Osho speaks!

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Jonathan Bricklin wrote:

OK, I'll bite.

>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

As I said spontaneous etc is no hallmark of GYAna. Hitler was vary
spontaneous. So are many fake gurus.

>"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.

Ehm, there's no point to see. This kind of reason is totally fallacious.
Why? The reason is that the number of desires one can have is infinite.
If there were only a finite number of desires that may be possible.

I'll give an example. I request list members to take the example
objectively and not be offended. It's also written from the point of
view of a male. Anyway, consider the example of desire for women in a
man:

1. It cannot be satisfied by indulging because no one can get all the
women he wants.
2. Even if he did, some woman he is not with right now would be more
attractive and the process continues.
3. Since there are about 1/2 a billion women in the world and time is
limited to about 100 years (max) such a thing is not possible.
4. Even if the desire for women is completely satisfied, some other
desire would crop up, after all there are infinite number of desires.

What does one do if some desires which cannot be satisfied crop up?
Suppose a man feels that shooting whoever he feels like is very
desirable. Is it your proposal that he go about shooting people till he
is sated? Don't give me reasonings like it cannot occur. It does for
some people at least and we can see it in the newspapers.

Ergo, the above reasoning of Osho sounds good, but cannot work. It's
like many of the perpetual motion machine ideas, all of them sound good,
in fact some of them are positively brilliant, but they can never work.

It does not require someone like Osho to tell me that repressing desires
indiscriminately may be dangerous for most people. That's exactly what
shastra-s say. But, they say: channel your desires into the "good"
desires if you cannot help having desires. Eg, do good for society, help
homeless kids etc. At the same time realize these thoughts must also be
finally given up. That's not too difficult.

But then, if Osho-Om-Rajneesh were to tell that to his fat, middle-aged,
rich, male disciples they would've laughed and been on their way.
Instead providing them with unrestricted access to young women and they
providing him with Rolls-Royces is a very comfortable arrangement
indeed. Based on this I wouldn't call Rajneesh a philosopher but a
member of another profession. Of course, there are enough low IQ men and
women to fall for any kind of nonsense, especially when free access to
drugs and sex is available. But well, I digress. Calling this profound
philosophy is even better. What more could a man want? Unrestricted
indulgence with women and drugs all the while calling it profound
philosophy! The garb of philosophy is also very convenient for
abandoning their families! Very, very attractive indeed!

When it has been intellectually determined that the jagat is mithyA it
is ridiculous to imagine that one will be free of desires by indulging,
when the number of desires are infinite. This is not homeopathy, you
know. It is not even just ridiculous, but plainly foolish. I have
thought about this "get rid of desires by indulging in them" nonsense
quite deeply. Don't think that I haven't given any thought to it or that
my reaction to Osho is that of a conservative Pavlovian dog (you might
be pleasantly surprised to know that I have even read some books by
Osho). It's my considered thought that this kind of reasoning has no
merit to it.

Ramakrishnan.

PS: I wrote the above in an objective manner. If if it offended anyone,
I apologize once again. Please send me mail if it offended you.