Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh-- I had forgotten him. But then I recalled those turbulent, controversial days in Oregon in the early 1980's. He came out of India to settle in central Oregon with quick confrontation with the authorities. His followers were moving there, buying property and voting. And then there were his counter culture teachings of sexual liberation and love. I remember him as the Cadillac Guru who drove around his compound in his sedan with followers throwing flowers on his hood. His Ashram came to an ignominious end in the mid 1980's when his private secretary and a small cadre were implicated in heinous crimes including plots to murder local and federal officials and poisoning a local restaurant salad bar. There has been no substantial evidence that Rajneesh himself was involved in the crimes but he did plead guilty to an immigration offense and was deported. He eventually returned to India where he has become more popular than before and has even undergone what some have called an apotheosis.
In autumn 2002 I went to a retreat in the NC mountains with a group of Osho followers. I didn't know Osho but learned he was a new incarnation of a guru who had died in the 1990's. Previously he had been Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh! What I went too I would call a dance meditation--not being into the language of the group. A free style movement, present in the now was what I experienced. They were a pleasant group with many having Eastern names in place of their Western birth names. They emphasized love and basically emanated peace. All this along with hikes in the mountains added up to a very nice weekend for me. I've had no further contact with the group.
All this came back to me today when I read an article from a researcher at the University of Oregon who conducted research on the group in the 1980's in Oregon and later into the late 1990's with members who had moved on to different locations.
The researcher pointed out that members continued to hold faith in Rajneesh (Osho) into the late 1990's and saw him as a great force in transforming their lives and helping them live comfortably with their goals and balance the many difficult conflicts of life and career. Two thirds of the Oregon followers had college degrees and/or lucrative careers. More than half were women. And many of these had left successful well paying careers because they still felt lonely and anxious and thrived in the love and affirmation of Rajneesh.
As mentioned, Osho has been undergoing something of an apotheosis. So perhaps we are seeing formed now, a major religion of tomorrow just as Christianity formed in the first and second centuries. I imagine most contemporaries never even heard of Jesus and his followers and most who did found the whole idea as absurd. Jesus in his day was a Roman criminal and had his own counter culture movement. And even so the movement changed with time and came to dominate the Western world.
Also today I read the basic "Ten Commandments" of Osho. They really don't seem such a bad set of principles to live by:
- Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also.
- There is no God other than life itself.
- Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
- Love is prayer.
- To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.
- Life is now and here.
- Live wakefully.
- Do not swim—float.
- Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
- Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.
---- the Bishop
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