Osho speaks!

[Jonathan Bricklin]

The now late, Ramnath Goenka, the owner of Indian Express was a
deeply spiritual man and also visited Rajneesh once. He was given royal
treatment, since he was quite influential in India. As soon as he
entered the Ashram in Pune, he found a few people in the lawns
implementing Rajneesh's "philosophy". Since Goenka was an ardent devotee
of shrI chandrashekharendra sarasvatI, then the pontiff of the Kanchi
mutt, you can imagine his reaction :-).

The author of over 600 books on
one basic theme, tat tvam asi, all of them spoken spontaneously in front of
huge audiences, and many of them availabale on video where the perfect
equanimity of the man is there on view for anyone who does not have the
screen blocked with the New York Times, Rajneesh is, albeit, a cautionary
tale.  He is a cautionary tale to himself for trying to predict what his
movement would lead to (his Poona ashram is flourishing but his Oregon
Ashram is now a cattle ranch.  Long live lila!)  He is a cautionary tale to
others not to be lead around by anyone else's agenda, especially those
posing as essentially agenda-less.   And yes, he is a
cautionary tale to how much pain and suffering an ashram of indulgence can
bring about--especially for women.

But let us also beware of guru critics who confuse harm by neglect with
intentioned harm.  And watch out, too, for that new category of logical
fallacy created right here on our very own list server:  ad subordinates
hominem.  As for Mr. Goenka, perhaps his deep spirituality was able to
comprehend the point of Rajneesh's philosophy better than the
exhibitionists he encountered.  The point, to quote this most prolific of
all gurus, was this:

"Repression is not the way, cannot be the way.  All that you have repressed
is waiting for its opportunity.  It has simply gone into the unconscious;
it can come back any moment.  Any provocation and it will surface.  You are
not free of it.  Repression is not the way to freedom.  Repression is a far
worse kind of bondage than indulgence, because through indulgence one
becomes tired sooner or later, but through repression one never becomes
tired.

See the point:  indulgence is _bound_ to tire you and bore you;  sooner or
later you will start thinking how to get rid of it all.  But repression
will keep things alive.  Because you have not _lived_ how can you be bored?
 You have not lived--how can you be fed up?  Because you have not lived,
the charm continues, the hypnosis continues.  Deep down, it waits.

And the people who indulge are in a way normal compared to the people who
repress.  The repressing person becomes pathological;  the indulgent is at
least natural.  That's how nature has made you, but to repress is to become
unnatural.  It is easy to go from lower nature to higher nature.  It is
very difficult to go from being unnatural to higher nature."   --The Book
of the Books, Vol. II--


Jonathan Bricklin





Ramakrishnan.
>From ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU Fri Aug 15 01:58:47 1997
Message-Id: <FRI.15.AUG.1997.015847.0000.ADVAITAL at TAMU.EDU>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 01:58:47 +0000
Reply-To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: "Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar at BRAINCELLS.COM>
Subject: Re: advaitam and Kashmir shaivam (Idealism and Realism)
Comments: To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19970813180655.3587608a at mail.nswcc.org.au>
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Wed, 13 Aug 1997, Martin Gifford wrote:

> Hi Jaldhar!
>
> Everyone sees the 'Sunrise' but the 'Sun' and it's 'rise' is given many
> different values and interpretations according to the person. eg. Sungod,
> star, continued drought, "stopping me sleep in", too early, too late
> (especially in the poles!), etc.
>
> And the baby doesn't conceptualise the Sunrise. It just sees light and feels
> warmth and glory.
>
> Regards,
>
> Martin.
>

Well if you're just saying people interpret physical phenomena differently
then I'd agree.  And I'd say it's a good thing they do.  Imagine how
boring life would be if everyone thought exactly the same.  But this is a
far, far more modest claim than that which Subjective Idealist
philosophers both Eastern and Western make which is that individual
observers create their own reality.  That view is untenable.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas [jaldhar at braincells.com]   And the men .-_|\ who hold
Consolidated Braincells Inc.                          /     \
http://www.braincells.com/jaldhar/ -)~~~~~~~~  Perth->*.--._/  o-
"Witty quote" - Dead Guy   /\/\/\ _ _ ___ _  _ Amboy       v      McQ!