Bhagwan Blames ‘Fascist Gang’ : Guru Revels in Revelation of a ‘Paradise’ Defiled

Guided tours through this commune city used to be, quite frankly, a bore. A manmade lake and state-of-the-art greenhouse were the high points, and there was an overabundance of discourse about the disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh transforming their 64,000 forlorn acres of high desert into an oasis of free thought and fresh vegetables.

Last week was different. Last week visitors were shown bullet-proof brassieres and wiretap devices and secret escape tunnels. They could tour an underground bunker equipped with a lavender hot tub--a nice place, it was suggested, to plot murder. They could examine a laboratory where mice were poisoned as precursors to who knows what, and even a hard-bound copy of the Bhagwan’s own “Above All Don’t Waffle” that had been carved out between covers to encase a covert tape recorder.

At each stop, the guides would shake their heads and express shock. Expressing shock was very much in evidence. The Bhagwan seemed to want it that way.

All week long, on average of twice daily, the bearded guru would summon his 2,000 followers, called Sannyasins, into a spacious, airy hall and unload another bombshell about his freshly departed personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, and 15 of her closest advisers. He called them “Sheela and her fascist gang,” language quickly adopted by all.

Sheela and her gang, he said, had attempted four murders. They overdosed, with fatal results, a hobo brought here last fall as part of a controversial share-a-home project, a project he now declared had been a ruse for winning an election. He said it appeared that they had absconded with money, perhaps as much as $55 million. He said they had bugged everything, even his own bedroom. He said they had plotted to divebomb The Dalles, a neighboring city, and to poison its water supply.

He laid out quite a police blotter, and it turned this place upside down. The Sannyasins, who wear only reds, oranges and purples--colors, they say, of the setting sun--had thought they were living in their own private paradise; this week the Bhagwan told them it had been a “concentration camp.”

With his bizarre revelations, the Bhagwan once again brought national attention to the incorporated city his followers began building here in central Oregon four years ago after migrating en masse from India. Bhagwan, who likes to call the community a meditation camp, also has gained notice for his fondness for Rolls Royces--his followers have “given” him 93--his free-wheeling attitudes about sex and his outrageous statements about conventional religion.

Sheela, however, has been a media star in her own right, setting all of Oregon on edge with her successful campaign to take over the neighboring town of Antelope--now called Rajneesh--and her threats to exact bloody vengeance on anyone who would harm any Sannyasin. The so-called gang also included the mayor of this incorporated city, its municipal judge, and financial experts who controlled international Rajneeshee assets they claimed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

‘Hiding Like Criminals’

The Bhagwan said the bunch had fled “to the black forest of Switzerland, where they are hiding like criminals.” This meant that Sheela and the others were unavailable for comment, and the world was left with only the Bhagwan’s own rather fuzzy version of events.

It was enough to attract a task force of 20 FBI agents, state police and local law enforcement officials. Wearing somewhat sheepish grins, the investigators moved into a makeshift command post Thursday at the City Hall here, and one vowed that they would stay for “as long as it takes.”

Rep. James Weaver, (D-Ore.), said law enforcement has long wanted to investigate the commune, but needed “a stool pigeon” from within. “Now,” he told reporters, “we’ve got the biggest one of them all--the Bhagwan himself.”

At one point, the Bhagwan told the Sannyasins not to “believe anything unless you know it yourself to be true, be skeptical,” an instruction that reporters who came to the commune found easy to follow. For it did not take long to determine that the Bhagwan didn’t have much on Sheela and the others in the way of tangible goods.

Pressed for details--names, dates, bodies--the Bhagwan would balk. “I cannot say anything precisely,” he said at one press conference.

Legal Difficulties

The possibility that the Bhagwan might have a hidden agenda was not to be discounted. His legal difficulties are legion. He and his group are entangled in several lawsuits, and a grand jury investigation into their activities is under way. His immigration status is under question, and he could soon be deported.

Some pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together suspiciously well. For example, it was revealed that Sheela and her company had written letters of resignation before they left, removing themselves as officers of the sect’s many corporate entities. They did not, however, leave documents needed to cancel their ability to draw on Rajneeshee bank accounts.

There was speculation that the Bhagwan now would follow Sheela out if things became too hot, and having the ability to tap into Rajneeshee resources from Europe or wherever would not hurt.

There also appears to have been a power struggle between Sheela’s clique, which had lived together in a secluded house called Jesus Grove, and another known to rank-and-file Sannyasins as “the Hollywood Group,” wealthy Southern Californians who previously lived together in a Rajneeshee outpost in Los Angeles.

The Bhagwan’s version was that Sheela and company had become corrupted by power over the last three years, a time when he maintained a personal silence. He said that because of his vow of silence, he knew nothing of their tactics. It was an alibi he repeated often.

Only Source of News

Sheela, he said, had been his only source of news about commune activities, and it gave her a power he said she protected with a vengeance. The only three others who had access to him--a doctor, a dentist and a companion--were themselves the intended victims of a Sheela murder plot, he said, explaining that she was nervous that they would tell him the truth.

“It seems these people might even have killed me,” the Bhagwan said. “If I was dead, they could have worshiped my dead body . . . and they would be in full power to do whatever they do.”

The Bhagwan began speaking again last fall, granting interviews to whoever wanted them. He said that it quickly became apparent that Sheela was despondent and dissatisfied. The Bhagwan said she didn’t like him copping her publicity.

He said he finally confronted her, and she gathered her supporters and left. After the departure, the Bhagwan said, minor accomplices in the plots began to come forward. He said they had not confessed previously because they feared that they would be murdered or exiled.

Only then, his story went, was discovery made of the underground escape tunnel leading from Sheela’s house to a nearby ditch, apparently a measure of protection against a raid or attack. Only then were the electronic bugs and flak corsets found--evidence, the Bhagwan said, of her extreme paranoia. Only then, the Bhagwan said, did he learn the extent of Sheela’s political activities.

Books in Order

The new leaders installed by the Bhagwan began to investigate his accusations. To their surprise, the books appeared to be in order. The only evidence of any looting by Sheela’s group was a $6,000 charge on a credit card last Monday in Switzerland. Similarly, they could find no evidence that one of the transients brought here last fall had been murdered, and it appeared the Bhagwan might have been referring to a previously publicized and investigated death of one of the transients in a nearby town. He had died of exposure, and no one was charged.

Some accusations did show promise. There had been an outbreak of what was believed to be salmonella poisoning in the town of The Dalles at about the time he said the water supply was contaminated by Sheela’s forces. And the Jefferson County district attorney, who, the Bhagwan said, had been poisoned, actually had grown quite ill, although pneumonia was diagnosed at the time.

“Certain evidence independent of the bare allegations coming from Rancho Rajneesh tend to confirm that (the district attorney) was the subject of an assassination attempt,” Oregon Gov. Victor G. Atiyeh wrote to state Atty. Gen. Dave Frohnmayer in calling for an investigation.

The few non-Rajneeshee residents of the town formerly called Antelope adopted a wait-and-see approach to the Bhagwan’s offer of a truce, which included a call to restore the town’s original name.

“They’ve made so many statements I don’t pay any attention anymore,” said Phil Hill, 68, a retired county worker. He estimated that his family is only one of four left out of the 23 that were living in Antelope when the Rajneeshees began to buy up property as a first step to eventually taking over the town’s City Council and police force.

‘He’s Been in the Know’

Hill said he doubted the Bhagwan’s claims of ignorance about Sheela’s campaign against the town. “He’s been in the know,” Hill said. “He knew what Sheela was doing. So how can all this add up now? The only thing I can guess is that they’ve gone so far that now they need a cover-up.”

Bhagwan promised full cooperation with the authorities, and said that while any of Sheela’s group was welcome to return and receive forgiveness, they also would be turned over to police. Late Thursday, the commune announced that the former mayor had indicated that he might accept the offer.

Most of the Bhagwan’s dress-alike disciples seemed willing to swallow his wild scenario whole. And his admonishment to look on the bright side of the scandal, to learn to become independent individuals, was mimicked continually and often verbatim throughout the commune by Sannyasins.

“Anything that happens here is good,” said Ma Veetnisha, a 44-year-old woman who quit her job as a pediatric nurse in San Francisco to come here. She was working last week as a clerk at the Noah’s Ark Rajneesh Boutique, the men’s clothing store in the commune’s fashionable mall. “I am not surprised by anything that happens here. I am not surprised, period.”

There were changes in the works. Whoops of joy greeted the announcement at the commune reception center that work hours were to be shortened. At the Rajneesh Times, a newspaper that had functioned as a house organ and had been called “Pravda” by commune residents, there was brave talk of becoming a real newspaper, and indeed the current edition is filled with stories about the developments.

Stunned by Accusations

“I didn’t have a good feeling at all about the people in power,” said a reporter, Ma Govind Shahido. A bright, articulate 28-year-old who had worked at a Nashville newspaper before joining the commune, Shahido said she had been stunned by accusations that the leaders of the commune had engaged in the very cult-like activities her family had warned about. That she had been blind to this troubled her.

“I had a bad feeling,” she said. “Why didn’t I do something about that?”

In the place of the departed community leaders, the Bhagwan installed several members of the so-called Hollywood Group. His new personal secretary is Ma Prem Hasya, a fashionable dresser and the former wife of movie producer Al Ruddy (“The Godfather”).

Hasya was said to be known around the commune at the “divine Miss H” and “Miss Hollywood.” Now, said one of her aides who flitted about Hasya as she held forth with the press, she can be called “The Godmother.”

Was she scared about becoming another Sheela?

“I’m not scared,” Hasya replied, examining a diamond-studded watch that decorates her right wrist. “It’s more like I am excited. I have a sense that the Bhagwan won’t allow it to happen to me.”

Leaders to Change

And indeed, he announced that from now on leadership positions would change hands every few months.

It was possible to spot some hints of the psychological toll the shake-up has taken on some of the Sannyasins. There were lines of followers, some crying, at the public telephones, where they waited to return some of the hundreds of anxious inquiries from relatives who had besieged the commune switchboard.

The Bhagwan himself was having a ball. In the morning, he would address the Sannyasins for hours. In the afternoon, he would hold “press conferences” at which reporters could ask questions in front of the entire commune, providing a handy foil for his sharp wit. At night, he would grant private interviews to television crews.

At one morning session, a follower asked if the automatic weapons his bodyguards carry could be eliminated. “They freeze my heart,” the follower said.

The Bhagwan said, “You are a mouse,” and went on for half an hour about an assassination attempt against him in India.

Guns Will Stay

Nonetheless, he agreed to put the matter to a vote. Those who didn’t want him assassinated were supposed to raise both hands, and the hall quickly became a forest of red and orange sleeves.

Bhagwan smiled and said the guns would stay, and then added: “Now, where is that mouse?” Then the whole congregation began to sing. The Bhagwan clapped his hands to the beat, and occasionally pounded on an imaginary bongo as he backed out the rear exit. Outside, a security helicopter perched eerily on a high cliff overlooking the commune, and then reared up to hover over the Bhagwan’s Rolls Royce limousine.

With the chopper and a Jeep providing escort, the limo moved quickly up a lane and turned left onto a private driveway that winds around behind a mountain to where the Bhagwan lives in a hidden mansion. It is rarely seen by any of his followers. The place is called Lao Tzu, and it is surrounded by taut strands of barbed wire.