Amazing docuseries about a religious cult in Oregon, I knew of Bagwan Sree Rajneesh before watching this but not all the details of the story, which takes you from India to the USA to Germany and beyond. When a religious leader is attacked in India by an irate Hindu terrorist the Bagwan moves his followers to rural Oregon after buying an enormous piece of unpopulated land.
The Bagwan has strong ideas about the way life should be lived however, hardly surprising for a person who has amassed a huge flock of people to idolise and adore him. Such strong ideas rub locals up the wrong way. The Bagwan’s secretary Ma Anand Sheela is an effective organiser but perhaps too effective, as she alienates people outside the community.
The Rajneeshis try to use the instruments of government to achieve their aims but come up against opposition at every turn. The TV series is about the cult but it’s about much more than that. In order to make the series the filmmakers get post-Rajneeshpuram members to talk in depth about what happened, including Sheela who at the time the show was made was living in Germany working as a nurse.
I was mesmerised by this show, it’s “about” freedom, democracy, belief, the separation of church and state, it’s about the individual and what it means to live a meaningful life, it’s about justice and core social values, what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy, it’s “about” so many things. It’s an amazing production.
After watching the show it struck me strongly that the foundational values of the Rajneesh community were viable and perhaps superior to those of the ranchers and law-upholders who surrounded them. There were flaws, it’s true, but the basic problem was one of aesthetics not anything concrete. People like the ranchers who lived in Antelope prior to the Rajneeshis arriving just didn’t like the sound of ‘em, it’s a simple as that. It was a clash of world views that led to the Rajneeshis being forcibly expelled from the United States.
Nowadays the 260-km-sq Big Muddy ranch is owned by a Christian youth foundation and is used for activities and camps.
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