Samadhan’s passion: Making Osho accessible

A major leap for lovers of Osho’s words: the Osho Archive Catalog now includes over 100 newly-added Poona 1 video discourses

“Thanks to one man’s dedication, discovering Osho’s vast legacy has never been easier,” writes Srajan.

The Osho Archive Catalog is an online platform offering free access to thousands of Osho’s discourses in English, given between 1970 and 1990. Recently enriched by over a hundred video recordings from the Poona 1 era, the catalog now provides, apart from text and audio files, the videos of more than 1,600 talks, including those from Rajneeshpuram and Poona 2.

The site is more than a static archive. Its dynamic search engine allows users to explore Osho’s work in multiple ways: by full-text search, by subject (with over 2,000 unique topics), combinations of keywords and by question – of which Osho answered more than 11,000 during his lifetime. Whether you are looking for discourses on “bodhidharma,” “centering,” or simply want to know if your inner question has already been asked, this tool is built for discovery.

The project is the life work of Prem Samadhan, who began cataloguing Osho’s talks in collaboration with Sugit from sannyas.wiki. Drawing from diverse sources, Samadhan and his team collected the audio and video recordings, first for internal use only, and now, after five years of meticulous work, are making them public online.

One of the key milestones was the addition of The Quest, a database of all questions posed to Osho, originally compiled by Nandan Bosma in 1990 with help from fellow commune members. Samadhan, joined by Nandan’s son Sanath, helped incorporate The Quest into the database of the Archive Catalog – an “inspiring but enormous task,” in Samadhan’s own words.

A significant further turning point came when a couple of months ago Samadhan’s ISP started offering fiber connections. The higher bandwith makes it now possible to host the videos. So he added over 1,600 videos (of which 100 are from Poona One) to the 3,000 English audio discourses. (What once would have cost thousands, now only requires a modest monthly sum – something Samadhan is more than willing to contribute in his mission to make Osho’s teachings accessible to the world.)

Despite its depth, the site is built for ease of use, though best seen on wider screens. You can search by discourse title, series name, discourse length, and various filters to access PDF texts, audio, or video directly. While it may take a moment to find your way around, the Archive Catalog is a remarkably rich and welcoming resource for seekers old and new.

Info provided by Srajan with many thanks