Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, was a fully enlightened master who lived during the twentieth century.
He was also a man of extraordinary intelligence, erudition, charisma, and powers of communication.
Some people thought of him as a guru of hedonism, an impressario of spiritual Mardi Gras. Tens of thousands of seekers jetted across oceans to his ashrams and communes to participate in giddy, high-energy experiments in living and consciousness.
But he was also a professor of philosophy, a lover of literature, and the author of an extraordinary library of books that explain the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures in matter-of-fact, crystal-clear English.
In the 1980s, he and his followers built a 65,000-acre city from scratch in the Oregon wilderness. Some people called it an experiment to provoke God, and others called it a fascist concentration camp.
Controversy surrounded him; he was accused of crimes and eventually deported from the United States for violations of immigration law.
He has left us a great legacy: his books. We think they are the clearest maps of the roads to enlightenment that anybody drew during the twentieth century.
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Biography
Born in Kuchwada, Madhya Pradesh, India on December 11, 1931. His parents gave him the name Rajneesh Chandra Mohan and raised him as a Jain. When he was seven, his grandfather died with his head in Osho's lap while riding to the doctor in a bullock cart. Osho became enlightened at 21 and graduated at about the same time from the University of Saugar with first-class honors in philosophy. While a student, he won the All-India Debating Championship. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Jabalpur for nine years. In 1966, he left his teaching post and established an ashram in Bombay. In 1974, he left Bombay and established an ashram in Poona. In 1981, he moved to the United States and established an ashram in Oregon. In 1986 he was deported from the United States for violations of immigration law (to which he pleaded no contest) and returned to Poona. He died on January 19, 1990.
