Mokshaa - Nirvaana
The Bhagawan Osho Rajaneesh Way
“I have said that man is afraid of both. That’s why they are taboos. No one talks about sex and no one talks about death. We remain silent about these two things. We have remained silent for centuries and centuries. They are taboo subjects, they should not even be mentioned. The moment they are mentioned, something starts trembling within us.”
- Bhagawan Rajaneesh
Love
and
Meditation
Osho Philosophy
Osho believed that awareness, love, meditation and laughter are the greatest values in life. As per him, enlightenment is a normal state of being. However, human thought and emotional ties to societal expectations and the consequent fears and inhibitions that a person experiences distract him from attaining this normal state.
Rajneesh Chandra Mohan Jain (December 11, 1931 - January 19, 1990), better known during the 1970s as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and later as Osho was an Indian spiritual teacher. He lived in India and in other countries including, for a period the United States, and was held centrally by the Osho-Rajneesh movement, a controversial spiritual and philosophical movement.
In the Western world, “Orange People” and Rajneeshees were popular terms to designate Rajneesh followers, the former because of the colour of their clothes, which were meant to be the colour of the sky at dawn. Osho’s philosophy
Osho (Rajneesh) claimed that the greatest values in life are (in no specific order) love, meditation and laughter, and that the highest grace in life was in experiencing spiritual enlightenment. This enlightenment is described as being the normal state of being for all that makes up the cosmos, but one is distracted from realizing that one is experiencing it - particularly by the human activity of thought, as well as by emotional ties to societal expectations, and consequent fears and inhibitions.
He extracted and expounded philosophies from various spiritual sources. He was a prolific speaker both in Hindi and English on various spiritual traditions including those of Buddha, Krishna,Guru Nanak, Jesus, Socrates, Zen masters, Hassidism, Sufism and many others. He also took pains to ensure no “system of thought” would define him, since no philosophy can fully express the truth. His, though by no means uniquely his, was more a “philosophy of no philosophy”.
An experienced orator, he used his skills to convey his message, but insisted that the only reason he kept on talking was to convince his listeners to start on a path of meditation.
He was often called the “sex guru” after some speeches in the late 1960s on sexuality which scandalised an orthodox society. These were later compiled under the title From Sex to Superconsciousness. According to him, “For Tantra everything is holy, nothing is unholy”, and all repressive sexual morality was self-defeating, since one could not transcend sex without experiencing it thoroughly and consciously.
Osho on meditation
According to Osho, meditation is a state beyond mind. It is not concentration. It is not about spiritual thoughts; it is a state of thoughtlessness. It is something that can just happen, it is a state that one can be in, it is not something that one can do. But he said that it is very difficult for modern man to just sit and be in meditation, so he devised some active meditation techniques that naturally take one into meditation. These techniques allow a person to unburden by expressing whatever is repressed in him.
Some of these preparatory exercises can also be found in western psychological therapies (i.e. gestalt therapy), such as altered breathing, gibberish, laughing or crying. His most significant meditation techniques are referred to as Active Meditations, such as “Dynamic Meditation”, “Kundalini Meditation”, “Nadabrahma”, “Nataraj”, and are quite demanding physically.
He also reintroduced several traditional meditation techniques, reducing them to their most minimal expression, stripping them of ritual and tradition, and retaining the most therapeutic parts. He also supported the theory that, given sufficient practice, the meditative state can be achieved and maintained while performing everyday tasks. Furthermore, enlightenment is nothing but being continuously in a meditative state.
