Philosopher
Osho
Category: Philosopher
Osho was born as Chandra Mohan Jain on 11 December 1931 in Kuchwada village of Madhya Pradesh. Subsequently, after enlightenment, he was known by many other names like Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, Osho, and sometimes as “sex guru”…..
Osho’s principle objectives were to remove the repressive attitudes that had developed around sex and reintroduce the sacred aspects.
Extracts from Sex and super-consciousness [from Osho - Insights on sex, - Anil Kumar Mysore Nagaraj]
Sex is a mysterious phenomenon, which has puzzled even great sages. Human beings have researched and mastered the biology of sex. But that is not all. Sex needs to be understood from the spiritual perspective too. The vision of Osho is an enlightening experience in this regard. …. Osho, made major contributions in the area of sex based on the principles of “Tantra”, which has its origin in Buddhism. His …insights on sex, if understood properly, can be a stepping stone for enlightenment.
Out of the thousands of lectures that he gave, five lectures on sex made Osho notorious. It all happened when he was called to speak on love in one of the prestigious institutions at Mumbai. In order to present a complete picture of the human situation regarding love, he had to bring in sex and those responsible for destroying its sacredness. Though the organizers banned his lecture after the first day, he continued four more lectures at a different venue despite death threats. It was all about realizing the sacredness of sex to create a better humanity that can transcend sex and transform self.
Life in brief
Osho was the eldest of the 11 children of a Jaina cloth merchant. His father Mr. Babulal Jain, was a successful business man. His mother, Smt. Saraswathi Jain was an artist. Osho spent his early-childhood days, till he was 7 year old, in his maternal grandparents’ house and was greatly influenced by his grandmother who was a wise woman. Despite being considered a ‘disruptive and argumentative’ student , he gained a B.A. in Philosophy from D N Jain College, Jabalpur and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Sagar. Soon after he obtained his M.A., he joined as a lecturer at Raipur Sanskrit College, but the vice-chancellor there asked him to take a transfer as he considered him a danger to his students’ ‘morality, character, and religion’. He left and joined Jabalpur University and within 2 years, by 1960, he became a professor.
Osho was very critical of orthodox Indian religions and by 1966, he had resigned from his job in the university and embarked on a campaign against Repression using lectures which emphasised the sacredness of sex. In a 1968 lecture series, later published under the title “From sex to super-consciousness”, he scandalized Hindu leaders by calling for freer acceptance of sex and became known as the “sex guru” in Indian press.
It seems almost incomprehensible to us now to imagine that India, the land with the Khajuraho temple complex [see left] and Tantra, should harbour Repression – but it did. In the end, Osho’s major ‘crime’ was simply to criticise orthodox Indian religions. Interestingly, although this made him very unpopular with those promoting religion and the ‘authorities’, it also gained him a loyal following that included a number of wealthy merchants and businessmen.
In 1974, Osho moved to Pune (Poona) from Bombay and founded the six-acre “Osho Commune International”. Here he gave 90 minute lectures almost every day, alternating between Hindi and English every month. In the evenings, he would answer disciples’ questions.
Throughout his life Osho came head to head in conflict with the authorities. To understand this we need to understand the relationship between sex and power, love and aggression
Pain, Sex and Time – Gerald Heard
...for a long while sociologically minded historians have been puzzled by the fact that militaristic dictators always interfere with the sexual freedom of their subjects, even forbidding behaviour which is private....
The dictators know intuitively how their requirements may be met. They require not merely cannon fodder but fanatics. They obtain their fanatics from those who think militarism better than debauchery – if not for themselves – then for others.
That is the true gravity of our situation; if our evolution is over, if we have no further original outlet adequate to our enormous and fretting energy, then the only choice is slow degeneracy through sex addiction or a convulsive end through homicidal mania.......
In other words, if you introduce via religion, repression of sex, you create aggressive even fanatical men who are prepared to take out their aggression on anyone or anything those in power [church or state] directs them to.
The forces of Darkness have no manpower if men are pursuing love and enlightenment via love and sex
Pain Sex and Time – Gerald Heard
The Vedantists say that when a man knows who he really is, he ceases to need any longer a body. …..Full psychical release may so draw all the energies into one advanced focus that the psycho-physical combination may break, the body be dissolved or (perhaps a juster simile) radiated away.
The purpose of evolution may be achieved.
Here it is worth-while quoting the opinion of one of the world's subtlest psychologists, the great Hindu thinker, Sankara. According to him the very fact of incarnation and embodiment is a symptom that craving and fear still remain, for the body is nothing but a material expression of such states of mind.
And so, by the late 1970s, although the ashram had become too small for the number of visitors, when Osho asked for a larger place and a place in Gujarat was found by his disciples, it “did not materialize due to mounting tensions with the Murarji Desai Government”. By 1981, punitive action was being threatened by the Indian authorities.
This, along with criticism of its activities, provided the impetus for the ashram to relocate to the USA. There a vast 260 km2 ranch was purchased in Oregon and was named “Rajneeshpuram”. But from day 1, problems arose between the local people and the ashram inmates that became increasingly bitter over the following years. Osho withdrew from public speaking and lecturing and entered a period of withdrawal and “silence” that lasted until November 1984. At the commune, videos of his discourses were played to audiences instead.
On the whole one gets the impression that he was used. The ashram leaders bought 93 Rolls-Royces ‘for his use’ with his money. And later tension arose within the ashram due to the autocratic leadership among ashram inmates. Nitrous oxide was used. ‘Crimes like bioterror attack and violence were committed by ashram inmates’. Osho stayed silent for 3.5 years. In the end he was deported back to India. In January 1987, he settled back in the Poona Ashram, however, health problems such as nausea, fatigue, pain in extremities, and lack of resistance to infections became frequent. He gave his last public discourse in April 1989. From then on, he would simply sit in silence with his followers. Osho died on 19 January 1990, aged 58, reportedly of heart failure.
The Principles of Sex as Spiritual driver
We have three key activities on the site that specifically use various forms of sexual activity to harness sexual energy
· Sex Magick and
With the help of one of my shamanic friends I have also added the activity of Peaking.
All of which can be helped by Sexy eating
Pain, Sex and Time – Gerald Heard
.......under the phraseology of alchemy and astrology, more than once was disguised knowledge of the endocrine system and how, by breath control and concentration to release hormonic changes which not only changed the energies and powers of the body but profoundly altered the quality and extent of consciousness.. ........for it is now known that the sex hormones cannot act unless the master gland – the pituitary sends out a non-sex hormone to bring them into action. The pituitary is a brain gland situated just behind the root of the nose and one in close touch with the higher mental activities………….
Although I have done my level best to provide ideas and pointers on how all this works, I will now admit that this is indeed better taught by someone who knows what they are doing and has your best interests at heart.
Extracts from Sex and super-consciousness [from Osho - Insights on sex, - Anil Kumar Mysore Nagaraj]
What is love? It is unfortunate that something that humans should have been living, something, which is actually meant to be lived, has only been talked about by them for the past 5000-6000 years. Love is being talked about and discussed, songs of love are being sung, devotional hymns of love are being sung, but love itself has no place in the lives of human beings. If we search deep within man, we will find that no other word used by him is more false than “love”. Today's human being is the product of a culture that is 10,000 years old. But the human being is blamed for being wrong, not the culture. Man is rotting, yet the culture is praised. It is like blaming the bitter fruit given by a tree and not the seed responsible for the tree.
More love can be seen in the birds, animals, plants, and tribesmen who have no organized religion or culture. Why is it that the more civilized we are, more away we are from love? Actually, love is our intrinsic nature. It need not be cultivated. However, barriers for its manifestation need to be removed. The barriers are essentially man made. The first thing is that until now all of human culture has been against sex. Everybody is inimical to it: All cultures, all religions, all gurus, and all holy men. Sex is projected to be sin. But the evolution of love is nothing but transformed sex energy. It is just like how coal becomes diamond with passage of time.
If lust is transformed, sex can become love. When religions proclaim that sex is unsacred and hence it has to be controlled it is repressed. Repression ultimately makes it to come out many times more intensely, like an obsession. Thus, people are more neurotic and perverted with anger, aggression, crime, etc. This is because it is the same energy that has taken an alternate manifestation due to centuries of repression.
Now the most important meaning of sex has to be understood. Man had his first ever glimpse of “samadhi”, of meditation, only in moments of lovemaking - nowhere else. It was only in moments of lovemaking that human beings realized for the first time that so much bliss was possible. Those who meditated on this truth, those who reflected deeply upon the phenomenon of sex, of lovemaking, saw that in moments of lovemaking, at the climax, the mind becomes empty of thoughts. For a moment, all thoughts disappear. This emptiness of the mind, this disappearance of thoughts, is the cause of the showering of divine bliss. They had discovered the secret.
They had also discovered the secret that if the mind could be freed from thoughts through some other process, the same bliss can be attained.
Observations
For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.