OSHO

Osho was born on December 11, 1931, in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, India. From early childhood it was clear that he would not follow the conventions of the world around him. He spent his first seven years with his maternal grandparents, who gave him a freedom to be himself that few children ever enjoy.

By his own account, the death of his maternal grandfather had a profound effect on his inner life and awakened in him the resolve to find what in life does not die.
He then went to live with his parents. By the time he started school, he had the clarity and courage to challenge every adult attempt to mold his life, and he had firmly formed his own ideas. He never shied away from controversy.

For him, truth could not be compromised; if it could, it would no longer be truth. Nor was truth something to believe in, for it was experience itself. He asked people not to believe what he said, but to experiment and see for themselves whether it was true. At the same time, he was relentless in exposing what belief really is: a mere comfort to soften the anxiety of facing the unknown, or a barrier against encountering mystery and unknown truth.

After attaining enlightenment at the age of twenty-one, he completed his studies and taught philosophy for some years at a university in Jabalpur. Alongside this he traveled throughout India giving talks, challenged traditional religious leaders in public debate, and met people from every walk of life.

In the late 1960s he began developing his own meditation technique, Dynamic Meditation. Osho said that modern people carry so heavy a burden, from the outworn traditions of the past and the anxieties of modern life, that they can hardly find a relaxed, thought-free state of meditation without first passing through a deep process of cleansing. It was also at this time that he began holding meditation camps across India. In the early 1970s Westerners began to listen to him as well. Until then Indians had been steadily becoming his disciples as neo-sannyasins, and from this time more and more Westerners joined them.

In 1974 a commune centered on Osho was completed in Poona, India, and the trickle of visitors from the West soon became a flood. By the end of the 1970s the Poona commune had become the world's largest center for healing and growth. Thousands of people came for therapy groups and meditation, for Osho's morning discourses, to sit with him at the evening darshan, and to devote themselves to life in the commune.

From 1981 to 1985 the commune experiment continued on 126 square miles of high desert in eastern Oregon, USA. Early commune life centered on building Rajneeshpuram, the city known as an "oasis in the desert." Its meditation and healing programs were run by Rajneesh International Meditation University, which developed longer courses and trainings and attracted a broader range of participants.

At the end of 1985, in the face of opposition to Osho and the commune from local residents and the government, the experiment came to an end. The commune was dissolved and Osho set out on a world tour. In mid-1986 he returned to India, and by January 1987 he had settled again in Poona, giving two discourses a day. Within a few months the Poona commune had resumed its full program, which spread even more widely than before.

More and more people came from the East, especially from Japan. Their presence further enriched the healing and martial arts programs, and this diversity is reflected in "Multiversity," the name Osho chose to embrace all the programs. Greater weight was also placed on meditation, a theme Osho returned to again and again in his discourses. He also developed and introduced several new meditative therapies, including No-Mind, Mystic Rose and Born Again.

From around mid-1987 Osho's health declined, and he was often unable to speak. His last discourse, answering questions and speaking on Zen scriptures, was given in April 1989. In the months that followed, whenever his health allowed, he came to the evening music and silent meditation to sit with his disciples.

Osho left his body on January 19, 1990. Only a few weeks earlier he was asked what would become of his work after he had gone. He replied that his trust in existence was absolute, and that if there was any truth in what he had said, it would survive. He hoped that people would grow on their own and come to know themselves rather than follow anyone else.

Before leaving his body, Osho dictated the inscription for his samadhi. In the room of marble and mirrors that holds his ashes, it reads:

OSHO
Never Born, Never Died
Only Visited this Planet Earth between
December 11, 1931 – January 19, 1990

Osho also spoke of how he wished his work to continue and grow: as he was leaving his body, ever more people would come, ever more would take an interest, and the work would grow far beyond what we could imagine. And that is what is happening now.