What Wild Wild Country left out

Systematic child abuse under the cover of total sexual liberation

This story contains sensitive subject matter about rape and child abuse.

One of Netflix’ most popular documentaries is Wild Wild Country, about the Oregon commune of  Osho / Bhagwan Rajneesh. Made by Chapman and MacLain Way, the six-part documentary drew on interviews with some of the principal figures in the commune,  especially Osho’s right-hand woman, Sheela Anand, and showed the allure of the project – the charismatic leader, the utopian collective endeavour, the new town constructed in a desert, the meditation, group sex, drugs and raving .

It then showed a descent into the dark side – the cultishness, the bodyguards in red jumpsuits touting uzis, the violent hostility to the locals, and finally the attempted murder and bioterrorism against opponents of the cult.

Personally, I came away thinking ‘wow that was pretty wild, but there was something amazing about the commune as well’ . That’s what reviewers thought as well. The Guardian said:

It is beautifully constructed and balanced, since it alternates between the two camps. Yes, Rajneesh’s followers were dangerously obsessed, but they did build a functioning city very quickly in the middle of nowhere. The authorities who went after them don’t come over as angels, either: suspicious and self-righteous, they twisted the rules to get the Rajneeshees out.

The Observer said:

What's exceptional about Wild Wild Country is its episodic treatment manages to make the cult attractive: a sense of purpose, self-realisation, free love.

Sheela is ‘a flinty ball-buster who is the incongruous star of one of the best documentaries I've seen in a while’, according to the Times of London.

Osho is still very popular in New Age spirituality and the human potential movement. I still hear New Age thinkers speak approvingly of him – he was an awakened master, and all the bad stuff that went down, that was the fault of Sheela, who was charged with attempted murder.

No. Osho was evil. The New Age has a problem with that word, so do religious studies scholars with their mealy-mouthed apologies for toxic cults. But it absolutely applies in his case.

He created an evil moral philosophy that encouraged his followers to think of themselves as a superhuman elite who were so far beyond good and evil that anything they did was acceptable, even child abuse, even mass murder.

Osho once said: ‘Good and bad are ugly words and I have dissolved them completely.’ If someone is spiritually advanced, whatever they do is right. ‘If he feels it right, he may kill.’ He was recorded by Sheela saying ‘if 10,000 had to die to save one enlightened master, so be it.’

He also encouraged his followers to think of sexual liberation as the key to enlightenment, and this phony philosophy of liberation led to widespread sexual abuse of women and children.

The true extent of this systematic child abuse is only becoming apparent now, thanks to a new documentary called Children of the Cult (you can watch it on ITV here, use a VPN if you’re outside the UK). There were paedophiles in senior positions preying on children and teens in Osho communities in India, Oregon, the UK, Holland and elsewhere. This was widely known, it was done in public, and it was accepted – even by the children’s mothers – because it was seen as part of Osho’s philosophy of total sexual liberation.

Local press reported on accounts of child sex abuse happening in public in the Oregon commune. So how did directors Chapman and Maclain Way leave this systemic child abuse out?

After the paywall, what Wild Wild Country left out, and why this story matters for the psychedelic renaissance.