Osho’s discourses being broadcast on Cable TV in Holland
After hearing about the availability of Osho’s discourses on Cable TV in the Netherlands (www.osho-tv.com), we contacted Tarangita who is actively involved with the project and asked her to tell us more about it:
Of the 58 years I have lived on this planet, 27 have been with Osho and ever since I am grateful to him. From the very start of being a sannyasin it has been disturbing to me that so much media talk is negative about Osho; rarely anybody writes about his vision, meditations and discourses. Hmmm… I have to say that one of the ways I got in contact with Osho was when I was writing a negative article about Osho in a Dutch feminist weekly magazine! But in the end it has been the Osho meditation techniques and his new vision that made my life worth living.
Around 1992 I saw a A4-flyer ‘Osho on Cable TV’ lying around in Global Connections in the Osho Resort. It was about a project of a network of sannyasins and friends in the United States and this project challenged me to become active about a dream that was already for years in my head – ‘How to put Osho on TV’ – and I felt that this could become a real possibility in the Netherlands too.
So I went to the offices of Cable TV in Amsterdam called Salto, and requested broadcasting time. At first they were not so open for Osho and I had to come back for another meeting. I took a friend with me for support because I realised that the broadcasting station was also influenced by the negativity that the media had spread around. After some talks we got permission to go for a trial run. They warned us that if we were broadcasting inadequate footage, they would stop us immediately. Years later the same person of the broadcasting station told me, “Osho brings all cultures together.”
When we received copyright permission from Global Connections, off we went. We were very naive; we thought that it was just a matter of bringing an Osho video to the broadcasting station. It was a major wake-up-call when we realised that we had to learn an editing program, and I had no clue about computers and I am not a technical wizard either. Two friends of the commune went to appropriate all the equipment needed. We have a sannyas organisation in the Netherlands, Vrienden van Osho (vrienden-van-osho.nl), in English ‘Friends of Osho’, and this organisation is based on donations by sannyasins. From them we got money to buy all the equipment needed, those two friends learned the editing program and then they taught me.
Since then we are broadcasting Osho three times a week in Amsterdam, five times a week in Rotterdam, and once a week in Utrecht. The broadcasts have to be paid for and we get the funds through donations made by ‘Friends of Osho’. After a few years the Rotterdam station demanded that we have to add subtitles to the broadcast, so we started to add subtitles to every video, which is a rather time-consuming activity. But many people are happy with this.
How many people are watching Osho TV I don’t know, but many, many people know now about the existence of Osho. Regularly we get to hear the responses of people who get in contact with Osho for the first time by switching on the TV and are so happy meeting him, and from there people can search for more on the internet. At the end of every broadcast we show information about where people can meditate and celebrate, info on Osho festivals and so on. Since a few years Salto put all Osho broadcasts on the internet, so now everybody in the world who is connected to the internet can watch a discourse by Osho.
We mainly broadcast Osho’s discourses, but once in a while we broadcast a concert of Miten and Premal or Devakant, or other musicians. Sometimes a newspaper writes about Osho TV or a journalist passes by to get some more information about Osho and his vision. A while ago a large broadcasting station phoned me and asked if we wanted to broadcast Osho on their Cable TV, but they were too expensive. It’s really a pity that only money is the reason not to be able to broadcast more….
Of course I hope that more and more countries will start broadcasting Osho, a beautiful way to spread Osho’s work, word, vision to every nook and corner of the world!
Dutch-born Tarangita is a former nurse and has been a sannyasin for 27 years. She lives in the Osho Mevlana Commune in Amsterdam together with 25 other friends. It is her joy to make Osho’s discourses widely available, if possible all over the world. Her next project is to help facilitating Osho meditation techniques in prisons.
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