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The Bhagwan and Netflix and Me.
Mar. 14th, 2018 11:43 pmI wrote this on my phone, as a Facebook comment on The Oregonian’s page. There’s a new Netflix special coming out about the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I don’t know how accurate it’ll be, but based on what I’ve seen of the advertising for it, not very.
At any rate, here’s how I remember it. Following this story was one of my first assays into journalism, as I wrote a couple of articles about them for my high school newspaper. Even so, some facts may be wrong, being filtered through my teen-aged mind, 30+ years removed from the events. In the comment I was replying to, someone had mentioned the widely-quoted story of the Rajneeshees poisoning salad bars:.
Please excuse the typos and strange formatting, this was written on my phone, with a dying battery:
I was following the story pretty closely at the time, though I was I high school, so it’s possible some of my memory is wrong.
But, I do t believe that anything was ever proven about the salad bars. There was a salmonella outbreak, and everyone in Antelope blamed the Rajneeshees, but I suspect it had more to do with them being weird and scary than any kind of evidence. Remember this was rural Oregon, and near the height of the whole Satanic Panic at the same time - superstition was running rampant everywhere, and I wouldn’t necessarily trust the assumptions of a small insular Christian community suddenly faced with a large influx of outsiders following a religion they’d never heard of before.
The only crime Ma Anand Shiela was charged with was embezzling from the Rajneesh organization. I seem to recall they caught her at an airport when she changed planes trying to flee the country.
The Baghwan was also charged with tax evasion. He claimed that as the head of a religion he didn’t owe any taxes. The State of Oregon disagreed, but dropped all charges in exchange for him agreeing to leave the country and never come back.
Also, there was a bombing that the cult was blamed for but the only thing that got bombed was their own hotel in Portland, so take any guesses who orchestrated it with a grain of salt.
Don’t get me wrong - it was a wacky cult, and they did bus homeless people in from across the county to take advantage of Oregon’s lax residency laws and vote themselves in to every elected position in Antelope, Oregon, which they renamed Rajneesh. He claimed he would do the same for every town in Oregon, but it was unlikely to work a second time.
They also ran a club in Portland called Zorba the Buddha, which never checked ID.
They also had a *lot* of guns - Rajneeshpuram was overrun with orange-robes zealots carrying CAR-15s everywhere. Also, lots of Rolls Royces - he said he wanted one for every day of the week, but only got up to 70-something before everything was shut down.
They were, come to think of it, the first proponents of “prosperity doctrine” - the idea that great wealth is a sign of God’s favor, which has since been largely adopted by mainstream Christianity.
At any rate, here’s how I remember it. Following this story was one of my first assays into journalism, as I wrote a couple of articles about them for my high school newspaper. Even so, some facts may be wrong, being filtered through my teen-aged mind, 30+ years removed from the events. In the comment I was replying to, someone had mentioned the widely-quoted story of the Rajneeshees poisoning salad bars:.
Please excuse the typos and strange formatting, this was written on my phone, with a dying battery:
I was following the story pretty closely at the time, though I was I high school, so it’s possible some of my memory is wrong.
But, I do t believe that anything was ever proven about the salad bars. There was a salmonella outbreak, and everyone in Antelope blamed the Rajneeshees, but I suspect it had more to do with them being weird and scary than any kind of evidence. Remember this was rural Oregon, and near the height of the whole Satanic Panic at the same time - superstition was running rampant everywhere, and I wouldn’t necessarily trust the assumptions of a small insular Christian community suddenly faced with a large influx of outsiders following a religion they’d never heard of before.
The only crime Ma Anand Shiela was charged with was embezzling from the Rajneesh organization. I seem to recall they caught her at an airport when she changed planes trying to flee the country.
The Baghwan was also charged with tax evasion. He claimed that as the head of a religion he didn’t owe any taxes. The State of Oregon disagreed, but dropped all charges in exchange for him agreeing to leave the country and never come back.
Also, there was a bombing that the cult was blamed for but the only thing that got bombed was their own hotel in Portland, so take any guesses who orchestrated it with a grain of salt.
Don’t get me wrong - it was a wacky cult, and they did bus homeless people in from across the county to take advantage of Oregon’s lax residency laws and vote themselves in to every elected position in Antelope, Oregon, which they renamed Rajneesh. He claimed he would do the same for every town in Oregon, but it was unlikely to work a second time.
They also ran a club in Portland called Zorba the Buddha, which never checked ID.
They also had a *lot* of guns - Rajneeshpuram was overrun with orange-robes zealots carrying CAR-15s everywhere. Also, lots of Rolls Royces - he said he wanted one for every day of the week, but only got up to 70-something before everything was shut down.
They were, come to think of it, the first proponents of “prosperity doctrine” - the idea that great wealth is a sign of God’s favor, which has since been largely adopted by mainstream Christianity.
