Rajneeshpuram and Cults

If you watched the long, long Netflix series about Rajneeshpuram, you saw many portions of an interview with Philip Toelkes.

Toelkes left a successful law career to follow Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and never looked back.  He exudes comfort and self-assurance in his interview, as do some other Rajneeshees.

As the television series ends, Toelkes tells the camera that the Rajneesh (now known as Osho) was "all about freedom."



Let's unpack this thought.  If you had gone to Rajneeshpuram in the early 1980s, here is what would have happened: 

-- You would be given a new name.  Toelkes became Swami Prem Niren.

-- You would be issued new clothes in the "colors of the sun," ranging from pink to orange to red to maroon to purple.  You also would be given a long beaded necklace, called a mala, that featured a picture of the Bhagwan.

-- You would be assigned living quarters and eat at communal meals.

-- You would work (called "worship") 10 hours or more for seven days a week with breaks for meals and for an afternoon lineup with all the other sannyasins to watch as the Bhagwan/Osho was driven past in one of his many, many Rolls Royces -- this to honor a spiritual leader who had not spoken publicly since before he left India.

-- You would be expected to give whatever money you had to the greater project.

In short, your personality would be submerged into the group identity, and your life would be organized for you, 24-7. 

Maybe the dynamic breathing and dancing and sex and exhortations to joy were great.  

But it doesn't sound like freedom to me.


Readings

Win McCormack, now the editor of the New Republic, reported on Rajneeshpuram from Oregon in the1980s.  Recently, the magazine has run relevant pieces of that work, grouped by topics that include "Police State," "Mind Control" and  "Money Machine."  A lot of good stuff there.  

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The cult was sex-positive (to put it in the nicest light), but it was child-negative, favoring abortion and sterilization.  One boy who spent his early childhood among sannyasins in Oregon and Europe was Tim Guest, whose mother joined and whose father did not. Guest's autobiography, "My Life In Orange," juxtaposed stories of free-range childhood with memories of sadness and abandonment.  This Observer review covers the high points.  Tim Guest died of a morphine overdose in 2009.

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Another of the sannyasins interviewed in the Netflix documentary, Jane Stork (Ma Shanti Bhadra), also wrote a book, "Breaking the Spell," about her experiences in India and Oregon.  A review of the book in an Australian paper discusses the writer's change of heart after she had been drafted to join murder plots and after her daughter had been abused sexually.


Cults 

We still read of the cults of the 1960s and 1970s.  They grew out of the human potential movement, which had its basis in psychotherapy and eastern philosophies.  

It is true that most people have benefitted from those therapies and from mindfulness and meditation.

But the few exceptions were pretty awful.  Here are two cases that share elements with the Rajneeshpuram story.

Synanon, which began as a 12-step program for narcotics addicts, attracted a thousand or more people over time in California but managed only to rehabilitate about 70 drug abusers.  It evolved into an increasingly rigid religion led by founder Charles E. Dederich. Synanon-the-church bound members for life, separated parents from children, broke down personalities in nasty group sessions, gathered an arsenal and attacked people who left or others who helped people to escape.  Famously, Dederich deputized two members to put a rattlesnake in the mailbox of an attorney representing a woman who had left the group.  The lawyer survived his bite, but Synanon imploded not long afterward.

Jonestown began as the People's Temple, a large Christian congregation led by Jim Jones in San Francisco. Jones was politically popular until he was not, at which point he took more than 900 followers to establish an agricultural community in the middle of a wilderness in Guyana, South America.  There were the usual abuses, and in late 1978 a California congressman named Leo Ryan came for a visit.  As Ryan was leaving, Jonestown goons shot him dead. Afterward, Jones convinced his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch in a ghastly mass suicide.  

Congressman Ryan's daughter moved up to Rajneeshpuram a few years later.  She is believed to have given her inheritance money to that cult. 

M̶o̶v̶i̶e̶TVMonday: Wild Wild Country

(The Idiosyncratist is in suburbia, where the only new film is a Dwayne Johnson thing based on a 1980s videogame.  It may be fine, but I decided to watch a six-hour Netflix program instead.)

Here we have an overlong, not particularly revealing documentary with a title that doesn't suggest anything about its content.  It probably should have been called "Rajneeshpuram," because that is the subject.

It is the story of a cult that began in Poona, outside Mumbai.  After some unpleasantness with the Indian government, the group decided to relocate in 1981.  It bought a 64,000-acre plot called Muddy Ranch in a mostly empty area in the state of Oregon.  

Eventually, several thousand Rajneeshees settled there, setting up a city with housing, roads, a sizable airstrip, a health center and secluded housing for its leader, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, as well as parking for his large fleet of Rolls Royces.  

The documentary consists of old film footage and interviews with now-older Oregonians and former sannyasins, as the cult members were known. 

The story that unspools is one of conflict between the Rajneeshees and 1) the people of Antelope, OR, a town of 40; 2) officials of Wasco County, population 25,000; 3) Oregon prosecutors and, 4) the U.S. Attorney based in Portland.  

The sannyasins vastly outnumbered local residents, but this did not stop the group from developing a paranoia about their new home.  Some of what they did:

-- Moved enough sannyasins into Antelope to vote in a new mayor, take over and expand the police force and give the town a new name, Rajneeshee.
-- Established another new city, Rajneeshpuram, on the ranch and set up a second, also very heavily armed police agency that seemed prepared more for war than peacekeeping.
-- Stationed roadblocks at various points on ranch roads, deployed foot and helicopter patrols across the ranch and also wired key ranch locations with listening bugs. 
-- Arranged sham marriages between American sannyasins and foreign ones to evade immigration laws.  
-- Poisoned two county officials with salmonella-laced glasses of cold water offered on a hot day's visit.
-- Imported thousands of street people from all over the country to pad the local voting rolls and take over Wasco County government.  When the street people became belligerent, they were drugged with Haldol.  When the new voter registration plan was kiboshed by the state, the street people were dumped in cities around Oregon. 
-- Distributed salmonella in restaurant salad bars and kitchens in the county's largest city.  The effort sickened 750 and sent hundreds to hospitals. The effort was a dry run for a planned larger poisoning to suppress voter turnout in a coming election. 
-- Set fire to the county planning office.
-- Planned the killings of the US Attorney in Portland, other county officials, the Rajneesh's personal doctor and possibly an investigative reporter at the state's largest newspaper.

This is weird stuff.  The documentary hints strongly that the Rajneesh's personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, the effective cult CEO, organized all of it.  But putting the plans into action involved many other actors. 

Sheela spoke daily with the Rajneesh, and she claimed the skullduggery was his idea.  (He had not spoken publicly since 1980, which raises the unposed question of how he continued to inspire his devoted worldwide congregation of 10,000 or more during those years.)

When the whole thing broke up in 1985, the Rajneesh started talking again and blamed Sheela.  He pled guilty to immigration fraud and returned to India.  She served a relatively brief prison term and moved to Switzerland where, surprisingly, she now operates a nursing home.  Some other sannyasins served short sentences.

This documentary has received a lot of attention and praise.  Many reviewers puzzle that the Rajneeshpuram story did not receive more national attention back in its day.  

My guess is that if it had happened in or near a major city, it would have got more attention.  Rajneeshpuram was three hours outside Portland, Oregon's largest city, and in a part of the state that is largely unpopulated.

The city where hundreds of people were poisoned has fewer than 20,000 residents and not a big news presence.  If it had happened in Chicago or San Francisco or New York, it would have been a big story.  

The interviews in the documentary don't add much.  Yes, Sheela talks, but it is hard to trust her word.  The Oregonians from the nearby town, mostly older ranchers, come off as bigots at first and then, as the story proceeds, maybe not so nutty after all.

A lot of interview time -- too much, I'd argue -- is given to three former sannyasins.  All are well-spoken and appealing.  They do not account for the popularity of the cult, or of any cult, for that matter.

What's missing from the documentary is any discussion of the internal workings of Rajneeshpuram.  I've read up a bit on this and will discuss it tomorrow.