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Rajneesh acquires more land and builds more buildings to accommodate more people. He uses the state's own laws against it.
In 1982, Rajneesh held the first "world festival," in July. He invited everyone who wanted to come and worship with him. Television crews attended the gala to broadcast the event to a National audience. Over 6,000 people attended the festival. The townspeople were further alarmed at this influx of "nuts" and hoped they didn’t come to stay. He accepted millions in contributions from his followers, even when contributions came in the form of a Rolls-Royce automobile. He used three of these cars as collateral to buy the Martha Washington Hotel in Portland, which he renamed Hotel Rajneesh. He collected so many vehicles that he created the Rajneesh Modern Car Collection group to manage the cars. Every day, he drove one of the cars into Madras to buy an ice cream soda. Interstate 97 became a tourist trap, with people from all over the country stopping to take a gander at the "Rajneesh show." By the summer of 1982, there were nearly 600 Rajneeshis. The colony now boasted an airport with a 3,200 foot runway with a million-dollar Mitsubishi airplane. They had a greenhouse and plowed fields for growing vegetables, grain, and fruit. The Antelope city council began to worry that Rajneeshpuram would become a serious drain on the city’s resources. When the colony applied for land-use building permits, the county denied the application, declaring that the land was zoned for ranching and farming only. When the colony applied for additional water rights form the John Day River, the city denied that application too. Rajneesh directed his lawyers to study the municipal codes. They discovered that to vote on a city ballot, a person had to own a piece of property, spend 24 hours in town, and declare an intention to become a resident. So Rajneesh bought an old building and had several followers spend the night in it. He picked four converts to run for city council. When elected, these members would issue the required building permits. When the Antelope city council heard of the plan, they tried to disincorporate the town, the first time in state history a town would try to vote itself out of existence. Unfortunately the plan didn’t work because enough Rajneeshis had registered to vote by that time. Their vote kept Antelope incorporated. Shortly afterward, the county held an election. The Rajneeshi citizens helped elect four Rajneeshis onto the city council. At the direction of Rajneesh, they renamed the town of Antelope to Rajneesh, another outrage to the citizens of Antelope. Rajneesh established a private school, which took $50,000 out of the county budget for schools. Antelope citizens were incensed that state funds were used for a private school, especially when their own children were forced to go there because of lack of funding for the public school district. 1000 Friends of Oregon started writing letters to Oregon legislators and newspapers. For more, see Rajneesh Gets Paranoid SOURCES: "Roadside History of Oregon," Bill Gulick, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, MT, 1991. "Great Moments in Oregon History," Win McCormack and Dick Pintarich, ed., excerpted from Oregon Magazine, Portland: New Oregon Publishers, Inc., 1987. Oregonian (Portland, OR), June 30-July 16, 1985.
The copyright of the article The Rajneesh Colony Grows in American History is owned by Elizabeth Gibson. Permission to republish The Rajneesh Colony Grows in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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