{"id":743,"date":"2026-01-25T11:44:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T11:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/?p=743"},"modified":"2026-01-25T11:44:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T11:44:40","slug":"the-new-indian-express-spiritual-dynamics-oshos-1970s-disciple-on-his-early-days-with-the-famous-spiritual-guru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/?p=743","title":{"rendered":"The New Indian Express: Spiritual Dynamics: Osho’s 1970s’ disciple on his early days with the famous spiritual guru"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Swami Chaitanya Keerti, one of the famous spiritual guru Osho\u2019s (Acharya Rajneesh) close disciples since the 1970s, was in the Devanahalli, near Bengaluru, recently to conduct a 3-day dynamic meditation camp<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as new-age spirituality picked up steam around the world in the late 1960s, with the West becoming fascinated by eastern spiritual practices, including Indian ones like yoga and meditation, 20-year-old college student Swami Chaitanya Keerti did not care much for it. \u201cI always avoided the spirituality column, thinking there would be some nonsense there, but one day , I thought I might be becoming prejudiced against religion and decided to read everything. That was the day Osho had written a piece \u2013 \u2018Is man a machine?\u2019, which talked about how we function like machines, becoming happy when someone says nice things and sad when it is bad and how the remote control remains in others\u2019 hands. his point was that meditators would respond, not react,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That piece took him down the path of \u2018neo sanyas\u2019 shaping up around Osho, dropping out of college, and taking sanyas in 1971, when the guru was operating out of a Bombay apartment. What he remembers is a magnetism: \u201cMy first meeting with him, I was alone and I could not look into his eyes because there was so much radiance. he asked me \u2018What brought you here?\u2019 It took me a while to answer that, but I said, \u2018I want to be with you\u2019. Sometimes, I would write things down before meeting him, because when I looked into his eyes, I would forget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

55 years later, he is still on that journey , teaching dynamic meditation, a cathartic meditation process popularised by Osho, most recently at The School of Ancient Wisdom in Devanahalli, organised by Friends of Osho. he explains, \u201cOsho felt that people suppress so much, unless they detox, meditation cannot happen. So you have to get rid of it with catharsis.\u201d The steps involve breathing vigorously , releasing pent-up emotion through open expression, followed by a phase of yelling \u2018hoo\u2019 to activate the root chakra. The last two steps, 15 minutes each, involve freezing in position and expressing joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to Osho, fresh in popular memory are two documentaries about the guru\u2019s infamous disciple Ma Anand Sheela\u2019s return to India, ‘Searching for Sheela’ (2021) and ‘Wild Wild Country’ (2018). The latter investigated Ma Anand\u2019s involvement in a mass salmonella poisoning case in Wasco County , Oregon, where the guru\u2019s \u2018Rajneesh-puram\u2019 ashram was, the duo\u2019s arrest and more. Among those who lived through the time, Keerti says he \u2018loved the documentary because it took Osho\u2019s name all over the world,\u2019 adding, \u201cThere were many people against us at the time (in the US), but Osho never bothered about the negative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the controversies that have followed Osho\u2019s attitudes toward sexuality and spirituality Keerti says, \u201cAll Osho was saying is \u2018do not suppress sexual energy , live it and transform it\u2019. If you are fasting for two or three days, then all you think of is food. When you bring consciousness to it, then even a single experience can be a liberating one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Swami Chaitanya Keerti, one of the famous spiritual guru Osho\u2019s (Acharya Rajneesh) close disciples since the 1970s, was in the Devanahalli, near Bengaluru, recently to conduct a 3-day dynamic meditation camp Even as new-age spirituality picked up steam around the world in the late 1960s, with the West becoming fascinated by eastern spiritual practices, including … Continue reading The New Indian Express: Spiritual Dynamics: Osho’s 1970s’ disciple on his early days with the famous spiritual guru<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oshodaily.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}