the logical, based on reasoning; and the metaphorical, manifesting itself in poetry and religion. ‘Poetry is a golden bridge, it bridges the object with the subject.’13 Religion is essentially poetry. The Tantric teaching is always to say ‘Yes’ to life. ‘The real atheist is one who goes on saying “No” to life.’14 ‘Man is the only unnatural animal – that’s why religion is needed.’15 Rajneesh resembled Jung in thinking that some varieties of neurotic symptoms were valuable because they compelled the individual to look within, to face his real problems.
Rajneesh did not claim that his teaching was original, although he did say that his way of expressing it was modem. However, he introduced a technique of meditation based on hyperventilation which I have not encountered elsewhere. ‘Dynamic Meditation’ consisted of ten minutes of rapid, irregular overbreathing to repetitive music. This is followed by ten minutes of catharsis in which the subject is required to release tension by shouting, weeping, dancing – expressing whatever comes to mind in the most uninhibited way possible. Dr. Gordon found himself screaming abuse and obscenities against hated figures from the past; teachers, parents, nurses, playmates. The third ten minute stage is occupied by jumping as high as possible whilst shouting the Sufi mantra ‘Hoo, hoo, hoo’. Rajneesh described this. ‘As you jump, land hard on the souls (sic) of your feet so that the sound reaches deep into the sex center. Exhaust yourself completely.’16 Following this, the subject stops doing anything at all for another ten minutes during which physical cramps and pains induced by the overbreathing and violent exercise begin to subside. The last stage is dancing to more music until the mind becomes quiet and the body relaxed.
In 1971 Rajneesh adopted the title of Bhagwan. This alienated some of his Indian followers, because the appellation means The Blessed One and implies an incarnation of God. His disciple Laxmi told Bernard Levin that many of the sannyasins regarded Rajneesh as God, but that he himself only claimed to be a conduit transferring divine energy. I think it possible that Rajneesh came to believe in his own divinity. He used to give out boxes containing cuttings from his hair or nail clippings in case carrying his photograph was not enough to persuade his disciples that he was always with them. His narcissism also manifested itself in his insistent concern that any photographs of himself should be carefully posed and lit in order to bring out his best features.
In early 1974, Rajneesh sent some thirty or forty sannyasins to work on a farm belonging to his family in Kailash. This was an appalling place, overrun with rats and scorpions, extremely hot, and almost infertile. Gurdjieff’s technique of persuading disciples that exhausting, futile work was a path to enlightenment was employed and used as a test of commitment to Rajneesh. The sannyasins were grossly underfed and overworked. They were forbidden to leave the farm or take time off and many became ill with amoebic dysentery and other diseases, including hepatitis, tuberculosis, and dengue fever. Some suffered permanent impairment of their health. After some months the experiment was abandoned.
As more and more disciples joined the movement, more space was needed. Some Indian business men set up a trust which became the Rajneesh Foundation. They bought a six acre estate at 17 Koregaon Park, Poona, in which the Shree Rajneesh Ashram grew and flourished. From 1974 onward, around six thousand followers of Rajneesh would be living there at any one time. The ashram became so famous that thirty thousand people a year from all over the world came as visitors. Large donations had launched the ashram; charges for rooms and meals, sales of books, fees for admission to discourses, and fees for group and individual therapy generated a regular income of somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 per month which served to sustain it.
The ashram day started with dynamic meditation from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. This was followed by a spontaneous discourse given by Rajneesh lasting two hours, in English and Hindi alternately. In 1975, encounter groups of various kinds were introduced. So many varieties of group and individual therapies were employed that Frances Fitzgerald described the Poona ashram as ‘a spiritual garage for anyone with a method’;17 while Bernard Levin referred to it as a ‘spiritual supermarket’.18 The group techniques employed became notorious for the expression of uninhibited sex and aggression. In the course of expressing anger, so many fractures occurred that suspicious local hospitals were fobbed off with euphemistic tales that injuries had been caused by falling off ladders or bicycles. The sexual freedom offered in Poona is described by Hugh Milne as ‘quite phenomenal’. The girls wore transparent dresses with no underclothes, since Rajneesh had said that underclothes interfered with the passage of energy. There were groups in which people were forced to watch their beloved having intercourse with someone else, ostensibly to free them from over-attachment to sex. There were groups in which oral sex predominated. One favoured sexual activity was for males to eat ripe mangoes which had been introduced into the women’s vaginas.
Rajneesh himself seems to have been an indifferent sexual performer, in spite of claiming that he had had intercourse with more women than any man in history. Like some other gurus, he helped himself to any female delights which were on offer. Becoming Bhagwan’s sexual partner was, of course, a highly prized distinction. But the experience itself was usually disappointing, since he appears to have suffered from premature ejaculation. He was more of a voyeur than a lover. Sometimes a couple would be encouraged to make love in front of him. A new recruit might be told to strip naked and be closely inspected without necessarily being touched. Others would be masturbated without intercourse taking place.
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