Osho
Friends, the world knows this person known as Osho among his devotees and followers as Rajneesh or Acharya Rajneesh. Let us tell you that Osho means a person who has merged himself in completeness i.e. the ocean. At many places, this word is also used for fortunate people who please the earth as well as the sky and are considered to be showered with flowers from the sky. However, apart from considering Osho as holy, the world also considers him a mysterious person. Apart from being an anarchist, he is also considered a very accomplished writer.
It was also possible for people to come to him and be interested in his ideas because he did not proceed on any particular tradition, ideology, interest or religion. He was born on 11 December 1931 in Kupwara, Madhya Pradesh. Although earlier his name was Chandra Mohan Jain. His childhood was spent in his village, then in 1951 he took admission in Hitkarini College, Jabalpur. Not only was he smart, his own thoughts were different from everyone else. Due to this, he got into an argument with the college philosophy professor.
He used to ask so many questions during lectures that the professor used to get worried while giving answers. Due to which he was not able to complete his course on time. It is described in his biography The Luminous Rebel Life Story of Maverick Mystic that finally when the professor could not tolerate Osho, he gave an ultimatum to the Principal that either he or Osho would stay in that college. Then the principal called him and said that it was not his fault in all this but still he did not want his senior professor to leave the college.
Therefore he asked Osho to leave the college. After hearing all this, Osho told the principal that he was ready to leave the college on the condition that he got admission in some other college. However, other colleges were also not ready to keep him. Then with great difficulty he got admission in DN College. Then later he started his career in 1957 with the post of lecturer in Sanskrit College, Raipur. Then in 1960, he became Professor of Philosophy at Jabalpur University. He was considered a very bright teacher of his time. At the same time, he also started making his mark as a spiritual guru.
He used to tour various places in India and also gave many controversial lectures. Due to this, after some time he resigned from the post of professor and became a complete guru. In the year 1969, they established their headquarters in Mumbai. During this time, he met a woman named Christina Wolfe, to whom Osho gave a new name Yoga Vivek, who also became his personal associate. From the very beginning he used to speak against religious beliefs and rituals. As a spiritual leader, he believed that religion should unite people and not divide them on the basis of religion. Religion in their eyes.
Having become a victim of various evils, he has lost his ideology. He considered religion and politics as two sides of the same coin, the sole purpose of which was to control the people. Along with this, he also supported the concept of sexual liberation, due to which Indians were divided into two sides for him. One is against him and the other is in his favor. The ability to normalize sex in this way attracted many people to them. Regarding his thoughts, author Khushwant Singh writes that Osho was one of the most original thinkers born in India.
Apart from this, he was the most thoughtful, scientifically minded and new ideas person. Not only in the country but also foreign writers have written a lot for him. American writer Tom Robinson believed that Osho is one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and is also a great spiritual teacher. Friends, his mother Anand Sheela, who was his personal assistant, came in contact with Osho very soon. Let us tell you that Osho used to give the name of mother to all his female followers because he considered every woman to be a symbol of motherhood.
Similarly, he used to address every male follower as Swami so that they could always remember that they had to always have control over themselves. Sheela writes in her autobiography Don’t Kill Him the Story of My Life with Bhagwan Rajneesh that generally Bhagwan did not meet people without prior appointment but we went to meet him without appointment. When I entered his room, he was sitting cross-legged on a sofa at one end of the room. She was wearing a white colored gown. When I entered the room, God smiled at me and spread his arms. He hugged me to his chest and held my hand very gently.
I placed my head in his lap. After some time, I quietly got up and started leaving. He said, Sheela, you will come to meet me tomorrow at 02:30. Osho used to give a rosary made of wood to each of his disciples. Every mirror was expected to wear that garland at all times. Also, his disciples should wear loose clothes so that energy can circulate easily in the body. Followers were instructed to keep their eyes closed during the speech. He used to give speeches in either Hindi or English. He was famous for his opinions on controversial topics.
Bill Mack writes in his book The Rajneesh Chronicle that his views were so controversial that there were many times discussions were held in the Indian Parliament about banning him. Osho used to choose many different subjects to excel different people. Whoever came in contact with him either became his disciple or his opponent. No one could remain indifferent towards him. Anyone who came to him was first asked to participate in a dynamic meditation, after which they were then introduced to Osho.
Initially, he used to give his speech at Chowpatty at 06:00 in the morning and then used to address at his home in the evening. Sometimes the number of listeners was around 100 and sometimes it reached 5 to 6000 and after some time, due to the heavy rains of Mumbai, he started suffering from asthma and allergy problems. Besides, his foreign followers were also not able to live properly. After much deliberation, it was decided that he would build his ashram in Pune because the climate of Pune was much better than Mumbai. He built his ashram in Goregaon.
Mother Sheela writes that after reaching Pune, Osho started isolating himself from people. He believed in the complete loyalty of his followers. They started giving more importance to foreigners and started ignoring most of the Indians. Soon he established himself in Pune and around 5000 people used to come to listen to him every day. This number was so high that Pune’s tourism industry grew by about 15 percent every year. Started increasing. Various types of therapy were done in Osho’s ashram, in which sex therapy was given the most importance. In these it started being accepted without any prejudice.
The ethics and uncertainties associated with it were left aside. Ma Sheela writes that Indian people were not allowed to participate in these therapies. For this reason, he was asked many questions on which he argued that the people of the West come from an oppressive world. Their lifestyle and mentality is completely different from the Indian people. They need an active therapy whereas for Indian people passive and quiet meditation is sufficient. His argument sent a message to his Indian disciples that they were spiritually superior to people coming from the West.
Within a short time, the total area of Rajneesh Ashram in Pune increased to 25 thousand square meters. A medical center was also built there where doctors and nurses brought from outside were kept and their medical services were provided free of cost to the people living in the ashram. The woman writes that Osho did not want newborn children to be kept in this confined space. Therefore, monks were discouraged from becoming pregnant.
Osho often talked about sexual reproduction, hence the monks lived an open sex life due to which sexually transmitted diseases started increasing in our ashram. Amidst all this, Osho’s illnesses started increasing. His asthma and stomach pain started increasing and his diabetes also started increasing. Due to which he had stopped leaving the house and even giving speeches. He used to have headache after reading the book. There was pain in his eyes also. Anand Sheela writes that she was very allergic to perfumes and scents.
We had to make a lot of efforts to stop people who had used scents from coming near them. Before the morning and evening speeches, every listener’s body was smelled to see if he was wearing any perfume. The ashram gate for outsiders opened at 06:00 in the morning and closed at 09:00 at night. Then finally he planned to open his ashram in America, in which thousands of disciples could live together. On May 31, 1981, he left for America.
Along with this, 500 ashram residents also went with him. But this is where his bad days started as he was prosecuted for violating immigration rules. He remained in American jail for 17 days and then was released from jail by paying a fine of ₹48 lakh. After this he tried to take refuge in many countries but he did not get success. Eventually he returned to India and then on 19 January 1990, he said goodbye to the world at the age of 58. His Samadhi was built in the Ashram of Pune.
Anyway, see you again with the powerful explanation of the History.
