I became a sannyasin in 1984, I met Osho on the Ranch and in Poona II. I considered myself a sannyasin for quite some time after his death in 1990, until I left the invisible enclosure of the cult around 2014. It wasn’t a sudden and drastic cut, but a growing out of concepts that gradually fell away from me.
In order to realise that many of Osho’s statements and recommendations are not based on „enlightenment“ but on traumatic experiences, I first had to push Osho down from the pedestal on which I had placed him.
At that time, during the Sannyas years, he was sacrosanct for me, I wanted to see him as a saint. I didn’t want to know that what I considered to be the most profound insights of a uniquely enlightened master were partly rooted in his narcissistically conditioned personality structure due to various traumas – even though it was (or could have been) clear from his numerous statements about his childhood and youth.
The inner dethroning of the IMAGE of an enlightened superman whom nothing and no one can touch and throw off track and who is beyond all human relationships was the ideal I – a mentally oriented person full of fear and insecurities about feelings, attachments and panic about losing control – was striving for.
And today?
I believe I can say that as far as Osho is concerned, I have been able to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. His contributions to human psychology, his often biting criticism of the vested interests and his unsparing directness, combined with an impressive literacy and knowledge of all religious and spiritual paths, make him one way or another an outstanding figure of the 20th century.
Not one with a halo, however, but a very ambivalent one in terms of the impact of the cult that grew up around him. The numerous reports of abuse of all kinds, the worst of which concern the sexual abuse of children and young people, overshadow the overall picture of Osho and his „movement“ for me.
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