Abuse feedback from Neeraj

This extensive feedback, covering many themes, is from Ma Prem Neeraj, a psychologist who has worked in this field for many years in Vancouver. It was posted on May 9 2024.

I.

-spontaneity and impulsivity are not synonymous
-permissive parenting and neglectfulness are not synonymous

1. On the notion that Osho or the community around him encouraged "impulsivity" which the sannyas.wiki introduction to this topic suggests is an attitude that some sannyasin have I would like to say:

My listening, understanding and direct experiencing is that OshoBuddha encourages "spontaneity" (acting out of centeredness; in the present moment with awareness: action out of in-action (authentic spontaneity) or wei wu wei; but not out of emotions (not out of "impulsivity"). Impulsivity is not coming out of awareness, impulsivity is a self-centered, egoistic, non-empathic, emotional reaction. My listening is that Osho indicated spontaneity (which is above the heart and beyond the mind): not impulsivity. They are not synonymous.

Offenders may intellectualize and rationalize as an ego-defense mechanism that they are somehow 'walking the talks' by acting impulsively (out of emotions, repressed desires and self centeredness) but acting impulsively is not what the master is pointing to nor indicating. So in this regard Oshovision when it is not misunderstood, is not the root of the problem as is implied by the sannyas.wiki introduction to this topic. Impulsivity and spontaneity are not synonymous. Learning to discriminate between the two is essential, to living a life that is not delusional.

2. The Osho sangha has in all its phases not encouraged the attendance of underage children at its central locations where the Beloved resided, in any of these situations. It was discouraged as these are always adult-centered environments. Yes the commune gives a child exposure to more than their biological parents; but it is the parents who are legally and ethically, up until now, responsible for those children’s safety. When parents bring children to such locations/spaces/places/group meditations/events: they must under those conditions (and in the worldly situations) be the one’s who are responsible for the child's safety; and that the child is not being neglected; nor through neglect that the child find themselves in situations that are not safe for their physical and emotional well being.

The sangha is a meditation device: the marketplace. We may and often do, no doubt, project, onto fellow sannyasins that they are aware and sensitive and understand what the master is indicating — which is strange when you consider that most of us know that we ourselves are not aware and lack understanding. It is subtle but essential living sannyas, that neither impulsive, nor self-centered egotistic attitudes and behaviors are in any way, reflective of Oshovision. The lack of response-ability is only, on the shoulders of the disciple.

Awareness is the essential key for anyone on the journey of sannyas, and parents are response-able when they create a safe space for the child relating to them, to share any concerns or conflicts openly with them; and not to bring underage children into living in an adult centered experimental environment without their supervision of the child. Just as impulsivity and spontaneity are not synonymous; also, permissiveness (informing the child when something is harmful but leaving the decision to the child) is not equal to, neglectful parenting. Permissive parenting and neglectful parenting are also not synonymous.

I don’t have anything else to say, although there are plenty of other angles that I have not touched upon in offering these two opinions.

II.

-inability to give informed-consent is the crux of the issue in child sexual assaults
-blaming the victim is the societal attitude that worsens the betrayal of trust; the soul-murder that the sexual or emotional abuse of children by a trusted adult is

I want to add that I read in detail what was written after I sent you my observations and it is so very very very well done. I worked as a psychologist in a clinic that specialized in child sexual abuse and those that wrote this piece have hit on all the essential points!

Maneesha, the adult woman who couples with the man 'who is so good with children' is the one who has been also been: taking-in, fooled or manipulated by this con-man; who, as with all psychopaths and sociopaths uses widespread exploitative and manipulative behaviors — and are good at it; effectively able to get others to do what they would not otherwise do. A person in such a situation is as much a victim has the children that were told omissive and commissive lies so that he was able to get them to do what they would not otherwise do. My sense (intuition: observation plus awareness) about Maneesha is that she loves children, you only need look at the expression on her face in darshan photos that include children interacting with Osho where she is present. Perhaps she longed to be a mother but chose not to go there. Such a woman would naturally be drawn to someone who also "appeared" to value children. When the woman in a couple where the man is a sexual offender continues to stay with him and she knows that he is an abuser, perhaps even of her own children; then that woman might be thought of as a co-offender; but being fooled by someone who is effective at manipulating others does not make such a partner involved in the abuse.

The theory is that men who have been abused "identify with the offender" and are more likely to become offenders; where as women fitting their social conditioning for the adjective "female" identify with the victim and it is said, therefore, become the victim — as the trauma continues into further and further generations. For it is multigenerational in nature and an actual offender assaults hundreds of children in his or her lifetime.

My point, my feedback is that as with all other areas of our lives, the spiritual master is not responsible for his disciples’ not understanding his message and vision. Osho is not responsible when we miss-understanding his indications and message.

Responsibility, I have heard Osho say, is being aware of the consequences of our behaviors. Being aware of the consequence of our behaviors is necessity in order to give an informed consent, and it is not possible for a child cognitively, before the age of 12, and therefore they are not held legally-responsible for their behavior (in North America at any rate). Children who were harmed are not and cannot to blame for being assaulted: children are not miniature adults (neither cognitively, socially, emotionally and certainly not physically). When a ’trusted adult’ (an adult in some authority or trust position such as a family member (for example a father, mother or step-parent, grandparent, etc.) — and in the commune Osho often said that all the adults were in the role and function of aunts and uncles to the children (ie trusted/safe adults) exploits (fools) a child or youth who by their innocence or lack of life experience is not aware of what they are becoming involved in, of what the consequences are of such relating, of sexual relating — then such a betrayal of trust, in the world of psychotherapy has been called "soul murder"; it is a wound on the manipulated and exploited child or youth; a wound. Society and family’s lack of understanding as well as the repression in discussion anything related to sexuality, and the cultural cop-out of 'blaming the victim' when it is a sexual assault deepens the wound by the child or youth having to hide it.

It is true that a psychopath or sociopath, and an offender who is sexual assaulting children who are not cognitively able to give informed consent; or the youth who is not aware of the consequences of their behavior: fits this symptomology of a pedophile (someone who specifically preys, is a hunter of children and youth as sexual objects) is a predator (a wolf among the sheep); a danger to innocents. A danger to those who lack enough life experience, that modern societies keep them safe from adult sexual demands, which are beyond their biological and hormonal actual desires or capacities. Predators seem as the writers indicate in the evolving article on this topic, to be drawn to spiritual communities.

Life and therefore of course sannyas, is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved; not a problem that we can work out with logic, eh.

My partner and I were the parents of a 3 year old child during the ranch phase of Osho's work to awaken the disciple. Neglect on the part of the child-care staff being confused with permissive parenting/teaching had her lost in the hills with the rattlesnakes (we were told) all about; because those functioning as the teachers (in the role of supervision of the children) lost awareness of this responsibility during drive-by. This was quite the meditation for us as the biological parents, quite the opportunity to observe attachment and identification.

Experientially similar to being thrown out of a window by a zen master, in those kind of stories. We left the ranch, we created a child and owed her safety; anyway the authoritarianism was obviously operational, and with both of those mismatches to our understanding of living a life of awareness there was no other option. The point is, that if we had stayed and our child had been hurt, and we were awake of the danger by denied it, rationalized it: who would have been responsible to the harm that might have resulted in putting her into a situation that we knew was harmful and dangerous?

The communes were and are by definition: the blind leading the blind. When we project onto a therapist, group leader, commune administrator, child care worker, primary or secondary school teacher, ’cool adult’ ('uncle'/'aunt') that they are superior it does not make it so. And this happens to us as, adult with years and decades of life experience!); imagine then the innocent child or the inexperienced youth. Adults are responsible for their choices and look at the choices, for the promise of 'permanent residence' that adults made, giving their permission to be 'pushed around' emotionally and socially (as authoritarian structures do). Does it give a teenager who was sexually assaulted any comfort to understand that anyone can be fooled, and taken advantage of?

Osho is not "Daddy" nor in a parental function or role to his people. In fact ’the mother’ and ’the father’ in any biological connection with a child are not either, by that biological condition: neither hormonally nor instinctively caring, protective, nor putting the child’s best interest before their own, naturally as part of the response-ability that come with the consequences of birthing another human being. This, although the stories that cultures tell us about mothers ("mama") and fathers ("daddy") condition us to think that they are through the biological function of reproduction loving and empathetic and responsible somehow, 'by instinct'; but it is not so.

When Osho in the latter phases of his work (post the ranch; post the world tour) describes a future world guided by awareness he describes that no leader in any situation would be in any place of functioning as a guide, unless s/he had undergone years of meditation (certification of that meditation’s authenticity) …. to be added to and as a co-requisite, to any educational requirements necessary for the work they were doing to be considered competent.

We are simply as a planet and a people, yes even those attracted to a higher level of living and meditative awareness, not yet evolved enough.

The mind is not the right tool and all adventures require awareness, or accidents that might have been avoided with the awareness that Osho indicates is essential to living sannyas are not avoided. And the children, I have heard him say, are the most abused group in the human species, due to the very innocence that is their nature before ego development at age 3-4. It is the response-ability of the parents (and ’trusted adults’) to keep children safe.

(This fellow who was a top-offender, S…., there must be ways of finding his legal name. An offender has hundreds of victims in a lifetime, usually. He should be reported to the police in his country of origin. Maybe Maneesha knows his legal name. Records of sannyasin names must exist in the administration section of the organization…. )

For victims of any form of abuse (sexual, physical, emotional) or neglect are wounded and one cannot live with an infected pus filled wound; but one can live with a scar. The manipulation and exploitation, the lack of transparency as to the consequences of their behavior on the child or youth’s lifespace in a sexual assault that are involved in the offender’s 'persuasion', are by definition also form of emotional abuse (and assault).

Some say that neglect is more harmful than abuse; observing that abuse is like a glue, the victim becomes a perpetual victim or offender from being 'glued to the experience with the offender' — over identification is happening. But with neglect the person is missing out on the basic fundamental natural human attachment to the parent, and this is in fact, more difficult to heal.

III.

-what the master indicates and what we understand him to be pointing to are not the same, usually
-only with a lack of empathy (feeling what the other is actually feeling) is it possible to harm the other

It keeps floating to the surface, the section in this topic on sannyas.wiki, of children been hurt and harmed by people in the communes in OshoBuddha’s name, when the editors quote Osho, referring to him saying that children might be in the presence of their parents when they are making love. (That is a really challenging one.)

You can imagine that for someone functioning as a developmental psychologist and therapist working with children who had been abused sexually and particularly in situations of incest, that this was a disturbing statement by Osho whenever I have heard it, which has been whenever I have heard OshoBuddha refer to it. Disturbing because of the misuse that such an indication, unexamined, might inflict on children, from unaware egoistic, normal (average) adults on planet Earth at this time.

My sense presently is that this indication (this quote), this scene, needs to be be put in context; and the context is the when the master is referring to the parents making-love this is not "having sex"; this is not two people "fucking".

It is, to the meditation room that he has also depicted as the place/space/location in which making-love; sacred sexuality as a meditation might be happening in congruence with his vision. His many depictions of: spiritual, sacred sexuality. It is not: of animalistic, mutual masturbation, kinds of sex that he also observes and calls "pornographic" and not-meditation; it is not of ego-driven, self-centered sexuality of most people that he images of a child being present! Those imaginings are of the person who is hearing him; our imaginings and projections are not the speakers responsibility. (I don’t think that he ever mentions the age of the child but I sense this is a child before ego development (0-4) and certainly before their own sexuality (teen years) when his images of akin to those that Margaret Mead reported about the Samoan Islands of girls and boys being sensual and sexual together in all naturalness; but this I don’t know. I have not ever heard Osho mention, in over forty years of listening any reference to sexual behavior between a child and an adult (— and i have been listening earnestly and intently.) These matters challenge the master’s indications that the discipline be sincere but non-serious! Watching; watching.

But just from his words, that sacred-sexuality; that meditation is the context for his vision of children absorbing the highest that human’s have between them: when sexuality is a meditation. This is a very extreme rareness; a vision of human potentiality. It is not the "sex", it is not the "having-sex" of the normal (statistically average) persons with our conditionings, repressions, and childhood traumas that the meditation room he describes in different series of talks consists of. His descriptions of the room in which sacred-sexuality is happening is a temple, a holy place.

So just today I imagined a world, of the future time, when if it were possible for the master’s vision (his 'dream') to be a part of life lived, it would be in today’s terms and capacities: like visiting another planet. That planet might be Earth, if it survives in one or two hundred years from now, or more. Socrates is 2,000 years ago and still not lived even by those drawn to a mystic master like Osho in the 21st century. In today’s sannyas terms, the energy congruent with his description of sacred sexuality and a young child being present: i imagine the energy for the child like being in a room when exercises from the 112 methods that Shiva gave to his consort are happening: this is not "fucking", eh; but a spiritual experiencing: sacred-sexuality that meditators in the present Earth, even sannyasi devoted to tantra as their path, only spontaneously stumble upon, that just happens to them unexpectedly and without expectation -if at all.

This is the love-making (the creating of divine energy; sacred-sexuality) that i understand the master to be referring to when he envisions a child present — it might be equivalent to a child being in a vipassana group in the sense of their picking-up; sensing; feeling and being enveloped in the spacious silence in the space that such a meditation would have present for the child to experience (a taste of above the heart and beyond the mind energy fields) ; or a child sitting in the center of a sufi-dancing happening around them of meditators dancing, bowing to each other, joyously acknowledging that all is love; isness; beingness.

When we only present any one or even opposite statements that Osho makes on any topic, without the wide and deep prospective of the context, it is not only meaningless but dangerous.

Dangerous when the reader projects their mind and their level of sexuality, onto his depictions (and actual descriptions: of a couple in grace, in meditation, in the blissfulness of meditation being of the same height whether that energy is that of the couple sitting in vipassana and the child is in the room; or the couple is in the meditation pose of Shiva & Shakti and the child is in the room). Dangerous according to who is hearing them; and if they are filtering through a person’s mind (fantasies, repressions, pathologies); heart (feelings, emotions, sentiments); or, for the very few: above the heart and beyond the mind.

For the person reading this passage of Osho’s describing children present during their parent’s loving-making, which is quoted in the current construction on the topic that sannyas.wiki is building; and that most readers (most of us) are projecting onto Osho’s words and images: a raunchy (shabby, grubby) level of sexuality; and this is unfortunately is happening, onto, a scene being painted from the eyes of an enlightened mystic poet and TantraTaoZen master.

Naturally, to such a person projecting raunchy sex and fucking onto the scene, such a person will be find the scene outrageous and scandalous. — If that person is a pedophile, the projections are fantasies that they convince themselves, that they rationalize as acceptable; and conveniently convince themselves that someone else is indicating what is actually bubbling up from their own unconsciousness.

When Osho speaks of "selfishness" (loving and caring for oneself in contradiction to the traditional religions’ demands to punish oneself and be consumed with guilt for being human), in context, he always speaks of centering, centeredness, balancing and empathy. Empathy, I have heard him say and have experienced directly, is not 'feeling for the other'; not pity; empathy is feeling as if it is happening to you actually. With empathy, in empathy it is not possible to harm the other.

Mentioning in this sannyas.wiki discussion of the harm done to innocents through the egocentricity of others: that when listening to a zen master, the context, is essential, is important. Osho does indicate this again and again. Even after more than forty years of listening with as much awareness as is available, whole-heartedly with totality and intensity, and yet honoring the mystery of it all: it seems to this disciple that Osho is also clear with us, that until one is awakened there cannot be true understanding. In my direct experiencing I observe that it is always applicable, that whenever we think that we know what a zen master is meaning, this is troublesome; for ourselves and for those that we relate with. "Don’t know; don’t know" is a call to being in the present, moment to moment; always learning, always changing -always fresh.

I hear Osho sharing that he is inviting anyone and everyone to join his caravanserai, those in prisons included, anyone and everyone: all included — this might be a grounding factor for any disciple who is listening, to be aware, be present to what we are experiencing in the other disciple, moment to moment; most particularly when they are the caregivers of a child; responsible (response able) to keeping a child safe as their function.

And yet, and still, sannyas, is learning the knack of combining: awareness, relaxation and alertness; together, and taking them with us where ever we go (even ’through the Bardo’).

Sannyas, it is a living/dying life of love and laughter. (And as with any Osho usage of words, coded-words; coded, because he is using words to say that which cannot be said in words; and to point to things that language, especially western languages, have not evolved to be able to indicate — the listener must be in centeredness to begin to be able to receive the meaning, images and actual suggestions that are actually being given: rather than what we project onto the words and scenes that Osho presents.)

The children’s Sesame Street character, "Kermit The Frog" says: "It is not easy being green." It is not easy being a disciple of a zen master: ochre, orange, red, maroon or white. I have heard Osho say: that zen people say "take it easy" —— and that: "it aren’t easy; that is why they say, take it easy."

IV

Another 'feedback' that I’d give is the mentioning of the two sannyasi who admit and apologized for their offending. 'Apologizing' is insufficient unless described as to what they meant and places like Psychology Today magazine will have archived articles on what an actual "apology" contains. At Family Services of Greater Vancouver (their name), the VISAC (Vancouver Incest and Sexual Abuse Centre) started as a federally funded project to examine the model of treatment that included the entire family, including the offender — not together but the offender as a client/patient in the whole treatment process. The view being that it is not a 'blame game', and that the offender (most often a male (father, relative or person in an authority role like a teacher or preacher) is most often a victim of sexual abuse himself. As I mentioned in my feedback before the male child because of the current continuing gender based conditioning "identifies with the offender" as his coping mechanism out of being a victim. And the female child in harmony with her gender identity identifies with the victim, and without awareness and guidance, most often 'identifies with being a victim' and continues in this 'gender-appropriate' behavior of submission to and under power.

My sense is that just as the "victims" names are not published so too the offenders names need not be published, for it smacks of retribution. It is one’s anger at each of our own offenders (whether of emotional, sexual, or other kinds of power impositions by those who are more influential then us, which is almost everyone when we are children.) Offenders usually start young, by offender those less powerful than themselves.

Misunderstanding Osho’s message, and out of this misinterpretation experimenting with behaviors that the person ’thought’ he was indicating is not the same as offending out of being sexually abused themselves and 'acting-out' that assault on others as a harmful and destructive, and at some point pathological, way of 'coping'. If you insist on name the two persons who have admitted to, then including (with their permission) their 'confession and apology' would be, it seems to me, the most non-reactive and compassionate way of dealing with that part of the story. Our sense at VISAC was that 'once an offender always an offender' — it is as much of a black hole as can be imagined. By now they must have a library (maybe online) on the topic of treating offenders, if they continued with the project’s model that included compassion for all the 'victims' in the situation.

I remember one set of researchers and early on asking, 'why?' — especially when the subset of 'grandmother as offender' came up. The response was "selfishness" (lack of empathy and opting for, choosing self-gratification and indulgence at the expense of the child's well being.)

That’s all from me for now.

see also

Sexual abuse in the sannyas world

Abuse feedback, other pages of feedback on this subject from wiki readers