THE ULTIMATE ICONOCLAST

Reviews — 10 August 2012
Review of the book by Dr. Kuldip Kumar Dhiman on Understanding Rajneesh Osho’s Revolutionary and Dangerous Ideas.

Review by Dhyanam in Osho News

After 33 years of reading and listening to Osho, I have come to believe His words: I am leaving something really terrible for scholars. They will not be able to make any sense out of it. They will go nuts; and they deserve it, they should go nuts. But nobody can create an orthodoxy out of me, it is impossible. (From Personality to Individuality, Chapter 8)

That is, until now. I have just finished an amazing book by Dr. Dhiman, in which he collects Osho’s words – contradictions, ideas, advice, suggestions – and describes, organizes, and analyzes Osho in a profound, spot-on book. Although the cover and title are not especially inviting, I find this book a great read. Dr. Dhiman has done a superb job of explaining the inexplicable, the inexpressible.

In the introduction to the book he clearly states the difficulty he faced: Rajneesh’s entire philosophy, as we shall see later in the book, was to go beyond dogmas, categories, and isms. […] That is why the moment you tried to associate Rajneesh with some religion, dogma, or philosophy, he would say something preposterous to shatter your image of him. Most thinkers are misunderstood for no fault of their own, but Rajneesh often deliberately created misunderstanding about himself.

The book is divided into five main sections. I especially liked the first one, “Problems of Language and Knowledge,” in which Dr. Dhiman discusses in detail the limits of language, a conundrum mystics along the ages have faced. As Dr. Dhiman says, “Rajneesh was himself a master of the language. If you listen to his recordings, especially his discourses in Hindi, you would be awe-struck by his extraordinary oratorical skills. Words flow from his mouth like a vibrant mountain stream with all its glory and music. In spite of the poetic use of language, he reminded listeners repeatedly that although language may be a very powerful tool, it has severe limitations. He argued that the ultimate truth is unspeakable because no language in the world can ever express it.”

Other chapters in the book deal with Osho’s attitude to the body (“the first step for the seeker”), His incredible contributions to psychology, His shocking (for India) comments about sex, the revolutionary concept of Zorba the Buddha, and on and on. I thought that even the epilogue was a must-read and particularly enjoyed the P.S. to it: The aim of this book was to present Rajneesh Osho’s revolutionary ideas in one book, in the hope of encouraging the reader to explore the original work. I only hope I have not added to the immense confusion created deliberately by the redoubtable Rajneesh himself.

Dr. Dhiman has clearly done his homework and is very well acquainted with Osho’s work. Although he has an impressive academic background – he holds degrees in graphic design and English literature, plus a doctorate in philosophical psychology – I can assure those of you who equate “academic” with “boring” that this is not a dry book at all. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dhanyam, first published in VIHA Connection
http://www.oshonews.com/2012/08/the-ultimate-inconoclast/

THE ULTIMATE ICONOCLAST

Dear friends after lying with several publishers for three years, my new book is finally out. Hope it interests you.

THE ULTIMATE ICONOCLAST
Understanding Rajneesh Osho’s Revolutionary
and ‘Dangerous’ Ideas

‘It is not that I am dangerous,
It is the truth that is dangerous’


Easily, one of the most interesting and controversial thinkers of the present age, Rajneesh Osho, once said: ‘I am leaving something really terrible for scholars; they will not be able to make any sense out of it. They will go nuts — and they deserve it, they should go nuts! But nobody can create an orthodoxy out of me, it is impossible.’
The challenge is formidable because Rajneesh spoke for about forty years, and there is a whole library of his discourses transcribed into more than seven hundred books. He once said jokingly that many of his discourses still had not been transcribed. When everything is collected, he suggested, we could call it Encyclopaedia Rajneeshica.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that he spoke on so many religions, philosophies, and theologies that one could go mad keeping track of his immense reach. It is doubtful if any single individual ever spoke on so many different subjects and issues as he did. Even if one tried to follow his work, one is at the end left baffled; one is unable to fit him into any category, any school, or religion. Some believed that he was the very apotheosis of spiritualism and wisdom, while others called him a materialist, a capitalist, a Marxist, a godman, a prophet, a failed messiah, a philosopher, a non-philosopher, a charlatan, a fraud, a nihilist, a hedonist and what not. How could one individual evoke so many diverse and contrary opinions from so many people?

Rajneesh’s entire philosophy, as we shall see later in the book, was to go beyond dogmas, categories, and isms. A liberated person belongs to no system; some system might coincide with his thinking, but he does not try to mould his life according to any established dogma. That is why the moment you tried to associate Rajneesh with some religion, dogma, or philosophy; he would say something preposterous to shatter your image of him. Most thinkers are misunderstood for no fault of their own, but Rajneesh often deliberately created misunderstanding about himself. He might have mused like Dr Rahi Masoom Raza:

The narrow-minded priest calls me an infidel;
And the infidel thinks that I am a Mussalman

Or as Friedrich Nietzsche said in Twilight of the Idols: ‘Posthumous men like me, for instance, are not so well understood as timely men, but they are listened to better. More precisely: we are never understood, and hence our authority . . . .’

True to his word, Rajneesh is a big headache for the scholar as his several signatures indicate. One cannot make out whether the language is Hindi, English, or Chinese. They look more like a work of modern art.

Who was this bearded man with mesmerising eyes? What should we make of his impossible legacy? What did this ultimate iconoclast want to say?

To such questions Rajneesh used to say that who he was depended on the way we looked at him. Those who wished to see a rogue would see a rogue, and those who wished to see a saint would see a saint. But ‘If you look at me with total emptiness, I will be different. . . . . I am just a mirror. Your own face will be reflected. . . . So it depends on the way you look at me. I have disappeared completely so I cannot impose on you who I am. . . . There is just a nothingness, a mirror . . . . If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as empty as I am. Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored . . . .’

A case of post-death bodily possession

Prof Antonia Mills of University of North British Columbia and I co-authored a paper which was published in the Proceedings of The Society of Psychical Research, London, recently. It is a strange case of a young woman named Sumitra who died after a week-long illness, and then came back to life. Afterwards she forgot her present life and started claiming she was Aruna (Shiva). She gave full details of Aruna's life, the name of her husband, children, parents, friends etc. She was later re-united with her parents who say that she gave accurate details of Aruna’s life.