One thing common about strong personalities is that they are rebellious and they don’t go by any rules. They believe in themselves and they have the courage to overcome the fear of unknown and these qualities make them strong!
People have different opinions about Osho and mostly are against him in India, at least people whom I met but last few years people also agreed that Osho was way ahead of his time and now young generation is open minded enough to know about his teachings. This is my second book by Osho and whenever people find me reading Osho they are like are you the follower of Osho? with some strange look on their face and people are like he is weird, are you sure you want to read Osho! And frankly, those expressions made me read Osho to find out why people have this opinion about him. I am not the follower of Osho but I like reading books written about and by different strong personalities to get the different perceptions in life and to make my mind more open.
Two books I have read by him answered my questions about those opinions. Osho is a very straight forward personality, very blunt and against all the tradition which are religious and orthodox and he talks about sex as normally as one talks about simple routine stuff. He is the man who talked against religions and in India you should never talk against any religion as a joke in fact, you could possibly get into trouble! And that man had questioned so many religions so obviously people get offended. And I think those people neither have the trust in their religion nor they have the deep knowledge about their religion, because those who have, never get offended by other people’s opinions!
About Author
Rajneesh famously known as Osho was an Indian mystic and viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader. From his school years, he was a rebellious student and gained the reputation as a formidable debater. He was an irreligious atheist. He emphasized the importance of free thought, meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humor.
In advocating a more open attitude to human sexuality he caused controversy in India during late 1960s and became known as the sex guru. In 1970, Rajneesh initiated followers known as “neo-sannyasins, the Rajneesh movement.”. In 1974 Rajneesh established an ashram in Pune and a variety of therapies, incorporating methods first developed by the Human Potential Movement, were offered to a growing Western following. By the late 1970s, the tension between the ruling Janata Party and the movement led to a curbing of ashram’s development and a back tax claim estimated at five million dollars.
In 1980, the Rajneesh movement’s efforts refocused on activities in the USA and he relocated to a facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon. The movement ran into conflict with country residents and the state government immediately. In 1985 in the wake of series of serious crimes by his followers, including a mass food poisoning attack and an aborted assassination plot to murder U.S. attorney Charles H. Turner, Rajneesh alleged that his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and her close supportes had been responsible. He was later deported from the United States. after his deportation, 21 countries denied him entry. He returned to India and revived the Pune ashram, where he died in 1990.
Rajneesh’s teachings was delivered through his discourses interspersed with jokes. He delighted in engaging in behavior that seemed entirely at odds with traditional images of enlightened individuals. His spoke on major spiritual traditions including Jainism, Hinduism, Hassidism, Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, Tantrism, on a variety of Eastern and Western mystics and on sacred scriptures such as the Upanishads and the Guru Granth Sahib. Rajneesh also drew on a wide range of Western ideas. His belief in the unity of opposites recalls Heraclitus, while his description of man as a machine, condemned to the helpless acting out of unconscious, neurotic patterns, has much in common with Sigmund Freud and George Gurdjieff. His vision of the “new man” transcending constraints of convention is reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche‘s Beyond Good and Evil; his promotion of sexual liberation bears comparison to D. H. Lawrence; and his “dynamic” meditations owe a debt to Wilhelm Reich.
About Book
This book is the insight of living on your instincts, living in wild, knowing the fear of unknown and still have courage to take steps ahead rather than being in safety of following society norms being alleged to us from the childhood. It tells that it is difficult to live as an individual having our own mind and safe to be with group of people and following them but the real freedom, responsibility and life is there on your own, it makes the life worth living! This book wakes you from your unconscious mind and make you believe that you are responsible for you, not anyone in the world so you have to live life according to your rules.
From childhood we have been taught to be dependent to others for our various needs and one day when we grow up we have to take responsibility for so many things we know nothing about because we never been taught how to be responsible and then comes the fear!
From childhood we have been listening and following what others say, never listened and believed what our instincts say and one day when we grow up we realize that we are stuck between society norms and rules and what our inner self telling to do, again then comes the fear!
This book describes what is fear? what is courage? How to be more courageous on your day to day life? It has also suggested meditation techniques and some questions and answers discussed in discourse by Osho.
One needs to be very open minded when you read Osho. He had the vast knowledge about so many things and people from history that he mentioned in the form of stories in his books so you surely get to know something new you never knew before!
Quoting some of my favorite line from the book.
“Don’t call it uncertainty – call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity – call it freedom.”
“Freedom creates fear. People talk about freedom, but they are afraid.”
“In the beginning there is not much difference between the coward and the courageous person. The only difference is, the coward listens to his fear and follows them, and the courageous person puts them aside and goes ahead. The courageous person goes into the unknown in spite of all the fears.”
“Truth is an experience, not a belief.”
“The experience does not depend on the object. The experience depends on the experiencer, on the quality of experiencing.”
“Only a man of great trust is capable of great doubt, great inquiry.”
“The crowd is not pulling you, you being pulled, not by somebody else but by your own unconscious conditioning.”
“The new is unfamiliar. It may be the friend, it may be the enemy, who knows? And there is no way to know! The only way to know is to allow it; hence the apprehension, the fear.”
“If you want to grow then you have to drop all cowardice.”
“The “I” is afraid, not really you. The being has no fear, but the ego has fear.”
“Let your prayer be spontaneous. If even your prayer cannot be spontaneous, then what will be? If even with God you have to be ready-made, then where will you be authentic and true and natural?”
“It is only through danger that life attain to maturity, growth. One needs to be an adventurer, always ready to risk the known for the unknown.”
“Love is when you have known your inner sky.”
“Nobody is holding you there; it is you who has decided to remain in that prison of misery. Nobody holds anybody.”
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