Groups

A survey of the amazing flow and function of groups in Osho's world,
a page in progress about a subject in progress
If you have some group info or stories to share, see discussion

Pune One groups

Groups sprang into a stupendous, full-flowering existence in the Pune One Ashram. They did not end then of course, but they began then and for a good chunk of that time were the main financial support for the ashram, although they were very inexpensive compared to groups in the West. A unique aspect of the groups of that time was that they were one of the major ways Osho's guidance would manifest for "ordinary" seekers, ie those who weren't involved in ashram work or other "special" roles which might define their relationship with the master.

For many of the many people who wrote letters to Osho concerning any "problems" they were experiencing, his answer would come in the form of a suggestion to participate in certain groups. Then, for the period of those groups, situations, experiences and interactions would happen, containing the seeds of an insight into the problem. Osho also assigned groups to people coming to see him in darshan, either taking sannyas, returning from the west, or coming to see him regarding a problem.

Another unique feature of groups in those days was darshan: after every group was completed, the group would come en masse to darshan. Osho would ask the group leader(s) how the group went, they would say a few words, or possibly enter into their own process with him, as it was also an opportunity for them, and then, depending on how crowded the evening schedule was, some group members might ask individual questions.

Groups were of many types, and of course many could not be easily pigeonholed, with categories blurring and overlapping. Basic types were Meditation, Therapy, Play, Energy, Creativity and Bodywork. All were different angles to approach the quintessential seeker's question, "Who am I?"

The highest-profile groups were the Therapy groups. Their methods derived from those of the developing "Human Potential" movement, whose cutting edge included sannyasins like Teertha and Somendra. They had come to Osho despite being leaders in their field, seeing that their approaches lacked an essential something that Osho was offering. These groups used the interpersonal dynamics that arose in their hothouse milieux to shine a light on unconscious patterns which might then, by being made conscious, be less binding on our self-image and -experience. Or something like that.

Sw Anand Vikrant has done years of research into the development of Humanistic Psychology and how it was influenced by Osho. He presents his findings in a remarkable four-part LoveOsho podcast/interview covering the development of therapy groups from the 60s to the present and Osho's group-leaders' part in it. Here follows a lightly edited transcript of an early part of that story:

The Human Potential movement started at the end of the 1950s, with Abraham Maslow, who had been influenced by Kurt Goldstein. Maslow was interested in studying normal people, because at that time we had mainly Freudian psychology, based on psychopathology. The whole theory of the human psyche developed by Freud was based on studying people who couldn't quite function socially. Maslow considered this a bit limiting and also the other important school of psychology, Behaviorism, he considered a bit shallow, just focused on trying to modify behavior, not trying to find out about the causes behind behavior.

So Maslow decided to study and see what were the ways people were motivated toward growth, he decided to study normal people, let's say normal neurotics, not people who had serious psychiatric pathology. And from there -- in the US originally, at the beginning of the 1960s -- people began to experiment and to wonder in which ways could we use let's say psychological technology not only to cure dysfunctional behavior but to use it as a way to explore human development, to explore human growth.

And from there, in 1962, the first growth center in the world appeared on the west coast of the US, the Esalen Institute. The Esalen Institute was the place where basically humanistic psychology moved from being a theoretical approach trying to understand the human psyche and human motivation to a practical way of exploring it. So things which are very common for us like group work or workshops or seminars didn't exist before. This was the first time in human history where people went to psychologists or to the psychological field not to cure their neurosis or their dysfunctional behavior but to explore what more was possible for me.

So people took off their ties, took off their shoes, got rid of their chairs, started to have cushions on the floor and to explore what all these theoretical people were talking about. Abraham Maslow, Aldous Huxley, Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, Alexander Lowen, Will Schutz, [? unintelligible], all these people decided to create an experiential psychology and work not only with the intellect. They moved away from conversational therapy to an experiential therapy, and they even started to get rid of the word "therapy" because that had a connotation of something not working, and decided to call this "work", so people didn't talk about going to therapy, but to work on yourself. Fritz Perls, the creator of Gestalt therapy, coined the word "workshop" instead of "therapy group", trying to take the psychological work away from psychiatrists and from the mainstream medical model into a personal development model.

And this created an explosion, first in the US in the late 60s and early 70s, and then this was carried to Europe and to the second growth center in the world , which was Quaesitor Growth Center, which was started by Paul Lowe and Patricia Lowe, both of whom later became sannyasins -- and they were leading therapists in the Osho world, as Teertha and Poonam -- and then from Quaesitor it started to spread all over Europe, so we had the [Seed?] Zentrum in Germany, we had [Center?] in the Netherlands etc, etc.

So all these people were working with experiential psychology and working with the possibilities of expanding consciousness that didn't only mean to resolve your inner conflicts but also the possibilities of growth, of expanding your sensitivity, of working on your childhood issues, working on how you relate to other people and working with the body and working with the emotions. And what happened to them is that they started to see let's say the ceiling of this approach: they had worked on their bodies, they had worked on their childhood, they had worked on their sexuality and their unresolved traumas, and they learned to be more honest, spontaneous, relate to each other, and then what else was possible?

And then they turned to the writings from the East. They turned to Advaita Vedanta, to Hinduism, to Buddhism, looking for what more was possible in the realm of consciousness. And in that search, some people joined sects like the Hare Krishnas or some people turned into Hindus or Buddhists but some people also were looking for a living master. And then, Richard Alpert, Ram Das, the author of Be Here Now, was the first Western psychologist who came back to the US with a new name. He had met his master in the Himalayas, Neem Karoli Baba, and this was a huge inspiration for a lot of people to travel East to find a living master.

Around that time there was a book going around in London called The Dynamics of Meditation, a book authored by Osho, taken from one of his talks. Many of the people who were involved in the growth centers in London, in Quaesitor, in Community -- Michael Barnett, Paul Lowe, Alan Lowen, who later became Somendra, Teertha and Rajen -- were interested, and this was a book that was read around this circle, so these guys decided to travel East and check this guy out. And they got there and they were stunned. When Paul Lowe or Michael Barnett got for the first time to be with Osho, they couldn't believe what they were seeing, you know, there was this guy that was way beyond all these people that they knew, way beyond Perls, way beyond Carl Rogers, way beyond Will Schutz, the creator of Encounter groups, and they decided to stay.

So that's how this happened. This was in Mumbai, in the early days before Pune, so they went there and they found what they had been looking for. And this is one important point I think, they were most appealed to by Dynamic Meditation, because this was the only technique which didn't somehow teach repression or to sit on your own neurosis. In that, it was very much in tune with the Humanistic Psychology movement, with the Human Potential movement, which was first, if you want to find inner peace, you need to face your own neurosis, you need to go through your own turmoil and throw it out.

Focusing here on the therapy groups is not meant to detract from the quality of the others, but it was the cachet of the therapy groups which led in short order to Shree Rajneesh Ashram's fairly legitimate claim of being the largest spiritual growth center in the world. That claim has persisted to this day, though the processes offered have become less cutting-edge, quality may have deteriorated and prices have skyrocketed to the point of making it less attractive in that regard.

Names of most of the groups available in Pune One were found in a timeline in The Sound of Running Water, pages XXIV and XXV. In alphabetical order they are:

Anatta, Arica, Aum, Awareness, Bioenergetics, Body Awareness, Body Mind, Boredom / Hell, Centering, Couples, Divine Healing, Encounter, Exorcism, Feldenkrais, Gestalt, Hypnotherapy, Intensive Enlightenment, Kyo, Laughing Meditation, Leela, Let Go, Massage, Mime, Movement, Music Group, Nartana, Prasadam, Prema, Primal, Rebirthing, Relationship, Relaxation, Samarpan, Sarjana, Satori, Shraddha, Shunyam, Soma, T'ai Chi, Tantra, Tantra Yoga, Tao, Tathata, Urja, Vipassana, Whirling, Yoga, and Zazen.

The timeline shows the dates that each group was offered. In most cases, they go on through March 1978. Most continued after that as well, through May-June 1981, but that is as far as the book covered. Where groups were discontinued in the book's time frame, end dates are also shown. The first groups began in Aug 1975. They were pretty much the "heaviest" of the groups offered, Encounter and Primal.

The table below contains a sampling of the groups about which some minimal facts are known. Names sometimes evolved over the years and leaders came and went. Assistant leaders' names are also included. Active links (non-red) go to pages about which more is known. Feel free to add your knowledge about any of these groups!

Group, aka	Leader(s)	a few facts
Alchemy	Maitri	new-age and "esoteric" processes to experiment and play with for personal transformation
Anatta	Aneesha	bio-energetics + neo-Reichian methods
Centering	Prasad	a seven-day "play" group, ie a non-serious, fun group; a "factory" group, ie assigned to most newcomers, with up to 200 people on Krishna House roof, deriving many of its techniques from Arica
Couples	Amitabh	interpersonal psychodramas, with all participants being couples who wanted help working on their relationships
Encounter	Teertha, Turiya	The "heaviest" of the therapy groups, held for seven serious days in the Chaitanya Therapy Chambers. See "God Is Not Great" is not great#Therapy groups for more (link for now).
Fear	Sw ... (ex Melbourne policeman)
Hypnotherapy	Santosh	aka Dehypnotherapy?
Intensive Enlightenment	Amida, Vimalkirti, Ganga, Parijat	aka Enlightenment Intensive, a "factory" group, ie assigned to most newcomers, with up to 150 participants. Three very long days residential group (~ four hours sleep) with breaks for meals and Dynamic and Kundalini Meditations, otherwise sitting with a partner taking five-minute turns asking the other, "Tell me who you are" and listening, changing partners every half-hour. Discipline was strict, very "boot camp".
Leela	Somendra
Massage		an introductory survey of various techniques and practice. Very hands-on!
Music Group	Anubhava	a free drop-in celebration group, every evening in Buddha Hall, except during camps, differing from most of the "assigned", process-oriented groups in this page
Nartana	Amiyo	Dance, what else?
Primal	Divya	This was the first Primal group in the world. Divya studied with Arthur Janov, the originator of Primal therapy, a process created for individuals and Osho asked her to create this group, a 14-day marathon. This and Encounter were the first groups offered in Shree Rajneesh Ashram.
Rebirthing	(a French couple), Rudra	Connected breathing. Rudra studied and toured with Leonard Orr, the originator of Rebirthing.
Samarpan	Rajen
Tai Chi	Mallika	Osho explains at length to Mallika in Get Out of Your Own Way!, ch 8, about how T'ai Chi's slow movements create a kind of mental sluggishness and help participants come to no-mind. As a Taoist method, it is antithetical to Western speed, with which ideas of intelligence can be entangled. The T'ai Chi group had two formats, an "intensive", running three hours a day (two in morning, one in evening) and an open drop-in for one hour in the afternoon.
Tantra	Sudha	sex, what else?, lots of it, and methods to explore attitudes and blocks
Tao	Siddha	Siddha was not the first leader of this group but became so in mid-1978
Urja	Somendra
Vipassana	Pradeepa, Gopal, Paritosh	Paritosh was the first leader, in 1976, along with Pradeepa, for a year or two. The group ran for ten days on the roof of #122 Koregaon Park. Its structure was an hour of silent sitting (watching the eternal infernal mind) alternating with half an hour of slow meditative walking. No contact was permitted between participants. It was non-residential but silence outside the group was encouraged as well.
Zazen	Pradeepa, Gopal	a "lighter" kind of Vipassana, five days, non-residential, sittings only half an hour with eyes open staring at a blank wall alternating with 15 minutes walking, with a Japanese tea ceremony at the end.

These parts below will be developed eventually but are not the first priority. If you have some group info or stories from those eras to share, see discussion

Pune Three

see also

How Osho Changed Modern Psychology (Part 1), first of a four-part LoveOsho interview/podcast with Sw Anand Vikrant, on the theme of therapy groups and how they evolved from Pune One to the Ranch to Pune Two, and the influence Osho's groups had on the field around the world.

Therapy