Osho

The ordinary man is being used by his mind. When it becomes too much, when the mind starts using you completely in a totalitarian way, we call it madness.

The moment the person withdraws from the mind, the mind has no energy to go on into old routines. It is your identity with the mind that gives power to it. You have taken your identity back, you are no longer nursing the mind; it starts dying. The farther you go away from it, the more and more your mind dies. And to attain a state of no-mind is what I call health. That is the goal of meditation. Then your spirit is healed, you have become whole.

There is no God, there has never been. Man has created God according to his own image because it is something that is needed by the sick mind. The healthy mind has no need for a God, the healthy mind has no need for a prayer. The healthy mind has no need for churches, temples, mosques, synagogues.

People are ready to throw their garbage, their advice, their wisdom, their knowledge, everybody is ready to catch hold of you and put something in your mind. You are already too much burdened. Subjective art burdens you more. Objective art unburdens you. Subjective art should be part of psychiatric hospitals only. People suffering from mental sicknesses should be allowed painting, poetry, sculpture, anything they want. And it is going to help, it is therapeutic. It will make them healthy.

Conscious mind is personal, unconscious mind is impersonal. The collective unconscious mind is all that has preceded you: the whole history of mind is contained in it. But this cannot be the foundation. Below it there is a cosmic unconscious mind, which is the mind of the whole existence.

As you go higher than the conscious no-mind, you find superconsciousness, or the superconscious mind. This superconsciousness is exactly the equivalent of the lower collective unconscious mind.

Conscious mind is very small: one-tenth of the Unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is nine times bigger. Nine times more powerful. And it knows no reason.

To call darshan Indian philosophy is basically wrong. Philosophy is a mind thing — you think about it. Darshan is a realization, a thing of your innermost being; you realize it. Philosophy needs logic; darshan needs silence — no thoughts, everything in absolute nothingness. Only then you will come to know yourself. So I don’t call darshan Indian philosophy.

My understanding is that religion is the ultimate luxury. You have to feed your body first; if your body is hungry, it is impossible to become a buddha. You have to train your mind first, bring it to its highest peak of intelligence. If that is not possible, you cannot become buddha. These are the steps. The body has to be completely satisfied. The mind has to be sharpened, alert, aware, able to enjoy Mozart, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Picasso, Rabindranath. Only then is there a possibility of a new flight, because all these things give you a little joy but very momentary.

Repress anything and your mind becomes focused on it. For example, if it said to you that, “Don’t eat apples” then your mind will start fantasizing about apples.

The moment you believe, inquiry stops. Keep your mind open — neither believe nor disbelieve. Just remain alert and search and doubt everything. Unless you come to a point which is indubitable, that’s what truth is. You cannot doubt it. It is not a question of believing in it, it is a totally different phenomenon and you cannot doubt it. It is so much a certainty, so overwhelming you that there is no way to doubt it.

It is really amazing to watch people’s mind how they work and how they make themselves miserable and they go on weaving their misery deeper and deeper and more complex and more complex, to a point from where they cannot get out. And it is all their imagination.

There are not many hindrances but only few. One is a repressed mind because whatever you have repressed, whenever you will sit silent to meditate, that repressed idea, the repressed energy will be the first to overflow you and your mind. If it is sex, meditation will be forgotten and you will be having a pornographic session. So first thing is: drop repressions — which is very simple because they are not natural, they have been told to you… that sex is sin. It is not. Is is nature, and if nature is sin then I don’t think what can be virtue. In fact, going against nature is sin.

The Eastern mind is accustomed to belief. Faith has been emphasized for centuries; to doubt is a sin and to believe is a virtue. To me the reverse is the case: to doubt is virtue and to believe is sin.

Source: Osho on Mind

Osho

A man of enlightenment does not practice compassion. He has not even to think about compassion, he simply finds it. As his ego disappears and as he realizes the ultimate universal life force as his own.

Sympathy is not compassion; it is just the opposite. Sympathy is a kind of exploitation of the other person. When you sympathize with somebody, you are higher, better, and the other is lower, falling, degraded. Your ego gets immense satisfaction out of sympathy. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. You don’t know exactly what you are doing.

This word “compassion” is composed of passion. To be compassionate means to be in love. Compassion is just a dimension of love. Passion is hasty, hectic, a little violent. Compassion is gentle, nice, understanding — but it is passion after all.

If you feel angry too often you should meditate more on anger, so that anger disappears and its energy becomes compassion.

The man of enlightenment finds that with enlightenment many things have come as by-products — and compassion is one of the most important.

It is exactly the same thing: when enlightenment comes, the ego has already gone out. When enlightenment comes, just as a shadow to it compassion comes in, truth comes in, beauty comes in, grace comes in, blissfulness comes in. All that you have been searching for and were never able to manage is just showered on you.

My own observation is that a person who loves himself deeply becomes so blissful that his whole life becomes a prayer, a service, compassion. Only a blissful person can have compassion, and only a blissful person can have love. The person who goes on following others remaining so miserable deep down, so crippled — how can he love, how can he be compassionate? Yes, he can go through empty motions of love, duty, but that is not going to fulfill him or the person he is dutiful to. It is not going to fulfill anybody.

Unless you love the Master deeply you will not be able to understand his knocks; they will look inimical. They are out of his compassion, out of his love.

To create nothingness in you is the goal of meditation, but this nothingness has nothing to do with the negative idea. It is full, abundantly full. It is so full that it starts overflowing. Buddha has defined this nothingness as overflowing compassion.

The word “compassion” is beautiful. It is made out of the same word as “passion.” When passion is transformed, when the desire to seek and search for the other is no more there, when you are enough unto yourself, when you don’t need anybody, when the very desire for the other has evaporated, when you are utterly happy, blissful, just being alone, then passion becomes compassion. Now you don’t seek the other because you are feeling empty and lonely; now you seek the other because you are too full and you would like to share.

When there is overflowing love it is compassion.

Passion arises out of negative nothingness and compassion arises out of positive nothingness.

Buddha says that the real man of wisdom can be judged only by one thing: his compassion, his love. He will be radiating compassion. He wi!l be always ready to help people on the path. The people will be insulting him, the people will be in every possible way against him, the people will be angry at him, because the people are fast asleep and to put them on the path he has to wake them up. And nobody likes to be awakened because people are dreaming beautiful dreams. And you shake them and you wake them and you destroy their dreams, and that’s all that they have got. Otherwise they are lonely, otherwise they are empty. So they are somehow filling their inner spaces with dreams, projections, imaginations.

Please try to understand what I mean by being selfish. First you have to love yourself, know yourself, BE yourself. Out of that you will radiate love, understanding, tenderness, care for others. Out of meditation arises true compassion, but meditation is a selfish phenomenon. Meditation means just enjoying yourself and your aloneness, forgetting the whole world and just enjoying yourself. It is a selfish phenomenon, but out of this selfishness arises great altruism. And then there is no bragging about it; you don’t become egoistic. You don’t serve people; you don’t make them feel obliged to you. You simply enjoy sharing your love, your joy.

Buddha says: Meditation is enough to solve your problems, but something is missing in it — compassion. If compassion is also there, then you can help others solve their problems. He says: Meditation is pure gold; it has a perfection of its own. But if there is compassion then the gold has a fragrance too — then a higher perfection, then a new kind of perfection, gold with fragrance. Gold is enough unto itself — very valuable — but with compassion, meditation has a fragrance.

With the flame of awareness even all that you have been thinking is wrong will become right. Love seems to be an entanglement, an imprisonment; with awareness that becomes a liberty, a freedom. Anger without consciousness is a destructive force, a suicidal force; it hurts you, it kills you by and by, it is a poison. With awareness the same energy is transfigured, becomes compassion. The same radiance comes to your face, but not in anger — in compassion. The same blood flows, the same chemistry of the body, but a new foreign element has entered into it, and the whole chemistry changes.

Source: Osho on Compassion

Osho

Enlightenment is pure silence, the silence of no-mind.

Enlightenment is simply becoming aware of your transcendence of chemistry and physics, biology and physiology, knowing yourself to be the eternal, non-physical energy. It is pure light, and nobody can enforce it, it is absolutely in your hands to remain ignorant or to become enlightened.

Enlightenment is not a state of ecstasy, it is beyond ecstasy. Enlightenment has no excitement in it; ecstasy is a state of excitement. Ecstasy is a state of mind — a beautiful state of mind, but still a state of mind. Ecstasy is an experience. And enlightenment is not an experience, because there is nobody left to experience. Ecstasy is still within the ego, enlightenment is beyond the ego.

It is not that you become enlightened: you are not, then enlightenment is. It is not that you are liberated, it is not that you remain in that liberation, liberated: it is a liberation from yourself.

When a man of enlightenment looks at a roseflower there is no division between the knower and the known; he becomes the very heart of the roseflower. When he looks at the sunrise he becomes the sunrise, when he looks at a white cloud, he becomes the white cloud. It is not by any effort. He has just become a mirror, so clean that everything that comes before it is reflected in it. He becomes it.

Enlightenment means exactly that: when meditation has become natural. You are meditative — not that you sit sometimes in meditation, not that you have a few hours of meditation every day — your whole time is meditative You move in meditation, you walk in meditation, you sit in meditation, you eat in meditation, you love in meditation, you do your businesses in meditation. Your whole life becomes surrounded by a new kind of energy. It is not NECESSARY, it is simply natural.

A man of enlightenment, feeling one with existence, needs no morality, needs no ethics, needs no teachings about what is right and what is wrong. He is so in tune with existence that everything that happens through him is bound to be just right. There is no possibility of anything going wrong. Meditation is an art of bringing you closer to the heartbeat of existence. The deeper you go within you… you will find the very heartbeat of existence. Then there is no morality for you; all that you do is beautiful.

Self-realization is not difficult at all. It appears to be difficult because we never try to get in tune with our own being. We have forgotten the language, that’s all, but it can be remembered.

Truth is only the one that happens when the mind stops functioning; that is the truth of enlightenment. When you are in absolute silence, not a thought moves and the lake of your consciousness is absolutely rippleless, then you become a mirror and then the whole is reflected in you; that is the truth of enlightenment. That’s what happened to Buddha under uhe bodhi tree… that was what Jesus was calling `the kingdom of god’.

Nirvana means the ultimate enlightenment, the state when the ego disappears, when man is no more separate from existence — not even a thin curtain separates him, not even a transparent glass separates him — when all separation disappears. That meeting with the total, that merger with the whole, that melting into the absolute, is called nirvana.

Whenever there is enlightenment, god takes possession of the enlightened person, because the enlightened person is not a person at all; he is just emptiness. And only in that emptiness can god take possession. So whenever there is this emptiness, whenever the ego disappears, god immediately appears. These are two aspects of the same phenomenon: the ego disappearing and god appearing; the death of the ego is the birth of god.

The awakening is called enlightenment because it is an experience of being full of light, overflowing with light.

Enlightenment is not attained by striving for it — no. Striving itself is the greatest impediment. You don’t attain it by making effort; you attain it by relaxing all efforts. It happens. It is not an attainment really, it is not an achievement… and the achiever’s mind never reaches it. It is a relaxation: when you are not striving for anything, not thinking to achieve anything, not even thinking about enlightenment, then it happens. It takes you always unawares: when you are really looking for it hard, it goes on eluding you. That is not the way to get to it. It is very elusive, mercury-like.

Watch desire… just watching, observing, seeing the ways of the desire and the subtle, cunning strategies of it and how it always comes. It even starts thinking “How to drop desire?” — it starts desiring the state of no-desire too. See this whole game, and seeing it one day, suddenly one is sitting alone and there is no desire, no desire around — in that very moment suddenly one finds oneself at home. That’s what enlightenment is, and that’s what the experience of God is.

Enlightenment can happen through anything, but the most potential situation is love. Enlightenment is possible in any kind of situation, in any state of mind; sometimes it has happened in very absurd situations.

Source: Osho Quotes on Enlightenment

So you want the day off

Lets take a look at what you are asking for :-

There are 365 days in the year available for work.

There are 52 weeks in the year, in which you already have two days off per week, leaving 261 days available for work.

Since you spend 16 hours each day away from work, you have used up 170 days, leaving only 91 days available.

You spend 50 minutes each day in coffee breaks which accounts for 25 days per year, leaving only 68 days available.

With 1 hour lunch period each day, you have used up another 46 days, leaving only 22 days available for work.

You normally spend two days per year on sick leave.

This leaves only 20 days available for work.

We are off for 5 holidays per year, so your available working time is down to 15 days.

We generously give you 14 days vacation per year, which leaves only 1 day available for work, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you take that day off.

What do you really mean?

OR, Dr Mann’s list of the main workplace lies:

It’s a pleasure - What a hassle.
Glad to be of help - I’d rather be doing something else.
Have a nice day - Drop dead, it’s all the same to me.
How are you ? - Spare me the details. I really don’t care.
Long time, no see - Thank God.
Can I help you - Oh, please say “No”.
That’s really interesting - What’s for lunch ?
Lovely outfit, is it new ? - My God, I bet they laughed you out of the shop.
Did you have a nice weekend ? - Please spare me your usual rambling account.
Can’t stop, I’ve another appointment - With the speaking clock.
Sorry to hear your hampster died - Get a life.
Of course this idea will work - Your guess is as good as mine.
I would love to be involved in this project - I would rather scrape graffiti off walls.
No problem - So long as I reschedule my life for the next week and work until midnight every night.

Ode to Public Servants.

Ten public servants standing in a line,
one of them was downsized – then there were nine.

Nine public servants who must negotiate,
one joined the union – then there were eight.

Eight public servants thought they were in heaven,
’til one of them was redeployed – then there were seven.

Seven public servants, their jobs as safe as bricks,
but one was reclassified – then there were six.

Six public servants trying to survive,
one of them was privatised – then there were five.

Five public servants ready to give more,
but one golden handshake reduced them to four.

Four public servants full of loyalty,
their jobs were advertised – then there were three.

Three public servants under review,
one left on secondment – then there were two.

Two public servants coping on the run,
one went out on stress leave – then there was one.

The last public servant agreed to relocate,
replaced by 10 consultants at twice the hourly rate.

Anon

The Facts of Life :-

This is the story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody: There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody, when Nobody did what Anybody could of done.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel :-

I thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, but it was only some bastard with a torch bringing me more work!

Another Week Ends :-

All targets met
All customers satisfied
All systems fully operational
All staff keen and well motivated
All pigs fed and ready to fly.

The Managers Prayer :-

Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those staff I had to kill because they pissed me off.

We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much with so little for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

No-one is fired here. Slaves are only sold!

The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Humour – Work & Stress
Source: Wolfescape

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve. If the mind is petty, small, narrow, limited, however great and complex the problem may be, the mind approaches that problem in terms of its own pettiness. … Though it has extraordinary capacities and is capable of invention, of subtle, cunning thought, the mind is still petty. It may be able to quote Marx, or the Gita, or some other religious book, but it is still a small mind, and a small mind confronted with a complex problem can only translate that problem in terms of itself, and therefore the problem, the misery increases. So the question is: Can the mind that is small, petty, be transformed into something which is not bound by its own limitations? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

From Sarlo’s Guru Ratings

Brought up to become a great world teacher by Annie Besant of the Theosophical Society but renounced this, turning away all followers. “No organization should lead or coerce people along any particular path.” No path, no method, no gurus. Extremely influential, enlightened, but not directly helpful as guru. Critical site has lots of stuff from TheoSoc + some dirt. Books site has text from all books.

One of the five Saints of the 20th century.

- Time Magazine

If any path is true it must have the seeds of its own destruction immediately available to its participants.
That is, the only true path would be one that would immediately show its followers why and how it is NOT true, since Truth–as such, or God as such–could not be conveyed by the limitations of its revelations.

Or, if we may invoke a Buddhistic Koan to get our point across. If you see a “True” Path Don’t Walk on it.

Why?

Because to the degree a path is “true” is directly proportional to the ways and means that it illustrates why and how it is false.

The main course is from Stanley Sobottka, at A Course in Consciousness.

At this point, I will list some observations I have made about teachers and practices. However, be warned that this is not science, and others may disagree, so you should make your own observations and draw your own conclusions.

The Hinayanists looked upon Nirvana as an escape from the pains of life and death, a conception which to the Mahayanists with their Brahmanic background appeared as the old error of dualism. Thus the ideal man of the Hinayana was the arhat, one who simply attained Nirvana and ceased from rebirth, entering into the formless rest, bliss, and impersonality of the eternal. But the Mahayanists gave their philosophy of non-duality practical expression in the ideal of the bodhisattva, who attains liberation but remains in the world of birth and death to assist all other beings to enlightenment. In other words, they refused to make any absolute distinction between Nirvana and Samsara; the two states are the same, seen, as it were, from different points of view. Therefore the Lankavatara Sutra (as translated by D.T. Suzuki) says: “False imagination teaches that such things as light and shade, long and short, black and white are different and are to be discriminated; but they are not independent of each other; they are only different aspects of the same thing, they are terms of relation, not of reality. Conditions of existence are not of a mutually exclusive character; in essence things are not two but one. Even Nirvana and Samsara’s world of life and death are aspects of the same thing, for there is no Nirvana except where is Samsara, and no Samsara except where is Nirvana. All duality is falsely imagined.”

In terms of practical psychology this means that there is no actual distinction between our ordinary, everyday experience and the experience of Nirvana or spiritual freedom. But for some people this experience is binding and for others liberating, and the problem is to achieve what the Lankavatara calls that “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness” which effects the transformation.

Now the Mahayana was more thoroughgoing in its statement of this problem than even Vedanta. For what is our ordinary, everyday experience? It is not just our awareness of external circumstances or even such ordinary activities as walking, eating, sleeping, breathing, and speaking; it includes also our thinking and feeling: our ideas, moods, desires, passions, and fears. In its most concrete form ordinary, everyday experience is just how you feel at this moment. In a certain sense Buddhism is very much a philosophy and a psychology of the moment, for if we are asked what life is, and if our answer is to be a practical demonstration and not a theory, we can do no better than point to the moment Now! It is in the moment that we find reality and freedom, for acceptance of life is acceptance of the present moment now and at all times.

For this reason Mahayana Buddhism teaches that Nirvana or enlightenment cannot really be attained, because the moment we try to attain it by our own power we are using it as an escape from what is now, and we are also forgetting that Nirvana is unattainable in the sense that it already is.

adapted from The Meaning of Happiness, by Alan W. Watts, 1940, New York 1970, (whatever that means – taken from a post on NDS)

Osho

To try to understand the “system,” if any, behind the names that Osho gives his people has been a popular game among sannyasins for decades. For the commoner “prefix” names he has given – Prem, Anand, Deva, and to a lesser extent, Yoga, Dhyan, Satyam and Shantam – there have been all manner of theories, chakra associations and so on. Of course Osho will occasionally throw us a curve to derail this kind of systematizing but the game goes on.

I have been known to play the game, not very seriously, but even in “anti-knowledge” mode it is hard not to notice among the victims of “premature enlightenment syndrome” the preponderance of males with the prefix Anand(a) who work(ed) as therapists. Somendra was not the first of Osho’s sannyasins to fall victim to this pernicious syndrome but may have been the first “Anand therapist” (AT), as early as the late 70′s. By 1980-81 Somendra was in and out of his discipleship with Osho, as Osho continued to bash him with comments on his unconscious ambitions, and his competition with Teertha, the well-ensconced “head monk.” Somendra was the first of this lot to leave Osho, a few years before Teertha himself and Rajen (Alan Lowen). These three ATs had constituted the “big three,” status-wise, of the already considerably pedestalized class of therapists. Of the three, only Rajen has since recanted his enlightenment, apologizing and acknowledging his ego trip, to resume the role of ordinary seeker/therapist, although not under Osho’s aegis.

Osho said later (but before Rajen recanted),

There are many sannyasins who have left, thinking they have attained something. Somendra thinks he has attained something. Rajen thinks he has attained something. And there are many Somendras and many Rajens.

About Teertha he said, “Teertha has become a mini-guru. He knows nothing about enlightenment. He has never meditated. Here he was involved with his [therapy] groups, which have nothing to do with meditation. And I have told these therapists, ‘You should meditate,’ but it was against their egos, because they were therapists. Thirty or forty people were joining their groups, and they were the leaders. To meditate with the same people was against their egos, so they never meditated.”

The big three established a pattern that continues to this day. Later AT’s include Anamo (Mikaire), Purno (Umi), Santosh (Jeru Kabbal), and Bhaskar (Maitreya Ishwara). And more are on the way; they just don’t have web pages yet. (Prem) Tyohar is the only one of Osho’s low-rated disciples who definitively doesn’t fit this pattern. Maybe that means i am wrong about him. Who knows? Stay tuned! Actually there’s (Satyam) Nadeen as well, but who cares? A larger list of Osho’s people in the guru trade is at OshoLineage.

The other common factor in the group under consideration is maleness. Not much can be said about this with any degree of certainty, since men have been dominating all forms of social hierarchy since (insert your favourite metaphor) In other words, so what else is new? Among sannyasins this tendency has not flourished, with the the flagrant exception of the guru-claimers. Osho spent years creating structures in which women were given the chance to run things, to even let their egos run amok, culminating in the glorious Oregon Ranch. He spoke endlessly on the travesty of humanity that was created by the patriarchal structures of organised religion, and worked hard in many ways to demolish our internalized patriarchy.

About women as masters he seems to have said not very much, and what he did say fits into basically two mutually cancelling patterns. One, that the lack of women masters is part of the overall pattern of male chauvinism that would change as women came into their power; and two, that women’s energy is not suited to mastership, that mastership is an outgoing function and women’s energy is receptive, ingoing. He is clear that there have always been exceptions, and that in any case, women’s energy has never been a barrier to becoming enlightened, and in fact can be a great help.

So there we have it. Among all the things Osho has commented on, this has perhaps the highest potential for further development. A master speaks in the language of the times, to communicate with those who are with him. As our collective understanding and intelligence get higher, masters to come can speak to more subtle concerns and put out truths that previous masters’ audiences were just not ready for. Just such a thing may already be happening in the women as masters field, in the Papaji stream.

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

- Bodhidharma

First, a disclaimer: “Abundance” is usually trotted out to appeal (pander) to our unconscious desires, its hook being to assure us that all our desires can be fulfilled if we sign on to some particular book,
workshop, dvd series, whatever, that will instruct us in the fine art of manifesting. This is not about that kind of abundance. No no.

It’s more about the abundance that is already always there, that is never lacking, where there is nothing to wish for or desire.

And then, a little background: It is said that dogs are not naturally mean and vicious, and just want to be of service. So if their human wants them to be that way, what to do? Loyalty and service to their humans dictate that they will even allow themselves to be trained and bred to go against their natures, just to please their humans.

So when these two thought-streams flow together, what do you get? A nice little corollary about abundance, and it goes like this:

Existence is incredibly bountiful; so much is given that it’s hard not to feel grateful, though some people do seem to manage somehow. The great thing is, existence is so generous, so “aiming to please,” that if someone wants to complain about something, well then existence will even supply something to complain about, in copious quantities if needed. It is that generous.

I can’t complain but sometimes i still do.

- Joe Walsh

Life’s been good to me so far,

Perhaps there have always been so many gurus. They were certainly never so able to have such a high profile though, nor such a worldwide following. Mind you, this is a Good Thing; we need lots of them in these trying times. But my skeptical mind wonders: how many of them, especially in the burgeoning field of Advaita, are really enlightened? Is there any kind of quality control here?

To see more of Sarlo’s cartoons

The Advaita position is unassailable. Almost a non-position, it is consistent with the experience of all the mystics of all traditions. It is its insistence on the process of attainment – in fact a non-attainment, because blah blah, etc etc – that puts it at odds with the weight of tradition. In many ways. The most important here rests on the observation that all other processes take time, lots of it. Never mind that time is an illusion. Never mind even that some of the processes, such as zen, admit theoretically of an instant enlightenment, but in their practice take years to bring the disciple to the point where it can instantly happen. Much preparation is needed.

It can be argued that in the case of Papaji’s disciples, they may well have done the preparatory work before they come to him, so they are ready for that last nudge. It can also be argued that Advaita is such a superior “path,” the direct path that is no-path, that it leaves all others in the dust. Bullock cart methods are no longer needed for the modern intelligent seeker. Etc etc. And there are so many women, especially among Papaji’s disciples, who have come this way. If nothing else, this is an equal-opportunity method. It can’t be all bad.

There are some large but’s here though. One is the certainty that this direct enquiry, “Who am i?” is not suitable for everybody. Even assuming all the apparent successes of Advaita to be genuine – a big assumption – there is only a very narrow segment of the population who can benefit from this. And the path has its dangers. Not the dangers of the devotional / surrender to the master path, the chief of which is exploitation, but the dangers of self-aggrandizement, of getting lost in the mind. To be sure, that danger is always present, but here, with all the conceptualizing about “There is nowhere to go,” and “I am a buddha as i am,” etc, it is easy to see the possibility of enlightenment as the biggest ego trip. And it has happened.

In the early 90′s a sannyasin couple who went to Papaji “got enlightened” in very short order, started holding satsangs and pretty soon had a group of fifty people around them who had also “gotten it.” The bubble did burst and no harm was done. In this instance quality control was achieved because Papaji was still in the body. Since he died in 1997 however, many who were with him only a short time are getting into the biz. The number of people who have actually been told by him to go and give satsangs is said to be quite small, ‡ (more on this below) much smaller than the number of claimers. So there you go.

The most prominent of Papaji’s disciples is Gangaji, who, if size of org and links with Papaji’s site are any indication, gives the impression of being his “official successor,” though he did not designate anyone as such. Nor for that matter did he personally claim a lineage from Ramana Maharshi, though his org and the orgs of his quasi-successors promote that connection as a lineage. Gangaji’s prominence is in spite of the fact of being with Papaji only a year and of coming across to some as fairly lightweight and even inarticulate. It is not my intention to pick on her, and i have rated her fairly high by my “tough” standards as she is also said to have inspired many seekers including some others claiming enlightenment. My point is more that if she is shaky, many of them are shaky. Mira, now calling herself Ganga, who spent almost thirty years with him, is obviously not in this category, but almost all the rest have been “drive-throughs” by comparison. It should give one pause. It does give me pause.

Then there are those who are so new or so retiring that they have not yet stood out from their masters very much. It’s a booming business, so they want in, but their individuality – what’s a good word for a master’s persona, whatever they project to the public that is their uniqueness, their market niche? – is not very developed. Nothing much can be said about them although they may have web pages, so i will throw them and their links, at least for a while, into Nonduals.

Another Take on This:

‡(Not my original analysis, seen at NonDuality Salon):

Papaji made it clear in the book “Nothing Ever Happened” that those he sent to teach not only are not enlightened, they are not even temporarily enlightened.
#1. When asked about those he sent to teach, Papaji said that the purpose was to have them point the way to Lucknow, not to pose as awakenened teachers.
#2. Papaji said that many can fool others into thinking they are liberated but they are the false coin.
#3. When asked about the experiences that so many people had in Lucknow, he said they were false experiences.
#4. When asked, “Why did you give them false experiences?” he said to get the leeches off my back.
#5. Papaji said he met only two Jnani’s in his lifetime. One was Ramana Maharshi. The other was a man who appeared from out of the jungle into the town of Krishnagiri.
#6. Ramana Maharshi said that there is a false sense of liberation that aspirants reach that very few ever go beyond.