– Osho –
Life begins where fear ends
Bhagwan Osho Rajneesh
"With me all illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes it will irritate you. It will annoy you. That's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots. Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind there is no hope for you."
“Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own; you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.”
Osho - Revolutionary
During his lifetime, Osho was viewed as a highly controversial new religious movement leader and mystic. He criticised leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and the orthodoxy of mainstream religion. Especially India’s dominant traditional Hinduism.
According to Osho qualities such as love, celebration, creativity and mindfulness are suppressed by static belief systems, religious tradition and social conditioning.
He advocated a much more open attitude to human sexuality and this caused controversy in India in the late 1960s. Osho became known as “the sex guru”.
“Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”
Osho Teachings
“Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.”
Osho was born as Chandra Mohan Jain 11 December 1931. He was also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh before naming himself Osho, which means “oceanic” – dissolving into the ocean. Later he found out that the name is also used as an honorific title for Japanese Zen masters.
After awakening to his true nature at the age of twenty-one, Osho travelled throughout India in the 1960s as a public speaker and professor of philosophy.
“My meditation is simple. It does not require any complex practices. It is simple. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently”
During the 1970s he expanded his spiritual teachings and commented on a wide variety of writings from religious traditions, mystics, bhakti poets and philosophers from around the world.
An Osho ashram was established in Pune which offered meditation and therapy workshops. It quickly became popular with Western spiritual seekers.
The ashram was known as a place for intense spiritual practice and has been described as radiating “an emotionally charged, madhouse-carnival atmosphere”.
A normal day began 6:00 am with Dynamic Meditation. From 8:00 am Osho would give a spontaneous 60 to 90-minute lecture and then during daytime various meditations and therapies took place. The highly charged energies of these events were ascribed to the buddhafield created in the ashram.
In the evenings Osho would offer darshan and initiate new followers as sannyasins with new spiritual names.
“The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.”
Osho Community: Rajneeshpuram
After problems with Indian authorities, Osho decided in 1981 to relocate his ashram to Orgeon in the United States. Soon the deserted wasteland in Oregon was transformed into a dynamic village for thousands of his followers.
However, the experiment almost immediately ran into conflict with county residents and the state government. A series of legal battles ended with Osho being deported from the US in 1985.
He went back home to India where he revived his ashram in Pune. This was where he left his body in 1990. A splendid samadhi hall was built as memorial monument.
Osho’s teachings had a huge impact on the development of a new age spirituality and after his death he has become perhaps even more popular than when alive.
John David's Connection to Osho
“With Osho I learnt meditation and the awareness to look inside. He inspired a life-long search for truth and opened up my heart. My everyday life changed dramatically during the fifteen years I spent in his presence.”
Extraordinary circumstances brought John David from his work as an architect in Tokyo to becoming a sannyasin at Osho’s ashram in Pune. Osho was his first spiritual master and John David stayed with him for 15 years until Osho left his body. After Osho’s death John David was encouraged to go to Lucknow where he met his final teacher Papaji.
Osho Blogs
Books about Osho
In ‘Glimpses of a Golden Childhood’, Osho tells the story of meeting Bodhidharma in another life. ‘The White Lotus’ is an opportunity to experience the secod meeting of these two outragous men of Zen.
“The route is simple:sex just has to be part of your religious life, it has to be something sacred. Sex has to be something not obscene, not pornographic, not condemned, not repressed but immensely respected, because we are born out of it. It is our very life source.
Photos of Osho
Osho Biography
December 11th, 1931
1952
1955
1957
1957
1966
Early 1970s
1974
1981
1985
1987
1989
January 19, 1990
Born as Chandra Mohan Jain in Madhya Pradesh, India
Experience of intense spiritual awakening at age of 21
Earning a BA in philosophy at University of Jabalpur
MA in philosophy from University of Saugar
Began teaching philosophy at University of Jabalpur
Resigned from university post and became a spiritual guru teaching meditation
Started initiating Sannyasins.
New Osho Ashram established in Pune
Osho moved to Oregon, USA, and started building up new Ashram Rajneeshpuram
Deported from the USA
Returned to Pune Ashram in India
Adopted the name “Osho”, meaning dissolving into the ocean.
Left his body while in the Pune ashram. Spectacular samadhi hall dedicated to his memory.
Osho Quotes
