Dictated response 1989 ~ 02

event type	interview
date & time	Sep or Oct 1989, exact date unknown
location	Unknown, Poona
language	English
audio	Availability unknown
online audio
video	Not available.
online video
see also	timeline : Osho Timeline 1989
online text

notes

Facsimile of the newspaper article.

A series of questions, sent to Osho by Sw Devam Bhaskar were answered in September or October 1989 and sent to Brazil by fax.

On December 3, 1989, the interview was published in one of Brazil's leading newspapers Folha de S.Paulo.

This material has not been published in any book.

A note from Bhaskar:

“To share with joy this interview I did with Osho, published by “Revista d´” of Folha de S. Paulo on December 3, 1989.

The photographs are by Ma Anand Niranjana (Mila Petrillo), they were taken in Pune (India) during darshans or in the gardens of Lao Tzu House – Osho's home in his community.

In the title, Folha de S. Paulo referred to my (our) Master as we previously called him – Rajneesh.

This is the third interview I've done with Osho, the first two for Correio Braziliense. Possibly, this will be Osho's last press interview. Two months before Osho left his body, I called the community in Pune from Brazil and asked for this third interview, perhaps in the desire for an impossible “synthesis”. My request was received, I faxed the questions and received Osho's answers and love through his advisory.”

(*1) The first two interviews, from 1985 (when Bhaskar was still living in the community of Rajneeshpuram-USA), are available on this website on video with subtitles in Portuguese and Spanish.

The original article in Portuguese can be downloaded as PDF here.

Bhaskar speaks about the interviews he did in LoveOsho podcast E065 Bhaskar.

synopsis

The English text was translated to Portugese by Bhaskar.

Unfortunately, Bhaskar lost the original English text of the questions and answers.

This is the text of the article in Folha de S.Paulo, translated again back to English by a friend of Bhaskar in April 2023.

Thus speaks RAJNEESH

Banned from the US, the Indian guru, who became 'OSHO', criticizes Gorbachev and preaches meditation

Interview with Devam Bhaskar

Photos: Anand Niranjana

Never has a silent man made so much noise. For four years, the Indian "master" Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh lived without exchanging a word in a community that gathered more than ten thousand people in the very out-of-the-way state of Oregon, in the USA, but he did not fail to answer and win more than a thousand municipal and federal lawsuits, which aimed, all of them, to expel the community from the country. In late 1985, the community of Rajneeshpuram was invaded by FBI planes, tanks, men, horses and dogs. Rajneesh was arrested and nearly died in an Oklahoma jail cell.

He spent twelve days in prison, ruined by the ridicule of the international media. Contrary to what would later be published, Rajneesh was tried and expelled from America just for not meeting the obligation of the immigration department (although he had never received any response about his permanent visa in the country): the bank accounts of the prosperous community were not frozen ( taxes were all up to date) and the FBI searches turned up nothing (they thought they would find weapons capable of facing an army and drugs). Expelled from the US, Rajneesh intended to travel the world, but no country granted him an entry visa. In Italy and Germany (where most of his “followers” were concentrated), the parliaments even passed specific laws to prevent their entry.

He then returned to India, to the city of Puna (the fifth largest city in the country), where, in the late 1960s, he began to attract Western admirers for his meditation techniques that seek to unite the experience of Western man with Eastern mysticism. In Brazil there are about two thousand disciples and two dozen books by Rajneesh published. In the exclusive interview that follows, Rajneesh – who came to be called Osho, a term traditionally used by disciples of masters of Zen Buddhism – makes “alerts” to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, criticizes the church, talks about AIDS and says that the solution for humanity's reunion with happiness is "meditation".

Folha - How do you analyze the recent wave of political openness in communist countries from the Soviet Glasnost?

OSHO - The Soviet Union is living in a state of absolute vulnerability, because the generation that lived through the communist revolution is dead. The new generation doesn't know anything, it doesn't know how much sacrifice was necessary to take the country out of a feudal condition and promote some development and more social justice. It doesn't know how much it took to expel old habits and all sorts of bourgeois resistance. Gorbachev is a visionary as was Karl Marx, but he doesn't understand the extremely practical aspects that are embedded in reality. He appears to be a good man with deep respect for democracy; but he does not realize that in the name of “democracy” America is conspiring, with all its machinery in front of the world media, to transform Gorbachev into a “hero”. Soon Gorbachev will win the Nobel Peace Prize. America wants to make Gorbachev a celebrity to divert attention from communism. The qualities of a new posture will be from Gorbachev, not from communist history. Since this started to happen, communism started to disappear... and this will be a great loss for humanity.

I warn Gorbachev not to let this happen, not to let the old and the rotten back into the Soviet Union. Organized religious institutions were expelled from the Soviet Union as the opium of the people and must not return. He can allow a lot of things, all sorts of political and social openness, but he must not allow Christianity to return. Watch out, Gorbachev! Don't allow priests and any religion to enter the Soviet Union if you want to save communism. Gorbachev must open the country to artists, independent thinkers and meditation. Communism is not the end, but it must be safeguarded as a fundamental step towards realizing humanity's primordial dream: a world where everyone has equal opportunities and equal distribution of knowledge and wealth.

Folha - Since the Soviet opening is inevitable, what path can leader Gorbachev follow?

OSHO - Gorbachev himself needs to dive into deep meditation, he cannot be just another politician. When you learn what meditation is, then whatever you do will be right. I can see that he is a man of intelligence and good intentions for humanity, but he has no meditative depth: just meditation brings transformations based on the discovery of the real needs of the species. Any other path of transformation will be a game of impositions of moralities and external commands, without foundation in the face of the people's deepest desires. With meditation it is possible to make the absolutist interference of the state disappear, and the world will not need new hierarchies, bureaucracies, presidents, prime ministers, KGBs or CIAs. Each individual will then be able to contribute to the ultimate utopia. There is no other way. This is not an economic revolution or a revolution in the strictly social field. It is a spiritual revolution, a rebellion infecting every individual.

Folha - Do you consider the universally popular saying that each people has the government it deserves to be correct?

OSHO - I have no doubts. Humanity is not dirty because of dirty politicians. Politicians, filthy, are there because humanity is dirty. It is necessary to understand this well: do not throw all the responsibility on politicians; they simply represent you, nothing more. This is the absurdity: first you choose them, then you call them dirty.

Folha - So isn't it power that corrupts people?

OSHO - There is a famous statement by an English philosopher who says that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts completely” - I do not agree with him. My analysis is totally different. People are all full of violence, ambition, anger, passion... but they have no power and so they remain “holy”. To be concretely violent you need power. To satisfy your ambition, you need to be powerful. To satisfy your passions, you once again need to be powerful. It is when the power is in your hands that all sleeping dogs begin to bark. Power becomes food for you, an opportunity. It's not that power corrupts you... You are corrupt. Power only opens the door to corruption.

Folha - So, how should one deal with this?

OSHO - The only way to clean the human conscience is meditation. Only meditation can fill the interior of man with light. Only meditation can give you a clean, incorruptible heart. Only then will power not be used in an unhealthy way. Power will be an instrument of creativity. The heart that is born from meditation will always be building a more loving world and a slightly more beautiful existence. But that great day has not yet arrived; and if you make any effort to bring about that day, addicted and ambitious people will be all against you. It's a question I've been asked constantly: "Why does everyone seem to be against you, persecuting you?" They are all ambitious and desirous of power, while I am trying to make man a lake of serenity, of peace and silence, of love and ecstasy.

Folha - Is democracy possible?

OSHO - People tend to understand “democracy” as the freedom to choose between politicians. For me, democracy means that there are no more politicians. You choose someone, some individual, when you realize you've found the right person for the right time. There are no political parties and no reason for them to exist. People will be smart for the right choice. In fact, the candidate approaching the people and asking “please choose me” is an absolutely ugly, worn out thing. If he really has some ability, people will ask him to take on this or that responsibility. True democracy will choose smart people, but people with real vision would never beg their vote, would never kiss their children or shake their hands in the streets. He's not going to look to television to deliver a performance similar to what you believe is ideal for a president. You will have to persuade him. The whole scene changes: politicians won't persuade you; you will be required to persuade someone to represent you.

Folha - Western culture has sought the path of drugs, sometimes in an attempt to experience the inner “feeling” that Eastern culture seeks through meditation. What is the role of drugs in this sense?

OSHO - I am not generally in favor of drugs; my insistence is on meditation. But if people don't meditate and want a pill to feel “higher” or “happier”, then I am in no way absolutely against drugs. I think the side effects of drugs should be removed, science is ready to do it, science is in a position to create chemicals that bring people some sense of joy, some capacity for efficiency with greater relaxation and less violence. These drugs should be purified under government control and sold under medical license. This is the only way to stop illegal and criminal drug trafficking. If 30% of people are taking drugs, then governments are unnecessarily turning them into criminals. Crime related to drug dealing and use can be easily extinguished, but the whole problem is that the Christian church and all other religions don't want to see people happy. This is the cause, the root, an issue that is not properly seen by society. If people are happy they won't go to church. The foundation and the whole strategy of religions is to make life as miserable as possible so that people go back to churches and ask for blessings for the next life.

Folha - Brazil today is one of the countries with the highest incidence of AIDS cases. How do you see AIDS in relation to the present and future of humanity?

OSHO - I am not a doctor, nor is AIDS just a disease. It is something else, something that is beyond the limits of medical understanding. It seems to me to be a spiritual illness. It is basically the inability to resist illness; and that to me means that humanity is losing the will to live. When a person loses the desire to live, his resistance immediately drops because the body follows the mind. Obviously, medicine will never be concerned with the will to live. So far AIDS has nothing to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality, but it certainly has everything to do with sex. Why? Because the desire to live is rooted in sex. If the desire to live disappears, sex will be the most vulnerable area for an invitation to death. Modern man has finally reached the point where he realizes that the life he is living has lost all meaning. He has finally realized that he is existentially an orphan, and this feeling pushes him towards the loss of the desire to live. Man has finally woken up to the fact that he has been living under false promises, from priests and politicians. Society has given man only false hope, and when you wake up to that, every vital desire disappears. The first sore that will appear will be in the sexual area. That to me is AIDS.

Folha - Even among different social classes and among different ages, in the West the demand for games, videos and erotic objects is explosive. Why so much attraction to pornography?

OSHO - All responsibility rests with an absolutely repressive tradition, constructed especially by their religions. They are responsible for all sorts of sexual perversions. They have turned life into something so paralyzed that their entire survival strategy depends on repressing the so-called sexual energy. Remember, you only have one energy, and in the lower parts of the body we call it "sexual energy". You can only transform that feeling through meditation. Through the alchemy of meditation, the same energy will be directed differently and in other directions. It will turn into love, into prayer. Religions have not worked to transform this energy, but always to repress it. And if you repress it, it is natural that the result is a perverted human being. He becomes obsessed with sex. Religions have created a strange situation: they have created an obsession with sex and they make you responsible for it. They are guilty of creating guilt in the people. Once freed from religious exploitations and religious conventions, there will be no interest in games and erotic objects.

Folha - Your ashram (community) grew and expanded again, now in Pune (India), after your expulsion, and your disciples, from America. What are the differences between the community of today, in Pune, and the one in the State of Oregon, in the United States?

OSHO - I don't think, in any sense, that the disappearance of the community in America was a loss. The way it was working it was an endless trajectory. When ten thousand people want to live together you have to build houses, make roads, prepare food at a factory pace, make clothes… a thousand and one things are necessary. Gradually, you lose sight of the real reason for being there. You came to meditate, to be with me as openly as possible and as available as possible, to share my experience with me… to enjoy, to relax, to sing, to dance, to live in ecstasy. You didn't come to work in an endless, mechanical way. Now I'm working in a totally different way. My community is now a “mystery school”, it is a community, but the people are changing. There are some permanent people who look after the interests of visitors, but the community has truly become a place of continuous pilgrimage: you learn a few things, drink from a source… and go back to the world.

I always want my friends (Osho does not call those who seek him disciples, but friends or “traveling companions”) to be in the world, coming to me only occasionally, staying with me and leaving more refreshed and whole. It is important that they return to the world, because the world needs to be transformed. We do not renounce the world: all religions taught and teach “renounce the world” I teach “change the world”.

Folha - Do you think that the people who are coming to your community in India are different from those who came to see you in America?

OSHO - The quality of the people who are coming is higher and that was what I expected. It was hard work, for thirty-five years, and now the results are beginning to show. Smarter and more sensitive people are arriving, people with greater capacity to listen and to experience silence as well. Even better people will come.

Folha - The people who will be reading this interview, and western people in general, possibly object to a “master-disciple” relationship and the idea of spiritual surrender to a master. What exactly is "given disciple to master"?

OSHO - In the West, the idea of ego development has been greatly emphasized, cultivated and encouraged. In a way this is natural. Every child has to go through the process of ego development to come to a recognition of the "self". Watch teenagers: they emphasize their differences, they want their own clothes, they want everything to be absolutely the way they want it to be. The character appears in adolescence. But as the ego develops, its barriers and side effects also become clear.

Anguish arrives. A sense of separation from existence takes shape. A solitude. A feeling of the futility of the whole game appears. The game of inflating yourself “I am me and no one else” loses its meaning and if you are a little more intelligent you will not be able to bear the game much longer. But the West has no other alternative to offer: this is the only game the West knows - inflate the ego until it bursts. In the East, our understanding goes deeper. It has been known for centuries that the real ecstasy of life is not in cultivating the ego, but in surrendering the ego. This is the function of the master-disciple relationship.

When disciple and master meet, dissolve into each other, we have a love relationship (a profound orgasmic experience), deeper than any other form of love relationship, because even lovers carry their egos and egos will always be there. ready to collide. The master's ego has already evaporated (that's why he is a master) and the disciple surrenders his ego to the master. But remember: when you surrender, when you surrender your ego to a master, you are not surrendering anything in particular, because the ego is just an idea and nothing more. It has no substance, it is made of dreams. When you surrender your dreams, what are you surrendering? If you come to me and say “I am giving you my dreams”, you are offering, ok, but what am I getting? You may even think that you are offering big dreams of golden palaces, beautiful women and fantastic treasures... you are only offering dreams, but I am not getting anything from you. As far as the master's role is concerned, he's just laughing about it all, because he knows what his ego is - just hot air! Not much to want to get.

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