In India, he worked as a small-town philosophy professor until he found enlightenment paid better. He built a thriving enterprise attracting Westerners to his lectures and group therapies. They sought meaning in their lives, escaping the remains of the Vietnam War and a crashing world economy. He mixed in plenty of sexual freedom, ensuring publicity to build his brand.
Government authorities in India cracked down on his group's unseemly and illegal behavior, including smuggling and tax fraud. The guru ran, ending up half a globe away at the Big Muddy Ranch.
The first contingent of Rajneeshees quietly moved to Oregon in summer 1981, but they couldn't escape notice for long. Resettling in Oregon was the work of his chief of staff, Ma Anand Sheela [Sheela Patel] then 31 years old. She wasn't after enlightenment. She was quick-witted and hungry for power, the perfect instrument for the guru's ambition.
Sheela intended to do as she wished on their remote 64,000 acres.
The money was paid, the guru packed and hundreds were expecting to be housed and fed. Sheela and the guru were undeterred. In India, trickery and bribery got results. Why would Oregon be any different?
Thousands dressed in red, worked without pay and idolized a wispy-haired man who sat silent before them. They bought one Rolls-Royce after another for the guru --93 in all. Along the way, they made plenty of enemies, often deliberately.
Hand-picked teams of Rajneeshees had executed the largest biological terrorism attack in U.S. history, poisoning at least 700 people. They ran the largest illegal wiretapping operation ever uncovered. And their immigration fraud to harbor foreigners remains unrivaled in scope. The revelations brought criminal charges, defections, global manhunts and prison time.
They had marked Oregon's chief federal prosecutor for murder, also stalked the state attorney general, lining him up for death. They contaminated salad bars at numerous restaurants. They spread dangerous bacteria at a grocery store, a public building and at political rally.
To strike at government authority, Rajneeshee leaders considered flying a bomb-laden plane into the county courthouse in The Dalles 16 years before al-Qaida used planes as weapons. And power struggles within Rajneeshee leadership spawned plans to murder even some of their own. The guru's caretaker was to be killed in her bed, spared only by a simple mistake.
The Rajneeshees turned the yawner of comprehensive plans into a page-turning thriller of brazen crimes.
Three months after the aborted Comini plot, the commune collapsed and the Rajneeshees' darkest secrets tumbled out.
It starts with Immigration fraud/Name change.... It always does. Just a thought.
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