When I first met Acharya Rajneesh at his Bombay apartment in December of 1970, he was only 39 years old.  With long beard and large dark eyes, he looked like a painting of Lao-Tse come to life.  Before meeting Rajneesh I had spent time with a number of Eastern gurus without being satisfied with the quality of their teachings.  I wanted an enlightened guide who could bridge the gap between East and West and reveal the true esoteric secrets, without what I considered to be the excess baggage of Indian, Tibetan, or Japanese culture.  Rajneesh was the answer to my quest for those deeper meanings.  He described for me in vivid detail everything I wanted to know about the inner worlds and he had the power of immense being to back up his words.  At 21 years old I was naive about life and the nature of man and assumed that everything he said must be true.

Rajneesh spoke on a high level of intelligence and his spiritual presence emanated from his body like a soft light that healed all wounds.  While sitting close during a small gathering of friends, Rajneesh took me on a rapidly vertical inner journey that almost seemed to push me out of my physical body.  His vast presence lifted everyone around him higher without the slightest effort on their part.  The days I spent at his Bombay apartment were like days spent in heaven.  He had it all and he was giving it away for free!

Rajneesh possessed the astounding powers of telepathy and astral projection, which he used nobly to bring comfort and inspiration to his disciples.  Many phony gurus have claimed to have these mysterious abilities, but Rajneesh had them for real.  The Acharya never bragged about his powers.  Those who came near soon learned of them through direct contact with the miraculous.  One or two amazing occult adventures was all it took to turn doubting Western skepticism into awed admiration and devotion.

One year earlier I had meet another enlightened teacher known to the world as Jiddu Krishnamurti.  J. Krishnamurti could barely give a coherent lecture and constantly scolded his audience by referring to their "shoddy little minds."  I loved his frankness and his words were true, but his subtly cantankerous nature was not very helpful in transferring his knowledge to others.  Listening to Krishnamurti speak was like eating a sandwich made of bread and sand.  

Life is complex and multilayered and my naive illusions about the phenomena of perfect enlightenment faded with the years.  It became clear to me that enlightened people are as fallible as anyone.  They are expanded human beings, not perfect human beings, and they live and breathe with many of the same faults and vulnerabilities we ordinary humans must endure.

Skeptics ask how I can claim that Rajneesh was enlightened given his scandals and disastrous public image.  I can only say that Rajneesh's spiritual presence was identical to that of J. Krishnamurti, who was recognized as enlightened by every high Tibetan Lama and revered Hindu sage of the day.  I do sympathize with the skeptics, however.  If I had not known Rajneesh personally, I would never believe it myself.

Rajneesh pushed the envelope of enlightenment in both positive and negative directions.  He was the best of the best and the worst of the worst.  He was a great teacher in his early years, with innovative meditation techniques that worked with dramatic power.  Rajneesh lifted thousands of seekers to higher levels of consciousness and detailed Eastern religions and meditation techniques with luminous clarity.

One false move.  One grand error.

When former university professor Acharya Rajneesh suddenly changed his name to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I was dismayed.  The famous enlightened sage Ramana Maharshi was called Bhagwan by his disciples as a spontaneous term of endearment.  Rajneesh simply declared that everyone should start calling him Bhagwan, a title which can mean anything from 'divine one' to God.  Rajneesh became irritated when I would politely correct his mispronunciations of English words after his lectures, so I felt in no position to tell him that I thought his new name was inappropriate and dishonest.  That change in name marked a turning point in Rajneesh's level of honesty and was the first of many big lies come.

Rajneesh lived in an ivory tower, rarely leaving his room unless to give a lecture, his life experience cushioned by throngs of adoring devotees.  As most human beings who are treated as kings, Rajneesh lost touch with the world of the common man.  In his artificial and insulated existence, Rajneesh made one fundamental error in judgment which would destroy his teaching.

"What you tell them is true, but what I tell them (the useful lies) is good for them."  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh 1975.

Rajneesh calculated that the majority of the earth's population was on such a low level of consciousness that they could not understand nor tolerate the real truths.  He thus decided on a policy of spreading seemingly useful lies to bring inspiration to his disciples and, on occasion, to stress his students in unique situations for their own personal growth.  This was his downfall and the prime reason he will be remembered by most historians as just another phony guru.

Acharya, Bhagwan Shree, Osho...all the empowering names taken by Rajneesh could not cover up the fact that he was still a human being.  He had ambitions and desires, sexual and material, just like everyone else.  All living enlightened humans have desires.  All enlightened men have had public lives that we know about and all have had private lives that remained secret.  The vast majority of enlightened men do nothing but good for the world.  Only Rajneesh, to my knowledge, became a criminal in both the legal and ethical sense of the word. 

Rajneesh never lost the ultimate existential truth of being.  He only lost the ordinary concept of truth that any normal adult can easily understand.  He rationalized his constant lying as "lefthanded Tantra," but that too was dishonest.  Rajneesh lied to save face, to avoid taking responsibility for his own mistakes, and to gain personal power.  Those lies had nothing to do with Tantra or any selfless acts of kindness.  What is real in this world is fact and Rajneesh misrepresented fact on a daily basis.  Rajneesh was no simple con-man like so many others.  Rajneesh knew everything that Buddha knew and he was everything that Buddha was.  It was his loss of respect for ordinary truthfulness that destroyed his teaching.

Rajneesh's health collapsed in his early thirties.  Even before reaching middle age, Rajneesh suffered reoccurring bouts of weakness.  During his youthful college years, when he should have been at a peak of vigor, Rajneesh often had to sleep 12 to 14 hours a day due to his unexplained illness.  Rajneesh suffered from what Europeans call myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or what Americans call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).  His classic symptoms included the obvious fatigue, strange allergies, recurrent low grade fevers, photophobia, orthostatic intolerance (the inability to stand for a normal period of time), insomnia, body pain, and extreme sensitivity to smells and chemicals, a condition doctors now refer to as "multiple chemical sensitivity."

Rajneesh's trademark chemical sensitivity was so severe that he instructed his guards to sniff people for unpleasant odors before they were allowed to visit him in his quarters.  People with Gulf War Syndrome, MS, and other neurological diseases are also often highly sensitive to chemicals and smells.  Rajneesh's poor health and strange symptoms were a product of real neurological damage, not some esoteric supersensitivity caused by his enlightenment.  Rajneesh also had Type II diabetes, asthma, severe back pain, and most likely fibromyalgia.  

Rajneesh was constantly sick and frail from the time I first met him in 1970 until his death in 1990.  He thought he was getting a different cold or flu every week.  In reality, he suffered from a chronic neurological illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with flu like symptoms that can last a lifetime.

Rajneesh could not stand on his feet for long periods of time without becoming lightheaded because he suffered damage to his autonomic nervous system which controls blood pressure.  This neurally mediated hypotension (low blood pressure while standing) causes chronic fatigue and can lower IQ due to a lack of sufficient blood and oxygen being pumped to the brain (brain hypoxia).  In the 1970s Rajneesh often complained of becoming lightheaded immediately upon standing.  During his final few months alive in Poona he frequently passed out into complete unconsciousness.

Rajneesh used prescription drugs, mainly Valium (diazepam), as an analgesic for his aches and pains and to counter the symptoms of dysautonomia (dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system).  He took the maximum recommended dose of 60 milligrams per day.  Rajneesh also inhaled nitrous oxide (N2O) mixed with pure oxygen (O2) which he claimed increased his creativity.  The nitrous oxide probably did relieve the sensation of severe exhaustion and suffocation patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often feel, but it did nothing for the quality of his judgment.  Naive about the powerful effects of drugs and overconfident about his own ability to fight off their negative effects, Rajneesh succumbed to addiction.  

A number of disciples have claimed that Rajneesh was so intoxicated at his Oregon ranch in the 1980s that he sometimes urinated in the halls of his own home, just as heroin addicts and common drunks often do.  I believe this to be true as the last time I saw Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh he was inebriated to the point of becoming physically ugly.  He had the same washed-out look and foolish behavior I had witnessed in addicts while working at a methadone clinic in the United States.  Rajneesh miraculously had the ability to leave his body at will through astral projection, but when he was in his physical body he was quite ordinarily human and unable to tolerate the devastating effects of massive doses of tranquilizers.

On top of Rajneesh's physical illness, his massive intake of Valium caused paranoia and greatly reduced reasoning power.  Valium addicts often think the CIA or other unseen villains are plotting against them, so it is no surprise he imagined he was poisoned.  Rajneesh actually considered moving to Russia to combine his totalitarian form of spirituality with Russian communism, an idea no sane man could possibly entertain.  Historically Valium has been the drug of choice for CFS sufferers, as it masks the unnerving symptoms of dysautonomia and helps bring sleep.  The now very ill Osho also suffered insomnia, yet another classic symptom of CFS.

Rajneesh was a physically ill man who became mentally corrupt.  His drug addiction was a problem of his own making, not a government conspiracy.  Rajneesh died in 1990 with heart failure listed as the official cause of death.  It is probable that the physical decline Rajneesh experienced during his incarceration in American jails was due to a combination of withdrawal symptoms from Valium and an aggravation of his ME/CFS due to stress and exposure to allergens.

After Rajneesh's humiliation and downfall in America, he declared that he was "Jesus crucified by Ronald Reagan's America."  In truth, Rajneesh was a drug addicted guru who self-destructed through his own wrong actions.  Comparing himself to Jesus was doubly dishonest as he himself had no respect for Jesus.  He once went so far as to undiplomatically proclaim to the American media that everything Jesus said was "just crazy."

Upon his sudden death in 1990, there was much speculation in the American media that Rajneesh had actually committed suicide by taking a overdose of drugs.  As no disciple has confessed to giving Rajneesh a lethal injection, there is no hard evidence to support the suicide theory.  A compelling circumstantial case could be made for such a scenario, however, with suicide provoked by Rajneesh's constant ill health and disheartenment over the loss of Vivek, his greatest love.

Vivek had taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a Bombay hotel one month before Rajneesh's passing.  Pointedly, Vivek decided to kill herself just before his birthday celebration.  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had threatened suicide at the Oregon commune several times, hanging his death over the heads of his disciples as a threat unless they obeyed his wishes.  On his last day on earth, Rajneesh is reported to have said "Let me go.  My body has become a hell for me."

The rumor that Rajneesh was poisoned with thallium by operatives of the United States Government is entirely fictional and contradicted by undeniable fact.  One of the obvious symptoms of thallium poisoning is dramatic hair loss within seven days of exposure.  Rajneesh died with a full beard and no exceptional baldness other than ordinary male pattern baldness at the top of his head.  Radiation poisoning, another fictional cause of illness, also causes dramatic hair loss.  

The symptoms which may have led Rajneesh's doctors to suspect poisoning were in fact common symptoms of dysautonomia caused by ME/CFS.  Those symptoms can include ataxia (uncoordinated movements), numbness, standing tachycardia (rapid heart rate upon standing), paresthesia (sensations of prickling and itching), nausea, and irritable bowel syndrome, which causes alternating between constipation and diarrhea.

The only proven cases of poisoning related to Rajneesh were carried out by Rajneesh's own sannyasins in 1984.  A sannyasin is an initiated disciple, one who takes sannyas.  There were 751 victims, including women and small children, at ten different restaurants in the small city of The Dalles, Oregon.  Rajneesh sannyasins attempted to take over the Wasco County Commission by making so many people ill on election day that they could elect their own sannyasin candidates.  See the Rajneesh bioterrorism newspaper story.

Rajneesh disciples poisoned salad bars with salmonella bacteria, which was mixed into salad dressings, fruits and vegetables, and the restaurants' coffee creamers.  Forty-five people became so ill they had to be hospitalized, thus making the case the largest germ warfare attack in United States history.  Sannyasins were later suspected of trying to kill a Wasco County executive by spiking his water with an unknown poison.  Michael Sullivan, a Jefferson County District Attorney, also became ill after leaving a cup of coffee unattended as Rajneesh sannyasins roamed the courthouse.  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh never bothered to apologize to any of the human beings who were poisoned by his own trusted disciples.

Members of Rajneesh's own staff were poisoned by Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary.  Sheela had the habit of poisoning people who either knew too much or who had simply fallen out of her favor.  Sheela spent two and a half years in a federal medium security prison for her crimes while Rajneesh pled guilty to immigration fraud and was given a ten year suspended sentence, fined $400,000. and deported from the United States of America. Sheela is now running two senior citizens homes in Switzerland funded by the insurance industry and health care funders, despite the fact that she embezzeled $54 million from the Oregon ashram when she fled the US.

Rajneesh felt that teaching ethics was unnecessary because meditation would automatically lead to good behavior.  The actions of Rajneesh and his disciples proves that theory to be false.  Rajneesh taught that you should do as you please because life is both a dream and a joke.  This attitude led to the classically fascist belief that one can become so high and mighty that one is beyond the need for old fashioned virtues and honest ethical behavior. 

Those unfamiliar with the Rajneesh story can read the book Bhagwan: The God That Failed, published by Saint Martin's Press and written by Hugh Milne (Shivamurti), a close disciple of Bhagwan during his Poona and Oregon years.  Mr. Milne's book is largely corroborated by Satya Bharti Franklin's book, Promise of Paradise: A Woman's Intimate Life With 'Bhagwan' Osho Rajneesh, published by Barrytown/Station Hill Press.  Both books are out of print but secondhand copies of the books can be obtained through Amazon.Com.UK. 

Regarding Bhagwan: The God That Failed, I can verify many of the facts Mr. Milne states about the life of Rajneesh in Bombay and Poona, though I have no first hand knowledge of the tragic events at the Oregon commune.  My contacts with people who were there lead me to believe that most of the facts Mr. Milne presents of the Oregon era are also highly accurate.  Hugh Milne is due great credit for a well written and entertaining book which is a sincere effort at complete honesty.  

Rajneesh did not suffer from "hypochodria," as Mr. Milne suggested.  Rajneesh had a very real neurological disease, probably inherited, which he mistook for frequent viral infections.  Rajneesh became unusually afraid of germs only due to his understandable medical ignorance.  I fully agree with Mr. Milne that Rajneesh suffered from "megalomania," however, and will add that Rajneesh had a Napoleonic, obsessive and compulsive personality.

Hugh Milne's book records an occasion when Rajneesh admitted, while under the influence of nitrous oxide, that there is no such thing as 'enlightenment.'  I cannot confirm this event through other contacts, but I assume if true Rajneesh was simply stating what U.G. Krishnamurti has said all along; that the storybook fiction we accept of a perfect enlightenment, full of infallible wisdom, is a big lie.  A powerful and expansive cosmic state does exist in humans who achieve it, but the way this state is described by the religious establishment is an egocentric fiction, contrived by spiritual leaders to control the masses for their own personal gain.

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."  Henry Kissinger

After leaving India in 1981, Rajneesh bought the 64,000 acre Big Muddy cattle ranch in eastern Oregon for six million dollars.  Rajneesh created his desert commune from his own powerful mind and named it "Rajneeshpuram."  He made himself the ultimate dictator, his picture placed everywhere as in an Orwellian bad dream.  J. Krishnamurti called Rajneesh a "criminal" and referred to Rajneeshpuram as "a concentration-camp under the dictatorship of enlightenment."  That totalitarian atmosphere was just one of the many reasons I did not stay at the commune beyond several brief visits.  I was interested in meditation, not in a big prison where human beings were treated like insects with no intelligence of their own.  Rajneesh put such a high emphasis on his disciples following orders without question that they did just that when Ma Anand Sheela, Rajneesh's personal secretary, gave absurd orders to commit crimes which Rajneesh himself (hopefully) would have never approved of.

When you decapitate the intelligence of human beings you create a situation that is highly dangerous and destructive to the human spirit.  You cannot save people from their egos by demanding "total surrender."  The anti-democratic technique of forcing blind obedience did not work well for Hitler, Stalin, or for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.  Germany, Russia, and the Rajneesh Oregon commune were all destroyed because of authoritarian imperial rule.  A diversity of opinion is always healthy because it acts as an effective counterbalance to the myopic arrogance of those who would be king.  Bhagwan never understood this truth of history and referred to democracy scornfully as "mob-ocracy."  Rajneesh was an imperial aristocrat, never a generous and open minded democrat, and he put his contempt for the democratic process into highly visible action in Oregon.

In an attempt to subvert local Wasco County elections, Rajneesh had his  sannyasins bus in almost 2,000 homeless people from major American cities in an effort to unfairly rig the voting process in his favor.  Some of the new voters were mentally ill and were given beer laced with drugs to keep them manageable.  Credible allegations have been made that one or more of the imported street people died due to overdosing on the beer-drug mixture, but to my knowledge that charge has not been conclusively proven.  Rajneesh's voting fraud scheme failed and the once again homeless were returned to the streets after the election was over, used and then abandoned.  If Rajneesh sannyasins had only held truth above all instead of obedience to guru above all, then no crimes would have been committed and the commune might still be in existence today. 

Rajneesh used people, spoke out of both sides of his mouth, and betrayed the trust of his own disciples.  This betrayal caused Vivek, his longtime girlfriend and companion, to commit suicide.  Rajneesh even lied about her death, slandering his greatest love in her grave, by falsely claiming that she was chronically depressed due to some intrinsic emotional instability.  Vivek was never depressed during the years I knew her and she was the most radiant women I have ever known.

Vivek was a glowing student of meditation, but her only meditation method was being with Rajneesh and absorbing his tremendous spiritual energy.  When her one method and one true love collapsed into insanity, she took her own life out of overwhelming grief.  Rajneesh drove her to suicide because she could not understand nor tolerate his mental decline and collapse.  Rajneesh lied about her death to avoid taking responsibility for his own bizarre behavior, which was the underlying cause of Vivek's despair.

The young Acharya Rajneesh started his life as a teacher who condemned false gurus and ended his life as one of the most deceitful gurus the world has ever known.  The difficult fact to comprehend is that he was enlightened when he was an anti-guru puritan and he was still enlightened when he was the ultimate corrupt self-indulgent guru himself.  This seemingly irreconcilable contradiction is the real reason I write this essay.  I love to go into uncharted territory where others fear to tread.

Bhagwan's wrong choice was to disregard truthfulness in favor of what he thought were useful lies. Once you make that wrong turn, away from ordinary straightforward truth, you have lost your way.  No human being can disregard fact on a regular basis without finding himself in a sea of turmoil because by discarding fact you discard the ground beneath your feet.  Little lies grow into big lies and the now hidden truth becomes your enemy, not your friend and ally.

Rajneesh ruled his Oregon desert empire as a warlord with his own private army and puppet government.  His visions and ideas, faulty or not, were taken without question as the word of God.  His disciples were judged by their ability to surrender to his will and any opposing views were branded as negativity and an unspiritual lack of faith.  His followers had to obey his often bizarre commands or be banished from the mini-nation Rajneesh created in the Oregon desert.

Rajneesh's poor reasoning became even more apparent during and after the Oregon commune scandal.  After being jailed and then deported from the USA, Rajneesh angrily declared America "a wretched country" and Americans "subhuman," ignoring the fact that it was he, an Indian, who pled guilty to felony immigration fraud and that it was Sheela, an Indian, who ordered the most serious crimes which brought his empire to ruin.  Even in his fifties Rajneesh was still lying to get his own way, still demanding to always be the center of attention, and by 1988, suffering from drug and illness induced dementia, was pouting that his box of toys, his expensive car collection and jewel encrusted watches, had been taken away.

Rajneesh's disciples thought they were following a reliable and authoritative "enlightened master."  In reality they had been mislead by a highly fallible enlightened human animal who was still a little boy at heart.  Rajneesh had not only misrepresented himself personally, but he misrepresented the phenomena of enlightenment itself.  The idealized fantasy of perfect enlightenment does not exist anywhere in the real world and it has never existed.  The universe is far too big and complex for anyone to be its master.  We are all subjects, not masters, and those who pretend to be infallible and all-knowing end up looking even more the fool in the end.

"Never give a sucker an even break."  W.C. Fields

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh lied when he said he had enlightened disciples.  He lied when he said he never made a mistake.  At the end of his life he was forced to admit he was fallible as his list of bungles had grown to monstrous proportions.  He lied by pretending that the therapy groups run by his disciples were not mainly a money making device.  Rajneesh lied about breaking United States immigration laws and only admitted the truth when he was presented with overwhelming documented evidence against him.  He lied by saying that he was adopted in a phony scheme to get permanent residence status.  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was no murderer or bank robber, but he certainly was a very big liar.  The ridiculous thing is that all of his lies were totally unnecessary and counterproductive.  As conventional and square as it may sound, honesty really is the best policy.

Rajneesh lied when he claimed he was not responsible for the horrors of the Oregon commune because he hand picked Ma Anand Sheela and the people who committed the major crimes of conspiracy to commit murder, poisoning, first-degree assault, burglary, arson, and wiretapping.  The fact that Rajneesh did not order or have pre-knowledge (hopefully) of the most serious crimes does not mean he was not ethically responsible for them.

There is no publicly released evidence to suggest that Rajneesh ordered the germ warfare attack on the ten Oregon restaurants.  There is also no publicly released evidence that implicates Rajneesh in the plot to have a sannyasin pilot fly an airplane full of explosives into an Oregon courthouse in order to intimidate the political opposition.  Luckily, the sannyasin pilot who was asked to perform the insane task was not as dumb as the plotters and fled the commune without committing any crime.

Rajneesh was directly responsible for the twisted mix of totalitarian slavery and libertine indulgence that the commune represented.  According to highly credible published reports, Rajneesh allowed middle aged men to have sexual intercourse with pre-pubescent girls at the commune in the name of sexual freedom, yet disciples were not allowed to have a mind of their own and had to totally surrender to the great Bhagwan's will.  Disciples were often forced to work 12 hours a day in cold and difficult conditions while Rajneesh himself enjoyed, in his own words, "groovy spaces" in his private heated indoor pool, watched countless movies on his big screen projection television, and enjoyed his daily drug supply.  Rajneesh showed his divine love for his disciples by squandering millions in hard earned commune assets on his car collection and expensive jewelry, and all in the name of egolessness and spiritual surrender.

Why did Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh own 90 Rolls Royces?  Why did Saddam Hussein own dozens of luxurious palaces?  Those desires were products of the base animal mind of two men who grew up in poverty.  Enlightenment does not care about symbols of power and potency.  Looking for hidden esoteric explanations for obsessive behavior is pointless.  Is there an occult reason that Elton John spends over $400,000. per month on flowers?  Is there a secret spiritual reason that Rajneesh had a collection of dozens of expensive ladies' watches?  The universal cosmic consciousness is completely neutral and without any need to possess, impress, or dominate.  It also cannot drive or tell time.

One of Rajneesh's most blatant lies was that "the enlightened one gains nothing from his disciples."  Rajneesh wanted people to believe that everything he did was a free gift born of pure compassion, that he gained nothing personally from the guru-disciple relationship.  In obvious provable fact Rajneesh gained much from his disciples; money, power, sex, and the titillation of constant adoration.  Being a guru was his business, his only business.  Without that income, at least on the material level, he was just a short, balding Indian man who could not hold a job.  Rajneesh's very real enlightenment would not pay his bills or give him the material luxuries he craved, unless of course he used his intoxicating spiritual energy to gain power and money from his own disciples.

Just as rock stars become energized by screaming fans at concerts, Rajneesh gained emotional energy and support from his disciples.  The energy transfer was a two-way street, not a totally free one-way gift.  During Rajneesh's incarceration in America, a television network broadcast a video of Rajneesh caught off-guard by a security camera while he was being held in a waiting room.  Rajneesh looked bored and disgusted, just as any ordinary man might be.  He didn't look blissful or "enlightened" at all.  In my own opinion that video clip revealed the stark truth about the phenomena we call 'enlightenment.'  The realization of the Void is not enough for anyone.  All human animals, enlightened or not, need social interaction and the comforts of the material world to be content.

Consciousness needs entertainment to survive and Rajneesh used his disciples as playthings for his own amusement.  Rajneesh had no bankable power of his own.  He could only gain material power by manipulating others to do his will.  The equation was simple; the more disciples he attracted, the more power and wealth he obtained.

Rajneesh, on so many levels, was just an ordinary man.  Sexually he was even less than ordinary.  Pretending to be a great tantric in his early years, Rajneesh handed out ridiculously bad sexual advice at a time when he had very little first hand experience with sex himself.  During his Bombay era, Rajneesh often grabbed the breasts of his young female disciples.  On at least one occasion he asked a couple to have sex in front of him so he could watch.  The couple wisely rejected his request.

Rajneesh often asked women half his age to strip in front of him so that he could "feel their chakras."  To facilitate this practice, he installed an electric lock on his bedroom door that could be activated from his famous high-backed chair by his desk, where he spent most of his time.  After Rajneesh started having sexual intercourse on a regular basis, the spiritual need for him to feel the chakras of his female disciples mysteriously vanished

Rajneesh groped the breasts of two of my women friends and "felt the chakras" of a third.  I soon began to realize that like so many other girl grabbing Indian gurus who had made the headlines, Rajneesh on the human level was just an ordinary sexually immature Indian male.  My lady friend who suffered the charkra feeling incident was so put off that she never came back to see him.  He had told her "Don't worry, you are mine now."  That grasping statement had chilled her as much as the sexual exploitation.  The young woman was a student of Indian music and had previously been sexually exploited by a famous Indian musician she had studied with.  She knew first hand what many Indian men were like.  Rajneesh proved himself to be predictably and disappointingly the same.

While living in Bombay, Rajneesh made one young woman pregnant through an aggressive and unasked for seduction.  The young woman was highly upset and forced by circumstance to have an abortion.  Rajneesh, protecting his image as a great guru, lied about his involvement and claimed that she had imagined the whole affair.  The young woman told the American Embassy her story and that incident marked the beginning of Rajneesh's troubles with the United States Government.

Because of the overwhelming importance and power of sex, most gurus, enlightened or not, have maintained active sex lives which are often kept secret for purely political reasons.  In his early years Rajneesh lied about his strong sexuality by claiming to be celibate.  To be fair, this has to be understood in the context of a rigidly anti-sexual and highly hypocritical Indian social structure.  Later on, after his position as a guru had become solidified, Rajneesh publicly bragged to the American media about having sex "with hundreds of women."  All of Rajneesh's sex partners were his own female meditation students who were used as his personal harem.

Even in the early 1970s in Bombay, Rajneesh made careless statements which could easily be interpreted as being pro-Hitler and pro-fascist.  In one lecture on "esoteric groups" he claimed that Adolf Hitler had been telepathically propped up by an occult Buddhist group that Rajneesh himself was in contact with.  During World War II it is well known that a number of Indian yogis and Japanese "Zen masters" had supported the Axis cause and the extermination of the "inferior races," so Rajneesh's claim was not entirely surprising, if not totally believable.  

Years later in Poona, Rajneesh gave an infamous lecture in which he stated that Jews had given Hitler "no choice" but to try to exterminate them.  In his last years Rajneesh stated that "I have fallen in love with this man (Adolf Hitler).  He was crazy, but I am crazier still."  Rajneesh said that he wanted his sannyasins "to take over the world" and that he had studied Hitler to gain insight into how to accomplish the task.  For a man who portrayed himself as the world's smartest, highest, and greatest soul, such remarks were proof to me that his drug taking had destroyed the quality of his mind.

Rajneesh's comments about Hitler could be discounted as obnoxious but largely harmless hot air if it were not for the fact that he put many of Hitler's techniques into practice.  Rajneesh used Hitler's big lie method of mind control very effectively and demanded total surrender from his troops (disciples), just as Hitler did.  Rajneesh condoned illegal spying on his own disciples at the Oregon commune and used informants to weed out the disloyal.  Sheela, his personal secretary, turned the tables on Rajneesh by bugging Rajneesh's trademark high-backed chair.  The Oregon police later found Rajneesh's illegally taped conversations, but due to rules of evidence they could not be used against him in a court of law.  The tapes were reported to be highly damning as to Rajneesh's culpability in much of the commune's illegal activity.

Rajneesh turned many of his disciples into the equivalent of armed Brownshirts.  I have received letters from several of Rajneesh's former security guards who admitted they had fallen under the spell of fascism and now regretted their behavior and attitudes.  One wrote that he did not know how to meditate and that the thrill of power was what kept him loyal to his great leader.  In Poona, Rajneesh guards beat up an annoying local resident, his hands held behind his back as the guards pummeled him.  In Oregon, Rajneesh guards were armed to the teeth with handguns and military style semi-automatic assault rifles.  Rajneesh was never an admirer of the great Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, but he did have a unhealthy fascination with Adolf Hitler, as well as the United States General George Patton.  According to Shivamurti, Rajneesh watched the movie Patton over and over again on his big screen television at his ranch in Oregon.  

Rajneesh's worst personal trait, in my opinion, was that he could dish it out, but he could not take it.  He constantly put his disciples through great physical hardships which resulted in serious illness and even death for some, yet he himself lived in luxury and could not endure physical discomfort without complaining loudly like a baby.  After his arrest on October 28th,1985 at the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was interviewed by ABC television news.  He began his jailhouse interview by crying in a shrill voice about his less than royal accommodations in the slammer.  His high pitched whining was so weird and annoying that a late night comedy show used the footage sarcastically as a joke about "God" complaining.

During Rajneesh's appearance on the ABC television show Nightline, Rajneesh gave evasive and dishonest answers to all of Ted Koppel's questions and behaved as an unusually pompous and inept politician caught red handed at illegal activity.  Rajneesh claimed that he was not responsible for any of the crimes committed at the commune because he was "in silence."  In proven fact, although Rajneesh had stopped giving public lectures for a time, he had never stopped talking to Ma Anand Sheela and other close disciples.  Rajneesh was always the ultimate authority at the commune, even though Sheela committed some of the most serious crimes behind his back.  His Rolls Royce dealer stated that Rajneesh had spent hours on the phone talking to him about his often weekly purchases of new automobiles.  

Rajneesh then pretended not to know that he was leaving the United States to escape an impending arrest warrant, thus secretly abandoning his disciples to face the music on their own.  His own sannyasins did not know he had left the commune until they learned from the media of the arrest of Rajneesh and several followers at the North Carolina airport.  Their luggage contained a bag of cash, a box of expensive jewel encrusted watches, and a handgun.  Rajneesh's defense was that he was innocently sleeping when police boarded the private jet he had hired to escape to Bermuda.  Rajneesh claimed he thought Bermuda was just another American state and that he was going on vacation for a rest and to escape "death threats."  The authorities later learned that a Rajneesh disciple with ties to the United States Justice Department had tipped off Rajneesh about his impending arrest on immigration fraud.

The Rajneesh cult had little luck winning over American television viewers.  Ma Anand Sheela also disgraced herself on Nightline weeks earlier by bursting into loud obscenities, forcing Ted Koppel to take her off the air.  The NBC television show Saturday Night Live climbed on the Rajneesh comedy bandwagon by doing a skit about an auction with actor Randy Quaid selling off "the Bhagwan's" nearly 100 Rolls Royces.  The FOX network cartoon show The Simpsons produced a wonderfully funny spoof of Rajneesh, depicting a white gloved guru driving his Rolls Royce down a dusty commune road as his disciples felt joy at eating his road dust.  In the cartoon, the great guru tried to escape the commune with bags of cash in a homemade peddle driven flying machine.

On a taped lecture Rajneesh was ranting emotionally, and factually incorrectly, about how the police in the United States had stolen his collection of jewel encrusted ladies' watches.  He said they would never be able to wear them in public because his sannyasins would see the watches on their wrists, at airports etc., and start screaming out loudly that "you stole Bagwan's watch"  His words and manner were so childishly irrational that he reminded me of Jim Jones.  This crazy old man, now called "Osho," was a far cry from the serene, dignified, and highly eloquent Acharya Rajneesh I had met years earlier.

Even after returning to Poona, Rajneesh continued his Valium and nitrous oxide use and seemed unable to learn from his own mistakes.  Rajneesh had often branded his critics as "idiots," yet in his final years he himself did not have any sane voice inside himself to say no.  Enough is enough!  Like a deranged alcoholic, Rajneesh could not stop his destructive behavior and the quality of his judgment had dropped below that of even the most ordinary of "unenlightened" human beings.  Rajneesh had used the myth of Tantra to rationalize his dishonesty and selfishness and now he could not stop.  He had become a drug addict, plain and simple, and no amount of spiritual rationalizations could alter that fact.

The Rajneesh scandal exposed the unconscious slavery of Bhakti Yoga and the underlying fraudulence and corruption of "lefthanded Tantra."  What is needed is an honest path, built on self-observation, self-reliance, and respect for truth.  The days of the know-it-all guru are over.  It is time to realize the source of all things directly.