Osho on Vishnu Devananda and Ram dass

 

 

Just the other day somebody wrote me a question about one of the disciples of Shivananda. He is well known in America, in Europe -- Vishnu Devananda is his name. Up to now he has been claiming that he goes on receiving messages from his late Master, Shivananda. Only recently he has confessed that somebody in his own organization was deceiving him, giving him messages as if they were coming from the late Master, Shivananda.

 

In the first place Shivananda was not a Master at all; he was only a teacher and a very ordinary teacher, a third-rate teacher. He was talking old rubbish. But a man like Vishnu Devananda who is worshipped by thousands of people in Europe and America -- particularly in Spanish countries he has a great following -- he can be deceived by someone in his own organization. Somebody was playing tricks on him. And these tricks are not new.

 

Madame Blavatsky used to play the same trick upon the Theosophists, and great Theosophists like Colonel Olcott and others were deceived. It was found out only later on that she had managed it through a servant; a servant used to hide on the roof. Just think... the roof of Buddha Hall and a sannyasin hiding there, and in the middle of the discourse a letter drops! And Madame Blavatsky used to claim that these letters had come from divine Masters, particularly from Master K. H., Kuthumi, who is the head of all the Masters, who is a direct mediator between God and the earth. Only later on did the servant confess before the court that he was hiding on the roof where there was a small place from which to drop the letters, and those letters were written by Madame Blavatsky herself. And then the experts on writing found out that that was true -- all the letters were written by Blavatsky herself.

 

Now somebody in Vishnu Devananda's own organization has been deceiving him for years. But these are the foolish people...

 

One of the very famous Americans, Baba Ram Dass, was deceived for one year continuously by a woman who said that she was delivering messages from Ram Dass's late Master, Neem Karoli Baba. And the messages were not just ordinary messages -- tantric messages, "The Master has said make love to me!" So Baba Ram Dass was making love to the woman, and for one year continuously it went on. It seems people want to be fooled!

 

There are people who want to befool, there are people who are ready to be befooled. This world is full of such people, and they have been thought religious, esoteric, occult -- all kinds of beautiful names have been given to these fools.

 

It is good that Vishnu Devananda has confessed that somebody in his own organization was deceiving him, but what does it show? It shows one thing: that Vishnu Devananda is a fool. If somebody in his own organization, his own disciple can deceive him, then what integrity has he got and what consciousness? He should drop being a Master, he should stop initiating people. He has lost all right to.

 

In the name of religion so much stupidity has happened in the world that if religion disappears as it is, man will be immensely benefited.

 

Just the other day I was reading that in Arabian countries at least one thousand women are killed every day, for SMALL things; just the suspicion is enough. If the husband suspects that the wife is having some relationship with somebody -- and can you find a husband who does not suspect, or can you find a wife who does not suspect? -- then that is enough reason to kill the woman. And Islamic law allows it; it is not murder. You are killing your own woman, your own wife -- it is like destroying your own chair! Who can prevent you? It is your own chair. You can burn your bicycle -- so you have burnt another menstrual cycle! So what is wrong with it? Thousands of women are killed every day, in the twentieth century, in the name of Islamic law. We have not really evolved; we are still as primitive as we have ever been.

 

-Osho, "Theologia Mystica, #4"