26/09/2026
I don't usually watch tv generally, but when it's something about a part of your life that you know changed it forever it's hard to ignore....
Wild Wild Country is a pretty incredible documentary that charts the spiritual rise of Chandra Mohan Jain or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh from his early days and blossoming community in Poona India, to The Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon in the USA.
It was deeply compelling watch, to see a beautiful vision of a Utopian society be created and then to see it crumble under the weight of the American establishment, leadership gone wild and the near by community of Antelope that could really of done without the aliens landing (it surely must of looked like that). What struck me was the way in which Osho was persecuted. It seems society is so deeply conditioned, that anything that challenges the status quo is rejected, viewed with suspicion, even if it has the potential for miraculous benefits for everyone involved.
Osho’s or Bhagwan’s Sannyasin’s, of which there were hundreds grew into the thousands. A large majority of them were people seeking something more than their lives could offer them, they were seeking freedom and love. An escape from the trappings of life they had become accustomed too.
What they found was heaven on earth, an idyllic community in the valley of Oregon. A community built on love, laughter, meditation and trust. It was somewhere to start a new life and commit themselves to the path of Meditation, Awakening and Love.
The ragged hills of the Big Muddy Ranch turned green, all the wildlife returned and flourished and Eden was precariously born on earth and they called it Rajneeshpuram or The Ranch. The food was delicious, organic and home grown, the river was running with fresh water from the hills. It was paradise, truly paradise.
It wasn’t long before the foundations of Rajneeshpuram started to shift slowly becoming a microcosm of the macrocosm, a symptom of the rest of the issues with the world. The pressures from the local community started, bullying, anti-rights, threats and the persecution began. The small group of leaders soon felt their community was under attack. It was fight or flight and they chose fight and began to stock up on weapons of all kinds. Drastic measures were taken to protect themselves and what they thought were sane choices began to prove as pure madness.
The real leader remained partially oblivious in Silence. Every night Osho had a meeting with his secretary Sheela, who’s roll in the commune had far outweighed anyone’s ideas of what it meant to be a secretary. Nobody really knows what happened in those meetings. The thing is wherever there is transformation there will be some chaos. It is the roll of the Master to unsettle the soil and stir the mud so that the lotus can make its way up through the muddy depths to the light.
I was 7 years old living on Rajneeshpuram with all of my family, I think that was pretty rare in itself, but we were young kids and my mother and father were seeking truth. Wild Wild Country has filled in some missing parts of the puzzle for me. What is certain is that everyone there had their own unique and powerful experience. As children our experience’s were very different and we were untouched by any of the unfolding drama, but we did have a few of our own.
I was in the hotel in Portland with my family the night the bomb went of. We were woken up by the hotel staff and asked to leave as quickly as possible. We didn’t even know what had happened until we got outside and saw a large group of people sitting on the pavements on the opposite side of the road from the hotel all staring in disbelief. We sat with our parents with nowhere to go and wonderful lady offered us her home for the night and so we were totally taken care of. Bless her wherever she is.
Often with great spiritual leaders, there is a lot of controversy that transpires around them. Wether you see it or not is often to do with which lens you are looking through. You can be in a storm, but if you stay in the centre it doesn't touch you. Osho came to shake things up, to sift through the dross of the mind, personality and attachments and show people a new way to live and he did.
Everyone on The Ranch contributed in there own way to the shifts that have continued to reverberate around the globe, in many of the ongoing communities that have sprung up. I was in Medina a few times near Cambridge and I used to visit Ko Husan in Devon.
Osho's presence was like dropping a stone in the ocean the ripples became the tide, the tide became the waves and Osho became the Ocean. We are all that, its Osho's legacy to each of us, wether we believe it or not. He came here at that exact time for us and everyone carries his fragrance within them. The people I have come to know through all of this are some of the most revolutionary, creative, freethinking, free beings and beautiful global contributors.
The last thing I will say about all of this is that there is always treasure in the mess and everybody got exactly what they needed for their own growth.
Boundless Love Dhyan Ji 🕉🦋🔥
