S3 E35 The Hidden Children of OSHO: A Conversation with Sarito Carroll

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Cult Vault podcast, your dedicated
podcast for uncovering the darkest corners of cults and coercive control.
I'm your host, Casey, and I want to start by
thanking each and every one of you for tuning in.
Your support fuels our deep dives into these critical issues.
Before we get started, a word of caution. Today's episode

(00:22):
may contain discussions on abuse, including graphic descriptions of abuse,
and covers a variety of human rights violations that may
be triggering for some listeners. Please consider this as a
trigger warning and proceed with caution. I'm thrilled to announce
that I'll be appearing at Crime Con UK in London
on the seventh and eighth of June twenty twenty five

(00:42):
and again in Manchester on the twenty seventh of September
twenty twenty five. Join me and a host of world
leading experts, advocates and noisemakers at the heart of the
true crime community. This is the UK's biggest true crime
event and you won't want to miss it. Use the
code vault see ult for ten percent off your tickets,

(01:03):
and remember there are flexible tickets and payment plans available
to accommodate everyone. This incredible event is sponsored by True
Crime and it's always my favorite weekend of the year.
I hope to see some of you there. And for
those who want even more from the Court Fault Podcast,
you can access early ad free content by supporting me
at Patreon dot com forward slash the Cult Vault, where

(01:24):
every pledge not only gives you exclusive access but also
directly supports the continuation of this work. Thank you again
for your support and your listenership. Now let's unlock the vault. Hello, Hello,
Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the
Court Vault podcast. I'm your host, Casey, and today I

(01:45):
am joined by a very special guest who has sent
me a copy of her recently published memoir to read
through and discuss today. Hello and welcome to the podcast, Serrito,
Thanks for having me. Good morning. I usually start by
asking every guest to introduce themselves to the listeners.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, so, my name is Sirito Kirol. I was a
child in the Osho Rajniche cult. I joined when I
was nine years old and I was there until I
was sixteen when it all fell apart as part of
the Rajnisch Porum City in Central organ So I was
in the movement from its time in India through its

(02:28):
demise in Central Oregon.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
The book that you've just published, in the Shadow of Enlightenment,
A Girl's Journey through the Osho Rajniche Cult. How did
you decide what name to use for the Rajniche movement
because there's several different names that that group goes by.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, it was actually a challenge because you know, when
I first joined the movement, the name of the guru
was bug one Tree Rajnish, and then that was his
name through the whole time I knew him or I
was involve the movement, and then after that it changed
to Ohshow. So I guess I just sort of took
a liberty and joined his surname with his new one

(03:11):
and only name, and so it created Osho Rajnish, which
I just wanted to be able to capture everyone's attention
who knew him as either name.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
And so then sort of.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Why I, I uh went that route because if I
just said oh Show, I think it it would have
not captured some of the people who knew of Rajnich's
Porum for example, right, because that's another and Sannyasin's is
another word that some people would identify with, which.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Of course you use throughout the book. But it's hard,
I guess, when you're an author to make the decision
on like what do you include in the title of
the book.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, it was actually a long process to come up
with the title, even though it's not very long, but
just to try and really, you know, very few words
get the essence of what the book is about.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Inspired you to finally tell your story about your experiences
in the Rajniche movement. Was there a specific event that
happened or was it a combination of things over time.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
It was a combination over time, but then certain more
current events sort of or the catalyst. So, I mean,
all through my twenties, I was wrestling with my past
in the commune and I wanted to write, and I
just sort of kept losing my momentum or I had
too much self doubt or you know, I was also
very scared to come up against a big organization that

(04:38):
had pretty much normalized my experiences, you know, which is
a lot of sexual impropriety.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
And then.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Around two thousand things came up in my current life
where people were bringing up the abuse in a sort
of subtle way, and at that point I my sort
of my internal turmoil about it got stirred, and at
that point I wrote a letter to my perpetrator, my
main perpetrator from the commune, and when he didn't respond

(05:11):
for two years, it just left me seething and feeling
sort of oscillating between feeling disempowered and feeling enraged to
the point that I was going to.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Take this on. It was my only.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I felt like, at this late stage, forty years after
these events happened, the main source of advocacy that I had.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Was my voice. And then so I wrote the letter.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
And then when that never went anywhere, and these discussions
continued in some private Facebook groups, Russianish Facebook groups, the
topic of abuse of the children came up, and at
that point I thought, okay, I'm coming out, you know fully,
And at that point that got a response from the
main purpose trader. So it took a whole community sort

(06:02):
of cornering him for him to actually respond. So that
coupled with Wild World Country coming out, the documentary on
the docu series on Netflix, which showed a lot of
the history of Russia's porn, but did not show the children,
did not discuss the story of the children, and the
neglect of the children and the abuse of the children.

(06:23):
So I'd say those, all those factors together finally got
me to sit down and be disciplined.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
And author of the book prays so much in your
memoir that I found it quite challenged to put our
questions together today. It's one of the longer memoirs I've read,
and it's so detailed, and it spans over quite a
significant amount of time. And I kept thinking back to

(06:54):
my first interview about the Rajniche cult with author Ronie Plank,
who wrote about her mother leaving to join the Brashniche movement.
And I remember her saying she when she watched World
Wild Country just to see if she could spot her mom,

(07:15):
just out of curiosity, like what was she doing during
those years when she left me behind? And then it
occurred to her that there are no children in that documentary.
And I hadn't even thought about that until she brought
it up. So what can you tell us about at
that time? There were clearly children involved, even if they're

(07:35):
not in that documentary, because you were one of them.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Absolutely, So that documentary just I mean, it was all
very accurate, but it took existing footage that was archived,
you know, various TV stations or you know, the Oregon
Historical Society, various outlets that had recorded and come to
the ranch and done some research or filming, but it
didn't go into investigating actually the daily life or the children.

(08:02):
And I feel like we weren't in the footage because
we were sort of kept well. Firstly, we were blended
into the culture that the older ones, you know, over
twelve we were working, and the younger ones were sort
of isolated off in the city of Antelope where they
went to school. So we weren't like we sort of
like the lost tribe, and what happened to us was

(08:27):
so normalized or kept out of the public purview that
we didn't appear.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
And I think that that's.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
One of the key points was that when I saw
the documentary and I didn't see any of the children,
it was like, if you didn't know better, you wouldn't
look for us. And so I part of me speaking
up is saying, hey, we existed, and stop ignoring our
existence and our stories. And it made it very clear

(08:58):
in Wild Wild Country too, how invisible.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
We really were. Yeah, absolutely, as you just said, it
didn't even occurred to me until Ronie said something. I thought,
oh my gosh. Absolutely, there are no children that I
can recall seeing, just even just in the background footage
playing or even working. You know, as you've said that
you were over the age of twelve. So it's been

(09:27):
very insightful and an education to read your memoir and
learn about what was happening to you and your peers,
because it's you know, you talk about children of a
similar age and children younger and older that were around
you as well during your years in this group, and
I wondered if you could give us some context about

(09:48):
the period of history that you were living in and
how that might have influenced the upbringing that you had
before your mum entered into this cult. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Absolutely, So it was the early mid well it's actually
it was the mid to late seventies, but before that,
that's why I joined the Commune in the late seventies.
But before that, it was the whole sexual revolution, you know,
all these protests for freedom, all these young people revolting
against the fifties and the repressive regimes, and so it

(10:26):
was the birth of the hippie movement that came out
of the Beatnik movement, and people were turning to Eastern
philosophy for guidance. People wanted a new way of life,
a way that didn't feel so restrained, and so that
was mushering up everywhere. And my mom was right in
the middle of that movement, and so we were already
sort of these wandering hippies and my mom was searching

(10:49):
for meaning, and like many of her peers in that
sort of subculture, a lot of them church or Eastern
philosophy and to following different guru. But I'd say that
Rajinish was probably one of the predominant gurus because he
really appealed to the Western mindset. He offered what they wanted.

(11:12):
He offered freedom, he offered enlightenment, he offered you know, community,
which a lot of these people were seeking. This sense
of community that wasn't mainstream society.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Was some of the other communities that your mom accessed
before really finding a place in the Rajnie cult that
she wanted to stay in.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
It was more like sort of this alternative culture of
these hippies who wandered around and gathered, and so we
did live in a kind of community setting in southern Colorado.
So it was very much living off the land, living
off grid, being self sufficient, taking care of each other's children.
And that was in that little community I was in.

(11:57):
It was probably only fifteen people, but I could tell
this she already had that sort of longing to be
in a community, and I think it wasn't until we
got to India.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
That that community really existed. Before that, it was just
sort of these.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Little potential communities that didn't offer everything she was looking for.
And even in India, so yeah, go ahead, sorry, you great, Sorry,
you gotn't need to interrupt. I hope you can cut
that up. Even in Hawaii, we were living off the
land and there were many other people living off the land,
So that, in a sense was this other subculture, but
it wasn't a proper community that was self contained. And

(12:36):
so that's very different than a cult that is much
more self contained. I mean, of course you could be
in a cult and not be in the community, but
often they had this closed off system, and that's what
it was like in India and an Oregon.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, I I was really interested in reading about the
nomadic lifestyle of the the hippie movement and moving around
place to place that I imagine is adventurous for some adults.

(13:15):
But I found it difficult to read about your experiences
as a child going through that nomadic lifestyle, and I
wondered if you could just speak to the impacts that
that had on you as a child, never really settling
in one place.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, so I always wanted just a home, and I
always wanted to fit in and go to school like
other kids and be normal. So for me, this constant
moving left me feeling very uprooted and very lonely, because
it was very hard to bond with people if you're
going to be leaving again in six months or maybe
a year in some cases, but not longer. And I

(13:57):
think for me it left my nervous system like highly
hyper vigilant and activated. And I think I also learned
to shut myself down a lot of emotionally, because after
being hurt several times by the separation, I think I

(14:19):
learned very young to be as self sufficient as I
possibly could be, and so I didn't feel like I
actually had a true childhood. And there's a lot of longing,
a lot of longing to.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Just belong.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
To the culture, and so I do think then when
I ended up in India, even though it was a
different kind of culture, I was so much seeking to
belong that I just dove right in.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
There's the word detachment that you used. I think that's
such a great way to describe the relationship that you
had with your mom growing up, because she was sometimes
she was with you, other times she was away and
you were with strangers or sometimes family members, and then

(15:06):
she would almost be upset that you didn't have an
attachment with her. But of course you never really had
a chance to form those attachments.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
That's the thing so already had of you know, the
situation with my dad was basically non existent, in the
little contact we had was not good at all, and
then having her be so loose and following these pre
stuffs about freedom, but as a child, it doesn't feel
like freedom. It feels like abandonment. And so yes, in

(15:35):
order to protect myself, I mean it's taken me years
to unpack this. In order to protect myself, I had
to withdraw because imagine trying to be attached constantly to
this figure that's not giving you the mirroring you need
from a psychological point of view and then turning it
around to say, well, you are rejecting me. And then

(15:56):
you're this child trying to figure out because you don't
have this abstract thinking abilities at that age, and so
your almost your system has an automatic reaction to kind
of shut down and become kind of separate in your
own little bubble of protection the best that you can do,

(16:16):
whether it's like a physical mechanism, but it's a shutdown
in some sense, a shutdown of your full openness to
the world because it's not safe.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
There was a moment in your writing way you described
going to a grandparents' house for the first time. And
I don't want to give too much of the book away,
but this particular, this particular experience, I wondered if you
could just talk the listeners through what that was like
for you, go into this house and seeing these things

(16:46):
that you'd never seen for the first time. And what
age were you when this happened.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
I was around six years old when I showed up
at my grandparents doorstep, having well maybe I met them
when I was a baby, but I didn't have any
memory of them, and I had this whole preconceived notion
that grandparents were you know, the stability and the loving
home they offered, the loving home that I didn't have
with my mom, like just the very stable life. But

(17:12):
I got there and they were they were so appalled
at how I looked and you know, just who I was,
and it wasn't really a welcoming.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Reception.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
But then when I was in their house, it was
like this mixed thing, like it felt sort of dank
and stagnant, and I think it's partially who they were,
but they I was in one sense drawn into, like
TV and plumbing and things I wasn't familiar with. But
at the same time, there was still not the doting,

(17:45):
the loving grandparents that I hoped for, so and I
think the main thing I remember experiencing is just wanting
to be invisible and shame for how, you know, how
I didn't fit in and how they, you know, get
it felt like they didn't welcome me with open arms.
So I just felt this like kind of heartache and

(18:06):
let me just be as small and the least amount
of trouble I could be while still existing in a
human body.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Which just a sad thing to think about a six
year old child, who you know, six year olds are
typically loud, adventurous, like finding their way in the world,
and you know where they like being as big as
they can be. So the thought of you trying to
make yourself small is a it's a difficult image, it is.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
I mean, I think like from a very young age,
I feel like I ternalize some thought process of my
own because of the circumstances around me, that I was
a burden, and so wherever I went, I felt like
I was a burden. And when when I was in
a more comfortable environment, which was usually rather temporary, I
would open up and I would be that child, and

(19:16):
I'd find that joy and the connection. But then I
would move again, and so you know, when this happens
over and over again, you get more tenuous about taking
that risk.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah. The way you described seeing running water for the
first time as a six year old child was just
wild to me as somebody living in you know, like
a first world leading country. Yeah, that's not something you
ever expect to read a six year old experiencing for

(19:50):
the first time. And it wasn't long after that that
your mum sent for you to move again, but this
time it was to Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Is that right, that's correct? Yes, So around six or
just around seven, maybe when I just turned seven.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
I think it's when I when I met up with
my mother in Hawaii. Where did she first find out
about Baghwan Shri raj Niche And how did she fall
into like really applying the teachings to her life and
and and taking on board like this this guru as
her leader.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, it must have been some time around when I
was eight and a half or nine, and one of
her friends had come back from India, and I mean,
I think it was actually a man who was trying
to date her and gave her the books and was
telling her how great it was. That's my recollection. And
then she read the books and I think she was curious.

(20:52):
I don't know how much she you know, was doing
the meditations or anything at that point. But soon after
that she started wearing orange, and I was just like,
oh gosh, you know, we were already on the fringe.
I already felt uncomfortable not being sort of in the mainstream,
and so she's showing up in orange. And the next thing,

(21:13):
you know, she got the Mala in the mail. And
so at that point, I think she was intending to
delve deeper. But I don't know to what extent, but
her curiosity was enough that she decided that we should
go to India during my summer vacation from school. And
it was meant to be just a short visit, but

(21:34):
once we arrived in the Ashram, that was it.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
We were there, We were in the movement for seven years.
Was that experience like going over to India? It was overwhelming.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
It was so, you know, so much stimuli after living
in Hawaii in the jungle, we lived off the grid,
you know, in a little grass shack essentially, and to
go then to this bustling, dirty all the smells, all
the sights, all the people pulling at your clothes, you know,

(22:06):
riding in the train with people like staring at you,
like wanting money because I was, you know, white, seemingly privileged,
even though I wasn't, you know, So that was overwhelming.
But then getting to the Ashram, it was like this
peaceful oasis with all these open hearted people, and that

(22:28):
was very soothing and I guess seductive for me, this
girl who's been sort of this lone wanderer in a
sense being welcomed by a whole community essentially. So I
wanted to be there I mean, I didn't you know,
also your kid, you don't really think about the future.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
You're not planning. So I was just like, this is great. Yeah.
The description around the difference between inside and outside the
ashram was the contrast was really interesting to read about,
and I wondered if you could just describe what that
was like.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, so just out front of the ashram, like, well,
you've come from the sort of bustling streets of Puna
where the ashram was, or is I guess again? And
as you get closer to the ashram, it goes into
the swanky neighborhood, these big mansions behind these wrought iron gates,
and you still have the hustle and bustle of rickshaws
coming back and forth, and some you know, beggars on

(23:28):
the streets because they knew the Snyacens were there that
had more money than them. So just outside the gates
there were still some of that, not to the intensity.
But then you walk in it's like these lush gardens, flowers,
peaceful music coming from the meditation hall. You know, all
these Westerns dressed in Indian clothes, kind of ambling along

(23:50):
with smiles on their face and the sort of uh,
sort of their eyes are sort of dilated with joy,
and you're just like wow. So that was my first impression.
And everyone was so kind like, oh, welcome, and you know, yeah,
everyone's dressed in orange. Everyone's dressed in orange. Everyone's worrying
the mala with the Raginaci's picture in the locket, and

(24:15):
there's this sort of communal sense of bliss and connection.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
So coming from that, it's like literally walking through a
gate into another world.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Did the atmosphere always fail like that? Or once you
had seen sort of the day to day operations of
the group, did ever, did that ever fade away?

Speaker 2 (24:35):
I'd say it wasn't, as it wasn't the main theme
quite as much. It was still there to a point.
There was generally a sense of goodwill and care. But
then sort of in the shadows there was some you know,
there was a lot more things I saw once I
got deeper in, which was like the very open sexuality.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
So I witnessed a lot of sexuality.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I could see that, I could hear people screaming in
the therapy group, sometimes see people with maybe a broken
arm or a black eye now and then you know,
and then of course when I worked in the office,
you know, I heard a lot of stark or kind
of intense calling out or being people being told off.

(25:19):
So that's when I sort of saw more of the
power structure that was going on, or the hierarchies that
were in place. There were several hierarchies in place, so
it wasn't as kind of all light and love as
when I first got there, but there was still a
general sense of people were there for good reasons. They
were really trying to work on themselves. And as a child,

(25:41):
I didn't go deep into the therapy groups. I didn't
do the therapy groups. And I think that's one area
where a lot of adults, young adults mostly that were
coming did the groups, and some of them found that
quite traumatic in retrospect because it was about stripping away
your ego, your Western ego, to find your true essence.
But in that sense, it was sort of like stripping

(26:02):
away your personality. And how I see it now is
that that was a way to promote devotion. See, so
that's sort of a sort of almost a passed a
right of passage towards a doctrination.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And from what I understand, most people don't live in
the Ashram, they live in the surrounding areas. So where
would you be sleeping when you were at the ashram?

Speaker 2 (26:32):
So yeah, so basically some people live in the ashram,
sort of more important people and people who'd been sinyasins longer.
When I first got there, I lived in a flat
with my mom. We just found a room that was
available with some other Sonyasins, and there are people all
sort of surrounding.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
So when you're out on the streets too, it's often
see sanyasin's walking. As you got closer, there's worse sanyasins
close by. And even if I was down in the
city center, i'd see sinasins. But I was very quick
taken under the wing of the sort of administrative inner circle,
especially one woman became kind of like another surrogate mom.
I had several throughout my life, and so I actually

(27:11):
lived inside the ashram and I shared a room with
two other children, and soon after that my mom moved
into but not living with me, just living somewhere completely
separately with other adults. So yeah, even.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Though you and your mom traveled over to India together
and you were kind of going through this experience of
going into the astrom for the first time, saying bog
wan streaiche impass And for the first time you were
doing all of these things separately because you were still
detached as a mother and daughter.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Well that's one aspect. So in a way, it was
a perfect storm. So I already had this situation with
my mom where I had, you know, once the attachment
kind of got several h I instead of chasing her,
I mean, it was a mixed bag. I was chasing
her that attachment, trying to bond, but also feeling so
hurt that I would reject her or just you know.

(28:11):
But at the same time, the commune, what Bogwantree Rushaniche
would say about children is the first thing was that
this is no place for children. Children are a hindrance
to the spiritual path. But also the second thing he
said was that children belonged to the commune and so
that parents didn't have to be their only parents. Everybody

(28:34):
would be their aunties and uncles, and so in this situation,
it just dovetailed perfectly into my situation. And so that
was what the culture was, and I wasn't the only
kids sort of left to my own devices, we sort
of bonded together. But that was not just for me.
It was a lot of parents were doing groups or

(28:55):
working while the kids were off doing our own thing.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Gosh, and I'm not don your mum was feeling any
type of guilt or being torn between like staying with
you and finding a place to settle or being part
of this free flowing kind of hippie movement. Then she
had just found the answer in kind of justifying what

(29:20):
she'd been doing with you your whole life. In this
particular place, she'd found somebody give her, almost give her
permission to have the relationship and set up that you had.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, and I don't know if it was a conscious thing,
because her thing. I really think that her true belief
was that she needed to give me freedom because she
grew up in a very strict household, and so she
really believed giving me freedom was what I needed. And
by that point, when I was throwing all these tantrums
because I was so hurt, I think she thought this
was going to help me, but it also led her

(29:57):
off the hook. It also led her off the hook.
So yeah, it was sort of a perfect storm that way.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
When you when you arrive as a child, what does
the day today. You said that you don't take part
in the meditation classes and things like that. How does
the day to day differ for you than from the
adults that would go to the ashrom daily.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
So for me, I would go to the discourses in
the morning for the most part until later I sort
of slept off, but I'd go to the discourse, so
that was like an hour an hour and a half
every morning. Then I would go eat breakfast, skip around
the ashron, maybe sit on the zen wall. This is
before I got pulled into the office. I'd sit around
watching people pass by, wander with other kids that I met. Meanwhile,

(30:44):
my mom is doing groups and other people are working.
So there was a school. I went there a couple
of times, some of the kids went there, but there
was no structure, no instruction about what I should do
with my time, so it was up to me.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Every day was different.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
And then after when I'm moved into the Ashrum, I
also started working in the office, so then I sort
of had this home base to go to throughout the day.
I was a message runner for the woman who had
sort of taken me uner her wing, and so I
would just be precocious, maybe go to the office, then
go run the errand and then meander around, talk to

(31:19):
some other kids, maybe go to one of the properties
outside the back gate, play in the garden, try to
plant things, goof around with some other people, you know,
skip around, and then end back in the Ashram. And
then it just sort of veered from there going. I
started going out more and more further away from the Ashrum,
to the point that I started going down to the

(31:41):
shopping center MG Road. You know, I'm ten years old,
getting the rickshaws, buying stuff, finding places in the black
market to buy KitKat bars.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
You know.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
I was very investigative in my pursuits, and you know,
to the point that I started to know a lot
of the shop owners. Oh kip cat bar today keep
get you know. But then I'd always come back to
the Ashrom and have my home base and live there.
But the daily life was not structured. I just happened
to be well behaved for the most part. I mean,

(32:13):
it does get a little more destructive later when I
discovered alcohol, you know, at age ten.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Oh my gosh, I so my son is five. Of course,
in another five years he'll be a completely different person.
But I still can't imagine him just like just gone
and you don't know where. And I mean, I know
that times have changed a lot, but that just seems

(32:44):
like and as you've said, you were, you know, quite
well behaved in the grand scheme of things. So I
imagine there was some children there that were different in
that sense. And I also think I read that they
were like four year old wandering around the ashrom just
doing the same thing as you, just meandering about.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Pretty much, it felt like there was this sort of
almost like a huge cognitive dissonance or miscommunication. It's sort
of like the commune is saying the kids belong to
the commune. The parents fall for that. I meanwhile, the
commune's not taking themselves seriously enough and they're thinking, oh,
the parents are still watching. I mean, I'm I'm maybe
that's my imagination, but that's right my wishes, I guess,

(33:26):
because the thought of four year olds walking around with
no guidance is so heartbreaking to me that I can't
almost believe it. So I maybe this is a justification
I made up in my head. But yeah, some of them,
I mean, maybe at certain times of the day they'd
meet up with their parents, like at the end of
the day, but the whole day they were wandering. And
I mean a lot of the bigger kids would sort

(33:48):
of look out for them, but sometimes you see them alone.
They list just looked lost. And you know, someone walking
around barefoot in the ashrom just sort of you know,
meandering around.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Then there's a time where you were asked to write
a letter of of of endorsement basically on behalf of
Bagwan Shri raj Niche almost like a marketing campaign and
you know, for for for the aschron to say, look
how well the children do here.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Absolutely, I mean I didn't know it at the time,
of course, but we were the kids. Us kids really
thought we were special. Like firstly, if kids weren't allowed
and we were allowed, so we must have gotten to
the through the you know, rite of passage to be welcomed.
And many people did love us, but they weren't our caretakers.
It was just like these passing things. And so I

(34:59):
was asked to write this this letter or passage to
put in the book lap of one of Ragenish's books.
And I and it was the title of the book
was The Further Shore. And I had no idea what
that meant, like, you know, it was a little too
abstract for me, and so I asked somebody what it meant,
and I was my education was already very far behind,

(35:20):
let's say, and so I was horrified. But they wanted
me to write about how beautiful the experience was essentially,
and how we were special, and then they wanted to
show the purity of a child's voice in this unconditioned
environment and sort of how it was a spiritual experience

(35:41):
for me. But for me, it was just random words
I was trying to put together, like it was this conundrum,
like what am I going to write? It was like
this panic came over me. And because I knew it
needed to be a positive endorsement, because that was the
general theme, you know, there was that was it. That
was how we all saw the experience. There wasn't At

(36:03):
that point, I already couldn't think of that there's something
wrong with the situation. This was my community, this is
my home, this is I need to promote this idea
that Rajniche is this enlightened being and he's taking us
to the further shore, which essentially is enlightenment or freedom
of suffering.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
People I've spoken with about their experiences of going to
the Ashram, of being a part of Ragniche Poum. People
talked about how the Marla has changed over time. So
I'm wondering, I'm gasingor Mum maybe had like one of
the earlier iterations of the marlow or the original version

(36:45):
of it.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Actually I think she had the second version. So the
first version the very old Sonya sans. And it's two
interesting things here, so that those were like oval, they
were I mean sorry, those they were more oval. The
later ones are around, so the really old ones were oval.
Those were people mainly.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
I think that.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Took Sonyas in the Bombay days before even Puna. And
the interesting thing too is all of us had prefixes,
or most of us had prefixes with our names, like
mine was mob Prem Crito, and there were several different
prefixes which were common like a nod Prem Deva were
the probably the three most prevalent, but there was one

(37:25):
that was yoga, and so it was interesting like the
yoga prefixed to your name sort of denoted that you
were old Sonyas and which sort of put you a
bit on a pedestal. He stopped using that later or
sis these subtle things that sort of made this sort
of hierarchy. So that so first there was an oval
mala and more of the use of the prefixed yoga.

(37:47):
And then there was the round lockett that was wood framed,
and they also had a child mala, which is what
I had. It was a miniature version of it the locket,
and then I think it was probably one it moved
to America. They became just like a plastic mallet encased
plastic with no wood. The beads were still would but

(38:08):
not the locket itself. So those are the three that
I know of. I don't know if there's been some
since then that have changed. Again, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
And I have also heard people describe their closeness to
Bargwan Shrie Rajniche in different ways as well, depending on
what time they joined as cult. So at what point
did you and your mum experienced Bargwan Shri Rojniche. Was

(38:40):
this when he was very active, very active in meeting
with people, or this was where he was quite withdrawn
point where people wouldn't see him in person very often.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
And I think we arrived right in the prime, like
the peak. So he was giving evening Darshan's in his
house as artrum office where you could go and meet
with him individually and ask questions or that's where he
gave initiation himself and then in the morning he would
give a lecture. So he was very much involved at
that point. It was only towards the last six months,

(39:13):
which I guess was more like eighty one nineteen eighty one.
We got there in seventy eight that the last six
months he went into silence and that's what persisted in
America until the last six months in America when he
spoke again right before the demise of Raschnie's Porum. Yeah,
so it was later in like rasnis Porum or maybe

(39:36):
towards the end of India that he had certain special
group leaders that started doing the initiation on his behalf.
And so that was very strange to me because I'd like,
he's the master, not this other person.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah, it's your experience, like meeting him for the first
time and going through the initiation, because that's the picture
on you of the front cover real book, right, that
is the picture of me taking initiation. I mean, I
have to say I was sort of timid. I was
already a very shy child. And for me, it wasn't

(40:10):
so much that I thought of him as a spiritual being.
I just knew he was important and he was who
everyone else was worshiping, and so I felt anxious because
of course I wanted him to approve of me, like
I didn't want to mess something up. I didn't want
to present myself poorly. So it was more like that
anxiety about, oh, I hope he likes me, and sitting

(40:31):
there just trying to be a little missort of well behaved.
And it took the initiation, and you know, it did
as I was supposed to. But it was interesting because
I I think he was still talking to me when
he was explaining the meaning of my name, and I
think I just literally bolted and went and sat back
in my seat instead of, like, instead of listening to
the whole explanation, I was like, Okay, I got my name,

(40:52):
see ya.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
You know. So I think I found him intimidating. But
I also didn't particularly worship him for the same reason
as other people worshiped him.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
And some of the things that you've mentioned about the
kind of the historical period that you were in in
terms of the political climate and the social climate and
people really rejecting the values of I want to say

(41:24):
predominantly like Christianity and traditional religious teachings around you know,
saving your self for marriage and then only having one
life partner in life and marrying them early, and then
you know a lot of purity culture around covering up
your body and all of those things that we've talked

(41:46):
about at length around purity culture on the podcast. All
of that was like, really, throw the baby out with
the bath water flipped on its head, completely reversed. When
it came to Bagwa Shri Rajniche his teachings and what
was happening in this ashram, it could it could not

(42:07):
have been more different than the purity culture that's been
talked about.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Length, the anti purity culture in this essence. I mean, firstly, yes, sexuality,
all of your restraints about sexuality and being in monogamous
relationships was very much discouraged.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
It was almost like something was wrong with you. If
you're in a monogamous relationship, you're supposed.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
To just follow your urges, your id. It was very
id centered culture sexually, and you know, you could hear
people screaming in these tantra groups and it's like group
sex happening, you know, and people even acting out their
desires of rape.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
I mean, I've heard these stories in these groups, but.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
As far as what I saw, it was just a
lot of very open sexuality, and it was very clear
to me that this was supposedly okay, although my gut
didn't quite wall for its. I always sort of had
this romantic notion about relationships and I imagine myself being
in a marriage one day. But I actually almost felt
this sense of shame that I even had those thoughts,

(43:09):
because it was so not normal in this culture. Similarly,
Osho or Bagwantri Reganiche was very anti religion, so he
would basically condemn almost all religions, especially Christianity, saying how
it was just brainwashing the masses and making everyone follow
these leaders blindly, and that he was offering a new way,

(43:34):
a way for new men, the real key to spirituality,
whereas all the religions were just you know, dogma is
how he put it.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
The environment then not being safe for anybody, really, men
and women. If the environment isn't safe for people in
the offhroom, then obviously, very clearly it's not going to
be safe for unsupervised children. Absolutely, and this is one

(44:04):
of the things that's explored deeply in your book. And
I don't know how much detail you want to go into,
but I just wondered if you could give us some
insight into the open sexual practices that adults were expected
to participate in, how that like filtered down directly onto

(44:28):
the children, so.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
That the culture was such that, you know, there was
lots of partner swapping going on, a lot of open sexuality,
even if it wasn't downright sex right in front of
me in the public part of the astron It's just
like these sort of long lingering hugs and maybe long
kisses along the central thoroughfare. But that was you know,
you sort of normalize it after a while because you
see it over and over again. And I think just

(44:52):
I'll talk about the adults drush one second first, but
I think a lot of the adults really thought that
was what they were supposed to do. It was part
of their liberty. So you know, in retrospect, I've heard
some adults saying, well, they sort of went along with
says focus, that's what it required to belong in a sense,
is to be open and loose sexually. But for the children,
we're seeing that. First of all, we're being exposed to that,

(45:14):
which is already traumatic to some extent because you're watching
people in the sexual act, or taking showers with adults
that are making out in the showers, or passing someone's
room while they're humping, and you can see it. You
could just some of the kids actually took made a
sport of watching, just sort of going around the austro
I'm seeing this happen. But again, when you're watching, there's

(45:38):
so there's such a fine membrane between that and then
being pulled into it. And so for me, at first,
I wasn't affected so much by the sex until we started.
Me and some of my peers were trying to learn
to French kiss at ten years old by one of
the guards that were called Samurais, So that already felt

(45:59):
like okay. For me, it felt like I was heading
into dangerous territory because I could see how I could
attach that attachment, bond could happen, and then that would
be a sexual connection, not just a adult child connection.
So I already felt that, and that was happening quite
you know, openly, with lots of the children were either

(46:21):
sitting on the laps of these men or you know,
we were kissing them when it was late at night
when they were doing the darshun and the lights were out.
And then that led to the next thing, which is
when me and my friend were lured in to give
one of one of these men in the commune a
hand job. So that was my first real sexual encounter

(46:44):
with an adult man man, and I well, literally thought
I was gonna vomit or something, but I just bolted
from the room. And I learned then to have much
more protection around me. You know, I could tell there
was certain this open sexuality. There's a vibe, and some
men looked at me and I'm sure others in a

(47:05):
sort of sexualized way, and I could feel it. I
could feel it, even though no more sort of experience
resulted because I was much more cautious, but I could
still feel the slimy looks.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
And I imagine in some cases there are children who
were maybe not able to be more cautious, or maybe
we're not able to discern kind of the safety and
the risk, and so maybe yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
They were also in a position with other men who
are far worse than what I was encountering.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, I didn't mean to trust you, gosh, but no,
you just summarized what I was trying to say. It's
really I find it really difficult to articulate myself when
we're talking about this subject because it's like I'm trying
to be very wary of using the right language and

(48:06):
I never want to lean ever into victim blaming, and
it's hard to I just always want to make sure
I'm saying the right thing, and sometimes I can't get
it out, and you just said it perfectly, So thank you. Yeah,
no problem.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
I mean, so each of each of the children that
were there had a different experience, but I'd say a
lot of them had sexual encounters. Oddly enough, or to
my out of luck, out of grace. I wasn't going
to the school, so I was in the aushroom, and
I had the office, which was a protective place because
there's women who cared for me and I could go

(48:40):
back there, and so I wasn't wandering as maybe readily
as other children, and I didn't live in the group
house where there was probably thirty children living together. I
had a little more contact maybe with sort of structure
within the commune. They were living outside in this hut,
So there was a huge amount of neglect.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
It was a rotation of parents or adults, but sometimes
they wouldn't show up. And I mean, I just I've
heard horror stories. But then a lot of the kids,
especially the younger kids six seven, eight, were going to school,
the commune school which was off site, which I didn't
go to. I don't know how the structure worked, but
many of the younger kids were there, and the main

(49:22):
teacher there was a pedophile, and he sexually abused multiple
of the young girls who are six, seven, eight years old.
And again I think, you know, you see these pictures,
there's this sort of closeness that you don't see in
normal culture, like these girls are all like hanging all
over him. And again, I think it was just what

(49:43):
was normalized. And I think many of us were starving
for attention. And so, man, I don't want to put
words in it. I didn't go through that with them,
so I don't want to put words in their mouth.
But I can imagine that that sense of him making
you special, which involved sexual abuse. You know, it was

(50:03):
the lack that led them to fall for it even
more so, and there wasn't parents around watching and people.
I think some people actually sort of knew that there
was something a little fishy going on, but it was again,
I think the culture in their brains overrode the voice
of the culture, overrode their own overrided. I don't know

(50:25):
if there is anyway it superseded their own instincts. So
so that's just tragic.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
To think about how children were almost desregarded by Rajni
his teachings as well. It's like, yeah, that it's a
ripe environment for child abuse. It is so right because
it can happen in plain sight exactly. He gave permission

(51:14):
in essence through his teachings. In essence, firstly, we're these open,
beautiful beings for children, but then at the same time
it's not an environment for children. And then here we
are the children in this sort of in between world
existing there, and all these adults are being taught to
be open with their sexuality, not to repress their fantasies,

(51:35):
not to repress their sexual you know, kind of delusions
or dark fantasies, and there's these innocent children walking around
alone going to school where there's probably not enough teachers
for you know, the ratio to students, and then the
kids are off wandering alone like after school. You know,

(52:00):
there's still many stories, and many people have not spoken out,
but their stories still exist obviously, and some of them
are far worse than mine. I mean, I hate to
say that, but it's the truth. The isolation aspect of
it as well, in terms of moving a lot of
children to a new country where there's a language barrier,

(52:22):
most likely where the view on female autonomy in some
areas of that country are very different to how they
are in countries like America. And then also to kind
of be a subculture within India, as in part of
the Rajniche movement, and then to be isolated further inside

(52:46):
that subculture in this school. It's just like a funnel
of isolation that leads so many already vulnerable people into
a more vulnerable place. It's I can't convert my brain
just probably in a protective way, I can't actually like

(53:08):
wrap my mind around it. It's hard.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
I mean for me, it's like it was what I knew,
so it just seemed normal until it took me years
to unpath that this wasn't normal. And it's I had
so much of a defense about it, probably also because
it was so awful that I made it seem normal
just to deal to function. But it was I mean,

(53:32):
first year at a foreign country, so you don't have
that bigger culture to blend into, and that that was
a very patriarchal culture. And then here we are in
this commune which the women are running it, but it's
still patriarchal because the guru is a man sort of
surrounded by women, right, and so the administrative women, but
all the women in his house too, like there were

(53:54):
really hardly any men that were as close.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Or taking care of him.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
And then the children are the last tribe, and the
focus of most people is either on the guru or
on themselves, not on the children. And they are taught
to think that it's for the children's own good. And

(54:21):
we didn't know any better. You have to deal with
what what you're handed. You know, at least too you
know most of the time. I mean, if I'm sure
kids had tantrums and one of their mom or dad
and got it a little bit, but you know, you
have very limited resources as a child.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Makes me think of yan Ya Lodge's description of a
self sealing system where all roads lead to the same answer.
All roads lead to children being neglected, abused, harmed, whichever
whichever way you come at it from in this particular
in this particular cult, How did your experiences change over

(54:59):
time you're in the astrom, you're working in the office.
At some point there's another big move over back over
to America. There must have been a lot of like
like hyper arousal at that time, like a big announcement,
we're moving. What what was that whole process?

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Like, well, so we weren't told he was moving, we
didn't we didn't know, but Guan was leaving. Suddenly he
was just gone. And suddenly the whole sort of love
and light aura of the commune just sort of collapsed,
and people were panicked.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Where where is he? What is a commune? End? Is
it over?

Speaker 2 (55:39):
What do we do now? A lot of people didn't
have money. They're visas needed fixing because they had stayed
over stayed by years, you know, no resources, so the
sort of panic. And I felt the same, more confusion,
and I had a big dilemma because I was really
bonded to this woman in the office. And then there
was my mother who had hardly had any contact and

(56:00):
so everyone was told to go to their prospective countries,
respective countries and wait for word of when the new
commune would emerge. At that point, we didn't know where exactly.
We thought America. We probably got that much information, and
so we all left. And so there I am again,
back in Hawaii, again with my mom, who I had

(56:24):
barely had contact with, and I was I was very depressed.
I think I didn't know that it was depression, but
I just I couldn't. I couldn't fathom not being in
the commune. And so very soon I got in touch
with Sheila and ended up going to the new commune
that wasn't a commune yet in central Oregon. I went

(56:47):
there when there was only about thirty people. I was
a thirty second person to arrive there. And I arrived
there about a month before my mother. Because I was
so eager. I was like, get me there now. And
so I traveled there alone. And there I was in
Cowboy Country with my little red dress and my Mala, going,

(57:10):
oh my god, where am I?

Speaker 1 (57:12):
And at that point, it's it was like uncultivated land,
like it was just it was I imagine you arrived
and it just looked like you're in the middle of
the countryside, like with no buildings, no plumbing, no toilets,
no food, like nothing.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
I mean, well, there was the old ranch settlement in
the very heart of the valley, and so there was
plumbing and electricity, but it was like there's one big
ranch house that the ranch foreman lived in still and
then a small house that was just packed with the
ausins of the kitchen and you know, people living there,
three to four people to a room. And then there
was this other outbuilding that we converted to a bunk

(57:52):
house that had fourteen people in one bathroom, and that's
where I was put And it turned out that everyone
in there was mail except me.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
So there's one boy. There's only one other child.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
When I arrived, the woman that was curly in charge,
her son was there, but otherwise there's no other children
except for the Harvey's the foreman's two daughters. And so
me and the other boy lived in the bunk house
with thirteen men. And I'm twelve years old.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Does your mom think about this? Is she like, does
she know that you're leaving? Is she questioning why you
get to go to the new site sooner than she does?
That's such an interesting dynamic that whole No, it's not
the whole thing. It's pretty bizarre.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
So so my mom basically always just gave me authority
for myself. And so of course that again, I think
I always wanted her to step in on some level,
but I was sort of like, whatever you want to do,
I let whatever you want to.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Do is find.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
And so when I said I wanted to go to
the ranch, she's said fine, and we got the money
for me to go. It was almost like the moms
that ran the commune had authority over her and over me.
And so if they said it and I wanted to
do it, then that's fine. It doesn't matter. I don't
even know what she wanted. She didn't say, she didn't say,

(59:16):
and I still had the impression that she would be
happier if I was out of her hair and so,
and they did say once she got the money, she
could come. But in the hierarchy of the commune, she
was not beloved like I was. So I was the
special child, and I was higher on the hierarchy kind
of because I was in favor of those people who

(59:37):
ran the commune, the moms who ran a commune. I
was in favor she was not. So that even compounded
the challenge with me and my mom, right, because then
I felt guilty that she wasn't appreciated by these people
and that they didn't like her and they liked me.
And so I loved my mom despite everything, and I

(59:59):
wanted her to be happy and safe and everything to
be peaceful. But it was this constant tug in my heart, like,
oh no, she's hurting, and I would I very much
felt like I took on her emotions.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
When you talk about Sheila, do you mean Marnan Sheila,
because she has been likened to a cult leader in
her own right, and I wonder what you think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Yeah, so yes, I'm speaking of mand On Sheila. And
the person who was sort of like my mother a stepmother,
was like number two or number three under her. So
I was around Sheila and all of those that whole
cohort to get, you know, all the time. And Sheila
she was always very directive and bossy and you know, confident.
But as time evolved, Yeah, she sort of had her

(01:00:47):
people that she chose to be in her inner circle.
So here's another little inner circle within an inner circle.
And as time went on, this woman who.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Worked for her directly.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
There's a few men, but mostly women. They started treating
her like a guru. She was the figure of authority,
and because Boguan Trirajeni was in silence, she was his representative.
And when that happened, which was the whole time in
America til the last six months, she just sort of
climbed that power ladder to the point that she was

(01:01:22):
definitely authoritarian and definitely had me I didn't think of
it like that at the time, but she definitely had
the characteristics of a guru and people were to surrendered
to what her word was. But because she was speaking
for Boguan and and meanwhile, Baguan was in isolation, and
I'm sure she added her own twist to things, you know,

(01:01:42):
I mean, some of it definitely came from him, but
I'm sure she augmented that with her own directives. And
to this day that a lot of the people were
still devoted to Bogwan Shri Ragene or oh show to
see her as the culprit for anything bad that ever happened.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
To move perfectly into my next next question. She was
really I don't know. I mean, some people would say
she was used as a scapegoat, and I think even
Rajnish himself movie. But oh my god. Yeah, like, so
talk us through that whole, that whole sago. How does

(01:02:20):
it go from you moving over into the early stages
of Rajnis being established? How what does what does Raim
turn into? And how does it all fall apart? I mean,
if people have seen the documentary World Wild Country, they'll
know why why everything falls apart. And you know, for

(01:02:43):
people that don't know much about cults that watch this documentary,
they were like, that is a wild story, like that
is insane and that's a tip of the iceory people,
right right, yeah, exactly. So yeah, just talk us through
that whole thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
So, when when I first got there, in the beginning,
it was a small clan and we were sort of
taking care of the land. We're trying to build little
infrastructure for ourselves, and I thought it was going to
be the small community kind of like the Ashram maybe
you know, that's what I knew. Yet we did have
sixty four thousand acres. So soon after I got there,

(01:03:21):
you know, people were arriving daily and next thing, you know,
all these sort of trailers, these double wide trailers, come
in that to provide housing, and they just popped up overnight.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
There was suddenly all these houses for us to live in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Then Sheila arrives, then the moms arrive, and the next
thing you know, we're trying to run like the whole
Oh Show or Rajaniche Foundation International sell books and tapes,
and meanwhile the local ranchers around us are watching, going
what in the world is going on? This is a cult,
this is crazy. These people are in orange. Get them

(01:03:57):
out of here. And so at the beginning was very
good at convincing them that we're just this you know,
loving family that wanted to live there and restore the land,
and that they bought it for a short time. But
when everything was happening so rapidly, they definitely got skeptical
and she got more defiant. And so the first hurdle
we came up against was the fact that we the

(01:04:19):
land was agricultural land. It wasn't to be a place
where you could run businesses. And Sheila really thought that
the laws didn't apply to her because she was in
service of a enlightened being, So we were immune to any.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Kind of enfortunate from anybody. That's how it seemed to me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
And so when government officials and citizens started questioning what
we were doing, she was trying to find a way
around it. And at that point we had quickly amassed
a group of lawyers who were trying to figure out
how to deal with all these challenges that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Were coming our way.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
And one of the lawyers came up with the idea
that we could incorporate our own city, because if we
were our own city, then we could run our businesses,
and then we could also rule ourselves. In essence, we
can have our own kingdom and we wouldn't be, you know,
under the sort of rule of the bigger, you know, society.

(01:05:20):
To some extent, there'll still be some rules. So we
managed to incorporate the city. We started building rapidly. Then
there was all the people who were against us found
ways to stop us, so then we'd have to stop
building for a while. Then we start building for a while.
In the meantime, while all this back and forth legally
is going on, like these building spurts where we built
work sixteen hours a day to get as much done

(01:05:44):
as we could until the next legal, you know, directive
came down that you must stop. Sheila had The next
good idea or I don't know who had it, but
Sheila instigated it or implemented it was to buy property
in Antelope and run our businesses from Antelope because it
wasn't incorporated town. And then the people Antelope revolted and said, okay,

(01:06:09):
we're going to disincorporate the town so you can't run
your businesses here. So that Sheila is like, oh no,
that's not going to work. Let's move. Let's buy as
much property as we can. We're going to just move
a bunch of people from rash Niche Porum, the new
city that's semi incorporated. It's incorporated, but it's under challenge.
We'll move them to Antelope so they can outvote the

(01:06:29):
current residents. Okay, so they go there and outvote them
so that the incorporation remains so that we can run
our businesses. And so this battle is going on the
whole time for four years or three and a half years.
And while this is all happening, like more and where
people were coming to the ranch and you know, versus

(01:06:49):
five hundred and then it's one thousand by the end,
I think it was four thousand residents there, and then
a lot of visitors too, because we devised all these
different as we added buildings, we added new services, we had,
we created the whole infrastructure. We had our busing system,
we had we built.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
A spiritual university where people could come do therapy groups
or like stay for three months and do therapy groups
a little bit and work for free, pay to work,
actually pay to work, and so and then a lot
of people just wanted to be near the masters, so
they were just dying to come.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
So it's very easy to get labor. And the reward
was these.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Festivals or where book one would come out and just
sit with us in silence, where there was music being played,
silence music, silence music, dancing, but he wasn't speaking. And
the other highlight of the day was watching him drive
by in one of his roll's voices, like that was
our break. We had a lunch break, and then after
lunch he would go for his daily drive, so we'd

(01:07:48):
line the road and he would pass, and that just
became more of the festivities because that's the only time
we got to see him, and so you know, that's
why people were there.

Speaker 5 (01:07:57):
So that was the highlight of the day.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
There's so much other stuff. This is already like like
a complicated and layered thing that's happening. There's also the
the well, the criminal activity at some point starts or
I mean it's always.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Been there, it just got to be much more pronounced
and much more extreme. I mean, I think it was
always this fixing the books. I even heard stories of
India where there was all these tax fraud charges and
that's I've been told that that's maybe why oh Show
actually needed to leave or bog One needed to leave
the country, or we need to close the ushram. There's

(01:08:56):
a sort of tax evasion going on. So I think
there's always these convert things that sort of like the
sense that the community was immune to law, to the
it was immune to law, and but it just got
worse and worse over time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Yeah, more extreme overtime, I suppose it just I don't
know what the not not over confident but just all complacent,
but the but just not trying to hide it anymore
because the movement had grown so big and Rajniche had
so much influence, even if that was being harnessed by

(01:09:37):
not him directly. But what is also interesting is the
allegations of sexual abuse against Raji himself, who surrounded himself
with women and claimed that he needed to, you know,
the female energy in order to remain enlightened, or so
I heard, And so there were actually women being abused

(01:10:02):
directly by him in his inn, his suf yes for
for for going back decades before rajniche poum.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
Yes so I I so interestingly enough, I always wondered,
like is he having sex with people? And and for me,
I always had the sort of notion that a holy
man has to be pure and not sexual. And so
the fact that he talked about sex so much, I
always felt kind of ick, like ick.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
And I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
I mean, I suspected that something was going on, and
it was interesting to me always watching that, especially in India,
where I could, you know, smaller, you could see more
what was going on, versus a huge ranch that it
was always these women were in his house that were
so beautiful, like like maidens, Like they looked like supermodels
and but very I don't know, it looked like pre

(01:10:49):
Raphaelite paintings, is how I sort of saw them. But
it only came out after me and some of the
other then children spoke out about our abuse. It was
only then that a couple of women came forth and
told their stories about the abuse at Oshow's own hand,
and it was shocking, and it was shocking, but I

(01:11:12):
wasn't surprised. And of course it was again under the
guys that it was for their own spiritual growth, but
it wasn't necessarily consensual.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
Very much in service to him from the descriptions I've read, and.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Yeah, very much being used.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
It seemed that these women were being used, and you know,
he would direct them to have sex with each other
in front of him, and just stuff that was pretty
hard to hear, really hard to hear, actually, And I
have to say, I think there's probably far more women
that were abused, but I don't believe that many of
them think it was abused. I think many of them

(01:11:52):
still think it was a blessing to be that close
to the Master, because that was so prevalent of an
aspiration that the closer you are to the Master, the
more special you are, and then the more special you are,
the closer you are to liberation and enlightenment, which is
the ultimate goal.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Mm hmm. That's it's like sounding as though there was
criminal activity of all kinds from the beginning right the
way through to the end, and it was through every
layer of the hierarchy, from the very very top all
the way down to the very bottom. And there were

(01:12:36):
instances of homeless people being busted at some point, and
then all of the stuff that happened with the attacks
on the citizens of Antelope. So I'm just gonna let
you continue on with this kind of like madness that
that just that just prevailed.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Well, it was like every every couple of months, or
maybe every five months, it was sort of like everything
started to feel a little calm, and then some big
other bombshell would go off and I'd be like, oh God,
what's going to happen now? And so first it was
all the people coming and I was overwhelmed by that
because I really wanted more of an insular kind of
family feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
And then all the.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Building, and then all the controversy with the neighbors and
the government, and at one point we had about I
think it was sixty lawsuits against us for various things.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
I don't know the details.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
There's also Biguan's immigration battle going on because he came
to America with a medical visa and that had expired.
He was trying to get a new visa as a
spiritual leader, and the said, well, he can't have a
visa as a spiritual leader because he's in silence. And
then all these Sasins wrote like two thousand letters to

(01:13:46):
the sing his silence is so beautiful. It's much more
profound that if you was speaking, and so all these people,
you know, trying to back them up. So it's sort
of like there was this the whole group of Sanasa
was this whole like almost like army defending our cause, right,
And so if Sheila asked someone to do something, the

(01:14:08):
answer was always yes, you know, we were you know,
we were told how to vote. I'm sure, like, okay,
we want to incorporate a city. Okay, yes, of course,
we have enough people to do that. But then it
seems like as time went on, Sheila was trying to
find ways to individuate so that we could have autonomy.

(01:14:29):
And her next thought then was, okay, we have a city,
but maybe we need to take over the county. Right,
And I didn't know this till later. Next thing, you know,
I guess this all this stuff was going on. I
could see that all the secret stuff was going on.
I did not know what it was about. Next thing,
you know, I'm in the center of the ranch yard,
the center, you know, the sort of hub, and there's

(01:14:51):
these inner city people, very poorly dressed in civilian clothes,
not orange or red like we wore, walking around, and
they kept arriving busload after busload after busload. I soon
learned it was part of a new program called Share
a Home, in which Sonyasin's were sent to the inner

(01:15:13):
cities of the big cities of America to recruit homeless
people to come join the commune for rehabilitation so they
get there. And it was all very confusing because I
never thought of us as being a charity, because we
always seem very self centered, So why were we trying
to help humanity at this point, it did not make

(01:15:34):
sense to me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
And these people are rough.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
I mean, some of them are very sweet, but it
was totally shocked to our normal kind of you know,
free flowing love, mellow eye gazing culture. Right, So soon
I learned that these people were brought in to vote.
They kept being these announcements in the cafeteria. Don't remember

(01:15:59):
to vote, remember to vote. I never heard anything about
voting prior to that, so I was suspicious. I didn't
know what was going on. Then voting day comes in
Watsco County. All these people are busted there to vote,
and at that point the county clerk said, no, we're
not going to allow same day registrations and voting. So
Sheila just blew up. You are not treating these people humanely.

(01:16:21):
You're treating like animals. You're taking away their human rights.
They all come back to the ranch anyway. They're the
purpose that we had of therefore we didn't need them anymore.
So Sheila just basically stopped taking care of them, had
them all dropped off at the nearest city, not even
where they were from originally, no money, nothing, no ticket

(01:16:42):
back to where they came from.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
It's next thing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:44):
You know, all these surrounding cities, the Dolls, Madras, all
these towns are like, you're leaving these homeless people in
our town with no resources. So they were complaining and
that was the end of that experiment. But it was
the way it ended with them was so heartbreaking because
they were loved with nothing, and they were told that

(01:17:05):
they were being offered all these very helpful tools, medical care,
free food.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
You know that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, and you know,
bringing in that amount of new people comes with the
risk again of you know, I don't want to say
the term stranger danger, but that type of element of

(01:17:32):
you don't really know who who's coming in on these buses.
The vulnerability exploitation of the people being bust in to
begin with, and then obviously the children that are in
that environment are at further risk is just so. It's
just so, as you said, compounded. And there were allegations

(01:17:55):
as well of the people being bust in being given
held all drugs.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
Yeah. Yes, So one thing I'll do, I will say
is that they were sort of kept isolated, So I
don't think those people that came in perpetrated the children.
That's one good thing, you know, in the grander scheme
of things. But it was definitely rough, and I think
for us it was sort of like this culture shock, like, oh,
we get to see what's going on in the real
world through their like rap, singing and stuff like that,

(01:18:24):
which we hadn't been exposed to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
But oh gosh, what was your question? Sorry, just the
howl dolls?

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Yes, sorry, yes, so, yeah, I didn't know about it
until one day I was at a meeting with all
the homeless people, with Sheila and Video and a few
other people of the moms, and they wouldn't let me
drink the beer. And in the past that you know,
they didn't really enforce that for us teenagers. And I

(01:18:52):
only learned later that they were basically spiking the beer
with hal Doll to keep the homeless people under control,
to keep them And it's it's it's it's actually a
fact that they found in their investigations, that the FBI
found in their investigations.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
This really was like the beginning of the end of everything,
would you say.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
I actually, now, thinking back, like I think that's when
maybe something internally started feeling like, oh my god, this
is scary. This is not home. This doesn't feel like
my home. But I don't think I let myself consciously
think that until later, when there's even more evidence of
things going awry. But definitely it just felt like an invasion,

(01:19:38):
like it just was such a culture clash. You know,
these are the inner city people. It's not just rand
you know, it's like people who have been living a
rough life who may not, you know, have they're hardened
by living.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
On the streets. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so I'm also sorry,
Oh no, it's go ahead. I was just going to say,
and also, this is your community of acceptance and peace
and love and serenity, and all of a sudden there's
all this turbulence that really contradicts what the movement is

(01:20:16):
supposed to be all about. So I remember when I
was speaking to Nicola Anson about her experiences of being
a son yas and she really couldn't believe what was
happening when she was like given a gun and told
to go and like man the you know, or go

(01:20:37):
to a to a point and beyond guard. She said,
it was just such a conflict of everything that she'd
lived and breathed over the last few years. And then
all of a sudden it was like now now we're
like violent, I don't know, like now we're now we're destructive.

Speaker 2 (01:20:59):
That's sort of like this meet you know, first it's
like more focused on spirituality. Then it sort of keeps
moving in the direction of not being about spiritual, just
being about politics and defending ourselves as we could become
militaristic as the start, you know, instigating these crimes. And
at that point there was sort of no very little

(01:21:21):
spiritual activity going on. You know, I mean all of
us who worked. We didn't meditate, we didn't do groups,
we didn't do anything like that. The only sort of
so called spiritual activity, well there's two. We were told
our work was our spiritual activity, it was our worship.
But it really was just hard work for twelve to
sixteen hours a day. But it was out of devotion.

(01:21:43):
That was how we could show our devotion. But there
was no more really self reflection going on. It was
all outward to prove that we could stand up against
the government and we could be independent. And it was
all because of our motion to Bagwashri Rajinish. And the
only real reinforcement we got, well it was reinforcement to

(01:22:07):
say we're working for this master. But the other reinforcement
was just getting the drive by, which was whatever two
seconds of seeing him in his rolls Royce with the
window shut that was enough to keep people devoted.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
It seemed you mentioned that you were sixteen years old

(01:22:46):
when not when you escaped the colt, but when the
colt really just fell apart disbanded, And that is one
of the ways that some people and leave a cult.
Some people escape, some people are shunned and forced out
and sometimes the culture just implodes. And although bag One,

(01:23:06):
Shree Ronie or oh show or show still has some
type of legacy even in mainstream culture where people will
quote him in pop culture referencing and still is in TV,
and oh my gosh, it's maddening. And look at like,
I don't know how the screenwriters and maybe have some
sort of association with the Rajniche movement or just don't

(01:23:30):
do enough research on this supposed enlightened being that they're
referencing in their books and films. Anyway, that's my soapbox
for another day. I'm on the same soap ups, I'm
on the same soap box. It's sort of like it's
like this blind thing. They just see these pretty words
and they don't care about anything else. So exactly exactly.
And I was watching a Disney film the other day

(01:23:52):
and there was an Ahow quote. I was like, ha,
you're kidding me. How, Oh my gosh, So what happens
to you when this all Because sixteen is a very
precarious age. You're still in development, you're still finding your
place in the world, and then all of a sudden,

(01:24:14):
are you just in the world a person in typical society,
like having never really been a part of mainstream society,
I can't even I can't even like there's a lot,
isn't there? So much as you could tell.

Speaker 2 (01:24:30):
The story is very long and complicated, and believe or not,
I cut out, like sixty thousand words. I'm glad I
saved you from that. So, yeah, sixteen, I thought I
was independent in an you know, an adult. Meanwhile, all
the women who are my role models, Sheila, the woman
who is like my mother, all those moms left in

(01:24:52):
the middle of the night, and so that was sort
of my safety net.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
They were gone.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
So it's already like totally disoriented and traumatized. Then like
a couple months later, the whole commune collapsed and most
of the people I was close to were already gone.
They had left a little bit earlier, probably because they
had a clue that things were collapsing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
So there, I am sixteen, haven't really spoken to my
mom for four years, you know, only minimally, And I
was like, I don't need my mom. I can make
it in the world. And I left the ranch. I
went to California and with three hundred dollars that my
mom did give me, and I thought, I'm going to
get a job. I'm very capable. I was always taught,

(01:25:34):
I was very you know, I felt like an adult.
I was treated like an adult. The truth was I
was not an adult. And it took being thrust into
the real world for me to realize that. And it
was very quickly clear to me that I didn't have
the survival skills really that I needed. I didn't have
an education. I was, you know, struggling to read and

(01:25:55):
write because I'd never gone to school. I didn't know
how to read societal cues, how to have small talk.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
Something we didn't do much of the ranch. We couldn't
do small talk. Everything was very direct and blunt.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
And my money was dwindling away very quickly, and I
was in full fledged panic mode trying to find a job.
And meanwhile, my peers, my good friends from way back,
like from India, the women I was closest to now,
well they were girls, We're all at the same age,

(01:26:31):
had turned to sex work and.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
Stripping, and I knew that I.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Couldn't do it, like just my whole being revolted, but
that was what a lot of people were doing to survive.
And then I sort of had an epiphany. Firstly, it
was that the men who had abused me that I
was still attached to who I had I had sort
of hoped I would be reunited with. And then I
saw them in California, two of them at least, and

(01:27:00):
I suddenly had this epiphany that they didn't care about
me whatsoever. And that was when things really changed for me.
I was like, Okay, I've got to get out of here,
because this is dangerous for me. I'll probably end up
in sex work like my peers. And later a lot
of them turned to drugs too, So it was this
whole scene there for several years. I got out of

(01:27:21):
it and it was more of like intuition or grace,
and I went to Boston and met up with my
mom and it wasn't ideal, but I had a roof
over my head, you know, I had food to eat,
and I traveled around with her and her husband for
about six months, and then I came back to Boston
on my own, and that time I managed to get

(01:27:43):
temp work and I started integrating into society. So I'd
say within about six months, I was supporting myself. You know,
I was living in a group house with others sat Jason,
so the rent was cheap, but I was surviving. But
those first few months I was scared I wouldn't be
able to serve. And then as time went on, I

(01:28:03):
met my grandparents again, and because I lived in Boston,
that's where my mother grew up, and somehow my grandfather
convinced me to try to get an education. And to
this day, I am so thankful to him because he
brought me back into the fold of mainstream society. Otherwise,

(01:28:25):
who knows. I mean, I don't know what it would
have happened. But I took my high school equivalency test,
enrolled in a junior college for a year that transferred
to a four year university, and by by sheer determination
and some aptitude, I made it through and graduated with honors.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
It's incredible. I love these these parts of the of
the interview. You know, it's when do you read in
Cibody's memoir, You're like, I don't know if they're going
to be okay, and then you know they're okay because
you've got an interview but with them, and you know
you know that they're you know, they've released a book
and they're doing the press tour and stuff. But in
the moment of reading the memory, you're like, I'm not sure.

(01:29:10):
And then you get to the part where there, you know,
there's the rebuilding of a life, and there's your autonomy
and there's your voice, and you are telling your own
story in your own words, and it's so empowering and
it's so inspiring, and I just love these little moments
where people mention the advocates that they had when when

(01:29:32):
the advocates were severely lacking, like your grandfather for example,
like yeah, a little hero, a little hero.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
At the time, I'm like, you're bugging me, you're bugging me.
I was brainwall I don't want to be brainwashed by
proper education. I was still in the dogma of the commune.
It took so much work to find my own voice
amidst all these sayings that just floating around in my head.
You know that you take on because that's where you
grew up. I mean, we all adapt to our culture. Yeah,

(01:30:02):
so things up for my.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
Grandfather, Yeah, yeah, And it's such it's such a good
example of how we've just a little bit of support
from others, but really with your own like gritin determination,
recovering from cultic abuse is possible. As you said, it's

(01:30:26):
taken you such a long time to unpack and understand
everything that happened. And I know that experiences of abuse
are likely situations that you people will work on for
a lifetime to understand and never really fully recover from.
But the healing and the recovery is possible. You've been

(01:30:47):
on this mad journey of like putting your own life
together really on your own.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
Yeah, very much. I mean a sense my early childhood
gave me those skills to survive on my own. But
it's not to say that it's not lonely, you know,
it's not been always alone, but very much my own
work is on my own. And I have to say
so I got my sort of practical life together pretty quickly,

(01:31:13):
you know, between going to the university and then getting
a good job.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
And fitting in.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
But only then when I had that security, then all
the trauma emotionally kind of surfaced. So then I had
to go down that road for many, many years. I mean,
I still do therapy because it keeps me sane, and
there's always more to work on, you know. I hope
there comes to day there when there isn't, but I
doubt it. I mean, it's actually I'm I'm happy to

(01:31:40):
continue that journey, but I'm far more stable. But then
I was like, Okay, I got it all figured out.
I have a good job, I owned a house, and
then this you know, tsunami of trauma emerges, and that's
sort of brought to the fore, you know, with the
continuing relationship with my mom but also trying to have
intimate relations and that being a mine field to my

(01:32:03):
past and all the sexual exploitation and all the lack
of trust and all the abandonment issues come up like
a storm. And so then that was the next stage,
was working away at that and finding my true voice
that way, not just sort of settling into a life
that's sort of comfortable but perhaps a little complacent about

(01:32:27):
what's really going on for me personally. And so that's
been a long time in coming, and I think the
book is sort of the culmination of that, saying, hey,
this is me, this is me integrating that past person
that I was with the woman I am today and
I don't need to hide anymore between my professional life

(01:32:49):
and my internal life that I kind of have shame,
have had shame about the sort of sort of coming
forth as one person, as you know, not being a
chameleon to fit all these different people's agendas anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
It's just an incredible book. I was, I was. I
always say this. I was struggling to get through the
parts of the sexual exploitation. Those parts are tough. Yeah, yeah,
I guess I did go into a lot of detail,

(01:33:24):
didn't I yeah, I think. I mean, of course. The
great thing about memoir is you tell your story the
way you want it to be told, and it's so
powerful and by the end of it, it's like it's
hard to explain. It's really inspiring, but it's educational as well,
so for people like myself who haven't had a cultic experience.

(01:33:47):
It really reinforces the things that I've learned through the
interviews that I've done, but it's in written form, and
the talking about the recovery stuff is and the ongoing
difficulties with the relationship with your mum, all of it
is so important. And I would love listeners to go

(01:34:09):
and grab a copy of In the Shadow of Enlightenment,
A Girl's Journey through the raj niche our show cult
and I would like to hear what other people think.
I'll put links in the episode description to where people
can grab a copy. Yeah, it's it's it's a longer memoir,
but it's it's not it doesn't feel long, if that

(01:34:32):
makes sense. Once you start reading it, I thought, gosh,
this is going to take me a while, but it
really didn't. So I'm I'm just really thankful that I
had a chance to read the book, that you wrote
the book, and that this subject of the harm of
children in the Rajniche movement is being is being addressed

(01:34:52):
and highlighted. Yeah, thanks for reading it. I really appreciate it.
So what is what is next? Then? Rete You're like,
are you on your book tour? Are you busy like
doing talks and everything? Are you going to write another book?

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Maybe I don't think I'm quite ready to write another book,
but I'm not totally writing that off because I did
cut out a lot of material. There was a lot
more to say about my recovery, and I did cut
that out because I wanted this book to be specifically
about the actual cult itself and how that played out.
But then I think there's a lot more about my

(01:35:28):
own process of recovery, Like the thirty years that aren't
in the book essentially, But for now I'm I'm yes,
I'm out promoting the book, and I mean it's all
a little overwhelming, I have to say, because I'm a
private person, so suddenly I put myself in this whole
very public, you know, with the book just being so personal,

(01:35:51):
and I don't know, I feel like I'm in the transition.
I don't know what's next, but I'm feeling inspired and
I just have to figure out what i want to
do next. And I'm still keeping my my business and
I'm still working doing my normal jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:36:06):
So so it's a lot at the moment, it's exciting.
It's exciting. I I'll be interested to find out when
you when you know which direct you are going and
which which way that goes, and until then we could
work together on this big hashtag campaign of hashtag stop
quoting Offshow. That's what I would like everybody to start

(01:36:28):
your social media posts.

Speaker 2 (01:36:30):
We're going to stop quoting oh Show. Okay, I will starty,
I will start yeah, just yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:36):
We don't we just I don't know how those obviously,
those those moments where he is quoted, it still reinforces
his work or endorses his work, but also, like I
don't know, gets people to go out and buy and stuff,
and then there's like a legacy there where money is
being made, and I just it's massive.

Speaker 2 (01:36:56):
I've only touched the tip of the iceburg with that,
but if you just go look, I just saw that
on Instagram. They have millions of followers like and I'm
just going, whoa, And it's all these they put up
these quotes of him speaking, these little videos, and they
are all these quotes and there's no acknowledgment from Ocean
International Foundation that there was harm to the children. Several

(01:37:21):
news outlets have contacted them, and their response is always
the same, like this organization had nothing to do. We
just sell the books. It had nothing to do with
what happened in these other communities. And plus, these perpetrators
that you mentioned aren't part of the community anymore, so
they're very legally protected, and yet it feels to be.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
It really runs me the.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
Wrong way because to me, it's the very opposite of spirituality.
It's the very opposite of spirituality. And yeah, so I'm
sure they're making money. He has two hundred and fifty books. Oh,
show has two one hundred and fifty books in different languages,
and with that many followers, and and I don't know,
I mean, I don't have any proof of it, but

(01:38:04):
it seems like, if anything, the movement is growing in
leaps and bounds.

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
Yeah, it wasn't abuse at himself. So I don't know,
you know, even if people say you know all these
perpetrators that you're like, literally the whole basis of him
as an individual and his movement was based on abuse,
it really was. I don't know how, I don't they
basically the people. This is how I see.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
What I've seen is that the people who are still
to vote it does whether they have two ways of
bypassing his abuse. One is that you the people who
he abused were not children, so they were of age
and it was their choice. They could have said no,
so therefore it was an abuse. And people literally the
woman who spoke out first, she was just raked over

(01:38:50):
the calls by Sonyasance, like you're just making this up,
You're just wanting attention, You're a princess, this kind of thing.
And the other thing is whatever contact. You were lucky
to be that close to the master, and if you
feel abused, that is because you weren't open to the

(01:39:12):
experience or it was your karma. It's an opportunity to
work through your karma. I mean, it goes on and on,
and that's you know, it's the epitome of gas lighting
and spiritual bypass and whitewashing all of it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
Yeah, that is horrendous.

Speaker 2 (01:39:31):
But the children like me that were abused, they have
less license. Even though they still use that stuff, they
can't use it to the same extent because we were
underage and the law is a lot clearer when it
comes to us.

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh well, there's clearly still a
lot of work that needs to be done on getting
the wider public to acknowledge and understand all of this,
and your book is going to contribute to that. Leaps
and bounds. Every single person that speaks out about their

(01:40:06):
experiences are likely experiencing retraumatization, are likely going to be
attacked online or even in person by people that want
to defend this just this man, this mortal being, this
non infallible individual, and that's probably enough to deter people

(01:40:32):
from wanting to speak out about their experiences, and rightly so.
So you have put yourself in such a vulnerable place,
and you've put this whole memoir together and given readers
the opportunity to really understand what happened in this environment,
but also to help us identify the red flags of
when it's happening again somewhere else. Because it is happening,

(01:40:55):
and there are loads of ashrams where there is reported abuse,
the isolation that people experience when they go on these
spiritual retreats, it's still happening, and it's still there, and
the more people read memoirs like yours, the more we'll
be able to protect ourselves against these abusive environments. So

(01:41:17):
it's absolutely incredibly poignant. I sure hope it helps some
people to think twice before they take their kid to
a ashram or a commune. And that's really all the
questions on my list today. There's loads of other stuff
that I wanted to ask you about today, but I've
kept you nearly an hour longer than I plan to,

(01:41:39):
so I will I'll shelf those questions for another time.
I just wanted to ask if there was anything you
wanted to say before we end the call today.

Speaker 2 (01:41:50):
I think the main thing is just I really appreciate
people taking the time to educate themselves about the children
and cultus because just like world world countries sort of
omitted us, I think that the story of abusive children
and cults is often omitted until too late.

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
It's sort of like it's not a red flag prior
to getting involved in some type of guru disciple environment,
and then once you're in, people tend to give their
power over to the guru, and I think their children
then fall into that neglect category, and then they might

(01:42:30):
not know as closely what's happening, and then the indoctrination
is already happening. So you know, there's so much more
I could say about that, but I think it's a
blind spot right there, a sort of exploration and then
people taking their kids along on their own journeys.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
Before I started this podcast, it didn't even occur to
me that some people don't get recruited into cults. Some
people are born and raised in them without that choice
or without going through that coercive experience, or however is
that a person finds themselves in a cult. And I
remember going through that process of realizing, oh, hang on

(01:43:05):
a minute, that's like second, third, fourth generation children born
into these groups and that's a whole invisible demographic. So
that's another thing that your book is going to be
highlighting for people that pick it up and have a read.
So is this Shadow of Enlightenment by Crito Carrol. Thank
you so much for joining us on the show today.

(01:43:26):
Let's keep in touch and keep us posted about what
you plan to do next.

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):
Well, thank you for having me. It was great talking
with you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:34):
Thanks so much, Crito

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S3 E35 The Hidden Children of OSHO: A Conversation with Sarito Carroll

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

S3 E35 The Hidden Children of OSHO: A Conversation with Sarito Carroll

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal