Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
spiritual philosophy, but he had the classic sophist's knack for
semantic legerdemain. He could make naive claptrap sound
positively Hegelian in its logical purity. And since he was exclusively
an oral teacher - the list of more than one hundred 'Books by
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh' listed in Rajneesh Foundation literature
being transcriptions of talks and discourses, no doubt scrupulously
edited - his primary audience was one more affected by style of
delivery and his carefully choreographed, charismatic presence than
by the content of the words floating through its ears.
This studiously contrived, carefully calculated stance -
extrapolated from the iconoclasm of his childhood hero, the Jain
reformer Taran Swami - achieved its objective in a snap. Soon
Rajneesh had made himself a major target for the wrath of Hindu
fundamentalists, especially the
shankaracharya
of Puri. This latter
was an authority as august as, say, the archbishop of Chicago, but so
belligerently orthodox that he was defending
sati
as recently as 1987
against what he termed a 'reign of unreason' that was attempting to
ban it. At the same time that the bhagwan was branded an anti-
nationalist, he was rumoured to be a CIA agent, too. All publicity is
good publicity. An antiestablishment guru was, after all, the only
kind of guru those fleeing Vietnam, Kent State and Watergate were
looking for, anyway. Thus the hybrid philosophy of 'Neo-Sannyas'
appeared.
Sannyasi
was the traditional Sanskrit term for a renunciant
who has forsaken all material possessions, living on offered charity
alone, wandering, chanting the names of God, meditating, and often
performing extreme austerities in the total isolation of remote caves.
The bhagwan instinctively knew this kind of self-denial would not
appeal to his growing brood of Western fans.
Like Taran Swami, Rajneesh antagonised every authority he
encountered. For example, he wrote his own character reference
and asked the chancellor of his first university just to sign it, telling
him, 'After all, who is in a better position to assess my own character
than me?' He also found himself 'transferred' from another teaching
position after confessing that, while he was indeed employed by a
Sanskrit university, he knew no Sanskrit, as he had claimed he did,
and furthermore, he considered the study of a dead language useless.
Like his Jain hero, too, he wanted nothing to come between man
