Word: rajneesh
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...tailoring his program to the psychospiritual circuit, catering to graduates of the "human potential" movement who felt that the movement's potential-and their own-had reached a dead end. Refugee experts from encounter groups, Rolfing massage and other please-touch techniques began making the pilgrimage and offering Rajneesh their 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...
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...
Lawrence Malkin, the screened initiates are placed in the lotus position on the hard terrazzo veranda. Rajneesh enters in a floor-length white robe. One by one, the candidates for instant sanyas prostrate themselves before him and receive a 108-bead mala (necklace) with the guru's plastic-covered picture dangling like a locket, and a personalized tidbit of wisdom from the guru's lips. (To a psychotherapist: "You will need much work because a psychiatrist is more puzzled in a way than a psychotic. Lose control. Let it happen.") Each apostle also receives a new name. Henceforth...
...initiations and in morning discourses attended by 1,000 or more motionless visitors, Rajneesh is a master of psychodrama. As he explained bluntly to Malkin, "The whole abracadabra is just to console you. It is a toy. The purpose of sanyas is so that you go on hanging around, so that a single sound from me, or just a look, will bring you that moment of enlightenment." So potent is that effect that most of the ashram's 200 permanent residents no longer bother to listen to the guru's words. "It's the presence that matters...