Rajneesh

Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain, 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), also known

as Acharya Rajneesh,[1] Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, Bhagwan Rajneesh, Osho Rajneesh and
later as Osho, was an Indian godman, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement.
During his lifetime, he was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader
and mystic. In the 1960s, he travelled throughout India as a public speaker and was a vocal
critic of socialism, arguing that India was not ready for socialism, and that
socialism, communism, and anarchism could evolve only when capitalism had reached its
maturity. Rajneesh also criticised Mahatma Gandhi and the orthodoxy of mainstream
religions. Rajneesh emphasised the importance of meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration,
courage, creativity, and humour—qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence
to static belief systems, religious tradition, and socialisation. In advocating a more open
attitude to human sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became
known as "the sex guru".
In 1970, Rajneesh spent time in Mumbai initiating followers known as "neo-sannyasins".
During this period he expanded his spiritual teachings and commented extensively in
discourses on the writings of religious traditions, mystics, bhakti poets, and philosophers
from around the world. In 1974, Rajneesh relocated to Pune, where an ashram was
established.
Ego and the mind
According to Rajneesh every human being is a Buddha with the capacity for enlightenment,
capable of unconditional love and of responding rather than reacting to life, although the ego
usually prevents this, identifying with social conditioning and creating false needs and
conflicts and an illusory sense of identity that is nothing but a barrier of dreams. Otherwise
man's innate being can flower in a move from the periphery to the centre.
Rajneesh viewed the mind first and foremost as a mechanism for survival, replicating
behavioural strategies that have proven successful in the past. But the mind's appeal to the
past, he said, deprives human beings of the ability to live authentically in the present, causing
them to repress genuine emotions and to shut themselves off from joyful experiences that
arise naturally when embracing the present moment: "The mind has no inherent capacity for
joy. ... It only thinks about joy." The result is that people poison themselves with all manner
of neuroses, jealousies, and insecurities. He argued that psychological repression, often
advocated by religious leaders, makes suppressed feelings re-emerge in another guise, and
that sexual repression resulted in societies obsessed with sex. Instead of suppressing, people
should trust and accept themselves unconditionally. This should not merely be understood
intellectually, as the mind could only assimilate it as one more piece of information:
instead meditation was needed.
Meditation
Rajneesh presented meditation not just as a practice but as a state of awareness to be
maintained in every moment, a total awareness that awakens the individual from the sleep of
mechanical responses conditioned by beliefs and expectations. He employed
Western psychotherapy in the preparatory stages of meditation to create awareness of mental
and emotional patterns.
He suggested more than a hundred meditation techniques in total. His own "active
meditation" techniques are characterised by stages of physical activity leading to silence. The
most famous of these remains Dynamic Meditation which has been described as a kind of
microcosm of his outlook. Performed with closed or blindfolded eyes, it comprises five
stages, four of which are accompanied by music. First the meditator engages in ten minutes
of rapid breathing through the nose. The second ten minutes are for catharsis: "Let whatever
is happening happen. ... Laugh, shout, scream, jump, shake—whatever you feel to do, do it!"
Next, for ten minutes one jumps up and down with arms raised, shouting Hoo! each time one
lands on the flat of the feet. At the fourth, silent stage, the meditator stops moving suddenly
and totally, remaining completely motionless for fifteen minutes, witnessing everything that
is happening. The last stage of the meditation consists of fifteen minutes of dancing and
celebration.
Renunciation and the "New Man"
Rajneesh saw his "neo-sannyas" as a totally new form of spiritual discipline, or one that had
once existed but since been forgotten. He thought that the traditional Hindu sannyas had
turned into a mere system of social renunciation and imitation. He emphasised complete inner
freedom and the responsibility to oneself, not demanding superficial behavioural changes, but
a deeper, inner transformation. Desires were to be accepted and surpassed rather than denied.
Once this inner flowering had taken place, desires such as that for sex would be left behind.
Euthanasia and Eugenics
Rajneesh spoke many times of the dangers of overpopulation, and advocated universal
legalisation of contraception and abortion. He described the religious prohibitions thereof as
criminal, and argued that the United Nations' declaration of the human "right to life" played
into the hands of religious campaigners. According to Rajneesh, one has no right to
knowingly inflict a lifetime of suffering: life should begin only at birth, and even then, "If a
child is born deaf, dumb, and we cannot do anything, and the parents are willing, the child
should be put to eternal sleep" rather than "take the risk of burdening the earth with a
crippled, blind child."
He argued that this simply freed the soul to inhabit a healthy body instead: "Only the body
goes back into its basic elements; the soul will fly into another womb. Nothing is destroyed.
If you really love the child, you will not want him to live a seventy-year-long life in misery,
suffering, sickness, old age. So even if a child is born, if he is not medically capable of
enjoying life fully with all the senses, healthy, then it is better that he goes to eternal sleep
and is born somewhere else with a better body.”
Rajneesh's "Ten Commandments"
In his early days as Acharya Rajneesh, a correspondent once asked for his "Ten
Commandments". In reply, Rajneesh said that it was a difficult matter because he was against
any kind of commandment, but "just for fun", set out the following:

1. Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also.
2. There is no God other than life itself.
3. Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
4. Love is prayer.
5. To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means,
the goal and attainment.
6. Life is now and here.
7. Live wakefully.
8. Do not swim—float.
9. Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
10. Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.