11 December

'Never Born, Never Died. Only Visited this Planet Earth between Dec 11 1931 - Jan 19 1990.'

That's the epitaph of Osho, born Rajneesh Chandra Mohan Jain, aka Acharya Rajneesh, aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose spiritual and other teachings successively enthralled and scandalised both westerners and Indians from the 1960s onwards.

His orange-clad sannyasins, or followers - many of them drawn by his message of freer attitudes towards sex - became familiar visitors to his ashram at Pune, in India, and, for four years in the early 1980s, the 64,000-acre ranch they settled in Wasco County, Oregon. Osho was forced to leave the US after a series of scandals, including a plot to murder public officials and to use salmonella in an attack on a nearby town, led to criminal charges being brought against the ranch's leaders.

Osho himself, having become as famous in the US for his fleet of Rolls Royce cars donated by followers as for his spiritual activities, died in 1990 after claiming that he had been a victim of thalium poisoning while in US police custody. His ashram still operates today.

'You can't go on eating Italian food forever: once in a while you want to try a Chinese restaurant. Marriage is a lifelong bondage.' - Osho