![]() This led to a spectacle of pink-shirted officers patrolling the no-stoplight town. Facing pressure from the tiny Antelope City Council over development plans, the Rajneeshees-who numbered 7,000 on the Rajneeshpuram at one point-mobilized to take over the council, which resulted in their taking over the police force as well. They dressed only in shades of pink and red and were inclined to spontaneous singing and dancing. The shoes weren’t the only thing different about the Rajneeshees. They were fashionable leather shoes, not cowboy boots.” And it was downhill from there. They came up with the Big Muddy Ranch, a 70,000-acre property in Oregon’s gorge country.Įarly on in the series, one local recalls seeing an early arrival to the Big Muddy-which was renamed Rajneeshpuram-speaking to just how unaccustomed the area was to other walks of life. When tensions with Indian authorities began to mount, the Rajneeshees went looking for a new place to grow. “We don’t charge for it, if that’s what you’re asking,” was the pithy reply. When the Rajneeshees later became an American obsession, one late-night talk show host asked a follower if they believed in free love. This philosophy included but was not limited to sex, but that, naturally, is what attracted the most attention. His basic vision involved taking the best parts of Western and Eastern societies and creating a “new man” not weighed down by the baggage of traditional societal norms. (Netflix)īhagwan Shree Rajneesh began attracting followers in Pune, India, in the 1960s. The guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and some of his followers. Indeed, many of the series’ themes-religious freedom, xenophobia, fighting for control over land, even voter suppression-make the story disturbingly relevant. Executive produced by brothers Mark and Jay Duplass and directed by brothers Chapman and Maclain Way, it’s a commendable retelling of a largely forgotten piece of history that feels familiar today. soil-all set against the barren, beautiful backdrop of Wasco County, Oregon. The six-part documentary series Wild Wild Country, out March 16 on Netflix, confirms that prediction, telling a twisted story filled with bombings, bioterrorism, and the largest illegal bugging operation ever recorded on U.S. Yet the details of the years-long conflict are so bizarre that one observer commented at the time that people looking back on the saga would consider it too fanciful to be true. One doesn’t need a deep understanding of the American West to guess how that went down with the local ranchers and townspeople in nearby Antelope, Oregon, population 40. In 1981, thousands of followers of a mystic guru named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh left India to start a new society based on free expression and free love on a ranch in rural Oregon. ![]()
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