Osho disscets Indian spirituality

Amrit sadhana


Vogue India is an Indian edition of the international fashion magazine Vogue. Its August issue presented a 16-page vision of supple handbags, bejeweled clutches, status-symbol umbrellas, and designer watches modeled not by runway stars or the wealthiest fraction of Indian society who can actually afford these accessories, but by poor Indian people.
A poor farmer modeled a Burberry umbrella that costs about $200.
A poor woman has a Hermès Birkin bag (usually more than $10,000) prominently displayed on her wrist. Or a middle aged farmer woman standing with her husband sporting a designer watch.
The caption of these images is: Welcome to the new India.

What’s funny about showing a poor person in a mud hut in clothing designed by Alexander McQueen? The poor farmer modeling a Burberry umbrella awkwardly might as well commit suicide shortly like many others in his starved village.
The fashion magazine in an excitement of floating novel idea forgot that they are touching the raw nerve of Indians. Not surprisingly, not everyone in India was amused.
“Fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” said the editor of Vogue defensively.
But these people do not carry it off. The contrast between these high end fashion goods and the person wearing them is as stark as the difference between the rich and the poor class of India.
Nearly half of India’s population live on less than $1.25 a day, according to World Bank figures released last week. At the same time India also has a fast-growing wealthy class and emerging middle class that make it one of the world’s most attractive new places to sell high-end products.
India has always been a country of paradoxes but the present contrast between poverty and growing wealth is incomprehensible to the world marketers.
Not to the Indians I suppose. Because Indians are used to this contradiction down the ages. Poverty has always been there, what is new is the financial upswing and expansion of the middle class.
These nouveau riche of India like to flaunt their money. The guy wearing a $10,000 watch on his wrist does not think about farmers whose debt could be paid in this price and that their lives could be saved. Their luxury is just a status symbol which is so important to them that they are blind to the dying people on the street.
Brands like Gucci, Jimmy Choo and Hermès have been bunking in new super luxury malls, where guards are often stationed at the doors to keep the destitute outside.

It may hurt the spiritual ego of Indians but we have to wake up to the reality that we are a greedy race. Whether in this world or in the other world, we are driven by greed.
Osho has hammered this trait again and again: “This greed, this money infatuation, this materialism comes exactly down from the seers of the Rigveda. It still constitutes the unconscious of the Hindu mind. On the surface, everything is spiritual; underneath, everything is so ugly. Indians go on condemning the whole world as materialist; they are the only spiritual people.
"But my own experience is that I have not come across more materialist people in the whole world than the Indians. Yes, they have a spiritual mask which the others don't have, so the others appear to be materialist. And Indians are very much conditioned to talk about spirituality, the ultimate reality; it is just common heritage to talk about great things. Indians have a great desire to possess. You may not have anything, and still you will be a materialist if the desire to possess is there. You may possess only a small hut or only a begging bowl, but that is enough for your whole possessiveness to be focused on. And you will be a materialist, not a spiritualist.”
Excerpted from Theologia Mystica courtesy Osho International Foundation