I really enjoyed this series. Again, I know the whole "I had no clue about this quirky piece of American history!" is a large part of the pull, but still...it's true! I brought it up to my dad to watch it and he had no clue what I was talking about either. I think that episodes 1 and 6 (first and last) were the weakest, but was thoroughly gripped for 2-3-4-5. One thing I will say that anyone who enjoyed this show should do is take about 45 minutes to read this piece in the New Republic. It's written by the journalist in the series who broke all the big stories about Rajneesh for The Oregonian in the 80's. It talks about a lot of stuff that the documentary doesn't cover (child abuse, sexual abuse, drug smuggling) that provides a little more context to the cult's time at both Pune in India and Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. Outside the Limits of the Human Imagination
lol. Seeing all these people having a good time smiling and then these old white fucks in their town of 45 people talking about how terrible they are. Sit the fuck down, ya silvertooth bitch.
How does this compare to the cult doc from a few years ago, HOLY HELL? The bend of that one is sexual in nature and mind fuckery.
This is crazier in terms of size of the cult, what they do, and more interesting in terms of scope. I think I liked Holy Hell more because it felt so much more personal being written, directed and narrated by a member of the Buddhafield. If you like one you're sure to like the other.
I finished it already. That's still my response at the end. I hated those townspeople so much. The fact they call it "their town" oof
I still find it so hilarious that when Antelope was trying to do something about the Rajneesh they just threw around some "fuck you money" and bought over half the town Awful because down with capitalism etc but I laughed so hard
That's why it's hilarious that they try to use the red scare commie BS as an excuse, it's literally the totally opposite thing ya doofs. It made me laugh every single time. I wish someone made a montage of them in a video, would be faved.
Apparently, population then was 48 people and if you look now it's 46 people... I was like "what happened to those two people?!?" Haha
I hated those people too. In hindsight, maybe they were right, but they were still extremely prejudice.
Uggh I HATE that you can say “in hindsight, maybe they were right” like UGH I just wanted the commune to be happy and pure and NOT fuck up so that all those bigots felt justified in their bigotry. I hate that it IS now something people point to as an example and say “THIS is exactly why we didn’t want them here” cause that’s not why they didn’t want them there. They didn’t want them there because they were (mostly) brown, and different.
Oh no, for sure. I'm definitely not trying to justify their bigotry. They didn't care about equality or faireness, they just didn't want different people "taking over" their town. I was 100000% on the side of the Rajneesh through the first few episodes. It sucks that they turned out to have some bad seeds in the bunch, but in the beginning they did nothing wrong and the townspeople were shitheads.
I feel bad for the majority of the followers. I'm sure there are/were a TON of people that are just lost and trying to find something to make them not want to kill themselves. Then they think they find it and it turns out that it's ran by lunatics. Talk about a bummer.
I've been thinking about this documentary since I watched it. Feel like all of the shitty stuff the Rajneesh did was a reaction to the town people trying to push them out. Maybe if Antelope wouldn't have been so shitty and just let them have their commune off in the middle of nowhere then none of this would have happened! The townspeople are 100% the villains of this story to me