Osho (11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), born Chandra Mohan Jain and known for most of his life as Acharya Rajneesh and then Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, was an Indian mystic, teacher and founder of a new religious movement. A brilliant and provocative speaker, he attacked organised religion, socialism and sexual repression, attracted tens of thousands of followers from the West, and built a commune in the American state of Oregon that collapsed in crime and scandal. His books of talks remain widely read.
Quick Facts
| Born | 11 December 1931, Kuchwada, Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh |
| Died | 19 January 1990, Pune (aged 58) |
| Birth name | Chandra Mohan Jain |
| Other names | Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh |
| Education | University of Saugar (M.A. in philosophy, 1957) |
| Known for | The neo-sannyas movement; Dynamic Meditation; the Rajneeshpuram commune |
| Centres | Pune, India; Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United States |
Early Life
He was born at his mother’s village and spent his first seven years with his grandparents, who let him do as he pleased; he traced his independence to those years. He then lived with his parents, Jain cloth merchants, at Gadarwara. A rebellious and argumentative student, he read voraciously and was fascinated by death.
He said that on 21 March 1953, at twenty-one, sitting under a tree in a garden at Jabalpur, he became enlightened.
Teacher
He took a master’s degree in philosophy and taught at colleges in Raipur and Jabalpur until 1966. Meanwhile he toured India as Acharya Rajneesh, lecturing to large crowds. He criticised Gandhi’s glorification of poverty, called socialism a way of sharing misery, and in talks published as From Sex to Superconsciousness argued that sexual energy, accepted and not suppressed, was a first step towards meditation. The press named him the “sex guru”.
In 1970 he introduced Dynamic Meditation, a method that begins with fast breathing and shouting and ends in silence, and began to initiate disciples into what he called neo-sannyas: they took a new name and orange robes but did not renounce the world.
Pune
He moved to Bombay and in 1974 to an ashram at Koregaon Park in Pune. He gave a discourse every morning, alternating between Hindi and English, on the Buddha, Jesus, Zen, Sufism, the Upanishads and much else, laced with jokes. Thousands of young Europeans and Americans came, drawn too by therapy groups that sometimes involved nudity and violence. Pune was scandalised, and the government of Morarji Desai was hostile.
Oregon
In 1981 he went to the United States. His secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, bought a 64,000-acre ranch in Oregon, where his followers built a town, Rajneeshpuram, with its own police, airstrip and reservoir. He kept a vow of public silence for three years and was driven past his disciples each day in one of his ninety-odd Rolls-Royces.
Conflict with the neighbouring ranchers and the state grew bitter. In 1984 members of the commune’s leadership contaminated salad bars in the town of The Dalles with salmonella, making about 750 people ill, in an attempt to swing a county election. It was the first bioterror attack in the United States. They also plotted to kill officials and ran a large wiretapping operation.
Sheela fled in September 1985; Rajneesh denounced her and said he had known nothing. He was arrested in October while leaving the country by private jet, admitted immigration offences under a plea bargain, was fined 400,000 dollars and deported. Sheela later served time in prison.
Last Years
Refused entry by some twenty countries, he returned to Pune in 1987. In 1989 he took the name Osho. He died on 19 January 1990. His followers said his health had been broken by poisoning in American jails; the cause given was heart failure. His epitaph reads: “Never born, never died. Only visited this planet Earth.”
Legacy
The Pune ashram became the Osho International Meditation Resort. His hundreds of books, all transcripts of talks, sell in many languages, and a 2018 documentary series, Wild Wild Country, retold the Oregon story to a new generation.
Featured image: A poster of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later called Osho, photographed in the Netherlands in 1984. Photo by Sjakkelien Vollebregt / Anefo, licensed under CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
