Living in
the ashram in Pune, Indian was not cheap, and when Osho followers ran out of
money, the leaders indirectly encouraged them to prostitute themselves or
smuggle drugs.
Several of
them were arrested and here is a summary of the trial of a young Swedish woman
named Maria Kristina Koppel, which took place in 1980 in England.
His defense
attorney, Mr. W. Taylor, began by saying:
“My extensive inquiries show that the man out in Pune, called Bhagwan,
is nothing short of an evil man, using a lot of young people ... and reducing
their mentality to such a position it becomes no more and no less than putty in
his hands. He does it for money, and he uses these girls as a front for
smuggling drugs all over the world. Over a period of time these young women, or
young men, have their personalities reduced to nothing, their past is
forgotten, and suggestions are put to them and they would do anything that this
man tells them to do.”
Taylor then called to the stand an expert on Hinduism and Eastern
religions who had done research on the Rajneesh group, Professor Johannes
Aagard. He gave the following testimony:
“In Pune, Bhagwan and his people, not least his group
of high-ranking officers, have established an alternative world. He gives them
a mala with his own picture on it, and they get a piece of his hair, connecting
their reality with his. From the beginning the aim is to do away with the mind,
the personality, the memory. You end up being nobody. You have to give up your
ego. You have to empty yourself totally to surrender to Bhagwan.
‘Total surrender’ are the key words. This is done by a series of humiliating
acts where you are forced to do what you hate to do in the group. You lose the
identity feeling which is connected with certain acts, certain reservations,
certain sexual inhibitions. In a number of those workshops promiscuity takes
place in the most rude and horrible ways. Male persons are allowed to do
whatever they like with females, and vice versa, and it aims at bringing down
the consciousness connected with the individual in order that a new
consciousness connected with Bhagwan and his ideology take its place.”
Then the
lawyer presented a document that Maria Kristina's mother had given him and in
which she reported that her daughter had told her the following about the
experiences she had in a Tantra group within the Osho community:
« Kristina was commanded to have sexual intercourse with every man
in the group in turn, in order to “kill her ego.” And as the group leader found that Kristina was hesitating, she shouted at her:
-
“If you are to
surrender to Bhagwan, you must surrender to anybody here, to any man although
the mere thought of it makes you sick —you are not to think— just let it
happen!” »
Then Mr. Taylor asked Professor
Agaard the following question:
- “And what is left at the end of the day?”
To which the professor replied:
- “The will of Bhagwan.”
Then a prosecutor, Mr. C.
Hilliard, asked Professor Agaard:
-
“After a person has
had this process administered to them, do they know what they are doing?”
To which the professor replied:
-
“I must say that they
are observing as a witness, as a spectator, everything they are doing. What is acting is not
them. They are only witnessing an action, and therefore you can murder, but you
are not a murderer. You can steal, but you are not a thief.”
Hilliard: Does Bhagwan say who is a thief,
and who is a murderer?
Aagard: It is the mind, and the mind is an
illusion. Therefore the act of stealing and murdering is an illusion.
Then Mr. Taylor called to the stand Doctor Joan Gomez, a psychiatrist
from the University of London who had examined Koppel.
Taylor: Do you think this young woman
knew, when she was asked to bring the cannabis into this country, the
difference between right and wrong?
Gomez: I do not know about right and wrong, but I am quite
sure she did not know it was against the law. I am sure if Bhagwan said it was
all right, it was just like God saying it.
Taylor: And did she have an alternative?
Gomez: I do not think it would have been possible for her
to opt out at all. Even intellectually she could not, because the alternative
was very horrible. She had to get money to go back to him. One way was
prostitution, the other was cannabis.
Mr. Taylor ended his presentation
by pleading with the court not to send his client to jail, saying:
-
“That will kill her
mind, and all she will do when she comes out is to go back to this sick and sad
community.”
Judge J. Murchie gave Koppel a 15-month suspended sentence.
A similar trial took place that
same year against a young woman named Margot Gordon in Paris. Her lawyer, Mr
Philippe Boulanger, argued in a similar way that young Margot had been
psychologically coerced into smuggling cannabis from India into Europe by the
Rajneesh sect.
But there the judge was less
compassionate and Margot received an eight-month jail sentence plus an
additional 16-month suspended sentence and fined £ 10,000.
~ * ~
These two women I mentioned above
were two cases reported by journalist Win McCormack (see
link), but there were many more
lawsuits that occurred in various countries in Europe, and also in the United
States and Canada. Women and men who were caught smuggling drugs because they
had become Osho's puppets, and trafficking drugs or prostitution were the only
ways they had to continue to pay for their stay in India.
And these were the unknown
victims of Osho that nobody talks about, but that show how monstrous Osho was,
who behind his facade of "spiritual guide" manipulated his followers
to continue getting richer and richer, and when his sannyasins were caught He
did not care about them at all since he had many other indoctrinates to replace
them.
