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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating glimpse of a life caught up in a cult, February 26, 2005
This review is from: My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru (Paperback)
Tim Guest is a young British man who was thrust at an early age, by his mother's spiritual search, into the commune life of the controversial Indian guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In this fascinating and moving biography of his early life as a member of that cult, we witness a boy who nurtures a broken heart through his mother's neglect and self-absorption in her search for enlightenment. We see parallels within the life of Tim's mother and the arc of the cult itself, moving from an off-kilter yet earnest spiritual seeking to a finale best characterized as a sad and empty waste of time. Any intense movement that comes to an end will always have its casualties, and we often think only of the adults who have been directly involved in a cult or movement as such "victims", but this book poignantly highlights how the children who are given no choice in the matter can be more messed up by the experience and also in later life.
Tim writes with a contained emotion about his lonely and strange upbringing, shunted back and forth between confused and misguided parents, particularly his mother, who may have meant well but served to give him absolutely no grounding, real love, or sense of self. Aside from occasional visits with his father, much of the time described in the book concerns Tim's pre-teen years, after his parent's separation, spent with the mother who becomes quite an important figure in the European growth of the Rajneeshi movement. She is no mere rank and file follower, but a key figure in the British leadership, and has some direct encounters with the Bhagwan himself. Eventually, the movement unravels under the weight of leadership scandals, tax, immigration, legal and other myriad problems.
Tim gives a very well researched and appropriate level of insight into the movement, as if seeing it again through the eyes of the adolescent he was. We read only obtuse accounts of the rumoured sexual scandals, rape and violence for which the cult was known, since Tim, as the last paragraph of the book tellingly alludes to, was luckily spared some of the darker activities that were going on around him. Needless to say, however, he still has his scars to deal with, most centrally his parents' lack of real involvement in his life. Through it all, he appears to have emerged as a deep and thoughtful person, and this memoir is a top-notch and moving read.
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33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Can't put it down" child's view of life in a cult, February 15, 2005
This review is from: My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru (Paperback)
What happens when a child is swept up in his mother's quest to become a follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru? How does a child have a normal childhood when it is spent traveling from England to Germany and other locales, all because of a parent's search for truth and enlightenment?
If Guest's memoir is any indication, the children of such parents may well be left feeling dazed, confused and neglected. In Guest's case, his mother spent much of her time involved in such activities as ecstatic dancing, group sex and bizarre rituals, some involving violence and even abuse. She wore bright clothing in the colors of the sunset.
In all fairness, his mother was not aware of the darkness at the heart of the Rajneesh movement and when charges of embezzlement and even a possible plan to commit murder came to light, she had a change of heart and began to examine all her earlier assumptions. In her own way, she was nearly as naive, trusting and innocent as a child...although I can't help feeling she should have known better and been there for her son as a parent first, with her spiritual adventures coming second.
I was happy to read that she did eventually make peace with her son and come to realize the harm she'd done to him, however inadvertently.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinting, September 30, 2006
This review is from: My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru (Paperback)
When I think about children growing up in communes, victims of cults, I think about the abuses you always hear happen in these situations. I imagined when I picked up this book that it would be a horrifying tale of sexual and physical abuse of a small child. I braced myself. Instead, I found that the child narrator, Tim, wasn't sexually or physically abused. In fact, he seemed to have many fond memories related to the commune and his life there. It was only when considered from an adult's point of view that the shocking amount of neglect comes into focus. The children in the commune did suffer in this very specific way. The damage was not as graphic and sensationalized as many people expect from a story about growing up in a cult, but it was horrifying nonetheless. Tim Guest did a fantastic job balancing this story to show why people might have been sucked into this commune in the first place, and then why they would decide to leave.
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