For a long time, I had a very simple reaction whenever I heard the name Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
I used to think:
Why would any spiritual teacher call himself Bhagwan (often translated as ‘God’ or ‘the blessed one') ?
To me, it sounded almost like someone declaring:
“I am God.”
And naturally another thought followed:
Wasn't that the very ego a spiritual teacher was supposed to transcend?
That title Bhagwan (God) put me off, and for years I barely read him. It was only later, through social media and greater access to his books, that I began to engage with what he actually said. I realised how easily I had let a name stand in the way of understanding a person. Sometimes we have to look beyond the title or the outward appearance and spend time with the work itself.
Recently, while reading Bodhisattva Swami Anand Arun, founder of Osho Tapoban in Nepal and one of Osho's early disciples, I came across a very different explanation.
It made me reconsider what I had assumed for years.
Before “Bhagwan,” He Was Acharya Rajneesh
During the 1960s, Rajneesh travelled extensively across India giving talks, participating in debates, and speaking on religion, philosophy, society, meditation and consciousness.
At that time he was widely known as:
Acharya Rajneesh.
“Acharya” broadly means a teacher or spiritual preceptor.
And this was largely how people approached him.
They came to listen.
They came to debate.
They came with philosophical questions.
They came to collect ideas.
Osho himself later described this as the introductory phase of his work.
He travelled throughout India speaking to people, almost as if issuing an invitation.
But around the beginning of the 1970s, something changed.
He no longer wanted simply to remain a travelling lecturer surrounded by people interested in intellectual discussion.
The relationship he was developing with those around him was becoming something different - less like teacher and student, and more like master and disciple.
And that is where the controversial word entered the story.
Osho Wanted a New Name
Shri Swami Anand Arun gives a fascinating account of this period in his book Mystics & Miracles.
According to Arun, large numbers of people had begun gathering around Acharya Rajneesh at his Woodlands apartment in Bombay (Mumbai).
Writers, poets, artists, businessmen, intellectuals, bureaucrats and senior officials wanted to meet him.
But Arun says many of these people were not interested in meditation.
They did not attend meditation camps.
They enjoyed conversations, philosophical discussion and what Arun describes as intellectual gossip.
Some simply wanted to be associated with Rajneesh.
"According to Arun, Osho wanted to filter out this crowd and make space for people who were genuinely interested in meditation and inner transformation."
So he asked his disciples to suggest a new name for him.
Several possibilities were proposed.
Among them were titles such as Jagatguru Rajneesh and Sadguru Rajneesh.
Then Swami Yog Chinmaya made another suggestion.
He pointed out that spiritual figures such as Ramana Maharshi and Ramakrishna had also been addressed as Bhagwan.
Why not:
Bhagwan Rajneesh?
According to Swami Anand Arun:
Acharya Rajneesh chose the name Bhagwan Rajneesh.
This happened in 1971.
But Was He Really Declaring Himself God?
This is where my earlier assumption begins to fall apart.
Years later, Osho himself was asked directly:
Why do you call yourself Bhagwan?
His explanation was surprisingly explicit.
He said:
“Calling myself Bhagwan is just a device.”
He explained that when he had been known as Acharya, many people came primarily to collect knowledge.
- They enjoyed arguments.
- They enjoyed intellectual stimulation.
- They came as students.
But when he began using the title Bhagwan, many of those same people stopped coming.
The word offended them.
They could accept a teacher.
They could accept a philosopher.
But someone allowing himself to be called Bhagwan was simply too much.
According to Osho, that reaction was exactly why the device worked.
The crowd reduced.
Many argumentative and purely intellectual followers disappeared.
And those willing to enter a deeper relationship with meditation remained.
Osho described the effect dramatically.
He said the word Bhagwan functioned like an “atomic explosion.”
It created space around him. People who were there merely to debate moved away, while those willing to go further remained.
This Is Almost the Opposite of What I Assumed
This was the part I found most interesting.
I had always imagined that calling himself Bhagwan must have been a way of becoming more important, perhaps even attracting more followers.
But according to both Osho and Swami Anand Arun, it actually did something very different.
It made many people leave.
Osho appears to have anticipated that reaction.
Swami Anand Arun remembers the change as a deliberate way to filter the crowd.
And Osho himself later described it as a device that separated those who came for intellectual entertainment from those who were prepared to go more deeply into meditation.
And He Said He Would Eventually Drop It
There is another detail that makes this story particularly interesting.
Osho did not describe “Bhagwan” as something he needed permanently.
"In the 1970s he explicitly said that once the device had served its purpose, he could drop it."
He said that when enough of his disciples had grown and the atmosphere around him had changed, there would be no need for the title anymore.
And many years later, that is essentially what happened.
By the end of 1988 and beginning of 1989, he stopped using Bhagwan.
For a period he was known simply as Rajneesh.
Later in 1989 the name Osho came into use, and by October that year his organisation formally announced that he had dropped the name Rajneesh and was now known simply as:
Osho.
So his public names followed an interesting progression:
→ Raja (childhood)
→ Rajneesh / Chandra Mohan Jain (student and early academic years)
→ Acharya Rajneesh
→ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
→ Rajneesh
→ Osho
Seen in that context, the title “Bhagwan” appears less like a permanent declaration of identity and more like something Osho himself described as a temporary device used during a particular phase of his work.
Whether one finds that explanation convincing is, of course, for the reader to decide.
Sources and Acknowledgements :
A principal source for this article is Swami Anand Arun's Mystics & Miracles, published by Osho Tapoban Publication, Kathmandu, in 2023.
I also consulted Osho's own discourse The Discipline of Transcendence, Volume 2, Chapter 4, in which he directly answers the question of why he called himself Bhagwan and explicitly describes the title as a device that he intended eventually to drop.
Comments
Post a Comment