“I am responsible for whatever happened – because you are fast asleep

Osho takes the responsibility for what happened in Rajneeshpuram and says, “…this is my deepest longing: that Sheela and her group should be forgiven.”

Beloved Master,
Yesterday I was sad when you said, “I take the blame for everything that has happened.”

Why should you be blamed? Every moment you are trying to make us loving, meditative and celebrative. If there is any blame, we are all responsible. We are not loving, meditative and alert, and that is why Sheela and her gang could dare to do such evil actions.
Please tell us how to become more meditative, loving and responsible.”

Osho:
“That’s why I have said that I am responsible for whatever happened – because you are fast asleep. You are not alert, aware; you live like a somnambulist, walking in your sleep. How can you say that you are responsible for it all?

Neither can I say Sheela and her group are responsible. They belong to the same category as you. They just had power and, in their sleep, they did whatever sleep allows you to do. You had no power, you followed them, because what can a sleeper do?

So the whole responsibility is basically mine. I should not have gone into silence and isolation.

But it has been a great experiment, and a great experience that a man like me should not leave you alone in the hands of people who are just like you.

The law, perhaps, may not allow it, but this is my deepest longing: that Sheela and her group should be forgiven, and if any punishment is needed they should give it to me.

Only I am responsible, because I went into silence. I had never thought that silence can lead to such calamity.”

Osho, ‘From Bondage to Freedom’, Ch.6, Q.2

GOOD CHOICE OF QUOTE/ ARPANA/ SN

I had no dreams of an alternative society, but felt at some level that to actually ‘be’ around Osho in his Buddhafield, wherever he was on the planet, was important, whatever the faults of the organisation.

I ask you one thing:
Why did you not leave the Ranch when this close friend of yours was ‘removed’ for the wrong reason? Why did you not follow your intuition maybe already earlier when you saw that things had gone wrong?

Nobody did force you to stay there.
I know guys who left after a week when they saw what was going on.

I can imagine what the reason was that you did not leave. Still the dream of an alternative society?

We took our freedom of choice, and responsibility for our actions, for our intelligence, and threw them out the window, giving them instead to a few “Chosen” people, and our deep desire to stay at the Ranch (we would do almost anything asked of us in order to be allowed to stay there and hopefully become a “permanent resident”- the brass bead was the greatest prize to have).

Remember that one, the “Chosen People” so-called controversy? Sannasyins getting upset that they weren’t on the list.

He has some interesting stories to tell of his Ranch days, one in particular when he was ‘asked’ to leave. He stood his ground, told off the big shots, and that he was there for Bhagwan, not them. They didn’t fuck with him after that.
http://hendrikus.com/

Much totalitarianism was in place in Poona One, but less evident, and it was very easy for people to simply leave if they felt something untoward was going down.

I personally knew people who lived in Poona One, and actually lived in the hut villages, and only went to the ashram to listen to Osho occasionally. But they still maintained they were in a Buddhafield.

They wanted nothing to do with the organisation, and as it turned out may well have been right!