Ma Yogini Bharti, a Canadian sannyasin now based in the Amazon rain forest, relates her remarkable story.

I first met Osho in 1972, during one of his meditation camps at Mount Abu. We did not exchange words but I did sit quite close to him, close enough to smell that specially made balm he used. It is decades ago and I must confess that my strongest memory of that time is of the troops of grey monkeys swarming all over the place. It was rumoured that some of the monkeys had rabies and I can remember they could be quite aggressive, especially if they smelled food.

Most of the meditators were Indians, a lot of them quite hysterical, with only a handful of Westerners, mostly German. The camp ended on a full moon night. I was not particularly impressed by the dynamic meditation, I have only done it half-a-dozen times in my life. I was impressed by Bhagwan and to this day I have no idea how he managed to generate what I would describe as a universal vibration of loving compassion.

I decided to visit Osho in Mumbai, where he lived in an apartment on Malabar Hill. It was there that we talked for the first time and I was eventually initiated into sannyas and given the name I still use today with my sannyasin friends, Ma Yogini Bharati (or just YB, for short!).

I rented a small apartment in the neighbourhood of Bhagwan’s place, so that I could spend more time around him. I’d fallen in love with the man. Those were very exciting times. You could feel that something was incubating and about to hatch, something big. I became friends with Bhagwan and Laxmi, who I always thought was a bit of a control freak with a very quirky sense of humour. She was totally devoted to Bhagwan.

One wet afternoon, during the monsoon, Bhagwan talked to an American hippie man about LSD. At that point I’d never taken an illegal drug in my life, except for trying pot a couple times, and I do not think Bhagwan had either. Later that day, I had tea with the hippy in a local cafe with an amazing view of the sprawling city below us. He gave me a gift of half-a-dozen orange LSD tabs and told me he was off to Nepal early the following morning.

Three days later, I took LSD for the first time. Within an hour my grip on consensual reality was slipping away. Nothing in my experience could have prepared me for the effects produced by LSD. The hum from the air conditioning unit in my small apartment sounded like a jumbo jet revving up before take-off. I decided to go for a walk, which turned into a mind-boggling adventure, perhaps a little like Albert Hofmann’s bicycle ride back in 1943 when he became the first human to ingest lysergic acid diethylamide.

It was early evening when I wandered under the Gateway to India. I made it to a spot marked on the tiles signifying that I was directly under the centre of the dome. Some kind of magnetic force kept me rooted to the spot. I have no idea how long I stood there. It was my first experience of no-mind, I was out of my mind yet utterly present. It changed my perception of life forever.

The next day was spent in bed. I felt a little depressed.

Two days passed before I saw Bhagwan again. I was sitting near to him at a darshan and he looked at me, smiled playfully and asked, “How was your journey?”

I said, slightly puzzled, “Journey? What journey?”

He chuckled and raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Your trip?”

Then I got what he was referring to. “Oh,” I said, “that trip. Yes, well, it was very interesting. It gave me a glimpse of no-mind.”

Bhagwan nodded sagely. “Very good, YB, very good.”

Then the master focused his attention on a couple of new people and asked them where they were from. How he knew about my acid trip will forever remain a mystery to me and he never mentioned it again.

A week later, I had to return to Canada to take care of my mother, who had a heart condition, but went on to live to the ripe old age of ninety-three.

I returned to India in the late fall of 1974, by which time Bhagwan had moved to Poona. I did not go there immediately. I first caught a ferry down to Goa and then on to the Sai Baba ashram in Puttaparthi, which I did not like at all. Sai Baba had strong energy, but it did not touch my heart. I returned to Goa and, after a beautiful LSD trip, which I had by then tried several times, I decided to go and see Bhagwan, having by that time decided he was my master.

I had spent most of my trip staring at a photo of Bhagwan. Might sound like a strange thing to do, but for me it was a wonderful revelation. Bhagwan, Bhagwan, Bhagwan. Just saying His name filled my heart with joy.

I was eventually given a room in the ashram, which I shared with another Ma, an overweight Californian, who kept me awake at night with her loud snoring. I had to buy ear plugs. I worked in the mala shop. I loved my work and my wonderful workmates, especially Asheesh, the boss with a funny eye. I never did any meditations. I found it all to be a bit silly.

You see, the reason I visited India in the first place was to get over the fact that my career as a trapeze artist in a world-renowned circus was over, due to an accident that almost cost me my life. I cannot begin to describe the sense of loss I experienced letting go of what I believed at the time to be my destiny. I had begun training as a gymnastic acrobat at age ten. I was a natural. In the ashram I would hear people talking about trust, let go and surrender, and I would laugh to myself. Try letting go of a trapeze a hundred feet above an audience of 5000 people, trusting that a fellow acrobat will be in exactly in the right position to catch you and then maybe you can begin to talk about surrender. Circus acrobats are amongst the most centred people I have ever met in my life.

I met the love of my life in 1978 in the ashram’s Vrindivan cafe. We left India behind and moved into his apartment in Manhattan, overlooking New York City’s Central Park. It was strange at first. So noisy, so hectic, so frenetic. I eventually fell in love with the city and its crazy inhabitants. On December 15, 1980, my beloved partner was diagnosed with a rare illness. John Lennon had been murdered outside the Dakota Building a week earlier. It felt to me like the world had gone insane.

For 18 months we travelled the world in search of a cure for my beloved’s illness. To no avail. He died on Christmas Day 1982. I fell into such a deep depression I was hospitalized.

By this time Osho (I’ll never get used to that name) was in the USA, but it did not occur to me to go and see him. In retrospect I probably should have.

I eventually went to Rajneeshpuram, a few months before it collapsed. I stayed for two weeks, caught a nasty cold and left without having set eyes on Osho, let alone talked to him. I did not like the Ranch, although I was very impressed by the amazing amount of work done there by sannyasins in such a relatively short time period. That was part of the problem for me. The commune had become all work with very little play. Although enthusiastic, everyone looked exhausted. Plus that mad woman, Sheela, had risen to power. I did not like her in Poona and I liked her even less in Oregon.

A month later, I caught a flight from LA to Quito in Ecuador. I met up with friends and we travelled by road to Iquitos in Peru. It was there that I tried 5-MeO-DMT for the first time. It made my LSD trips seem like weak tea. Somebody present told me that I screamed non-stop for five minutes. I do not recall that. But I do recall understanding  that I was a part of everything that exists. I understood for the first time what enlightenment is.

And so it happened that I spent the next three years in the Amazon Basin with my new teacher, Donna Mercedes Salvadora, an authentic spiritual healer. She passed away in 1989. May she forever rest in peace.

I heard from a visiting Brazilian sannyasin friend that the master was unwell, due to the effects of a slow acting poison. I dreamed about Osho that night and returned to Poona six weeks before he left the body. Somehow I felt like seeing him one more time, although my journey with Osho had somehow ended many years before.

Poona was even noisier and dirtier than how I remembered it. The ashram was buzzing with rumours as usual. The energy level was high and I had a wonderful time reconnecting with friends. Osho’s body being cremated at the burning ghats down by the Bund River was an event that I will never forget. I will not even attempt to describe in words what I went through that night. I returned to South America a month later, with the distinct impression that I would never return to Mother India, and I never did.

This abbreviated life story is actually an introduction to a very different subject, which I will not touch upon now. I will read the comments in response to this article on Sannyas News and decide afterwards whether to write a follow-up or not. Osho once said to me that life passes quickly and it is most important not to waste your time on the unessential. I think he was right.

Dear Osho, one of the sweetest and most gentle human beings to ever grace the world with his presence. I feel blessed that I had contact with him before he became famous, when it was possible to have a more personal relationship with him, even though he said the relationship only existed on your side, him being a hollow bamboo and so forth.

Oh yes, and one thing that I should mention. When I was in my prime I could have had any man I wanted. Yes, I was that beautiful. I wanted Bhagwan. Not once in my meetings with the master was there the slightest hint of anything sexual coming from his direction. To be honest, I can’t say the same for myself.

I now live in a remote part of the Amazonian rain forest, where I instruct students in the preparation of entheogenic plant compounds and how to use them to greater understand our potential as human beings. Every two weeks I travel for three hours to reach the nearest outpost of modern-day civilization, where I shop for provisions, drink an ice cold beer, chat with the locals and check my emails. I am open to answering questions in relation to what I have written here on Sannyas News. Just do not expect a quick reply. You can contact me here: egauthieramazon@gmail.com

For lack of something to read on a rainy afternoon I had a rummage in a dusty cupboard and found a well-worn copy of Osho’s ‘The Last Testament: Interviews with the World Press’, Volume One. It’s been at least twenty years since I read an Osho book from cover to cover and, if nothing else, this one is definitely good for a laugh.

The interviews were given just before the collapse of The Ranch. One thing is for sure: going by what he was saying at the time, Osho was not a clairvoyant. He did not see what was coming. He did not even see what was going on around him…being enlightened does not mean you know your phone is bugged. He honestly thought there was absolutely no crime taking place in the commune, when, months later, it was revealed that a secretive group led by his personal secretary, Sheela, had engaged in a variety of criminal activities, including the attempted murder of Osho’s physician, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within Osho’s home, poisoning of two public officials and a whole bunch of locals, and arson. How could a man such as Osho have been so blind and out of touch? I can recall, back in Poona One, that Osho claimed to know everything taking place in his commune and, from what I witnessed, he was not exaggerating. What changed?

Before giving these interviews, Osho claimed not to have read anything for five years, and it shows. He thought that AIDS could be transmitted through the breath and people who ate with their hands from a communal plate of food were leaving themselves open to being infected by the deadly virus. No kissing, babe, pass the rubber gloves. All part of Osho’s ‘prophet of doom’ phase.

Then we have Osho expounding his ultra-conservative views on gay people. All perverts, according to him, whose pathologically sick behaviour all stems back to repressed nuns and monks living in monasteries, having to resort to same-sex couplings to vent their repressed sexual energies. A warped perspective best observed with Socratic detachment, I suppose. I have sannyasin friends who are homosexual and lesbian. They are sensitive, intelligent beautiful people who have never spent time in a monastery. It says much about Osho’s magnetism that they stayed with him, after him expressing publicly such a narrow-minded take on their sexual preferences. It could be viewed with Socratic irony that Osho held Socrates in such high esteem, because Socrates was a man who lost his senses when in the company of beautiful young boys.

On the topic of sex, Osho claimed to be a natural man who followed his carnal instincts in every way. He boasted that perhaps no man had loved as many women as he had. In case one was left unsure as to the nature of the ‘love’ he was referring to he added, “I used to keep count, but dropped it. What is the point?” Osho, the Hugh Hefner of the spiritual world. What I’m left wondering is where did Osho do all his behind-the-scenes shagging? One friend, who lived in Osho’s house for many years, told me that not once did they see any unknown females leaving or entering the master’s room. Perhaps those sexy nymphs sneaked in through the bathroom window, or maybe there was a secret tunnel.

The bottom line regarding Osho’s ‘Last Testament’ is that I really enjoyed reading it. Osho was out to stir controversy and he succeeded. There he is, digging in his war chest and pulling out the verbal equivalent of a cruise missile. “I love Adolf Hitler”, he declares. “He was crazy,” he adds. “’But I am even more crazy!” Bet that got the dogs barking. In a later interview he writes the Nazis off as nonsense, which hardly sets the balance straight. A wee bit of spin needed…quick! Osho telling the world how he loves Jewish people and that two-thirds of the members of his commune are Jews. I always wondered where those rumours started about Osho being a reincarnation of Holy Moses. The way Osho waffled on about the Jews I’m surprised there wasn’t a synagogue built adjacent to Buddha Hall.

What about all those Rolls Royces and fancy watches? Osho makes out that he doesn’t care about such things, which are actually presents from his adoring disciples and he has to accept them because he does not want to upset his disciples. Such was the extent of Osho’s compassion. What to do? A far cry from Sheela´s report about Osho throwing a hissy fit because the commune’s coffers could not afford to fork out a couple of million dollars for a diamond-encrusted watch that he just had to have, although, for once, he did not employ emotional blackmail in the form of threatening to leave his body because he did not get what he wished. Wasn’t the enlightened one supposed to be beyond desire? You have to laugh.

When questioned about what would happen to his commune when he died Osho certainly laughed and said he did not care. He was very clear that creating an organised religion around him after he was dead was the last thing on his no mind-mind. When asked about the obvious contradictions in what he was saying, Osho said it was his right to respond to each moment in the way he saw fit. What he said one day might be quite the opposite the next, depending on who he was addressing etc.

I understand where he was coming from. Life is not static. Complications can and do arise when people take what Osho said as gospel and try to live by his words. For me, Osho was never about his words. Osho was a representative of a loving, humorous, playful, illuminating, compassionate and enlightening energy. A non-serious energy that our serious world of today needs more of. I find myself admiring Osho because he had the balls to just get out there and do his dance, and not give a fuck what people thought about his moves. Somehow he understood, without a doubt, that people’s opinions about him were meaningless, that it was all ultimately mind-fuck. He asked, “How could Jesus save anyone? He couldn’t even save himself.” Osho’s penchant for poking fun at all and everything, especially that revered by the masses, knew no limitations, because he understood that none of it mattered in the greater scheme of creation. How liberating!

To conclude. I had a visit from an old sannyasin friend the other day. I first met Anand in Kandahar in 1972. He was headed for Goa…on a horse. A true rebel, he was always in trouble with the ashram administration in Poona One. I think he got away with his wild celebrations at Laxmi Villas because Osho saw him as a true representative of the rebellious spirit of sannyas. Rock and roll! I asked Anand, who has a very down-to-earth approach to life, how he viewed his seven years in Poona One. He laughed and said, “It’s history now and I am glad that I was a part of it.” A view all of my old sannyasin friends share.

I mentioned reading ‘The Last Testament’ and some of the bullshit Osho was coming out with at the time. Anand laughed again and said, “Man, I remember going to Buddha Hall for a discourse. Sometimes there would be a couple of thousand people there. When the talk was over I listened to what people were saying. Nobody saw or heard the same thing, man…everybody is different and sees things they way they see it…not one person the same. People are too hung up on words, man. Osho always said his message lay in the space and silence between his words. Most people don´t want to hear that and instead go around talking in their sleep, repeating what Osho said, blah, blah, blah!”

Anand tugged at one of his dreadlocks and added, “This whole life is a school, man. You come here to learn something and, when you learned it, it´s time to move on. Osho was a great teacher of how to go about doing just that in the best way possible. Celebration, man! He even wanted us to celebrate death. How cool is that, man?”

Amen.

Ma Ananda Sarita

Now a tantra teacher in the U.K., lived on Rajneeshpuram the whole time.

I was there with the first 20 people before Osho came to the ranch and then I was there until there were only six people left. We took a desert and we completely transformed it in only five years and turned it into an oasis. People were working 16-hour days but always singing, dancing, hugging, laughing, and having love affairs. It was a very vibrant and alive place and very joyful. Most of the people who were there had no idea about the crimes that were being committed by Sheela and her close entourage.

The documentary was very touching and fascinating to watch. They tried to be very balanced. However I did find what was missing was more about Osho and the meditative aspect. There were personal development groups happening, people were coming from all over the world to work on themselves. For the outsiders looking in, they would think “oh, that’s a cult,” but you know, the fact of guru and disciple has been a thousands-of-years-old approach to life in India and I think it should have been at least given some kind of attention or spoken about in some way.

In the very early days, I was working in Sheela’s house as a cleaner and later on I was shifted to work in the press office. I saw that things were going in a not very pleasant direction with her and the people around her. I saw that she was under a lot of stress. Osho had invited her to live in his compound, and he advised her to work during the day but in the evening to come back to a meditative space in his compound, to leave the work behind — she chose not to do that. When people are under stress, they do strange things.

This first appeared in “The Cut” . As the Sheela cabal tried to murder Amrito it is important testimony, and a major flaw that the film did not try to interview him, oe see it as important.

The following interview has been edited and condensed.

Did the documentary makers ever reach out to you to be in the documentary?
No. I wasn’t contacted.

How did you feel about that? 
I think there are a few things which really got kind of overlooked which would’ve been nice to have been able to articulate, really.

What would you have wanted to add?
I mean, in a way, Osho’s really not a central part of the documentary at all. If you wanted to really tell the story properly, you’d want to know something about Osho, right? And all the coverage in a way totally misunderstands Osho. I saw Megyn Kelly the other day — it was actually disgusting, really, in terms of misrepresentation — she did an interview with the two guys who did the documentary, and it was kind of, oh you know: these ridiculous cultists, sex all the time, they were killers — sort of just pure misrepresentation. Well, hang on: You don’t say all of Chicago are killers because Al Capone lives there. Another thing is, [the reason we initially went to Antelope is] that we couldn’t get a phone line [where we were]. That’s what it came down to. It wasn’t this invasion of Antelope. I mean, who wanted to go to Antelope? Who in the hell wants to go 19 miles away from your friends, it took 25 minutes in a pickup on a really bumpy road.

Right.
There was no reason why [Oregonians] couldn’t have just left that community alone. They weren’t interfering with anyone’s lives. And in fact, turning a piece of barren desert into an oasis, that’s not a bad project. When you look at the world today you kind of wish there were a few more experiments like that going on. 

In a way, that seems like why the documentary is really resonating with people. People are watching it and saying “Well, the actual utopian ideal of Rajneeshpuram looks kind of appealing” — although of course there was this very ugly and awful stuff that was happening behind the scenes.

Let me just clarify that. The other part of the story which is really not clear, but you could pick up on it, is that over a period of time, basically Sheela split from Osho. She openly said, “I’m not interested in meditation at all.” So you’ve got a non-meditater trying to understand the vision of someone whose only interest is meditation. That’s a pretty strange starting point. And then, basically, she starts saying: “He’s lost interest in his vision, but I know what his vision is and I’m going to be the one to deliver it.” As time went by, she really started to push back and not do anything Osho wanted. By 1984, she’s really kind of going off the rails, really.

Why didn’t you leave after the murder attempt? 
I would never have thought of leaving. I’m there because this is the most amazing experiment ever, and primarily I’m there to be with Osho. So I would just do my best  later to keep my back against the wall, you know what I mean!?

Sheela has definitely been this sort of object of fascination, I think, for people who’ve watched the documentary. Can you give any insight into what kind of person you think she is based on the time you spent with her? 

Definitely courageous. No question. She was this kind of high-powered, fast-moving, quick-talking, quick-thinking, intelligent, courageous, go-getting person, and everyone went “Great! This is wonderful.” By sort of early ’81, Sheela’s really everybody’s favorite. It’s we who chose Sheela, and Osho who crowned her. And she’s an incredibly able administrator, able to get things done. Yet she had no sense of Osho’s vision. She thought Osho’s vision was to create a community. But Osho’s vision was to help people become themselves. He’s not interested in creating an alternative society. He’s interested in people who go into the normal life and live beautifully wherever they find. In my opinion, what Einstein was to the 19th century, Osho will be to the 20th century. Instead of being about the outer cosmology, it will be about the inner cosmology.

Why was she so out for you? She claims that you were planning to give Osho euthanasia and that you had got him addicted to drugs and so forth. Is that all a lie? And if so, why did she try to have you killed?

Yeah, of course. The key was, she attacked his household and everybody in it and found any excuse she could to do that. She constantly hated the fact that we had access to Osho. We were a constant threat to her total monopoly on power.

Were you frightened during all this?
No, not really. I mean, you know, I wasn’t dead, I’m alive.

To what extent were you aware of the stuff that was happening in the wider community? You know, the salmonella poisonings and the assassination attempts. 

No one would have dreamed of it. She had a very, very little tight community. No one had a clue. By the time she left, everyone was horrified. It was kind of a pretty major moment. She just got in that plane and, I remember, she flew off in the middle of September. 1985. That was it, she was gone. Everyone’s like “What?” Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know? “Wow, she’s gone!” “Hey, it’s party time.”

I’ve talked to a lot of people who were on the commune and there are sort of mixed feelings about the film. What was it like for you to watch the Netflix version of it? 

Some of it was very beautiful. Though you didn’t really quite understand how it sort of got going to start with. They lay a very beautiful foundation of the background, but the specifics were a little loose. Let’s start with “guru.” What is a guru? Osho has spoken against gurus and religious leaders, and [against] this game of hierarchy and how God is the ultimate dictator and this endless business of creating middle men. He’s very precisely clear, “My whole effort is to leave you alone with no mediator.” You’re here because of your interest in meditation. You’re not here to be friends with each other. You’re not here to create some group. You’re not here because of each other, you’re here because of yourself. The bridge is single-file. So the whole idea of a cult is absolutely antithetical to everything he presents.

Then [this notion of] a sex cult, I mean … Osho’s understanding is very simple: [Sexuality is] your vital life energy. Very simple. And it’s completely natural. In order to grow spiritually, whatever you wanna call that, you cannot repress sexuality. One thing that he was very, very strong on was giving responsibility to women. That was, in a way, the most beautiful thing.

Sheela, oddly enough, has kind of become this feminist empowerment meme on the internet.
Yes, I saw all the “tough titties” stuff all over the place. She was strong. I mean, as a woman, she would take no crap from anybody. In today’s world, good on her.

Were you able to feel any sympathy for Jane (Shanti Badra) , who is sort of the only character in the story who seems to feel like she was sort of brainwashed and then later deprogrammed?

Well, you’re watching someone who’s completely unconscious. She was unconscious then, and she’s unconscious now, and all you can do is look at this person and go, “Well, you were dumb then, and you’re dumb now.”

Also, by the way, we haven’t mentioned the other famous subject: of course, his Rolls-Royces.

Osho thought: In a society obsessed with stuff, I can write, I can produce 600 books on meditation and no one is interested. But Get 93 Rolls-Royces and the world will never forget. Basically, here is this nonwhite male from India who wears a robe and a funny hat, and drives around the city where everyone wears red and doesn’t get paid, they’re all vegetarians with no interest in the family or private property, right in the middle of cowboy country — you could see how the inevitable game unfolds. But by having cars, and driving these cars, and having 93 of them in the country which has the biggest and the best — you know, ‘make America great again’ — if anyone’s going to have the most cars, we have to have the most cars. And here’s the nonwhite guy, he’s got more cars than we have. So it turns into kind of a joke about consumerism. Fantastic.

I know there’s been some controversy about Osho’s death and that you were with him at the time, with some people alleging that there was foul play involved. Can you give your own account of what happened?

So I’m saying to Osho, “We need proper intensive care now, should I call the cardiologist?” And he says, “No, existence has its timing.” So then you’re a doctor sitting there, like “Well, the guy says no to any further medical intervention and it’s his body and one thing he’s always been quite clear about, everyone has a right to their own body, no one else has any right to interfere.” When people go, “Someone must have killed him,” it’s like -  that’s such crap.

Did you ever feel that your ethical duties as a doctor conflicted with your devotion to Osho’s teachings?

No. He was really scientific. I mean, in a way, this is a really funny role, but in a way I was a research assistant, that’s really what I was.

Rashid Maxwell

Artist/painter and farmer living in England. Lived at Rajneeshpuram for four years.

Because of my agricultural experience, I was one of the first people to go to Rajneeshpuram. My job then was taking the land, which had been totally neglected and overgrazed, and getting the basics of agriculture started. Very soon after that I had many disagreements with Sheela, I never got on with her. It didn’t feel to me like she was intelligent, even. She was cunning, clever, but not intelligent.

The arguments were about policy. She said we should have chickens because we’d need lots of eggs, and I said, Yeah, we should have them all scattered around, and she said, No, put them all together. And I said then you have the likelihood of disease and you need to give them antibiotics. And she said, so give them antibiotics. And that was really not my way, I was an organic farmer. And there were more profound disagreements. Like, I did have contact with the Nike shoes guy in the documentary [rancher Bill Bowerman]. I had very nice contact with him: I went over to his ranch, we talked about growing grapes and having a vineyard, and he taught me how to roll cigarettes one-handed on a horse. But somehow I couldn’t and wouldn’t go along with Sheela’s aggression towards the neighbors, so within another three months, I was out of farming and gardening and in the pot room washing pots. I was very unhappy in the pot room because I felt like my dream of an environmental paradise was just lost, and she handed it over to someone who would be more obedient to her wishes.

I didn’t like or trust Sheela but none of us had any clue what was going on — the poisonings, the fire-bombing. It was inconceivable to me. After it all came out, we were all sort of wandering in shock for days. I just remember walking down one of the roads not knowing what I was doing, what, what, where am I?

The documentary — I felt quite queasy watching it. Actually like a feeling of nausea. I’m not very supportive of the film, people talk about it as being balanced, but it was balanced between villains and rednecks. It felt to me like a male, puritan, American movie, lavished with the usual ingredients of sex, guns, and money.

I went to Osho to have the rug pulled out from under my feet — the sort of comfortable rug that I was given in my education and my upbringing. I could go on forever about how important that experience was for me. I’m 80 and I just feel so happy, so rich, so free, so my life is so joyous. And I blame him for all that! He did the work on me. I also read a few days ago that 42 percent of millennials say they are engaged in meditation of one sort or another. So I think that’s amazing that that message, that understanding that we have struggled and fought and battled with — that they got it just like that. Meditation was the tool Osho gave us — stepping out of ego, and stepping out of the busy traffic of the mind.

https://youtu.be/RrqhGOndewk

Netflix Docuseries “Wild Wild Country” A Review

by Nick Allen

The latest must-binge original offering from Netflix comes in the shape of a six-part documentary series about a small religious movement (or cult, if you prefer) that moved into a small Oregon town in the 1980s. Under the wisdom of their then-silent Indian guru Bhagwan, a large swarm of Rajneeshees (made up seemingly of mostly white westerners, but with all of them dressed in bright red) turned a vacant ranch plot into their own utopia. It was a gobsmacking, full-functioning community that included rows of homes, a massive assembly hall, a pizza parlor, a dam and a private airstrip. But the construction of this self-made paradise proved to be just the beginning, as they clashed with the Oregonians who saw their size and growing influence as a threat, despite arriving in peace: biochemical warfare, assassination attempts, electoral chaos and much more ensued.

Easily one of the craziest documentaries I’ve ever seen, Chapman and Maclain Way’s six-part series “Wild Wild Country” boasts a profound narrative with intricate human beings, an amass of intellectual themes and more twists than you can count. Told chronologically and using 250+ hours of footage and extensive new interviews, it places you into the contrasting experiences of people in this bizarre saga, leaving you to wonder in part how such a story could have been so forgotten by American history. And after the six-plus hours of “Wild Wild Country” flies by, you won’t want an approach to this story any different or shorter than what the Ways do: The Ways know that they have the constructs of a great drama just as much an extremely potent list of discussion topics, and are able to make their presentation of these events the very definition of fascinating entertainment.

“Wild Wild Country” concerns the beginning of life, in the Rajneeshee sense, with an expansive spiritual awakening lead by someone who wants to create what he calls “The New Man.” As we hear from select members of the group, each who had a huge influence on the dramatic events that follow, there’s a nonpareil sense of the harmony, and how it gave Rajneeshees something deeper than family. “We really did feel like we were the chosen people,” one of them says. Throughout, they talk fondly about what Bhagwan’s teaching meant to them, and the purpose it gave them. But in the case of his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela, who speaks quietly in a dark room as if sharing the most mind-blowing bedtime story ever told, there’s a clear of the power the Rajneeshees had as an enterprise, for good and for evil. In just one of its offerings, “Wild Wild Country” essentially offers the full story of a true civilization, its glorious rise and unbelievable downfall.

Fear of the outsider is certainly one timeless theme within this tale, as exemplified by the unassuming but charismatic people who live in Antelope, Oregon, which was known for its population of 40 people, most of them retirees. The residents who speak on camera talk about the absolute culture shock of the Rajneeshees coming in next door, and it becomes clear that the fear only sparked more defensiveness that turned into aggression on both sides. The images seen in the docuseries’ beginning moments, of swarms of people in red strolling through their quiet Oregon town as if it were a peaceful invasion, are startling enough. But that evolves into more surprising tension, especially when the American legal system gets involved, and tries to find any bureaucratic way possible to shut down the Rajneeshees.

Designated as a “film” in the end credits, “Wild Wild Country” is broken into six parts with excellent cliffhangers leading into the next one, but fear not: it’s a binge-ready epic in which the filmmakers are dedicated to all major plot details; the juicier bits might be more exciting than the bureaucratic stuff, but the pacing of the story never drops out. Curiously, the Ways don’t introduce their subjects a second time as so many documentaries do, but that seems like an artistic statement itself: the people are all very memorable, and become symbols of their respective viewpoints. The talking head interviews add more to the story instead of normalizing the production, and like with the contemporary, excellent songs used to proclaim further storytelling inspiration, “Wild Wild Country” proves to be invigorating historical documentary filmmaking.

The size of “Wild Wild Country” especially pays off as the film explores so many huge and various issues: old vs. young; believers vs. nonbelievers; conservatism vs. free love; fear vs. compassion; the honest potential for perfection when humans are themselves imperfect. These all become more fascinating given the story’s complications between who is right and who is wrong in this story. The Ways never take a stance or simplify the issues.

As one of the Rajneeshees advises about the journey of following Bhagwan (Osho), “the truth lies within.” That might be the largest force within “Wild Wild Country,” the way its logic always goes back to the seed of belief, how a feeling deep in one’s gut can send a person on the wildest of journeys. Watching this documentary becomes a personal experience itself for the viewer, as the viewer is not only invited to take whichever side in this story, but their feelings towards these subjects are guaranteed to change from part to part. Hearing about this story in a way that’s equally vivid and surreal, you are faced with an endless amount of questions about what this all means, and what you would do if you were an Oregonian confronted with so many outsiders, or a Rajneeshee willing to die for what you believe in. By handling this story so intelligently and by opening its heart to a very complicated idea of good and evil, “Wild Wild Country” has a profound, mesmerizing power itself.