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Summary
Summary
At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy, and sexual freedom, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, preaching from a dentist's chair, and collecting Rolls Royces.
Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. While his mother worked tirelessly for the cause, Tim-or Yogesh, as he was now called-lived a life of well-meaning but woefully misguided neglect in various communes in England, Oregon, India, and Germany.
In 1985 the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
British journalist Guest recalls the toll taken by his childhood in a commune devoted to the teachings of notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh. Torn between her conflicting desires for ecstasy and paradise, the author's mother moved from devout Catholicism as a child to Marxism, feminism, and eventually a Bhagwan commune. She never married Guest's father, an academic who later relocated to teach in California, and was a loving but troubled mother. In 1979, when Tim was three, she heard a tape of the guru talking "about joy, about bliss, about an end to fear and pain." She became increasingly involved with Bhagwan's British acolytes, went to India to meet him, then took her six-year-old son with her when she joined an ashram outside Bombay. From then until the late 1980s (when Bhagwan fled an indictment in the US, and his followers fell apart), Guest's life was controlled by the cult. He poignantly describes a world turned upside down, a world in which the adults behaved like children, following their bliss with unlimited sex and drugs (until the Bhagwan became obsessed with AIDS) while their neglected offspring struggled to raise themselves and take care of one another. Guest movingly details a lonely childhood spent at communes in London, Devon, India, Oregon, and Germany. His mother moved frequently and performed exhausting manual work as she strove to obey the sect's increasingly draconian dictates. He missed having her come to say goodnight to him, cuddle him, or read to him. He wanted to be with a parent, not a group, and he resented the numerous rules: obligatory worship, restricted diet, confiscation of his books and stuffed animals. Adolescence was rocky, though by then his mother had grown disillusioned with the Bhagwan, who once owned 93 Rolls Royces, lots of expensive jewelry, and 21 assault rifles. A rightly disturbing record of malignant child neglect by people who sought a heaven, but made a hell. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
