Tim Guest (16 July 1975 – 31 July 2009) (also known as Yogesh and Errol Mysterio) was an English author and journalist.
Tim Guest (16 July 1975 – 31 July 2009) (also known as Yogesh and Errol Mysterio) was an English author and journalist.
When he was four, Guest was left in the UK by his psychologist mother, Anne Geraghty, who went to India and became involved with the emergent Rajneesh movement, founded by the Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, now known as Osho. She returned from her trip dressed all in orange and with a new name: Ma Prem Vismaya, a Sanskrit name which translates as "wonderful love". [1] She dyed Tim's clothes orange and gave him a mala , a bead necklace with picture of Bhagwan. Tim was given the new name—Swami Prem Yogesh, meaning 'Love of Yoga'.[ citation needed ]
Tim and his mother moved to Medina, a large sannyas commune in Suffolk, England that ran from 1981 to 1985, here Tim went to the commune school, where English and maths were compulsory and history and politics were not taught. [2] [3] Guest spent his youth moving between Osho communes in England, India, Germany and the United States, a childhood he was later to describe as "somewhere in between Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies ". [4] [5] [6] [7]
His mother left the movement when he was 11 years old and they returned to London. [8]
He attended Sussex University where he studied psychology, and obtained a MA degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. [8]
Guest had articles published in The Guardian , The Observer and the Telegraph Magazine. [4] He published two books: My Life in Orange (2004) about his early life growing up in the Osho movement; and Second Lives (2008), about virtual communities where he was known as Errol Mysterio. [5] [6] [7] [9]
Guest died in July 2009 after a suspected drug overdose at 34 years old. He was found dead by his wife Jo; despite her effort to resuscitate him she was unable to revive him. [10] [11] Tests found 1,020 micrograms of morphine per litre of blood. [12] Barnet coroners verdict was that he died of non-dependent drug use. [13]
Rajneesh, also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho, was an Indian godman, philosopher, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader during his life. He rejected institutional religions, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious dogma. As a guru, he advocated meditation and taught a unique form called dynamic meditation. Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he advocated that his followers live fully in the world but without attachment to it. In expressing a more progressive attitude to sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".
Rajneeshpuram was a religious intentional community in the northwest United States, located in Wasco County, Oregon. Incorporated as a city between 1981 and 1988, its population consisted entirely of Rajneeshees, followers of the spiritual teacher Rajneesh, later known as Osho.
The Rajneesh movement are people inspired by the Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1931–1990), also known as Osho, particularly initiated disciples who are referred to as "neo-sannyasins". They used to be known as Rajneeshees or "Orange People" because of the orange and later red, maroon and pink clothes they used from 1970 until 1985. Members of the movement are sometimes called Oshoites in the Indian press.
Vinod Khanna was an Indian actor, film producer and politician who is best known for his work in Hindi films; while also being a notable spiritual seeker. In Bollywood, he was the recipient of two Filmfare awards. Khanna was one of the highest-paid stars of his times, along with Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna. He gave competition to Amitabh Bachchan's box office run in late 1970s to early 1980s before taking break from films. After joining politics, he became the MP from the Gurdaspur constituency between 1998–2009 and 2014–2017. In July 2002, Khanna became the minister for Culture and Tourism in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet. Six months later, he became the Minister of State for External Affairs.
Neotantra, navatantra, or tantric sexuality, is a Western new religious movement partially based on Eastern spiritual traditions of Tantra. It includes both New Age and other modern Western interpretations of traditional Hindu and Buddhist tantras with an emphasis on their sexual elements. Some of its proponents refer to ancient and traditional texts and principles, and many others use tantra as a catch-all phrase for sacred sexuality, and may incorporate unorthodox practices. In addition, not all of the elements of Indian tantric practices are used in neotantra, in particular the reliance on a guru.
Paul Lauchlan Faux Heelas is a British sociologist and anthropologist. He is noted for work in the field of spirituality, religion and modernity, with special reference to 'New Age' spiritualities of life. Recent publications and current research explore 'the sacred' and 'the secular'; transgressions of the secular ; 'life force', CAM, and 'spiritual humanism'.
Ma Anand Sheela is an Indian-Swiss woman who was the spokesperson of the Rajneesh movement. In 1986, she was convicted for attempted murder and assault for her role in the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack.
In 1984, 751 people suffered food poisoning in The Dalles, Oregon, United States, due to the deliberate contamination of salad bars at ten local restaurants with Salmonella. A group of prominent followers of Rajneesh led by Ma Anand Sheela had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. The incident was the first and is still the single largest bioterrorist attack in U.S. history.
In 1985, a group of high-ranking Rajneeshees, followers of the Indian mystic Shree Rajneesh, conspired to assassinate Charles Turner, the then-United States Attorney for the District of Oregon. Rajneesh's personal secretary and second-in-command, Ma Anand Sheela, assembled the group after Turner was appointed to investigate illegal activity at the followers' community, Rajneeshpuram. Turner investigated charges of immigration fraud and sham marriages, and later headed the federal prosecution of the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack in The Dalles, Oregon.
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru is an account of a child growing up in the Rajneesh movement led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The book is a firsthand account, written by Tim Guest at the age of 27, years after his experiences. The book was published in 2004 by Granta Books. The book's title is a reference to the term "the orange people", which was used to refer to members of the Rajneesh movement due to the color they dyed their clothes.
Charles H. Turner was an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon. Prior to his presidential appointment as U.S. Attorney, Turner worked under his predecessor, Sidney I. Lezak, for 14 years. He was appointed as Lezak's replacement by President Ronald Reagan.
Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom is a non-fiction book by Catherine Jane Stork about her experiences as a Rajneeshee, a follower of Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. It was published in April 2009 by Pan Macmillan. Stork was raised in Western Australia in a Catholic upbringing, and met her first husband while at university in Perth, Australia. After a psychotherapist introduced Stork to teachings of Rajneesh, she became involved in the movement and moved with her husband to an ashram in Poona, India. Stork later moved to the Rajneesh commune in Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. She became involved in criminal activities while at Rajneeshpuram, participated in an attempted murder against Rajneesh's doctor, and an assassination plot against the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Charles H. Turner. Stork served time in jail but later lived in exile in Germany for 16 years, after a German court had denied extradition to the United States. She returned to the U.S. to face criminal charges after learning of her son's terminal cancer condition. Stork discusses her process of reevaluating the effects her actions within the Rajneesh organization had on other people and on her family.
Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds is a book about virtual community, written by author Tim Guest.
Andy Desmond, now known as Miten, is a British musician known throughout the Yoga and Alternative Healing community for his songs of redemption and transformation. He travels creating meditative evenings of mantra and song to millions of devotees around the world.
Wild Wild Country is a Netflix documentary series about the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), his one-time personal assistant Ma Anand Sheela, and their community of followers in the Rajneeshpuram community located in Wasco County, Oregon, US. It was released on Netflix on March 16, 2018, after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. The title of the series is drawn from the Bill Callahan song "Drover", which features prominently in the final episode, and it also echoes the comments of Jane Stork about first seeing the ranch, shown at the beginning of episode 2: "it was just so wild, so rugged, but vast—really wild country".
Philip John Toelkes, also known as Swami Prem Niren and Philip Niren Toelkes, is an American lawyer and follower of Rajneesh who served as the second mayor of Rajneeshpuram from 1985 until the commune's disbandment in 1986. He served as the personal Lawyer of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Ma Prem Hasya, or Françoise Ruddy or Hasya-Françoise Ruddy, was a French-American follower of Rajneesh who served as his personal secretary after Ma Anand Sheela. She is featured in archive footage in the Netflix documentary series, Wild Wild Country about Rajneesh, and is depicted in the 2022 miniseries The Offer about her then-husband Albert S. Ruddy's experience making The Godfather (1972).
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