For those of you who have seen the intro to Michael Topper’s 5-hour documentary on the Shree Rajneesh Ashram, this is the next 7 minutes of the film, covering his life from his birth in 1931 up to the point at which the ashram is purchased in March 1974. Unfortunately nothing else can be posted without incurring copyright claims, so if you would like to view the entire 5-hour film, email mtopper68@gmail.com for the links to download the 5 chapters, or use the following links;
CHAPTER ONE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5hFsl9yjE3ekA9tWkW7ak1xRpSSfV66/view?usp=sharing
CHAPTER TWO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xH5ca9kHtWnGeNcaGla7HygcIDuS3NSN/view?usp=sharing
CHAPTER THREE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JZjEUrvEhnmuCDFkHc0CTLcJHEny_2QP/view?usp=sharing
CHAPTER FOUR: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OD7S8uxrGLZkCvztK2nGSB5No56G6pCA/view?usp=sharing
CHAPTER FIVE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e2m5ueBnAsmNf43LaX3ZENjXD4uxHP5f/view?usp=sharing
Michael Topper writes “Hello everyone, thank you for your interest in this documentary. A little background: my mother was an Osho sannyasin who originally visited the Pune ashram for six weeks in September/October 1978 (I briefly mention her darshan with Bhagwan in chapter 3).
We also visited the Oregon Ranch for two days in August 1983, where I even got to see Sheela in person. So Osho has always been in the background of my life, but my interest was re-ignited in 2018 after I saw Wild Wild Country.
I was particularly fascinated with the few clips that were shown of the 70s ashram and consequently went on a research spree to find out everything I could about that period. I was frustrated, however, because I really wanted there to be some kind of straightforward chronological history of the era, or a good comprehensive documentary, and there simply wasn’t.
After about seven years of plowing through at least three dozen books, many hours of documentary footage, interviewing sannyasins etc. I finally realised that I now had the knowledge to create the Pune documentary I always wanted to see, and so I made it myself using all available documentary footage and interviews with the events mentioned in chronological order, with additional narration and connecting segments by me.
I am not a professional filmmaker, so this is a fairly amateur production done on relatively cheap editing and voiceover software, but I think it works according to its original intention, which is to provide a highly detailed chronology of the Pune era from 1974-81, to be used both as a reference tool and to tell people a little bit about why this period was so special.”