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Outlook: Bodyguard to the 'Free Love' Guru

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Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

02/07/2018 GMT

Bodyguard to the 'Free Love' Guru

BBC World Service - Outlook, Bodyguard to the 'Free Love' Guru

Hugh Milne was the personal bodyguard to Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Scotsman Hugh Milne was the bodyguard of a notorious Indian guru who amassed thousands of followers and 100 Rolls Royces.  He tells us what was really going on behind the scenes.

For almost a decade Hugh Milne worked as a bodyguard for an extremely controversial man - an Indian guru who had tens of thousands of followers. He went by the name of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and he preached free love. This was in the 1970s, when many young Westerners were abandoning traditional ideas of monogamy, and looking east for new ideas around sexuality and spirituality. Hugh went to India to learn from Rajneesh - and later followed him to the United States, to Oregon where he was establishing a base. He's written a book about his experience with Rajneesh called Bhagwan, the God that Failed.

In Japan there's a phenomenon called "kodokushi" or 'lonely deaths'.  It's when people die alone or their bodies remain undiscovered for a long time - sometimes even months. It's perhaps the result of Japan's ageing society - the most rapid in the world - where more and more elderly people are living on their own with no family connections. The phenomenon has spawned a whole industry of people who clean up at the scenes where these people die.  Reporter Alessia Cerantola went to the city of Yokohama to find out more.

Pierre Abi Saad from Lebanon is the third generation of his family to dig for fish fossils high in the mountains in Hakel, a famous palaeontological site. He regularly goes fishing 700 metres above sea level. Outlook's Eloise Alanna has been to see him at work in this ancient place. 

(Picture: Bernard Charlon/Getty Images.)

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