"God Sir" at Esalen East

India's ex-sex guru tries instant sanyas

Bald bearded and photogenic. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was once known as India's sex guru. At Mount Abu, the hill resort in Rajasthan where he operated from 1969 to 1974, he dispensed tantric yoga, chanting and meditation. Western pilgrims would sometimes doff all their clothes and wriggle in ecstasy, while the more inhibited Indians stripped down to their underwear. Photographers clicked merrily away without hindrance.

As permissiveness spread, Westerners felt less need to travel to India to shed inhibitions with spiritual sanction. So the swami of sex began tailoring his program to the psychospiritual circuit, catering to graduates of the "human potential" movement who felt that the movement's potential--and their own--had reached a dead end. Refugee experts from encounter groups, Rolfing massage and other please-touch techniques began making the pilgrimage and offering Rajneesh their talents. Since 1974, when the lushly gardened Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Ashram opened in the sedate city of Poona, more than 50,000 seekers have gone, mostly from the U.S., Britain and West Germany. Among recent visitors: Actor Terence Stamp, Singer Diana Ross and the Marquis of Bath. Now the guru is instructing his best-connected disciple yet: Richard Price, co-founder and director of the Esalen Institute, the very fount of the encounter craze. Price will return to the Big Sur, Calif., center in mid-January to apply the teachings of his new master.

Those teachings are mostly pop-Hinduism and anything-goes homilies. "I don't profess anything," Rajneesh says. The charm seems to lie in the guru's dramatic presence and the hope of an easy way to Eastern enlightenment. In ancient Hindu tradition, a sanyasi is a holy man who studies and meditates for years before he renounces the world. The Poona guru offers the blissful state of sanyas immediately, and calls it "neo-sanyas." Says he: "Westerners want things quickly, so we give it to them right away."

Esalen's Price received his neo-sanyas by cable to California. But all others must undergo the elaborate ceremony led by Rajneesh himself. They buy orange robes at the ashram's boutique, then wash thoroughly. No one may approach the asthmatic guru with any trace of dust, perfume or hair oil. Two tall blonde vestals at the gate carefully sniff at all who seek entrance. A single cough during the rite can be the cause for ejection. Then, reports TIME'S New Delhi bureau chief,

Lawrence Malkin, the screened initiates are placed in the lotus position on the hard terrazzo veranda. Rajneesh enters in a floor-length white robe. One by one, the candidates for instant sanyas prostrate themselves before him and receive a 108-bead mala (necklace) with the guru's plastic-covered picture dangling like a locket, and a personalized tidbit of wisdom from the guru's lips. (To a psychotherapist: "You will need much work because a psychiatrist is more puzzled in a way than a psychotic. Lose control. Let it happen.") Each apostle also receives a new name. Henceforth Richard Price will be Swami Geet Govind. One unfortunate drew the name Krishna Christ.

In the initiations and in morning discourses attended by 1,000 or more motionless visitors, Rajneesh is a master of psychodrama. As he explained bluntly to Malkin, "The whole abracadabra is just to console you. It is a toy. The purpose of sanyas is so that you go on hanging around, so that a single sound from me, or just a look, will bring you that moment of enlightenment." So potent is that effect that most of the ashram's 200 permanent residents no longer bother to listen to the guru's words. "It's the presence that matters," says one.

The master was born 46 years ago as Rajneesh Chandra Mohan in a small village in Madhya Pradesh province. Raised in the Jain religion, he worked as a journalist, photographer, and teacher of philosophy at Madhya State University before becoming a spiritual master in 1966. Today the Poona center is growing so swiftly that he is looking for roomier quarters. Rajneesh's lectures are taped and turned into a steady stream of books. One title: Above All, Don't Wobble. Rajneesh centers now operate in 22 nations.

The staff at Poona, whose only remuneration is free room and board, includes a range of behavior therapists whose services are urged on initiates by the master. Some of their courses are taxing indeed. Ma Prem Amida. who once conducted Arica therapy in the U.S. under the name of Enid Stevens, offers Intensive Enlightenment. Group members sit opposite partners and for 17 hours take turns in five-minute bouts answering the often painful question. "Who am I?" For three days, all other subjects are forbidden.

A week in the presence of "God Sir" can be had for well under $100, including a gourmet vegetarian diet. Typically the Poona seekers are in their late 20s, or older, searching frantically for spiritual answers. Ma Prem Ida, who dropped out after 15 years as a Las Vegas waitress, then tried est, says, "I want to get out of myself, have fun with myself, do what my feelings tell me." A 35-year-old psychotherapist named Tim who practices in the Midwest found his techniques running dry and is searching for what he calls "radical autonomy." America, he says, is "an emotional desert. That's why they come out here." The ashram's new publicist, Swami Krishna Prem, a former Montreal ad writer, says, "We're not really in India. We could be anywhere." And save a lot on air fare too.

*Roughly translatable as "God Sir" Rajneesh.

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