Rajneeshpuram

Rajneeshpuram, Oregon was an intentional community in Wasco County, Oregon, briefly incorporated as a city in the 1980s, which was populated with followers of the spiritual teacher Osho, then known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

History

The city was located on the site of a 64,229 acre Central Oregon property known as the Big Muddy Ranch, which was purchased for $5.75 million (nearly 30 times its assessed value.) Within three years, the sannyasins (Rajneesh's followers, also termed Rajneeshees in contemporaneous press reports) made tremendous strides towards developing a community, turning the ranch from an empty rural property into a city of up to 7,000 people, complete with typical urban infrastructure such as a fire department, police, restaurants, malls, townhouses, a 4,200 foot airstrip, a public transport system using buses, a sewage reclamation plant and a reservoir. The Rajneeshpuram post office had ZIP code 97741. [ Ken Forster, in "The Stamp Magazine" (London, England), February 1985, p. 84]

When Rajneesh's followers first arrived in Oregon, they made peaceful overtures to local communities. But within a year, they had become embroiled in a series of legal battles with their neighbors, the principal conflict relating to land use. Initially, they had stated that they were planning to create a small agricultural community, their land being zoned for agricultural use. But it soon became apparent that they wanted to establish the kind of infrastructure and services normally associated with a town. The land-use conflict escalated to bitter hostility between the commune and local residents, and the commune was subject to sustained and coordinated pressures from various coalitions of Oregon residents over the following years.harvnb|Carter|1987|p=, reprinted in harvnb|Aveling|1999|pp=182, 189]

The city of Antelope, Oregon became a focal point of the conflict. It was the nearest town, located 18 miles from the ranch, and had a population of under 50. Initially, Rajneesh's followers had only purchased a small number of lots in Antelope. After a dispute with the 1000 Friends of Oregon, a public-interest group, Antelope denied the sannyasins a business permit for their mail-order operation, and more sannyasins moved into the town. In April 1982, Antelope voted to disincorporate itself, to prevent itself being taken over. By this time, there were enough Rajneeshee residents to defeat the measure. In May of 1982, the residents of the Rancho Rajneesh commune voted to incorporate the separate city of Rajneeshpuram on the ranch.harvnb|Latkin|1992|p=, reprinted in harvnb|Aveling|1999|pp=339–342] Apart from the control of Antelope and the land-use question, there were other disputes. The sannyasins took an aggressive stance on many issues and initiated litigation against various groups and individuals.

The Rajneeshees did not receive a cordial welcome from Oregonians. Soon after their arrival, church leaders started to denounce Rajneesh and his followers. Petitions were circulated aimed at ridding the state of the supposed menace. Letters to state newspapers reviled the Rajneeshees, one of them likening the Rajneeshees to another Sodom and Gomorrha, another referring to them as a "cancer in our midst". In time, circulars mixing "hunting humor" with dehumanizing characterizations of Rajneeshees began to appear at gun clubs, turkey shoots and other gatherings; one of these, circulated widely over the Northwest, declared "an open season on the central eastern Rajneesh, known locally as the Red Rats or Red Vermin." [harvnb|Carter|1990|p=203]

The bombing of a Rajneeshee-owned hotel in Portland in June 1983 further heightened tension. [harvnb|Carter|1990|p=187] The display of semi-automatic weapons acquired by the Rajneeshpuram Peace Force created an image of imminent violence. There were rumours of the National Guard being called in to arrest Rajneesh.

At the same time, the commune was embroiled in a range of legal disputes. Oregon Attorney General David B. Frohnmayer maintained that the city was essentially an arm of a religious organization, and that its incorporation thus violated the principle of separation of church and state, enshrined in both the Oregon Constitution and the United States Constitution. 1000 Friends of Oregon, an environmentalist group, claimed that the city violated state land-use laws.

Followers of Rajneesh have long maintained that religious intolerance, rather than any legitimate legal or environmental objection, was the cause of opposition to the city.

In 1983, a lawsuit was filed by the State of Oregon to invalidate the city's incorporation, and many attempts to expand the city further were legally blocked, prompting followers to attempt to build in nearby Antelope, which was briefly named "Rajneesh" when sufficient numbers of Rajneeshees registered to vote there and won a referendum on the subject.

As Rajneesh himself did not speak in public during this period and until October 1984 gave few interviews, his secretary and chief spokesperson Ma Anand Sheela became, for practical purposes, the leader of the commune. She did little to defuse the conflict, employing a crude, caustic and defensive speaking style that exacerbated hostilities and attracted media attention. On 14 September 1985, Sheela and 15 to 20 other top officials abruptly left Rajneeshpuram. The following week, Rajneesh convened press conferences and publicly accused Sheela and her team of having committed crimes within and outside the commune. [harvnb|Carter|1990|p=230] The subsequent criminal investigation, the largest in Oregon history, confirmed that a secretive group had, unbeknownst to both government officials and nearly all Rajneeshpuram residents, engaged in a variety of criminal activities, including the attempted murder of Rajneesh's physician, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within Rajneesh's home, poisonings of two public officials, and arson. [harvnb|Carter|1990|p=237] Sheela was extradited from Germany and imprisoned for these crimes, as well as for her role in infecting the salad bars of several restaurants in The Dalles (the county seat of Wasco County) with salmonella, sickening over 750 (including several Wasco County public officials) and sending 45 people to hospital. Known as the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, the incident is regarded as the largest germ warfare attack in the history of the United States. These blatantly criminal activities had, according to the Office of the Attorney General, begun in the spring of 1984, three years after the establishment of the commune.

Rajneesh himself was accused of immigration violations, to which he entered an Alford plea. As part of his plea bargain, he agreed to leave the United States and eventually returned to Pune, India. His followers left Oregon shortly afterwards.

The legal standing of Rajneeshpuram remained ambiguous. In the church/state suit, Federal Judge Helen J. Frye ruled against Rajneeshpuram in late 1985, a decision that was not contested, since it came too late to be of practical significance.Carl Abbot (1990). "Utopia and Bureaucracy: The Fall of Rajneeshpuram, Oregon", "The Pacific Historical Review", Vol. 59, No. 1. (Feb., 1990), pp. 77-103] The Oregon courts, however, eventually found in favor of the city, with the Court of Appeals determining in 1986 that incorporation had not violated the state planning system's agricultural land goals. The Oregon Supreme Court ended litigation in 1987, leaving Rajneeshpuram empty and bankrupt, but legal within Oregon law. [1000 Friends of Oregon v. Wasco County Court, 703 P.2d 207 (Or 1985), 723 P.2d 1039 (Or App. 1986), 752 P.2d 39 (Or 1987)]

The Big Muddy Ranch was sold. Presently, a Christian youth camp, Wildhorse Canyon, operated by Young Life, [ [http://sites.younglife.org/camps/Wildhorse/default.aspx Wildhorse Canyon web site] ] and the Big Muddy Ranch Airport are located there.

Analysis

James T. Richardson, writing in "Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe" (2004), states that from the beginning of their settlement in Oregon, the Rajneeshees were subject to tremendous social and legal pressures from the federal and state government, as well as the media.harvnb|Richardson|2004|pp=481–486]

, did raise such charges in 1985. [harvnb|Shay|1985|p=] Especially with hindsight of the aggressive posture and illegal actions undertaken by the commune leadership from 1984 onwards, officials can argue that they were doing their duty to protect the public. They have also argued that they were upholding a very important principle – the separation of church and state.

The Rajneesh commune was the focus of huge media attention, almost all negative in tone, some of it highly inaccurate.harvnb|Richardson|2004|p=486] harvnb|Latkin|1992|p=, reprinted in harvnb|Aveling|1999|p=353] A 1990 study [B. van Driel & J. van Belzen: "The Downfall of Rajneeshpuram in the print media: A crossnational study", "Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29(1), 76–90"] showed that U.S. media coverage of the events around Rajneeshpuram was particularly negative, compared to coverage of the same events in Europe, with the U.S. media focusing almost exclusively on alleged criminal activity of the group's leaders. The U.S. media treatment provided a clearer justification for severe action being taken against the group, and helped to shape public opinion in this direction.

As a mediating agent between society and new religions, the mass media exert pressure on new religions. Such pressures have a "deforming" effect on the groups subjected to them, eliciting reactions that are either accommodative or defiant, yet invariably change the group's basic goals and character. Defiant reactions, as in the example of the Rajneesh commune, lead to battles that such politically weak groups have little chance of winning.

Faced with these challenges, the commune had to divert considerable resources to doing battle within the legal, political and media arenas. What the group would have become if they had not had to fight for their very existence will never be known.

See also

* Osho
* 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
* Osho movement
* Big Muddy Ranch Airport
* Princess Saskia of Hanover

References

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External links

* [http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=44.831343,-120.483584&spn=0.021639,0.040169&t=h&z=15&om=1 Google map of the Big Muddy Ranch property]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDgOf2Om28 University of Oregon video on The Rise and Fall of Rajneeshpuram]
* [http://www.ashejournal.com/index.php?id=151 The Rise and Fall of Rajneeshpuram in "Ashé Journal of Experimental Spirituality":]
* [http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/rajneesh.html Religious Movements: Osho (or Rajneeshism)]
* [http://home.att.net/~meditation/bioterrorist.html John Cramer, "Oregon suffered largest bioterrorist attack in U.S. History, 20 years ago", "Bend (Oregon) Bulletin" Oct 14, 2001]
* [http://m31.de/ranch/index.htm Photographs of the "First Annual World Celebration" in Rajneeshpuram, 1982]