Years ago I read Osho when he went by the name of Rajneesh. Through the years I found that he was an immoral man who misled others into believing he was an enlightened master. Near the end of his life he changed his name to Osho when he announced that he was the reincarnation of the Buddha.

The man started out as a philosophy professor, and then became a guru. Isn't it possible that he read a bunch of books and tried to pass off what he read as his knowledge?

Fakes like Osho and the organizations that follow such fakes survive, because people aren't willing to question them. Instead they come up with all manner of excuses for their immoral behavior and false teachings.

If people really want to serve the light, perhaps they should be responsible and put their discrimination to use, otherwise they'll end up supporting false teachers such as Osho, and mislead other people down the same false path.   IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR AND LOVE ARE NOT THE SAME THING!

Does anyone feel this energy? When we do this the energy level drops. To me it feels like I am actually being weighted down when I read. Just a comment for those who will notice it. I'm off to other territories now.

love, blink

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  Yes Blink, to hear the below is potentially disheartening, heavy, and sad.  To hear a long term member of this forum describe and compare another long term member who is just simply speaking his truth, as this, Quote:


  He or she that is free from such transgressions could without hypocrisy say such things i suppose. 

  However, the above quote from you is just as critical, belittling, and judgmental as anything that i or others have said about gurus who lead people more to false self, than to Source. 

  Why you do not see that, i have no idea.   Selective reasoning i suppose.   I remember some of your words to another poster here, Tempest, i remember how you treated her, and the selective, convenient reasoning that went on there.   

  There is some relative difference between speaking critically but impersonally on the kinds of behaviors, teachings, and ways of being that some teachers who called themselves enLightened, than speaking on the negative attributes of others who happen to speak up about how they don't agree with those teachers, teachings, and the one sided promotion of same. 

   Personally, i prefer more direct and honest criticisms, and no wonder why your energy is dropping, you are partaking in judgment just as much if not more than some others on this thread.   Do not blame others for your energy decrease when you are just as party to it as anyone else is, don't fool yourself that it just comes from reading other people's words.

Desert wrote on Feb 8^th, 2008 at 2:28pm:


  Yet more "selective" reasoning i would say.   Did Albert Einstein claim to be fully enLightened?  Making scientific discoveries, theories, and the lot is not directly related to one's treatment of others as ones supposed spiritual development, and whether or not they should rightly call themselves "enLightened". 

   You are comparing, or rather treating apples and oranges as the same, to make a point. 

  When a person claims themselves as enLightened, then their behaviors and treatment of others, becomes paramount as a consideration of that claim. 

Perhaps someone claims them self as enLightened, when they aren't, in the hopes that they will have more people listen to and support them, and as in Osho's example of fleecing others of both money and sexual favors?

  Yah, truly a wise and spiritually enLlightened teacher whom we should really listen closely too because their words must be full of pungent and pure truths. 


   There are 7 fields of growing Wheat.    Most of the fields contain both spoiled and unspoiled kernels of Wheat.    In those, you can get enough of the good and healthy kernels out without too much work of separating from the spoiled and unhealthy from the healthy. 

    But in two other fields, we find more unusual and extreme conditions.   In one of the two, we find that most of the Wheat kernels have wilted, molded, or otherwise spoiled, and though there only be some few kernels here and there worth picking, it would take too much time and effort to do same for a slower gain. 

  In the other field, we find a perfect harvest, every kernel of Wheat is golden, ripe with flavor and vitality, and health producing.

   Occasionally we need to go through the former fields, to eventually learn and know truly what is the healthy kernel from an spoiled one, i mean after all, if we get ergot poisoning enough we learn to avoid the ones with mold..

  But eventually, we become wise and learn to seek out those fields wherein we find only or mostly only the healthy kernels.   We realize that too concentrate on the others, while we can gain from same, it requires more work and effort than is necessary, and its a smart person who spends their energy and time pragmatically.      

 

Or let me put it this way, without the smiley faces. If I or any former cult member was given the opportunity to go back in time and speak to our former cult member self, our former cult member self wouldn't be able to convince us to believe in the guru we used to believe in.  With a similar type of rational applied, people who haven't gotten around to seeing what the Oshos of the World are really about, aren't going to be able to con me back into a cloudy state of mind, that makes excuses for gurus such as Osho.

Bloody hell!

C'mon guys. Step back a moment and take a look at the sort of fire this topic has drawn. It's great that positive and negative views on teachers get aired because they can be of great assistance to others, but for sure there's not much equanimity around on the topic.

Why are we arguing about this? It suggests there's a lot of projection and investment in beliefs, whatever they are.

To repeat. We're on a hiding to nothing if we demand uniform group acceptance of the validity or otherwise of a given teacher. It's flat out not practically possible, nor for real.

What matters is personal view, path and process - we have no choice but to take responsibility for ourselves. The broad information on Osho is already on the table and has been for a long time - he appeals to some, in my opinion has some good things to say, but has a certain hint of danger about him that suggests that discretion and care is required too.

To push beyond this in either direction is to attempt to force your view on somebody else, which has got to be wrong.

The perspective we all have to remember here is that everything in this reality reflects an aspect of universal Mind. None of it matters in the end. But any attempt to force what from  our selfish and personalised viewpoint as 'good' on existence, while trying to exclude what we consider from some mind made philosophical position 'bad' is doomed to failure, doomed to create more suffering. (which in the end doesn't matter either - but why do it as it seems pretty real from this viewpoint?)

God accommodates the bad the same as the good, and allows both to mix in the measure we each need to learn. There's no 'one size fits all' solution.

The problem is that when we get fired up and enmeshed in the intellect and try to force a solution in this way we lose touch with flow, and with natural wisdom or 'seeing' of the heart. Which is why so many genuinely well intended but intellectually originated acts actually do more harm than good - the persons pushing them get hung up on just one angle and cannot see the implications of what they propose.

To repeat. The challenge in this is not to win or lose some argument on teachers. The challenge is whether or not we can open enough to become easy with the groundlessness of the reality that there is no absolute right or wrong in this. That's not to say that there isn't an optimum course of action on the topic for each and every one of us, but that's a different matter...

Vajra:

If somebody decides to use somebody such as Osho as a validation of the over and over viewpoint of reincarnation, somebody is liable to object.

In a way it is good that his thoughts were brought up, because it provides an example of the source of such information. 

Is he "enlightened" or is he not?

And what, pray tell, is meant by "enlightened", and how does that differ from "fully enlightened"?

My definition differs from yours, and ours differ from theirs.

If a man walks up to you an the street and hands you a book with instructions for saving ourselves, a set of universally acclaimed to be good, tested, validated and agreed upon principles, it would be useful to look at the book and see if it could be applied to our own lives. Yes? (There are a large number of such books around, including one by Moses that only took ten lines. Patanjali wrote one that took eight lines. Others exist as well. I happen to like the Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Mary - but maybe I'm kinda strange.)

Now let's say that we notice that in the other hand we find that this guy is carrying a freshly severed human head, still dripping gore. And, amazingly, we discover that in his rucksack we discover forty dozen sex toys and assorted dildonics, plus last year's output of pornographic magazines. Does this mean that what he hands us is worthless?

Add to that a yellow rubber raincoat that he occasionally opens, flashing us with gratuitous glimpses of his nether regions in a state of turgidity. (Who says size doesn't matter?) Does that mean that he is incapable of carrying anything of value?

And finally, we discover that this guy has a lot of disciples, a stable of Rolls and Bentley cars, and a daily schedule of prayer, meditation, Tantric practices that verge on cannibalism (use your imagination) and yet everyone seems elated with the notion that there is nothing more important than God, and hopefully this will be a path to lead them to God. Does this mean anything?

Not all paths lead through the narrow gate of Puritanism. While it is absolutely necessary that there be a staunch Calvinist to add up the beans in the collection plate, and to watch anxiously to guard against the possible fact that somewhere, somehow, someone might be having fun - it is also necessary that prostitutes, junkies, crazies and idiots also should have salvation brought to them in whatever form they can understand. Most of us would have little trouble with the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, but there are many who wouldn't dare to approach the Temple of Our Lady of the Evening. And this is true even if the same salvation were equally dispensed in either place.

Are we such snobs that we deny God, even if the present manifestation happens to be in nocturnal activities of the bedroom? Or are we so much wiser than God that we can dictate the Proper Method of being holy?

I suggest that this thread illustrates several things, of which one is that nobody knows what enlightenment is - not even in terms of the discussion. A simple working definition would settle a lot of talk.

I suggest that we tend to follow the Doctrine of the Eye more than the Doctrine of the Heart because it is easier. That way we can dump on others for being inferior to Us. Yet every last one of us was born between urine and feces. From such an ignoble beginning, whence arises this arrogance? Is it not a matter of trying to build ourselves up, in worldly terms, as opposed to changing in other-worldly terms? And, given that, why do we argue that those who are sent to save the wretched in their own medium of wretchedness are any less than those who are sent to save the neat, clean, tidy and well dressed business world, those who are "doing the right thing, so conservatively"?

So here's a daring and dangerous thought - Perhaps it just might be true that social conventions are ultmately meaningless. That salvation can be spread through whoreing and promscuity just as through giving alms and titheing, both instances requiring the proper attitude, as opposed to the proper social medium of expression of plattitudes. I hapen to agree fully with Rajneesh or Osho or whatever handle this spirit uses in his life. I just don't have to use his methods these days, but 50 years ago they suited me just fine.

dave