Don Latin, San Francisco Examiner, California and Pete King, Los Angeles Times, California.

Don Latin,
San Francisco Examiner, California
Osho,
This morning you said Sheela's group injected one of the Share-a-Home people with a drug and he died of an overdose. Were you referring to the death of William Allen whose body was found last October behind a tavern near Mount Hood or another case or could you explain what the details were of that?
Details I don’t know. Perhaps that is the man. Just one sannyasin has informed that one of the participants in Share-a-Home program was overdosed. Sheela and her company was giving drugs to all the participants to keep them silent, calm down, almost unconscious, and this was an accident. So the man died and they threw the body outside Rancho Rajneesh. Perhaps that is the man that you are referring, but details you should inquire Isabel.
Okay. Did you say they were inject the Share-a-Home people with drugs or were they putting it in their food or beverages or just how were they?
Because I was silent and I had no idea what they were doing – whether they were inject… Giving them injections or giving them orally, you can inquire it from our medical corporation who will be more capable to give you the details. But certainly they were giving them drugs; it does not matter whether you give it orally or you inject it.

Pete King,
Los Angeles Times, California
There's confusion among the press and among your press office and among the financial people that we've talked to today over exactly what you meant when you were referring to allegations of theft that had come to you, and also statements about a potential debt of fifty-five million dollars. Can you precisely lay out what those two things are about?
I cannot say anything precisely. Because I have not been part for three-and-a-half-years, and I was not knowing what is going on. Just within these two days, as Sheela left – perhaps afraid that now it is time, things will explode. She had done so many crimes, she must be aware that you cannot go on doing; one day, sooner or later… So she departed with all the group of criminals who had committed things against humanity and against the values of love, life, compassion.
In these two days, hundreds of sannyasins have opened their mouth. The whole day, the office is receiving informations that, “We were silent – we knew it – but we were silent because we were afraid that if other people can be killed, we can be killed also, so it is better to keep silent.
One sannyasin from Germany phoned – he was here and he was our best pilot – and suddenly he was sent to Germany, to a commune where they don’t have any airport, no airplane, he is not needed there. He phoned from there as he heard that Sheela has left. He said, “I had been sent as a punishment, because I was told to take one of the airplanes, with as much bombs in it as possible and crash it on the Wasco County office and jump in time in a parachute – so save yourself.”
Because I refused, I was simply told that you get on the plane and leave the country immediately, because they suspected I may say it to somebody. But now is the time that I should say it. We have called him that, “You come immediately.”
And as his message was received, just another sannyasin came, that from Sheela’s house they have found materials from which bombs are made. Now that material is there and they have found other mechanisms which are all illegal. And there was no need for them to be here, and nobody was aware that they are here.
So just it will take a week for everybody to gather courage to say things which they have not been saying, and there is going to be a far bigger Watergate soon.
What do you think gave Sheela the power to make these people so afraid that they would not come forward, with what sounds like very scandalous behavior, should no one have been killed by her. The guns were held by the police force. The police or the peace chief says that she was not an accomplice to any of this. So what gave her any power to have such a reign of terror?
They had tried to poison three people.
But nobody knew that.
Just now things have become more and more clear. First, they poisoned the sannyasin who takes care of me. Sheela never wanted anybody to be close to me in any way. She never wanted anybody even to talk to me, so that I don’t know what is going on.
Three persons she was trying to kill. The people before whom she discussed the plan are here. One was my physician, one was my dentist, one was my caretaker.
First, my caretaker was given poison while she was visiting Sheela’s house and took a cup of tea – but nobody suspected. We thought some illness has happened. She was immediately taken to the hospital. She remained few days in the hospital, got well, and nobody even thought, nobody could even conceive that.
Then my physician one day was taking coffee at Sheela’s house and he came… But because he is a physician, with the best qualifications from England, he could feel that there was some poison in the coffee. But everybody laughed at the idea that, “You must be mad! Who will put poison in your coffee and for what?”
He remained sick for few days and while he was sick, he was here in the medical clinic and Sheela’s accomplice in all these crimes was Puja, who was a trained nurse and knew everything about medicine, drugs, poisons. She injected him again with a poison. Since then he has been feeling weak, for no reason at all.
And third time, just in the last celebration – here in a meeting – a woman who was the third in Sheela’s group, Shanti B., she injected him while he was sitting in the meeting. And he immediately thought that something has been pushed. He took over his robe and called people to see: there was blood and something has been injected.
He was taken to the clinic, but he refused to go to this clinic, because now he was afraid. If these people can do it in a public meeting where fifteen to seventeen thousand people were present, what they can do in the medical clinic? And Puja was a dominant figure in the medical corporation.
So he insisted to go to Bend. He was taken to Bend. His wife, Hasya, was with him there. The doctor said, “There is no disease. We can only assume perhaps he has been poisoned. But there are poisons which are not detectable.”
And the doctor also said, “The same thing had happened to Mike Sullivan, the attorney of Jefferson County, one year before – exactly the same thing: he suddenly fell sick, suddenly felt white and weak, as if dying, and no disease and no symptom of any poison.”
Today, one sannyasin has come on his own and he said, “I am an eye witness. In front of me, Shanti B. has injected Devaraj, but I was keeping silent: if they can kill Osho’s physician so easily – I am a poor sannyasin – they can kill me any time.”
So what was keeping people silent was that I was not available. Whatever they wanted to say, there was nobody to listen. Sheela was all-powerful. She has placed her people on every power post. She had thrown out all the sannyasins who had some independent mind, who were more intelligent than her, and she has put dummies who were just puppets, who will do whatever she will say. And to me, she will bring only news, what she wanted to bring. And from me, the instructions that I gave, only those will reach to the people that she wanted to reach to them. It was very simple, because I was silent.
The moment I started speaking, it became impossible; now I am available to people. They can say to me whatsoever they want to say and they can ask any question they want to ask. She never wanted me to start speaking. I was surprised, because the whole commune wanted me to speak – except Sheela. But when I started speaking, then I understood what was the problem. She became sad. The whole commune became ecstatic, that for three and half years, waiting, they are again able to communicate with me. But she became sad and she started going away for longer periods, for small excuses.
Finally, it became clear that because her face from the television was disappearing, her voice from the radio was disappearing, her statements from the newspaper were disappearing. In these three and half years she has become a world famous celebrity. The ego has become too big and now it was hard for her – I can understand – just to drop that ego and be again an ordinary sannyasin as she was before. This was the trouble.
And then people started bringing news to me and she became afraid that all these things that she has done – without my knowledge… She escaped, with the whole group, suddenly. She did not even came to see to me.
For three days she has been here. In fact, there was no need to come, if she was going to go back. There was no need to come. She came back just to put things – files and everything away or burn or destroy or take away. In three days she did that work, and once it was finished, she without saying that she is going today… She went on saying that she will be staying few days more. Suddenly one day, four o’clock, she left. And that is the time I go for a ride towards the forest in the Ranch, so she knew that I will be far away – this is the best time to escape from here.
After her going, so many things have come to knowledge. Just today somebody informed that Sheela and Puja had herbs, poisonous herbs, to put in the food of these three people. And because the woman who was doing it was afraid to do it, and because Devaraj was afraid – after these two poisonings – they have started eating outside. They started arranging food from outside, so they could not succeed to poison their food. That woman has also escaped. Now other people from the restaurant have informed that that woman was doing something and putting some herbs in their food, but they never turned up. So they were… They killed one person certainly.
There are sannyasins who informed that they were the people who burned one of the offices of Wasco County, because there were many papers concerning Rajneeshpuram and their activities, that they were the people who had poisoned the tea of one of the judges of Wasco County who was visiting here. But just within two days, all this information has surfaced. Much more is bound to come up – what else they were doing, what else they have done, what else they were planning.
For example, I am against politics or any kind of political atmosphere. These sannyasins here are not for politics or to gain power. These people are here to meditate, to be silent, to be themselves, to experience what this life is all about. They have no interest in power. But she was not interested in meditation. And the group that she has collected, also was not interested in meditation.
Most of his group has never been to India, into my ashram, to learn meditation. She had a center here, in America, and she had her people running the center. When I came here, those people, certainly, were my hosts and because I remained here, my health improved, those people and Sheela became more and more powerful.
They tried to create hostility. They unnecessarily took over Antelope – there was no need. We have such a big land that there is no need to take Antelope, but just ego, power.
I would like the people of Antelope to take their houses back, just as they have sold them to the foundation, purchase them back. And I will ask my sannyasins to come back to the commune. They are forcibly living there. And Antelope should be Antelope – there is no need for it to change its name. And it should be in the hands of the people of Antelope.
I am not for any hostility, antagonism, with anybody. That’s why this time I have advised my people that choose most of the officers who are American, so that other Americans can feel at home with them and they can feel at home with them.
We can enrich Oregon immensely. We can make this place – in four years we have already made it an oasis, it was just a desert when we came, not… Nothing to see except barren hills, not a single bird, not a single animal, and only one dilapidated house – and we have changed it into an oasis. These people have worked tremendously hard and lovingly.
We can make it an… Tremendously luscious holiday resort, one of the best tourist spots in the world. Anyway, more people are coming here every year than in any other place. Seventeen to twenty thousand people every festival, and all the year round hundreds and thousands of people are coming and going. If we can make more arrangements – and we feel that Sheela and her group gone – the wall between us and the Oregonian government and the federal government has disappeared. There is no reason for any conflict. We are not against any law, we are not against the Constitution. In fact, I respect the American Constitution as one of the best in the whole world. It is one of the hopes of humanity.
And we are ready to go according to the law, according to the Constitution, and we hope that Americans should show, in reality, what they have written in their Constitution: respect for individuality, respect for freedom, respect for religion, respect for different religions, no discrimination – a little help from their side. And we don’t want them to be unlawfully helpful to us; just don’t be unlawfully hindrance. A lawful little help, and we are enough intelligent – we can make this place something beautiful, clean, livable.
This is for you, the media, to give the message to the whole nation that we are friends, not enemies. In fact, perhaps in the whole of America, there is nobody who is more against communism, fascism, than me, because I believe in individual property, I believe that the person who is capable of creating wealth is a genius in the same category as a great painter or a poet or a scientist. Everybody is not Henry Ford, neither everybody is Picasso. The man who can create wealth should be respected.
And now that science has made technology available, so much wealth can be created that it is sheer stupidity what is happening in Soviet Union: they have simply distributed poverty. It is a poor country. I have my sannyasins there. But they have distributed poverty. Everybody is equally poor, so nobody feels that he is poor – there is no comparison to feel. I also want everybody to be rich – so rich that nobody feels poor, because nobody is poor.
In Russia, a certain illusion is being created. Wealth can be created so much that just as you don’t hoard air, you need not hoard wealth. I am against equality, because it is psychologically impossible. Every individual is unique and his individuality should be respected, and his uniqueness should be respected.
Everybody should be given equal opportunity to grow his uniqueness. In other words, everybody should be given equal opportunity to be unequal. But equality should not be forced on people; that is the greatest crime one can commit.
So please let America know that we are in absolute agreement with a higher quality of capitalism than you have. Your capitalism still allows poverty. Thirty million people are still poor and starving and you are still going on piling up nuclear weapons. You don’t care about those people.
The same energy can create so much wealth, that from America all religions will immediately disappear, because paradise will be herenow. Then who cares about a paradise after death? And that is my, one of the basic approaches, that paradise is the poor man’s projection, that father is the helpless man’s projection – and all these projections have to disappear. And man has to be centered, integrated, completely satisfied with the here and now… And this very moment is paradise!
I can send my people, who are trained for years in meditation, to every university campus to teach exactly what meditation is: the simplest method which can be followed even by a small child who can understand language, which can be followed by the oldest man who is just on the dying, last phase of his life, perhaps only for few minutes more. But in those few minutes, he can know something that can make him experience the deathless.
Ronald Reagan was wrong to ask for prayer to be introduced, because prayer is bound to be part of some religion. And prayer is basically based in the belief of God, which is the ultimate lie. There is no God. And there is no argument that has been able to prove.
Out of nine judges of the Supreme Court, eight rejected – and this is what I respect in America: that even a president cannot pressurize fairness and justice. And one judge, who was not in agreement, made a really beautiful comment and he used the word ‘meditation’. He said, “It will be better if meditation is introduced,” because meditation has nothing to do with any religion; it is a scientific method. An atheist can do it, because it needs no belief system, no prerequisite condition to be fulfilled.
Prayer is ugly, because it has to be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. Prayer cannot be pure. It is polluted. Meditation is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Jew, it is simply a science of going inwards.
I would like the Supreme Court to consider again and change the word ‘prayer’ by ‘meditation’. And if they don’t know what meditation is, then I am willing to send trained meditators to every institution of education to teach – it is such a simple thing.
In the East we have been practicing 112 methods for almost ten thousand years and out of 112 methods, I have chosen one which is the simplest, which can be done by anybody and everybody.
So now that Sheela and her fascist group is gone, there is no question of any antagonism – they were creating unnecessary hostility. We withdraw all hostility that they created and we are ready to welcome everyone who wants to visit our place or wants us to visit their place. I can come with my whole circus!
Okay.

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