By Dennis Hartley
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 24, 2018)
“If people stand in a circle long enough, they’ll eventually begin to dance.”
– George Carlin
In my 2012 review of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, I wrote:
What [Anderson] has crafted is a thought-provoking and original examination of why human beings in general are so prone to kowtow to a burning bush, or an emperor with no clothes. Is it a spiritual need? Is it an emotional need? Or is it a lizard brain response, deep in our DNA?
As Inspector Clouseau once ruminated, “Well you know, there are leaders…and there are followers.” At its most rudimentary level, The Master is a two-character study about a leader and a follower (and metaphorically, all leaders and followers).
You could say the same about the mind-blowing, binge-worthy Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country, which premiered March 16th. On one level, it is a two-character study about a leader and a follower; namely the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and his head disciple/chief of staff/lieutenant (take your choice) Ma Anand Sheela. In this case, the one-on-one relationship is not a metaphor; because the India-born philosophy professor-turned-guru did (and still does) have scores of faithful followers from all over the world.
Actually, the Bhagwan is dead, but his legacy lives on. The exact nature of that legacy, however, is still open to debate…depending on whom you talk to. Obviously, those who continue to buy his books (and related “Osho” merch like T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, etc.), attend seminars, join communes, and/or live by his philosophy and consider themselves “Rashneejees” tend to think and speak of him in nothing less than glowing terms. Others, not so much. Both “sides” are given a fairly even shake in the 6-part series.
In the early 80s, fed up with harassment from authorities in his native India (who were readying to drop the hammer on him on suspicions of smuggling and tax fraud), the Bhagwan closed his ashram and, like the persecuted Pilgrims before him, set sail (more likely, booked a flight) for the land of the free. Opting to resettle a bit farther West than Plymouth Rock, he scooped up 100 square miles of cheap range land adjacent to a sleepy cow town in Wasco County, Oregon. Eventually, a veritable New Age city was created.
Who, you may ask, would have a problem with this soft-spoken, beatific gentleman who encouraged people to let go of hang-ups, realize their full potential, be as spontaneous and joyous and free and giving and loving toward one another as humanly possible (i.e. fuck like bunnies) while insisting he himself not be deified in any way, shape, or form?
What do you mean, “What’s the catch?” Must there always be a catch? Why so cynical?
What tipped you off that something may have been amiss…was it his fleet of Rolls-Royces? Was it his affinity for collecting shiny things, like expensive watches and jewelry? Can he be faulted if (as he claimed) his admirers insisted on festooning him with baubles? Oh, I bet I know what it was…it was the henchmen, armed with AK-47s—right?
Here’s a refresher, from a 2017 revision of a piece published in The Oregonian in 2011:
The Rajneeshees had been making headlines in Oregon for four years. Thousands dressed in red, worked without pay and idolized a wispy-haired man who sat silent before them. They had taken over a worn-out cattle ranch to build a religious utopia. They formed a city, and took over another. They bought one Rolls-Royce after another for the guru — 93 in all.
Along the way, they made plenty of enemies, often deliberately. Rajneeshee leaders were less than gracious in demanding government and community favors. Usually tolerant Oregonians pushed back, sometimes in threatening ways. Both sides stewed, often publicly, before matters escalated far beyond verbal taunts and nasty press releases.[…]
Hand-picked teams of Rajneeshees had executed the largest biological terrorism attack in U.S. history, poisoning at least 700 people. They ran the largest illegal wiretapping operation ever uncovered. And their immigration fraud to harbor foreigners remains unrivaled in scope. The revelations brought criminal charges, defections, global manhunts and prison time. […]
It’s long been known they had marked Oregon’s chief federal prosecutor for murder, but now it’s clear the Rajneeshees also stalked the state attorney general, lining him up for death.
They contaminated salad bars at numerous restaurants, but The Oregonian’s examination reveals for the first time that they just as eagerly spread dangerous bacteria at a grocery store, a public building, and a political rally.
To strike at government authority, Rajneeshee leaders considered flying a bomb-laden plane into the county courthouse in The Dalles — 16 years before al-Qaida used planes as weapons.
And power struggles within Rajneeshee leadership spawned plans to murder even some of their own. The guru’s caretaker was to be killed in her bed, spared only by a simple mistake.
Strangely, most of these stunning crimes were in rebellion against that most mundane of government regulations, land-use law. The Rajneeshees turned the yawner of comprehensive plans into a page-turning thriller of brazen crimes.
Meditate on that (om, om, on the range). And that’s just the Cliff’s Notes version. This tale is so multi-layered crazy pants as to boggle the mind. It’s like Dostoevsky meets Carl Hiaasen by way of Thomas McGuane and Ken Kesey…except none of it is made up.
It’s almost shocking that no one thought to tackle this juicy subject as fodder for an epic documentary until now (eat your genteel heart out, Ken Burns). Co-directors Chapman and Maclain Way mix in present-day recollections from various participants with a wealth of archival news footage. Oddly, with its proliferation of jumpy videotape, big hair and skinny ties, the series serves double duty as a wistful wallow in 1980s nostalgia.
