In case you've been living under a rock (for which I'd be the last person to judge you, since I don't even get NPR out here), Netflix recently released a documentary series that received quite a bit of buzz called "Wild Wild Country". It centers, fittingly, around a yoga cult that had its heyday in 1980s Oregon. And since a central question of my experience here has been "wait so, I haven't accidentally joined a yoga cult, right?", I obviously had to binge-watch the whole 7-episode arc over the course of a few days, digest the experience, then write about it.

If you're not familiar with the show or the history it follows, and I highly recommend you see "Wild Wild Country" because it's a good story exquisitely told (from a couple of perspectives, anyway), my editorialized 20-second distillation is: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho) rose to popularity in India in the 1970s with his ashram in Pune, riding a wave of surging spiritual tourism by Westerners. Some stuff happened in India between Rajneesh and the government, so further expansion was planned for the US. The whole merry band of "Rajneeshees" moved to the (highly conservative, heretofore sleepy) middle of nowhere in Oregon, where they threw raucous orgies, eventually armed themselves with semiautomatic weapons and tried to poison a town with biological weapons, and generally caused a huge ruckus until they eventually flamed out in a blaze of legal troubles and high-profile finger pointing.

Given the sheer volume of yoga scandals and cult blowups (literal and figurative) we've seen in recent years, it's worth reflecting on the Rajneeshees' saga and how we might avoid their plight. It's also worth reflecting on what I've seen here so far, on what can go really really well when a group unites around a shared intention. I am by no means an authority on the subject, but I think it says something that the Himalayan Institute has been in continuous operation in America for almost 50 years. That's longer than Microsoft. It's twice as long as Justin Bieber has been on the planet. So I feel like whatever it is we're doing, it's got some legs to it, and what follows are my highlights and conclusions, if you're going to start a collective or commune or movement, on how to do it right.

Make friends with the locals

This seems pretty obvious on the surface, but I think there's an urge, when you're really excited about a new idea that's gathering a lot of momentum, to ram it down people's throats before they are necessarily ready. But as The Supremes so wisely instructed, "you can't hurry love." No, you just have to wait. And as you do so, it's enormously helpful to make peace with the surrounding community. The central tension of "Wild Wild Country" occurs between the Rajneeshees and the straight-laced, small-town Oregonian natives whose land they invaded, a war the documentary would have you believe led to their ultimate demise. The newcomers flaunted their difference, strutting around town in the nude and going on talk shows to decry the ignorance of the local populace. By contrast, our Retreat Center director is known as the honorary mayor of Honesdale (nearest town) and we regularly host local career fairs and service club meetings. This is a deliberate choice and the result of decades of relationship building; Pandit Rajmani Tigunait ("Panditji", as we call him, Spiritual Head of the Himalayan Institute) talked before Easter dinner about how we've worked tirelessly over the years to avoid being known as the "cult on the hill".

Obey the laws

If you want to avoid getting in trouble, it's best to avoid breaking the rules to begin with. If for no reason other than to prevent your enemies from gaining more ammunition with which to attack you, it's generally a good idea to stay on the right side of the law. Osho's group was accused of a bunch of crimes in its day (some of which they admitted to, some of which remain alleged), not limited to immigration and voter fraud, the aforementioned bioterrorism incident, and attempted murder. But following the rules doesn't just mean staying clear of law enforcement, it also means sticking to the guidelines your group was founded upon to begin with. The yamas and niyamas form, if you will, the 10 Commandments of yoga, and a cursory review of these basic tenets will tell you that somewhere along the way, the Rajneeshees went off the rails. Honestly, if you follow those ten simple principles (which are, incidentally, posted in our kitchen, which is typically the likeliest place for things to get out of hand), you're unlikely to commit any felonies anyway.

Work industriously

This is actually a place where I think the Rajneeshees were onto something. They built a town from nothing into a thriving center of commerce and production in a matter of months. Osho wrote dozens of books, some of which I've read (all of those were powerful, succinct, and clearly the work of a master, which makes the rest of the story all the more puzzling) and many of which were and continue to be bestsellers. They continue to run the "Esalen of the East" in India at their old Pune ashram. And like our cultish cousins, we stay busy as well, running our own publishing house and retreat center, carrying out several humanitarian missions abroad, putting out tons of content on our website (which is what I do here now!), and introducing the West to the joy of nose teapots and launching and spinning off Yoga International along the way. It's easier to gain traction when you're contributing tangible things to society, and besides, you know what they say about idle hands.

Be boring

Getting mild at the Himalayan Institute during a recent power outage.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it helps to just be lame. It's a lot harder to cause controversy when your philosophical bedrock is the practice of relaxation, you're going to bed at 10pm every night and keeping a dry campus, and your side hustle is a chocolate and coffee producer. It doesn't make you immune to scandals (yes, we had our own #metoo moment in the early 1990s), but generally putting people to sleep makes the scandals much less likely to gain traction. If you're patient, you can actually build a network of highly motivated people who may not be the life of the party, but just might spark a revolution.

And now, some fun facts!

Rajneesh apparently learned pranayama (yogic breathing) from Swami Rama, founder of the Himalayan Institute. According to Swamiji, Rajneesh was one of his quickest students ever to master the practice.
A couple of the teachers here went to Rajneeshpuram, either as aspirants or just as tourists after the whole thing went down. My general sense is everyone here thinks the Rajneeshees went pretty far off the deep end, but most people are down with Osho's general teachings/books. Aside from the weird free love stuff.
I'm still reasonably sure I haven't accidentally joined a yoga cult.