Please note that Vineeto’s correspondence below was written by the feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ while ‘she’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom.
Selected Correspondence Vineeto Mohan Rajneesh aka Osho Actualism Homepage RESPONDENT: You see Vineeto that kind of stuff and also that you still use your Sannyas name VINEETO: I have explained before both to you and another correspondent why I use the name Vineeto – [Respondent]: Hi Vineeto, (is that still your Sannyas name? No offence meant I was given the name <name deleted>. My so-called spiritual backgrounds are roughly the teachings of Mr. Krishnamurti and BSR). We have met on a short occasion in Byron I call it the No. 12 incident. [Vineeto]: Yes, Vineeto was my name in Sannyas days and I have decided to keep it for various practical reasons, one being that my original German name is difficult to pronounce in English and I now live in an English speaking country. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 23, 14.6.2001). * [Vineeto]: The story about my name is very simple. When I first became a disciple of Rajneesh in 1980, I was told to keep my Christian name together with the typical Hindu prefix – it was the practice at the time because there were so many new disciples initiated every evening that new Indian names were only given on special request. Two years later, when I visited the Ranch in Oregon, USA, many Americans and English-speaking nationalities had trouble pronouncing my German name – so I went along with the fashion and asked for an Indian name – Vineeto. Living in Australia, the difficulty for people pronouncing my Christian name has not changed and I decided to keep the Indian name for practical reasons, even after extricating myself from the devotional relationship with Mr. Rajneesh and his religion. A name is but a name, and it makes no difference if it originates in the Christian tradition or in the Hindu tradition. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom Mailing List, No. 12, 30.7.2000). RESPONDENT: ... and keep on referring to Osho as Mohan or plain Rajneesh however never using his Full name (that he referred to himself during the period that no doubt you got your name Vineeto) which read Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, casts a shadow on what I would call your hmmm... authority in these matters. VINEETO: Rajneesh’s original name was in fact Chandra Mohan. When he began to become famous he added the name Rajneesh (king of the night) and also gave himself the title ‘Archarya’ (teacher) which he later changed to ‘Bhagwan’ (God). ‘Shree’ is also just a title meaning ‘Sir’ or ‘Reverend’. In his final year Rajneesh had a period in which he called himself Maitreya (imagining himself being a vessel for a reincarnating Siddhartha Gautama) and after he dropped this idea he allowed his disciples to call him ‘Osho’ which is merely a reverential title gleaned from Japanese spiritual tradition. When I freed myself from my feelings of loyalty and devotion to Rajneesh I also stopped using the reverential terms that his disciples use. As for my ‘authority in these matters’ – I draw my expertise on matters of spirituality from having freed myself from all spiritual beliefs after being deeply entrenched in the practice of this certain brand of spirituality. One has to be free from a belief in order to understand it in its totality and thus be able to talk about it with authority. * VINEETO: You also made comment on a post I sent to you recently – As you become more and more observant as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive and you find that are not happy then you can become aware of the human condition in action in you. In this process you may for instance discover that it is part and parcel of the human condition to want to deny and repress one’s bad emotions, to automatically block out information that possibly destroys the image one has of oneself or questions the truths one holds, to mechanically blame the other first – be it the government, the system, one’s parents, one’s upbringing, etc. – for unwanted feelings and inconvenient situations, to choose to remain aloof and agnostic instead of challenging one’s own convictions, to create a diversion so as to avoid certain topics when one’s pet beliefs are at stake, to attack or retreat when one feels threatened even though there is no physical threat happening, and so on – in short, one discovers that the human condition is inherently ‘self’-preserving, comparable to an invincible fully armoured castle with only small peepholes to look out from. (Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, No. 23, 31.1.2004). RESPONDENT: As to [to create a diversion so as to avoid certain topics when one’s pet beliefs are at stake] ‘nless you would be willing to answer the question: what is the meaning of the name Vineeto? like i.e. Prem Prabat means (the dawn of love). Iow. to disclose this information I have asked for (albeit only once and quite a while ago). VINEETO: This is what I said when you first asked this question – [Respondent]: So just out of curiosity what was your German maiden name? ^note as I have made it perfectly clear in previous writings to Richard that I have no intentions nor do I have any interest to invade in private matters so if you consider this as to be an irrelevant question it will be fully respected as entirely your own business whether to disclose it or not , yet as Peter has disclosed his former Sannyas name and even explained the silly poetic meaning of it, so just to poke a bit of fun of Spirituality I wonder what it is that Vineeto meant, mine was silence and I was very proud of it. ^ [Vineeto]: I do consider these issues as irrelevant to this list and nothing to do with the business of becoming free from the human condition and, as such, I prefer to leave it at that. Whatever meaning Rajneesh gave to the name Vineeto is of no concern to me today. I simply decided that it was easier to keep using the name by which everyone has come to know me rather than revert to a name that my parents gave me which is more difficult to pronounce in English. (Re Fellow human beings, 24.8.2002). To be precise it was not Rajneesh who gave out names at the time I was received the name but one of his disciples, and insider’s rumour had it that he just randomly picked his way through a list of Indian names. So you see, once I began to question my spiritual beliefs and saw through the whole charade of the guru business any ‘special’ meaning of the name disappeared along with my dependency, loyalty and gullibility. (...) * RESPONDENT: Also it would put under discussion the assumption (as it still is nothing more then that to me) that the occurrence of an ongoing PCE indeed is a result from this amygdala event and not of the fact that you people are strongly affected by a Buddha field that is generated in Byron. VINEETO: What you call a ‘Buddha field’ has no existence outside of the minds and hearts of spiritual disciples. Nowadays Byron Bay ‘Buddha field’ mainly consists of Rajneeshees defending their belief against attacks from other spiritual/religious believers while squabbling amongst themselves for positions on the spiritual ladder, or preying on the gullible for their own material gains– and it’s all on display in the local newspapers. RESPONDENT: Well I have put it very nicely and I will sent it in rich text as well as in plain text and we’ll see how it goes. As far as I’m concerned all the gooses are out now and the pigeons too. PS. I have been considering the option to sent it to your private maladdress, but I have rejected that option as I no longer see the need for that kind of suppositious behaviour. VINEETO: I appreciate that. RESPONDENT: You also may have noticed that I have sent a humaniversity link such as to make clear were I come from and what my current position is. VINEETO: Yes, I noticed. RESPONDENT to No. 60: Over the years that I have been on this list, for quite some time I have always had my reserves to the enormous implications that Richard’s claim has, yet regardless of the verifiability of that he for sure is a vip. i=(intelligent). Being myself not one of the most stupid people in fact some sort of genius, I have always been open to consider the impossible. That’s why I have persistently practiced AF (albeit adjusted the method in my own way). Taking stock of what that has resulted in, I come to a conclusion that probably before I ever came in touch with AF – I already had reached a plateau of relative happy and harmlessness. By and by when I started to write on this list I became a pusher of Actualism, and the method, because I sincerely believed that the sequence might affect other brains and produce a hmm chain reaction, and that PCEs would start to happen as outbreaks. So… before I came in touch with actualism I was a sannyasin and although I have tried to made a 180 degree turn I have never done so apparently for me I set course when I decided to join the sannyasin-club, and became a meditator and that’s basically how I look at the sequence: a high-tech meditation technique (meditation on the fly if you wish) and perhaps for some a lifesaver. There’s no other way for me than meditation not that I even would want to and it is an ongoing process. VINEETO: Although you say that you ‘have persistently practiced AF (albeit adjusted the method in my own way)’ it nevertheless seems to have persistently escaped your attention that Actual Freedom has nothing at all to do with the meditation practices as taught in the East. You only need to compare the actualism method with what Rajneesh describes as meditation to recognize that they are 180 degrees opposite. Here is what Mohan Rajneesh, or Osho as you prefer to call him, says about meditation – [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘Meditation is nothing but the method of discovering that positive aspect of nothingness, the positive quality of it. Meditation means dropping the content of the mind very consciously, knowing that you are dropping it. And when you have dropped everything, suddenly you realize that everything has disappeared but you ARE and your are more full than ever because all those things, all that junk that you have been carrying all along was simply taking your space. Now the whole space, the whole sky is available, and your heart can ope its petals. <…> Nothingness is spaciousness, and to be spacious means to be vast. The moment you feel nothingness in its positive quality you feel vastness, you feel infinity. You don’t see any limit anywhere, you are unlimited. Even the sky is not the limit! That experience makes you enlightened. That experience makes you full of light, life, love, so full that you start overflowing, that sharing is now possible. Only a mediator can be a lover.’ [Emphasis added]. (Mohan Rajneesh, Guida Spirituale, Ch 1, Q 1). And [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘You have to go beyond your thoughts. And religion knows only one method – there are different names, but the method is one: it is watchfulness, it is witnessing. You simply watch your thoughts, with no judgment, no condemnation, no appreciation – utterly aloof, you just see the process of thoughts passing on the screen of your mind. As your watcher becomes stronger, thoughts become less – in the same proportion. <…> The moment you are one hundred percent a watcher, the mind becomes empty. This whole process is known as meditation. As you pass through the thoughts, you will come to the second layer, which is inside you – of feelings, of your heart, which is more subtle. But by now, your watcher is capable even of watching your moods, your sentiments, your emotions, your feelings – howsoever subtle they may be. And the same method works in the same way as it worked with the thoughts: soon there will be no sentiments, no feelings, no moods. You have gone beyond the mind, and the heart. Now there is utter silence, nothing moves. This is your being, this is you. The taste of your being is truth. The beauty of your being is the beauty of existence’. [Emphasis added]. (Mohan Rajneesh, The Hidden Splendour, Ch 8, Q 1). And [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘That’s my method of meditation. <…> it is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts passing before you. Just witnessing – not interfering, not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say this is good, this is bad, you have already jumped into the thought process. It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise: you are not the mind, you are the witness, a watcher. This process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion, because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witness, thoughts start disappearing. A moment comes when there is no thought at all. You are, but the mind is utterly empty. That is the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment when for the first time you become unconditioned, sane, a really free human being.’ [Emphasis added]. (Mohan Rajneesh, The Last Testament, Vol 1, Ch 1). In contrast, here is a description from Richard of the actualism method, posted only a day before you wrote this post – Richard: In the actualism process, as detailed on The Actual Freedom Trust web site, the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) – are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to be feeling good, feeling happy and harmless and feeling excellent/perfect for 99% of the time. If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on) then with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception) ... and apperception reveals that there is only this actual world/universe. [Emphases added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 64, 10 March 2004). In short, your ‘adjustment’ of ‘the method in my own way’ is nothing but a continuation of Rajneesh’s method, it ain’t actualism at all. RESPONDENT: So... I wonder what has happened to Vineeto and Peter, did meditation not work for them? VINEETO: meditation did not work for me because by practicing meditation for many years I became more and more insular, more and more aloof, more and more detached and thus more and more dissociated from what was actually going on. Meditation did not work for me because I never could quite loose track of what I really wanted from life, which is living in peace here on earth, in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are and not, as I found I was as a spiritualist, being aloof, empty-minded, removed and dissociated from being here. The sensate-only experiencing of actuality in a PCE was the final proof that meditation did not, and never could, deliver the goods. RESPONDENT: I remember a long time ago listening to a Bhagwan-tape, he mentioned two path’s to attain fulfilment, the one being Meditation the other a LOVERS-relationship. I guess that is Peter’s and Vineeto’s and likely Richards path though they will probably deny it that’s fine and it is not important anyway. My own alternative for Love is friendship, not too exclusive though. VINEETO: Your guess is so way off track that I wonder if you have read anything at all in these years you have been on this mailing list, let alone dared to take it in. This is what Peter has written in his journal about the process he underwent when he investigated his feelings of love for me (that was in 1997) – Peter: Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why, increasingly, were there misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties between us? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what Vineeto was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that, despite our matter-of-fact contract and investigations, we had fallen in love! We were both exhibiting the classic symptoms, emotions and feelings associated with being in love. I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. I realized that I had been jealous, possessive, pushy, demanding and obsessive with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when the impossible demands of love are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to disappointment, resentment, withdrawal, spite and eventually hate. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that, unless something changed, this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure. This was, after all, my last chance to succeed and I was watching it wilt away before my very eyes. And, not only that, I was actively causing it to happen…! I was simply repeating the mistakes of the past as though nothing had been learnt. I was faced with the facts of the situation and could clearly see that it was the result of my feeling of being ‘in love’ with Vineeto. I realized my contract with Vineeto had put me ‘on the hook’ and there was no way to avoid the facts. Armed with the conviction of the blindingly obvious, I confronted Vineeto with the news. I told her I was simply going to stop battling her and acting the way I had been. I remember her response as somewhat bewildered and unbelieving, but I knew that, at least, I had to stop the torment of raging feelings in me. What happened in the ensuing week was quite remarkable. I found that the strength of my intention for peace and harmony made me able to completely drop this destructive behaviour. Somehow I knew this was the only course of action I could take to make this relationship work and I knew it was my last chance. The realizing and facing of the facts, coupled with a clear intent, left ‘me’ with no choice. It wasn’t that ‘I’ made a decision – there was actually no decision to make. Action happened by itself, exactly as it would in swerving to avoid hitting another car while driving. A calmness and surety replaced the swirl of feelings; no longer was I thinking about Vineeto when we were apart, and when I was with her I was no longer suspicious, doubtful, impatient or moody. I began increasingly to accept her as-she-was. I was no longer driven to change her. This then brought a corresponding ease in myself for I was then able just to be me and more able to focus on how I was experiencing this moment of being alive? It was the beginning of realizing that the only person I can change is me and I was then able to start working on exactly that. One thing that did arise was the fear that, given I no longer found myself emotionally-driven to the same extent, I could risk losing her, but at least I would not be acting in a way that was destructive to my happiness or hers. But what to do? The pact said peace and harmony, come what may … and if taking a risk, and feeling some fear, was the price to pay, so be it. In the end I had to assume that Vineeto was with me because she wanted to be with me, and I was with her because I wanted to be, as simple as that. This was a free association and companionship with no other conditions, bonds or deals other than our agreement to look at anything in the way of peace and harmony. A week later, we both realized the full extent of the dramatic change that had occurred. A certain excitement seemed to be missing, a passion and a bond in our lives. It was quite tangible, and a sense of loss overwhelmed us. It was apparent I had fallen in love about three weeks after we met and had been in love for about six weeks until I had called a halt to the battle. I hadn’t recognized at the time that this behaviour of mine was really love in operation; I only saw it in the end as an emotional turmoil that was destroying my enjoyment of being with Vineeto. So, what we had seen was love in operation – a practical demonstration in our lives, not just a theoretical concept. As we sat down to talk about what had happened we both had tears in our eyes. I knew that, for me, whatever had changed was irreversible. I could not go back, nor did I want to, nor could I pretend to. As for Vineeto, she wasn’t any longer with a man who responded in the normal way, a man no longer in ‘love’. This was definitely not the usual male response I had in the past when I would repress or deny my feelings. Indeed, it was only because I had experienced them so strongly and understood the effect of them so well, that it was no longer possible to tolerate their destructive powers any longer, to allow the feelings of love to ruin our peace and harmony. (Peter’s Journal, Love) I have given a similarly detailed report about tackling love and leaving it behind in order to allow actual intimacy become apparent (that was also in 1997) – [Vineeto]: My traditional response to the feeling of being trapped had been that the man should give me his love and reassurance. But the way to the intimacy that I had already experienced and wanted to have with Peter all the time, was that I had to question, examine and eliminate the notorious bunch of feelings called love. Peter’s description of our adventure into freedom and intimacy is certainly not just a male point of view. Did he love me enough or not, or did I love him enough or not, was not the question – I discovered that love was not the solution but the problem itself! The answer again lay 180 degrees in the opposite direction to what I had come to know up to now. I had expected or assumed someone was to love my ‘grotty self’, when even I could not stand those parts of me! A person who ‘loves me’ is supposed to accept all those ‘quirks of my personality’, which no intelligent human being would be able to put up with without blind nature’s intoxication known as ‘being in love’. And for years I had tried the same with the men I had ‘loved’, without success or happiness, let alone lasting intimacy. Intimacy can only happen when there is no emotion, no feeling or projection in the way between us. So, one of the first things that we discovered to be in the way of actual intimacy were the feelings of love – that sweet syrup that was usually poured over the spiky, malicious, miserable ‘self’, which I was most of the time! (A Bit of Vineeto). And here is just one example of what Richard has said about the path of a ‘LOVERS-relationship’ – Richard: It is well-known that the war between the sexes is a power-battle. It is kept alive by the woman’s identification with Love as being the Ultimate and by the man’s identification with Authority as being the Ultimate. Both the power of Love and Authority vie for supremacy ... Love has its intrinsic Authority and Authority has its intrinsic Love. Both provide the illusion of security so desperately sought for by billions of people throughout the ages. Whenever we trip over an issue of man-woman differences and find ourselves falling back into our gender identities we notice, while looking at each other over a gulf of separation, a marked lack of equity and mutual intimacy between us. Then again, in our long periods of mutual intimacy, we experience that neither Authority nor Love plays any role. Can we contemplate a life together where intimacy and equity are paramount? Wherein the power of Love and Authority become irrelevant? Any Authority precludes equity ... and therefore intimacy. Any Love precludes intimacy ... and therefore equity. It all stems from separation. There is a separation of male and female from each other by gender identification as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – two distinct social identities – leading to a localised discontent and resentment, causing the battle between the sexes. Then there is the separative ‘I’ or ‘me’ – a psychological and psychic identity – forever alienated from one’s body and from the world of people, things and events, leading to a generalised discontent and resentment, causing wars between tribal groups. (Richard’s Journal, Article 2, The Mystique of Sex was a Challenge to be Met). Here is another – Richard: Please, do not confuse what I am talking of, which is an actual intimacy, with True intimacy. True intimacy lies in the delusory nature of Love Agapé, with its Divine Bliss. One can become lost in the Eternal Mystery, the Great Unknown. Beguiled and bewitched by the promise of Glory and Glamour and Glitz, one has every reason to be afraid ... one will have fallen under a Divine spell, intoxicated by The Sublime. Actual intimacy is innocence personified; a self-less experience characterised by blitheness and gaiety because of the marked lack of separation. There is no distance, psychologically speaking, between me and these birds, these flowers, these trees ... and between me and you. Actual intimacy has nothing to do with love ... love is a bridge between two separate social identities, creating the illusion of intimacy. And Love – Love Agapé or Divine Love – gives one a feeling of Oneness, a feeling of Unity ... an intuitive sense of ‘Being’. Then we are back to ‘being’ again, this time ‘Being’ with a capital to denote Divinity. ‘Being’, in whatever form, is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. (Richard’s Journal, Article 8, Community Spirit Seems to be Dead on the Ground, (People hope that love will cure the desperate loneliness caused by separation). It would aid the accuracy of your guesses if you made the effort to become a little bit more informed. Actualists are always upfront in what they are on about if you care to read what we have to say, which only begs the question as to why you waste your time writing to this mailing list when you have already ‘reached a plateau of relative happy and harmlessness’ by practicing meditation and state that ‘there’s no other way for me than meditation’. RESPONDENT: ... and keep on referring to Osho as Mohan or plain Rajneesh however never using his Full name (that he referred to himself during the period that no doubt you got your name Vineeto) which read Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, casts a shadow on what I would call your hmmm... authority in these matters. VINEETO: Rajneesh’s original name was in fact Chandra Mohan. When he began to become famous he added the name Rajneesh (king of the night) and also gave himself the title ‘Archarya’ (teacher) which he later changed to ‘Bhagwan’ (God). ‘Shree’ is also just a title meaning ‘Sir’ or ‘Reverend’. In his final year Rajneesh had a period in which he called himself Maitreya (imagining himself being a vessel for a reincarnating Siddhartha Gautama) and after he dropped this idea he allowed his disciples to call him ‘Osho’ which is merely a reverential title gleaned from Japanese spiritual tradition. When I freed myself from my feelings of loyalty and devotion to Rajneesh I also stopped using the reverential terms that his disciples use. As for my ‘authority in these matters’ – I draw my expertise on matters of spirituality from having freed myself from all spiritual beliefs after being deeply entrenched in the practice of this certain brand of spirituality. One has to be free from a belief in order to understand it in its totality and thus be able to talk about it with authority. RESPONDENT: Vineeto you have translated Rajneesh as ‘king of the night’ According to the source of information that I have the translation reads ‘full moon’ I’m only mentioning it, because I know that actualists like to be accurate in providing information, so... I wonder if you are willing to make an amendment, should indeed appear that your translation comes from a dubious source and may be considered inaccurate in this matter. VINEETO: The Indian language can be interpreted in many ways because it is often used poetically. Incidentally the full moon is considered the king of the night. * RESPONDENT: Ok, the full moon is by some /many considered the king of the night. VINEETO: My sources, which you consider to be apparently ‘dubious’ and ‘inaccurate’, are both Chandra Mohan himself (aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh aka Osho) and various Indian dictionaries. Viz – [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘This morning I was telling you about the time when the queen of Bhopal visited our village, which was part of her state, and she invited us to be her guests at her annul celebration. When she was in our village she asked my Nani, ‘Why do you call the boy Raja?’ Raja means ‘King’, and in that state, the title of Raja was of course reserved for the owner of the state. … Naturally she asked my grandmother ‘Why do you call this boy of yours Raja?’ You will be surprised to know that it was really illegal in that state to give the name Raja to anybody. My grandmother laughed and said ‘He is the king of my heart, …’ This incident happened when I was eight, and after just on year we had left that state forever… but she never stopped calling me Raja. I change my name, just because Raja – ‘the king’ – seemed so snobbish and I didn’t like to be laughed at by everybody in school …’ [emphasis added]. (Rajneesh, Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Ch 12). And … [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘There is one sannyasin, I have given her the name Nisha. ‘Nisha’ means the night. … I have given it to her knowingly because of her fear – her fear of darkness, her fear of passivity, her fear of relaxation, her fear of surrender. That is all indicated in the word ‘night’, nisha.’ [Emphasis added]. (Rajneesh, Come Follow Me, Vol 4, Ch. 10). The spelling of ‘Neesh’ or ‘Nish’ varies according to the transcription from Indian to Western alphabet, and ‘-a’ is the female ending for the word. Further, some of his disciples addressed him as such – [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘Beloved Osho, King of the Night, It seems that Zen monks, poets, and masters were almost as moonstruck as we are …’ [Emphasis added]. (from Zen: The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest, Ch. 4). This is what Indian dictionaries have to say – Hindi: raajaa – ‘king’, ‘monarch’, ‘sovereign’, master’ (http://www.wordanywhere.com/cgi-bin/fetch.pl). Urdu: raja – 1 one who holds sway, regent, governor, ruler, king: rajavart (ja+av), s.m. A kind of diamond or other gem (=raj-patt, q.v.): rajawali or rajawali, vulg. raja ‘oli (ja+av), s.f. Line of kings, royal dynasty or genealogy, royal house 2 To cause to rule; to keep (one) in princely state, or in ease and comfort: raj rajna, v.n. To rule (=raj karna); to live like a prince: raj karna, v.n. To exercise rule or sway, to rule, reign, govern. (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/platts/). Hindi: nish – ‘night’ (http://www.wordanywhere.com/cgi-bin/fetch.pl). Sanskrit: nishaa = Night (http://www.alkhemy.com/sanskrit/dict/dictall.txt). RESPONDENT: This poetic aspect as to the meaning/purpose of names (aka labels) to me exactly just that, special poetic aspect of what the poetic meaning of yur hmm ie a sanscrit? name, like Vineeto is/would be/could be, some how has my intrest. It is not to pry into yur private life, yet more as a matter of hey!? what would her name mean, like mine for instance means silence (quite poetic). VINEETO: Ha, nice try, No. 23. If you are looking for Indian poetry, there is plenty available on the Internet and in the fairytales of the 350 or so books of Chandra Mohan Rajneesh. RESPONDENT: So… I take it that your reference to the meaning of the word Rajneesh has been your own chosen reinterpretation of the primary meaning of the word hence the translation sequence would have been <Rajneesh><value> Literally full moon><value> poetic/symbolic attribution> VINEETO: No, I gave you the literal translation. The ‘poetic/symbolic attribution’ applies to ‘full moon’, maybe linking it to his first name Chandra – Viz: chan.dra – Name for the Moon (http://www.alkhemy.com/sanskrit/dict/dictall.txt). moon – (a) cha.ndra (b) chandramA (c) shashi (http://www.wordanywhere.com/cgi-bin/fetch.pl). full – (a) bharA huA (b) bharA pUrA (c) pUrA (d) pUrNa (http://www.wordanywhere.com/cgi-bin/fetch.pl). Besides, arguing about the correct translation of the acquired name of an Indian philosophy teacher turned guru who has been dead for almost 15 years on a mailing list that is outspokenly non-spiritual seems to me like serving mustard after the meal has long been eaten, as the Dutch say – in other words, wrong time, wrong place. In all the years you have been posting to this mailing list you persist in wanting to engage in dialogue with anyone about any subject other than the pivotal subject of this mailing list – bringing an irrevocable, as in actual, end to human malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: Or perhaps check in with Vineeto’s and hence become a supporter of condemnation of all Spiritual institutions (that includes also the so-called kind-hearted spiritualists for any info about that check in with No. 30). Based on the assumption that all of them are rotten to the core. Iow. charged with corruption. That surely is not a small thing and it has a bit of a taste of rhetorical innuendo least to speak. Now considering that this implies that every spiritualist is corrupt. VINEETO: You have taken my statement, put your personal spin on it and then run with it. This was my original statement – [Vineeto]: Vipassana is not flawed because some teachers are quacks – it is the whole institution of spiritual enlightenment that is rotten to the core. (Vipassana/fatigue, 31.10.2004). You then take ‘the whole institution of enlightenment’ to mean ‘every spiritualist’ and bingo, yet another falsehood is fabricated, in this case that ‘every spiritualist’ is ‘charged with corruption’. Before you take your misconception any further in your ‘lets-see-if-we-can-nail-[an actualist]-or-give him-a beat-up-game’, here is the reason why I said that the whole institution of enlightenment is ‘rotten to the core’ – something that a little bit of research on the Actual Freedom website would have easily revealed – Konrad: Have you not constantly said that ALL emotions are bad? Richard: ‘They are neither just good nor bad in my eyes ... to be run by emotions – either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotions – is imbecility in action. And to be run by passion is to be run by the very disease of the Human Condition ... this is absurdity in motion. But to become calenture itself – as a State of Being – is to be that very sickness as narcissistic self-aggrandisement. And to then disseminate it to all and sundry as the cure-all for suffering is to perpetuate all the misery and mayhem for ever and a day. Calenture is an incredibly useful word as it describes the delirious passion needed to manifest the delusion that: 1: There is a God ... and: 2: I am that God. Calenture is not just ‘bad’ ... it is sick. It is ‘I’ being rotten to ‘my’ very core. (Richard, Konrad Correspondence, Page Five, from Actual Freedom List, No. 27e, 5 April 2003). My personal experience with Godmen, and Mohan Rajneesh in particular, confirms Richard’s statement. Once I saw through and freed myself from my feelings of master-disciple loyalty the sickness of the institution of enlightenment became more and more obvious. Living in Rajneesh’s ashram I have experienced the corruption and deceit of the institution of enlightenment first hand, heard the promises of freedom and equality that never came true, witnessed the narcissism masquerading as Divine Love and diligently tried to live the unliveable teachings. I have seen his girlfriend become driven to desperation and depression, I have known the many women who felt honoured to fellate him while he publicly denied that it happened and pretended to be beyond it all. I have seen the power play amongst his followers in order to curry his favour and seen the richest disciples rise to the top of the favour list first. There is nothing good I can say about the institution of enlightenment – it is sick to the core. RESPONDENT: I seem to agree to some extent with No. 5, but not to the extent of being mad with Vineeto. I also do not find anything radical in Richard’s teachings. I already am aware of most of this stuff thanks mainly to Osho and other eastern philosophies. VINEETO: Could you explain a bit more in detail of the ‘stuff’ that you are aware of and that seems to you to be the same as Osho’s and Eastern Teaching? I know from my own experience that it took quite some time, a lot of hearing and reading and a lot of daring for me to question Osho’s and the Eastern teaching in order to really understand that Richard’s discovery is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of EVERYTHING that is being taught in the name of enlightenment. Wearing spiritual glasses at the time when I met Peter – and having an investment to keep them – made it at first impossible for me to actually hear what Peter or Richard had to say. Fear, pride and spiritual arrogance were the main reasons not to question the teachings that I had been wearing like a second skin. Only when I began to admit that not everything was wonderful in my life and my efforts according to Osho’s teachings had not been very successful, was I able to investigate a bit deeper into Richard’s story and I could start thinking about the possibility that something may be wrong with the spiritual teachings and not only with the thousands of disciples who all did not ‘get it’. RESPONDENT: I was able to discard the concept of God long back in my early twenties, because of Osho’s teachings but then I was able not to replace it with Osho (as Vineeto did), again because of Osho’s teachings. So I am really surprised how Vineeto – being so close to Osho – missed the whole point. I think that is where Osho seemed to have failed. VINEETO: As long as I was a sannyasin, and specially as long as Osho was alive I did not think I had God in my bonnet. Osho was simple the wise man I followed, he was the guide for my life, his words were Truth and his directions were Right. Whatever he said about life, meditation, relationship and the Universe was law for me, and I tried to live my life accordingly. I don’t see anything strange in this, taken that I had burnt my bridges to ‘being normal’ when I took sannyas, and taken that this was called ‘commitment’ – a necessary requirement for enlightenment or spiritual success. Instead of god, priests, teachers or philosophers he was now the authority in my life, followed without caution or restraint. RESPONDENT: Many of his close associates seem to got him so wrong. Osho and many other eastern philosophies have stressed so many times on being happy ‘here and now’. There may be many methods how to achieve it. VINEETO: I don’t think us disciples got him wrong there. Commitment and surrender were not only a big issue during ranch-time, but ‘totality’, as it was called later, was the main ingredient on the path to enlightenment. The story of digging only one hole and not 50 different ones to produce a well the stressing the point to not listen to other masters as to not get confused. ‘Being happy here and now’ only sounds like the same as living this moment here, now. The spiritual ‘here and now’ does not jell with the teaching of reincarnation, enlightenment being the ending of the wheel of birth and death and the teaching of meditation – closing your eyes and go somewhere else inside – to one day maybe become enlightened. Yes, when after all this effort you become enlightened, then you can laugh and say you were always ‘here and now’. But that is a different ‘here’ and ‘now’ than the here and now of normal mortals who were considered asleep and had to do dynamic meditation and other exercises to ‘wake up’. The other obvious difference between the spiritual ‘here and now’ and the actual ‘here and now’ is how Osho and eastern philosophers regard the body and everything physical. The spiritual concept is that the world is ‘maya’, an illusion. Once you ‘get it’, you can be happy in the spiritual realm of ‘here and now’. But you have to identify as the ‘watcher’, not as the body, you have to be detached from the body and from your senses in order to rise to your ‘true nature’. That ‘true nature’ is your consciousness, so they say, best to be achieved through meditation, which is in its purest form sitting motionless with closed eyes for hours on end. Then the identity shifts to ‘being the watcher’, to being Consciousness – and one day, one realizes that one is ‘One with All’, ‘That’, ‘Universal Love’, etc. The delusion is complete. One loses one’s ego on the way, but the soul, the feeling part of the instinctual being stays not only fully intact, but is aggrandized to the extent that one considers oneself to be God or the Universe itself. Compared to this illusory scenario, the actual ‘here and now’ is to be here in this moment of time, which is the only moment one can experience anyway. To be actually here is to be in this place which is no-where in particular in the infinitude of the physical universe. Coming from no-where and having no-where to go we find ourselves here in this moment in time in this place in space. To be here is to be the universe experiencing itself as a human being. Being here now is to ‘be doing what is happening’ with no sense of ‘I’ or feelings of ‘me’. To be fully here, now without a fearful ‘self ‘or a ‘Grand Self’ is to be innocent, perfect and pure, fully engaged in this only moment of being alive. VINEETO: Could you explain a bit more in detail of the ‘stuff’ that you are aware of and that seems to you to be the same as Osho’s and Eastern Teaching? RESPONDENT: By the ‘stuff’ I mean, ‘There is no God, There is no life after death. This very moment is the only moment you have to live and it is possible to live being happy here and now in this very world ... blah blah blah’ VINEETO: Rajneesh was actually a very tricky guy. One day he would talk about God and the other day deny that there was such a thing as God. He had whole discourse series on Jesus, where God appeared in every other sentence. Then he talked about Zen, and suddenly all was prevailing emptiness and utter serenity. So in the process of checking out my beliefs and replacing them with facts I had to take a closer look, not just rely on what I ‘felt’ Rajneesh had said or meant. By really digging into the contents of his teachings and words I was able to dismiss him as the ultimate authority he had been for me. What I found was that his essential teaching was about the Divine, Existence, Buddha Nature, Oneness with the Whole. So, where is the difference? God or the Divine, God or Buddha Nature – it still ensures immortality. The spiritual ‘Universe’ is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’, and after death one will be united with the Whole, forever in bliss. Just the words on his tombstone ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet...’ are enough to reveal his belief in an afterlife as the ‘real life’ and the actual world as an illusion. * RESPONDENT: I will give you one example. Osho said ‘Don’t let your doubt die. You should doubt every concept, every belief till it becomes your own experience’ So I doubted Osho himself, to the extent that sometimes I even thought that this man is just an intelligent orator who is making fool of so many people. That is why I didn’t become a sannyasin. And that is why I was free to read other Gurus and Scripture and am open to any new way of life. VINEETO: Yes, Rajneesh said, ‘don’t let doubt die’ and he said ‘you have to learn to trust me completely’. I never heard him encourage us to doubt him as the master as the ultimate authority. ‘Doubting every concept’ was to doubt your old conditioning and believe in your ‘Buddha Nature’, your soul, your inner light, the Truth, which shall be revealed... Since Rajneesh himself lived and worked within the system of Eastern Teaching, he had never himself doubted the existence of a soul, or the Divinity of Existence, or Divine Grace (God will be coming towards you if you only try hard enough). That’s why he could speak of it so convincingly. Your doubting Rajneesh and considering him ‘just an intelligent orator’ is what Rajneesh himself would have called ‘not surrendered’, ‘stuck in the mind’ or ‘Westerners don’t know the wonderful and blessed master-disciple relationship of the East’. I have heard several discourses on that topic. You say, you didn’t become a Sannyasin, and you read other Gurus. Have you found with Rajneesh or other Gurus what you were looking for? And what in particular were you looking for? What are you looking for when you read about Actual Freedom? What is the intention behind your search? I am asking these specific question, because they have helped me to distinguish between the teachings and promises on one side and the results, both personal and global, on the other side. Upon close investigation I had to admit that promises and results did not reconcile. Neither did I become enlightened nor did enlightenment result in a solution to the world’s problems. I had the choice to forever blame myself and keep hoping – or to try something new and radical. The new and radical was to questions the soul, the feelings, the emotions (including love) and to learn that instincts are deleteable. The new and radical is to look at facts instead of trusting any master, to only rely on what can be evidenced by the physical senses. In short, to throw everything meta-physical out the window. Actual Freedom definitely is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of all spiritual beliefs. * VINEETO: Are you saying you feel gratitude to Rajneesh because he taught you to doubt? Or did you have the tendency to doubt already before you met Rajneesh? RESPONDENT: I feel gratitude towards Osho, not just because he instigated doubt in me, but also for the way I think now about life, universe, God, myself. Not that I just follow what he says about these things, but his words helped me a lot to make my own mind about these issues. I don’t agree with many of the things he said. I could not understand his life style. But still what I learnt (learning is not following) from him is enough for me to feel gratitude towards him. However now after having some e-mail discussions with Richard, I am reviewing the feeling of gratitude per se. VINEETO: Gratitude and loyalty were the two strongest ties I had to Sannyas. I had to literally take apart my beliefs in love, loyalty and gratitude before I could even begin to question what other authority issues I had had with Rajneesh. Only after dismantling all those feelings and eliminating them in me, was I able to investigate the content of what he was saying – which then became increasingly obvious as being 180 degrees opposite to Actual Freedom. Whenever morals or feelings are operating within us, we cannot examine the issue with common sense. The only way common sense works is as bare awareness – bare from feelings such as gratitude, loyalty, love, aversion, etc. RESPONDENT: In fact, if you spent 10-20 years with Osho and/or eastern religions and you missed the bottom-line, which is no different from what Richard is saying, don’t blame Osho or eastern religion or any other religion. But blame yourself that you missed it!! VINEETO: I spent 17 years with Osho, I listened to almost every of his discourses and I thoroughly and intensely tried to make sense of what he was saying and apply it to my life. I did a lot of therapy and meditation groups to deepen my understanding. But after 17 years I was not happier that when I had started, I still had all my emotions intact, meaning, they would pop up once in a while and give me a hard time. And none of my friends had ‘got it’ either. I cannot see where I missed the bottom-line, because the bottom-line was meditation. The very bottom-line was transcending this world, including all the senses, and rise into ‘Consciousness’ where you are detached from everything that is happening to you or other people – including the wars, rapes and murders. The bottom line is ‘you are not the body, but eternal Consciousness’, and thus we were all trying to do the impossible – meditate and still live in the marketplace, be happy and transcend it all, ‘have’ a body and not be in it. Once I stopped blaming myself for the failure of those unsuccessful years, which had not brought me closer to the purity and happiness I was looking for, I was shocked when I started to see the vastness of the spiritual plot, that traps people in their misery. Alan put it very well when he said: [Alan]: ‘because [the gurus] have not eliminated the Human Condition in themselves and they continue to perpetuate the misery, sorrow and malice, while telling all and sundry they are the embodiment of peace on earth.’ (Alan to Actual Freedom List, 8.1.1999). Maybe you want to consider for yourself that it is not your fault that you missed it – unless you got it? – and start to question the revered teachings, so insidious instilled in all of us. In the beginning it is hard to see the forest for all the trees, but it is well worth a turn-around, in fact 180 degrees in the opposite direction of what Osho and the Eastern religions are trying to sell us. RESPONDENT: ...And love, Love are kind of feelings. Then what is happy and harmless? I am experiencing being happy and harmless as a kind of feeling right now. VINEETO: I think here you are applying your ideal of love rather than what is actually happening. I remember the discourses in Poona, where every night there was a hushed competition who would sit closest to the Master, who would get a look from him or even be talked about. There was a tough competition going on – far from happy and harmless. And Rajneesh was as much part of that game as us, his disciples. He would stir the fire of competition, fancy some and neglect others, while all the while telling us to drop desire. Now, that the Master is dead, ‘spread all over Existence’, it is much easier to dream of his Un-conditional Love, and that one day you would attain it. The daily check on reality is but nil. But it is all ‘in the head’ or in the feeling, ‘spirit’-ual, it is not actuality. Being happy and harmless is not a coating over one’s grotty ‘self’, over the Human Condition in us. Being happy and harmless is only possible when you actively remove the feelings, emotions and instinctual passions that the ‘self’ consists of – what then remains is a happy and harmless human being. What remains is the delight of a perfect universe experiencing itself as a sensate and reflective human being. * RESPONDENT: As I said before, I think this is not my case. VINEETO: Could you explain further, why you ‘think this is not [your] case’? Did you check your thinking with the actual fact, ie what particular improvement a certain advice of Rajneesh has brought to your daily life? Did you inquire into the nature of your feelings for Rajneesh to find out which feelings and passions, hopes and desires lay behind the dream of ‘unconditional love’? When I dared to investigate into the devotional relationship that I had to ‘the Master of Masters’ I found several instinctual passions rampantly operating: the instinct to herd together – gathering in a group of like-minded people who – in this case – think they are better than anybody else, the instinct to seek a strong father-figure who would protect me against the evils of life, the need for some authority to map out and guide my life, the need for someone to love and be loved by in order not to be alone in this hostile world, the need to have a high ideal and an unquestionable meaning in life (in that sense Rajneesh replaced the belief in God as the ultimate matrix) the desire to be one day as happy, carefree, blissed out and powerful as he seemed to be. I had to investigate all of those underlying instinctual passions first before I could make a definitive and honest assessment about my relationship to Rajneesh. Well, that investigation proved to be the ending of my love, my devotion and my dependence on the Indian philosophy professor who thought he was God and who had gathered thousands of people around him who still think he is God. RESPONDENT: Also I am in a state of big disappointment, because I was reading Krishnamurti for 10 years every day. I think now he was wrong. So I am left with a big sadness. After I was in contact with Henry Templeman, who was in his steps (Krishnamurti’s). Another disappointment. VINEETO: I remember the time after Rajneesh died and left thousands of his loyal followers in the lurch. He had promised the solution to misery and sorrow but his promises were nothing but empty words – his teachings did not work. Along with most of his followers I saw this failure not as the failure of his teachings – let alone the intrinsic failure of all spiritual teachings – but I saw the failure as my failure in that I did not live his teachings properly or the failure was due to ‘the organization’ that was set up to promote his teachings and indoctrinate yet more followers. After his death, I began to have some doubts about the spiritual life-style but did not want to return to the normal world that I had left behind. When I came across actualism it soon became clear that here is a third alternative to the tried and failed solutions of human kind – including all of the revered spiritual teachings – and I began to systematically extricate myself from my spiritual beliefs and from the close-knit world of spiritual believers. When I finally succeeded in leaving this imaginary world of dreams and promises, hopes and lies, arrogance and hypocrisy behind, it was a great relief. In regaining the will I had so eagerly surrendered to others, I found I had the necessary dignity for the first time in my life, sufficient to enable me to begin to stand on my own two feet. I can only suggest not staying stuck in feeling disappointment but to move on to leaving the rotten corpse of spiritualism behind. Now that you have recognized that it does not deliver you have the opportunity to begin afresh. * RESPONDENT: P.S In your other email you named Osho. I consider him the biggest fraud of the past century with his Mercedes, VINEETO: By the way, Mohan Rajneesh didn’t drive Mercedes, but Rolls Royces. I mentioned Mohan Rajneesh because Dr. Amrit Sorli, the man you quoted in order to demonstrate the non-infinity of the universe, is apparently a follower of Mr. Rajneesh – he lives in a Rajneesh centre and certainly sprouts ‘Sannyas wisdom’ in his various articles. If you consider Mr. Rajneesh ‘the biggest fraud of the past century’ I am left wondering why you posted an article by one of his disciples as evidence to prove your point? RESPONDENT: … and any other guru the same. VINEETO: Does ‘any other guru’ also include J. Krishnamurti? I am only asking because you stated that ‘the perceiver and the perceived are one thing’ – a basic teaching of J. Krishnamurti. It is undeniable that J. Krishnamurti was a guru – he talked for 52 years in order to convey his teachings and some 15 years after his death some of his followers are still trying to listen, understand or even live his teachings. When I began to dismantle my spiritual beliefs I began to understand that it is the revered state of Enlightenment itself that is fundamentally flawed and that it needs to be debunked for the massive delusion it is. VINEETO: When I typed ‘AGFLAP’ into Google and the it came up with the label for the method you described – the ‘Sedona Method’ – I had to laugh. Sedona is the spiritual Mecca of New Mexico and amongst other things is/has been the residence for a large group of Rajneesh’s ‘Inner Circle’ from where they have been holding court teaching their ‘privileged’ version of going in and letting go, a technique which was in many aspects identical to the above described method. RESPONDENT: Rajneesh was a ‘master’ of promoting a wide selection of methods so that is not too surprising. VINEETO: If you are suggesting that Rajneesh promoted a wide selection of both spiritual and non-spiritual methods then it may clarify the issue to contemplate if he would have promoted the actualism method without alteration. Fact is that Rajneesh took whatever method he came across, such as emotional release therapy and human growth movements and turned them into tools for dissociation (such as ‘I am not my feelings, I am not my body’) as the sole method towards enlightenment. I remember my admiration for this mastery of adaptation at the time when I participated in those emotional release and awareness groups and as I listened to him talking about Western therapy as a tool for becoming enlightened. * VINEETO: But one does not need to know all this to find out that the ‘Sedona Method’ is spiritual through and through – just look at this explanation of ‘How It Works’ from their site – [quote]: ‘We hold on to our feelings and forget that we are holding on to them. It’s even in our language. When we feel angry or sad, we don’t usually say, ‘I feel angry,’ or, ‘I feel sad.’ We say, ‘I am angry,’ or, ‘I am sad.’ *Without realizing it, we are misidentifying that we are the feeling*. Often, we believe a feeling is holding on to us. This is not true… we are always in control and just don’t know it. (...) As you master the process of releasing, you will discover that even your deepest feelings are just on the surface. *At the core you are empty, silent, and at peace* – not in the pain and darkness that most of us would assume.’ [Emphasis added]. (How It Works A Sample Releasing Process, http://www-sedonamethod.com/). RESPONDENT: I do remember reading that sometime and of course it did remind me of how ‘The Release Technique’ is different from actualism. VINEETO: Not just different – 180 degrees in the opposite direction. RESPONDENT: I read ‘Osho: The God that Failed’ by Hugh Milne and learned a few interesting things that went on in the movement. He and a few others unquestionably seem to suggest that there is this ‘aura’ or ‘presence’ in people like Osho that made even the westerners with a scientific/skeptical bent of mind lulled into this kind of stuff. VINEETO: Oh yes, there certainly was a rather powerful aura with Rajneesh as is with every genuinely enlightened person. They emanate Love and Compassion and people flock around them to lap it up and in turn give the guru devotional love, material goods and the power to mould their lives. Similarly, non-enlightened people can emanate some or a lot of charisma which then seduces others to follow the charismatic person’s suggestions, as you can see happening in the political arena, in sports and games, in religious movements or in any other group-and-leader activity. RESPONDENT: Perhaps this is the psychic web or the vibe that has been discussed to some extent in the topica list. VINEETO: It certainly is part of it, yes. RESPONDENT: Have you felt that yourself in any encounter with anybody? VINEETO: Of course. I was a very devoted disciple of Rajneesh for many years until a couple of years after his death. RESPONDENT: What kind of phenomenon is that? Is it a willing protocol buried in the subconscious of the Guru and the Disciple – coming to the surface? Or is there some kind of mysterious transmission in the ethereal space? VINEETO: Following a charismatic leader or wanting to lead willing followers is part and parcel of the human condition. I am somewhat reminded of the genetic setup of ants or bees who are born to act as is best for the survival of the tribe. In the case of humans there are other aspects, the lust for power on the side of the leader and the fear of standing on one’s own feet on the side of the follower. There is also the longing for the grand feeling of belonging to a powerful group, to be one with a crowd under one common theme, the sense of unity with others under one aim. Have you never experienced feelings like these? Those ‘transmissions’ not so mysterious after all – they consist of feelings being transmitted and received between humans and the more unconscious but strongly felt the transmissions the more powerful they are. RESPONDENT: Do these kind of things puzzle you anymore? VINEETO: No, I have thoroughly felt and understood them – what sometimes puzzles me is that people do not desire to become free from their grip. PETER: I had a conversation with someone yesterday, who said that how I talked and wrote was offensive... RESPONDENT to Peter: Of course it is – you are continuously spitting around in subtle ways. PETER: I have no religious tolerance whatsoever, so all call me evil, ... RESPONDENT to Peter: except you. You BELIEVE you are HARMLESS, hahaha. PETER: ...but given that I was a Sannyasin, RESPONDENT to Peter: at least you BELIEVE you were, isn’t it? PETER: ...particularly the followers of Mr. Chandra Mohan call me evil. RESPONDENT to Peter: Right, they will, ’cause you want to destroy their ‘leader’. The LOVERS of Osho, however, will call you simply an asshole. I do. (An asshole is one who spits at love, in case you don’t know). In fact, to call an asshole an asshole is such a joy, thanks for the opportunity, guy. And don’t forget to do what you said on top of your first reply: get lost sometime soon – the endless repetition of your happy and harmless number is getting too boring man. VINEETO: As far as I know, your Indian name means ‘peace’. Does it mean you are looking for peace in you, with others and for the world at large? That had been my main reason why I took Sannyas. But to be a LOVER of Osho for you means obviously calling everybody who isn’t an asshole. The consequence of love is obviously that you have to hate everybody who does not love who you love. Isn’t that what the Jews do to the Muslims in the Middle East, what the Catholics do with the Protestants in Ireland and the Hindus do with the Muslims and Sikhs in India. Tell me, where is the difference? Aren’t you simply defending your love of Osho, your belief in him as the Master, against another belief? You attack the ‘wrong-believer’ like all get-out and have great glee doing it. So your love is just another opportunity to wage war, something human beings have developed into a great art or entertainment over the centuries. Just calling someone an asshole is not enough of a fact to refute anything he says, you have to give more evidence to your opinion. Otherwise I cannot see any difference to all the other religious warriors who are simply sending missiles when they disagree with their neighbour’s country’s religion. When I met Peter and he said he wanted to live with a woman in peace and harmony, I took the opportunity. I had to question and eliminate a lot of my dearly held beliefs in the course of the search for such daily and permanent peace, but I considered those beliefs as part of the ego that I had set out to leave behind when I started on the spiritual path. My primary aim was peace. And being practical I realised that the challenge was to live in peace with one person. That was and is my contribution to peace in the world. If I could not live with one other person in peace and harmony, how could I realistically expect to be peace on the planet? Whatever was in the road between us I would investigate according to what was factual and what was a belief. Based on facts, we could always find a sensible agreement in whatever situation, something that has never been possible on the basis of believing something to be right or wrong, good or bad. Sticking stubbornly and passionately to my beliefs had only resulted in endless fights about opinions in my previous relationships. This is how I came to question one belief after the other, and one of them was the belief in authority. Without the belief in authority I can confidently stand on my own two feet and can examine whatever somebody says according to the content and not to who says it – a man, a woman, a guru, a ‘newcomer’, a heathen. That confidence gives me peace with everyone, I don’t need to attack or defend authority, and I can simply examine facts. You replied to what I wrote to No. 18: [Vineeto]: I actually got off my bum and cleaned myself up from everything that I did not like about myself: anger, jealousy, need, greed, fear, malice, bitching and depression... [Respondent]: Wow! And who is this who doesn’t like these things? Is that you now? Mask = Perfect Person? [endquote]. I think you don’t consider it a possibility that somebody can actually get rid of anger, greed, jealousy etc. You can only interpret it as another mask. I think it is a bit short-sighted, that’s all. I am simply saying that it is possible because I did it, and why not give it a try? My life now is well worth living and so much more fun than with all the problems that the Human Condition in me, like anger, fear, greed, sorrow etc. used to produce. You seem to get rather annoyed when we use the words ‘happy’ and ‘harmless’. I could also call it ‘not miserable’ and ‘not vindictive’. But you can always press ‘delete’ in case you enjoy your life as it is and yourself as you are. VINEETO: With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant one who does not want to take the first step to freedom. RESPONDENT: very Osho-like VINEETO: It may look like that at first glance, but Osho talks about ‘leaving the body’, not dying. He said he would dissolve into his people, when he dies, so there must be something he believed would remain of him after his bones were burnt. His ‘now’ always had the implication that there is also a life-after-death. Once I fully accepted the fact that life after death is a mere belief, dearly ‘wished for’ by the psychological and psychic entity within, the very impact brought now, this very moment, much closer. RESPONDENT: What do you think Osho said about living here and now? Is it really that different from what you are saying? Don’t tell me he promised God or Heaven, because I know for a fact that he didn’t. VINEETO: What do you mean ‘I know for a fact that he didn’t’. Yes, he didn’t promise the Christian or Jewish God or Heaven, but he kept talking about the divinity of Existence, dissolving into Godliness. The concept changed from God as a person to God as a quality. If I meditated enough I would reach that Godliness or discover it in me. * VINEETO: And this is where I see one of the main differences between the freedom, Peter and I talk about, and the teachings of the enlightened masters of all ages: the concept of life after death. ‘Eternity’ was a good attraction at the time, improving on the notion of the Christian heaven and hell. The idea was that the soul was eternal, and would live on for ever and ever, evolving and in bliss, or, in endless re-incarnations of sorting out one’s karma. It offered the dream of ‘me’ living on for ever, even after physical death, ‘I’ would continue... and it leads to the most insidious postponement – everything will be fixed with enlightenment or in Nirvana after death... RESPONDENT: I don’t know where you as a sannyasin got all these ideas from, because all what you are saying here are just your interpretation of what enlightened masters of all ages intended. VINEETO: How did you interpret all the stories about life after death, about dissolving into the divine energy of Existence, about re-incarnation and karma? Wasn’t re-incarnation one of the very reasons to become enlightened in this life-time, to stop the wheel of endless births and deaths? It definitely was it for me. * VINEETO: This belief in eternity comes in many forms and disguises, but if you take a closer look, you will always find that the Divine, the Melting with the Universe, the Dissolution into the Greater Whole – life after death – are part of Eastern teaching. RESPONDENT: ‘Eastern Teaching’... this again illustrates your tendency to generalize. There are many different so called Eastern teachings. And certainly Osho isn’t part of it. You’re on a sannyas-list and ‘Eastern Teaching’, or what you present of it, is irrelevant here. VINEETO: Ok, if you want to – I can give you two quotes to ponder about: [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet ...’ (His tombstone). [Mohan Rajneesh]: ‘When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are a God.’ (The Beloved/2, Chapter 10). I have come to see Osho’s teaching as a modern version of Eastern Teaching. He talked on Buddha, Krishna, the Zen-Masters, Zarathustra, the Sufi-Masters, Lao-Tzu, Ramakrishna, on all the important representatives of Eastern and Western religions. But in order to question the Master after a devotional relationship of almost two-thirds of my adult life, I first had to question several ingrained concepts in me. I found the belief in authority was a big issue and a strong need, to always have somebody to guide me, love me and to belong to. Surrender to his authority was an easy option. There was also the belief in God or Existence, the ultimate and invisible authority, some (non-physical) energy outside of me and outside of the physical universe. This energy represented the ultimate power and Wisdom. Dismantling the need and belief in authority allowed me to stand on my own feet for the first time in my life. What a freedom not have to react to people, men in particular, out of superiority or inferiority, but to be able to communicate with everybody as fellow human beings! Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this meant that from then on, I could not blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any issue. Now there was no more excuse, no more hiding place. These emotions were my reactions and my behaviour, which I had to face and change in order to be free. And then there was love. The need to be loved and the hope to become Divine Love one day. Love for the Master made it impossible to question anything he said; I was following him not only for bliss, but for love. And yet, so many things didn’t add up. I had needed to explore the nature of the bonds with the Master and face the fears which came along with dismantling my relationship with Him – he who claimed to represent the ‘Absolute Truth’ in the spiritual world. Once I had seen through the belief in the ultimate authority of God or Existence, I could then more easily set out to investigate the facts of enlightenment. You see, all those beliefs I had to tackle first in me, before Peter and I could begin to talk openly about Osho without me being offended. If you are ready to look for proof that Osho was in fact talking about godliness, divinity, merging with the Universe, etc. you can send the search function through one of the discourses on the Osho-website, read without Sannyas-eyes and find out the answer for yourself. VINEETO: Osho may have said not to replace the beliefs of your secular conditioning and beliefs, but he certainly replaced them with his version of spiritual conditioning and beliefs. RESPONDENT: As I said before, I don’t get that you hear me ... so since I am not addicted to endlessly arguing, as apparently you both are ... I’ll make this short. Pray tell, what spiritual conditioning and beliefs did Osho replace in us? VINEETO: So now we are investigating what is a belief and what is a fact, are we? Remember, belief per dictionary means ‘fervently wishing to be true’, while fact means ‘what has really happened or is the case’ . You say that nothing that Osho tried to instil in us was based on belief, do you? Do you say that everything he talked about were mere facts, evidenced by our senses? That one did not need to believe or trust what was said, one could simply see it, touch it, hear it, taste it or smell it? I try to avoid battling with quotes, Osho said billions of words and everyone makes their own interpretation of it. But since you seem to claim that there was no spiritual conditioning or any beliefs involved, I found some of his words that point to his belief in God, divinity, soul, immortality, the mysterious ‘inner space’ and the Universe as animated by divine intelligence [Mohan Rajneesh]: God is all around you, but you are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of your own ego that there is no space left inside you where God can penetrate and enter into you. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: The Beloved, Vol. 1, Ch 1). [Mohan Rajneesh]: And if we go still more deeply, then the child also chooses the time of its conception. Every soul chooses its own time of conception – when it will accept a womb, at which moment. The moment of conception is not insignificant. It is significant in that it is a question of how the entire universe exists at that moment, and to what sort of possibilities the universe opens the door at that moment. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: Hidden Mysteries, Ch 5). [Mohan Rajneesh]: A man of sensitivity remains wherever he is – and God seeks him. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3, Ch 9). [Mohan Rajneesh]: Your unmoving centre becomes such a dance. And one who knows his centre, also knows his eternity, his immortality. Buddhas don’t die, neither are they born. They simply appear and disappear into the same ocean just like waves. You have to go deeper and deeper every day, you have to bring more and more of the Buddha to the circumference of your life. It happens, certainly – I say it with absolute authority because it has happened to me. [Emphases added]. (Ch. M. Rajneesh: Rinzai: Master of The Irrational, Ch 2). As I said to No. 10: [Vineeto]: With Actual Freedom a second de-conditioning took place, a spiritual de-conditioning. And again, I was ready for it, because after all those years of sincere effort my search did not show the results I had been aiming for. This second de-conditioning was much more radical and went far deeper than the first, it is going to eliminate all of me, ego and soul, emotions and beliefs, instincts and ‘spiritual achievements’. It leaves me as this physical body with its senses, free to delight in this pure, perfect and infinite universe as a sensate flesh-and-blood human being. Nothing more, nothing less. (Vineeto, List C, No. 10, 13.1.1999). Actual Freedom and the simple and effective method to achieving it is available for everybody who wishes to go for the best – presupposing that you are discontent with your life as it is now. RESPONDENT: I do not appreciate you cutting down Osho. This site is for sannyasins and friends of Osho. I personally am not interested in ‘converting’ but you guys seem to be forcing your issues on those that are here. VINEETO: When I started to write on this list, and talked about my experiences, I stated that I had found the Eastern teachings lacking in delivering solutions for me personally and for the world at large. After thousand of years of teachings about enlightenment and meditation people are still killing each other for their beliefs, their territory and many other petty reasons. I just saw a report about an emergency hospital in Chicago where kids of 9 – 18 years are brought in with 13 or more bullets in their bodies, not only once, but often returned a second or third time ... and the reasons were often a fight over a Hamburger, a stereo-recorder, a missing apology, a misunderstanding. You may say, they are not Sannyasins, but is there really such a difference? Haven’t we all experienced rage, blinding jealousy or despair? I know that, until a year ago, I could not rely on myself that I would not ride on the lust for power or the thrill of being malicious to someone. There was always this doubt, ‘would there be a situation that would trigger me’? In the end, I couldn’t be sure of myself. Then people on the list said, this list is not about Eastern teaching, what about Osho. So I became more specific in my replies. Being a ‘friend of Osho’ does not mean for you that you are not allowed to check out facts, or does it? When people ask specific questions, because they want to investigate, I answer. If you don’t like the answer you can always investigate, find out for yourself and discuss it further, if you like. Is this list only for the loyal ones who don’t question Osho’s authority on anything he said, and represented, or is this list also for those who would like to find out about life on earth, who are searching for a solution to their own and humanity’s problems? I had loved and followed Osho for seventeen years and I was in this Sannyas-world for half of my life. I have now found something that works 100%, that makes me completely happy and harmless, and that is possible for every human being on the planet. It is simple, obvious and straight-forward, it is actual and factual. Naturally, the first people I am sharing it with are the people I have spent all those years with, searching together for an answer, investigating and experimenting together, living, longing and laughing together... I don’t see how this inappropriate? RESPONDENT: Speaking for myself, how would you like it if we went to your site and started to push Osho on you... VINEETO: I would appreciate it very much. You are very welcome to discuss this on any list you want to. I don’t have a perception of ‘my’ site or ‘your’ list, I simply enjoy talking to people where ever and when ever they write to me. RESPONDENT: Osho says: meditation and love go hand in hand. Is it not the same as what you guys have been saying? Meditation defined as aliveness, watchfulness, investigation, paying attention to one’s feelings. VINEETO: When you are trying to fit what we say into what Osho said you will miss the point entirely. In the last days I have talked to two old girlfriends, both enthusiastically and devotedly on the spiritual path, and I have tried to tell them about my findings and experiences. It was bewildering to see how they both said it was all the same like the spiritual. It leaves me at a loss what words to use. But, I will try again – Actual freedom is 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Meditation is based on the watcher. You watch your thoughts and feelings in order to rise above them, to dis-identify from them, which in the end amounts to going somewhere else, where you are not the body, not the mind, not the emotion. You are to identify with the watcher and thus move away from the source of your troubles, your body and brain inflicted with the emotions and instincts of the Human Condition. If you persist and identify with the watcher strongly enough, you become the watcher and simply ‘watch’ your body doing its number. Nothing is changed in the Human Condition except ‘you’ become someone other than this flesh and blood body. Then you become the ‘soul’ (the heart), and maybe you even become so deluded as to flip into an altered state of consciousness, aka enlightenment. Actual Freedom is firmly based on this flesh and blood body with its physical senses as the only actuality there is. Everything that not perceivable by the physical senses is feeling and imagination, deeply ingrained in our genetic heritage and our socially absorbed psyche, but nevertheless imagination and as such non-actual. The aim of the path to actual freedom is to come out of the psychic and psychological structure of the ‘real’ world, the instinctual passions, emotions and beliefs, and step into the actual, sensate and sensual world of the physical universe, where everything is already here, perfect, magical and pure. In order to come out of the real world one needs to investigate into the ‘hooks’ that keep pulling one back into misery, malice and fear – and eliminate them whenever they appear. That is done by running the question: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ Then everything that is preventing you from feeling good will be examined and traced to its root. Usually, when examining an emotion, the first thing I found was a certain dream. By questioning the validity of it and the effects that this idea had in my life I often recognised that it fitted a general, collective belief-system. Questioning the collective belief was a bit more scary. But it is only fear that prevented me from acknowledging the facts. Acknowledging the facts brought me back to here, back to my senses. For instance, survival fear would blink red lights when I decided to quit work. Examining the facts revealed that I could easily survive without the income from that job. But the instinctual fear blurred my view and made it great detective work to come to a sensible evaluation. I had to see the instinct in its functioning in order to not be driven by it.
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence | Library – Spiritual Teachers
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