Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's Intergenerational Reverberations

Rose* stumbles over the date of her youngest daughter’s birthday. For a moment, she claims it's at the end of April-but she catches herself. She’s confusing her daughter's birthday with that of one of her granddaughter's. She eventually (and correctly) settles on May.

Later, Rose tells me about the day she first left the Philippines for India to meet Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a mystic and spiritual leader whose teachings “preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, individual devotion, and sexual freedom.” She recalls the date with unwavering clarity: “April 1, 1976.”

In the decade that followed, Bhagwan, later known to his followers as Osho, would form a commune in Wasco, Oregon. Rose would leave the Philippines once more to follow him there.

By the late 1980s, this commune, known as Rajneeshpuram, would dissolve, becoming known to the public as a ranch populated by religious zealots responsible for the first bioterrorist attack on American soil. Some forty years later, the Rajneeshpuram re-entered the limelight through the release of the critically acclaimed Netflix original documentary “Wild Wild Country.”

As we approach the fortieth anniversary of the Wasco bioterrorist attack, it seems Bhagwan and his Oregon commune are but a blip in the American consciousness. But for Rose, the impact of Bhagwan cannot be confined to a singular moment in time or a single place on the globe. The impact of the Rajneesh has been life defining, taking her across the world, and shaping Rose’s relationship to herself, her home, and her descendants

*Rose and her family members’ last name has been omitted for safety purposes.