Books Loved by OSHO

Not long after my post about shelfari and booklists, I received a Google alert about a post on a blog called http://enlightensoul.blogspot.com and the title of the post was Books Loved by OSHO. Meher Baba's God Speaks was on the list and that's why I received the alert. I won't reproduce the list here but here is the link to the actual blog post for those who might be interested.

Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was of course an interesting and controversial character. Followers of Osho are often called Orange People because of the colour of the clothes that they favour. When I first arrived in Pune in the late 90s, I remember being surprised by the number of westerners wandering around in orange robes. As I later learned, they were from the famous Osho ashram that attracts visitors from around the world. At the time, I was just passing through on my way to Ahmednagar and then on to Meherabad.

Followers of Osho are sometimes called sannyasins or neo-sannyasins (the word means "renouncer" in Sanskrit) and following Osho's death in 1990 quite a few of them were attracted to my old guru Barry Long. When I first started attending Barry's talks in the early 1990s, I noticed that a leaflet was always on display that was addressed specifically to any Osho followers who might be in attendance. Barry was based at Tambourine Mountain and often gave talks at the Gold Coast. There is a large Osho community around Byron Bay and many would have come from there to attend his meetings. Barry was always respectful of Osho and acknowledged his spiritual credentials.