His thousands of hours of extemporaneous talks, spoken to people from around the world over a twenty-year period, are all recorded, often on video. The transcriptions of these talks are published in hundreds of titles in dozens of languages. In these talks, the human mind is put under the microscope as never before, analyzed to the smallest wrinkle. Mind as psychology, mind as emotion, mind as mind/body; mind as moralist, mind as belief; mind as religion, mind as history, mind as politics and social evolution – all examined, studied, and integrated and then graciously left behind in the essential quest for transcendence.
In the process Osho exposes hypocrisy and humbug wherever he sees it. As the author, Tom Robbins so eloquently said:
“I recognize the emerald breeze when it rattles my shutters. And Osho is like a hard, sweet wind, circling the planet, blowing the beanies off of rabbis and popes, scattering the lies on the desks of the bureaucrats, stampeding the jackasses in the stables of the powerful, lifting the skirts of the pathologically prudish and tickling the spiritually dead back to life.
“Jesus had his parables, Buddha his sutras, Mohammed his fantasies of the Arabian night. Osho has something more appropriate for a species crippled by greed, fear, ignorance and superstition: he has cosmic comedy.
“What Osho is out to do, it seems to me, is pierce our disguises, shatter our illusions, cure our addictions and demonstrate the self-limiting and often tragic folly of taking ourselves too seriously.”
So what to say of Osho? The ultimate deconstructionist? A visionary who becomes the vision? Certainly a proposal to existence – that it is everyone’s birthright to enjoy the ultimate experience of being a buddha. For that, Osho says, “There is only one path, which goes inwards, where you will not find a single human being, where you will find only silence, peace. Then you will find yourself, and after that even you will not be there.”
His legacy?
