Media | Rajneesh was a neoreactionary
What’s so bad about living in a wild, wild country?
The documentary series Wild, Wild Country has proved wildly, wildly successful. However, people of a reactionary persuasion should be on their guard with regards to the demonisation of the guru Rajneesh (known as Osho in later life) and his movement in the mass media.
Neoreactionaries and reactionaries are inclined to believe that the mass media in the West is under the control of people who subscribe to a Godless religion, a sort of degraded Christianity, that is unbearably smug and puritanical. This invisible secular religion – followed unconsciously – guards its territory jealously; it is a religion, although the general population just thinks it’s what educated people should think.
This secular religion is a product of “the Cathedral” – the triangular relationship between universities, media, and the state that dominates the West – and it seems to be related in some queer way to the Protestants who stopped believing in a metaphysical God.
The teachings of Rajneesh stand in firm opposition to those of the Cathedral.
Wild, Wild Country is not the first time that Cathedral media has attacked Rajneesh and his movement. In 2004, a book called My Life in Orange was published to great acclaim. It received extensive coverage in Cathedral media: it was published by the prestige imprint Granta and serialised on the BBC.
The book described a childhood in the Rajneesh movement in very unflattering terms. Similarly, Christopher Hitchens – a paragon of the leftist media establishment – also attacked Rajneesh in writing.
In other words, Wild, Wild Country is not the first time the Cathedral media complex has attacked Rajneesh’s group.
This makes me suspicious: why are they so afraid of what this man taught and did?
Rajneesh and his group promoted many ideas that were counter to Cathedral ideology, and his ideas are, in fact, reactionary and neoreactionary in nature.
He was a man who was very much influenced by Nietzsche, DH Lawrence, and Heraclitus, and that should give us a clue to his character – and the implicit nature of his politics.
I am not claiming that Rajneesh was some kind of saint or even remotely good. I am suggesting that what he preached was completely counter-Cathedral in nature. There are a great many killers and nutcases running about the world, but only a small number of these killers and nutcases are selected for demonisation in the mass media – others, those who accord with the hegemonic belief system, are celebrated.
Neoreaction could be very roughly summarised as an authoritarian movement that is anti-democracy, favours the wisdom of nature, and wishes to see decentralised authority replace the sprawling corporate-technocratic states that dominates the world. It favours capitalism and antic individual liberty. Neoreaction is similar to libertarianism, except that it recognises fundamental biological human differences and the need for strict authority and order in government. Neoreaction’s “newness” is attributable to the emphasis it gives to Artificial Intelligence, genetics, and scientific advance in general as a means to enact cold and accurate authority in the world. Otherwise, it retains many similarities with the older streams of reactionary thought.
Keeping this in mind, the following points, derived from his Wikipedia page, illustrate Rajneesh’s reactionary and neoreactionary credentials:
- In his early life, Rajneesh attacked socialism and communism: “In parallel to his university job, he travelled throughout India under the name Acharya Rajneesh (Acharya means teacher or professor; Rajneesh was a nickname he had acquired in childhood), giving lectures critical of socialism, Gandhi and institutional religions. He said that socialism would socialise only poverty, and he described Gandhi as a masochist reactionary who worshipped poverty.”
- Rajneesh endorsed capitalism and science: “What India needed to escape its backwardness was capitalism, science, modern technology and birth control.”
- Rajneesh was not a democrat: “It is not decided by votes what is true; otherwise we could never come to any truth, ever. People will vote for what is comfortable – and lies are very comfortable because you don’t have to do anything about them, you just have to believe. Truth needs great effort, discovery, risk, and it needs you to walk alone on a path that nobody has traveled before.” Your Answers Questioned (2003).
- Rajneesh believed in free speech and telling ethnic jokes: “Many observers noted that Rajneesh’s lecture style changed in the late seventies, becoming less focused intellectually and featuring an increasing number of ethnic or dirty jokes intended to shock or amuse his audience.”
- Rajneesh practiced the patchwork vision of small states advocated by the neoreactionary thinker Moldbug. He attempted to start his own state on land in Oregon. In doing so, he fought against the US government, the media, and NGOs (i.e. elements of what is called the Cathedral in neoreactionary parlance): “On 13 June 1981, Sheela’s husband, John Shelfer, signed a purchase contract to buy property in Oregon for US$5.75 million, and a few days later assigned the property to the US foundation. The property was a 64,229-acre (260 km2) ranch, previously known as. The Big Muddy Ranch. and located across two Oregon counties (Wasco and Jefferson). It was renamed Rancho Rajneesh and Rajneesh moved there on 29 August…In May 1982 the residents of Rancho Rajneesh voted to incorporate it as the city of Rajneeshpuram. The conflict with local residents escalated, with increasingly bitter hostility on both sides, and over the following years, the commune was subject to constant and coordinated pressures from various coalitions of Oregon residents. 1000 Friends of Oregon (an NGO) immediately commenced and then prosecuted over the next six years numerous court and administrative actions to void the incorporation and cause buildings and improvement to be removed. 1000 Friends publicly called for the City to be ‘dismantled’”
- Rajneesh was an anti-Puritan: He repeatedly jokes in his videos that he would prefer to go the hell, since all the interesting and creative people are there. He asserts that creativity is associated with a certain devilish, impish, and destructive element that is not accessible to prudes.
- Rajneesh liked luxury and encouraged people to make money: “He also gained public notoriety for amassing a large collection of Rolls-Royce cars, eventually numbering 93 vehicles. (His stated aim was to have 365, one for each day of the year).”
- Rajneesh feared the collapse: As with many neoreactionaries and reactionaries, Rajneesh was concerned about overpopulation, AIDS (and pandemic disease more generally), nuclear war, and so on. This concern with the biological carrying capacity of the planet is typically rightist and elitist, since it suggests that there might be too many people altogether.
- More praise for the rich: “Rajneesh said that he was ‘the rich man’s guru’ and that material poverty was not a genuine spiritual value.”
- Advocacy of euthanasia and eugenics: “According to Rajneesh, one has no right to knowingly inflict a lifetime of suffering: life should begin only at birth, and even then, ‘If a child is born deaf, dumb, and we cannot do anything, and the parents are willing, the child should be put to eternal sleep’ rather than “take the risk of burdening the earth with a crippled, blind child…He stated that the decision to have a child should be a medical matter, and that oversight of population and genetics must be kept in the realm of science, outside of politicians’ control…He believed that in the right hands, these measures could be used for good: ‘Once we know how to change the program, thousands of possibilities open up. We can give every man and woman the best of everything. There is no need for anyone to suffer unnecessarily. Being retarded, crippled, blind, ugly – all these will be possible to change.’”
To recap, Rajneesh was a man who vehemently opposed socialism and communism, favoured a joyful or ecstatic religious experience in line with a kind of Dyonisiac Nietzschean thought, loved making money and capitalism, told ethnic and dirty jokes, sought to found his own state (exit, as the philosopher Nick Land might say), fought with NGOs and the US government, didn’t believe in democracy, believed in eugenics, and was keen on sex.
This is all reactionary or neoreactionary in practice. All that’s missing is an affection for computing, although, being a technology enthusiast, I’m sure Rajneesh was open to the immense value of computers – perhaps even Artificial Intelligence.
Rajneesh also embodied, somewhat like the media provocateur Milo, the trickster energy of the right. He falls into the category of philosophical entertainer, and even in his indulgences (Rolls-Royces and luxury watches) were not entirely serious. His extravagance was a means of shocking people out of their minds and into their senses.
On the more sinister side, there is a link between Rajneesh and fascism. He was briefly involved with the Axis-aligned Indian National Army during WWII, and his emphasis on pure physicality and priority for the senses and intuition inclines him to the fascist right. His aspiration to combine Eastern and Western approaches to life was also a project of the Nazis – after all, their symbol was shared with Hinduism.
And, even more darkly, there is a recording of Rajneesh praising Hitler. It seems that he never quite gave up his WWII affection for the Axis cause, and he certainly does – if you watch his videos – have a rather dreamy aspect to his character reminiscent of the “medicine man” type of dictator.
However, this is quite characteristic of spiritual movements that embrace the senses over the mind. As with Heraclitus, there is a notion in these movements that everything – even “evil” – must be embraced, since life itself is a perpetual contest between opposing principles. Without the “evil” people, there wouldn’t be a game of “good” and “evil” to play. Those who think in this way see that even evil and catastrophes are necessary moments of renewal for humanity, rather than chances to moralise.
Substantially, however, the reason Rajneesh is condemned and vilified in the mass media is simply due to Cathedral-inspired animus against people who like having a good time and don’t agree with the party line.
Typical neo-Puritanism, or so it seems to me.
