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Yes, Bagwan Rajinishi was also in Oregon, but he was not the one. But from what i read Masters had a sizable amount of devotees to himself.

A quote from his ‘Hypnotic States of Americans’: ‘Inspired by the idea of harnessing this baffling force for good, he later pursued the art of hypnotism and established a successful hypnotherapy practice.’ He was unable to continue in that practice without a professional license, so he founded the Foundation of Human Understanding in 1961 upon the realization that ‘life itself is hypnosis’ and the solution is to be ‘DE-hypnotized’ from undue influences and pressures that cause us to over-react to stress.

He began teaching a meditation exercise and started a call-in radio talk show called ‘How Your Mind Can Keep You Well’....he later changed the name of the program to ‘Advice Line.’

In 1982 he moved the headquarters of the FHU from Los Angeles, CA, to Selma, Oregon, near Grants Pass, and invited his followers to follow him there and more out of the big cities before the ultimate collapse and downfall of society. Approximately 2000 of his followers moved to Grants Pass in 1982. After a legal battle he successfully obtained tax-exempt status claiming that his organization is a church.

Other excerpts from posters:

Masters states that his teachings are ‘Judeo-Christian’ in nature and claims to have a deeper understanding of the Bible than what most churches teach.

Masters has referred to himself as the only person besides Jesus Christ who has this special knowledge and understanding that was not passed on in the canonization of the Bible.

He offers books, audio and video recordings, a web site, church services, and meetings. The objective of his teachings and meditation practice is to bring people to their own inner understanding of truth and to overcome and transcend our evil sin nature that responds hypnotically to the pressures and stresses of life.

People who follow Masters’ teachings are instructed to withdraw all emotional involvement with absolutely everything in their lives: family, friends, work, eating, drinking, recreational activities ‹ because any involvement with anything whatsoever is a sin that can lead to death and hell.

Having any kind of self-image is discouraged. According to Masters, pleasure causes a hypnotic state; do not enjoy food, or entertainment, or music, or any other recreational activity. Do not engage in anything of a sensual nature or you are reinforcing the original sin of escaping from reality. Sleep is the enemy of consciousness therefore be careful not to sleep too deeply.

The objective of the meditation exercise is to reach a heightened state of consciousness in which there is no emotion, no feeling, no sensuality, no reaction or response to any outside stimuli, no thought, no decision-making.

Masters prefers to call it an ‘observation exercise’ rather than meditation as there is a ‘razor’s edge’ that separates hypnosis from true meditation.

The meditation he teaches contains very simple instructions and seems quite harmless from the outset. My experience in practicing it for 6 years, and the experiences shared with me by others including my own brother, have proven to be detrimental rather than beneficial. Many of us experienced loss of control of our critical thinking processes and a trance-like effect from the meditation.

Probably the most interesting revelation in this book regarding Masters’ meditation practice is found on Page 24 in which he states that “….a razor’s edge separates hypnosis from true meditation” and that ‘Each can become the other.’ This came as a surprise to me because it is such a departure from his classic teachings. Masters used to declare that his meditation was the exact and complete opposite of hypnosis, that it is in fact diametrically opposed to inducing a hypnotic state. Here he reveals how very easy it is to just ‘toggle’ back and forth between hypnosis and ‘true meditation’ as he calls it. This brings up the question……what’s the difference then? How does one know if they are ‘meditating’ or just being hypnotized by a clever teacher who is well-versed in hypnotic technique? Masters goes on to say that ‘concentration’ on anything causes a hypnotic state and ‘observation’ causes a meditative state; apparently the difference between hypnosis and Masters’ meditation is whether you are ‘concentrating’ or ‘observing’ as you practice it. It comes down to Masters’ nimble use of language, a verbal smokescreen obscuring the fact that his meditation practice is a poorly disguised hypnotic programming tool which looks completely innocent to the unsuspecting public..

To me this book was very cumbersome to read because of the continual recitation over and over of the same theme, as if by sheer repetition Masters can induce a hypnotic state in the reader in which he finds himself agreeing with the author. Either that or Masters considers his readers to be rather stupid. In short, the theme of the book is that life exerts a hypnotic force through our reactions to it and forces upon us a realm in which we are merely one or the other: a psychopath or a psychotic. Ambitious and success-driven people are the psychopaths and basically everyone else are their psychotic victims. Any emotional reaction to anything creates and keeps us in a psychotic state.
(www.freedomofmind.com/Info/infoDet.php?id=56)