The Hell (group)

"The Hell" was a Pune One group of unknown duration, at least four days. It appears in the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water, which shows that it was offered from Nov 1976 to Mar 1977. In the timeline chart it was called Boredom/Hell, but in The Buddha Disease, Osho refers to it as "the hell", so the wiki is going with that.

The account below was written by Maneesha in The Buddha Disease as a background to the occasion of the first "the hell" group's darshan, on Jan 31 1977. It includes some of the history of its creation:

One evening in darshan two months ago, (see blessed are the ignorant december 4th) bhagwan suggested to Prasad, the leader of the Tathata group that he put together ideas for a "boredom group".

Bhagwan talked about boredom as a device to help the mind drop, and said to Prasad that boredom should be the central core of the group.

Over the next few days Prasad was inundated with voluntary help from sannyasins -- all with their own particular ideas for creating a really boring situation.

Prasad compiled a list of rules and regulations for "the hell", as Bhagwan named it, which included the following:

1) you must eat as much as possible at mealtimes.

2) you must smile as much as possible at all times.

3) no joking, laughing, crying or catharsis.

4) no communication with group members except when told to.

5) no activities other than those scheduled; no newspapers, no meditations, no dancing, no smoking

The format for the group was the same each day, commencing with the same lecture (a particularly technical one from "the yoga sutras") a discussion (carried out blind folded) which was constantly kept in check if it began to border on the faintly scintillating, and a reading by the groupleader from the economic section of a two-year-old newspaper.

After a lunch break, stockhausen music assailed the ears of the participants for over an hour. This was followed by two hours of repetition tapes which proved to be particularly non-thought-provoking. One tape was the constant repetition of Bhagwan's voice saying, "he must be getting fed up; he must be bored ... he must be getting fed up; he must be bored" ... over and over and over again. Or, another nerve-wracker: "Just e-stupid" ... and a peal of laughter; "Just e-stupid" ... and a peal of laughter; "Just e-stupid" and a peal of laughter ... and so on, ad nauseam.

The monotony was further enhanced by an hour's rendition of the life story of the group members -- this carried out in pairs, the same couple pairing up each day!

This particular group was told an hour before lunchtime on the last day that they would be having no lunch as many of them had been breaking the rules. By the afternoon the tension had reached a peak and members were really brought to the brink of utter frustration -- so much so that when it was announced that the group was over, and a large cake produced with which to celebrate, most group members could only collapse in heart-rending relief.

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