Ranch Demographic

On November 25, 1984, The Eugene Register-Guard documented some statistics about the ranch and the sannyasins who were living there. It reported that they ‘tend to be, according to demographic studies conducted last year by University of Oregon professors, young (average age 34), married (74 per cent), childless (75 per cent), white (91 per cent), and highly educated (64 per cent were university graduates, 36 per cent had post-graduate degrees). Most were generally “religious” before becoming sannyasins. Nearly 85 per cent had some prior religious affiliation (30 per cent Protestant, 27 per cent Roman Catholic and 20 per cent Jewish).’

‘The sannyasins are supremely self-possessed, confident, relaxed and happy people. Moreover they are all, as far as I know, bright and competent. None of these dreary losers, dopers, lazy­ bums, drop-outs, misfits, and dreary-eyed malcontents you can always find in, well, communes. Hell, no. This is all cream, with no dregs. And not a hippy in the whole bunch.’ John Fry, Frying Pan magazine.

Ted Shay, Professor of Political Science at Willamette University, Oregon, summed it up in 1983: ‘[Osho] has attracted to his teachings some of the best educated minds of Western Europe and the US.’