To understand the phenomenon of Osho—born Chandra Mohan Jain—one must look beyond the fleet of Rolls-Royces and the scarlet-clad crowds of Oregon. At his core, Osho was a modern manifestation of a very old, very challenging, and very beautiful current in human spirituality: Antinomianism.
This is the belief that for the “enlightened,” moral laws and social conventions are no longer binding. While many religions seek to reach the divine through discipline and denial, Osho sought it through a “total” living that included the ego, the body, and the bank account.
If we look back through the fog of history, we find his spiritual ancestors not in the quiet monasteries of the Himalayas, but in the radical, wandering mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries: The Brethren of the Free Spirit.
The Medieval Rajneeshees
Imagine the High Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is an absolute monolith, a spiritual and political monopoly. Into this world stepped a disparate group of mystics, mostly in the Rhine Valley and the Low Countries, who claimed something scandalous: they had achieved a “state of perfection” that made them one with God.
Like Osho’s Neo-Sannyasins, the Brethren of the Free Spirit believed that God was not a distant judge in the clouds, but a presence to be realised within the self. Once this realisation occurred, the “Free Spirit” was liberated from the constraints of the law.
The parallels are striking:
The Collapse of the Sacred and the Profane
Osho’s most famous philosophical construct was “Zorba the Buddha”—the idea that a human being should be as grounded in the sensual pleasures of the world (Zorba) as they are in the silent heights of meditation (Buddha).
The Brethren of the Free Spirit held a nearly identical view. They argued that because the soul was divine, the body’s actions could not be sinful. In a time of extreme asceticism, they were accused of practicing “spiritual libertinism.” They believed that eating fine food or engaging in sexual intimacy was not a distraction from God, but an expression of God’s abundance. To the medieval authorities, this was a “doctrine of the flesh” masked as holiness—exactly the same charge levelled against Osho’s “Sex Guru” persona in the 1970s.
The Path of Blame (The Malamatiyya)
Osho was a master of provocation. He challenged every religion, every politician, and every social norm, often using coarse humour to shatter his disciples’ preconceptions. He wanted to be misunderstood; he wanted the “wrong” people to leave and the “right” people to stay.
This mirrors the Malamatiyya (the “Path of Blame”) within Sufism, a tradition Osho deeply admired. The Malamati mystics believed that the ego thrives on being perceived as “holy” or “good.” To kill the ego, one must deliberately act in ways that invite public contempt. By being seen as a sinner, the mystic becomes truly free from the prison of public opinion. Osho’s provocative behaviour—the opulence, the controversial statements—can be seen as a 20th-century “Path of Blame,” designed to offend the “moral” world while creating a vacuum in which his followers could find their own truth.
The Rejection of the “Book”
Osho famously said, “My message is not a doctrine, not a philosophy. My message is a certain alchemy, a science of transformation.” He encouraged his followers to burn their crutches—tradition, scripture, and even his own words—once they had served their purpose.
The Brethren of the Free Spirit were equally dismissive of the Bible and the Church hierarchy. They saw themselves as “living scriptures.” Why read about God in a book when you are breathing God in the present moment? This radical subjectivity is what made both the Brethren and the Rajneeshees so terrifying to the establishments of their respective eras. You cannot control a person who believes their own inner light is the ultimate authority.
The Mirror of the “Wild God”
The similarity between Osho and these past movements suggests that Osho wasn’t an anomaly of the “New Age” 60s. Instead, he represented the recurring return of the Wild God—the Dionysian element of religion that demands ecstasy over liturgy, and experience over belief.
In the 14th century, the Church eventually hunted the Brethren of the Free Spirit into extinction, burning their leaders at the stake. In the 20th century, the “Church” was the modern nation-state, which used immigration laws and tax codes to dismantle the city of Rajneeshpuram.
Whether it was a medieval mystic in a tattered robe claiming to be God in a tavern in Cologne, or a bearded man in a designer robe sitting in a Rolls-Royce in the high desert of Oregon, the message remained the same: The kingdom of heaven is a state of rebellion.
Both the Brethren and Osho remind us that there is a strand of human spirit that will always refuse to be “good” if it can instead be “free.” They represent the religion of the Now, a dangerous and intoxicating fire that burns brightly, causes a massive scandal, and eventually leaves behind a pile of ash—and a few transformed souls who can never again return to the “normal” world.
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See also:
https://www.osho.com/read/osho/vision/the-religions-their-fundamental-mistake/
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