By Ron Evans
In 1981, a growing movement out of India called Rajneesh sought new lands to practice their religion that wasn’t a religion - as they had grown more and more attractive to Westerners and a bit too notorious in India. They decided on an 80,000 acre ranch in rural Antelope, Oregon. The Rajneeshpuram, named after its leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho), grew so fast that it quickly freaked out the locals. All these strangers taking over their neck of the woods, dressed in red, some carrying guns. Their leader looked right out of a cult guru line-up from Central Casting as he drove around the grounds in one of his 93 Rolls Royces. And never very far from Osho, his right hand gal, Ma Anand Sheela with her sheepish grin and imposing presence. Yeah, it was a lot to take in for the townsfolk, and this xenophobia and culture clash would lead to one of the most bizarre sagas the nation has ever seen - criminal investigations, espionage, mass poisonings, naked stuff, a fleeing guru and ultimately the dismantling of the Rajneeshpuram. The bulk of this saga was brilliantly portrayed in the groundbreaking Netflix docu-series Wild Wild Country, which is highly recommended for filling in the details outside this personal account.
On that note…I recently learned that a local man had spent four years as a child in the commune - and funnily enough, I already knew him. Joss Paddock is someone I had chatted with over the years, mostly concerning artistic doings. I met him through his girlfriend, local artist/muralist Sara Hasslinger. The two recently worked together to create the new WENATCHEE mural on the Ave between Mela and the Antique Mall.
Upon learning of Paddock’s history I immediately reached out to talk about a feature for The Comet, not really knowing how thrilled he’d be about the idea. This was a very controversial and polarizing group after all, and this is a small town. I was happy when he not only expressed interest but enthusiasm in sharing his story.
“I consider my time in the commune one of the high points of my life. It was a very loving and creative place. A very intellectual place.” Paddock says with a wide grin.
I hope he someday pens an autobiography so he can properly tell his amazing story in detail. But until then, here’s the abridged tale of a little boy growing up in one of the most famous cult communes in American history.
First things first…let’s talk about the word cult for a moment. Are you offended by it being used in association with Rajneeshpuram?
No, actually I believe in taking that word back. Cult is essentially short for culture. It’s really just used to describe a culture that’s misunderstood or disliked.
How and when did you find yourself in the commune?
Well we were living in Asheville, North Carolina in 1981 - my mom had been into the movement for a while. She had been reading about it and at the time, my parents were heading for divorce. My mom wanted to take me and my sister to the commune and my dad was hoping to keep the marriage and the family together. My mom sorta said look, you can try to stop me or you can come with me. So we all headed to Oregon and joined the commune.
That seems like a pretty abrupt upheaval of your life. How old were you at the time?
I was six when we moved there, my sister was eight. It was pretty crazy really, and when we got there it was such a different way of life. It took a bit of adjusting. And part of the philosophy of the movement was the idea of breaking up the nuclear family model, so we all went there as a family but…you know, things changed instantly when we got there. A lot of people don’t realize - and they didn’t really cover this in the movie - the kids lived apart from the adults. We called it Kids Town. We had renovated an old school, it’s the one you see in the documentary, and we would clean it up and work on making it our home. And we were kind of left to our own devices and we ran all over the place and built these giant tent platforms and we’d shimmy up and all over them. Mostly we just had a lot of fun. There would be some adults circling through now and again and we all had buddy systems for when we were wandering around, the older kids would sorta look after the younger ones. My sister and I were in separate groups. It was a little harder for her because she was older and had been in public school where I was just getting to be that age.
So when would you see your family?
Not very often. Maybe at lunch in the cafeteria, or some of the gatherings.
Wow. That seems like a pretty big thing to leave out of the documentary.
Yeah I wonder if the filmmakers thought that was just a bit too much for people to see. Or they cut it for time, I don’t know. But, after getting used to how things worked there, I thought it was great. We were learning how to be independent and free from certain attachments. And we were kids so we were mostly just playing around, running all over the desert hills. And it worked well for my family because my sister and I didn’t have to watch our parents fighting all the time anymore. It wasn’t like we were told we couldn’t see our parents, we could if we wanted to. But again, it was set up in a way that…you really didn’t need to after a while.
Was there schooling of any kind for the children on the compound?
No, not really school in the normal sense. We were shown how to do certain jobs and we could learn some basic skills so we could help out. It wasn’t like a sweatshop or anything like that. But that was one of the things they (outside the commune) tried to use to shut us down. They said well, these kids aren’t getting what they need so we’re gonna come in and take them away. They tried that angle.
Joss and his mother, Madhurya Paddock, at the commune in 1983
Did they dye all your clothes red as soon as you arrived at the gates?
Well, my parents had already gone to a gathering for the group in California before we moved to Oregon and when they came back they were in red clothes. So they dyed all of our clothes red. Even our underwear.
That’s very thorough. Did the leaders of the group ever explain to you what the red clothing was all about?
It may have been explained to me but I don’t recall. It was odd. I mean…we had gone to a typical public school wearing typical clothes and then to arrive at this sprawling compound was a little strange. And I had imagined it being a big tent or something out in the desert but as you see in the documentary, there were houses and buildings all over the place. It was overwhelming at first.
I suppose it would have felt like going to camp if it weren’t year round, and the population wasn’t always changing so much. There were maybe 1200 people when we moved there. And then at festivals, there were like between 10,000 and 20,000 people in the summer. And I think other than that, maybe it was close to 5000 residents.
I had heard about this group when I was a kid. When my family drove down to Bend, Oregon to visit relatives they’d always say - ‘over there is where Les Schwab lives. And down that way is where that guru lives.’ I, too, only imagined a couple hundred people and some old dude in a tent. Wild Wild Country was the first time I really saw how massive this group got to be.
Yeah. It could be pretty crazy. Far outnumbering the locals in the area.
Were you aware of any of the controversy concerning the locals and how the group was being portrayed in the media?
Not so much with the hostility of the locals. We knew that we had to be careful to some degree about that, and we knew that - famously now - we had a large group of armed people to protect the commune. But they would actually post newspaper clippings around the commune cafeteria with all these stories about us being a scary cult and you know…these people are the most evil people on the planet. So we were all aware how we were being perceived but it wasn’t a daily occurrence of violence or anything. When we were in Antelope I remember some of the locals would try to intimidate us by driving back and forth and standing around with their rifles.
When they would fly the fighter jets over that was something that got our attention. We didn’t have TV but we would sometimes watch movies and one they showed us was The Day After which is about nuclear war. One of the most memorable scenes for me was when you see the missiles going up and it’s like…ok, well World War III has begun. So we would sometimes talk about the possibility of a major attack or disaster and what life would be afterwards. Sometimes we felt targeted I guess.
It didn’t help that you had Sheela going on Ted Koppel and cursing up a storm and being all threatening. And even the stuff with the Rolls Royces - that was all used as a way to make us look like a bunch of crazy people.
The Rolls Royce thing was pretty damn kooky.
That’s kind of what Baghwan wanted, he wanted to sort of be this kooky kind of guy and then he’d say, if all you see are the Rolls Royces then you’ve missed the point. He would almost sound like…this is how we weed some people out. I don’t expect anyone to buy that though [laughs].
There’s footage from a Viha (Rajneesh) documentary (The Way Of The Heart) of Oshso making one of his famous drive-bys as the commune all lined up on the side of the road. At one point he stops and gives a little boy a toy Rolls Royce. That little boy was a 10 year old you.
Yeah. Sheela told my parents their son was gonna be on camera getting this gift. I thought it was gonna be a stuffed animal, that’s what the kids usually got. So they set this up as a bit of a photo-op for the documentary The Way Of The Heart. More of a promotional thing about what the group was about. And so he was kinda like Santa Clause to us. He wasn’t speaking in those days so this was really our interactions with him.
I’m guessing it’s too much to hope that you still have that toy?
No, sadly. I don’t think it ever made it out of the commune. I remember it disappearing in the toy box there.
So after a while in the commune, how were your parents adjusting to not really seeing their children?
My mom was into it. My dad had a harder time with it. But he had a few girlfriends to keep him company.
I find that a fair trade-off.
Honestly, I think my dad was sort of mourning his loss of the American Dream. He never really found a place at the commune. He did end up leaving with someone from there, who’s now my step-mom. My mom also left with someone from the commune when it all disintegrated.
What would you say is the root of what Osho was trying to teach?
To break from attachments. And to be at peace with yourself through meditation. And even though he was this…big deal, you know - a famous leader, he would always talk about how the movement wasn’t about him. He didn’t want us to just make another religion, he wanted the opposite of that. You didn’t need these other things (religion and possessions) to be enlightened, you just needed to find it within. It was about walking away from the trappings of the modern world, really.
What are your thoughts on Sheela? The documentary makes it pretty clear that she was a shit-stirrer. And someone who did a lot of damage to the movement in many ways.
I got chills when I first saw her walking up the hill in the documentary. I was shocked. They found her. They got her to talk for the film. That was a huge get. Honestly, it’s so hard watching her. The way she acts, all the things she did and said. She was so vicious. In the early days all the children would go over to her house for chocolate chip cookies and Coca-Cola. But it’s pretty clear now the kind of person she is. I can still remember watching her plane fly off into the sunset when she left the commune. It was a big day. Kind of a holy shit moment. Things fell apart pretty quickly after that.
Your overall thoughts on Wild Wild Country?
I loved it. And it’s great because I didn’t talk about this very much for so long. It was always like ‘this big crazy cult’ and I could try to tell my story but it was hard to put it into words. And so now I can show this to people and I feel like it does a good job. It does focus a bit on the drama and the palace intrigue of course, but I think overall it’s great. It sometimes felt a little like rewatching old family traumas unfold on TV.
I was glad they showed the stuff about rehoming the homeless people to the commune, the Home Share program. One of my favorite moments from the film was one of those men saying he wasn’t gonna leave until every single last one of the group left. A lot of them found a true home there. Of course it was a very dangerous plan to bring all these people to our home because some of them were clearly psychopaths. And the way they started secretly drugging those people to make them more calm was so disgusting, a complete disregard for these humans. That’s an ugly part of the story.
Was there anything you learned about in the doc series that you never knew about before?
Oh yeah. The chopped up beavers. I never knew that story.
NOTE: You’ll just have to watch the series for this one to make sense.
The film gets into a bit of the more eyebrow raising elements of the commune - specifically, the nude screaming meditation stuff, which looks like the prelude to a David Lynchian orgy. Were the kids ever exposed to any of these kinds of…things?
No, there was nothing like that around the kids. Not in our commune anyway. I have read about some pretty questionable things involving children from one of the communes in India, but that whole thing was a bit wilder and more chaotic than ours. But no, we never…I guess the most sexual thing I could recall from my time there was occasionally you’d hear the sounds of people having sex in their tents somewhere out in the night. But no, nothing I ever saw indicated children were exposed to any of that. There was a lot of French kissing going on with the grown ups though.
I have heard that occasionally there were straight up orgies and I’d believe that. Osho’s thing was…you can’t meditate if you’re too busy thinking about sex all the time. So yeah, go crazy, get it all out of your system and then bring it back to the meditation
Osho drives by in the Rolls Royce in 1983. Photo by Samvado Gunnar Kosattz
Are you still in contact with any of the kids from the commune?
My best friend, Sadhu, is actually from there, we weren’t best friends in the commune but we later became close. He was born into the commune unlike me. He later became the City Manager of Vancouver, British Columbia. But yeah, we’ve stayed in touch through the years and we did a trip to Europe together, visited a bunch of friends there. There’s also a community on Facebook for the current and former members of the group but…that’s a whole different story.
How strange was it to leave the commune and integrate back into a more typical society?
It was a bummer. My sister and I went to Maryland to live with my dad and to go back to public school and all the normal things I guess. I called it suburban hell. But we adjusted. We had a lot of friends from the commune that had a harder time fitting back in. They were even still wearing the red clothes. We kind of just stopped talking about it, because it had become a pretty well known story. We felt like refugees of a good thing.
My mom followed Osho back to India for a while after the commune dissipated. My step-mom, on the other hand, now thinks Osho is burning in hell. That he became an evil man that led them all astray. And a lot of people feel that way because they put him on this pedestal that he couldn’t live up to so they felt cheated or misled.
After college I went to a few intentional communities, as they call them. That’s sort of a catch-all term for a group of people looking to live together and share resources. Communes have a bad name, thanks to some people.
How did you find your way to the Central Washington area?
So I met a girl in South Carolina, in one of these intentional communities, and we ended up moving to Chelan which is where she was born. Chelan really reminded me of where we lived in Oregon. Very similar rolling hills, sagebrush…the smell of sagebrush will always instantly make me think of the commune. There are no juniper trees here though. Anyway, after that relationship ended I started dating Sara who I’d met years before in Chelan, so... here I am.
Have you ever gone back to Antelope as an adult just to see what’s left?
Yeah my dad, step-mom and sister and I decided to drive down there years ago. Maybe around 2005 or so. It’s a Young Life Christian camp now. They have this story that the finger of God came down and burnt up the wicked Osho’s commune and replaced it with a Christian one. It was strange to be there, I’d say at that time at least 90% of the structures from the commune were still there. What I wanna know is if Osho’s parents are still there. They were buried there you know, and he was in a hurry to leave before he got arrested so, I don’t know if he ever had a chance to have them moved.
Do you still pursue spirituality of any sorts these days?
I’m really into meditating. In fact there are a couple groups in Wenatchee I’m a part of that have kind of joined forces in a silent meditation group. Nothing to do with Osho or anything like that, even though he was all about meditation. And there’s a place near the Plaza Super Jet called the Little House Dharma Center - at 400 Yakima street. And anyone is encouraged to join the sessions. You can email Sally@nama1119@hotmail.com for more info about that.
So yeah, I will always take certain things with me from those early years. As I said, it was a highlight of my life. The commune had lots of problems of course and we all know more about that now thanks to Wild Wild Country, but to me it’s the story of home. I don’t expect anyone to agree with how I feel about it all and I understand how strange it looks from the outside, but a lot of that does come from ignorance and fear. Fears that we are all brainwashed lunatics looking to dismantle everyone else’s way of life.
Although, I will say this…Osho once said that if our brains are full of garbage, then maybe brainwashing isn’t such a bad idea.
