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In yesterday's post, Osho was described as a controversial mystic. Ahh...indeed he was. From his 93 Rolls Royces, to his arrest and deportation...assasination plot...to his teachings on sex and aids and all manner of eccentricities. He was also agnostic...
Very strange guy. And while I would not spend the time talking about him that I spent posting about Frank Laubach, I think he is interesting enough for one post. Most of his teachings do not really speak to me because, being an agnostic, he does not come from the same paradigm I live in. I believe in a living, personal God. He believes, I think, in some kind of energy...and the word love is thrown about quite a bit in his teachings.
There is a plethora of info available on line about him. For a quick synopsis, as always, wikipedia gives a concise overview (and the writing on Osho has citations galore. This guy certainly got a lot of attention) And then at his home page there are literally hundreds of e-books containing his teachings. Amazing considering that I read somewhere he never wrote a single book. His books are his spoken messages, transcribed by his followers. So, all in all, he might be worth a quick look...but there are a lot of sticks to sort through before you get to any hay.
One little snippet of his that caught my eye was the following quote about sympathy. Very true, don't you think?
Sympathy is not compassion; it is just the opposite. Sympathy is a kind of exploitation of the other person. When you sympathize with somebody, you are higher, better, and the other is lower, falling, degraded. Your ego gets immense satisfaction out of sympathy. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. You don't know exactly what you are doing.
And it is an enjoyable moment for you, because the other is in need of your sympathy. You are the giver, the other is the beggar.
It occurs to me that pity is an even more stronger demarcation of status. Pitying another really puts us on an even higher rung of the ladder....at least in our own mind.
Nothing particularly profound in this post...perhaps verging on news you can't use...although I kind of like the sympathy vs. compassion thought. It makes me realize that sometimes, even though we might think we are doing/feeling a good thing, the motives (which may be unbeknownst to us) are ultimately selfish and self serving.
4 comments:
U cannot label him " AGNOSTIC". To clarify ur perception here is A comment :
Osho – I am not creating any religion. It is only a religiousness, a diffused kind of religiousness, not very tangible. You cannot make a creed out of it, you cannot make a church out of it–impossible! I am not leaving a single Bible or Koran or Gita so you can make a church out of it. When I will leave the world I will leave at least one thousand books, so contradictory to each other that anybody trying to make out any dogma out of them will go crazy.
It is impossible to make any dogma out of my ideas, but you can transform your being through them.
I have been constantly inconsistent so that you will never be able to make a dogma out of me. You will simply go nuts if you try. I am leaving something really terrible for scholars. They will not be able to make any sense out of it. They will go nuts; and they deserve it, they should go nuts. But nobody can create an orthodoxy out of me, it is impossible….
From my words you can get burned, but you will not be able to find any kind of theology, dogmatism.
You can find a way to live but not a dogma to preach.
You can find a rebellious quality to be imbibed, but you will not find a revolutionary theme to be organized.
My words are not only on fire. I am putting gunpowder also here and there, which will go on exploding for centuries. I am putting more than needed–I never take any chances. Almost each sentence is going to create trouble for anybody who wants to organize a religion around me.
Yes, you can have a loose community, a commune. Remember the word loose: everybody independent, everybody free to live his own way, to interpret me in his own way, to find whatsoever he wants to find. He can find the way he wants to live–and everybody unto himself.
There is no need for somebody to decide what my religion is. I am leaving it open-ended. You can work out a definition for yourself, but it is only for yourself; and that too you will have to continuously change. As you understand me more and more, you will have to change it. You cannot go on holding it like a dead thing in your hand. You will have to change it, and it will go on changing you simultaneously.
Do you want me to say that I bring you the last message? I am not going to say it. I am not going to be in the company of all these fools who have been trying somehow to make their religion look bigger, higher, truer.
I say to you that I am not bringing anybody’s message–because there is nobody! I want you to understand that I am simply trying to share my experience with you. It is always fresh, always young; it is always in the now, in the here. That is a fundamental quality of truth.
And I’m not saying that after me there will be nobody who will experience it. On the contrary, I am saying to you that if you understand me, there are going to be millions of people after me who will go on and on and on discovering more and more.
Even if they have to contradict me, don’t bother about it–let them contradict. Who am I? I am not closing the doors. I am not putting a lock on the door and taking the keys with me. My house is without doors. It is open from everywhere–and I want it to remain always open.
Naturally, people who will be coming will make new arrangements of the furniture in the house. They may plan a new architecture for the house, they may make new plans for the garden. I leave it to them, but the process will be the same.
-osho.
Refer my previous comment. Pl. go through this interview of Osho as well :
Q: YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD, IS THAT CORRECT?
A: I don’t believe in anything. Belief is simply not part of my vocabulary. Belief simply means you don’t know, yet you believe. A blind man believing in light — what can that belief do? He does not need a prophet, a messiah; he needs medicine, a surgeon, perhaps an operation on his eyes, so that he can see. And do you believe in light? Nobody asks such questions — you know light is there. The question of belief is asked only when the thing is non-existential. You cannot see it, you cannot touch it, you cannot feel it. God is a belief, heaven is a belief, hell is a belief The reason why you believe in these things is within your psychology; the priest is only exploiting. You have greed for immortality, you have greed for paradise and all the pleasures there. You have fear of death, you have fear of falling into the darkness of hell and all the tortures there. Naturally you start believing, because you don’t want to go to hell, you want to go to heaven. It is because of this psychology that an idiot like Reverend Jim Jones managed the suicide of his whole commune. He persuaded them to die with him, because if they died with him, they would all enter into heaven. This is the logical conclusion of Jesus’ telling his disciples, ‘I will take you into heaven.” Jim Jones went a little farther. He was really a great Christian! — after Jesus only he is the prophet.
Q: SO YOU BELIEVE THAT IF GOD EXISTED, GOD WOULD REVEAL HIMSELF IN SOME TANGIBLE WAY?
A: There is no God, and there is no question of his revelation. I don’t see any possibility of God’s existence. I can understand the existence of consciousness, because it is within me and I can experience it. And in my silent moments of awareness, I have never come across any God, any hell, any heaven.
Q: IS RAJNEESHISM OR 0SHO A RELIGION?
A: No. It is a religionless religion. It is simply religiousness.
Q: DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A PROPHET?
A: No. I am not so stupid. I don’t consider myself in any way special, extraordinary, a messenger of God, a prophet, a messiah. No. I am just an ordinary human being like you and everybody else.
Questions by Lynn Hudson INDIA ABROAD NEW YORK to OSHO
Hi baawra...you said:
U cannot label him " AGNOSTIC".
Cindi says:
I think I got the description of Osho as an agnostic from the wikipedia article...or another of the articles I came across. I am definitely not all that familiar with Osho's teachings but for some reason had the whim to write about him. And I thank you for your comments and for pointing out the misleading information. From what I came across this morning on a quick little google jaunt around the internet, I found several articles where he flat out says...there is no God....similar to the comments he made in the article you quote in your second comment. Again thanks...and while I might find some hay amongst the sticks in his teachings (and he was certainly prolific I am amazed at the amount of stuff on the internet) He is for sure living in a different paradigm than the one in which I live...
Cindi.....
baawra said:
Refer my previous comment. Pl. go through this interview of Osho as well :
Q: YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD, IS THAT CORRECT?
Cindi says:
Thanks again...and for further clarification on Osho's beliefs about God check out the following link...
http://www.osho.com/Topics/TopicsEng/UnderGod.htm
Perhaps some of the reason for the agnostic label might be from taking some of his words in this article that seem to be somewhat vague or even bordering on contradictory. I imagine there are other articles that may seem kind of vague as well. But you are right, he does flat out say...there is no God.
Osho says:
There is no God, and there is no question of his revelation. I don’t see any possibility of God’s existence.
Cindi says:
I think I may write another post about this spurred on by thoughts spurred on by your comments. Thanks for taking the time to comment...
Cindi....
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