The Last Testament (Vol 1) ~ 26

event type	interview
date & time	12 Aug 1985 pm
location	Jesus Grove, Rajneeshpuram
language	English
audio	Available, duration 1h 44min. Quality: good.
online audio	free download from OshoWorld purchase from Osho.com
video	Available, duration 2h 4min. Quality: good.
online video	Edited excerpt: For Thirty-two Years I Have Been Absolutely Nothing (6min 10sec, parts of questions 17-20) **
see also	timeline : Osho Timeline 1985 first edition : The Last Testament (Vol 1) (1994 on CD-ROM) other editions, translations and links
online text	find the PDF of this discourse
shorttitle	LAST126

notes

synopsis: Interview. Announcements by Ma Anand Sheela : Steve Davis, KGO Television, San Francisco; CD-ROM on this chapter: Interview with KGO TV, San Francisco, California.

Question 1

What would you have a reporter learn here?

Question 2

How is that accomplished?

Question 3

I suspect that many of those whose religions you feel the way you do about, would probably agree with those tenants, and those goals. Or at least would voice an agreement with it.

Question 4

I heard you begin by saying that the world is on the verge of self destruction essentially. And that there is an answer, that sannyasins around the world, can bring that about. But now you tell me however, forget it. But I think there's purpose here. There's nothing in this place speaks of accident. Everything speaks of purpose and intention.

Question 5

Much that you do, or you consider playful is received otherwise. And the conflict with many around you, which I suspect you relish, is received otherwise. Where is the message in there for the outside world?

Question 6

Well, if it's a playful... If it's a playful attempt I mean....

Question 7

This present you enjoy in this place came through planning for the future through which you arrived at this day, did it not? That's what I mean by everywhere I see planning, intention, concern with creating what it is that you see to create.

Question 8

Is this the best game you've ...

Question 9

It has been reported that you were a student in your early years, that you were a brilliant student, that you read everything on the subject you studied, and that you had great grasp of it. What did you study? Was it another game? What was it that you used for preparation?

Question 10

You've written that you would trick a follower or a student. You don't refer to the sannyasins as followers, although their feet seem to be following you.

Question 11

But you said you would trick a student to teach a lesson, and that you hope they would forgive you that. Is that a technique that's useful to you?

Question 12

So the answer then is that trickery would be work?

Question 13

The Rolls Royces obviously raise a lot of silly questions... Because the whole thing is a little silly.

Question 14

Just to prick the hide of those of use on the outside and get their attention.

Question 15

Why do you so pointedly avoid the title 'leader'?

Question 16

But if a thing looks like an elephant, why not call it one?

Question 17

Edited excerpt: 6min 10sec, parts of questions 17-20 **

The quest to influence the human mind may well be the central issue of the next decade or so -- from all fronts. How do you see that? If you agree or disagree, how do you see that kind of competition for beliefs?

Question 18

What about the belief system that doesn't believe in belief systems?

Question 19

It is said that nature detests a vacuum, that something will fill the human mind.

Question 20

You won't be surprised to learn that I don't understand any of that.

Question 21

What do you mean, don't listen to you?

Question 22

There are patterns and similarity between what is taught here and how, and what's taught in other organizations and how. And specifically in the manner which involves rhetoric and psychology. That's why people ask you, "Is this place another Jonestown? Is this place another whatever?" But they are clear similarities, and there must have been somewhere some shared knowledge.

Question 23

He (reverend Jim Jonestown) was a Marxist.

Question 24

He forsook religion as he defined it, and I remember a sermon he preached one day where he threw the Bible on the floor and stomped up and down on it and said, "That's all bullshit," and went on to tell his followers if they followed him to Guyana that eventually they could go to the Soviet Union and that religion was to be forsaken. Perhaps philosophically you could connect the two, Marxism and Christianity, but on the level that most people deal and will understand, they aren't related.

Question 25

But isn't it misleading to refer to a man who defines himself as a Marxist as being a Christian?

Question 26

Of what? -- suicide. Though not all what happens there was suicide.

Question 27

I don't seek to draw a conclusion of a similar end.... What I've seen is remarkable similarity in technique.

Question 28

The techniques of meditation -- not precisely the same

Question 29

The control of information.

Question 30

A street black would tell you that that's nonsense, that he's hard to con, so what would your reaction be?

Question 31

I take it from the fact you didn't volunteer to tell me what is, there's no point in asking.

Question 32

A sannyasin once told me during the period of your silence that you would begin to speak again when an economic need arose.

Question 33

Where could a man like you be defeated?

Question 34

Do you say that in confidence of your being able to play the game of democracy better than anyone else...

... So that if you can't win then the game is wrong?

Question 35

Why are there so many people who studied psychology and psychiatry here?

Question 36

Can they teach better than anyone else?

Question 37

What about in the meditation courses and in the university?

Question 38

I see this business of competition for the thoughts of man and for the indoctrination procedures that are going on all over the world. It happens in advertising, it happens in the military, it happens in churches, but it seems to have become more sophisticated.... There seems to be a level of it that's almost franchisable.

Question 39

Do you think that's going on in the world?

Question 40

Where do you see that leading, your commune quite aside, just as an observation?

Question 41

This ruled my quest: to make folks see things how whatever particular leader sees them. It just seems to me to be heating up and heading some place that makes me uncomfortable in the world at large.

Question 42

Even the ones who say they're not?

Question 43

You paint such an utterly dark picture.... You paint such a picture of the totality of selfishness of everyone outside here.

Question 44

This is the ark?

Question 45

How will you accomplish that here?

Question 46

You're saying it has to be a controlled environment?

Question 47

I keep having difficulty... It's the totality with which you condemn us.... I've been to AIDS hospices, I've seen the tremendous care, that decent giving human beings present to men who were dying. I've seen people of religion who you condemn being generous and good and operating from points of conscience.

Question 48

I can't, I can't see things in that black and white. Like your stories about Mother Teresa -- I know nothing. But I do know they're decent people out there.

Question 49

You are treating two people who have AIDS; I have seen the people who are taking care of them...

Question 50

How do we know that these people I saw working.... Won't get it?

Question 51

Are you suggesting that I would go out knowingly contaminate people if I knew I had AIDS.

Question 52

There is a theory about that.

Question 53

I'd like to talk with them about that.

(source:CD-ROM)

◄ Previous event