Apollo BBS Archive

Apollo BBS Archive - June 4-5, 1998


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Message: 3568
Author: $ James Taranto
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Ann
Date: 06/03/88  Time: 20:37:47

Yes, yes, yes, the Rajneesh commune was just wonderful.  No crime, they grew
their own food, and best of all--everyone was the same!

Message: 3569
Author: $ James Taranto
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Burkhart
Date: 06/03/88  Time: 20:38:06

The plural of "kibbutz" is "kibbutzim."

Message: 3570
Author: $ James Taranto
Category: Question?
Subject: Rod
Date: 06/03/88  Time: 20:38:41

What exactly is your complaint about our society?

Message: 3571
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Question?
Subject: JT/Rajneeshes
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 06:18:18

The same what? =*--ANN--*=

Message: 3

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Subject:JT/Ann/Same

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 1:        All people who attend Catholic schools are the same, eh?
 2:end

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Subject:JT/Society

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 1:        It's not our society, it is our world.  I don't much like it, I 
 2:think people are too afraid of physical death and they allow all sorts of 
 3:things to happen to them in order to avoid it.  We have a wimp world. 
 4:        People, most people that is, will freak out at the though of dying, 
 5:go insane and I think that is one of the problems we earthlings have.  Our 
 6:quality of life directly reflects this fear.  
 7:        We are too ignorant of a species at this time to have a fun, 
 8:workable world. 
 9:        Although mankind is evolving, it seems like thick syrup.  
10:        Knowledge is pain, Ignorance is bliss, Oh well.
11:                                Rod
12:end

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 4:        People, most people that is, will freak out at the though of dying,
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 4:        People, most people that is, will freak out at the thought of dying,
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Message: 3572
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Question?
Subject: Where is ......
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 06:30:16

..... Zak Woodruff? School is out and he should be on Apollo now!
=*--ANN--*=

Message: 3573
Author: $ James Hawley
Category: Answer!
Subject: Last
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 08:02:02

I heard he was working so he could buy some materials for a project of his.

I wonder what it could be.

Message: 3574
Author: $ David Burkhart
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: last
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 16:39:45

Yeah, I heard he was spotted at Standard Brands buying some red paint.

Message: 3575
Author: $ Dean Hathaway
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Rod/Evolving
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 17:14:53

  Yes, that is the correct answer, but this was not the correct question.
  See you later,
     Dean H.

Message: 3576
Author: $ Dean Hathaway
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Ann/Bigotry
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 17:21:02

  Hogwash. They met resistance because of their deeds. Claiming that the
cult members should not be held responsible for the acts of their
leadership is ridiculous.
  See you later,
     Dean H.

Message: 3577
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Dean/last
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 18:07:07

In this sig. you missed my point too. These people DID NOT KNOW WHAT WAS
GOING ON! My daughter was right at the top - very close to Bhagwan and the
people who did those things - yet, she did not know. If she had of, she
would have reported them and left. Poisoning people was not the daily
fare! In fact - they were gaining legally when this happened. It just wasn't
going fast enough to suit those in power. Hatred, spite, murder was not
Bhagwan's teachings. He might have felt this way - but the members did not.
He might have been one gigantic fake - who knows, who cares? My point was -
they made a working community there that had a wonderful future and proved
it could be done - that mankind from all walks of life and race could and
did live together in harmony. There was a lot wrong with it, but sure a lot
right too. At least they were doing something they wanted to do with their
lives. See you =*--ANN--*=

Message: 3578
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: James/David
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 18:09:42

Project? Red paint? Oh no! Not again! I'm locking my gate at night.
=*--ANN--*=

Message: 3579
Author: $ Apollo SYSOP
Category: BEHOLD! .....
Subject: End of School Year
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 20:48:54

        For all you users that had a successful School Year I give you a
hardy Congrats for a Job well done!

        For those of you who failed... see the mos SIG message # 1331

SYSOP

Message: 3580
Author: $ James Taranto
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Ann
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 21:07:55

If the Rajneeshees didn't know what was going on, it was only in the sense
that they were deceiving themselves.  I visited the commune in 1985 and was
rather taken with it myself, so I have some personal insight into the
psychology that was at play.  I was rather dissatisfied with my life at the
time, and my interest in Rajneesheeism was a way of rebelling against a
society that I blamed for my own dissatisfaction.  The members of the cult,
I think, had the same problem I did, only it was much more severe.  (I was
wise enough not to actually get involved with it, though I did for a while
credulously believe patently false rationalizations, such as the claim that
Rajneeshees all dressed the same because they all just wanted to dress that
way.)  The Rajneeshees were a bunch of basically sad people who were unable
to find any purpose in their lives in the real world, so they set off in
search of a utopia.  Having invested not only all their possessions but also
their lives in the cult, they had a clear interest in hiding--from others as
well as from themselves--the truth about the commune.  Their self-esteem was
entirely dependent upon the belief that they had found paradise.  They had
not, of course--there was not a single good thing about the entire
enterprise.  It was intellctually bankrupt, it stressed mindless conformity
rather than individual creativity, and it was far from economically
self-sufficient.  But these unfortunate folks wanted utopia, and when
someone wants a utopia, little things like the truth simply won't get in his
way.  The fact that these people were so tragic may mitigate their
involvement in the wrongdoing somewhat, but it certainly doesn't excuse it.

Message: 3581
Author: $ Jim Lippard
Category: Chit-Chat
Subject: Gray meets Rajneesh
Date: 06/04/88  Time: 21:44:25

From "47 Beds" in _Sex and Death to the Age 14_:
   At last I was about to get an introduction to the tantric master, Gopi
Krishna, who was said to be one of the last great tantric gurus in India. 
But when I got to his ashram in Kashmir, it turned out that he was in the
Poconos for the summer.  So I shot off to Poona, another town in India,
which I thought would be a good place to go because the name sounded so sexy
and that old reprobate Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had an ashram there.  Some
Indians I met in Bombay had  told me that they never even would look inside
the ashram gate for fear of the orgies they would see.  I thought: That
sounds tempting.
   Maybe you've heard about Rajneesh.  After he left Poona he started Rancho
Rajneesh, an ashram about the size of the state of Rhode Island in Oregon
and later fled the U.S., but at the time I was in India he was residing in
Poona and advocating a kind of special sexual liberation practice for
Westerners.  His theory was that Westerners are all hung up on sex and that
we really have to just do it a lot and get it out of our systems so that we
can get on to something bigger and better.  I was wondering what that bigger
and better thing was.
   So he was running work shops in which he'd say, "Now we're going to turn
outthe lights and you just go to tow