The Sex Guru of Oregon

In March 2018, Netflix released a documentary called “Wild Wild Country” about a cult that created a city in the middle-of-nowhere Oregon in the 1980s. This insane, although fairly unknown period in American history involved one of the largest bio-terrorist attacks on US soil, the largest incident of immigration fraud, planned assassinations of high-ranking government officials, and the largest collection of Rolls Royces in the world. In the middle of this chaos stood one man, Bhagwan, now known as Osho, an Indian mystic.

Most of the documentary deals with the American government’s conflict with the cult. What I was curious about was Bhagwan himself. Unlike various other cults, the Rajneeshi movement appeared to operate with little coercion. Highly intellectual Westerners, tired of the consumerist rat-race, fled to India after hearing of his teachings. Psychologists, seeking a non-academic explanation for consciousness, became increasingly drawn to the Bhagwan’s discourse. To this day, companies such as BMW and IBM hold meditation retreats with the OSHO International Foundation in order to seek stress relief. Since his death, Osho has found appraisal from former Indian prime-ministers, Bollywood actors, Indian media, and has been called “The Wittgenstein of Religions”. Unlike cult leaders such as Jim Jones or Charles Manson, Osho cannot be specifically tied to any of the crimes committed under the…