History & overview · every faith gets one
Sannyas without renunciation — celebrate first, witness after.
The neo-sannyas movement of Rajneesh (1931–1990), who took the name Osho in 1989: initiation without renunciation, active meditations built for people who cannot sit still, and a teaching stitched from Zen, Tantra, Sufism and Gurdjieff that refused every one of them as an authority. Its Oregon commune, Rajneeshpuram, ran from 1981 to 1985 and ended in criminal convictions. The meditation resort at Pune and the publishing house that carries the discourses are open now.
In September 1984 members of the Oregon commune contaminated salad bars at ten restaurants in The Dalles with Salmonella Typhimurium, sickening 751 people — the largest bioterror attack in United States history. The outbreak investigation by state and CDC epidemiologists was published in JAMA in 1997. Ma Anand Sheela and Ma Anand Puja pleaded guilty in July 1986 to charges including product tampering and attempted murder; Sheela served twenty-nine months and was released in 1988 and left the country. Rajneesh himself entered an Alford plea in November 1985 to two counts of immigration fraud arising from arranged marriages, was fined 400,000 dollars and left the United States the same day.
Why it is filed this way
The commune ended; the movement did not. Rajneeshpuram was wound up in 1985 and the Oregon land sold. The Pune ashram reopened and runs today as the OSHO International Meditation Resort, with centres in dozens of countries and the discourses continuously in print.
The founding
In September 1970, at a meditation camp in Manali, Rajneesh initiated his first neo-sannyasins — orange robes, a mala with his picture, a new name — and told them to keep their jobs, their marriages and their appetites. Renunciation was the mistake. The ashram opened at Koregaon Park in Pune in 1974.
Its founding is bound to Rajneesh — Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, from 1989 Osho — 1970 CE.
What it holds
Reality. Existence as it already is — nothing to be reached, only something to be noticed.
The divine. No god is worshipped and none is argued for. Rajneesh described existence itself as the sacred thing and himself as a finger pointing at it; sannyasins take initiation from the master, which is not the same as worship, and he said so repeatedly..
Death and after. Rebirth assumed and treated as beside the point — the work is this life's awareness.