Sex, Drugs, and the Rolls Royce Guru
Every day at 2pm on a dusty road through the mountains of Oregon, hundreds of young people dressed head to toe in various ‘sunrise’ hues of red and orange would gather to wait solemnly for a car to go past.
It was always a Rolls-Royce, although a different one each day, and it would glide slowly past as they bowed and threw roses on the bonnet.
Inside, wearing robes, a tea cosy-style woolly hat, flowing grey beard and beatific smile, was the object of their devotion, the guru and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Once he had passed by, the crowds would return to toiling in the fields — or ‘finding their true selves’ in group sex sessions.
Rajneesh — not to be confused with the far tamer Maharishi, who was the Beatles’ Indian guru — presided over a New Age sex cult that was second to none in its embrace of ‘free love’, unorthodox meditation techniques and sheer outrageousness.
In India, he was known as the ‘Sex Guru’ and attracted tens of thousands of followers from all over the world, including celebrities, from the venerable British journalist Bernard Levin to film star Terence Stamp.
In the U.S. he was dubbed the ‘Rolls-Royce Guru’. Given that he owned 93 of the luxury cars, the title was more than fair.
His followers were often highly educated professionals ready to reject the strictures of middle-class convention and seek enlightenment first in India and later at communes in Oregon, Cologne and Suffolk.
Some left spouses and children, while others donated everything they had to the cult.
What they received in return were a bead necklace with a locket bearing the guru’s picture, a new Rajneeshi name and the great man’s thumb imprint on their forehead, giving them their ‘third eye’ of insight.
However, it was the group’s attempt to build a $100 million utopian city in a remote corner of the northwestern state of Oregon that became its downfall in the Eighties, resulting in a jaw-dropping scandal that included attempted murder, election rigging, arms smuggling and a mass poisoning that still ranks as the largest bio-terror attack in U.S. history.
The story of the Rajneesh movement’s slide from peace-and-love hippiedom into machine gun-toting, homicidal darkness is revealed in a new six-part Netflix documentary entitled Wild Wild Country.
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