The Oregonian/OregonLive
March 3, 20202
March 3, 20202
The Rajneeshees used to belong only to Oregon.
Not really. The late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh started his sex-embracing spiritual-enlightenment movement in his native India, and attracted adherents from around the world, before moving to the Beaver State. But for more than three decades after Rajneesh left the U.S. in 1985, few Americans outside of Oregon had ever heard of him.
Then came the blockbuster 2018 Netflix documentary “Wild Wild Country.”
Suddenly people from coast to coast -- and beyond -- wanted to know every detail about the guru and his sprawling, central Oregon commune, which collapsed thanks to murder plots, arson, bombings, mass poisoning and other criminal acts and allegations.
During the last four years, there has been a torrent of articles about the Rajneeshees in Oregon, as well as a documentary about Rajneesh’s most determined enforcer, Ma Anand Sheela.
Now lawyer-turned-podcaster-turned-author Russell King brings forth what could be the definitive chronicle of the subject, “Rajneeshpuram: Inside the Cult of Bhagwan and Its Failed American Utopia.”
King says his book is about “the attraction to power in all its beguiling forms and how every utopia finds its victims.”
Quite so, but it’s the mystery at the heart of this bizarre episode that will reel in most readers: Who was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, really? And what was he really trying to accomplish in Oregon?
Good luck with those questions (the headstone of the guru’s grave in India states: “Never Born Never Died”), but at least his average follower is easier to figure out. A lot of hippie-idealists had seen their dreams for a better world obliterated in the 1970s, and “they wanted to retreat from the world,” says Doug Weiskopf, who had been a student antiwar activist at Portland State University before he ended up as an account man at Northwest Portland’s Northern Steel & Supply Co.
In 1982-83, his biggest client was the Rajneesh commune out at the former Muddy Ranch, he says.
Weiskopf made one trip to Antelope to check out the commune and was impressed by what Rajneesh’s sannyasins had accomplished, and how happy – and self-satisfied – they appeared to be.
“They bragged they had the highest percentage of PhDs of any town in the U.S.,” he says. “Fanaticism can happen to the smartest people.”
And smart or not, fanatics are dangerous.
In King’s “Rajneeshpuram,” we learn that Sheela epitomized the attraction to power. When Sheela decided that another woman in the movement -- Rajneesh’s personal assistant Ma Yoga Vivek -- had become a “problem,” Sheela and a group of conspirators “talked about car accidents, they talked about ambushes, they talked about piping lethal gas into Vivek’s trailer.”
Many more murderous plans would follow, King writes. A civil-court verdict in favor of former Rajneesh funder Helen Byron “led to fury,” said one of Sheela’s minions. “Just led to fury.”
Sheela immediately dispatched a team of assassins to Byron’s victory party to kill her with a cocktail of drugs. Byron survived the night only because she “was always surrounded,” King writes. “They couldn’t get close enough to inject her without somebody noticing.”
The story here is epic, the characters by turns fascinating, inspiring, heartbreaking. The Rajneeshees built an entire world for themselves out in rural Oregon, and they worked hard to bend the surrounding community to their will.
They established a presence in Portland as well, where their sex-is-enlightening philosophy aided the popularity of the nightclub they established at Southwest Salmon Street and Ninth Avenue. It was a place, an Oregonian columnist wrote, “where lonely guys could wander in for a late nightcap and suddenly find themselves doing the boogie-woogie with that most elusive of all breeds – women who actually said ‘Yes’ when asked whether they might care to dance.”
“I think one of the biggest draws for the ranch in Antelope,” Weiskopf says, “was the absolute freedom to have all the sex in the world you could ever want.”
Maybe so, but for Sheela and some other followers, the foremost draw was always the power, even when such fanatical ambition proved impossible to control.
Rajneesh himself seemed to recognize that risk better than anyone. When the authorities closed in and Rajneeshpuram began to fall apart, the commune’s leader would claim he knew nothing of Sheela’s various nefarious activities. But, behind her back, he had long called her “the atom bomb.”
-- Douglas Perry
dperry@oregonian.com
@douglasmperry
https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2022/03/rajneeshee-murder-plots-hardball-politics-uncovered-in-new-book-about-notorious-oregon-commune.html
Not really. The late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh started his sex-embracing spiritual-enlightenment movement in his native India, and attracted adherents from around the world, before moving to the Beaver State. But for more than three decades after Rajneesh left the U.S. in 1985, few Americans outside of Oregon had ever heard of him.
Then came the blockbuster 2018 Netflix documentary “Wild Wild Country.”
Suddenly people from coast to coast -- and beyond -- wanted to know every detail about the guru and his sprawling, central Oregon commune, which collapsed thanks to murder plots, arson, bombings, mass poisoning and other criminal acts and allegations.
During the last four years, there has been a torrent of articles about the Rajneeshees in Oregon, as well as a documentary about Rajneesh’s most determined enforcer, Ma Anand Sheela.
Now lawyer-turned-podcaster-turned-author Russell King brings forth what could be the definitive chronicle of the subject, “Rajneeshpuram: Inside the Cult of Bhagwan and Its Failed American Utopia.”
King says his book is about “the attraction to power in all its beguiling forms and how every utopia finds its victims.”
Quite so, but it’s the mystery at the heart of this bizarre episode that will reel in most readers: Who was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, really? And what was he really trying to accomplish in Oregon?
Good luck with those questions (the headstone of the guru’s grave in India states: “Never Born Never Died”), but at least his average follower is easier to figure out. A lot of hippie-idealists had seen their dreams for a better world obliterated in the 1970s, and “they wanted to retreat from the world,” says Doug Weiskopf, who had been a student antiwar activist at Portland State University before he ended up as an account man at Northwest Portland’s Northern Steel & Supply Co.
In 1982-83, his biggest client was the Rajneesh commune out at the former Muddy Ranch, he says.
Weiskopf made one trip to Antelope to check out the commune and was impressed by what Rajneesh’s sannyasins had accomplished, and how happy – and self-satisfied – they appeared to be.
“They bragged they had the highest percentage of PhDs of any town in the U.S.,” he says. “Fanaticism can happen to the smartest people.”
And smart or not, fanatics are dangerous.
In King’s “Rajneeshpuram,” we learn that Sheela epitomized the attraction to power. When Sheela decided that another woman in the movement -- Rajneesh’s personal assistant Ma Yoga Vivek -- had become a “problem,” Sheela and a group of conspirators “talked about car accidents, they talked about ambushes, they talked about piping lethal gas into Vivek’s trailer.”
Many more murderous plans would follow, King writes. A civil-court verdict in favor of former Rajneesh funder Helen Byron “led to fury,” said one of Sheela’s minions. “Just led to fury.”
Sheela immediately dispatched a team of assassins to Byron’s victory party to kill her with a cocktail of drugs. Byron survived the night only because she “was always surrounded,” King writes. “They couldn’t get close enough to inject her without somebody noticing.”
The story here is epic, the characters by turns fascinating, inspiring, heartbreaking. The Rajneeshees built an entire world for themselves out in rural Oregon, and they worked hard to bend the surrounding community to their will.
They established a presence in Portland as well, where their sex-is-enlightening philosophy aided the popularity of the nightclub they established at Southwest Salmon Street and Ninth Avenue. It was a place, an Oregonian columnist wrote, “where lonely guys could wander in for a late nightcap and suddenly find themselves doing the boogie-woogie with that most elusive of all breeds – women who actually said ‘Yes’ when asked whether they might care to dance.”
“I think one of the biggest draws for the ranch in Antelope,” Weiskopf says, “was the absolute freedom to have all the sex in the world you could ever want.”
Maybe so, but for Sheela and some other followers, the foremost draw was always the power, even when such fanatical ambition proved impossible to control.
Rajneesh himself seemed to recognize that risk better than anyone. When the authorities closed in and Rajneeshpuram began to fall apart, the commune’s leader would claim he knew nothing of Sheela’s various nefarious activities. But, behind her back, he had long called her “the atom bomb.”
-- Douglas Perry
dperry@oregonian.com
@douglasmperry
https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2022/03/rajneeshee-murder-plots-hardball-politics-uncovered-in-new-book-about-notorious-oregon-commune.html
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