Chapter 04

[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]

INTERVIEW WITH MARIANNE HEUWAGEN, SUDDEUTSCH ZEITUNG, GERMANY

B: I call it religiousness. When religiousness dies, it becomes a religion. Religion is a corpse. Religiousness is alive, singing, dancing, flowering.

In existence nouns don't exist. It is the language that gives us a wrong impression. For example, the tree or the river. These are nouns. They don't exist in reality, because the tree is continuously growing. There is no full stop. It is treeing. River is rivering. It is a continuous flow.

Existence knows no nouns.

And religiousness is the experience of the highest peak of consciousness.

Existence has not gone beyond it. It is existence' highest reach.

So when I came out of silence I had said, "This is the first - and the last - religion." First in the sense because nobody, neither Jesus nor Buddha nor Krishna, created any religion while they were alive. When they were dead, others created the religion.

It is a strange phenomenon which has been repeated again and again down the ages. When the person who knew is dead, then the persons who do not know organize it. They become the popes, they become the shankaracharyas, they become the caliphs, imams. But they are carrying only a dead body.

So I call it the first religion in the sense that I am alive and something is happening around me. But I also call it the last religion. People have not noted the second part, that soon I am going to dissolve it. That too has never been done.

Of course, it was impossible. Jesus was not alive when Christianity was born. He could not dissolve it. He neither created it nor he could dissolve it.

I allowed it to happen just to dissolve it and make it clear that the only authentic religiousness is always unorganized. The moment you organize it, something dies.

It is the same: a bird on the wing has a beauty. The whole sky, the sun, the wind, and the bird and its freedom, they are all together there.

You can catch the bird. You can put it in a golden cage. In one sense it is the same bird, in another sense it is not the same bird because where is the freedom?

Where is that sky? Where is that wind? Where is that life which was on two wings, available to the whole universe? All that has disappeared.

Truth cannot be organized. It can be experienced, it can be made available to those who are receptive, open. But it cannot be explained. It is something contagious. You can get infected by it, but there is no intellectual way to communicate it.

So now I call it simply religiousness. And it has a beauty, because now it need not be Christian, need not be Hindu, need not be Rajneeshee. It need not have any label. All labels are dangerous to freedom. It is better to leave it unlabeled.

Q: WHY DID YOU ENTER YOUR LONG STRETCH OF SILENCE AND WHY DID YOU BREAK OUT OF IT AT THIS POINT IN TIME?

B: I have never lived with any plan in my life. It has been something spontaneous, moment to moment. As I feel, I do it. I felt to be silent, I went into silence. I may have remained my whole life silent. There is no way to say why I started speaking again. The same spontaneity. Three and a half years silence and suddenly one day I felt that much has remained to say. I have not yet said that for which I am here. So better say it now, because who knows about tomorrow?

But it is all spontaneous. There is no reason of going into silence or coming out of silence. But those three and half years created a beautiful gap.

I was speaking for thirty years continuously. I think I deserve at least three years silence after thirty years continuously speaking.

And those thirty years I was speaking in a very strange situation, because humanity is divided. Every person is born in some religion. I had to say something. I had discovered something within myself but I could not see that it fits with any traditional, conventional, religion.

But everybody is already part of a conventional religion. Who is going to listen to me?

Hence, as a device, I started speaking on Gautam Buddha. I was speaking my own experience. The name of Gautam Buddha and his words was just an excuse.

But Buddhists started listening. Even great Buddhist scholars came to me and said, "We have never thought that these simple statements of Gautam Buddha contain so much."

And I was laughing within, because they don't contain anything. I have used them and made them to mean whatsoever I wanted to mean them.

I have found the way how to catch people. I was speaking on Krishna, I was speaking on Mahavira, I was speaking on Jesus. I spoke almost on all the religions for thirty years, and slowly slowly people who became more and more intimate to me begin to see the device, that I am saying something which is not there in those old scriptures. I had to use those old scriptures, because without that screen it is very difficult to find people to listen.

And soon these people became available to me. Then I started having my own individual camps where I was speaking directly, with nobody in between. And that's when I started initiating people into sannyas.

Sannyas was simply that they are now ready to listen me without any device.

They are willing to open their heart. That much trust has grown in them.

These three and half years silence has given me another opportunity that is just a byproduct. The silence was not meant for it.

There were many people who were just hanging around me because of their intellects were convinced. My arguments were important to them although I was insisting that truth cannot be found by arguments. But they became addicted with my words, with my explanations. These three and half years, by and by they left, seeing that now I am not going to speak and silence they could not understand.

Only those remained for whom it did not matter at all whether I speak or I am silent. Just my presence, and something transpires between my being and their being. It is a wordless communion.

Now I am speaking exactly the purest truth possible, as pure as it can be put into words, because now the people who are around me can even understand my silence. So there is no question of misunderstanding my words. That is impossible.

So a totally new phase.

And I have experienced so much that to die without conveying it in some way or other will be a shame.

Q: IS YOUR CONVEYING WHAT YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED ALSO THE REASON WHY YOU ARE SO AVAILABLE TO THE MEDIA NOWADAYS?

B: Yes, because there are millions of people around the world who may not ever come in contact with me. But through the media many of them may get some glimpse. Few of them may even come.

And my message is not limited to any particular group of people. It is for all human beings as such.

So I wanted to reach to all the nooks and corners of the world. And I am a contemporary man, so no need for me to go everywhere when media can take the message. That is far more easier.

Q: DURING YOUR LONG PERIOD OF SILENCE, YOUR FORMER PERSONAL SECRETARY, SHEELA, HAS OBVIOUSLY EXERCISED SOME ABUSE OF POWER, AS YOU YOURSELF HAVE STATED. AND SHE WENT TO GERMANY, AS YOU KNOW, AND IS CAUSING BIG WAVES IN THE MEDIA OVER THERE. HAS HER DEPARTURE AND HER ACCUSATION HURT YOU, SINCE YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH HER SO CLOSELY FOR SO MANY YEARS?

B: No, nothing hurts me. And just a poor Sheela, how can she hurt me? And her going has made the commune cleaner, more hygienic. The whole credit goes to her that she left with her whole gang. And what harm? She has only harmed herself and the people who are with her. They have missed a life's opportunity.

And they have not gained anything. Now their whole life they will live with a guilt, with a shadow of crime. And as far as the commune is concerned, there is not even a ripple. Everybody is happy that those people have left, because they were creating almost a fascist regime.

They were torturing people, and because I was in isolation and silence she had all my powers. Those powers were given for legal reasons, but she misused them, took advantage, which is very understandable. Just an ordinary human being, she has been a waitress in a hotel. Now suddenly she had two hundred fifty million dollars in her hands she would have never even dreamt of and one million sannyasins around the world ready to do anything in my name.

Suddenly she has almost an empire. And her only fear was that if I start speaking, then all the glory and the celebrity she had attained will disappear within a day.

So she was trying in every possible way that I should not speak.

Lust for power is such a thing, and once you have it, then to let go of is very difficult.

She started doing things which were against my very thinking. She started harassing those sannyasins who had lived with me long before she joined, and who were far more intelligent, far more educated. She is not educated.

The vice-chancellor of the university, the chancellor of the university, many psychologists, therapists, doctors, left the commune because she was harassing them, insulting them, and they had not come here for her. But she was afraid, because those were the people who were far more competent.

If once I come to know about all the things she is doing, I will change her immediately. So she removed all competent people from the commune. She tried to kill those who were very intimate to me, and particularly those who had the opportunity to approach me in my silence: my personal physician, my dental surgeon, my caretaker. These three people were dangerous for her. They may inform me of things that are going on. She was so much afraid that she tried to kill all the three persons.

She poisoned my personal physician four times, and she had every arrangement:

if nothing succeeds she could have killed me. For that she had made every arrangement.

Just the lust for power. And the day I started speaking, the whole commune was dancing on the streets, because they had not expected that I will speak again.

They were ecstatic. But Sheela and her group of twenty people were utterly sad.

And since that day she had not faced me. For any excuse - she was going to Australia, the commune needs her there, or to Singapore or to Japan or to England or to Holland or to Germany. She will come for a day or two, but will not come to see me. She will simply send the message that, "I have cold." And I am allergic, so that excuse is enough. "So when my cold is okay I will come." But before the cold is okay, she is gone again.

And that's what she did the last time. She informed me she has cold. Three, four days she will rest, and as her cold gets better she will come to see me. And next day she escaped.

Naturally, she did not want to inform me that she is going forever. She has left her resignation, all the papers, in the office.

But if I had known that she is leaving forever, then I would have told the police to look into her luggage, everything has to be checked: how much money she is carrying. Because twenty persons she is taking with her, she will need money to travel to Europe, to live there.

And she had told me that she has opened a bank account in Switzerland - for me, in case I have to leave America someday. Then it will be enough to create a commune in Switzerland.

I asked her, "But at least I should know the bank, the account number, how much money you have got in it." She said, "I will tell You everything when the time arrives."

The bank account is in her name, and if it was sufficient to create a commune it cannot be less than fifty million. It can be more but not less. Because this commune we had to put two hundred million dollars, just for five thousand people houses, roads, everything to create the land.

So she would have to answer if she had told me when she is leaving. And she must have carried weapons, poisons, bombs, because in her room the literature has been found how to make bombs, literature on poisons, how to kill people, how to give certain poisons in small doses on a long period so that the person slowly slowly becomes sick and dies almost as if a natural death, so nobody can suspect that he has been poisoned.

If you suddenly poison somebody and he dies, then it will be found. So she was giving the poison in tea, in coffee, in injections. The person may be thinking of some other injection is being given, and he is being given some poison. And it will take six months for him to die.

So she must have carried much. And nobody checked her, because she was continuously coming and going, so there was no question of checking. Otherwise she had no right even to use the commune airplane. She should have herself declared that she is leaving, so her luggage should be checked. But to avoid it she kept me in dark that four days she will be waiting and then she will see me. And there was no question of going at all.

And the time she left she had chosen rightly. In the afternoon between two and four I go for a drive in the mountains. I saw her plane and I could not believe, because that was not the time for our regular plane to go. Back home, I found that Sheela and twenty others have left.

My physician was continuously saying that he is being poisoned, that these are the effects of a certain poison, and this is the only poison which is undetectable.

(Tape side B) But nobody will listen to him. Even doctors will not listen. They think that he is just getting into a paranoia. They checked his blood. There was no poison, there was no sickness - nothing. But in her room the book was found on poisons, and the same poison is underlined which my doctor was continuously saying that, "That is the only poison which cannot be detected." And that is the only poison which is underlined in the book with the description that it cannot be detected.

And it will kill the person surely, slowly slowly.

So she did everything just to remain in power. And as I started speaking she had to escape.

In Germany she is simply lying. There she can lie. If she has guts she should come here, because we have invited FBI, state police, county police. They have been here, our guests, and we have provided all the evidences, all the testimonies, eyewitnesses, so if she has guts she should come here and produce counter-evidences. Just lying and making allegations does not mean anything. It has to be decided in the court, and it has to be decided on solid grounds.

One of her gang returned back from Seattle. The sannyasin must have some heart. She felt that it is better to be imprisoned and come out after few years clean rather than carry this load whole of your life, hiding here and there. So she came back. Her coming back has been of immense help. Her testimony has lasted almost two weeks, and she had given everything that the circle has done.

Because she was part of the innermost circle and she has been witnesses in many crimes: the arson, the burning of the Planning Office of Wasco County, she was a witness. She drove two persons of the group who burned the office, and she drove them back.

She knows how they drugged three thousand people whom they had brought as Share-A-Home program from the streets, from all over America. The desire was to take over the county, so to keep them drugged so they cannot go away, and by the time the voting day comes they will be so drugged that whatever you say they will do.

For three thousand people she had to bring gallons of drugs from outside America, because if you purchase in America then you will have to answer for what purpose you had purchased them and what use has been made of them.

But this sannyasin is an eyewitness. One person was overdosed and died. She says* they simply threw his body out of the campus. The police found the body but they could not figure out who the man is, from where he comes. He was a street person, a hobo, so there was no case, no inquiry, no investigation.

So almost every crime - murder, attempts to murder, arson, beating people and then giving them drugs thinking that they are informers, to keep them drugged and go on asking... Almost she created a small fascist state.

Now the doctor himself... herself who managed to do all these things where people were beaten, drugged for three days, and just in their drugged asleep state they were thrown in Portland, so when they woke up they could not figure out what has happened, and they forgot all... They were drugged with some chemical that washes your memory that they have been beaten or why they have come here. They were simply in a state of daze.

The doctor herself has confessed.

So rather than lying there, and lying anything... She is talking that five hundred sannyasins have left. Twenty persons have left with her and thirty persons more have left who must have been connected some way or other in some small crime and must have been afraid that they will be caught.

The chief gangsters have left and the people who had done small things, they followed. Only fifty persons including her group have left, but one hundred fifty people have come back: those who had left because of her. And five hundred people are coming back.

So rather than telling lies - she is telling that the commune is finished, there is no food in the commune, there is no money in the commune, everything is finished.... She should just come and see that everything is far better than it has ever been. People are happier because they are freer. They can say no if that's what they feel, without being punished.

And people are immensely happy for small things. For example, if they wanted to go for a vacation... for four years she was forcing them not to go. Now, it is just natural. If they want to go to see their parents for one week, this is nothing. They should be allowed. So now people are allowed to go for one week or three week or as long as they want, because this is not a concentration camp.

Here you are on your own accord. If you want to have one month's vacation, you can have it. There is no problem in it.

And if there is no food, then how these people are surviving? And people have never been so happy: a very deep feeling of lightness. A great burden has disappeared. And everybody is feeling responsible for the first time. And whatever she has done in three and half years, I have to undo it. Now there is no religion. She has created a book, Rajneeshism, to be the holy scripture of the religion. She created the word Rajneeshee. I had to tell my people that, "There is nobody who is a Rajneeshee. You are yourself and you need not be anything else in the world."

And we had to burn all those books because I don't want any holy book and I hate the word ism.

So we are in a far better condition.

And she will repent.

And there is no question of hurt.

Q: THE AMERICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES ARE USING THESE ACCUSATIONS AND THE WHOLE INCIDENT TO SNOOP AROUND HERE ANY WAY THEY CAN. YOU ARE AWARE THAT THEY BUILT THIS BIG TASK FORCE OF PEOPLE AND THEY ARE JUST TOO HAPPY TO WALK IN HERE AND, AS THEY WOULD CALL IT, CHECK THE PLACE OUT. ARE YOU.... THIS HAPPENS IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONTROVERSY ABOUT YOUR COMMUNE HERE THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON EVER SINCE IT STARTED. ARE YOU CONCERNED THAT THESE GRAND JURY INVESTIGATIONS AND THE POLICE ACTIVITIES HERE ARE GOING TO HURT THE COMMUNE AND THE SANNYASINS, AND THEY ARE GOING TO TRY AND LOOK FOR AN EXCUSE TO DO SOME HARM TO YOUR COMMUNE HERE?

B: They cannot do. The politicians may have it in their mind but, as you know, politicians don't have much of a mind in the first place.

They certainly have it in mind that this is a good opportunity to destroy the commune, but it is not possible. We will fight to the very end, and this fight for the commune may take bigger proportions.

If they start in any way harassing the commune rather than catching hold of the criminals, which they are delaying.... Now we have produced every evidence, testimonies, eyewitnesses, but they are not doing anything to the criminals.

If they have any mind, it is better they should change it. If my commune is harassed in any way, then this small thing will take really big proportions. Then I am going to fight up to the Supreme Court, and I am going to expose the whole American hypocrisy, that these people are talking of democracy, of freedom, of freedom of speech, of respect for individuality, respect for private property....

But this is not their land. If they have any respect for their own constitution, then the Supreme Court should tell the government to "resign and give it to red Indians. This land belongs to them, and you are all foreigners here.

"And then you apply for green cards the way we apply, and if the red Indians want you to be here you can be here. Otherwise get lost.

"Either do this or drop from your constitution all that nonsense about freedom, respect for individuals, for individual property."

This is such an absurdity, that the real Americans are just living in reservations and the foreigners have become real Americans. And who are they to decide about my permanent residence here or my commune's residence here? On what authority?

On what authority they had entered in this country? Had their grandfathers visas and green cards? They invaded the country. They have been violent with the innocent people of the country. And they are still talking about democracy and freedom, and this is the only country which is under slavery.

And foreigners have become the masters, and the real masters are nobodies.

I am going to fight it and make it a worldwide problem. You talk about communism, that it is dictatorial, and what you are? What is your relationship with the red Indians? Who is the master to whom this land belongs?

It is better they should change their mind, because I enjoy fighting and I don't like small things. If I want to fight, then I fight on real big grounds. And then it is going to be a worldwide problem.

I have my sannyasins all over the world. Then each American embassy will be surrounded by my sannyasins meditating. We will not do any harm to anybody, that is not our way of thinking. But we will make our point all over the world, that Americans have to decide it that the land goes to the red Indians. Otherwise they should stop talking about democracy, about freedom.

Then it is an imperialist country, so why unnecessarily have beautiful masks?

Why not show your ugly face?

So if the politicians of Oregon want to get into troubled waters, I am ready. We have nothing to lose, but they may lose America.

And if they can issue green cards, who are all foreigners, why we cannot issue?

What is the difference? Just because you came a little earlier and we came a little late. Okay, we will make our green card a little less green.... (laughter, and Bhagwan's words are unintelligible) But we are going to issue green cards, we are going to issue passports, because other foreigners are doing the same thing. Either you stop all this nonsense....

America is not in a good position as far as its own constitution is concerned. Its constitution is one of the best in the whole world. I have tremendous respect for it. But its politicians are worst in the world, and I simply hate them from my guts.

And I will fight for the constitution against the Americans. I will not allow them to prostitute their own constitution. This constitution is one of the hopes for humanity.

But they should learn to behave.

So I know that there is the idea in their mind, but it is better... sooner they drop it, better it will be. If they want to pursue it, we are not worried. We have not done any harm. We have not done any crime. We have not done any wrong.

Now we have to see how an innocent commune can be destroyed.

Q: YOU SEEM TO CARE A LOT ABOUT RAJNEESHPURAM AND YOUR SANNYASIN. I MEAN, HOW MUCH DO YOU CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE HERE THAT SURROUND YOU? AND YOU SEEM TO BE WILLING TO, IN A WAY, DEFEND THEM, WHATEVER IT TAKES.

B: I love them. The question of care does not arise. I love them as myself, and I will fight for hem just the way I will fight for myself. They are here for me.

It is not a question of care. It is something far more deeper. My sannyasins are my extensions. This commune is an organic whole. We are not only living together, we are growing together. We are creating our future together, and we will not allow anybody to disturb it.

And we have the means to stop.* We are not violent people so we will not do any violence to anybody, but innocence has its own power. Silence has its own power. Love has its own power.

And you can see it.

They have nuclear weapons and they are afraid of us, who are just living in an isolated desert. They are worried about our three dozen semi-automatic guns, which are as old as Adam and Eve. We don't know whether they will work or not because we have never used them.

And the biggest nuclear power in the world is afraid of three dozen guns. It is simply hilarious. We enjoy it.

Q: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? I MEAN, WHY ARE THEY AFRAID OF YOU?

B: That's what I am asking you.

Q: SHALL I TELL THEM THEY OUGHT NOT TO BE AFRAID?

B: Hm.

Q: I WAS WONDERING EARLIER, HOW MANY OF YOUR SANNYASINS DO YOU PERSONALLY KNOW? I MEAN, THERE ARE OVER A THOUSAND PEOPLE HERE. DO YOU KNOW MOST OF THEM PERSONALLY, I MEAN?

B: I know them individually, not personally. And I make a distinction between knowing someone personally and knowing someone individually.

Ordinarily we know people only personally: their name, their qualifications, their job and things like that, which are all superficial. You can change the name but the individual remains the same. You can change the job but the individual remains the same. You can change the address, you can change his wife, but the individual remains the same.

I am not interested in people's personalities. I know them individually. That means I know them in their very essence. When I pass by the side of a sannyasin, I don't know the name but I know at what stage of meditation the individual is or whether he has at all progressed in meditation or not.

I know whether the individual has come to taste something of the higher qualities of love or is still thinking that sexuality is all there is. I know just by looking in the eyes of anybody whether the person has any inner approach to himself or he lives just outside himself. That inner approach is his individuality, and that outside life is his personality. I am not concerned with the personality at all.

The person may be a man or a woman - does not matter. What matters is his essential being, how close he has come to his essential being. Closer he comes to it, a certain aura arises around his body, a certain fragrance.

You can immediately recognize that here is someone who is very close to the center, and when somebody reaches the center, then it is as if a house was dark and suddenly you have switched the light on. Even from the outside you can see through the windows the house is on light.

Ordinary people are just without light. Even from their windows you can see only darkness. And when a person reaches to his center of individuality, suddenly he is aflame. And you can see - from his eyes, from his gestures, from his words, the way he walks. His words start becoming more poetic. His walk becomes more of a dance. His gestures have a grace that was never there before.

I am knowing my people only in that inner context, and it is almost impossible to know them personally. One million people around the earth - how can I know their names? But I can know them. And the moment I look into their eyes, they also know that they have been found where they are.

Q: YOU RECENTLY MADE A REMARK, AND I THINK IT WAS AGAIN IN YOUR FIRST DER SPIEGEL INTERVIEW, THAT WERE... YOU SAID THAT YOU ADMIRED ADOLF HITLER. AND THIS IS A TWO-PART QUESTION. I FIRST OF ALL WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHETHER THAT IS TRUE, AND, SECOND, WHY WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS HERE IN THIS COUNTRY, KNOWING THAT THIS IS VERY UNPOPULAR, AND DON'T YOU THINK THAT SAYING SOMETHING LIKE THAT MAKES IT DIFFICULT FOR YOU, OR MORE DIFFICULT FOR YOU, AND YOUR SANNYASINS HERE IN THIS COUNTRY?

B: Whenever I make any statement, I do not consider the consequences for me or for my commune. It is only politicians who think of consequences, who always say what you want to hear. I say what I want to say.

That statement is not complete, and this is the third-rate yellow journalism that wants to create sensation even where it is not.

I had said that Mahatma Gandhi was a hypocrite. He was a very violent man talking about non-violence. But looking at his life one can see that his non- violence is only a political strategy. He himself is very violent.

To his wife he was violent, to his children he was violent, to his disciples he was violent, and in very ugly ways. To himself also he was violent. So he was a kind of sado-masochist.

In this reference I was saying that I have a certain respect for Adolf Hitler. He is at least straightforward. He is not a hypocrite. He is what he is.

Mahatma Gandhi is a hypocrite.

Now, this is the whole context.

(Tape side C) Hitler is violent, is fascist, thinks that the German race is the chosen race to rule over the world. But whatever he says, he says it. He believes in it. He is a crackpot but very sincere.

In this context I had said that I have a certain respect for Adolf Hitler because he is not a hypocrite, and I don't have that respect for Mahatma Gandhi because he pretends to be a saint. In reality he is just a politician. And he is using his saintliness for his politics.

He became the leader, the father-figure of India, because Hindus are in majority and he behaved like a Hindu saint. But if you study his life....

For example, he used to sing every morning and evening that Hindus and Mohammedans are one. That was a political thing, because that was the greatest problem in India.

Hindus never wanted India to be divided for the simple reason because if it remains undivided Hindus will always rule the Mohammedans. And it was clear that if Mohammedans want to be their own land, their own country, they want to be deciding their own fate, then they need a separate land. And they were the second majority after Hindus. And their demand was absolutely right. Hindus would have destroyed them.

So Gandhi's songs of the unity of Hinduism and Mohammedanism, his discourses that both are the same, that there is no difference, are proved all bogus, because his own son, eldest son, Haridas, who was a rebel from his very birth - and I love that man, he was far superior in every way than his father....

He wanted to go to school and Gandhi will not allow because he thought that all education poisons people. So no education for children. He will teach them enough so they can read religious scriptures. But Haridas was insistent that he wants to learn everything the way other boys are learning. Gandhi threatened him that, "If you go to school, then never enter in my house again."

Do you think this is the attitude of a non-violent man? And that too against a small child, and whose demand is not in any way for any crime. He is not saying that he wants to go to a prostitute. He is simply asking to go to school to study just like everybody else. And his argument is perfect. He said, "You have been educated and you are not poisoned, so why you are so worried? I am your son. If you can be educated, if you can attain to the degree of bar at law, then why I cannot? Why you are so suspicious?"

But Gandhi said, "I have given you the ultimatum. Either you live in this house with me, then no school, or you go to school, then this house is no more for you."

And I love that boy. He left the house - with grace. He touched his father's feet, asked for his blessings, which Mahatma Gandhi could not give.

I cannot see non-violence and love. In these small acts you can find the real person, not in speeches, public performances.

The boy left. He lived with one of his uncles, studied, many times wanted just to come and see his mother but was refused. He graduated, and just to see how much Gandhi means that Hinduism and Mohammedanism are all one he became a Mohammedan. He was really a colorful man.

He became Mohammedan, he changed his name - meaning still the same.

Haridas means servant of God. So he asked the Mohammedan priest to give him a name which means Haridas in Arabic. Abdullah means exactly the same. Abd* means God, Abdullah means servant of God. So he became Abdullah Gandhi.

When Gandhi heard about it, he was so much shocked. He was so angry. His wife said, "But why you should be so angry? Every morning, every evening, you say both are the same. That's why he must be trying, that, "If both are same....

Hinduism I have lived for all these years, now let us see what is Mohammedanism."

And Gandhi was angry that, "This is not a matter to laugh. He is disinherited from my property. He is no more my son, and I don't want him to see again."

And in India when somebody dies and his funeral pyre is lit with fire, the eldest son puts the fire. So Gandhi made it his will that "Haridas is not my son and I emphasize the fact that after my death he should not put the fire into my funeral."

What anger! What violence!

I have known this man, Haridas Gandhi. He was really a lovely man. And he said, "I simply became a Mohammedan just to see how my father reacts. And he exactly reacted the way I thought, so all that unity of religions, Hindu and Mohammedan, Christian and Buddhism, is all nonsense. It is all politics. That's what I wanted to prove and I have proved it."

The place where I lived just eighty miles away from there, just a coincidence that Haridas.... It was a junction station. He was coming from one train and Gandhi was passing into another train, so he came close to the compartment of Gandhi just to see his father, and the mother will be there. Gandhi, seeing him coming towards the compartment, closed all the windows and told his wife that, "If you open the window and talk with him, then my connections with you are finished.

Then you can go with him."

Kasturbhai, Gandhi's wife, was crying, weeping, but could not open the window.

Haridas was knocking on the window. Gandhi was standing there. And this man is thought to be the greatest non-violent saint of the contemporary world. I don't agree.

And this is just one instance. I have gone through his life in very detail and I have found thousands of instances where his real personality surfaces. His public performance is a different thing.

So it was in this context I was telling that even Adolf Hitler has my respect. At least he is straightforward. He is doing everything wrong. I do not agree with what he is doing, but he is not a hypocrite.

And I don't see there is any problem in my statement. It is very clear. But what those people did, they simply took off the whole context and put only Adolf Hitler, that I respect Adolf Hitler.

This is something ugly that journalism has to drop. Otherwise journalism will not be ever an art. It will remain third rate. It will feed the mob psychology but it will not raise human consciousness.

And I think the media has a responsibility. It is such a great instrument to raise human consciousness that all kinds of yellow journalism should be condemned from every corner.

Q: YOU HAVE MANY SANNYASINS IN GERMANY. WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR FOLLOWING IS SO BIG PARTICULARLY IN GERMANY?

B: Hitler has made the way. The whole credit goes to Adolf Hitler because with him the German youth is finished with politicians - completely finished. In Adolf Hitler they have seen the ultimate politician. And there is a vacuum.

They are finished also with religious leaders, for the simple reason that anybody who has eyes can see. The chief bishop of Christianity blesses Adolf Hitler and prays for him and for his victory to God. The archbishop in England also blesses Winston Churchill and prays to the same Christian God for the victory of England. And pope, of course, prays and asks for the victory of Benito Mussolini.

The German youth has seen the original faces of these bishops, archbishops, popes. They are finished with political leadership, they are finished with religious exploitation. But that leaves a tremendous gap.

I am not a religious leader and I am not a political leader, either. Hence with me they find a deep harmony. And I can fill their gap without exploiting them like Adolf Hitler did, without cheating them, conning them, as their priests have been doing. I can help them to grow individually into more freedom, into more individuality, into more authenticity.

Hence the German youth is interested in me. Those who are not yet interested, simply means they have not yet heard about me. Otherwise none of the German youth is going to get away from me.

Just I am a little bit engaged here in America, otherwise I would be in Germany.

Once I am finished here, my next place is going to be Germany.

I would like to have a good fight with German politicians.

Q: WITH DECLARING THE DEATH OF RAJNEESHISM AS A RELIGION, ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE ANY CHANGES IN THE CONTENT OF YOUR TEACHINGS, OR ARE YOU CHANGING ANY OF YOUR TEACHING?

B: No, because before I went into silence there was no Rajneeshism. It was created by Sheela and her fascist gang. As I came out of silence, I have simply destroyed that which was not part of my teachings. So it makes no difference. It simply purifies my teachings, makes them more clean and more clear. Okay?

Q: THANK YOU VERY MUCH.