Rajneeshees

Rajneeshpuram was an intentional community ( or commune ) of Rajneeshees.

Within three years, the neo-sannyasins ( Rajneesh's followers, also termed Rajneeshees in contemporaneous press reports ) developed a community, turning the ranch from an empty rural property into a city of up to 7, 000 people, complete with typical urban infrastructure such as a fire department, police, restaurants, malls, townhouses, a airstrip, a public transport system using buses, a sewage reclamation plant and a reservoir.

In 1983, a lawsuit was filed by the State of Oregon to invalidate the city's incorporation, and many attempts to expand the city further were legally blocked, prompting followers to attempt to build in nearby Antelope, which was briefly named Rajneesh, when sufficient numbers of Rajneeshees registered to vote there and won a referendum on the subject.

Letters to state newspapers reviled the Rajneeshees, one of them likening Rajneeshpuram to another Sodom and Gomorrha, another referring to them as a " cancer in our midst ".

In time, circulars mixing " hunting humor " with dehumanizing characterizations of Rajneeshees began to appear at gun clubs, turkey shoots and other gatherings ; one of these, circulated widely over the Northwest, declared " an open season on the central eastern Rajneesh, known locally as the Red Rats or Red Vermin.

* Rajneeshees in Oregon – The Untold Story.

" They were also formerly known as Rajneeshees or " Orange People ," because of the orange and later red, maroon and pink clothes they used from 1970 until 1985.

Bob Mullan, a sociologist from the University of East Anglia, states that " at any one time there were about 6, 000 Rajneeshees in Poona, some visiting for weeks or months to do groups or meditations, with about two thousand working and living on a permanent basis in and around the ashram.

In the last week of September 1985, after Sheela had fled in disgrace, Rajneesh declared that the religion of " Rajneeshism " and " Rajneeshees " no longer existed, and that anything bearing the name would be dismantled.

Nearly three quarters of those surveyed attributed their decisions to become Rajneeshees to their love for Osho or his teachings.

When asked to rate how they felt about their lives as Rajneeshees, 93 per cent stated they were " extremely satisfied " or nearly so, most of them choosing the top score on a scale of 0 to 8.

* Rajneeshees in Oregon: The Untold Story – Five-part series in The Oregonian newspaper, April 2011

* List of attacks attributed to the Rajneeshees on the START terrorism database