The authorship of these files on cults has his or her own motivations for providing them a

    [Fredric Rice, The Skeptic Tank:  The authorship of these files on
    cults has his or her own motivations for providing them and will
    contain his or her own bias.  What I find typical is that
    individuals and organizations which report on cults are usually
    themselves a competition cult yet like to think of themselves as
    "a religion, not a cult."  In actual fact, _ALL_ religions are
    cults by the primary, secondary, and terciary usage definition of
    the term.  Some of the information you find here is inaccurate and
    contains urban legend -- take what you find with a grain of salt.
    If you wish to acquire a copy of the Law Enforcement Guide on
    Occult Crime, contact myself at frice@stbbs.com or at The Skeptic
    Tank (818) 335-9601 and I'll forward the address and information
    you need.]

Bhagwan Rajneesh

Controversy continues to surround the flagship ashram founded by
Baghwan Rajneesh in Poona, India. Though Rajneesh was always as
famous for his fleet of Rolls-Royces (11 to 96, depending on who
you believe) as he was for his sexual theories, it is now claimed
that his ashram and posthumous empire have been taken over by
financial opportunists, who have turned it into a resort for
stressed Western executives.

Dubbed 'Club Meditation' by the LA Times, it is run by 'Swami Prem
Jayesh' (formerly known as Canadian real estate investor Michael
William O'Byrne). It has been said that the organisation makes
between $15 million and $45 million a year. O'Byrne and his colleagues
have recently started management courses in Europe specialising in
helping laid-off executives. One of its first clients was BMW.

Baghwan (which means 'master of the vagina') Rajneesh's story is a
well-known one. Brought up by middle-class grandparents in India,
he studied and taught philosophy at the University of Jabalpur. He
developed a form of meditation which involved nudity, sex and making
loud noises, opened an ashram in Poona (south of Bombay) in 1974 and
was soon cashing in on the hippy dollar. Rajneesh moved to a
126-square-mile Oregonsite in 1981 but was followed by his reputation
for material greed, sexual coercion and tax evasion.

To the rest of the world, Rajneesh became the ultimate spiritual
con-man. The temperature of his private swimming pool was computer
controlled and he had a private plane. He died in 1990, rumour had
it of Aids. His movement was by then, as now, called 'Osho'. There
used to be nearly 600 Osho centres around the world, but all but 20
of these have been scrapped. As Rajneesh once said, through his
interpreter: 'That the materially poor can ever be spiritual is 
out-and-out absurd.'

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