Chapter 02

[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 interviewers' remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

QUESTION:* I WOULD LIKE TO BE VERY PRECISE AND GO TO THE POINT.

(There follows a long irrelevant preamble to his first question, and to all his following questions!)

TELL ME AS PRECISELY AND CONCISELY AS POSSIBLE THE ESSENCE OF YOUR TEACHINGS, IF IT HAS CHANGED FROM 1970 WHEN I FIRST INTERVIEWED YOU.

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

Q:* IT IS NOT MY INTENTION AT ALL TO BE UNFAIR.

A:* No. Then it will not be my intention, too. So just remember it. Never again be imprecise. Just be precise and to the point.

Q:* I APOLOGIZE. AND I WAS MADE A LITTLE NERVOUS BECAUSE OF ALL THIS (INAUDIBLE).

A:* I understand... a nervousness when starts speaking, that I understand.

Q:* 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 WHO HAS READ A LOT OF YOUR BOOKS.

A:* I know, and I can see in your eyes love, immense respect.

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 near about thirty years of their age; then they may live fifty years more, but that is 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 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 what the foundation science has:

doubt until you find something indubitable (inaudible).

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.

Q:* MAY I INTERRUPT?

A:* 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 mirror has no judgment. A beautiful face, the mirror does not say, "Great." A 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 of consciousness, awareness, then there are only ten percent thoughts. Hundred percent witness, and 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 if 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 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 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.

Q:*(ANOTHER IRRELEVANT PREAMBLE ON HIS PREVIOUS INTERVIEW WITH BHAGWAN IN 1970!) I'M ALSO ENLIGHTENED. I HAVE BEEN ENLIGHTENED A LITTLE BIT IN (INAUDIBLE) BUT I WOULD LIKE TO COME TO ONE POINT.

A:* Before you come to that, I will have to interrupt you again. 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. Both cannot exist together.

Q:* I ONLY MEANT TO SAY I WAS STARTING ON THE JOURNEY.

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

Q:* WITH REGARD TO SHEELA'S LEAVING, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO IN THE FUTURE?

A:* 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 of other. Even if they call themselves democracies it is only in the name; the basic structure is dictatorial for the simple reason because 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, few are Ph.D.s, few are D.Litts, 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 always people afraid that the enemy is going soon, soon you will be (inaudible) 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 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 limit. She made the commune a strong. She made the commune self-sufficient. She made the commune feel protected, unafraid. But then, by and by, she started the human unconscious urge, lust for power.

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 has to say that, "Bhagwan 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 capable of approaching me -- my physician, my dentist, my caretaker.

She became afraid that these people may 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, she started wandering into 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 will come here, she will pretend she is sick and she is afraid she will infect me, so she will not come.

Even the last time she came, she pretended that she has cold, so she will 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." The person who has brought the message, her secretary, I told her, that, "Give her 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 from the television will disappear. Your voice from the radio will not be heard. 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. If I come myself to Germany, then who is going to bother about you?"'

That she understood clearly, and rather than staying three days and to 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 mouth; they were afraid.

Q:* ACCORDING TO THE REPORTS IN THE RAJNEESH 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.

A:* I had no idea that she's leaving. She left at a time when I always go for a ride.

She left at four o'clock. In a plane.

Q:* IN YOUR PLANE?

A:* Yes, in my plane. And the people had no idea that she has resigned.

Q:* WELL, THEY WERE HELPING PACKING UP HER CLOTHES AND....

A:* Yes, because they had no idea. She had not informed anybody that she was leaving, that she was leaving forever.

Q:* WELL, SHE SAID, "BHAGWAN IS ONLY INTERESTED NOW IN JEWELRY AND NOT IN THE THING; I'M LEAVING."

A:* That she said only to those twenty people who were leaving with her.

But the commune was absolutely unaware that she is leaving forever. And then, too, only forty people were there out of five thousand people.

Q:* SOME OF THESE FORTY PEOPLE ARE STILL HERE, WHO SANG AND CRIED AND SAID GOODBYE.

A:* 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.

Q:* WHEN DID YOU KNOW THAT SHE HAD LEFT?

A:* 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 has left, and I was informed that she has left forever. And it was informed 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, you never informed me about anything going wrong. I will have to think about it."

Next day, morning, she left.

Q:* WHEN DID YOU DISCOVER THAT TAPE RECORDERS, THE HIDDEN PASSAGE? HOW DID ALL THAT HAPPEN? IT'S ALMOST LIKE A SUSPENSE CRIME STORY, A SHERLOCK HOLMES THING.

A:* It is a crime story, but there is no suspense in it. It is very simple. While she was in power, she has put on every power post -- we have many corporations, it is a big phenomenon. We have put two hundred million dollars in the commune to develop it. We have seven or nine corporations. So she has put presidents, secretaries, on each corporation of his own. 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, she forced her to leave because she took all power from her hands. It was so insulting that she has to leave.

Slowly slowly she has dropped all the people who could be suspected to go 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.

Q:* THESE THREE PEOPLE WERE CLOSE TO YOU: YOUR DOCTOR, YOUR DENTIST, AND YOUR CARETAKER, HAVE BEEN WITH YOU SINCE INDIA.

AND IF YOU HAD EDUCATED THEM AND BROUGHT THEM UP TO A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY, THEN THEY SHOULD HAVE 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?

A:* 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 from the commune. Even the guards on my house were not allowed to talk to the people of the house.

Q:* YOUR DENTIST, OR YOUR NURSE? SHE SAW YOU DAILY.

A:* Yes. They are living with me in the same house. And Sheela managed that she -- she was clever. She managed that, "Your doctor should not be part of the medical center."

Q:* BUT HE FELT THAT HE WAS POISONED.

A:* That's when I started speaking, when he was poisoned. He was poisoned in a meeting. First he was poisoned at Sheela's house.

Q:* HOW MANY MONTHS AGO? HOW MANY WEEKS AGO?

A:* Just few weeks ago.

Q:* SO THEN WHY DIDN'T HE TELL YOU IMMEDIATELY?

A:* It was impossible even for him. He felt something strange. He has 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 will be poisoned.

My caretaker was also poisoned the same way, a cup of tea. Even she could not think....

(tape side B) Q:* EVEN YOU GOT AN INJECTION OR A NEEDLE, IS THAT RIGHT?

A:* No; my physician got that. But my milk was poisoned, and they were poisoning it so slowly, with such minute doses, that it effects will come in years so that my death seems to be natural.

Q:* I WOULD LIKE TO QUOTE ONE OF....

A:* Just first, because your question is not answered and it will remain your mind. These people could not inform me for the simple reason she stopped the dentist to go 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.

Q:* SO HE'S WITH YOU ALL THE TIME?

A:* He's with me all the time.

Q:* THEN HE HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO TELL YOU, "LISTEN, MASTER"....

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

Q:* SO THESE THREE PEOPLE WERE AS UNAWARE AND AS CUT OFF FROM THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY?

A:* Yes. Completely cutoff.

Q:* SO THEY'D NEVER BEEN TO THE CANTEEN AND SPOKE TO THE PEOPLE?

A:* 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.

Q:* ARE YOU SCARED?

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

Q:* ARE YOU SCARED THAT SHE MIGHT BLACKMAIL YOU?

A:* I'm not afraid of anything, because there is nothing to blackmail me.

Q:* BECAUSE SHE WAS A LITTLE CRAZED THAT I KNEW LONG TIME AGO.

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

Q:* BUT NOT TO HOLD THE POWER OVER YOU?

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

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 doing, 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 have done, they could not believe. They said, "These people have far more sophisticated ways of bugging than Nixon had done."

Q:* YOU KNOW SHEELA OBVIOUSLY LONG TIME. THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT THE SHEELA YOU KNEW IN THE BEGINNING. SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HER.

A:* No. It is the same Sheela. What happened was just whatever she was carrying in her unconscious -- she may not have been aware, when she got the opportunity.... She was just a waitress, and now she got millions of dollars in her hands.

Her old secretary's letter yesterday has come that she had opened a private account in Switzerland in her own name. The money that was to come here slowly she was accumulating there, small parts of it; now it is forty-three million dollars.

So when she got the opportunity... just human mind. It is nothing special. I feel it, anybody else in her place would have done the same, more or less.

Q:* A QUESTION THAT MIGHT ANNOY YOU, BUT I HAVE TO PUT IT.

A:* No, nothing annoys me. You put it.

Q:* AMONG THESE FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE -- DOCTORS, LAWYERS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, ONE OF THEM SHOULD HAVE HAD THE GUTS TO SOMEHOW GET THE MESSAGE TO YOU. THERE'S SOMETHING FUNNY HAPPENING HERE.

A:* No; but even they were not aware. You don't understand a thing.

Q: 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 capable to know.

For example, they burned a county house, an office in Wasco County. Now, only one person knows it who burned it. That person is with them.

Q:* THIS IS WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

A:* Now, this is very simple. It is anybody who has a little understanding will not make it, that fifty persons know that -- fifty persons know that you are burning a office. One person knows. And if he behaves in any disgusting way or goes against, he can be killed; and he knows that -- because these people are doing that. He's part of the gang.

They killed one person. One of the street persons they killed, and simply threw the corpse out of the Rancho Rajneesh.

Q:* WHEN I CAME HERE LAST TIME, IT WAS AS IF I WERE IN AN IMMINENT JONESTOWN, I COULD FEEL IT. WHY DIDN'T SOMEBODY HAVE THE COURAGE TO INDIRECTLY LET YOU KNOW THAT SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT HERE?

A:* I don't agree. First, the fear that you felt here was a created paranoia by Sheela and her gang that the whole Oregon is 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 the police that, "Such a great sale has never been there." Suddenly at the time of election, when these people were going to vote in the Wasco County, people are purchasing guns. I had finally -- even though I was in silence, Sheela brought the news to me, 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 a atmosphere which can -- 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.... Then tomorrow these people can be killed and I will be responsible.

Q:* BUT YOU AND I KNOW VERY WELL THAT GUNS NEVER SOLVED ANY PROBLEMS.

A:* They never solved any problem, but no guns have also never solved any problem. Just remember it, have no guns solved any problem.

Q:* IT DEPENDS HOW ONE LOOKS AT IT.

A:* 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.

Q:* I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHO IS BHAGWAN RAJNEESH?

A:* I am. (Inaudible) I am exactly what I am, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD WAGNER FROM CBS NIGHTWATCH.

Q: 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?

A:* No, I love it.

Q:* WHAT IS THE SITUATION HERE NOW? SHEELA AND THE GANG ARE GONE. WHAT IS THE MOOD? WHAT IS THE FEELING AT RAJNEESHPURAM NOW?

A:* 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.

Q:* WHICH IT IS MEANT TO BE, RIGHT?

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

Q:* BHAGWAN, HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO DO THAT? HOW COULD THEY DISTORT THE AIM OF THE COMMUNE?

A:* 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 outside world -- no newspaper, no radio, no television.

And I have told Sheela to bring only absolutely essential things to me. That gave her 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 in 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.

Q:* FORTY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS SHE HAS?

A:* Yes.

Q:* -- OF MONEY THAT BELONGS TO THE COMMUNE?

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

Q:* WHAT CAN YOU DO?

A:* We will see what we can do.

Secondly, I was silent and the people who had 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 because I was in silence I did not want to be disturbed.

Q:* IF I MAY ASK, HOW DID YOU DISCOVER WHAT SHE WAS ABOUT AFTER THE TIME?

A:* So this gave her immense power. In my name she could say anything to my people and they will follow, knowing that it is coming from me. Even if sometimes they will suspect that this cannot be from Bhagwan 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 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 Bhagwan 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 intelligent people who could see that she is 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.

Q:* THESE PEOPLE COULDN'T COMMUNICATE WITH YOU AND TELL YOU WHAT WAS HAPPENING?

A:* Because I was not available. That was the trouble. I was in isolation, I never came into the commune, I never met anybody. So that gave her an opportunity.

And thirdly, because all those intelligent people left, she replaced her own people -- who were just puppets, who will follow her whatsoever she said, even if she was committing crime they will be supporting her. Because their whole position was on her support, otherwise they had no reason to be there. So to keep their position they had to support her crime. 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-home program, because they were giving all those people some drug to keep them drugged so that they can vote for them, or whatsoever they said they will do.

Q:* THIS IS THEIR PACKING THE POLLS?

A:* Yes. Keep them like robots. But this man they accidentally overdosed, and he died; and they threw him just -- so inhuman -- out of the 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 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 will not be punished and they will not be thrown away, or perhaps they may not be even killed.... Because she killed that man and then she tried to kill three other people. That's what started the whole thing.

Q:* THIS WAS YOUR DOCTOR, YOUR DENTIST....

A:* My doctor, my dentist, and my caretaker. She was very much afraid of these three people, because they were the only ones, except her, who could approach me. 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 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, that, "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 poison. It was so unnatural to think of it.

She became sick, she vomited the whole night, for three days she has to rest; but still we did not think of poison -- for the simple reason because if I come at your home and you give me a cup of tea, there is no reason to believe that she 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 is poison in the coffee. So he immediately went to the medical center. Other doctors were also suspicious that there is possibility of a poison, but some kind of a poison which is undetectable.

Q:* OH, THEY NEVER DISCOVERED WHAT KIND IT WAS?

A:* 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 source you cannot detect them.

Q:* AND THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE USING?

A:* They have been using the book. When Sheela left, in her room a whole literature on poisons, 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 were -- medical people were suspecting, that page was underlined. So it seems they have been using that poison, no way to detect it.

Q:* 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?

A:* 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. 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 how long you want the person to die that much dose you should give.

Q:* IS THIS BEING INVESTIGATED NOW BY THE AUTHORITIES?

A:* Yes; FBI and State Police and other agencies -- county police. They are all having a office here and people are going and revealing everything that they know.

Q:* YOU'RE COOPERATING WITH THAT?

A:* Absolutely. I am absolutely against crime, and I am all for law.

Third time they again injected my doctor, and that was in a meeting. I started speaking after the second poisoning. It was still not certain, but suspicion was enough; and when I asked her, I could see on her face a little hesitation. And I told her that, "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, just in the crowd, my doctor. In the crowd. But it such an injection that it can be done from over the robe. He felt it immediately, he pulled his robe, he showed people, he knew who has done it, and people saw blood and the mark of the injection. And one person has come as a witness, that, "Whatever the doctor says, that is the person who has done it, I have seen her doing with my own eyes." 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.

Q:* ARE PEOPLE COMING FORWARD NOW?

A:* People coming forward, so many stories that it seems just unbelievable. They have bugged even my room.

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

Q:* BHAGWAN, WAS THE REASON FOR THIS TO STEAL MONEY? IS THAT AT THE BASE OF IT? DID THEY WANT TO TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN?

A:* No, not only that because money was already there and nobody knows, and nobody knew. This letter has come yesterday...

(Interruption for tape change) 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 has accumulated in three and a half years, she lost her face on the television screen, her voice on the radios, 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 of -- television people coming, all media lined up, interviews. She has become a celebrity, and that is a very poisoning thing.

Q:* HAVE YOU SPOKEN WITH HER SINCE SHE LEFT BY TELEPHONE?

A:* No, I never have used telephone in my whole life.

Q:* WOULD YOU SPEAK WITH HER IN ANY WAY IF YOU COULD?

A:* No. If she comes only in front of me.

Q:* WOULD YOU SPEAK TO HER IF SHE CAME AND ASKED TO BE FORGIVEN?

A:* There is every possibility. Future is always unpredictable.

Last time she came here, she wrote a letter to me, that, "I don't feel excitement coming here" because the whole commune does not go to receive her on 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 photographs gather around her airplane, put as many garlands as she wants, why unnecessary 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 who was always bringing notes when Sheela was absent, I told her, that "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 her what is really the reason.

The reason is, that `You are no more now getting nourishment for your ego.'" Q:* BHAGWAN, DID, DID SHE AND HER GANG STEAL SO MUCH MONEY FROM THE COMMUNE THAT THE COMMUNE COULD BE IN FINANCIAL DIFFICULTY?

A:* 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 she will be caught, and she will be soon in trouble. And I am certain because... she has... the second 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 it is? I don't know anything; you have never told me."

She said, "Tomorrow I will be bringing every detail." And tomorrow she disappeared too.

Q:* BHAGWAN, WHAT IS YOUR, 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?

A:* 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 been not able to find anything that 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. I have applied on five grounds, and I will fight on each ground separately. One ground will ground will take twenty years to reach to the Supreme Court. Five grounds will take hundred years, so what problem? All so many judges will die, so many INS people will die, I myself will be died.

Perhaps they will give the green card to my grave. That will be their tribute.

Q:* ASSUMING 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?

A:* 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 more hostility you create, 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, except red Indians, everybody is a foreigner. So what is the problem? In fact we are legally here, and you are illegally here.

Q:* WHAT ABOUT...?

A:* The Americans, the forefathers, have invaded this country. 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 than New York; that means ninety dollars at the most. And remember that you may have come one hundred year before, somebody may have come two hundred year before, somebody three hundred year 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.

Q:* WHAT ABOUT SHEELA AND HER GROUP BRINGING THE HOMELESS PEOPLE FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY HERE AT ELECTION TIME? WAS THAT ONE OF HER PLOTS?

A:* 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 you have purchased 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 again to do something like that. 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.

Q:* HOW CAN YOU MAKE UP TO THE LOCAL PEOPLE? HOW CAN YOU GET THE CONFIDENCE OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE AROUND THE COMMUNE?

A:* 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, immediately that it cannot be done. This is making 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 lying down there. 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 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 hundred sannyasins are living there, a unnecessary trouble. And those people don't want to go; working after 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. So I had told to the press that we would like to take all of our people back, but then it is the responsibility of Antelope people that they should take their properties back....

Q:* BUY THEM BACK?

A:* If they want, yes, they should buy them back; and we are ready to give them at the same price. We have improved their property, we have made almost renovated houses, and prices have already gone high 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 in any loss. We have made the city beautiful.

But the ex-mayor's news I saw, she says, that "We are not going to purchase, 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 property is now in the hands of Antelope people. If they want to sell it on reasonable market price, we will purchase it; but we will want them all to vacate. We don't want any trouble any more. 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.

Q:* THE PEOPLE HERE CLEARLY WISH YOU NO HARM. WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN SUCH RIGID SECURITY IN THIS COMMUNE?

A:* 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 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. So unless government takes the guarantee that our people will not be harassed, the security will remain. If they take the guarantee, security will disappear tomorrow. There is no problem, because we don't want. In fact, one hundred people are unnecessary 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 peoples having guns on both the sides. We removed them, and a mad man 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, to FBI.

Still the FBI people said to one of our people that, "We would like at least 500 people from the commune to be locked in prison." Now, this is -- this means they are not interested really in Sheela, her gang, her crimes; they are more interested in destroying the commune.

Q:* WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO DESTROY THE COMMUNE?

A:* Ask Attorney General. Why they should 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 federal government, state government, county, from everybody. And then suddenly the city became illegal.

Q:* THE SUPREME COURT OF OREGON SAID THAT THE LAND USE WAS NOT PROPER, IS THAT CORRECT?

A:* Yes, they have said it; but Attorney General has found another way. Now he says that state and religion is 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.

Q:* SO YOU'LL APPEAL ON TO THE HIGHEST COURTS -- THE FEDERAL COURTS?

A:* 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 they should 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.

Q:* BHAGWAN, WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE COMMUNE? WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THE COMMUNE?

A:* 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, 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 Bible for taking oath; this is mixing religion with justice. Why Bible is 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 Bible; I would rather prefer a magazine of PLAYBOY, which is at least colorful and glossy.

They are -- there are 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 five hundred pages collection. And they say this five hundred pages 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 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.

Q:* WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HISTORIC FIGURES IN RELIGION LIKE JESUS AND MOHAMMED AND BUDDHA? WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF THEM?

A:* 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.

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, which I don't think any would bother to worship.

About all these people, miracles have been created by the followers to make them as higher, holier, 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 just the heat of the desert, forty years wandering in the desert, got the man crazy, drove him crazy, nothing else.

Q:* BHAGWAN, WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?

A:* 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."

Q:* IS IT POSSIBLE FOR YOUR VIEWS TO BE ALLOWED JUST TO EXIST IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, OR WILL PEOPLE ALWAYS TRY TO STOP YOU....

WILL YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENEMIES?

A:* 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.

Q:* DO YOU THINK YOU WILL BE SEEING THE PRESS DAILY, OR...?

A:* 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.

Q:* DO YOU THINK WE TREAT YOU FAIRLY?

A:* Quite fairly.

Q:* IS THERE ANYTHING YOU DON'T LIKE TO READ ABOUT YOURSELF OR SEE....

A:* No. I like everything.

Q:* DO YOU THINK YOU MAY EVER TRAVEL TO YOUR OTHER COMMUNES AROUND THE COUNTRY -- AROUND THE WORLD AGAIN?

A:* 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.

Q:* WHY DID YOU CHOOSE OREGON?

A:* Because of my allergies. (inaudible) 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.

Q:* WELL, I'M SURE THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT WOULD SAY THIS HIGH DESERT HAS NEVER BEEN PUT TO BETTER USE.

A:* Yes, it has never been. For the 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 part -- on my side, then I don't care about small governments.

Q:* MAY I ASK YOU HOW YOU SPEND YOUR DAYS? DO YOU MEDITATE? I KNOW YOU HAVE DISCOURSES IN THE MORNING.

A:* 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.

Then in the end, my secretary brings if anything is about the commune that is necessary; 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 it 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.

Q:* BHAGWAN, DID YOU HAVE TEACHERS OR HAVE -- YOU HAVE DEVELOPED THIS ON YOUR OWN?

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

Q:* DO YOU READ A GREAT DEAL, OR NOT VERY MUCH?

A:* 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? Neither I read nor I write. All my books are my discourses.

Q:* YOU NEVER PUT YOUR THOUGHTS ON PAPER?

A:* Never. In my whole life I have never written. 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.

Q:* WE LIVE IN THE VIDEO AGE. YOU COULD MAKE VIDEO CASSETTES.

A:* We are making.

Q:* WILL THEY BE MADE AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC?

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

Q:* SO YOU ARE COMMUNICATING OTHER THAN JUST ONE ON ONE OR JUST TO A GROUP?

A:* Yes; this is communication.

Q:* BUT THE VIDEO CASSETTES ARE, IN A WAY, A BOOK -- NOT A WRITTEN WORD, BUT A RECORD.

A:* It is different. Very different. And soon, when it becomes three dimensional, then it will be really beautiful.

INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT MILLER*, FROM CHANNEL 8 Q:* I KNOW HIM.

A:* I feel like I know you as well, although we have never really met face to face.

My pleasure.

Q:* I'VE BEEN A BIG FAN OF HOT AND COLD SHOWERS MYSELF FOR QUITE SOME TIME.

A:* Some day you can come to my bathroom.

Q:* WE'RE AN AFFILIATE OF NBC, AND NBC HAS OBTAINED, 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. I ASK YOU TO RESPOND TO A COUPLE OF THE ALLEGATIONS THAT SHE'S MADE IN THE INTERVIEW. WE CAN GIVE YOUR SIDE AS WELL. I UNDERSTAND YOU FEEL YOU'RE TREATED FAIRLY.

A:* I am (inaudible). Anything she says, she will get a good reply. You just....

(Delay while cameraman gets ready) A: Meanwhile have some grapes. They are our own.

Q:* THEY'RE GROWN HERE?

A:* Yes.

Q:* SHEELA CLAIMS THAT THERE HAS BEEN WIDESPREAD USE OF NARCOTICS AMONG YOUR SANNYASINS, DRUGS, SPECIFICALLY THE DRUG ECSTASY. 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.

A:* I know ecstasy, but ecstasy can be a drug I am hearing for the first time. I have never heard before even the name, 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 drug was 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?

Q:* WHICH DRUG?

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

(Tape side D) Q:* HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF YOUR SANNYASINS BEING ON ANY DRUG?

A:* 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 because 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 in ecstasy, but I'm not drugged. And nobody has been drugged by me. And if Sheela says, she was the whole and sole for all these years, then she must be responsible for the drug and she must have done it to people.

Q:* DO YOU BELIEVE THAT SHE'S DONE IT TO PEOPLE?

A:* 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 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.

Q:* SHE SAYS THAT YOU THREW TEMPER TANTRUMS AND WOULD THREATEN TO COMMIT SUICIDE IF YOU WERE NOT GIVEN MORE ROLLS ROYCES.

A:* 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?

Q:* HAVE YOU EVER ASKED FOR A ROLLS ROYCE?

A:* 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. The* cars are sacred, and we want them where they are. So we voted, and that's where they'll be.

Q:* DID YOU EVER THROW TEMPER TANTRUMS THEN?

A:* 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?

Q:* 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?

A:* She must be afraid, because every murderer is always afraid of 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 Dalles. Naturally she must be in a paranoia, that she will be killed. Anybody who commits 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; and after knowing all this, I can also say to you that she killed her own husband too. In Ind....

Q:* HOW DID SHE DO THAT?

A:* Her husband was sick with cancer.

Q:* THIS IS MR. SILVERMAN?

A:* Yes. Mr. Silverman, her first husband. But she was loving another man, and that was a constant trouble; and finally because he was again and again needed oxygen, it seems that she cut the oxygen source. And he died.

The rumor was right when it reached to me, but it was too late. He was already burned, finished. And there was no solid ground in my hands. Otherwise she would have been given to the police, then and there. But now seeing all these things that she has done here, of which there are solid proofs, I suspect perhaps it was right that she killed her husband.

Q:* YOU DIDN'T THINK OF REMOVING HER WHEN YOU FIRST FOUND ABOUT IT? DIDN'T SHE RUN THE AFFAIRS HERE FOR A LONG TIME AFTER YOU HEARD SUCH RUMORS OF SUCH A HIDEOUS ACT?

A:* No, nobody.... I did not believe that she will do it. I thought it was just a rumor. But now I can say that she must have done; 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 police comes she can escape. So her fear has reason, and the reason is her own crimes are following her like a shadow. Every murderer is followed by his own guilt.

Q:* HOW LONG AGO DID SHEELA'S FIRST HUSBAND DIE?

A:* That (unintelligible) Q:* HE HAD SOME FORM OF CANCER, BUT WAS HE SICK BACK EAST OR...?

A:* I think... Devaraj is here?... He has something to do with lungs, lungs cancer.

Voice:* Hodgkins.

Q:* HODGKINS DISEASE.

A:* Hodgkins or something like that.

Q:* WAS HE A SANNYASIN?

A:* He was a sannyasin.

Q:* AND WAS THIS BEFORE THE COMMUNE HERE WAS STARTED?

A:* It happened in India. It was nearabout '77.

Q:* AND AT THIS TIME WAS SHEELA INVOLVED WITH JAYANANDA?

A:* No, she was involved with Veetrag.

Q:* IT GETS COMPLICATED.

A:* And this reminds me 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, she married in Switzerland, Dipo, another sannyasin. And she committed bigamy.

She is married to American Jayananda and she had 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, so she has become a professional criminal now.

Q:* WHAT HAPPENED TO VEETRAG?

A:* Veetrag is here.

Q:* HE'S STILL ALIVE?

A:* Still alive, because he refused her. She has told him.... He is our best pilot. She told Veetrag, that "You take the airplane, fill it with bombs, and crash it with 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 absolute crime. It will not only destroy the Wasco County office, it may destroy few other houses also. It will become a wild fire.

Q:* WAS SHEELA'S FIRST HUSBAND HOSPITALIZED IN INDIA?

A:* Yes. He was in the commune; in the ashram. Once in a while he used to be hospitalized when he was serious; otherwise he was living in the commune. He died in the ashram.

Q:* AND HE COULD GET OXYGEN IN THE ASHRAM?

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

Q:* OKAY, BHAGWAN, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR STAYING LATE FOR US. I REALLY APPRECIATE IT.

A:* Good. Come again.

Q:* I WILL BE... I'LL BE HERE.

A:* Good.

Q:* THANK YOU.