General Meeting – Buddha Hall – May 1989

11 min readOn 19 May 1989 Amrito, Osho’s personal physician, Anando, Osho’s secretary and Neelam, Osho’s secretary for India, share, in a General Meeting in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium, the latest news about Osho’s health and his plans for the expansion of his work.
AMRITO
So, good evening everybody.
First let me tell you about Osho. I’m sure that’s what you mostly want to hear. Since that last episode when he left the podium he has had many weeks of severe pains and been extremely weak, and I’m glad to be able to say those pains are now easing and he is considerably better. However, at the end of this period it’s clear that his strength is not back and he now feels that he is not going to be able to speak to us regularly, as he has done in the past. He said that he will be able to come out from time to time, talk to us sometimes, sit and listen to our music at other times, and just sit in silence with us on yet other occasions. But he is clear that he is not going to be able to talk regularly in the way that he has been able to in the past.

He is very emphatic that we all understand that his presence and his absence is part of his work.

And he specifically mentioned that he’d heard that somebody went off to the Taj Mahal because he wasn’t talking. And he said, “This is a waste of their time.” They need to be here. And this buddhafield – it depends on his presence, not on his speaking. So that what’s really important is that you all understand that and don’t think that we’re just sort of hanging around waiting for him to start speaking. But that we set about making this buddhafield the kind of beautiful and aesthetically fabulous place that he would like it to be, to realize that it’s his presence which is critical to the buddhafield.
That’s what makes it a buddhafield, not because he’s talking but because he’s still here. And he said,

“If people want to find out what I have said, it’s all in the books.” So he is not expecting you to be here just to hear his words; it’s his presence which is all-important.

And clearly, the longer we can manage without him, as it were, the longer he is going to be with us, and the more he has to come out and speak, the shorter time he is going to be with us. So in a way we are preserving him for as long as we can, by allowing him just to be in peace in his room. And he really wants to know that we are, how did he put it, “blissful and alone,” and not in need of him to come out every night to hold our hand. But that we could actually be mature enough to build this ashram in the way that he would like it.
Now that all raised all kinds of questions about what kind of ashram is it, what are we doing here, how do we organize it, how do we arrange it, who is doing what to whom – every sort of question started to come up. And it’s clear that in the last two or three years we’ve really come back incredibly since the buffeting we took at the hands of the United States.

We are sitting here with smiles on our faces; Meese and Reagan are in bad shape back there.

And the press is now beginning to understand who Osho is. Someone the other day said, “The press is so good, I think we could have written some of that!” And someone said we did. The press is really lovely and is beginning to see exactly who he is, and at the same time the outside world is beginning to realize that they are running out of cul-de-sacs, and he is preparing here a place for literally hundreds of thousands of people to be able to come through and share this buddhafield.
Let me ask Anando to come and talk to you about the basic plans to make us a self-sufficient and… celebratory and highly financially successful place.
ANANDO
Actually, he has been talking a lot lately about what Amrito just said about presence. And he doesn’t mean his presence here in Buddha Hall. He means his presence here in the buddhafield, and that anybody… he says anybody who feels that because he is not coming out and speaking, there is no need for them to be here, is missing the point. His presence is here in the buddhafield. And he has also been talking a lot lately about his vision for what he calls the expansion of the ashram.

What he sees is that we create here the biggest and the most beautiful spiritual health club in the world. A kind of Club Med., spiritual Club Med., as in “meditation.“

So this is what we have been planning. And friends have already started purchasing properties, Indian friends have started purchasing properties around here and getting building permission to start building new buildings. You can see in the bookshop window across the street… some of the first plans have gone up.
There are four new buildings going up in Mirdad. Other friends are developing two new buildings in number 4; there’s nine units being built at the end of the road, number 22. And some other friends have managed to get a lease from the government of the entire land at the back of Mirdad, from the Indian village right to the river, or somewhere down there, alongside the creek. It’s twelve acres of land, which will be developed as an international meditation park. So slowly slowly you will see the plans going up in the window over there – you’ll see what’s happening.
Basically what he wants us to end up with is an Olympic size swimming pool, tennis courts, a dojo for martial arts to happen, a whole house for creative arts. Every kind of creative art he wants here: painting, sculpture, dance, music, theater, every possible kind of creative art.
He wants the Center of Transformation to have every possible kind of therapy that’s going. The Mystery School will have a complete smorgasbord of every kind of esoterica. There’s just going to be….

There is going to be a health club, beauty club, a spa, gymnasium… medical center, discos, restaurants.

And also there is going to be all kinds of trainings coming soon, being made available to people to learn new skills: languages, computers, video, commercial arts, commercial writing, sales and marketing even. All kinds of people are coming along now and offering to share their experience and skills out in the world with other sannyasins, so we can all start developing skills.
And as he said this morning… just this morning he said,

“We are expanding. We are not just a religious center, religiousness will be our very atmosphere, but we are now going to make a greater expansion.

“We will have a complete colony built with aesthetic sense, surrounded with big trees and gardens and pools of water with swans and other birds, and simple and aesthetic buildings” – which actually he has designed,.. the buildings, they are black pyramids. So all the buildings in the new ashram now will be black pyramids with blue glass windows, really dramatic. And at the end this morning he said – it is very beautiful – he said, “We are going to create this as the Garden of the Beloved One, with every kind of dimension.” And then he said, “That will be the name of the ashram: the Garden of the Beloved One.”
AMRITO
Okay, so the next point which came up was exactly how do we all fit into this vision and how does it actually relate to us?

And one thing which was clear is that we are not setting up a commune.

So then the whole question of whether we come here as self-sufficient individuals or whether we come here to be taken care of came up, and at what point do you or do you not take care of people, all those issues which are very dear to your souls and your pockets – all became an issue. And basically… I just bought along these two books here, I think you saw the video two nights ago from the Uruguay talk, The Path of the Mystic, and Light on the Path – they are both books where he talks about just what you’ve heard.

As always he talks well in advance about what is going to happen, and none of us take any notice and then we find several years later he has been saying it all along.

And he describes the world he’d like to see around him. And it is not a commune. So it is not going to be a commune.
And again, Anando has got some guidance on that, where he specifically talked about self-sufficiency as a community.
ANANDO
I asked him whether this meant we are setting up a commune again. And he said, “No, the ashram is not an institution.” He said, because I talked to him since of taking care of people, how it has always been in the past with the commune, and he said, “It is not an institution. It is a meeting place for friends. It is nobody’s monopoly.”

We are all creating it; it is our common project. And in every possible way everyone should contribute to it.

We are the ashram, and it can function only if we all help it. The ashram does not want to be begging for money from outside, so we should all be supporting the ashram rather than asking the ashram to support us.
AMRITO
So basically, what someone said the other day, basically we’re riding on a bicycle built by other people about fifteen years ago. And what we’ve done is set up a system, either consciously or unconsciously, whereby there’s always an unconscious hope that if one keeps playing the game of spiritual snakes and ladders, you’ll end up as part of some permanent pension scheme. Like a sort of Distressed Spiritual Folks Fund. And it has all happened with the best of intentions, but actually large numbers of people end up fighting for their last rupee in order to stay on as long as possible, because that may just allow them to get their foot in some door which leads to some further something or other. But there is nothing.

We have to absolutely stop playing this game.

And that’s why I would really like you to read those accounts of Osho because he really describes that. Neelam has some very specific comments that Osho made just on that issue about what it does to us when we’re getting into this kind of survival mode, and we’re actually not here for him, we’re here for the next chapati. And suddenly we’ve just lost something. And it’s difficult, it easily happens. Let me just ask Neelam to tell you.
NEELAM
Actually, it is almost the same thing which in the morning also he said to Anando. From time to time I have been asking him his guidance how he would like this ashram to function. And he said that sannyasins should not be economically dependent on the ashram, because economic dependence takes out some dignity and grace from the man.

Then he said that in the commune in Rajneeshpuram we gave all our possessions and money to raise the commune, but it was very sad to see it, because there were fear and insecurity in the eyes of the sannyasins and it made him sad to see that.

And that came out of economic dependence on the commune. And somehow sannyasins lost their dignity and grace, and that comes when we are not dependent on anybody, and we are working out of our joy, out of our abundance, out of our love for Osho. And that has something very different quality which he would like to have it here in this ashram, not a fear and insecurity that we are working because we would like to have food and rent to be paid.
No, he would like us when we work here out of our abundance and joy and out of our love for him. And he would like that people come and go. They stay here as long as their visas and finance allow them.

And one thing more beautiful also he said, that when people arrive after a gap of time they are full of joy, they are full of receptive and celebrative energy, and it is very beautiful to see them here.

There is no chance of taking him as granted, which usually mind does, when there is a long period of time… that we know that we are going to live here forever. And when we are leaving then – we all know from our own experience – that when we know that for a few weeks that our intensity and our totality comes to the peak and we start drinking him at the optimum. And he has said it always that when our finance and visas are not allowing us to stay, it will be better to go, because it helps us financially to the ashram also, and it helps more people bringing into the ashram too. Because when we go back to our country we meet so many people; our joy, our feeling when we have gone from here, it effects the other people, and it helps them to come here.
AMRITO
So, let me just come to the actual implementation of what we are talking about, and basically what we’d like to do is for the food passes particularly, which is the most obvious and a treadmill which we have created for ourselves, and that is first and foremost I think basically everybody who is a worker will pay for their own food pass if they can afford it, now that is, right – everybody, no distinction in any way or form.

If you have money and you can afford your food, then you should pay for your food.

Now there are people who may be here, who budgeted on the expectation, the understanding that they would get a food pass for the next period while they’ll be, and people who are just in the middle of just arriving or just applied or…those situations will be dealt with as if this meeting hadn’t happened.
Nobody is going to have the rug pulled from under them. But as your time here ends and your visa ends and you go back, next time when you come back, you need to come back with enough money so that you are not half expecting the ashram to be able to look after you. I come from an old socialist background and it was a bit hard for me… But I finally got convinced. And one of the things that convinced me actually was somebody came in here who for as long as I’ve been a sannyasin he’s been in his shorts, he has had a hammer in his hand and he has been building and building and building. It must be fourteen years now, he is still building, he has never stopped. Twelve hours a day. He reminds me of that story of Osho’s about the man who is dancing under the tree and is told he has only got as many lives as there are leaves on the one tree. And he is delighted because there is a whole forest of leaves.

He just never stops working.

And he turned up here and of course, everybody knew he is a great worker, so someone rushed up to him and said, “Oh look… food pass? Rent?” You know. “Can can you fix this? You know….” And he said, “No. I’ve done that. I don’t want to do that anymore. But you come when I’m ready.” And off he went and the person coordinating suddenly felt that he was a very mature individual. It is not this kind of game of buying people’s loyalty and having to laugh at your boss’s jokes in order to get a food pass and that rubbish. Basically this guy just left, and two weeks later he comes back and he is totally ready to work, and of course he is still working twelve hours a day like he always has done, but this time it is out of his love and his gratitude and it’s coming from him; it’s got nothing to do with buying and selling and wages and having his soul purchased.

Now I was really taken by that, and I suddenly realized that that’s clearly what Osho has been trying to tell us.

And there are going to be people here who are not sure they can earn money out in the West and all those kind of things. One of the things which Anando alluded to earlier, is to make use of your time here maybe to find a skill, get yourself organized. Suban is now running a red pages sort of sannyasins’ business directory. We’ve licked the Christians, we’ve licked the Hindus, now we’re gonna beat the Jews, right?
Basically, worldwide, we need to stop thinking of survival, to think of affluence, to really come here with enough money so you can have a great time, whether you’re earning money there to be here, whether you’re doing groups here, whether you’re working here, whatever you’re doing, it’s all part of his work.

And we need to just see the critical moment we’re in, the beautiful opportunity in front of us and just go with it and make this place…. Already there is nowhere comparable and when all of you put all this energy into it, it’d be something totally totally magnificent.

Thank you. Good night.
END
You can watch the video of the General Meeting HERE

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