I'm reading Cultish by Amanda Montell, and Dionysus: Myth and Cult by Walter F. Otto, and thinking about Buddhism, and being a soccer fan.
On the one hand, I think the hype language of Buddhism is about doing the hard work of meditating a lot. I can see why there are sects that de-emphasize meditation because it is so hard and time consuming. I tend to go in the direction of Dogen, who see it as the most important part. Other traditions use meditation, but meditation is at the heart of Buddhism in my opinion. I don't scoff at Buddhists who don't meditate as I did in my early zeal, to me it's essential. There are Buddhists who don't meditate, and that is an acceptable path.
Humans don't live up to their ideals and that can lead to cynicism and nihilism. I'm working to use ideals positively and avoid misuse and negative use.
Somehow being a soccer fan is a weird cult of sorts. It's worship of others playing an athletic game, and there's all kinds of spin off into kit collecting, travel, and policing how others should talk about the team on social media. Montell writes about cancer fundraising, which uses benign cultish language. What a cult is actually hard to define, thus a focus on Cultish language. I suppose being a part of a benign cult helps one to do more. The power of a cult is too much for humans to weild.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that Otto wants to look at Dionysus worship from the inside, to really give it the best representation, the benefit of the doubt, not to look at it as superficial and just some old craziness.
Montell uses an interesting phrase. Bespoke spirituality, where you taylor everything for your needs like a well cut suit, regardless of the tradition. I've met a few people like that that don't mind taking from Hinduism or Christianity, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Aztec, Paganism, science or psychology.
The Rajneesh community seems to have embraced the Dionysian cult of rapture to some extent, with the Human Potential Movement, and many other complementary therapies.
"No man prays to a concept," is a quoted by Otto, and it makes sense. When I talk about how beautiful the mythology of Tibetan Buddhism, I get downvoted on Reddit, because they're not evoking concepts, they're evoking deities. I think the concepts are beautiful and I can pray to personifications of them. Tara is overcoming obstacles. Avalokita is compassion. Amitabha is love. I like that line of the jinas.
You can see why capitalism uses cultish behavior, language and psychology, and wants you to really believe in work, to squeeze the maximum out of the workers who just want to eat, housing and clothes. Whipping up motivation is important in life, but you own your own motivations, you don't have to become a tool of someone else, except to survive! That's why housing, food, gas need to go up, the struggle for existence has to be hard, make you really bust ass. That's why no benefits, no insurance, no safety net. Make schools subsistence level. Make public hospitals undesirable. Make public transport yucky. No rail, everyone needs a car.
Montell's repudiation of the term cult is to avoid judgment that assumes people don't have independence to participate in these groups. It makes me think how some on r/Buddhism use it quite quickly for sects they don't like. I have a different line and allow Triratna and NKT to exist without judgement in my mind, but I still wish to reserve the right to judge Shambhala after some of things I've read. I'm on the fence about SGI. I note how Pierce on Community was in a fictional Buddhist cult. "Cult" and "Brainwash" close down conversation.
Jonestown happened in 1978 when 918 people died, and people used that to judge the Rajneesh community. The community was confused because Jonestown was a Christian community and they were a new religion, based off of Hinduism, but it was also eclectic and inclusive. They used some Buddhist language.
Charles Manson had 35 people killed, and was convicted in 1971 (source). 39 people died part of Heaven's Gate in 1997. Order of the Solar Temple claimed 77 lives in Switzerland, France, and Canada in 1994, 1995 and 1997. Statistically, you have to understand that there are a lot of human social organizations and that these murderous events are very very rare.
I'm watching Wild Wild Country, a 6 part documentary on Bhagwan Rajneesh's time in America. I actually don't even know anything about him, besides he was later rebranded as Osho. I had a psychiatrist recommend a book on meditation by him. I've met a fellow who does the dynamic meditation. I've never read anything by him or tried anything like dynamic meditation.
I love learning about American history and historical characters. Bill Bowerman supposedly negotiated the surrender of some German forces, won 4 championships in college track and field, and founded Nike. And he was a big person against the Oregon compound of the Rajneeshpuram.
I'm learning this all from the documentary and reading Wikipedia. I find this interesting from the Rajneesh wikipedia: "Price is alleged to have exited the Pune ashram with a broken arm following a period of eight hours locked in a room with participants armed with wooden weapons. Bernard Gunther, his Esalen colleague, fared better in Pune and wrote a book, Dying for Enlightenment, featuring photographs and lyrical descriptions of the meditations and therapy groups. Violence in the therapy groups eventually ended in January 1979, when the ashram issued a press release stating that violence "had fulfilled its function within the overall context of the ashram as an evolving spiritual commune"."
Every force has a counter force. When the Sanyassins bought up all the houses in Antelope, people got a little more nervous, imagine they're going to take over the world, they were taking over their world. They tried to dissolve the city. I'm not sure what that would have gotten them, does the county take over and then those laws are more favorable to the people who lived there before the Sanyassins. There's a real culture war that includes the hotel they own in Portland being bombed. America where peaceful people are forced to militarized.
It's kind of chilling to see them using the concentration of meditation to help them aim a gun. They also alienate the residents who were there before by having loud sex all night. They took over the police force. This is like a square community nightmare, but it's also quite obnoxious in a way, seems like an over reaction and deliberately provocative.
Ma Anand Sheela emerges as an interesting person. She defends the community vigorously in the media. I want to watch Searching for Sheela. Her work raised sales of the Rajneesh's books. They had 500,000 followers. They seem to be hugging each other all the time, and joyful. Looks like they had an awesome party in 1983. There's also a German film called Ashram in Poona (1979).
Every good party is followed by lawyers. The district attorney goes after them with the separation of church and state thing. The school doesn't seem particularly secular. The lawyer who was a Sanyassin is pretty persuasive that if you look at the history of America, Catholics rule Boston, Mormons rule Salt Lake, and on and on about how America was founded on religious freedom.
Then at some point they began busing in homeless people, giving them food and shelter, and just asking them to vote, so they could take over the county they lived in. Part of the motivation was compassion. I'm finding this as a fascinating study on American politics, because you've got a kind of nominal Christian rural retirement community and a hippy commune in Rajneeshpuram, and Sheela is an intelligent assertive leader who vigorously advocates for her community. It becomes a documentary about Democracy.
Then the mental health issues come to the fore, a raging man is sedated and driven away. They decide to sedate all the homeless population that moved there. They put Haldol into the beer.
Then there was a salmonella outbreak. They accused the Sanyassins of doing it, and the Sanyassins deny it, and in a kind of way they threaten to infect the world with love and their values.
Then Hollywood gets involved, the wife of the producer of Godfather is head of the Hollywood people embracing Rajneesh. The Hollywood people tempt Rajneesh with material goods, fancy watches, catalogues of things to want. A million dollar diamond watch is what he starts wearing. The spiritual movement has a bunch of corporations and the Hollywood crowd gets a corporation under the wing of the community. Is there are power struggle between Sheela and others. Sheela sees this as a kind of turning point in him losing spiritual momentum. He began taking laughing gas and valium.
The accumulated government response goes federal, and begins to focus on immigration. The Sanyassin get involved, and fight them back a little. There were a bunch of marriages to allow some people to stay in America. The government went after that as fraud. They traveled all around America to try and disguise the pattern. They used that conspiracy to get Rajneesh deported. The Sanyassin developed assassination plans, to target the people targeting them. They don't say why they didn't follow through with it, or if anything thwarted them.
Sheela starts evicting people from the community. The locals who hated them have a certain glee at the problems managing the homeless crowd. This creates more negativity towards the community. They send out a box of poisoned chocolates. Government officials who visited became ill.
Lots of rumors without proof circulated. The community experiences a kind of stress they're not really used to. Sheela seems to demonstrate stress. Sheela wiretaps the Rajneesh's room. Rajneesh acquired poisons which he stored. Rajneesh asked Sheela to build a crematorium. He said he would die on the 6th of July, "Masters Day". He was going to commit suicide maybe. Jane Stork stepped forward to assassinate the doctor who would euthanize Rajneesh. She stuck the doctor with a syringe, pretended it didn't happen, someone was set to pick up the syringe she threw. She tried to murder the doctor with a syringe and felt she cross a barrier, she became disillusioned. She did not succeed in killing him.
Sheela decided to leave in 1985. Many left with her. Rajneesh was angry to find out she left. He breaks his 3.5 year silence. He said Sheela and her group tried to kill 3 people, he found the bug, called them inhuman, fascist, didn't face him and say goodbye, stole money.
Rajneesh and Sheela feud. He says he made a point of never having sex with a secretary, and he accused her of being on drugs. Jane Stork goes to Sheela, as a substitute guru. The Hollywood producer Ma Prem Hasya becomes Rajneesh's secretary. Swami Prem Niren becomes the new mayor. He would go on to write a legal history of the movement. He says it's a Gurdjieff test for everyone. Philip Toelkes (Ma Prem Hasya) writing a book about his experiences.
Rajneesh extends the accusations. Said she stole 43 million dollars, was planning to bomb the community. That got the FBI onto the ranch investigating crimes. Law enforcement talks about public sex they witness frequently. The find tunnels and tapping equipment and dredge the pond.
The nurse who was head of the medical section seems like she might have done some shady stuff, including doing the salmonella outbreak. They tried to subvert the election by making people sick. They thought about poisoning the water.
Then Rajneesh blows everything up, says it's not a religion, he's not the guru, stop wearing the color clothes and carrying malas. He ends the religion. The movement literally commits suicide, burns his books and clothes. But he still calls them his Sanyassin and doesn't pack it up, they continue to fight for their existence.
So bizzare, Sheela poses nude for a German magazine. She has 25 of her own disciples in an island off Germany. Search warrants are issued. Nobody was willing to talk, except David Berry Knapp, or Krishna Deva as he was known in the movement. The national guard surrounds the compound, and two jets load up and take off. Rajneesh left. But he landed in Charlotte, and was arrested. Around the same time Sheela was arrested in Germany.
They fly Rajneesh in short hops all over America, in a weird time wasting drama of perp walks for 3 weeks. Sheela gets 4 years, fines and export. Jane Stork gets 10 years for attempted murder, but they don't explain why she's in Germany and comes back to ask to go visit her sick son in Australia. Rajneesh makes a deal to leave the country.
The people leaving were crushed. It was 1981-1985. I was in high school, and I don't remember seeing it on the news at the time. Antelope is back to its old name, and they replace the street names. The party for the anti-Rajneesh people's party was a bunch of smug old ladies. Nothing wrong with older women, but it's not the party I want to go to. I have sympathy for their desire to not have things change so drastically and the drama of those 4 years. I'm not on any side, I just wondered what was preventing them all from understanding each others, not escalating things.
Rajneesh goes back to India where he still has lots of followers. He rebrands of Osho, a Japanese honorarium of a teacher. When he dies it's the final party, maybe they still party. The ecstatic dancing, the permission to be free. They discuss the freedom and feelings about the ending of things.
Jane Stork could have stayed in Germany, but wanted to go visit her son who had brain cancer in Australia, but she had to go to America to resolve the case for the freedom to go to Australia. She was allowed to go to Australia, she got time served, she was free. She expresses gratitude for being allowed the mercy of going to see her son.
Sheela is still a fiery person who works with the sick elderly.
The ranch is now a Christian resort.
The Sanyassin are surprised America didn't embrace him the way they did.
The 6 part movie is pretty amazing, I was really resistant to watching it, but I felt quite a lot like, why didn't I know this happened.
The dancing and lack of asceticism is an interesting antidote to the usual spiritual community.
Now back to reading Montell and Otto.
Links and references:
Rajneesh building for sale in Antelope, Oregon includes relics of Rajneeshpuram made famous in ‘Wild Wild Country’ (Oregonian Nov. 29, 2021)
Ma Prem Nirvano (Sanyas.wiki)
Rajneesh (Wikipedia)
Breaking the Spell by Jane Stork
Afterthoughts: I had trouble focusing on the breath this morning, thinking about the documentary.
I really like Morell's not wanting to judge these spiritual movements harshly. Seems like labeling a community a cult leads to suspending people their rights. Maybe there can be more gentle checks to some wayward behavior. People get so irritated they have to do things, they over correct. That's one thing I try to do with parenting, is to not to get too bent out of shape and over react. The paternalism of government should be similar.
Montell writes about the escalation of the Branch Davidians that led to 8 deaths.
“In an attempt to find a less judgy way to discuss non-mainstream spiritual communities, many scholars have used neutral-sounding labels like "new religious movements," "emergent religions," and "marginalized religions." But while these phrases work in an academic context, I find they don't quite capture the CrossFits, multi level marketing companies, college theater programs, and other hard-to-categorize points along the influence continuum. We need a more versatile way to talk about communities that are cult-like in one way or another but not necessarily connected to the supernatural. Which is why I like the word "cultish." (p. 39).
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