Osho and Rajneeshpuram: The Teaching and the Crimes

He built a body of meditation technique that thousands of people still use every morning, and that a fair number of them find genuinely useful. And his organization, during its four years in rural Oregon, carried out the largest bioterrorism attack in United States history — a deliberate salmonella poisoning that made 751 people ill in a town of about 10,000.

This is an attempt to hold both. What he taught, what the active meditations actually are and how to try one safely, what happened at Rajneeshpuram, who was convicted of what, and the uncomfortable question underneath all of it: what do you do with a practice when the people who handed it to you did something like that?

Who he was

He was born Chandra Mohan Jain in December 1931, in a village in Madhya Pradesh, central India. He studied philosophy and taught it for several years as a university lecturer in Jabalpur — a detail worth keeping, because it explains the register of everything that followed. He argued like an academic who had decided to stop being one.

Through the 1960s he lectured publicly, increasingly provocatively, across India. In the early 1970s he took the title Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and began attracting Western students, whom he called sannyasins. An ashram in Pune followed in 1974, and by the late seventies it had become a fixture on the overland trail for young Europeans and Americans looking for something.

The core teaching: awareness, and "Zorba the Buddha"

The central word is awareness — living consciously rather than reacting mechanically. That idea is not original to him; it runs through most contemplative traditions. What was distinctive was what he attached to it.

He rejected the premise that spiritual life requires renouncing ordinary pleasure. His image for the alternative was "Zorba the Buddha": the earthy, appetite-having, life-enjoying man on one side, the silent meditator on the other, and no contradiction between them. The pitch was that you did not have to choose.

For a Western audience raised on the assumption that holiness means giving things up, this landed hard. It is also, obviously, an extremely attractive proposition, and attractive propositions deserve more scrutiny than they usually get. A good deal of the later trouble grew in the gap between "enjoy your life consciously" and "the rules do not apply here."

The active meditations

This is his most durable contribution, and the part most likely to be useful to you regardless of what you conclude about the rest.

His observation was simple: tell a wound-up modern person to sit still and watch their breath, and they will mostly sit there being wound up. The body has to discharge before stillness is available. So he built techniques that start loud — breathing, shaking, dancing, shouting, laughing — and only then drop into silence.

• Dynamic Meditation. The famous one. Roughly an hour in five stages: rapid chaotic breathing through the nose, then catharsis — whatever wants out, gets out — then jumping with a repeated sound, then an abrupt total freeze wherever you are, then quiet celebration. Traditionally done at sunrise.
• Kundalini Meditation. Gentler, four stages, about an hour: shaking, then free dancing, then sitting still, then lying down. Usually done at the end of the day, and the common recommendation for beginners.
• Nadabrahma. Quietest of the three. Humming, then slow symmetrical hand movements, then stillness. Adapted from an older Tibetan practice.

If you feel	Try	Why
Restless, full of stuck energy	Dynamic	Most physical discharge; built for exactly this
Stuck in your head, overthinking	Kundalini	Shaking interrupts the loop before stillness
Wired and exhausted at once	Kundalini, evening	Designed as a day-closing practice
Already fairly calm, want depth	Nadabrahma	Sound and stillness, minimal exertion

A real safety note, because these are physically strenuous. The first stage of Dynamic is sustained rapid breathing, which is hyperventilation by design. That can cause dizziness, tingling, cramping in the hands, and fainting. If you are pregnant, have a heart condition, high blood pressure, a seizure disorder, a retinal condition, or are managing a psychiatric diagnosis, talk to your doctor before trying it, and consider Kundalini or Nadabrahma instead. Stop if you feel unwell. None of this is a substitute for medical or mental health treatment.

The Science of Self-Realization — $7.95
If the era itself interests you — the decades when Indian teachers came West in numbers and Western students went East — reading the primary literature beats reading about it. This is a different teacher with a very different position from Osho's, which is rather the point: the movements of that period disagreed with each other sharply, and the disagreements are more informative than any summary.

Neo-sannyas: devotion without renunciation

Classical Indian sannyas means renunciation — leaving the householder's world behind. Osho's neo-sannyas inverted it. Stay in the world. Work, love, earn, enjoy. Just stay awake while you do it.

Initiates took a new name, wore ochre or red, and usually a mala with his picture on it. That combination — a new name, a color, a portrait worn at the chest — is worth naming plainly: it is the architecture of a personality cult, and it was in place long before Oregon.

Oregon: how 7,000 people ended up in Wasco County

In 1981 the operation moved to the United States and bought the Big Muddy Ranch, a large stretch of dry rangeland in Wasco County, Oregon. They named it Rajneeshpuram and set about building a city: roads, housing, a farm, a reservoir, an airstrip, a shopping mall, its own police force.

By most measures the construction itself was impressive. It was also immediately in conflict with everyone nearby. Neighboring Antelope, a town of a few dozen mostly elderly residents, found itself politically overwhelmed as sannyasins moved in and took over the town council. Land-use regulators challenged whether a city could legally exist there at all. The conflict escalated for four years and was, throughout, genuinely mutual — the ranch faced real hostility, including threats and an unsolved bombing at a hotel the group owned in Portland.

What the leadership then did went far past anything done to them.

The Dalles, 1984

In the autumn of 1984, facing a county election that could decide the commune's future, members of the inner circle cultivated Salmonella Typhimurium in a laboratory on the ranch and contaminated salad bars at ten restaurants in The Dalles, the county seat.

751 people fell ill. Forty-five were hospitalized. Nobody died, which appears to have been luck rather than restraint. The apparent aim was to sicken enough voters to swing the election.

At the time, health investigators could not establish a cause and the outbreak was provisionally attributed to food handling. It was only when the commune's leadership collapsed the following year, and insiders began talking, that federal and state investigators established what had happened. It remains the largest bioterrorism attack on US soil.

Other plots surfaced in the same investigation, including a scheme to bring large numbers of homeless people to the ranch and register them to vote, and plans against a US Attorney and against a county official. Ma Anand Sheela, his secretary and the commune's chief administrator, was convicted on charges including the poisoning, attempted murder and wiretapping. She served time in federal prison and was released in the late 1980s.

What he was actually charged with

This distinction gets flattened constantly, so it is worth being precise.

Osho was not charged in connection with the salmonella attack. He publicly blamed Sheela and her circle after she left the ranch, and invited investigators in. Sheela in turn maintained he knew. The criminal case against him was immigration fraud — specifically arranging sham marriages to get followers US residency.

In 1985 he entered a plea to two counts, was fined, given a suspended sentence, and deported. He left the United States in November 1985. Several countries then refused him entry, and he eventually returned to Pune.

He took the name Osho in 1989 and died in Pune in January 1990, at 58. The Pune resort continues to operate, and his talks — transcribed rather than written, running to more than 600 volumes — remain in print in many languages.

The honest problem

So: what do you do with the meditations?

The strongest case for keeping them is that techniques are separable from the people who transmit them. Dynamic Meditation is breathing, shaking and sitting still. It does not require believing anything about the man, joining anything, or sending anyone money. Millions of people have done it in living rooms with no connection to any organization, and it either helps them or it does not on its own merits.

The strongest case against is that separability can be a little too convenient. The teaching's most distinctive move — that an awakened person is beyond conventional morality — is not incidental to what happened in Oregon. An organization in which the leader's authority is absolute and ordinary rules are framed as unconsciousness is an organization with a specific, predictable failure mode, and it failed in exactly that way.

A workable position, and the one we would suggest: use the technique, know the history, and be suspicious of the structure rather than the breathing. The warning sign was never the meditation. It was the portrait worn at the chest, the surrendered decision-making, and the idea that this particular group was exempt. Those are transferable red flags, and they are worth carrying into any spiritual setting. Our guide to spotting a bad-faith practitioner covers the commercial version of the same instinct.

Practically: trying Kundalini Meditation this week

Start with Kundalini rather than Dynamic. It is gentler, it is done in the evening, and it needs no one else present.

• Set aside an hour, four quarter-hour stages. Use a timer or one of the freely available stage-marked audio tracks.
• Stage one, shaking. Stand, soften the knees, let the body shake. Do not choreograph it. Fifteen minutes is much longer than it sounds.
• Stage two, dancing. Move however the body wants. No form, no audience.
• Stage three, still. Sit or stand, eyes closed, and watch whatever is happening. This is the part the first two stages were buying you.
• Stage four, lying down. Flat, quiet, eyes closed.
• Write two lines afterward. What was in the shaking, what was left in the stillness. Over a few weeks that record tells you more than any single session.

Do it somewhere you will not worry about being heard, and wear something you can move in. If you live above a neighbor, the shaking stage is the one to be considerate about.

What we don't promise

We do not promise that active meditation releases stored energy, clears trauma, or produces enlightenment. Those are interpretive claims from within the tradition, not demonstrated effects.

We do not promise it will make you calmer. Many people report it does; that is testimony, not evidence, and the practice does not suit everyone.

This is not therapy and not medical treatment, and it does not replace either. If you are working with a mental health professional, tell them before starting an intensive breathing practice.

Describing what he taught is not endorsing him. The crimes set out above are matters of court record, and nothing here is intended to soften them.

Frequently asked questions

Was Osho convicted over the salmonella attack?

No. He was never charged in connection with it. He was charged with immigration fraud over sham marriages arranged to obtain residency for followers, entered a plea to two counts in 1985, was fined and deported. Ma Anand Sheela, his secretary, was convicted on charges including the poisoning and attempted murder, and served federal prison time.

What actually happened at The Dalles in 1984?

Members of the commune's leadership cultivated Salmonella Typhimurium and contaminated salad bars at ten restaurants in The Dalles, Oregon, apparently to suppress turnout in a county election. 751 people became ill and 45 were hospitalized. No one died. It is the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, and it was only identified as deliberate after insiders spoke to investigators in 1985.

Are Osho's meditations safe to do at home?

Kundalini and Nadabrahma are gentle enough for most healthy adults alone at home. Dynamic is more demanding — its first stage is deliberate hyperventilation, which can cause dizziness, tingling, muscle cramping and fainting. Anyone pregnant, with a heart condition, high blood pressure, a seizure disorder or a psychiatric diagnosis should speak to a doctor first and start with a gentler technique.

Do I have to join anything to practice them?

No. The techniques are published, widely described and freely practiced. Stage-marked audio is easy to find. There is no requirement to take a name, wear a color, visit a center or give anyone money, and we would treat pressure to do any of those as a reason to step back.

Did he really own all those Rolls-Royces?

A large fleet, commonly reported at over ninety cars, was assembled at the ranch and became the single most photographed fact about the place. Defenders framed it as a deliberate provocation aimed at Western attitudes to wealth; critics read it as straightforward excess. Both readings have been argued since, and the cars were sold off after the commune collapsed.

Why is he called both Rajneesh and Osho?

They are the same person at different points. Born Chandra Mohan Jain, he took the title Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in the early 1970s, and adopted the name Osho in 1989, the year before he died. Writing about the Oregon period usually uses Rajneesh, because that was the name in use at the time.

Sources and further reading

• United States federal and Oregon state court records from the 1985 and 1986 proceedings, including the immigration case and the prosecutions of commune leadership.
• Public health investigation and subsequent published analyses of the 1984 Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak in The Dalles, Oregon.
• Oregon state and county records relating to Rajneeshpuram, Antelope and the Wasco County land-use disputes.
• Osho International Foundation catalogues for the published discourses and the descriptions of the meditation techniques.
• Contemporary press coverage from Oregon outlets across 1981 to 1985.

Related reading: kundalini awakening symptoms and the signs of spiritual bypassing.