Tao (group)

Tao was a five-day Pune One therapy group held in the Chaitanya Therapy Chambers. It appears to have started as a seven-day group in late Dec 1975. In the Darshan Diary Hammer on the Rock (6 Jan 1976), Maneesha writes:

The Tao group were present at darshan this evening. It was the first group to pass through this particular process and the feeling was one of a very positive experience.

The groupleader [(unnamed)] described the format, or nonformat, as: "The substance, purpose, and process of the Tao group is committed to nothingness, no pre-planned structure or method. The creation and evolution of the group emanate from each moment to be discovered. Whatever happens will happen".

The Tao group meets for seven consecutive days, and is available twice a month.

Later, in Nothing to Lose but Your Head (Feb 28 1976), we learn that Amitabh is the leader. Then, from Dance Your Way to God (Jul 28 1976), we have:

In keeping with bhagwan’s insistence on the need to maintain balance if one is to be a whole, holy and integrated being, apart from daily meditations and the monthly ten-day meditation camps in which five different meditation techniques are available, groups —growth groups of the humanistic potential movement in the west—are available here. Each groupleader is a sannyasin and has had extensive training in his or her field.

Once during the course, or at the conclusion of their group, members come to darshan together to share with bhagwan their experiences. Tonight the tao group was present, with dhruva, a new sannyasin, for whom this was the first group he had led in the ashram.

The tao group is a five-day group, the basis of which is to move completely free of any structure, simply responding to the moment as it comes. It is a group with the emphasis on allowing rather than doing, on spontaneity rather than structures and techniques. Tao means to go with the flow—wherever that is leading. To the valleys as well as to the peaks, into anger as well as into compassion, into suffering as well as joy. It is a choicelessness and acceptance of all that comes as being needed; an unquestioning acceptance and gratefulness for wherever life leads one.

So now Amitabh is gone, though Dhruva did not last for long, and probably Amitabh was only gone for the summer, as was his practice. And already the group was reduced to five days. Probably this remained the case.

According to the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water, it was offered continuously from Jan 1976 until Mar 1978, TSORW's cut-off date for group info. In fact, it was likely offered all the way through to Jun 1981, when Osho left for the States.

The Community to Provoke God brochure said of it:

The unstructured nature of this group provides a space where participants can flow unhindered with whatever is happening moment to moment. Individuals are thrown into spontaneous situations which reveal their own behaviour patterns and encouraged to allow freer and freer expression of emotions, fears, expectations, disappointments, love and laughter, and to stay with the flow of events that follows as a consequence of this expression.

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