A dangerous man
Though so much has been written about Osho, it is difficult to describe who he was. This enlightened master spoke with astounding clarity about every aspect of human experience and consciousness. Yet, he declared to his disciples, “I cannot say I am a master; I can only say I am a hollow bamboo. You can make a flute of me; existence can sing a song through me. My quality is only that I will not be in the way. I will allow existence in its purity to touch your heart.”
Osho was born on December 11, 1931, in Kuchwada, a small village in Madhya Pradesh, and his parents gave him the name Rajneesh Chandra Mohan. He died on January 19, 1990, at Osho Commune International in Pune, where his ashes are preserved in his samadhi at the Chuang Tzu Auditorium.
Osho loved books and his personal library in Pune contains about 1,00,000 titles. His tastes were eclectic, ranging from philosophy and religion to psychology, science, literature, history, the arts, politics and poetry. All books have been read and dated and often signed by him.
Osho used a unique signature. Of it he says, “Thousands of times people have asked me, ‘What does this signature mean? Which is the language you are signing in?’ It means nothing! It is no language… My signature says nothing; it is just symbolic. It indicates something but it says nothing, it means nothing. It is not my name.”
This is the way an enlightened mystic, who is without ego, looked at himself. He lived beyond time and space. It may not be easy to understand this as most of us live our lives in memories of the past and in anticipation of the future. Only rarely, in our deepest meditation, do we touch the timeless dimension of the present.
Osho has also been criticised and condemned by priests and politicians of the world as he was not a conformist to any religion or belief system. Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume, said: “Osho is the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ... He’s obviously a very effective man; otherwise he wouldn’t be such a threat. He’s saying the same things that nobody else has the courage to say.”
Osho had a rebellious spirit, he advocated a new vision for the new man on the earth. He said: “The new man I conceive, will not have any belief system and will not have any faith. He will be a seeker, a searcher, an enquirer. His life will be a life of tremendous discovery — discoveries in the outside world and discoveries in the inside too. I want every human being to be a discoverer: a Copernicus, a Columbus, in the outside world and a Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Chuang Tzu in the inside world. My whole effort is concentrated on one thing: to create the new man as Zorba the Buddha. The day you are both together you have become the new
man, and the new man is going to be the saviour of humanity.”
Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance
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