The idea is to keep moving from the new-age ghetto into the mainstream, a shift that’s been aided, incidentally, by none other than Tom Robbins - an outspoken supporter who once called Osho’s fleet of Rolls-Royces ”the funniest joke ever played on our pathological consumerism” and deemed Osho ”the greatest spiritual teacher of the 20th century.” Martin’s first full-color, illustrated Osho work. Also in the pipeline is India My Love, which will be St. Due out this fall is The Art of Tea, containing a book of Osho’s meditations on the Zen tea ceremony, two Japanese tea cups and a bamboo mat. Martin’s began publishing Osho with the Osho Zen Tarot, which has now sold 150,000 copies in the U.S. ”They’re willing to look at much more provocative material now.”Īstonishingly, returns on Osho’s books are only 4 percent - a ”fairly good indication we could get a lot more books out there,” Denneny says. Martin’s is getting more courageous,” Steeg says. Plus, the door’s opening wider for Osho’s mischievously iconoclastic wisdom.
The group has signed more publishing contracts in the first quarter of this year than in all of 2000, according to Klaus Steeg, Osho International president. The guru-provocateur is edging back into the literary footlights largely through the work of Osho International, whose three-year-old, New York-based offices manage the author’s rights. Martin’s Press, which has published Osho in the U.S.
”In a certain sense he’s a dead author, but boy, that doesn’t keep him from writing new books,” says Michael Denneny, senior editor at St. Osho’s a bestselling author in India, with 200 titles in print there, and about 45 titles are on sale in Germany, including picks for Heyne, Econ-Ullstein-List and Bertelsmann.Īnd don’t forget China, where in 1996 alone 16 Osho titles sold a total of 600,000 copies, with Bertelsmann’s book club getting 100,000 copies of Meditation out the door before the Chinese government declared the deceased advocate of ”religionless religion” an enemy of the People’s Republic. Some 80 titles are in print in Italy, 2 of them bestsellers last year. His latest, Love, Freedom and Aloneness, is due out this summer, following the paperback release this month of the Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. Indeed, 11 years after his death from heart disease at age 58, the artist formerly known as Zorba the Buddha is pumping out more books than Vishnu has avatars. Nearly two decades after he captivated the world with escapades of gonzo spirituality as the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh - he with the fleet of 93 Rolls-Royces and a controversial 64,000-acre commune in Oregon - the guru today known as Osho has been reincarnated as a mind-body-spirit book phenom. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (5/15/01)
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