11/22/2025
Osho /
"Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth."
"Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (born December 11, 1931, Kuchwada [now in Madhya Pradesh], India—died January 19, 1990, Pune) was an Indian spiritual leader who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, individual devotion, and s*xual freedom.
As a young intellectual, Rajneesh visited with and absorbed insights from teachers of the various religious traditions active in India. He studied philosophy at the University of Jabalpur, earning a B.A. in 1955; he began teaching there in 1957, after earning an M.A. from the University of Saugar. At the age of 21 he had an intense spiritual awakening, which inspired in him the belief that individual religious experience is the central fact of spiritual life and that such experiences cannot be organized into any single belief system.
In 1966 Rajneesh resigned from his university post and became a guru (spiritual guide) and a teacher of meditation. In the early 1970s he initiated people into the order of sannyasis, who traditionally renounced the world and practiced asceticism. Reinterpreting the idea of being a sannyasi in terms of detachment rather than asceticism, Rajneesh taught his disciples to live fully in the world without being attached to it.
The first Westerners came to Rajneesh in the early 1970s, and in 1974 the new headquarters of his movement was established in Pune. The basic practice taught at the centre was called dynamic meditation, a process designed to allow people to experience the divine. The centre also developed a diversified program of New Age healing adopted from the West. Rajneesh became well-known for his progressive approach to s*xuality, which contrasted with the renunciation of s*x advocated by many other Indian teachers.