Osho

Osho (born Chandra Mohan Jain, later known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) was one of the most controversial, provocative, and intellectually formidable spiritual teachers of the twentieth century — a man whose direct challenge to every form of conventional authority, religious organisation, and psychological conditioning attracted millions of followers and an equal number of fierce critics.

Born in a small village in Madhya Pradesh, he showed from childhood a fierce independence of mind that resisted all received authority. He studied philosophy at Saugar and Jabalpur universities, winning national debating championships and, by his own account, attaining enlightenment on March 21, 1953, at the age of twenty-one while sitting under a maulshri tree. He became a university professor of philosophy, but his lectures were soon attracting crowds far beyond the academic context, and in 1966 he resigned his professorship to devote himself to teaching.

Over the course of his life he delivered over 5,000 hours of discourses — spontaneous, wide-ranging explorations of spiritual texts from all traditions, interspersed with jokes, paradoxes, and direct observations about the psychological barriers to awakening. His ashram in Pune (1974–1981) became one of the most dynamic and controversial spiritual communities of the era, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors and developing innovative therapeutic approaches alongside meditation. His Oregon commune experiment (1981–1985) ended in scandal and legal crisis, from which he never recovered in terms of public reputation.

After his death in 1990, his teaching has reached a wider global audience than ever through digital media. Whatever one thinks of his personal conduct and the events surrounding his organisations, his intellectual exploration of consciousness, freedom, and the mechanisms of ego remains among the most original and penetrating in modern spiritual literature.