Poona Revival Festival
22.-26. September 2024
5 days sharing, meditating and dancing, like in the old days in:
I want to celebrate my 60th birthday (23.09.) with a big festival in my OSHO commune on the country side in the middle of Germany. My wish is to bring alive the energy of the old Poona times in the 70th, 80th and 90th years; with mini-groups, meditations, dancing, concerts, Sauna, Sufi-dance and parties.
It is mandatory to wear red clothing. It must not be a maroon robe, all cloths between orange and purple are okay! This is also an experiment for our commune, because we are not wearing red since more than 30 years! This is how it looks today:
The main emphasis is on sharing your own experiences in the ashram of Poona. After short movies from Poona 1 & 2 my wish is that everybody is sharing what he/she experienced in the old days. The festival is not only for those who have been in Poona, but also for the newcomers who want to feel the energy of the old times!
I myself will coordinate the program with the help of other community members. Our musicians will play on many occasions. There also some international musicians like Chinmaya Dunster (known for his Celtic Ragas) who played longtime in the ashram of Poona and the Indian Sitar player Pradeep Gupta.
The program is free, you only pay for lodging and boarding. A donations for the musicians is welcome.
- lodging and boarding (4 nights) is under the usual conditions in our meditation-center >> Parimal Gut Hübenthal between Kassel and Göttingen. We have more than 65 beds in single-, double and 6 bedrooms. (The complete price for the full festival ranges between 254 € in dormitory, 294 € in 6-bed room and 446 € in a single room with attached bathroom)
- we have 4 grouprooms plus Sauna, a marble meditation temple and a big café.
- Our buddhafield in the region consists of more than 100 people.
- Start is Sunday, 22th Sept. at 15:00 with coffee and cakes
daily schedule: (except sunday 15:00) - here detailed program
07:00 Dynamic meditation
08:00 morning classes
08:30 mantra morning singing with live music
09:00 breakfast
10:15 come together: sharing & overview of the day
11:00 open space for sessions & mini-groups
13:00 lunch
14:30 short movies from Poona and sharing the experiences
16:00 start of Sauna
17:00 Kundalini meditation
18:30 Evening meditions with real white robes or white cloths, with live music
20:00 dinner
21:00 evening events: concert, heart dance, Tantra-event, musicgroup
>> booking is with the reservation of the room!
Sw. Neerav (Dipl.-Psych. Andreas Koch)
- when you have questions to me, contact me via email or WhatsApp : +491722812328 / Email: Lapis9 (at) web.de
- P.S.: here is a report about our >>last Summer Festival with the story, how the earl of the nearby castle went to Poona and came back in red and with a mala, the beginning of the commune...
How I came to Poona:
The first time I heared about Poona, I remember, was around 1979 when I was 15 years old. I was sitting in a doctor´s waiting room and read the German magazine “Stern”. There was an article about wild things going on in the grouproom of an Indian spiritual school. I just thought “How disgusting! What a terrible place”. (Well, it took less than ten years until I was sitting in the same grouproom).
In the age of 17 it happened that I was one week with my school class in a youth hostel for a social course “meditation and politics”. Actually I was only there because I was interested in a special girl who wanted to go to that course. The teacher was not a sannyasins, but he conducted the Kundalini meditation as well as Dynamic, Nadabrahma and Gourishankar with us school children. It was overwhelming for me and I got interested in this strange Guru.
After that course I went to the school library and found the famous book “Ganz entspannt im Hier und Jetzt” from the German “Stern” reporter Sw. Satyananda in which he described his own experiences in the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona. I was fascinated and shocked at the same time!
With 18 years I went the first time to the sannyasins meditation center in my hometown Bielefeld. I attended Satsang and group rebirting sessions. After a short time the center closed and I was very disappointed. The same year, after the final secondary school examinations (“Abitur”) I went to Rajneesh Stadt - Schloss Wolfsbrunnen. At that time the sannyasins owned a real castle! It took only three days when members returned from the annual world celebration in Rajneeshpuram with the order to sell the castle. Another disappointment. So I went for a couple of weeks to the meditation center of Hannover and worked in the Rajneesh Disco. Here I also got my Mala and the name Sw. Shivam Neerav in August 1984.
Later I was irritated about the things going on in Oregon and I distanced myself for a couple of years from the Sannyas movement.
In 1987 I heared that Bhagwan was again in Poona. I felt a strong urge to go there. So finally in February 1988 I arrived in the ashram of Poona and was sitting many times in the discourses of Bhagwan and attended a lot of groups. I also became a worker in the kitchen and made the Chai for the whole commune. I only missed the orange or maroon clothes which I assosiated so much with the sannyasins. It was a little bit strange for me to wear ordinary street clothing in a spiritual ashram at that time. Finally in the 1990th it was changed again to maroon colours which I liked very much. After a short hesitation I felt very good in my maroon robe inside the green ashram and all the other crazy sannyasins. I spent weeks and months participating or assisting in various groups and had a great time!