Osho Rajneesh

He was born as Chandra Mohan Jain on 11 December 1931 in Kuchwada, a small Indian village in the Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh, as the eldest of eleven children of Babulal and Saraswati Jain. His father was a cloth merchant.

He spent his early childhood with his maternal grandparents and enjoyed considerable freedom living with them. He credited his early life experiences for having a major influence on his future life.

He grew up to be a rebellious teenager and questioned all social, religious and philosophical beliefs. While he was studying at Hitkarini College in Jabalpur, he argued with an instructor and was told to leave. Thus he transferred to D.N. Jain College and completed his B.A. in philosophy in 1955.

As a college student he had started giving public speeches and spoke regularly at the annual Sarva Dharma Sammelan (meeting of all faiths) at Jabalpur. He later stated that he became spiritually enlightened on March 21, 1953, at age 21.

He earned his M.A. with distinction in philosophy from the University of Sagar in 1957.

He became a lecturer of philosophy at Jabalpur University in 1958 and was promoted to professor in 1960.

Along with his teaching job he also started traveling throughout India under the name “Acharya Rajneesh”. His initial lectures were focused on the concepts of socialism and capitalism—he strongly opposed socialism and felt that India could prosper only through capitalism, science, technology and birth control. He eventually started exploring a wide range of issues in his speeches.

He criticized orthodox Indian religions and rituals, and stated that sex was the first step towards achieving spiritual growth. Not surprisingly, his talks garnered considerable criticism, but also helped to draw crowds to him. Wealthy merchants flocked to him for consultations on spiritual development and paid him donations. This way, his practice grew rapidly.

He began to conduct three- to ten-day meditation camps in 1962, and soon meditation centers sprung up around his teachings. By the mid 1960s he had become a prominent spiritual guru and in 1966 he decided to quit his teaching job to devote himself wholeheartedly to spirituality.

Very open-minded and frank, he was different from other spiritual leaders. In 1968, he called for greater acceptance of sex in a lecture series which was later published as ‘From Sex to Superconciousness’. His talks unsurprisingly scandalized Hindu leaders, and he was dubbed “the sex guru” by the Indian press.

In the mid-1980s, relations between the commune and the local governmental community became tense, and it was revealed that the commune members had been engaging in a variety of serious crimes ranging from wiretapping to voter fraud, and from arson to murder.

Following the sensational revelations, several of the commune leaders fled to escape the police. Rajneesh too tried to flee from the United States but was arrested in 1985. He pleaded guilty of immigration charges and agreed to leave the United States.

Over the next several months he travelled to several countries around the world including Nepal, Ireland, Uruguay and Jamaica, but he was not allowed to stay in any of the countries for long.