The Joy of Uber Driving

by Yamini Redewill

  Interestingly, to some wise pundits, that would be a good thing, meaning we would be clearing our minds of all our preconceived ideas based on fear and self-loathing. Of course, the media thought of it in another way. At that time everyone was concerned that we would be another Jonestown, where the mass suicide of 918 devotees had been ordered and carried out just a few years before. Coincidentally, the daughter of the senator who was assassinated in Jonestown (Senator Joseph Ryan) was a sannyasin who lived at the ranch.

  But before I get into the political drama that was occurring under our noses but out of our collective consciousness until it was too blatantly obvious to miss, I’d like to summarize my experience on the ranch as one of the “elite” worker bees. (Yes, this is an oxymoron.)

  My first five months there, I lived in a tent with one other, a male sannyasin I didn’t know. We hardly ever spoke, because when I came home from work at night, he would be deep in meditation and then go to sleep. We had to get up at dawn and rush to get breakfast before being assigned to our work. Flashlights were a necessity for our shower and bathroom trips at night and early morning, going down a long, winding dirt path to the closest facility. I had brought a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream as part of my necessities, which I used to reward myself at the end of every day with a hearty sip. That was my preferred meditation. The last month in the tent (November) I would awaken every morning with a sheet of ice on my sleeping bag. Being a native southern Californian, this kind of weather was completely foreign to me.

  The first three months or so, I worked as a gas station attendant at the far end of the ranch, near Krishnamurti Lake, learning how to check all the fluids, change the oil, and check the tires of all the trucks on the ranch. I loved this job with my two male attendants, even though one of them never bothered to work but instead spent his time carving beautiful wood sculptures behind the shed. This got to me a little, especially when Bhagwan drove by and stopped to acknowledge Swami Wood Carver while he handed the sculpture of a dove directly to Bhagwan himself.

  Coming from thirteen years of Buddhism, where I mastered being a good follower and doing my best at whatever job I was given without complaining, I was unable to express my anger at the unfairness of the situation. And so it festered beneath the surface, building upon my already well-cooked victimhood.

  PING! A handsome young couple piled into the back seat, and right away a lively conversation ensued. The guy seemed to want me to know how positive and creative he was by announcing the fact many times. “I’m a really positive guy . . . I see all the good things in people. Also, I’m an artist!” whereupon he showed me a sculpture on his iPhone that he had on exhibit at the county fair. He proudly explained all the details of this unique bronze wire sculpture of a guitar. His girlfriend was backing up his statements and commending his great talent as an artist and carpenter and as a boyfriend, reiterating it over and over again. (I think they both might have been a little high.) I told him he had a great champion in her. He then turned his attention toward me and said he could read my aura, which, according to him, was bluish green, and then he exclaimed what a wonderful woman I was. But the statement that got me was when he said that I had uplifted him and made him happier than before he entered my car. I blurted out, “But I haven’t done anything!” to which he countered, “You don’t have to. You just being you with your beautiful energy makes me happy.” What is so amazing is that it corresponded exactly with my intentional prayer before driving that day. When I finally dropped them off, he said, “I have to give you a hug,” and then he got out and walked around to my door, and we hugged. His girlfriend also wanted a hug. It was a perfect way to begin my day.

  Finally, the day came when we were all assigned a townhouse, which were manufactured two-story homes with nine bedrooms accommodating a total of eighteen sannyasins. There were token living rooms with one chair, a washroom with a washer and dryer for our muddy clothes, and four bathrooms. There was not much socializing in the townhouses. They were merely sleeping and personal hygiene quarters. All socializing was done on the job or during mealtimes. We worked from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a sixty-minute break at Magdalena Cafeteria for lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks where they would hand out snacks to munch on at the jobsite. Depending on where you worked, five minutes by bus or twenty minutes walking were subtracted out of your eating and rest time. At the gas station we were not supervised, so it was a little more lax, and we usually had our own truck to take us to Magdalena (cafeteria). For dinner we could either eat for free at Magdalena or pay for a more elaborate meal at one of our two restaurants. At one point we were awarded coupons that had an allotment of so many boxes per month to mark off for free goodies from the restaurants, ice cream parlor, hair salon, bookstore, or boutiques.

  Bhagwan’s “drive-by” was an additional break in our day, usually around 2 p.m. Like clockwork, the sannyasins would line up along the road from Bhagwan’s house to the center of town, and he would come slowly driving by with his companion Vivek in the front seat of one of his ninety-three Rolls-Royces. Every day he made eye contact with each one of us and gave us a one-handed Namaste. This, more than our lunch, filled us up with great energy for the rest of the day.

  One day after about four months at the gas station, I was called into the office and given another job: to drive a pickup truck for the pipe crew. That meant I would drive from one construction site to another with a load of PVC pipes. I loved this job too. My CB moniker was Kundalini Ma, because the truck was so old and bumpy that it could have made my Kundalini rise. Being with all those cute Italians on the pipe crew and sitting with them at lunch was an ego boost. Before that, I didn’t know many other sannyasins, and it was stressful to find a table where I felt comfortable and accepted. Very few of the sannyasins I lived with in Hollywood came to the ranch, except during our yearly world festivals. So I was alone in a sea of red, trying to connect individually or break into already formed sannyasin cliques. Eventually that all changed, and I found myself locked in spontaneous hugging groups every day while hanging out at the mall or walking from one building to another. I also had the advantage of having my own form of transportation and got to know sannyasins by being able to pick them up if they needed a ride while I was en route. (Do you see a connection here?)

  As a truck driver, I later branched out to delivering wood, nails, and other building supplies to every building project on the ranch, which included about twelve different sites. Just before the Second Annual World Celebration was to take place, we were redirected to other jobs to accommodate ten to twenty thousand more sannyasins. I ended up on the grounds beautification team, where we simply moved small boulders in a creative way in the urban A-frame area. It was summer, so the heat soared to 118 degrees, with few or no trees to provide shade for relief. Work was very slow and painful, but we survived.

  After the festival, which was a joyous occasion seeing old friends from home, I was called into the office once again and given a new assignment: cleaning townhouses, alternating every week with working in the kitchens of all the restaurants, including the one in Antelope called Zorba the Buddha Café. My glorious truck-driving days were over. Now it was just me and toilet bowls and showers, mopping and vacuuming and washing piles of clothes alone in three townhomes every day. I always looked forward to my alternate week at the restaurants.

  During all this time I was aware that almost all my friends had been awarded a brass bead, which meant they had been given permanent membership to the commune and didn’t have to pay for anything. I was never given that opportunity, which weighed heavily on my victimhood heart. I was called into the office a couple of times and questioned about my husband’s intentions toward the commune, since he had been a major part of the very small insiders group in Pune. I, unfortunately, lied and said I was in touch with him all the time and that he fully intended to live here. I was never in touch with him and made it all up for fear that they would think badly of me for not being important enough for my husband
to want to be with me, much less call me once in a while. I was deeply intimidated by the ruling mas and was not able to be brave enough to tell the truth. (I’m sure this added significantly to my lack of self-love.) One of them had been married to Tosh before and was particularly interested in his well-being. And the naked truth was he was part of the rebellion on the outside against Ma Anand Sheela. Recently, I was told he greatly regretted his rebelliousness and separation from the ranch and the community. He had been such an integral part of the commune in Pune and cherished those memories. He was in a state of depression until he died. But his funeral was attended by hundreds of sannyasins who knew him and loved him.

  About this time, Sheela was in the news for constantly trying to outsmart the state and county officials with many different creative ways to counter their efforts to deny us permanent status as a city. Rather than explain everything in detail here, I’ll refer you to Sven Davisson’s article “The Rise and Fall of Rajneeshpuram,” the current Netflix series called Wild Wild Country, and an hour-long video by Oregon Trust in a series called The Oregon Experience: Rajneeshpuram. All are excellent representations of the truth as I experienced it.

  PING! My first ride of the day began in Mill Valley and ended near the Embarcadero in San Francisco with a woman psychologist of about forty-five. She wanted to know why my name was Yamini, and I told her. This began a twenty-five-minute discussion about my experience in Pune and at the Oregon ranch with Bhagwan, because her mother and father were also sannyasins. Unfortunately, her experience would confirm the darkest of unfounded beliefs about Rajneesh. She was a young child when her mother and father left for Pune just two months after giving birth to her baby sister, leaving them both to be raised by an aunt and uncle. Her impression was that her parents had been ordered to come to Pune and leave their children behind.

  Now she believes that it is a cult and no one is allowed to be themselves or do anything that doesn’t correspond to Rajneesh’s dictates. She thought that we all worshipped Bhagwan because we had to wear red and a beaded necklace, called a mala, with his picture in a locket. I tried to tell her that worshipping him, or anyone for that matter, was completely against his teachings, and that his signature quote was “Don’t look at the finger pointing to the moon, look at the moon.” And his message to me was “Be a light unto yourself.” I told her that he was all about dismantling widely held belief systems so that we could form our own opinions and discover our own authenticity. But she had wounds that were too deep to penetrate and departed still unconvinced. Coincidentally, the next ride I picked up, a block from where I left her, was an Indian couple who knew all about Osho (Bhagwan) and read many of his books and understood and greatly admired his teachings, even though they were not sannyasins.

  I will explain only my own personal experience of some of the events that took place and a few retrospective thoughts. To me it all began with one of Sheela’s bright ideas: the sudden influx of about three thousand homeless men transported from around the US by over a hundred yellow school buses driven by sannyasins. They were housed in available A-frames and in a tent city erected for them. They were supposedly rehabilitated here from drug and alcohol abuse by certain drugs given them, and when they were strong enough to work, they were given jobs alongside sannyasins. They ate their meals with us, and I noticed many of them would pour a heap of sugar on their potatoes and vegetables. They danced with us at the disco, and it was like watching a hardened criminal become docile and sweet, mingling their energy with ours.

  We heard they were here to help us vote in the Dalles (the county seat) to gain power in the local government to secure our rights as an established city. Many of them assimilated with us and became sannyasins. I remember groups of them gathering in front of the mall and breaking into spontaneous rap sessions. It was the first time I ever heard rap music. They would speak a story with a drumbeat, with each person adding a sentence ad infinitum until the group felt the story was completed. Rap sessions could go on for up to forty minutes. Someone would invariably do a Michael Jackson moonwalk to the music. It was a joyous thing to behold, and everyone within hearing distance would be uplifted.

  Soon after, news organizations from around the world got hold of the story and came to Rajneeshpuram to see for themselves and report their impressions. All the articles were posted on a board downtown the next day, and we were amazed and saddened to see that almost all of them made up stories that were untrue and cast us in a bad light. It got so ridiculous I even had one reporter follow me into a public bathroom. Luckily, the door had a lock on it.

  Coming on the heels of all this publicity, the Guardian Angels took up residence in Antelope and came into the ranch daily, trying to talk some of us out of believing that Bhagwan was legitimate and cautioning us to leave for our own good. In addition, we had a loud Bible-thumper on the main street across from the mall, shouting warnings of hellfire and damnation. It was a circus. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to most of us, the government was surveying us with airplanes and staging a coup. According to Sven Davisson, who investigated the whole thing extensively, we could have ended up just like the Branch Dravidians did many years later. Since our first day at the ranch, we had heard of threats on Bhagwan’s life and on the commune almost daily. Locals had stickers on their cars and trucks with Bhagwan’s picture and a gun sight across his face. We tried to make friends with them, but they were hostile from the beginning. However, they were not the enemy. They were bit players in a nationwide drama that almost ended in mayhem.

  Meanwhile more of Sheela’s tactics included taking away some of our rights and small benefits, such as snacks at break times, and making us work longer and harder. She would assert her authority in every workplace, saying how things should be done, even if she didn’t know what she was talking about. In my case, she paid a visit to us in the restaurant and instructed us to make guacamole “the correct way” with twelve avocados, one small lemon, one cup of milk, and a dash of salt. I was flabbergasted, but of course, I didn’t speak up. This was to position herself as the undisputable head of the commune and make us her slaves. Later we learned she had built a bunker under her house loaded with books on how to enslave a large group of people. Not coincidentally, Bhagwan suddenly came out of his silence and gave talks nightly to a small group of sannyasins, which were videotaped and later played for the rest of us in Buddha Hall. It was learned that on one of the tapes he told everyone not to believe anything Sheela said, because she had evil intentions. That tape was never shown, and Sheela announced that it somehow got lost or destroyed. Some sannyasins knew better, and the word got out.

  Another disquieting occurrence was the appearance of four Uzi-armed female sannyasins walking alongside all four corners of Bhagwan’s car during his drive-bys. There were also two Ford Broncos with armed sannyasins: one in front and one in back. Sometimes a helicopter whirred overhead with sannyasins pointing Uzis at the crowd. It was surreal. What happened to us? We were peaceful, loving sannyasins now suddenly carrying machine guns! We knew we had a small municipal police force, but we never knew they would be used in such a way. Most of us had nothing at all to do with guns or weapons of any kind. Our weapon of choice was meditation and joyful celebration dancing on the heads of hatred, fear, and self-doubt. I wish the leaders had embraced that form of weapon instead of playing into the fear and the illusion the world believed about us.

  My take on all the scandals and Bhagwan’s noninvolvement and nonintervention is that it happened precisely as it should, given our spiritual immaturity. We were all wrapped up in our little ego trips, unaware of the bigger picture, allowing everything to happen because we had only the barest understanding of our individual power and connection to Source. Not one of us stood up to Sheela as we watched her abuse her power over us, slowly taking away our rights and pushing us to work harder and longer hours.

  To me it looks like a similar thing is going on in our government today, where the truth is being labeled as fake news and lies are ra
mpant and excused for only being “alternative” truths. Also, too many congressmen are afraid to speak truth to power and do what’s right, for fear of not being reelected or alienating their donors. Similarly, we were all afraid of being thrown off the ranch. Thus we were like little lemmings giving away our power, willing to believe the lies and kiss-assing our leaders in order to stay with our beloved Bhagwan. I guess I wasn’t the only opportunist in existence then.

  Disclaimer: Decades later, I have heard many rumors about Bhagwan’s sex life from people who weren’t there but apparently knew someone who was. They say he had many young lovers and was also a voyeur, purposely setting up sexual trysts with couples so that he could witness their lovemaking. I have to say that those rumors never circulated around the ranch at any time, or at the very least, never reached my ears. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Maybe I was too far out of the loop or just too deaf, dumb, and blind because of my devotion to Bhagwan to let any of that in. And why should I have? Such lies are a regular phenomenon around people of power by those who fear the unknown and fear their own lack of self-power, self-awareness, and self-love. They feed on rumor and “fake news” that bolster their hateful, misguided opinions.

  PING! I pulled up to Amelia, a lovely windblown blond-haired woman standing alone on Union Street in San Francisco, just outside her office. We exchanged greetings, and I noticed she seemed preoccupied and even distraught about something. I waited for her to settle in and then asked, “How’s your day going?” hoping to get some response that would open up a more revealing and personal conversation. She didn’t disappoint. Right away she went into a lengthy monologue about her last client, whose story had brought up a lot of personal feelings. I sneaked a glance at her expressive suntanned face, which was becoming red with emotion, and her clear blue eyes, welling up noticeably with tears. Apparently, the woman she was talking about had had a childhood similar to hers, and it had touched her deeply, reminding her of her own life experiences.