Word: bhagwan
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...someone wants to come close to me, he has to make the effort," says Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, 54, the guru of some 1,300 red-garbed disciples who live in the commune city of Rajneeshpuram in central Oregon. "Those who come to me, it is their joy. If they leave me, it is their joy. I am blissful anyway, whether anyone comes or anyone goes...
Last week some seemed to be going, and the guru was not exactly blissful about it. The Indian expatriate discovered that his personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, had taken off, along with Rajneeshpuram's mayor, a city-council member and a gaggle of other top Rajneesh functionaries. The bhagwan (revered one) called a succession of news conferences to denounce the nine or so who flew his coop as "fascists" and "criminals." He accused some of the defectors of an exotic miscellany of offenses. Offering nothing that authorities considered proof, Rajneesh asserted that there had been attempted poisonings of seven people...
...Sheela was responsible for the scheme to recruit about 3,500 homeless people for the commune last fall, in what observers believe was an attempt to load the voting rolls against longer-term residents of Wasco County. However, many of the transients later departed. Sheela's latest plan, the bhagwan said, was to build a housing complex for AIDS victims in Rajneesh. His reaction was less than charitable: "I said this is not right. You would be putting the whole of Oregon in danger. I had to stop it." After Sheela and her followers fled, said the guru, "sannyasins started...
Given the sect's penchant for put-ons, as well as its reportedly declining membership and lawsuits concerning the takeover of Antelope, outsiders did not know what to make of the bhagwan's statements. Neither, evidently, did the six different groups of lawmen that jointly began examining the guru's charges last week: the Oregon state police, the FBI, the Wasco County sheriff, the Dalles police, the state attorney general's office and the U.S. Attorney's office. Wasco County District Attorney Bernard L. Smith said at week's end that his office will coordinate an investigation of the situation...
Some of the new arrivals have become bored in the countryside and have demanded free bus tickets to return to urban centers. Many of them have left, enlarging the street population of Portland. But at the ranch, most contented followers of the Bhagwan wonder what all the furor is about. Declared Ma Prem Goldie, a former Los Angeles high school teacher: "I haven't missed a thing about the outside world. Time and the future don't get in the way here. This is truly a religious experience...