Osho: Intimate Glimpses - reviews

 This page is under construction --Sugit (talk) 19:42, 4 May 2022 (UTC) 

Ma Deva Anando's 2021 book Osho: Intimate Glimpses has made quite a stir.

With some delay, Sw Prem Amrito wrote a long article in the on-line Osho Times: Misleading Content in Anando’s book “Osho: Intimate Glimpses”. To be found here on-line. As the article is so relevant, it's also available on this page.

A month later Ma Prem Sangeet replied to Amrito, with severe criticism of his article. That was published on Facebook and has also been copied here.

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Amrito: Misleading Content in Anando’s book “Osho: Intimate Glimpses”

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Ma Prem Sangeet replies to Amrito's article

Published 2021-04-21 on Facebook by Sw Chaitanya Keerti

I’ve just read Amrito’s preachy, defensive, and rather outrageously nasty “review” of Anando’s book in the online Osho Times. Anyone who’s read Anando’s book will know it’s a collection of memories, like so many other books written by the first generation of sannyasins. Why anyone should find that threatening is beyond my imagination. People have read these accounts with enjoyment and warm reminders of their own experiences with Osho.

I find it very ironic that Amrito should be so self-righteous, when he, along with Jayesh, Niren, and no doubt a few others, submitted a forged will allegedly by Osho in a legal proceeding after Osho’s death. That document claimed to give ownership of all of Osho’s work to a non-profit Jayesh personally controlled. At least four experts have sworn that the signature on the “will” was actually a copy of a signature that appeared on an Osho book in the 1970s. Osho’s signature had always changed through time, and this was particularly true in his last illness. It’s mind-boggling that anyone would think they could pass off such an old signature as one from 1989. To this day, Amrito and his co-conspirators remain unrepentant. I’ve asked myself many times: if Osho gave all the power to Jayesh, as they claim, why did they need to forge a will?

One of Amrito’s complaints now is that Anando corrected some text in her book from an earlier draft. Seriously? None of us has a perfect memory of events over 30 years ago. Anando’s willingness to discuss and correct her memories seems admirable to me. Will Amrito write to correct all the errors in his recent account?

Why, I wonder, is Amrito so threatened by the idea that Anando had a special relationship with Osho? Laxmi, Deeksha, Sheela, Garimo, Anando, Neelam, Devageet, Amrito, Shunyo, and many others had special relationships with Osho. So what? In fact, when Maitreya died and Osho declared him enlightened, Osho said something about us not knowing who has the most special relationships with him. Thirty-two years after Osho left the body, why should any of us be jealous, competitive, or squabbling about that?

Of course, as we read on, we find a possible answer. It’s all about power. Amrito projects a misogynistic attitude toward women onto Osho, in order to claim only men have power over Osho’s work. (Where have we heard that one before?) Amrito uses an Osho quote about women and jealousy to support his perception. Yes, Osho hit women about jealousy, as he hit men about many things. Usually, he just hit all of us together. He hit women in that instance so we could see how we were making ourselves miserable. I was in Pune when the whole “women and jealousy” issue was up, and though it was painful, I have always been extremely grateful to Osho for helping me see how I harmed myself that way. Does that mean that Osho had a judgmental and condemning attitude toward women? No way! Those aren’t Osho’s feelings.

Ironically, it was Amrito who went to Osho and asked him not to make Anando and Shunyo leave Lao Tzu at that time. I understood that both Anando and Shunyo saw the truth of what Osho said and their relationships with Osho returned to normal. And that was nobody’s business but theirs.

Yet Amrito goes on and on about Anando and power, when all she’s done for many years is run groups and write books. Why, why, why are you so threatened, Amrito?

The stories of Anando’s alleged mistakes from ancient history are also amazing, considering all the allegations of forged documents, power grabs, and Jayesh’s attempt to legally control all of Osho’s work personally. Talk about a double standard!

I also think it’s significant that Anando’s book was published some time ago, and the folks at OIF were sent a copy of the manuscript before that. Why are we hearing about these far-out claims now? Is it because of Neelam’s recent death so that she is no longer here to refute these allegations? Hasya, Kaveesha, and several others who could have refuted these allegations died years ago. Recently, Neelam left her body, and suddenly these outrageous ideas come out of the darkness.

Again, why are you threatened by Anando, Amrito? You’ve got power; you, in the form of OIF and/or other entities, have got or had millions stashed in offshore accounts, so what is it you want? People have known about the money in the accounts for years, but they don’t want to get down and wallow in the mud with you. It’s like when people told Osho some others were stealing books, Osho suggested putting up a sign saying, “Steal this Book.” “Steal the money,” Amrito, if that’s what you want to do, steal power. Many of us really don’t care. But please keep your vituperations for private conversations with those who are interested in hearing them. Leave the rest of us to enjoy each other and to enjoy reading each other’s memoirs.

And now to address some little “memory gaps” of Amrito’s. I think it’s important to set the record straight. Amrito claims that Osho refused Anando as a caretaker in late 1989. At that time, I lived and worked in Lao Tzu. There was a room in what had been intended as part of Osho’s library where Anando had her desk and held meetings. I, the joke guys, Anando’s secretaries, and others, worked there too. Amrito spent quite a bit of time on the computer there, hanging out, or doing whatever he was up to. Anando and Amrito used to have a lot of arguments there. In fact, they drove the rest of us crazy, and we wished they would take it around the corner to Anando’s room.

At one point the focus of the arguments seemed to be about Anando acting as a caretaker. Amrito kept saying that Osho wanted her to come back, and she refused at first, saying he was Osho’s physician and could take care of it. At some point she did go back. Anando and I weren’t on good terms at that point, so I never discussed it with her and don’t know the details. I do know that Anando accompanied Osho to Buddha Hall every evening, which indicates some kind of caretaking role during that whole time.

Another interminable topic of argument was about what Osho had told them to do. Clearly, they were both talking with and receiving instructions from Osho, but they didn’t seem to hear the same things. This happened so often that I began to wonder if Osho was intentionally giving them different instructions until they stopped the competition and figured it out. Who knows?

The last point about the office is that Osho insisted that a direct phone line between his room and Anando’s desk be installed during this time. The instructions were that no one except Anando was to answer it, and that included Amrito. When it rang, we were to go find Anando, wherever she was, and bring her back.

But the most significant point for me was that after Osho left the body Amrito approached me. This was a surprise, as we really didn’t like each other (even then!). I, somewhat naively, thought this was because he was saddened by Osho’s death and was talking to anyone who would listen. So Amrito launched into a tale of how the night before he died Osho told Amrito to go to Anando and tell her that he, Osho, was leaving the body the next day and wanted her to sit with him through the night. Amrito claimed he went to Anando, but she said Osho was always saying that and she wouldn’t go. So, Amrito told her that Osho had said himself that he was leaving the body. Then Anando went, and, sure enough, Osho left the body the next day.

The other remarkable thing Amrito said was that as Osho was dying Jayesh was waiting, outside the door. Osho hadn’t asked to see him. That account was later amended to say Osho had sent for Jayesh and left Jayesh his dream (just as he supposedly left Jayesh control of all his property in the forged will). Amrito admitted to me that Osho didn’t ask for Jayesh, which makes the later story unlikely. I believe Osho left his dream to his people to carry on. His last words weren’t about power but about love, for those already there and those to come. The last thing Osho said was that Anando would be his medium, but it seems Amrito and Jayesh would like to forget that. I can see why.

Many years later I heard that Jayesh and company had objected to a draft of Anando’s most recent book, claiming that she wasn’t with Osho on his last night. I managed to get a message to Anando, telling her what Amrito had told me at the time, and asking her a few questions. She confirmed that Amrito was now claiming that Anando wasn’t there at all that night. She also said Amrito had never come to her with a message from Osho as he had claimed. She was already on the regular schedule to do night-time caretaking. She went as usual, and Osho never said anything about leaving his body the next day.

I was puzzled. Why would Amrito go out of his way in 1990 to tell me that Anando was in the room at Osho’s request and now claim that she hadn’t been there at all? It struck me then that the point of his first story might have been to claim that Osho had predicted his own death, so there would be no reason to suspect that anyone had sped up the process. And of course, I didn’t suspect it at the time. It was only after the doctor they called in to confirm Osho’s death expressed concerns that I began to wonder.

When I heard that Amrito is now insisting that Anando wasn’t in the room the night before Osho’s death, I began to seriously consider the idea that Osho might not have died naturally, as many have been suggesting. Otherwise, why lie? And one of Amrito’s versions is clearly a lie.

Sadly, the reality is that we’re not likely to ever know, or at least be able to prove, the truth, so there may not be a point in expending too much energy on it now. Personally, I’d rather focus on meditation and enjoying life. On the other hand, I wanted to put things that maybe only I know about on record for the future. I’m hoping others will do the same, and not let this kind of slander of Osho stand. For example, if Anando was with Osho on the night of January 18, what was Amrito up to? I’ve heard various stories that Amrito was out drinking till 1 or 2 in the morning that night. One version said he was in Jayesh’s office drinking with Jayesh. If any of that is true, then he not only wasn’t with Osho, he wasn’t available in case Osho needed a doctor in the night. But I don’t have personal knowledge of this; maybe someone else does.

Did Amrito tell his stories about Anando and Osho to anyone other than me in 1990? Did Anando tell anyone at the time that she was with Osho that last night? She told me on the steps in Lao Tzu. I suspect there are a lot of bits and pieces people know and haven’t thought about in years. Maybe we can collect these memories online and leave a cleaner record for the biographers to come. I think that’s only fair to Osho.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping the Osho Times will go back to sharing awareness and not hate. We would all be deeply grateful.