Saving Himself and Becoming a Disciple of Osho

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Saving himself and becoming a disciple of Osho

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‚I found something that gave me purpose in life.‘

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‚Instead of brining my brother, I came back with red clothes and wearing a picture of the Indian guru.‘

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This is about … Maybe I’m jumping a little bit ahead here but ’76, ’79, that area,

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I have a note here: in ’79, the People’s Republic of China

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became internationally recognized for the first time, at the cost of Taiwan.

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The Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran. The Russians invaded Afghanistan.

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Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.

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And the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I hope I have pronounced that correctly,

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later known as Osho, and his followers are in the mainstream media all over the world.

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Free sex, drugs, a cult? Question mark? Parents were in fear over their daughters and sons,

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and in front of that background you went on a mission to Poona.

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Have I jumped a little bit too quickly to that question?

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We’re good. So, I’m at the farm in Krefeld doing my apprenticeship.

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At that time, my brother left Germany on the hippie trail,

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partly with a magic bus that went from London and Amsterdam to Kathmandu,

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overland and somewhere in Turkey he got off.

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He spent some time in Greece and in Turkey. Then he went overland from Turkey through Iran.

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This was just before the Russians invaded Afghanistan.

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He made it through Afghanistan and somehow he ended up in Poona

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with the notorious Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

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And then the first TV documentary appeared, people screaming and being completely crazy.

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I would give you one example.

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One of my later mentors, he was actually the tax commissioner of Poona, it’s a very high position, but he was also a healer.

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He was standing in the middle of the meditation room on a big table, like this, and then everybody who had a cold

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was to run around in a clockwise movement, and he would be standing on a table going ….

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(Arjava makes strange noises and grimaces. René chuckles.)

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Like that. And everybody running around. A few hundred people.

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And they were playing the most outlandish music you could ever imagine, straight from hell.

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And they showed this in Germany on television: this is what’s happening there.

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And we’re watching and we’re thinking, ‚Oh my God, now the boy has gone completely crazy!‘

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Poor Martin!

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Poor Martin, now he has lost the plot completely. He was alwas eccentric and always a worry for my parents,

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because nobody could control him. And now he was in this insane cult.

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He was the first born, or was your sister the first born?

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No, he was the second.

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He was the second.

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She was born in 1956, he was in 1957.

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So now he’s there, then we get another letter. At the time no internet, no WhatsApp.

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Phones were not really working in India at the time. The letters always took a few months, like relay.

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And we got another letter from Colombo, he said, ‚Oh, no, I left the place, it was too much. I’m in Sri Lanka now.‘

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And then I don’t know, two months later, we get another letter,

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‚Oh, I’m here again, and I’m working as a night guard in the Osho ashram.‘

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And we would go, ‚Oh no, what are we going to do?‘

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So we decided, my parents and me, that I would go and take a look if he is okay.

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You’re 19 now?

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I’m 18.

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I’m still doing the farming apprenticeship.

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To look if he’s okay, and if he’s okay … okay, good.

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If he has found a place … My parents were amazing!

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They’re like, ‚if he finds a place where he is happy, we’re good.‘

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One worry less.

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And if he’s not okay, see if you keep persuade him to come back.

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Then my parents were in the Protestant church, very involved.

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They started talk to some people in Poona from the church, and what to do, and what they could do.

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So I went in my spring vacation to Poona.

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I still remember entering the gate. They had this beautiful wooden, massive wooden gate.

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It opened up, when you walk in there, it was like ‚boom‘, you entered like a time-warp space.

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I can’t explain it. It was magical really.

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I took one look around and I thought, I never wanted to leave from here ever again.

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Magnetic to the max.

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I was looking at …

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There were so many people, there were maybe 3000 people there at the time,

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working at the ashram, doing psychotherapy groups, doing meditations, meditation camps.

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Any kind of new age … Anything that you could possibly think of you could receive treatments or sessions there, or learn it from really good people.

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So I looked around at the people at the ashram, and I thought, they really reminded me of those Zen kind of characters,

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I thought, ‚I found my place, that’s it, I want to stay here.‘

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So instead of saving my brother, I saved myself.

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What an irony, you know, there he goes to save his brother in Poona and ends up staying there. I found that very amusing.

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Then I came back to Germany, because it was my Easter vacation.

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And …

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How long did you stay in Poona at that time?

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Three weeks.

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Only three weeks, so no encounter groups, no … ?

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No, I did something that was called ‚intensive enlightenment‘, or ‚enlightenment intensive‘, either one.

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Okay, I will explain it a little bit.

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We were maybe 70 people in a group, in a big …

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On the top of a building with some shade over it, like a bamboo tent over it, and then the group leader was saying:

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‚Pick a partner. You’re going to keep eye contact for five minutes, and then one of the partners says, ‚tell me who you are!‘ Then the other would answer.

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You have to keep talking. … If the one who’s supposed to talk doesn’t talk, then the listener gets my attention and I come and I’ll help.‘

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So, ting! Okay, tell me who you are. ‚Okay, I’m Frank, I’m German. I’m from Dusseldorf,

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I have a brother and a sister, I have a dog, I do the farming thing, I went to high school, I like football …‘

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Okay, so after three, five minute sessions like that, you’re starting to think, everything I say is complete nonsense.

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It doesn’t describe me at all, it’s just the periphery.

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Now, this went on about 12 to 15 hours per day! For three days.

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Intensive enlightenment! So very soon you got to the point that everything that you think you are,

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is just dictated from the outside, from your culture, from your parents, from your society,

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from your religion, from the food you eat, from the mountains you see … everything.

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And what is really you? So this thing really pushed you into this …

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into this space that is you, that you can perceive very much but you cannot say anything about.

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Incredible! One of the most incredible experiences.

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There was one Japanese boy, clean-shaven. Maybe he was a monk or ex-monk.

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He was sitting there the first day, I was thinking, oh my god, this guy must be enlightened.

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So relaxed, so calm and quiet.

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And the second day they needed five people to keep him down. He freaked out.

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All the repression, it was just … boom!

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So that was very intense. And then I did meditations every day, three, four hours of meditations.

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And then I went back home.

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So, after these three weeks, you went back home to Germany?

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I went back home to Germany, but before … I go back.

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I became his … Osho’s student, Bhagwan’s disciple at the time at the time.

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He called it Rajneesh Neo-Sannyas. ‚Sannyasin‘ is a recluse in India, somebody who is on the path of enlightenment to leave society behind and

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for finding out who he is and then to share that with others.

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At the time, there weren’t that many people there, you could still talk to Bhagwan and he …

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When I left, he said to me, ‚So how are you? What have you done?‘ I said, ‚Oh, I’ve done intensive enlightenment and some other

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groups similar to that, with some bio-energetics and things.‘ He said, ‚Good. When are you coming back?‘

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And I’m thinking, ‚Okay, another year of the farming apprenticeship, then six months of army service or, if I refuse, one and a half years of social work.‘

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No, it was nine months … of army and one and a half … or something like that, or what, I don’t remember,

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… one year, two and a half … six months to make money … three years. Now, I’m eighteen years old, and I am asked, when are you coming back?

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I can’t say in three years, three years is eternity.

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So, I’m looking at him, I go, ‚I don’t know‘ and he starts to smile and he says, ‚Don’t worry, I’m back at the right time.‘

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Okay, so I left. Then I went back to Germany.

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At this moment, you already had your Sannyasin name ‚Arjava‘ which is…

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No, Frank, he kept my name first. Frank, and then a few years later, I asked him to change it.

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Okay, sorry for jumping the gun.

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He seemed to know something that I didn’t know. I was a little bit suspicious, what did he mean, that you come back at the right time.

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Again, one of those Zen type of answers, which intrigued me, which I liked.

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I went back. Instead of bringing my brother, I come back in red clothes with the wearing a picture of the Indian guru,

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My parents were like, ‚Oh!‘ My father didn’t talk to me for days. They thought, ‚Okay now the second son has gone bananas, brainwashed and …‘.

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But then, of course, with time, they realized that there was no brainwash, that I was actually content, I found also something that I really liked,

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something that gave me significance, it gave me significance in life, a purpose, thinking, ‚Buoah! I really want to go more into diving into myself.‘

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Very much like the situation I’m in now again, where I just really want to see

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who am I? And what is my purpose, and what is it that I really want to do?

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Nice!

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Rebirth? If it is not the wrong expression?

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No, it’s not wrong. Don’t … take it too … spiritually.

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I like actually your resetting analogy, it is quite a nice one.

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It’s nice. (Clicking noise).

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Thank you to our sponsors! This video depicts a segment of a four-day interview with Frank Arjava Petter.

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For all videos and the list of sponsors visit our website: www.reiki-conciliation.org

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Transcript: René Vögtli