Osho ( 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990 ), born Chandra Mohan Jain, and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who garnered an international following.

During his residence in Rajneeshpuram, Osho also dictated three books under the influence of nitrous oxide administered to him by his private dentist: Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Notes of a Madman and Books I Have Loved.

Osho also drew on a wide range of Western ideas.

Osho developed other active meditation techniques, such as the Kundalini " shaking " meditation and the Nadabrahma " humming " meditation, which are less animated, although they also include physical activity of one sort or another.

Especially after his move to the United States, Osho became increasingly critical of homosexuality and also believed that homosexuality created or caused AIDS, though it is unclear what he believed about the concrete biological mechanism by which a sexual orientation may create a contagious virus.

According to Osho, " homosexuals, because they were perverted, created the disease AIDS " and also suggested that " homosexuals should be given different localities.

* Jörg Andrees Elten ( also Swami Satyananda ), German journalist and writer, follower of Osho

Osho had said as early as 1964 that " the third and last war is now on the way " and frequently spoke of the need to create a " new humanity " to avoid global suicide.

Osho had coached Sheela in using media coverage to her advantage and during his period of public silence he privately stated that when Sheela spoke, she was speaking on his behalf.

Osho was born Chandra Mohan Jain, the eldest of eleven children of a cloth merchant, at his maternal grandparents ' house in Kuchwada ; a small village in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh state in India.

On the strength of Sheela's tape recordings, authorities later stated the belief that there had been a plan that sannyasin women and children would have been asked to create a human shield had authorities attempted to arrest Osho at the commune.

Although the movement was without clearly defined and shared values, it was well known that Osho discouraged marrying and having children, since he saw families as inherently prone to dysfunction and destructiveness.

According to Osho, only persons with appropriate qualifications should be allowed to vote.

* The Osho Tarot calls this card Inner Voice and depicts it as a quiet person with a circle face in her center, holding a crystal in both hands and surrounded by two dolphins, a crescent-moon crown, and water.

* The lifestyle of Osho ( Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ) with his 93 Rolls Royces at his disposal ( though as a gift from his followers ), a bioterrorist attack at The Dalles, Oregon by some of his followers, the group's successful effort to take control of the city of Antelope, Oregon, his unusual teachings that contradicted both traditional morality and Hindu norms, the group therapy sessions with little restraints, and the liberal sexual freedom that he promoted.

Osho was deported from the United States in accordance with a plea bargain.

Osho was profoundly affected by his grandfather's death, and again by the death of his childhood girlfriend and cousin Shashi from typhoid when he was 15, leading to a preoccupation with death that lasted throughout much of his childhood and youth.

Osho became an anti-theist, took an interest in hypnosis and briefly associated with socialism and two Indian nationalist organisations: the Indian National Army and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

In evening darshans, Osho conversed with individual disciples or visitors and initiated disciples (" gave sannyas ").

A few later said that, while Osho was not directly involved, they discussed such plans and activities with him in darshan and he gave his blessing.

Conflicts with various Indian religious leaders aggravated the situation — by 1980 the ashram had become so controversial that Indira Gandhi, despite a previous association between Osho and the Indian Congress Party dating back to the sixties, was unwilling to intercede for it after her return to power.

On 10 April 1981, having discoursed daily for nearly 15 years, Osho entered a three-and-a-half-year period of self-imposed public silence, and satsangs — silent sitting with music and readings from spiritual works such as Khalil Gibran's The Prophet or the Isha Upanishad — replaced discourses.

According to the testimony of Swami Devageet ( Charles Harvey Newman ) she was admonished in front of the others, with Osho declaring that his house, and not hers, was the centre of the commune.

Osho stated that because he was in silence and isolation, meeting only with Sheela, he was unaware of the crimes committed by the Rajneeshpuram leadership until Sheela and her " gang " left and sannyasins came forward to inform him.

According to court testimony by Ma Ava ( Ava Avalos ), a prominent disciple, Sheela played associates a tape recording of a meeting she had had with Osho about the " need to kill people " in order to strengthen wavering sannyasins resolve in participating in her murderous plots: " She came back to the meeting and [...] began to play the tape.

On 23 October 1985, a federal grand jury issued a thirty-five-count indictment charging Osho and several other disciples with conspiracy to evade immigration laws.

According to Osho every human being is a Buddha with the capacity for enlightenment, capable of unconditional love and of responding rather than reacting to life, although the ego usually prevents this, identifying with social conditioning and creating false needs and conflicts and an illusory sense of identity that is nothing but a barrier of dreams.

Osho aimed to create a " new man " combining the spirituality of Gautama Buddha with the zest for life embodied by Nikos Kazantzakis ' Zorba the Greek: " He should be as accurate and objective as a scientist ... as sensitive, as full of heart, as a poet ... as rooted deep down in his being as the mystic.

Osho believed humanity was threatened with extinction due to over-population, impending nuclear holocaust and diseases such as AIDS, and thought many of society's ills could be remedied by scientific means.

This is hosted by Arthur Smith on Radio 4 Extra, with occasional relief presenter Andi Osho.

Nirmala Srivastava was known to have been concerned with the damage being done to society by ' false gurus ' and because of this visited a meditation camp in Nargol that was presided over by Rajneesh ( later known as Osho ).

Hindu groups which have presence in Russia are ISKCON, Brahma Kumari, Ramakrishna Mission, Ananda Marga, the organizations associated with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sahaja Yoga, Chinmaya Mission, Satya Sai Baba and Osho Rajneesh.

Rajneeshpuram, Oregon was an intentional community in Wasco County, Oregon, briefly incorporated as a city in the 1980s, which was populated with followers of the spiritual teacher Osho, then known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

In the United States, following a 10-year legal battle with Osho Friends International ( OFI ), the OIF lost their exclusive rights over the trademark OSHO in January 2009.

Osho devised new " meditation therapy " methods such as the " Mystic Rose " and began to lead meditations in his discourses after a gap of more than ten years.

Osho believed such cathartic methods were necessary, since it was difficult for modern people to just sit and enter meditation.

The work was known, appreciated and quoted by Ramakrishna and his disciple Vivekananda, as well as by other well known gurus such as Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu, Swami Chinmayananda, Ramana Maharshi, Osho and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Teachers such as Osho and Anandmurti Gurumaa define yoga-nidra as a state of conscious deep sleep.

He attracted the attention of western writers such as Paul Reps, whose rendering of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, later used by Osho, brought Lakshman Joo and the meditation methods of his school to international prominence, and Miguel Serrano, the Chilean mystical writer.

* 1931 – Osho, Mystic ( d. 1990 )

In the mid-eighties, the controversial spiritual teacher Osho suggested that both Democracy and Communism should be replaced by Meritocracy, as an overarching political system.

Osho suggested that first the various nations should become meritocracies, after which they can all be joined to form a global meritocracy.

The modern-day gurus Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ( of Transcendental Meditation fame ) and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ( Osho ) were born in the present-day Madhya Pradesh.

Honor Blackman, notable for her appearances in the James Bond film Goldfinger and the TV series The Avengers, was born in Plaistow, as were actor Jimmy Akingbola and comedienne, actor, and playwright Andi Osho.

The Osho Tarot calls this card Existence and depicts it as a naked figure viewed from the back sitting on the lotus of perfection, gazing at the beauty of the stars.

Gurdjieff is said to have had a strong influence on many modern mystics, artists, writers, and thinkers, including Osho ( Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ), Frank Lloyd Wright, Keith Jarrett, George Russell ( composer ), Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Fripp, Jacob Needleman, John Shirley, Carlos Castaneda, Dennis Lewis, Peter Brook, Kate Bush, P. L. Travers, Robert S de Ropp, Walter Inglis Anderson, Jean Toomer, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Louis Pauwels, James Moore and Abdullah Isa Neil Dougan.

According to Osho, the Gurdjieff system is incomplete, drawing from Dervish sources inimical to Kundalini.

* Osho ( Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ) settled temporarily in the USA.

In 1970, Osho settled for a while in Bombay.

In 1981, Osho relocated to the United States and his followers established an intentional community, later known as Rajneeshpuram, in the state of Oregon.

The Oregon commune collapsed in 1985 when Osho revealed that the commune leadership had committed a number of serious crimes, including a bioterror attack ( food contamination ) on the citizens of The Dalles.

Twenty-one countries denied him entry, causing Osho to travel the world before returning to Poona, where he died in 1990.

His ashram is today known as the Osho International Meditation Resort.