Bizarre lifestyles,murder plots: former sanyasin recounts her Osho days
Controversy is not new to the Osho commune,earlier called the Rajneesh Ashram and now the Osho Meditation Resort.
3 min read
Controversy is not new to the Osho commune,earlier called the Rajneesh Ashram and now the Osho Meditation Resort. The latest has been triggered by a former sanyasin in a book released earlier this month by Pan Macmillan Australia.
From stories of bizarre lifestyles to the huge inflow of wealth to plots being hatched to kill district attorney Charles Turner,and the former sanyasins own attempt on the life of Rajneeshs doctor with an adrenalin filled syringe,the book paints a sordid picture of the guru and his ways.
The author,Jane Stork,now 64,had served a two-year sentence for the attempted murder.
In the book,Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom,Stork,who lives in Germany,has attempted to retrace her journey with the commune. The book is already creating ripples amongst readers and Osho followers the world over.
This includes the meditation resort in Pune,where Ma Amrit Sadhana,part of the management team,dismissed it as irrelevant to us. The Delhi-based Osho World Foundation that has Swami Chaitanya Keerti as editor of the Osho World monthly magazine termed Storks writings the outpourings of an embittered person.
Stork alias Ma Shanti Bhadra came to Pune from Australia in 1978. She was soon followed by her husband and two young children. Stork rapidly rose in the ranks and became a member of the inner circle of Ma Sheela,who was one of the most powerful sanyasins in the ashram in the 80s. When the ashram was shifted to Oregon in the US in 1981,Stork went along.
Stork had been with the ashram for almost nine years. She faced 10 years of imprisonment for the attempted murder in 1985 and served only two years,but it marked her breaking away from her past with which she says she is still coming to terms.
In Pune,Amrit Sadhana of the meditation resort denied having heard of the book though she admitted to having a hazy recollection of Shanti Bhadra in the ashram. Whatever she may have written has no relevance to us. She is writing about Rajneesh and the commune,that part is over and gone. This is Osho and a meditation resort that has a completely different perspective and working pattern, said Sadhana.
Swami Keerti remembered Shanti Bhadra in Rajneeshpuram,as one of the assistants. She seemed to be a nice person then. My understanding is that she did not have any power or individuality of her own. She did whatever Ma Anand Sheela asked her to do. She may be repenting now what she had done then and blaming everything on Osho. She may be bitter about being jailed for her misdeeds, he said.
The book is yet to be released in India.
You May Like
