My Life in Orange - Contents

Contents

Tim Guest's mother Anne was born in 1950 into a Catholic family. She took courses in psychology at the University of Sheffield. His father was a psychologist on staff at the university. Guest's mother fell in love with another man when he was six months old. She became a feminist, studied Ronald David Laing, and experimented with sex and drugs. She gave birth to Tim Guest in 1975. Guest's mother became a follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh when Guest was a toddler, after listening to a cassette tape of Rajneesh which displayed the cover text "Surrender to me, and I will transform you", and was titled: "Meditation: the art of ecstasy". Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh taught his followers his perspective on chaotic therapy, sexual freedom and mysticism. She brought her son into the movement in 1979. She was given the name of "Ma Prem Vismaya" (Sanskrit: Mother Love Wonder), and dyed all of her clothes orange.

In 1981, his mother took him to live on an ashram operated by Rajneesh in Poona, India. Guest was renamed as "Yogesh" by Rajneesh. As the Rajneesh movement grew in influence and became involved in controversy, Guest's mother became more involved in the movement. Guest was moved to various Rajneeshee communes, including London, Devon, India, Oregon and Germany. Guest was moved at times to communes and sent to live without his mother. Guest's mother was involved in running the commune and his father lived in the United States. He was raised by other members of the Rajneesh movement, and lived with other children in the ashrams.

His mother ran a commune called "Medina Rajneesh" in Suffolk, and Guest went to a school run on the commune where no history classes were given. Guest describes multiple rules he disliked which he had to observe while living on the Osho commune, including a restricted diet and mandated worship. His stuffed animals and books were taken away from him. He did not spend much time with his mother, because she was frequently working for the movement. When Rajneesh moved from India to Oregon, Guest and his mother moved to Oregon as well, and though Guest enjoyed roaming on the 64,000-acre (260 km2) commune he still wished to spend time with his mother.

His mother was later demoted in leadership status by other members of the female leadership of the commune, and sent with Guest to a commune in Cologne. Guest had difficulty learning German, and spent time hiding behind a pile of mattresses with a book and playing with Legos. He describes his childhood in the Rajneesh movement as "somewhere in between Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies", and writes that he had 200 "mothers", but did not spend time with his own mother. According to Guest, group leaders in the Rajneesh movement often initiated fourteen and fifteen-year-old girls into sex. Guest and his mother left the movement when he was a teenager, and she burned all of her orange clothing. Guest himself left at first; he phoned his mother at age 10 to inform her he was leaving to live with his father in San Francisco.

When his mother left the group, Guest moved back with her to the United Kingdom. Guest, his mother and stepfather Martin moved to north London, and he began the process of experiencing adolescence in a society different from that inside the Rajneesh movement. Guest reentered society at age 11, and faced confusion over the contrast in experiences between his childhood in the Rajneesh movement and his new experiences as a teenager in London. He enrolled in the Haverstock School in north London, but had trouble during his teen years with drugs and alcohol. He had difficult relations with his stepfather, and had not spent much time with him prior to the move to London. Anne and Martin went through a period of time where they thought they were beings from a different world, and read books on UFOs. Guest fostered his interest in reading, and went on to study at university.