---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Last Testament, Vol 4"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "LAST4"
dategiven: "23 October 1985 pm"
place: " in Sanai Grove"
chapternum: "Chapter #3"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8510235"
shorttitle: "LAST403"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "111mins"
displaytitle: "The Last Testament, Vol 4: Chapter #3"
---

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[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 SWAMI ANAND VIDEHA, PRIVATE NATIONAL NETWORK, CHANNEL 5, ITALY
QUESTION: BHAGWAN, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME YOU COME IN TELEVISION IN ITALY. LAST MONTH YOU OVERWIN THE POPE, AS FAR AS ARTICLES IN NEWSPAPER ARE CONCERNED.
YOU SAID YOU ARE NOT A PROPHET, YOU ARE NOT A LEADER, YOU ARE NOT A MASTER AND THEN I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN BE CONSIDERED A PHILOSOPHER, AND THE QUESTION IS: WHO ARE YOU?


ANSWER: The very idea of categorizing people is basically wrong. I am just myself. Why should I fit into some category? I am a category unto myself.


I am just an ordinary human being. I consider your saviors, your prophets, your messengers of God crackpots. These people are hallucinating. They are not in their right senses. What to say about their being enlightened? They are not even normal human beings. They are sick.


And the popes are representatives of these sick people. They must be dead. Only dead can represent the sick.


And all religions are dead and their leaders are dead. And they have not helped humanity to become healthier, wholesome, profounder, more beautiful, more creative. On the contrary, they have made humanity hateful -- Christians hating the Jews, Jews hating the Mohammedans, Mohammedans hating the Hindus, Hindus hating the Buddhists. It seems the whole work of all these religions is nothing but hate: spread hate as much as possible and divide humanity into small fighting fragments.
I am just an ordinary man who is not sick.
Q: YOU CALL THIS ENLIGHTENMENT?


A: To be perfectly healthy in your being, to be whole, is enlightenment. And that does not make you superior to others. It makes you unique, that's why you can't fit into any category.
Every enlightened person is unique.


And whatever I have experienced has made my life a benediction, has made thousands other people's life a blessing, a joy. And I have not divided humanity and I have not created any hatred. I have not created any fight, cruelty, war, violence.


I don't represent any religion. I have a religious experience. I am my own authority. The Bible is not my authority, neither the Koran nor the Gita. Those who depend on those authorities simply show that they themselves are just without any experience. Even your popes are unenlightened people. Their authority rests in Jesus Christ. He himself is unenlightened. His authority rests in God, who does not exist.


These people have been exploiting humanity and it is time that it should be stopped. And Italy has to take first steps. It is the responsibility of Italians to clean the earth of Christianity. They have spread it. It is Roman crime and they have to accept the responsibility.


And they are still protecting Vatican and all its stupidities. In a world overpopulated, the pope goes on saying to people that birth control is against God, that abortion is against God, that the pill is the invention of the devil. The Italians should shut up this Polack. Either he keeps quiet or he goes back to Poland.
Q: IT'S QUITE DIFFICULT, SINCE THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT NOW IS CHRISTIAN, ALL OF THEM.


A: It doesn't matter. In Italy everything is possible, it is such a mess. No government is government. Italians can do anything.


And Italians only pretend that they are Christians. They are not. In fact, the whole Roman tradition, the roots of Roman culture, are not religious at all. It was very physical culture, very athletic culture, very down to earth.


Christianity simply confused the Roman tradition, because it is just the opposite: anti-body, anti-matter, anti-joy. Romans were different people. They had no religion. They had no hypocrisy about morality. They were plain and simple, natural beings. They enjoyed life, they loved life and they lived to its intensity.


And that background is still present in every Italian. It needs just a little provocation. Christianity is very superficial and foreign. It does not belong to Roman culture at all. In fact, it has destroyed the uniqueness of Roman civilization, Roman thinking, Roman approach to the life.


In a single word it can be said that Roman approach was pagan, and to the Christians the word pagan is heretic.


It is still time. Italy can recover itself from this nightmare. And this whole mess that you see in Italy is because of this mixture of two things which are not mixable. So there is a very deep split and every Italian feels confused. If he can get rid of Christianity, can get rid of Vatican, it will find back its health.


And to be a pagan is perfectly good. That means to be a Zorba. And in accordance with the pagan, if spirituality grows -- not against it but in tune with it -- then we can create Zorba the Buddha.


Italy can become the first country in the world to create Zorba the Buddha. Because Zorba is already there in the unconscious of the whole land. Just Christianity has to be removed and there will be a sudden flowering of healthy people, saner outlook. And Italy will not be in such a state as it is.
Q: DO YOU THINK IT CAN HAPPEN LIKE THIS?


A: Yes, it can happen like this. Just people have to be made aware of the fact that basically their culture is pagan, and Christianity is against it. So you are living a dual personality. Your base is totally opposed to your mind, your theology, so neither you can live according to your nature nor you can live according to your religion.


You need a new religious consciousness which can go hand in hand with Roman paganism. Just the idea has to be spread. It can catch fire. It can become a wildfire very soon, because basically every Italian is suffering under it.
So I say: Just like that.
Q: WHAT'S YOUR POSITION AS AN ENLIGHTENED BEING IN THE WORLD, BESIDES ITALY. WHAT'S YOUR POSITION? WHAT IS YOUR ROLE?


A: I don't have any role because it is not a drama. And I don't have any position because it is not an organization. I have a presence, and my presence works. It brings people to me. And once a person has come to me, he cannot forget me, he cannot forgive me.


He has to come to some settlement with me. Otherwise he will suffer his whole life. Because I am raising basic questions concerning you, concerning everybody who comes to me. I am making him aware of his own conflict. Unaware, he can manage to drag on towards the graveyard, but once he becomes aware -- and that's my function, to make him aware that he has a natural potentiality which is not being allowed to grow by some stupid thoughts that have been imposed upon him.


He cannot follow those thoughts, because they are against his nature. And those thoughts will not allow him to follow his nature. They will create feelings of sin, guilt. So he will remain in a fix.


I simply make people aware where they have got entangled and how to get rid of this entanglement. It is within their hands. And once they understand it is within their hands, then it becomes very difficult for them not to drop them. Sooner or later they are going to drop it. Sooner or later they are going to live their natural potential, which is the gift of existence.


And I am not trying to give them any ideal. That's why I am not a savior, a prophet, a messenger, a messiah. At the most I am a mirror so that you can see yourself with all your conflict, all your nightmares, divisions. You can see what is causing the whole trouble, from where comes this schizophrenia. And then things are simple.


One thing is absolute: you can never drop your nature. At the most you can repress it.


Second, you can never follow borrowed ideas. At the most you can only hope that tomorrow some miracle is going to happen and you will be able to do it.


What you are able to do you are not doing, and what you are not able to do, you are hoping for it. This is simple human situation around the world.


Now, drop that which is not naturally to you and accept the natural with totality, with gratitude. And let it blossom. And see how much joy and how much benediction it brings to you -- not only to you, it brings blessings to the whole existence.


When even a single individual becomes enlightened, the level of consciousness of the whole universe rises a little.


That's why I say if only two hundred people are able to become enlightened, the consciousness level will be that high that the third world war will become impossible, that we will be able to go through a total transformation of humanity.
Q: YOU PUT YOURSELF AGAINST ALL THE GARBAGE OF THE PAST, AND MANY PEOPLE HAVE DONE IT IN THE PAST AS WELL. WHAT DO YOU THINK, IS NEW HUMANITY THAT IS READY FOR A RADICAL CHANGE, AS YOU SAY IS NEEDED?


A: Many things are which make this time the most feasible for a mutation. One is that all the old religions have failed so totally that even the ordinary man who does not think too much is aware of the fact that religions have failed. That hope has disappeared, which was keeping people under a kind of drugged state.
(Tape side B)


Second, the politicians have failed -- of all types: the Democrats, the Republicans, the liberals, the socialists, the communists, the fascists. All in toto have failed. They promise but they cannot deliver the goods.


And we have believed too long. Now nobody is willing even to believe. It simply gives frustration.


Thirdly, the most important thing is the nuclear war hanging over the horizon. That makes the issue of transforming human consciousness absolutely urgent. Either you change or you die. And when there is such a choice...


In ordinary conditions nobody wants to change. Even those who are miserable, suffering, poor, even they don't want to change for the simple reason that they have become accustomed of their lifestyle. They are afraid that they will have to learn from ABC again a new lifestyle. Nobody wants to do that.


But when the question comes, change versus death, then it is a totally different matter. It is not between one kind of society, economic structure, another kind of society, another economic structure, this politics or that politics. It is not such a small affair. The question is: if you want to survive you have to change. If you don't want to survive, then it is perfectly good. Let the nuclear war happen and let the whole life be finished. But nobody in the whole world is ready for the whole life to be finished.


That's why I say this is the most opportune time. If we insist and make it clear to people's sleepy consciousness that the choice is between changing your consciousness or being destroyed completely, I don't think people will choose to be destroyed. Nobody wants to be destroyed, neither in America nor in Soviet Union nor in China -- nowhere.


Life is so valuable that people go on living in all kinds of conditions which seem to be almost intolerable, but they go on living because life is such a treasure. Just to be able to breathe, just to be able to see, is such a priceless gift, you cannot purchase it.


Politicians go on consoling people that some way will be found: "We are negotiating." They have been negotiating for thousands of years, and all their negotiations have ended into wars.


But this war is no ordinary war. It is total war in which the victor and the defeated both are going to be finished. And not only that it will destroy humanity, it will destroy trees, birds, animals -- anything that is living on the earth. It will destroy every possibility for life to continue in any form.


This darkness of death has to be made very clear to the people. Then they can be ready for any change. And the change is not difficult. To drop Christianity or to drop Hinduism, I don't see where is the problem.


You have dropped Christianity. It does not even make a sound. Thousands of my sannyasins have dropped all kinds of things: somebody was a communist, somebody was a socialist, somebody was a Buddhist, somebody was a Mohammedan, somebody was a Jew, somebody was a Hindu, somebody was a Jaina. All kinds of people. And they were thinking it is going to be very difficult. But when they dropped it, they were surprised. It does not even make any noise.


It is only a question of making people aware of the alternatives. Dropping their conditions is very easy.


And when we are ready to give every argument against their conditions and they don't have any support to protect their conditions... That's my work.


I go on hitting from different angles, giving you arguments against the conditionings of humanity. And all those conditionings are without any foundation.
Whenever I see a man of belief, I always remember of a temple in India.


In central India near Indore* there is a temple which has no foundations. A huge structure, and you can feel... You can put wires from one side of the wall near the ground and the wire goes to the other side, inside the temple. And you can go around the whole temple with the wire. There is no foundation anywhere, not even small pillars somewhere holding the temple.


They have a story about the temple. The story is sheer nonsense. The story is that the temple was so beautiful that it does not belong to the earth. It was in paradise, and angels were fighting over it. Everybody wanted it to be in their neighborhood. Angels are also, after all, like human beings. Whether they live in paradise or in Paris makes no difference. The same stupid guys...


So they were fighting and dragging the temple here and there, and it fell from the sky. That's why it has no foundations. It is lying there.


The story is nonsense but the man who built it must have been a master artist. To create such a huge structure without foundations, one needs a genius. And that is one of its own kind. There is no other structure in the whole world without foundations.


But whenever I see people full of belief systems, theologies, I remember that temple and I think perhaps the architect was also thinking of these people when he was making this temple, that not only this temple is without foundations, all temples are without foundations. The temple that you are carrying within your mind is also without foundations.


My feeling is that that temple was made by someone of tremendous insight to give you an idea that even in the outside world you can create something without foundations.
So in the mind it is very easy.


I am giving you every argument. I am inviting you questions only in order so that you can put your conditions and I can demolish them.
Q: THERE IS NOTHING TO DEMOLISH. WHEN YOU DECLARE, "THE RELIGION RAJNEESHISM IS DEAD," THEN YOU SAY THAT NOW THERE IS THIS RELIGIO, MANY PEOPLE IN ITALY SAY, "WELL, IT'S THE SAME." SO THE QUESTION I HAVE, IT'S REALLY DEAD, OR WHAT IS NOW?


A: It is dead. It has never been there. When I was speaking it was not there. I have always been against organized religion. I have been always in favor of religiousness. And my whole life I have been making the distinction clearly that to be religious is one thing and to be a member of a organized religion is totally different.


It does not mean that you are religious. Do you think all the Christians are religious people? All the Buddhists are religious people? Then all the people of the earth are religious, because somebody belongs to some religion, somebody belongs to some other religion.


If just being a member of an organized religion makes you religious, then the whole earth is religious. But you don't see the fragrance, the love, the compassion, the intelligence, the gratitude towards existence anywhere.


So to be a member of an organized religion is really to keep yourself deceived, a cheap way to deceive yourself.


To be religious is arduous. It means going through a revolution, changing so much garbage that you have been carrying, thinking it is all pure gold.


So while I was speaking, there was no Rajneeshism. When I was not speaking, this small gang took advantage. That's how most of the religions have been created.


When Buddha was alive there was no Buddhism. There were people who were living with Buddha -- thousands meditating, growing. But there was no Buddhism. The day he died, the first thing the disciples started thinking is how to organize the religion.


It was good that I was not dead, I was only silent. Otherwise the religion was going to be just like other religions. Sheela has become already the high priestess. And that's how things start. Then she will choose the successor, and it goes on.


But because I was only silent, absent from the commune for three and a half years, they managed to create an organized religion. They managed to write a book taking my quotations, collecting them, making it a holy book. Sheela even went to the assembly.


When the assembly starts its session, the priests of all the religions go to pray to God to help the assembly. Sheela went there to do the prayer.


As I became aware that more and more they are making things centralized... I was not reading, I was not listening to radio, I was not seeing the TV. I was completely in isolation. Just for one hour I used to come to see the faces of my people.


But few people were capable to approach to me: my personal physician, my dentist, my caretaker. And slowly I came to know that they are demolishing all small centers and making big communes in Europe. They demolished hundreds of small centers and forced people to move to six big communes so that they can be controlled centrally.


They completely destroyed the English commune, which was a flourishing commune. Four hundred sannyasins were in the commune and almost two thousand sannyasins used to come for festivals. And it was a beautiful place. And they were looking for a bigger place because more than four hundred they could not manage.


But these people simply shifted all people from English commune to European communes and sold the property, closed small centers and told that they have to go to European communes, collected all the children from everywhere -- and they were trying to put them in Holland in a separate commune for children so they can be controlled.
The whole idea was to centralize everything, particularly finances.


And they have made their center in Germany in Cologne, so from there they will control the whole Europe.


These people were doing exactly the same as all the religions have done. They have destroyed the individuals, they have destroyed their freedom, they have destroyed their joy of doing something on their own.
(Tape side C)


And finally when I heard that they have started killing people, that was too much.


I was not going to speak again, but I had to speak because that was the only way to finish with those people. Because I knew the moment I start speaking they will escape.


And I had not to say a single word to those people. They simply escaped, because now they knew everything will be known to me. And they were not even courageous enough to face me.
They have committed almost every possible crime.


But that's how all the religions have done. And it is done in such a way that the doer thinks he is doing something good.


When Mohammedans force somebody on the point of the sword that, "Either become a Mohammedan or be ready to die," the person who is doing it does not think he is doing any harm, any crime, anything against the person. On the contrary, he thinks he is helping the person, because unless he makes it that his life is at risk he will not become a Mohammedan. And without becoming a Mohammedan, you cannot be saved. He is really saving your life for eternity.


This life is a small thing. He is trying to save your life for eternity in paradise. So his intention is good. And for himself also he is doing a good act, because he is saving people who are going to fall into darkness of hell, so he is earning virtue. He is also going to paradise. So this is just pure profit on both the sides -- hundred percent profit to you, hundred percent profit to me.... A good deal.


All the religions managed to commit crimes in the name of God, in the name of the savior. And these people here were doing everything in my name.


The people who did were not criminals. They loved me. They thought they are doing something for me.


Sheela's whole strategy was to go on enforcing in people's mind that whatever she is demanding is "your surrender to Bhagwan, your commitment to Bhagwan, your love to Bhagwan. And whatever you are doing is for His sake."


And the people who did I understand perfectly well. They had never meant to do any crime.


For example, the person who poisoned Vivek, Devaraj -- they were told by Sheela that, "These people are trying to kill Bhagwan." And she convinced them that unless these people are removed, then the enemy is not outside, the enemy is in Bhagwan's own house.


And because she was my representative, whatever she said people believed. So if these people are trying to harm me, then these people have to be removed.


Sheela has always been asking me that she can find a better doctor than Devaraj, so why not change the doctor?


I said, "It is not a question of doctor. In the first place, I don't think you can find a better doctor here in the commune. Secondly, even if you can find, I will not change, because he knows my body for ten years. And my body functions in different ways, reacts in different ways, than an ordinary body does."


So in the beginning he was himself very much puzzled. He will give some medicine and it will bring such bad result that he was surprised that this has never happened. He has studied about this medicine. Never any indication in any book that this can cause any trouble. This is very innocent. But slowly he became aware that books don't matter. He has to listen to on* my body. And then he started taking notes: what medicines affect me in what way. And slowly slowly he got the grip.


So I said, "It is not a question of better doctor. The question is one who understands the language of my body."
But I asked her, "Why you want Devaraj to be changed? What is the trouble?"


Now I can understand what was the trouble. The trouble was that if I started speaking, her image of holy priestess, high priestess, will disappear. So I have to kept either sick or, if needed, then I have to be killed.


When I refused to change the doctor, they started thinking of killing him. Then naturally I will have to change. When I refused to change the doctor, she started asking me that she needs a special lock from the outside to my bedroom. In any emergency she can enter.


But I said, "In what emergency? In my bedroom I am sleeping alone. What emergency can happen there? And if any emergency happens, how you can reach there? The best way will be to phone. And the guards are on top of my roof. They can phone. Twenty people live in the house. Within seconds they can reach in my room. You will take ten minutes to reach. The guards will inform you, then you will get up and come here in the middle of the night. This is absurd."


But she insisted, so I said, "You can have it if this is such a urgent thing. You can keep a key." But Vivek was not willing, and she was right. She said, "This is dangerous. You sleep alone. Anybody -- Sheela, Puja or anybody -- can come, can just give an injection to You."


And they have tried on one doctor. In tea they gave some poison that made the tongue paralyzed for twenty-four hours. The doctor could not speak.


They wanted that I should not speak, because if I speak then I am going to burn their holy book and their holy nonsense, and I am going to destroy this organization in my name.


While I am alive, I cannot allow any such thing. In fact, I am trying to do everything so that even when I am dead nothing can be done against my basic approach, that my teaching remains individual, that my teaching remains mystical, that it never becomes a ritual, a church, an organization.


Seeing all these things I started to speak, and then more and more information started coming to me. And before I had solid proofs they escaped.


The moment they left, by the evening I had solid proofs in my hands. Even my room was bugged.
Q: WHAT HAS GROWN AROUND YOU HAS BEEN PRESENTED BY NEWSPAPER AS A CULT, AS A SECT, AND I WONDER IF YOU CAN NOW EXPLAIN WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF SANNYASINS IN THIS MOVEMENT.


A: It is simply a movement, neither a cult nor a sect nor a religion but a movement for meditation, an effort to create a science of the inner. It is a science of consciousness. Just as the science is there for objective world, this movement is preparing a science for the subjective world.


The scientist will study everything, and we are going to study the scientist. Otherwise he will be left alone. He will be able to know everything except himself, and that will be real shame, that Albert Einstein knows so much about electrons and neutrons and protons that only twelve persons in the whole world can understand it, but he knows nothing about himself.
This is a very ugly state.


So my work is a movement not to create a religion but to create religiousness. I take religiousness as a quality, not as a membership of an organization but an inner experience of one's being.


And it is going to happen. It is happening. Now nobody can call my movement a cult, sect or religion. My movement is purely a scientific approach towards the inner world. And it is individual.


The question arises, then why so many sannyasins are together? To be together does not mean that you lose your individuality. You can be together in many ways. You can be together as friends, because you are working in the same dimension. You can be together because your search makes you understand each other better than anybody else. But you are not part of any organization.
Hence I have called it a mystery school where you learn meditation.


And if you feel that your meditation grows in this togetherness, be here. If you feel you can manage it alone in a better way, then that is perfectly good. You can do it anywhere else.


So there is no binding, there is no expectation, there is no imposition. Only I am available here. If you ask for help, if you ask for some problems that you are facing which I have faced... dark nights that will come on the way which I have passed... I can encourage you.


That's the real function of a friend, to help you, to encourage you to be yourself.


So everybody is independent and yet deeply connected with love, with the same search for truth, with the same inquiry. And with the same experience ripening on different levels, different stages to different people.


But it is not an organization and you don't become a Rajneeshee like a Christian or a Catholic. You remain simply yourself, just the way I remain simply myself.


So this place is to give you freedom and help you to experience the summum bonum of life, the ultimate peak of blissfulness. Okay Videha?
Q: SINCE THIS PROGRAM WILL BE FOR SURE SEEN BY THE POPE, IF YOU WANT TO TELL HIM SOMETHING THIS IS YOUR CHANCE.


A: For the poor?
Q: FOR THE POPE. IN VATICAN.


A: Hmmm. If he has any guts, then he should come here and see what religiousness means, feel the love of the people, experience with them their meditation. And if he can come with open mind, he may be immensely enriched because as a pope he is meeting the cardinals and the bishops and all kinds of clergymen. None of them has any meditative experience.
(Tape side D)


He is going around the world talking to Catholics without knowing anything of religiousness himself, talking to the poor. But whatever he is saying will make them more poor. So the best way will be for him to come here and be here for few days just like a human being, not like a pope.


Because here we don't recognize anybody as a pope, shankaracharya, imam. We recognize the ordinary human being as the highest possibility of growth. All these positions are political. They have nothing to do with religion.


So tell him that he will find a mystery school here. Even Jesus himself had to be initiated into a mystery school. He lived in a mystery school called Essenes for almost seventeen years, from thirteenth up to thirtieth. And whatever he says he has gathered from the Essenes.


So tell him that here is a school far more developed than the Essenes. That was a bullock cart school. So it will be truly following in the steps of Jesus Christ, coming to Rajneeshpuram. @D048
Q: WHEN PEOPLE SPEAK ABOUT YOU, THERE IS THIS RICHNESS COMING OUT ABOUT THE ROLLS ROYCE AND WHATSOEVER IS CONNECTED WITH IT. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO PROVE WITH THIS, SO MANY CARS AND SO MANY RICHNESS AROUND YOU?


A: Why people are concerned? Then certainly they need. Then more Rolls Royces will be here. Until they stop asking me, the Rolls Royces are going to be here more and more. Now it has to be seen. It is a challenge. The day nobody asks me about Rolls Royces, they will not be coming.


People's interest in Rolls Royces shows their mind. They are not interested what is happening here. They don't ask about meditation. They don't ask about sannyas. They don't ask about people's life, love, the laughter that happens in this desert. They only ask about Rolls Royce.


That means I have touched some painful nerve. And I will go on pressing it till they stop asking.


I am not a worshiper of poverty. That's what those Rolls Royces prove. I respect wealth. Nobody before me has the guts to say it. The pope cannot say that he respects wealth, although he is the wealthiest man on the earth.


I am not a hypocrite. I am the poorest man on the earth. I don't have a single cent with me. But I want to prove to these people that what attracts their mind.


If there were no Rolls Royces here, perhaps there was nothing for the whole world to be asked about me, about you, about meditation, about initiation into sannyas, about love, about anything.


It is for those idiots that I am keeping all those Rolls Royces, because they cannot move their eyes away from those Rolls Royces. And meanwhile I will go on pouring other things in their minds.
Without those Rolls Royces they would not have asked a single question.


Those Rolls Royces are doing their work. Every idiot around the world is interested in them. And I want them to be somehow interested -- in anything in Rajneeshpuram. Then we will manage about other things.


So tell those people -- anybody asks, tell that, "These Rolls Royces are for you idiots. Otherwise you are not interested in anything. Once you stop asking about Rolls Royces, then I will have to think for something else: whether to have rockets which are going to the moon. Something else I will have to think about."
Q: WHAT SHEELA HAS BEEN FOR YOU AND WHY SHE HAS BEHAVED LIKE THAT?


A: Anybody would have behaved like that. Just ordinary unconscious mind finding an opportunity -- millions of dollars, thousands of people ready to do anything, so much power, so much money -- and she was just a hotel waitress when she came to me. She had never dreamt of having two hundred fifty million dollars, having one hundred twenty-six square miles land, having one million sannyasins around the earth ready to follow her. It is not Sheela. Anybody would have fallen in the trap.


But the problem was that I could not give the position that Sheela had to a meditator. A meditator is basically introvert. Sheela knows nothing of meditation. She has never meditated. Neither she has any possibility in this life. This was her qualification: she is extrovert.


She is very materialist, and to create a commune you cannot put a spiritualist as the president because real houses has to be created, real roads have to be created. A meditator, a spiritualist, is of no use.


So I had to find a person who has no introvert inclinations and no desire to grow spiritually, but has great ambition to do something, has a great inferiority complex to prove herself. And all those qualifications Sheela fulfilled. I was aware that that kind of person can take advantage of the situation. But I was here and I knew that I will give her as long rope as possible. Otherwise it is within my hands.


It was not a question that she can be so powerful that she won't listen to me.


So when I saw that she is going now beyond limits and has started doing things... Otherwise I would have tolerated her, because she was doing good work. She did much good. She managed to make this desert into an oasis, managed houses for five thousand people, and has to fight with politicians and all kinds of third-rate people. Now for that you need a third-rate person. You cannot put a first-rate person to fight with third-rate people. Otherwise third-rate people will be victorious.


Ninety-nine percent she did good, and the commune should always be obliged to her. Just she forgot that I am not dead, I am only silent. And the moment I see that things are going beyond the need, I can put a stop to it immediately, instantly.
And that's what I did.


She has not been able to harm much. She tried. She committed all the crimes. But, for example, she bugged hundreds of houses. It is a big crime. For one bugging you get five years of jail. She bugged so many houses that even one thousand years of jail will not be enough. So it is a big crime, but what harm?


As far as we are concerned, what harm she could do by bugging? We were not planning any conspiracy against her. Nobody was even bothering about. So what was the point? All that she was collecting -- records and tapes, taping all the phones -- but it was all meaningless. It is crime but it has not done any harm to us.


She has tried to kill two persons. She failed, so no harm has happened. In the eyes of law she has committed grave crimes.


She may have stolen money that was coming from European communes here, and she prevented it in Switzerland and kept in a bank account in her own name. It is very difficult how much it was. According to one source it was twenty million dollars. According to another source it is forty-three million dollars. But the second source is still two year old, so in these two years she must have accumulated even more.


So somewhere near fifty to sixty thousand... fifty to sixty million dollars she has... This is a big crime -- in the eyes of law, not according to me. Because to me money means nothing.


We will gather sixty million again, that is not a problem. And we are perfectly comfortably running. She has not stolen from here. It was coming here, we would have made few more roads, few more buildings which were necessary. But because she has stolen the money you are not missing those buildings. You don't even know what those buildings were going to be. So we have not missed anything.


And to me money is just meaningless. We can create money, there is no problem about it.


So whatever she did, we will try to undo it. And whatever we cannot try to undo it is not much to be bothered about. I have not even talked even for a single moment... When you ask I answer, otherwise I have not even bothered what she has done.


We have given the whole case to the law. Now @D345 they should take their own course if they want. If they don't want, who cares? In this small life we have much more important things to do. And that is now such a old story... forget about it. Okay?
			

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