Sw Devateerth Bharti

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(Shree Babu Lal Jain)

Osho’s father was from Timarni, a small town in the Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh. He was born in Mar 21, 1908 into a family of Digambara Jains of the Taran Panthi sect, who worshiped the Jain saint Taran Swami.

About taking sannyas from his son, he said in the Osho News interview with Sarjano (link below):

My wife had invited me many times to take sannyas from him, but I always used to answer that I wasn’t mentally ready for it, even if sometimes I would go to listen his discourses, but nothing else! I even participated in some of his Meditation Camps, but it took me over two years to decide for this adventure, until one day in 1975… I was here in this room, there was a full moon in the sky, and at dawn I was sitting in meditation as usual, when suddenly my body started trembling and shaking on its own, and it went on for a couple of hours. Finally when I came back to my senses my sons asked me what was going on, and I told them that what I’d been waiting for years had just started happening to me; somebody decided to inform Osho, and even though it was only four in the morning, they woke him up to tell him about the latest events. After a few minutes he appeared in my room, and I bowed to him and I touched his feet… and Osho bowed himself and touched my feet, so I bowed again and I touched his feet once more, starting to cry with no control, and at this point he asked Laxmi, his secretary in those years, to give him her mala, and once he had the mala in his hands he placed it around my neck like a garland of love…and this is how I became a sannyasin.

The full moon he speaks of was likely the one on Oct 20 1975. On Oct 30, Osho answered a question about this event, declaring his father to be an exceedingly rare man to be able to bow down to his son like that:

Just think of bowing down to your own son, coming to the feet of your own son. being initiated. A tremendous humbleness, a tremendous innocence, is needed. That is one of the most difficult things in human relationships. It is not accidental that Jesus' father never came to him.

It is simple: to believe in the son to whom you have given birth, whom you have seen from the very first day, from his first cry how can you believe that he has become enlightened? Your own son? -- impossible. Your own blood and bone? -- impossible. How can you think that he has become something, someone, from whom you have to learn?

~from Come Follow to You, Vol 1, ch 10.

Devateerth died enlightened on Sep 8, 1979. At the death celebration in Buddha Hall, Osho placed flowers on his father's body and touched his head. Osho then created an annual festival on the 8th of September, Mahaparanirvana Day, to celebrate all sannyasins, past and future, who have died and will die.