Highly recommend “Wild Wild Country”. Excellent documentary about the Bhagwan cult and happenings related to its movement into and establishment of a huge settlement in rural Oregon in the 1980s.. I recall seeing newscasts about some of the events back in the day, and how thousands of people followed this Indian guru as some of kind of new messiah. And laughed at the time that his followers didn’t think it fraudulent thayt he needed so many Rolls Royces (eventually over 20) and diamond watches.
But never learned what exactly happened to that community/cult until now.
P.S. For the literary minded: John Updike’s 1988 novel “S.” is loosely based on this cult, centered around the experiences of the female protagonist, an America WASP who joins a similar cult, and rising within to the point of significance and closeness to the cult leader. If you aren’t familiar with Updike, he was such a tremendous writer, amazingly gifted at putting the reader deeply into the mind of the characters. And IMO, he did so even the female protagonist of this story.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98110.S_
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
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