciples believed the young woman, not the much older "enlightened" man.  Similarly, decades later, many would believe a young White House intern, not a much older President Bill Clinton.  Being president, or being "enlightened," does not always ensure good behavior.

     Nature has provided human animals with a strong, virtually unstoppable sex drive to ensure reproduction of the species.  Because of the overwhelming importance and power of sex, most gurus, enlightened or not, have maintained active sex lives which are often kept secret for purely political reasons.  In his early years, Rajneesh lied about his strong sexuality by claiming to be celibate.  To be fair, this has to be understood in the context of a rigidly anti-sexual and highly hypocritical Indian social structure.  Later on, after his position as a guru had become secure, Rajneesh publicly bragged to the American media about having sex "with hundreds of women."  All of Rajneesh's sex partners were his own female meditation students who were used as his personal harem.

     All human beings are animals, specifically mammals.  Scientists now understand that human DNA is approximately 96% the same as chimpanzee DNA (see news story).  World history, Asian mythology, politics, and the world of alpha male gurus makes allot more sense if you keep that unavoidable fact in mind.  Our most primal subconscious motivating forces come from the animal world, which we are still a part of. 

     The last time I visited the Rajneesh ashram in Poona, India, was in 1988.  It was literally like a loud convention of German Brownshirts (storm troopers) by that point.  Rajneesh, alias "Osho," was still very popular in Germany, due in part to his comments in the German magazine Stern which were widely interpreted as being pro-Hitler.  Many young Germans who were looking for a strong and charismatic leader were thrilled by his words.  Those who lost loved ones during World War II were justifiably shocked.  

     Even in the early 1970s in Bombay, Rajneesh made careless statements which could easily be interpreted as being pro-Hitler and pro-fascist.  In one lecture on "esoteric groups" he claimed that Adolf Hitler had been telepathically propped up by an occult Buddhist group that Rajneesh himself was in contact with.  During World War II it is well known that a number of Brahman Indian yogis and Japanese "Zen masters" had supported the Axis cause and the extermination of the "inferior races," so Rajneesh's claim was not entirely surprising, if not totally believable.  

     Years later in Poona, Rajneesh gave an infamous lecture in which he stated that Jews had given Hitler "no choice" but to try to exterminate them.  In his last years Rajneesh declared that "I have fallen in love with this man (Adolf Hitler).  He was crazy, but I am crazier still."  Rajneesh said that he wanted his sannyasins "to take over the world" and that he had studied Hitler to gain insight into how to accomplish the task.  For a man who portrayed himself as the world's smartest, highest, and greatest soul, such remarks were proof to me that his drug use had destroyed the quality of his mind.

     Rajneesh's comments about Hitler could be discounted as obnoxious but largely harmless hot air if it were not for the fact that he put many of Hitler's techniques into practice.  Rajneesh used Hitler's big lie method of mind control very effectively and demanded total surrender from his troops (disciples), just as Hitler did.  Rajneesh condoned illegal spying on his own disciples at the Oregon commune and used informants to weed out the disloyal.  Sheela, his personal secretary, turned the tables on Rajneesh by bugging Rajneesh's trademark high-backed chair.  The Oregon police later found Rajneesh's illegally taped conversations, but due to rules of evidence they could not be used against him in a court of law.  The tapes were reported to be highly damning as to Rajneesh's culpability in much of the commune's illegal activity.

     Rajneesh turned many of his disciples into the equivalent of armed Brownshirts.  I have received letters from several of Rajneesh's former security guards who admitted they had fallen under the spell of fascism and now regretted their behavior and attitudes.  One wrote that he did not even know how to meditate and that the thrill of power was what kept him loyal to his great leader.  In Poona, Rajneesh guards beat up an annoying local resident, his hands held behind his back as the guards pummeled him.  In Oregon, Rajneesh guards were armed to the teeth with handguns and military style semi-automatic assault rifles.  Rajneesh was never an admirer of the great Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, but he did have a unhealthy fascination with Adolf Hitler as well as United States General George Patton.  According to Shivamurti, Rajneesh watched the movie Patton over and over again on his big screen television at his ranch in Oregon.  

     In my opinion, Rajneesh's worst personal trait was that he could dish it out but he could not take it.  He constantly put his disciples through great physical hardships which resulted in serious illness and even death for some, yet he himself lived in luxury and could not endure physical discomfort without complaining loudly like a baby.  After his arrest on October 28th, 1985, at the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, Rajneesh was interviewed by ABC television news.  He began his jailhouse interview by crying in a shrill voice about his less than royal accommodations in the slammer.  His high pitched whining was so weird and annoying that a late night comedy television show used the footage sarcastically as a joke about "God" complaining.

     During Rajneesh's appearance on the ABC television show Nightline, Rajneesh gave evasive and dishonest answers to all of Ted Koppel's questions and behaved as an unusually pompous and inept politician caught red handed at illegal activity.  Rajneesh claimed that he was not responsible for any of the crimes committed at the commune because he was "in silence."  In proven fact, although Rajneesh had stopped giving public lectures for a time, he had never stopped talking to Ma Anand Sheela and other close disciples.  Rajneesh was always the ultimate authority at the commune, even though Sheela committed some of the most serious crimes behind his back.

     Rajneesh's favorite Rolls-Royce dealer stated that "the Bhagwan" had spent hours on the telephone talking to him about his often weekly purchases of new automobiles.  All of the 90 Rolls-Royces were paid for from general commune funds on his direct orders, not "gifts" from outsiders as he would later try to claim.  Rajneesh was the only person who wanted the cars and he was the only person allowed to drive them.  After bankrupting the commune he claimed the automobiles were owned by the commune, not by him.

     Rajneesh pretended not to know that he was leaving the United States to escape an impending arrest warrant, thus secretly abandoning his disciples to face the music on their own.  His own sannyasins did not know he had left the commune until they learned from the media of the arrest of Rajneesh and several followers at the North Carolina airport.  Their luggage contained a bag of cash, a box of expensive jewel encrusted watches, and a handgun.  Rajneesh's defense was that he was innocently sleeping when police boarded the private jet he had hired to escape to Bermuda.  Rajneesh said he thought Bermuda was just another American state and that he was going on vacation to rest and to escape "death threats."  The authorities later learned that a Rajneesh disciple with ties to the United States Justice Department had tipped off Rajneesh about his impending arrest on immigration fraud.

     The Rajneesh cult had little luck winning over American television viewers.  Ma Anand Sheela disgraced herself on Nightline weeks earlier by bursting into loud obscenities, forcing Ted Koppel to take her off the air.  The NBC television show Saturday Night Live climbed on the Rajneesh comedy bandwagon by doing a skit about an auction with actor Randy Quaid selling off "the Bhagwan's" approximately 90 Rolls-Royces.  Years later the Fox Network cartoon show, The Simpsons, produced a spoof of Rajneesh that depicted a white gloved guru driving his Rolls-Royce down a muddy commune road as his disciples felt joy at eating his road dirt.  In the cartoon, the great guru tried to escape the commune with bags of cash in a homemade peddle driven flying machine.

"When it comes to gurus, take the best and leave the rest." Ramamurti Mishra

     During my last visit to the Poona ashram in 1988, Rajneesh was in silence because he was angry at his own disciples.  He wanted his sannyasins to demonstrate in the streets against some Indian officials who had spoken out against him.  Wisely, no one was interested in creating a new confrontation.  This spell of sanity among the flock irritated Rajneesh, who canceled public talks as punishment.  I was thus only able to see him on video tape.

     On the taped lecture Rajneesh was ranting emotionally, and factually incorrectly, about how the police in the United States had stolen his collection of jewel encrusted ladies' watches.  He said they would never be able to wear them in public because his sannyasins would see the watches on their wrists, at airports etc., and start screaming out loudly that "you stole Bhagwan's watch!"  His words and manner were so childishly irrational that he reminded me of Jim Jones.  This crazy old man, now called "Osho," was a far cry from the serene, dignified, and highly eloquent Acharya Rajneesh I had met years earlier.

     Some may be horrified that an enlightened man could become a convicted felon, but that has not stopped me from seeking the ultimate existential truth.  Rajneesh's life is a lesson for us all to practice what we preach.  Rajneesh gave great advice, but he could not heed his own wise words.  He is also a reminder not to take what people say very seriously.  It is better to observe how people live and put less emphasis on what they speak.  Talk is cheap.  Actions are more costly and telling.  

     Do enlightened men have egos?  In my younger idealistic years I would have said the answer is no.  Rajneesh, Gurdjieff, and even J. Krishnamurti prove to me that they do.  I became convinced that Rajneesh had an ego when I saw him on television in chains being transported from jail to an Oregon courthouse.  In response to a reporter's question he looked into the television camera and spoke to his disciples saying "Don't worry.  I'll be back."  It was not what he said, but the look in his eyes that was positive proof for me.  I could see his ego in action, calculating and manipulating.  Once you see something that clearly no rationalizations can cover up the basic truth.  Rajneesh was magnificently enlightened, but he was also profoundly egotistical.

     For ordinary humans the ego is the center of awareness and the Void is perceived only at the periphery.  People look at a picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and they see the Void as an outside object, not as a personal identity.  When you become enlightened, either temporarily in a satori or permanently as a Buddha, the situation is reversed.  Now the Void is your center of awareness and the ego is at the periphery.  Ego does not die, it just no longer takes the center stage of your attention.

     Enlightenment is a functional disassociation of identity.  The human brain is a biologically created thinking machine that has evolved for both personal self-preservation and the survival of the species.  The ego, which is a selfish motivating force, is needed to protect our colony of living cells (the physical body) from danger and to keep our cells replenished with food and water.  If you did not have an ego you would not be able to think, speak, or find food, shelter, and clothing.  The ego function is so vital for survival that the human brain evolved with two potential ego mechanisms, one a centralized ego and the second a larger and more diffuse backup system utilizing less central portions of the brain.

     If the body and brain becomes physically ill with high fever and the centralized ego center is damaged, the backup ego mechanism may temporarily take over its function.  This is ego displacement without enlightenment.  The backup self-maintenance system keeps sleep walkers out of danger and helps enlightened human animals find food and the basics of life, so they do not physically die as a result of their own deep meditation.

     Enlightened humans do not feel their more diffuse ego and thus they feel as free as space itself.  In actuality ego is still present and working, just as our autonomic nervous system keeps on working whether we are aware of its function or not.  You do not have to consciously tell your heart to beat 70 times a minute because it will keep on beating regardless of your awareness.  The brain function that controls heart rate is automatic (autonomic) and does not need our consciousness to make it work.

     Some enlightened human animals have become fooled by the phenomena of ego displacement and thought they no longer had any personal selfishness that could cause trouble.  Meher Baba spent much of his life bragging about how great he was, yet at his center he felt perfectly egoless.  He once even proclaimed that "No one loves me as much as I deserve to be loved."  In truth Meher Baba was very egocentric and should have realized that even enlightenment is no excuse for bragging.

     The same fundamental misjudgment plagued Acharya Rajneesh.  He became fooled into thinking that he was above arrogance and greed, but that was simply not the case.  The ego is an integral part of the structure of the human brain.  It is not simply psychological, but neurological and hard wired into our neural pathways (see the scientific study of 'self'').  The self-survival, self-defense mechanism we call 'ego' cannot be destroyed unless the physical body dies.  

     Even enlightened humans have to mind their manners and realize that the Atman is the wondrous phenomena they should promote, not their own fallible and temporary personalities.  Ramana Maharshi had the right approach in this regard, and that is one reason he is still beloved by all.  Ramana Maharshi promoted the Atman, the universal cosmic consciousness, but never his own mortal body and mind.

     Despite his corruption, his poor judgment, and his disastrous last years, everyone who experienced Acharya Rajneesh's oceanic energy still loves at least the memory of his magnificent presence.  Through it all, the good, the bad, and the horrific, Rajneesh's vibrations were always powerful and positive.  Visitors to the Osho ashram in India often feel a giant wave of cosmic presence there.  That wave is but the vibrational remnant of what we once called Rajneesh.  The body has been turned to ashes, and Rajneesh himself is gone, but the wave can still be felt.  In the same way J. Krishnamurti's presence remains a powerful force at Arya Vihara, his former home in Ojai, California.

     Rajneesh's spectacular energy was proof that he was 'enlightened' in the Eastern esoteric sense of the word.  The Eastern, esoteric definition of 'enlightenment' is an energy phenomena, gained only by those who are totally open to the infinite power of the universe.  The Western definition is simply to be a very wise man, which Rajneesh, in my opinion, was not.

     It is because I value the truth above all that I write what I believe are essential criticisms.  If we cannot analyze our mistakes then our suffering was a waste of time.  The ongoing cover-up of Rajneesh's frailties by his establishment disciples will only destroy the possibility of learning from his tragedy.  Osho worshippers can destroy the tapes and physical evidence of his insane behavior, but they cannot change what actually happened.

     Even after returning to Poona, Rajneesh continued his Valium and nitrous oxide use and seemed unable to learn from his mistakes.  Rajneesh had often branded his critics as "idiots," yet in his final years he himself did not have any sane voice inside himself to say No!  Enough is enough!  Like a deranged alcoholic, Rajneesh could not stop his destructive behavior and the quality of his judgment dropped below that of even the most ordinary of unenlightened human beings.  Rajneesh had used the myth of Tantra to rationalize his dishonesty and selfishness, and now he could not stop.  He had become a drug addict, plain and simple, and no amount of spiritual rationalizations could alter that fact.

     I miss Acharya Rajneesh, never Osho, because he was at his finest when he had no manipulating political organization surrounding him.  When Acharya Rajneesh was just a man in an apartment with one old Chevrolet, not dozens of Rolls-Royces, he was more honest and true.  When he became his own political establishment things started to go wrong, and that is often the case with men of great power.

     The Rajneesh scandal exposed the unconscious slavery of Bhakti Yoga and the underlying fraudulence and corruption of "lefthanded Tantra."  What is needed is an honest path, built on self-observation, self-reliance, and respect for truth.  The days of the know-it-all guru are over.  It is time to realize the source of all things directly.    

     Rajneesh's lifelong teaching had been that enlightenment was a state of perfect egolessness which brought about wisdom, compassion, and in his unique case, total infallibility.  In the last months of his life Rajneesh, now renamed "Osho," finally admitted that the ego could not be destroyed, only "observed."  The very basis of his demand for total surrender of his disciples was that the ego contaminated followers had to submit their will to the perfect master, because only the perfect master had no ego, and thus could do no wrong.  If this were not true, then why should anyone surrender to another fallible and corruptible human ego?  Rajneesh even finally admitted that there was no reincarnation and that the concept of reincarnation was a "misinterpretation."  This shocking admission meant that his previous frequent claims of being a famous guru in past lives were pure fiction, designed to impress, manipulate, and control his disciples.

     Rajneesh's main teaching was based on souls, reincarnation, and achieving freedom from rebirth (moksha) through spiritual practice.  His massive drug intake seemed to act as a truth serum at times, allowing admissions of truths that he had previously kept secret in order to remain in control of his cult empire.  The course of Rajneesh's life, and his drug induced admissions, proved to me that his most basic teachings were wrong and a lie (see Do you have a soul?).  

     In his last days Osho argued with his doctors to ignore their medical ethics and give him even more nitrous oxide.  Osho rationalized his drug addiction just as a teenage boy might if caught smoking marijuana by his mother.  The God "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh" had fallen down to the stumble-drunk Osho, and a substantial number of his disciples were so addicted to his artfully seductive words and false image that they could not see what was happening right in front of their eyes.  It would be wonderful to believe that enlightened men were perfect in every way.  That would make life simpler and sweeter, but it would be fiction, not fact.

Addendum - On letters I have received

     Any thoughtful person can imagine the wide range of letters I have received as a result of posting my Web essay on Acharya - Bhagwan - Osho - Rajneesh.  To date about half of the letters have been from former Rajneesh disciples who generally agree with my comments and who thank me for putting them on the Web.  Those who agree tell me they see "compassion for all involved" on my Web page and that I got it "just about right."

     The other letters I receive are from current disciples of the now deceased Osho, many whom have never actually met the man in person.  Those letters range from death threats from several German disciples to poorly written and often unsigned insults.  The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance also gets lots of hate mail, but from many different cults, not just from one.  It is interesting to see how most personality cults are alike in this regard.  The us vs. them mentality takes over and anyone who does not tow the party line of the cult is deemed a villain.

     Meditation has nothing to do with cults, organizations, politics, or business, but for many meditation is a secondary issue.  For them it is all about hero worship and blind obedience to the memory of a now dead guru, which is a silly waste of time in my opinion.  Why not go directly to the source of all gurus and religions through your own meditation?  There is an old Zen saying that "One should not become attached to anything that can be lost in a shipwreck."  Certainly this admonition applies to gurus as well.

     Several Osho followers have written me claiming to be enlightened, and I hear reports that many Osho disciples now make that claim.  One man said that he was "the new Osho" and invited me to visit his Web page.  His page displayed a large heroic picture of himself, much self-promotion, and an advertisement for prostitutes in Russia, who he claimed were practicing "Tantra."  So for him "enlightenment" and being "the new Osho" literally means to be a pimp.

     Another man, who had never met Osho in person, claimed that reading Osho's books helped him get over his "mental illness" and now he was "enlightened" himself.  He then forcefully instructed me to rewrite my Web page to make it "less judgmental" and suggested that Osho's hypocrisy was just a means to convey his enlightenment to others.  Well, Osho certainly did convey his hypocrisy to others!

     One young woman, who grew up on the Rajneesh Oregon commune, asked me how she could make money out of teaching Osho's meditation techniques.  I replied that she should go to an employment agency and get an honest job.  Meditation and business do not mix and there are too many money hungry gurus out there already.

     It shocks me to find that many Osho disciples do not care about the crimes that were committed and are not bothered by the lies and hypocrisy of their own movement.  They don't seem to comprehend that as a result of the germ warfare attack committed by Rajneesh sannyasins on restaurants in Oregon, that meditation groups have gotten a very bad name around the world.  The unrelated but equally infamous nerve gas attack on a subway station in Tokyo by a Japanese cult named Aum Shinrikyo worsened this situation considerably.

     The attitude of many Osho sannyasins seems to be that as long as they get their psychic kicks it does not matter who was hurt or how unethical and disgraceful their own behavior was.  In their minds everyone in the world was responsible for the Oregon debacle except them!  As a result of this careless attitude many Americans now feel that if a meditation group starts an ashram nearby it is time to buy a gun and a gas mask.

     The amount of historical revisionism and propaganda put out by some Osho disciples rivals the efforts of Maoists during the 1960s and their state of mind is similar.  If you want to believe in one perfect man, a pope of the universe, then anyone who criticizes that pope is deemed a devil.  Thus all the subtleties of my essay are lost on these disciples and all they claim to see on my Web page is "hate and anger."  Of course they do not see the hate in themselves directed at anyone who does not share their own narrow beliefs.

     Shivamurti's book, Bhagwan: The God That Failed, could have easily also been entitled The Man Who Became His Own Opposite, or The Man Who Betrayed Himself.  I often tell people that if they could go back in time and kidnap the Acharya Rajneesh of 1970, then bring him up through the years to meet the Osho of the late 1980s, that the two men would be at war with each other.  Acharya would have hated Osho's pompous self-indulgence and Osho would have never tolerated the young Acharya's brash criticisms.  Acharya Rajneesh spoke of freedom and compassion.  Osho once said that he wished someone would "shoot" (assassinate) former Soviet leader Mikael Gorbachev because he was leading the Soviet Union to Western style capitalism instead of his own imagined "spiritual communism."  This change in teaching was remarkable. 

     I would like to think that the early Acharya Rajneesh would have approved of my essay, but who can say for sure.  For those who suggest I am not being loyal to Osho, I counter that I am honestly trying to be loyal to Acharya Rajneesh, the man I took sannyas from, not Osho.  The Acharya was a man I still deeply love and respect.  But that Acharya Rajneesh died along time before Osho was even born, and the two men were as different as day and night.

     My message to letter writers is to go ahead and write me.  You can vent your anger or thank me, but neither will have much affect on me as I have heard it all before, from both sides.  I can only sigh and ask myself how Acharya Rajneesh, who started out as an anti-guru extraordinaire, ended up as he did with this current crop of disciples.  Perhaps it shows that power can corrupt anyone and that the means rarely justifies the ends.

     In the end where is meditation in all of this?  Color Puncture, Tantric Tarot, encounter groups, and every phony crackpot scam in the book is being peddled by Osho disciples for large sums of money, but what about meditation?  Then I think back to the day when the just turned 40 year old Acharya wisely instructed a friendly Japanese woman that "Meditation must not be made into a business."  The corrupt means have gotten so far out of hand that the original intent of the ends, Acharya Rajneesh's noble vision, has long been forgotten by many, but not by me (see picture of Acharya Rajneesh still young).                  

*Dynamic Meditation: (warning)  This spectacular meditation method was Rajneesh's trademark, and remains a tremendously effective tool for naturally expanding consciousness.  Rajneesh never did the technique himself because he didn't need to.  He developed the method simply by observing his disciples, who would occasionally go into spontaneous body movements during his early meditation camps.  When his judgment started to decline he unfortunately changed the third and fourth stage of the method into a pointless torture test.  The correct and most effective version of this meditation technique has four stages, each lasting ten minutes.

Stage #1)  Start by standing with your eyes closed and breath deep and fast through your nose for ten minutes.  Allow your body to move freely.  Jump, sway back and forth, or use any physical motion that helps you pump more oxygen into your lungs.

Stage #2)  The second ten minute stage is one of catharsis.  Let go totally and be spontaneous.  You may dance or roll on the ground.  For once in your life screaming is allowed and encouraged.  You must act out any anger you feel in a safe way, such as beating the earth with your hands.  All the suppressed emotions from your subconscious mind are to be released.

Stage #3)  In the third stage you jump up and down yelling Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! continuously for ten minutes.  This sounds silly, and is funny, but the loud vibration of your voice travels down to your centers of stored energy and pushes that energy upward.  When doing this stage it is important to keep your arms loose and in a natural position.  Do not hold your arms over your head as that position can be medically dangerous.

Stage #4)  The fourth ten minute stage is complete relaxation and quiet.  Flop down on your back, get comfortable, and just let go.  Be as a dead man, totally surrendered to the cosmos.  Enjoy the tremendous energy you have unleashed in the first three stages and become a silent witness to the ocean as it flows into the drop.  Become the ocean.  

     Rajneesh unwisely changed the third stage of the method to rigidly holding your arms over your head while shouting Hoo!  Even worse, he changed the fourth stage to freezing in place like a statue with your arms still awkwardly held over your head.  This method is not only uncomfortable to the point of torture, it can also be medically dangerous for those with an underlying heart condition.  When you stand with arms elevated over your head you increase your level of orthostatic stress.  This means that your heart must work harder to pump blood that has traveled down to your legs back up to your heart and on to your brain.  You could easily pass out in this position or induce a heart attack in individuals with coronary artery disease.

     Freezing in place makes deep relaxation impossible as it keeps your mind's controlling functions fully operational.  This holds your consciousness on the surface, defeating the purpose of the exercise.  The point of the technique was to have three stages of intense action followed by a fourth stage of deep relaxation and complete let go.  Rajneesh himself could never have practiced the freeze method even in his youth.  Asking his disciples to do it simply showed that he had lost touch with physical reality.  Rajneesh was a fallible human being, never a perfect God. 

     I advise students to only use the enjoyable early version of Dynamic Meditation and not the pointlessly difficult freeze method version.  This wonderful technique was intended to grow with the student and change as the student changes.  After a few years of practicing the method vigorously, the first three stages of the meditation should drop away spontaneously.  You then go into the meditation hall, take a few deep breaths, and immediately go deep into the ecstasy of the fourth stage.  Rajneesh intended the method to be fluid, health giving, and fun.  Those new students who wish to experiment with Rajneesh Dynamic Meditation should read the section on Cathartic Dancing Meditation in Meditation Handbook for further warnings and details before experimenting with this powerful technique. 

Christopher Calder -  E-mail  -  my home page

Please feel free to copy, repost, or publish Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth.

Other Web pages at this site

Meditation Handbook

The TES Hypothesis

The Seven Stages of Consciousness

Call For a New Buddhism

Common Lies of the Phony World of Mystics

The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong Way Rajneesh

Do you have a soul?

Guest author Adithya K. on "The Brain and Meditation" 

Useful outside links

http://www.religioustolerance.org/rajneesh.htm  - A brief overview of Rajneesh.

Osho in the Dental Chair - Parmartha's article in "Sannyas News" about Rajneesh/Osho's use of nitrous oxide.  The article makes no mention of Osho's massive Valium intake for over a decade, which probably did more brain damage than the N2O.  One cannot cheat the body's natural systems by taking drugs to feel good.  There is always a heavy price to pay in the form of loss of healthy brain function.  

http://www.sannyasnews.com/Articles/OshoDentalChair.html - Parmartha's article

http://www.resort.com/~banshee/Info/N2O/nitrous.dangers.html - article on N2O dangers

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E. information

http://www.cfids.org/

U.G. Krishnamurti speaks more truth than any teacher I know of.  I have never met him and do not know if he is "enlightened." -  http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/ug_video/index.html

Jiddu Krishnamurti  A dry, publicly humorless teacher who was uniquely lovable.  His powerful vibrations can still be felt at Arya Vihara, Krishnamurti's former home in Ojai, California.

http://www.kfa.org/   Krishnamurti Foundation of America

http://www.silcom.com/~jmsloss  Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti

Ramana Maharshi  Every major religious group in India agreed that Ramana Maharshi was enlightened.

http://www.ramana-maharshi.org/

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was a liar and drunk who many consider enlightened despite it all.

http://www.gurdjieff.org/

The Secret Life of Swami Muktananda  When I first went to India in 1970 I stayed at Muktananda's ashram in Ganeshpuri for several weeks.  It is interesting that Muktananda was very different from Rajneesh, yet both men ended up committing many of the same mistakes.  Muktananda was not fully enlightened, inarticulate, and his crude manner reminded me of Benito Mussolini.  Rajneesh, by contrast, was fully enlightened, highly articulate, and a master of subtlety.  In the end, given absolute power and treated as royalty, both men became as corrupt as the Caesars.

http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/secret.htm

Swami Satchidananda  Virtually every teacher I met or became involved with had scandals, except for J. Krishnamurti, the 16th Karmapa, and Swami Chidananda.  Swami Satchidananda taught his disciples celibacy yet forced himself sexually on his own female disciples.   

http://www.rickross.com/groups/yogaville.html

Suggested reading

Bhagwan: The God That Failed, by Hugh Milne, Saint Martin's Press, the sordid details of a fall from reason and sanity.  This book can be bought second hand through Amazon.Com.  

Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho Rajneesh, by Satya Bharti Franklin, published by Barrytown/Station Hill Press.  Satya documents much of the strange corruption of the Rajneesh cult and describes in detail the illegal sexual exploitation of children at the Oregon commune.  Her book is also out of print but can be purchased secondhand through Amazon.Com.

The "God" Part of the Brain, by Matthew Alper, available at http://godpart.com/ or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/.   Alper details the logical scientific argument that spirituality is the product of genetics and bio-chemistry, and that God, soul, and reincarnation are inventions of the human brain, used as a device to relieve the tremendous stress of death awareness.

Rajneesh's (Osho's) books  - Be warned that Rajneesh/Osho used words as a device to influence and control people and was not concerned with speaking the truth.  In my opinion, less than 25% of what he said was actually fact, and his books belong in the fiction section of bookstores next to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.  Much of his teachings represented a kind of self-serving spiritual pornography: a mixture of false ancient teachings and his own ambition motivated distortions.  At his worst, Rajneesh came out with titles like The World of Rajneesh and Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic.  This is like a primadona television newsman who thinks that he is the news story rather than the important headlines of the day.

Note  Opinions expressed on this page must be viewed as the ideas of an ordinary student of meditation.  While I truly believe everything I say, you should not believe anything unless you see it, feel it, and know it for yourself.  I make no claims of infallibility.  In fact I absolutely claim fallibility.  

Truth is a sword that cuts in all directions.

It is a mind that is unprejudiced by religion, philosophy, and cultural conditioning.  It is going naked in the stars.

Reproduced gratefully from Christopher Calder's home page