small business Archives

DARPA is launching an accelerator for small businesses

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Business

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When Microsoft Excel was first released, it became an essential for big businesses and helped many companies move quickly into...

Business

Digital Marketing for Small Businesses

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When you think of marketing, you tend to bring up pictures of big, high-budget campaigns. As a small business, investment...

Business Technology

An honest payments solution to help SMBs grow combining great tech with security

Tim Hinchliffe5 years ago

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For small to medium-sized business owners, having a trustworthy payments solution is crucial not only for growth, but for protection against fraud...

Business

5 Ways Europe Prioritizes SMEs, The ‘Backbone’ of its Economy

Tara Desquitado5 years ago

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Europe considers small and medium enterprises - commonly referred to as SMEs - as the backbone of its economy. Considering...

Business

A Guide to Chatbots for Small Businesses

Michael Peggs5 years ago

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Every small business owner understands the struggle of being spread too thin. In a small business, there are just too...

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.