Osho on Psychic & Spiritual Exploitation by Fake Gurus

Question - Is Psychic Exploitation possible in the name of Shaktipat? How is it possible And how is the Meditator to guard against it?
Osho - It is possible. Much spiritual exploitation is possible in the name of shaktipat. In fact, where there is a demand, a declaration, there is always exploitation. When a person declares that he will give, he will take something in return also, because giving and taking go together. Then whatsoever form it is in – in the form of wealth, in the form of reverence, in the form of trust – he will take. Where there is giving with insistence, then for sure there is taking.

And he who claims to give is bound to take more in return, or else there was no need for him to shout in the marketplace. A fisherman puts a worm on the hook of his rod because the fish does not eat the hook. Perhaps someday the fish may be coaxed into swallowing the hook directly, but it is the worm that attracts the fish to the rod and it swallows the hook with the intention of eating the worm. It is only after swallowing it that it comes to know that the hook was the main thing and the worm was only a bait. But by then it is caught.

Osho on Psychic & Spiritual Exploitation

So whenever you come across anyone who claims to do shaktipat, who claims to give you wisdom and take you to samadhi, who makes a thousand other claims, beware. Be aware, because he that belongs to the realm of the beyond makes no claims for himself. If you tell such a person, ”Because of you I experienced grace,” he will say, ”How can it be? I do not even know. You must be mistaken.

It must have happened by the grace of God.” So your thanks will not be acknowledged by such a one; he won’t even acknowledge that he was a medium for the happening. He will insist that grace descended because you were worthy of it – that was God’s compassion falling on you. Who is he? Where does he stand? What is his worthiness? He does not come in at all: that is what he will say.

Jesus was passing through a town. A sick man was brought to him. Jesus embraced him and he was cured of all his ills. This man told Jesus, ”How can I thank you? You have rid me of all my woes.”

Jesus replied, ”Do not speak thus. Give thanks where it is due. Who am I and where do I come in?”
The man said, ”But there is no one else except you here.”

Jesus said, ”You and I are not. You are unable to see he who is – and all happens through him. He has healed you.”

Now, how can such a man exploit? The hook has to be covered with the worm in order to exploit. He is not even ready to own the worm, let alone the hook. So wherever a person claims results, be on your guard. When he claims to do this for you and that for you, he is only covering the hook with the worm.

He is raising your expectations; he is inciting your hopes and desires. And when you are possessed by desire and you say, ”Oh, beloved master, give...!” he will begin his demands. Very soon you will come to know that the worm was just on the top and the hook was inside. So watch your step wherever there are miraculous claims. It is dangerous territory. Avoid the path where someone waits to be your guru. There is fear of entanglement there.

So how is the seeker to guard himself? He should guard himself from those who make big claims, and thus he will save himself from all evil. He should not seek those who claim wonderful results; otherwise he will be in difficulty, because such men are also seeking. They are on the lookout for those who will fall into their trap. There are persons such as these going about everywhere. Do not ask for any spiritual gains and do not accept any spiritual claims.

What you have to do is entirely a different matter. You have to prepare yourself from within. And the day you are ready the happening is bound to take place. Then it will happen via any medium. The medium is secondary; he is like a hook. The day you acquire a coat the hook is ready to hang it by. Then the hook is not very important. If there is no hook you can hang your coat on the door. If there is no door you can hang it on the branch of a tree.

Any hook will work; the main question is of the coat. But we do not have the coat, while the hook calls out: ”Come here! I am the hook.” You will be caught if you go. You do not have the coat so what will you do by going to the hook? There is every danger of your hanging yourself on it. You have to seek your own worthiness, your own capability. You have to make yourself ready in order to be able to receive grace when it comes.

You do not have to worry about the guru at all; that is not your concern. That is why what Krishna says to Arjuna is correct. He says, ”Carry out your action and leave the fruits to the divine.” You have not to worry about the result of your action; that will become a hindrance. Then all kinds of complexities will arise: concern over what your action will yield, over what will be the result. And in your anxiety about the result your performance will go off. That is why the action itself should be our main concern.

We should be concerned about our own worthiness and receptivity. The moment our effort is complete – just as when a seed has reached its point of bursting – that very moment all is achieved. The moment the bud is ready to burst and blossom into a flower the sun is always ready, but we do not have the bud that breaks into a flower. Then even if the sun shines brightly in the sky it is of no use.

So don’t go seeking the sun; get involved in developing your bud. The sun is there for ever and is always available. No vessel remains unfilled for even a moment in this world. Any kind of receptacle becomes filled immediately. In fact, to be receptive and to be filled are not two happenings; they are the two sides of the same happening. If we were to remove all air from this room, fresh air from outside would at once fill the vacuum.

These are not two happenings, because as we remove the air in the room the outside air rushes in. Such are also the laws of the inner world. We are hardly even ready on our side when the fulfillment of our efforts begins to descend. Our difficulty is, however, that our demands start long before our preparedness. Then there are always false supplies for false demands. Some people really amaze me.

One man comes and says, ”My mind is very restless; I want peace.” He talks to me for half an hour, and in the course of his talk he confesses that the cause of his unrest is that his son is jobless. If the son gets a job his mind will be at rest. Now this man came with the excuse that he wanted peace of mind, but his actual requirement was absolutely different; it has nothing to do with peace of mind. He only wanted a job for his son. Thus, he had come to the wrong man.

Now, one who has gone into the business of religion will say, ”You want a job? Come here. I will get you a job and I will give you peace of mind too. Whoever comes here gets a job; whoever comes here, his wealth increases and his business runs well.”

Now a few people will gather around the ”shop” who will tell you, ”My son got a job.” Another will say, ”My wife was saved from death.” A third will say, ”I won my lawsuit.” A fourth will say, ”Wealth is pouring on me.” It is not that these people are telling lies or that they are hirelings; nor are they the agents for this business. It is nothing like that. When a thousand men come asking for jobs ten of them are bound to get employed in the normal course of things. Now these ten remain while the remaining nine hundred and ninety go away.

Then these ten slowly spread word of the ”miracle,” and the crowd around increases. This is why every such shop has salesmen and advertisers. Those who say their son got a job are not telling an untruth; nor have they been bought over by the shopkeeper. Such a man had also come seeking, and it happened that his son got a job. Those whose sons did not get a job left long ago to seek other gurus who would fulfill their desires.

Those whose desires are fulfilled begin to frequent the shop often; they come on each festival every year. The crowd increases day by day, and a group forms around such a so-called guru. Then what they tell becomes his indisputable testimony. If so many people’s wishes were fulfilled, why not yours? Now this is the worm; the hook which traps the man is within.

Never ask or else you are bound to be caught. Prepare yourself and leave all else to evidence. Let the grace happen when the moment is ripe for it to happen. If it does not happen we will know we are not yet ready to receive. The fact is that you will feel the need for shaktipat again and again only when the happening has not yet taken place. And you will find the need to take from others only when your experience with the first has been in vain.

If the first shaktipat is successful, the matter ends there. It is like trying many doctors because the disease has not yet been cured. Naturally, the doctors have to be changed. But the patient who is cured never raises the question of changing doctors. The slightest experience of a glimpse due to shaktipat makes this question irrelevant. Besides, once this glimpse is attained from someone it makes no difference if it is attained again from another.

It is the same energy coming from the same source, only the medium is different – but this does not result in any difference. Whether it comes from the sun or an electric bulb or oil lamp, the light is the same. It makes no difference and there is no harm, if the happening has taken place. But we do not go seeking for the happening. If it comes to you along the way, accept it and go further – but do not seek it.

If you seek there are hazards, because then only the tricksters will come your way and not someone who can really give. He will appear only when you are not seeking, when you have prepared yourself. So to seek him is wrong, to ask is wrong. Let the happening take its own time and let the light come from a thousand paths. All paths will prove the authenticity of the same original source. It is the same; only it is appearing from all sides.

Someone was saying the other day that he went to a sadhu, a religious man, and said that wisdom should be one’s own. The sadhu retorted that it cannot be – that wisdom ”always pertains to another, and that such and such a monk gave it to such and such, then he passed it on to another.”

Then I explained to this friend that Krishna’s experience was his own. When he says that ”so and so got it from so and so,” he means that this wisdom that has revealed itself to him has not been revealed to him alone; it was revealed to so and so also, before him. Then this person had shared the happening with another person, and this happening took place in him also. But what is to be noted here is that the revelation did not take place by mere telling; it was told after the happening.

So Krishna says to Arjuna, ”This wisdom I am conveying to you is the same that has come to me. But my telling of it will not bring it about in you. When it happens to you, you will be able to tell others that it is like this.”

Do not go begging for it, because it is not attained from anyone. Prepare yourself for it and it will begin to come from all directions. Then one day when the happening takes place you will say, ”How blind I was that I could not see that which was coming to me from all sides.”

A blind man may pass by a lamp or an electric light or go out in the sun, but he will never see light. Then one day if his sight is restored he will be shocked to see that he was always surrounded by light. So on the day of the happening you will see it all around you. And until the time comes when it takes place, offer your respects wherever you get the glimpse of truth. Take it from wherever you can get it, but please do not beg for it like a beggar – because truth is never obtained by a beggar.

Do not beg for truth or else some businessman might lure you with lucrative suggestions. Then a spiritual exploitation will begin. Go along your way always preparing yourself, preparing yourself, and wherever you happen to find it, accept it. Offer your gratitude and move on; then at the moment of full attainment you will not be able to say that you got it from so and so. That moment you will say, ”What a miracle I got from existence. Whosoever I approached, I received from him.” Then the final thanksgiving will be to existence and not to anyone in particular.

Source: from Osho Book "In Search of the Miraculous Vol 2"

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