When meditation becomes a profession, association becomes authority, and the messenger becomes a product – by Anuragi
There is a peculiar way to encounter Osho today: to meet almost everyone, except Osho.
A newcomer may discover an elaborate world of meditation facilitators, therapists, spiritual masters, retreat centres, podcasts, influencers and newly created spiritual systems. There are programmes to attend, certificates to acquire and an astonishing number of people prepared to explain what Osho really means.
Yet Osho’s own work remains available without an intermediary: his books and discourses, his recorded voice and videos, and the meditations he taught. One need not enter somebody else’s spiritual universe to encounter him.
There is an irony here. A man who questions borrowed knowledge, religious authority and the impulse to follow others now has an expanding world of authorities growing around his work. When does sharing Osho become a means of establishing one’s own importance?
Many of the examples prompting this article come from sections of the Indian and Nepalese Osho communities, including some networks operating internationally. This is not a judgment on either community as a whole, nor a claim that the tendencies are absent elsewhere.
Ironically, some of those who came to Osho are now establishing themselves as gurus, gathering followers and creating the very spiritual hierarchies that Osho questions.
The concern is not nationality. It is what is being created around Osho in his own name.
A New Spiritual Profession
Meditation now has a professional infrastructure: courses, certifications, trainers and programmes that prepare people to conduct further programmes. Capable facilitators perform a valuable service, especially for beginners. But knowing how to conduct meditation is not the same as knowing meditation.
Osho warns:
“Once I am gone the meditation is going to be organised – it is impossible to prevent it; it is the way things move. Then you will do it for twenty years – or two hundred years – and nothing will happen. It does not happen through the technique; technique is just dead.”
Come Follow Me, Vol. 1, Ch 4
Skill can be certified. Presence cannot.
There is also something faintly amusing about becoming so busy conducting meditation that little time remains for meditating. Workshops must be promoted. Registrations must increase. Another retreat must follow the last.
Only enlightenment remains without a deadline.
Earning a livelihood is not the problem. The difficulty begins when professional identity, recognition or expansion becomes more important than meditation. Osho becomes the introduction; the facilitator becomes the destination.
The Rise of the New Guru
The transition can happen almost imperceptibly. Someone conducts a meditation. Participants ask questions. Soon the answers extend beyond the technique to relationships, consciousness, enlightenment and what Osho actually means. Guidance becomes teaching. Teaching attracts followers. Followers confer importance.
And another guru is born.
Nobody can judge another person’s inner realisation from a public profile. But the authority being claimed and the dependence being encouraged can certainly be questioned.
Osho’s warning to therapists is direct:
“A therapist should not become a guru, because the moment you become a guru you start changing your patients into your disciples, you start exploiting their misery for your own aggrandisement, for your own ego.”
The Great Pilgrimage, Ch 27
How many new gurus are required to explain Osho?
Personal proximity offers another route to authority. Years spent around Osho, responsibilities in his communes, photographs and private conversations can provide valuable historical testimony. They deserve to be preserved. But proximity is not enlightenment, and association is not authority.
A photograph with Osho establishes that two people were photographed together. It does not establish that one of them subsequently became qualified to guide humanity. Fortunately, others who knew him share their memories without turning the relationship into a professional credential.
There is a difference between carrying a fragrance and advertising the bottle.
When Meditation Serves the Institution
Beautiful gardens, comfortable accommodation, excellent food and even luxurious facilities can coexist perfectly well with serious meditation. The issue is not comfort or the fees a centre charges. It is whether meditation remains its central purpose.
A centre can gradually acquire the ambitions of an ordinary enterprise. Rooms must be filled, programmes multiplied, competition met and visibility maintained. Eventually, a reversal can occur: instead of the institution existing to support meditation, meditation begins serving the institution.
A luxurious resort may remain genuinely meditative. A modest ashram can be intensely commercial in spirit. The building is not the measure. The centre of gravity is.
Nor is money the only currency. Recognition, influence, followers and spiritual prestige can be equally rewarding. Are people being helped to discover meditation – or encouraged to depend upon an institution and its personalities?
Spirituality Discovers the Microphone
Social media offers extraordinary opportunities to introduce people to Osho. Authentic recordings, accurate translations and thoughtful conversations can open doors. But a telephone, a microphone, Osho’s photograph and sufficient confidence can also establish a spiritual identity remarkably quickly.
A quotation appears, followed by an explanation. Another video announces what Osho really means. Gradually, Osho remains on the screen while the presenter becomes the personality.
Apparently, the mysteries of consciousness become considerably easier to explain once a microphone is available.
Podcasts can encourage genuine dialogue. They can also allow personalities to exchange audiences and endorse one another. Occasionally, this resembles a newly discovered spiritual technique: Mutual Promotion. Everyone gains visibility. Whether anyone moves closer to meditation is harder to measure.
Spiritual Entertainment
In The Osho Upanishad, Osho warns of “spiritual entertainment.” The phrase has acquired new relevance in an age of endless feeds.
A moving discourse, an inspiring quotation or a beautifully produced video may lead someone towards meditation. But consuming spiritual content can also become a substitute for exploring what it points towards. Another video, another personality, another revelation: the viewer feels spiritually engaged while remaining a spectator.
Even an authentic Osho discourse can be consumed this way. The recording is not the problem; the question is what happens to the listener. For content creators, meanwhile, the rewards favour whatever attracts attention – more dramatic claims, more compelling performances, an endless supply of spiritual excitement.
The audience remains busy with spirituality. Whether it has found time for meditation is another matter.
The problem is not discussion. It is the confidence with which interpretation becomes authority. There is a world of difference between “This is how I understand Osho” and “This is what Osho means.”
Osho does not suffer from a shortage of words. What he may increasingly suffer from is a surplus of spokespersons.
The Manufactured Osho
Osho’s name also appears alongside independently developed spiritual systems and new therapeutic practices. Experimentation may be valuable, but a new method should not borrow his authority. What belongs to Osho, and what has somebody else added?
Artificial intelligence makes the question more urgent. It can manufacture photographs never taken, videos never recorded and synthetic voices delivering words Osho never spoke. It can even create the appearance of his speaking languages he never spoke.
Interpretation can distort the message. AI can manufacture the messenger.
Combined with spiritual entertainment, the result could be an endless stream of new Osho performances designed to satisfy an audience. An original discourse may challenge the listener. A synthetic performance can be tailored to provide precisely what attracts attention.
Restoring original recordings, faithfully preserving photographs and accurately translating discourses are valuable. Clearly identified creative experimentation is different from letting fabricated words, images or performances circulate as authentic. Disclosure must remain unmistakable, including when material is shared beyond its original post.
Why manufacture Osho when Osho himself is available?
The Question Nobody Wants to Answer
There is one difficulty with all these observations. Almost everyone involved may agree with them – while thinking entirely of somebody else.
The established therapist recognises the ambitious facilitator. The facilitator recognises the self-appointed guru. The guru criticises competing institutions. The social-media personality recognises everybody else’s hunger for attention.
But what exempts one’s own interpretation, institution, profession or spiritual authority from the same examination? The difficulty is not recognising these tendencies in others. It is recognising them in oneself.
Fortunately, there are sincere facilitators, dedicated centres and people who share Osho’s work without establishing themselves as spiritual authorities. They show that organisation need not become exploitation and sharing need not become self-promotion. Perhaps a facilitator’s success can sometimes be measured by how unnecessary that facilitator gradually becomes.
What Are We Passing On?
People came to Osho through love, curiosity, rebellion, friendship or simply an unexpected attraction. Not everyone arrived seeking enlightenment. Many encountered something that challenged their certainties or awakened a sense of freedom. How strange if that encounter eventually produced another hierarchy of authorities and another industry dependent upon people remaining followers.
What will newcomers inherit: Osho’s own voice or an endless succession of interpreters? His meditations or programmes borrowing his name? Authentic recordings or convincing artificial performances? An invitation to explore – or another form of spiritual entertainment?
The original remains available. But availability does not guarantee visibility.
For someone encountering Osho for the first time, the simplest safeguard may be to begin with his own work. Listen to his discourses, read his books and explore his meditations. Appreciate those who make this possible, but do not mistake their understanding for his words or their authority for your own experience.
Osho says:
“Keep the message pure, twenty-four carat gold.”
Sermons in Stones, Ch 12
That does not prohibit honest livelihoods, beautiful centres, genuine conversations or independent experimentation. It asks that what belongs to Osho remain identifiable as his, and what others create be presented honestly as their own.
Those who share his work might occasionally ask themselves one question:
Am I making Osho more accessible, or am I making myself more important?
The challenge is to make Osho available without making oneself indispensable.
The fragrance does not need advertising.
And twenty-four carat gold needs nothing added to make it shine.
Featured image by Nigel Hoare via unsplash.com
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