Rationalists' Attempt at Osho (Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh) by            Jagmohan Singh Khurmi               So Osho Has Been 'Exposed' at last ! the most talked-about , the most criticized, the most transparent Guru ever. Perhaps the only philosopher who was able to answer every question the world asked. The person who has done this wonder is a ( so called ) Tarksheel. The book written is "RAJNEESH BENAKAB ".Literally meaning 'Unmasking Rajneesh ' (!) The author is a Karamjit Singh, a teacher at Kurukshetra University. You haven't read it ? Never mind ! No one has !The book is written in punjabi, and hence like all punjabi books rottening in book shops and newspaper stalls. (It seems that the only way left to sell a punjabi book these days is mark it 'only for adults'. So sad) He gives laughable logics to cut-down his own wrong projection of the great thinker, his one major argument against Osho is that he had never to face a serious questioner - proves his own ignorance ! In fact the legendry debate between Osho and Dr. Abraham Kovoor, ( the founder of Rationalist Society ), that begin in the weekly Current in 1977 , in which cynical Kovoor attacked Osho, in a vain attempt to prove that Osho is just another Sai Baba with a closet full of proverbial skeletons, fired back and instead churned up and exposed short-sightedness of Kovoor himself( from then onwards Kovoor came to be known as ' the irrational rationalist')   When asked that what he thought about the Kovoor attack on him Osho said : " I enjoyed it. It was sheer delight. It was delicious?.far out?no body has complimented me so highly. Listen to his compliments?". The first 'compliment': Rajneesh is crazy !                                                                                     Osho says that he was actually flattered because there is no other way to achieve greatness ( and the bliss that comes along with it) without going crazy. Only those who are crazy enough to go beyond the barriers  of so-called sanity attain. Only those who are ready to put their minds aside, only those who are ready to cut off their heads completely, they attain. I am crazy. So was Buddha, so was Jesus. Kovoor, it seems, had not done even his basic homework . He never cared, for instance, to observe that Osho had always denied existence of 'God' that controls destinies and sends people to heaven or hell, the God of Jews and Christians, the God, against whose existence  Rationalist Movement was  all about. In fact Osho was heavily critiqued by all other so-called 'gurus' because he was 'anti-God' ! What an irony ! Other arguments of Kovoor are even more pityingly childish. His puerile thoughts, the worn-out weapons he was accustomed to corner hypocrite 'baba ji' leading double lives at cost of gullible rural, illiterate masses attracted with 'chamtkars' and meaningless commentaries over holy truisms, fell face-down, and ended with Dr. Kovoor looking like a third standard student of Government Model School trying to argue with Albert Einstein. The very definition of God, according to Osho is : " that which can never be objectively proved...that which is beyond explanation...  Osho have been excoriated chiefly for calling himself 'Bhagwan', but a few have ever cared to understand his doing so. Unlike the sunday school fathers or a madrassa-tutor, and other run-of-the-mill Indian gurus, Osho at the end of his sermon would pray to his listeners, without caring for their social status, bow before them to express genuine devotion to the 'God' sitting inside their hearts ! Now compare him to the preachers of main-stream religions in West whose God is nothing more or less than a foolproof prosecutor who is more interested than anything else to remand you for an indefinite period of time in burning fires of the hell if you violate the ten commandments.  "You are all Gods", is what Osho has always emphasized.  In Hinduism, the God is not like a painter that will complete his job and separate himself from his work ( the painting ). Our God is more like a dancer who cannot separate himself from his work (the dance ) !  Like non-Indian religions (Islam, Christianity and Jewism ) we have never tried to explain the making of physical world by God in six or seven days. So sincerely speaking as far as intelligence is concerned non-Indian religions should have called it a day when Charles Darwin proved his theory. But, surely, even before Darwin, to a realistic inquirer,  Adam and Eve fable should have been too infantile to explain the vast complexness of morphology of life on earth, let alone other far deeper mysteries of existence. Religion in west had a double role : being religion was not enough, it also tried to be 'science'. It wanted you to believe in God because without him such a grand and big universe with a flat earth in its exact center and sun and moon doing their obedient rounds just for you, would not have come into being. Just like Louis Pasteur's pocket-watch, it has to be 'made' by someone! Who was it : God ! Logic : If there is something it has to be made by someone. It is absurd to assume that anything can come into being on its own. So there is a God. Ok. Proved. Done.  But then one may ask : who or what made God ? The answer will be: God doesn't need any one to make him. He was always there. (And always will be )   Now comes the problem : If God can be there without anyone to make it...then why the universe can not be there without a God to make it, in the first place...why such futile exercise ?  Perhaps the world four or five hundred years ago was not as complex as grand as ours is. Because there were no electron microscopes to look at microorganisms, no machines taking visuals wandering as far as the most distant planets, people had no idea about the  mind-blowing vastness, depth and periodic history of biological evolution on earth stretching back to millions of years, no TV channels showing the incredibly infinite variety of colorful life in the deepest of the seas. That is, the world would have been a clever but dead automation,  that could be safely credited to a watchmaker, whose origin we need not question because he is just like us. He was someone in the likeness of the guy who had made Pasteur's watch, and he is like us ! This makes us the masters of the universe for a  while!  So this is the theological tyranny of church Kovoor was actually designed to fight against. Kovoor, probably, would have made a great arguer had he born three or four hundred years ago. But he erringly is sharing fire-line with a person who is the arch-enemy of this very doctrine. He ( Kovoor )carries on his onslaught by challenging that he believes only in things and facts that can be objectively proved, for instance my wife ( that is Kovoor's) gave birth to a child fifty years ago, today he can be seen living and growing  as Mr. Aries Kovoor, I can believe it.   "You believe  ", remarked Osho acidly, "you just 'believe' that he is your son. That has not been proved objectively, Dr. Kovoor...but  still you believe : because you have faith in your wife...! What kind of rationalism is that !"  Thus leaving behind the sober rationalist with a red face, who was perhaps already regretting having taken this panga. The ultra modern jet-set Osho jumps on to the cutting edge nuclear science, general relativity, fourth dimension theory and quantum physics. What kind of baba is this, Kovoor had wondered, he should not even be knowing that does the Earth go around the Sun or is it vice-versa.          Osho also remarked (Tarksheel freaks, take note ) that Kovoor is simply out of touch with the world of contemporary knowledge. And indeed it is the fact. Actually Kovoor came from a poor family and his whole life was little more than a struggle with numerous facets of his subdued interrelations with a seemingly hostile environment, the result was the typically brought-up  sensitive young person bearing upon himself a partial or whole numbness towards the  man's quest for knowledge, strangulation of personnel ambitions, resulting in paranoia of learning new things. Kovoor was never equipped to be a philosopher, all he ever was a sort of political-activist fighting a Marxist's war for the have-nots, against the haves. So as far as 'God' is concerned, to Kovoor it is nothing more than a symbol, an arm-band on the sleeve of the foe.  Sometimes ago one great Tarksheel I personally know was almost shocked when told that Buddha has no 'God' ! His world is too conveniently contrasted  to have any shades of gray, all there is is 'God area' and 'no-God area', and between them is the line of control, the sacred border to fight and defend. Anything beyond that is abstraction to them, a confusion to be avoided at all costs. Tarksheels are no scholars or philosophers, but foot soldiers engaged in a social class-struggle, a battle they have already lost.
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