Spiritual Company Newsletter

By Steffan Vanel • Astrologer • Tarot  Reader

Author of:
     The Astrological Karma of the USA
     Charles & Diana: The Inside Story: An Astrological-Karmic View

Now on YouTube:
     The Astrological Karma of the USA and The New Presidency
     Bridging Heaven & Earth Show #238

Pune, Osho & Dark Robes

As I said on my last newsletter about Goa and being a 60’s chauvinist, Pune was also a place I would have liked to have visited back when I first heard about the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Ashram there, in the early 70’s. I am sure there was quite a party going on back then.

Rajneesh later changed his name to Osho, and now the center is called the Osho Meditation Resort. It is done up quite classy, reminding me of high-tech spiffy spas I’ve visited in Germany, with some Asian fusion flair, and futuristic ambiances. Everyone has to wear maroon robes during the day. And in the evening everyone goes to the main pyramid temple wearing white robes, freshly showered, with no perfume or cologne for the evening meditations and video of Osho.

Occasionally I had flashes of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ while I was there, or being in the year 2050.

There are several different temples and spaces to be in and various Osho meditations going on.

At 6:00 AM in the main pyramid temple, you can do an hour of dynamic meditation; With eyes closed for the whole hour you go through five stages: a period of intense deep breathing, a period of cathartic screaming/physically expressed releasing, a period of holding your arms straight above you jumping while uttering the mantra Hu! then another bell rings and you have to freeze in whatever position you are in, and then a period of graceful dance with flowing music.

I must say it is a trippy way to start the day!

Before I share some of my feelings about Osho I want to share my most interesting encounter there. I met an Indian psychologist from Mumbai, who is also an Osho Meditation teacher. He started with Osho meditation in the late 90’s, when Osho had already passed. His story was quite interesting. Before he started with Osho he had a very bad case of rheumatoid arthritis, where he had to use heavy pain medication just to get through each day.

In addition to being a psychologist, however, he was also a student of classical Indian music. He knew his teacher was a follower of Osho although they had never spoken about it. One week his teacher told him he would not be available for his class because he was going away for a four-day meditation retreat. Manosh, my friend, was curious and asked if he could go, not really knowing what to expect.

He said that in those four days his pain level was reduced by 50% and within two years he went into complete remission. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, basically a part of yourself is attacking yourself, and one can imagine how the physically, emotionally cathartic releasing of dynamic meditation did the trick for him.

Manosh continues to do an hour of Dynamic Mediation every day.

He also shared with me how, in addition to his regular psychotherapy clients, he does volunteer work with a home that cares for street kids in Mumbai. He told me how a lot of these kids have experienced and/or perpetrated serious physical and sexual violence in their lives. At one point he proposed a 10-day course of intensive Dynamic Meditation for a group of these kids. He said not one of these kinds dropped out of the course and they had really positive results following their having gone through this process.

Myself, I am more drawn to the sitting meditation of Vipassana, which can also be very physically and emotionally intense, especially in the 10 day and longer retreats. And there are several instances where they are now teaching Vipassana in prisons, the first time in India.

I can imagine, however, that these traumatized street kids may very well be well serviced by the physically active catharsis of dynamic meditation.

That being said, for whoever is interested, I will now share some of my personal feelings about Osho.

First of all, he is still a bit of an enigma to me and I don’t know if I have the final word on him. And my philosophical fall back position is always: “Everything is good, for the people it’s good for, until it is no longer good for them.”

I do think Osho was a genius, and I love listening to him because he is so brilliant, and his knowledge is so vast, and his way of explaining things so clear and clever, and he is extremely funny at times.

But I don’t trust him.

The ‘Dark Robes’ part of this newsletter title relates to one of the Hilarion/M.B. Cooke series of books, which, in respect of this newsletter, I have produced as an EBook now available on Amazon. (You can go to this link if you want: www.amazon.com)

In this short and to the point book Hilarion explains how the Dark Forces are part of God’s Plan. The original Divine Source created everything, including the dark and the light. Hilarion explains how, at this level of duality where we now exist, there is no concept of light without an opposing darkness.

The most interesting chapter in this book for me, however, was: ‘Attacking Those on the Path.’ those who are already trying to follow a spiritual journey. He says the Dark Forces work through different spiritual teachers or channeled entities, beings who have a lot of truth, have a lot of wisdom, but carefully interwoven into their teachings, consciously or unconsciously, are things that are not true. And this holds the seeker back because they tend to ‘buy the whole package.’

Hilarion goes on to say how he can’t tell us who is good and who is bad because this very situation serves a purpose. That purpose is for us to develop our own powers of discrimination. What I call your own ‘bullshit detector.’

There is an additional chapter where Hilarion shares what kinds of things to look out for when experiencing different teachers and their teachings.

Personally I find there are a lot of very popular New Age teachers and beliefs out there, which I suspect, in some way, to be serving the Dark Forces.

In balance and fairness I would also like to share how Hilarion has stated that if anything doesn’t seem right to you, you should reject it. Because either it is information that isn’t right, or it is simply information that you, at this time, are not capable of benefitting from, and for either reason you are totally justified in rejecting it.

That, however, is the kind of clear guidance that engenders my own trust in Hilarion.

I am really grateful for my trust in Hilarion and feel confident that I can compare what he has said in relation to other teacher’s teachings to help me to have a sense of how I feel about those other teacher’s teachings.

One example relative to Osho: I was told that on the Osho Community Ranch in Oregon Osho was encouraging the men to have vasectomies because this was not a good time on the planet to have children.

First of all, when socially and environmentally conscious people promote not having children because of over-population etc. my counter-argument is: If all of the socially /environmentally conscious people stop having children and only the unconscious, less socially/environmentally conscious people keep having children, then what does that do for the future of the human race?

Of course the perfect counter-argument to that is adoption.

Returning to the subject of vasectomy. In response to a question about the effects of vasectomy published in the book: Answers, Hilarion stated that the vasectomy operation was extremely disruptive to the channels through which root chakra energies normally flow in the body and will have negative ramifications on the physical, astral and aetheric bodies.

Knowing and believing what Hilarion has said about vasectomies you can imagine how I feel about what Osho has said when I make the comparison.

I nevertheless think Osho was a brilliant, unique individual who was meant to bring through some special teachings, who also had some dark corners that were able to provide haven for the expression and manifestation of some Dark Forces.

At the Osho resort and in other certain spiritual teachings of an Eastern flavor being followed by Westerners I often feel that there is a certain ‘heart’ quality which I find is really missing. I will go further into this in an upcoming newsletter about Tiruvannamalai and the Advaita Community.

Blessings,
Steffan Vanel

Steffan’s Spiritual Company Newsletters and ‘Starwise’ Monthly Forecasts are available by email on an annual, sliding-scale donation basis; from $10 - $50 a year.

Subscribe

To donate by mail send a check to: PO Box 476, Curlew, WA 99118

— Steffan Vanel Archive —