Chapter 30

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

A:* Your question has to be short. That you remember. If your question has many implications then my answer cannot be short.

Q:* WOULD YOU SAY YOU'RE AN ENLIGHTENED MAN?

A:* I am.

Q:* IF YOU ARE AN ENLIGHTENED MAN, HOW COULD IT BE THAT FOR SO LONG SHEELA AND HER GANG WERE ABLE TO CARRY ON THEIR BUSINESS HERE?

A:* Enlightenment has nothing to do with it. There is no contradiction. To be enlightened simply means I know myself. That does not mean that I know everybody. That does not mean that I know future, tomorrow. It simply means that I know my consciousness is fully awakened, twenty-four hours.

I know my inner light. I know my eternity, my deathlessness. It has nothing to do.... In fact, if I was not enlightened, perhaps Sheela may not have been able to do what she was able to do, because then I would have been just as cunning, as political, as suspicious, as everybody else.

My enlightenment makes me loving without any condition, trusting without any condition. It brings my childhood back to me, my innocence.

And I still trust and love those people who have deceived. That is their problem that they deceived. It does not change my attitude. If they can change my attitude, they become my masters.

Nobody can change, by doing anything, my attitude. If I love you, even if you assassinate me, I will still continue to love you. Your assassination makes no difference. You can assassinate me but you cannot assassinate my love.

Q:* WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THOSE, THAT CONTEND THAT SHEELA AND HER GANG REALLY HAD YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT AND THAT....

A:* No!

Q:*... AT A CERTAIN PERIOD YOU CUT THEM OFF FROM THEIR CONVENIENCE....* A:* Not my encouragement. Don't try to make your own implications. When I am present here, you ask me.

I was silent for three and a half years and in isolation, and I was not interested at all in any information. I was not reading any newspaper, seeing no television, getting no information. Everybody who was approachable to me -- only four persons: Sheela as my secretary, my physician, my dentist and my caretaker -- they were told not to bring any unnecessary information to me. I don't want anything. I want to be left alone.

So my silence is not an encouragement. My silence became an opportunity for them, but it is not an encouragement from my side.

Q:* WHAT DAMAGE HAVE THEY DONE?

A:* They have done much damage. They have tried to kill innocent sannyasins.

They have killed a man, a street person that they had brought here. They have burned the county planning office. They have entered into government offices in the night and stolen papers, files. They have even tried to poison me. They have made a bank account in Switzerland.

Just yesterday I have been informed by Sheela's old secretary that at least forty- three million dollars are in the account, and she was Sheela's secretary five years before. So in these five years, what else they may have accumulated there?

Q:* YOU HAVE NEGATIVE PUBLICITY IN PLACES LIKE AUSTRALIA FOR THE RAJNEESHEES, PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF WHAT SHEELA WAS SAYING IN AUSTRALIA. WHAT DAMAGE HAVE THEY DONE THROUGH THEIR BUSINESS HERE TO THE RAJNEESHEE CAUSE?

A:* No, that does not affect me at all. Negative publicity I can change into positive publicity at any moment -- just like that. That is not a problem.

Q:* BUT IT HASN'T HAPPENED -- JUST LIKE THAT....

A:* It is happening. Just like that.

Q:* I DON'T SEE IT HAPPENING -- JUST LIKE THAT NOW....

A:* I see. And you don't have eyes to see, you have only a journalist's blindness.

And I don't have a good opinion of journalists, remember.

I don't have any good opinion of the journalists, remember. They are just people who could not succeed in politics and now standing by the side of the road and throwing a stone on everybody who is succeeding. So that does not matter at all.

I don't care a bit what the journalists say.

Q:* BUT DO YOU CARE WHAT PEOPLE SAY?

A:* I don't care. What I care is what happens to my people. Saying makes no difference.

What difference does it make to Christians? People were not saying very positive things about Jesus, otherwise he would not have been crucified. Not a single hand was raised for him. Everybody was against him. But what harm that has done to Christianity? In fact, those hands which were raised against Jesus have created Christianity. If Jesus was not crucified, there would have been no Christianity at all, because Jesus was a Jew -- born a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a Jew, had never thought or dreamt that he is a Christian.

So negative publicity, what people say, does not matter. What matters is what is happening to my people. They have done damage to my people. And to do damage to people who are so loving, so trusting, so innocently ready to do things, is simply unbelievable.

Q:* WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN TO SHEELA AND HER SO- CALLED GANG?

A:* I would like them to come back and be treated in the university here. We have all kinds of psychotherapies. Because in my understanding, every criminal is a sick person psychologically. I don't believe in punishment. Punishment is barbarious, and all the courts of the world and all the governments of the world and all the laws of the world are still barbarious.

For example, a man wants to commit suicide and is caught. Then the court sentences him to death. Great minds! He has failed in committing suicide, now they are killing him because he was trying to kill himself.

(interruption for tape change) Q:* WHAT CHANGES CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE NOW THAT SHEELA AND HER GANG HAVE GONE?

A:* Every wrong that they were doing has also gone with them. But let me first finish my question. These tapes change at wrong times.

Q:* IT'S NOT ANOTHER JOURNALIST TRICK, LET ME TELL YOU.

A:* No, it is not journalist trick, but they are part of the journalism.

I was saying that the very idea of punishment has failed, yet it goes on continuing.

You have never converted any criminal by punishment, change his heart or change his behavior. You have really made him a bigger criminal by sending him to the prison.

Your prisons are universities for criminology. So your courts go on growing, your police force goes on growing, your legal experts go on growing at the expense of poor criminals.

A great business is going on around the world and the criminals don't diminish at all. They are growing faster than your courts. And nobody sees a simple fact, that anybody who commits a rape must be having a repressed sexuality, so much so that he becomes obsessed with it, almost possessed by it, and does something which he would have never done if he was in his senses. All that he need is a psychiatric treatment.

The rape he has committed is not his responsibility, is the responsibility of all the religions who have been teaching celibacy, repression of sex.

If you want to punish, then punish Ayatollah Khomeini, punish Pope the Polack, punish the idiot Shankaracharya. But why punish these poor people who are just victims?

So if you ask me what I would like to do with Sheela and her gang, I would like them to come back. They will be received with love and dignity. They need not hide in the Black Forest in Germany like criminals unnecessarily. They can be here back and they can accept what they have done.

Of course, the law will take its course, but we can fight for them. Right now they have put us in a position that we have to fight against them.

Q:* BUT YOU ARE PREPARED TO DEFEND THEM UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES AGAINST ANY FBI CHARGES OR....

A:* No. Right now, no, unless they come here. Right now we are going to expose them to every charge possible. If they have courage they should come back and see how they are received, and then we will try in every way to fight for them.

But right now we are going to expose them totally and clean the whole commune of all criminality that they have somehow contaminated in the very air.

Q:* IS IT TO BE ASSUMED THAT SHE IN FACT WANTED TO REPLACE YOU?

A:* Certainly it seems so, if she wanted to kill me. Or poison me slowly so I remain sick and cannot start being again amidst my people. Certainly that was the desire. And in three and half year she got the idea, because she became a celebrity. And the moment I started speaking her image disappeared from televisions, from magazines, from newspapers, from radios. And that was the real wound.

She was persuading me that it is against my health to speak. I said, "Even if it is against my health, what am I to do with the health? My health is to serve my people. If I cannot serve my people, then there is no point in living and being healthy.

Just being healthy is no point. I would like as long as I live.... It may be shorter life than you think. It would have been possible to live longer if I was not speaking. I am willing to live shorter, but I would like to speak to my people because I have so many things yet to say. My philosophy of life is not yet complete. and before I leave the body I want to complete it so they have the total vision.

She tried to put guards on top of my residence. The excuse was that they are to protect me, but the reality was different. Because as she has left, those guards are coming crying and weeping that they have been put to take attention of everybody who comes to the house and the people who live in the house with me: be alert of them.

And just as I was coming here, somebody informed me that the guards were told not to have any contact with the people who live with me, not even to smile at them, not even to wave at them, not even to recognize that they are there.

One girl was in love with one of the guards. The guard was told that, "You stop all connections with the girl because it is possible one day you may have to shoot all the people of this house."

So they were not only ready to kill me, they were ready to kill all the people who are very close to me: my seamstresses who made my dresses, my shoemaker, my doctors, my dentist, my nurse, my caretaker, my kitchen people, the cleaners -- everybody lives with me in the house. They all have to be shooted.

And then she insisted to have a lock on my room from the outside, and the key will be with her. But I said, "What is the need of that?" She said it was just emergency, and any time if the guards phone her that there is some emergency, she can immediately come.

I said, "You live at least ten minutes away from my house. The guards can phone just inside the house and everything can be arranged before you will be arriving." But she insisted, so I said, "Okay, you can put. I have no fear of death or anything, you can put. If it is your enjoyment and if you feel that the security, put."

But the people of my house, my caretaker, did not feel at ease with the idea, so she put another lock from inside.

Then she said that, "Because You have only one bathroom and sometimes something goes wrong in the plumbing, in the water system, it is better to have one... another bathroom so that Your routine is not disturbed."

I said, "You can make another bathroom."

She made another bathroom and just now we have discovered it is bulletproof.

Why, what a bathroom needs to be bulletproof? And it has a door from outside of the house for the cleaner, but she must be having another key for that door.

And from that door anybody can enter and shoot me lying down or sitting, and escape without entering the house. And even you can manage to shoot the person who has assassinated me, the bathroom is bulletproof. No bullet can enter in the bathroom. She has just to shoot me, or anybody in her place, and enter into the bathroom, that's all. And from the bathroom she can go out without anybody in the house knowing about it.

Her assistant was poisoning cows just to poison my milk, so most of the cows are sick. And the vet is simply surprised that there is no disease, why they are sick?

And it has been revealed just yesterday that Sheela's assistant, Puja, who was a medical person, has been visiting the place every night, and nobody knows for what. She must be injecting slow poisons to cows.

They attempted to kill my physician. Three times they made the attempt. Third time they were caught red-handed. And when they saw that things are getting exposed and there is bound to be soon trouble, they simply escaped.

And only we came to know about things, and many more things may be there.

Now FBI is here. They have their office here now, for few days, so that everybody can come and give the information.

And they are simply surprised. When they saw the bugging devices -- my room was bugged. The whole hotel was bugged. My caretaker's room was bugged.

Other houses of people who had a certain intimacy to me were bugged.

Everybody's phone was listened, taped.

And the FBI people were surprised to see the sophisticated instruments that they had been using. They said these sophisticated instruments were not used even in Watergate.

The FBI men yesterday said that for one bugging the person has to go for five years jail. And looking at all the buggings, it seems anybody who has bugged needs to be at least one thousand years jail.

So it is feeling purer, cleaner. People are happy. A fear, a paranoia, a nightmare, is gone. And it will not be possible to repeat it for the simple reason because I will be speaking and I will not go in silence again. One silence has been enough.

Q:* WHAT DO YOU SAY TO PEOPLE, WHO BECAUSE OF THIS EPISODE AND BECAUSE OF PAST HISTORY PARTICULARLY HERE IN OREGON, HAVE VIEWED THE RAJNEESHEES WITH... IF NOT SUSPICION, EVEN PERHAPS, FEAR. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THOSE PEOPLE ABOUT YOU, ABOUT THE RAJNEESHEE?

A:* They should not fear any more. The people they were afraid are gone, and these people have never come in contact with the Oregonians. They are involved in building the commune, cultivating the food, the vegetables, making dams, roads. They have not come in even contact.

Those were the people who were in contact, and those were the people who created hostility. In fact, that is a simple device of all fascist minds. If you want to remain in power, you have to create hostility in the minds of the neighbors.

Q:* YOU MIGHT GO TO AUSTRALIA?

A:* No. Unless I get my green card, I am not going to leave America. If I get my green card tomorrow, perhaps I may start thinking going around the world to visit my communes.

I have one million sannyasins around the world and I would like to visit them, because they are all shaken whatever has happened here. They are in a confusion. But I cannot move out of America without green card.

So it is up to American government. If they want me to go out, green card first.

Q:* BUT YOU'RE QUITE HAPPY TO REMAIN IN OREGON, TO MAKE OREGON YOUR HOME?

A:* Yes, I am perfectly happy, because my health has improved, my basic problems.... I cannot tolerate humidity. My breathing immediately becomes disturbed and that disturbs my heart. So this cool and dry air is perfectly suitable to me.

I am allergic. Now, allergy is not a disease that you can cure. You can only take precautions. You can avoid it. Perfume, any kind of perfume, immediately gives me an attack of asthma. So here all of my people are aware and careful of me.

They don't use perfume.

But in the outside world it is a little difficult. We cannot force everybody not to use perfume.

Dust, smoke -- anything can trigger my allergies. So because we have managed the whole place in such a way that the whole commune is air conditioned, no question of dust. The nearest neighbor is twenty miles away, so no question of any neighbor creating smoke, which was a continuous problem in India. We had to go and beg to the neighbor that, "Don't create smoke."

But this is not right. That is their thing. If they want to burn their rubbish or anything, we cannot prevent legally. We can ask them.

We have here one hundred twenty-six square miles area, completely free of neighbors. So no problem for my health. My health is perfectly good. In fact, I wonder why I was not born in Oregon, because if nature gives me this kind of body which fits here, then it must have been a mistake that I was born in India.

Q:* DO YOU HAVE AN ULTIMATE DREAM FOR THE RAJNEESHEE WORLDWIDE? IF SO, WHAT IS IT?

A:* No, there is no dream. But there is certainly a vision that anybody who loves me has not to become (Tape side B) conditioned like other old religions. He has not to follow me blindly. I don't require any faith, any belief. I want my people to trust in doubt.

Doubt to me is one of the greatest values. It is doubt that has created science in three hundred years. And religion has been trying to create life based on belief for ten thousand years, and nothing has come out of it.

In three hundred years in spite of all the hindrances created by religions, science has contributed immensely to every dimension of life. And the reason is its functioning is not belief, it is doubt.

I want a religion based on doubt, inquiry. So naturally there is no question of any ideology to believe in. I am not giving any ideology. I am simply trying to deprogram my people, that their minds are completely clean and they can start afresh, questioning, inquiring.

And this is the way how I have realized myself. So I know it works.

So there is no problem. If they really inquire and don't fall victims of borrowed knowledge, soon they will discover their own source of wisdom, their own light.

And that's what I call enlightenment.

And I am not their prophet, savior, messiah, no. I am not their leader. I am simply their friend.

And whatever I have I want to share with them. Sharing is such a joy that they need not feel obliged. I feel obliged to them.

So it is a totally different kind of milieu. Every individual remains individual, in fact becomes more individual, more integrated, more crystallized, drops all kinds of fears of hell and greed of heaven, and drops all kinds of lies -- the ultimate lie, God -- he drops everything and starts with absolute innocence, with the point that, "I do not know and I want to know."

And the method that is to be used in this inquiry I call meditation. And meditation need not be based on any belief. Meditation simply means becoming silent, utterly silent and collected together, coming to a point where you are absolutely alone, not even a thought moving in your mind or a mood in your heart, as if all time has stopped.

That is the greatest moment of experience, of explosion. And everybody's birthright is to come to that moment.

So I am not creating a Christianity, a Hinduism or a Mohammedanism. I am creating a group of rebels.

Q:* I THINK THAT YOU HAVE A CLEAN SENSE OF HUMOR. IS HUMOR AN IMPORTANT... HOW IMPORTANT AN ELEMENT IS HUMOR...?

A:* It's very important. Serious people are sick. A sense of humor makes you more alive more healthy.

Q:* WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF THEN PERHAPS EVEN AS A COMIC?

A:* You can. I am.

Q:* BECAUSE IT'S AN IMPORTANT INGREDIENT.

A:* It is. Sense of humor is absolutely essential for human health. Without it something is psychologically wrong with the person. A man who cannot laugh means something is dead in him. Life is so hilarious. All around it is fun. It is a carnival. So I call my people my circus.

And certainly I want their life to be comedies, not tragedies. So I am a comic.

Q:* I'VE HEARD YOU HAVE LITTLE RESPECT FOR PEOPLE LIKE THE POPE, MOTHER TERESA, MAHATMA GANDHI AND A HOST OF OTHERS. IS THERE ANYONE THAT YOU CAN NAME...?

A:* No. I don't look up to anybody and I don't want anybody else to look up to me.

It is just one horizontal existence, no vertical hierarchy. And you said that, "You have very little respect." That is wrong. I don't have any respect, not even very little. I have very great disrespect, because these people are criminals. And their crimes are far bigger than the people you go on hanging or giving them electric chairs. These people are real criminals.

For example, Mother Teresa. You reward this woman with Nobel Prize.

Universities go on giving her D.Litts. Countries go on pouring on... awards on her. And what she is doing?

All she is doing is collecting orphans and converting them into Catholicism.

One of the men went to Mother Teresa's one of the centers in Calcutta. The secretary asked, "What do you want?" He said, "I want to adopt one child."

Seeing that he is a white man, must be a Christian, she said, "We have seven hundred orphans. You can choose any. But first fill this form."

In that form he had to fill his religion, and he filled Protestant Christianity. And the girl said, "You just wait. I will have to ask Mother Teresa about it."

And back came Mother Teresa herself and said, "We are sorry, we don't have any orphans here. When we have, we will inform you. Just leave your address."

Just a minute before, there were seven hundred, but because he is not a Catholic....

He wrote letters to the newspapers. According to his letter, I criticized Mother Teresa in a public meeting. She wrote a letter to me that, "The real reason is that the children who are brought up in a certain atmosphere -- religious, psychological -- they should be given to a family where they are not misfits.

That's why we had refused."

I asked her that, "All these children have come from either Hindu, Mohammedan or other Indian religions. None of them has come from Catholic religion. On what grounds you are teaching them Catholicism? You should teach a Hindu child Hinduism and give it to a Hindu family if you are sincere and honest."

And in her letter she has written also that, "For you I will pray to God that he forgives you."

So I said, "About the second statement, you have to take your words back.

Otherwise I will sue you in the court. I don't believe in any God in the first place.

And who are you to pray on my behalf? I have not given you my attorney authority. And what I have done that God has to forgive me?

"In fact, if he meets, he has to ask me to be forgiven, because it is he who has created this world ugly. It is he who has created Adolf Hitler, who killed ten million people, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini. He has to give explanations why these people were created by him, if he is the creator.

"I have not done anything wrong. Just to question you, is it a crime? And your answer is just bogus."

And these people go on teaching in a poor country like India against birth control methods, against the pill, against abortion, for the simple reason because if there is abortion, if there is birth control, if the pill is available freely to poor people, from where Mother Teresa is going to have more orphans? The supply of orphans is needed urgently for more Catholics.

That's why I call this woman is a criminal. And anybody who is teaching around the world -- and she is one of them -- celibacy is teaching homosexuality or lesbianism, and the ultimate result is AIDS. And these are the people responsible for it.

Nobody can be celibate scientifically. And I am simply amazed. There are millions of scientists around the world, doctors around the world, and nobody says clearly that celibacy is impossible. Because it is part of your biology, and biology is not in the control of your mind. It is not that when you want to perspire you can, or you can decide that, "I take the vow that I will not perspire any more." It is not within your mind. Your body has its own program, which is absolutely determined from your birth.

So all your celibate saints are simply hypocrites. There has been no celibate ever, and there cannot be any celibate in future.

So the ultimate result of talking celibacy and teaching that it is something holy, sacred, causes homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, nocturnal emissions and thousands of perversions.

Even Mahatma Gandhi at the age of seventy was suffering from nocturnal emissions. And you are teaching a young boy fourteen years of age that, "You have to be celibate" when he is full of sexual energy. Nearabout eighteen the boy comes to his peak of sexual energy. He can have from three to five love affairs in the night. But after forty-two even one is enough. And after fifty-two, once in a week.

Q:* YOU ARE NOW FIFTY....?

A:* I am fifty-five.

Q:* WHAT IS YOUR IMPRESSION OF RONALD REAGAN?

A:* Just a third-class Hollywood cowboy actor. Nothing much. And choosing him, America has shown its own retardedness. No intelligent country can choose people of his calibre.

It is strange that in America you have killed twenty percent of your presidents.

This is the largest number in the whole world. Twenty percent of your presidents are being assassinated. And, in fact, those twenty percent are the most intelligent.

The remaining eighty percent who are not killed are not worth.

Because any intelligent person creates trouble in retarded people's mind, because he wants to change, he wants to bring new ideas into existence, he wants to move country forward. And the retarded people simply want to remain where they are. So they are happy.

They were not happy with Abraham Lincoln. They were not happy with Kennedy, but they are happy with Jimmy Carter -- just a fool who knew how to exercise his lips and go on smiling twenty-four hours. They are perfectly happy with Ronald Reagan.

But America needs better people and America has better people, but they should not come from politics. In fact, better people don't enter politics.

Q:* JOURNALISTS DON'T ENTER POLITICS, AS YOU POINTED OUT EARLIER.

A:* Yes. Only inferiority complex is the cause of any person becoming a politician. He feels deep down inferior, and that's why he wants to prove, "No, I am not inferior. I am superior."

A really superior person does not bother about proving it. He is.

America should look in the universities, in the scientists, in the academies, for their president, because choosing these people presidents is simply dangerous, particularly at this time when they have so much power in their hands that they can destroy the whole planet.

I am not happy with Ronald Reagan. When America has so much intelligent people, what is the need of choosing third-class people? The only reason is, the third-class people fit with other third-class people. They are, of course, in majority. Somehow these third-class people have to be awakened, that, "You may be third class, but try to choose someone who is a first-class mind."

Q:* DO YOU THINK YOUR COMMENTS WILL HELP YOUR EFFORTS TO GET A GREEN CARD?

A:* I don't care what happens. Whatever in the moment comes to me, I say it.

What will be the consequence, I don't care a shit. Okay?

INTERVIEW WITH DIRK MASTERSON(?) FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE, Q:* DO YOU...? YOU USED TO TAKE VERY LONG LONG DRIVES OFF THE RANCH. DO YOU THINK THAT WHEN THINGS CALM DOWN AROUND HERE A BIT THAT YOU MIGHT GO OFF THE RANCH AGAIN?

A:* No. Never. I go for a ride but my sannyasins have made a special road for me, too. If they can manage one hundred Rolls Royces for me, they can manage a whole road also.

Half the road is complete, so I go. And other half will be complete before the winter, so I will be going, but not outside. We have enough land inside. Outside I had to stop because of the county road.

The county has been nasty. They have not worked on the road at all. When we had come here, they used almost every month to repair it. Now for years there has been no repairing work. The road is in a bad condition.

And I love my cars. So I don't want my cars to go on that road. Even when the cars come here in, they come on trucks. I don't allow them to drive on that road.

And soon we are going to make our own road by the side of the county road.

Q:* IS IT SOMETHING THAT RELAXES YOU? YOU SEEM LIKE A RELAXED PERSON AS IT IS.

A:* Yes, I am relaxed. Everything relaxes me.

Q:* INCLUDING PRESS CONFERENCES?

A:* Yes, press conferences are just a great joy, because I have not come across yet any journalist who was not intelligent and who was not nice and it was a real joy to meet him.

Q:* DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST INFATUATION WITH A WOMAN?

A:* It is difficult because women have always been infatuated with me.

Q:* I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM.

A:* I don't think. And if you want I can ask my women to stand up: "Are you fascinated with this man?" Do you want voting here?

Q:* NO. LET'S GO BACK TO WHEN YOU WERE THIRTEEN YEARS OLD OR FOURTEEN. DIDN'T YOU EVER SEE AN OLDER WOMAN WHO JUST KNOCKED YOU OUT AND...?

A:* I have loved so many women that it is almost impossible for me to remember who was first and who was second. I don't even remember their names. And every woman was a joy, because every woman has something unique to herself that no other woman has. So there is no question of comparison.

Q:* THERE'S SORT OF AN OLD JOKE IN THIS COUNTRY ABOUT THE SPIRITUAL SEEKER WHO CLIMBS MOUNTAINS AND TRAVELS OCEANS TO TALK TO AN OLD BEARDED MAN ABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE.

WHEN YOU WERE EIGHTEEN OR NINETEEN, A YOUNG MAN, DID YOU EVER THINK THAT ONE DAY YOU WOULD BE THAT MAN AND THE PEOPLE WOULD COME TO YOU?

A:* People were already coming. In fact, I don't remember a time in my childhood when I was not already thought to be something who can advise people.

I had no friends of my own age, ever. I had friends always far older than me, for the simple reason because they were able to understand me: what I was saying, my arguments, my way of looking at things. So it was not new and it didn't happen suddenly. It went on as back as I remember, that I was something separate.

Q:* DO YOU EVER MISS THE FACT THAT YOU DIDN'T PLAY BALL AND...?

A:* No. I simply thought that those who are playing football are idiots. And more idiots the country has, more the football match is enjoyed. Otherwise, what is there? There is nothing in it.

Perhaps America enjoys football most. Millions of people sitting on their televisions for hours, just seeing few idiots hitting a ball from here to there. I don't see the point. If they are so much interested, they can have eighteen balls and go on playing.

But in America everything is possible. You enjoy boxing, which is simply barbarious. In California university they have been doing some survey last year, that after each boxing match violence increases thirteen percent to the normal rate. It remains for three, four days after the match and then slowly settles down back. And still you don't stop it.

And the people who are looking boxing must be somehow enjoying some identification with the boxers. Some kind of violence in them must be getting satisfied. And if the violence rate increases to thirteen percent, it should be a simple legal matter that boxing should be a crime and should be stopped immediately.

Q:* DON'T YOU THINK IT'S BETTER THAT A LOT OF THOSE FANS ARE LIVING OUT THEIR VIOLENCE VICARIOUSLY?

A:* Those are the people who must be increasing violence. So it is better to stop that boxing completely. People should be given something better. This is something exactly the same.

In Rome they were throwing Christians before the lions, hungry lions. And the very civilized people of Rome were dancing and shouting and screaming and enjoying when the lions were eating the Christians. It is nothing different from boxing. The same principle.

So it seems we are not going anywhere, going round and round. And the University of California has only studied about the increase of violence. They should also study increase in rapes, and I am certain they will find more rapes happening after the matches of boxing. They should find other things also, and everything that is criminal will have a higher rate than normal because you are giving people opportunity.

With your films you are giving opportunity. With your films you are giving opportunity to them for being violent. All your films are just based on violence.

Your matches are violence. And still you think that the world should live in peace.

Q:* WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT CENSORSHIP? SHOULDN'T A MAN BE FREE TO EXPRESS ANYTHING EVEN IF IT IS VIOLENT?

A:* Man should be free to express whatsoever he wants to express, but he cannot interfere into anybody's life because the other is also free. And his territory should not be entered in.

If somebody wants to be violent he can go into the mountains and beat himself.

Nobody should prevent him. That is his freedom, his birthright.

But his birthright is not that he should beat somebody else to death.

And as far as writing is concerned, it is certainly every individual's right.

Whatsoever he wants to write, he can write. But he should be ready if he is contradicted. And if he is writing falsities, then he has to be prevented.

But on the contrary, something else goes on happening. One small group of atheists is publishing a book, a collection from the holy Bible in which they are collecting all the pornographic sections in the holy Bible. And it is five hundred pages. And that proves holy Bible to be the biggest pornographic book in the whole world.

Q:* WILL YOU BE SELLING THIS HERE?* A:* Yes. And once that book is published, we are thinking to publish it with pictures and colored pictures on glossy paper, because that is the ancient source of all Playboy magazines. But I was informed that already people are trying, government, to prevent the publication of the book. Now, this is against freedom of expression.

If those people are putting anything wrong, anything that is not in the Bible, you have the right to contradict in another book but you cannot prevent them.

Q:* I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE A DISCOURSE ON THE TIME YOU BECAME ENLIGHTENED. ARE THERE OTHER ENLIGHTENED PEOPLE WALKING ON THE EARTH?

A:* I was talking even before my enlightenment, giving discourses even when I was seventeen, eighteen.

And there is every possibility that there may be enlightened people walking around here.

Q:* WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THAT PERSON IF YOU MET THEM?

A:* Just goodnight. What else you can say at this time?

(Tape side C begins) Q:* IT'S BEEN REPORTED THAT SHEELA HAS CALLED YOU ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT HUMAN BEINGS ON EARTH. GIVEN THE AMERICAN CONCEPTION OF CORRUPTION, DO YOU THINK SHE HAS ANY REASON TO SAY THAT?

A:* I don't know the American conception of corruption. I think corruption is the same whether it is in America or in Germany or in India. And if Sheela calls me the most corrupted man in the world, that's a great compliment. In fact, she is habituated to call me the most enlightened man in the world. Now she has to find something else, but "the most and the unique" still remains in it unconsciously.

She has put "corrupted man" instead of "enlightened man", but nothing changes.

I am still the "unique" and the "most unique" man in the world. So just tell her, "Thanks for your compliment."

Q:* THIS MORNING WE WERE TOLD THAT YOU WOULD BE MEETING THE POLICE AT ABOUT TWO O'CLOCK TODAY, AND THEN IT WAS CANCELED. WHAT HAPPENED WITH THAT? AND IS IT RESCHEDULED?

A:* Because they were not prepared. They were out* here.... I am an spontaneous man, always ready. There is no question of preparation.

Q:* ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP YOUR ANSWER SHORT FOR THEM?

A:* No. Not for them. They need complete answers.

So they have been preparing their questions for two days and their questions are not ready. So they have canceled it. They asked that tomorrow afternoon....

So I said okay. Let them prepare their questions well, because I am going to put their minds right.

Q:* AND YOU'LL BE WILLING TO GO TO PORTLAND TO COURT IF NECESSARY?

A:* If necessary I am going to the Supreme Court also. Anywhere, if it is necessary for my commune's sake, I will go.

Q:* I UNDERSTAND YOU LIKE ZORBA THE GREEK. IS THAT RIGHT?

A:* That's right.

Q:* CAN YOU TELL ME SOME OF YOUR OTHER FAVORITE FILMS?

A:* No. Nobody is comparable to Zorba.

Q:* HAVE YOU MET ANTHONY QUINN?

A:* No. But he seems to be a beautiful man. I have seen his other films also. In Barabas also he has done tremendously beautiful action.

But Zorba represents to me the materialist West and Buddha represents to me the spiritualist. And I want them to meet and be one. I don't see there is any antagonism or contradiction.

So I am Zorba the Buddha, not Zorba the Greek.

INTERVIEW WITH BERT RUDMAN(?) FROM KOMO-TV IN SEATTLE.

Q:* YOU DON'T LIKE JOURNALISTS MUCH, AND I WONDERED....

A:* No.

Q:*... I WONDER WHY YOU KEEP HAVING THESE PRESS CONFERENCES.

A:* It is not a question of.... I like people. I like you. But I don't like journalism....

Because I am not in a good health to go out, hence out of necessity I have to use the media.

Q:* WHAT IS IT THAT IS WRONG WITH THE WAY IN WHICH WE'RE REPORTING ACTIVITIES DOWN HERE?

A:* First, the media is not brave enough to report correctly against the government, which is doing everything illegal here in this commune against the commune. Perhaps the media has its vested interests with the government.

It is not fair to us. Perhaps we are such a small minority that to be fair to us you may lose your audience in the Oregonians.

So it is not a question of being sincere, authentic but just to be businesslike. So whatsoever reports I see, I see you are looking from business eyes, not human eyes.

Q:* WE'RE TRYING TO ARRANGE WITH SOME OF YOUR SANNYASINS TO HOOK UP AN INTERVIEW WITH YOU BY SATELLITE TO PEOPLE IN SEATTLE. WHAT IMPRESSION DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD LIKE TO LEAVE WITH THEM, GIVEN THAT MEDIUM?

A:* Any question, because I don't have any secret to hide from anybody. So whatever they want to ask, they can ask.

Q:* WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THEM TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?

A:* Anything they want. I should not dictate them that what they should ask me.

They should ask out of their own freedom and I will answer out of my own freedom.

Q:* WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED SPEAKING YOU HAD A PRESS CONFERENCE AND THE FIRST WOMAN WHO ASKED YOU A QUESTION SAID, "WOULD YOU EVER BE ABLE TO GET ALONG WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS?" AND YOU SAID....

A:* No, you are not putting it rightly. That's what I say....

Q:* THE QUESTION WAS, FROM THIS WOMAN, "BHAGWAN, WILL YOU EVER BE ABLE TO GET ALONG WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS?"

A:* No. You are not yet right, remember.

The question was: "Is it possible for you and the commune and your neighbors to coexist?" And this is totally different, what you are asking.

I said, "Never." And this is where I feel.... Journalists continuously ask me to be short, but they cannot understand short answers. Now what.... The journalist immediately moved.

And by "never" I meant that "Coexistence never," because coexistence simply means hostility continues. But fate has put us together, so what else to do? We go on compiling and holding our hostility. You go on repressing your hostility. This is coexistence. The way America has coexistence with Soviet Union, this is coexistence.

I was saying "Coexistence never; I want one existence." But the journalist did not even wait to hear me, that what was my implication. And she must have spread her own interpretation of the word never.

I was denying coexistence in favor of one existence. Why coexistence? You don't ask anybody else. You don't ask people of Madras that, "What about coexisting with Oregon?"

They why you ask us? We are part of Oregon. Coexistence is simply out of question. We are one. We are living on this land. We are loving this land. We are making this desert an oasis. Nobody has loved this land the way we have loved this land. For fifty years it was for sale and nobody purchased it, seeing it is a desert. And we purchased it, seeing that it is a desert it will be a good challenge for us, to create an oasis out of it.

I don't see why we should think of coexistence. It is one existence. We are Oregonians. It does not matter that you came fifty years before or hundred years before and we came only four years before. Years don't count, makes no difference.

The governor, Atiyeh, comes from outside. He is as foreigner as we are. In fact, in America who is not a foreigner? Except the red Indians, everybody is a foreigner.

And in fact mathematically we have been here only foreigners for four year. You have been here foreigners for one hundred year. We are less foreigner than you.

Q:* I ASKED YOU AT AN EARLIER PRESS CONFERENCE ABOUT SHEELA. I REMEMBER THE LOOK IN YOUR EYES, THOUGH, AND IT WAS A LOOK OF GREAT GLEE AND LOVE AND WARMTH, A LOT OF TWINKLE.

AND MONDAY NIGHT WHEN YOU HAD ANOTHER PRESS CONFERENCE, THAT TWINKLE ABOUT HER HAD GONE. AND I'M WONDERING, AS A MAN, AS A HUMAN BEING, DO YOU MISS HER? DO YOU MISS HAVING HER AROUND?

A:* Certainly. I miss her. I miss any sannyasin who goes from the commune. It is part of my heart. Whatever they did, that is their problem, but as human beings I had loved them. I still love them. And I miss them.

Q:* I KNOW THAT YOU HAVE INVITED THEM BACK TO THE RANCH AND WOULD LIKE TO HELP THEM THROUGH....

A:* Certainly.

Q:*... SOME KIND OF UNIVERSITY THERAPY. AND YET, BY CALLING IN THE LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES AND GIVING THEM ALL KINDS OF EVIDENCE AGAINST SHEELA AND HER GANG, BY BRINGING THEM BACK YOU'RE PUTTING THEM IN THEIR HANDS..., SO TO SPEAK, AND IF THEY ARE CONVICTED OF THE CHARGES WHICH HAVE BEEN LEVELED AGAINST THEM THEY WILL BE PUT IN JAIL....

A:* We will fight for them if they come back. We will not support their criminality. We will not support whatever they have done is wrong. But we will fight that whatever they have done simply signifies that they are psychologically sick people and they should be given to a psychiatric hospital. Or you can give them back to us. In our own university we can treat them. Or you think it will be better to send them to other psychiatric place -- send them there.

But putting them in jail is simply barbarious. We will fight for that up to the Supreme Court for all those people.

Q:* IN OTHER WORDS, YOU'RE TURNING THEM IN, TURNING EVIDENCE IN AGAINST THEM, AND YET....

A:* I am giving, yes. This is the situation. I am giving every evidence against them and yet I will try to save their humanity, their dignity, their future, if they come back. If they don't come back, then it is beyond our hands.

They need not have escaped. They should have simply told me that, "This is what we have done," and we would have made them confess to the court clearly.

And we would have fought for them. Not that they are not guilty. They are accepting they are guilty. We are accepting they are guilty. But our fight is that the guilty should not be punished, he should be treated. And it would have been an unprecedented case, and may have opened a new door for all criminals in the future.

Q:* WOULD YOU HAVE THE SAME POSITION HAD SHEELA BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN KILLING YOUR CLOSE AIDES AND....?

A:* No. Not right now. Unless she is treated and is cleaned from all dirt that she has collected, she won't have any position. She will have just like any sannyasin:

be here and work here.

Q:* WHY ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN IN RAJNEESHPURAM?

A:* Because I am speaking. In thirty years it never happened in India because I was speaking and I was in direct contact with the sannyasins. And I don't have any power.

The situation is, the people who have power are separate. The people are connected with me, not because I have any power. I have no power at all. My power is of my love, my trust in them. And if I am seeing them every day, then there is no possibility for anybody to exploit the situation.

They can ask questions, they can ask everything: if it is going against me.... Every day morning I am answering their questions. And in front of me the president, Hasya, is just a sannyasin as any other sannyasin.

Sheela got a special opportunity. I was silent and in isolation, so I was not available to my people. She became my representative, and she started dictating her things in my name. Everything she did was done in my name, and people simply did it because my name was mentioned. They thought it is coming from me. And I was not even aware of it. It was not even told to me.

Even in my room, when they bugged it, she told me that they are putting a switch for a buzzer, so that if there is any problem I can buzz so the guards above the house know that there is some problem and they can run down. So I said, "That's perfectly okay, you can put it." And the whole trick was that inside the switch they put the microphone. And I don't know anything about wires, that what wires they are putting and what is happening.

And they managed to put a tape recorder behind, in a bathroom for the guards.

And it was not for any emer....

I had told that, "There is no problem. The guards will see anybody. If somebody is going to attack me they will see first. They are on top of my head, on the roof. I will not see. All the day the curtains are closed. Nobody sees me, neither I see anybody. The buzzer is useless."

But she insisted in case. I said, "Then you can put it."

She deceived me and lied to me.

I never used the buzzer because there was no need. I never even touched it. It was only when she left, then the people informed that the room is bugged. And then the guards came crying that, "We were feeling so hurt but we could not do anything. We thought perhaps it is with your permission."

Q:* HAVE YOU COME UP WITH A JOKE ABOUT THIS WHOLE SITUATION WITH....

A:* Not yet. But I will come. I will come.

Q:* SO, IT'S COOL IN THIS ROOM. WHY DO YOU KEEP IT SO COLD?

A:* I love cold.

Q:* DO YOU HAVE ELECTRIC UNDERWEAR OR WHAT?

A:* No underwear. But I love cold, and I am sitting in the same cold every day in my room. So I am accustomed to it.

Q:* AIDS IS A BIG SUBJECT WITH YOU. WHY IS IT SUDDENLY, THIS YEAR, THAT YOU'VE BEEN STARTING TO TALK ABOUT IT?

A:* Because AIDS has become important, and it is becoming important every day bigger and bigger problem to the whole humanity.

Perhaps humanity may* not need a third world war. AIDS may finish it.

It is not a disease, because there is no possibility from the scientists' side that there can be any cure for it. Disease means it can be cured, if not today then tomorrow. Someday we will find some cure.

But the opinion of the scientists is that there will be no possible cure for AIDS.

The man has simply lost the will to live, and he has become vulnerable -- absolutely vulnerable -- to any kind of infection, and his body will not create antibodies to fight with any infection. So he can die by anything. Even ordinary cold and it will be difficult for a AIDS patient to get rid of it.

It is something more than a disease. It is something as if the major part of humanity is losing the will to live. There seems to be no meaning in life. It seems to be just a drag. Boredom, meaninglessness, anguish, anxiety, despair -- these are the modern subjects of the philosophers of the whole world to discuss. God is no more discussed, heaven and hell no more discussed. Anguish, despair, meaninglessness, boredom. And no answer is coming from any source.

So it is multi-dimensional case. Man has lost the will to power, will to live. He does not see any point in living any more. And doctors have known it for long, that once a patient loses the will to live, then no medicine is going to help.

Medicine can help you only if you want to live. Real cure happens out of your will to live; medicine only helps the cure. But it cannot become the very cause of it. It is always secondary.

Secondly, the homosexuality has become so widespread. And the reasons are two. One is marriage.

Marriage is an artificial thing forced upon man unnecessarily. Because of marriage, men are bored of their wives, their wives are bored of their husbands.

And there seems to be no exit. Things have become so complicated. Children are there, service* is there, economic, financial problems are there, old parents are there. So man is simply burdened with a Himalayan load. And there is no joy anywhere.

So he is simply dragging this whole load from cradle to the grave. Now, just to have some little changes in his life.... A man cannot move with another woman because her wife will immediately create great trouble. But he can go with a man and the wife will not make any trouble at all. If your wife is going with a man, you will feel offended. If she is going with a woman, there is no problem. You will not even think that they are lesbians.

So little change.... Marriage created the possibility that men should explore sex relations with men, women should explore relations with women. Even men have been found to make love to animals. It is so widespread because marriage is almost universal phenomenon.

The second cause is religions of the all countries. They have insisted that their monks should be celibate, their nuns should be celibate, which is absolutely impossible. They are asking something which cannot be done. So those monks who are living together are bound to become homosexuals sooner or later. The nuns are going to become lesbians.

So my own understanding is that homosexuality, lesbianism, both were born as religious phenomenon. This is the greatest contribution religion has made to the world. And now homosexuality brings AIDS.

And AIDS is not like other diseases that you can figure out how it infects. It infects in many ways: sexual contact certainly, kissing somebody who has AIDS and you can get it through saliva. Somebody is crying and out of sympathy you simply wipe the tears of the person and you may get AIDS, because tears carry the virus. In fact, any liquid coming out of the body will carry the virus.

So you can avoid sexual contact but all these things....

You will have to declare celibacy illegal, that monks should get married immediately to nuns. For the Polack pope we will have to find... perhaps Mother Teresa will do.

Something has to be done, and someone has to begin it.

Celibacy should be declared a crime. So rather than declaring celibacy a crime, governments are trying to declare homosexuality a crime. This is sheer stupidity.

In Texas they did it. They declared homosexuality illegal. Suddenly one million homosexuals in Texas became criminals. And do you think just by making it illegal they will become heterosexuals? They will go underground. And anything underground is more dangerous than above ground. You at least know that this man is gay. They have their clubs, gay clubs, gay meetings, gay conferences. You know who is gay.

Now in Texas you will not know who is gay. And danger is more.

Christians in their religious festivals, Mohammedans in their religious festivals, drink from the same cup. Now, that should be declared crime. And nobody is even thinking about it, that these are the things which will spread things.

A single man in the whole group who has AIDS will be enough, and the whole ceremony will become really holy.

Anything that can prevent is the way we are taking measures: that nobody make love without condoms, without gloves. Kissing should be abandoned. It is of....

Q:* KINDA TAKES ALL THE FUN OUT OF SEX, DOESN'T IT?

A:* No, we can create new fun. It is not... Eskimos have never kissed, but they have all the fun. They rub their noses instead of kissing, and that is more hygienic. So why not rub noses?

Kissing certainly now is dangerous. And I think anybody you love, you would not like to put in danger of death.

And there are other ways. Vatsayana, the oldest sexologist in the world -- five- thousand-year-old sutras in India -- writes that the best way is to press each other's earlobes, play with each other's earlobes. They are very erotic. And I find it, this is great!

Q:* YOU'VE TRIED IT?

A:* Yes. I never say anything unless I have tried it.

Kissing is really... I don't see. Even before AIDS I have never felt that kissing is right. It is dirty, mixing each other's saliva and this* French kissing and exploring each other's mouth with your tongues. You just take a film of what you are doing and then see the film, and then you will know that this is not the right thing. It is simply disgusting, sick. You will feel like vomiting. What is* happening? This is love and you call it enjoyment?

Q:* WHEN I GO BACK TO SEATTLE AND TELL MY GIRLFRIEND I'M NOT GOING TO KISS HER ANY MORE, SHE'S NOT GOING TO LIKE YOU VERY MUCH.

A:* That's good. That's very good. Give her my blessings and tell her that I have told you to rub nose and press each other's earlobes. Explore something new!

Kissing is too old and rotten. Okay?