Living Dangerously

This book, edited by Alan Jacobs, is a collection of extracts from the speeches & teaches of Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh - a man who were it not for this excellent netflix documentary series I wouldn't have heard of probably. As you'll know if you've seen the doc - things got strange; but as you'll know if you're read this blog much - I love it when things get strange, and I'm always happy to suspend disbelief a bit when the lines between genuine wisdom & odd cultic dogma seem to be blurry. So, without making any judgments whatsoever - I decided it wasn't worth only having an impression of the man's life and/or philosophy without actually exploring some of it directly rather than just via a probably-somewhat-dramatized retelling of all the juiciest highlights. And my verdict is - I mean, my personal jury's still out on the nature of the cultic community his ashram turned into, but in terms of his actual outlook and ideas? The man makes some excellent points, which are highly uncomfortable to hear for anyone from settled ideological perspectives: his reflections on the nature of meditation, modernity & the mishap-overlap in-betweens therein are some of the most striking new poignancies I've heard from any thinker on the subjects of mindfulness and modernism, and much of the rest of his philosophy in my view does bear striking similarity to the clarity of insight and quasi-prophetic character of properly, dangerously enlightened thinking. That's not to say I necessarily agree with him about all the things he said - far less endorse all the things that happened under his watch - but you know, shit happens when you start trying to fundamentally question & uplift the human consciousness beyond the boundaries of convention, so I'm not gonna throw stones. Think for yourself if you want to dare to try to.

[edit - June: I've lent this book to a colleague of mine who's into spiritual mysticism and all that after we had a conversation about the documentary. He's still very skeptical which is totally fair enough - they did have those pink police people...]