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Indian spiritual leader
Alternate titles: Acharya Rajneesh, Chandra Mohan Jain, Osho Rajneesh
By
J. Gordon Melton
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Born:
December 11, 1931 •
India

Died:
January 19, 1990 (aged 58) •
Pune •
India

Subjects Of Study:
human sexual activity

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Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also called Osho or Acharya Rajneesh, original name
Chandra Mohan Jain, (born December 11, 1931, Kuchwada [now in Madhya
Pradesh], India—died January 19, 1990, Pune), Indian spiritual leader who preached an
eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, individual devotion, and sexual freedom.

As a young intellectual, Rajneesh visited with and absorbed insights from teachers of
the various religious traditions active in India. He studied philosophy at the University
of Jabalpur, earning a B.A. in 1955; he began teaching there in 1957, after earning an
M.A. from the University of Saugar. At the age of 21 he had an intense spiritual
awakening, which inspired in him the belief that individual religious experience is the
central fact of spiritual life and that such experiences cannot be organized into any
single belief system.

In 1966 Rajneesh resigned from his university post and became a guru (spiritual guide)
and a teacher of meditation. In the early 1970s he initiated people into the order of
sannyasis, who traditionally renounced the world and practiced asceticism.
Reinterpreting the idea of being a sannyasi in terms of detachment rather than
asceticism, Rajneesh taught his disciples to live fully in the world without being
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Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh | Biography, Facts, & Rajneesh Movement | Britannica
g
attached to it.

The first Westerners came to Rajneesh in the early 1970s, and in 1974 the new
headquarters of his movement was established in Pune. The basic practice taught at the
centre was called dynamic meditation, a process designed to allow people to experience
the divine. The centre also developed a diversified program of New Age healing adopted
from the West. Rajneesh became well-known for his progressive approach to sexuality,
which contrasted with the renunciation of sex advocated by many other Indian
teachers.

Rajneesh moved to the United States in 1981 and, the following year, incorporated
Rajneeshpuram, a new city he planned to build on an abandoned ranch near Antelope,
Oregon. During the next few years many of his most-trusted aides abandoned the
movement, which came under investigation for multiple felonies, including arson,
attempted murder, drug smuggling, and vote fraud in Antelope. In 1985 Rajneesh
pleaded guilty to immigration fraud and was deported from the United States. He was
refused entry to 21 countries before returning to Pune, where his ashram soon grew to
15,000 members.

In 1989 Rajneesh adopted the Buddhist name Osho. After his death his disciples,
convinced that he had been the victim of government intrigue, voiced their belief in his
innocence and vowed to continue the movement he started. In the early 21st century it
had some 750 centres located in more than 60 countries.

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J. Gordon Melton

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meditation more_vert Actions

mental exercise
By
Dan Merkur
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meditation

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Key People:
Guru Nanak •
Philip Kapleau •
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh •
Li Hongzhi •
Chögyam Trungpa

Related Topics:
mysticism •
Buddhist meditation •
ching-tso •
contemplation
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Summary

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meditation, private devotion or mental exercise encompassing various techniques of

concentration, contemplation, and abstraction, regarded as conducive to heightened
self-awareness, spiritual enlightenment, and physical and mental health.

Meditation has been practiced throughout history by adherents of all the world’s
religions. In Roman Catholicism, for example, meditation consists of active, voluntary,
and systematic thinking about a biblical or theological topic. Mental images are
cultivated and efforts are made to empathize with God or with figures from the Bible.
Eastern religious practices that involve thinking in a controlled manner have been
described as meditation in the West since the 19th century. The Hindu philosophical
school of Yoga, for example, prescribes a highly elaborate process for the purification of
body, mind, and soul. One aspect of Yoga practice, dhyana (Sanskrit: “concentrated
meditation”), became the focus of the Buddhist school known as Chan in China and
later as Zen in Japan. In the late 1960s the British rock group the Beatles sparked a
vogue in the West for Hindu-oriented forms of meditation, and in the following decade
Transcendental Meditation (TM) became the first of a variety of commercially
successful South and East Asian meditative techniques imported by the West. Academic
psychological studies of TM and other forms of meditation followed rapidly.

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Indian philosophy: Theories and techniques of self-control and
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meditation

Patanjali lays down an eightfold path consisting of aids to Yoga: restraint (yama), observance
(niyama), posture (asana),...

In numerous religions, spiritual purification may be sought through the verbal or

mental repetition of a prescribed efficacious syllable, word, or text (e.g., the Hindu and
Buddhist mantra, the Islamic dhikr, and the Eastern Christian Jesus Prayer). The
focusing of attention upon a visual image (e.g., a flower or a distant mountain) is a
common technique in informal contemplative practice and has been formalized in
several traditions. Tibetan Buddhists, for example, regard the mandala (Sanskrit:
“circle”) diagram as a collection point of universal forces, accessible to humans by
meditation. Tactile and mechanical devices, such as the rosary and the prayer wheel,
along with music, play a highly ritualized role in many contemplative traditions.

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Most meditative practices concentrate attention in order to induce mystical

experiences. Others are mindful of the mental character of all contents of consciousness
and utilize this insight to detach the practitioner either from all thoughts or from a
selected group of thoughts—e g the ego (Buddhism) or the attractiveness of sin
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selected group of thoughts—e.g., the ego (Buddhism) or the attractiveness of sin
(Christianity). Meditation may also serve as a special, potent preparation for a
physically demanding or otherwise strenuous activity, as in the case of the warrior
before battle or the musician before performance.

The doctrinal and experiential truths claimed by different practices of meditation are
often inconsistent with each other. Hinduism, for example, asserts that the self is
divine, while other traditions claim that God alone exists (Sufism), that God is
immediately present to the soul (Christianity and Judaism), and that all things are
empty (Mahayana Buddhism).

In the West, scientific research on meditation, beginning in the 1970s, has focused on
the psychological and physical effects and alleged benefits of meditation, especially of
TM. Meditative techniques used by skilled practitioners have proved to be effective in
controlling pulse and respiratory rates and in alleviating symptoms of migraine
headache, hypertension, and hemophilia, among other conditions.

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Disenchantment with materialistic values led to an awakening of interest in Indian,

Chinese, and Japanese philosophy and practice among primarily young people in many
Western countries in the 1960s and ’70s. The teaching and practice of numerous
techniques of meditation, most based on Asian religious traditions, became a
widespread phenomenon. For example, the practice of “mindfulness meditation,” an
adaptation of Buddhist techniques, was popularized in the United States beginning in
the 1980s. Its medical use as an adjunct to psychotherapy was widely embraced in the
late 1990s, leading to its adoption in many psychiatric facilities.

Dan Merkur

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