Who is OSHO?

"Never be inspired by anyone.
Stay open.
When you see a beautiful sunset,
enjoy this beauty;
when you see a Buddha,
enjoy the beauty of man,
enjoy the silence, enjoy the truth
that man has accomplished,
but don't become a follower.
All followers are lost. "

Most of us live in the world of time in memory of the past and in anticipation of the future. We only rarely touch the timeless dimension of the present - in moments of sudden beauty or danger, in the encounter with a loved one or with the surprises of the unforeseen. Very few people leave the world of time and mind, their ambitions and competitions, and start living in the world of the timeless. And of those who do, only a few try to share their experiences. Lao Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Bodhidharma ... or more recently, George Gurdjieff, Ramana Maharshi, J. krishnamurti ... They are considered by their contemporaries to be eccentric or crazy; after their deaths they are called "philosophers". And over time they become legends - not flesh-and-blood human beings, but perhaps mythological representations of our collective desire to grow beyond small and trivial, beyond the meaninglessness of our daily lives.

Osho is one of those who discovered the door of living or the timeless dimension of the present - he called himself a "true existentialist" - and devoted his life to provoking others to seek the same door, to leave the world of the past and the future and discover the world of eternity for themselves.

From his earliest childhood in India, it was clear that Osho would not follow the conventions of the world around him. He spent the first seven years of his life with his maternal grandparents, who allowed him the freedom to be himself, which few children enjoy. He was a lonely child, preferring to spend long hours sitting in silence beside a lake, or exploring the surroundings alone. The death of his maternal grandfather, he says, had a profound effect on his inner life, provoking a determination to discover the immortal of life. By joining his parents' growing family and entering school, he was firmly grounded in the clarity and sense of self, which gave him the courage to challenge all attempts by his elders to shape his life according to his own ideas. of how it should be.

He never shied away from controversy. For Osho, the truth cannot make concessions, because then it ceases to be true. And the truth is not a belief, but an experience. He never asks people to believe what he says, but instead asks them to experiment and realize for themselves whether what he is saying is true or not. At the same time, he is relentless in finding ways and means of exposing beliefs as they are - mere consolations to ease our anxieties in the face of the unknown, and barriers to meeting a mysterious and explored reality.

After his enlightenment, at the age of twenty-one, Osho completed his academic studies and spent several years teaching philosophy at the University of Jabalpur. In the meantime, he traveled through India giving speeches, challenging orthodox religious leaders, in public debates and meeting people from all walks of life. He read extensively everything he could find to expand his understanding of contemporary man's belief systems and psychology.

In the late 60s, Osho began to develop his active meditation techniques. The modern human being, he said, is so overwhelmed with the old-fashioned traditions of the past and the anxieties of modern life, that he has to go through a deep cleansing process before he hopes to discover the relaxed, thoughtless state of meditation.

He began conducting meditation camps across India, giving speeches to the participants and personally directing meditations he developed.

In the early 70s, the first Westerners began to hear about Osho, and joined the growing number of Indians who were initiated by him in neo-sannyas. In 1974, a commune was established around Osho, in Puna, India, and soon the few visitors from the West became quite numerous. Many were therapists who faced the limitations of Western therapies and were looking for an approach that could reach and transform the depths of the human psyche. Osho encouraged them to contribute their skills to the commune and worked closely with them to develop their therapies in the context of meditation.

The problem with therapies developed in the West, he said, is that they are confined to treating the mind and its psychology, while the East has long understood that the mind itself, or rather, our identification with it, is the problem. Therapies can be useful - like the cathartic stages of the meditations you have developed - to relieve people of their repressed emotions and fears, and to help them perceive themselves more clearly. However, unless we begin to let go of the mechanisms of the mind and its projections, desires and fears, we will come out of one hole only to fall into another, or one of our own invention. Therapy, therefore, must go hand in hand with the process of de-identification and testimony, known as meditation.

In the late 70s, the commune in Puna was home to the largest therapy and growth center in the world, and thousands of people came to join the therapy and meditation groups, sit with Osho in their daily speeches and contribute to the commune's life, and some returned to their countries and established meditation centers.

From 1981 to 1985, the commune experiment took place in the United States, in a region of more than two hundred square kilometers, in the high desert of Oregon. The primary emphasis of the commune's life was to build the city of Rajeeshpuram, an "oasis in the desert". And in a miraculously short period of time, the commune built houses for XNUMX people and began to reverse decades of damage - due to excessive land use - restoring streams, building lakes and reservoirs, developing self-sufficient agriculture and planting thousands of trees .

In Rajneeshpuram, meditations and therapy programs were held at Rajneesh International Meditation University. The modern facilities built for the University and its welcoming environment made it possible to expand and expand its programs, which was not possible before. Long-term courses and training were developed, and attracted a large number of participants, including many who were already professionals, but who wanted to expand their skills and understanding of themselves.

In late 1985, however, opposition from the local and federal government to Osho and the commune made it impossible for the experiment to continue. The commune was dispersed and Osho headed for a tour around the world, giving interviews to the press and giving speeches to disciples in the Himalayas, Greece and Uruguay, before returning to India in mid-1986.

In January 1987, Osho reestablished himself in Puna, giving speeches twice a day. Within a few months the Puna commune started a full program of activities and expanded much more than before. The standard of modern facilities was established in the United States, and Osho made it clear that the new commune of Puna should be an oasis of the XNUMXst century, even in underdeveloped India. More and more people came from the East, particularly from Japan, and their presence brought a corresponding enrichment to the healing and martial arts programs. Visual and performance arts also flourished, along with the new Mystery School. Diversity and expansion were reflected in the choice of the name, by Osho, Multiversidade, which housed all the programs.

And the emphasis on meditation was further strengthened - this was a topic constantly addressed in Osho's speeches, and he developed and introduced many new meditation groups, including Non-Mind, The Mystical Rose and Being Born Again.

- "I will remain a source of inspiration for my people, and that is what most sannyasins will feel. I want them to develop for themselves qualities like love, around which no church can be created; like awareness, that it is not anyone's monopoly, like celebration, delight, and keeping freshness and innocence in their eyes ... I want them to know themselves and not follow the expectations of others. And the path is within ".

Osho leaves the body on January 19, 1990. Just a few weeks before that date, he was asked what would happen to his work when he left. He then said:

 “My confidence in existence is absolute.
 If there’s any truth to what I’m saying,
 it will survive ...
 People who remain interested in my work
 they will simply carry the torch, but impose nothing on anyone ...

 “I will remain a source of inspiration for my people,
 and this is what most saniásins will feel.
 I want them to develop qualities like love for themselves,
  around which no church can be created;
  as conscience, which is nobody's monopoly;
  as a celebration, delight;
  and stay rejuvenated, with the eyes of a child ...

 "I want people to know themselves,
  that do not follow the expectations of others.
  And the way is to go inside. ”

Osho dictated the inscription for his samadhi, the marble and mirror crypt that contains his ashes. She says:

Osho - was never born, never died. It only visited this planet Earth between December 11, 1931 and January 19, 1990.

"I am here to seduce you into a love of life; to help you become a little bit more poetic; to help you die to the mundane and the ordinary, so that the extraordinary explodes in your life."

"I am not a logician, I am an existentialist. I believe in this beautiful chaos of existence
and I'm ready to go wherever she goes. I don't have a goal, because existence doesn't have a goal. It simply is, blooming, budding, dancing - but don't ask why. Just an overflow of energy for no reason. I have existence."

"I am not a messiah and I am not a missionary. And I am not here to establish a church or to give a doctrine to the world, a new religion, no. My effort is totally different: a new conscience, not a new religion, a new conscience, not a new doctrine. No more doctrines and no more religions! Man needs a new awareness. And the only way to bring a new awareness is to continue hammering on all sides so that slowly, slowly chunks of your mind come off. The statue of a Buddha is hidden in you. Right now you are a rock. If I keep hammering, chopping off pieces of you, slowly, slowly the Buddha will come "

- OSHO

"Osho is an enlightened master who is working with every possibility to help humanity overcome a difficult phase in the development of consciousness".

- Dalai Lama

"This book is part of the bookshelf of every library and the home of all those who seek knowledge of the highest being".

- Dr Deepak Chopra

“Osho is the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ… He is obviously a very effective man, otherwise he would not be such a threat. He is saying the things that no one else has the courage to say. A man who has all kinds of ideas, they are not only inflammatory, they also have a resonance of the truth that scares the monsters of control ”.

- Tom Robbins