Kranti you can play semantics as much as you like, but it does not change the situation. Obviously if you are using the term devotion to refer to the negative tendency of excess worship, then yes devotion is not equated with love (or Zorba). If Osho was referring in any particular passage to the negative sense of devotion, then of course it would not be equated with Zorba or love. Devotion is today usually viewed in the negative sense, and so therefore it is more popular to consider oneself a great disciple rather than a great devotee. This does not change what I mean when I refer to devotion as the process of dissolution into the Master. It is the same as the path of love and the path of the Sufis.
Kranti has a definition of devotion as (negative) worship and putting the Master on a high pedestal. The term Zorba in Zorba the Buddha, the term surrender, and the term love, have the same meaning as described by Osho in the passages deleted from the Osho books. OK so it is love or surrender that has been cut out of the Osho texts. OK so it is Zorba that has been cut off the Osho texts and the Osho movement. Call it what you like, but the systematic deletion process in the two texts chops the Master in half, as per Osho’s own definition of Zorba the Buddha. It actually destroys the Master’s vision. Your negative definition of devotion makes no difference. I will call Keerti, Arun, Neelam, and Swami Rajneesh great lovers who have surrendered to Osho. The terms devotion and devotee have nothing to do with it at all. Many people (including from the Inner-Circle) that are representative of different dimensions of Osho have been forcibly removed. They have been kicked out, and the dimension of Osho that they are aligned with has been deleted from the Osho texts.
The editing of the texts is not what people think. Have a read! It is firstly removing love or surrender (what I also call devotion). It is, as Osho himself says, removing Zorba (love) from Zorba the Buddha. It has nothing to do with your ideas of love, surrender, devotion, or Zen. It comes directly from Osho’s explanation of Zorba the Buddha (equating Zorba with love), and the fact that the passages relating to love (which Osho uses interchangeably with the term surrender) have been removed from the texts. Of course there are other changes to the text that also completely change the meaning.
Admittedly I may be charged here with quote bashing. In reading the entire text, I consider the meanings Osho has given to be clear, and that I have here reflected this. OK so I am cleared of the worst grade of quote bashing, but still the charge is there. The reason is that there are probably numerous references to Zorba being this or that. This is likely the case, yet this ironically only reinforces the central argument anyway.
Osho is clearly a complex and multi-dimensional fellow, and so to make any major changes to anything in his discourses (and his legacy) is an affront to its integrity. In the texts I referred to Osho moves swiftly through so many different issues. If through this process he let’s say addresses the issue of rebelliousness (or perhaps corrupt politicians or priests) on any number of occasions, then I simply cannot delete these references without changing the meaning of the entire passage.
The references are interwoven in a complex web. It is not like Osho will just give a great spiel on one issue alone. He was a rambling forgetful genius. He had the unique quality of prolific rambling on an array of subjects with who knows what changes in depth of meaning (and style of delivery). It is like a magical bundle of knotted twine that is impossible to unwind. Yes you can point to different parts of the bundle of twine. What else can people do? Who has the intellectual genius to fathom but a small fraction of what Osho offers? Yet this does not mean you can cut off the bits you like with a pair of scissors, and then place these bits together to make a new piece of string. This is what is happening with the type of editing of texts that I have looked at. This destroys the meaning of the message and the integrity of the discourses.
Kranti you consider the objections to editing to be based on worship or what you negatively refer to as devotion (“how dare you touch…”). So have you considered the objections? Have you looked at the editing? Or, did you simply pass judgement on the objections without being informed? Actually that is what you did, and do you know what that is? It is called blind judgement. You are saying yes to editing and no to the objections without knowing yourself anything about the matter. This means you have a conditioning in favour of the Pune resort and team. This is called devotion (in the negative sense). You are a great devotee of Amrito, ha ha!
Have you met Keerti or been to the centre in Delhi? Have you met Arun or Rajneesh? How much time have you spent with Amrito, or indeed at the resort? You have strong views based on nothing but reading books that you have no idea how heavily or in what way they are edited. You are the essence of devotion (in the negative sense). The blind worships the blind.
Of course you say you would like to know more, and do not want to comment. All this after you have made great comment. You are not only a great devotee, but also a great hypocrite.
Shantam, not for your sake but rather for the sake of those that might start believing you false claims, I am not Abhay. As the great master Hitler knew only too well, if you repeat a lie often enough it shall become the truth. You ask will anything change. Will you?
Shantam, His people can speak (or not) what ever they like. That makes no difference to who Osho was, and what he said. It does not change the fact the Osho declared there be no spiritual successor and that the Inner-Circle was not a pseudo-guru group, but a practical managerial group.
Since you are a great lover of Osho (what I call a devotee) you might like to share quotes that highlight love or surrender. That is well and perfectly good. Since Jayesh is a great zen disciple he might like to share quotes that highlight meditation or awareness. (Of course he is actually a great devotee, in the negative sense).
Trouble is, what has happened is that in discourses that interweave many different perspectives, the particular references to love or surrender (and also death, social theory, and rebelliousness, etc.) have been cut out. When you read through the amended text, it gives the false impression that you are viewing something that is complete and whole, when it is clearly not. Even if a book states clearly that it is a compilation, this false impression is still there.
The point of a compilation is to provide an impression without losing the essential message. Yet, as explained previously, with Osho’s style of lengthy intertwining complexity, and with the style of ‘compiling’ being one of cutting out particular references as the arise, the essential meaning is lost. It is not like Osho talks only about ‘zen’ one day, and the next day he talks only about ‘devotion’. So many issues are intertwined in any given discourse, such that compilation based strictly on one subject matter (in the way done in the texts I have looked at) gives this subject matter new meaning, and takes away the capacity to give meaning to the subject matter that has been deleted.
If I read a quote from OshoWorld.com, then I know that it is just a fragment that of course supports their position. If I read a quote from Osho.com then of course I know that it is just a fragment that of course supports their position. (Unless, like most happy fools I am naïve and stupid). In the case of the two texts however, when I read them I start with the assumption that I am reading something that is offering a general and comprehensive perspective of Osho’s understanding, yet what I get is actually an expansion of one perspective (or fragment), at the expense of other perspectives. In this lies the deception, and the injustice to the meaning given by Osho. It changes the meaning! It is the same as the quote bashing that takes place here and all over the place. A fragment of Osho is used to justify your position in an argument. It takes Osho out of context and gives the words a new and slanted meaning.
The books that have amended Osho’s words in this way should have a warning something like that on cigarette packets. WARNING: Reading is a mental health hazard. It should also say that the view offered is a biased and false impression created by personally motivated systematic deletions (and additions), and does not reflect the views of the so denoted author (Osho), but rather a cult of narrow minded corrupt fascist pseudo-Zen psychopaths.
Lokesh, it is clear that at certain times Osho’s discourses reflected certain practical realities rather then deep spiritual truths. For example, when The Ranch imploded he took to providing different types of explanations to the various interest groups (to either get rid of them or again try and draw them back into the fold). Imagine Osho back in Pune after all the dramas of The Ranch. The guys image was in tatters. If he wanted to attract some more people he had a little bit of explaining to do I should think (of course not to himself, but to us worldly folk who by the way are not enlightened, but are also not entirely stupid).
When for example in the early days Osho stopped travelling around India and decided to settle and create a community, then of course he would need people with practical skills to support this. It wouldn’t be much good if everyone wanted to either touch his feet or sit 24/7 in zen. I find it difficult to draw from this that at the end of calculation table when The Ranch imploded, that Sheela came out with a score of 99 percent positive. I consider that maths to be devoid of any common sense.
It makes me think of Jayesh. I wonder why?
No comments:
Post a Comment