Andrea Nagel is a South African woman who in an article recounted the
experience she had with the Osho followers when she worked in London.
I was introduced to Chandra Mohan
Jain, also known as Baghwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, more than 20
years ago. The first time I heard his name I was 20 years old and what you
might call a prime target.
Just out of university, and on
the second day of a year of working in London, I was out of my element. I lived
with a friend in the tiny attic of a house full of strangers, sharing a
bathroom, kitchen and land line.
My friend had arrived in London
six months earlier and was at work when the communal phone rang.
"Who's this?" said a
booming voice.
"That's a rude way to say
hello," I answered.
"Who's that?" I asked.
"This is God," came the
response.
"Hello God, I'm Andrea,"
I answered.
"Tell Yasmin I'm coming to
pick her up," he said. ''And I'm taking the two of you to lunch."
Yasmin lived in the room downstairs
and arrived back as I put down the phone. She was in her early 20s, dark and
beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and olive skin. She wore a long red dress
and lots of beads. I wore black with heavy black platform boots.
Soon a tall man in his 50s,
dressed in paprika-coloured robes, his arms covered in red beads and strings,
his head bald, with a long black ponytail extending from the nape of his neck,
swept like a summer thunderstorm into the house. And the two of us were swept
up with him.
He marched us around London
banging on telephone booths. He hit them so coins poured out as if they were
jackpot machines - the heavens were providing.
He said he was half Jamaican, and
a quarter Chinese, quarter Indian. His name was Dr Mohan, a staunch disciple of
Osho, and he was going to save me. I thought he was the most enchanting
creature I'd ever met.
That evening we went to another
disciple's apartment. By that time Mohan had bought me a red dress like
Yasmin's, and I was out of my black.
Only women were in the space and
they busied themselves in the kitchen while we sat on the couch and got deeply
into a conversation about our saviour Osho, and made plans to go to Pune,
India, to Osho's sanctuary.
I was told by one of the women to
sit on the floor at Mohan's feet. He told me that my mother was "a
bitch" who would try to keep me from my true path to purity and spiritual
ecstasy. We watched videos of Osho's teaching for hours and later he cleaned my
aura with a clump of burning sage.
My friend, he said, was a vampire
and I should leave her and join him. He took me into the bathroom to show me my
glowing aura. Then he got naked and invited me into a run bath to baptise me
into glory.
When I refused, he said that 20
years of conditioning had made me shameful of sharing my naked body.
I said that it would take another
20 years to "de-condition" me and that I would like to leave
immediately.
Mohan drove me home and left me
with a vial of pills. I threw them down the toilet. And I never did get to
Pune.
(Source: https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2018-04-14-i-had-a-close-call-with-charismatic-cult-leader-osho)
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