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Talk:Rajneesh/Archive 5

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Latest comment: 16 years ago by Jayen466 in topic Next thing...
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REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Latest comment: 16 years ago22 comments2 people in discussion

I notice that a detail added to this WIKIPEDIA article was intercepted by another contributor, "Jayen", with a note that, without suitable references, WE WILL HAVE TO remove that detail. Evidently the provided reference did not meet Jayen's criteria, since the detail was removed within seconds. I can see Jayen has contributed a lot of energy to this article, which is admirable, but I can also see that he is not in possession of all relevant facts since, for example, he dismisses above what is in reality an account of an earlier form of the Dynamic Meditation (which contained a "who am I?" stage). I am therefore curious to know; is this authority he has claimed as "WE" based upon some actual authority in Wikipedia, or has he merely cornered this particular article as his personal property? I am not discussing the decision - there has been no further reason given - but the claim of unique authority, as spokesman for an unspecified group, over a section of Wikipedia. Regrettably, Jayen, you afforded me no other means to reply to your "instructions". Redheylin (talk) 23:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I have put a note on your talk page. As for the insertion I deleted, please see WP:NOR. (I didn't make that one up.) Cheers, Jayen466 01:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your note welcoming me to Wiki and offering advice to beginners. I must point out that I am not a new contributor, though this is a new account, and I had thought I was following the advice you gave and was hoping for an answer. However, since you gave it, since you are able to detect edits to this page before they are entered, and since you clearly consider your decisions final, am I to suppose (as I asked) that you are acting for Wikipedia in some official capacity? Redheylin (talk) 01:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

No, of course not. However, this was a clearcut case – introducing facts based on personal experience (in this case, what someone told you in a private conversation) and unsupported by published evidence. I am very happy for the article to include the passage you sought to add, but according to WP policies it must be supported by a reliable source. It's just the way this thing works, and no reflection on your good intent. Jayen466 01:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course not? As I said, in that case, I am surprised by your action. Since the subject is deceased, instant removal is not recommended by Wiki - you have the opportunity to flag personal research, but my brief quote already announced itself as such. This being the case, you might first have asked me for verification of this matter, which is relevant as well as verifiable. I am therefore at a loss to explain your actions to myself. I have referred the matter to Wiki. Redheylin (talk) 01:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am very sorry that my excessively quick response has left a sour feeling. However, I did leave a note on your IP talk page asking if you could add a source to back up the insertion: [1]. After you indicated, as per the above diff, that your source was a personal conversation I added another note to your IP talk page and mentioned that private conversations are not an acceptable source [2]. After you had registered, I left a message on your talk page offering to explain myself. So please don't let it turn you off. This article could certainly do with more contributors. And the "we" I used suffered from an inaccuracy inherent in English, which unlike other languages does not differentiate between the "inclusive" we and the "exclusive" we. Please rest assured that you were included, not excluded, in the "we" as I used it in my communication. ;-) Cheers, Jayen466 02:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Just to place this thing in context, Jayen, I also note;

1) More or less ALL contributions, however minor, seem to get undone by you. 2) You yourself have trashed verifiable sources here, like this; "people like Urban – the other day I read this priceless description of Dynamic Meditation in a paper of his". I point out that the account is correct after all - this is verifiable published evidence which bears upon the development of active meditation - but you do not retract nor enquire. 3) You yourself have used or allowed unverifiable data - can you verify that "Rajneesh was a nickname"?? Chapter and verse? There are other such things. 4) The article has frequently been criticised as partial.

So I am asking myself what is happening? Would I be correct in assuming, then, to begin with, that you are working for the Osho organisation? Redheylin (talk) 02:06, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Re 1: Not true, there are plenty of additions by others, most recently by User:Semitransgenic. 2. Urban wrote in 1996. Dynamic Meditation has had its present form at least since the late seventies, and the version prior to that, described here for example, does not match Urban's description either. If it ever had the form Urban described, this must have been a looong time ago. 3. There are multiple sources attesting to the fact that Rajneesh was a nickname. The one quoted in the article is Encyclopedia Britannica, the same information is also present in FitzGerald (ultimately based on Joshi). Lastly, I am not working for the Osho organisation, and never have done. Hope that answers your questions. Cheers, Jayen466 02:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, Encyclopedia Britannica have updated their article, and now feature a longer piece by J. Gordon Melton which no longer includes this info. I have therefore removed the EB ref (the info is still sourced to FitzGerald, p. 77: "His full name was Chandra Mohan Jain, but his family called him Raja or Rajneesh"). Another book (Huth) says it was his uncle Shikharchand who gave him the name Rajneesh. If you are aware of any information to the contrary, do mention it. Jayen466 02:43, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I think he claimed to have chosen the name himself;

"In the same way, in that small state at that time, the woman was the head and she was called the queen, rani, but there was no raja. Her husband was only a prince "Raj-kumar." Naturally she asked my grandmother "Why do you call this boy of yours Raja?" You will be surprised to know it was really illegal in that state to give the name Raja to anybody. My grandmother laughed and said, "He is the king of my heart, and as far as the law is concerned, we will soon leave this state, but I cannot change his name."

Even I was surprised when she said we would soon be leaving the state... just to save my name? That night I said to her, "Nani are you mad? Just to save this stupid name... any name will do, and in private you could call me `Raja.' There is no need for us to leave."

She said, "I feel in my very guts that we will soon have to leave this state. That's why I risked."

And that is what happened. This incident happened when I was eight, and after just one year we had left that state forever... but she never stopped calling me Raja. I changed my name, just because Raja -- "the king" -- seemed so snobbish, and I didn't like to be laughed at by everybody in school, and moreover I never wanted anyone else to call me Raja except my grandmother. It was a private affair between us." (Osho: Glimpses of a Golden Childhood Ch25)

You will find that the Osho organisation has published many such first-hand accounts - if we can trust such accounts, of course, for they are hardly academic. Redheylin (talk) 03:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, if there are contradictory sources, we could stick closer to FitzGerald's wording and say that his family called him "Rajneesh", without going into who made up the name. Would that do? Jayen466 03:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


On that one Fitzgerald has to be preferred over the man himself, I would say, according to your standards. To your other answers - well, I appear to be suffering from multiple misapprehensions, since it looks as though, from the history, you reversed the contribution you mention. And also, what gave the impression you worked for the Osho organisation is that you were able to alter the legal terms on which a photo copyrighted by the organisation was displayed. Please pardon me if I am being inept on this, but that's what gave the idea - that and the documented speed with which you attend to all alterations.

If you mean the picture of Osho, that is a very low-resolution image used under standard fair-use terms. [3]. The ashram picture was included at the request of a previous reviewer, and I obtained the copyright holder's permission. Rest assured that I react equally speedily to changes to other pages on my watchlist. ;-) I'll update the text, if you haven't done it already. Jayen466 04:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

You are correct that Urban used an outdated source - possibly "Dynamics of Meditation" appendix "Rajneesh Chaotic Yoga" - but I would respectfully suggest, even so, that such mistakes should be checked and corrected by you yourself, seeing that you are taking upon yourself the management of this page, also that a certain intrinsic interest be shown in a matter so fundamental to your subject and finally a consistency of approach to sources that precludes suspicion of some sort of revisionism. I therefore feel that a more constructive and collaborative approach would be of value, and that you ought not refuse first-hand information out-of-hand. The "rule of no rules" asks us first of all to consider the improvement of the resource. Please excuse these remarks from a late-comer; I mean no disparagement to your labours. Yet there are other matters that give rise for concern. Redheylin (talk) 03:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Urban indicates Rajneesh, ‘Experiment in Dynamic Meditation’, The Mystic Experience, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidas, 1977, pp. 72ff., but I have my doubts that source is correct, or correctly quoted. I have seen all sorts of weird and wonderful descriptions of that meditation in the literature. You are very welcome to contribute. Jayen466 04:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The above may be the source, but I recall "Dynamics of Meditation" (Life Awakening 71-2) Anyhow, I had verified that the source exists and is correct/ly quoted. Possibly this is to be considered original research, otherwise I do not see the reason for doubt. So then we have the problem of source-selectivity. And if we ask who is correct and who not, that will also be personal research, unverifiable and so forth. For example, if someone says "yes, I remember it was this way"... or if it is published only in a biased (Osho) source. Awkward, adjusting to the idea that you do not know what you know, but only what somebody else says they have heard. But in my understanding, the Wiki policies recognise the problem and allow some self-published or unverifiable sources when flagged as such. Which is what I did.

The matter of drugs - drug use is well-documented in Poona, as is Osho's complex but defensible stance on the matter. I do not think, though, that any paper has appeared on the matter, but I am surprised to find the treatment makes so little use of the documentation and appears to isolate and distance itself from "hippie sannyasins" for, when I look at the long-hair, beads, robes and sandals of those meditating cultists, it is difficult to find one who could NOT be categorised, if it suited our purposes, as a "hippie". This gives rise to a sense of revisionism.

I further note that a considerable amount of space has been given to "the end of Oregon", apparently simply because of its prominence in US media, along with consideration of every allegation that anybody chose to make at the time. It's rather like looking at Charlie Chaplin's bio and finding that half of it consists of an account of his "unamerican activities" and the accompanying gossip about his young bride.

I think it is possible to state, on the basis of published stats, that all this really only affected around 1% of sannyasins. For example, it has never been much of an issue in India (which this wiki serves) Yet, on the other hand, since Osho's demise there has been a massive controversy, amounting almost to an east-west schism, which is very well-documented indeed in the Indian Anglophone press, but which goes unmentioned here. So there are POV issues galore.

I'd further note that OSHO (tm) is a business, distinct from, though related to, Osho the person, and suggest that disambiguation may need to be introduced. Redheylin (talk) 22:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Verifying sources is not Original Research, but Source-based Research, and it is the essence of work in Wikipedia. So let's have a look at Urban, whom I owe a partial apology. Urban speaks, in his Zorba the Buddha paper, of

a method called ‘Dynamic meditation’ (its original name was ‘Chaotic’ Meditation). As a kind of ‘microcosm of Rajneesh’s outlook’, its explicit purpose was to ‘shock habitual patterns of thought and behavior’, and so open the individual to ecstatic freedom and liberating bliss.69 This involved four stages: first, basic concentration on the breath to achieve a deep state of relaxation (!); second, letting the body go, ‘without restrictions’, ‘allowing the body to do whatever it wants’, including dancing, gyrating, laughing, crying, shrieking or rolling around on the ground, allowing the inner Shakti to move spontaneously through the body; third, asking oneself the question, ‘Who am I?’. And fourth, entry into profound meditation, in which practitioners ‘merge with Cosmic Consciousness’ and realize the unity of the Self with Absolute Reality: in such a state, ‘you are no longer confined to anything . . . you have become infinite, liberated’.

Now, for the first stage, Urban speaks of achieving a "deep state of relaxation" through "concentration on the breath", something that sounds a bit like Vipassana. Compare this with the following, from 1970:

"The first thing to be understood about Dynamic Meditation is that it is a method of creating a situation through tension in which meditation can happen. If your total being is completely tense, the only possibility that remains is relaxation. Ordinarily one cannot go directly into relaxation, but if your whole being is at a peak of total tension then the second step comes automatically, spontaneously: silence is created.

The first three stages of the technique are done in order to achieve this climax of tension throughout all the layers of your being."

I submit Urban has not understood the first thing about it. ;-)

The breathing must be both deep and fast -- as deep as possible and as fast as possible. If you cannot do both, then it must be fast. Fast breathing becomes a sort of hammering on the vital body and something which is asleep begins to wake: the reservoir of your energies breaks open. The breathing is like a flood of electricity throughout the whole nervous system.

So you must do the first step as vigorously, as intensely as possible. You must be in it totally; not a single fragment of you should be outside of it. Your whole being should be in the breathing in the first step.

You are just an anarchy: breathing in, breathing out. Your total mind is in the process -- breath going out, breath coming in. If you are totally in it, thoughts will cease because none of your energy is available to move into thought -- there is no energy left to keep them alive.

As far as I am aware, the breathing is always described in those terms, as "chaotic" and energising the body, not "relaxing".
In Urban's source, The Mystic Experience (later republished as In Search of the Miraculous, Vol. 1), the description of this "chaotic breathing" includes the following:

Continuously for these ten minutes you have to bring your entire energy to it, to deep breathing. Inhale deeply and exhale deeply -- so deeply and vigorously that your whole body shakes, every fiber of it shakes. Your body will be charged with electricity. Some energy within you will begin to rise and penetrate and permeate every fiber, every pore of your body... Use your full strength. ... Exert yourself fully. Exert yourself totally and in every possible way. ... Take breathing to its climax. Right change from one stage to another happens only at the climax.

Relaxation is clearly not the object here, but preparation for the catharsis in the second stage.
Now, in the third stage, people are shouting what is described as the sufi mantra "Hoo". "Go on hammering the sound within -- Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! -- until the whole being becomes nothing but the sound. You must exhaust yourself completely; only then does the fourth stage, the meditation, happen." They are not shouting "Who?"
However, Osho did on a few early occasions, around 1970, 1971, experiment with having people ask themselves "Who am I" in the third stage (a fact that I was not aware of until I checked through the archive of his literature). That was 25 years before Urban wrote, and abandoned after 1971, I think, but I'll let him off on that one; it would have said that in the source he consulted. Thanks for looking it up. I'll get to your other points in a minute. Jayen466 11:12, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Personal recollection and unverifiable sources are not allowed as sources. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. But where multiple sources contradict each other, it is good practice to prefer the one that is more reliable; if a source is clearly in error, according to other more authoritative sources, the authoritative sources should take precedence. Jayen466 11:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
As for the "Western hippie sannyasins", without wanting to get into a long thing about it, I have deleted the word hippie. There is certainly pictorial evidence that lots of people grew their hair long in Poona; though I doubt that makes all of them drug-smuggling hippies. Jayen466 11:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
It is ludicrous to say that the events in Oregon only affected 1% of sannyasins. Many people all over the world left the movement due to the ensuing scandal. They certainly all heard about it, and lost the commune they regarded as their spiritual home and visited in their thousands at least once every year. And as for people in the U.S., which this Wikipedia serves too, these events and the events described in 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack are the most notable about this movement, with considerable coverage in various categories of literature.
I am aware that there have been wrangles within the Osho movement about Osho's legacy; however, the consensus in previous discussions was that this is the biography of Osho, the man, and that such squabbles among his disciples should be covered in Osho movement (an article that requires some attention).
As for Osho (TM), you are welcome to start an article on Osho International Foundation, but I doubt it would meet the notability criteria. Jayen466 11:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Jayen - the "Osho movement" article certainly "requires some attention", moreover, I am aware of no such entity nor common or authoritative use of the term. Seems to me the term is "neo-sannyas". However, as you say, the point is to disambiguate use of the term, and you say it is accepted that Osho the man is not "Osho the movement", hence Osho the man is different from OSHO tm. This does not necessarily require a separate entry for the latter, does it?

I welcome the removal of "hippie" but still question a fascination with allegations supported by nothing but an appearance in print, in this case, the hearsay report of an unsupported allegation of a self-deluding criminal who is not "researching" but (supposedly) vaguely reporting firsthand impressions. It is verifiable that such a statement was once made, but the statement is an unverified first-hand anecdote completely at variance with Osho's published position. And I'd distinguish here between "original research", common knowledge and "self-reporting" also. Otherwise we do indeed get ourselves into a situation. I was reporting, not researching.

I agree that Urban has not DONE or properly understood the Dynamic, and he has provided the wrong source, but I submit that your basis for rejecting him (on "concentration and relaxation") is your own experience, which you secondarily support with NON-academic sources,which many would find unacceptable, even though the academic one is incompetent!

What IS useful about him is his statement that the Dynamic represents a microcosm of Osho's teaching. I think this would form an admirable, solid, defensible basis for the presentation of that teaching which would sufficiently make the point of the existential, non-intellectual foundation of that teaching (which Fox assures me is the case!) I'd like to propose a rewrite that develops the present themes from that centre.

I maintain that the concentration on Oregon is a distortion created purely by poor common (American) comprehension of poor reporting, and I point out the availability of sources describing the Portland bombing, the deployment of the national guard and covert operations, the illegality of Osho's arrest and so forth, and the entire absence of these entirely verifiable facts from an account that instesad dwells, as I say, on empty and discredited allegations simply because such allegations have been made. You speak of those who were scandalised, but do not mention the millions who were positively affected - at precisely the same moment - by the glowing reports of distinguished reporters like Sue Arnold and Bernard Levin. I think you have been forced onto the back foot by hostile and entirely unscholarly, unverifiable critiques.

I entirely accept I have no right to say the debacle was entirely predictable but....... certainly it was hardly a shock to folk who had no desire to be part of any mass movement but simply to work individually with and for their master. How will this standpoint be upheld when reporters simply do not ask, the idea being off their faulty radar? Truth IS an issue, verifiability must be arranged.

Hope you understand, for "I am no pedant to criticise another man's labours" (Introduction to English Translation of the Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis, Vaughan facsimile pub. SRIA 1923)

Redheylin (talk) 14:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure, constructive criticism is most welcome. :-) Re your points:
  1. Note that we (inclusive, all of us Wikipedians, you included ;-) ) have an article on neo-sannyas as well.
  2. If we don't have an article on Osho™, then we don't need to disambiguate.
  3. The passage re the hippie allegations is sourced to Fox, p. 47, a very neutral source. Milne has a reference to this as well (p. 155), mentioning that sometimes people brought up their travel plans in darshans. References to sannaysins smuggling drugs – marihuana mostly – are generally plentiful, much as described in Sam's book, which has a citation in Fox (otherwise I wouldn't have included it in the refs, since it's self-published).
  4. Luckily, Fox (p. 5), a more recent academic source, has a more accurate description of Dynamic Meditation that matches those given in primary sources. Also, this is one of those rare cases where it might be defensible to use a primary source, or at least to consult it in assessing the reliability of conflicting secondary sources.
  5. As for a re-write: Do you mean the Teachings section? That section is solidly sourced at the moment, mostly to Fox (and Urban -- I am meaning to expand the Urban part a little, and have it replace the "Deconstructionism" section in Reception). You could create a draft and place it here on the talk page, or create a subpage either in your user space or as a subpage here: Talk:Osho/Drafts. Just remember, whatever you write must be a summary of published secondary sources. You can't summarise Osho's teaching from your perspective, simply because any editor could access the osho.com archive and cherry-pick either "the best" or "the worst" bits and then make his POV "summary" on that basis. We have to make use of summaries published in reputable, reliable sources, with preference to scholarly sources where these are available. Do you have access to the Urban? If not, feel free to e-mail me. Also, please see WP:PSTS for orientation.
  6. Portland bombing etc.: I have said this before elsewhere, you could write a whole Wild West novel about all of this, with the bombing of the sannyasins' hotel in Portland, gun clubs in Oregon declaring open season on the "Red Vermin", Christian preachers entering Rajneeshpuram and declaring Osho to be the devil incarnate, Ma Anand Sheela's abortive plan to crash a plane into some government building, etc. etc. And you could write 5000 words and then realise that Osho has not really figured once in all of this. This is his biography, not Sheela's, not that of the dude who tried to blow up the Portland hotel. I don't think we are actually overstressing Oregon, it's just that a lot happened in those years. A commune was built, it collapsed amid scandal, his secretary ended up in jail, he ended up in jail, he claimed he was poisoned, etc. What to do? Wikipedia has to reflect the available sources.
  7. Which allegations featured in the article have been discredited? Source? As for his arrest, in what sense was it illegal? Source?
  8. There is no lack of praise for Osho in the article, where this was available in published sources.
  9. Verifiability must be arranged: I certainly welcome help in researching the various sources available to us. Cheers, Jayen466 16:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Note that there is also an article on Dynamic Meditation; perhaps the Urban quote about it being a microcosm of his teaching could be put to good use there. Jayen466 16:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Response

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion

I know - hence I say that the "movement" entry is redundant and the issues, including the ambiguity of words like "Osho" and "Dynamic", can be addressed under neosannyas with disambiguation here. I have a major problem with "Osho Movement" which is flagged "type of hinduism"!!



I think Fox is a sannyasin! I know Milne is a non-academic source of established inaccuracy. Sam's book offers no new material. Neither Milne (re darshans) nor Fox (re teachings) can possibly draw on anything else but the same primary sources available to us. The drugs issue is as futile as, say, listing all the crimes for which Christians have been responsible. Let us either wipe it or provide a balanced, accurate view. And, by the way, Milne knew those smugglers pretty damn well! And so do I.


You say;


Of course, I am aware of normal academic standards - I should be! But I think you are taking a much harder line than necessary. Not only are the same primary sources available to us as to them, and the paucity of scholarship highly likely to perpetuate mistakes and miss or misinterpret important factors. There is no verifiability issue. There is no obsessive referencing in the case of say Ramakrishna (qv) Self reporting is allowed where necessary. The rule of no rules also. You are really talking about NPOV and undue weight, I think. Since "the teachings of Osho" ARE the teachings of Osho, he is the only touchstone, and attempting to establish due weight, achieve neutrality and add counterbalance, on the basis of the only acceptable and verifiable primary source is NOT original research.



Great - then let us include it verbatim. Like this;

1) Urban on the importance 2) Fox on the instructions 3) Osho on the rationale

then branch to freudianism, therapy, awareness, dialectics and the rest. I DO mean on this page, NOT on the Dynamic page (why it exists??)



exactly



Sorry, I am not going to undertake this alone while it can be excluded by you alone.



Yes, and anything whatsoever that we can find that makes Osho a sensational, controversial figure in the US media.



It is precisely Osho not figuring, and 99 per cent of his disciples not figuring, and the facts not figuring either, that bothers me.



This has real academic cred and I suggest making AS MUCH USE OF THIS AS POSSIBLE:

http://www.ashejournal.com/index.php?id=151

Redheylin (talk) 19:42, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


Okay, couple of points: Judith M. Fox has a doctorate in the Sociology of Religion, last I knew she taught at London University (Department of Study of Religions of the School of Oriental and African Studies). She has used several surnames throughout her academic career; in the eighties, she published an earlier study of the Osho movement together with Paul Heelas under the name Judith Thompson, but I believe her most widely regarded academic work has been on Sahaja Yoga, under the name Judith Coney. To the best of my knowledge, she is not a sannyasin. See write-up. The present passage on Dynamic Meditation is already based on her description and cross-checked against a primary source (see refs). It is also not included verbatim, since that would be a WP:COPYVIO, but paraphrased.
As to the prevalence of the term "Osho movement" in published literature, please see [4].
I am afraid the "Ashé Journal of Experimental Spirituality" would leave a number of contributors here entirely unimpressed. While it claims to be "peer-reviewed", I believe it is not an academic journal in any meaningful sense of the word (most of the contributors to the issue you point to aren't academics, but private individuals). In its entire history, it seems to have garnered a single academic citation, as per Google Scholar. Compare this against, say, the citations for "Sociology of Religion", an actual peer-reviewed academic journal. I believe Ashé is more properly seen as a cultural fringe journal; certainly not part of the academic mainstream. I am aware of the article, by the way, it is quite well-written (better than the rest in that issue, at any rate), and much of it matches what we have here. As a single source for contentious statements of fact, however, it would probably not pass muster here.
Your idea that we can access the same primary sources as scholars and come up with a better analysis and summary of Osho's teachings seems, I am sorry to say, wholly incompatible with the basic idea of Wikipedia. It would be WP:Original Research. Instead, we have to work with the sources we have. There is much that can be done within that framework, and such contributions will last longer in such a sometimes hotly contested article than WP:OR. Jayen466 21:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
FWIW, I've added Urban's description of DM as "a kind of microcosm" of Osho's outlook. Jayen466 21:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


Further discussion

That's not what I said. I am saying, the contributors have to use their own expertise to attain due weight and neutral viewpoint and they can only attain this on their own joint knowledge of the subject, which in this case is not primarily an academic matter. On the words of Osho, the words of Osho are the unique verifiable source, therefore we have to take care to establish due weight ourselves, and it is this that leads to our own knowledge of the primary sources as touchstone, just as we refer to our own knowledge of Dynamic in saying that Fox has a well-understood view of the modern form, while Urban has a less well-understood version of one of the earliest. This is de facto, and merely reflects the expertise of the editors.

I further pointed out that, for example, Ramkrishna's bio shows no need of back up to assert that he was an Advaitist devotee of Kali - it is regarded as common knowledge, like "Chaplin was a comedian".



That is what I am arguing, but I am saying the primary source itself is the verifiable criterion for the matter of what Osho said - it is a matter of POV and proportionality and the editors are responsible themselves for that. Furthermore, when contributors undertake this, it can only be countermanded on the basis of discussion using all the sources with equal or better rigour, so there is no question of instability and no invitation to vandalism. Clive James, though, is not a serious source!



Let's please settle about teachings and overall entry structure, then the matter of allegations. Osho is primarily a famous master.



published an earlier study of the Osho movement together with Paul Heelas under the name Judith Thompson

Now I recall - yes, they really participated. Lancaster Uni Dept Religion still has all the books.



You are saying that FOX HERSELF refrained from verbatim publishing because of copyright???? Or you are saying that OTI can prevent Wiki from quoting Fox, and so you will not do that, though you find yourself able to claim unilateral "legitimate use" for a photo that DOES belong to OSHOtm?

In my understanding, the previous OIF tolerance of Fox, howsoever she expresses herself, establishes fair use under generic trademark rules for anything she has said, and quotation from an academic source is anyhow absolutely fair use in compiling an encyclopaedia.


":As to the prevalence of the term "Osho movement" in published literature, please see http://books.google.com/books?q=%22Osho+movement%22&btnG=Search+Books."

Does not give any results!!


http://www.ashejournal.com/index.php?id=151


Ah! so at last we get to the point I came in on. What others are you speaking for or taking into account, please, and why are they not stepping forward to present their positions?

Now. The writer has a perfectly legitimate degree from a legitimate college and is affiliated to the top American organisations in the field, who produce the most resepected journals.

Please, I want to know who considers this source invalid, at least for statements which are common knowledge to those who were present at the time?

"One thing is certain, Rajneesh’s departure from Rajneeshpuram stemmed off the government’s plan for a major assault on the commune and, thus, likely spared several hundred lives. By late September 1985, 15 National Guard armored personnel carriers were positioned in the hills surrounding Rajneeshpuram. In addition to the many FBI agents investigating the allegations made by Rajneesh, the state was ready to commit 800 state troopers if conflict erupted and the National Guard had another 600 guardsmen on standby as backup. By September 30, the National Guard had three HUEY helicopters at Redmond airport ready to carry FBI agents and Oregon State Police SWAT teams into Rajneeshpuram. Turner also unsuccessfully requested U.S. Marshal’s Service Fugitive Investigative Search Teams (FIST) and Border Patrol from the U.S.-Mexico border to assist with “mass arrests.”

When Weaver was asked about the government’s concern about a bloodbath of innocent sannyasins at Rajneeshpuram, if the commune was stormed by force, he simply stated, “It’s not the government’s job to make those guy’s jobs easier.”

In retrospect, Rajneesh's cross-country flight did not meet the legal definition of fleeing prosecution and he and the other passengers could not rightly be considered fugitives. U.S. District Attorney conceded in the Charlotte court that he lacked the evidence to support his claim that Rajneesh and co. were attempting to evade arrest. Despite Turner's contention to the contrary in court, the pilots filed flight plans that listed Charlotte as their final destination.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism, the President authorized the CIA to investigate foreign entities on U.S. soil, thus sidestepping the congressional mandate against domestic CIA operations. In December 1981, President Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 which authorized federal law enforcement agencies to hire outside people to conduct illegal break-ins for the purposes of obtaining evidence. The executive order specifically allowed that evidence thus collected could be in turn used to obtain a legitimate search warrant.

Beginning in 1983 and increasing through to the dissolution of the commune in 1985, military jets from Whidbey Island Naval Base conducted regular flyovers of Rajneeshpuram. In violation of FAA regulations, the plains routinely flew extremely low over the commune disrupting daily life and, in several instances, jeopardizing civilian air traffic at the Rajneesh airport.

In his book Passage to America, Max Brecher interviews two soldiers-for-hire who allege that they were offered money for killing Rajneesh.

Another persistent rumors of illegal activity at Rajneeshpuram remains that the sannyasins were stockpiling weapons. Media reports of the day often focused on images of Uzi toting sannyasins. By 1985 Sheela was always shown wearing a gun on her hip. The reports all failed to mention that the photographed sannyasins were members of the Rajneeshpuram police force—a state recognized law enforcement agency whose members had been trained at the State Police Academy.

Redheylin (talk) 23:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I take your point re editor expertise – of course that is useful.
Re paraphrasing: This is just a general issue with Wikipedia – we are not allowed to reproduce copyright works verbatim. Any texts in Wikipedia can be freely used by anyone, so they must not infringe any existing copyrights. Please see WP:COPYVIO.
Re Ramakrishna: You can find plenty of articles that are poorly sourced. Wikipedia is an ongoing collaborative effort. Thousands of unsourced statements and articles are deleted every month. We should use best practice. Any possibly contentious statement must be sourced; the guidelines such as WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR etc. are very clear on this.
Re Clive James: While Clive James is not a notable commentator on religious matters per se, he is quoted in an academic work as exemplary of the kind of reception Osho received in wider society. As such, his comments have relevance, as much as the more positive comments of Bernard Levin or the former president of India. It is part of an WP:NPOV presentation.
Re google book results: I get several dozen results, many of them scholarly works, when I click on the link I provided. Perhaps enter "Osho movement" (with quotes) yourself in http://www.books.google.com and see what comes up for you.
As for the suitability of Ashé as a source, if you like we can ask for a third opinion, e.g. from Cirt (talk · contribs), the lead editor on 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack (a Featured Article), or Will_Beback (talk · contribs), an admin who has in the past commented here. We could also consult Vassyana (talk · contribs), who performed the recent GA review.
(Because of the edit conflict (our edits overlapped) I haven't yet read the quotes you just added.) Jayen466 23:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
On a technical note: Please don't use multiple = characters at the beginning of lines, it seems to mess with the WP format, making talk page sections unavailable for editing. You can use :: characters at the beginning of lines to indent your responses. Jayen466 00:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Tx for the quotes, it's a while since I read the article. Another, more mainstream academic source that may be of interest, though perhaps more so in the Rajneeshpuram and Osho movement articles, is here. Jayen466 00:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Coherent discussion

Latest comment: 16 years ago18 comments3 people in discussion

I refactored the above discussion and quotation (as best I could) so it is somewhat easier to follow for other editors. Please try to keep discussions and responses in a format that can be easily followed by other users. Thanks! Vassyana (talk) 00:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

You are an angel and now one "random acts of kindness" barnstar richer. Jayen466 00:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Vassyana, I used keys habitual to me that have control functions here in wiki. I appreciate your various past efforts, thank you.

If you would be so kind, and are paying attention still, I'd like to know what you think about the credentials of the journalist I quoted. He IS a journalist, editor of the journal in which the article appears, so there are shades of self-publishing. But his academic affiliations are impeccable and his own journal is a specialist publication that has aspirations towards peer-review. The article is already recognised by an external link from the present page, and he provides a useful source of verifiable information which I believe is required in order to present a NPOV.

Jayen, you have already quoted Fox verbatim;

The author of a recent academic study of the Osho phenomenon has remarked that the "answer to whether Osho was a manipulator, addicted to power, etc., or a radically enlightened spiritual master who continues to offer a joyful, authentic, and enriching – if at times turbulent – path to those who open their hearts to him, seems to rest with the one asking the question, and with posterity."[143]

however I take your point - perhaps we can ask her permission to quote, just to clear things up once and for all, right? :> Maybe if you are STILLL worried about flak from elsewhere, have a look at wiki on fair usage of generic trademarks.

Redheylin (talk) 00:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It's fine to quote an author if the passage is clearly marked as a quote, with quotation marks. What we can't do is simply quote from a book at length, essentially plagiarising their work to write our article.
Btw, the way this indenting works, if you now reply to this posting of mine, you should place two colons at the beginning of each line in your response. This will indent your response by one tab more than mine, which has one colon at the beginning of each line. If I then reply to you, I place three colons and so forth (until it gets too much, and then one writes (outdent) and starts again on the left.
Please don't write your responses in the middle of mine; if you want to quote what I have said, please make a copy and quote it in your response (and perhaps put it in italics). Thanks! Jayen466 00:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, as I say, if you consider Fox's account of the meditation too long to pass without a complaint from her lawyers, then by all means let us seek her approval. I really think it is very important to make sure that everything is watertight. Redheylin (talk) 01:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
What indentation convention is recommended?? Progressive until silly, regardless of order? Redheylin (talk) 01:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
You always indent one colon more than the post you are replying to. Multiple replies to the same post all have the same, not progressive, indentation. As for Fox, you can compare what we have in the article against her text here (the first section of her book is available as a sample online). Jayen466 01:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I see. Now, please, I would like to suggest that this section be advanced to the top of "teachings" and that the whole section lead off with Urban in order to emphasise that the walk is the talk!! And so "egomachine" goes under "master". I'd also suggest adding a slight amount about three stages and threefold man, from a primary souce if necessary. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Redheylin (talk • contribs) 01:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Could I ask you to try what you want to do in a draft page? I don't doubt your enthusiasm and your expertise for the subject matter, which is great, but you're new to the format, and it's very easy to get the cites messed up. I've created a draft page with the current content: Talk:Osho/Drafts and have inserted the present version of the article there. Then other editors and I can look at what you propose. Jayen466 02:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Redheylin, no problem and thank you for understanding. Wikiformatting can be a bit confusing at first and even after a while, you can find out new things about the wiki markup. :) Vassyana (talk) 02:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC) Don't be shy about working on something in a sandbox (as we call those draft spaces). They can be good places to organize your thoughts and create a clear example for discussion. Sometimes, a good direct example of what we mean can communicate to other editors better than our explanations. Plus, working in a sandbox will allow you to experiment a little more to get a feel for things. Cheers! Vassyana (talk) 02:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I have been wandering around the place, making small anonymous edits, often just grammar and orthography, I registered to contribute more to the music section but clicked on this and got enmeshed instead. I now see the use of sand, just like Brian Wilson. I also admire Jayen466's work and sympathise with his consternation, given that the citations appear in numerical order, at the suggestion of a para reorder. I defer to his seniority, so that I would not make an unagreed major change, and admit the responsibility for any donkey-work should he agree to the restructure. I will make the changes to the section in draft without the update first, leaving any detailed rejig till after our conference. Redheylin (talk) 02:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
As far as the donkey work is concerned, I already have a fair lot of that to do to implement Vassyana's suggestion concerning the (tedious but necessary) reorganisation of the sources. Reordering the paragraphs actually wouldn't be a problem from that point of view, since luckily WP numbers the references automatically in the order in which they first occur in the text. :) But have another look at the text; I think that the current sequence of paragraphs is actually quite successful; it introduces meditation at the point where it makes clear that in Osho's view, the philosophy outlined in the first couple of paras is not actually sufficient without an inner dimension. The paragraphs would not link up in quite such a coherent way if we shift things around, IMO. Jayen466 01:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I made the first edit. Jayen I dig that crazy source, since it confirms what I said, that American media were unbalanced negative, while Europe was more balanced. It says that this, together with federal and state suppression, destabilised the commune. The actual legalities involved building regulations, losses to neighbours and separation of church and state. It can be easily said and supported that, without this, Sheela could and would not have behaved like a criminal despot, nor would others have let her.
To my mind, the neutrality lies in the fact that they DID let her and, on balance, it SHOULD be unconstitutional to state-fund a city where a core group has absolute ownership, ideological ascendancy (due to religious trust) and power. It can, and ought to be said, that anybody could walk away anytime, or even choose not to go. And that the experience had a positive effect upon the org from then on in. So yes, this piece gives great strength. And its true and verifiable, J, do not fret nor fear, dear one. Redheylin (talk) 04:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Richardson is a much more solid and reputable source than Davisson, in my view. It might be worthwhile to add a paragraph in the Reception/Controversies section based on Richardson, e.g. the "deforming effect", with perhaps a sentence or two sourced to Davisson as well. I don't think we can justify much more than that for Davisson, simply because it's a fringe view in the present panorama of sources – fine to mention as part of an NPOV presentation, but not something we can use as a main source for the article. By the way, some of the papers in Aveling – (plug warning:) a useful book, worth buying – also address the issue of media coverage and its effects on the situation in Oregon. Cheers, Jayen466 01:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, I had better leave it all to you then. If you are happy that media perceptions of Oregon take up more space here than everything else put together, then all I can say is that your point of view is far different from mine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Redheylin (talk • contribs) 14:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC) Redheylin (talk) 14:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree there are number of reputable scholarly sources stating that much of the news coverage in the U.S. was "almost uniformly negative and often highly inaccurate" (Aveling, p. 353, and others). So thanks for bringing it up; it deserves to be mentioned. I've also noticed that one of the sections you had in your draft was present in this article but did not display due to a ref formatting error; this has now been fixed. Thanks, Jayen466 22:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand your reasoning re teachings structure and I see that it is a progressive or bottom-up. But I think it can be rendered closer to its source by going "top-down" - I think this is an unobjectionable editorial means of expressing the essence, which has to be existential not didactic, and positive not arguing from suffering like Buddha. Glad you notice I had included the intro at the bottom. Now please allow me to show what could be done with the microcosmic Dynamic.

Redheylin (talk) 03:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I still can't see how it would work, since the description of Dynamic at least in its present form is too specific and detailed to make a good lead for this section, but I am prepared to be shown I am wrong on this. Jayen466 21:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

And another thing.....!

Latest comment: 16 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

Another thing that I think contributed to my impression of unbalanced Oregonian POV is the absence of a bio section for the period 1985-90. This period was unique, different, key to Osho's work, career and influence. It was the era of No-Mind, White Robe and Mystic Rose, the first advances in meditation since 1976. Meditation, therapy and darshan were combined in an even more elegant way, though the emphasis on the reputation and authority of therapists and managers plummeted in the estimation of all who had witnessed the previous possible behaviour of such worthies and dignitaries. Large communes were put aside in favour of resorts and mystery schools. The obstructions of the Desai administration, which had precipitated the Oregon commune location, were reversed, and massive expansion took place in Poona. Osho's discourses focussed exclusively on Zen masters, creating a body of teaching work of another order from that of his earlier career. The idea of the nature of discipleship was considerably modified and reviewed with greater emphasis on autonomy. The effort towards worldwide exposure was already successfully completed, and a reversion to the main item on the programme - meditation - was swift. Osho's recommendation of aloneness and deep relations discouraged attendance in the mere hope of sexual promiscuity.

I see this era as in many ways a climax of Osho's efforts, easily as significant as Bombay, Poona 1 and Oregon. Yet this article seems designed to perpetuate the idea that, when Oregon closed, the whole thing vanished. This is empty propaganda. The truth is, it was the real beginning.

Redheylin (talk) 20:33, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Good point, that had been irking me as well a little; the thing is, I can't find many sources that cover this period in detail. However, Fox does mention that he devised and personally led new meditations in this period (p.34), and she also has a reference to Aveling's The Laughing Swamis which may have more. Will do some digging. Excellent point! Jayen466 21:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
I've made a start and filled in this time period a little, sourced to Fox. Jayen466 22:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Re paragraph division in the lede – while I can see where you're coming from, note WP:LEDE#Length. Jayen466 18:26, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


OK. But now I made the cut in bio, you can see there's as much space for Oregon as for his entire life. If that's because there are so many POV at that point, then it has to go to Rajneeshpuram or Bioterror or neosannyas; we have to "increase what is too little and decrease what is too much" as I seem to remember the I Ching says (Wilhelm trans. RKP 2345 edition, page 101010101010, footnote).

Redheylin (talk) 22:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the solution is to develop the Rajneeshpuram article properly, based on the available sources. Then we can refer the reader for further detail to that article, as per WP:SPLIT, and reduce coverage here to the essential points. Good sources for Rajneeshpuram are FitzGerald (the New Yorker articles, reproduced in Cities on a Hill – enormously influential and absolutely indispensable for any article on Rajneeshpuram) and Lewis F. Carter's Rajneeshpuram, Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram, by far the most complete academic source and very highly regarded. There is also the book by Ted Shay (Rajneeshpuram and the abuse of power), mentioned in the Richardson, as well as the Richardson section itself, as linked in our earlier discussion. Then there is Tucker, Toxic Terror (the section by Carus, "The Rajneeshees"), and Carus' paper, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes. Another interesting paper is Utopia and Bureaucracy – The Fall of Rajneeshpuram, by Carl Abbott, The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Feb., 1990), pp. 77-103. There are several sociological studies by Carl Latkin, some of them included in Aveling, Osho Rajneesh, Some Western Perceptions; again, these I think are essential. Lastly, there is a book by Max Brecher, A Passage to America, which is hard to get hold of – it appeared only in India, and I haven't yet succeeded in getting a copy myself. At the moment, I am still a little under pressure IRL (= in real life), so if you or someone else would want to forge ahead, that would be great! Jayen466 22:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

And another other thing.

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

The period between Osho's university days and the beginning of sannyas - the sixties, basically - is another time that is underrepresented here and in sources. There are a few primary sources in English - Beware of Socialism, From Sex to Superconscious maybe "The Sound of Running Water" - but very little record of his time as a travelling orator other than his own tales. There is Menen, "The Mystic of Feeling", then what? And we are not allowed simply to ask an old Indian!!

Just to keep on ad nauseam - it seems to me the structure of the article is a meta-message; due weight and neutrality require an equal chronological emphasis, and where important events require extra space, those events should be primarily important to that which makes the subject notable.

What makes Chaplin famous is his films. What makes Osho famous is his books and meditations and foundations.

We have established that at present the Oregon phase is significant in the USA as a factor of Osho's fame, but his "fame as a criminal", we have seen, is largely built on misapprehensions, and anyway is a secondary effect arising from the primary. We have seen that in Asia, Europe, Australia, these perceptions are far less prevalent.

While it is good to use neutral scholarship to refute misapprehensions, the dominance of this aim will of itself constitute meta-undue-weight and loss of meta-neutrality!

Hence the oracle.

And really just for the record I'd like to repeat and clarify what I said above. Osho said "watch; everyone in the world will see me and hear of me. Whatever reaction they have is OK. If they kill me it wil be even better promotion - look at Jesus".

All the Frohnmeyers and Turners and Reagans and Oregonian Sheelas in the world were only fulfilling their appointed roles in the entirely, unbelievably successful accomplishment of Osho's publicity stunt; the existential advert for the New Man, Zorba the B. Sure, they did not get paid, but at least their otherwise insignificant lives may live on in our memories. We owe them a great debt - a good laugh.

Redheylin (talk) 23:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

For the sixties, see the earlier biography by Vasant Joshi, The Awakened One, widely referenced by all subsequent writers, including FitzGerald and Carter. I just ordered that book the other day, Barnes & Noble have second-hand copies (nothing on Amazon). Jayen466 23:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
What makes Chaplin famous is his films. What makes Osho famous is his books and meditations and foundations.. Unfortunately, what makes Osho famous is not really his books, meditations and stuff. In the US and Europe he is known mainly as the sex-guru and for the happenings in Oregon. In India (and Asia to a lesser extent) he is known as an orator who gave talks in front of tens of thousands during the 60s and 70s and later set up a 'sex ashram' in Pune. Given that the english version of the Wikipedia is read mainly in the English speaking parts of the world, it's natural that those events have a certain amount of prominence. It's also the reason that there is so much documentation around them. Notoriety and infamy spawn academic research, which provide sources for Wikipedia. Kind of a circular motion, but that's the way it is. jalal (talk) 10:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Glad to hear about the Joshi book. Osho can be famous as sex-guru; he should be, considering he was advocating open sex education, sex as meditation, contraception and termination on demand, the end of the family and the enfranchisement of women. He was saying that religious sexual abstinence causes far more perversion and hypocrisy than it causes holiness and purity. I am sure that was sufficient reason for Indians, and I think you'll find it was the Indian press who invented the name. It was not sufficient reason for westerners, who therefore concluded that everybody was trying to shag their way to god, while Osho was presumably God trying to shag his way back. It will be great to dwell on and explain the origin of the term, and it will help explain the accusation of sham marriages, but I would like to say;
1) That still makes him famous as a "guru" on the basis of his talks etc.
2) He is not known as "the machine gun guru", "the valium guru" etc, let alone as "the machine-gun and valium criminal".
So I was disappointed to see the straight progression "Sex to Superconsciousness" > sex guru > promiscuity offered in the text, since I cannot think of anywhere Osho advocated promiscuity, except when once he says that some Taoists saw value in it. He advocated serial monogamy, or monogamy with holidays, until such time as celibacy happens of itself, which it must because no relationship can be perfect.
Some time ago, there was a quiz programme on TV - the competitor has three chances to guess the most popular answer to some question from an audience survey. This time the question was "name one of the three musketeers". The entrant lost because he knew the three names. The most popular response was "d'Artagnan". Great for a show, not so great for an encyclopaedia. Redheylin (talk) 21:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


ALSO! I'd like to look at the matter of Osho as master of the vagina. It's not really "false", he said in Guida Spirituale;


Hindus are very down to earth. You will be surprised, even shocked, but the original root in Hinduism of bhagwan is bhag -- bhag means vagina. You could not have thought it. And bhagwan means one who used the vagina of the universe to create -- the creator. Hindus worship the female vagina and the male phallic symbol, shivalinga. If you have seen shivalinga, the marble standing out is just a symbol of the male sexual organ, and it is standing in the vagina. Underneath it, if you have looked, there is a marble vagina out of which it is standing. Hindus have worshipped it symbolically, and it seems meaningful in their reference, that any creation is bound to be the meeting of the male and the female, yin and yang. So for 'the creator' they use the word bhagwan. But the origin of the word is very strange.

Buddhists and Jainas don't believe in God, don't believe that anybody created the world, but they use 'bhagwan'. They have a different origination for their word. In Jaina and Buddhist reference bhag means fortune, and bhagwan means the fortunate one, the blessed one; one who has attained to his destiny, who has matured.

So when I started talking thirty-four years ago, people started using it... because in India, if you respect a man you don't use his name; that is thought to be disrespectful....So when I started speaking and when people started feeling something for me, on their own they began to call me Acharya. Acharya means 'the master', but not just the master; it is something more. Actually it means the person who says only that which he lives, one whose actions and thoughts are absolutely in harmony. So for almost twenty years people called me Acharya. This was before I started initiating people. They were asking me all over India to initiate them.....

The day came. I was taking a meditation camp deep in the Himalayas, in Kulu-Manali -- it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is called the Valley of the Gods, it is so beautiful, so otherworldly. Once you enter Kulu-Manali you start feeling you are entering into another world. On the last day of the camp it came to me, "Now the moment has come," and I declared, "Whosoever wants to be initiated, I am ready." Twenty-one persons immediately stood up. They entered into sannyas. Now for them it became a question what to call me. Everybody else used to call me Acharya; now it was not enough for them. For them I had become far more important, far more significant, far more intimate. They had come very close to my being, and they decided that they would call me Bhagwan. They asked me. I said, "That's perfectly good, because that's a very meaningful word for me: the blessed one."

It does not mean God to me, it does not mean the creator, it simply means the blessed one -- one who is at home, has arrived; one who has found, one who has encountered himself. Then there is nothing else but blessings, and blessings go on raining over him. Day in, day out, the blessing goes on showering. So remember, Bhagwan has nothing to do with God. It has certainly something to do with godliness, because that is what arriving is: coming home. That is what makes you the Blessed One.

Redheylin (talk) 00:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Celibacy

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

By his own statements and those of ex-followers, Osho himself was not a celibate. Why does it say ex-followers? Did one become an ex-follower after spending the night with Osho? Or did he have a penchant for ex-followers? It is also true to write "by his own statements, Osho was a celibate", so why choose one set of statements over another?
Also, celibacy is not something one needs to claim over their whole life, as Osho said: Right now I am celibate, but if my health gets better I am not going to be celibate. I have never been celibate. I do not do anything against nature. Right now I am celibate not because celibacy has any value, but just because I am sick. (Press Interviews)
Why are there no sources cited here? Having a source would help decide what the paragraph is trying to say. This somewhat orphaned line looks a little out of place somehow.jalal (talk) 08:09, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, we can certainly drop that sentence if you like. I don't really like it myself. The reason for the funny wording is that I only found references to this in Milne and Franklin and in Osho's own books. Nobody else seems to have bothered mentioning it. Jayen466 19:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

  Done Jayen466 19:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Prole - Sanity Disordered

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feet-Clay-Study-Anthony-Storr/dp/0006384234 is where ya find "Feet of Clay", another biting analysis of Osho's psychological problems. It might be fun to compare diagnoses! You will also find some great laughs; for example when Storr says about Gurdjieff that "inventing words is a sign of schizophrenia, as we are told by the man who invented the word "schizophrenia"".

Redheylin (talk) 00:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've actually owned a copy of that book for some time. I'll have to re-read it. ;-) Jayen466 00:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

"Silence must happen while you are absolutely alive, vital, bubbling with life and energy. Then silence is meaningful. But then silence will have a different, altogether different quality to it.

And that's what I'm doing. Dynamic meditation is a contradiction. The dynamic means effort, much effort, absolute effort. And meditation means silence, no effort, no activity. You can call it a dialectical meditation." (white clouds 4) Redheylin (talk) 01:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I ask the following:

Why, on a number of occasions (the last being today) in the last number of months, has a semi-automated bot selectively excised specific threads from the Osho discussion page?

Why did the archiving ignore chronology?

Where is the evidence of consensus?

This has totally screwed the order of discussion and effectively concealed relevant debate that other readers may need to be aware of before editing/discussing.

Semitransgenic (talk) 07:46, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Next thing...

Latest comment: 16 years ago12 comments3 people in discussion

Why was Bernard Levin's stuff in "The Times" "gushing"?? A bit of a gratuitous pejorative, innit? I'd have thought that his articles, and the Rajneeshpuram experience of Sue Arnold in "The Observer" would rather show that the British liberal press rather liked Osho just when they were not supposed to?

Re' Clive James, it would really be better to have the whole thing; his reasons for cynicism particularly. The main thing was; Osho had an Indian accent and said "troot" instead of truth. I have always wondered; is Clive James Hindi THAT good - or is he just the fat racist wanker he seems to be?

If you wanted kneejerk cynicism (and it seems you do), would not Alan Whicker be a better bet?

Redheylin (talk) 01:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I remember Alan Whicker had something cynical to say as well, but don't have a source to hand. "Gushing" feels consonant with how the review was portrayed in the source cited (Mullan). Levin's Telegraph obituary says he "drooled embarrassingly" over Osho. I am not endorsing these cynical statements, but there was a lot of cynicism about Osho in the press, and that section is there to ensure that POV is reflected. We also have strong statements in support of Osho at the beginning of that section. The Sue Arnold article I don't have, are you aware of it being on the net somewhere? Jayen466 15:13, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Alan W made a TV programme in Poona. Sue Arnold wrote for the Observer in Oregon very soon before it closed. The point is; the atmosphere in the liberal press was very positive right up until the disinformation. Bernard Levin's Times column was the most respected in the country and he gave two full pages to Osho and never recanted. (I did not know he was dead even). Anyhow, a press-cuttings agency is needed. Osho's press releases were usually carried in those days. For example the Guardian reported that he planned to go west if the retrospective taxes were levied by Desai.

To me, balance requires some source-criticism. A remark in "The Times" and one in "Cult Corner" of Private Eye does not carry the same weight. But we do not hear about any of this, nothing from Levin himself, nothing about the size and scope and reasoning and the shock of finding this famous satirist saying these things, but just what the right wing press thought about it years after, when fortified by a load of unchecked facts. Or, what Mullen thought of it....

But this is going to be an infinite regress. If we cannot read Levin, but only what the Telegraph thought about Levin, then strictly we should look for a source that tells us what we should think of the Telegraph article.

Source criticism. You could call Levin's pieces "fulsome and enthusiastic" - the point is their size, their prestige, their impact. Levin's rep outguns all those detractors, and that should be clear. Redheylin (talk) 00:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

You could call Levin's pieces "fulsome and enthusiastic" Okay.   Done. Jayen466 12:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

btw, on Channel 4 news Jon Snow announced the death of "the enlightened master" Osho - no "so-called, drug-taking criminal discredited guru" stuff. On the other hand "The Guardian" printed a stupid obituary saying he must have had a heart attack from too much sex. "The Independent" followed Channel 4 and showed every respect. Redheylin (talk) 00:09, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Made the cover of Time magazine too - what happened to that? Redheylin (talk) 00:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

"His sannyasins were not expected to live an ascetic life" - yes, but the BIG deal was that WOMEN could be sannyasins. It would be so cool to find out the first context in which he was called "sex guru". Redheylin (talk) 00:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be so cool to find out the first context in which he was called "sex guru". I've been trying to find out that too. I'll get back to you here if and when I do. Jayen466 12:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You could call Levin's pieces "fulsome and enthusiastic" - er, Redheylin, are you sure of the meaning of the word 'fulsome'? The Oxford Concise Dictionary defines it as: Cloying, excessive, disgusting by excess (of flattery, servility, exaggerated affection Revera (talk) 14:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

touche! Redheylin (talk) 14:32, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
It wasn't meant to a 'one-up' thing. I wonder if Jayen knew the word's meaning? If so, s/he should have told you, IMO. Also, the link to Bernard Levin's obituary seems to be either broken or unobtainable. I wonder if the article he wrote about Rajneesh/Osho is available online (by way of balance to the other critics mentioned). And, Jayen, (pardon me) Redheylin, you say the big deal was that women could be sannyasins. Big deal to whom, may I ask? Revera (talk) 12:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I was aware that that is the word's proper, and original meaning. However, I believe it is these days more often used in the "wrong" sense than in the (originally) correct one. Also, originally we had "gushing"; Mullan characterises the praise that Levin lavished on Rajneesh in the article as slightly over the top ("Steady on, Bernard", he comments, quoting some of it), adding later that Levin became something of a joke over it (that's mentioned in the referenced Levin bio, IIRC). So we could also return to "gushing". Levin never became a disciple, btw. Jayen466 14:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
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