R
Rajneesh, Bhagawan
Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi
College of Humanities & Social Sciences –
Languages & Literature, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi
University, Katra, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Chandra Mohan Jain (b. 11 December 1931–d.
19 January 1990), an Indian spiritual leader,
adopted and shed several titles during his spir-
itual teaching career, such as Rajneesh,
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Acharya Rajneesh,
and lastly the most popular one Osho
(hereafter Osho is used in this entry). During
his lifetime, he was considered a controversial
man, an iconoclast, the most dangerous man in
the world, and a great four-dimensional
mystic. He was actually a progressive and
reactionary, and he challenged many conven-
tional systems, institutions, and government
practices during his time. For that, he received
severe criticism and considered to be neurotic,
corrupt, atrophied, and anti-life. However, he
made thousands of followers and made impact
on millions of people across the globe. His
spiritual teachings are spread over published
450 texts, including 5500 discourse transcrip-
tions which have been translated in world’s
major languages.
# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2018
P. Jain et al. (eds.), Hinduism and Tribal Religions, Encyclopedia of Indian Religions,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_567-1
His teachings evolved during the course of his
lifetime as for him spirituality has a totally differ-
ent meaning from the stereotypical Indian
sanyasis – spirituality was not attending religious
institutions, reading scriptures, and worshipping
God but it simply meant to find oneself. While
examining his spiritual journey, it is interesting to
note that Osho was a master of rhetoric, and he
presented his speeches and lectures with histrion-
ics and spellbinding details, unlike his contempo-
raries who were busy teaching spiritual discourses
in dry and academic settings. Besides he was
widely read and a voracious reader, and whatever
information he passed to his disciples it became
firsthand knowledge and it never occurred to them
that he was passing routine or bookish
information.
Some of the Western philosophers have also
inspired Osho’s thinking, out of which the key
were Nietzsche, Freud, Krishnamurti, and
Gurdjieff [11]. His crusade against established
religion may be found in the philosophical stands
presented by Nietzsche. Though Osho did not
proclaim that “god is dead,” yet he believed that
faith is a prison whereas doubt is freedom. He
argued that it was “necessary. . .to inculcate skep-
ticism in place of blind faith” (Prasad, Rajneesh:
The Mystic Feeling, 11). Similarly, we find Nietz-
sche claiming that convictions are prisons and
even great spirits such as Zarathustra were
skeptic. If someone studies Nietzsche and Osho
closely, one will find great similarity between the
two philosophers – both rejected orthodoxy [10].
2 Rajneesh, Bhagawan
But not much similarity is found in Krishnamurti
and Osho; however, Osho would have agreed to
Krishnamurti’s view that religion can be defined
as “the cultivation of freedom in the search of
truth” (ibid, 43).
Freudian influence on Osho can be seen when
he talks about sex, sexuality, ego, neurotic, uncon-
scious, and patterned reactive behavior. In one his
discourses, Osho says “one of the most interesting
words in the English language today is the word
‘fuck’. It is a magical word. Just by its sound it can
describe pain, pleasure, hate, and love.” Perhaps
his discourses on sex and sexuality show the
greatest debt to the Viennese psychoanalyst; fur-
thermore, Osho incorporates catharsis into his
meditations, and thus transforming this old yogic
practice into a unique contemporary spiritual one.
But it is Gurdjieff’s view which we find in Osho’s
discourses most vocally and which he approved of
all the time. Osho, like Gurdieff, believes that
human beings are reactive entities who are living
in oblivion, unknowing to the fact that they are
leading a mechanical existence – a neotype con-
dition which we have witnessed at the starting of
the film The Matrix. According to Osho, this is
due to the fact that many of our experiences are
rooted in the past and we do not want to live in the
present. We are “moving in the same circle, in the
same rut” (Morning Discourse, 25 April 1977).
Osho’s message was particularly a reaction to
the popular and major religious beliefs where
masses were following one guru, saint, messen-
ger, or God. Instead, he believes that all of us are
Buddhas and we have this capability to enlighten
ourselves. All of us are capable of feeling uncon-
ditional love and of responding to life. As once he
said, “You are truth. You are love. You are bliss.
You are freedom” ([1], The Goose is out, p. 286).
He says that devoid of our egos we can experience
innate divinity and be aware of who we really are.
He said, “when the ego is gone the whole individ-
uality arises in its crystal purity” (ibid, 142).
He provides explicit answer: how to bypass the
ego and to move from periphery to center. He
suggests that we need to free ourselves from the
mind game. Mind is actually a mechanism for our
survival, and Osho emphasizes that we need to
identify the ways in which the ego or mind comes
to exert its control. Mind replicates behavioral
strategies – which were successful in the past
and repeats them in the present. This repetition
stops us being ourselves and prevents us from
living authentically in the present. This mind
game is dangerous as we continuously repress
what we genuinely feel, and we live in a close
state off from experiencing the joy since “the mind
has no inherent capacity for joy. . .It only thinks
about joy” ([1], The Goose Is Out, 13). The out-
come of mind control is hazardous as we uncon-
sciously poison ourselves with inhibitions,
neurosis, jealousies, etc., dragging along with
false religious teachings instead of living in joy-
ous and authentic awareness.
Following Freud, Osho says that behavior
influenced by the unconscious state of mind does
not produce the effect we desire. For instance, till
reaching adulthood we do not express or mostly
repress our sexual feelings, and even after
reaching adulthood most of the religions/societal
norms direct us to curb our sexual desires in order
to attain essence in our lives. We start repressing
our sexual desires and that leads to the
reemergence of these feelings in another guise to
haunt our lives. This result in, Osho said, a society
that is obsessed with sex where sexual crimes,
such as rape, pornography, and prostitution, are
rampant ([2], The Secret of Secrets, 2:344). For
that, he proposed a simple solution. He said, “Be
total. Be authentic; be true” ([3], Roots and Wings,
111) and further he said, “We have been
repressing anger, greed, sex. . .And that’s why
every human being is stinking. . .Let it become
manure, . . .and you will have great flowers
blossoming in you” ([4], Be Silent and Know,
36). Since it is easier said than done, therefore,
Osho offered a practical answer, i.e., meditation.
For him, meditation is not simply a breathing or
concentration practice but it is a state of aware-
ness, knowing oneself, that can be realized each
moment of our lives.
He included Western psychotherapy as a
means of preparing his disciples for meditation,
and presented hundreds of techniques for success-
ful meditation, characterized by silence and
moments of alternating activity. One of his
famous techniques on mediation is “Dynamic
Rajneesh, Bhagawan
Meditation.” It is divided into five easy stages:
first is rapid and continuous breathing for 10 min;
next 10 min for catharsis: allow things happen to
you – “Laugh, shout, scream, jump, shake-
whatever you feel to do, do it!” ([5], Meditation:
The Art of Ecstasy, 233). In the third stage, the
practitioner jumps up and down making sounds
hoo-hoo-hoo, and next every action stops and
meditation starts. Lastly, the exercise ends and
the culmination starts with 10–15 min of dancing
and celebration [9].
Not all meditation techniques are action/exer-
cise oriented. Nadhabrahma and Kundalini medi-
tation are gentler – in Nadhabrahma disciples
make humming sounds and in Kundalini the par-
ticipants are supposed to shake their bodies for
first 15 min till they became the shaking. Though
the base of most of the meditation techniques is
movement and activity, yet the final outcome is
peace of mind and body – a complete harmony
between the two. In Mystic Rose meditation tech-
nique, intense rest and activity periods continue
for weeks: three hours of laughing for first week,
followed by three hours of weeping in the second
week which entails silent meditation in the third
week. The outcome of such intensive meditation
activity is that the participants start witnessing
themselves wherein “the jump into awareness
becomes possible” ([5], Meditation: The Art of
Ecstasy, 116).
Osho wanted to recreate “a new man,” a com-
bination of Gautam Buddha and Zorba the Greek.
He said, “he should be as accurate and objective as
a scientist. . .as sensitive, as full of heart, as a
poet. . .be [as] rooted deep down in his being as
the mystic” ([6], PhilosophiaPerennis, 10). This
new man will neither reject science nor abandon
spirituality both make a harmony with both to
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create a new era. He believes that many of
society’s ills, such as AIDS, cancer, over-
population, and nuclear holocaust, could be
remedied through scientific advancements. His
new man will never be struck in traditional insti-
tutions, such as family, marriage, political ideolo-
gies, or religions [7].
Following serious charges for the crimes,
including an assassination plot to murder US
Attorney Charles H. Turner and the 1984
Rajneeshee bioterror attack, Osho deported from
the USA and returned to India, where he
reinvigorated Pune ashram, now known as the
Osho International Meditation Resort till his
death in 1990 [8].
References
1. Rajneesh B (1982) The goose is out. Rajneesh Foun-
dation International, Poona
2. Rajneesh B (1985) The secret of secrets,
vol 2. Rajneeshpuram, Rajneesh Foundation
3. Rajneesh B (1975) Roots and wings. Rajneesh Foun-
dation Publication, Poona
4. Rajneesh B (1991) Be silent and know. Diamond
Pocket Books, New Delhi
5. Rajneesh B (1976) Meditation: the art of ecstasy. Shel-
don Press, London
6. Rajneesh B (1981) PhilosophiaPerennis. Rajneesh
Foundation, Rajneeshpuram
7. Rajneesh B (1997) A cup of tea. Rebel Publishing
House, Pune
8. Rajneesh B (1978) The disciple of transcendence,
vol 2. Sheldon Press, London
9. Rajneesh B (1978) Neither this nor that. Sheldon
Press, London
10. Rajneesh B (1985) The Rajneesh Bible. Rajneesh
Foundation International, Rajneeshpuram
11. Rajneesh B (1976) The true sage. Rajneesh Founda-
tion, Poona