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Interview By Allan Hartley
The individual inner journey led this young man from Hemet, California to India and a connection with his master that given him guidance, peace and joy. For ten years he has lived the Rajneesh master-disciple relationship. This is a story of the personal experience, different from the many reports given about the Rajneesh movement as a whole. This is part one of a two part interview with Randy S.
In August 1977, Randy S. attended a lecture/demonstration entitled “Surrender: An Eastern Approach to Wholeness and Health” sponsored by the Integral Life Center (Living Light, Inc.) in Hemet, California. It was given by a Rajneesh sannyasin (disciple or renunciate) Shanti (Aleph Green) who had just returned from India and had opened a Rajneesh Center in Escondido, California
She shared with those present techniques in breathing, movement, and visualization. What I remember most, though, was how she got everyone there to participate in a “chaotic” meditation of shouting, jumping, flailing the arms, etc. After this strenuous workout one was supposed to be in touch with feelings, vibrations, breathing, thoughts, and eventual movement toward calmness.
Randy is back in Hemet, visiting his parents, where he started from ten years earlier. During the intervening years he became a disciple of Rajneesh, went to India twice, lived on the east coast with other Rajneesh disciples and helped develop the ranch in Oregon.
In a way, I felt somewhat responsible for him making the connection with Rajneesh (I was head of the Integral Life Center at the time), so I wanted to find out from him first hand about what the media were saying about Rajneesh and therapies that border on violence, free sex, and about some of the confrontations with the townspeople in Oregon, and the problems resulting from the mismanagement of the ranch. I was more interested though, in whether he found what he was looking for and how he felt about his ten years with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Randy gave me the New Yorker magazine for September 22 and 29, 1986 to read as background information. It is probably the definitive (two part) article on the whole Rajneesh experience.
Pers: How did it all begin: What were you looking for?
Randy: At that point in time (1977) I didn’t know what was in store, but I knew something was going to happen other than going to college and starting a career, spending years doing that. I knew something else was going to happen and I was basically waiting and looking around and when this seminar took place it rang a bell. Not long after that I went to India.
Pers: That first trip to India must have been especially memorable because you met Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, were initiated, given the name Swami Prem Swahil and became a sannyasin.
Randy: It certainly was memorable. I never regretted doing it and would do it again if it was all to do over. It is hard for me to explain the master-disciple relationship. I love him and am devoted to him, but I’m not a zombie or anyway in his control or power. It’s a unique relationship, the master-disciple relationship. Basically I feel that he is somewhere at the peak of humanity, the highest a human can reach and he may be able to show me ways to reach that space myself. But not that I’m following him or any way emulating him, it’s just a matter of him helping me to find my own way.
Pers: What is this special quality that the spiritual teachers in India have that inspires a master-disciple relationship?
Randy: I personally feel Bhagwan is enlightened.
Pers: What did you do for those four months you were in India in 1978?
Randy: Bhagwan spoke every morning. Then he went back to his house and the rest of us would go to groups or to work. The groups were mostly quite playful, just relaxing and enjoying ourselves and having a good time. It was not heavy violent like you heard on the news. Nothing I went through was of that type at all.
Pers: Who ran the groups?
Randy: Therapists. All of them were either American, English or German. Bhagwan also spoke to a smaller group every evening and that’s when he initiated disciples. It was a much smaller group in the evening. You would get to go see him then, and he would answer questions and say hello to those who were just arriving and good bye to those who were leaving. A Much more intimate thing. In the morning he spoke to thousands of people. In the evening there were just a few hundred.
And at different times of the day various things were happening, such as Sufi dancing. There was always live music at night and dancing. It was quite joyful, playful, relaxed atmosphere. That was from my view, my standpoint. Other people had different experiences.
Pers: The people that had different experiences, did they attend the same sessions as you did?
Randy: No, it was all individual. After the first three days I got to see Bhagwan in the evening and he asked me a few questions. He asked me if I wanted to become a disciple. I said, yes, and he gave me a new name and then he spoke another few minutes about my name and about what was happening in my life. And then he said, “Do these few groups.”
Pers: He selected the groups that you were to go to?
Randy: At that time, yes. He said to do this, this, and this. So in that sense it’s individual. Some people could choose their groups. I could have also. He said, “Do this and come back.”
Pers: The Bhagwan could select for someone else or an individual could choose to go to a group that was more confrontive. Is that true?
Randy: They could have gone to an encounter. The only really confrontive group was called the encounter group. Any time, I could have done that also.
Pers: But it seems that he was suggesting because of your nature that you go to the particular group you went to.
Randy: Right. Apparently, yes.
Pers: What were the meditations?
Randy: Bhagwan created some unique meditations. He basically said, “The ancient meditations no longer help modern man. Modern man has too many tensions, neurosis and problems to be dealt with by sitting silently watching your breath.” He said, We need first purge the system of all these anxieties.” That’s why he created a number of chaotic (or dynamic) meditations which did that.
Pers: What makes it different from other meditations is that it is more active? Is that right?
Randy: Yes, that particular one. Actually he has a book of hundreds of meditations for different needs, reasons or people.
Pers: Could you choose different Meditations?
Randy: Yes. He always said, “Find the one that works best for you.”
Pers: Then did you stick with one?
Randy: It’s not like that. It’s not so rigid. It’s mainly a learning process. It’s been a few months since I’ve done one of his formal meditations but in a sense I feel that much of my day is spent meditatively.
Pers: In the same way Krishnamurti talked about?
Randy: I’m sure it’s the same way. My work I do is very creative and it’s meditative, and I love what I am doing (building and landscaping). That’s the bottom line, now. Anybody that loves what they are doing and are totally into it—in some sense that’s meditation.
Editor’s note: There is a challenge to those of us who adhere to the principles of unity, brotherhood, and the belief and value in a diversity of paths. We need not respond with emotional fears and prejudices encouraged by the press about the Rajneesh experiment in communal living that showed in the end it couldn’t be done, and that the power of some of its management leaders were corrupted. Nevertheless if we are willing to look beyond this at the individual’s experience, we can find similarities to our own path and even receive valuable insights that we wouldn’t have anticipated at first.
Read the second part of the interview in our June 1987 issue. |
