Rajneesh
Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain; 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh,[2] Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh,[1] and later as Osho (Hindi pronunciation: [ˈo:ʃo:]), was an Indian godman,[3] philosopher, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement.[1] He was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions,[4][1][5] insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious dogma.[6] As a guru, he advocated meditation and taught a unique form called dynamic meditation. Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he advocated that his followers live fully in the world but without attachment to it.[6] In expressing a more progressive attitude to sexuality[7] he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".[1][8][9]
"Osho" redirects here. For other uses, see Rajneesh (disambiguation) and Osho (disambiguation).
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Rajneesh experienced a spiritual awakening in 1953 at the age of 21.[6] Following several years in academia, in 1966 Rajneesh resigned his post at the University of Jabalpur and began traveling throughout India, becoming known as a vocal critic of the orthodoxy of mainstream religions,[1][10][11][7] as well as of mainstream political ideologies and of Mahatma Gandhi.[12][13][14] In 1970, Rajneesh spent time in Mumbai initiating followers known as "neo-sannyasins".[1] During this period, he expanded his spiritual teachings and commented extensively in discourses on the writings of religious traditions, mystics, bhakti poets, and philosophers from around the world. In 1974, Rajneesh relocated to Pune, where an ashram was established and a variety of therapies, incorporating methods first developed by the Human Potential Movement, were offered to a growing Western following.[15][16] By the late 1970s, the tension between the ruling Janata Party government of Morarji Desai and the movement led to a curbing of the ashram's development and a back tax claim estimated at $5 million.[17]
In 1981, the Rajneesh movement's efforts refocused on activities in the United States and Rajneesh relocated to a facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon. The movement ran into conflict with county residents and the state government, and a succession of legal battles concerning the ashram's construction and continued development curtailed its success. In 1985, Rajneesh publicly asked local authorities to investigate his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and her close supporters for a number of crimes, including a 1984 mass food-poisoning attack intended to influence county elections, an aborted assassination plot on U.S. attorney Charles H. Turner, the attempted murder of Rajneesh's personal physician, and the bugging of his own living quarters; authorities later convicted several members of the ashram, including Sheela.[18] That year, Rajneesh was deported from the United States on separate immigration-related charges in accordance with an Alford plea.[19][20][21] After his deportation, 21 countries denied him entry.[22]
Rajneesh ultimately returned to Mumbai, India, in 1986. After staying in the house of a disciple where he resumed his discourses for six months, he returned to Pune in January 1987 and revived his ashram, where he died in 1990.[23][24] Rajneesh's ashram, now known as OSHO International Meditation Resort,[25] and all associated intellectual property, is managed by the registered Osho International Foundation (formerly Rajneesh International Foundation).[26][27] Rajneesh's teachings have had an impact on Western New Age thought,[28][29] and their popularity reportedly increased between the time of his death and 2005.[30][31]
Life
Childhood and adolescence: 1931–1950
Rajneesh (a childhood nickname from the Sanskrit रजनी, rajanee, "night", and ईश, isha, "lord", meaning the "God of Night" or "The Moon" (चंद्रमा) was born Chandra Mohan Jain, the eldest of 11 children of a cloth merchant, at his maternal grandparents' house in Kuchwada; a small village in the Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh state in India.[32][33][34] His parents, Babulal and Saraswati Jain, who were Taranpanthi Jains, let him live with his maternal grandparents until he was eight years old.[35] By Rajneesh's own account, this was a major influence on his development because his grandmother gave him the utmost freedom, leaving him carefree without an imposed education or restrictions.[36]
When he was seven years old, his grandfather died, and he went to Gadarwara to live with his parents.[32][37] Rajneesh was profoundly affected by his grandfather's death, and again by the death of his childhood girlfriend Shashi from typhoid when he was 15, leading to a preoccupation with death that lasted throughout much of his childhood and youth.[37][38] In his school years, he was a gifted and rebellious student, and gained a reputation as a formidable debater.[12] Rajneesh became critical of traditional religion, took an interest in many methods to expand consciousness, including breath control, yogic exercises, meditation, fasting, the occult, and hypnosis. According to Vasant Joshi, Rajneesh read widely from an early age, and although as a young boy, he played sports; reading was his primary interest.[39] After showing an interest in the writings of Marx and Engels, he was branded a communist and was threatened with expulsion from school. According to Joshi, with the help of friends, he built a small library containing mostly communist literature. Rajneesh, according to his uncle Amritlal, also formed a group of young people that regularly discussed communist ideology and their opposition to religion.[39]
Rajneesh was later to say, "I have been interested in communism from my very childhood...communist literature — perhaps there is no book that is missing from my library. I have signed and dated each book before 1950. Small details are so vivid before me, because that was my first entry into the intellectual world. First I was deeply interested in communism, but finding that it is a corpse I became interested in anarchism — that was also a Russian phenomenon — Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy. All three were anarchists: no state, no government in the world."[40]
He became briefly associated with socialism and two Indian nationalist organisations: the Indian National Army and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.[12][41][42] However, his membership in the organisations was short-lived as he could not submit to any external discipline, ideology, or system.[43]
University years and public speaker: 1951–1970
In 1951, aged 19, Rajneesh began his studies at Hitkarini College in Jabalpur.[44] Asked to leave after conflicts with an instructor, he transferred to D. N. Jain College, also in Jabalpur.[45] Having proved himself to be disruptively argumentative, he was not required to attend college classes at D. N. Jain College except for examinations and used his free time to work for a few months as an assistant editor at a local newspaper.[46] He began speaking in public at the annual Sarva Dharma Sammelan (Meeting of all faiths) held at Jabalpur, organised by the Taranpanthi Jain community into which he was born, and participated there from 1951 to 1968.[47] He resisted his parents' pressure to marry.[48] Rajneesh later said, he became spiritually enlightened on 21 March 1953, when he was 21 years old, in a mystical experience while sitting under a tree in the Bhanvartal garden in Jabalpur.[49]
Having completed his BA in philosophy at D. N. Jain College in 1955, he joined the University of Sagar, where in 1957, he earned his MA in philosophy (with distinction).[50] He immediately secured a teaching position at Raipur Sanskrit College, but the vice-chancellor soon asked him to seek a transfer as he considered him a danger to his students' morality, character, and religion.[13] From 1958, he taught philosophy as a lecturer at Jabalpur University, being promoted to professor in 1960.[13] A popular lecturer, he was acknowledged by his peers as an exceptionally intelligent man who had been able to overcome the deficiencies of his early small-town education.[51]
In parallel to his university job, he travelled throughout India under the name Acharya Rajneesh (Acharya means teacher or professor; Rajneesh was a nickname he had acquired in childhood), giving lectures critical of socialism, Gandhi, and institutional religions.[12][13][14] He travelled so much that he would find it difficult to sleep on a normal bed, because he had grown used to sleeping amid the rocking of railway coach berths.[52]
According to a speech given by Rajneesh in 1969, socialism is the ultimate result of capitalism, and capitalism itself, of revolution that brings about socialism.[39] Rajneesh stated that he believed that in India, socialism was inevitable, but fifty, sixty or seventy years hence, India should apply its efforts to first creating wealth.[53] He said that socialism would socialise only poverty, and he described Gandhi as a masochist reactionary who worshipped poverty.[12][14] What India needed to escape its backwardness was capitalism, science, modern technology, and birth control.[12] He did not regard capitalism and socialism as opposite systems, but considered it disastrous for any country to talk about socialism without first building a capitalist economy.[39] He criticised orthodox Indian religions as dead, filled with empty rituals, oppressing their followers with fears of damnation and promises of blessings.[12][14] Such statements made him controversial, but also gained him a loyal following that included a number of wealthy merchants and businessmen.[12][54] These people sought individual consultations from him about their spiritual development and transforming their daily lives, in return for donations and his practice snowballed.[54] From 1962, he began to lead 3- to 10-day meditation camps, and the first meditation centres (Jivan Jagruti Kendra) started to emerge around his teaching, then known as the Life Awakening Movement (Jivan Jagruti Andolan).[55] After a controversial speaking tour in 1966, he resigned from his teaching post at the request of the university.[13]
In a 1968 lecture series, later published under the title From Sex to Superconsciousness, he scandalised Hindu leaders by calling for freer acceptance of sex and became known as the "sex guru" in the Indian press.[9][7] When in 1969, he was invited to speak at the Second World Hindu Conference, despite the misgivings of some Hindu leaders, his statements raised controversy again when he said, "Any religion which considers life meaningless and full of misery and teaches the hatred of life, is not a true religion. Religion is an art that shows how to enjoy life."[56] He compared the treatment of lower caste shudras and women with the treatment of animals.[57] He characterised brahmin as being motivated by self-interest, provoking the Shankaracharya of Puri, who tried in vain to have his lecture stopped.[56]
Legacy
While Rajneesh's teachings were not welcomed by many in his own home country during his lifetime, there has been a change in Indian public opinion since Rajneesh's death.[254][255] In 1991, an Indian newspaper counted Rajneesh, along with figures such as Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, among the ten people who had most changed India's destiny; in Rajneesh's case, by "liberating the minds of future generations from the shackles of religiosity and conformism".[256] Rajneesh has found more acclaim in his homeland since his death than he did while alive.[30] Writing in The Indian Express, columnist Tanweer Alam stated, "The late Rajneesh was a fine interpreter of social absurdities that destroyed human happiness."[257] At a celebration in 2006, marking the 75th anniversary of Rajneesh's birth, Indian singer Wasifuddin Dagar said that Rajneesh's teachings are "more pertinent in the current milieu than they were ever before".[258] In Nepal, there were 60 Rajneesh centres with almost 45,000 initiated disciples as of January 2008.[259] Rajneesh's entire works have been placed in the Library of India's National Parliament in New Delhi.[255] The Bollywood actor, and former Minister of State for External Affairs, Vinod Khanna, worked as Rajneesh's gardener in Rajneeshpuram in the 1980s.[260] Over 650 books[261] are credited to Rajneesh, expressing his views on all facets of human existence.[262] Virtually all of them are renderings of his taped discourses.[262] Many Bollywood personalities like Parveen Babi and Mahesh Bhatt were also known to be the followers of Rajneesh's philosophy.[263] His books are available in more than 60 languages from more than 200 publishing houses[264] and have entered best-seller lists in Italy and South Korea.[256] [265][266]
Rajneesh continues to be known and published worldwide in the area of meditation and his work also includes social and political commentary.[267] Internationally, after almost two decades of controversy and a decade of accommodation, Rajneesh's movement has established itself in the market of new religions.[267] His followers have redefined his contributions, reframing central elements of his teaching so as to make them appear less controversial to outsiders.[267] Societies in North America and Western Europe have met them half-way, becoming more accommodating to spiritual topics such as yoga and meditation.[267] The Osho International Foundation (OIF) runs stress management seminars for corporate clients such as IBM and BMW, with a reported (2000) revenue between $15 and $45 million annually in the US.[268][269] In Italy, a satirical Facebook page titled Le più belle frasi di Osho repurposing pictures of Osho with humorous captions about national politics was launched in 2016 and quickly surpassed a million followers, becoming a cultural phenomenon in the country, with posts being republished by national papers and being shown on television.[270]
Rajneesh's ashram in Pune has become the OSHO International Meditation Resort[271] Describing itself as the Esalen of the East, it teaches a variety of spiritual techniques from a broad range of traditions and promotes itself as a spiritual oasis, a "sacred space" for discovering one's self and uniting the desires of body and mind in a beautiful resort environment.[31] According to press reports, prominent visitors have included politicians and media personalities.[271] In 2011, a national seminar on Rajneesh's teachings was inaugurated at the Department of Philosophy of the Mankunwarbai College for Women in Jabalpur.[272] Funded by the Bhopal office of the University Grants Commission, the seminar focused on Rajneesh's "Zorba the Buddha" teaching, seeking to reconcile spirituality with the materialist and objective approach.[272] As of 2013, the resort required all guests to be tested for HIV/AIDS at its Welcome Centre on arrival.[273]