by Tim Guest
On 23 December, two weeks after Sheela’s outrageous remark on NBC, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service denied Bhagwan’s petition for a permanent US resident’s visa. They listed four reasons: his poor health would interfere with his religious work; religious leaders were not silent; applicants must have been working as religious teachers for two years prior to the application, and when Bhagwan’s application was filed in November he had been in the US only five months. Citing an incident on his arrival at a New Jersey airport, they also questioned his need for medical treatment. Laxmi and Sheela had arranged for an ambulance to meet the plane. When they landed, Bhagwan asked Laxmi whether the stretch limo was also theirs. It was; and, against Sheela’s advice, Bhagwan rode in the limo instead. Finally, the INS claimed, the purchase of the land which became Rajneeshpuram indicated that Bhagwan had prior intent to come as a resident.
‘I have expected it,’ Bhagwan responded publicly. ‘This is the only way they could treat a Jesus or Buddha.’
The next day was Christmas Eve. In the snow outside the INS offices in Portland, Oregon, hundreds of sannyasins marched and waved placards that read stop religious mccarthyism and STOP MODERN CRUCIFIXION.
Word was sent out from the Ranch for sannyasins to arrange demonstrations across Europe. Thousands gathered in Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Australia. In Milan three thousand sannyasins marched in the city centre, under a huge orange helium balloon inscribed: IF ONLY THE WORLD WILL LAUGH FOR 24 HOURS . . . BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH.
In London, on 10 January 1983, hundreds of sannyasins—including my mother—gathered from Kalptaru and Medina to march through Hyde Park to Grosvenor Square and demonstrate outside the US embassy. The then-Vice President George Bush was visiting the UK so, to ingratiate their case with the US government, my mother and her friends gathered outside Grosvenor House and marched round and round in a circle among the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protestors, with banners that read: ‘Rajneeshees Welcome George Bush to England!’ Along with some of the other sannyasins who had come from a radical political background, my mother was reluctant to give a warm welcome to such a notorious Republican, the former head of the CIA. Fifteen years before, she had demonstrated on this very spot against US imperialism in Vietnam. But Bhagwan needed it. They marched. It was another exercise in surrender.
That evening, back at the Medina head office, my mother, Poonam, and the rest tuned in on the radio to hear what a fuss they’d made on the national media. Instead of making the news, they made the traffic report. ‘Some Hindus are protesting about immigration,’ the BBC announcer said, ‘so be advised to avoid Hyde Park corner.’
Later that week—ever aware of the importance of good public relations—my mother and her friends threw a tofu and wild rice press-banquet. They invited a thousand sannyasins and a hundred journalists. Just one journalist turned up.
Who knew what my mum was up to in those days? Certainly not me. She disappeared from Medina for days; I usually had no idea where she was going. But she was up to something. After George Bush remained unmoved by their warm orange welcome, a message came over from Sheela to Poonam saying that someone should meet with George Bush and personally persuade him to let Bhagwan remain in the United States. So Poonam picked two young, beautiful women sannyasins—my mother and a Ma called Moumina—to find and meet the Vice President.
By reading the newspapers they tracked Bush and his entourage to the Churchill Hotel, just around the corner from the US Embassy. Poonam gave my mother and Moumina a sizeable amount of commune money to go out and buy themselves the smartest clothes they could find. They drove to the hotel in a borrowed Mercedes. As they sat in the Churchill bar, drinking expensive cocktails, thinking they were probably being clocked as high-class prostitutes, they saw a group of obviously powerful Americans come into the lobby. They followed them into the lift. They smiled at the Americans and watched which floor button they pressed. Then they got off at the floor below. Over a few more drinks they tried to formulate a plan; as the drinks got longer, their plans got shorter. Finally they decided to waltz right into the Bush compound as if they belonged there. They took the elevator back up. The doors opened. Two guards stood on either side of the lift doors. They let the doors close. On the way down, they tried again. This time when the lift doors opened they swanned out. The guards didn’t stop them.
They felt like they’d walked onto a movie set. Everyone was slamming doors, looking serious, striding along hallways. My mother and her friend, trying to keep a straight face, walked once around the floor, then walked around the floor again. Realizing they would soon be spotted, my mother stopped a man to ask where George Bush was. Before he could answer, another man came down the corridor and appeared to recognize them. Oozing a kind of hypnotic charm the man ushered them into a plush office set up in a room off the corridor. The man—now flanked by two armed guards—asked how he could help. My mother and Moumina looked at each other then said they had a message for George Bush. The man introduced himself. He was the Vice President’s head of PR. George Bush was a little busy, he said. Was there no way he could possibly help the young ladies? I’ll pass on your message personally, he said. What would you like me to say? To my tipsy mother, this man’s charm seemed an irresistible augury of American power. In any other country, she thought to herself, this guy’s charm would be running the show, but in the US he’s just the guy helping the guy helping the guy run the show. Moumina was also swept away. They blurted out that they were disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who was their religious teacher. He needed a visa for America, and he was definitely a religious teacher, definitely a very spiritual person, and should definitely be given a visa. The man leaned back, looked at them both; then he flashed the most charming smile. My mother and Moumina beamed. I’ll make sure he gets your message, he said, and they were—very, very politely and carefully, very charmingly—escorted back to the lift, where he bid them a suave but firm goodbye.
Then on 11 January the INS withdrew its decision. The reason was not my mother’s heartfelt objections, but a legal technicality: the INS had not included the copies of their evidence in their written application to the court. The INS would reapply and continue the fight; but sannyasin lawyers now had the opportunity to refute any evidence they presented. The dispute—dubbed ‘God vs the Universe’ by Sheela—would likely drag on for years. For now, at least, Bhagwan could stay in Oregon.
There was no snow at Medina Rajneesh that winter. Instead of making snowmen, we crunched down in our maroon moon-boots over the frosty grass to the bottom of the front lawn. There we picked up big sticks and threw them at each other—a game we called ‘Stick Wars’. One afternoon Toyvo hurled a whole branch at Majid; it hit him on the side of the head, and he bled all down his face. We decided that ‘Stick Wars’ was out of bounds. Then someone discovered you could eat the chestnuts that littered the front lawn. So in the cold afternoons we gathered them in plastic bags and roasted them in bulk over the fire in the Main Hall. We climbed the oak tree in the clearing, until one afternoon someone fell off and was knocked unconscious.
On the coldest days the lake froze over, and we went down to slide across it or play basketball on the ice, fleeing when it cracked. Occasionally some of us would get marooned on the island in the middle until someone fetched a plank. (The first time that happened was on a Sunday; on Monday morning we gathered together on the island, broke up the ice, pulled in the planks, and refused to go to school.) In the evenings, while all the adults were in meetings, we hung out in the Kids’ Hut playroom. We would sit there hitting each other with cushions, listening to Rupda’s tape on the stereo, wondering what it sounded like when doves cried. We played games I had never played before: truth-or-dare, kiss-chase, murder-in-the-dark (which often seemed to turn into kiss-chase when the lights went off). With no adults around, we played our first games of spin-the-bottle. One of the older kids arranged the cushions in a circle and produced a wine bottle nicked from the Main Office drinks cabinet
. The younger ones, me and Majid included, balanced on the cupboard or sat on top of the piano to watch as Purva pulled her pink blouse over her head. Above us, through the little window above the piano, the sky grew darker earlier than it had done the night before.
Because I was one of the youngest, and also because I was a boy, I escaped much of the sexual pressure at Medina. I knew about sex; we all did. It was no big deal for us to see a naked Ma or Swami step out of a dormitory door to replace a breakfast tray in the hallway, or dash across to another room. We’d all seen adults at it, in one way or another. I remember one morning waking up to find my mother’s roommate, Adheera, sweating under a bearded Hadiqua’a doctor. He was doing press-ups, which confused me, until I realized they must be ‘having sex’. I hid under the bedclothes with just my face showing. Adheera noticed me watching and smiled. ‘Look at Yogesh! How sweet!’ she said. They kept going.
The girls talked about sex constantly. There were plenty of jokes that we didn’t repeat so much when the adults were around. (‘Deepa and a teacher are lying on the school table. The teacher says, “Deepa! Deepa!” Deepa says, “I can’t, sir. That’s as far as it’ll go.”’) One afternoon I heard a huddled group of girls in the Kids’ Hut hallway talking about ‘having crabs’; I told them all I’d had crabs, back in India, and they all laughed and laughed, although I couldn’t understand why. In the later years of Medina, I heard the girls talking about playing dressing-up games with one of the adults on the Accounts office photocopier. Once, from behind the sofa, I heard three of the girls talking about having sex with a visiting group leader—they were speaking in their secret language, but I had already realized that if I didn’t concentrate too hard on the words I could understand what they were saying.
At Medina, we had little chance to discover things for ourselves. There were no hushed discoveries, no evenings playing with girls in long grass. The sannyasin determination to be open about sex meant it was part of our lives from the start. Some of the kids stayed out in the open, leaped into the heat of the sun, and got burned: I retreated under the covers; backed away into the shade. Either way, our own small lights were harder to make out against the red glow of the sannyasin sun.
The light was bright, and it burned us, too. I was caught once in the bath on the top floor of the Kids’ Hut, in the early years of Medina, playing ‘doctors and nurses’ (to be honest, it was more like ‘doctors and doctors’), with another boy, also six years old, until I saw an eye at the keyhole. Asha, the girl who spied on us, ran shrieking to tell the rest of the dormitory (‘Guess what I just saw Yogesh do!’). Another time I came downstairs with a hole in my shorts and no underwear, and Saoirse kindly pointed it out. Hysterical songs were sung about it—‘Yogesh and Saoirse, sitting in a tree . . .’—all week.
Years later I heard other things about this less visible side of the commune: the things we needed and didn’t get; the things we might not have needed, but got anyway. The things we gave ourselves. ‘In a better world, mothers would initiate their sons into sex, fathers their daughters,’ Bhagwan said once; I know this advice was taken literally by some at Medina. Some of the girls had their first sexual experiences arranged by some of the adults, to make sure the experience would be a good one; they spent nights in candle-lit rooms with visiting group leaders. I heard, too, that at the continuation of Medina in Ko Hsuan, in Devon, one girl sent a roll of film to be developed at Boots on the high street; and, when the police came to call at Medina Rajneesh, more photos were burned in a bonfire out in the woods.
That first winter, as the sky and forest grew dark, I took to standing outside on the front lawn in a borrowed bomber jacket, looking in on the orange light of the Main House. The shapes of the porch and bay windows made the house look like a grinning Hallowe’en pumpkin. As I watched, one or two of the lights would flick off; I’d try to predict which light would go out next, stare at one, and will it to go dark. I would stand there for a long time, on the lawn, alone, looking in on the orange light from my new home.
In the later years, as a non-sannyasin religious festival, Christmas would be abolished, but for now we were delighted when Christmas came. There was just enough space in the crook of that wide staircase in the Main Hall for the tip of the tallest Christmas tree you’d ever seen, easily two storeys high, branches bent low with the chocolates and ginger biscuits you weren’t supposed to eat until Christmas Day. You’d swear you could definitely reach them, though, if you leaned out far enough from the stairs, and if somebody would just hold on to your leg to stop you from falling.
8
In January Adheera cut the ceremonial maroon ribbon on the Body Centre, a converted sannyasin health club in Belsize Park, North London. There were aerobics rooms, where pink-leotarded Mas in maroon legwarmers ran ‘Rajneesh-ercise’™ classes in front of wall-length mirrors. Swamis, Mas, and visitors leaped in rows, their malas slung over one shoulder to avoid injury. There were sauna rooms and squash courts. (Somehow Poonam and her friends resisted the temptation to make the game’s rules noncompetitive and call it ‘Orange Squash’.) The rigorous routine of morning Dynamic and Kundalini meditations was broken for Sundays, when champagne breakfast was served in the café. The Body Centre became a well-known feature of the North London landscape. Maroon-clad, bead-wearing sannyasins gathered in small crowds in local Belsize Park pubs, and on Sundays teams of sannyasins, one side wearing predominantly orange, the other maroon, could be seen playing football on Primrose Hill and in Regent’s Park, amidst shouts of tactics and congratulations: ‘Nice shot, Krishnamurti!’ ‘Siddhartha! Man on!’ ‘Get stuck in, Parmartha!’
Adheera moved to London to manage the place. Poonam divided her time between the two sites. When Poonam was in London, my mother, now her deputy, ran Medina.
One night a man crashed through the window of the Body Centre. It was late, but the administrators were still there; they rushed to pick him up. Drunken and bloody, he demanded to be taken to see Bhagwan. They were about to call the police when one Ma recognized him: it was R. D. Laing, the existential psychiatrist who had befriended my mother after the ‘Dialectics of Liberation’ conference fifteen years before. ‘I’ve tried everything,’ he slurred, when they picked him up. ‘Take me to your leader. He’s the only man on the planet who will understand me.’ They cleaned him up, gave him a brochure, put him in a taxi home.
As winter turned into spring, my mother’s popularity as a group leader grew even more. As well as running Medina parttime, she started to travel more often, to run meditation and therapy groups in sannyasin centres in England and in Europe. She even went to Africa, she told me once. I believed her, because two weeks later she brought me back a hand-carved rhinoceros. I began to see less and less of her around. I used to pass the garage and hear songs call upon exotic places—‘I bless the rains down in Africa . . .’ and think: there are other colours and other places still. Places where my mother might also be. When I did see her, it was now more often than not when I caught her in Hadiqua’a, during a week-long group before she flew off elsewhere.
They always seemed to be having fun at Hadiqua’a: laughing and joking, sucking on beedies and roll-ups, crammed into the little room by the reception in between sessions. Even when I had no idea what they were discussing, my mother always did her best to include me. I remember one particular occasion: I came into Hadiqua’a and, before the receptionist could say anything, I caught sight of my mother through the curved leaves of the hanging spider-plants. She was on the bench that ran round the walls of the smoking room, a beedie in one hand, taking a sip from a mug of barley-cup. When she saw me, she shifted over and patted the cushion next to her. I went into the smoking room, poured some apple concentrate into a cup, ran the cup under the tap. I walked through the cloud of cigarette smoke and the hot orange smell of barley water, and sat down next to my mother. I took my Lego spaceman out of my pocket and started flying him around in front of me, careful not to spill the drink, landing and taking off from differ
ent surfaces. I got up to launch a mission to the sink.
‘Yogesh?’ my mother said. I looked up. ‘Come here a sec, love. Do you want to play a game?’
‘What kind of game?’
‘It goes like this. I ask questions,’ she said, ‘and you answer them. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Right. First question.’ My mother turned her head and beamed a smile round to the other women crowded in between the sink and the bench. They were all watching us intently. She fixed her eyes on me. ‘Tell me who you are.’
I frowned.
‘Go on, love,’ my mother said. ‘It’s fine. Tell me who you are.’
‘You know who I am,’ I said. Laughter came from around the room.
My mother smiled. ‘Yes, love, I know who you are. But say it to me. Tell me who you are.’
I looked around, incredulous. ‘I’m me.’
The women laughed and applauded. My mother beamed a proud smile around the room. ‘Right!’ she said. ‘That’s it! Well done. Are you ready for the next question?’ The room quietened down. I nodded.
‘What is life?’ my mother asked.
I thought about it for a moment then shrugged. ‘Life is—life.’
The applause was louder this time. There was some cheering. I liked this game.