CHURCH AND STATE
Just the other day some information came to me: The attorney general of Oregon has declared Rajneeshpuram illegal. The reason that he has given is that here in Rajneeshpuram, religion and state are mixed. Now, in the first place, our religion has nothing to do with any religion that has ever existed on the earth. It is just a legal necessity that we have to declare that we are a religion; otherwise, you cannot find such an irreligious commune in the whole world. What religion is there? No God, no Holy Ghost, no Jesus Christ, no pope, no prayer, nobody concerned at all about death. Everybody is so much involved with life, who has time? In fact, even if death comes to my people, she will have to wait. My people are so involved in living that even death will have to consider . . . She can take people easily who have been dead for thirty, forty, or fifty years. It is not a problem for death, there is no need to be concerned; they just have to be carried away. They have lived posthumous lives long enough. Perhaps death is too busy—must be. This planet and fifty thousand other planets have life; and no religion has said that there are even associates, deputies, of death. Death is alone. Poor death needs a great bureaucracy, and she is doing the whole job all alone. So of course many people die when they are near about thirty years of age, and then they have to wait for forty, fifty years, or sixty years, when their number comes up. What can death do? She has not yet cleaned out the old pending files, and you go on dying. But with my people death will be surprised. These are living people, so involved in life that they have not even bothered about death. She will have second thoughts before she can take you. She may think, "It is better to let me first finish the pending job, which is unending. These people can be taken later on; let them live a little more." What kind of religion is this? I have called it a religionless religion. I have called it religiousness. Here there is no sermon. Certainly my talks cannot be called sermons. You can call them antisermons. What religion do they think is here, which is interfering with the state? And what state is there? In the first place we are not a religion defined by any dictionary in the whole world. We will have to create our own dictionary, our own definitions. And what state is there? Just a city council, which has to take care of the roads, of cleanliness, of the houses, of the hospital. How is religion going to interfere with the roads? I have tried hard but cannot figure it out: how to mix religion with roads? How to mix religion with houses? How to mix religion with hospitals, with medicines, with injections? They should give us some clue as to how they do it. Because here, no religious priest even goes to our hospital to bore the patients. Those people write on their dollar, "We trust in God." On the dollar! Who is mixing religion with state? You are mixing religion even with the dirty dollar! In front of the Supreme Court it is written, "We trust in God." If someday I happen to be in the Supreme Court—it is very possible, I may manage it—then I am going to ask them, "Where is God? And on what authority have you written this? And if at the very gate there is a lie, you cannot ask me to take the oath for the truth. Rather, ask me to take the oath to only speak lies and not truth"—because the greatest lie is there.just at the gate of the Supreme Court. On every dollar bill is the great lie: We trust in God. These people go on mixing religion in every way, but they are legal. I don't have any way to mix my religion with anything, it is so unmixable. This is the only legal city in the whole world. If mixing religion makes a city illegal, then all the cities of the world are illegal because everywhere religion is mixed. This is the only place where religion is not mixed at all. Religion, in fact, does not exist here at all.
AFTER SEVERAL APPEALS, THE LEGALITY OF THE CITY OF RAJNEESHPURAM was finally upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in May 1988, after Osho had been back in India for almost two years.

1983: CITYWIDE AIDS TESTING
Osho is still in silence and seclusion, but when his doctor informs him about the development of the AIDS epidemic, he suggests that the City of Rajneeshpumm initiate universal testing for all residents and visitors. He further recommends that people take precautions to avoid infection with the virus, including use of condoms, using latex gloves in foreplay that involves contact with body fluids, and avoidance of kissing. At the time, these measures are considered to be extreme and even absurd, and provoke ridicule by the media. Members of the community who are found to be HIV positive are secluded in separate housing and provided with work to do, entertainment, and medical care. Perhaps this is the only place in the world where every precaution has been taken against AIDS. Six thousand people have gone through tests—no other place has guts enough to put the whole city through tests. They are afraid that they may find people who have AIDS. And the people who feel perhaps they may have it are not going through the test, for the simple reason that if they are found positive, then even their wives, their children, their parents, will reject them. They will have no place in their own home. They will not be allowed in any restaurant. Their own friends will become their enemies. So they don't want to be tested; the government does not want it, the hospitals do not want it. And the fire is spreading; nobody wants to recognize it, to see it. This is not intelligence. Just closing your eyes does not mean that the enemy has disappeared. We have found a few people with AIDS, two persons. We have made a beautiful isolation place for them; the best that we could afford has been given to them. They have all our respect and love.
1984: A TASTE OF FASCISM
In October 1984, Osho decides to end his period of silence and seclusion and resume his daily talks. Curiously, his secretary Sheela is opposed to this decision and tries to persuade him not to speak, citing concerns about his health. It is finally arranged that he will begin by speaking to small groups of people in the living room of his home. At first, videotapes of his talks are shown to the whole community on the following day, in the large meditation hall. When Sheela proposes that these showings should be suspended because there is too much work to be done, the community revolts and a compromise is worked out so that the videos can be shown late at night, after the day's work is complete.Finally, on September 14, 1985, Sheela and a close-knit group of her supporters pack up and leave with all their possessions and go to Germany. As soon as she is gone, an avalanche of evidence emerges about criminal activities some of her followers had been engaged in, including attempted murder by poisoning of Osho's physician and caretaker, firebombing of a county planning office, and wiretapping of Osho's room and of phones and offices within the community. Osho makes public all the information he has received and offers his full cooperation to state and federal investigators. Members of the press arrive in droves to interview Osho and question him about how such events could have taken place.
Q: IN MY MEETING SHEELA, CERTAINLY ONE COULD SEE HER INTELLIGENCE,
at least in very practical matters, in her cleverness about things, but you could also see the very oppressive side, the very mean-spirited side as well. You must have seen that being in contact with her every day?
A: I know! But it was needed for all those mean politicians all around. I could not put the commune in the hands of some innocent people—the politicians would have destroyed it.
Q:But you didn't see what she was doing on the ranch itself?
A: No, because I was never coming out and never meeting anybody. . . .
Q: But if you're creating such a big experiment [as the commune in Oregon], don't you think it would have been helpful to have had at least one other person coming to talk to you?
A: No. The experiment means nothing compared to my silence. I am teaching everybody to be an individual and depend on his own insight. And if he feels that he is being forced to do something that he does not want to do, he is perfectly capable of revolting against it. There is no need to submit—and many people left.
Now there will be a totally different atmosphere—but looking at the world, whatever happened, although it was not good, only bad people could have managed it. Good people could not.
Q: Over the last year I thought to myself, When is he either going to get rid of Sheela or turn things around? And it felt like maybe you were just letting her go and do things.
A: I will do something only when I feel it is time. When I saw that the point had come to do something, I did it.
Q:How did you know the point had come to do something?
A: When her group poisoned my physician. That was the point when I started asking my physician and my caretaker about things, and I declared that I was going to speak and meet with people. Then information started coming by and by, and I started exposing Sheela and her group. Then I informed the government, the police, the FBI—they are all here, but they are doing almost nothing. We have given them every proof—and they go on saying, "We don't have any solid proof." I don't understand what solid proof they want—do they want the person, caught red-handed?
Q:Why did you wait nine months or so?
A: It was needed, because she was fighting so many legal cases—I did not want to disturb things in the middle. I wanted things to come to a conclusion from where a new group could start. And this was the time, when many cases are finished and the new cases will start almost eight months later, so these new people within eight months will be perfectly prepared to take over. And they will be able to fight—there is no problem.
Q: You play a very risky game.
A: Certainly! I am a risky person. And it is a game—I know the right timings. I am just a referee, nothing more.
•from an interview with James Gordon, The New Yorker
growing revelations about the criminal activities of sheela's group create a state of shock and disarray within the community, and waves of hindsight arise about the underlying strategy behind previously inexplicable situations and events. As people begin to struggle with the issues of personal responsibility and accountability, Osho addresses these questions with increasing sharpness in his daily discourses.
We are trying to live a different kind of life than in the outside world. So there are only two ways: either the way of Sheela or my way. I had chosen Sheela to be my secretary to give you a little taste of what fascism means. Now, live my way. Be responsible, so that there is no need for anybody to dictate to you. . . .
If you want Sheela back, I can call her and her whole gang, and give the commune to her. If you don't want anybody to be dictatorial to you, then take responsibility.
And you are a group of very intelligent people, but this is the trouble with intelligent people. They always try to misuse freedom.
I would like to remind you that Germany is one of the most intellectual countries in the world. It has given to the world people like Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger—great philosophers, great psychologists. And still a third-class crackpot, Adolf Hitler, managed to get all the intelligentsia of the country to follow him.
And I don't think humanity has learned anything out of it. If you don't learn, then history repeats. If you learn, then you can stop history from repeating again.
Martin Heidegger was perhaps one of the most significant philosophers of the century, and he was a contemporary of Adolf Hitler. He supported Adolf Hitler—inconceivable! The whole youth, which is the cream of the society, its intelligence, all the universities' vice-chancellors, professors—they all supported Adolf Hitler, a man who was uneducated, a man who was refused from the school of art, who was refused from the school of architecture because he had no intelligence. This man became the leader of the most intelligent country in the world, and he created the most fascist regime. He killed almost ten million people, and still people were supporting him.
It has to be psychoanalyzed. What was the reason? The reason was, Germany was defeated in the First World War. And the intellectuals tend to fight among themselves. They argue, rationalize, philosophize; they are not physically active people. And they are egoists. They think they have found the secret of life, every one of them.
After its defeat in the First World War, Germany was in a chaos. The chaos created Adolf Hitler, because he promised, and he fulfilled the promise, "I can make this country again united, again strong, so strong that it can rule over the whole world."
It was something that was immensely needed. People were not working, people were not being creative. Somebody was needed to make the country again creative, disciplined, and Adolf Hitler filled the gap. Within ten years Germany was again a world power.
Strange—if you give people freedom, they become lazy, they don't want to work. But if you give them a fascist order, they work to their very potential; they create, they are united, they become strong. Germany went on winning for five years. That proved that the people of Germany had chosen the right person—the whole world on one side, and he alone was enough.
He gave the intelligentsia their ego as nobody had given them before. He said to them that the Nordic German race is the purest Aryan race, and it is its destiny to rule over the world because all others are subhuman. It was tremendously gratifying. The intellectual ego was very much fulfilled, and even a man like Martin Heidegger fell into the trap.
Only after Hitler was defeated and Germany was almost destroyed, then people started looking back at what they had done, what kind of man they were supporting: a monster, a murderer who has killed millions of people— perhaps the greatest murderer in the whole of history.
So remember one thing: freedom is not license. Freedom is responsibility. And if you cannot take your responsibility yourself, then somebody is going to take the responsibility on your behalf. And then you are enslaved.
People have been asking me how it happened that five thousand people, almost all university graduates, having the best qualifications from the best universities of the world, could not see for four years what was happening.
The reason is that Sheela was not only doing something ugly and fascist, she was also creating the commune. She was also making the desert into an oasis. She was making the commune comfortable in every way. Every coin has two sides, so you looked at the light side. And you were surrounded—which Sheela and her group created—with hostility in Oregon. That is a simple political strategy.
Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, says that if you want a nation to be strong, create enemies all around it; otherwise, people relax. Keep them continuously in paranoia, fearing that there is danger all around. And Sheela created that. She created the hostility of the Oregon government. She created the hostility of Americans in general. That made you come close to each other, become strong: "Be ready so that nobody can harm you."
So if you don't take the responsibility, something like that is bound to happen again. History certainly repeats, because man does not learn.
ARREST
Osho has promised to cooperate with law enforcement agencies to fully investigate Sheela's crimes, but investigators turn most of their attention toward finding reasons to indict Osho and the remaining residents of the city instead. There are persistent rumors of a grand jury indictment to come, charging Osho and several sannyasins with immigration violations. But attempts by Osho's attorneys to negotiate a peaceful surrender are rebuked by U.S. Attorney Charles Turner, on the grounds that it is "premature" to have such a discussion.
Meantime the National Guard has been mobilized into position to stage an invasion of Rajneeshpuram.Amid concerns that they intend to conduct an armed and aggressive raid on the community, a decision is made to fly Osho across the country to Charlotte, North Carolina. There, it is reasoned, he can be out of harm's way while his attorneys continue to try and clarify the situation. When Osho and his staff land in Charlotte they are met by heavily armed Customs agents and U.S. marshals, who have been told to expect dangerous terrorists. Having no warrant, the officers read out a list of suspects that has been faxed to them from Oregon. None of these people are on the plane; nevertheless all are arrested, along with Osho, and taken to prisoner holding cells in Charlotte's federal building.
In a hearing that begins three days later, the sannyasins accompanying Osho are released, but the judge orders that Osho be returned to Oregon for a separate bail hearing. Authorities insist that he be taken on a prisoner transport plane rather than flown in a commercial airline or private jet. The prisoner transport plane takes six days to complete the journey across the country, and for one of those days the government refuses to reveal Osho's whereabouts even to his own attorneys. It is eventually learned that during this time he was being held in a federal penitentiary in Oklahoma, under a false name, allegedly for his own protection.
Osho is finally released on bail in Oregon, charged with a string of immigration violations alleging that he participated in arranging marriages among his disciples and that he misstated his intent on his original tourist visa application. After negotiations with Oregon officials, Osho's lawyers remain very concerned for his safety should the case proceed. Reluctantly, Osho agrees to plead "no contest" to two of the thirty-four charges against him and to leave the country.
His health declines dramatically as a result of his imprisonment, although it will be more than two years before his doctors begin to suspect that Osho was poisoned while he was in government custody.
WHEN THEY DEPORTED ME, [U.S. ATTORNEY CHARLES TURNER] ADMIT-ted in a press conference that I had not committed any crime. The reason he gave for deporting me was: "We wanted to destroy the commune. That was our priority." And without deporting me, it was impossible to destroy the commune.
They arrested me without any arrest warrant and without showing me any reason for arresting me. Just a piece of paper on which there were a few names—"We have been ordered that these people should be immediately arrested."
I said, "But you should look at our passports! My name is not on this paper; neither are the names of the six people who are with me on this paper. You are absolutely absurd. Just look at our passports and compare with your names; you are arresting the wrong people." Still, we were arrested.
In fact, they had no evidence at all to arrest me. But they did not give me bail for twelve days. They arrested me in North Carolina, and the flight from North Carolina to Oregon, where the commune was located, was only five hours. It took twelve days for me to reach Portland, and they dragged me from jail to jail; in twelve days I was dragged to six jails.
Only later on I became aware of it, when the British experts in poisoning looked into my symptoms and gave the verdict, that I was given a certain poison, thallium. It is not detectable either from blood or from urine; it simply disappears. I had all the symptoms—when the poison disappears, it leaves certain kinds of sicknesses in the body. This poison has been used against political prisoners. But if you give it in a bigger dose, the person dies immediately. That's why they wanted twelve days, to give it to me in small doses so I would not die in their jails—they would be condemned by the whole world.
And when they released me, I was ordered to leave America immediately, within fifteen minutes. My car was in front of the courthouse and my jet plane was kept with its engine running at the airport; I should leave immediately. They were afraid that if I stayed one day more, I might appeal to the Supreme Court. And there was every reason for me to win the case, because none of their charges. . . thirty-four charges against a man who was in silence, had never moved out of his house. How can he commit thirty-four crimes? And they had no evidence of any crime.
When I saw democracy American-style at work ... it was absolute nonsense to talk about democracy. Their Constitution is just a showpiece for the world. The country consists of criminals talking about freedom.