Further reading for: The Somerton Man/ The Bhagwan Rajneesh:
Tamam Shud: The Somerton Man Mystery
Don’T Kill Him !: The Story Of My Life With Bhagwan Rajneesh
Dec, 1948, a mans body was found on the Somerton Park beach, in South Australia. In the mans pocket is a scrap of paper on which is printed the word “tamam shud” meaning “finished” or “ended” in Persian. The scrap of paper had been torn from a book of poems authored by the 12 century poet Omar Khayyam.
Following a public appeal, they were able to find what appered to be the book the piece had been torn from. On the inside back cover, they were able to read indentations of a local telephone number, another detective thought that it could have been and encrypted message.
This case has been on of Australia’s most profound mysteries, they have been trying for decades to find out how this man died as well as who he was. The death happened at a time of huge international tensions because of the cold war, and the possible involvement of secret codes, as well as that he may have been poisoned has kept heightened public interest in this case.
This case is just super creepy and cool, as new sciences could lead to more clues… I just cant get enough info on it.
And now for some culty stuff
The Bhaguan Shri Rajneesh, began his carrier as a philosophy professor in India and later became a guru when he realized there was money to made off of unhappy westerners looking for a new path. Once his millions of dollars in unpaid taxes came to light, however, he had to get himself out of India.
He comes to South Central America to create a utopian existence for him and two thousand of his followers, at that point this area of land was ranch land that had fallen into complete disrepair. They were going to take this land and build housing and shops that they would have in india and expand their cult.
The more they developed and the more they expanded within themselves the locals started to tell them they were expanding too much, that the city was not zoned to do the amount work they were doing.
Needless to say it was all down hill from there. A power struggle between the cultists and the locals, as locals start suffering from Salmonella poisoning, and the ultimate plan of the cult was to poison the local watering system.
Cults really freak me out…
Episode 50
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