Word: rajneesh
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...holy man, it was a world of trouble. There, in a third-floor medical cell of the Mecklenburg County jail in Charlotte, N.C., sat Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh last week, facing 35 counts of conspiring to violate immigration laws. Back home in Rajneeshpuram, Ore., where he ran a 1,300-member commune that espouses free love and the good life, the Bhagwan (Revered One) was accustomed to more deferential treatment, not to mention a more elegant life- style that offered, among other amenities, no fewer than 90 Rolls-Royces...
...Bhagwan departed forthwith from Rajneeshpuram. The guru and six disciples chartered two Learjets and took off so quickly that their pilots had to obtain final clearances while aloft. As the Bhagwan's retinue tried to arrange a flight to Bermuda, Federal Aviation Administration controllers tracked the planes. When Rajneesh's touched down at 2 a.m. at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, authorities arrested...
...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...
...leader of the first band of Rajneeshees that settled in 1981 in what was then Antelope, Ore., a hamlet of 40. As their numbers increased, the sannyasins (followers) bought out older residents, registered to vote and took over the city council, changing the name Antelope to Rajneesh in 1984. 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...