The key to the Rajneesh puzzle

All these attempts to figure Rajneesh arise in the belated realization in a completely confusing situation of the fact that he was not ‘enlightened’ and not deluded on this point, a puzzling constellation of facts, including the complete cynicism of his executive agent, Sheela. A lot of effort goes into trying to figure some mystery of the enlightened when in fact the whole scheme was a puzzling play on the indic tradition of gurus. His ability to bluff his way through this is not only surprising but testimony to the way he mastered the surface aspects of the buddha game. He was in fact far more attuned to a crypto-fascism and yet honestly exposed the buddhist sangha on this point.

Source: Lost innocence: the children whose parents joined an ashram | Aeon Essays