George Paravanani, Freelance German TV, ZDF TV, Germany; Richard Wagner, CBS Nightwatch, National TV; Scott Miller, NBC, channel 8, Portland, Oregon

Glad to meet you.


Osho,
I consider it a great privilege to be sitting once again opposite to you. I have made a commitment to Isabel that from the moment I start the first question I have exactly one hour, so I would like to be very precise and go to the point.
Let me start this off with a quotation from Eternal India by Indira Gandhi, in which she said, “The rishis conceived of a glow that was brighter than a thousand suns. They sang of the circle of birth and death, of creation and destruction, of the many ends which culminated in new +beginnings.”
Now, the events of the last week starting Friday, September 13th - funny, Friday, September 13th! - have led to a lot of attention here, but what interests me personally is not so much the scandal but your teachings and what the future is going to be.
First of all, I would like to ask you to tell me as precisely and concisely as possible the essence of your teachings; and secondly, if it has changed from 1970 - when I sat opposite you, and at the first interview ever for Western television - until today.

The first thing, you have to remember is to be precise if you want me to be precise. This is unfair.


I beg your pardon, it is not my intention at all to be unfair. I.

No. Then it will not be my intention, too.


I forgot to say one thing.

So just remember it.


Okay.

Never again be imprecise.


Okay.

Just be precise and to the point.


Okay. I apologize. And I was made a little nervous because of all this [inaudible].

I understand.


I apologize.

A nervousness when one starts speaking, that I understand.


I also want to say - I also want to say that I have come here not so much first as a journalist but as a countryman, as an admirer, as a well-wisher.

I know.


.who has read a lot of your books.

I know, and I can see love, immense respect in your eyes.
One thing: everything has changed since your first interview. To me life is a permanent change; only change is unchanging, everything else changes. If you are alive you change, if you are dead, of course you cannot change. The moment you stop changing you have died. Many people die nearabout thirty years of age; then they may live fifty years more, but that is a posthumous life. I will live to the very last breath. I will go on changing, I will go on growing. There is no limit to it. There may be a limit to the sky, but there is no limit to the consciousness.
Secondly, you want [to know] what is my teaching. It is very simple. The essential core of my teaching is: no belief, no dogma, no creed, no religion, nothing borrowed. But only that which you have experienced has to be trusted; everything else has to be doubted. Just as other religions have their foundation in belief, I have my foundation in doubt. My foundation is exactly the foundation science has: doubt until you find something indubitable.
Science moves outwards; I move inwards. This inward movement I call meditation. You have to take three simple steps for this inward movement, and the fourth happens on its own accord.
The first step is observing all your activities; that is your body and its acts - walking, chopping wood, drawing water from the well. Remain a witness. Don’t do it like a robot.


May I interrupt?

No. No interruption.
Second, when you have become capable of watching and witnessing your body and its activities, then you can take the second step: watch the activities of your mind - thoughts, dreams, imagination. Just remain a witness, as if you are standing by the side of the road and a procession of thoughts is passing on the road. You are not part of it. You are just a mirror reflecting, without any judgment - because the mirror has no judgment. A beautiful face.the mirror does not say, “Great!” An ugly face.the mirror does not say, “My God!” The mirror simply reflects whatsoever comes before it. Exactly one has to become a pure witness, without any judgment, evaluation, good, bad. Then a strange experience happens: as your witnessing grows, thoughts start lessening. In the same proportion, if you have ten percent witnessing, then there are ninety percent thoughts; if you have ninety percent consciousness, awareness, then there are only ten percent thoughts. A hundred percent witness, then there is just pure nothingness. This is the state of no-mind, this is the door to the third and the last step.
Now watch subtle emotions, moods. Thoughts are not so subtle. Moods - a certain shadow of sadness, a certain joy.
One is concerned with the body, the second with the mind, the third with the heart. And when you become capable of watching the third too, the fourth happens on its own accord. Suddenly a quantum leap and you are standing exactly at the very center of your being, where there is nothing to be aware of. Awareness is aware of itself, consciousness is conscious of itself. And this is the moment of ultimate ecstasy, samadhi, enlightenment, or whatever name one prefers to give it; but this is the ultimate, there is nothing above it. There is no way to go beyond it, because wherever you go beyond it you will still be a witness. If you start witnessing the witness, you have not gone above it; you are still a witness. So the witness is the very end of the inner journey, you have come home.
And this is my whole teaching. It is absolutely scientific; it needs no belief, it needs only experimentation. And I don’t ask anybody to trust me. I ask only to experiment and experience.
I know that it will happen to you because it has happened to me, and I am just as ordinary a human being as you are. I don’t claim to be a prophet or a savior or an incarnation of God. I don’t claim any speciality. I am just exactly like you. The only difference is you are still asleep, and I am awake. It is only a question.sooner or later you will be awake too.
So there is no need to worship me, there is no need to adore me. If you really love me, that’s enough for you to move into the experiment. I will stand as a guarantee that it happens. I will be your encouragement, but I will not be your savior. I will not take the responsibility, but I will do my best to shake you and wake you up.


Can I ask something?

Yes, now you can do.


Okay. Thank you very much. That, in essence, gives your teaching and it has already taken away some of my questions.
In one of your lectures you had already said - and I quote: “The only consistency in me is my inconsistency. I always contradict myself.” So a person has a right to change.”
I want to let you know that ever since 1969 or ‘70 when you were with fifteen followers in a little apartment in Peddar Road in Bombay.a friend of mine called Deracharya[sic] came and begged me four or five times - I was on a different assignment, and after four or five times, on some instinct I came, I did the interview with you, and after the interview you took me in your arms and said, “Come on, join me and go to the West and let my teachings be known.” And already since then there has been a love affair between you and me, and it has always been there. But I go with Victor Hugo in saying that you have the right to say what you feel, and I must have the right to say what I feel - even when we have mutual love.

That’s perfectly true.


I’ll defend that right to my death. Yes.
I love a lot of your teachings, and one of the things - and I had come back to Pune again, and lived fourteen days there and interviewed Laxmi. And I made a film called Ecstasy in Orange - I gave you a copy, I’m sure you never got to see it.

Mm, mmm.


I would suggest that - I left it last time when I was here. And I also want to congratulate you basically on what has happened in September, because when I came here in November 1984 I was here two days, I was happy to get out alive. As soon as my cameraman and I left, I said, “My God, thank God, never again am I going to this place, not for a million dollars.”
And I’ve come because I wanted to find one answer. I have studied your teachings. I’m also enlightened. Many of these people don’t know the meaning of enlightenment, and you finally cleared them up. They asked that if you were enlightened then you should have known all about Sheela. Enlightenment obviously doesn’t mean omni - omnipotent and knowing everything, being able to know the complete future. That already I know. So I have been enlightened a little bit in [inaudible] and I have to thank you a lot for many things.
But I would like to come to one point.

Before you come to that, I will have to interrupt you again.


Yes sir.

Again you are not being precise, and you have made so many points which need answers and I will not have time to answer them. And you wanted me to be precise.
And this has been my experience with almost every journalist, that they go on saying things and want precise answers, but don’t have any precise questions. It is so stupid. A question has to be very precise. Now, what you are saying is so absurd. Either you are enlightened or you are not enlightened; you cannot be a bit enlightened; that is not possible, that has never happened and can never happen. What do you mean by a bit enlightened? That means a bit unenlightened, too.


Yes.

Both cannot exist together.


I only meant to say I was starting on the journey.

That is a totally different thing; that is not a bit of enlightenment.


Okay; agreed.

And I can see you are not even a bit enlightened. And you are just thinking to start the journey, you have not started yet.
So just be clear, honest and sincere.


Okay. That was my total intention. Okay, now I put precise questions.
First question is: On Friday, September 13th, Sheela prepared and she left. And according to - now I’m quoting.

Mm, mmmm.


.The Oregonian: “The future of this community” - this utopia that you have started here is one of the greatest achievements that any human being has done. And there’s a quotation which says, “Everybody leaves footprints in the sand.” You have left your footprints in the sand. This is something incredible that has happened. Now everybody is asking the question - this interests not only me: What is Osho going to do? because obviously there is a suspense. I see them that - there’s a relief. I feel much happier here than last time. There’s a relief. People are happy. But there is doubt, there is an air of - a vibration of suspense. You hold the cards in your hand, if I may quote these people. What - if I may be allowed to ask - are your future plans? What is going to happen?

I never think of the future. The present is enough for me. Sheela’s going is an immense relief to the commune. It is a great freedom to my people. Naturally freedom brings its own problems. Slavery is less complex; somebody else is always responsible, you are not. You are ordered to do something, you do it - whether it is right or wrong, that is not your responsibility. Freedom means you are responsible for its being right; if it is not right then you will be responsible. You cannot throw the responsibility on somebody else.
So freedom is always a risk. That’s why most of the countries have chosen dictatorship of some kind or other. Even if they call themselves democracies it is only in name; the basic structure is dictatorial for the simple reason that they are afraid that the people cannot take the great responsibility of freedom.
But this will settle, there is no problem in it. These people are all intelligent people. They’re all graduates, most of them have master’s degrees, a few are PhDs, a few are DLitts; many are psychologists, many are doctors, all are well-qualified. Professionally they have been successful in life; just out of love for me they have dropped their success, their professions, and have come into this desert to create a utopia, an oasis.
Sheela was a hindrance. She was creating what every power-lusty person creates: hostility amongst the neighbors. Adolf Hitler writes in his autobiography that unless you create hostility amongst your neighbor nations, you can never become strong; keep people always afraid that the enemy is going soon to attack, soon you will be destroyed. That fear will keep them strong and ready to order and surrender and trust and believe anything the leader says.
I was silent for three-and-a-half years and in isolation. That gave her an opportunity. These people love me; they have nothing to do with Sheela, Sheela means nothing to them. She was just a waitress in a hotel, but I saw in her a few very important things: she was very practical, very pragmatic, very clever - and that was needed to create this commune. It was absolutely essential in the beginning. And she has contributed wholeheartedly. But only in the beginning she was useful. As the commune started growing, taking roots, she became dangerous - and this is one very important thing to understand, that a person may be useful to a certain limit, and beyond that he can become harmful, he can be dangerous. She was useful up to a point. She made the commune strong, she made the commune self-sufficient. She made the commune feel protected, unafraid. But then, by and by, she started the unconscious human urge, lust for power.
And she was doing everything in my name. These people were doing everything because of me. I was not available, she was representing me. So whatsoever she wanted to do, just she had to say that “Osho wants it,” and my people did it.
And whatever she wanted to report to me, she reported; whatever she never wanted to report to me, she never reported. And she was the only communication.
When things became too much, she became afraid of three other persons who were also able to approach me - my physician, my dentist, my caretaker. She became afraid that these people might start informing me that “Sheela is doing something not according to Your wish, that the meditation commune is turning into a concentration camp.” At that point she started to think how to kill these three people. She poisoned two of them, and when she poisoned them then it became clear for me that now I have to come out of my isolation and start speaking again.
And the moment I started speaking again, Sheela started wandering to other communes in Europe, in Australia, in Japan, in Singapore, and she was rarely here. She did not want to face me. Even when she would come here, she would pretend she was sick and she was afraid she would infect me, so she would not come to see me.
Even the last time she came, she pretended that she had a cold, so that she would wait three, four days, and when her cold is gone she will come to see me. But she wrote a note to me, that, “Now I don’t feel excited coming here. I feel more excitement in Europe, more excitement in Australia, but I don’t feel any excitement here.”
I told the person who had brought the message, her secretary, that, “Give Sheela my message that, ‘Watch and find out the reason. The reason is simply that because now I’m speaking myself, your function as a representative is finished. Your face will disappear from the television; your voice will not be heard on the radio. And in these three-and-a-half years you have got a very swollen head. That’s why you don’t feel excited here. And if you want, for an experiment, I can come to Europe and you will not feel excited there too - I can come to Australia or anywhere. Because there you are receiving respect because you represent me, so if I myself come to Germany, then who is going to bother about you?’”
That she understood clearly, and rather than staying three days and face me, she escaped the next day and took away twenty of her intimate colleagues who were conspirators against the commune in many crimes. And as she left, people started opening their mouths. Before they were afraid.


Okay. Here I would like to ask two questions with your kind permission.
According to the reports in The Osho Times and in the papers, she was sent off at the airport with a song. Obviously they knew that she was leaving. Why didn’t you stop her? You obviously had the authority to stop her.

I had no idea that she was leaving. She left at a time when I always go for a ride. She left at four o’clock.


In a plane?

In a plane.


In your plane?

Yes, in my plane. And the people had no idea that she had resigned.


Well, they were helping packing up her clothes and.

Yes, because they had no idea. She had not informed anybody.


.that she was leaving?

That she was leaving, that she was leaving forever.


Well, she said, “Osho is only interested now in jewelry and not in the thing; I’m leaving.”

That she said only to those twenty people who were leaving with her.
But the commune was absolutely unaware that she was leaving forever. And then, too, only forty people were there out of five thousand people.


And some of these forty people are still here.

Yes; there is no problem in it. It is understandable. She has been working here for three-and-a-half years with all these people, and she had done immense work. She may have committed many crimes, but she has done much good too. It is not that everything she did was wrong, and the people who had worked with her, many may have started respecting her, loving her, but out of five thousand people, only forty people were there. So that means only twenty people were there to give her a send-off; twenty were going with her.


When did you know that she had left?

I knew when I came back from my ride. Every day I go at two o’clock for a ride in the forest, in the mountains. When I came back then I came to know that she had left, and I was informed that she has left forever. And it was told to me by her second, and she wanted that her second should be made the president of the commune. I said, “I will have to think over it.”.Because if she could deceive and she could commit all these crimes, to put her second person. “You have been with her for three-and-a-half years, and you never informed me about anything going wrong. I will have to think about it.”
The next day in the morning she left.


When did you discover the tape recorders, the hidden passage? How did all that happen? I mean, it’s almost like a, you know, Shakespearean novel or a suspense crime story, a Sherlock Holmes thing.

It is a crime story, but there is no suspense in it. It is very simple. While she was in power she had put in every power post - we have many corporations, it is a big phenomenon. We have put two hundred million dollars into the commune to develop it. We have seven or nine corporations. So she has put presidents, secretaries of her own, in each corporation. In three and a-half years, slowly slowly she managed all those people who were of independent mind, who were more intelligent than her, who were more capable than her.to harass them in some way or other so that they had to leave.
The vice-chancellor of the university left, the chancellor of the university left. The woman who had collected thirty-three million dollars - the initial money that started the commune - she had to leave. Sheela forced her to leave when she took all power from her hands. It was so insulting that she had to leave.
Slowly slowly she has dropped all the people who could be suspected of going against her. So naturally the people who had left were simple, innocent people who had come here just to live with me in peace and not to get into any power politics.
So when she left, and all the gang of twenty people - who were all criminals. I will tell you what crimes they had committed. When they all left, people started coming on their own.


This is where your critics outside are going to ask you the following question.

Yes.


You’re one of the most courageous men that I know, and for the simple reason: You have dared - even in India, in those days, when you were not that powerful and that not well-known - to go against Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, every religion. You showed a remarkable amount of courage, and yet - things I would never have the guts. Okay.
But, now they’re going to ask you either - these three people were close to you: your doctor, your dentist, and your caretaker; they have been with you since India?

Mm, mmm.


And if you had educated them and brought them up to a sense of responsibility, then they should have - if they were your servants and if they loved you - overcome this fear and informed you of what was happening here. And indirectly, are you willing to take part responsibility for the phenomenon Sheela and what happened?

No responsibility. And the reason why my people could not inform me was that they were also as much uninformed as I myself.
Sheela cut my whole house and the people who lived in the house off from the commune. Even the guards on my house were not allowed to talk to the people of the house.


Your dentist, or your daily - your - or what is the lady’s name who is your nurse? She saw you daily.

Yes. They are living with me in the same house. And Sheela managed that she. She was clever. She managed that my doctor should not be part of the medical center.


But he was poisoned. He felt that he was poisoned.

That’s when I started speaking, when he was poisoned. He was poisoned in a meeting. First he was poisoned at Sheela’s house.


How many months ago? How many weeks ago?

Just a few weeks ago.


So then why didn’t he tell you immediately?

It was impossible, even for him. He felt something strange. He had taken just a cup of coffee - and you don’t immediately suspect that somebody will poison you. And in a commune where you are completely devoted to the welfare of all, he could not even imagine that he would be poisoned.
My caretaker was also poisoned the same way, a cup of tea. Even she could not think.


Even you got an injection or a needle or a pin or something, is that right?

No, my physician got that. But my milk was poisoned, and they were poisoning it so slowly, with such minute doses, that its effects would come only after years so that my death seems to be natural.


I would like to quote one of.

Just first.because your question is not answered and it will remain in your mind. These people could not inform me for the simple reason. Sheela stopped the dentist from going to the dentistry because he works on my teeth, so it is better that he should do editing in the house and just take care of my teeth.


So he’s with you all the time?

He’s with me all the time.


Then he had an opportunity to tell you, “Listen, Master”.

No, no; but he never goes anywhere. They are cut off. You don’t understand the thing. He’s not going to the dentistry. He’s not going anywhere.
And people - Sheela’s people - have tried in every way that these people get no information of any kind.


So these three people were as unaware and as cut off from the rest of the community?

Yes.


Okay.

Completely cut off.


So they’d never been to the canteen and spoke to the people?

They were eating there, but everybody in the canteen was not aware what was happening, it was only a small group of these twenty people who really knew what was happening.
For example, taping. Only two electricians knew about it. Now, even they bugged my sitting room - in front of me!


Are you scared?

No, there is no question because I have nothing to lose.


But did she threaten to blackmail you? I don’t know what she has tape recorded. Supposedly there was a tape recorder in your bedroom. I mean, each one has his own private life. Are you scared that she might blackmail you?

I’m not afraid of anything, because there is nothing to blackmail me.


Because she was a little crazed - that I knew a long time ago.

Nothing to be worried about that. But she was in a paranoia. The bugging was so that if somebody - my caretaker or my dentist or my doctor - says something, then she knows.


But not to hold the power over you?

For me there is no question, because when I am alone I have not been speaking to the microphone.


It’s possible that one might speak in one’s dream or something.

But the question is, even she bugged my room. I don’t know about electricity, what wires are for bugging. Everybody in my house knew that she’s putting some new wires, and she told me that this is an emergency buzzer. “If you press it, then the guards will immediately come into the house.” So I said, “Okay, if you want. There is no emergency, but if you want to put it you can put it.” And I have never touched it. The people saw it being done, but nobody is an electrician, nobody knows what they are doing. So in the buzzer, inside, she placed a microphone. Even the people from the government, FBI people, when they saw all the bugging that they had done, they could not believe it. They said, “These people have far more sophisticated ways of bugging than Nixon had.”


But I think you will agree with me. Obviously you know Sheela since a long time. When I was here last time I interviewed her and saw her many times on television. This is definitely not the Sheela you knew in the beginning. Something happened to her.

No. It is the same Sheela. What happened was just whatever she was carrying in her unconscious - she may not have been aware of it. When she got the opportunity. She was just a waitress, and now she got millions of dollars in her hands. Yesterday her old secretary’s letter has come saying that she had opened a private account in Switzerland in her own name. The money that was to come here she was accumulating slowly there, small parts of it; now it is forty-three million dollars.
So when she got the opportunity.just human mind.


It’s very.

It is nothing special. I feel it, anybody else in her place would have done the same, more or less.


More or less. In German there is a nice saying - if I may quote - Gelegenheit macht Diebe. It means when a man gets a chance to do a thing like that, he does that. And you said in your quotation too - and I’ve heard it before, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Right.


But I have to unfortunately come back to a question that might annoy you, but I have to put it.

No, nothing annoys me. You put it.


Thank you, sir. I feel that this - you have built a community of - I remember in Pune, I was so happy when I spent fourteen days there. And my crew didn’t want to leave, they wanted to take sannyas. I said, “Nothing doing; come on. We’ve got to go to work.” And - but these people - you have created a miracle out of the earth. I mean, your name is going to go down in history, no doubt about it.
But what I want to know is, if this - all this meditation.that they should have had a sense of responsibility. Among these five thousand people - doctors, lawyers, psychologists, they’re all asking: What is it in Rajneesh that brings all these educated, well-to-do people? One of them should have had the guts to somehow get the message to you, through your dentist or through this. There’s something funny happening here.

No; but even they were not aware. You don’t understand a thing.


.fear.

No, no, they were not aware - not fear. Otherwise they would have approached me. There were thousands of ways to approach me. They could have phoned to my caretaker, they could have phoned to my physician, if the guards were not allowing them in. They could have managed any way.
The real thing is that what kinds of crimes she committed were such that in the community, except the people that were committing them, nobody was in any way able to know.
For example, they burned a county court house, an office in Wasco County. Now, only one person knows who burned it, and that person is with them.


This is what I don’t understand.

Now, this is very simple. Nobody who has a little understanding will make it.that fifty persons know that you are burning an office. One person knows. And if he behaves in any disgusting way or goes against you, he can be killed - and he knows that, because these people are doing just that. He’s part of the gang.
They killed one person.


Yes, one of those street.

They killed one of the street persons and simply threw the corpse out of Rancho Rajneesh.


You obviously know that the attorneys and the FBI.you will have to prove all these charges. That’s not my concern. But what I would like to come to know a little more about, about the fact that you have taught these people - you have been telling them for years again and again, “Take responsibility for your life in your own hands. Your life is yours. Life is a joke.” And that surprises me that they knew, not the crimes - they knew there was something funny happening. There was fear here. One could see. When I came here last time, it was as if I were in an imminent Jonestown. I mean, I could feel it, an outsider; my cameraman could feel it. I mean, I know how - if they’re honest with them, they would have felt - they may not have known the crimes, but why didn’t somebody have the courage to indirectly let you know that something is not right here, this is not paradise, this is not utopia?

I don’t agree. First, the fear that you felt here was a paranoia created by Sheela and her gang, that the whole of Oregon is out to destroy you, that everybody is against you. If everybody is against you, naturally you have to have your security force, you have to have your own guns. And she was not absolutely wrong. This is how human psychology works. Wasco County people were purchasing guns suddenly. Even the Wasco County shopkeepers who sell guns reported to the police that “There has never been such a great sale.” Suddenly, at the time of election, when these people were going to vote in Wasco County, people were purchasing guns. I had finally. Even though I was in silence, Sheela brought the news to me, asking that “What we have to do?” I said, “Simply boycott the election. We are not politicians and we are not interested in American politics. Our work is here and our work is meditation. There is no need.”
But she created the fear in the people, and people could see it - that “They are moving on the county road with guns.” Then naturally these people started getting ready, learning shooting, becoming alert - just the way it goes everywhere around the world. If Russians go on piling up nuclear weapons - they are afraid of America - America goes on piling nuclear weapons afraid of Russia, and it seems there is no end to it.
And that’s what was happening. She created hostility through her statements. Those people created hostility through their statements. And it became a very tense situation.
So if you had felt it, it was not that the commune was going to harm anybody; the commune was simply trying to defend itself. But whether you are trying to defend yourself or harm anybody, there is an atmosphere which any sensitive person can feel. But even I would not prevent it, seeing that if they are having guns, and if I stop my people having guns.


Yes.

Then tomorrow these people can be killed and I will be responsible.


But you and I know very well that guns never solved any problems. But I would like.

They never solved any problem, but no-guns have also never solved any problem.


I would like to.

No, just.


Yes.

Remember it: have no-guns solved any problem?


It depends how one looks at it.

No, never; not a single problem has been solved by guns, not a single problem has been solved by no-guns. In fact, no problem has been solved.


I agree with you. But I personally see a golden opportunity - okay, I will ask a last question. I have to leave. Let me ask you the last question: One of your disciples right here said, “By the time it was over I was boiling with tears and anger. He should have known. He should have seen what a monster she was. He should have protected us.” I also feel that Sheela could not have been Sheela without [inaudible]. She was a reflection of you, she got a power from you that I don’t know how you would be able to explain.
And, secondly, my last question, please give me an answer possibly if you can - this is very important to me.

But this is not a question.


Yes, yes. The question is: I would like to know who is Osho Rajneesh? Please answer this question only.

I am.


Okay.because some people have called you - your critics have called you, “He’s a cosmic Santa Claus”, “He’s a charlatan”, “He’s an intelligent man”, “He’s well-read”, “He’s a psychologist”. People say - you have critics, you have lovers, well-wishers, like me well-wishers who are not sannyasins, not critics. But I was trying to find an answer to who is ‘Osho’? Is he - what is he, what is he? Is he for real, what is he? I was trying to find.

Yes.


.out. Probably there’s no answer.

I am exactly what I am - Osho.


Thank you so much.

Okay. Okay. Come back whenever you feel like.


I would love to come here.

Good.


I hope you will look at this one film that I did; it’s called “You Are a Rainbow.”

Mm, mmm.


And I think - it’s all about Esalen and the human potential movement, and I would like to write a letter to you. I hope you will read it.

Okay.


Thank you very much.


[new interviewer]

Come here.


Good evening, Osho.

Glad to meet you. Come here.


Isabel: This is Richard Wagner from CBS Nightwatch.

Good.


Not quite so many people tonight as there were.

No, no problem.


.last Monday night. And I am sure that I have no questions that you have not been asked before, because all journalists tend to ask the same questions.

You don’t worry, but I will not answer the same!


I will be your straight man.

Good.


I will feed you good laugh lines. While they’re getting ready, just - I’m curious on a personal basis. Um, do you enjoy the attention of all of us, all we reporters who come here, or would you rather we didn’t come and ask you things?

No, I love it.


Good. Cause I’ve only been here a couple of times, but it’s always interesting to come and speak to the people here; I enjoy it.

Great.


Are we ready, gentlemen? [Yes] Just about. Okay.

Okay. So you just. Okay?


I appreciate your patience. I believe we are ready. Do I believe correctly?

[Answer from team: Yes.]

After how many minutes do they have to change their tape?


Twenty minutes.

That’s okay.


Okay. We’re ready. Osho, I’m sure that you’ve answered this question now many times in this past week, but.

You don’t be worried, you just ask.


Okay. What is the situation here now? Sheela and the gang are gone - what is the mood? What is the feeling at Rajneeshpuram now?

Of great rejoicing, as if they have come out of a concentration camp. They are feeling free, unburdened. And for the first time it seems that the commune is a place of absolute freedom, love and joy.


Which it is meant to be, right?

Which it is meant to be; which Sheela and her gang had destroyed.


Osho, how were they able to do that? How could they distort the aim of the commune?

Because I was silent. I came to America in silence, and I remained for three-and-a-half years silent, and I wanted no information from the outside world - no newspaper, no radio, no television.
And I have told Sheela to bring only absolutely essential things to me. That gave her a great opportunity on three grounds: one, she was a poor hotel waitress before, and suddenly she saw millions of dollars in her hands. Two hundred million dollars we have put into developing this oasis in the desert. It is just human. I don’t condemn her that she started saving little bits in Switzerland, money that was coming from Europe, so she started accumulating her own account there. Her old secretary’s letter yesterday informed me that she has accumulated forty-three million dollars.


Forty-three million dollars she has?

Yes.


Of money that belongs to the commune?

That belongs to the commune, that should have come here.


What can you do?

We will see what we can do.
Secondly, I was silent, and the people who have come here have come out of love for me, they are ready to do anything for me, and she became my representative to them. She became my symbol. Otherwise, she was just as any other sannyasin. In India she was nobody special. Because she was the only communication line between the commune and me.


But you gave her that power because you chose not to speak?

Because I was in silence, I did not want to be disturbed.


If I may ask, how did you discover what she was about after this time?

I will tell you.


Okay.

So this gave her immense power. In my name she could say anything to my people and they would follow, knowing that it is coming from me. Even if sometimes they would suspect that “This cannot be from Osho because it is against his teaching”.
I have never taught them to believe anything. Be reasonable, be rational, and doubt everything unless you come to an inevitable reality. I am not teaching them to be part of a faith. I am trying to give them a science of the inner world, which begins in doubt and ends in the experience of truth, of their own reality.
So sometimes they suspected, because Sheela was asking for surrender - to trust everything: whatever comes, comes from Osho and you have to do it.
So those people who had any suspicion, she simply threw them out of the commune. The chancellor of the university she threw out, the vice-chancellor - all the intelligent people who could see that she was getting into a power trip. The best psychologists she threw out. The people who have been devotedly in love with me for fifteen years, she harassed them in such a way, misbehaved with them, that finally they decided to leave, it was such a humiliation.


These people couldn’t communicate with you and tell you what was happening?

Because I was not available, that was the.


I see.

A:.trouble. I was in isolation, I never came into the commune, I never met anybody.


Understood.

So that gave her an opportunity.
And thirdly, because all those intelligent people left, she replaced them with her own people - who were just puppets, who would follow her whatsoever she said. Even if she was committing crimes they would support her, because their whole position was dependent on her support; otherwise they had no reason to be there. So to keep their position they had to support her crimes. So it became a clique of twenty people conspiring against the whole commune.
They did every kind of crime. They killed one man in the share-a-home program. They were giving all those people some drug to keep them drugged so that they would vote for them, or whatsoever they said those people would do.


This is their packing the polls?

Yes.


Uh huh.

Yes. Keep them like robots.


Uh huh.

But this man they accidentally overdosed, and he died; and they just threw him - so inhuman - out of Rancho Rajneesh. The corpse was found by the police, but they could not figure it out - from where it came, who the man was, who had killed him. And it remained a mystery and died out. Only just now, when people started revealing.when Sheela left and their fear disappeared that they would be punished, they would be thrown out, or perhaps they may even be killed. Because she killed that man and then she tried to kill three other people, and that’s what started the whole thing.


This was your doctor, your dentist.

My doctor, my dentist, and my caretaker.


Uh huh.

She was very much afraid of these three people, because they were the only ones, except her, who could approach me.


Uh huh.

So the only way was that those three should be simply finished.
First she tried to poison one of my sannyasins who has served me for fifteen years as lovingly, as carefully, that I don’t think any other woman is capable of. From the morning ‘til late in the night she is just running and doing everything for me, to make everything convenient. They had asked her, “Why don’t you come once in a while to visit Sheela?” So she went there, and just in a cup of tea they poisoned her. But she could not think of poisoning; it was so unnatural to think of it. She became sick, she vomited the whole night; for three days she had to rest. But still we did not think of poison - for the simple reason that if I come to your home and you give me a cup of tea, there is no reason to believe that you will kill me. For what reason?
But then the same thing happened with my physician. Because he is a physician, he became aware that there was poison in the coffee. So he immediately went to the medical center. Other doctors also suspected that there was possibility of poison, but some kind of a poison which is undetectable.


Oh, they never discovered what kind it was, huh?

No. There are poisons, they discovered, there are poisons which cannot be detected. They can be given to you, but from blood or from any other source you cannot detect them.


And that’s what they were using?

They have been using the book. When Sheela left, in her room a whole literature on poisons, a whole literature on how to murder people so that you cannot be caught, in what doses you have to give the poison - and particularly that poison which the medical people were suspecting, that page was underlined. So it seems they have been using that poison.no way to detect it.


I must ask, though, if they were using it and they understood how to use it, why didn’t they use enough to kill? Why just use enough to make someone sick?

Yes. The reason was that if suddenly you kill somebody who was not sick, then there will be suspicion. You have to give the poison slowly so he becomes weaker.


I see.

And slowly, within three, four months he dies almost like a natural death. That was the reason. And that is given in the book, that depending on when you want the person to die, that much dose you should give.


Is this being investigated now by the authorities?

Yes; the FBI and State Police and other agencies - the county police. They all have an office here and people are going and revealing everything that they know.


You’re cooperating with that?

Absolutely. I am absolutely against crime, and I am all for law.
On a third occasion they injected my doctor, and that was in a meeting. I started speaking after the second poisoning. It was still not certain, but the suspicion was enough. And when I asked Sheela, I could see on her face a little hesitation. And I told her, “From tomorrow I am going to speak, and I am going to meet my people. Now you need not be my representative. I will represent myself.” In the meeting, while I was speaking and ten thousand sannyasins were listening, they injected my doctor, just in the crowd.


In the crowd?

In the crowd. But it is such an injection that it can be done from outside the robe. He felt it immediately, he pulled up his robe, he showed people. He knew who had done it, and people saw blood and the mark of the injection. And one person has come as a witness, saying that, “Whatever the doctor says, that is the person who has done it, and I have seen her doing with my own eyes.”


They saw the person who did it?

Yes. And that girl also has disappeared with Sheela’s group.
After that, I made it clear to people that this group must have done more crimes. And if anybody has any information, then now it is your responsibility to expose them.


Are people coming forward now?

People are coming forward, and with so many stories that it seems just unbelievable. They have even bugged my room.


That sounds so hard to believe.

And they have bugged the whole hotel. They have bugged every house where they suspected there are people who may one day not be with them.


Was the reason for this to steal money? Is that at the base of it? Did they want to take money and run?

No, not only that, because money was already there and nobody knows. This letter has come yesterday. They have to change? Okay.


I’m sorry, I didn’t know we ran out of tape. You were so quiet.
Osho, let me, if I may, ask - re-ask that question. I must ask the last question again because we didn’t have the tape in.
Essentially the question is: Sheela and her gang, were they betraying the commune simply for.to get rich? Were they just trying to get money and flee?

No. The money they had already got there in their own name, and here they were doing all these crimes to keep the whole commune under their control. And because I started speaking, two things happened. One, Sheela lost her big ego that she had accumulated in three-and-a-half years; she lost her face on the television screen, her voice on the radio, her picture in the magazines, because when I’m speaking myself, who is going to take interest in her interviews? She was representing me.
So since I started speaking, she went on touring Europe, Australia, Singapore, where my other communes are. There she was received with the same grandeur that she had become accustomed to - television people coming, all the media lined up, interviews. She has become a celebrity, and that is a very poisoning thing.


Have you spoken with her by telephone since she left?

I told. No, I never have used a telephone in my whole life.


Would you speak with her in any way if you could?

No. Only if she comes in front of me.


Would you speak to her if she came and asked to be forgiven?

There is every possibility. The future is always unpredictable.
Last time she came here, she wrote a letter to me saying that, “I don’t feel excitement coming here,” because the whole commune does not go to receive her at the airport. There are no photographers; nobody is taking any note when she comes and when she goes. To become special and then to become again ordinary is difficult. I have every compassion for that. And if she had asked me, I would have arranged everything. I could have told my people that “There is no problem, you can go. Have photographers gather around her airplane, put as many garlands as she wants. Why unnecessarily make her unhappy? But she never told me. She simply told that “I feel no excitement coming here. But in Europe I feel very happy, in Australia I feel very happy.”
The person who has brought the note, the second person, the one who was always bringing notes when Sheela was absent, I told her, “Tell her it is nothing but ego, and if she wants to see it, I can come to Europe and stay just three months there, and all her happiness will disappear. Or if she wants Australia, it is perfectly good; I can come to Australia and prove to her what is really the reason. The reason is that ‘You are now no more getting nourishment for your ego.’”


Did she and her gang steal so much money from the commune that the commune could be in financial difficulty?

No, the commune can never be in financial difficulty. We have one million sannyasins around the world. And my sannyasins are all rich, all intelligent, all professional people. There is no problem: just a word from me and we can have one hundred millions immediately available. That’s not a problem. So she was just foolish; that does not make any difference to us.


But you must be hurt?

But she will be caught, and she will soon be in trouble. And I am certain of it because the next person to her has said to me the last day that “We have certainly an account, and the rumor is not wrong, but we were keeping the account for your safety. If in any case you have to leave America, then we should keep some money there.”
But I said, “If it was for my sake, at least I should be made aware of it. And how much money is there? I should be made aware of it. What is the number of your bank account? What bank is it? I don’t know anything; you have never told me. She said, “Tomorrow I will be bringing every detail.” And ‘tomorrow’ she too disappeared.


What is your status vis-a-vis staying in the United States? Are you here legally? Can you stay with no problem, or do you have a difficulty with Immigration and Naturalization?

No, there is no difficulty. They are having difficulties. I have been here for four years, and I will be here. And in four years they have not been able to find anything about which they can say no to me. I want them to decide this way or that. If they say yes, okay; if they say no, then I move to the courts.
They have six grounds [for immigration] and I have applied on five grounds, and I will fight on each ground separately. One ground will take twenty years to reach to the Supreme Court. Five grounds will take a hundred years, so what is the problem? So many judges will die, so many INS people will die; I myself will be dead. Perhaps they will give the green card to my grave. That will be their tribute.


Assuming - and I do assume - that you will be here as long as you please, how are you getting along now with your neighbors in this part of Oregon? Are you friends with them?

From our side there is no hostility towards anybody. Sheela and her company has created hostility. That is a necessary part of any fascist mind, to create hostility with the neighbors. That creates fear, paranoia; then your own commune becomes more in your hands, more surrendered. And they know that they cannot stand alone, they can only stand with the commune. So even against their will they have to follow your orders. So the more hostility you create, the more your small minority becomes stronger. So that’s what she was doing. But now they are gone. I don’t have any hostility towards anybody. In fact, in America everybody is a foreigner except Red Indians. So what is the problem? In fact we are legally here and you are illegally here.


What about.?

The Americans, the forefathers, have invaded this country.


I say no argument; you’re absolutely right.

Right. We have not invaded the country; we have purchased the land, and purchased also in a right way. We have paid seven million dollars for this land. Your forefathers paid thirty dollars for the whole area of New York. So this land is three times bigger than New York; that means ninety dollars at the most. And remember that you may have come one hundred years before, somebody may have come two hundred years before, somebody three hundred years before - no visa, no green card. And we are asking you on every legal ground. And foreigners are trying to prevent other foreigners - strange - and illegal foreigners are preventing legal foreigners!


Let me - we could go on and on about that one.
What about Sheela and her group bringing the homeless people from around the country here at election time? Was that one of her plots?

Yes, it was a plot. They wanted to take over the county. But that, too, only just now people have started telling me. I was silent. I had no idea. Sheela has simply informed me only one thing: that they have surplus money out of the annual festival, so they want to do some humanitarian job, that’s why she is bringing these people. I said, “If it is a humanitarian job, perfectly good, do it.”
Now, as I have started speaking, people have revealed to me that it was not humanitarian, it was just the opposite, very inhuman. Those people were drugged completely every day. Gallons of drugs were imported from outside, so they cannot be detected here - that they have purchased them in America.
They killed one man, and then finally they wasted three million dollars on it and created so much hostility and a negative kind of publicity.
They were going to do something like that again; if I was not speaking, they would have done that too. They had made in City of Rajneesh one housing complex for five hundred people, a beautiful housing complex with separate bathrooms, and they wanted it to make an AIDS home just to create more trouble for Oregonians.


How can you make up to the local people? How can you get the confidence of the people who live around the commune?

It will come by itself, because now there will be nobody who will be creating any hostility. It will take a little time to heal.
But I stopped it immediately, that this cannot be done; this is making a dangerous spot for Oregon and also for your own people. Five hundred AIDS patients will be dangerous for everybody, and we will be the closest to them, so this is simply idiotic. So I had to stop it. So now the whole housing complex is just lying there and unnecessarily we have to keep it clean and keep it in order, and there is.
But I had made the gesture. I had told the press that we are ready to vacate the City of Rajneesh, change its name back to Antelope, because there is no need, Antelope was perfectly good. And we have got our own city, there is no need.
And our people unnecessarily were being forced to live there. Every day they work here the whole day; in the night they have to go to Antelope just to show that a hundred sannyasins are living there, an unnecessary trouble. And those people don’t want to go; after working the whole day they would like to meet their friends who are here, they would like to go to the disco, dance, sing, go to the restaurant, drink; but they had to be packed into buses and sent to Antelope. I don’t want that. So I had told to the press that we would like to take all our people back, but then it is the responsibility of the Antelope people that they should take their properties back.


Buy them back?

If they want them, yes, they should buy them back; and we are ready to give them back at the same price. We have improved their property, we have made almost renovated houses, and prices have already gone higher in four years, but we are ready to give them at the same price as they had sold us. The price is almost double now, so they are not going to be at any loss. We have made the city beautiful.
But the ex-mayor’s news, I saw.she says, “We are not going to purchase.”


Why would she say that?

“.because our city is already destroyed by these people.”
Strange people. If you don’t want to purchase, then we are ready to purchase. You sell your houses and be finished, be clean. And they are in a minority; only twelve people are there. So only one-third of the property is now in the hands of Antelope people. If they want to sell it at a reasonable, market price, we will purchase it; but we will want them all to vacate. We don’t want any more trouble. Either they should purchase our properties, or we are ready to purchase their properties.
But if they think that we should vacate and just let them have their properties free, they are wrong; this is stupid.


I think it’s about time; are we going to change our tape? Do one more. [inaudible conversation]
Osho,
While they’re doing what they have to do, I’ll ask you a long rambling question.

Okay.


I haven’t been here except two times, and I’m curious to know why - why the security? The people here clearly wish you no harm. Why is it necessary to maintain such rigid security in this commune?

I was thinking that as Sheela has gone and the hostility between Oregonians and this commune disappears, we will slowly withdraw security. But there was reason for it, even in Sheela’s time.
Before we had no security, just the police - which is part of the Oregon, city police, but we had to create the security because Christian fanatics started coming and creating a nuisance in the city. And then Hell’s Angels started coming on their bikes. Now, that we cannot tolerate.
And we don’t want our people to be harassed by these fanatics.


Perfectly understandable.

So unless the government gives the guarantee that our people will not be harassed, the security will remain. If they give the guarantee, the security will disappear tomorrow. There is no problem, because we don’t want it. In fact, one hundred people are unnecessarily involved in security. They are creative people - somebody is a doctor, somebody is a plastic surgeon and he is just carrying a gun. This is - that gun is meant for retarded people, not for intelligent people who can do better things. We don’t want it. And those guns look so ugly. We want the whole place to be full of roses, not full of guns. But, the problem is that if we remove those guns.
Just one day we experimented - yesterday. In the morning discourse, two security people stand by the podium where I speak. We removed them. It doesn’t look right. I’m talking about love, and you have to keep two people with guns on both the sides. We removed them, and a madman jumped on the podium. He would have harmed me.
We know that there are people who belong to Sheela’s gang; they are hostile. We know that there are people who have been posted by INS in the commune to give them all information. Now, with all this. And we are giving all the information, everything, without keeping anything back, to the FBI.
Still the FBI said to one of our people that, “We would like at least 500 people from the commune to be locked in prison.” Now, this means they are not interested really in Sheela, her gang, her crimes; they are more interested in destroying the commune.


Why would they want to destroy the commune?

Ask the Attorney General. Why should they declare a legal city illegal? For two years it was legal; it was incorporated by the state government, by the Wasco County, it was accepted by the federal government. We were receiving support from the federal government, the state government, the county, from everybody. And then suddenly the city became illegal.


The Supreme Court of Oregon said that the land use was not proper, is that correct?

Yes, they have said it. But the Attorney General has found another way. Now he says that state and religion are mixed, so on that ground the city is illegal. We have won that case, that on land use laws city cannot be declared illegal, so they have now found another way.
And you can see the intention of the person. We said, “That’s perfectly okay. We are ready to fight, but the case should be decided in a federal court.” Because if the case is state versus city, it cannot be decided by any state court.


So you’ll appeal to the highest courts - the federal courts?

That’s what we are trying, but they are insisting that the case should be decided by a state court, which is absolutely illogical. Those state courts are under state pressure, they are part of the state; naturally we cannot win in those courts. And why they should be afraid of federal court or Supreme Court? If we are not afraid, why should they be afraid? We know perfectly well we are legal, the city is legal; we have not committed any illegality in its incorporation. There is no question of mixing any religion with the state. I don’t see - because we don’t believe in God, we don’t have any heaven and hell, we don’t have any prayer, we don’t have any catechism. The city’s work is making the roads, taking care of the public park, the public dam; I don’t know how we can mix religion with the roads.


What is the purpose of the commune? What is the goal of the commune?

The goal of the commune is that people should realize their reality, their self, their center. They should become fully conscious. There should not be a corner in their being which is dark. That is the goal, the eternal goal of all humanity, to achieve self-realization; and that is our goal.
Now, how can we mix that goal with the municipality of the city? I don’t understand. I don’t see that there is any way to mix.
They are mixing everywhere. In every court you are keeping the Bible for taking the oath; this is mixing religion with justice. Why is the Bible being kept there? And knowing perfectly well that there is no other book so pornographic as your Holy Bible. Now, I cannot take oath on a Bible; I would rather prefer a Playboy magazine, which is at least colorful and glossy.
There are a few people, a group of atheists, who are publishing all the passages from the Bible which are pornographic, and what they have come to is a five-hundred-page collection. And they say this five-hundred-page collection is the most pornographic; no other scripture is comparable to it. But why you are keeping it in the court? The court can keep the Constitution of America; that one understands, and that has some value, that has some democratic respect for freedom, respect for expression. And that is made by far more intelligent people than the Old Testament. I can accept the Constitution, but I cannot accept the Bible - when you have such a beautiful Constitution - the best in the whole world.


What do you think of historic figures in religion like Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha? What is your opinion of them? Are they historical personages, historical figures, what?

They are mixed. For example, Jesus: everything that is important is fictitious, and everything that is real is not important. Now, walking on water is fictitious, the virgin birth is fictitious. That he is the only begotten son of God, that is nonsense. That he revived people from death, it is all fiction. These are not histories. Then what remains is just a poor carpenter’s son, that I don’t think any would bother to worship.
About all these people, miracles have been created by the followers to make them as high, holy, unique as possible, and as far away from ordinary human beings so that you have to fall down on your knees and pray to them. Only then they can be your saviors, prophets, messengers of God.
There is no God, hence there is no question of messengers.
And if Moses saw God, that simply means that the heat of the desert, forty years wandering in the desert, just got the man crazy, drove him crazy, nothing else.


What is the purpose of life?

There is no purpose beyond life itself. The purpose is intrinsic. Life itself is so beautiful, so ecstatic, such a dance; but we don’t know it, we don’t live it. We go on postponing. We are always thinking tomorrow we will live; today we are occupied so much in other things, living can be postponed. And we go on postponing. We realize only when death comes that, “My God, now there is no tomorrow.”
Change?


Do you want to change?
[Cameraman: No, we’re okay.]
I only had one last question.

Okay.


And I think you’ve answered it, but let me ask it anyway. Is it possible for your views, your outlook on life, your beliefs, to be allowed just to exist in the world we live in, or will people always try to stop you - the people who believe in organized religion, the politicians? Will you always have enemies?

I will always have enemies, and because that is the very nature of things, it is not a disappointment. I accept it joyously. Whatever is the way of life is perfectly good, and I am happy with it.


You’ll take as it comes, huh? Okay. I thank you. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you.

Always come back whenever you can.


We shall be, we shall return, I’m sure. I think what he [the cameraman] would like to do is just take some more pictures of you. The talking part is essentially complete, but inescapably they need more video.
Do you think you will be seeing the press daily, or.?

I have been seeing the press for the last whole month. And I will be going.seeing the press every day because I’m not going to travel around the world. My health does not permit it. So I have to take your help.


Do you think we treat you fairly? The things you read and see on television, do you think you get a fair treatment from the press?

Quite fairly.


Is there anything you don’t like to read about yourself or see about yourself? No?

No. I like everything.


Do you think you may ever travel to your other communes around the country - around the world again?

My health is not good. My problem is my allergy. Any perfume, any dust creates asthma attacks. For four years I had not a single attack. In the last twenty years I have never been so healthy and happy. So I am not going anywhere. In fact, I’m always puzzled why I was not born in Oregon.


I told a friend last night that I was coming over here today to speak with you, and he said, “You must ask him why Oregon?” Why did you choose Oregon?

Because of my allergies. It has a dry climate and cool; humidity is disturbing to me, so humidity I don’t like. Hot I don’t like. So this desert simply was waiting for me for fifty years - since I was born, this desert was waiting for me!


Well, I’m sure there are people that would say this high desert has never been put to better use.

Yes, it has never been. During my whole fifty-five years on the earth this desert has not been used. It has been reserved for me by existence. Now, no government can prevent me. When existence itself is on my side, then I don’t care about small governments.


May I ask you how you spend your days? Do you - do you meditate, do you - do you - do you - I know you have discourses in the morning.

The morning goes in the discourse. Then I take my lunch and go to sleep. Two o’clock I wake up and I go for a drive into the forest, and near 3:30 or 4:00 I come back, take a bath, swimming. I have a beautiful swimming pool, olympic-size. And I love the change of hot and ice cold showers, so one-and-a-half hours, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening. And then the press conference.


That’s the rest of your day.

Then in the end, if anything is about the commune needs my attention my secretary brings it, and by 11:00 I go to sleep again.
But whatever I am doing, my meditation continues. It is not something that I have to do separately; it is just an art of witnessing. Speaking to you, I’m also witnessing myself speaking to you. So here are three persons: you are listening, one person is speaking, and there is one behind who is watching, and that is my real me. And to keep constant contact with it is meditation.
So whatever you do does not matter, you just keep contact with your witness. I have reduced religion to its very fundamental essence. Now everything else is just ritual. This much is enough. And this does not need you to become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or anybody, and this can be done by an atheist, by a communist, by anybody, because it needs no kind of theology, no kind of belief system. It is simply a scientific method of slowly moving inwards. A point comes when you reach to your innermost core, the very center of the cyclone.


Did you have teachers or have you developed this on your own?

No, I have developed it on my own. I have never had any teacher. I was not as fortunate as my sannyasins are.


Are you a reader? Do you read a great deal, or not very much?

No. For five years I have not read anything - no newspaper, no book, no television, nothing. I’m so happy. And what is there to read?


I envy you.

Mmm? I neither read nor write.


You don’t write?

No.


You never.

All my books are my discourses.


You never put your thoughts on paper?

Never. In my whole life I have never written.


Any particular reason why not?

It is easier to speak the truth than to write it. The written word is dead. The spoken word has some life at least. The eyes, the gestures, the tone, the nuance of the voice, everything which the written letter misses.


We live in the video age. You could make video cassettes.

We are making.


That’s better than the written word. That’s still some life to it.

Yes.


Will they be made available to the general public?

It is available all over the world. I am a very contemporary man.


Well, in a way, then, I mean of course it’s not writing, but it’s communicating; so you are communicating other than just one on one or just to a group?

Yes; this is communication.


Uh huh. But the video cassettes are, in a way, a book - not a written word, but a record.

It is different.


Yes, I agree.

Very different.


I agree. And yet it’s a record, it’s a.

And soon, when it becomes three dimensional, then it will be really beautiful.


I thank you very much.

Okay.


Scott Miller,
Channel 8

I know him.

I feel like I know you as well, although we have never really.


Great.

.met face to face. My pleasure.


Yes. Okay. How are you doing today?

I am doing fine.


How was your swim? I noticed that you.

Great.


I’ve been a big fan of hot and cold showers myself for quite some time.

Some day you can come to my bathroom.


Well, I’ll leave you my business card when I leave. If we could arrange that, I’m sure my news director would be very happy.

[inaudible] Are we.Isabel? Let them be ready.


I’m here just to talk to you very briefly today, and I just wanted to check.in the nature of our business, which sometimes doesn’t make any sense to me either, with the competitive nature of our business I do need to be somewhat.somewhat careful about what I say right now. Isabel, are we clear at this point? Okay.
Competitiveness aside, I guess we’re ready. I’m here also as a representative of NBC news. We’re an affiliate of NBC, and NBC has obtained, I understand, a copy of an interview with Ma Anand Sheela which is purported to be the first one since she left the ranch a week and a half or so ago. And so what I’m going to do, once we do get the cameras rolling and squared away, is just ask you to respond to a couple of the allegations that she’s made in the interview. Of course, doing our best to tell both sides of the story, we can give your side as well.

Good.


I agree. And, Tom, if you just tell me when you’re ready, we’ll do that.
So I understand you feel you’re treated fairly. I’m glad to hear that.

I am.


Do you ever get to see what we say about you, though?

Anything she says, she will get a good reply. You just.


Oh, I’m sure. I’ve heard you speak enough, Osho, to know that I have - I have no fear of that. I have no fear of that. I was - I was just interested in your comments, as my cameraman is getting ready, that you - that you do feel that you are.

Let them get ready.


.that you do feel like you get fair treatment.

Meanwhile you take few grapes.


Well, thank you. They’re good grapes.

They are our own.


They’re grown here?

Yes.


My compliments to your farmers then. Okay? Okay. Allegation number one. First of all, Sheela claims that there has been widespread use of narcotics among your sannyasins, drugs, specifically the drug ecstasy, which I have also heard referred to as MDM. And she goes on to charge that with your knowledge, sannyasins were induced to sign over money and belongings while under the influence of drugs.

I know ecstasy, but that ecstasy can be a drug I am hearing for the first time. I have never even heard the name before. And I was in silence and isolation for three-and-a-half years. I was not coming into the commune, not meeting anybody. So if drugs were used and people were given such a drug, then Sheela must be the one to do it. How I can do it in isolation, in silence? Except Sheela, nobody was coming there. Have I given the drug to Sheela?


Which drug?

The drug that she is mentioning. I have never heard even about the drug.


Have you ever heard of your sannyasins being on any drug?

No. In my commune drugs are absolutely prohibited. We keep a dog to check every car coming in, every luggage coming in, just for drugs. Drugs we don’t allow for the simple reason that every drug is against meditation. No drug can bring you to ecstasy, it can give you only a hallucination.
So I know ecstasy. I am twenty-four hours in ecstasy, but I’m not drugged. And nobody has been drugged by me. And if Sheela says so, she was the whole and sole in-charge for all these years, then she must be responsible for the drug and she must have done it to people.


Do you believe that she’s done it to people?

If she is saying it - that in the commune drugs are being given - then except her nobody can be responsible, because she was the president of the Foundation. And if she thinks people have been drugged in order to take money from them, then it must be she. Because all the money that the commune has received has come from donations far away - from Europe, Asia, Australia. And she has stolen forty-three million dollars out of that money. Perhaps she has been drugging people and taking the money to Switzerland.


The second allegation is a little bit more personal. She says that you threw temper tantrums and would threaten to commit suicide if you were not given more Rolls Royces.

That is sheer cow dung! I have already ninety Rolls Royces, and a simple law of economics is that as you have more and more of a thing, it has less and less value. Now ninety-one Rolls Royces.what meaning they can have to me?


Have you ever asked for a Rolls Royce? Have you ever asked?

Never! There is no need. In fact I wanted to distribute all the Rolls Royces to people, but they don’t belong to me. I cannot distribute - I am not their owner. They belong to a certain trust of the commune, and the president is here. I had declared in a discourse that tomorrow all the Rolls Royces should be distributed, because unnecessarily.I use only one and eighty-nine are just sitting. Let all the sannyasins enjoy them. Make few pools and everybody can take whenever he wants.
John.?
He is the president of the cars’ trust. So I asked him distribute the cars. Now he will answer you what happened.


John: We decided that we didn’t want to do that.

I think we chatted about that.

John: The cars are sacred, and we want them where they are. So we voted, and that’s where they’ll be.

Did you ever throw temper tantrums then?

That is up to them. But this is simply stupid. I never thought Sheela to be so stupid.that I should commit suicide for a Rolls Royce?


Final allegation for right now at any rate. I’m sure you’re expecting more over the weeks to come. Sheela says that she’s afraid for her life right now. She’s afraid for her life because she fears that you will have her killed. And she believes that you’ll have her killed. How would you respond to that?

She must be afraid, because every murderer is always afraid for his life. She has killed one man here; she has attempted to kill three other commune members. She has attempted to kill the whole city of The Dalles. Naturally she must be paranoid that she will be killed. Anybody who commits a crime like murder, dosing people with poison, throwing poison into water systems, is bound to have the fear that she is going to be killed. But we are not to going to do anything to her. Nobody here is a murderer; she is the murderer.


Didn’t she run the affairs here for a long time after you heard such rumors of such hideous acts?

No, nobody. I did not believe that she would do it. I thought it was just a rumor. But now I can say that she must have done it; it cannot be just a rumor. Because what she has done.
When she left, in her room we have found all kinds of books on poison, how to poison people, all books on murdering, how to murder people without getting caught. And we have found an underground tunnel in her room, that she was prepared completely to murder somebody, or in any case if the police come she can escape. So her fear has reason, and the reason is that her own crimes are following her like a shadow. Every murderer is followed by his own guilt.


Thank you very much, Osho. If we could just get one or two wide shots, would that take too much time?

Okay.


I really appreciate it. I know it’s been a long night for you.
I’m interested.when.how long ago did Sheela’s first husband die? I know you’re not good with dates, but.

That [inaudible]


I’ll find that out. But.what specifically, he.I know he had some form of cancer, but was he sick back east or.?

I think.Devaraj is here?.He had something to do with lungs - lung cancer.


Devaraj: Hodgkins.

And at this time was Sheela involved with Jayananda?

No, she was involved with Veetrag.


It gets complicated.

And this reminds me of one thing more. She was involved with Veetrag in India, and she came to America for some work for the Foundation and got involved with Jayananda, got married with Jayananda. Then there was trouble because Veetrag was in a very sad state. Here, because she has done all these crimes and she saw that if she does not escape soon she will be caught, in Switzerland she married Dipo, another sannyasin. She committed bigamy. She is married to the American Jayananda and she has married in Switzerland to remain in Switzerland. Then, seeing that this is bigamy and will become trouble, she rushed to Nepal. Because in a poor country like Nepal you can bribe the magistrate and get a backdated divorce. So she has got a backdated divorce - she has become a professional criminal now.


What happened to Veetrag?

Veetrag is here.


He’s still alive?

Still alive, because he refused her. She had told him. He is our best pilot. She told Veetrag, that “You take the airplane, fill it with bombs, and crash it into the Wasco County office, and jump out in a parachute.” He said, “This is too risky and I may be killed. I don’t want to do it. And this is an absolute crime. It will not only destroy the Wasco County office, it may destroy a few other houses also. It will become a wild fire.


Was Sheela’s first husband hospitalized in India?

Yes.


And she would visit him in the hospital?

No, no. He was in the commune.


In the ashram?

In the ashram. Once in a while he used to be hospitalized, when he was serious; otherwise he was living in the commune.


And he would.he would need oxygen there?

He died in the ashram.


And he.he could get oxygen in the ashram?

Yes, he could get; every arrangement was there. In their room every arrangement was there.


Okay. Osho, thank you very much for staying late for us. I really appreciate it.

Good. Come again.


I will be.I’ll be here.

Good.


Thank you.

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