Kidnapping Press Release

Kidnapping Press Release by Swami Samarpan David (aka David Leslie Kent) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at https://sites.google.com/site/samarpandavid/home.

Press Release to Osho Times, Poona, India

17 March 1990 from Medellín, Colombia

BELOVEDS!

LOVE!

On February 13, 1990 I was kidnapped by the Nelson Mandela Command of the National Liberation Army of Colombia in protest of USA intervention in Colombia. By accident I was born north of the Rio Grande and therefore served their purposes. They took me to an urban guerrilla house.

While going through my wallet my captors found a calling card with my sannyas name and the address of Osho Padma Meditation Center. They suspected that Osho Padma MC might be a front for imperialist espionage and began to ask questions about Osho. In the hours of discussion that followed we found ourselves in agreement on some points: the ugliness of militarism in a world full of hunger, the lack of respect for women and indigenous peoples, the failure of representative democracy, the myth of God and the role of religious belief in supporting marriage and the state.

The National Liberation Army (ELN) doesn't seem overly concerned about stopping destruction of the ecosystem or reducing the world's population. And they do not recognize Osho's vision as being more radical than their own. Their analysis does not go as deeply as Osho's insight. They don't, for example, recognize marriage at the root of our social problems with its maintenance of the family/nation-state and subsequent transmission of antiquated values to the young. They do not appreciate the immediate practicality of meditation in undoing the negative effects of conditioning by the church, family and state. The socialist vision doesn't recognize meditation as essential to overcoming the conditioned divisions created and maintained in the mind; socialists have no idea of the role of silence in the realization of a new world. After a meeting, where they must have tried to understand what I had tried to explain about sannyas, they informed me they had decided I was involved in "something spiritual, with universalist tendencies." I should have let it drop, but I didn't.

I wanted them to understand that neo-sannyas is an alternative more radical and more humane than socialism. I began to make specific criticisms of Marxist doctrine. I suggested their revolutionary organization (now 25 years old) was just as sexist as the Colombian national congress (neither has women in the upper echelons of leadership). I argued that a revolution which kills some is not a revolution for all, but this argument fell on deaf ears. I maintained that armed struggle cannot change consciousness and is therefore not as revolutionary as meditation. I made an eight-point analysis showing how the ELN and the Catholic Church function in exactly the same way (the leader of the ELN is a priest from Spain). At this they became angry and said my ideas constituted "heresy." (Make that nine points!)

Unable to break free of their revolutionary conditioning and unable to answer with arguments, they began to threaten and label me, saying my ideas were "subversive," that I was "recalcitrant," an "enemy of the revolution." They said my words (even my saying every human being is unique!) could be used as charges against me in a "revolutionary trial." I thought I heard death's footsteps nearby. I tried to prepare myself to take death's hands, to dance with her into the infinite, feeling Osho's love strongly throughout this experience. I concluded further discussion was futile and that something had to be done to break the mounting tension.

When left alone I decided to do the Mystic Rose meditation and started laughing. Within minutes someone appeared and told me to stop laughing. "Don't you ever laugh?" I asked them, "Is laughter not normal behavior for revolutionaries?" They assured me that revolutionaries do have a sense of humor and this was later confirmed. One night, after I had been moved to a rural guerrilla camp high in the mountains of Colombia, I suggested a joke festival. I always laughed at their jokes because they had the machine guns!

After being held for 12 days, during which I became sick with hepatitis, I was released unharmed with a message to give to the Colombian government. I told the guerrillas they should try to find a more efficient way to communicate with the government. Kidnapping, guarding, and feeding a hostage for 12 days seemed to me a terribly inefficient way to send messages. They didn't laugh. They told me they would be in touch in a couple of months to have me do some work for them, translating documents from English to Spanish. I didn't laugh.

I decided not to risk any further contact with ELN (which would put my life at risk from right-wing death squads). After six years in Colombia, violent years for Colombia, the experience of being kidnapped has served as a catalyst. I am closing Padma Osho MC and leaving Colombia. I have no idea where I will live or what I will do.

LIVE! LOVE! LAUGH!

Samarpan David