Rajneesh is greeted by followers in 1984 as he enters the Oregon commune in a Rolls-Royce. Jenn McAllister, a YouTuber with more than three million subscribers, had a typical reaction of those not yet born during the period: “I can’t believe that happened in the US and I never knew until now.” Viewers also seem to be shocked that they didn’t already know this story. The tenor of the excitement around the show isn’t just about the intimate footage the directors have unearthed, or the fact they secured in-depth interviews with nearly all the cult’s living leaders. I’ll probably make it through a third.” The film has spurred hundreds of articles revisiting the events as other journalists attempt to get in touch with former members or relive their sannyasins experiences. The six-part documentary, available to view now, scored 100% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes, and received even more glowing endorsements from other filmmakers, including Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of Moonlight, who tweeted: “I’m on my second watch of Wild Wild Country. Now it seems people can talk about little else.
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Yet until the release of Wild Wild Country, Netflix’s latest hit documentary series directed by brothers Mclain and Chapman Way, it had not entered the cultural conversation in the same way as those movements. The cult that formed was as paranoid as scientology, as bizarre as Jonestown, and as controlled as the Manson family. They called it Rajneeshpuram, and when it was ready, Rajneesh and his followers relocated to the US.
They built a giant dam, an airport, an electricity station and a meditation centre that could hold 10,000 people.
The land was largely uninhabitable but he sent his followers ahead to create a utopia.
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Rajneesh, who died in 1990, was a popular spiritual leader in India, attracting thousands of followers – called sannyasins or “orange people” – to practise free love and take part in his unusual style of meditation: lots of primal screaming followed by dancing as if Fatboy Slim had just come on to Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage.īy the 1980s he was at odds with the government in India and so decided to buy a ranch in Oregon. Yet if you go on the Osho website, or are one of the 200,000 people that visit the Osho International Centre in Pune, India each year – you’ll hear nothing about the most eventful section of his life, before he was rebranded as “Osho”, and known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The bearded Indian mystic has had his books translated into more than 60 languages, published by more than 200 publishing houses – you’re likely to find his works next to the crystals and yoga mats in your local hippy shop. A nyone who has ever dipped a toe in the pool of new-age mysticism is likely to have come across Osho.