Rajneesh

Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain; 11 December 193119 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho, was an Indian godman, philosopher, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement.

He was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader during his life.

He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious dogma.

As a guru, he advocated meditation and taught a unique form called dynamic meditation.

Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he advocated that his followers live fully in the world but without attachment to it.

Rajneesh was later to say, "I have been interested in communism from my very childhood...communist literature — perhaps there is no book that is missing from my library. I have signed and dated each book before 1950. Small details are so vivid before me, because that was my first entry into the intellectual world. First I was deeply interested in communism, but finding that it is a corpse I became interested in anarchism — that was also a Russian phenomenon — Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy. All three were anarchists: no state, no government in the world."

He became briefly associated with socialism and two Indian nationalist organisations: the Indian National Army and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

However, his membership in the organisations was short-lived as he could not submit to any external discipline, ideology, or system.

In 1951, aged 19, Rajneesh began his studies at Hitkarini College in Jabalpur.

Asked to leave after conflicts with an instructor, he transferred to D. N. Jain College, also in Jabalpur.

Having proved himself to be disruptively argumentative, he was not required to attend college classes at D. N. Jain College except for examinations and used his free time to work for a few months as an assistant editor at a local newspaper.

He began speaking in public at the annual Sarva Dharma Sammelan (Meeting of all faiths) held at Jabalpur, organised by the Taranpanthi Jain community into which he was born, and participated there from 1951 to 1968.

He resisted his parents' pressure to marry.

Rajneesh experienced a spiritual awakening in 1953 at the age of 21.

Rajneesh later said, he became spiritually enlightened on 21 March 1953, when he was 21 years old, in a mystical experience while sitting under a tree in the Bhanvartal garden in Jabalpur.

Having completed his BA in philosophy at D. N. Jain College in 1955, he joined the University of Sagar, where in 1957, he earned his MA in philosophy (with distinction).

In expressing a more progressive attitude to sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".

Following several years in academia, in 1966 Rajneesh resigned his post at the University of Jabalpur and began traveling throughout India, becoming known as a vocal critic of the orthodoxy of mainstream religions, as well as of mainstream political ideologies and of Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1970, Rajneesh spent time in Mumbai initiating followers known as "neo-sannyasins".

During this period, he expanded his spiritual teachings and commented extensively in discourses on the writings of religious traditions, mystics, bhakti poets, and philosophers from around the world.

By the late 1970s, the tension between the ruling Janata Party government of Morarji Desai and the movement led to a curbing of the ashram's development and a back tax claim estimated at $5 million.

In 1974, Rajneesh relocated to Pune, where an ashram was established and a variety of therapies, incorporating methods first developed by the Human Potential Movement, were offered to a growing Western following.

In 1981, the Rajneesh movement's efforts refocused on activities in the United States and Rajneesh relocated to a facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon.

The movement ran into conflict with county residents and the state government, and a succession of legal battles concerning the ashram's construction and continued development curtailed its success.

In 1985, Rajneesh publicly asked local authorities to investigate his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and her close supporters for a number of crimes, including a 1984 mass food-poisoning attack intended to influence county elections, an aborted assassination plot on U.S. attorney Charles H. Turner, the attempted murder of Rajneesh's personal physician, and the bugging of his own living quarters; authorities later convicted several members of the ashram, including Sheela.

That year, Rajneesh was deported from the United States on separate immigration-related charges in accordance with an Alford plea.

After his deportation, 21 countries denied him entry.

Rajneesh ultimately returned to Mumbai, India, in 1986.

After staying in the house of a disciple where he resumed his discourses for six months, he returned to Pune in January 1987 and revived his ashram, where he died in 1990.

Rajneesh's ashram, now known as OSHO International Meditation Resort, and all associated intellectual property, is managed by the registered Osho International Foundation (formerly Rajneesh International Foundation).

Rajneesh's teachings have had an impact on Western New Age thought, and their popularity reportedly increased between the time of his death and 2005.

Rajneesh (a childhood nickname from the Sanskrit रजनी, rajanee, "night", and ईश, isha, "lord", meaning the "God of Night" or "The Moon" (चंद्रमा) was born Chandra Mohan Jain, the eldest of 11 children of a cloth merchant, at his maternal grandparents' house in Kuchwada; a small village in the Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh state in India. His parents, Babulal and Saraswati Jain, who were Taranpanthi Jains, let him live with his maternal grandparents until he was eight years old. By Rajneesh's own account, this was a major influence on his development because his grandmother gave him the utmost freedom, leaving him carefree without an imposed education or restrictions.

When he was seven years old, his grandfather died, and he went to Gadarwara to live with his parents.

Rajneesh was profoundly affected by his grandfather's death, and again by the death of his childhood girlfriend Shashi from typhoid when he was 15, leading to a preoccupation with death that lasted throughout much of his childhood and youth.

In his school years, he was a gifted and rebellious student, and gained a reputation as a formidable debater.

Rajneesh became critical of traditional religion, took an interest in many methods to expand consciousness, including breath control, yogic exercises, meditation, fasting, the occult, and hypnosis.

According to Vasant Joshi, Rajneesh read widely from an early age, and although as a young boy, he played sports; reading was his primary interest.

After showing an interest in the writings of Marx and Engels, he was branded a communist and was threatened with expulsion from school.

According to Joshi, with the help of friends, he built a small library containing mostly communist literature.

Rajneesh, according to his uncle Amritlal, also formed a group of young people that regularly discussed communist ideology and their opposition to religion.