When a controversial guru builds an utopian city in the Oregon desert, it causes a massive conflict with local ranchers. This docuseries chronicles the conflict, which led to the first bioterror attack in the United States and a massive case of illegal wiretapping. It is a pivotal but largely forgotten, time in American cultural history that tested the country’s tolerance for the separation of church and state.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, during the 1970s and 1980s, and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic guru. He was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious dogma. He taught a form of meditation called dynamic meditation and advocated that his followers live fully but without attachment, rejecting traditional ascetic practices. In advocating a more progressive attitude to human sexuality, he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as “the sex guru.”
Rajneesh moved to the United States in 1981 and, the following year, incorporated Rajneeshpuram, a new city he planned to build on an abandoned ranch near Antelope, Oregon. During the next few years, many of his most-trusted aides abandoned the movement, which came under investigation for multiple felonies, including arson, attempted murder, drug smuggling, and vote fraud in Antelope. In 1985 Rajneesh pleaded guilty to immigration fraud and was deported from the United States. He was refused entry to 21 countries before returning to Pune, where his ashram soon grew to 15,000 members.
