The Lost City of Wasco County

A decade after the fall of Rajneesh, his disciples still eke out a living

Dorothy Berry for the Free Agent, July 20, 1998

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The high desert of Eastern Oregon is scattered with ghost towns. Desolate villages with names like Friend, Horse Heaven, and Cornucopia stand as monuments to emptied mines, bust railroads, and failed business ventures. Tucked in a dry valley in Wasco County, three hours east of Portland, Rajneeshpuram looks like nothing but the most recent of these failures. Its greenhouses and dormitories are silent, overgrown, coated in sand and dust. Drive into the city’s heart, however, and carefully tended garden plots begin to appear. There is still life amid the ruins.

Nine years after the collapse of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s political ambitions and his death in federal custody, a few hundred of his most devoted followers still work the land. The colony survives on the sufferance of the international Rajneesh Foundation, which provides its residents with a meager stipend; it is shunned by its neighbors and has little contact with the outside world. Nevertheless, the shrunken city’s mayor, her red robes bleached pink and her face burnt brown by the sun, is resolute. “We’re here to stay.”


The Portlanders had stopped sweating. Their skin still looked clammy and their hair still looked damp – or was that just the chemical greases they used? – but they had no water left to give the desert. Arianna was reminded of a worm drying out on the sidewalk. Trying to keep a straight face, she announced the end of the tour. Their expressions of gratitude were a sight to behold. Both quickly stifled their pleasure as burgundy-clad members of the Peace Force led them into the main office building, but Arianna knew she’d shaken them already.

Once they were all seated in Arianna’s mayoral office, a wood-paneled room that felt and smelled like a dry sauna, she gave them another gift. “Would you like a glass of water?” Again they smiled in relief, and again they quickly regained their composure. The dishonesty of professionalism!

The woman – Berry, that was her name, Berry, news and politics for the Portland Free Agent – drank greedily. The man, her photographer, spilled some down his shirt. Arianna nearly laughed. He was making a fool of himself already; the ridiculous gelled spikes of his hair had drooped and melted within twenty minutes of his arrival.


Few Oregonians took notice when the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a self-proclaimed spiritual teacher with a large following among New Age practitioners in the United States, relocated to Wasco County from Pune, India, in 1981. Stymied by Indian land-use laws and under investigation from local authorities, the guru’s followers – “Rajneeshees” or “neo-sannyasins” – decided to create their utopian community in America. They soon became headline news. On the Big Muddy Ranch outside Antelope, Oregon, the disciples set about building Rajneeshpuram, which they envisioned as both an agricultural commune and a place of pilgrimage for Rajneesh’s thousands of followers worldwide. They were soon met with suspicion by locals. Neighboring ranchers were concerned about the threats to their meager water supply posed by the neo-sannyasins’ intensive dry-soil farming. On a more personal level, they were disturbed by the behavior of the Rajneeshees, who wore all red, devoted themselves totally to the service of the Bhagwan, and were rumored to subject new recruits to sex orgies and violent abuse.

Aided by land-use lobby groups such as 1000 Friends of Oregon, the people of Antelope fought against the incorporation of Rajneeshpuram as a city. The neo-sannyasins’ plans were stymied by this unexpected resistance; to fight back, they made a bid for political power. Buying out everyone in town, they voted themselves onto the city council and subordinated Antelope to the ashram. Fleeing locals reported being harassed out of their homes by the Rajneeshpuram “Peace Force.”

Today, the forty or so residents of Antelope live in a garrison state. Volunteer patrols watch the road to Rajneeshpuram night and day. A plaque affixed to the post office flagpole reads: NEVER AGAIN.



Arianna had the upper hand as the interview began. Berry hid her embarrassment well, but she was still dehydrated, and her questions wobbled. “What I mean to say,” she said, “What I mean to ask, is how you’d describe your relationship with your neighbors in Antelope.”

“I’d describe it as sad,” Arianna replied. “They don’t speak to us, they don’t sell to us, their police force is half their population, they call the state troopers every time they spot us on the road, they treat us like criminals. And what do they get out of it? We have to send people all the way to Portland and to Eugene to buy supplies. We offered them so much, spiritually and practically. Money used to flow from all over the world into this county, but not anymore.”

The cameraman was fidgeting with his cowrie bracelet. Good.

“The people I spoke to in Antelope are scared of you. They say you took over their town once, you could do it again.”

“We purchased property in Antelope in the 1980s because the legal status of Rajneeshpuram was still in question. We were unsure if we’d be allowed to stay on this land, so we arranged a backup. Today, our city has been incorporated for more than a decade, and we haven’t had a legal challenge since 1992. There’s no need for us to ever return to Antelope. Might I add that if closed-minded people in Wasco County hadn’t tried to prevent our construction projects in the first place, we never would have had to move to Antelope at all.”

Shit. No I-told-you-sos. No refighting the battles. Let the readers make up their own minds. Just answer the questions. Arianna smiled broadly. “Would you like some more water?”


It remains a quiet embarrassment for many public figures in Oregon that they defended the sannyasins for years under the banner of religious freedom. In 1982, KGW-TV commentator Floyd McKay famously lamented the guru’s frosty reception in Antelope: “Is there no place in America for the acknowledged spiritual leader of a quarter-million peaceful people?” After the lethal 1983 bombing of a Rajneeshee-owned restaurant in Portland by Islamic fundamentalists, state leaders including then-Governor Vic Atiyeh personally expressed their condolences. As late as 1986, gubernatorial candidate Neil Goldschmidt proclaimed that “The Bhagwan’s followers are exercising their First Amendment rights” and that “more understanding is needed on both sides in Wasco County.”

Playing to the taste of cosmopolitan liberals was a conscious political strategy developed by an inner circle of sannyasins known as the “Beverly Hills clique.” Led by Ma Prem Haysa, Rajneesh’s spokeswoman from 1982 onwards, this coven of wealthy disciples projected a chic, cosmopolitan image that excited the paparazzi and won converts among the powerful. Haysa herself, once known as Françoise Ruddy, was the ex-wife of a leading film producer and used her connections to pull celebrities into Rajneesh’s orbit. Even today, the multimillion-dollar Rajneesh Foundation continues to draw donations and endorsements from celebrities including Sean Penn and David Lynch, and calls for an inquiry into the guru’s death remain a Hollywood cause celebre. None of the Foundation’s prosperity, however, seems reflected in Rajneeshpuram today.


“So you say you have difficulties getting resources from the county,” said Berry. Her voice was a flat drone. She sounded like a computer. “How does that impact life in Rajneeshpuram?”

“It’s hard, but we get by. We have wells for our water, we’ve built solar panels. We’re self-sufficient.”

“Well, up to a point; you do receive annual stipends from the Rajneesh Foundation in Pune, correct?”

“Supplementary funds, yes. Because no one in Oregon will buy our crops, we have difficulty maintaining anything above a subsistence level. Our brothers and sisters in Pune help us when we need capital for repairs.”

Look at them. Berry was in all black, tiny purple-tinted sunglasses perched on her head, hair that looked like it had been cut with a bowl and a ruler. A sexless android from the year 3000: ridiculous. Her camera idiot’s “Nirvana” shirt, on the other hand, must have been chosen as a deliberate insult.

“But the Rajneesh Foundation pulls in millions every year. Meditation resorts in India and Germany. Corporate seminars and consultancies. Tom Robbins just offered the Foundation all his royalties from the film adaptation of Still Life with Woodpecker. With all of that money, all of the fame and fortune that your movement has access too, couldn’t they do more for you than just sending spare change for upkeep?”

Arianna smiled. “Miss Berry, ‘sannyasin’ means ‘one who has renounced.’ We don’t need any more than ‘spare change for upkeep.’ The rest of that money goes to the good works of the Foundation – healing the world’s souls, helping them unlock their potential.”

“I take it you’re unimpressed by Senator Weaver’s calls for a second investigation into the Foundation’s finances, then.” Berry seemed incredulous. Arianna knew that the reporter was picturing those damn Rolls Royces.

“It was very clear during the 1991 trials that any irregularity in the Foundation’s finances was the fault of Ma Prem Haysa and her clique. As for Weaver, he’s a demagogue. America has been familiar with his ugly bigotry ever since the arrest and persecution of the Bhagwan.”

It was important to steer the conversation away from the money. The money had been the problem last time. If only they’d listened to Sheela, and kept the PR focus on all the investment the sannyasins were putting into Oregon. But no, the Bhagwan’s mistress hadn’t liked Sheela, and so the voice of reason was sent packing back to Pune in favor of a Beverly Hills brat.


Rajneesh had always recruited from the rich. As early as the 1970s, the guru had proclaimed that he loved capitalism and decreed “that the materially poor can ever become spiritual is out-and-out absurd.” Before the creation of the Oregon ashram, the ranks of the sannyasins already included Learjet heiress Pat Lear and Prince Welf of Hanover. Rajneesh’s fleet of Rolls-Royces, the world’s largest, became iconic symbols of his reign. Haysa’s rise to power, however, led to an even sharper focus on glitz. Under her direction, the movement opened exclusive recruiting centers in Los Angeles and New York and hired legendary reporter Bernard Levin as editor of a glossy biannual magazine aimed at the jet set.

The sannyasins’ money and glamour won them invaluable connections in government and legal circles. The ashram’s leading lobbyists in Salem were Bob Davis, a former aide to Governor Tom McCall, and Ed Sullivan, a former aide to Governor Bob Straub. The mayor of Rajneeshpuram, Swami Prem Niren, had been a high-powered lawyer under his birth name of P.J. Toelkes and maintained business ties to his former partners at the Los Angeles firm of Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg, and Tunney.

Against this mighty constellation of fame, fortune, and power, Wasco County’s ranchers were practically helpless. Margaret Hill, the mayor of Antelope before its takeover, said that the ashram’s cash made the battle one-sided. “With $2,000 in our treasury, what could we do? How could we fight them with their millions?” The Rajneeshee juggernaut was impervious to every legal challenge brought by concerned citizens or by the public officials who sympathized with their plight. The decision in 1000 Friends of Oregon v. Wasco County Court which infamously shredded the state’s land-use law was only one of many judgments won by the Bhagwan’s followers during the 1980s.


“Do you, or anyone else in the movement, have any plans to run for local office again?”

She was going to push the invasion narrative, wasn’t she. Of course; the Free Agent was a liberal alternative newspaper, but it was also sensationalist trash. Arianna had endured this kind of interview before. She knew what to say.

“I absolutely do not. I only ran for mayor of Rajneeshpuram because I wanted to serve our community here; I have no greater ambition. As for my brothers and sisters in the movement, I can’t say, but if they did run for any office it would not be in their role as sannyasins. My position as mayor and my devotion to the teachings of the Bhagwan are separate. Either way, I sincerely doubt that anyone here in Rajneeshpuram is interested in electoral politics.”

“So you’re not going to campaign for Dennis Kucinich if he runs in 2000, then.” The vile smirk on the woman!

“As I’m sure you know, the Rajneesh Foundation’s only political campaign is our effort to secure a fair and unbiased investigation into the Bhagwan’s death. We have been grateful for the support of Representative Kucinich, Representative McKinney, and other public officials, but we do not make endorsements.” Arianna cleared her throat. “Excuse me. Excuse me, I agreed to be interviewed as mayor of Rajneeshpuram. I would appreciate it if you kept your questions on topic, and if you did not quote me as a representative of the Foundation.”

The cameraman looked confused. Berry was still smirking.


It’s perhaps unsurprising that Wasco County has become Ground Zero for today’s populist right. The county was carried by both Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan in their Presidential bids. Commissioner Murray Jepsen has become a prominent gadfly on the right of the Oregon Republican Party, fulminating against “spoiled politicians in Salem” who condescend to “the two-thirds of the state east of the Cascades.” Jepsen most recently made headlines for endorsing Bill Sizemore’s Reform Party bid for governor over GOP incumbent Dave Frohnmayer. His fiery rhetoric has benefited him at the ballot box: many Wasco voters equate liberalism with obliviousness, elitism, and Rajneesh.

Wendy Harper, a PTA leader from Chenoweth who chaired the Buchanan campaign in the county, reflects on the “paleoconservative’s” popularity in Eastern Oregon: “Tolerance is a real nice idea, but liberals tend to worship it, to put it above sensibility and security. Folks in Antelope got tolerated right out of their homes. If the federals hadn’t gotten their act together, the same thing would have happened in The Dalles. Then maybe the whole state.” Indeed, Buchanan said much the same during the 1996 campaign stop in Prineville where he named controversial anti-cult campaigner Ted Patrick as his running mate.


“So the real question I’m getting at here is – if life is so hard out here, if you don’t deal with your neighbors, if you have to drive hundreds of miles for supplies, why are you still here?”

“The Buddhafield of the Bhagwan lingers in this place,” Arianna said, blandly. “This is where he chose to spend the last years of his life. He saw the potential in this desert; he knew we could make it bloom, just like the Israelites. The rest of the Foundation is there to publicize his works and his teachings, we’re here to worship through action.”

“Enlightenment through labor doesn’t sound like what Rajneesh preached, though. He said that there was no virtue in poverty, that he was the rich man’s guru, that enlightenment came through introspection and openness rather than deprivation. You used to have 365 Rolls Royces out here – one for every day of the year. How does that square with this austerity you’ve subjected yourselves to?”

Arianna paused for a moment. She would have to be delicate here.


Despite drawing condemnations from public officials including then-Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer and then-Representative Jim Weaver, Rajneeshpuram continued to grow, swelling into a city of thousands. The well-connected sannyasins survived dozens of legal challenges, enduring even after Governor Norma Paulus pledged to restore the Antelope refugees to their homes. Heavily armed officers of the Peace Force menaced opposition figures in nearby towns and county officials in The Dalles.

In 1988, the Rajneeshees claimed victory in a disputed county commissioner race, insisting that the incumbents had only triumphed via voter fraud. Candidates Ma Deva Jayamala and Swami Prem Niren sat as the “Rajneesh County Court” in Antelope and issued arrest warrants for the commissioners and the sheriff. The standoff coincided with a federal investigation into money laundering and violence allegedly rampant at Rajneeshpuram. After a shootout between sheriff’s deputies and the Peace Force in January 1989, the National Guard moved in to “Rajneesh County” and arrested the ashram’s leaders. Before the year was out, Rajneesh died while awaiting trial and his remaining devotees retreated from Antelope to their dwindling city.

From a peak of eight thousand, the population of Rajneeshpuram rapidly fell to a few hundred as sannyasins returned home. Even more left after the high-profile trial of Ma Prem Haysa, embarrassed by the duplicity of their onetime leaders and disgusted by the tales of sexual abuse aired out in court. Today, less than two hundred unrepentant survivors toil on, tending fruit trees amid empty dormitories and conference centers. The dusty streets of today’s Rajneeshpuram are scarcely recognizable as those once toured by convoys of Rolls Royces, but the mayor insists that the city’s opulent heydays will soon return.

“The Bhagwan earned his luxury. It was stripped from him by the federal government and by the closed-minded, but he earned it via the gratitude of the thousands he helped reach enlightenment. As the dark days of our persecution fade and the Foundation spreads the word of our project, Rajneeshpuram will glitter again.”

Her eyes turn dreamy as she stares out at the glittering greenhouses. “There are people around the globe interested in the Bhagwan’s teachings. We have deep, deep wells. The weather is perfect, Mediterranean, just like the Greek climate in which I was raised. We will make this desert bloom, and people will come from around the world to participate, meditate, and learn.”

Her predictions display an optimism as rosy as her robes, but a sober assessment suggests that it might take a long time for the adoring throngs of sannyasins to return. The Rajneesh Foundation’s lavish advertisements and up-to-date Web site neglect to mention their tiny dependency. When questioned about Rajneeshpuram by the Free Agent, Foundation representatives declined to comment. It seems that at least for now, the movement prefers to relegate its Wasco County adventure to the past.

In the meantime, practical challenges remain. Oregon supermarkets retain an informal boycott of the ashram’s produce. Hydrology experts insist that the aquifers of southern Wasco County can provide barely enough water to raise cattle, let alone irrigate the dry ground of Rajneeshpuram.

To a true believer, of course, faith is all.


“Thank you for your time, Ms. S–”

“Please, Dorothy, it’s Arianna. It’s been a pleasure.” The lizard of a woman didn’t even smile back. “I only wish you could have been here when the city was still enveloped in the Bhagwan’s Buddhafield. I believe you would have been less skeptical.”

Berry lowered her sunglasses. “Maybe, Arianna. It must have been quite a place.”

The cretin with the camera grinned and snapped a case closed. Arianna was sure it had been timed to emphasize Berry’s remark. These two were a double act of affect. Ah, America, where everyone played to the audience.

The Bhagwan had called this country the land of charlatans and false gurus. He had seen the vapid, banal evil of America. Thousands more who suspected it had been drawn to him. But Haysa – and her proteges, who even now dominated the Foundation – had diluted his message and poisoned the well. Rajneesh had been doomed long before the government killed him.

Arianna was the only one left to redeem his philosophy. And if she took a few liberties with the source material, what of it? The Rolls Royces and sex parties had only made outsiders suspicious. In Pune the Hindus had called him a Westernizing cultural vandal, in Oregon the Christians had called him a limousine liberal. If Arianna sheared off the worldliness, demanded humility and hard work…people would listen. People would follow.

Through the dust-filmed windows, Arianna watched the two hipsters stalk, sweating, back to their car. She began to smile. This Berry woman would no doubt publish a hatchet job, but its quintessentially American stupidity might just cause a handful of open-minded readers to doubt. Of those handful, a few might look into the movement themselves. And of those, perhaps one would come to visit the ashram. So it would begin.
 
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I'm sure there will be quite a few folks who aren't familiar with what's going on here, so for those who'd like the details given away:

This is my second / more serious attempt at playing with the "New Age in politics" idea - this time, with a more politically influential Rajneeshee movement.

The Rajneeshee invasion of Wasco County really did happen. IOTL, their takeover of Antelope and the aggressive and confrontational attitude of their spokeswoman, Ma Anand Sheela, slowly alienated a lot of the support they initially had in elite circles in Oregon. As various lawsuits caught up with them, they panicked and tried to rig the county elections, first by busing in homeless people from all over the country and registering them to vote, next by contaminating salad bars in The Dalles with salmonella in the first bioterrorist attack on US soil. Rajneesh turned Sheela and the other poisoners in to the police, and was himself arrested for immigration fraud and deported to India. The incorporation of Rajneeshpuram was ruled illegal and the site was sold. Rajneesh began going by "Osho" and managed to repair his reputation somewhat before he died. (If you're Facebook friends with any hippies, you might see them reposting his inspirational quotes.)

The POD here is that Sheela's fall from favor happens earlier, shortly after the foundation of Rajneeshpuram. (Not hard to do, since she often squabbled with other members of Rajneesh's inner circle and was reportedly plotting to assassinate a few of them before her arrest.) With a less abrasive public face and greater emphasis on cultivating connections, the sannyasins are able to win a few more lawsuits and gain a few more friends in high places. By the time the end comes, they're very close to consolidating control over the county.

With no taint of bioterrorism and with Rajneesh made a martyr by the government, the surviving movement is even more popular and lucrative than the Osho Foundation is IOTL, and "justice for the Bhagwan" is a popular cause among the Free Tibet types.

On the other hand, the fact that "the liberal elite" let this Scary Foreign Cult (never mind that most of the sannyasins were middle-class white Americans) conquer a county of all-American ranchers is a huge talking point for Buchanan and his ilk.

Can anyone tell who the mayor is? She was briefly associated with the Rajneeshees IOTL.

As well as the AH stuff, I'd be happy to hear any thoughts on my writing and if this half journalism / half narrative structure works.
 
Huffington?

Got it. Probably should've just left it at the name and the reference to Bernard Levin; the mention of Greece at the end was kind of forced.

Oh shit it's a Cult based AH Vignette what up?

I liked it

Thanks. I hadn't noticed anybody on here having fun with cults before (aside from occasional uses of the Mansons as assassination devices), so I saw some potential.
 
Incredibly good. I liked how you briefly explored the political implication.
Got it. Probably should've just left it at the name and the reference to Bernard Levin; the mention of Greece at the end was kind of forced.
Huh. I never knew she was associated with the movement. (Though my knowledge of the Rajneesh movement OTL is limited.) I never would've guess it was her.
 
Incredibly good. I liked how you briefly explored the political implication.

There are lots of implications, some of which I didn't even get to:

Norma Paulus and Dave Frohnmayer are mentioned as having more successful political careers, presumably due to their prominent opposition to the Rajneeshees in the 80s. But both were part of a dwindling tradition of liberal Oregon Republicans. How do they square their personal popularity with an increasingly conservative state GOP that's just had a massive boost for its anti-establishment, anti-Salem wing? (I think the fact that conservative gadfly Bill Sizemore is running for the Reform Party instead of the Republicans is a hint.)

How is the 90s militia movement changed? With federal agents intervening on behalf of white, rural Americans against a "foreign invasion," maybe far-right militias will be oriented more towards racism and nativism than anti-government NWO paranoia. Especially since Waco and Ruby Ridge are likely to be butterflied away.

How does the different result in 1000 Friends of Oregon v. Wasco County affect land use and urban planning in Oregon? If the Rajneeshees won, the precedent would have made it possible to just create cities anywhere on agriculturally zoned land and immediately surround them with an urban growth boundary - somewhat defeating the purpose of UGBs to begin with.

There's a surprising amount of mileage in such a strange little POD.

Huh. I never knew she was associated with the movement. (Though my knowledge of the Rajneesh movement OTL is limited.) I never would've guess it was her.

She was only involved briefly in the early 80s, along with her partner at the time, British journalist and commentator Bernard Levin. ITTL, though, it could be seen as a conduit to wealth and power... at least, until you start drinking the kool-aid.
 
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