The faithful were cynically thought of as ignorant, rural, overweight, Bible-thumping hypocrites, or long-haired hippy types that lived in communes and leached off the culture.
Where "The Commune" may have bitten off more that it can comfortably masticate is in its critique of television news.
His walks, sometimes taken in conjunction with a festival or occasion, like the solstice, are his art: he picks an untouristed path, packs a camera and a journal and goes off to commune with nature.
By the close of the decade, Rajneesh had died of a heart attack in India, Sheela had evaded the bulk of her three concurrent 20-year white-collar jail sentences after just two and a half years, and Oregon had finally decided to sell off the commune's property under its pre-cult name: the Big Muddy Ranch.
They could be the descendants of an off-grid commune, evolved in the wake of a nuclear disaster so their skin has taken on hippy hues.
Katz has lived for many years in an off-grid commune in rural Tennessee, churning out sauerkraut and brewing obscure variants of kombucha tea for a small band of devotees.
"When we think of cults we think of communes, of people going off somewhere and forming a group like that, wearing Hare Krishna-type clothes," says Hodgkins.
When you swim in the ocean, you do it not just to cool off but to commune for a while with its wild, eternal, mysterious vastness.
Sweden's Lukas Moodysson scored a likable crossover hit with his 2000 comedy Together, about 1970s commune living, but later veered off into dark, experimental realms so confrontationally outre that they made Lars von Trier look like Ron Howard.
There may be a second wind in the future, once the guitarist has gone off to a commune and found religion, the singer's recorded a weird side-project with an experimental artist, and the third drummer's died in a freak llama accident, but for now, don't expect a return to those dizzying heights.
