WHAT IS HINDUISM?
more. Industrialisation, instead of satisfying has increased
our Western needs. We want more wants.” In a prescient
anticipation of the economic ‘rise’ of India in today’s global
market economy he also warned that:
“India is now approaching the most momentous moment
in its history ... The country will be subject to the play of
monster economic forces ... the world-vortex ...Will she
have the strength to keep her feet in it. I hope she may.”
What he did not and could not anticipate at the time
was that as capitalism continued its historic global march, it
would begin to colonise, consume and then turn into
marketable commodities the very spiritual traditions and
teachings which others had relied upon to halt that march.
An early but notably strident affirmation of this
tendency towards the commodification and consumerisation
of ‘tantra’ can be found in several sayings of the ‘neo-
Tantric’ guru, Acharya ‘Osho’ Rajneesh:
“The materially poor can never be spiritual.”
“Capitalism has grown out of freedom.”
“I sell enlightenment.”
Rajneesh began his guru career precisely by speaking
against socialism, and when he later discoursed on ‘Tantra’
he did so in a way that led it to be perceived as a mere form
of liberated spiritual hedonism – ‘aware indulgence’ or
‘sacred sex’ – yet of a sort lacking any roots in the spiritual