Long before mindfulness went mainstream and gurus trended on Instagram, Osho was branding spirituality with the flair of a luxury startup, leveraging charisma, psychology, and sharp marketing instincts to set up a highly profitable and equally controversial business.
Born in 1931 in Kuchwada, a small village in Madhya Pradesh, Osho started his career as a philosophy lecturer in Jabalpur. His public talks, initially free, then paid, resonated with the educated elite and a growing cadre of wealthy patrons started funding his retreats and lectures.
The Osho enterprise
By the early 1970s, he had initiated thousands of sannyasins into his cause. Clad in ochre robes and sporting new spiritual names, they were the harbingers of a global movement led by a bearded oracle.
Shrewdly, the new-age guru didn’t just gather followers; he transformed them into customers. The meditation camps, therapy sessions, and one-on-one darshans were duly monetized as the rich and famous flocked to his Pune ashram in search of enlightenment—though they also found “free love”, a call to open sexuality that was unique to the place. While the eager disciples sought peace, Osho’s staff were busy tallying their growing riches.
The movement accelerated with Osho’s relocation to Oregon in 1981. Here, in a place called Wasco County, he and his followers purchased a 64,000‑acre ranch to build Rajneeshpuram, a self‑contained city with its own airstrip, bank, police, and university. For variety, it also boasted a disco and malls.
This was the heart of the Osho enterprise, with followers paying thousands for therapy courses that ranged from the exotic to the more exotic. The enterprise was on a roll, such that a week-long World Festival in 1984 attracted 15,000 participants who spent over $10 million in admissions, accommodations, souvenirs, and sessions.
The whole operation was predictably opaque with a corporate labyrinth of entities, including Rajneesh International Foundation (RIF), Rajneesh Investment Corporation (RIC), Rajneesh Services International Ltd (Switzerland), and niche verticals like The Rajneesh Modern Car Collection Trust used to channel funds, hold assets, and mask financial flows.
The Rolls-Royce—nearly 90 of them—besides fueling Osho’s lifestyle, added to his mystique. Along with the diamond-studded Rolex watches, these were symbolic tools in a carefully crafted display of wealth and freedom.
The dark underbelly
But hidden away from the public eye was the movement’s dark underbelly. By the mid‑1980s, legal and financial allegations started surfacing. The commune was implicated in immigration fraud and misusing tax exemptions to smuggle foreign donations.
A former disciple, Helen Byron, filed a lawsuit against Rajneesh Foundation International, leading to a federal trial in Portland in 1985 and an adverse judgment for the guru.
Bigger scandals lay in store, none more infamous than the 1984 case where followers led by his closest ally, Ma Anand Sheela, carried out a salmonella-biological attack in The Dalles, Oregon, in a bizarre plot to influence local elections. The lady was convicted and sent to prison, and shortly after that, Osho was arrested too. He pleaded guilty to immigration violations and was deported in 1985.
Osho returned to Pune, where he died in January 1990. At the time of his death, his net worth was believed to be over $100 million, mostly in intellectual property, real estate, brand licensing, and the residual value of a global spiritual enterprise.
While the commune had collapsed, its material hangover continued unabated. In 2000, nearly 10 years after his death, the Osho brand in the US was said to be generating over $25 million a year through seminars, licensing and corporate stress-management programmes.
A 2018 Netflix series, Wild Wild Country, reignited interest in the criminality of the cult. But it was another documentary, Children of the Cult, which threw light on the worst aspect of the movement—child sexual abuse. It spotlighted the shocking treatment of children who were included in the orgies, all in the name of free sex.
It should have served as a warning to the world that the mosaic of spirituality and business often masks evil. Clearly, it didn’t.
Osho, the spiritual libertine turned spiritual capitalist, continues to inspire many of today’s godmen and spiritual influencers who have adopted facets of his model, including charisma‑based global branding and retreats that double as resorts. Who knows what horrors lie beneath these business-savvy management apparatuses?
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