Man, this book was kind of bullshit...trying to make Rajneesh aka Osho out to be a cult leader, when he wasn't...trying to make him out to be Charles Manson on that cover above...please...dude had fuck all to do with anything...he was arrested for not separating church and state well enough in his community and turning the other cheek on some shady marriages to get green cards...hardly a Jim Jones...still the book gave me a perspective on how people in Oregon felt about Osho and his friends...and granted a few of his friends were a bit fucked up and went a little overboard on a couple of things...but this wasn't a cult...i know cults...fuck i was a cult leader myself once upon a time...this was a case of people reacting to something that's different...anything that's different in our culture gets quickly labeled and dismissed or labeled in a negative view point...i mean jesus christ could be reborn and hit up the nearest church and he would be quickly labeled as sandal wearing, granola eating hippy and shown the door...
Win McCormack was the publisher of Oregon magazine when Rajneesh and his disciples relocated in 1981 from India to a 64,000-acre ranch outside of Antelope. For five years McCormack ran editorials and investigative pieces, warning of the dangers presented by the cult, dangers that came to include harassment, wiretapping, orange-clad Rajneeshees brandishing automatic weapons and, in an attempt to keep citizens from the polls and thus steal a county election, the poisoning of salad bars in The Dalles with a strain of salmonella that sickened more than 700 people.
Currently publisher and editor in chief of Tin House, McCormack recently sat down over blackened catfish and eggs to talk about what attracted people to "the guru of shortcuts," the personal consequences of speaking out against Rajneesh and how, had the cult had its way, the world's population would be smaller by two-thirds.
Q: The Rajneesh Chronicles was first published in 1987. Why rerelease it now?
A: The hook is, it's the 25th anniversary of the poisonings in The Dalles. People know the story, but they don't know how the different parts of the plot fit together.
Is another reason to republish to remind people not to be foolish?
Right. Not to be taken in. But people, even when they're reminded, if the particular thing they're attracted to comes along, they might not associate it with a cult, or a charismatic leader with bad motivations. I delved into how he manipulated people. He fashioned this whole ideology that was a combination of Eastern mysticism and Western humanistic psychology, then he fed it back to them.
He also told them they could have lots of sex while building a better world.
He did, he did. (Laughs.) You could have sex and be religious at the same time.
His followers tended to be educated and intellectual, people who believed they had the power and responsibility to foment change. The more they were deprived -- and by all accounts, commune life was vile, filthy and dangerous -- the more they blamed themselves and worked all the harder to create utopia.
That's one of the techniques cults use. They promise you nirvana if you join them. And then when nirvana doesn't come, they blame it on you. "It's your fault because you're not living up to our creed," or working hard enough. They turn it back on the follower.
Was Oregon uniquely poised to grow the Rajneesh organism, pitched as it was between central and eastern Oregonians' rock-ribbed independence, and super-liberal Portland?
Super-liberal Portland did not understand what was going on in Antelope. The way it was perceived was there was this religious leader who had come from India and he was being persecuted by these know-nothing hicks out of central Oregon who didn't like him because he was foreign and was preaching a different religion and blah, blah, blah.
In 1984, at the height of this whole thing, I was at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco. (The Rajneeshes) had been involved in prostitution and escort services. I was talking about it, and the guy who was chair of the Democratic Party heard me. He turned around and left the room. He thought I was being bigoted, anti-liberal, intolerant, whatever. That was kind of the general attitude -- "you're picking on this guy."
In one of your editorials, you wrote, "Rajneesh leaders and followers do not deny they are in a cult, they merely assert that ... unlike other cults, theirs is a good one."
(Laughs) Yes! That's sort of the way it is. Even if it started to dawn on them that Rajneesh might have some similarities to Jim Jones, he wasn't out to do anything bad. He was good, and they were good; they had good purposes.
Did Rajneesh believe in anything?
Oh no, no, no. He actually didn't hide the fact that for him it was all a joke; that was part of his message. He said at one point, "This is my circus, and I enjoy it."
One might appreciate the comic imagery of his driving one of his 96 Rolls-Royces around the ranch by day, and huffing nitrous oxide by night.
He did. I actually saw it afterwards. I went on a tour of the place. I saw his nitrous oxide machine. It was right next to his bed.
Less funny was the crematorium his followers built on the ranch. Disciples often said they would do anything Rajneesh asked. One imagines them flinging themselves in.
We have a picture of the crematorium (in the book), and the caption I wrote was, "If it had ended in a simulacrum of Jonestown, as some people thought it would, this is probably where the event would have taken place."
One of the most frightening things, in retrospect, is that they had this program (at the ranch) to try to culture a live AIDS virus.
In 1984, Rajneesh prophesized that two-thirds of the world's population would be dead from AIDS within 10 years.
A, he was predicting it. B, they were culturing this virus. Put the two together. Why were they trying to culture a live AIDS virus, except to use it? I was trying to get people to realize the significance of this. That there was a group of people out there in Oregon trying to culture a virus that they thought would kill two-thirds of the human race. They weren't a bunch of peace-loving, enlightenment-seeking people.
Have you had former followers of Rajneesh say to you, "How could I have been so stupid?"
No, I have never encountered a follower who said something like that.
Were you ever personally threatened by anyone from the cult?
There was an incident in the summer of 1984. My wife and I were having a Labor Day party. A couple days before, I picked up the phone and there was this person on the other end; I thought this was some sort of teenage prank, but the person said, "We're coming to get your son." My son was 12. So, we were freaked out. Even though it sounded like a teenager, we couldn't be sure. There were a couple hundred people coming, so we hired Pinkerton detectives to come and guard our son during this party. I don't know if that was them or not, but we couldn't take the chance.
There was an incident in the summer of 1984. My wife and I were having a Labor Day party. A couple days before, I picked up the phone and there was this person on the other end; I thought this was some sort of teenage prank, but the person said, "We're coming to get your son." My son was 12. So, we were freaked out. Even though it sounded like a teenager, we couldn't be sure. There were a couple hundred people coming, so we hired Pinkerton detectives to come and guard our son during this party. I don't know if that was them or not, but we couldn't take the chance.
Were you on a quest for justice back then, and are you still now?
Now? No. Back then, yeah, I was. I wanted people to know, and understand, and I wanted this guy to ... to what? I don't know. Be exposed for what he was? Yeah.