Wild Wild Country is a Netflix documentary series about the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, his one-time personal assistant Ma Anand Sheela, and their community of followers in the Rajneeshpuram community located in Wasco County, Oregon, US. It was released on Netflix on March 16, 2018, after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. The title of the âŚ
Oct 31, 2018 ¡ After receiving some backlash for dressing up as Rajneeshee cult members for Halloween, lawyer and former member Philip Toelkes says he thought Kate Hudson and her pals were ârespectful.â
Mar 27, 2018 ¡ Wild Wild Country, the compelling Netflix docuseries produced by Jay and Mark Duplass and directed by Chapman and Maclain Way, unpacks the Byzantine saga of an Indian commune that moved into a ...
Law360 (May 4, 2018, 10:16 PM EDT) -- On the latest episode of Law360's Pro Say podcast we're joined by Robert Weaver, one of the lawyers featured âŚ
Wild Wild Country | |
---|---|
Original release | March 16, 2018 |
Though somehow, things only got more provocative from there. In 1994, Weaver defended none other than Tonya Harding. Weaver now helps companies and persons in deep water with the government for white-collar crimes for a Portland-based firm, but was also notably recognized by the ACLU for pro bono services to Guantanamo detainees. However, his successful work on behalf of scandalized ex-Portland mayor Sam Adams is believed to have cost him a judgeship.
Jane Stork (a.k.a. Ma Shanti B) When Stork recalled having initiated the process of breaking the spell upon leaving Rajneeshpuram, she wasnât simply turning a phrase. She was also subliminally promoting her own tome about those times with Bhagwan, titled â you guessed it â Breaking the Spell.
Now living as Sheela Birnstiel (she remarried in 1984, but was widowed nine years later) in a small Swiss village not far from Zurich, the fiery former secretary for Rajneesh commune founder Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later Osho) made quite the pivot. As revealed at Wild Wild Country âs end, she now runs a caretaking and nursing facility for older individuals dealing with a range of aging-related disorders, a kind of small-scale analog to the sprawling rural ashram she helped erect by Bhagwanâs side. Sheela has also engaged in Dadaist theater and written a memoir of her time with Bhagwan, which is perhaps why she was so worn out from rehashing details by the time the Ways were done filming her.
The town of Antelope was just outside of where Rajneesh and his "sannyasins" settled on an expansive ranch. The 60-person town was most unwelcoming of its new, New Age-y neighbors â and those neighbors retaliated to such intolerance with great force. Advertisement. The documentary series explores how a 1983 bombing of a Rajneeshpuram-owned hotel, ...
For Niren, who spoke extensively in the documentary, Rajneeshpuram was a community ruined by intolerance. At the end of Wild, Wild Country, Niren declares that he is working on his own book â one that will likely be more pro-Rajneesh than Stork's memoir. Advertisement.
As Rajneeshâs right-hand woman, Sheela was largely responsible for spreading the guruâs wishes to those living in the commune (which she also managed), as well as to the naysayers outside of the community. Sheela first met Rajneesh when she was just a teenager, and went on to do anything she could to protect him and his legacy over the years â including orchestrating a bio-terror attack and plotting murder. It was she who found the space in Oregon, and it was Sheela who represented the guru in the media. However, when it became apparent that her beloved leader had fallen deep into drugs, she was forced to sever ties with him and she was eventually replaced.
The guru , whose birth name was Chandra Mohan Jain, was the spiritual leader of the Rajneesh movement, or the sannyasins, as his followers were called. He got his start in India during the â60s and â70s, when he traveled and spoke out against socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and orthodox religion. He began amassing worldwide followers thanks to his more lenient views on sexuality and relationships, his penchant for wild dancing, and his unique âtransformational toolsâ of meditation that he brought to those looking for enlightenment. Before long he was referred to by some as a godâŚalbeit one who defended Hitler and took all of his followersâ money.
Fearing arrest himself, Rajneesh boarded a Lear Jet and tried to flee the country. He was arrested and jailed, and pleaded guilty to immigration crimes in exchange for a big fine and deportation. State and federal investigators rushed in, and once-loyal insiders easily flipped.
The charges included attempted murder, assault, arson, immigration fraud, wiretapping and conspiracy.â.
Over the next few years, Dara and thousands like her would travel to rural Oregon with Rajneesh, and build a sprawling commune in his name. The lure of the cult would fracture Daraâs already fragile family, and even now, some 33 years after I first met them, they are still healing. Advertisement.
On the pages of fan websites still dedicated to Rajneesh â he died in 1990 and is now known as âOshoâ â the reviews are pouring in. âWatched four parts already. Even worse than I thought,â former sannyasin Dorothee Bull writes on a pro-Rajneesh Facebook page. âBhagwan was a politician playing the power game.â.
Bhagwanâs top aide, the vicious Ma Anand Sheela, quit and ran off to Europe under a cloud. After a three-and-a-half-year period of self-imposed silence, an enraged Bhagwan gathered the media to denounce her. âSheela and her group tried to kill three people,â Bhagwan said. âThese people are absolute criminals.â.
David met Rajneesh on a trip to India in 1978, and the experience was profound. Back on the Rutgers campus, David began dressing in orange, wearing a beaded necklace with Bhagwanâs photo on it and insisting that he be called Swami Das Anudas.
In the â90s, two British followers of Rajneesh were convicted for conspiring to murder a U.S. attorney general in retaliation for his investigation of the group. By that point, however, Rajneesh himself had already died in India, where he relocated after being deported from America after a criminal guilty plea.
Rajneesh and his thousands of followers made headlines throughout the '80s after opening a large commune in a remote part of Oregon. By Adam Carlson. April 06, 2018 09:36 AM. There are few aspects of the story of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his Oregon commune that donât sound too strange to be true.
Rajneesh â born in India around 1932 â came to America in 1981 already the leader of an eponymous religious group that he had founded in 1974, in Poona, India.
Such seeming friendliness faded as the Rajneeshes pushed first to incorporate their ranch as its own city, Rajneeshpuram, and then â through quirks in the stateâs election laws â used their numbers to take control of Antelopeâs city council, at one point officially renaming it after their leader.
Sheela, long the groupâs public face during Rajneeshâs years of silence, abruptly left the ranch in 1985 and later pleaded guilty in connection with the large-scale poisoning, among other charges, for which she served about two years in prison.
The space, which covered about 100 square miles a few hours east of Portland, soon became home to thousands of Rajneeshâs sannyasins, or followers, many of whom came from upper- and middle-class families in America and Europe.