Oregon Neighbors Still Haunted 10 Years After Fall of Commune

Amid the stark beauty of the high desert, the skeleton of a city is all that remains of the Rajneeshees’ experiment in consciousness and power.

Gone are the machine guns, the Rolls-Royces, the thousands of red-clad disciples from around the globe who came to central Oregon in the early 1980s to live and meditate with Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

The city they created, Rajneeshpuram, was disincorporated 10 years ago after the commune imploded with revelations of murder plots and poisoned salad bars, arranged marriages and bugged hotel rooms.

Some of the “sannyasins” followed Rajneesh back to Pune, India, where he returned after being convicted of immigration fraud. Others are scattered around the world, with large groups in Germany, Italy, Japan and England, where the sect has relocated its international publishing and media business.

Instead of red clothing and pendants bearing a picture of the guru--who had changed his name to Osho before his death in 1990--disciples now wear marble lockets made from the bedroom where he died. They believe his energy will inhabit the stone for 2,000 years.

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Sannyasins place the blame for any wrongdoing at the Oregon ranch squarely on Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh’s big-talking personal secretary who exercised dictatorial control over the commune.

Sheela served 2 1/2 years in federal prison for a host of crimes--attacking the guru’s doctor with a poison-filled syringe, setting fire to the county planning office, giving glasses of poisoned water to two county officials, creating the largest electronic eavesdropping system in state history, arranging 400 sham marriages so that foreign disciples could stay in the United States, and masterminding a food poisoning outbreak that sickened 750 diners at restaurants in The Dalles, 80 miles away.

Another 21 Rajneeshees were convicted of various crimes, most recently in July, when two other former commune leaders were found guilty of plotting to murder former U.S. Atty. Charles Turner of Portland, Ore.

Barry Sheldahl, an assistant U.S. attorney in Portland, notes that the outcome could have been much worse at the heavily armed commune.

“All you have to do is look at Waco and Ruby Ridge,” Sheldahl said. “We were being told some of these people would lay down their lives for the Bhagwan. And they were being told the government was out to get the Bhagwan. So luckily the collective governments in Oregon decided it wasn’t worth anyone’s life to try to arrest the guy.”

Fortunately for the government, Rajneesh flew out of Oregon one night, ostensibly headed for vacation in Bermuda, and was arrested on the immigration charge in North Carolina. His followers still contend that the federal government poisoned him while he was in custody.

Eleven disciples remain fugitives, including Sheela, who was charged in the Turner plot after her release from prison. She cannot be extradited from Switzerland, where she now cares for elderly people in her home.

“Nobody really knows much about Sheela and nobody really cares,” said Ma Chit Tantra, a Salem, Ore., psychologist who worked in the kitchen at Rajneeshpuram. “I think by and large most people have forgiven Sheela. There’s no more anger.”

The same cannot be said for the Rajneeshees’ former neighbors in Oregon, who still are haunted by memories of gun-toting disciples who took over the town of Antelope, filling virtually all the elected positions and changing its name to City of Rajneesh.

Rajneeshee is “still a dirty word to me,” growled old-timer Don Lucas as he left the Antelope Store and Cafe on a recent morning.

Visitors can stop by the cafe in the town of 45 and get a map to the juniper- and sagebrush-dotted property 20 miles away known once again as the Big Muddy Ranch. The 64,000 acres now are inhabited by four cowboys, 500 head of cattle and a fair number of deer and elk.

The Rajneeshee symbol of a dove, planted on the side of the dam, has been changed to a “happy face.” What once was an outdoor cafeteria serving vegetarian fare now is a hay barn for beef cattle.

The ranch was purchased for $3.65 million in 1991 by Montana millionaire Dennis Washington, who hopes to donate it to the state of Oregon for use as a combination state park and boot camp for teenage criminals. The massive 88,050-square-foot meditation hall would be moved to Madras, Ore., for use by Central Oregon Community College.

Many local residents prefer that the Big Muddy remain a ranch, just as it was before the Rajneeshees moved in.

“They won’t bury it. They won’t let it go. The community just wants to see it ‘dozed,” said Lonnie Maulding, a former Antelope City Council member who now manages the ranch.

Other residents are more concerned about the fact that state ownership would take the ranch off county tax rolls.

“I think it should be used for something,” said Margaret Hill, who was mayor when the Rajneeshees came to town. “I think some people are flat-out opposed to anything. And maybe that’s one of the divisions the Rajneeshees left.”

The Rajneeshees paid $6 million for the ranch in 1981 and poured $100 million more into creating a Utopian vision complete with airstrip, hotel and shopping mall. More than 1,000 buildings remain on the property.

At its height, about 4,000 disciples lived at the commune nicknamed Rancho Rajneesh, working 84-hour weeks punctuated by daily meditation sessions and the guru’s “drive-by” in one of his 93 Rolls-Royces. All work stopped as sannyasins lined the dusty road, chanting, dancing and tossing flowers on the hood.

Rajneesh taught that meditation was the path to enlightenment. But the white-bearded guru blended Eastern mysticism with hedonism and Western materialism, calling himself the “world’s greatest lover” and the “rich man’s guru.” He claimed half a million followers around the world.

After the fall of Rajneeshpuram, the guru told his disciples to decentralize themselves, creating spiritually affiliated but autonomous groups, said Swami Prem Amrito, head of Osho International in London. Amrito was known as Swami Deveraj at the ranch, where he nearly died after being stabbed with a poison syringe.

A media distribution center is being set up in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the guru already is beamed via satellite and cable television to 94 countries and 400 U.S. cities.

“Rajneeshpuram was just a small part of a story that began to get quite international from late ‘60s onwards,” Amrito said. “Of course, the essence of power and the abuse of power is not a topic that humanity is very good at learning from.”