Zorba the Buddha by Urban Hugh B.;

Author:Urban, Hugh B.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

THE RAPID DECLINE OF RAJNEESHPURAM: FROM CHARITY FOR THE HOMELESS TO BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM

This apocalyptic paranoia was followed by an array of increasingly bizarre and illegal activities. Among the many astonishing things that took place in the later years of the Rajneeshpuram experiment, the “Share a Home” program was surely one of most outrageous. Begun in late summer and early fall of 1984, Share a Home was promoted as a charitable program designed to help homeless people from around the country by bringing them to the ranch, feeding and housing them, and offering them work and a place in the commune. Buses were sent across the country, all the way to the East Coast, to find homeless people and to offer to give them a fresh start at Rajneeshpuram. By the time the program ended, nearly 4,000 people—mostly single males, many of them African American, and all of them over eighteen—were brought to the ranch. Suddenly, nearly half the ranch was black.99 According to interviews with these men from the time, moreover, many of them enjoyed the program and appreciated the food, the housing, the beer, the nightly disco, and even in some cases the spiritual teachings.100

Yet to most observers, including many sannyasins at the time, this was a purely cynical and calculated attempt to sway a political election. In November 1984, the Wasco County elections were held, and it was clear to many both inside and outside the movement that Share a Home was essentially an attempt to get enough registered voters to outnumber the local voters in order to put sannyasins on the county council and then get their various plans approved. In the words of former sannyasin Will Foster, who worked in the Share a Home program, the scheme was simply “morally corrupt” and a transparent political maneuver.101

Moreover, keeping thousands of street people inside a commune for several months also proved to be a challenge, since not all of them were necessarily on board with the sannyasin experience. In one of the most shocking revelations to come out of the ranch, it turned out that these new residents were unknowingly being given serious drugs—heavy-duty tranquilizers and Valium—in their food and beer to keep them quiet. “Haldol in the chili,” Ritter recalls.102

The Wasco election officials quickly grew suspicious of the Rajneeshees’ plan to bring in thousands of new voters, and announced a blanket rejection of all the new registrations. Despite the Rajneeshees’ intense protests that this was unconstitutional, undemocratic, and even fascistic, they had no chance in the election, which brought out record numbers of Wasco County voters. Shortly after the election, many of the street people were abruptly bused out of Rajneeshpuram and dropped off in nearby cities, such as Portland, where they were abandoned without any resources or contacts, often thousands of miles from their starting place.103

If Share a Home was outrageous for its pure Machiavellian politics, even more surreal events would soon unfold. From simple election fraud, things rapidly escalated to psychological and physical warfare. At

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