Nityaprem, who grew up on the Ranch and in the communes, reflects on Children of the Cult and on how he has come to see Osho
Like many of you I have seen the Children of the Cult documentary, I have read Erin Robbins’ open letter, I have read Hugh Milne’s book and listened to Deeksha’s podcast. It has made me wonder how could these things have come from Osho’s movement as I remember it from my childhood and later years. For those of you who wondered like I did, I wanted to write these few words.
My immediate reaction to seeing Children of the Cult was anger. These people who had been children on the Ranch and in the communes were my peers; it had influenced my life as well; what happened on the Ranch left deep tracks in me. I expressed my anger by writing about it. And eventually it passed; after about a year I reached a place of greater clarity. I found that what had been there underneath all that was love, gentleness, kindness.
Time and many feelings passed. I found that it was useless to try to unify the many visions of Osho in my mind. However tempting it was to make a single image of him, he was both the ordinary man who liked sex with many women, liked having many Rolls-Royces, liked expensive watches, and the brilliant speaker who delivered discourse after discourse as if coming from a source beyond, soaring high like an eagle above Buddha Hall.
In the end I decided not to judge him or form one opinion of him, but to accept him as a mystery. In one being he was capable of showing both great authoritarianism and great love and compassion. At times he was the hollow bamboo breathing the music of Existence, and at times he was an ordinary Indian, nothing special in his tastes.
I still had love for Osho. I remember him as he was when we met at Chuang Tzu Auditorium, when he gave my family the last family darshan he would give. I was seven years old and didn’t speak English, but I recall that while watching him, it was as if the light of the full moon were shining behind him, silvery and cool and loving. And that is why I still like to listen to a discourse regularly; he had the knack of speaking to the infinite. I think he still has things to say.
It is, of course, you who are responsible for your own path, and it is good to take counsel from your own being on what Osho says. One thing he said was, “If you listen to everything I say and try to follow it, it will drive you mad,” and there is no longer anyone left to ask. He certainly wasn’t infallible. So instead I try to be a light unto myself, while listening to the world’s most rebellious and uproarious mystic, and I try to find the places where I resonate with what he says and recognise the truth.
I guess what I am trying to say is that for me it is all right that Osho is all these things. I can accept him as a mystery, without having to understand him in order to move on. I have love and gratitude for him, who was a great friend and yet unknowable.
With love, and hoping you find something in these words.
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