RedHanded - Episode 311 - Bhagwan Rajneesh: The Rolls-Royce Driving Sex Guru

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

In July 1981, the 40 residents of Antelope, Oregon watched on in bemusement as their rural village was descended upon by an Indian guru and thousands of his followers. Little did they know at the time, that these maroon-robed chanting hippies and their money-loving spiritual leader would go on to overthrow the local government, attempt wide-scale voter fraud, plot to fill a plane with explosives and eventually, carry out the most significant act of bioterrorism in US history.This is the real story of Bhagwan Rajneesh, and how he managed to amass a global following of devotees who were ready to do anything for him… See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Where I am sweaty. So sweaty. I've got the mortgage sweats. Oh, the mortgage morbs. The dreaded mortgage measles, whatever we want to call them. Basically, I was just saying, Hannah, being self-employed is great until you want a mortgage.

And then banks are like, sorry, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do what? For who? Yeah. You what now? Murder? Get out.

And yeah, it's just a fucking nightmare. But all is in hand. Interest rates are going up this evening. Surprise, surprise. Yeah. My mortgage advisor was like, I know we said we had at least a day, but could you get me all of these things immediately? And then I emailed my accountant and then I got an out of office and I was like, no,

not today. But anyway, it's being handled yeah i believe something that's not being handled that's a terrible segue i can't do it i couldn't do it couldn't segue into this something that was handled terribly was the netflix documentary world world country and also the british leaving india which is what we covered on this week's shorthand you got there in the end which is over on amazon music you can go listen to that because of course this week the week you are listening to this on the 15th of august was of course indian independence day on the 14th of august was pakistan independence day so if you would like to learn more about the shit show that was partition and the countless millions of people that died,

go listen to our episode on shorthand on the partition, which will give you a very thorough rundown on everything you need to know. Now, this isn't really anything to do with that other than the man at the center of it all today comes from India. Yeah, not much to do with partition except that there are some Indians.

That's it. But that's all you need to know that's good enough for me that's a good enough segue for me listen you can't have it all and that's about all you need to know but there are lots of things you need to know lots of things that didn't come up in wild wild country did you watch it i tried yeah but to be fair i'm a very tricky tv watcher like i have to be in the right frame of mind to watch something that i haven't seen a hundred million times and when it comes to documentaries i will either get super obsessed with one and watch it over and over and over again like sherpa or i just need to be in the correct like headspace and i don't have much headspace at the moment so i tried to watch it when everyone was talking about it.

And even then I was like, eh. It was a bit slow for me. Yeah, no, it is. I do feel like they dragged it out a bit. But the story is fascinating. The documentary, less so. And hopefully our episode on this case will be far better. So let's get into it.

In July 1981, the sleepy rural town of Antelope, Oregon. I guess when you've got a country that big, you just got to start naming things after stuff you see. Antelope. Cantaloupe. Cantaloupe. The town of Cantaloupe, New Mexico? Juicy. But no, we are in Antelope, Oregon.

And it had a population of just 40 people. Wow. At the time. So who the fuck gives a shit what it was called? And those people were mostly elderly, retired Christians. So when the village was descended upon by an Indian guru and thousands of his followers, the people of Antelope watched on in bemusement. Elderly Christian bemusement.

Absolutely. These maroon-robed chanting hippies, with their Rolls-Royce-driving spiritual leader, seemed harmless enough. At that point, no one could have predicted that this group would go on to infiltrate and overthrow the local government that they would attempt to commit wide-scale voter fraud

and plot to fill a plane with explosives and eventually carry out the most significant act of bioterrorism in US history. This is the story of Bhagwan Rajneesh and how he managed to amass a global following of devotees who were ready to do anything for him.

And it all began in the small village of Bareilly in Madhya Pradesh, India. And there, the man who had become Bhagwan Rajneesh was born. He was born with a different name, Chandra Mohan Jain. He was born to a cloth merchant on the 11th of December 1931. He was the eldest of 11 children, red flag, and he was sent to live with his grandparents at an early age. His grandfather, a huge influence on him, gave him the nickname Rajneesh,

which means God of the Night. Don't do that. Don't do that. What have we learned time and time again on this podcast is do not give your child an inflated, grandiose sense of self. And I think calling them the God of Night is going to do that. Yes. He also encouraged the young and no doubt precocious boy to study a lot of holy books about numerous religions.

So when Rajneesh was just seven, his grandfather passed away. Which, if you know anything about personalities that are bad, it's not good. Dennis Nilsen, same thing happened. Uh-oh. So of course this death, as well as being a blow to the young boy, it also sparked something of an infatuation with death, just like who?

Dennis Nilsen. Finger lickin' good. And if you don't know what i'm talking about you haven't listened to enough red handed and i'm gross yeah that's true built the whole script to get around that smashed it in anyway never mind back to rajneesh over the next few years his behavior grew stranger and stranger like literally everybody he became obsessed with the occult hypnosis death and sex he'd follow funeral processions less normal jump off high bridges into rivers sleep in crematoriums and spend days lying on the ground in snake infested

temples okay so here is the thing right in india especially if you are of the Hindu persuasion, I can only speak to that. That is the religion of which I was tangentially involved in my youth. Death is a big thing and they're not a quiet people. You've got to do a lot of public mourning. You've got to do a lot of public grief. Funeral processions are big, noisy affairs. You're banging drums, you're walking down the street, you're carrying the person, etc, etc. And this kind of behavior of like following funeral processions, sleeping in crematoriums, and also sleeping on the ground in snake infested temples. This is all quite reminiscent of like a specific set of holy men in India. Okay. Who perform the funeral rites who like tend to

the graves or not necessarily graves because like hindus tend to burn sorry cremate but like tend to the pyres right right right and do the work of like smashing up the ashes any bones that might be left collecting up the ashes to dispose of and things like that and it is seen as a very in one hand very spiritual and holy job because it's necessary yeah but in the other hand a very dirty job and it earns you similarly i would say to like an executioner in medieval europe interesting a kind of untouchable status so it's very very ostracizing but it's also very connected with spirituality interesting and i feel like he is doing this to himself at a very early age because of his obsessions and i find it

interesting i find it interesting as to why that's happening so he's putting himself in a very specific group of people yes that are holy but also unclean aloof deemed to be unclean by the community but highly revered interesting and spiritual it's a confusing thing i cannot think of a natural connection to the west the closest i can come like i say is to a medieval executioner everybody feels like this is a job that has to be done, but like, probably stay away from me. And yeah, they are seen as kind of like otherworldly, aloof holy men. And he's at a very early age putting himself into that pocket. And by the time he reaches early 20s, he gets even deeper into that pocket. Rajneesh embarked on a spiritual quest and later claimed to have achieved total enlightenment while sitting under a tree. A ding, ding, a ding, ding.

No, I'm not dinging Isaac Newton. I'm dinging Buddha. So this total enlightenment story bears quite a lot of resemblance to the story of the Buddha himself, who is also said to have achieved enlightenment while sitting under a tree. We're not saying he's lying except we are we're just pointing out the similarity again he likes to borrow from all of these various things again i feel like it's that grandiose personality putting himself in quite lofty positions yeah within the spirituality space the other thing i'd like to say about those holy men that do tend to the pyres etc out their fucking heads on drugs i was gonna say a lot of drugs in hindu holy men ism not the

classic mainstream ones that are hanging out in the temple they're just swindlers straight up swindlers they'll take your money fuck your mom whatever fuck your dad everything and you know i've got a lot of issues with them like you know car snobs etc etc but with these holy men hash straight up hash in your face all the time marijuana and gander actually come from the hindu word for um or the hindi word i should say for weed which is pretty interesting because they fucking love it love it well they are supposed to be enlightening. Very much so. So, get this.

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carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti.

It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Supposed enlightenment. Rajneesh decided to stay in school,

whereas teachers described him as above average but nothing special. I bet he hated that. He then went on to get a doctorate in philosophy and teach at Jabbar Pooja University. But after just a few years, Rajneesh was asked to resign due to his increasingly controversial lectures. According to the vice-chancellor of the university, Rajneesh was a threat to his students' morality due to his advocacy for sexual freedom and endless criticism of the powerful Janata party. So, look, Rajneesh, I disagree with a lot of things that he says and that he does and he's a very

confusing character but the fact that he got let go from this lecture position because he was criticizing the janata party and if you don't know who the janata party is they are the bjp who are modi's party far right hindu radical party I've got a lot of issues with them. Welcome to Red Handed, as you've never heard that before. So the fact that he was let go for criticising them is incredibly shit. And, you know, I don't support that at all. As you can see, he's got a lot of other issues going on, though. So after this, Rajneesh moved on to lecture at the Raypaw Sanskrit College for a while but he soon

realized that the enlightenment business could be far more lucrative than that shitty old higher education salary he was pulling him. Yeah who swings in more dollar bills is it academics or is it evangelical preachers? Yes or literally any fucking charlatan working in the charlatanist charlatany charlotte charlottesville queen charlotte pennsylvania industry there is that is the fucking wellness industry i was talking to the team about it yesterday in the monday morning meeting i was like we need to do an episode on the wellness industry because it is a scam scam rackety scam but we'll come back to that and Rajneesh knew that he could be one of those people that made a killing in that space because he was a natural showman who spoke in slow purposeful

sentences filled with philosophical quotes remember he has got a doctorate in philosophy or he would you know switch it up with wry quips broken up with very very smug pauses smug pause but in my opinion he's completely fucking unbearable. If you go and listen to his speeches, if you watch Wild Wild Country for even half an hour, I just, he makes me want to cry. I cannot listen to him. But he was clearly doing something

right because he was absolutely packing them in. I don't know if you overheard that we went to Canterbury on Saturday and we were standing on the platform and there was a group of people in front of us. I didn't see them because I had my back to them but I did overhear a snippet of their conversation and this guy was like how do you say that in Indian? Oh yes I did. Or in Hindu and then he was like it's Hindu. I was like I am only one step up from that level of ignorance. Anyway whilst he was working at the college, Rajneesh

spent his free time working as a travelling spiritualist, which is quite the thing to put on your CV. He gave private consultations to wealthy Indians seeking guidance, for which he would charge a pretty decent fee. Interestingly, Rajneesh's parents were Jainists, which is the religious practice of denying yourself anything fun for spiritual gain. Jainism is basically like Hinduism on steroids. Right. It is like, oh, you don't do this, we don't do any of these. Okay.

Thank you. Right, got it. But, in contrast to his parents, Rajneesh loved a little bit of material wealth. Not a little bit, a lottle bit, actually. He preached that one could still be godly whilst living in a big house and earning lots of money, which is something that basically no religion does. Basically, he told the rich people what they wanted to hear, and he served it up to them in a well-rehearsed, expensive package of spiritual drivel.

This was, and is, still fairly common practice in India. Many people will consult with gurus and holy men for life advice and guidance, whether they should get married, etc. However, the rate at which Rajneesh's following grew was definitely unusual. Whilst on tours of the country, he would regularly stop and make public speeches

anywhere people would listen. He'd openly condemn organised religion, even though he was organising his own, and he would criticise popular figures like Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Which... Again, look, this is what i'm saying you want to slag off the bjp you want to call mother theresa a bitch you want to say gandhi had a lot of fucking issues like being a sexual predator and also a car snob again i'm like he's not wrong yeah but he does go on to abuse a lot of people but, his views brought on quite a lot of controversy. And that controversy, as it always does, amounted to media attention.

And that media attention pulled in more punters. Something else that stirred up the people of India was Rajneesh's advocacy for free sex. And his belief that sex was the first step to enlightenment so rajneesh managed to stand out in india's frankly saturated spiritual marketplace of countless mystical gurus with his teachings that married materialism and capitalism with eastern spirituality and it's kind of the perfect act it's kind of the perfect message because like in a developing country like india people are very obsessed you know not wrongly so with accumulating wealth with generating money with securing their families their futures etc etc but they're also still a

deeply spiritual people and a deeply superstitious place and a place where like you said people will still highly educated people will still go to gurus and holy men to ask them for advice on important things like who they should marry it is a very juxtaposition in terms of beliefs and desires so i do think this is why it worked for rajneesh in the beginning and he'd even say things like materialism is all around us what use is it to fight it? And with his client base growing faster than he could handle, Rajneesh did what any good business owner would do. He hired somebody else. And he hired a woman named Lakshmi Thakasi Kuwara to be his business manager and personal secretary. Now Lakshmi was upper class,

well connected in the political world and most importantly, absolutely bloody enamoured with the wispy-haired guru. Together they formed Jivan Jakuti Kendra, meaning Life Awakening Centre, which immediately, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Alarm bells. Alarm bells. It's like when we're like, front, national, unified. Storm. Bad, bad words. Front. Life front life awakening center it's up there but basically they said it was a foundation to finance activities of the small town boy turned

guru ah nice little uh nice little tax dodge it sounds like yeah Tax the church. So by 1966, Rajneesh adopted the new title of Akaria Rajneesh, with Akaria meaning spiritual leader or teacher. So the budding mystic entrepreneur then began running meditation camps around northern India in 1969. And Rajneesh didn't know it yet, but there was truly no better time to commodify eastern spirituality and you know this is just this swinging seven is it the swinging 70s or is it swinging 60s swinging 60s so the swinging 60s is coming to an end and the era of free love in the 70s in the west is coming

to a start so this is the perfect time for him Everybody spent all the 50s being like madmen buttoned up and they're ready to just fucking go nuts. So yeah, basically this idea of like spirituality, Eastern spirituality, Eastern mysticism was something that had been bubbling away among the disillusioned middle class of Western baby boomers for quite some time. And just to give you a bit of context, in 1968, the Beatles had travelled to Rishikesh in India, where they had studied and popularised transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As a result, countless cash-rich, spiritually deprived young adults in the US and UK, desperate for meaning in their lives, turned to old Indian men in robes for answers. And so, given this backdrop, pretty soon Rajneesh had a constant flow of Westerners coming to his Bombay apartment

ready to throw some serious dollars his way in exchange for a spiritual awakening. As his core of devotees grew, Rajneesh decided that it was time to take on yet another new name and swapped out Acharya for bhagwan which means enlightened or awakened one look he's just like i'm on the path i went from whatever the god of night or whatever the fuck to teacher to now straight up bhagwan it's like self-promotion at its most literal and the enlightened one called his growing following the neo-saniacins

saniacins a sanskrit word and it's given to someone who has reached the life stage of saniasa or renouncement of material possession i once know a girl who had a sanskrit tattoo on her arse cheek and i can't remember what it said. But like, it was like vegan or something. I was really hoping that was going to be a limerick. But when she got it, she would go around telling everyone that she had a Sanskrit tattoo. And I was like, that's not how you say that word. I mean.

Yeah, she's still out there. I bet. And I bet it doesn't say vegan. Anyway. Of course, Rajneesh's movement was different from those who renounce material possessions. They embraced material possessions. And that is why he called them neo-Saniyans. Bhagwan Rajneesh's following then began growing even faster than before. And with all the dollar bills coming his way,

he decided that despite all of his railing against organised religion in his earlier career, he decided that it was time the movement had some structure to it. The Rajneeshis, another term he gave to his disciples, were instructed to start wearing orange robes and carry a mala, which are those prayer beads you see, which is similar to how Indian holy men dress. He named his followers after various hindu deities with all of his female followers taking the prefix ma as in mother and the males taking the prefix swami the same name adopted by hindu holy men sort of shaking her head in despair no i just i love a part of me loves it because i'm just like in hinduism not unlike like in other religions,

that upper echelon of like who gets to be close to God, who gets to be like a holy man, who gets to preserve that right to do things like religious rights. It's very, very baked in, right? It's based in caste. It's based by birthright. It's very, very restrictive. You think it's old boys club here with like who gets to be a fucking barrister. If you want to go into that spirituality world unless you are born into it you literally

cannot and part of me kind of loves that he's just like you're a swami fuck you i'm a swami we're all swamis yeah and it's that kind of democratization of this like ancient birthright tradition and the destruction of that that i kind of love and i think it's very funny because it would have made those like upper caste hindus fucking furious and i love it and those appropriations alongside rajneesh's teachings of subversive politics and sexual liberation were some serious hind don'ts as siri just said the hardline upper-class hindus were fucking furious but us stupid white people fucking loved it man have it i think it's hilarious i think it's hilarious i think too much like if anybody else covers this story, they'll be like, oh, they were just culturally appropriated.

And I'm like, so? So? What do you think it actually means? It doesn't mean anything. They can fucking culturally appropriate it all day long because it is hysterical. And I love it. So soon enough, white Westerners made up the majority of the rajneeshi movement and in 1974 the hq was located on a six acre property in the city of puna in maharashtra western india which is actually where i used to

live and where i went to school ah saint anne's in puna you can fucking suck my horrible place to go to school anyway it was dubbed the shrineesh Ashram. Again, Ashram, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, alarm bells. And it steadily grew to include a meditation hall, an auditorium, a medical clinic, and even restaurants, shops, and housing for live-in Rajneeshis. And the ashram had a well-defined hierarchy in place. Straight out of the L. Ron Hubbard rulebook, the most wealthy devotees were allowed the most access to the Bhagwan. After all, he didn't say

that he wasn't all about materiality. Yeah, it's right there on the tin. It literally is. And also just like Scientology, Rajneesh did his best to recruit as many celebrities as possible. These included Oscar-nominated actor and Superman villain Terrence Stamp,

actress Annika Wills, who starred in Doctor Who in the 60s and changed her name to Ma Prem Anita at the Sri Rajneesh Ashram. I was nearly called Anita. Oh, were you? No, it doesn't suit you. I don't think Hannah suits me, though.

I think Hannah suits you. What would you be? Rajneeshi. Rajneeshi Swami Ashram Bhag bhagwan well we can do it okay i think it's like 40 pounds for a deed poll we can go okay great you can be my cultural appropriation counselor and be like i say it's fine i can have it have it have it fucking all and he didn't just stop with ho Hollywood weirdos. He also went into the world of European royalty because another one of his devotees was Prince Welf Ernst of Hanover.

Fucking gagging for it, the royals. They are. They're just bored, man. And he's a Hanover, so he's probably like super inbred with no chin. And he's like, but maybe if I go there, I will be handsome. I'll grow a chin.

This guy, Prince Welf, actually changed his name to Swami Vimal Kiriti and died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the ashram aged just 33. Woof. So at the movement's peak in 1976, Rajneesh had around 30,000 Westerners visiting the ashram every year and around 25,000 more devout followers around the world. But it wasn't all smooth sailing for the Rajneeshis. Recruitment began to slow after worrying stories began emerging

about the goings-on in the ashram's therapy groups. There were dozens of different kinds of therapy offered at the ashram in Pune, all of which were touted to aid personal transformation ding ding ding ding ding these groups were called things like alchemy bioenergetics boredom slash hell divine healing exorcism intensive enlightenment and hypnotherapy and i can only imagine that boredom slash hell was your experience at St. Anne's. No, man, just straight up fucking violence. Violence. I choose violence.

And that was the nun who used to teach me. Just fucking straight up hell. Like, it was so awful. Like, it was a really good school. Like, it was a really good school. It was like a private Catholic school. My parents always knew we're going to come to England, like, very soon. dotting some i's crossing some t's etc so we need to get her into school where they're gonna make her speak english basically and so they sent me to this school it was run by like a mixture of different types there were some white nuns some indian nuns etc but

everybody was very christian they fucking love hitting you with a ruler those bitches they fucking are mad for it it was awful it was awful and like if they caught you speaking anything other than english smack wow i know it's fucking scary shit but anyway i'm fine look at me now look at me now slagging you all off on a hit podcast so yeah some of the uh therapies are more self-explanatory than others maybe and in the late 70s some really disturbing stories began emerging about the goings-on during a particular therapy group that was called encounter don't like it encounter was known as the quote-unquote heaviest of therapy groups it was a seven day long process nope during which 16

naked rajneeshis would be kept in a padded room all together and that padded room was four meters by four meters what the actual fuck i cannot think of anything worse it's like the fucking russian sleep experiment is what it is. It's so grim. Oh my god. Yeah, it's real bad stuff. During these encounter groups, participants were encouraged to let go of their mental inhibitions and logic. They were also encouraged

to spontaneously engage in fighting and physical affection as they naturally felt to. Guys, we have evolved past that. Like, honestly. you know when you're just like i want to fight that person but i probably shouldn't because of society like that's not a bad thing no right like i'm so that's fine i'm so drained right now that when someone asks me to do something what i want to do is punch them directly in the face and you not doing that

is billions of years of evolution which we don't need to undo also me not being a psychopath like i have an emergency break like it's not come on guys oh my god if anybody ever asks you to let go of your logic just be wary so apparently during these encounter sessions there was a tacit agreement between all participants that everyone would act as a stimulus to everyone else's needs. And I'm sure you can see where we are going with this. Absolutely nowhere good. Articles began to emerge in Western publications

based on the experiences of ex-disciples who reported having witnessed or been victims of gang rapes and violence. Because that's what's going to happen. Rosalind Smith was one of these women. She went through six months of so-called therapy at Rajneesh's ashram in Pune. She said that coercive psychological pressure was applied at the ashram, particularly on the women, to enforce participation in sexually promiscuous behaviour in other words they were pressured to join an orgy whenever an orgy was happening which i imagine was quite a lot yeah this is the thing look i'm just like if you want to do it do it but if you're constantly being told oh the root of all of your sadness and ill whatever in life is because you're not being free enough and how to do that is to just

take part in this whole thing that we're doing and if you say no it's because it's your fucked up caged brain telling you no just listen to the part of you that's like no seriously don't do this we don't want to do this yeah it's horrible it's a really bad idea it's a really bad idea and it's gonna fuck us up for ages yeah listen to that bit or just play this bit back to yourself so smith went on to say that rajneesh's motto was say yes to life and this was actually just used to ostracize any women who refuse to have sex which again is just like a very dangerous slippery road to just be like you must just be some selfish frigid bitch and like maybe you should just have more sex and say yes to life.

It's like, but I don't think I like this. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. So basically, yes, all this enforcing sexual participation didn't only involve psychological pressure. It also involved violence. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich,

be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of

The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. Another ex-disciple, Eckhart Flother, reported having witnessed a female Rajneeshi being raped by two men during an encounter group called Samarpan or surrender no according to eckhart

when he tried to intervene the group leader restrained him and said she needed to be raped female rajneeshis in puna were allegedly also encouraged to take part in sex work in order to pay their way a practice which was known in the ashram as getting sweets. An English newspaper quoted the chief inspector of the Pune police in 1981 as saying, quote, prostitution by the Rajneesh cult's girl disciples reached disgraceful proportions. It became epidemic. Yikes. So the free love preaching Bhagwan Rajneesh would say that, quote, sex is just the beginning, not the end. But the end he was likely hoping for was for his disciples to completely lose their ability to form any kind of stable, loving relationship.

So they'd be completely dependent on him. Precisely. According to Margaret Singer, an expert on mind control, it's always in a cult's interest to control sex in one way or another. They tend to either prohibit it entirely or enforce participation in it. Either way, both have the same end result, which is the prevention of pair bonding and the forming of couples. And it isn't just through sex, it's through anything. Anything that destroys not just pair bonding, but also any kind of nuclear family development is how you

maintain control in a cult taking the kids away you know raising them communally so that they don't have a strong connection to their parents so the parents don't have a strong connection to the children you know we've seen it in other cults where they'll suddenly say oh you're now no longer married to him you're married to him you're with him nobody is to have sex even in a marriage all of these tactics are used because couples and families are dangerous in cults. Because if two people love each other, and maybe their children, more than they love the group, they're going to end up leaving and that's going to lead to the downfall of your cult. Singer goes on to say that enforcing participation in sex

is the more effective tactic. It leads to a greater degree of subjugation. The leader takes actual control of the most intimate part of a person's life. Yeah, it does make sense because I also feel like prohibiting sex completely makes it this taboo thing that then can bond two people, like in 1984, like if two people sneak away and are doing it

and it's like this taboo thing that's like, fuck the system. It could lead to that. But if you completely desensitize people to it it enforce it to the point that sex becomes repulsive because it's being enforced on you constantly i can see that that is actually a much more effective tactic and while these stories were intended to turn people off they also definitely attracted a lot more people who wanted to come to the ashram and let loose. Rape people, it sounds like.

This is what I mean. I'm just like, if the word is out that this kind of horrible thing is happening and then you are drawn to that, what kind of person is drawn to that? Right, yeah. Dangerous people. By the late 70s, the ashram was filled to capacity and thousands more disciples flooded the hotels and apartments in and around Pune. Rajneesh tried for five years to expand the site, capacity and thousands more disciples flooded the hotels and apartments in and around Pune.

Rajneesh tried for five years to expand the site, but the government and local opposition stopped him at every turn. I wonder why? The Indian government had pretty much had it with Bhagwan's public criticism of the ruling party and the wild behavior of his followers. And as a result, they set out an organized crackdown of Bhagwan and his followers. It began with them denying Rajneesh's charity status. And in 1981, the government demanded that the Rajneesh Foundation pay them $4 million in unpaid income and property tax. And then a number of US Rajneeshies were arrested for skirting Indian visa requirements, and British disciples were convicted for smuggling drugs into Europe. Apparently, drug smuggling had become something of a cottage industry in order to raise money for the movement. And by 1981, with government and media pressure only mounting away,

it became very clear to Rajneesh and his disciples that they couldn't stay in Pune for very long. And it was also this year that a militantly fierce and, as you'll come to see, terrifying disciple named Ma Anand Shila replaced Lakshmi as Rajneesh's right-hand woman. And in doing so, she became the second most powerful person in the movement. 31-year-old Shila had first met Rajneesh when she was just 16 years old, and has said that she fell in love with the man the second they met, and that she was instantly devoted to him. So Sheila moved to the US to study when she was 18,

and returned to India in 1972 with her then-husband, Mark Harris Silverman, a.k.a. Swami Chinamaya. The pair quickly became disciples of Rajneesh, but Mark died of cancer in 1980, although a prominent Rajneeshi would later tell the FBI that Sheila claimed responsibility for killing him herself by injection. But let's now get back to the search that the group had to find a new commune in 1981. At that point, Indira Gandhi had just come back to power, and due to Rajneesh's relentless bad-mouthing of Mahatma Gandhi, who was a close associate of Indra's but not actually a relation, the Rajneeshis knew that they had to leave India. And that's when

Sheila suggested to the Bhagwan that the US would be perfect. Its constitution was, she reasoned, the perfect way to protect their religious freedoms. So, with Bhagavan's blessing, Sheila flew to the US in search of a site for the new utopian city that her guru had in mind. And in July 1981, Sheila ended up in Wasco County, Oregon. And there, she purchased a 64,229-acre ranch for $5.9 million. And the terror you can hear in my voice is to do with the cult, but also having to say numbers out loud. But also, can we just pause on the fact that they had $5.9 million to spunk away on this bit of land? I'm not saying it's a small bit of land, it's a big bit of land.

But in 1981, he had $6 million. And he'd already paid $4 million to the government. Yeah. And they're going to relocate. They're fucking rolling in it. Just for context, if you're as bad at numbers as I am, Big Muddy Ranch, which is what she bought, was renamed Rancho Relaxo. No, it was renamed Rancho Rajneesh. I really want a t-shirt that says Rancho Relaxo. I'll get you one. Thank you. Rancho Rajneesh was more than four times the size of Manhattan. That is insane.

But it wasn't all roses for the Rajneeshies. It happened to be around this time that Rajneesh himself was supposedly suffering from numerous health issues. So he decided to take a vow of silence, which I suppose is very helpful when you have to do a visa application. And he would speak to absolutely no one but Sheila in nightly meetings between just the two of them. He'd communicate his wishes,

and she would pass them on to the rest of the movement. Red flag. And also so Scientology. She's David Miscavige. Oh, 100%. And this is where it all gets a bit tricky. As you'll come to learn, Sheila goes on to order the Rajneeshis to commit some pretty heinous acts, all the while maintaining that they came from the Bhagwan.

But since nobody was ever in these unrecorded meetings except for the two of them, there's a lot of plausible deniability. Yeah, for him. He seemed to be like, I didn't say it. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no doubt in our minds

or anyone who is enlightened that Sheila was a bona fide lunatic. And another side note for you. It would also later come out that Rajneesh wasn't actually ill. He was, as I said, using it as a ruse to sidestep the US visa requirements so he could enter the US for a prolonged amount of time on medical grounds. Still, Sheila was convinced that she'd found the Rajneeshi promised land,

but for the locals who were already there, their lives were about to become a living hell. One thing that Sheila hadn't realised before buying the ranch was that there were very strict rules in place about what ranch land could actually be used for. And to her utter rage, Sheila found out that they were only allowed to house a maximum of around 100 people on their bloody almost 65,000 acres of land. And they weren't even allowed to build much on that land. Now, Sheila, I know you've got a lot on your mind, but maybe do a survey? Yeah, just some due diligence.

Look, I almost fell into this trap, so I'm not going to be too laughy-laughy at Sheila, but I'm just saying, if you're going to buy a house in a conservation area be warned and then don't do it. But Sheila was determined and she found a way around it. Municipal incorporation. In other words the Rajneeshis were going to create their own city which in turn would allow them to govern themselves and build whatever the hell they pleased. And according to Oregon law, all they needed to incorporate a town or city were the signatures of 150 US citizens in the area which they easily managed.

And they christened their new city Rajneeshpuram in May 1982. Meanwhile, the Rajneeshis decided to set up a satellite community in Antelope, the nearest town to the ranch, which is about 18 miles away, which, as we said at the top of the show, had a population of just 40 elderly people and, like, some farmers. And of course, this 40 versus the entire fucking cult made it far too easy for the Rajneeshis to the chagrin of the locals, they took over the entire place. Sheila quickly renamed the town Rajneesh and raised the property taxes to squeeze money out of the remaining residents who hadn't already fled. Oh, you'd just be blue in the face, wouldn't you?

You'd be absolutely furious. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy. And in an extremely maverick move, they also renamed the recycling centre Adolf Hitler. Oh, so they call the town hall Goebbels. Like, what is happening? And apparently they did this because they felt the only reason

the Orgonians didn't like them was bigotry oh for god's sake yeah come on it's not like they saw you roll in and they're like oh well there goes the neighborhood this fucking brown guy in a rolls royce they were like they fucking moved in completely changed everything renamed the recycling center adolf hitler won all of the city council seats and now i'm being forced out of my house because property taxes have quadrupled. Oh, but I don't like them because some of them are brown. Most of them were white.

Fucking crazy. But numerous sources I've read also mentioned that Rajneesh was a huge fan of Hitler and regarded him as quite the genius, saying that they'd succeeded where Hitler had failed in taking over the world.

So, you know, like I said, don't agree with everything he said and thought, and take from that what you will. Now, there is no way we could do this episode without a cursory mention to Netflix's six-part series. Too many parts. Too many parts. It could have been two parts. That's what I was just going to say.

Wild, wild country. And as we have already admitted we did not watch it our research team did and i watched like five episodes oh okay i think i didn't finish it i watched it with my parents like during lockdown and we were like okay what should we watch and they were like you know it's hard to get dad interested in true crime uh-huh so when he was like open to watching it i was like right, right, fucking out. Let's watch this. And I think we watched five episodes. I was like, oh, just shut up. Shut up.

What we did read was police transcripts, countless articles and books written by ex-Rajneeshis. And hate to break it to you, the documentary leaves out quite a lot of extremely critical information about the movement and the things that they did and said. The documentary makes absolutely no mention of the sexual assault, the fact that Rajneesh hated the idea of the nuclear family, and the numerous accounts of Rajneeshe's being encouraged to undergo sterilization and vasectomies. The documentary also never mentions Rajneesh's adulations of Hitler and his recorded lectures where he claimed that, quote, the Jews gave Hitler no choice. And he's got even more. He had this to say about the Führer.

He said, quote, I have fallen in love with this man. He was crazy, but I am crazier still. So if you are going to watch it, go in knowing those things. Yeah. Love you, Netflix. But for now, let's get back to Sheila and the

Rajneeshis in Oregon. As soon as they were incorporated, they wasted no time in getting to work on building the city of Rajneeshpuram. And honestly, what they achieved was nuts. In the space of a couple of years, the highly educated Rajneeshis built several hundred houses, several multiplex apartment complexes, and a two-story shopping centre, and a 22,000 square foot counselling complex. This is the thing, this is why cults don't want the dullards, they want the creme de la creme. Do you think that the products that were in the two-story shopping centre were all from failed shark tank pictures i was like oh have you gone gone to retail well i'm not on amazon but i am i am in distribution in one town but it's a very good it's a very good town for us we're in rajneesh

we're in the two-story shopping center there and we're doing great. Are you selling through? We are selling through. You can just get like potatoes with faces on and like a pet rock. And that is not all. They also had a series of office buildings, restaurants, a large warehouse, a four-story hotel, a factory, an 80,000 square foot public meeting hall, and a fucking airport landing strip for their own private jet plane, which was called Air Rajneesh. Of course it was. And like, look, again, I do have to hand it to them that that is unbelievable. That is an unbelievable level of like achievement in infrastructure building yeah and at one point

their glorious capitalism loving leader was the proud owner of 93 rolls royces you probably couldn't even fucking drive when you're that rich you don't need to somebody else drives you around cardi b doesn't drive she's got fucking loads of cars there you go and of course having a city the people needed a mayor and a city council. And just reading these people's former Western names and their new Indian names is so funny. It's honestly hilarious. So their mayor was 36-year-old Chicago native and former Californian real estate broker Krishna Deva, also known as David Knapp. And their city council was comprised of New Yorker Prem Patipada,

a.k.a. Marianne Young, and Texan Dava Rikita, a.k.a. Phyllis Caldwell, and Seattle native Dava Jayamala, a.k.a. Gloria Sargent. Love it. I'm here for it. Take it. Take it all. Needless to say, locals were terrified by this point, as they watched their quiet little life in this corner of Oregon being overrun by a cult and their sex guru in his 93 Rolls Royces. And so, naturally, tensions between the natives and the Rajneeshis steadily grew worse. Eventually, it spilled over when a few local ranching families,

including Bill Bowerman, the founder of Knife, teamed up with an environmental organisation to file a lawsuit on the grounds of improper use of land. And things got so much worse when on the 29th of July 1983, a hotel owned by the Rajneeshis in Portland, Oregon, called Hotel Rajneesh, was blown up. Nobody died in the attack, but the three pipe bombs did cause $180,000 in damages and severely injured Stephen Paul Pastor, the man who planted them. And it turned out that he was a member

of the American-based Islamic terror group Jamaat-ut-Fakur, which, like Stephen Paul Pastor, there's a lot of people converting all over the place in this story. And he was also the prime suspect in two later bombings of Hindu religious sites in Seattle. So the bomb wasn't the work of angry locals, it was the work of angry Muslims. But in Sheila's mind, it might as well have been from the locals.

And this meant war. She began illegally stockpiling semi-automatic weapons at Rancho Relaxo and trained the disciples on how to use them. How does she know? Where have you been, Sheila? The sudden appearance of Rajneeshis patrolling Antelope and the ranch brandishing AR-15s and Uzis understandably scared the shit out of the locals that hadn't already gone and did nothing to mend tensions. Soon enough, effigies resembling red-clothed Rajneeshis began popping up in gun clubs and shooting ranges around Oregon, and a letter even began circulating amongst the locals declaring an open season on the Rajneesh,

otherwise known as the Red Rats or Red Vermin. By this stage, there were about 2,000 disciples living in and around Rajneeshpuram, and there were thousands more on their way. Sheila desperately needed to build more homes, but her plans for expansion continued to be blocked by the Wasco County Commission. The Rajneeshus tried everything they could think of, including intimidation tactics like parking their cars outside of local politicians' houses in the dead of night and storming government offices. But obviously, none of these things helped their case. And Sheila, not a patient woman, was getting quite sick of all the legal wrangling and red tape. So she took things into her own grubby little hands. It was a baking hot

day when two Wasco County commissioners arrived at Rancho Rajneesh for a tour. So when Sheila offered Bill Hulse and Ray Matthew a glass of water, they happily accepted. But that night, Bill Hulse jumped out of bed and began vomiting violently. And 200 miles away in a mountain cabin alone, the same thing happened to Ray Matthew. Hulse's wife took him straight to hospital, where doctors were stumped about what was causing the sickness. Only Sheila and her small inner circle of Rajneeshis knew what was really going on.

They had, of course, poisoned the water. Hulse was kept in hospital for four days, and doctors told him that he'd have died without treatment. Now, Hulse isn't stupid. He knew immediately who was responsible and publicly accused the Rajneeshis of having attempted to kill him. Sheila responded by accusing Hulse of being hysterical and insisted that offering him water was simply an act of kindness.

With this, Sheila wanted to demonstrate that there were no lengths she wouldn't go to to get what she wanted. And what she was about to do next is a testament to exactly that. Oregon Attorney General David Fronmayer made a case that because the Rajneeshis were a religious sect, the incorporation of their city was a violation of the separation of church and state. So, Sheila, at the behest of Bhagwan, she said, came up with an idea. Two of the three Wasco County Commissioner seats were up for grabs in the upcoming elections in November 1984, and the Rajneeshis all wanted them.

The only thing was, Wasco County had a population of 20,000 at the time, and pretty much everyone there wanted the Rajneeshis out for good. And this time, with the Rajneeshis only making up 10% of the population, winning the election was not going to be an easy task. However, Sheila was a psycho on a mission. Here's what she did. She had two Rajneeshis shed

any visible affiliation they had with the cult and move to the Dales. Dales? Dallies. Anyway, a very large city in Oregon. The largest city of Oregon is where they sent them, in order to run for county office. Still, in order to get them elected, the Rajneeshis needed to achieve two things. Register as many new voters loyal to the Rajneeshis as humanly possible,

and somehow stop as many Wasco County residents from voting as they could. For the first part of their two-pronged plan, in September 1984, the Rajneeshis began busing in homeless people from every corner of the county to Rajneeshpuram, promising them food and shelter. The only contingency was, of course, that the homeless people had to agree to vote for the Rajneeshi candidates, and most of the people accepted this. The Rajneeshis called this supposed humanitarian effort the Share a Home programme. In the end, they managed to bring in 3,000 homeless people and put them in tents on Rancho Rajneesh. But there were two things that Sheila hadn't contemplated beforehand. One was that the mainly middle and upper class Rajneeshis wouldn't really like living among thousands and thousands of homeless people. And the other was

that many of these new residents had pretty severe mental illnesses. So when fights began breaking out among the new residents, the Rajneeshis began tranquilising them with a mix of Haldol and antipsychotic medication. That's what they put Andrea Yates on. Yeah. That's a big deal. Yeah.

And they just slipped Haldol into the beer that they were giving these homeless people. Police documents show that the homeless people were also made to wake up at 5.30am every morning. They were then blindfolded, drugged and forced to listen to hours of religious chanting. And some reports even mention some female guests being forced into sex work. So that answers the first part of Sheila's plan. As for the second part of Sheila's master plan, which was to suppress voter turnout as much as possible,

the Rajneeshis initially considered poisoning the Dali's... Dali's... What did you say? I said lots of things. Poisoning the area's water supply. The only thing that stopped them, however, was that they couldn't figure out how to do it. Not, you know, some sort of morality. So instead, Sheila and her team decided to poison Oregonians where they ate instead.

And this would go on to be the biggest bioterror attack in US history. And on the morning of the 10th of September, for a sort of test run for the mass poisoning that they were planning on election day, Sheila armed her gang with vials of salmonella-tainted liquid and sent them to the city of the Dalles. She's fucking savage. She's that. She is that. As instructed, the group split up into pairs and emptied the vials all over the salad bars in 10 popular restaurants. And within a matter of hours, emergency rooms all over the Dalles city were flooded with sick patients. All in all, 751 people were diagnosed with salmonella poisoning,

including a pregnant woman and her unborn child. But fortunately, no one died. A state official then famously concluded that the outbreak was a result of the restaurants not following proper hygiene practices. Evidence that the Rajneeshis were responsible for the mass poisoning wouldn't come out until years later. But in the end, despite thousands of displaced homeless people and a record-breaking bioterror attack,

the Rajneeshis' plot to win the election all came to nothing. Just a few weeks before the big day, state authorities monitoring Rajneesh Puram's activities had discovered the voter fraud scheme after spotting the irregularities in the voter roll. And on the 10th of October, voter registration was halted. And an emergency rule was invoked. This meant anybody registering to vote in the county had to personally appear at a local eligibility hearing, and the applicant had to have lived there for at least 20 days. Knowing that they'd been rumbled, the Rajneeshis withdrew their candidates and announced that they'd be boycotting the election instead. What an unconnected series of events.

They then bizarrely tried to laugh it all off as an elaborate ruse, saying that the people of Wasco County just didn't understand their wacky sense of humour. As for the thousands of homeless people living among them, the Rajneeshis sedated them and turned them loose on the streets of Oregon. The Salvation Army were forced to step up and spend $100,000 rehousing, feeding and purchasing train tickets for each of them to return to where they had been busted from. Among all this chaos, on the 30th of October, Bhagavan Rajneesh, who hadn't been seen by his followers for a very long time, suddenly started to speak.

He announced they'd finished his three-and-a-half-year-long vow of silence and began lecturing again. Though he would still only communicate his wishes through Sheila. The failed plan to rig the county elections spelt the beginning of the end for the Rajneeshis and their dreams of a utopia. After it all went wrong, Sheila started to really lose the plot, and everything started to spiral out of control in ways it never had before. She spent four years fighting to achieve Bhagwan's dream, and by January 1985, she was exhausted,

and her mental state was on the absolute brink, if you couldn't already tell. And all it did was make her more dangerous than she was before, which is really saying something when it comes to Sheila. In January of that year, with the improper land use case against Rancho Rajneesh gaining momentum, Sheila decided that any files on the land had to go. So she directed a group of her inner circle to burn down the Wasco County Planning Office. I'm sure a lot of her inner circle to burn down the wasco county planning office i'm sure a lot of people who are applying for loft conversions have had the same rage and have wanted to burn down county planning offices but to actually do it it's quite something she also sat down with

her most trusted rajneeshis and told them they couldn't rely on fair treatment from the US courts. So the commune's enemies had to be stopped. And then Sheila handed her most trusted amigos a hit list. This is the thing I love about this case is that Sheila doesn't just go full crazy and like, I'm just going to, you know, bioterror attack loads of people like she's doing it all with a very specific political small town county level political aim and like burning down the county offices it's also so weirdly intrinsically linked with that small town politics which i find so bizarre because there are so many of them they have so much money but it's like she is being hemmed in here by like planning control and she's furious and it's funny apart from the fact that they did like try to kill a

bunch of people the tippity top target on this hit list was someone called charles turner the u.s attorney for the state of oregon and he just so happened to be conducting a grand jury investigation on immigration fraud focusing on Rajneesh and other top ranking followers including Sheila herself. And this investigation was based on the fact that the Rajneeshies had carried out 400 marriages between their US followers and foreigners for visa purposes. Obviously. Yeah they really had to maintain that ratio of US to foreign to make this work. Sheila was convinced that the only way to end this investigation was to take Turner out.

That'll do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they don't have other lawyers. So her plan was to gun him down on his way home from work. Other targets on the list marked for death by Sheila included Dave Fornamea, the guy we met earlier, the Oregon Attorney General, James Kamini, a former politician who publicly criticized the cult, and two members of the Rajneeshis themselves. Sheila wanted to kill Bhagavan's personal doctor, Swami Devraj, a.k.a. George Meredith, and Bhagavan's caretaker because she blamed them both for the guru's addiction to nitrous oxide and valium. Fortunately, none of the assassination attempts were successful, and Sheila's inner circle refused to try and murder anyone after that.

And then, the next September, the entire operation began to unravel. Knowing that they were going to be arrested soon, Sheila, the Rajneeshpuram mayor, the city council, the city judge, and several top Rajneesh corporate officials resigned their posts and fled the country. Many of them followed Sheila to Germany. After this, on the 16th of September, Bhagavan Sri Rajneesh himself held a press conference. And what he said stunned Oregonians and Rajneeshis alike. Rajneesh told the world that Sheila and her gang had tried to assassinate numerous people, that they planned to poison the

water supply, and that they were responsible for the 1984 Salmonella outbreak, and that they stole $44 million from the commune, burned down the Wasco County Planning Office, and were at one point planning on filling a plane with bombs and flying it into the Wasco County Courthouse. They did have a plane. They did. And in the end, Rajneesh also denied having known anything about Sheila's crimes, and called on his followers to leave Oregon forever. State and federal investigators wasted no time, and they rushed into Rajneeshpuram to leave Oregon forever. State and federal investigators wasted no time and they rushed into Rajneeshpuram to begin collecting evidence. There they discovered Sheila's secret

biological warfare laboratory, complete with subtly titled books as Deadly Substances, Handbook for Poisoning, The Perfect Crime and How to Commit It, me die before i wake sheila is fucking on one right i know she tries to kill the doctor or says she wants to kill the doctor for getting rajneesh addicted to like nitrous oxide and valium but i think that's what allowed her to do all of this crazy shit and yeah she's just taking out people who also speak to bhagwan that's it oh absolutely look i'm not saying that rajneesh is a good guy he was absolutely wholeheartedly behind all of the fucking rape and stuff that was going on in the organization but this whole like bioterrorism let's blow shit up let's like you know destroy

the wasco county courthouse etc this is sheila not understanding how a cult operates rajneesh for all his faults and this is one of them understands how a cult works and sheila doesn't have that subtlety she is like a fucking sledgehammer and while rajneesh is incapacitated she fucking ran the whole thing into the ground by drawing way too much attention to themselves and on top of poison books there were also a lot of books on assassinations explosives and terrorism And most terrifyingly of all, investigators found that there was a research project being carried out by Rajneesh Medical Corporation, and that research project's aim was to develop a live AIDS virus within the lab.

And this is in the 80s, just so everybody knows what that would have meant for the people that they would have like i don't know thrown that at i'm not sure numerous rajneeshis then gave themselves up for interrogation and most of them saved their own arses by striking deals and telling the authorities everything they knew on the 24th of september rajneesh gave his followers permission to stop wearing red colored clothing and carrying their malas he then announced an official end to the religion of Rajneeshism. I wonder how many times in history there has been an official ending of a religion. Interesting. Interesting. I don't know. I don't know because like other ones like say

Om Shinrikyo which is very similar to this like very much like came in and invaded Japan during a time of like spiritual and religious flux that's how he was able to take over. Then the bioterrorism, the terrorism attack, like the sarin gas attack on the Japanese train, it never went away. Even after he was executed, there are still people today who are like pro that. He never retracted, he never recanted. But it's interesting that Rajneesh is like, it's over. Yeah, we're done here. It was a joke. And then on the 28th of October, Rajneesh himself jumped on a plane and attempted to flee the US for Bermuda. But he did not make it. He was arrested whilst refuelling in Charlotte, North Carolina, and subsequently charged with 35 counts of violating immigration law and one count of fleeing to avoid prosecution.

Soon after, Sheila was arrested in west germany and brought back to the states she was found guilty on the plethora of charges against her and sentenced to three 20-year terms in federal prison fucking good yeah i know but ultimately this sentence was inexplicably reduced no down to four and a half years. Served concurrently. Why? And a fine of $470,000. She was released after just 29 months in the federal prison system because she was well behaved, apparently.

And she was deported back to Germany. Today, Sheila lives in Switzerland. Boo. Where she runs two nursing homes, which is fucking terrifying. So as for the background himself, he ended up making a plea deal and was handed a 10-year suspended sentence, five years probation and a $400,000 fine. What?

I know. He was then deported back to India. Oh, okay. Upon his return in 1985, his Indian disciples gave Rajneesh a hero's welcome. He proceeded to spend the next few years trying to set up new communes in dozens of countries with zero success. It really reminds me of that documentary Holy Hell. Oh yeah. Where they're like right at the end they're like all of these people new hearing all of these awful things that this man has done and then they track him

down at the end and he's doing it again in Hawaii. Oh of course. These people don't know how to do anything else right but it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Nobody wants to be a part of these communes and eventually with no other option, Rajneesh changed his name to Osho and continued teaching in India. Only now, the spiritual leader who once owned almost a hundred Rolls Royces did an about turn on his beloved capitalism and began preaching that communism was the true path to spiritual enlightenment. On the 19th of January 1990, Osho died of heart failure at the ashram in Pune, age 58. Quite young for an enlightened being. Yeah, and if anything you heard today has made you interested in joining up, firstly, don't. Stop. Get some help. But if you do still want to go ahead with it,

then you're in luck, because the ashram in Pune is still going strong. Probably full of people I went to university with, but no yoga instructors. Though it has changed its name, and it's now called the Osho International Meditation Resort, and it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Despite the madness the Rajneeshis committed during osho's time it seems that the legacy of the sex guru cult leader spiritual holy man whatever you want to call him is despite him withdrawing everything and

you know shutting down the religion is still alive and well white people man mate like look there's a lot of people in my family that are members of guru ashrams right educated i'm talking masters phd physics maths blah blah blah ashrams and i'm like what's happening why is there a picture of this fucking man on your wall i hate it that it's just there it's just yeah there you go there you go rajneesh that's it that is the story yep don't go to an ashram no you can do yoga somewhere else you can do indeed and if you do choose to watch wild wild country on netflix we're not saying it's bad but just remember that they left out a hell of a lot of things just everything you watch add a pinch of fascism and then you might be on the right track yes i think this is the problem we've talked about it before but with documentaries they have to have an agenda they have to toe the line in order to get people to like speak to them blah blah blah

so there are going to be things that are left out and they typically will be quite one-sided on red-handed we don't have that concern because nobody's trying to sue us because they don't give a fuck and we never have guests on so we can say whatever the fuck we like so that's it that is the true story of mr bug van rajneeshi and go check out our shorthand which came out on tuesday on amazon music on the partition of india it's a very relevant week for it this week and we'll see you next time for some other things that are maybe less relevant. Bye. So get this, the Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who?

I just sent you a profile. Her first act as leader asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah. Higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either

until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.