op-ed Archives - The Sociable

COVID passport mandates are fueling authoritarian social credit systems, digital identity schemes

28.1K

If there were ever a time in human history where techno-totalitarianism had "a narrow window of opportunity" to enslave all...

Government and Policy Technology

COVID vaccine passports threaten fundamental rights of citizens who opt-out

Tim Hinchliffe1 year ago

25.4K

With COVID vaccine passports being touted by governments, major airlines, and globalist think tanks as the best way to re-open...

Government and Policy Technology

A skeptical look at the ‘great reset’: a technocratic agenda that waited years for a global crisis to exploit

Tim Hinchliffe2 years ago

87.2K

In the face of a global pandemic, an un-elected body of global bureaucrats based in Davos, Switzerland has asked the...

Social Media

Facebook says it doesn’t benefit from hate, but its algorithms tell a different story: op-ed

Tim Hinchliffe2 years ago

5.2K

At a time when huge companies are suspending their advertising campaigns on Facebook, the social media giant claims it doesn't...

Technology

5 ways China weaponizes tech against its own citizens, warning signs: Op-ed

Tim Hinchliffe2 years ago

8.75K

As China weaponizes technology against its own citizens from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, here I present five ways in which...

Social Media

Are you really buying Facebook’s privacy-focused vision? Op-ed

Tim Hinchliffe3 years ago

14.3K

TheFacebook launched on the exact same day DARPA's LifeLog project was reportedly killed. The vision of LifeLog is congruent with...

Brains Byte Back

We explore how our brains, psychology, and society are impacted by the ever-evolving technology that surrounds us. If you want to be better prepared for the new information age, have a healthier relationship with technology, and get more out of life using top technology and psychology hacks, this is the podcast for you! Every other Friday we bring you interviews with leading experts in the fields of technology and psychology combined, with past guest speakers such as New York Times journalists, MIT Professors, and C-suite executives of top tech companies.

You may have heard of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, commonly known as Rajneeshees or sannyasins, from the incredibly popular Netflix documentary “Wild, Wild Country.”

Well in today’s episode we speak with a former follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult to get a better understanding of how this society functioned, what it was like to live in normal society as a member of the cult, and what it was like on the famous Oregon ranch.

With our guest, Annie (who has asked to remain anonymous but showed her mala that she wore during her time as a Rajneshee to prove her affiliation with the cult), we find out how she first find out about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the Rajneeshees, and what inspired her to join their cult, where she goes into great detail about how she found them when she was 16 at an Alcoholics Anonymous event.

She also shares why life as a Rajneeshee was difficult off the ranch in normal society, as society often treated them with a mixture of suspicion, curiosity, and fear. In fact, she was fired from all of her jobs due to her membership in the cult, but she also explains how she saw this as a positive, “a trial by fire” as she claims.

Annie also goes into detail about what it was like visiting the ranch in 1983, when, she believes, much of the footage used in the documentary was filmed. She talks about the important role meditation played in being a Rajneeshee and what a normal day was like on the ranch.

She also shares her thoughts on how accurate the documentary was, how close she came to meeting Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and finally, how she left the cult in the end.

Overall, Annie explains why she doesn’t see the following as a religion or cult, but instead as a community and how this community had such an overall, lasting positive experience in her life.