Personal avowals

• I found westerners started out on an Indian devotional path with a great deal of naivety and lack of information.
  Deleted article on Mother Meera by Martin Goodman (*1956) British journalist, cult critic, author, May 2006

• Unethical behavior doesn't get you enlightened. It gets you a nightmare. It gets you the unhappy dream. It's the worst of
  all possible worlds paraded under this "crazy wisdom" notion. By the way, there is no "crazy wisdom" teaching in the East.
  It was invented by three American drunken womanizing teachers to rationalize their [mis]behavior [justifying egoic impul-
  ses as transegoic]. I am very fond of these guys, incidentally. They are some of my very dear friends.
  Video presentation by ⚡ Ken Wilber [LoC 490] (*1949) US American transpersonal philosopher, consciousness researcher, thought
  leader of the 3rd millennium, founder of Integral Theory, Assholes and Accidents, YouTube film, minute 3:14+, 9:00 minutes dura-
  tion, posted 4. June 2011

Quotes from: Jane Stork (Ma Shanti Bhadra) (*1945) Australian former devoted disciple of ⚡ Osho [Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh] (1976-1985), author, disclosing memoir Breaking the Spell. My life as a Rajneeshee and the long journey back to freedom,
Pan Macmillan, April 2009, republished on CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, paperback 3. April 2018

I wanted Bhagwan to be this great holy man, this godlike figure, this fatherlike figure who would guide me through life – enormous self-delusion.  Minute 7:55 Jane Stork The issue of brainwashing in cults is a 2-way street. He is being the enlightened master who has all the answers and he has all these followers who are going along with that.  Minute 9:03 People [gurus] like Bhagwan who set themselves up as enlightened being way above everybody else, they are very, very lonely. They have no friend in the world. And they get depressed, some are using drugs. And I think that over the years Bhagwan definitely deterioted – physically and mentally. Minute 9:56 Because of my friendship with Sheela [Birnstiel, Bhagwan's intstructed out- rageous shadow bearer] I got to see what was going on behind the scenes.  Minute 11:05 To me it is still frightening to realize how insane I was [to attempt to kill Bhag- wan's doctor who was about to help Bhagwan to commit suicide]. Instead of letting Bhagwan letting to commit suicide, no, no, I was going to rescue Bhag- wan [who I considered the savior], I was going to save the world. This is madness.  Minute 14:26 Audio interview with Jane Stork [Ma Shanti Bhadra] (*1945) Australian former devoted disciple of ⚡ Osho [Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh] (1976-1985), author, MP3, 21:51 minutes duration, aired 29. April 2009   Question: How does Jane Stork see Bhagwan today? JS: Bhagwan was a catalyst for me in my process of learning about myself, my process of growing up, but I would not like to give him any more credit than that. It was I who had to do the hard word.  Minute 37:22   Question: Was Bhagwan a charlatan? JS: If you ask anybody who still hold Bhagwan as their master they would immediately tell you that Sheela manipulated Bhagwan. This is absolute nonsense. Bhagwan was the master and the master manipulator.  Minute 37:57   Question: Why are Bhagwan's followers still holding onto him? JS: Most sanyassins, I would say 99.99% of sanyassins, were completely innocent of any knowledge of the other Bhagwan. The only Bhagwan they ever knew was the public face – this benign, loving, funny man, full of wisdom, full of jokes. That's all they ever knew. They had idea what was going on behind the scenes, and so they have no reason to change their view of him. Because of my association with Sheela I came to be privy to an other side of Bhagwan that most devotees never ever knew. I left Bhagwan myself. Most people didn't have the opportunity. Bhagwan left them, he abandoned them. So they are left with this image of this great master who was so ill-treated by the American authorities and who was driven out. And for them he is a martyr and a master and a sage. So I understand it.  Minute 38:36 Audio interview with Jane Stork, Bhagwan Blues, MP3, presented by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC Radio National, host Rachael Kohn, 54:27 minutes duration, aired 26. April 2009

Quotes excerpted from the book: Jill Satya Bharti Franklin, US American former first Western disciple of Osho for 15 years
turned cult critic, chief editor of Osho's talks (first half of the 1970s), ghostwriter of Rajneeh's earliest English-language books,
speechwriter, poet, author, The Promise of Paradise. A Woman's Intimate Story of the Perils of Life with Rajneesh, Station Hill Press, 1. February 1992

• This book is about the dream and the deception, the love affair and the disillusionment. It's about what it means to leave the people you love most in the world to follow a dream that may turn out to be a con in the end. It's about the awe-
  some experience of being with a spiritual Master: [...] and how easily spiritual goals can be perverted when people suspend their critical judgment in the pursuit of lofty idealism.

• Unbeknownst to most of us at the ashram [...] other sannyasins were being picked up as drug couriers in France, Ger-
  many, and elsewhere [...] I couldn't imagine the subject of drug smuggling coming up; it was inconceivable in a thera-
  py group context. Which isn't to say that I didn't know sannyasins in Poona were doing dope runs. [...] it had obvious
  appeal for middle- and upper-class drop-outs who [...] were continually being pressured to buy rooms at the ashram,
  make donations, do meditation camps [...] buy books, tapes, and wall-sized photos of Bhagwan. [...] Was the ashram
  responsible? [...] Sannyasins on drug runs seemed to have few qualms about what they were doing, convinced Bhag-
  wan would protect them from both 'bad karma' and the authorities. Anything they did 'for him' was pure; blameless.
  S. 95

• Huge numbers of sannyasins were left stranded in Poona (some working as prosti-
  tutes to get the money ot leave India, some doing drug deals, others begging friends
  [...]). Sheela looked for, and found land 'somewhere in the States' to build a large,
  city-sized ashram. S. 169

Satya Fraklin

• Bhagwan's theories on sex education were unusual to say the least. Children should be exposed to sex as early as possible, he said, watching their parents and other adults making love. [...] While the ashram kids' attitude towards sex was undoubtedly healthier than the attitudes I'd been brought up with [...] I wasn't so sure I'd want my children to be as uninhibited. S. 107-108

• On the first day of the ten-day-long First Annual World Celebration [...] [Rajneesh] sat down gracefully in his chair on the raised dias, flanked by two hired armed guards in khaki army fatigues [...]. Disturbed by the armed guards in the hall, I tried to convince myself they'd be a deterrent to potential troublemakers; we needed them. S. 203

• We could make love to anyone we wanted, but we couldn't live where we wanted, work at the jobs we wanted, eat what we wanted, or even be sick when we were sick. It was a strange freedom. S. 279

• Where else but in Rajneeshpuram [...] would the local version of music be Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Pink Floyd? Where else would bulldozer drivers read Heidegger while they waited on their machines, laundresses discuss Carl Sagan and Monty Python in the same breath, and construction workers with Ph.D.'s debate Buddhist theory? Despite what I didn't like about the ranch, I still found the place fascinating. S. 283

• Was he [Bhagwan] immoral or merely amoral – indifferent to anything that happened as long as 'his work' benefitted? [...] Was he merely playing games for his own amusement all along? According to his own accounts, he was a mischievous rascal even as a child – rebellious and constantly courting danger. As soon as he got away with something, he became more outrageous. [...] He may well have figured that if a poor village kid could become a college professor, if he could travel all over India lecturing to large enthusiastic crowds, why couldn't he become a guru? Most gurus were phonies. He was intelligent and perceptive; he could get away with it. He practically fell into the role: people were demanding it of him, begging to call themselves his disciples. Reading every book on pop psychology and religion that he could get his hands on, Bhagwan developed a repertory of powerful meditation techniques that opened people up to mystical experiences. What ‘60’s drop-outs used drugs to attain, Bhagwan created through hypnotic music, frenzied dancing, intense catharsis and finally, at the [Oregon] ranch, exhaustive physical activity. His most successful technique was Dynamic [Meditation],
  to which he quickly added a final stage of celebration, turning catharsis into meditation into rapture. People soon learned
  to associate their euphoric states with Bhagwan. In Poona therapy groups they were told to look at a picture of him and
  'surrender to it' after they'd been through a particularly heavy emotional catharsis. What I'd chosen to think of as a helpful
  spiritual technique could easily be seen as deliberate imprinting. We were all advised to keep photos of Bhagwan besi-
  de our bed at night so he could 'work' on us in our sleep. 'When you make love,' he went on to say, 'keep my picture near-
  by. I will be there with you,' fostering a primal attachment to him even amongst sannyasins who'd never met him personal-
  ly. Once he arrived in the States, Bhagwan seemed to up the ante and go one step further than he'd gone before. If he
  could be a guru in India [...] why couldn't he be the richest man in the world in America? Why stop there for that matter?
  He could rule the world some day [...]. During his years of silence and isolation in Oregon, sannyasins turned Bhagwan
  into an idol, an icon, a god – making him into Jesus Christ, the Buddha, the Wizard of Oz – pretending he knew what
  was happening, that he was running the show somehow [...]. He warned us, 'You have to find your own path, your
  own way.' Yet he also told us to surrender to him and accept him as our Master; everything he said he contradicted.
  [...] He talked about individuality, creativity, and freedom, while in practice something very different went on around him
  [...]. In a TV documentary on hypnotism produced by the CB, Bhagwan was compared to a stage hypnotist, the Marines,
  the Moonies and Jesuits. To change people's fundamental belief system, the film postulated, all you have to do is change
  their environment and put them into one that you control. When their sense of identification is shaken, an authority figure
  steps in to tell them what to do, think, feel, and believe. 'Surrender and I will transform you. This is my promise' [Rajneesh's constant message, inscribed on the big banner in Buddha Hall]. [...] Bhagwan employed all the methodo-
  logies of the others. It was a comparison that was as chilling as it was irrefutable. S. 325-327

• Bhagwan used open sexuality as a means not just to free people from their inhibitions but a means through which people were controlled. If you don't have tight bonds between you and other people, whether family or a partner, then the community and Bhagwan became the center of your life and focus, energy and efforts. […]
  I never saw him as a sexual being. If I had taken his action of fondling of my breast and checking my sex chakra as sexual he might have asked me to have sex with him – and I would have.
  Jill Satya Bharti Franklin, US American former first Western disciple of Osho for 15 years turned cult critic, chief editor of Osho's talks (first half of the 1970s), ghostwriter of Rajneeh's earliest English-language books, speechwriter, poet, author, cited in: article Wild Wild Country: 'Sex Cult' Member Reveals Truth About Orgies, Sterilizations and Punishments at Oregon Ranch, presented by the US Ame-
  rican weekly news magazine Newsweek, Kashmira Gander, 11. April 2018

• Rajneesh lived in an ivory tower, rarely leaving his room unless to give a lecture, his life experience cushioned by throngs of adoring devotees. His isolation became even more complete when he moved from his small Bombay apartment to a large and luxurious estate in Poona, India, in 1974. As most human beings who are treated as kings, Rajneesh lost touch with the world of the common man. In his artificial and insulated existence, Rajneesh made one fundamental error in judg-
  ment which would destroy his teaching. "What you tell them is true, but what I tell them (the useful lies) is good for them. Article by Christopher Calder, US American former Osho Sannyasin, cult critic, Osho, Bhagwan Rajneesh, and the Lost Truth, presented by meditation-handbook.50webs, undated

• Ours is the only religion, first religion in the history of the world," he said in a statement published by the Rajneesh Times. "All the others are just premature experiments which have failed. And we are not going to fail. For the simple reason because we don't have any belief that can be proved untrue. We don't have any dogma that can be criticized.
  ⚡ Osho [Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh] [LoC 570⇒180⇒90] (1931-1990) Indian professor of philosophy, controversial guru, founder of
  the NeoSannyas movement, quoted in: special report part 2 of 20, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: Small-town boy makes guru, presen-
  ted by the daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, The Oregonian, Grant Butler, published 1. July 1985, reissued and updated
  20. March 2018

• Democracy is not the highest goal. It is better than dictatorial regimes, it is better than monarchies, but it is not the end of the journey – because democracy basically means government by the people, of the people, for the people, but the people are retarded. So let us say: government by the retarded, for the retarded, of the retarded.
  Democracy cannot be the highest possibility man can attain. It is good in comparison to other forms of government that have preceded it, but not something that can suc-
  ceed it. I call that meritocracy. ⚡ Osho [Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh] [LoC 570⇒180⇒90] (1931-1990) Indian professor of philosophy, controversial guru, founder of the NeoSannyas movement, quoted in: From Bondage to Freedom. Answers to the Seekers of the Path, Rebel Publishing House, 1st edition 1991

• Five percent of people are intelligent, the remaining 95 percent are our follow-
  ers. ⚡ Osho [Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh] [LoC 570⇒180⇒90] (1931-1990) Indian professor of philosophy, controversial guru, founder of the NeoSannyas movement, quoted in: Article Psy-
  chopathen. Raubtiere ohne Kette [Psychopaths: Unchained predators], presented by the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, Heiner Thorberg, 25 September 2013

I'm a rascal. [...] I need [...] prayers. Werner Erhard [LoC 510⇒175] (*1935) US American founder of the est Training (1971-1983) [LoC 400] and the "Forum" (1984-1991), cofounder of the Hunger Project, author   Werner Erhard, age 82 In Zen, they say there’s the high road to enlightenment and the low road. I took the low road. On the low road, you do everything that doesn't work. Werner Erhard (*1935) US American founder of the est Training (1971-1983) and the "Forum" (1984-1991), cofounder of the Hunger Project, author   Knowing change principles ≠ ability to actually change for the better I'm not proud of the way I am, nor am I ashamed. This is who I am, and I've lear- ned to accept myself as I am and not try to fix myself. Most people are horrified when I say that, because they recognize we can all improve and therefore I ought to be interested in changing myself. But I'm not – I spent more than half my life working on changing myself, and I got very successful at it. Man, I really knew principles of change. But as the old French proverb goes: 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.' I've learned it's more empowering simply to accept yourself as you are, not narcissistically loving yourself, but a simple being at peace with yourself. When I'm able to be fully responsible for the way I am, without justification or rationalization, new possibilities for being come into existence. Werner Erhard (*1935) US American founder of the est Training (1971-1983) and the "Forum" (1984-1991), cofounder of the Hunger Project, author

• More than seven out of ten participants found The Landmark Forum to be one of their life's most rewarding experien-
  ces. [when asked about it 3 months after having participated in a TLF seminar]
  [90-95 percent of Forum graduates believe it has had] specific, practical value [for many aspects of their lives].
  [86 percent of those surveyed say that it helped them] cope with a particular challenge or problem.
  Daniel Yankelovich (1924-2017) US American public opinion analyst, social scientist, conductor of the study Analysis of The Landmark Forum and Its Benefits

Yankelovich's study consisted of a survey conducted of more than 1300 people who completed "The Landmark Forum" seminar during a three-month period. Some details of the study methodology, especially concerning sampling methods and demographics of study partici-
pants, remain undefined in Landmark Education's "full report" on it. It is unknown whether any part of Yankelovich's study was based on direct empirical research through participation in any of Landmark Education's related coursework. Yankelovich expressed "surprise" over the results of his own investigation on the efficiency of Landmark Forum participants.