Yoga - Christopher Calder, Krishna Christ, and his Lying or Misinformed “Lost Truth”.

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Christopher Calder, Krishna Christ, and his Lying or Misinformed “Lost Truth”.

AnthonyTh

2007-09-25, 3:22 pm

Christopher Calder and his Lying “Lost Truth”about osho.
A response to Mr. Calder´s “Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh and the Lost Truth”
By Antyhony Thompson Ph. D.
*English is not my first language, so forgive my misspellings and gramatical mistakes.

Mr. Calder quotes Osho on several ocations.The way he does this is malicious and clearly his intention is not that of an expert detached observer, but that of a resentful lover. His intention is to create an image of Osho that becomes a passway for his own feelings of anger and hurt.
To be hurt or angry is Mr. Calder´s prerogative. However, to twist facts, quotes and ideas to spread the undertsnading that we are facing an evil character is just a manipuilative and indirect way of giving an outlet to his own personal vendetta.
In my understanding it is utterly nonsense to pick up a few statements from Osho's more than 8500 hours of talks and evaluate him based on that. I can’t believe that a person like him, who claims to know him since ages, can do it. And a funny thing is, Osho himself never denied being contradictory, on a contrary he glorified it. So, to this day to take a quote from osho means nothing in itself. You can get the man to advice you on gardening, wall papers or sex. Out of a whole chapter refference a quote means nothing. He quotes (without a direct book or chapter reference) that Osho loved Hitler. I have serached the entire library of his talks and that quote is nowhere to be found.
Osho himself once said “ You need not agree whith what I say; you can only agree with me directly. There is no need to come through what I say. I say a thousand and one things and I contradict myself everyday. If you start agreeing with me you will go mad! You can´t agree; nobody can´t agree with a what I say . You can anly agree witha few points but those wil not be all that i say. Contradiction is my method. I go on shattering. I go on shocking, offending people; that is may method, to shatter people´s beliefs” (Osho, 1980, The Open Secret).
So I think Osho´s words need to be taken not as a comprehensive philosophy, but rather as a seductive invitation to self-explore and understand the nature of mind, body, emotions, and the role of meditation in this search.Besides, the discourses were given many times as responses to individuals, and in several ocations he was answering not only the question but the questioner himself/herself.
The “Cult” Story
Also, mr. Calder speaks of the sannyas movement referring to it as a “cult”. I do not agree with his statements of Osho´s movement being a cult. This is why: Some of the pre-requisites to have a cult is to have systemathic body or set of beliefs. A complete belief system that explains everything in terms of itself. As Mr. Calder´s knows, and has consistently argued so, Osho contradicted himself a lot. It is practically impossible to create a cult out of his words. The only consistent idea in his talks is that of awareness and meditation. The rest is simply not systemathic enough to do anything with it. If you are going to join a sect, you need to have something to believe...some promise of paradise or future enlightenment . You don´t join a sect that tells you that “you are already a buddha, enlightened” (from “The heart sutra”) and that you just “need to come back home. However you are, you are beautiful the way your are” (from “The Goose is Out”).
My understanding is that Osho´s work was mainly deprogramming people against their self constructed ideas about love, spirituality, growth, relationships, etc. In fact if you want you can find statements where he speaks of karma and reincarnation and then onother statement where he sais there is no soul, no reicarnation (see “Reincarnation a Misconception” discurse given in 1989) , and that karma is just a way of social control. He speaks of god and then says there is no such a thing and it is just a” teddy bear” for fearful people.
Second, you need rituals that people, old and new, can join to.Around his movement there are no rituals, or any sort of worship.
Third, a cult does not admit dissent, and mr. Calder and I have been writing and discussing in a sannyas owned website and the quotes he took from Parmartha´s article are also discussions crticizing Osho in sannyas websites.
Sannyasins tend to be free, open minded, closed, fanatics, or careless... as any human being can be. But there is no official inforced dogma on believing or agreeing on anything.
My research shows that Osho was no " Deepak Chopra". The man was a rebellious iconoclast who did and said what he thought was his truth. He demolished the catholic church,The islam and any form of organized religion; he spoke against mother Theresa, Gandhi(precisely for being against technology, which Osho strongly advocated, not as mr. Calder´s affirmation in his article).
Osho, was a man who saw no use for rituals, discipline and all the self-torture that is going on in the name of renunciation or spirituality. The development of self-awareness was his flag. More over, he spoke against Indian traditions. Reazon enough for the attempted murder against him in early eighties in Poona, by a fanatic Hindu during a public talk.
Calder´s suppositions
Calder states “Rajneesh's poor health and strange symptoms were a product of real neurological and immune system dysfunction, not some esoteric supersensitivity caused by his enlightenment. Rajneesh also had Type II diabetes, asthma, and severe back pain.” According to him and his conclusions Osho had “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)”. Now this is simply his own idea, not based in any medical diagnosis made by any certified doctor.
He also states: “Rajneesh used prescription drugs, mainly Valium (diazepam), as an analgesic for his aches and pains and to counter the symptoms of dysautonomia (dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system). He took the maximum recommended dose of 60 milligrams per day. Rajneesh also inhaled nitrous oxide (N2O) mixed with pure oxygen, which he claimed increased his creativity. The nitrous oxide probably did relieve the sensation of severe exhaustion and suffocation patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often feel, but it did nothing for the quality of his judgment. Naive about the power of drugs, and overconfident of his ability to fight off their negative effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction.”
Now this information that is stated as a “fact” comes, in fact, from second hand sources which are Hugh Milne´s book “The god that failed” and an Interview that Sheela, former Osho secretary, denounced by the master, gave to Stern magazine in Germany and 60 minutes in CBS in USA. Sheela was angry at Osho. She was actually enraged with the man, after all it was his accusations that threw her into jail. And also it was a way to undermine Amrito´s (Osho´s doctor) work. We should not forget that she tryed to kill him at the ranch. And this has been documented. Now, a simple reflection would be to try to drive a car each day in the awful ranch roads with 60 miligrams of valium in the body and not to crash into the hunmdred of sannyasins standing by the side of the road to greet him.
Consulted eye witnesses to these two accusations refuted Milne´s and Sheela´s accusations, and of course, Calder´s statements:
Devageet, Osho personal dentist from poona one, to the end of Osho´s life stated to me: “Osho never used nitrous oxide, I used it, as his dentist, during his dental treatment sessions. Osho, as other masters have demonstrated ( see Nikhilananda taking a massive dose of LSD on his first meeting with Guru Ram Dass, and showing no effects whatsoever), showed that the effects of Nitrous Oxide during his dental treatment had no effects of diminishing his clarity and awareness. Nitrous Oxide is a valid and valued analgesic and anaesthetic agent, as you know, and it still provides the basis of anaesthetic techniques because of its proven track record of safety and efficacy. It is a fact too that people have used it for leisure purposes. Osho was given nitrous oxide in a purely dental context." Also, Sw. Jalal the dental equipment technician stated the following: “during the Ranch and in Poona 2 I was the dental room technician, responsible for looking after the equipment. Unless Osho was having surreptitious sessions without my knowledge, he wasn't using gas on a daily, or even weekly basis. He did have an annoying tendency to want a session at strange times (6am in the morning) but that was Devageets problem”. This is to the claim that Mr. Calder made to me that Devageet had told that Osho used "N02 for months on end". Which is just a lie or a misinformation.
Mr. Calder uses in his article a text From Jim weaver where this congressman states that he saw nitrous oxide spigots by the side of the bed of rajneesh´s room in rajneeshpuram in USA. This Weaver text that Christopher keeps referring to and which is available at http://home.att.net/~medi tation/Weaver.html is obviously not reliable. Just one paragraph above the famous spigots, Weaver writes, with seemingly remarkable clarity of memory:
“Two days later, the Bhagwan and Ma Anand Sheela absconded from the Big Muddy, attempting to flee the country, and leaving their acolytes high and dry. On the same day, the two Prineville BLM chiefs announced their resignations.”
There is just a little problem … nothing like this happened. Sheela left on her own for Germany, Osho stayed in Oregon and denounced her to the press. Now I am supposed to believe this kind of witness?
That’s before we come to telling apart, say, an oxygen spigot for a known asthma sufferer from a nitrous oxide spigot … if indeed there were any spigots at all.
I exchanged some posts in a website with Mr. Calder and when I produced the evidence and arguments of true eyewitnesses to the events he was reporting in relation to Osho´s drug addiction he wrote to me: “When I visited the Oregon ranch in the 1980s I could tell he was on drugs just by looking at him. No one even had to tell me.” ( Calder, 2007). This was his final eyewitness proof. He saw him with 15.000 thousand people, perhaps no less than 40 meters away, I do not think he got front seat at the ranch. And he “could tell” he was on drugs. Wow! Even I can not tell all the time when my friends are on drugs in parties at my own house. But, again, perhaps I am just not so perceptive. When I discussed this point with Mr. Calder he called me “dis-honest, crazy, fanatic and neurotuic.. and in denyal”. Simply because of my disagreeing with his second-hand information. So, his ultimate proof is his perception of Osho. If he felt it...then, it must be true.
When I confronted Mr Calder with the quotes from Devageet, he just wrote that “Devageet was a a crazy man” and so was I. Therefore my disagreeing with his second-hand information made me into a “fanatic cult follower”.
The Sheela Story
Milne had serious conflicts with Sheela´s facsist style in the Commune in USA. He assumed that Osho was behind her actions. In fact she usually said that the “order comes from the chief” to convince someone to do something they felt their consciousness would not allow. So people thought it was a “divise” from the master. Now, Osho and his personal staff have clarified that many “orders” did not only not come from Him, but were deliverate moves on Sheela´s part to expand her power to areas where it was weak, such as the inner circle of the personal staff around Osho.
This area that was not under her command in the commune. In fact the attempeted murder of Osho´s doctor was a move in this direction.
Many people were expelled from the commune in Oregon and big international and prosperus communes like Medina in England and Sushila´s in Autralia, were closed down because they were too succesful and independent from Sheela ´s regime. Osho knew nothing about it (we must remember he was not speaking in public or having personal contact with his disciples) and to all of them it was said that it was Osho´s order.
Sheela´s fascist style developed under time as a response to the intense antagonism that the commune created around them . There were 17 state agencies trying to get them out of there; the sighn announcing the nearby commune was used as shooting target by the local resident of the area; the hotel they bought in Potland was bombed, and even there is convincing evidence that the CIA hired someone to kill Osho. All this has been documented in the books " Passage to america" by Max Brecher and, "The way of the heart" By Judith Thompson, and "rajneesh garden", by Dell Murphy. Also, it can be checked Juliette Forman´s accout of the time and Ms appletton´s Book. See: http://www2.db.dk/pe/twotales.htm , Or for a complete stoty of Osho´s commune see: http://www.ashe-prem.org/two/davisson.shtml
Also, in his article, Mr. Calder joins, or at leat holds morally responsable, Osho´s arrest and deportation from USA with Sheela´s crimes. What he fails to see is that all those crimes, the salmonella poisoning, the intent of murder of Osho´s doctor, Devaraj, and the plot against the attorney general, the bugging of the commune, including Osho´s own room, were crimes commited by sheela and her associates. These crimes were exposed by Osho and it was HIM who invited the FBI to investigate them in his own commune. Which ultematley lead to the arrest of Sheela and her friends in Germany. If he had kept silent, no one would have ever guessed or known about them. We should know that the salmonella poisoning in The Dalles was attributed to "unproper food handling" by the authorities. Now this is referred to by the media as “The only american case of Bio-terrorism”.
We could argue that Osho had a poor eye for choosing his secretary or that she changed over time, or that he should have been more involved in controling what she did in his name, but we can not accuse him of crimes that include him as a victim, such as the wire-tapping of his own room. To think of Osho as omniscient or infallible is nothing but a god-like father projection. He was a human being. Wise, awake, but a human being. He himself said when a journalist asked him “if he was enlightenmed how he did not know about theses crimes?”. His answer was “ enlightenment means I know myself. It does not mean that I know that my room is being bugged” (Osho, Interviews with the press, 1985)
Osho´s factual “criminal” records
These are the "terrible" crimes he was sentenced in the plea bargin in USA : Arranging sham marriages, and lying in the visa application. And in relation to this last charge, according to his attorney, Niren, and the research he did, no one in the whole history of the United states has been even prosecuted by such act and, what to say about the half a million dollar fine that he was forced to pay for his excarcelation.He could not arrange any marriage. He hardly came out of his house and was in public silence, not speaking to his disciples.
The attorney general said when he was asked why Osho was not accussed of the same crimes as Sheela that “I did not have any proof whatsoever linking Rajneesh to Sheela´s crimes.” And “ all we wanted was to dismantle the commune”. And he forgot to add that the complaint that lead to Sheela ´s arrest was filed by Osho himself.
Also he did not denouce Sheela, as he states, when he suspected she was stealing money from him, but when she left the commune and people started comming up with the stories of her crimes...including the money stealing.
All through out his article Mr calder confuses facts with his personal opinion based on second hand information, and assumptions, such as when he quotes Sheela´s statement on Osho using 60 miligrams of valium a day. Suddenly the cheat, liar criminal becomes a reliable source of information. How convenient.
The calder´s death theory
Mr calder argues that he thinks that Osho died of “the addiction effects” of N02. He said to me in our discussion “Rajneesh was destroyed by illness and by his own drug use.... the official cause of his death was listed as heart failure, but there was much speculation he committed suicide. If he did commit suicide, I am sure they used morphine or barbiturates”. Now, these exceptional ideas come from Mr. Calder´s talent to “feel” or “ tell” how people die. Because actually nobody knows for sure what killed the man. The doctors consulted thought that the case looked like heavy metal poisoning. As they could not trace anything in the blood , they thought of Thalium, as it can not be traced in the bloodstream after a while. This was told to Osho and then he and his personal staff concluded that the only place where this could have happenned was while held in cutody in USA for his imigration trial. It is a proven fact that he was held in a jail in Ocklahoma under the false name of David Washington. It is assumed throughout Mr. Calder´s article that Osho 'regularly used nitrous oxide' in the dental chair, without any clarification of what 'regularly' means. It could mean once or twice a year. But the assumption, or rather, the implication here is that it was on a daily basis. One does not get nitrous poisoning just by using it a few times a year. And yet there is absolutely no evidence that Osho used laughing gas more than that. Nor that he had nitrous poisoning. We are just asked to accept this as "fact".
Mr calder says that the poisoning does not equate with thalium poisoning symptoms. Now, as far as I know, Mr. Calder is not a doctor and at the worst he could have got the information from internet. Now, in the webpage for thalium poisoning says “Note that Thallium poisoning symptoms usually refers to various symptoms known to a patient, but the phrase Thallium poisoning signs may refer to those signs only noticable by a doctor.”
Mr. Calder argument is that the main symptom for Thalium poisoning is hair loss. Well, Osho did loose his hair in huge quantities, as it was reported by Anando, his persobnal secretary. Usualy the hair is not lost in the beard, but in the head, where Osho was certainly bald.
and had been for some time. However, the doctors might have been wrong and the toxin used was not Thalium...or there was no toxin. Who knows. Diagnosis is not as infallible as the Pope. But the fact is that Osho died at 59 years of age and his health was certaily deteriorating since the US deportation. Now, Mr. Calder argument is that his death is the result of N02 addiction. Well, it has been already proved that the people who used this gas on him, used it only during dental sesions as anaesthtic. Therefore the possibility of being poisoned by N02 is out of question. We could argue that those people (His dentist and technician, and caretakers) are lying to protect Osho´s vice. But then, if we begin with that argumant, then everybody could be lying, including myself, Mr. Calder, Osho, his personal stuff... Then we have nothing to hold on to and all this discussion is irrelevant. What I have done is taking eyewitnesses account as facts, for the argument sake, and then contrast it with second–hand information. Not only that, second-hand emotionally motivated information. It is clear from Mr. Calder letters, articles, and responses, that he is emotionally driven, as myself, to discuss what we think is the truth.
What I do know is that as far as second hand information I have closer and more reliable ones: The actual people involved in the stories he tells. And, of course, bibliographical references for the quotes I use. Not just words I assume I heard, or heard someone else saying them. I insist: A quote without a reference is a lie. And Mr calder lies a lot.
athompsonphd@hotmail.com
See Full refernces at:
http://www.dynamicbrain.net/christo...rmed-lost-truthChristopher Calder and his lying Lost truth about Osho