Rajneesh written by Xavier James L.S.

Rajneesh  By Xavier James L.S.

Introduction

Mohan Chandra Rajneesh was born in December 1931. He was one of 12 children of a cloth merchant. As a child he was a willful, completely fearless child who in early life displayed hypnotic abilities. He was a university lecturer until 1965. He is gifted, erudite, a natural leader, completely fearless and capable of inspiring love. He was surrounded by wealthy business men and these tried to promote his teaching. He was always associated with the rich and wealthy people who became his disciples.

He called himself as Bhagwan i.e. the Blessed One and he says that he is the incarnation like any other spiritual leaders. He is not “the blessed one” whereas he is a human being just like us. Many people state that he is a remarkable teacher with a deeply disturbing influence. His emphasis was on spiritual sexuality and the physical release of inhibitions. And this is why many westerners joined his sect and followed and propagated his teaching in India as well as in West.

About Indian Philosophy

According to Rajneesh there is no Indian Philosophy as such. Philosophy is one and universal. There can be no geographical division in the human mind. These divisions and distinctions are political. You can see the world through three dimensions. One is science: that is thinking empirically about reality. The second is philosophy: thinking about reality speculatively. And the third is religion: not thinking about reality at all, but experiencing it. He states that philosophy is absolute because we are not thinking about the outside but we are thinking about the inside of humanity, about the inside of the human being: the innermost, the subjective core of the human mind. Philosophy can be absolute but it cannot be whole because the outside has been left out.

Thought on Truth

While dream is death, truth is life; dream is sleep and truth is wakefulness. So wake up and realize yourself. One day when all our efforts fail, when no path seems to lead us anywhere, it then becomes clear that whatever I can do does not take me to Truth. No activity will unravel the mystery of the ‘I’ because all activities lead us out. No activity takes us to Existence. Where activity ceases Existence reveals itself. No activity will offer that to us because that is in existence even before the activities. There is no path ‘there’ since there is ‘here’. Truth cannot be said, and that which can be said not truth anymore. The moment you say it, you falsify it, Truth is so simple it cannot be uttered. Hence a pure heart is needed, not a mind full of information. Hence love is needed, not logic. Truth is vast as the sky. Truth is not just intellectual.

God is not somewhere else, but in your own depths, into your own ultimate depths. Truth is not somewhere else to be found; it has to be searched and looked within. Truth is not something of the mind, otherwise it would have been very easy to attain it.

Thought on Consciousness

In truth, in Existence ‘self-alienation’ is eradicated. That difference too was only in thought and of thought.  Consciousness has three aspects: 1.Outer insensible – inner insensible 2. Outer alert – inner insensible and 3. Outer sensible – inner alert. The first aspect is that of insensibility – non consciousness. It is the condition of an interior thought. The second aspect is that of half-insensibility – half consciousness. That is between the insentient and the sentient. That is the condition during the thought. The third aspect is that of absence of insensibility – perfect consciousness. It is beyond all thought. Mere absent of thought does not enable one to secure the knowledge of Truth. It leads only to sluggishness, to insensibility. Many of the activities current in the name of religion lead only to insensibility. Wine, Sex and Music too lead only to insensibility. In insensibility there is flight. It is not a positive achievement. One has to possess absence of thought plus realize the Truth.

God is not to be searched; what is searched is consciousness. The conscious person knows, feels, experiences. He does not believe in God: he lives in God, he breathes in God, his heart beats in God. In consciousness you have eyes to see God, you have eyes to see the truth of existence. A man of awareness acts out of his awareness, hence there is not repentance; his action is total. Man’s character is a shadow phenomenon, consciousness is the center. Character simply reflects consciousness.

When you are absolutely happy in your aloneness, when you don’t need the other at all, when the other is not a need, then you are capable of love. If the other is your need you can only exploit, manipulate, dominate, but you cannot love.

Anger is there because you are unconscious, greed is there because you are unconscious, possessiveness and jealousy are there because you are unconscious. In order to change the character we need to be more intensely and passionately conscious. And the meeting of your consciousness with the beyond is the point of bliss, true happiness. A life lived unconsciously can’t be beautiful, a life lived unconsciously cannot have freedom, how there can be any freedom?

Revolutionary Thoughts

A flower has flowered. By evening, it must die just like that.  Any idea that has flowered must die. It must not try to be permanent. It must allow other flowers to flower; it must die so that the next day something else can flower. If I create an organization, then I am creating a hindrance of my own that will prevent something new form arising. To be really authentic in your sex life you have to go beyond the structure of marriage. Planning always presupposes frustration. When you plan you create the seeds of frustration. Do not plan, just go on working and let it come. It is always beautiful when it comes by itself. It is always fulfilling, never frustrating, because there has been no expectation, you are never disappointed. The less you are disheartened, the more you can do. The more you are disheartened the less you can do.

Wisdom & Knowledge

Knowledge is not knowledge. It has the appearance of knowledge. Knowledge is only information, and accumulation of information goes on growing. Rather than liberating you it goes on creating new bondages for you.

Wisdom is to know that you do not know, to know that it has not happened to you. It has come from others, that it is not your own insight, your own realization. The moment knowledge is your own realization, it is wisdom. Wisdom means you are not a parrot, that you are a man, that you are  not repeating others but expressing yourself, that you are not a carbon copy, that you have an original face of your own.

Knowledge always belongs to the past, wisdom belongs to the present. Knowledge satisfies the ego: wisdom destroys the ego completely. Knowledge means theories about truth; wisdom means truth itself. Knowledge is second hand; wisdom is first hand.

Who am I

‘Who am I’ is not really a question, hence can never be answered, neither by others nor by yourself. Then what it is? It is utterly absurd. By asking it, do not hope one day you will get the answer. Life is not a question-answer game. It is not a puzzle to be solved, it is a mystery to e lived.

Conclusion

It has been a reflective reading of the life of Rajneesh. He has been very influential among the Indians and Westerners. He was encouraging free sex and so many wealthy people joined his sect. His thoughts and teachings are very inspiring but as a Christian I find his teaching is different from Christian values. He is too skeptic about religion and religious people. Like any other philosophers his discourses are not purely philosophical. But they are the messages to the humanity to lead their lives in a particular way where the humanity will truly live their life to its fullest.

References

Bhagawan, R. S. (1978). Seeds of Revolutionary Thought. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Bhagwan, R. S. (1984). The book of hte books, Vol. III. USA: Rajneesh Publications.

Bhagwan, R. S. (1985). The book of the books, Vol. IV. USA: Rajneesh Publications.

Bhagwan, R. S. (1980). The Eternal Quest. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.

Milne, H. (1986). Bhagwan The God That Failed. London: Caliban Books.