Ashram in Poona 1979_ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.mp4

First recorded video inside Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ashram in Poona 1979.(director:Wolfgang Dobrowolny)
This is documentary. Some scenes can be shocking, but this are therapy groups -encounter groups.To release suppressed anger and emotions. This are NOT sexual orgies.
Some parts are in German language and there is story of Swami Satyananda (Jörg Andrees Elten),reporter from German magazine "Stern", who became sannyasin. Here is separate excerpt with English translation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px1ZSI-BxXw
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Last part of german talk is translated like this:
I am here now for three and a half year.

And what did you do before?

I worked for ten years in advertising, in advertisy agencies and film production.

And what are you doing here?

Here I work with the books, i.e. I make the inventory of the books, of the book warehouse, book..., how do you say? (laughs)

And why are you here?

Ah, because of Bhagwan.

And what does this mean?

Yes ... it, yes, I don't know, it is in my heart, I think, I just want to be here, it is incredibly beautiful here and I have the feeling, that here I learn to know myself and that I can drop the problems that I feel inside of me. And it is an incredibly intense situation to live here. I feel I am somehow permanently demanded to go beyond my own limits and to let go of my fears and my tensions.

Do you have still connections to the West?

No. My parents still live there, but I have almost no contact with them.

We filmed you in the encounter group. Can you say something about what you experienced there?

Yes, the main feeling was fear. I simply came into contact with fear itself without having fear of something in particular. Fear itself which was very strong in my body in form of strong tensions and heavy breathing and simply not any more ..., I could not think any more.

At the beginning of the film it looks like a man is raping you or at least overwhelming you. What ..., do you still remember it?

Yes, I remeber it very well. My feeling was that I had not so much to do with it what the man had to do with me. But I felt that apparently I was an object of projection for him. And I feel within me that I can easily be that by the way I behave, the way I look like.

And why you didn't defend yourself?

I didn't feel any aggressions against him. For example I never saw my parents naked. I never had physical contact with my parents. I think we never hugged. I could be absent for months somewhere in holidays. I came back, then there was not even a kiss or so. This whole physical contact wasn't there. I also feel very inhibited to be with many people and then to have to say something or so. I experienced very much passive violence, very much relentlessness, very much really ugly punishments. My father was an army officer, a regular officer, and somehow I felt this whole relentlessness, this whole war, which somehow came down on my brother and me. Well a lot of these very ugly punishments which make children really livid. Not simply open in the way "this is forbidden now, that you can't do." Things from behind, for example not to take us with them in holidays when we did a small thing wrong or so. The father beated the mother and the mother came into the children's room and cried. Then of course the children took sides with the mother because they had no idea what was going on but simply saw the mother with a black eye, such things (laughs). If that hears the mother (laughs).


part 10 of 10, 0:00 - 0:53

What did change in your relationships to people since then, since the group compared to prior?
Hm, yes, I feel generally much more open to people. I have now the feeling that I move into situations that still look delicate but which I avoided totally before. Especially with men. Before I had really a dreadful fear of men and in any contact with a man at once the idea came up that he wants to go to bed with me. Now I dropped this whole fear almost totally and when I like somebody I can make contact with him and can share with him the feeling that I have for him without having at once the idea that he wants to sleep with me. I can simply enjoy to be with him.