crowyhead's review
3.0
This was a bit disappointing. I think I was expecting more of a coherent narrative -- I didn't realize this was essentially a collection of Oregon Magazine articles written while the events related were unfolding. This makes for interesting reading, but I think also means the book may be best as a companion to more narrative works about the cult. Because everything was written at the time of the events or shortly afterward, the articles tend to be reactive rather than reflective, and are geared toward alerting Oregonians of a potential danger in their midst, rather than giving contextual information. There are also, it seems, quite a lot of details missing, or not elucidated very well, particularly in the case of the wiretapping operation and the plot against US Attorney Charles Turner. There seems to be the assumption that people will have read about some of these events from other sources. I think I would have enjoyed this more if McCormack had taken the extra steps of synthesizing his articles with further research and crafting more of a book-length narrative.
stephen_means_me's review
4.0
This was a fascinating read, but flawed in certain important ways. As a stand-alone work, I'd give it a 3/5. But if taken with other accounts of the Rajneesh movement in Oregon, it's a useful first-hand account of the backlash, meriting an extra point.
A longer review follows.
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Review of the book as a stand-alone work: The Rajneesh Chronicles is largely a chronological collection of articles written in the early 1980s by the author, Win McCormack, as editor for Oregon Magazine. It covers the events surrounding the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their attempt to found the city of Rajneeshpuram in north-central Oregon. They were the focus of accusations of cult behavior, brainwashing, threats of violence, illegal wiretapping, voter and immigration fraud, drug smuggling and prostitution, and the poisoning of over 700 people in The Dalles with salmonella as an attempt to sway local elections. And make no mistake, the Rajneesh movement is wall-to-wall woo-woo, and their leadership seem like A-plus assholes.
But the book, taken on its own, is very much a product of the times, that is, the 1980s. With the mass suicide at Jonestown fairly recent in the popular memory, and the Satanic panic gathering steam (Michelle Remembers was published in 1980; Rajneesh followers bought the Big Muddy Ranch in 1981), there are a lot of salacious accusations being made, often with their own outlandish flavor. For example, in the article "Experts describe Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as a master hypnotist," McCormick cites a professor (!) at Lewis and Clark College who blithely talks about psychic phenomenon and the ability of Eastern mystical practices to overwhelm Western academics who aren't in tune with their emotions.
The accounts of what went on at Rajneesh's ashram in India, too, strains credibility, just because it's precisely the sort of claims you'd expect defectors to make, especially defectors from a strange, non-Christian religious group. Remember, this was at a time when hypnotic-trance-induced "memories" of Satanic ritual abuse were taken as Very Serious Accusations. Baby sacrifice stuff. So I can't help but discount some of the more outlandish claims.
Of course, one doesn't need those claims to believe that Rajneesh's organization was a very effective recapitulation of abusive relationships. In other words: a cult.
The other thing, of course, is that reading the book by itself will give you the impression that the Rajneesh takeover was extreme in all ways. Not so; in fact, one can get a possible sense of what other tensions were at play. You have rural versus urban sensibilities; conservative family values ("de-emphasis of marriage" and "sexual orgies" are portrayed as prima facie evil, rather than focusing on how members were often forced into these things); limited religious tolerance (conservative Christian farmers versus "Eastern" New Age spiritual seekers); and so on. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what might have gone differently if one of these were less inflamed. If the Rajneeshees were in fact simple communal farmers, would the residents of the surrounding county have accepted that?
A longer review follows.
---
Review of the book as a stand-alone work: The Rajneesh Chronicles is largely a chronological collection of articles written in the early 1980s by the author, Win McCormack, as editor for Oregon Magazine. It covers the events surrounding the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their attempt to found the city of Rajneeshpuram in north-central Oregon. They were the focus of accusations of cult behavior, brainwashing, threats of violence, illegal wiretapping, voter and immigration fraud, drug smuggling and prostitution, and the poisoning of over 700 people in The Dalles with salmonella as an attempt to sway local elections. And make no mistake, the Rajneesh movement is wall-to-wall woo-woo, and their leadership seem like A-plus assholes.
But the book, taken on its own, is very much a product of the times, that is, the 1980s. With the mass suicide at Jonestown fairly recent in the popular memory, and the Satanic panic gathering steam (Michelle Remembers was published in 1980; Rajneesh followers bought the Big Muddy Ranch in 1981), there are a lot of salacious accusations being made, often with their own outlandish flavor. For example, in the article "Experts describe Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as a master hypnotist," McCormick cites a professor (!) at Lewis and Clark College who blithely talks about psychic phenomenon and the ability of Eastern mystical practices to overwhelm Western academics who aren't in tune with their emotions.
The accounts of what went on at Rajneesh's ashram in India, too, strains credibility, just because it's precisely the sort of claims you'd expect defectors to make, especially defectors from a strange, non-Christian religious group. Remember, this was at a time when hypnotic-trance-induced "memories" of Satanic ritual abuse were taken as Very Serious Accusations. Baby sacrifice stuff. So I can't help but discount some of the more outlandish claims.
Of course, one doesn't need those claims to believe that Rajneesh's organization was a very effective recapitulation of abusive relationships. In other words: a cult.
The other thing, of course, is that reading the book by itself will give you the impression that the Rajneesh takeover was extreme in all ways. Not so; in fact, one can get a possible sense of what other tensions were at play. You have rural versus urban sensibilities; conservative family values ("de-emphasis of marriage" and "sexual orgies" are portrayed as prima facie evil, rather than focusing on how members were often forced into these things); limited religious tolerance (conservative Christian farmers versus "Eastern" New Age spiritual seekers); and so on. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what might have gone differently if one of these were less inflamed. If the Rajneeshees were in fact simple communal farmers, would the residents of the surrounding county have accepted that?
redbecca's review
3.0
Like many others, I picked this book up after seeing the Netflix series, Wild, Wild Country. The book is a series of articles about the cult from the Oregon Magazine, published in the sequence of their original appearance during the establishment and fall of Rajneeshpuram. Given the new interest in the Rajneeshees, I hope that this book's author might consider a more narrative history. This book includes much more detail about negative aspects of the Rajneesh cult than the film does, including descriptions of rapes and beatings during 'therapy' sessions, anti-Semitic ideology, more information on the cult's history in India, as well as more information about the organization's financial activities, and commentary from a variety of experts on cults and authoritarian leadership.
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