Jan 12, 2016 · Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (né Chandra Mohan Jain) was born on December 11, 1931, in Kuchwada, India. He lived with his grandparents during his early youth and then with his parents and was an ...
Mar 27, 2018 · U.S. Attorney Charles Turner. Photo: Netflix. The man who brought down Bhagwan (and Sheela and others), and who was allegedly targeted for assassination by those within Rajneeshpuram, nearly ...
Jan 19, 1990 · Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also called Osho or Acharya Rajneesh, original name Chandra Mohan Jain, (born December 11, 1931, Kuchwada [now in Madhya Pradesh], India—died January 19, 1990, Pune), Indian spiritual leader who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, individual devotion, and sexual freedom. As a young intellectual, Rajneesh visited …
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 “respectful.”
Apr 25, 2018 · Cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers in India. When Ma Anand Sheela first met the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in his apartment in Mumbai in 1968, she hugged him and cried ...
Ma Anand Sheela | |
---|---|
Known for | 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack |
Title | Personal Secretary to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh |
Term | 1981–1985 |
Movement | Rajneesh (Osho) |
Toelkes was the director of the Rajneesh Legal Services Corporation and later mayor of Rajneeshpuram, succeeding Krishna Deva. After his first marriage ended, he remarried Ma Prem Isabel, director of public relations for Rajneeshpuram.
After traveling to Pune and meeting with Rajneesh, he quit his job and relocated to the newly-established Rajneeshpuram commune in Wasco County, Oregon. From 1981 to 1990, Toelkes acted as Rajneesh 's personal attorney, until the latter's death.
University of San Francisco ( BA, JD) Philip John Toelkes, also known as Swami Prem Niren and Philip Niren Toelkes, is an American lawyer and follower of Rajneesh who served as the second mayor of Rajneeshpuram from 1985 until the commune's disbandment in 1986.
After graduating from college and claiming to have found enlightenment, in 1970, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh introduced the practice of "dynamic meditation" and became a spiritual teacher and began to attract a significant following. When his controversial teachings put him repeatedly in conflict with Indian authorities, Rajneesh and his followers fled to a ranch in Oregon, where they attempted to establish a commune. However, conflicts with the local community there resulted in Rajneesh and members of his group turning to crime to achieve their ends, and in 1985, Rajneesh was arrested for immigration fraud. After pleading guilty, he was deported to India. He died on January 19, 1990, in Pune, India.
After several of his commune leaders fled to avoid prosecution for their crimes, in 1985, police arrested Rajneesh, who was himself attempting to flee the United States to escape charges of immigration fraud.
In 1951, Rajneesh graduated from high school and started attending Hitkarini College in Jabalpur but was forced to transfer to D.N. Jain College after his disruptive behavior put him at odds with one of his professors.
Among his teachings was the notion that sex was the first step toward achieving "superconsciousness.".
In the process, he became something of a pariah and earned himself the nickname "the sex guru.". In 1970, Rajneesh introduced the practice of "dynamic meditation," which, he asserted, enables people to experience divinity. The prospect enticed young Westerners to come reside at his ashram in Pune, India, and become Rajneesh's devout disciples, ...
including murder, wiretapping, voter fraud, arson and a mass salmonella poisoning in 1984 that affected more than 700 people. After several of his commune leaders fled to avoid prosecution for their crimes, in 1985, police arrested Rajneesh, who was himself attempting to flee the United States to escape charges of immigration fraud. During his subsequent trial, Rajneesh pleaded guilty of immigration charges, realizing that a plea bargain was the only way he'd be allowed to return to India.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Photo: Matthew Naythons/Liaison. Facing ongoing pressure from government authorities and traditional religious groups, in 1981 Rajneesh fled to the United States with 2,000 of his disciples, settling on a 100-square-mile ranch in ...
The man who brought down Bhagwan (and Sheela and others), and who was allegedly targeted for assassination by those within Rajneeshpuram, nearly survived to see Wild Wild Country come to life. Turner passed away relatively peacefully this January at the age of 82. He retired from the U.S. Attorney’s Office not long after successfully prosecuting the aforementioned, and lived in the greater Seattle area from 1993 until his death.
Jon Bowerman. Photo: Netflix. The proud rancher and son of Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman says in Wild Wild Country that he tends to relish a fight. And in recent years leading up to filming interviews for the documentary, he was nothing if not tested.
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 ’s 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 Bhagwan’s 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.
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.
In 1985 Rajneesh pleaded guilty to immigration fraud and was deported from the United States. He was refused entry to 21 countries before returning to Pune, where his ashram soon grew to 15,000 members. In 1989 Rajneesh adopted the Buddhist name Osho.
In 1966 Rajneesh resigned from his university post and became a guru (spiritual guide) and a teacher of meditation. In the early 1970s he initiated people into the order of sannyasi s, who traditionally renounced the world and practiced asceticism.
Reinterpreting the idea of being a sannyasi in terms of detachment rather than asceticism, Rajneesh taught his disciples to live fully in the world without being attached to it. The first Westerners came to Rajneesh in the early 1970s, and in 1974 the new headquarters of his movement was established in Pune.
He studied philosophy at the University of Jabalpur, earning a B.A. in 1955; he began teaching there in 1957, after earning an M.A. from the University of Saugar.
mysticism, the practice of religious ecstasies (religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them.…
In 1981, with the help of Sheela, who became his personal assistant, Rajneesh bought a ranch nearby the tiny town of Antelope, Oregon, and moved his cult there, creating a whole new city named Rajneeshpuram.
Rajneesh preached to his followers about the idea of creating awakened people who live in harmony with their surroundings. But his cult also forced members to donate large quantities of money, while creating an isolated community that kept tight control over its members.
Photo: Netflix. When Ma Anand Sheela first met the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in his apartment in Mumbai in 1968, she hugged him and cried. “My whole head melted,” Sheela says in the Netflix docuseries Wild Wild Country, which discusses Rajneesh and his cult. “My life was complete. My life was fulfilled.”.
Rajneesh was just one of many cult leaders who have captivated — and horrified — people throughout history. In 1978, cult leader Jim Jones urged more than 900 of his followers to kill themselves by drinking poison in Jonestown, Guyana.
But as Ronit Feinglass Plank notes in The Atlantic, the series doesn’t really explain what the day-to-day life was like in Rajneeshpuram. And it doesn’t really address how it’s possible that thousands of people could just give up their lives, wear only maroon clothes, and blindly follow one man. What are the psychological mechanisms at play?
The Netflix documentary doesn’t show this, but Win McCormack, who wrote about the cult in the 1980s, points out in The New Republic that Rajneesh’s followers were encouraged to get sterilized or have abortions. (For more on Rajneesh and his cult, read The Oregonian ’s 20-part investigation from the 1980s.) Rajneesh was just one of many cult leaders ...
In the ’90s, 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.
Beyond that, though, Rajneesh stayed silent except for communicating with his deputy and longtime secretary, Ma Anand Sheela.
Against this social and political conflict came more serious altercations: In 1983, a Portland hotel owned by the group was bombed by an Islamic militant (though no one was killed) while in 1984, hundreds of residents of the Wasco County seat where the Rajneesh ranch was located became ill from salmonella infections.
Rajneesh died in 1990 at 58 from heart disease after returning to Poona, according to the Times. Before his death, he had told his followers to refer to him simply as “Osho.”
Later investigation discovered that 10 restaurants in The Dalles had had their salad bars infected by followers of Rajneesh in an attempt to suppress voter turnout and ensure the group could gain seats on the county commission.
At various points the commune was described as housing approximately 1,400, 3,500 and 5,000 people; with Rajneesh representatives maintaining to media that there were some 200,000 followers worldwide. RAJNEESHEES.
His followers, also called Rajneeshees, wore only clothes in the sun-like colors of red, orange and purple. Meanwhile the Bhagwan was known for most of his years in Oregon for his daily appearances in one of his many Rolls-Royces, reportedly owning between a few dozen and as many as 91.
The personal doctor to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who claims... THE DALLES, Ore. -- The personal doctor to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who claims he was poisoned by former top disciples of the guru's sect, testified as the first witness Tuesday in a special grand jury investigation.
Hasya was scheduled as the second witness. The special jury of five men and two women was called to investigate accusations leveled by Rajneesh against his former personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, and other leaders of his sect who left the commune last month and fled to Europe.
The Rajeeshees are seeking $136,000 from the Harveys in disputed wages. Harvey is conutersuing for more than $3 million claiming defamation and invasion of privacy by members of the commune. Back to Article. /.
Also scheduled to testify today were Ma Deva Barkha, Rajneeshpuram chief of police, and Dyan John, president of the Rajneesh Investment Corp., and manager of the guru's collection of Rolls Royce automobiles. The jury was meeting under tight security on the second floor of the courthouse.
Abraham refused to grant a postponement of an Oct. 29 trial date for a suit and countersuit by the comune organizations and Robert and Gle nda Harvey. Harvey was foreman of the 64,000 acre former cattle ranch where the guru and his followers now live.
Bhagwan Rajneesh was addicted to drugs, as revealed by former Rajneeshees in various interviews. He used drugs, particularly valium and nitrous oxide, on a regular basis, to deal with the pain of various health issues.
Bhagwan Rajneesh allegedly owned over 90 Rolls Royces . A man fond of luxuries, he'd famously drive around the area in his favourite car while his devotees would stand on the road in massive cues waiting to catch a glimpse of the guru. Source: The Plaid Zebra. 2.
Rajneeshpuram was allegedly methodically wiretapped, for the Rajneeshees feared the leak of vital information. Unknown to those in the commune, Sheela had established a secret listening post near the commune's telephone center & all calls into and out of Rajneeshpuram were tapped. Source: Pinterest. 6.
Here are 10 notorious things that happened in and around Rajneeshpuram: 1. Bhagwan Rajneesh allegedly owned over 90 Rolls Royces .
Rajneeshees apparently arranged over 400 sham marriages to evade US immigration laws. This was termed as the 'largest recorded marriage fraud in USA', one of the major accusations against Bhagwan Rajneesh and his commune. Source: Vanity Fair. 7.
8. Ma Anand Sheela invited over 3000 homeless people to Rajneeshpuram but without their knowledge, they were all allegedly kept drugged with Haldol.
The weapons included .357 Magnum revolvers, semiautomatic Uzi carbines, and Galil assault rifles, along with tear gas grenades and barricade-penetrating shells for police riot guns, sourced from over 25 dealers.