The golden guru - James S Gordon

This study focuses on the religious guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a man who claimed to be the equal of Jesus, Krishna and Buddha and encouraged group violence and sexual freedom as paths to spiritual liberation and who assigned highly skilled people to menial labour for years at a time.;James Gordon presents a study of this sect having had 13 years of contact with Rajneesh and his disciples, as well as first hand interviews with the Master, his assistant Ma Anand Sheela and hundreds of Sannyasins. He traces their odyssey from Poona, India to a new utopia on Rancho Rajneesh in Oregon, to its eventual disintegration following Rajneesh's expulsion from the United States.;He chronicles the growing conflict between the Sannyasins and the Oregonians, the group's more than 600 illegal marriages and its leader's poisoning of 750 people in the town of The Dalles, Oregon. Also described is the rise of Ma Amand Sheela and the transformation under her leadership of a "meditation camp into a concentration camp". He also portrays many of the Sannyasins and discusses their psychological and spiritual quests.