[SP] Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh & Kebenaran yang Hilang (1/4)

[Hudoyo Hupudio]

http://home.att.net/~meditation/Osho.html

Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth
"Meditation must not be made into a business." Acharya Rajneesh 1971

When I first met Acharya Rajneesh at his Bombay apartment in December of 1970, he was only 39 years old. With long beard and large dark eyes, he looked like a painting of Lao-Tse come to life. Before meeting Rajneesh I had spent time with a number of Eastern gurus without being satisfied with the quality of their teachings. I wanted an enlightened guide who could bridge the gap between East and West and reveal the true esoteric secrets, without what I considered to be the excess baggage of Indian, Tibetan, or Japanese culture. Rajneesh was the answer to my quest for those deeper meanings. He described for me in vivid detail everything I wanted to know about the inner worlds and he had the power of immense being to back up his words. At 21 years old I was naive about life and the nature of man and assumed that everything he said must be true.

Rajneesh spoke on a high level of intelligence and his spiritual presence emanated from his body like a soft light that healed all wounds. While sitting close during a small gathering of friends, Rajneesh took me on a rapidly vertical inner journey that almost seemed to push me out of my physical body. His vast presence lifted everyone around him higher without the slightest effort on their part. The days I spent at his Bombay apartment were like days spent in heaven. He had it all and he was giving it away for free!
Rajneesh possessed the astounding powers of telepathy and astral projection, which he used nobly to bring comfort and inspiration to his disciples. Many phony gurus have claimed to have these mysterious abilities, but Rajneesh had them for real. The Acharya never bragged about his powers. Those who came near soon learned of them through direct contact with the miraculous. One or two amazing occult adventures was all it took to turn doubting Western skepticism into awed admiration and devotion.

One year earlier I had meet another enlightened teacher known to the world as Jiddu Krishnamurti. J. Krishnamurti could barely give a coherent lecture and constantly scolded his audience by referring to their "shoddy little minds." I loved his frankness and his words were true, but his subtly cantankerous nature was not very helpful in transferring his knowledge to others.

Listening to Krishnamurti speak was like eating a sandwich made of bread and sand. I found the best way to enjoy his talks was to completely ignore his words and quietly absorb his presence. Using that technique I would become so expanded after a lecture that I could barely talk for hours afterwards. J. Krishnamurti, while fully enlightened and uniquely lovable, will be recorded in history as a teacher with very poor verbal communication skills. Unlike the highly eloquent Rajneesh, however, Krishnamurti never committed any crime, never pretended to be more than he was, and never used other human beings selfishly.

Life is complex and multilayered and my naive illusions about the phenomena of perfect enlightenment faded with the years. It became clear to me that enlightened people are as fallible as anyone. They are expanded human beings, not perfect human beings, and they live and breathe with many of the same faults and vulnerabilities we ordinary humans must endure.

Skeptics ask how I can claim that Rajneesh was enlightened given his scandals and disastrous public image. I can only say that Rajneesh's spiritual presence was identical to that of J. Krishnamurti, who was recognized as enlightened by every high Tibetan Lama and revered Hindu sage of the day. I do sympathize with the skeptics, however. If I had not known Rajneesh personally, I would never believe it myself.

Rajneesh pushed the envelope of enlightenment in both positive and negative directions. He was the best of the best and the worst of the worst. He was a great teacher in his early years, with innovative meditation techniques that worked with dramatic power (see explanation and warning about Osho's Dynamic Meditation technique near the bottom of the page). Rajneesh lifted thousands of seekers to higher levels of consciousness and detailed Eastern religions and meditation techniques with luminous clarity.

One false move. One grand error.

When former university professor Acharya Rajneesh suddenly changed his name to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I was dismayed. The famous enlightened sage Ramana Maharshi was called Bhagwan by his disciples as a spontaneous term of endearment. Rajneesh simply declared that everyone should start calling him Bhagwan, a title which can mean anything from 'divine one' to God. Rajneesh became irritated when I would politely correct his mispronunciations of English words after his lectures, so I felt in no position to tell him that I thought his new name was inappropriate and dishonest. That change in name marked a turning point in Rajneesh's level of honesty and was the first of many big lies to come.

Rajneesh lived in an ivory tower, rarely leaving his room unless to give a lecture, his life experience cushioned by throngs of adoring devotees. As most human beings who are treated as kings, Rajneesh lost touch with the world of the common man. In his artificial and insulated existence, Rajneesh made one fundamental error in judgment which would destroy his teaching.

"What you tell them is true, but what I tell them (the useful lies) is good for them." Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh 1975

Rajneesh calculated that the majority of the earth's population was on such a low level of consciousness that they could not understand nor tolerate the real truths. He thus decided on a policy of spreading seemingly useful lies to bring inspiration to his disciples and, on occasion, to stress his students in unique situations for their own personal growth. This was his downfall and the prime reason he will be remembered by most historians as just another phony guru, which he undoubtedly was not.

Acharya, Bhagwan Shree, Osho...all the empowering names taken by Rajneesh could not cover up the fact that he was still a human being. He had ambitions and desires, sexual and material, just like everyone else. All living enlightened humans have desires. All enlightened men have had public lives that we know about and all have had private lives that remained secret. The vast majority of enlightened men do nothing but good for the world. Only Rajneesh, to my knowledge, became a criminal in both the legal and ethical sense of the word.

Rajneesh never lost the ultimate existential truth of being. He only lost the ordinary concept of truth that any normal adult can easily understand. He rationalized his constant lying as "lefthanded Tantra," but that too was dishonest. Rajneesh lied to save face, to avoid taking responsibility for his own mistakes, and to gain personal power. Those lies had nothing to do with Tantra or any selfless acts of kindness. What is real in this world is fact and Rajneesh misrepresented fact on a daily basis. Rajneesh was no simple con-man like so many others. Rajneesh knew everything that Buddha knew and he was everything that Buddha was. It was his loss of respect for ordinary truthfulness that destroyed his teaching.

Rajneesh's health collapsed in his early thirties. Even before reaching middle age, Rajneesh suffered reoccurring bouts of weakness. During his youthful college years, when he should have been at a peak of vigor, Rajneesh often had to sleep 12 to 14 hours a day due to his unexplained illness. Rajneesh suffered from what Europeans call myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or what Americans call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). His classic symptoms included the obvious fatigue, strange allergies, recurrent low grade fevers, photophobia, orthostatic intolerance (the inability to stand for a normal period of time), insomnia, body pain, and extreme sensitivity to smells and chemicals, a condition doctors now refer to as "multiple chemical sensitivity."

Rajneesh's trademark chemical sensitivity was so severe that he instructed his guards to sniff people for unpleasant odors before they were allowed to visit him in his quarters. People with Gulf War Syndrome, MS, and other neurological diseases are also often highly sensitive to chemicals and smells. Rajneesh's poor health and strange symptoms were a product of real neurological damage, not some esoteric supersensitivity caused by his enlightenment. Rajneesh also had Type II diabetes, asthma, severe back pain, and most likely fibromyalgia.

Rajneesh was constantly sick and frail from the time I first met him in 1970 until his death in 1990. He thought he was getting a different cold or flu every week. In reality, he suffered from a chronic neurological illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with flu like symptoms that can last a lifetime.

Rajneesh could not stand on his feet for long periods of time without becoming lightheaded because he suffered damage to his autonomic nervous system which controls blood pressure. This neurally mediated hypotension (low blood pressure while standing) causes chronic fatigue and can lower IQ due to a lack of sufficient blood and oxygen being pumped to the brain (brain hypoxia). In the 1970s Rajneesh often complained of becoming lightheaded immediately upon standing. During his final few months alive in Poona he frequently passed out into complete unconsciousness.

Rajneesh used prescription drugs, mainly Valium (diazepam), as an analgesic for his aches and pains and to counter the symptoms of dysautonomia (dysfunction his autonomic nervous system). He took the maximum recommended dose of 60 milligrams per day. He also inhaled nitrous oxide (N2O) mixed with pure oxygen (O2) which helped his asthma and brain hypoxia, but which did nothing for the quality of his judgment. Naive about the powerful effects of Western medications and overconfident about his own ability to fight off their potentially negative effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction.

A number of disciples have claimed that Rajneesh was so intoxicated at his Oregon ranch in the 1980s that he sometimes urinated in the halls of his own home, just as heroin addicts and common drunks often do. I believe this to be true as the last time I saw Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh he was inebriated to the point of becoming physically ugly. He had the same washed-out look and foolish behavior I had witnessed in addicts while working at a methadone clinic in the United States. Rajneesh miraculously had the ability to leave his body at will through astral projection, but when he was in his physical body he was quite ordinarily human and unable to tolerate the devastating effects of massive doses of tranquilizers.

On top of Rajneesh's physical illness, his massive intake of Valium caused paranoia and greatly reduced reasoning power. Valium addicts often think the CIA or other unseen villains are plotting against them, so it is no surprise he imagined he was poisoned. Rajneesh actually considered moving to Russia to combine his totalitarian form of spirituality with Russian communism, an idea no sane man could possibly entertain. Historically Valium has been the drug of choice for CFS sufferers, as it masks the unnerving symptoms of dysautonomia and helps bring sleep. The now very ill Osho also suffered insomnia, yet another classic symptom of CFS.

Rajneesh was a physically ill man who became mentally corrupt. His drug addiction was a problem of his own making, not a government conspiracy. Rajneesh died in 1990 with heart failure listed as the official cause of death. It is probable that the physical decline Rajneesh experienced during his incarceration in American jails was due to a combination of withdrawal symptoms from Valium and an aggravation of his ME/CFS due to stress and exposure to allergens.

After Rajneesh's humiliation and downfall in America, he declared that he was "Jesus crucified by Ronald Reagan's America." In truth, Rajneesh was a drug addicted guru who self-destructed through his own wrong actions. Comparing himself to Jesus was doubly dishonest as he himself had no respect for Jesus. He once went so far as to undiplomatically proclaim to the American media that everything Jesus said was "just crazy."

Upon his sudden death in 1990, there was much speculation in the American media that Rajneesh had actually committed suicide by taking a overdose of drugs. As no disciple has confessed to giving Rajneesh a lethal injection, there is no hard evidence to support the suicide theory. A compelling circumstantial case could be made for such a scenario, however, with suicide provoked by Rajneesh's constant ill health and disheartenment over the loss of Vivek, his greatest love.

Vivek had taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a Bombay hotel one month before Rajneesh's passing. Pointedly, Vivek decided to kill herself just before his birthday celebration. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had threatened suicide at the Oregon commune several times, hanging his death over the heads of his disciples as a threat unless they obeyed his wishes. On his last day on earth, Rajneesh is reported to have said "Let me go. My body has become a hell for me."

The rumor that Rajneesh was poisoned with thallium by operatives of the United States Government is entirely fictional and contradicted by undeniable fact. One of the obvious symptoms of thallium poisoning is dramatic hair loss within seven days of exposure. Rajneesh died with a full beard and no exceptional baldness other than ordinary male pattern baldness at the top of his head. Radiation poisoning, another fictional cause of illness, also causes dramatic hair loss.

The symptoms which may have led Rajneesh's doctors to suspect poisoning were in fact common symptoms of dysautonomia caused by ME/CFS. Those symptoms can include ataxia (uncoordinated movements), numbness, standing tachycardia (rapid heart rate upon standing), paresthesia (sensations of prickling and itching), nausea, and irritable bowel syndrome, which causes alternating between constipation and diarrhea.

The only proven cases of poisoning related to Rajneesh were carried out by Rajneesh's own sannyasins in 1984. A sannyasin is an initiated disciple, one who takes sannyas. There were 751 victims, including women and small children, at ten different restaurants in the small city of The Dalles, Oregon. Rajneesh sannyasins attempted to take over the Wasco County Commission by making so many people ill on election day that they could elect their own sannyasin candidates. See the Rajneesh bioterrorism newspaper story.

Rajneesh disciples poisoned salad bars with salmonella bacteria, which was mixed into salad dressings, fruits and vegetables, and the restaurants' coffee creamers. Forty-five people became so ill they had to be hospitalized, thus making the case the largest germ warfare attack in United States history. Sannyasins were later suspected of trying to kill a Wasco County executive by spiking his water with an unknown poison. Michael Sullivan, a Jefferson County District Attorney, also became ill after leaving a cup of coffee unattended as Rajneesh sannyasins roamed the courthouse. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh never bothered to apologize to any of the human beings who were poisoned by his own trusted disciples.

Members of Rajneesh's own staff who were poisoned by Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary. Sheela had the habit of poisoning people who either knew too much or who had simply fallen out of her favor. Sheela spent two and a half years in a federal medium security prison for her crimes while Rajneesh pled guilty to immigration fraud and was given a ten year suspended sentence, fined $400,000. and deported from the United States of America.

Rajneesh felt that teaching ethics was unnecessary because meditation would automatically lead to good behavior. The actions of Rajneesh and his disciples proves that theory to be false. Rajneesh taught that you should do as you please because life is both a dream and a joke. This attitude led to the classically fascist belief that one can become so high and mighty that one is beyond the need for old fashioned virtues and honest ethical behavior.

Those unfamiliar with the Rajneesh story can read the book Bhagwan: The God That Failed, published by Saint Martin's Press and written by Hugh Milne (Shivamurti), a close disciple of Bhagwan during his Poona and Oregon years. Mr. Milne's book is largely corroborated by Satya Bharti Franklin's book, Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho Rajneesh, published by Barrytown/Station Hill Press. Both books are out of print but secondhand copies of the books can be obtained through Amazon.Com and Amazon.Com.UK. There have been several other tell-all books published on the same subject matter, but I have not read them and I do not know the authors, so I do not mention them by name here.

Regarding Bhagwan: The God That Failed, I can verify many of the facts Mr. Milne states about the life of Rajneesh in Bombay and Poona, though I have no first hand knowledge of the tragic events at the Oregon commune. My contacts with people who were there lead me to believe that most of the facts Mr. Milne presents of the Oregon era are also highly accurate. Hugh Milne is due great credit for a well written and entertaining book which is a sincere effort at complete honesty. On a few occasions, however, I differ from Mr. Milne's interpretations of what the facts he presents actually mean.

Rajneesh did not suffer from "hypochodria," as Mr. Milne suggested. Rajneesh had a very real neurological disease, probably inherited, which he mistook for frequent viral infections. Rajneesh became unusually afraid of germs only due to his understandable medical ignorance. I fully agree with Mr. Milne that Rajneesh suffered from "megalomania," however, and will add that Rajneesh had a Napoleonic, obsessive and compulsive personality.

Mr. Milne suggests that Rajneesh used "hypnosis" to manipulate his disciples. Rajneesh had a melodic and naturally hypnotic voice which would be a great asset to any public speaker. However, in my personal opinion, Rajneesh's power came from the intense energy field of the universal cosmic consciousness which he channeled like a lens. Hindus call this universal energy phenomena the Atman. As a Westerner I prefer more scientific terms and describe the Atman as a highly evolved manifestation of time-energy-space, the TES (see The TES Hypothesis).

Hugh Milne's book records a day when Rajneesh admitted, while under the influence of nitrous oxide, that there is no such thing as 'enlightenment.' I cannot confirm this event through other contacts, but I assume if true Rajneesh was simply stating what U.G. Krishnamurti has said all along; that the storybook fiction we accept of a perfect enlightenment, full of infallible wisdom, is a big lie. A powerful and expansive cosmic state does exist in humans who achieve it, but the way this state is described by the religious establishment is an egocentric fiction, contrived by spiritual leaders to control the masses for their own personal gain.

"Enlightenment is not something you own. It is something you channel."

Whatever term you use for the phenomena of enlightenment, it is scientifically accurate to say that no human being has any power of their own. Even the chemical energy of our metabolism is borrowed from the sun, which beams light to the earth, which is then converted by plants through photosynthesis into the food we eat. You may get your bread from the supermarket, but the caloric energy it contains originated from thermonuclear reactions deep in the center of a nearby star. Our physical bodies run on star power. Any spiritual energy we channel also comes from far beyond, from all sides of the universe, from the complete TES, from beyond the oceans of galaxies and onto infinity. No human being owns the Atman and no one can speak for the TES.

The Void has no ambition or personality whatsoever, so Bhagwan Rajneesh could only speak for his own animal mind. The animal mind may want its disciples to "take over the whole world," but the Void does not care because it is beyond any motivation. The phenomena we called Rajneesh, Bhagwan, and Osho, was only a temporary lens of cosmic energy, not the full cosmos itself.

Rajneesh, as George Gurdjieff, often used the power of the Atman for clearly personal gain. Both men used their cosmic consciousness to overwhelm and seduce women, which was largely a harmless affair in my opinion. Gurdjieff was ashamed of his own behavior in this regard and vowed many times during his life to end this practice, which was a combination of ordinary male lust backed up by the potent advantage of oceanic spiritual power. Rajneesh went even further and used his channeled cosmic energy to manipulate masses of people to gain a kind of quasi-political status and to aggrandize himself far beyond what was honest or helpful to his disciples. In Oregon he even declared to the media that "My religion is the only religion." Diplomacy and modesty were not his strong points.

Gurdjieff, to my knowledge, never reached the extremes of self-indulgence of Rajneesh and even warned his disciples not to have blind faith in him. Gurdjieff wanted his students to be free and independent with the combined abilities of clear mental reasoning and meditation. Rajneesh, by contrast, seemed to believe that only his thoughts and ideas were of value because only he was "enlightened." This was a grand error in judgment and revealed a basic flaw in his character.

Rajneesh earned his psychic abilities honestly through many lifetimes of intense inner work. Unfortunately, when he finally achieved the ability to fully channel the vastness of the Atman, he failed to apply the needed wisdom of self-restraint. His human mind so rebelled against Asian asceticism that he failed to ensure that his borrowed power was only used for the good of others.
 
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