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?"

Human Potential history

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.

Particular groups info

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.

In 1978, a decent-sized brochure outlining what Osho and his ashram / commune were all about was published, called My People: A Community to Provoke God. In it was a substantial amount of info about groups. The general info / introduction ran:

The groups that are offered at the ashram play an important part of the process towards awakening -- a combination of growth methods developed in the West in recent years, the richness of Eastern disciplines and Bhagwan Shree's wit and wisdom. There are now 26 different groups (at the time of going to print).

Most people who first come to the ashram are asked if they would like to participate, and then Bhagwan Shree suggests what would be fitting for them. Sometimes he is serious -- and in the next breath he says the groups are just toys. In the meantime there are about 900 places for participants in groups each month.

The ashram groups are led by professionals who have been trained around the world, and have often been pioneers in their field before coming to be with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The group leaders include founders of growth centres such as Quaesitor and Community in London, Associates for Human Resources in Boston.

Among the group leaders are psychiatrists, certified psychologists, Jungian analysts, educators and persons with doctorates in many different fields. Some therapists have worked at Esalen Institute, Arica Institute and the Radix Institute. Others have worked directly with well known Western therapists such as Fritz Perls, Will Schutz, Claudio Naranjo, Charles Kelley, Alexander Lowen and Gerda Boyesen. Several have studied Tai chi, Shiatsu and meditation with eastern masters. These varied backgrounds and the deep connection to Bhagwan Shree leads to an unbelievable richness and depth in the ashram groups.

All the 26 groups of the day are listed in this brochure and categorized into different types. The types have short descriptions, which are followed by the groups and their short descriptions. The individual group descriptions will not be reproduced here, but in their individual group pages (see table below for links):

1. Introductory groups ~~ When people first arrive at the ashram, Bhagwan Shree often suggests one of the introductory groups that focus on the initial task of awakening self-awareness. { Centering | Enlightenment Intensive }

2. Working with the body ~~ These groups work on the premise that awareness must be rooted in the body before it can be taken beyond. { Body Awareness | Massage | Movement | Bio-Energetics | Anatta }

3. Opening and releasing ~~ As human beings we are inevitably trapped into the conditioning given us since birth by parents and society. These groups aim to cut through successive layers of conditioning, allowing participants to experience their natural emotions directly. { Encounter | Tao | Samarpan | Gestalt | Couples | Let Go }

4. Early life issues ~~ We are deeply influenced by our early years, even our early moments in life. These groups help participants go back to the past, reliving and so becoming free of those early experiences. { Primal Therapy | Rebirthing }

5. Subconscious ~~ Much of a person's potential is below the conscious mind. These groups help participants tap these deeper resources. { Hypnotherapy | Deeper Hypnotherapy }

6. Energy ~~ Life is composed of energy. Awareness of the grosser forms -- the warmth of a fire for example is obvious to everyone. These groups help participants become more and more sensitive to the subtleties and qualities of energy, especially within themselves and in their relationships to others. { Leela | Sarjana | Tantra | Prema | Urja | Relaxation }

7. Meditation ~~ In addition to the monthly meditation camps there are groups that teach traditional methods of meditation handed down from past Masters. { Vipassana | Zazen | Kyo }

The brochure also included:

8. Individual sessions ~~ Direct one-to-one work on the body can be a short cut to releasing energy blocks and tuning into the body. { Alexander Technique | Rolfing | Postural Integration | Reflexology | Shiatsu | Massage | Acupuncture | Rebirthing | Neo-Reichian }

While most of the individual sessions above do not correspond to groups, they were packaged with groups in the brochure, including even a description, and so, as they have no place of their own yet in the wiki, we have put them in here at the bottom of the table below, at least temporarily.

The table contains the groups about which at least 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. Please share 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
Arica		little known, see page for period offered
Aum Marathon	Veeresh
Awareness		little known, see page for period offered
Bio-Energetics		a body-oriented group, see page
Body Awareness		see page
Body Mind		little known, see page for period offered
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
Boredom/Hell		little known, see page for period offered
Couples	Amitabh	interpersonal psychodramas, with all participants being couples who wanted help working on their relationships
Divine Healing		little known, see page for period offered
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).
Ethiopian dance	Sw Neeraj	a drop-in ongoing group, ran for years, lots more than just Ethiopian forms
Exorcism		little known, see page for period offered
Fear	Sw ... (ex Melbourne policeman)
Feldenkrais		little known, see page for period offered
Gestalt		a therapy group, see page
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".
Karate		little known, see page for period offered
Kyo		a meditation group, see page
Laughing Meditation		little known, see page for period offered
Leela	Somendra	a therapy and energy-oriented group, see page
Let Go		a therapy group, see page
Massage		an introductory survey of various techniques and practice. Very hands-on!
Mime		little known, see page for period offered
Movement		a body-oriented group, see page
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?
Prasadam Women's Group		little known, see page for period offered
Prema		an energy-oriented group, see page
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 the Shree Rajneesh Ashram.
Rebirthing	(a French couple), Rudra	Connected breathing. Rudra trained and toured with Leonard Orr, the originator of Rebirthing.
Relationship		little known, see page for period offered
Relaxation		an energy-oriented group, see page
Sahaj		little known, see page for period offered
Samarpan	Rajen	a therapy group, see page
Sarjana		an energy-oriented group, see page
Satori		little known, see page for period offered
Shraddha		little known, see page for period offered
Shunyam		little known, see page for period offered
Soma		little known, see page for period offered
Sufi Dancing	Aneeta	a free drop-in group offered every day at 10am in Buddha Hall from Dec 1976 to 1981, with guided heart-opening dancing and singing, live music
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
Tantra Yoga		little known, see page for period offered
Tao	Siddha	Siddha was not the first leader of this group but became so in mid-1978
Tathata	Pujari, Kabir	Pujari was the first leader of this group, then Kabir took over
Urja	Somendra	an energy-oriented group, see page
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.
Whirling		little known, see page for period offered
Yoga		little known, see page for period offered
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.
Individual session		a few facts
Acupuncture		see page
Alexander Technique		see page
Massage		see page
Neo-Reichian		see page
Postural Integration		see page
Rebirthing		see page
Reflexology		see page
Rolfing		see page
Shiatsu		see page

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