Word: guru
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India's ex-sex guru tries instant sanyas...
Bald bearded and photogenic. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was once known as India's sex guru. At Mount Abu, the hill resort in Rajasthan where he operated from 1969 to 1974, he dispensed tantric yoga, chanting and meditation. Western pilgrims would sometimes doff all their clothes and wriggle in ecstasy, while the more inhibited Indians stripped down to their underwear. Photographers clicked merrily away without hindrance...
...talents. Since 1974, when the lushly gardened Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Ashram opened in the sedate city of Poona, more than 50,000 seekers have gone, mostly from the U.S., Britain and West Germany. Among recent visitors: Actor Terence Stamp, Singer Diana Ross and the Marquis of Bath. Now the guru is instructing his best-connected disciple yet: Richard Price, co-founder and director of the Esalen Institute, the very fount of the encounter craze. Price will return to the Big Sur, Calif., center in mid-January to apply the teachings of his new master...
Those teachings are mostly pop-Hinduism and anything-goes homilies. "I don't profess anything," Rajneesh says. The charm seems to lie in the guru's dramatic presence and the hope of an easy way to Eastern enlightenment. In ancient Hindu tradition, a sanyasi is a holy man who studies and meditates for years before he renounces the world. The Poona guru offers the blissful state of sanyas immediately, and calls it "neo-sanyas." Says he: "Westerners want things quickly, so we give it to them right away...
Esalen's Price received his neo-sanyas by cable to California. But all others must undergo the elaborate ceremony led by Rajneesh himself. They buy orange robes at the ashram's boutique, then wash thoroughly. No one may approach the asthmatic guru with any trace of dust, perfume or hair oil. Two tall blonde vestals at the gate carefully sniff at all who seek entrance. A single cough during the rite can be the cause for ejection. Then, reports TIME'S New Delhi bureau chief...