‘Osho can never be reduced to a brand’
“Please note that Osho can never be a brand; he is a Buddha, an awakened one, an enlightened mystic. He belongs to the whole humanity. Nobody or no institution can monopolise his vision,” says Swami Chaitanya Keerti
This is in reference to your report, ‘OSHO’ belongs to Zurich entity, rules Euro court’ (HT 14 Oct 2017). I have read your story with interest about the OIF winning a case in Europe.
I would like to inform your readers something about the earlier cases that Osho World Foundation had won against this foundation. Osho World Foundation and Osho Friends International are based in Delhi and this foundations won the cases in USA.
It is indeed a sad news for the thousands of Osho disciples in Europe who have been working without the permission from OIF and have been sharing Osho vision with lakhs of people in their unique way. They will be restrained by this court decision and harassed by OIF if they continue to do Osho’s work. We in India will be sharing Osho’s vision even with more vigour and love for the master, as we don’t agree with the decision of the European court, it won’t affect us in any way.
Our beloved master did not appoint anyone his successor. All disciples are his successors as Osho himself says:
“I want my sannyasins to inherit my freedom, my awareness, my consciousness. And each sannyasin has to be my successor, has to be me. There is no need for anybody to dominate. There is nobody for anybody to dictate to. They are on their own. If they want to be together they can be together. Out of their own freedom, it is their choice and their decision. If they want to move free they have all the rights to move free.”
OSHO, The Last Testament Vol-2
What Osho said about copyright and trademark needs to be noted: “Things can be copyrighted, thoughts cannot be copyrighted, and certainly meditations cannot be copyrighted. They are not things of the marketplace. Nobody can monopolize anything. But perhaps the West cannot understand the difference between an objective commodity and an inner experience. For ten thousand years the East has been meditating and nobody has put trademarks upon meditations.”
(OSHO- Om Shantih Shantih Shantih discourses series)
Please note that Osho can never be a brand; he is a Buddha, an awakened one, an enlightened mystic. He belongs to the whole humanity. Nobody or no institution can monopolise his vision.
What did the eminent people of Pune say?
This is what Raghunath Mashelkar, the renowned scientist, Director General CSIR and Chairman of the committee of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) said: “I believe that Osho was well ahead of his time in terms of his teachings, his thinking and as a practical man. This is very clear that the message of Osho are universal in nature. This also means that the right to His message is equally universal and should be available to any individual. In fact each one of the 6 Billion of us that inherit the earth today have a right to the words of Osho.”
Dr. Vijay Bhatkar, eminent scientist and former Director of C-DAC observed: “Osho, undoubtedly, was the most original thinker and philosopher of the last century. He openly declared the death of ‘the old man’ bound to the chains of self-professed ideologies of the past centuries and the arrival of ‘the new man’ who is unbound and free to explore the joyful and creative nature of his existence. Osho’s new man is both spiritual and scientific, simultaneously; he is not repressive and aggressive as in the past but tender and loving to embrace the joyful future.
Let us rejoice and welcome the new man of Osho who is open and transparent, honest and truthful, authentic and self-disclosing. Osho’s new man is not fragmented but integral, wholistic in the image of his creator. And, this new man is not going to fall from some alien space but he is arriving through each one of us as we start dropping the gross sheath of our existence and start reaching the essential nature of ourselves, which is pure existence, pure consciousness and pure bliss.”
Swami Chaitanya Keerti
