Appraisal by scholars of religion[edit]

Academic assessments of Rajneesh’s work have been mixed and often directly contradictory. Uday Mehta saw errors in his interpretation of Zen and Mahayana Buddhism, speaking of “gross contradictions and inconsistencies in his teachings” that “exploit” the “ignorance and gullibility” of his listeners.^[247] The sociologist Bob Mullan wrote in 1983 of “a borrowing of truths, half-truths and occasional misrepresentations from the great traditions”… often bland, inaccurate, spurious and extremely contradictory”.^[248] American religious studies professor Hugh B. Urban also said Rajneesh’s teaching was neither original nor especially profound, and concluded that most of its content had been borrowed from various Eastern and Western philosophies.^[180] George Chryssides, on the other hand, found such descriptions of Rajneesh’s teaching as a “potpourri” of various religious teachings unfortunate because Rajneesh was “no amateur philosopher”. Drawing attention to Rajneesh’s academic background he stated that; “Whether or not one accepts his teachings, he was no charlatan when it came to expounding the ideas of others.”^[242] He described Rajneesh as primarily a Buddhist teacher, promoting an independent form of “Beat Zen”^[242] and viewed the unsystematic, contradictory and outrageous aspects of Rajneesh’s teachings as seeking to induce a change in people, not as philosophy lectures aimed at intellectual understanding of the subject.^[242]

Similarly with respect to Rajneesh’s embracing of western counter-culture and the human potential movement, though Mullan acknowledged that Rajneesh’s range and imagination were second to none,^[248] and that many of his statements were quite insightful and moving, perhaps even profound at times,^[249] he perceived “a potpourri of counter-culturalist and post-counter-culturalist ideas” focusing on love and freedom, the need to live for the moment, the importance of self, the feeling of “being okay”, the mysteriousness of life, the fun ethic, the individual’s responsibility for their own destiny, and the need to drop the ego, along with fear and guilt.^[250] Mehta notes that Rajneesh’s appeal to his Western disciples was based on his social experiments, which established a philosophical connection between the Eastern guru tradition and the Western growth movement.^[241] He saw this as a marketing strategy to meet the desires of his audience.^[180] Urban, too, viewed Rajneesh as negating a dichotomy between spiritual and material desires, reflecting the preoccupation with the body and sexuality characteristic of late capitalist consumer culture and in tune with the socio-economic conditions of his time.^[251]

The British professor of religious studies Peter B. Clarke said that most participators felt they had made progress in self-actualisation as defined by American psychologist Abraham Maslow and the human potential movement.^[72] He stated that the style of therapy Rajneesh devised, with its liberal attitude towards sexuality as a sacred part of life, had proved influential among other therapy practitioners and new age groups.^[252] Yet Clarke believes that the main motivation of seekers joining the movement was “neither therapy nor sex, but the prospect of becoming enlightened, in the classical Buddhist sense”.^[72]

In 2005, Urban observed that Rajneesh had undergone a “remarkable apotheosis” after his return to India, and especially in the years since his death, going on to describe him as a powerful illustration of what F. Max Müller, over a century ago, called “that world-wide circle through which, like an electric current, Oriental thought could run to the West and Western thought return to the East”.^[251] Clarke also said that Rajneesh has come to be “seen as an important teacher within India itself” who is “increasingly recognised as a major spiritual teacher of the twentieth century, at the forefront of the current ‘world-accepting’ trend of spirituality based on self-development”.^[252]

Appraisal as charismatic leader[edit]

A number of commentators have remarked upon Rajneesh’s charisma. Comparing Rajneesh with Gurdjieff, Anthony Storr wrote that Rajneesh was “personally extremely impressive”, noting that “many of those who visited him for the first time felt that their most intimate feelings were instantly understood, that they were accepted and unequivocally welcomed rather than judged. [Rajneesh] seemed to radiate energy and to awaken hidden possibilities in those who came into contact with him”.^[253] Many sannyasins have stated that hearing Rajneesh speak, they “fell in love with him”.^[254][255] Susan J. Palmer noted that even critics attested to the power of his presence.^[254] James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist and researcher, recalls inexplicably finding himself laughing like a child, hugging strangers and having tears of gratitude in his eyes after a glance by Rajneesh from within his passing Rolls-Royce.^[256] Frances FitzGerald concluded upon listening to Rajneesh in person that he was a brilliant lecturer, and expressed surprise at his talent as a comedian, which had not been apparent from reading his books, as well as the hypnotic quality of his talks, which had a profound effect on his audience.^[257] Hugh Milne (Swami Shivamurti), an ex-devotee who between 1973 and 1982 worked closely with Rajneesh as leader of the Poona Ashram Guard^[258] and as his personal bodyguard,^[259][260] noted that their first meeting left him with a sense that far more than words had passed between them: “There is no invasion of privacy, no alarm, but it is as if his soul is slowly slipping inside mine, and in a split second transferring vital information.”^[261] Milne also observed another facet of Rajneesh’s charismatic ability in stating that he was “a brilliant manipulator of the unquestioning disciple”.^[262]

Hugh B. Urban said that Rajneesh appeared to fit with Max Weber‘s classical image of the charismatic figure, being held to possess “an extraordinary supernatural power or ‘grace’, which was essentially irrational and affective”.^[263] Rajneesh corresponded to Weber’s pure charismatic type in rejecting all rational laws and institutions and claiming to subvert all hierarchical authority, though Urban said that the promise of absolute freedom inherent in this resulted in bureaucratic organisation and institutional control within larger communes.^[263]

Some scholars have suggested that Rajneesh, like other charismatic leaders, may have had a narcissistic personality.^{[264][265][266]} In his paper The Narcissistic Guru: A Profile of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Ronald O. Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Oregon State University, argued that Rajneesh exhibited all the typical features of narcissistic personality disorder, such as a grandiose sense of self-importance and uniqueness; a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success; a need for constant attention and admiration; a set of characteristic responses to threats to self-esteem; disturbances in interpersonal relationships; a preoccupation with personal grooming combined with frequent resorting to prevarication or outright lying; and a lack of empathy.^[266] Drawing on Rajneesh’s reminiscences of his childhood in his book Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, he suggested that Rajneesh suffered from a fundamental lack of parental discipline, due to his growing up in the care of overindulgent grandparents.^[266] Rajneesh’s self-avowed Buddha status, he concluded, was part of a delusional system associated with his narcissistic personality disorder; a condition of ego-inflation rather than egolessness.^[266]

Wider appraisal as a thinker and speaker[edit]

There are widely divergent assessments of Rajneesh’s qualities as a thinker and speaker. Khushwant Singh, an eminent author, historian, and former editor of the Hindustan Times, has described Rajneesh as “the most original thinker that India has produced: the most erudite, the most clearheaded and the most innovative”.^[267] Singh believes that Rajneesh was a “free-thinking agnostic” who had the ability to explain the most abstract concepts in simple language, illustrated with witty anecdotes, who mocked gods, prophets, scriptures, and religious practices, and gave a totally new dimension to religion.^[268] The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has called Rajneesh a “Wittgenstein of religions”, ranking him as one of the greatest figures of the 20th century; in his view, Rajneesh had performed a radical deconstruction of the word games played by the world’s religions.^[269]

During the early 1980s, a number of commentators in the popular press were dismissive of Rajneesh.^[270] The Australian critic Clive Jamesscornfully referred to him as “Bagwash”, likening the experience of listening to one of his discourses to sitting in a laundrette and watching “your tattered underwear revolve soggily for hours while exuding grey suds. The Bagwash talks the way that looks.”^[270][271] James finished by saying that Rajneesh, though a “fairly benign example of his type”, was a “rebarbative dingbat who manipulates the manipulable into manipulating one another”.^{[270][271][272]} Responding to an enthusiastic review of Rajneesh’s talks by Bernard Levin in The Times, Dominik Wujastyk, also writing in The Times, similarly expressed his opinion that the talk he heard while visiting the Poona ashram was of a very low standard, wearyingly repetitive and often factually wrong, and stated that he felt disturbed by the personality cult surrounding Rajneesh.^[270][273]

Writing in the Seattle Post Intelligencer in January 1990, American author Tom Robbins stated that based on his readings of Rajneesh’s books, he was convinced Rajneesh was the 20th century’s “greatest spiritual teacher”. Robbins, while stressing that he was not a disciple, further stated that he had “read enough vicious propaganda and slanted reports to suspect that he was one of the most maligned figures in history”.^[267] Rajneesh’s commentary on the Sikh scripture known as Japuji was hailed as the best available by Giani Zail Singh, the former President of India.^[225] In 2011, author Farrukh Dhondy reported that film star Kabir Bedi was a fan of Rajneesh, and viewed Rajneesh’s works as “the most sublime interpretations of Indian philosophy that he had come across”. Dhondy himself said Rajneesh was “the cleverest intellectual confidence trickster that India has produced. His output of the ‘interpretation’ of Indian texts is specifically slanted towards a generation of disillusioned westerners who wanted (and perhaps still want) to ‘have their cake, eat it’ [and] claim at the same time that cake-eating is the highest virtue according to ancient-fused-with-scientific wisdom.”^[274]