Tim Guest grew up in a number of communes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, most of them under the teachings of Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh. Through England, India, Oregon and Germany, Tim and his Mother live, dance, work, and play amongst thousands of other orange and burgundy-clad sannyasins in search of peace, therapy, enlightenment. The result is a childhood that is delightfully fun, free, and eccentric, though also full of neglect, confusion, and separation from his mother.
Guest writes his story so that the reader can feel what it was like to be a child in a world of spontaneity and spiritualism, and also gives us the story of Bhagwan’s global rise and fall over a decade. I have just now read the last page and already, the chapters are melting together in my mind… pages of a blind following, plenty of free love, a unique mother-son relationship, AIDs paranoia, the joys of childhood, scandal, community, manipulation. Towards the end, the systems of punishment, excommunication, and confusing shame remind me of a communist regime. Leaders are put in the lowest positions, anyone with any doubt or ‘negativity’ sent away for good.
Though most of the story is through the eyes of Tim the child (renamed ‘Yogesh’ halfway through, as every member of the community was given a new name) with little judgement, the book ends with his gathering of clues and feelings, memories and snapshots, all culminating in his understanding of what this time did to (and made of) him and his family. The story is honest without being negative, appreciative of the joys of the lifestyle without diminishing its dark side.