u/TopDue971

Many people rightly have the consensus that Ma Anand Sheela and her gang -- not Osho himself -- were solely responsible for the crimes committed. However, it is important to remember that it was not only her who went off the rails in this dark period of the movement's history, but also the Oregonians and U.S government who were clearly at fault in this long, tense tug-of-war between the Rajneeshees and the locals.

The sensationalist accounts only gloss over this important fact, as they know that a clear-cut, binary “good vs evil” narrative gets good money, and exploring deeper complexities doesn’t allow for gripping headlines.

Firstly, a so-called land-use “watchdog”, 1000 Friends of Oregon, claimed that the sannyasins were acting illegally by building on their own 250+ km^2 land that they paid $5.7 million in cold, hard cash for, because it was supposedly “agricultural land”. The supposed environmental concerns raised were spurious, as the land was barren, overgrazed and totally rehabilitated by the sannyasins in such a short time period, with the water table of the whole county being raised as a result. The city plan submitted to the state received unanimous praise from environmental organizations.

Officials cited and misapplied the separation of church & state to say that because 100% of the population were followers of a particular spirituality, it was a “theocracy” which isn’t allowed. Absolute nonsense, there are Mormon and Amish religious enclaves that have the right to self-determination scattered throughout rural America. Only because the movement was Eastern, was it considered a violation. 

Additionally, it was not a de jure “theocracy”, it wasn’t like (for example) a rogue Islamic settlement where people would be whipped for blasphemy – in which case the state and federal laws and in turn respective authorities would have to intervene. It was a de facto homogenous community, with American citizens exercising their First Amendment right. Anyone – whether a follower of Osho or not – could technically buy land at Rajneeshpuram as the laws were secular. In practice, however, a staunch Christian or others who are not like-minded would never choose to live there.

They set up a standard city council and followed American law. Apart from a little Osho-inspired twist stipulating that before each meeting a joke is required to be told, it was fully secular. Osho himself rejected narrow dogmas and rigid moral codes, only emphasising freedom, love, and meditation.

These factors left the community in a state of permanent legal precarity, as at any moment, with the sign of a pen, they could have been ordered to tear down all they had built. This affected infrastructure development (necessary building permits were not granted), the creation of winterized housing and expansion of the sewerage system for the growing settlement.

Furthermore, the Immigration & Naturalization Services (INS) delayed granting Osho and the sannyasins religious leader and religious worker status respectively for years so they could leverage this ambiguity to build a case against them and get them out of the country. The Rajneeshees could not press their books at the commune as the government refused to let them be incorporated as their own city, so they had to travel all the way on an uncomfortable, bumpy ride to the nearby town of Antelope to do so. 

Although the City of Rajneeshpuram was incorporated in May 1982, this meant nothing in practice, as the ongoing lawsuits threatened this ruling, which was eventually overturned in 1984. Once again, at any moment they could have been told to demolish what they had poured time, energy and immense resources into.

There were numerous scary cases of hostile Oregonians going on drive-bys around the commune perimeters, brandishing rifles, provocative banners and stickers (saying “better dead than red”, mocking the burgundy robes worn by the sannyasins), shouting slurs, in addition to dehumanizing language and even open talk of “hunting Rajneeshees”, death threats, bomb threats and more.

The crowning moment of external hostility was the July 1983 bombing of Hotel Rajneesh in Portland, where an Islamic extremist, Stephen Paster, who was involved with Jamaat Ul Fuqra, detonated 3 pipe bombs, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and openly threatening the lives of the community.

This was a declaration of war. And, just a week later, a man who went by the pseudonym “El Rashid”, who had been sending Sheela frightening, threatening letters and phone calls for months, demanded extortion money. In a dramatic sting operation, Sheela risked her life to meet him and his accomplice in-person at the commune on 6 August 1983 to supposedly pay the extortion, while she actually tipped off the county sheriff and had him arrested. Afterwards, a Wasco County jury -- clearly acting in an absurd air of bias -- voted not to prosecute the 2 criminals, while the perpetrators had the audacity to file a $1.5 million lawsuit against Rajneeshpuram, the very existence of which they had violently threatened.

All these examples of external hostility pressured a mentally unstable Sheela and directly (and justly) led to the establishment of the commune’s armoury and beefed up security (including checkpoints and thorough body searches), after which these violent threats drastically decreased. The Rajneeshpuram Peace Force (RPF) was established, with officers fully state-certified through the Oregon Board on Police Standards and Training (BPST) granted jurisdiction over the city, given full statutory powers including carrying weapons and having access to state law enforcement databases.

The media portrayed it as a “crazy cult arming up for a holy war”, with one article from Oregon Magazine dated to the 1984s I read titled “Rajneesh’s Police State”, totally ignoring the historical context and the clear fact that it was a necessary, rational, proactive move for the community’s safety. Without those tougher measures enacted, who knows what could have happened? A heavily-armed vigilante group could have strolled in and killed people, had the Ranchers allowed themselves to be sitting ducks!

In the American political system, First-Past-The-Post or “Winner takes all” is used, meaning anyone with 50% +1 gets full representation while the other 49% is left totally unrepresented. The only way for the unjust legal blockade imposed against the Rajneeshees to come to a grinding halt, therefore, would be to secure a majority in the county elections. Rajneeshpuram's total population constituted nowhere near the county's majority, and Sheela made a rather questionable move, the "Share-a-Home Program", whereby homeless individuals were bussed in, in a desperate manouever to break this blockade.

When a blanket freeze enacted by the county clerk, Sue Proffitt, happened, preventing even the legitimate, long-term residents of Rajneeshpuram from having any say in the county election, they were each required to undergo an adversarial interview in which they were assessed on their intention to stay long-term in order to be able to vote. Out of 200 sannyasins who went, only 14 were approved.

This was the final straw for Sheela who lost faith in the legal, political avenue, and took evil steps to attack the state --who were threatening to erase everything they had built with millions of dollars and multiple years spent with the mere sign of a pen -- directly, culminating in the bioterrorist attack in 1984, where herself and Puja experimented with and cultivated salmonella bacteria in a secret lab, as well as the assassination plots against key politicians.

An in-depth, 12-page analysis has been written by Michael Topper detailing how Osho was neither responsible for nor even *aware* of the crimes that Sheela and her clique committed. In brief, the 1984 salmonella poisoning in The Dalles was officially suspected to be the result of poor hygiene by restaurant workers, nobody knew that the biggest bioterrorist attack on US soil had just taken place! 

Osho – after Sheela’s abrupt departure – invited the authorities, the whole machinery of the state, to the commune to investigate. Remember, they were trying every trick in the book to get him out, they were licking their lips, and this was their golden opportunity to pounce. Yet, even they admitted that despite the thorough examination done – which included extensive, high-quality wiretapping across the community done by Sheela, that recorded everything that was said by the commune’s leadership – not even a single piece indicated any involvement on Osho’s side. (Topper goes into much greater depth in this article:  What Did He Know?)

The RICO Statutes (Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act) was originally passed in 1970 to assist the US government in taking down mafias. Instead of prosecuting individuals for crimes, it allowed a whole organization to be charged as a criminal enterprise, the entity dismantled and assets confiscated.

This allowed the US government to assume guilt by association, treating the entire commune as an enterprise, meaning Osho was held legally liable for the unsanctioned actions of others (Ma Anand Sheela and her circle). This lowered the burden of proof and legal rigour required, painting everyone with the same brush, as they knew a standard, rigorous trial against Osho himself would have fallen apart due to lack of evidence.

Osho was unlawfully detained without a warrant, and was taken to-and-frow between different American jails for 12 days, where the Americans poisoned him with slow-working thallium (the same chemical used in rat poison, Osho’s symptoms after returning from the prisons corresponded to it), which gradually led to his death in 1990.

Prem Niren, Osho's lawyer, wrote a 273 page book titled "USA v. Osho: A Legal History of the U.S. Government Persecution of a Minority Religious Community, Oregon 1981-1986" to offer a balanced perspective. It is an in-depth analysis of the legal arguments, not a popular history, and significantly more insightful than sensationalist, scandal-soaked "documentaries" from which people jump to conclusions about the events of this time.

The key documents discussed within and an archive of 1700+ relevant documents are available on the website. (https://www.bsrinusdocs.com/)

>“The book presents incontrovertible documentation and the applicable law proving the US Government’s illegal program to get Osho out of the US and destroy his Community in Central Oregon. It proves that the federal government misused the immigration laws, that the State of Oregon misused the constitutional requirement of the separation of Church and State and the RICO statutes, and that an Oregon land use “watchdog” group misused the Oregon land use laws. All in a pervasive atmosphere of bias and hostility.”

“While this is technically a book review, we are not talking about a book in any conventional sense of the term. Rather, this long-awaited publication is basically an assortment of legal arguments for and against, one after another in a seemingly endless series. In short, to paraphrase Ram Dass (Be Here Now), more box than book. Thus the readership is more likely to be (future) historians, law students, political activists and others interested in problems relating to the hostility to, and marginalization of ethnic and religious minorities.

Unfortunately, not for the general public. Especially for those who already think they know what happened from scandal-soaked television ‘documentaries’ and ‘true accounts’.

To put it mildly, all this is rather disappointing because we are hugely predisposed to read and recommend it. To us, it supports, amplifies and in many instances, clarifies what we have more than suspected in real time – since the 1980’s when the heat was on from wherever one looked – and known for certain since Max Brecher’s excellent A Passage to America. (First written in 1989 and published in 1993 and updated in 2014.)

Namely, that there were concerted and occasionally on the same page conspiracies at all levels of government against Osho and our Oregon commune – the size of San Francisco. That is, broad agreement on the goals – ‘getting the job done’ – but not the specifics of who was to do what, when and how. Thus not just, as the title suggests, the ‘US Government’, but local and state governments as well.

It was a combination of stalking and stalling. Ongoing, open-ended investigations into ‘crimes’ suspected, hoped for and openly rumoured about – they have to be there somewhere, if only we can find and prove them – rather than those committed and reported. What’s known in legal parlance as ‘selective prosecution’.

In addition to that targeting, there was foot dragging*. Repeatedly failing to finalise matters that, for almost anyone else, would have been rubber stamping routine. Such as Osho’s applications for ‘religious leader’ status and granting him permanent residence.*

The animosity was palpable, potent and in many instances personal as well as institutional*. This is now so firmly established that for those with eyes to see, ears to hear and ready and able to* attend to facts and well-structured arguments instead of innuendo and smear*, this perspective should be upgraded from theory to history. The way it was.*

This is something Niren also demonstrates. He presents in clear and compelling legal terms – it sounds like a contradiction in terms – various government arguments against Osho et al. and sannyasin lawyers for. And for those not qualified to follow all the technical ins and outs, the government’s side seems decidedly grasping at straws.

There were so many culprits on the government side that it appears impossible to keep track of them all. Among the top was senior senator from Oregon, Mark Hatfield. Niren exposes his two-faced letters to constituents and others on the topic. Another, but nowhere near the top, was Tom Casey of the Portland INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services). He was heavily steeped in anti-cult scare propaganda and was going  to determine what did and didn’t fit into those categories. And Osho and his people definitely didn’t.

What’s interesting though, is that Casey continued bullishly on the case even after Osho had been deported. We wonder who put him in charge of that (considering the ongoing global harassment of Osho during the World Tour) but the thread was not picked up by Niren.” 

_____________

If it weren’t for the monkey behaviour on the side of the US Govt. and Oregonians, Sheela and her clique would still have had authoritarian rule, with a horrible demeanour, however, the unbelievable atrocities that took place would NEVER have EVER happened had outsiders not deliberately acted from Rajneeshpuram’s very inception to destroy it.

I am 17 and I have been following Osho and exploring different spiritual traditions in more depth since 2 years ago. Would love to meet like-minded peers ❤