Elitism and the Beginnings of a Mass Movement
It is easy for western disciples (like me) to forget that their eastern masters are human. After they have thrown the sum of their Judeo-Christian upbringing into the ring and danced around it, they expect the guru to wear it. The western ego demanded that Rajneesh be the "Master of Masters," a modern avatar, someone with supernatural powers creating a spiritual elite who were destined to spearhead a new evolutionary era. There is precedent for this belief. For example, Teilhard de Chardin conceded the possibility that entry through the gates of the superhuman would be under the influence of an elite (Phenomenon 244). Moreover, German sannyasins, of whom there were many, possibly a majority, were still dealing with the subconscious vestiges of Nazism. In short, to be a member of an elite was a highly gratifying ego-position for western sannyasins, many of whom, as we have noted, were the post-Hiroshima disaffected still rebelling against the nuclear establishment, which often included their parents.

Rajneesh himself contributed to an elitist ego-position in at least four ways. For one thing, he spoke frequently of a critical mass of meditators to be achieved that would then transform the whole of humanity, but there is scientific merit to this concept (Sheldrake 162-163). For another, though he avoided overt self-aggrandizement in his lectures, he allowed a rampant personality cult to flourish. Thirdly, he was also often stridently uncompromising and righteous in his criticism of mainstream religious and political figures. A good example of this was a never-ending tirade against Mother Teresa of Calcutta, probably undertaken for its shock value, but carried on ad nauseam . The point continually made was that Mother Teresa, like Mahatma Ghandi, rather than being thought of as a great spiritual being, should rather be regarded as a skillful politician using methods that appear spiritual to lure people to her ideology. It was, if nothing else, a controversial contention, the frequent repetition of which was highly polarizing. A fourth way he contributed to the feeling of elitism was in his conception of the "New Commune" (one manifestation of which was the American commune in Oregon called Rajneeshpuram and designated in 1983-84 on roadmaps of the United States) which he wanted to be insulated from the outside world for protection of the sannyasins who, in one interpretation of his words, would be undergoing significant neural deprogramming and would be highly vulnerable to re-imprints. This could also be seen as merely isolationist, however, and it had the effect of alienating the neighbors, which was one of the reasons for violence perpetrated against and by the commune, both in India and America.

This feeling of elitism was at its highest when the commune in America started, and given the great number of sannyasins, and the personality cult, it was almost inevitable that a religion should arise around Rajneesh. The neo-religion of Rajneeshism had most of the characteristics of a mass movement in its early stages, as described by Eric Hoffer in his none too flattering book on the subject The True Believer, written just after World War II when the memory of Nazism was fresh. For myself, I can say that I fit certain aspects of Hoffer's profile of the potential convert to such a movement, being chronically poor, and a self-proclaimed societal misfit. This did not apply to everyone, however. Many sannyasins had been highly successful professionals disillusioned by a sense of creative stasis. However, as Hoffer pointed out:

"The most incurably frustrated - and, therefore, the most vehement - among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled desire for creative work." (50)
That the mass movement, if it was that, never progressed very far into its formative stages was the triple effect of external pressures brought to bear by political and legal forces, duplicity on the part of officers within the fledgling organization and other events that seem to have been choreographed by Rajneesh himself. These latter included re-alignment with new cadres within the ranks of his close disciples and a series of television interviews that he might have hoped would project him before the viewing public in a way that would pre-empt selective editing of the media establishment. His contradictory discourse style was not compatible with the "sound bite" format, however, and his statements could be construed as satanic or saintly with equal ease, depending on the overriding commentary or the predilections of the viewers. He was a creature from another planet as far as most Americans were concerned.

Rajneeshism
It is questionable whether Rajneesh actually sanctioned a religion bearing his name in the first place (although the obverse is equally true - it is questionable whether he did not), but the fact was that in 1982 the sannyas movement gave way to the "neo-religion" of Rajneeshism. For its part, the US. Dept. of Justice never acknowledged this religion because to do so would have meant allowing Rajneesh US. residency under the classification "religious worker." On the other hand, the Oregon Attorney General managed to convince the US. District Court that the City of Rajneeshpuram represented an unconstitutional mix of church and state on the strength of testimony by city officers that they consulted with Rajneesh before making decisions. If Rajneesh did sanction this perverse twist to the sannyas movement, it could have been The Way of Malamat or it could have been nothing more than a utilitarian ploy to secure immigration status for himself. In any case, sannyasins became "Rajneeshees" and by 1984, there was a blossoming Rajneeshee ideology. This was when the movement really began to coalesce, but it died a quick death when Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary and de facto head of the religion (the "Pope," as she used to say) left the commune under shady circumstances. The American commune itself disbanded when Rajneesh left soon afterwards but religious feelings among the sannyasins persisted.

When Rajneesh returned to Poona, his discourses took on a more intimate, but at the same time, more political tone. In addition, the experience of having been a bona fide founder of a new religion, at least as far as his devotees were concerned, as well as the time he had spent in a jail cell, and the experience of being hounded across the globe by the "long arm of American justice" ( Forman, Twelve Days...) seem to have produced in him a kind of misanthropically farcical megalomania. This is evidenced by the titles of books about him he instructed his sannyasins to choose. Thus we have books like Bhagwan: The Buddha for the Future and Bhagwan: One Man Against the Whole Ugly Past of Humanity, by Juliet Forman and, perhaps most telling of all, Bhagwan, The Most Dangerous Man Since Jesus Christ, by Sue Appleton. Perhaps he had finally given in to the ego demands of the western world, or perhaps this was another instance of the "Rolls Royce guru" ( so designated because of his collection of upwards of 90 of the high priced automobiles) who had reflected the image of the consumer society back on itself in all its gaudy detail doing the same for religious fundamentalists. He sanctioned a new "meditation technique" which went through a short evolution, from raising the hands at the crescendo of some wild music and shouting Yahoo! to later shouting Osho!. This had the effect of alienating sannyasins, myself included, who had grown weary of sectarian shows of solidarity but by this time Rajneesh was quite ill anyway, insisting vehemently that he was poisoned while in prison in America and he died (or, in New Age speak, "left his body") shortly thereafter, on January 17, 1990. The saga of Rajneesh after he left America as it concerns covert elements within the United States government bears an uncanny similarity to that of Leary. His so-called "world tour," chronicled in detail by Forman (One Man...), an eyewitness to many of the events she describes, reveals a concerted campaign of harassment. He could not be jailed, because he had already satisfied legal process in Oregon, a satisfaction that was out of proportion to the charges that could have been brought against him. In the event, he had accepted a plea bargain in which he allowed two charges of contributing to the falsification of immigration documents to stand, and for this he was fined $400,000 ( a large part of which went to pay for the lengthy government investigation), given a suspended sentence of 10 years, and placed on probation for five years, during which time he was forbidden entry to the United States. On the basis of this "conviction," which his lawyers strenuously argued it was not, he was refused entry to almost every country he tried to enter, or, if he was granted a visa, it was soon revoked. All the countries involved shared a diplomatic relationship with the US. that involved sympathy with the religio-scientio-rational ideals of its government, which by this time (1987) had become saturated with economic and religious conservatism. He encountered a particularly gnarly reception in Greece, the birthplace of the rational approach, and he made much of this in later discourses, comparing himself to Socrates, who was executed by poisoning in the 5th century BC. for "corrupting the minds of the youth." In some cases, documentation exists that shows US. intervention in decisions of foreign agencies to refuse entry (Forman, One Man...).

Warnings of Disaster
The words quoted from Bennett on page 50 were spoken in 1963 and presage Rajneesh's more explicit warnings of ecological disaster in the absence of a turning inward of the western mind, some of which form the narrative, as we noted, for the video entitled "The Rajneesh Manifesto." Swami Prem Amrito, his personal physician, wrote on the eve of "The Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro in 1992:
"For years Osho has been saying that humanity is doomed unless meditation becomes the essential ingredient of the way we all live." (Osho Times, June 1992)
The theme of a crisis facing modern humanity, and of the need for some kind of radical inner change, was in fact a recurrent one throughout the years I was living in the commune. In the days before Rajneesh left for America he often spoke in a poetic vein, extolling, in true catholic fashion, the commonalty of all religious experience. After his return, however, his discourses took on more of a sectarian tone involving frequent tirades against the fundamentalism he had encountered in America. His expulsion from America had taken its toll on his optimism, and by the time of his death, he was stating in his discourses that there may be no stopping the extinction of the human species.

The mutation of Rajneesh from incurable optimist regarding the fate of the human species to resigned nihilist was, thus, no doubt due in large part to first-hand experience with the entrenched power structure of the US. government. Leary experienced a similar deflatement, and gave vent to it in analogous fashion. In Info-Psychology, he describes pre-Hiroshima philosophies, and the philosophers who hold them, "larval," a word not guaranteed to win friends in high places. He later disclaimed this term, ascribing it to "Celtic playful arrogance...inflated by jail-house blues" (Info-Psychology, Intro. v.). It bears mentioning that Rajneesh, by at least one reliable account conveyed to me personally, had taken to inhaling nitrous oxide supplied by his dentist before the closing of the commune in America, and one book probably dictated while he was under its influence, Notes of a Madman, reveals an astonishingly stratospheric ego identity. He was, during this time, protected from contact from the outside world, and when contact finally came, it was with rude vengeance. After he was released from prison, and he started giving regular discourses again, his treatment at the hands of the "Christian fundamentalists" in America was a recurring theme, expressed with self-righteous condemnation and shrill insistency. He claimed repeatedly that he was poisoned while in prison, which, if true, could very well have been the cause of his death. This said, we may possibly refrain from writing the epitaph of the human species based on the predictions of global disaster that he expressed at this time, coming as they did from injury, but we cannot dismiss his warnings altogether. For one thing, he was expressing the arguments of a growing number of environmentalists. His increasing espousal of "green" political views, however, sounded at times suspiciously partisan, even though he continually expressed nothing but disdain for politics in general.

A Core Teaching - "Be Total"

Rajneesh often spoke of a "quantum leap" in consciousness, usually referring to the inherently illogical or irrational processes of meditation. This metaphor of discreteness and totality was borrowed from the early Bohr conceptions of the atom. When an electron jumps to a new orbit in the Bohr model, it is an all-or-nothing process. Rajneesh employed this and other metaphors with analogous meanings when speaking of the process of meditation. As an illustration, I have italicized the following words from the instructions to the Dynamic meditation: "Hold nothing back...Never allow your mind to interfere with what is happening. Be total." What was intended to happen, if one followed the basic instructions for Dynamic, was a state of catharsis, after which, in the period of silence, if one was attentive, one witnessed the awakened energy in the form of thoughts, feelings, sensations. However, if one followed the instruction to be total, the ultimate intention was satori , the annihilation of the thought process. One was to witness in the in-breath and out-breath of the universe itself, the cycle which exists in the "abyss of absolute nothingness," in the words of D.T. Suzuki (The Awakening of a New Consciousness in Zen, Ross, 227). Elsewhere, Suzuki has said:
."..The eye sees, the ear hears, to be sure, but it is the mind as a whole that has satori; it is an act of perception, no doubt, but it is perception of the highest order. Here lies the value of the Zen discipline, as it gives birth to the unshakable conviction that there is something indeed going beyond mere intellection." (The Koan, Ross, 53)
The achievement of satori is the great goal of Zen Buddhism. It is traditionally associated with contemplation upon a koan , a nonsensical puzzle posed by the master, the 'solution' of which brought a momentary flash of intuitive awareness that transcended the thinking process altogether. The Japanese word Zen , which comes from the Chinese Cha'an , which in turn comes from the Sanskrit Dhyana , literally means "meditation" (the word "meditation" is an approximate translation of dhyana . There is no English equivalent). This particularly radical offshoot of Mahayana Buddhism traces its origins to the crazy-wise sage Bodhidharma, who legend has it cut off his eyelids the better not to fall into a state of unawareness. Sometimes called the "religion of no-religion" (Ross 3), Zen made landfall in the United States about the year 1900, but became popular only after the bombing of Hiroshima among the 'beat' generation - the precursors to the hippies. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, literati of the 'beat' generation, were influential for Leary, who says of the Beats in general (displaying in the process a misunderstanding of Zen that was common at the time):
"They sought altered and intensified states of consciousness, novel experiences, and mystical perceptions through drugs and oriental yogic techniques, especially Zen."(Flashbacks 45)
Zen is most definitely not a yogic technique, and though it has no philosophy as such, behind it lie the profound philosophies of Buddhism, developed as a device to "save the philosopher from his conceptual prison," according to William Barrett, who also said:
"For Plato, philosophy is a discipline that leads us from the lower to the higher world, from the world of the senses to the world of ideas, to leave us abiding in this latter world as much as is humanly possible; for the Buddhist, philosophy should lead us beyond the intellect back into the one real world that was always there in its undivided wholeness." (Zen for the West, Ross, 348)
The fact that it is the philosophy of Buddhism to eschew philosophy has often led to it being interpreted as nihilistic and negative, but nothing could be further from the truth. It was an attempt by Buddha to communicate on an intellectual level with the Upanishadic philosophers of India, and in its original form it was couched in language that would appeal to them. That it involves so much nay-saying is more a signification of down-to-earth practicality than it is of nihilism. Zen is the most existential expression of this approach, symbolized by the hard whack of the Zen stick on the disciple's head. It doesn't suffer even the unfurling of the wings of thought.

Zen was much loved by Rajneesh. He spoke at great length on the various Zen masters, as well as on various aspects of Buddhism in general. His discourses were based on the Buddhist principle of "no-philosophy." He often said he used words to take his audience beyond words-to a state of "no-mind." To enter this state is to take a "quantum leap." Besides Zen, he also spoke extensively on tantra . Tantric exercises were common in the ashram as well. For this reason he was also known in the press was the "sex guru," a designation which demonstrated a common misperception of the tantric lineage he invoked. Briefly tantra concerns the transubstantiation of human energy. In this way, it is analogous to alchemy, a pre-rational European mystical tradition whose real teachings concerning human energies were hidden behind the symbolic image of converting base metals into gold. Unlike alchemy, however, tantra dealt directly and openly with the spiritual-psychological-sexual complex of the human being. Like certain yogic traditions, with which there is a cross-breeding, it recognizes that the various forms of human energetic experience are part of a continuum, that is, there is only one energy that finds expression through various channels, called chakras . Whereas yoga seeks to move this energy through the concerted application of willpower by the adept, who is almost always a celibate ascetic, tantra has been much more naturalistic in its approach, prescribing free expression of energy in all its forms. The literature of tantra is replete with images of the merging of the male and female principles in their erotic as well as more refined aspects, and, in fact, for the tantrica there is no difference in these aspects. The expression of sexual energy is considered essential and reveled in, since it is the basic energy, the point of origination - the "base metal" from which the "gold" of the more refined spiritual states is derived. It gave rise to a kind of spiritual hedonism, tolerated in Hindu and Buddhist societies, but condemned as paganism in the Christian world. Rajneesh said about it in Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy:

"The sex center, the muldahar, is the first to open. It can open either toward biological generation or it can open toward spiritual generation..." (qtd. in Osho Times, Feb. 1993)
The Dynamic Meditation, while not overtly a tantric technique, instructs the meditator in the third stage to jump up and down shouting "Hoo." This has the intended effect of "hammering" the energy awakened in the first two stages deep into the sex center in preparation for the following period of silent watching. In the normal state of body awareness, there is a sense of identification with gravity that gives the sensation of weight. However, if one is "total" during this stage, the sense of weight disappears and the body seems to acquire a life of its own. All feelings of effort and tiredness disappear. This is a phenomenon common to long distance runners called "second wind." It was also recognized by Gurdjeiff, who devised absurd-looking exercises for his students in order to awaken it. In the silent phase of the meditation, one then witnesses, in a very real way, the subtle coursing of energy and the coalescing of that energy in certain locations in the body. Each jump in this third stage is a "quantum leap" of pure energy, not involved with the thinking process at all. The prescription of totality is a current that runs through all of Rajneesh's teachings. Towards the end of his life, he began to say clearly that the end of the human race is imminent:
"Whatever I am saying, it is my absolutely clear vision that the world is very close to its end." (Osho Times, June, 1992)
His motivation for saying this is not altogether transparent, however. In one context, he said: "Unless you become absolutely clear about death, you are not going to concentrate your whole energy on transforming your being." (Osho Times, June, 1992)but in another he insisted:
"This is not a device." (Osho Times, June, 1992)
In all cases, he clearly stated that humanity is facing an urgent crisis from which it might not emerge, but his increasing unequivicability may have come from an awareness of his own impending death, a matter of great importance to those who were gathered around him. In any case, the admonition was to use the present crisis as an opportunity for awakening, and the best way to do this was to refrain from questioning the veracity of his predictions:
"Mind is very clever in finding excuses, that something or other will prevent the destruction. And I am not saying the destruction should not be prevented. What I am saying is that in your mind, there should be no excuse left for postponement - so your whole energy gathers in the now; it is not spread in the future. And if the whole energy is concentrated in this point, then this moment can become the moment of enlightenment." (Osho Times, June, 1992)
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