Nov 15, 1985 · ''I never want to come back to this country again,'' Rajneesh told the judge after Leavy asked whether he understood the terms of the plea agreement. His lawyer, Brian O`Neill, said Rajneesh was...
Apr 06, 2018 · Also in 1981, Rajneesh’s group purchased the approximately 64,000-acre Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon’s Jefferson and Wasco counties, where John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn had once filmed a movie.
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 survived...
Apr 03, 2018 · The now-retired lawyer is still devoted to Osho (the name Bhagwan adopted after returning to India), he visits the Indian ashram regularly, and has a “conscious coaching” practice. But because of...
Oct 15, 1985 · 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 ...
SwitzerlandSince completing her sentence, Sheela has moved to Switzerland, where she has since settled down for a much calmer life. The Oregonian reported that that Sheela operates two homes for the mentally disabled, where she and her staff members care for a total of 32 patients.Mar 16, 2018
SwitzerlandThese days, the now 71-year-old Sheela goes by Sheela Birnstiel, having taken the name of her late husband, Urs Birnstiel. She lives in Switzerland, where she has resided since the late 1980s.Apr 28, 2021
Jane Stork (a.k.a. Ma Shanti B) Per her website bio, she now resides in Germany, and strongly encourages people to “meet” her in the Netflix docuseries in which she is so prominently featured.Mar 27, 2018
Swami Krishna Deva: Mayor of Rajneeshpuram, he pleaded guilty and went into the Federal Witness Program. He served two years in federal prison and now lives in California under his given name of David Knapp, handling real estate investments and a small international charity founded with another ex-Rajneeshee.
ninety-fourThe huge inflows of revenue made the Bhagwan a very rich man. Portraying himself as an enlightened being, the Bhagwan decided that the only car in which he would be seen was a Rolls Royce. But he wasn't merely content on owning just one. He amassed ninety-four of them.
On September 13, 1985, Sheela fled to Europe. A few days later Rajneesh "accused her of arson, wiretapping, attempted murder, and mass poisonings." He also asserted that Sheela had written the book titled Rajneeshism and published it under his name.
He is married. His wife is from “a really good Irish Catholic background, and I love that”. They have three children, aged 17, 16 and nine.Apr 24, 2018
As for the Bhagwan's original ashram, it is still standing in India, with a few upgrades. You can still go to the resort — renamed Osho — and live by his teachings, signature red robes and all. You can visit Osho today, or at least visit their website.Mar 15, 2018
three yearsStork was convicted of the attempted murder of Rajneesh's physician in 1986, and served almost three years in jail.
Osho was opposed to marriage. He considered it to be self-limiting and restrictive. He never married and consistently said it was just a form of self-sabotage wherein you tie yourself down by getting “legally attached” in a way that lowers your spiritual potential.Sep 12, 2021
billionaire Dennis WashingtonThe 64,000-acre expanse where the Rajneeshees lived was eventually purchased by billionaire Dennis Washington in 1991. After encountering zoning problems, Washington donated the property to Young Life, a Colorado-based Christian youth group with branches throughout the world.Apr 6, 2018
His wealth came from donations by followers both within Rajneeshpuram and across the world. In India, he made money from wealthy locals, but, as his popularity grew in the West, he started making his fortunes directly from followers across the globe.Aug 14, 2018
In 1971, he adopted the title "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh". Shree is a polite form of address roughly equivalent to the English "Sir"; Bhagwan means "blessed one", used in Indian traditions as a term of respect for a human being in whom the divine is no longer hidden but apparent.
Rajneesh died on 19 January 1990, aged 58, at the ashram in Pune, India. The official cause of death was heart failure, but a statement released by his commune said that he died because "living in the body had become a hell" after an alleged poisoning in US jails. His ashes were placed in his newly built bedroom in Lao Tzu House at the ashram in Pune. The epitaph reads, "Never Born – Never Died Only visited this planet Earth between December 11, 1931 and January 19, 1990".
Rajneesh became critical of traditional religion, took an interest in many methods to expand consciousness, including breath control, yogic exercises, meditation, fasting, the occult, and hypnosis.
Rajneesh emphasised the importance of meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration, courage, creativity, and humour —qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious traditions, and socialisation.
Rajneesh believed humanity was threatened with extinction due to over-population, impending nuclear holocaust and diseases such as AIDS, and thought many of society's ills could be remedied by scientific means.
In his early days as Acharya Rajneesh, a correspondent once asked for his " Ten Commandments ". In reply, Rajneesh said that it was a difficult matter because he was against any kind of commandment, but "just for fun", set out the following: 1 Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also. 2 There is no God other than life itself. 3 Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere. 4 Love is prayer. 5 To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment. 6 Life is now and here. 7 Live wakefully. 8 Do not swim—float. 9 Die each moment so that you can be new each moment. 10 Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.
The property was a 64,229-acre (260 km 2) ranch, previously known as "The Big Muddy Ranch" and located across two counties ( Wasco and Jefferson ). It was renamed "Rancho Rajneesh" and Rajneesh moved there on 29 August.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Oregon commune dissolved in the months after Rajneesh left the country and remained abandoned for years afterward, falling into foreclosure. (Strangely, some of the group’s barns and mobile homes were sold to another religious group, this one in Montana.)
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.
Such seeming friendliness faded as the Rajneeshes pushed first to incorporate their ranch as its own city, Rajneeshpuram, and then — through quirks in the state’s election laws — used their numbers to take control of Antelope’s city council, at one point officially renaming it after their leader.
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.
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.
The once-hubristic mayor of Rajneeshpuram fell hard from grace after flipping on Bhagwan and the commune to cut a deal with law enforcement. And though Wild Wild Country implies that he was swept off into witness protection, Knapp actually served two years in federal prison for his role in the group’s sophisticated immigration fraud. It’s no easy task to track his current residence, but curiously, there was a David Knapp who founded an El Segundo, California-based mortgage-brokerage firm in 1985 (right around the time he was working with the U.S. Attorneys office toward immunity) called Trust Capital. And public records show that there is a 69-year-old David Berry Knapp who lives in El Segundo today and was born in 1948. And per FBI records (which also divulge all those beans Knapp spilled on his fellow commune members), Knapp graduated from high school in 1967, which about adds up. Then again, Knapp would have been lucky to survive at all, given that there was allegedly at least one plot to kill him while he was incarcerated.
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.
And public records show that there is a 69-year-old David Berry Knapp who lives in El Segundo today and was born in 1948. And per FBI records (which also divulge all those beans Knapp spilled on his fellow commune members), Knapp graduated from high school in 1967, which about adds up.
According to one account of the Rajneesh rise and fall and resurrection, Ma Prem — the ex-spouse of Godfather producer Albert S. Ruddy who eventually supplanted Sheela as Bhagwan’s secretary and fled with him to India following his 1985 conviction — was still functioning in a secretarial capacity for Osho Commune International via Sedona, Arizona, as of 2010. (This, despite testifying years earlier that her former commune mates Sheela and Jane attempted to murder her husband and Bhagwan’s doctor, Swami Devaraj.) Although, another telling has it that she parted ways with the larger Osho sect following Bhagwan’s death. (And that version is corroborated here .) There is consensus, however, that she passed away herself in August 2014.
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.
Sheela would ultimately plead guilty to a variety of charges, including conspiracy, wiretapping, and attempted murder.
She served two years of a 20-year sentence, and paid a $400,000 fine. After she was released, the Way brothers say she cleaned houses in Spain, worked as a dog walker, and with the help of her family, purchased a small Swiss retirement home for the mentally disabled.
While Sheela may have set much of the Rajneeshee criminal activity in motion, she certainly didn’t act alone. But the directors say some sannyasins featured in the series were more complicit than others. Swami Prem Niren (a.k.a. Philip J. Toelkes ), now 73 years old, was the guru’s lawyer until 1983.
Finally, we get to a few story lines that go unresolved in Wild Wild Country, starting with former Antelope mayor John Silvertooth —who says in the series that he was the first to contact then-Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer with unshredded Rajneeshee documents he had found at the city dump. But Jon Bowerman, Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman’s son, thinks it was his family’s connections to the now-deceased Oregon official that brought the Rajneeshees to his attention.
Maclain says Frohnmayer’s deputy, William Gary, would only acknowledge the receipt of letters from the Bowermans, and that he was aware of what Silvertooth sent Frohnmayer. The documents shown in the series were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Still, the woman who worked with a handpicked group of female assistants (nicknamed the “Moms ”) and former mayor Swami Krishna Deva to arm sanyassins and drug and eventually discard homeless people imported to win the county election, among other crimes, tries to justify her actions in Wild Wild Country.
She may have started out as Frank Underwood’s cool, if slightly icy, wife who stands on the sidelines, but Claire Underwood (played by Robin Wright) quickly transforms into the show’s stealthy Lady Macbeth with a chic pixie cut, delivering quiet, but shocking blows to her enemies.
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.
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.
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. /.
Sheela, who has been living in West Germany, has denied the accusations against her. Hasya, 48, is president of the Rajneesh Foundation International. She is the former wife of Hollywood filmmaker Hal Ruddy, who produced the Godfather.
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.
Swami Devaraj and his wife, Prem Hasya, the personal secretary to Rajneesh, were the first witnesses summoned before the seven-member jury. They appeared at the Wasco County Courthouse decked out in the distinctive red and purple clothing that has become a trademark of the Rajneesh movement. Advertisement.
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.
In 1993, in a standoff with government officials, more than 75 Branch Davidians died in a building fire in Waco, Texas, together with their leader David Koresh. All of these groups, and many more less prominent cult organizations, have some things in common.
If you look historically at different types of cults, there’s always an indoctrination period where the cult leader is going to form a bond with people. Once they have that bond, now they can get inside of someone’s head, because now those people start to trust that person.
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.”.
The cult leader wants to control people, to a certain degree. When you look at people who run these organizations, if you look at the more historically famous ones, they had a need to control people, and when that control got pushed up against, they pushed back.
If you can’t attract people to you, then you’re going to be hard-pressed to form a cult. Beyond that, it’s going to depend. You have to understand people, you gotta know what’s going on inside of their heads, you gotta talk to them, you gotta be able to pull information out of them. Those are skills.