stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

THE MANGO KID 127
Rajneesh has said at some time that underwear interferes
with the passage of energy (Gordon, 1987).
Former mediums claimed to have had sexual contact with
Bhagwan for the purpose of “stimulating our lower chakras”
... and for “orchestrating our energies” (Palmer and Sharma,
1993).
He would manipulate my genitals, masturbate me, but it
was also as if he was rewiring my circuits (in Gordon, 1987).
* * *
There were few legal ways in which a Westerner could earn
money [to stay at the Poona ashram], and before long many
of the girls turned to prostitution....
The other main way of making money in those days was
to mount a drug run (Milne, 1986).
For the same financial reasons,
a large number of strippers working from London’s SoHo to
San Francisco’s North Beach were sannyasins (Strelley,
1987).
In Rajneesh’s parlance, sannyasis/sannyasins were simply initiated
disciples, not seasoned monks as the term would be taken to
refer to in other traditions.
By the late 1970s and early ’80s, this particular “inner city
path to spiritual enlightenment” was beginning to have some predictable
reported side-effects:
Three British sannyasins ... were arrested on smuggling
charges in Paris in 1979. The most ambitious known smuggling
attempt was made in 1979 when fifty kilograms of
marijuana were packed into the frame and furnishings of a
hippie-style bus traveling from [Poona] to Europe. About
twenty disciples had invested in the deal and another twenty
had worked on the bus. The contraband, however, was discovered
in Yugoslavia, and three sannyasins were put in jail
for a year (Mangalwadi, 1992).
One sannyasi murdered another in one of the hut villages
about a mile from the ashram, and another was found