If you have ever wondered what happens when two huge, grand experiments collide, you must watch Wild Wild Country.
Wild Wild Country is a documentary about the time when Bhagwan Rajneesh and his followers tried to start a commune in the United States.
Ironically, both the United States and the Rajneesh had similar ideas about freedom. They both believe that people should be free to be what they want to be and free to do what they want to do. Yet when these two experiments collided, what seemed like a dream on paper, turned out to be a nightmare of epic proportions in reality. I don’t want to spoil the story but the experiment goes bad and ends in a disaster.Perhaps freedom means different things to different people.
The most mind-blowing aspect of a cult is the fact that its members are willing to blindly follow the leader, to commit crimes for him/her and risk life and limb for them. Yet, these followers see themselves, not as criminals, but as heroes who selflessly sacrificed themselves for the good of the group.
In the documentary, Bhagwan Rajneesh’s personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela openly admits that they were willing to go to any lengths to preserve what they had built.She frequently uses words such as “self preservation” and “self defense” but by the end of the documentary its pretty clear that she if she wasn’t a complete psychopath then she at least displayed psychopathic tendencies. She had zero remorse for the things that she did and in fact blamed the victims for being ignorant and narrow minded.
It would be unfair to determine Bhagwan Rajneesh’s legacy based on what happened in 4/5 years of his life. Yet from the events that took place as depicted in the documentary, the followers talk of “joy, love, happiness and laughter” was but a sham to exploit those who seek to fill an emotional/spiritual void in their lives.
That documentary blew my mind. I have been a practicing Hindu all my life and I have never known people like the ones shown in the documentary.
Or so I thought.
I realized that cults come in all shapes and sizes and I almost joined one myself.
My parents were never big on the ‘ceremonial’ aspect of Hinduism but are God Fearing people.They would take us kids to temples during festivals but we were nowhere close to being called devout.When we lived in Indonesia in the 1990s we socialized with other Indian expatriate families.One family, I will call them the Mohans, who were wonderful people, were ardent devotees of a God man called Sathya Sai Baba.
Sathya Sai Baba claimed to be a reincarnation of another saint, Sai Baba, who died 8 years before he was born. He also claimed to an incarnation of Shiva. Sathya Sai Baba is a polarizing figure in India.To some people he is God.To some he is a Demi-God because of the amount of charity work he has done.To some he is a con artist and a criminal.Yet to millions of people in India and around the world, he is an avatar of God who roamed amongst his devotees.
The Mohans were fervent devotees of Sathya Sai Baba.They were wonderful people; soft spoken, kind, gentle and successful people. They regularly conducted Prayers/Bhajans in his names and they would invite people to their house to attend these Bhajans. The Bhajans would be the chanting and singing of traditional Hindu songs and hymns but instead of the regular Indian Gods like Ram/Krishna/Shiva, the singing would be directed towards a large portrait of the God man placed on a rocking chair. These Bhajans would typically last 2 to 3 hours and then dinner would follow.
After the bhajans some of the devotees would speak about their experiences with the Guru.Someone would claim that holy ash fell from the portrait after a particularly intense Bhajan session. I remember an evening, when a bespectacled wiry man narrated a story:After a long Bhajan at the God man’s palace, the God-man called him by a pet name and asked him to come sit at his feet. The man sat at the Gurus feet and massaged his feet and the Guru put a hand on his head and later conjured a ring out of his mouth and gave it to the man. The man beamed with pride as he showed us all the ring, that he had on one of his fingers. It was a gold ring with a picture of the God man embossed on it.
His face glowed like someone who had recently been engaged.
The man then also spoke of the all the social work that was happening in the once tiny village of Putaparthi, where Satya Sai Baba was born. His followers had bought electricity to tiny villages that surrounded Putaparthi. They had opened schools free of cost. They had opened hospitals with cutting edge technologies that served the needy free of charge.The list goes on and on. It was truly amazing what this man had achieved. He had done all the things that the Indian Government had failed to do and he had done a far better job. Those who wanted to volunteer to the cause were welcome.If they couldn’t volunteer in person they could also donate money to the cause.
These Bhajans were quite frequent, but my family wasn’t big on Bhajans so we stopped going after a while. We did continue to socialize with the Mohans, but we never adopted or even considered becoming devotees. I was 14/15 years old at the time, and even then I was skeptical about the God man. Not wanting to hurt anyones religious sentiments, I never said a word out in public. I realize now, that we came quite close to joining a cult.I believe that the Mohans had no malicious intent and that they were merely displaying/sharing their love for their guru with the world.
Yet, knowingly or unknowingly, the Mohans were propagating a cult. They were, knowingly or unknowingly, recruiting people under a private banner.
In a way Hinduism is particularly ripe for this kind of pedagogy. After all, Hinduism already had a 100 different Gods, whats the problem with adding another one to the pantheon?I can almost imagine Satya Sai Baba up in heaven, asking a visibly annoyed Shiva to scooch over a little.
It was bizarre and impressive at the same time. One could argue that the whole thing was a sham designed to fleece people.Yet considering how much charity work had been done, one could almost argue that the scam was worth the price. If a single life had been saved or needless suffering attenuated, perhaps it was all worth it? The principle be damned?
After all, what was the alternative? The Indian Goverment didn’t live up the expectations of the people. The population continued to grow, but the leaders we put into power were to busy being corrupt and/or incompetent. Indian politicians are amongst the most corrupt people on the face of the planet. They routinely rob people of hundreds of thousands of crores through scams and cronyism.
Compared to them a God-man isnt half bad. Right?
Or so one would think. The biggest damage that Putaparthi Sai Baba might have done is that he set the precedent for all those who followed him. He created the roadmap and the blueprint to creating more people like him.After all, if one is to accept that one human being is a God, what stops someone else from claiming the same? Aren’t we at some point just splitting hairs?
So the net result is this: Now we have corrupt politicians AND God-men fleecing people. Quite often these two criminal elements work hand in hand. The God man launders the money for the politician and the politician makes any PR problems for the God man go away. The Indian people end up becoming the construction workers in “The ghost and the darkness”; hunted by the twin man-eaters of Tsavo.
This cult that I witnessed firsthand, if Wikipedia is to be believed, has been accused of sexual abuse, money laundering, fraud and even murder. The God man himself has been accused of sexual abuse. The accusations come from a wide range of people and from a broad timeline. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that there were others who never spoke up in fear of being ostracized. Yet this well connected God man, whose birthday guests included celebrities, Prime Ministers and Presidents never spent a day in court or prison. He died at the age of 84 and famous people from all over the world came to pay tribute.
The accusers and victims were called liars and cheats and were cast aside.If the accusations against the God man are true, this is undeniably a terrible miscarriage of justice. Till this day, every so often I would often come across his photos in people houses and even in Hindu temples. I dont know what to do in these cases and I walk around like I didn’t see that picture.
Wondering if what the Mohans did is unethical is a tricky question.I am not 100% sure. Perhaps in their minds they saw something great, or a wonderful opportunity to perform social service, yet to believe another human being is a God is madness. All humans being are created equal and no one should be held above the law.
