I never knew much about the cult, but when I was in high school/college, I used to see large ads by the Bhagwan in major mainstream magazines like Newsweek.
His ads usually consisted of his beaming, beatific face with a weird, nonsensical essay about how happiness lies in combining the wisdom of Buddha with that of Zorba the Greek (I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!).
Ads like that weren’t cheap, so he must have had a ton of money once.
Same here. I didn’t know anything about it until Forensic Files did an episode on the salad bar poisoning.
My daughter raved about the series and I love true-crime stuff, so I’ve put it on my list. However, I can only follow one Netflix series at a time, and I have to finish 3% first.
Yes, I remember them. I was living in an American Zen Buddhist monastery at the time of the Rashneeshis. There was a lot of that sort of thing going around, back then. The exotic religion of the East/charismatic guru/gullible earnest western followers thing.
Some groups persisted through their scandals and follies and came out the other side into sustainable normality (became more like a religion, in other words), and some went straight off the deep end, but few as resoundingly as those poor souls.
Haven’t seen the film and probably won’t. I do not have any fascination for that shit, I am long ago done with it.
Really enjoyed this series. The absolutely insane escalation of conflict and the fact that there’s so much footage of everything makes it a really neat time capsule.
I’ve got one episode left (which I’ll get around to at some point) and I noticed that as well. Same for Jonestown and the Branch Dividians at Waco, tons of [home movie type] footage from them as well.
It was an interesting series but it could have easily been edited to 5 episodes with the given information. What would have been interesting was to know what was happening the whole time he was “quiet”. Was he really or just publicly?
This is something I wonder about, too. Was Sheela simply taking advantage of his self-imposed isolation to build her own power profile or was he actually ordering all of the bad stuff Sheela was authorizing?
I had a book from their leader and the only thing I got from it besides a ton of dirty jokes disguised as parables was that overachieving didn’t get you much
I thought it was stated that when he was quiet/silent, it just meant that he didn’t do any public speaking or leave his house. Sheela (and maybe some of the rest of the inner circle) still talked to him regularly.
It’s hard to tell, it seems everything about them is reactionary or ‘reactionary’. They were perfectly nice…until the town turned on them, then they defended themselves. I think both Sheela and Bagwhan stated similar things, that the other started it.
Maybe that’s the entire problem, they were all acting like 3 year olds. When things got heated with the town, Sheela did the talk show circuit to very specifically say they will retaliate if they’re attacked.
It’s like no one there understands that if even you technically haven’t done anything, if you put your finger 2 inches from someones face and yell ‘i’m not touching you’, you’re going to get slapped sooner or later.
I watched and enjoyed this.
I think that it raises some questions about voter suppression. It was certainly unethical to bring in large numbers of homeless people for the purpose of overwhelming the local vote, and I understand the locals wanting to fight it, but was it really legal for them to not allow the registration of new residents?
Both sides acted poorly at times but obviously the Rajneeshi lost any moral high ground by poisoning a salad bar.
I enjoyed the series, but when it was over my wife commented on the lack of pregnant women or babies in a cult with such an emphasis on promiscuity. I looked into it and women who became pregnant were given the choice of abortion or excommunication. The children who were there (no children were born in Rhashneeshpuram, the ones living there arrived with their parents) were sexually abused, particularly the girls. A lot of the women were pressured into sterilization surgery as well. I think this issue being left out of the series is a serious omission.
Wow, I couldn’t disagree more and I have to agree with another poster who said that while the cult wasn’t good, the towns people were closed minded, xenophobic and generally not open to them at all. I thought they came off worse as a group than the cult did and that’s saying something.
Can you give me one example of where the people of Antelope were “even tempered?”
Sure. To me, all of the residents interviewed for the documentary (not in the old news clips) the people sounded even-tempered. They didn’t sound as angry or upset about what had happened as Sheela, even. I did think the people from the old news clips did seem upset and reactionary, no doubt. But even some of them seemed like they were trying to be reasonable. Same goes for both sides.
They managed to not attempt mass murder.
I guess that supports my point. Years later, after they got their way, the towns people are even tempered and happy. Why wouldn’t they be?
But at the time those people are having all that sex (ohhhh) they are destroying the town (how we’re not really sure), we need to get the inspectors up there, we aren’t going to let them vote, etc. I honestly don’t remember any of the clips of the towns people (at that time) being level headed. I couldn’t be wrong.
I felt that if there was more of a live and let live attitude, it would have been fine. But gosh darn we can’t have any of those outsiders here!
There was a fair amount of intolerance and xenophobia, sure. But the cultists really had violated zoning regulations, and for a “enlightened and spiritual” group they had a major lack of empathy. If they had worked at becoming good neighbors, the whole thing would have been avoided. Buying the only local cafe and turning it into a vegetarian restaurant isn’t going to make you friends in any small town.
Johnny Ecks, you may be right. And it’s difficult if not impossible to know who shot first. My gut from watching it just seemed as though the townspeople just didn’t like the outsiders and noting was going to change that.
Let’s take the zoning regulations. I have property on a lake with some others (about 15 of us) and we’re all from out of state. If we do anything out of the ordinary, the zoning guy is up our asses in a heart beat. But there are zoning issues all over the county that are by the “townies” that are ignored and ignored. The zoning regulations that the Raj’s wanted to do were an issue because the townies wanted them to be, not because they had any real impact to anyone.
There was a conflict between the towns people and the cultistis for sure. Perhaps the towns people came off as xenophobic and conservative to their detriment, however no matter how unwelcoming and conservative the people of Antelope might have been it does not justify the spreading of salmonella throughout basically every restaurant in the region as a response.
The Rajneeshees didn’t just contravene local zoning laws, they attempted to poison the local populace in an effort to keep them from voting- and plotted to murder a government agent in order to keep him from investigating their activities so their cult could carry on with business as usual.
And as to that sex(ohhhh) if you look at my previous post you will see that the Rajneeshees had no problem forcing sex upon children who were dragged to their compound, not to mention coercing women there into abortions and sterilization.
I would say that the documentary goes out of its way to portray the cult as something benign when in fact it was something evil. The people of Antelope were right to oppose it.
The cult may have been sexually abusing children and tried to murder a bunch of people, but the townsfolk seemed xenophobic so I think both sides are equally at fault here.
What the … the towns people were 100% correct not to be “open” to this group. I mean, the group did try out biological warfare against them, right? 