Dave Frohnmayer, the Oregon Attorney General who had written his Harvard honors thesis on Nietzsche and Lenin, said at the time, that he saw in Rajneesh the same “individual self-aggrandizement,” the same “relativity of truth,” the same “disengagement from ethics,” that he had discovered in Nietzsche’s concept of the Superman. Rajneeshism to him was a teaching that did not encourage compassion, or what the Buddhists called Karuna, the selfless love for all sentient beings. To Frohnmayer it encouraged guilt-free indulgence, individual self-aggrandizement, and a smugness about being on a spiritual path. Given the above, this came to be coupled with a supercilious, disdainful and, indeed, hostile attitude towards other people.

I (EPW) at this time thought this a strange judgment given Rajneesh apparently was grounded in Hindu Philosophy.

Since Rajneesh' s books were predominantly compiled from transcriptions of his public lectures, one gathers that he must have been a fascinating and compelling speaker, his large eyes, as well as his charming manner, added to the effect.

He also was very eclectic, culling his ideas from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Sufism, as well as a variety of Western sources, such as the teachings of Gurdjieff, Alan Watts and those therapies that were becoming popular at the time.

But foremost  he claimed to have achieved enlightenment, and claimed he could do the same with his disciples. And second,  Rajneesh's appeal to the need for community, seemmed a need that was particularly acute among those Westemers who, although  educated and often materially  successful, apparently felt alienated from the mainstream of their societies.

Thus during the 1970s already, Rajneesh's movement comprised thousands of enthusiastic disciples, whom he referred to as "sannyasins." Many of these resided at or near his main retreat center, in Poona ( India) and  thousands more were affiliated with auxiliary Rajneesh centers worldwide.
Some said he was a very shrewd entrepreneur who knew how to capitalize on people' s longing, yet he also was receiving praise from various observers of his movement, from the distinguished journalist Bernard Levin to the Dalai Lama. All in all thus, it seems Rajneeshism had a most promising future. Yet as often is the case, the gift of promise, talent, or genius, especially when it is applauded by other people, invites hubris.

In his autobiography, Rajneesh indicates that although a rebellious child he became a college professor. Then when Rajneesh quit the university he set out as a traveling lecturer. Yet Rajneesh also fell for the temptation to achieve worldly success by engaging in the type of publicity-creating theatrics endemie to demagoguery. But it was  when Rajneesh claimed that he was enlightened, that he began to attract a large, following.

But Poona, like many towns and cities of India, was a fairly provincial and conservative place. Thus Rajneeshees, most of whom were Westerners, managed to offend the local residents. Many also condemned Rajneesh's claim - that enlightenment could be attained by orgiastic sexuality.

In order to support themselves in India and to pay their tuition at Rajneesh' s ashram, some of the Rajneeshees found work in India in a variety of professions. But some engaged in prostitution and drug running (Anthony Storr, Feet Of Clay, 1996, p. 57).

These illegal activities on the part of some of his disciples, did not endear the Rajneeshees to the members of the neighboring community. Furthermore, Rajneesh liked to make remarks in public that he knew would offend the powers that be, in Indian politics, religion, and in other areas. Coupled with back taxes finally, Rajneesh' s inner circle finally concluded that it they got into so much trouble in India , it was time to emigrate.

Thus, the purchase of  a 64,000 acre ranch in central Oregon , which they amptly named "Rajneeshpuram." Accordingly now the Rajneeshees, would work the land, and construct various buildings that would be part of their operation, a kind of meditation, for they would work with a high degree of mindfulness so they tought.

James Gordon, a journalist who had studied Psychiatry, and former disciple of Rajneesh, indicates that the purpose of ‚the ranch’ as it was called innitially, was to ...serve as the birthplace for the 'new man' (Gordon, The Strange Journey of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. 1987, p. 221). Or as Rajneesh who thus  changed his name to „Osho“ stated, "With the new man there will come a new world, because the new man will perceive in a different way. He will live a totally different life, which has not been lived yet. He will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together."

Thus the goal of their enterprise was not anymore to provide a context where ‚enlightenment’ could be achieved. Rajneesh and his disciples by now were caught up in millenarianist - a quasi-Nietzschean notion of bringing about the birth of a superman. Plus there was another mixture of motives, using the ranch as a money-making operation.

Initially, the Rashnees group had claimed that  only forty people would be moving there. Yet despite this and other differences, it briefly appeared that the Rajneeshees would get along with their neighbors. Untill the Rajneeshees started purchasing buildings in the neighboring town of Antelope, for what now where 2500 Rajneeshees having moved there. Faced with these larger ambitions the townspeople appaerantly felt betrayed, and  sought to limit purchases by the cult through zoning ordinances. They considerred this fair becouse the water in the region was seriously limited and could not accommodate so many people. It certainly could not accommodate a city, which Rajneesh intended to build.

Exacerbating matters  apparently was Sheela, the Indian woman Rajneesh put in charge of the commune. People said she was exploiting everyone with endless work and demanding what money they had. Sheela later wrote a book in German claiming she herself was exploited by Rajneesh whose lover she was.

Be it what it is, the new religious movement - which, in terms of population, was now a majority - gained control of the city counsel. They changed the name of the town from Antelope to Rajneesh, changed street names to those  names, raised taxes from the previous inhabitants, and took over the school system requiring the non-Rajneeshian inhabitants of Antelope to bus their children to another district fifty miles away.

To keep their neighbour under control the Rashneesh comune felt the need to  created a  police force that possessed hundreds of assault weapons, inc1uding machine guns and Uzis. However when they start using intimidation to motivate the neighbors to sell their homes complaints by the inhabitants of Antelope invited investigation. In fact, the Immigration and Naturalization Service already was getting wind of the fact that the various marriages that had occurred at Rancho Rajneesh were essentially fraudulent. They had been made merely for the purposes of obtaining citizenship for many of the inhabitants of ‚the ranch’ , in order to be allowed to work and act as US citizens there. This might have gone unnoticed or been ignored were it not for the fact that it was blatant. Thus, the Attorney in charge began investigating the complaint that the transformation of the town of Antelope into the town of the Rajneesh’s ideals , violated the separation of church and state.

Around this time, in 1983, Rajneesh then issued apocalyptic warnings that appeared in , the Rajneesh Times (for several months in a row). Predicting a  period of crisis between 1984 and 1999...with a man-manufactured holocaust that is going to be global...Plus there will be floods „not known since the time of Noah.“

The way in which the Rajneeshees could save themselves would be "a Noah's Ark of consciousness." (Gordon, 1987, p. 131) The Rajneesh meditation centers in Los Angeles and San Francisco were dosed down because  these cities where going to  be destroyed soon. Plus „the ranch“ now had eleven armed watchtowers, and a whole series of checkpoints to ensure that no unwanted visitors could get in and, sannyasis could get out.

 Sannyasins also had both their ineoming and outgoing mail opened, read, and sometimes destroyed. People' s telephone lines were tapped, their rooms bugged, and there were spies everywhere. Those Rajneeshees accused of being disloyal were "...subject to psychologieal intimidation and verbal assaults" (Gordon 1987, p. 134).

Other incidents, inc1uded Rajneeshees poisoning a salad bar with salmonella so that local townspeople would be absent for an eleetion that involved zoning decisions.  Over 700 people got sick (an incident considered to be the first instance of bioterrorism in the United States). And Rajneesh announced, "...they cannot do any harm here. People can also hijack American planes..." (Gordon, 1987, p. 186).

Once again, the defense mechanism of projection is at the core of this extreme paranoid reaction on the part of the Rajneeshees, not only to their neighbors, but to each other. Through the process of projective identification, the scapegoat is provoked, making it easier for the scapegoat to become a projection of the the strugling new religious movement’s malevolence. Then the group or cult feels vindicated since they are only acting defensively. And where before they where inhabitants of India, now the the inhabitants of the Oregon town of Antelope, the dosest town to Rancho Rajneesh. Needless to say, given previous theatrics in India the townspeople were suspicious of the „new man“ experiment. Then there was the anti-Christian perceived Hindu cult creating an ill perceived image that „sannyasins“ would be involved with „brainwashing“  for the more down to earth observers, the fact that Rajneesh felt the need to purchase ninety-three Rolls-Royces for himself, didn’t help.

Or as another former inhabitant who wrote a book Hugh Milne wrote:

As the Rajneeshees started to lose court cases and the zoning plan for the new city started to look in extreme doubt, hatred and paranoia were increasingly turned outwards.“ (Milne, Bhagwan: The God that Failed, 1987, p. 345)

Milne's description implies that the process by which Rajneesh's disciples externalized their frustration occurred naturally, but, according to others it was a deliberate strategy on the part of Rajneesh. James Gordon,  stated that Rajneesh expressed admiration for Hitler and the Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels. And when ask Rajneesh apparently also  told  Gordon:

Only bad people could have managed [the commune in Oregon]. Good people could not. (James Gordon, The Golden Guru, 2000, p. 254)

In any case over time, the commune was transformed into something indeed resembling a repressive, fascistic, totalitarian theocracy. Lewis F. Carter in his own book quotes Mills and Kaplan, who described Rajneeshpuram as "... the closest thing to an Eastem Bloc experience in the United States ..." (Carter, Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram, 1990, p. 7).

Carter, a sociologist who had spent several years as a participant observer in Oregon, was struck by how extremely regimented life at Rajneeshpuram had become. Carter describes how he, and the staff that had accompanied him, reacted to what they experienced at the commune: We were perhaps too embarrassed by the constraints of our well-socialized notions of how social scientists "ought" to think and talk to compare the structure of Rajneeshpuram to a "fascist state" as Bhagwan was  to do. (Carter, 1990, p. 31).

In the end Anthony Storr classified Rajneesh as a narcissist, a classification which makes sense. In fact Milne' s observations might qualify Storr's psychiatrie classification:

He had little compassion or regard for the feelings of others. There were to be many deaths in the ashrams, both from suicide and from hepatitis and other diseases that could have been cured with proper medical attention. Rajneesh never gave enough money for food in the ashrams, and was not concemed when we worked too hard or slept too little. (Milne, 1987, p. 105)

Furthermore, Rajneesh's hostility significantly contributed to the us/them duality that developed between the Rajneeshees and ‚the rest of humanity’. When society finally reacted in the case of Oregon, the Rajneeshees then projected their own hostility onto society, and acted like victims.

But where Storr is correct that power corrupted Rajneesh  it must be added that the desire for fortune and fame also did. The infinitude that people with the problem of Rajneesh promise is not that which belongs to religious, philosophical, or mystical transcendenee, but the infinitude implied in the notion of being free of the limits that belong to the human condition.

The lure of the false infinite – be wealthy, powerful, famous or ‚enlightened’ - fills the mind with delusions of grandeur, causing one to lose sense of what it means to be human. It is in that sense that wealth, power, and fame are disorienting. Rajneesh' s arrogance, disdain, and aggressive animosity towards society similarly evince a hubristic disregard of the limits intrinsic to the human condition. Some popular writers, concerned with the lack of motivation at workplaces,have referred to the loss or the death of the (methaphoric) corporate soul. More apt might be the fictional account of soul death amongst college students, due to shallowness, for example, in Tom Wolfe's  novel, I am Charlotte Simmons (2004).

Thus perhaps, at one time, as a young man in Bombay, he was resolute; he had but one desire, and that desire was to achieve ‚enlightenment’, or was resolute in seeking to teach other people to attain what he tought to be such state of awareness. But, in examining the history of his movement, one sees that Rajneesh became dissolute, for he also had a lust for power; he philandered with his female disciples, he became greedy for money; he craved world fame, he sought martyrdom; he became preoccupied with attacking society for its provincial ways; he was drawn to being an outrageous and notorious iconoclast; he sought to bring about the millennium, etc.

Kierkegaard once wrote a book entitled, Purity of Heart (published 1847). The book's argument is that purity of heart is to will one thing. Rajneesh, on the other hand, willed everything. Consequently, what might have once been a focused self became but a legion of incompatible selves. Going through life as a plurality of selves might make for an interesting existenee, although a schizophrenie one.

And although it is true that using the word "dissolute" to describe Rajneesh's sense of self, might opens one to the criticism of being retrograde. However when Rajneesh was the paradigm of selfhood for his disciples, they sought to follow in his ways. And as we has shown above, his Rousseauan utopianism, can be said to have become paranoiagenic.

Needless to say, the notion of  having ones cake and eat it, too is always a bit suspect.
In fact one maybe even argue that  the  notion of guilt-free indulgence is predicated on the notion that one does not have to be under the constraints of (inborn) moral consciousness. Rajneesh however framed the whole effort to be free of such constraints not in post-Freudian terms, but in the language of Eastem mysticism; he spoke of the goal of such efforts being the letting go of attachments...

And as far as his ideas being  paranoiagenic, in so far as they are founded on a worldview that is unconstrained in its perception of human possibility, his teachings unwittingly promote delusions of grandeur. Thus when we are suggesting that Rajneeshism is essentially Rousseauan optimism re dux. Perhaps the problem with such facile optimism is that it is founded, paradoxically enough, on a fundamental repression a phenomenon that the existential psychologist Rollo May noted during the 1960’s. What becomes repressed in such teachings according to Rollo is an awareness of the depths of human existence. More specifically, what is repressed is an awareness of one's finitude, morality, the tragic dimension of sexuality and of life, the connection of sexuality with love and with death, and the inescapable sin and guilt connected with being a human being.

When delusions of grandeur are in season according to this- the awareness of the finitude that belongs to the human condition is repressed in this fashion, as it was in Rajneeshism. But the awareness of finitude - mortality, the tragic, sin, guilt, and all else that constrains human aspirations - does emerge, and when it does, the paths that it then takes can be sinister.

This reemergence may have many manifestations, of which --as suggested in one of the articles posted at the start of this website-- a paranoid vision is one. For when that which has been repressed is finally recognized, the attitude of one who comes to see it may be a bitter resentment towards life, and then hatred towards some group of people who are blamed for having deflated one's delusions of grandeur. That is the sort of bitterness that Dostoevsky' s Raskolnikov - perhaps the model for Nietzsche' s pale criminal - experienced, when his inflated view of himself, his sense that he was a superman, came to grief.

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