The Story of Osho and Rajneeshpuram

The Story of Osho and Rajneeshpuram


Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com wrote “by handling this story so intelligently and by opening its heart to a very complicated idea of good and evil, Wild Wild Country has a profound, mesmerizing power itself”.

Remarkable, remarkable story. Even those of us who recall this happening, won’t remember it as comprehensively as it is presented here. Outstanding production. Highly recommended.

As you watch this tale unfold episode to episode you will at first find yourself swerving back and forth between two sides of an argument. Or question if neither has any argument at all here. 

You will recognize familiar bigotries, age old fears, insecurities and threats of provincial mindsets. You will witness unseemly power grabs, brazen law breaking, arrogant manipulation, and exploitation of innocents. You will question motives of everyone and anyone from start to finish. 

From one interview, one discovery, one observance to the next, you will be forced to reckon with opposing states of mind that often live side by side. The belief in nirvana and heavenly prophets, at almost delusional levels, and the rejection of both in our more earthbound states. 

There are clear legal arguments  presented here with no rational defense against the laws that were broken. It is this reality that undermines the higher thoughts one could have about the honest pursuit of spiritual elevation and community with the lower thoughts of exploitation and power over others. Probably the saddest form of these human transgressions occurs in spiritual communities. 

Still, as you watch the interviews and hear certain words, you will alternate your judgements of both sides with disdain and repulsion. You will call out both sides for disgraceful behavior.



There is always a difference between spiritual leaders of vision and those who would follow them. Perception, interpretation, are all subject to differences within the latter group.

In some cases, the communal visions of followers and later messengers diverge so much from the original ideas that what was once a basic lifestyle choice to peacefully share with others instead becomes a perversion of power co-opted to serve those whose personal needs get in the way. 

Other times, the visionaries and practitioners are so alike that the only real difference between the two is nothing more than the chance outcome of one becoming a leader through no deliberate intention, and the other simply listening to them with reverence. Neither owns more integrity simply by their position.

The idea of spiritual enlightenment, community and sharing remains a personal goal to lots of people. How they try to get there is a matter of who’s selling it and when, but it remains a high ticket item. Such is, in fact, all religion, all spiritualism. Because of that, every proposition, every promise, every sermon, will, and should always, be questioned.

At the end of it all, after you hear all the arguments, all the philosophies, all the justifications, all the facts. After you take all of this in, you will find your place. It may be the opposite place you thought you’d be in the beginning. No matter where you do land, it will be unsettled. It will be conflicted.

MB


“The unknown is what we fear.”– Local Resident

‘The truth lies within.” – Philip Toelkes


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneeshpuram

https://www.racked.com/2018/4/16/17235638/wild-wild-country-rajneeshee-red-rajneespuram-maroon-burgundy-orange

https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/9-rajneesh-followers-on-what-wild-wild-country-got-wrong.html

Alt-Right: Age of Rage

Alt-Right: Age of Rage


Disturbingly important to watch. Produced in 2018, here is a palpable demonstration of what has been happening in plain sight these last four years. There is no mystery that Donald Trump has emboldened the Alt-Right movement, and borderline psychotics like Richard Spencer. Whether Trump has done so by ruthless premeditated formula for his own personal gain, or by empowering hate groups by sheer cluelessness of his irresponsible speech no longer matters. The damage has been done. The only thing left to wonder is whether the Alt-Right presence will shrink in relevance and attrition over the next few years just as Trump’s legacy and influence hopefully does, or provokes yet another crescendo of violence across this country in its final gasps of desperation.

MB


Available on Netflix and iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/alt-right-age-of-rage/id1418846527

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

There are so many articles about the Donald Trump Presidency that serve as a springboard to larger discussions, its no effort to search them out. They hang out there every day with the next load of news.

Donald Trump will try his best to co opt the RNC for himself with help from the same enablers who sold their souls to him from the start. What is clear, is that in spite of the feverish support he has from millions of his followers, and their expected social media barrage, Trump will face longer odds to resurrect himself without the machinery of the Republican Party. That platform is the single biggest asset he has to potentially exploit as he leaves office.

The story linked below is yet another trigger for the exhaustingly redundant questions I’ve tried to answer for myself of how this man got elected, and how it is possible he could continue to infect our sociopolitical system years after he’s gone from the White House.

Concurrent with the devastating coronavirus sweeping the globe, is an equally virulent disease that has infected millions in America. Trumpism. In this case, the answer is not a vaccine, but a broad scale comprehensive treatment of the disease carriers that is even more monumental than administering a nationwide Covid vaccine.

It’s hard to imagine a single individual as the proverbial patient-zero being capable of super spreading an infection, which then goes on to cause a chain reaction in a country’s entire political system, but, that is what this country is fighting off right now with Donald Trump and, arguably, his victims.

The origin of the disease is not an immediately transferable comparison with a physical virus because it’s not physiologically originated. It is psychological. Likewise, it is not a contagion that one gets, or not gets, through random unexplained immunity, or inherent physical vulnerability. Instead, this psychological disease needs to be understood from its earliest days within each individual’s initial infection, and then, tracing contact backwards through family, friends, parents, co-workers, as far back as necessary, and of course, including the overlay of technology and social media.

I have ruminated on this, and other “psychological diseases” afflicting humanity long before this dude in his red cap and red tie showed up. He’s nothing new. He is a human character that’s been re-incarnated many times from others who have come before him. He’s nothing new. Nor are his followers. He, and they, are simply this time’s version of the same play and theater that had its curtains raised on what’s always been there among all of us. Fear. Fear of powerlessness. Fear of weakness. Fear of loss. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of the other. Fear of confronting fear.

Humanity is prone to a panoply of fears on a daily basis. Small fears. Medium fears. Larger fears. Each of these fears has a root perhaps in a single universal fear. Unfortunately, honest deliberation among all of the earth’s citizens on subjects of this depth, rarely occur outside of deeply religious enclaves, often with dogmatic approaches. They form communities of coping and perseverance in the name of one religious or spiritual movement or another, but, in most cases, the end result is the same. Separating us from each other in judgement. No matter how gentle the language used in defining those who “believe” and those who do not. This will also be the struggle of humanity. The struggle to feel part of something universal, of a higher meaning, and of an equal inherent value among all the others in the same grand scheme.

Donald Trump may be easily diagnosed with deeply rooted psychological problems, but tens of millions of his followers are not as easy to dismiss. Understanding them is no different than understanding any critical mass of humanity that is stirred into action at any given time in history. Its nothing new. It happened before. It will happen again. What have we learned? What will we learn?

MB


“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel


How Trump Hopes to Use Party Machinery to Retain Control of the G.O.P.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/us/politics/trump-gop-control.html?referringSource=articleShare