He rejected institutional religions , [ 5 ] [ 1 ] [ 6 ] insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious dogma. Rejecting traditional ascetic practices, he advocated that his followers live fully in the world but without attachment to it. Rajneesh experienced a spiritual awakening in at the age of In , Rajneesh relocated to Pune , where an ashram was established and a variety of therapies, incorporating methods first developed by the Human Potential Movement , were offered to a growing Western following.
In , the Rajneesh movement's efforts refocused on activities in the United States and Rajneesh relocated to a facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon. The movement ran into conflict with county residents and the state government , and a succession of legal battles concerning the ashram's construction and continued development curtailed its success.
In , Rajneesh publicly asked local authorities to investigate his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and her close supporters for a number of crimes, including a mass food-poisoning attack intended to influence county elections, an aborted assassination plot on U.
Turner , the attempted murder of Rajneesh's personal physician, and the bugging of his own living quarters; authorities later convicted several members of the ashram, including Sheela. Rajneesh ultimately returned to Mumbai, India, in After staying in the house of a disciple where he resumed his discourses for six months, he returned to Pune in January and revived his ashram, where he died in When he was seven years old, his grandfather died, and he went to Gadarwara to live with his parents.
According to Vasant Joshi, Rajneesh read widely from an early age; although he played sports as a young boy, reading was his primary interest. According to Joshi, with the help of friends, he built a small library containing mostly communist literature. Rajneesh, according to his uncle Amritlal, also formed a group of young people that regularly discussed communist ideology and their opposition to religion.
