Sex to Samadhi : Osho's philosophy

Rajneesh was born as Chandra Mohan Jain, on 11 December 1931 and passed away on 19 January 1990. He was also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho. He was educated in Jabalpur with MA in Philosophy and was also a Professor of Philosophy in Jabalpur University. He later became an Indian godman, mystic and founder of the Rajneesh movement. During his lifetime, he was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader and a mystic Guru. He rejected institutional religions. (Source: Wikipedia)

Rajneesh emphasised the importance of freethought, meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration, courage, creativity, and humour—qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious dogmas and traditions, and socialization. In advocating a more open attitude to human sexuality. He caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".Bollywood stars like Vinod Khanna and Vijay Anand also had joined his ashram.

In a 1968 lecture series, later published under the title From Sex to Super consciousness, he scandalised Hindu leaders by calling for freer acceptance of sex and became known as the "sex guru" in the Indian press. 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." He compared the treatment of lower caste shudras and women with the treatment of animals. He characterised brahmin as being motivated by self-interest, provoking the Shankaracharya of Puri, who tried in vain to have his lecture stopped.

Samadhi is a state of ultimate bliss. During sexual intercourse also a person gets bliss. Osho says that rather than finishing the act swiftly, one need to prolong it. Longer the duration, longer the bliss, equivalent to Samadhi. May be this is what he meant. Osho was criticised because he was outspoken and had spoken a lot about secularism, Mahatma Gandhi, Christianity and a lot more. The immense issue was his liberal and open attitude towards sexuality. His teachings only emphasized on happiness, self contentment, self acceptance. He wanted every person to sing, dance, enjoy, meditate, laugh.

He was criticising so called saints who pretended to be saints. He was a criticizer of Christianity also. This made the church angry. So, definitely followers of them will never appreciate his sayings and will eventually spring him up as a fraud, fake and what not! There are many who are speaking against Osho although they haven’t read Osho so sincerely. And one more important thing here, people say that gurus do not wear diamond watches, diamond caps, do not travel by Rolls Royce. To them, I should make clear, Osho never bought anything amongst these for himself. It were his disciples, his lovers who used to make it themselves for him (watches and caps and robes).

Maybe for them it was a gesture to show their love towards Osho. If he was a fraud, he could have ended up with his account overflowing with money. Nothing was his. Nothing belonged to his family. His brother, even today meditates, eats, walks like every other follower of his in the commune. It is not like that he is the owner of the whole empire. All the belongings of Osho are still there in the commune. Nobody has any sort of possession over them. My father is his follower since 1973, and his immense trust and love towards Osho is the reason that even I have started following him. It always depends on the person how deeply, completely he absorbs what he perceives. For me, a person like Osho can never be a fraud.

He wanted the society to be free, frolic some, happy, content, free from any boundaries. Because it is as simple as that, the more you try to suppress or hide something, the more prohibited it will become. A society with taboos is not a flourishing society. Osho always used references of Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Kabir, Shankracharya, Lao and all. But he always took the names of the people whose words he was reciting in his discourses. But since Osho is dangerous for his “sophisticated-reputation,” Sadguru avoids being linked with Osho in any way. I have seen Sadguru talking comfortably about everyone but when it comes to Osho, I could sense a subtle hesitation.

On the other hand Osho would criticize and ridicule politicians. Even Nehru got frustrated of him when he was in University. Osho was despised by politicians, including the contemporary US president Ronald Reagan. And he was banned from many countries. Whereas Osho is for rebels. You keep listening to him, and the current in his voice and his fiery eyes will bring the rebel out of you. He always made clear that any psychic phenomena such as "siddhis" , or superpowers ,or astral experiences that came through meditation were simply distractions on the journey for the Truth and that these should be ignored, and one should always "keep on moving" “chareiviti, charieviti” in Sanskrit.

If a person attained satori , or a temporary glimpse of enlightenment, he made it clear that this should not be dwelled over and people should keep moving on. Whatever came up, bliss, beautiful experiences, one should keep moving on . Like Nisargadatta Maharaj, a South Indian master of Advaita, who had described Osho as a ‘great sage’ and who had said that his state was no different to his own, Osho made it clear that whatever experiences came up on the path, one had to keep going until the seeker had reached the point where there is no-one left to experience. Nisargadatta had said that ecstasy came and went , and too much ecstasy would burn the brain out if prolonged for too long. The real enlightenment was a state of deep, inner peace, and love.

Osho had also said: "Enlightenment is not a state of ecstasy, it is beyond ecstasy. Enlightenment has no excitement in it; ecstasy is a state of excitement. Ecstasy is a state of mind — a beautiful state of mind, but still a state of mind. Ecstasy is an experience. And enlightenment is not an experience, because there is nobody left to experience. Ecstasy is still within the ego, enlightenment is beyond the ego. It is not that you become enlightened: you are not, then enlightenment is. It is not that you are liberated, it is not that you remain in that liberation, liberated: it is a liberation from yourself."

"When a man of enlightenment looks at a rose flower there is no division between the knower and the known; he becomes the very heart of the rose flower. When he looks at the sunrise he becomes the sunrise, when he looks at a white cloud, he becomes the white cloud. It is not by any effort. He has just become a mirror, so clean that everything that comes before it is reflected in it. He becomes it.” Osho always made it clear that his disciples should keep going if they attained enlightenment, that self-realisation was only the beginning of the real journey, which was an endless beginning. He cautioned against beautiful states that seekers could get stuck in, including spaces where seekers are sometimes left with a premature illusion of being enlightened, before actual enlightenment itself which is permanent . He always taught seekers to keep witnessing and watching until they had reached the point of no return. At times he had also talked explicitly about the different types of samadhi and the different planes of consciousness that the meditator passes through.

This is where a Master can be very helpful. Osho had become enlightened at the age of 21 whilst still a student of philosophy at University. A sannyasin , Sw Anand Neeten (Pierre Evald) , has conducted a lot of field research on Osho`s early life in Northern India and has discovered a paper with notes in Hindi on chakras, the different stages of samadhi etc that Osho wrote as part of his post graduate studies for his M.A. at Sagar University, M.P. circa 1955-57. He had kept quite about his enlightenment for ten years, unless someone suspected something and asked him about it, and then he had always asked them to keep it secret. Apparently he did organise a small meditation group in his university at some point when he was a professor.

Osho had been living very simply for many years in India. First he wore a simple lungi and shawl,for many years, touring the country as Acharya Rajneesh, and then wore a simple white robe, and attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, who were impressed by his talks on many enlightened mystics from so many different traditions, Buddhist, Tantra, Tao, Hasidim, Sufi’s, Bauls, Hindu mystics, Mahavira, Jesus , and many more. But they were also attracted by his inner silence, his magnetic presence. The energy field that surrounded him was able to help his disciples grow in consciousness and rapid spiritual growth much faster than if they were meditating alone, breakthroughs and satori's were common.

Osho had the capacity to literally breathe in the heaviness and darkness of people sitting with him and transmute that energy into bliss. But Osho’s energy wasn’t confined to the transmission that came from being in his physical presence . Many of his sannyasins found that the grace that came through him enabled him to connect to them energetically through the heart, and in this way he can work with people at a distance, beyond the confines of time and space. This ‘heart to heart communion’ was Osho’s main way of working with his disciples.

The love and receptivity of disciples allows the connection to happen. Osho’s first initiated disciple , Ma Anand Madhu, had been Osho’s secretary for a while and in 1971, he had asked her to go and start a commune in Gujarat. However, Madhu had become very deep into vipassana meditation and wanted to go on a silent meditation retreat. Osho gave her his blessing and his shawl, and she went to the Himalayas. She ended up spending fourteen years in meditation, in Rishikesh, she maintains that Osho supported her energetically throughout that time, and that she attained realisation after fourteen years.

There are several sannyasins around the world who have claimed enlightenment after being nourished in this way by Osho and are sharing with seekers today. Some are still connected to Osho`s presence. Swami Purnanand Bharati, Pan and Tyohar are just several out of many. Osho is now completely free from the last limitations of the body-mind and his presence is still available, as many sannyasins have discovered. He was well aware his energy would still be available to help people once he had dropped the body.

Osho had also developed therapeutic, cathartic style methods of active meditation , which were praised by psychologists and psychiatrists and are still used around the world today. There were designed by Osho to help “clear the soil” for meditation to develop, later, in his Pune ashram in the ‘70’s, there were a vast array of modern psycho-therapeutic methods available, led by some of the leaders of the Human Potential movement, these were meant to serve a similar purpose.

When Osho arrived in the USA in 1981, he had already entered a public period of silence. He had said that he wanted to begin a ‘heart to heart communion’ with his disciples. Later, when he began speaking again after three years of public silence in 1984, he had said that this period of silence had been useful to “weed out” those people who were following him only for intellectual reasons or were not ready for the heart to heart communion. “I have found my people and I have to arrange a silent communion, which will help in two ways: those who cannot understand silence will drop out. That will be good. That will be a good weeding; otherwise they will go on clinging around me because of the words, because their intellect feels satisfied. And I am not here to satisfy their intellect. My purpose is far, far deeper, of a different dimension. So these days of silence have helped those who were just intellectually curious, rationally interested in me, to turn their back. And secondly, it has helped me to find my real, authentic people who are not in need of words to be with me. They can be with me without words. That's the difference between communication and communion.” (OSHO: From Unconsciousness to Consciousness chapter 1, 1984)

“The true master can only be felt. It is a question of a loving openness on your part. The disciple has to open the heart. The true master comes through the heart, not through the head. He is felt as love, not as logic. He is felt as a song, not as syllogism. He is felt as poetry, not as prose. He is a dance; you can know him only through with a true master. Just being with him, sitting by his side in deep silence, with no prejudice, with no idea what is happening, something transpires. Something jumps from the master into your heart. You can feel it. It is energy, it is an energy phenomenon. It is not a question of a theory, of any hypothesis, of philosophy. It is a jump of energy, a quantum leap. Something invisible radiates from the true master and penetrates to the true disciple. And who is the true disciple? - the one whose heart is open.” (From OSHO: ‘Dhammapada The Way of the Buddha’ vol 9)