y combinator Archives - The Sociable

Sales veteran Jim Benton joins Apollo.io as CEO

5.81K

San Francisco-based startup Apollo.io is announcing this week that sales veteran Jim Benton is joining the company as CEO. Benton was...

Business

Strong mentorship, networking are key to industry focused accelerators’ success

Tim Hinchliffe5 years ago

4.12K

Looking back to 2013, there was a lot of negative feedback about success rates from accelerator programs, but the industry is...

Business

Battle of the tech startups: Pioneers Festival Vienna 2016

Tim Hinchliffe6 years ago

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This year's Pioneers Festival takes place in Vienna on the last week of May with over 2,500 attendees from all over...

Business

The highs and lows of Accelerator Programs for entrepreneurs #interview

Piers Dillon Scott9 years ago

2.16K

More start-ups are applying to accelerator programs but are they still worth it, can they really help entrepreneurs? We speak with Luke Deering to see.

Max Salzberg, one of four Diaspora founders

Social Media

Diaspora joins Y Combinator, may launch after summer

Darren McCarra10 years ago

2.11K

Diaspora, an alternative privacy-centric social network still in private beta, has reportedly joined startup accelerator programme Y Combinator and hopes to eventually launch sometime after this summer.

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.