 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
My Life in Orange
By Tim Guest
Granta $35.00
 From the age of six to the threshold of his teens, Tim Guest was dragged along by his separated parents, disciples of the canny Indian guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, as they moved through the fast-growing sect's communes on several continents.
In these bizarre settings, the children looked on while the sanyassins obeyed their guru's orders to indulge in self-expressive behaviours, including scream therapy, assaults and free sex, underpinned by an eclectic spiritual menu scripted by Bhagwan who described Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed etc as little more than 'fascists'.
By the mid-1980s he would use the term to deride the once-trusted followers who had fled the 'Rajneeshpuram' ranch in Oregon with millions of dollars, leaving behind plans that included crashing a bomb-laden plane into the local courthouse and poisoning the water supply.
'Things will be different, now the fascists have left and their crimes have been exposed. Sanyassins will dance and sing, they will talk to their families and outside friends again,' he said.
At three, Guest was left behind when his mother, a psychologist, travelled to India and became involved with the emergent Rajneesh sect. Anne, now known as Ma Vismaya ('wonder'), returned clad in orange, their trademark colour, dyed his clothes and gave him a bead necklace and locket with a portrait of Bhagwan.
Then he got a Rajneesh name - Swami Prem Yogesh - and began attending the sect's schools where English and maths were compulsory, but history and politics were banned.
As a letter penned in his teens shows, he was deeply resentful of his mother's actions: "You dragged me off... only because I was your obligation. You had to go on your pathetic little quest for the answer to it all while I, too alone to cry, bounced up and down, confused and hurt."
This book damns the 'flamboyant religious conman' whose advice from a former PR adviser to Ronald Reagan was for Bhagwan to swap his Rolls-Royces - there were 93 on the Oregon commune - for US-made Lincoln Continentals: "If it's good enough for the president, it's good enough for the guru,' the consultant said.
When the ranch was abandoned, sale items included the Rollers, a flight simulator, flotation tanks and Israeli-made assault rifles used by the commandos (who wore surplus East German army berets dyed orange) protecting the man brought down by vanity and his closest acolytes.
He died in near-anonymity in 1990, remembered mostly, it seems, in Byron Bay.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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