Unseen abuse in almost all of our spiritual groups — Chogyam Trungpa tortures a cat & other stories
If you, as a seeker of the ‘beyond,’ consider;
- Wasting your creativity for 30 years (for example)
- Being abused/coerced into sex, Child abuse
- Disempowerment, brainwashing
- Disconnection from your compassion/heart in service of an authority — which means you are also contributing to the disconnection from the Earth herself.
…all the while being fooled that you were being taken to ‘enlightenment’, and you along with thousands of people, repeatedly, in increasing frequency since the 1970s …worse than dying of COVID (although I get it may not be for everyone), then read on!
Amongst most guru-based spiritual groups, where you find an ‘enlightened leader’ and which you might have thought was a ‘safe’ haven — even the very recent ones — from the unknown to the widely known — one will be able to uncover festering and disappointing evidence of abuse, or otherwise evidence of being complicit to abuse.
Why is it not seen by the general public as a pattern — as an actual ‘pandemic’ — a repeating pattern — you may ask?
It is a complex process:
a) Because people tend to only know about and speak about their own experience in a cult and are unaware of the similar patterns repeating around the world. When people hear about isolated testimonials, it is sometimes very hard for them to connect to it or believe that it could be true because it sounds so unbelievable in contrast to the ‘rainbows and light’ public persona of the group.
However, when seeing it as a pattern across the world, the seriousness of the problem becomes far more evident, so I hope you will bear with me on my expose.
b) Because these are isolated organisations which the wider public does not see and therefore the main media may not be widely interested in — plus the most powerful cults are obviously people who are in high places and may have an influence on the media.
c) Because the belief systems appear to be so beautiful and benign. The sheer, tremendous, complexity of the beliefs seems so convincing and real, and people have ‘energy experiences’ that they attribute to these leaders. Humanity has never encountered this type of complex situation before.
d) All that brings in loads of money. As more people become interested in spirituality, the selling of spirituality is now becoming big, BIG money. No one wants to rock the boat on their lots of money!
e) People are not in control of their own stress response systems — the belief system has become their identity, their survival, and their source of perceived safety. To break beliefs down would be to enter a perpetual feeling of being in danger for the unconscious brain.
f) In addition, people fight each other for their beliefs and the peer groups control each other with fear. Many people in cults will attack viciously any outsiders that come and question their beliefs upon which they base their psychological security. The force of peer pressure has and always has been, a tremendous force on our brains, as we have evolved to find security in the community. A very powerful example of this is the book showing why it was possible for normal every-day people to be convinced into committing atrocities in Hitler’s time.
Those, of course, are my own reasons that I have personally observed growing up in new age cults most of my life, but there are many books on the subject of why people join and stay in cults. You could read for example “Comprehending Cults — The sociology of New Religious Movements” by Lorne L Lawson, or you could visit the site of the International Cultic Studies Association, for more reflections.
I actually dislike writing this, I wish I could do something else happier, it causes stress in my body, and I’d rather hide in the mountains, but it’s bursting out from me so I am just going to write it. Some people find doing this healing, but I am not finding that.
I am going to list some of the examples I know about. I will start first with the well-known and publicised abuses, and then the not yet very well-known or publicised. It may be triggering because I might touch on a group that the reader has a strong existing allegiance to. I apologise in advance for any pain caused, as believe me, I know it is stressful. It is easy to see how the ‘other group’ was wrong, but not so much for a group you trusted. I also think spiritual people overestimate their ability to discriminate — each person thinks it would never happen to them, and that they chose the one true right ‘path,’ while the other ‘lesser ones’ did not.
I am not advocating the eradication of any of these cultic groups. I believe in the right for these cults to exist, since people obviously feel they need them to get by in life. What I am doing is presenting the information for people like me, who would, if they knew more about the overall pattern of it, from a birdseye view, choose another path. I want to give those people a choice — a choice that I myself never got.
After I give the stories, I am going to explain what I feel is the root of the pattern — of the spiritual pandemic, and how to heal it in following articles. I am not saying I know, or that I know how to heal it, but I feel that observing clearly what is going on does point to a way. I am fully aware that I am speaking about some groups where there will be aggressive opposition, but I would argue, that aggression is part of the problem.
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The last century brought tremendous suffering due to oppressive political regimes and belief systems fighting each other, usually under the guidance of a charismatic leader, such as Hitler and Stalin.
The New Age world promised something different. Ever since the 1970s there has been a great deal of talk of peace, love, light, ascension, transcending this awful world — these types of ideas and philosophies have mushroomed into a dizzying variety, each group of people thinking they are ones who have ‘the truth.’ Many New Agers have declared that they themselves are Jesus, or are channeling ultimate wisdom, or similar. And it is no wonder, given our traumatic past, that everyone flocked desperately to hear what these spiritual movements and leaders had to say. People who desperately want someone to guide them. People who desperately want to believe in something.
We are a traumatised people, searching for a way out, are we not? Additionally, who else is explaining to us what these energies we sensitive people feel, in our bodies are? No one, apart from these groups. Not everyone feels those sensations, science has absolutely no explanation for these energies, so the ones that do feel them are searching for belonging.
The question I am challenging you to think about as I show you these examples, is why do you think more of the SAME ended up happening? Why did we just replace one misery with another copy of the same ‘authority’ problem but with different clothes?
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I will start with John of God. Until recently, I along with many others thought he was amazing. He appeared to be healing people of so many ailments, and maybe he did. He had an entire village and a booming economy built up around just him, in Brazil. He appeared on Oprah. Wayne Dyer supported him. He has literally thousands and thousands of followers and admirers in the New Age world believing in him.
And yet Sabrina Bittencourt recently literally gave up her life to speak out against him.
Why? Because he was running a baby farm for women and abusing women. He has now recently been put in prison for this.
Pretty unbelievable (and scary). Especially with trusted media personalities like Oprah saying how impressed they are with him.
It is even scarier, when you consider that some insensitive new age people are still going on about having ‘blessed’ John of God Healing Quartz’s from him, in 2019. How can a person still represent him as the healing energy of love and light, when the guy ran a baby farm for women, and then murdered the women after 10 years, and then sold their children?
There are now hundreds of testimonials against him. We ‘spiritual folks’ need to please wake up, because we are becoming so much worse than the average person on the street, not more ‘evolved’. If we do not do these, how will we ever be able to trust each other again? How will we be able to ever believe in anything again? I predict that eventually, people are going to wake up to it all and become just as frazzled as I am right now about it.
Anyway, if you are new to all of this, and it is a hard pill to swallow, it becomes less unbelievable the more you find out, and the more you see the pattern of insanity.
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Next up, Chogyam Trungpa, Pema Chodron’s guru. If you follow the popular new age spiritual gurus of the day, then you will know about Pema Chodron, as she features regularly on places such as soundstrue.com. She goes on Oprah quite a bit.
Chogyam Trungpa seems like a great guy. Apparently, he was one of the first in the West to coin the term ‘mindfulness’. It's another leader around which a tremendously convincing world was built. As is often the case with these gurus, many felt that he was a friend.
And yet, this April 2021, the testimonials came out more publically:
“Hays remembers Trungpa demanding women and girls at all hours of the day and night, some of them teenagers. He was not only prone to outbursts of physical violence but, according to Hays, her job as a “spiritual wife” (traditionally a consort for ritualized sexual meditations) involved offering Trungpa bumps of cocaine, which she remembers his lieutenants pretending was either a secret ritual substance or vitamin D. Hays’s entire relationship with Trungpa testifies to how he used his charisma to prey on followers…
…In the bedroom, Hays says, he would use a vibrator until she screamed out in pain. Then Trungpa started to punch and kick her…
…Another ex-Shambhala student, who asked to remain anonymous, knows of several women Trungpa physically assaulted besides her. “He pinched me to the point of leaving dark bruises,” she says. I reached her at her office in Atlantic Canada, where she runs a practice as a therapist…
…Trungpa’s “henchmen,” as she calls them, would circulate through the participants to find the women he desired. “The entire scene around him was sexualized,” she says. “Trungpa was basically the king of the universe, and any contact with him was a blessing that was going to guarantee your enlightenment and eternal salvation.”
And then there was the animal abuse. Leslie Hays writes on her Facebook page:
“We returned to Prajna late one night after a talk and there was this beautiful tabby cat sitting on the porch. I said, “here kitty kitty” and he came right over to me, purring and rubbing against my legs. I picked him up and said: “Here sweetie, here’s the cat you’ve been wanting.” I can’t remember exactly who was on duty but i think it was Marty Janowitz and of course Mitchell. Someone took the cat from me and Rinpche ordered them to tie him to the table on the porch. He instructed them to make a tight noose out of a rope so the cat didn’t get away. He stood over his guards to examine the knots and make sure they were secure. I was curious at this point, wondering what this enlightened master had in mind for the cat-i knew there were serious rodent problems on the land and i assumed he wanted to use the cat for this problem.
Then, he instructed the kasung to bring him some logs from the fire pit that was in front of the porch down a slight slope.
We took our seats-CTR was seated to my right and there was a table between us for his drinks. He ordered a sake. The logs were on his right side, so he could use his good arm. Anyway, the cat was still tied by a noose to the table. Rinpoche picked up a log and hurled it at the cat, who jumped off the table and hung from the noose. He was making a terrible gurgling sound-and he finally got some footing on the edge of the deck and made it back onto the porch. Rinpoche hurled another log-making contact and the cat let out a horrible scream as the air was knocked out of him. I said: “Sweetie-stop! What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” He said something about hating cats because they played with their food and didn’t cry at the buddha’s funeral. He continued to torture the poor animal and I was crying and begging him to stop. I said: “I gave you the cat, please…stop it!” And I’ll never forget his response-he looked at me and said: “You are responsible to for this karma.” and he giggled. I got up to try and stop him and he firmly told me to sit down. One of the guards stepped closer to me and stood in a threatening manner to keep me in my place.
The torture went on for what seemed like hours, until finally the poor cat made a run for his life with the patio table bouncing after him. It was clear he had a broken back leg. I’m sure that cat died. I looked for him or the table for the rest of Seminary and never found either. I imagined him fleeing up the mountain and the table catching on something and strangling him. I was completely traumatized by the event, but it was never spoken of again. Rinpoche told me the “karma” from this event was good. I was dumbfounded. A common feeling i had when around CTR was that there were things going on that i simply could not understand, while it seemed other people, with a knowing nod of their heads, understood things on a deeper level than I. I was in fear of exposing my ignorance, so i learned not to question and to go with the crowd around him. They didn’t appear to have any problems with what he did-such was the depth of their devotion. I just needed to generate more devotion to Rinpoche and one day i might understand.
I kept this secret for 30 years.”
Page 60 of the book, ‘The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant’ by John Riley Perks, also contains an account of how he abused a dog.
It makes me want to scream from the rooftops at the spiritual section of humanity to wake up - that something truly has gone very, very wrong on our ‘spiritual paths’. Why have so many heart-centered spiritual people become unresponsive zombies with little feeling, just because the authority said it was ok?
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A recent sub comment on Leslie’s post states:
“Three years ago, every single friend I’d had for more than 30 years in that community of blindness disowned me. Why? They did not approve of me speaking negatively about their hero and root guru. But now I have the most delightful, real, honest to God friends.”
I am hoping it's as obvious to the reader as it is to me, that a huge illusion and mass disconnect from the heart is taking place when the ascension of humanity was supposed to be the other way round — was it not?
What is the consequence of the mass of ‘spiritual humanity’ being disconnected from compassion because they are following an authority? If you have become a brainwashed follower, can you have your energy to help save the natural world?
To disconnect from your compassion towards all living things is to disconnect yourself from the natural world because the heart channel is the way the spirits of the land and the Earth talk to you and inspire you.
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Do we really need to keep waiting for an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ (children's story) scenario before we can see that people like Chogyam Trungpa are doing something wrong? Must we need the peer pressure and someone pointing it out for years and year before we see? Or can we start feeling for ourselves?
Here we can see from Pema Chodron when asked how can an enlightened person do the types of things that Choyam Trungpa was doing — she says:
“I do not know. I cant buy a party line, where it was sacred activity… come up with ground to make it ok. I also cannot come up with ground, or fixed idea to make it not ok. .. I am really left in that… I don't know. I can't answer the relative questions because he defied being able to answer them.”
How can Pema Chodron NOT come up with ground to make it not ok?
The ground is very simple — would you have been ok with hurting living things, when you were a young child, before you became disconnected from your heart? Why do we even need an intellectual ground?
She still thinks he was enlightened — how can she think that?
What do you think might be the danger in thinking someone who can do this, is enlightened? You give up your heart’s wisdom in deference to someone else.
a) You can be easily controlled, by any self-interested force that comes along to take advantage of this dynamic.
b) You can be misguided into aiding the suffering of others, and of animals, and have thus betrayed your own heart.
c) You are have given too much importance to the leader’s apparent wisdom rather than your own. You are basing your life on someone else’s illusion of perfection rather than your own. And you have probably done this unconsciously because feeling guided makes you feel safe and because you have been taught to undervalue yourself in deference for the illusion of authority. Yet, our desperation for safety has made an even more insecure spiritual environment.
The only crazy wisdom is the wisdom that mother nature of life herself is teaching us through these experiences— there is no one else who can do that.
Not only that but something truly ridiculous is Scott Barry Kaufman quoting Chogyam Trungpa as if he knows how not to be one, in an article on Spiritual Narcissism in Scientific American! The levels of deception in this game are endless.
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My next example is the Osho commune of the 1970s. They believed themselves to be the chosen ones.
There is a very well-done documentary series on Netflix, called Wild, Wild Country — the beginning shows why it was that thousands of the most talented people happily created their own city equipped with their own police force. They also created huge communes around the world. They were trying to create a Utopia.
Osho got everyone to believe that having sex with everyone was a good idea and that having the commune take care of the children instead of the parents was a good idea. I know this because of Lily Dunn and Tim Guest. They both were children growing up around the cult but they became writers, so that is why we know of them.
Lily Dunn wrote:
“Occasionally, I trawl a website set up for those who lived at Medina (an Osho commune in the UK). It is not up to date. My father’s entry fails to say that he died 10 years ago of alcoholism. But there are blurred photos of the kids who lived there, and many of them I remember. I study these pictures and the rushed, misspelt notes beside their faces. On the first page, I am shocked to read: She died in 1997, after a long battle with drugs. I scroll down: He died of AIDS in London in 1994. I scroll down: Unknown. Unknown. Unknown…
…There was a Facebook page dedicated to a young woman who had attempted to reverse her sterilisation, done at Pune, aged just 19. Years later, she’d fallen in love and wanted to have a baby. She was 33, the same age I was when I saw the posting and had my first child. It is a much more straightforward procedure for a man to reverse a vasectomy than for a woman to reverse sterilisation. The young woman had died…
…Here, my father felt free to be himself. He could wear a skirt, a faded pink bandana around his head; he could eat watermelon. He could take many lovers, which he did. ‘It is very hard to describe it all,’ he writes. ‘Not because I don’t want to, but because the reality was only in the feeling and the being, and not in the mind and therefore couldn’t really be memorised at all.’ I have since recognised that this is the language of the heart — the soft, oblique realm of the unconscious. But it is also the innocent space that a child knows, both creative and naive.
…Bhagwan gave his disciples permission to abandon their responsibilities; those things that burdened them with a certain dispassionate duty. The needs of ‘the self’ were paramount. ‘He created a kind of structured carelessness,’ my father describes it. ‘If another person was suffering from some emotional problem — jealousy, anger, fear, doubt — it was their problem.’…
Soon after returning from Pune, my father and his girlfriend rented a small top-floor flat in Primrose Hill, and their existence became about when they could finance their next trip to India. We were left behind as an afterthought, to become merely an anecdote that belonged to a time when Dad didn’t know himself, before he’d spun himself around and chosen the right dusty path. His maroon-clad friends would nod and smile in recognition. My mother was left to pick up the pieces. Their publishing company was taken into receivership; debts accrued. We almost lost our home, set against an unpaid bank loan…
…During those weekends at Medina, I woke up to sex. It was not a particular moment or revelation, it was just around me every day, in displays of open affection and in conversation among the kids and the adults — inappropriate things being said, late-night noises. I learned that sex could be indiscriminate, and that love didn’t necessarily mean monogamy; that kids did it, too, with each other and with adults.
…It’s hard to trace Bhagwan’s discourse on sexual initiation, but my father talked about it as if it were a good thing: leaders coming to the commune to give young women their first sexual experience. Perhaps this initiation was seen as a safety net for women to be guided by a wiser, more experienced teacher, but it’s also horribly artificial. It’s worth noting, too, that there’s no mention of roaming bands of older women preying on younger men. There were men who watched me while I played at Medina, making no attempt to hide their desire. ‘She’s cute. She’s going to be a beauty,’ they’d say to my father. ‘He likes you,’ he’d tell me, as if it were normal. My mother was right to be worried.”
Osho hypnotically created a community and persona that everyone was so desperate to hold on to, so much so, that 12 of the leadership were willing to indiscriminately poison an entire town of people in order to maintain their way of life. They also recruited hundreds of homeless people to win votes, they had a great time but then they were eventually all drugged against their will when only some of them became out of control.
He created Sheela, and then Sheela created a system of total control for many that were there.
Sheela attempted to murder someone with a lethal injection.
So how did this happen? What was the organisational structure that allowed for 12 people to follow the orders of a narcissist, like lemmings, without being connected to their own hearts? It is hard to understand the type of control that actually manifested since Osho himself grew up in freedom.
“Bhagwan’s grandparents allowed him to do whatever he wanted; they paid a guard to follow him and make sure he wasn’t bothered or reprimanded in any way. He said it was this lack of indoctrination, and lack of personal attachments, that left him free to find the truth. What he didn’t discuss in his autobiography but what friends and family recall, was his deep fascination with magic tricks and hypnotism.” (p.34 of Tim Guest’s ‘My Life in Orange’)
So Osho can have a lack of indoctrination, but the rest of us have to be indoctrinated by ‘the truth’ of others, including his?
I personally had to fight to the death to free myself of indoctrination and was stuck for more than 20 years before I was ‘free to find the truth.’
I can pretend to sell enlightenment too. But I have absolutely no desire to.
Tim Guest describes more:
“In this climate of war against repression, broken arms — explained at the local hospital with the euphemism, ‘fallen off a ladder at the Ashram’ — were signs of commitment. Slings and casts were paraded as badges of honour. There was even talk of deep-seated tension that could only be released when bones were broken. After the occasional rapes, all those involved claimed that the experience had been of therapeutic value. One Ma stated that her rape in an encounter group had been the ‘facing of my final nightmare’ and that she was glad it had come from a sannyasin. ‘How could anything at the Ashram be bad for me?’ she said.” (p.41)
“The sexual licentiousness didn’t conform to Western boundaries; it was common at the Ashram to see girls in their early teens paired off with bearded Swamis older than their fathers.” (p.45)
“A big part of Bhagwan’s message for those living in his communes was to surrender: to him, and to the commune. In practice, this usually meant submitting to the often well-intentioned whims of whoever was running the particular commune you were at. There was an unspoken but intense competition among the leading sannyasins about who was the most ego-less, the most detached, the most un-phased by jealousy and by need.” (p.71)
How often have you seen spiritual people compete with others to see who ‘got it the best’? Why do you think that happens? Do you think that it is actually spirituality?
“Bhagwan who was never there but always there — in his books, his tapes, the songs we sang at celebrations — ‘Disappearing into you, oh Bhagwan, the sun and the moon …’ Bhagwan was wrought in miniature around all our necks; and writ large, too, in laminate photos sometimes six feet wide, on the walls above our heads at all times.” (p.85)
There were thousands of sannyasins at Rajneeshpuram. I remember having difficulty finding my mother’s tent among the thousands and thousands of tents lined up in rows, in dusty fields upon dusty fields. If I missed my mother during the day, I went to look for her in the evening at ‘Magdalena’, in the food tents. … After dark, much of my time at the Ranch was spent wandering through those crowds looking for my mother. There were times when, as evening drew in, I felt I had spent my whole life on tiptoes, looking for my mother in a darkening crowd. (p.194)
“That year, the summer of 1984 at the Ranch, many of the Medina kids lost their virginity; boys and girls, ten years old, eight years old, in sweaty tents and A-frames, late at night and mid-afternoon, with adults and other children. I remember some of the kids — eight, nine, ten years old — arguing about who had fucked whom, who would or wouldn’t fuck them.” (p.195)
“Our favourite was Noah’s Ark, the boutique. When no one was looking we ran in and hid under the rails of clothes, peeked out at customers, ran our hands through the sleeves and hems. The boutique sold all kinds of Bhagwan souvenirs: Bhagwan pillowcases showing him in profile, asleep, resting his head on his own pillow; decks of cards, like the ones used in the Rajneeshpuram Casino, a different picture of Bhagwan on the back of each card; pocket-sized Bhagwan flashlights, ‘Be a light unto yourself’ written down one side.”
Be a light unto yourself? Was that being implemented?
“The level of fear in the ordinary sannyasins was also rising. People would inform on others who made ‘negative’ comments; the offenders were called in to Jesus Grove for a spiritual dressing down. People were afraid to leave and afraid to offend the Big Mammas. Lists of ‘negative’ people were pinned up on the Magdalena notice board: these people were not to be allowed back into The level of fear in the ordinary sannyasins was also rising. People would inform on others who made ‘negative’ comments; the offenders were called in to Jesus Grove for a spiritual dressing down. People were afraid to leave and afraid to offend the Big Mammas. Lists of ‘negative’ people were pinned up on the Magdalena notice board: these people were not to be allowed back into the Ranch, or even talked to by any sannyasin.” (p.207)
“Those who had been kicked out and who dared to write directly to their guru received replies from Sheela on Rajneesh Foundation International headed paper. ‘Beloved: it is not possible for you to have a new mala. Just enjoy your life as it is. His blessings.’ To remind themselves why they were there, many sannyasins sought out the ‘enlightened’ page of the Buddhafield Newsletter. This was a growing list of the ‘enlightened’ sannyasins — those who had made it. Some took these lists seriously; others observed that the sannyasins on the ‘enlightened’ list tended to be the richest ones.” (p.208)
A list of those who had made it?
“An Oregon woman instigated a class-action suit against Rajneeshpuram, on the grounds of widespread child-abuse. The PA system in the Magdalena food tents now played a looped recording encouraging sannyasins to write letters complaining about the persecution.”
“Each day she woke up at 6 a.m. and worked until 7 p.m. After work she went to see Bhagwan in the huge Rajneesh Mandir auditorium, then she dragged herself back to her shared A-frame to sleep. After washing pots for twelve hours, she had no energy for anything else. Nonetheless, the Big Mammas kept an eye on her. One morning two weeks into her stay, she was hauled up to Jesus Grove where Sheela held court. My mother was told to sit in front of a line of all the Ranch Big Mammas: Vidya, Arup, Yogini and Patipada. They gave her what the lower-level dissident sannyasins called ‘the Full Number’. The Big Mammas told her she was a deceitful, manipulative, cowardly liar who had never let Bhagwan into her heart. She was un-surrendered, worthless; she hadn’t learned a single thing in all her years with Bhagwan. They told her she had ‘the negativity of a hundred lifetimes’ and, to ensure that she would not be able to spread her negativity, she would never be allowed to run groups or therapy sessions again. My mum started to cry. They remained stony-faced. The fact that she tried to cry, they said, was further evidence that she was un-surrendered, egotistical and negative.” (p.210)
“She asked to see Ramateertha, the Wioska coordinator (known among the more rebellious German sannyasins as ‘der Bishop von Köln — the Bishop of Cologne). She told him how she was suffering, and she pleaded with him for leniency. He said no. He told her she had a lot to learn. He told her she was unhappy because she was clinging to her ego. He told her she had to rid herself of her will to power, and cure herself of her rebellious lack of surrender…
…Meanwhile Bhagwan had begun a new series of discourses called ‘The Rebel’, in which he talked about his own rebellious childhood, and the importance of refusing to submit to any external authority.” (p.246)
Ok, so do you see the ridiculousness of it all, as I do?
Do you think this ‘experiment’ worked?
“Bhagwan missed India; while the dream of a sannyasin city became a sump around him, he watched videos of Indian films through the afternoons. In the evenings, he and Vivek argued. She shouted: ‘You don’t love me any more, why don’t you love me? Why don’t you make love to me?’ The microphones picked up the sound of something thrown in the kitchen. He threw something back — a book, a shoe — and muttered: ‘Shut up, woman. I am trying to watch television. Always you are moaning.’ (p.274)
Later this woman, Vivek, committed suicide.
…Bhagwan denied his need for others; his claim was that this denial freed him from his lineage and from history, allowing him to attain great spiritual height. He felt his separation to be the source of his connection with the absolute. His wound was also inflicted on us. By following him, the sannyasins were brought to the heights of spirituality: but when the whole dizzy tower collapsed we were also cut off from the family and friends we needed.”(p.274)
Osho, she and another woman were put in prison, but Sheela only stayed in prison for about two and a half years, when she should have been there for 20 years.
In this 2019 Indian news piece, she still has the appearance of a wise little old woman, telling everyone she has paid her dues and does not need to explain why she tried to kill people, and it's clear she still doesn't at all recognise the magnitude of what she did.
They blamed her for controlling and brainwashing Osho, but I think the Netflix documentary makes it clear that Osho appointed her, and he could have at any time, decided for a change in leadership and his will would have been done. He is responsible for creating this culture and system of authority, is he not?
He had more than 90 Rolls Royces and a customised rolex diamond and ruby watch. He was always eager to buy more of the shiny things — that's why he was “Selling Enlightenment” in his own words.
There are many all around the world who still think Osho was the epitome of enlightenment — a ‘master’ (but do any of us know what that means?).
I say this because I see many comments like this on YouTube
I think the real issue in the commune was that many of them were happy (possibly a hypnotised happiness), and some of them wanted to desperately hold on to the happiness, in order to avoid a miserable world, regardless of who else they were hurting.
Here is a recent quora comment (it's buried in sub comments which I don't know how to link to) from someone who used to be part of the commune:
“The truth is, dear ignorant Friend, it was the very opposite of hell. It was heaven. Shocking, eh? Even though we worked long hours in tough surroundings… Yes, it still managed to be heaven for most. What a mystery! The one thing everyone dreaded was being asked to leave.”
I am the ‘dear ignorant friend’.
The new-age-spiritual-world people often attack you while clothing it in nice-sounding words. I am personally so bored of that now — I wish it would end.
This person made it clear that they were all frightened to leave, maybe that is why they practiced shooting their guns every day.
This is the person’s take on the childrens’ testimonials:
“As for children as young as eight having sex… what a load of bollocks! (Excuse my French.) If it happened at all it was in someone’s ugly imagination…
…As for Tim Guest, author of My Life in Orange, I knew him fleetingly. He was a very unhappy child before he went to live at the commune. His mother did indeed leave him to his own devices more than he wanted, and he was one of the very few casualties in a city of 11 thousand. Most of the others were thrilled to have the chance to be free and creative and to learn practical skills as well as get a real education surrounded by loving people.”
Tim Guest is now dead, due to an overdose of morphine and, apparently, the children having sex part, that Tim wrote about, was all a ‘load of bollocks.’
Also apparently according to this quora person, Tim was just one of a very few casualties (as if a few casualties is ok anyway).
The thoughts of another former child of the cult Noa Maxwell says:
“He can understand the appeal of Rajneesh, the aura of the man, the extraordinary voice, his charisma. “But I think without doubt he was deeply culpable, guilty of neglect of his people and did massive damage to many of them.”
He doesn’t like seeing pictures of him. And he has fundamental problems with the message. “For me, the meaning of my life is about family, family relationships, and that was blatantly disregarded in the idea that these kids are just going to be happy growing up in this wild place.”
I know this feeling. I also can not look at Vishwananda’s picture anymore — young men who have been raped tell me they feel the same. I am also a child of two consecutive cults from which I feel deeply betrayed, and I think there were many times where I could have gone the same way, as did Tim, while I was deprogramming myself, and even before that.
I think many children of cults feel the same way — that is why I feel it is important to do my part, to make sure to do Tim justice.
Even though he was doing well for himself, there would have always been a part of him that felt too broken. I know that feeling. I would like to help make his lost life mean something, just as I wish that for myself.
While I understand quora person’s viewpoint, my argument is that no one deserves to have their experience discounted and that everyone matters.
I think again, this is showing that despite this person being a ‘psychotherapist who has meditated with Osho for 45 years’, they do not see that their own lifetime attachment to the ideas, is causing them to discount the experience of others and disconnect themselves from their compassion.
Another person Anand Harp says of the documentary, Wild, Wild Country in the Rolling Stone:
“To be clear, we were in no way, shape, or form the homicidal, terrorist, sex-crazed cult we are smeared as being,” he tells Rolling Stone. “We were actually anything but. It was the commune leadership who drank the Kool-Aid and went off the rails.”
I think it is important to remember that it is true that most people did not partake in terrorism, but I personally, out of principle would never choose to be part of a society where it was possible for the leadership to become that way.
Why WAS it possible for the leadership to become that way? I believe that it was because of the overall authoritarian structure of the beliefs, and the attachment to their beliefs.
They became that way because of an unquestioning relationship to the authority, and because of peer pressure (like the ‘Ordinary Men’ in Hitler’s time book, mentioned above).
They became that way because they were indoctrinated into their way of life and because they were frightened.
People believe that your heart is going to tell you when you have found your true master, and I need to say here that just because you think you are feeling that, does not necessarily mean it is real. I thought that also with the Bhakti Marga cult. I do believe that I was being put under some hypnotic and emotional spell. Once a Swami told me that Vishwanada was able to turn the Swami’s love for Vishwananda, off from one moment to the other, just to prove a point. The Swami thinks it is a sign that he is God, but what do you think that is a sign of?
The only way to know if your real heart is working is by looking to see who, and what, was harmed, and if you are practically still capable of compassion for all living things, or if in fact you have been disconnected from it. Ignoring the suffering of just one child, or just one cat, is a sign that you have ignored your heart.
Being brainwashed to ignore your natural compassion is the essence of the ‘Spiritual Pandemic’. And a disconnect from compassion is the reason people only see the value of a tree once it is cut down.
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At least Osho did not directly commit some terrible abuse himself, and as I said above, I am not against each one choosing whatever path works for them and I think they should.
I am pointing this out for those that did know these things before so that they can have more freedom to make an informed choice for their own lives.
I am also pointing out that the problem lies in the state of heart of the followers as well as the irresponsibility of the spiritual leader.
At the beginning of this article, I listed many ‘ailments’ which have not yet been dealt with in these examples. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I tell more stories and suggest a solution.
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