91
OSHO INTERNATIONAL MEDITATION
RESORT (PUNE, 2000s): AN
ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF
SANNYASIN THERAPIES AND THE
RAJNEESH LEGACY
ANTHONY D’ANDREA obtained his PhD in anthropol-
ogy at the University of Chicago, following a master’s in
sociology and a bachelor’s in social sciences. His general
research interests are cultural globalization, counter-
cultures, and subjectivity formation. Among his main
publications, he authored a book about New Age spiri-
tualities of the self in Brazil and contributed to the
edited volume Rave Culture and Religion. His coming
book, Global Nomads: Techno and New Age as
Transnational Countercultures in Ibiza and Goa, will be published by
Routledge under the International Library of Sociology series.
Summary
This article examines a multinational community of meditators and
therapists, now called the Osho International Meditation Resort.
Based on 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork at this resort located in
Pune, India, the article focuses on cathartic therapies and active med-
itations, analyzed as practices of self-formation affected by relations of
power and ideology. The article provides new data about the insti-
tutional and ideological contexts that currently inform sannyasin
practices, revealing how the organization paradoxically promotes and
controls expressive behavior. The study introduces the notion of “psy-
chic deterritorialization” as a way to conceptualize processes of cathar-
sis and self-derailment verified among Western sannyasins and
travelers. Moreover, it examines orientalist claims about the Indian
self and culture that tend to obstruct Indian nationals from partici-
pating in therapy workshops. The efficacy of expressive therapies, as
exemplified by the Osho resort, depends on historically shaped tenets
of “repression/expression” that forge the Western subject.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 47 No. 1, January 2007 91-116
DOI: 10.1177/0022167806292997
© 2007 Sage Publications