02.22.10
A gateway to a new tradition?
Some free advice on ’spiritual paths’
Again, I should say that in my experience the sufi domain and/or Gurdjieff branch of that are barren labyrinths where you will be doomed to wander, or be exploited.
Be gone from those worlds forever. The Indic paths, such as they are, corrupted by Hinduism, and filled with many confusions, nonetheless point to something real that you can access as real ways.
I recall meeting/befriending a Rajneesh follower in the late seventies, and his sage head-shaking contempt for Gurdjieff followers, pointing the an open way coming into being: Rajneesh at that point was openly telling followers of Gurdjieff to get with and jump into his game.
Since I wasn’t really a Gurdjieff follower, and not prepared to become a Rajneesh follower, I didn’t really connect with what was really a good piece of advice.
Rajneesh had his many fiascos after that point, and it seemed at the time that that was something even worse than defunct Gurdjieffianity. But as I reflect on the situation I can see that the self-destruction of the Rajneesh cult was a dangerous step to the creation of an open way beyond the guru figure.
We can disagree with this, why not, but it is useful to consider what Rajneesh did, or wished to do, or what something tried to do through him: the creation of a new Indic stream based on non-Hinduism, looking to the greater tradition (Rajneesh was a Jain by birth) of Indian spirituality. That seeding tradition was comprehensive, concealed Saivism resurrected, with tantra and yoga cojoined. In fact we see that something mysterious set Rajneesh up and then destroyed him in the process creating a gateway to a new tradition, if you can find it in the ruins of the Osho ashram.
So, despite the many critiques of all that, par for the course, note well the way the train has left the station, and like the long line of twenty-four teertankers predating even Buddha, the Jain world seems to have seeded a new ‘great tradition’ with its first exemplar, Rajneesh.