Category:Rajneeshpuram

Four years after the fall 1985 events, I sent a question into Rajneesh. Unlike the journalists at Rajneeshpuram, I was not offered a face to face interview, because he was seriously ill. I didn't know it at the time, but he had less than five months to live. "I would like to know how you saw events at that time. Was there an unspoken intent when you decided to leave Rajneeshpuram on Sunday night, October 27, 1985?" He answered through his secretary, Ma Deva Anando.

"I left for Charlotte because for six weeks previously the National Guard was on standby around the commune, ready to enter the commune. Obviously, if they had arrested me there, the 5,000 sannyasins would not have tolerated it. There would have been bloodshed. To avoid this, I went to Charlotte. It was just to avoid the bloodshed of the sannyasins. There were no sannyasins in Charlotte to be involved if I was arrested there. And there was a beautiful house in the mountains there for me to stay.

I was in America and I was free to go anywhere. There was no intention on my part of destroying the commune. On the contrary, I wanted no bloodshed in the commune, which would have happened if I was arrested there.

The INS had been asked to help in arresting me, and they refused. In fact, they were at fault all along. They hadn't adjudicated my case and replied to my request for extension. The reason was that if they said, "No", we could appeal. And then they couldn't destroy the commune. So it was a clear cut conspiracy."

(Max Brecher, A Passage to America)