Bunte magazine,
Offenburg, West Germany

Great.
Osho,
I want to thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to talk with you. And let's start with what happened in the last few days here. Could you ever imagine that something like this would happen to you and to the commune here?
I never think of the future, so I am always prepared for everything. I am never surprised, never disappointed either. Whatever happens, I take it for granted that it must do some good. Anything looked at rightly is always beneficial. Whatever happened here has helped my people immensely. Now it will never happen again.
They were innocent people. The whole life of the commune was only four years. They trusted me absolutely, although I have never asked anybody to trust in me or have faith in me. Just the contrary: I have asked them never to have any belief, any faith. Doubt is my fundamental teaching.
Doubt is so clean. It has given us the whole of science. In just three hundred years doubt has given us so much, and in ten thousand years beliefs have not given anything except wars, bloodshed, fanaticism, retarded people, divided humanity.
But it is a paradox of life that the more I tell my people not to have faith, not to have belief, the more they love me, the more they trust me.
For three and a half years I was silent. Sheela was my secretary; she was the only link between me and the commune. The commune simply trusted Sheela, and that whatever she is saying she represents me. That’s how the whole thing happened.
And I don’t condemn Sheela, either. It is just a human weakness. Everybody carries will to power within him. It is just a question of opportunity. If you get the opportunity, the will to power takes possession of you. And she had a good opportunity. These people had tremendous trust in me; she was representing me. She used the opportunity to become almost a fascist leader.
She was nobody – she was only a hotel waitress. But in three and a half years she became a great celebrity on the television, on the radio, in the newspapers. Naturally the poor girl got a swollen head. When I started speaking again, then the problem arose; otherwise it would have never arisen. Because I started speaking to my people again, they could not believe me. Sheela had been saying something else for three and a half years and I was saying just the opposite! She was asking them to surrender completely, to trust totally, and those who don’t surrender she was throwing out.
And when I said to my people that, “You had completely forgotten me and my teaching,” she immediately understood that now this is not her place. On the one hand she is no longer going to be the celebrity she has been; on the other hand, all these people are going to bring all the complaints that have accumulated in their minds for three and a half years. She simply escaped.
And now so many things are coming out it seems almost inconceivable. She has tried to poison people, to kill people. Just today somebody has sent me the message that one of my most important sannyasins, who was also the vice-chancellor of the meditation university here – very well educated, had an MA, PhD, an experienced psychiatrist, for twelve years the head of an army psychiatric hospital – suddenly he and his girlfriend disappeared. And Sheela told me that they wanted to go, so I allowed them to go.
I said, “This seems to be strange, because Prabodhi was there just the other day dancing and receiving me at the door – the girlfriend of Siddha. Siddha was there in the meeting every day and I saw him flowering and rejoicing. I don’t see that they have any reason to leave. What reason have they given?”
She said, “No reason.”
And just today I have heard that most probably both have been killed, because they were – particularly Siddha was so devoted to me that he wouldn’t listen to Sheela.
This is just a rumor right now, but I am going to inform the police and to find out what happened to those two people. It is possible, because she has done the same thing to one of the Share-a-Home people. When she arranged that Share-a-Home people program, she ordered a certain drug in such a great quantity that our pharmacist simply refused, because, “What is the point of such a great quantity? How am I going to explain it? What is the need?” So Sheela’s people simply said, “Don’t be worried. We will find some other way.”
And they must have found some other way. Now people have come to say that they were giving a certain drug to all the street people to keep them calm and quiet and under control. One man by accident got too big a dose and he died, and they just threw him out of Rancho Rajneesh. If they can do that…
They tried to kill my own personal physician by giving him slow doses of poison. They were very much against three persons because those three persons were very close to me, and they were afraid that those three persons might be giving me information that they didn’t want me to know. I was in isolation and silence. Nobody else was coming to see me except Sheela and these three people: my physician, my dentist and my caretaker.
At first we thought that this was something strange, because nobody could conceive of it. My caretaker one day went to Jesus House, where Sheela used to live, and took a cup of tea, and her heartbeat suddenly went to such a high speed… She is not sick, she is perfectly healthy – there was no question of it. Even the doctors were puzzled how it happened. And after much medication – it took three hours for them to bring her heart back to its normal condition. But nobody even connected it with the tea.
But after just a few days my personal physician…the same thing happened again. He had a cup of coffee in Jesus House, where Sheela lived, and he came back and he said he had been poisoned – perhaps because he is a well qualified doctor he was able to suspect that some poisoning has happened – and he became sick. He had to be admitted into a nursing home. There they again tried to inject him.
One of Sheela’s accomplices was Puja, who was really the expert. She was a trained nurse, almost as qualified as any doctor. She again tried to inject him with poison, and then my physician became absolutely afraid to live there in the nursing even for a single moment longer. He was brought back home.
They tried a third time in the public meeting we have every morning, in the discourse. In the crowd they injected him with poison and he immediately felt…he took up his robe and showed people the blood coming out and the place where the injection was given. Now he was absolutely certain that it was a certain injection that is not detectable, and it simply weakens you, and in a period of six to eight months it kills you. So nobody can be caught; it is not a sudden killer.
This time he refused to go to the commune’s nursing home again because that was under Puja, so we had to send him to Bend. His wife Hasya was with him there. The doctors could not find any disease. They told his wife that, “We don’t find any disease. All we can say is that some undetectable poison had been injected. But we can only say it;. there is no proof because it is undetectable.”
They said the same had happened to Mike Sullivan, the attorney of Jefferson County, one year before – exactly the same situation. And there is every possibility that the same people were behind that case too, because our commune’s land comes half in Wasco County and half in Jefferson County, and Jefferson has not been in any way helping us to develop the land or to make a few houses there for farmers to live in. It is a big stretch of land – one hundred and twenty-six square miles. We need a few houses there at the other end. Perhaps because Sullivan was not helping, was a hindrance, they may have tried…
But all these things have come out within the last two days, and more and more information is pouring in. These people had got the information from some source that a grand jury is going to convene within two or three days. The moment they got that news, immediately Sheela took the whole group away – twenty people – and escaped out of the country. There was no need for them to fear; if they had not done anything wrong, I don’t see the point of escaping from the country.
Just today Hasya – she is the new president of the Foundation – moved into the president’s room and she could not believe it: there was a door going underground, and they had a few rooms underneath that room which nobody in the commune knew about, and a tunnel which goes out. In any case, if somebody attacks or takes possession of the house, people can escape by the tunnel. So they have been preparing really well, doing things mathematically.
And in whatever they have left in the rubbish, we have found literature about how to make bombs, materials out of which bombs are made, material on poisons, in what doses poisons can kill and how they should be given. We have also found that the fire that had happened in Wasco County, in one of the offices, was the work of this group. They burned the whole office because the county had the papers against them and they wanted to burn all those papers.
Today one sannyasin phoned from Germany. Knowing that Sheela and her company had left, he was immensely happy. He was our best pilot, and nobody knew why he was sent to Germany, to a commune where there is no airport, no airplane. He was sent as a punishment, because Sheela wanted him to take one airplane full of bombs, full of petrol, and crash the plane into the Wasco County building, and before the crash happens he should jump out with a parachute to save his life – “but destroy the building and have enough bombs and enough petrol so that the fire burns the whole place.”
He refused. He is a simple man. Because he had refused, and afraid that he might tell this thing to anybody, they immediately packaged his luggage and sent him to Germany.
I informed him that, “You come immediately, because your evidence to the government will be of immense help.”
The whole day the office is buzzing with phone calls from all over the world about how people have been thrown out of the commune, humiliated – and particularly those people who were more devoted to me, have lived with me longer than Sheela, knew me more than Sheela. She did not want anybody like that here. And she had arranged a clique of almost all new people who had no idea of my ideology, so that whatsoever she said, they thought that she had brought the news from me.
We are informing the police – we have informed the police, the state police, the federal police, and we have asked the German police, the Swiss police, because they are hiding in Switzerland in a small village near Zurich. And just today I received the message that they are spending fifty thousand dollars per day. So that means our people have to look into the books well, because from where have they got the money? They have left the commune in fifty-five million dollars of debt.
So it has really turned out to be a criminal gang. But deep in the unconscious every man has the same possibility. One just needs opportunity. They got the opportunity.
Now it will not happen for the single reason that I am going to speak directly to my people. Secondly, I am making every arrangement to decentralize power. Thirdly, I am making arrangements to change the power positions more often so that nobody takes their position for granted, as if it is their inheritance. And I am telling my people to be alert and aware because my teaching is for freedom, not for fascism.
I value democracy not dictatorship. To me, individual and respect for his individuality are the highest values. And no individual should be humiliated.
So now I will have to teach them that, “You have to be aware of your own power elite, too. And anything you see, immediately inform me.”
This was an ugly nightmare, but they could not do any harm to the commune. They tried. Money does not matter; if they have taken some money, that is not much of a thing to be bothered about. But otherwise they have not…
And all the people that have left are asking to come back, and I am calling them to tell them that they can come back. There has been such rejoicing. People have been dancing for hours in the street when they heard that Sheela and her group had left – as if they are freed from a concentration camp.
So in a way it is good that these people are gone. They were creating a rift between the commune and Oregon, between the commune and the American government. Now that barrier has disappeared and we can create bridges of friendship, because to me America is the only hope for humanity. If America does not succeed, then the whole of humanity is going to be under communist regimes, and humanity is going to be reduced to robots. They have done that in the Soviet Union and they will do it more forcibly everywhere else.
So America is not just a country; it is now more than that. It is a hope for freedom and hope for democracy and hope for individuality, justice.
My respect for the American constitution is immense, so great that I feel that American politicians are all prostituting it. The constitution is something immensely valuable; but the third-class politicians cannot keep up with the constitution, that’s the difficulty.
I can understand. The constitution has such high goals and ideals, and the politicians have no goals and no ideals except a lust for power, so the gap is big. They are doing things which are unconstitutional, illegal. So in every way I would like to be part of this country. But I will also fight any illegality that is being done to the commune and against the constitution. We are fighting and we are winning, and we will fight up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is still a ray of light.
And we see no reason why we cannot win. We are going to win, because whatever they have done to the commune is absolutely unconstitutional. They had recognized the commune as a city for two years; their judges, the county, the state and the federal government were all helping the commune for two years as a city. And then suddenly – perhaps under some Christian pressure – they declared the city illegal. This is the only city in the whole world which is illegal. There are cities and there are no-cities, but illegal cities don’t exist.
And the greatest beauty of it all is that this is the only place where in four years nobody has been raped, nobody has been robbed – and still they go on calling it illegal!
It took the attorney general of Oregon – his must be a mighty dull head! – two years to discover that the city is illegal. You should have done every investigation before you accepted the city and its incorporation. If it is illegal, then you are the criminal. Why did you incorporate it? You did not investigate properly or you don’t understand the law. It took two years for you.
Now also they are trying and fighting for one thing: we want the case to be decided in a federal court, and they want the case to be decided in a state court. Now, it is a very simple thing, it needs no legal knowledge, that if the state itself is involved in the case, the state courts cannot be expected to be fair. And why are they afraid of the federal courts? Do they think their state courts are more fair than the federal courts?
Now they are fighting for that, that the case should be decided in the state courts. We will not let them decide in a state court, because the state court is under their influence. We want a federal court to decide. We don’t want any favor from anybody; we simply want that whatever is legal should be given to us.
I will come back to what happened before, that you are sure something like that wouldn't happen anymore. Does it mean that you take over the control again?
Who?
You.
No, I don’t have any control. I never had. My love is my control. I don’t have any position. I never had before, and I don’t need it. You need position only when you don’t have enough love. I love these people, I trust these people; they love me and they trust me. I have enough. What can any position give to me?
So I don’t have any position legally, but I am one of them and my heart and their hearts beat together. We have a certain synchronicity.
So I am not going to take control. When I said that, I said simply that I will be continuing to speak. I was in isolation and not speaking; that gave the opportunity to some wrong people. Now I will be speaking and meeting my people every day, and that’s enough.
It never happened in India for thirty years for the simple reason that nobody would have dared to do anything. When I am present, then none of my people is afraid of the president or the mayor or the secretary or anybody. Then they can say the truth openly. And the president and the secretary will also never feel that this is an opportunity to take advantage of.
So just my presence, my availability, is enough. It won’t happen. It can’t happen.
From those people who went to Europe, everybody can come back? Also Sheela?
Yes, everybody can come back. I love them; they are my people. But I will have to make it clear to them that, “I love you as a person, as an individual, but I don’t love your wrong actions. For your wrong actions you will have to face the courts. And for your wrong actions we are not going to help you. As far as you are concerned, our love remains the same.”
I make a clear distinction between the action and the person. The action is a small thing. For example, for thirty years you were a perfectly nice person and one day you commit a murder. Nobody could have conceived of it. And after that day you may never murder again. But our legal systems are blind: because you have murdered, they will murder you.
This is a strange, primitive law. If murder is wrong, then the punishment which is to murder the person is also wrong – more wrong. Just because it is being done in the name of society, civilization, culture, law, the court, does not make it right.
To me, the murderer as a individual is as respectable as the magistrate. His action, murder, is wrong, which is a small thing considered against the personality of the being, his whole life.
I would like every wrong person, illegal person, criminal person, to be sent not for imprisonment but respectfully, with dignity, to a psychiatric camp, to a hospital where he can be treated, because murder is basically something psychological, rape is something psychological. Power, the lust for it, is something psychological.
Perhaps the person is not responsible at all; it is just some instinct that takes possession of him and he does something. And it is wrong to behave in the same way. An eye for an eye – that is not civilization. He can be treated. You don’t have any right to destroy a person’s whole future because of a single act in the past. The past is over, the future is open. Why should you destroy his future? You should help him so that the same thing does not happen in the future. So whatever steps are needed should be taken: medically, physiologically, psychologically – everything should be done to get this person out of this instinct to murder or rape or do something wrong.
I will call that a cultured society.
So I will have to see. Even if they come back…whatever they have done is small. Their humanity and their being is far more precious.
But I will not protect them against the law. Just as we are lovingly receiving them, I would like them to go and surrender to the court and tell everything, whatever they have done, and ask the court that they are willing to accept whatever punishment is needed.
Did you send somebody after them?
No, not yet.
You will?
No. I will just wait, because one of them has already come back, another has phoned. I will wait. Soon they will be feeling that they have done something wrong and that it is not right to be there. They will all come back.
Those who will not come back will be the three persons – Sheela, Puja, Shanti B – who were really involved in killing people. They will be brought back by Interpol or the Swiss police or German police.
And I don’t need to send anybody anywhere because I have my sannyasins everywhere; they cannot go to any corner of the world and hide. I have my communes in Germany, in Switzerland, in Holland, in England, in Italy – wherever they go my people will find them. And I am going to inform all the communes…
And they are committing the same stupid crimes there. A phone call just came that Sheela has married one Swiss sannyasin. Now this is bigamy; she is married to an American here. She has married there just to remain in Switzerland. And her husband was a trustee of the commune – we have a big commune in Zurich and one of the best in Europe, and he was a trustee there. Another trustee was Pragyan, who is missing. Again the same suspicion…because if they could do such things here they may have done the same thing with Pragyan.
Pragyan is missing, and Dipo has withdrawn from the bank all the money which was the commune’s money and he is not entitled to take it for his personal use. So they phoned and asked, “Should we give him to the police?”
I said, “Immediately, because once Dipo is behind bars Sheela and the whole group will be without support.”
So we will catch them. They cannot escape anywhere.
In Europe there are some rumors in the last few days that you would leave Oregon, probably to Australia. Is it true?
I was just joking with an Australian journalist. Nothing…no rumors.
You will stay in Oregon?
I am going to stay here.
For how long?
Till I get the green card. If they give me the green card I may go. If they don’t give it to me, then alive I am not going anywhere.
Do you trust these new people on the top of the commune?
Perfectly. I even trusted those people, and I trust them even now. To err is human; it is nothing very important. And my trust is unconditional. It does not depend what you do and what you don’t do. I trust your being, your very existence. I certainly trust the new people. Now, without my trust, without my love, my commune is not going to choose anybody.
So you don't feel hurt?
No. Not at all. There is nothing to feel hurt about. I just feel excited.
Thank you.
Good. Great.

---