VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4], 5, 6, 7, 8 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 06:15:46 12/11/05 Sun
Author: H - 23 Sep 2005
Subject: Re: Prana
In reply to: d - 22 Sep 2005 's message, "Re: Prana" on 06:07:00 12/11/05 Sun


Two years ago a friend of mine gave me one of Osho's books which he said is a really good one, although he did not find it had anything to do with yoga. It was "Sex and the Superconsciousness", written about 1973, shortly before Osho became a public nuisance.

I read the book. I did not find anything extraordinary in it. The topics he dealt with were generally conventional and rather incoherent, lots of platitudes, added by some puns in the style of Sai Baba. There were also some (moderately) hateful and unnecessary attacks in it which shows that his character didn't fundamentally change later on. The book made the impression of having been written with Western college students in mind, maybe the content was edited material from Q&A sessions. The main goal of the book was obviously to make people indulge in sex and give up their spiritual quest. There were lots of exaggerations, misleading simplifications, twisting of truth, deliberate lies and queer ideas.

I think what is behind this whole affair is that people like Osho come into contact with some force, energy or state of consciousness they cannot deal with. For some reason this happens to people in India much more often than to those from other countries. The pressure of this force stirs up all what is below, and in people who are full of desires, vanity and ambition those lower instincts rise up, take control and completely pervert what is being received. In some people this goes so far as rendering them debilitated or insane.

Another matter is that there is no guarantee that any force is really a spiritual force - it could be anything else. There are many people in India and elsewhere including left-hand tantrics that make use of forces unintelligible to the normal consciousness. Discrimination, purity, tradition, authority -- all those qualities that were prescribed by legions of yogis in order to save people from going astray are exactly the qualities that Osho used to preach against all his life.

In Osho's case one result was the complete breakdown of the system including the body - he was suffering from illness and frailty all the time during the last decades of his life. Another that he intentionally ruined hundreds of lives.

This may be one of the reasons why yogis used to stress the importance of purification and a stable life. Otherwise, at a certain point, Brastha seems to be the inevitable result.


The another time, in the early 60?s, one of his room-mate went to see Rajneesh and when he came back to dorm, declared that after being with Rajneesh for five minutes,he decided to be sanyasin. When he asked ? why did you decide so quickly ? The friend said, even five minutes is a too long time to decide to be his sanyasin.

This suggests a hypnotic or at least very charismatic quality. There are many such reports about Osho. As a rule of thumb one should stay away from such people in matters spiritual. Often people who are impressive in the beginning don't have anything worthwile to share later on.

H

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.