Title: Nothing to Lose : The Authorized Biography of Maa Anand Sheela
Author : Manbeena Sandhu
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2020
Format: Ebook
Rating: 4/5 stars
Author Manbeena Sandhu's latest work 'Nothing to Lose' is the story of Anand Sheela's love and devotion for her Guru Rajneesh, her gradual realisation of the dark reality, her futile attempt to save the guru as a devotee blind in love and ultimately her revolt against his empire of lie and deceit. The biography provides some shocking details about way Sex-guru Rajneesh used to satisfy his innermost desires of power, sex and money through the exploitation of his Neo-sanyasins.
The book gives us a glimpse of Anand Sheela's journey from a little girl of Baroda to Rajneesh's secretary at Rajneeshpuram, USA. It also shows us how an ordinary professor of Jabalpur University becomes a sex-guru, through the power of his excellent oratory and persuasion skills. He used to propagate his concept of 'Homo Novus' or 'The New Man'. According the this concept one can only attain spiritual awakening if he/she first indulge in fulfilling all his/her sexual urges. His new man would be Zobra and the Buddha, utterly physical in one hand and spiritual on the other.
Unlike the vedic or Hindu philosophy that stresses on the preservarion of semen and talks about various yoga mudras to attain the spiritual, he used to avocate the idea of constant change of sexual partners. He also sermoned about being sexual without being possessive, and encouraged the use of contraceptive pills to control birth. It was illegal to give birth inside his ashram and he used to brainwash the disciples by promoting abortion in the name of freewill, letting the atma choose another womb. According to him birth control pill was the greatest invention of mankind.
But more than that the main attraction of the Ashram was encounter groups, where the sanyasis used to enjoy unnatural sex and used to inflict pain on each other to get a weird kind of sadomasochistic pleasure. It was exclusively for foreign Sanyasis as he was well aware of the fact that Indians would revolt against such practices. He also used to choose beautiful sanyasins to give them 'special darshan'. Ann BeCoy in her memoir has mentioned one such event where she was almost raped in the name of 'special darshan' by Osho.
Many Indian political leaders and actors like Vijay Anand, Mahesh Bhatt, Vinod Khanna, Rekha, Parveen and Indira Gandhi were an ardent follower of his philosophy. At the end of the book you will find pictures of these actors and political leaders with Osho.
As far as the writing is concerned, biographer Manbeena Sandhu has done a commendable job. The way she has presented the incidents through her excellent storytelling techniques and writing skills is absolutely amazing to read. Author Manbeena has presented the whole story in a manner which is equally interesting and informative.
Overall, it was an eye-opening read. I have thoroughly enjoyed going through the work and encourage everyone to read it. Read it so that you can be much more aware when next time you will meet any such godman. I give this work 4 stars for the excellent writing and narration and for the overall presentation.
Happy Reading
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