The Helen Byron Case and its Consequences

At this point in my account of the Osho communes, we enter the final phase of the Rajneeshpuram drama. The Ranch had evolved from the realization of a utopian dream—shaped by the genius of the sannyasins—into a bizarre doomsday scenario marked by intrigue and visions of horror.

The lawsuit filed by former sannyasin Helen Byron against the Rajneesh Foundation marked a turning point in this development—a catastrophic financial and psychological blow that led directly to the subsequent escalation of criminal activity, to Sheela’s resignation, Osho’s arrest and departure from the United States, and ultimately the end of the Rajneeshpuram experiment.

Helen Byron, an American artist, had come to Rajneesh Ashram in Pune in 1979 after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). She took Sannyas and became Ma Idam Shunyo. She loved to live and work in the ashram, experienced great healing regarding her disease and gave loans totalling $ 389000 to the ashram. The largest loan was purportedly for the purchase of a new ashram site in India—a purchase that never materialized. In March 81 she was told by Sheela to secretly leave Poona with her caretaker, go to Colorado and search a property suitable for the new ashram in America. She followed Sheela’s instructions but didn’t find anything appropriate.

In autumn 1981 she was invited to the Big Muddy Ranch. Eight months later she decided to leave, feeling quite unhappy with Sheela’s style of managing the new commune. In her book she describes the main incident for her disenchantment while she was working as a receptionist in Jesus Grove: [1]

An ecstatic Sheela came running to tell me that Bhagwan’s life was spared when his car ran into a cement truck, and that I was partially responsible for saving his life. What? In her excitement, she told me that my money had paid for the armored Rolls Royce he was driving. The heavy cement truck apparently bounced off the armored Rolls Royce, and Bhagwan was not hurt. I was incredulous, could not speak, probably sputtered something. Of course, I was glad Bhagwan was not injured. But this was my first indication that Sheela had lied to me. I was told in Poona that my money was needed for the land purchase in India. I hadn’t worried about it until this moment. All the while, I reasoned in my mind that if the land hadn’t been purchased, the money would still be available when I needed it. This was the promise Sheela gave when I provided the funds.

I eventually discovered the true story.

Sheela not only lied about the land purchase, but Laxmi had found no land in India. Nada. Sheela convinced me to give the money in June 1980, which was forwarded to an ashram bank account in Chicago. From that she ordered a 1979 Silver Wraith II for $82,500 and spent an additional $220,000 to lengthen and install Level Five protection, meaning bullet-proofing that would withstand even a sub-machine gun attack. It was then offered to Bhagwan as a birthday present from Sheela in July 1980.

Sheela felt this armored car, which I assume of the quality of protection needed by a Mafia Don, was vital for Bhagwan to drive the 160 yards from Lao Tzu House to Buddha Hall each morning for discourse. Yes, this exorbitant car to protect him from inept assassins throwing dull knives was about the level that the windmill needed to protect itself from the ferocious attack of Don Quixote. This heavy expensive Rolls had been shipped from Florida to Poona and then, in a few months, back to America to Rancho Rajneesh where the enemy happened to be a cement truck which, indeed, lost the battle. My loan given to buy land was about the right amount to cover this gift.

Byron left the Ranch towards the end of 1982, deeply disappointed with Sheela and convinced the commune was no longer right for her. A few weeks later her daughter Makima, the daughter’s husband and another couple, who were all longtime trusted commune members from the Poona days, left the commune secretly. This caused quite a stir among the remaining residents, adding to the growing resentment against Sheela’s style of handling internal matters. Sheela called a meeting, which Brian Gibb (then known as Pramod) describes:[2]

Sheela had held a general meeting at which she appeared nervous and grim. She called in Vivek to speak and to say that Sheela had Bhagwan’s full confidence in everything she did, and that everyone should support her.

When Vivek says these words, my eyes fill up with tears. I know that Vivek would not say these words in public unless Bhagwan had told her to do so. I feel incredibly sad. It simply confirms for me my own sense that Bhagwan does know and approve of what Sheela is doing.

The same meeting is mentioned in a book by another longtime disciple Satya Bharti (see chapter 15). Satya, who had been a close friend of Sheela in the seventies, had been at this point already very critical of Sheela. She was repeatedly tempted to leave because of Sheela, but when she found clear hints that Osho backed up Sheela’s leadership and instructed her how to do the work, she stayed: [3]

Distraught by the obvious dissatisfaction of people she considered friends, Sheela begged Bhagwan to relieve her of her duties. She’d obviously failed as an administrator, she told him; she wanted to retire. As she repeated the story at a community-wide meeting, my heart danced with joy. Sheela was resigning!

“Bhagwan said he needs me,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion—dammit!—as Vivek came up to the microphone and put her arms around Sheela, tears in both of their eyes.

“I want you all to know,” Vivek whispered softly in what was the first and last public speech I ever heard her make, “that I think Sheela’s doing a wonderful job. Bhagwan’s happy with her. If we can’t all work together without conflicts, he said he’ll leave.” Die, she meant obviously: “leave his body.” “He’s only here for us. We have to work together in harmony. Please! I can’t tell you how important it is. I want you all to know that I support Sheela totally.”

Seeing the two women who were presumably closest to Bhagwan suddenly embracing each other after years of hostility, tears pouring down both their faces, touched me immeasurably; I began to cry. As Kirti held me in his arms, Sheela asked everyone if we wanted her to continue in her job. Catcalls of affirmation and thunderous applause that neither Kirti nor I joined were the enthusiastic response to her insecure (manipulative?) query. For the umpteenth time since I’d gotten to the ranch, I willed myself to trust Sheela. If Vivek did, how could I not? Surrender, Satya, I told myself; it’s time. It wasn’t easy.

The meeting was also the first time that the residents heard about Osho threatening to leave his body, unless everybody would cooperate to create the commune. When I talked to Sheela in 2018, she claimed he uttered this threat privately quite often, specifically when he didn’t get what he wanted.

Helen Byron, her daughter, the daughter’s friends and Brian Gibb settled in Santa Fe, forming a group of former Poona ashramites, who all strongly disliked the way the Oregon commune was run. The group sent a postcard to Osho, which showed the famous Camel Rock close to Santa Fe and he received it. From then on, Osho often spoke about the “Camels of Santa Fe”. “Camel” for him was a synonym for a stupid human being and ridiculing these camels became one of his favorite topics in later discourses: [4]

I wanted them to go away for the simple reason that they were wasting their time in a wrong place. It is a wrong place for those people because it cannot fulfill their desires. They are wasting their time and they are wasting the time of my people. My people are working in some way to create an energy field where people can become awakened, and they are not here for that purpose. They are an unnecessary load.

So I gave them the idea to go to Santa Fe. All the camels are gathering there in Santa Fe. They are known as the dirty dozen; because only one dozen camels are there, they have become famous as the dirty dozen. A great achievement!

In January 1983[5] Helen Byron requested the return of her loans from Sheela, but there was no response from the Ranch. Over a year later, in July 1984, she was informed that she was declared a Bodhisattva (see chapter on Sansads)—a development she found insulting rather than honoring. Finally she decided to file a lawsuit against the Rajneesh Foundation.

Jane Stork aka Shanti B remembers how Byron’s request was handled on the other side: [6]

Sheela definitely showed Bhagwan Helen Byron’s letter and sought his advice on what to do—as she always did in this and all matters pertaining to himself and the community when she went to see him every evening. I was present when Sheela returned from Bhagwan that evening and told the dismayed lawyers that Bhagwan refused to return the money and that they were to argue that it had been a gift.

I don’t remember whether Helen Byron’s request for the return of her money came from her personally or from her lawyer. In any case, it was our Rajneeshee lawyers in the legal department who had to handle what then became a legal case. Had Bhagwan agreed with Sheela’s and the lawyers’ advice to return the money, there would never have been a lawsuit, with a judgement adding crippling fines to the original debt. It was a lawsuit that we were bound to lose even without creating false evidence, as by then (1984/5) feelings were running high against the community, added to the fact that Helen Byron was a frail elderly woman. Sheela had relayed all of that to Bhagwan but he dismissed it….

In Roshani’s Chronicle we find on May 20, 1985, a summary of various newspaper reports on the proceedings at the United States District Court for Oregon, Portland:[7]

First arguments in jury trial (6 member jury before Judge Owen Panner) in which 65 year old former sannyasin (Helen C. Byron, Santa Fe, NM, disassociated June, 1982) suffering from multiple sclerosis is suing RFI for the return of $389,000 and $1.5 million in punitive damages; at issue is whether $309,000 was a loan or donation and which corporation should be sued for the $80,000 deposited in the Rajneesh Currency debit card system; Byron says she has donated $160,000-173,000 to RFI, which she is not trying to reclaim and she was angry that her money had been used to buy an armored Rolls Royce; RFI attorney says there are contribution receipts (Byron says they are not signed and she hadn’t seen them until filing the lawsuit), the donations were not claimed on her tax return and had come from a Swiss bank where monies had been deposited to avoid paying taxes.

 In spite of her own reservations Sheela followed Osho’s guidelines and came up with a double strategy to prevent Byron from winning the case:

• According to Ava’s testimony, Sheela instructed Anugiten, Yogini and Ava to ‘do her in’ while she was staying at the Marriott Hotel in Portland—a euphemism that implied physical harm.
• Fake evidence by some of her confidants like Jane Stork:
  … I was first notified of it in May 1985 when I was informed that as treasurer of Rajneesh Foundation International, I was to appear in federal court to testify that the money in question had been a donation. I was to do this by verifying that the bookkeeping records were original and genuine. I was not told that the records had been tampered with, but I could see that for myself and was aghast that I was to present them as authentic. … I took the stand very unwillingly, though as usual I did not protest. When asked if the records before me were bona fide I answered ‘Yes’ …[8]

Swami Manas, who was working in RLS (Rajneesh Legal Department) at that time, recalled in an interview with me in Dec 2020:

I was part of the preparations for the Helen Byron lawsuit. I was preparing people for all the lying. We were telling these lies. Everybody knew it was a lie, but we had to pretend it was true. Everybody knew it was a loan and not a gift. But the legal team was preparing people who were going to be witnesses to lie. We were pretending to be prosecutors to prepare them—it was horrible.

A group of Rajneeshee lawyers, headed by Niren and Subhan, tried their best to convince the jury that Byron had given the whole amount as a donation. Outside the courtroom some old friends of Helen and Brian, who were still members of the commune, tried to put pressure on them.[9].

In the courtroom some thirty-five sannyasins—including many people who had been their closest friends—harassed Byron and her witnesses. The sannyasins stared at them in the courtroom, taunted them in the corridors, and crowded them in the courthouse elevator. Byron’s lawyer, Mark Cushing, and several other witnesses told me that Siddha, the psychiatrist, seemed particularly venomous. Reportedly, he held his nose and complained of “the smell”; wondered aloud, “How much money are you getting for this?”; he asked Barbara Byron, “How does it feel to be Judas?”; and called them all “traitors?’[10]

Despite the intimidation, the courtroom testimony proved decisive: Byron and Brian Gibb presented a far more convincing case to the jury, and Helen ultimately prevailed.

She writes in her book[11]:

And so, the end of my tale I must share. After leaving the ashram, it became clear that I must fight for the return of my funds which I had loaned to the ashram and later discovered went to purchase a well-endowed Rolls Royce for our guru. During 1983, I requested from Sheela repayment of these funds repeatedly to no avail. I then filed a lawsuit later that same year against the Rajneesh Foundation.

In May 1985, the lawsuit came to trial. The basic premise of the suit was that it was my understanding that the loan was for the land purchase in India and was just that, a loan, to be repaid. There were many misconceptions that flew in the courtroom during the days of the trial. It was disturbing and distressing to see many of my former friends who were still at the Oregon ranch changing colors before my eyes. I had most certainly become a traitor and deserter in their eyes. Once all the final words were slung. the jury decided in my favor and awarded me with the return of my funds.

Helen is inaccurate here, as she was awarded a lot more money than she had loaned.

On May 25 1985, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon (Portland) ruled in favor of Helen Byron. Rajneesh Foundation International (RFI) was ordered to pay back the loans—$ 389.000—and an additional $ 1,250,000 in punitive damages[12]. This sum was far larger than the original claim and threatened the commune’s solvency.

The commune leaders were in shock. They had been aware that their scheming against Helen Byron might fail and that the original debt might have to be paid back. But a fine which was three times higher than the amount in dispute wasn’t just a verdict against Sheela’s credibility. It was a heavy blow against the commune itself and threatened to cause its very existence.

Before Sheela left, Osho publicly never commented on Shunyo (Helen Byron) or about the lawsuit. But in the first discourse after Sheela had left the ranch on September 14 he came up with a rather twisted story and ill-founded accusations against Sheela: [13]

One of our old sannyasins, Shunyo, has donated three hundred thousand dollars, after an attack on my life was made, to purchase a bulletproof car. Those three hundred thousand dollars were simply swallowed up by Sheela and her brother, Bipin. They went on saying, “The money will be returned, it will be returned within a month.” Now almost eight years have passed, and not a single dollar has been returned to the commune. And I heard yesterday that, although Sheela and her whole gang has left, Bipin is still in Jesus house.

Back at the ranch after the lost lawsuit, a devasted Sheela went to see Osho in his room in Lao Tzu Grove and told him that there was no way the Sannyasins could win a lawsuit in Oregon, as the public was turning more and more against them. During the next few days Sheela called daily meetings with the most trusted members of her staff. At one point she wanted to make sure that she could give her confidants a precise description of Osho’s answer. So she brought a tape recorder hidden in her bag to Osho’s room and recorded the conversation. Later she played the tape to a group of people in Jesus Grove in her room. Ava, KD, Jane Stork, Patipada, Sagun and Anugiten were all present and reported some time later about these meetings.

Ava Avalos recalls in the first set of interviews with the FBI in Portland from Oct 7- 22, 1985, p. 27, which is available on the internet. I recall that she told me the same story about the tape in a private conversation around the same time:

Sheela again made the statement about having to choose between one enlightened master and one thousand unenlightened, then the master must be chosen. Sheela indicated that if necessary, the one thousand people would have to be killed, Avalos further advised that during these meetings Sheela held up Avalos, Yogini, and Anugiten as examples of those who had been doing good work, people who were “strong.”…in one of the meetings, Sheela quoted Bhagwan as saying that Hitler was a good person, and that it was necessary to get Sheela’s people strong to that point.

Ma Anand Sagun is quoted in her FBI testimony from November 6, 1985 (Sagun’s legal name is Langhoff. She was the girlfriend of mayor Krishna Deva and was a relatively late inclusion in Sheela’s special task force):

Langhoff recalls that approximately two weeks after the July 6, 1985, Devaraj incident, Shanti Bhadra confronted her in the Jesus Grove mud room. Shanti B. told Langhoff that she saw how paranoid Langhoff was on the morning of July 6. Shanti B. asked her if she had heard the tape where Bhagwan talks to Sheela about killing people. Langhoff responded, and asked what tape Shanti B. was referring to. Shanti Bhadra said that Sheela had consulted Bhagwan about what to do about people who get in the way of the vision and Bhagwan said “to just simply get rid of them.” Shanti B. repeated Bhagwan’s words, “that anyone that’s in the way, to just get rid of them.” Shanti B. told Langhoff that she should ask Sheela to hear the tape and repeated that she must hear it—however, Langhoff never did so.

Mayor Krishna Deva recalls Osho’s statement about the value of life: [14]

… Sheela told him and others that Bhagwan said on several occasions that “a master’s life is worth a million other lives.” Bhagwan said, “Life is meaningless unless one is enlightened.” His message was that if a million died to save one enlightened master it is okay.

Later he states that Bhagwan knew about Sheela’s secret activities…regarding Bhagwan’s news conference which occurred immediately after Sheela and her group departed Rajneeshpuram, Bhagwan was aware of all the crimes, not because he discovered them after the departure of the group, but because Sheela kept him advised of what was going on all along.

Jane Stork also mentions some statements of the tape she heard in the meeting: [15]

My only personal experience of what might be considered his endorsement of such clandestine activity was a tape Sheela played one evening to twenty or more of us. It was the tape of a conversation she had had with Bhagwan in which she had asked him to what lengths his sannyasins may go in order to protect him. Bhagwan answered to the effect that an enlightened being such as himself was a very rare thing and that if ten thousand people had to die in order to protect the enlightened one, then so be it. He also said that if there was an attempt to seize him, his sannyasins were to form a massive human shield around him, which left open just which ten thousand people he had in mind: Them or Us ?

There can be little doubt about the authenticity of the above statements. None of the above people would have any benefit in blaming Osho for something that Sheela was responsible for at the time of the testimony. While there had previously been talk about killing people and Yogini, Ava and Anugiten had been making a rather clumsy attempt “to do Helen Byron in”—as they called it—Sheela made it clear in those meetings that from now on the survival of the commune would be depending on their readiness to get some people out of the way and that Osho was fully backing her up. They were all in a state of shock, but only two men declared their unwillingness to cooperate and left the group. The others did not—at least openly—speak up against the directive and started to plan and prepare the assassination of United States Attorney for Oregon, Charles H. Turner, with the understanding that they were doing the master’s work. Two women went to Texas and New Mexico and bought several guns with false identities. Two other women checked out the location of Turner’s house, and strategies were discussed how to ambush him without getting caught. Jane Stork, who was the best shot of the whole group volunteered to fire the gun.[16]

But before the plan was executed, at least two members of the group (Vidya and Samadhi) came to the conclusion—in spite of the collective madness that had grasped the whole group in those days—that killing a government official was going too far, and they convinced Sheela to abandon the plan. This action prevented the group from becoming real murderers but some years later it didn’t save them from being prosecuted for a conspiracy against the US attorney of Oregon.

There was, however, another story going on between Osho and Sheela, which had started at their departure from India in 1981. As I have mentioned in the chapter “Departure to America”, Osho had told—unknown to Sheela—Sheela’s predecessor Ma Yoga Laxmi on the day of his departure in Mumbai to look for a commune in India, to which he would return after spending some time in the US. But Laxmi felt betrayed by Sheela and Osho. Instead of continuing her search for a commune in India she decided to follow them to New Jersey, where she attempted to win back her number one position. She did this by giving him expensive presents and trying to find a large property in America together with Deeksha before Sheela could succeed. But Laxmi failed and was on Osho’s instruction degraded by Sheela to a common commune member.

Osho mentioned Laxmi’s situation in a private darshan with Laxmi’s brother Laherubhai, who had managed to come from India for the first summer festival in July 1982:

He expressed very much happiness on seeing me, made me sit near him and told Vivek to bring a cap, same type as he wore, and he put it on my head with his own hands. After that, he talked with me for about fifty minutes. First, he asked about me. Then he enquired about Pune Ashram in detail. Then he talked about Mradula and Laxmi. For Laxmi, he said to me, “I have advised Laxmi to take rest now, and have arranged adequately for taking care of her, because in America it is not possible to work like in Pune. But because of her nature Laxmi cannot sit silently.

The next appearance of Laxmi and Osho’s desire to return to India is in Veena’s recollection of a short talk, which happened sometime in 1982.[17]

After spending about an hour with Osho she came out looking a bit fragile and I put her in the car to take her home . She was initially very quiet, but then volunteered the information that Osho had instructed her to go back to India immediately and find a suitable place for him to return to. She didn’t elaborate much but the inference was that he was not happy being in the USA and wanted to go back to India as soon as possible.

Obviously this meeting happened without Sheela and shows Osho’s desire to return to India. He hadn’t given up on Laxmi and hoped that she would succeed. But again Laxmi did not follow his instructions and decided to stay on in the US.

We will never find out whether Osho kept his intention about his return to India hidden from Sheela at this point, or if she knew about it, and simply decided to fade it out from her consciousness.

But in the beginning of June 85, a few days after Sheela had concluded that the killing of the enemies of the commune had become a necessity for the continuation of the commune, Osho offered the Indian solution to Sheela in another private meeting directly.

Patipada mentions the surprising turn of events in her book “Forever is not long enough”:[18]

Sheela came back from one meeting with Bhagwan and said to me: “Go pack and get ready—we have to leave for India right away.” It seemed that evening Bhagwan had told Sheela to go look for some land in northern India. He was thinking of a new commune. I went back to my A-frame and frantically started packing … telling Karuno [Patipada’s boyfriend] that I was going to India. I was beyond the comprehension of anything anymore. We left for San Francisco that night … stopping so that another person and I could obtain visas. We were on our way to India. We arrived in new Delhi and didn’t make any effort to look for land in northern India. There was some fighting going on … and it was not totally safe to travel … but we could have gone. Sheela kept calling the ranch to give Bhagwan messages saying it was impossible to go. Finally we were told to come back.

 

Krishna Deva told the story in his FBI statement to investigators from 1985:

K.D. states that SHEELA took he and PATIPADA with her to India and they left on or about June 6, 1985. SHEELA did not make much of an attempt to LAXMI or to locate a place for BHAGWAN to go. They stayed in their hotel for three days and called BHAGWAN and advised him that It would be extremely dangerous for him to relocate to India at that time due to the Sikh rebellion that was occurring and other factors. They received a message from BHAGWAN telling them to forget trying to locate a place for him and to come back to the ranch. On the way back K.D. became ill on the plane and remained so for weeks after returning to the ranch.

Ten years later, KD testified again in court during the Croft/Hagan case about the trip:

How long were you in India, sir?

A couple of days. It took a day travel time, each time around, so it was about a day.

Why did you go there?

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had asked Sheela to go and investigate whether or not there was a possibility of locating the community there. And this was as a result of the pressure that was being felt that the community may not last in Oregon because of the fact the immigration was closing in. And so he asked can we go there and –actually, Sheela had a great aversion to India, so only made half-hearted attempts, once getting there, giving the excuse there was some kind of violence in North India as a pretext to come right back home.

There were indeed some heavy riots going on in India in the beginning of June, 1985, but they were confined to a few cities in the state of Gujarat. Sheela could have searched for another property in another Indian state, but it seems that she had lost her sense of finding practical solutions at this point.

Sheela’s state of being extremely overstrained was magnified through some other threats that were looming over her head around June 1985: [19]

Sheela had come to believe that the authorities would soon be coming to arrest her and Rajneesh. She said this when she launched the God v. the Universe suit. She had other worries as well. The Internal Revenue Service had given her notice that its criminal division was investigating her personal income taxes, and she knew that the Oregonian was about to publish its long investigative series on the Rajneeshees…

Sheela also knew that some of the renegades were now actively supporting the investigating authorities. Her former secretary Kate Strelley aka Avibha reports[20]:

Out of the blue Deeksha called me from Switzerland. She advised me to get involved with the case, as she was. She had given information, but refused to testify. How, exactly, she came to be involved with the INS has never been made clear to me. However, she assured me the INS agents were good people to work with.

So began a relatively short—but certainly instructive—experience with the U.S. government.

From the first I was very wary of getting involved. But Deeksha’s call had turned my thinking around. She made it clear that she was working with the INS and some other federal people, as was Shantam. “It would be good for you to work with them too,” was how she had phrased it.

At one point I argued with her. “Deeksha,” I said, This is Sheela that we’re talking about!” I knew that even though they had fallen out over the Ashram at one level, they were still very close. “How can you do it?”

Deeksha said, “It’s not Sheela, it’s Bhagwan!” Deeksha and I were in agreement then, and I think we’re still in agreement: If the term “evil” means anything, Bhagwan certainly played the major part—not Sheela.

Deeksha said, “If you act now, things won’t get out of hand and people won’t die.” And what she was saying made sense. I remembered how startled I had been when Sheela had told me on the phone, in regard to a question of a possible Ranch-wide sweep by government agents to check for green-card validations, “If we have to have a bloodbath, we’ll have a bloodbath. And if all these people have to die, then they have to die.” I felt the response was excessive.

I was bombarded with information on all sides. In the end the best solution seemed to be to work with the government.

But after I worked with them for a short time I was convinced that they were as corrupt as anyone else. At that point I told Sheela what I was doing. From then on I would pass along to Sheela whatever information they were giving me; she would tell me what she wanted them to hear. And things would go back-and-forth in this way. Pretty crazy—but what connected with the ashram doesn’t have that element of loony-ness?

When I asked Jane Stork in an e-mail exchange in 2020, she described Sheela’s (and her staff’s) situation:

In looking back, I think it is important to remember that at that time none of us, and least of all Sheela, were rational human beings. Rather we were in what could be called a group psychosis, in thrall to Bhagwan and his vision and our perceived need to protect him and the vision.

Upchara, who was a resident in Jesus Grove observed that Sheela once got a break from the drugs, but it didn’t last long: “When Sheela’s mother came to live on the Ranch, she felt that her daughter was in a very bad shape and decided to help her. She cooked her a special diet and stopped any kind of medication. Sheela, even though she had obvious withdrawal symptoms, sticked with the diet for a while and started to look better. But with the next heavy stress situation, Puja regained access to her and started giving her injections and pills again, so Sheela fell back into her addiction.”

I found two more stories that document Sheela’s physical and mental state in those days:

The first one was published by Madhuri in Facebook in 2021, where she describes an official lunch with representatives of a telephone company in Jesus Grove:

…There must have been twenty of us. Sheela had gone back into her room for a bit and she now appeared at her door wearing a long white lace wedding dress. The middle finger of her right hand was elaborately bandaged in white as well; and, of course, it stuck straight up whenever she raised the hand. Which she did immediately, to show everyone and explain: “I was cleaning out a cupboard,” she said, “and a spider bit me. My finger got so big –.“ Her huge round eyes blinked—the heavy flat voice seeming to come from a glossy, cynical brown toad. “So it had to be bandaged.” She sat down at the long table, we all sat, and soup was placed before each diner. Sheela went on, “I’m wearing this dress because Jayananda and I are going to get married again. Last time we got married it was on an airplane. So we wanted to get married on the ground, too.” Jayananda, as ever giving nothing away, sat near her; he neither spoke nor nodded nor shook his head. His eyes held…what? Not nothing. But what sort of something was it? I could not fathom him at all.

…Whatever pills Puja (Sheela’s nurse) had given her patient to cope with the pain caused by the mighty spider’s mandibles, their effect was accelerating as we watched… She was, quite frankly, maundering, with sentimental slurrings coming in amongst the matter-of-fact words. Then she toppled forward into her soup.

The table held its breath and scraped its chairs back. The phone company guys, I saw with a quick glance, were in shock, and still trying to put a brave face on it. Someone helped Sheela sit upright and mopped her off. As I remember it, another pill was administered—presumably to wake her up. It worked; some dreadful eternity later we were all gathered in her bedroom.

Swami Prem Anubuddha, whom Osho once called his best bodyworker, remembers an incident in RIMU, the Rajneesh International Meditation academy:[21]

The group leaders call me into Tantra group for a day to do bodywork with the participants—it must have been close before Sheela left. And who’s in the Tantra group, but Jayananda (Sheela’s husband, who had been assisting her in her work). He had never done a group. When he split up with Sheela, it kind of broke his connection with the role he was in, and he wanted to be free from being with Sheela. So, he does this whole program. It was called “Fresh Beginnings” and it included Primal work and then Tantra work.

I am there as one of the co-leaders. I go there innocently at 10 o’clock and I’m starting the group. Suddenly the door opens and Sheela and Puja come into the room. They just burst into the group room and Sheela catharts on Jay. Turiya and Prasad, the group leaders, can’t stop her. Sheela is just going at Jay.

I kind of stepped back. She had been in the rebalancing groups before, too, and I had a good relationship with her. But I knew she was borderline crazy when she was on drugs. I knew she was on uppers and downers big time.

At a certain point Puja—I’m right next to both of them—very, very discreetly gets out a syringe. I don’t even know if other people saw it. But because I was sitting right next to Sheela, I saw Puja inject a syringe in Sheela’s gluteal area. Then within a few minutes the whole energy calmed down a little in the room and then it ended maybe by tea break.

This incident was really not talked about and Turiya, I and Prasad, we said, “okay, let’s not even pretend this happened.”

I am telling you this story to show that Sheela was an opioid addict. All the opioid addicts—which my sister is one, so I have firsthand experience—exhibit really unbelievable mood swings. Anyone who thinks that Sheela was not an upper and downer addict is not seeing the whole picture of Sheela. I think, now she got off it, but it started with her having to deal with physical pains.

On top of her problems with the outside world, with her staff, and with her own sanity, Sheela came to know in June 85 about an even bigger threat for the continuation of Rajneeshpuram.

Through the bugging devices in Osho’s house she and Savita were informed about everything that the master said privately. The bugs had been secretly placed by Julian (see chapter 28) in Osho’s room and Vivek’s room and the receiving ends were in Jesus Grove (Sheela’s headquarters).

Samadhi was frequently assigned to listen on the headphones taking turns with Anubhavo and two or three others. According to her the wiretapping wasn’t done to control the master but with the understanding that he needed to be protected from his doctors who were giving him too many drugs. She remembers the situation:[22]

This was a whole separate operation that happened in Jesus Grove. We were sitting there with the earphones on, which led to some wires that Julian had put there. There wasn’t a lot of talking, because Bhagwan was mostly alone. I don’t remember him talking to himself. He was only talking to Chetana, Vivek, Devaraj or Sheela…

I myself was completely shocked because before I started listening to him on the headphones I didn’t have any personal meetings with Bhagwan on the Ranch. We saw him on the road or at gatherings at the festivals. Then to listen to this person—it was initially shocking to hear the quiver in his voice—the emotion in his voice, which he never expressed in any of the discourses or in public appearances.

Was this the same person I kept asking? Is this the same person? Am I really listening to him, you know? I remember having that reaction frequently.

When there was something remarkable content, Anubhavo took the recording to Savita or Sheela and they decided whether action had to be taken. The most shocking recording was of a conversation of Bhagwan with his personal physician Devaraj around June 1985.

David Knapp (former Mayor Krishna Deva) stated during the Croft/Hagan case in 1995:

I listened to a copy of a tape from a bug in Bhagwan’s room where he [Devaraj] and Bhagwan discussed how to assist Bhagwan in committing suicide.

Jane Stork remembers hearing precise details of Osho’s and Devaraj’s plan: [23]

One evening Sheela called me into her room and said there was another tape from Bhagwan’s room she wanted me to listen to. What I heard was incomprehensible to me. Bhagwan was speaking with his doctor. He was asking whether it was possible to bring on death so that it would be painless and dignified. The doctor told him three drugs were needed. They should be administered intravenously, in a particular order. The first was morphine. Morphine would put the person into a beautiful space and slow the breathing. A sufficiently large dose of morphine would slow the breathing to the point of stopping it. The second drug was curare, which would produce total body paralysis; and the third was potassium chloride, which would then stop the heart.

Now Sheela and her combatants saw themselves with their backs against the wall fighting against the whole world—protecting the vision, the commune, and the master. None of them had been killers or even criminals in their former lives, but the latest developments required another drastic step. After hearing the tape, the consequence was another murder plot. Devaraj was to be injected with a poisonous substance during master’s day celebration. Jane volunteered to do the job and Puja provided her with a high dosage of Adrenalin.

There are many descriptions of the drama on master’s day and Devaraj’s narrow escape from death, but there are not many contradictions about the story and it is very clear that Osho did not know anything about Sheela’s actions, so I will not go into details here.

I asked Jane Stork about Puja’s role:

As far as I am concerned, Puja is a kind and gentle person, and courageous. Her mother was Philippine and her father an American. She has a lot of the Asian art about her and none of the loud, boisterous, white European/American manner. She was not good at speaking up for herself, she was not outspoken like a Deeksha or a Padma, she was the silent servant. Some people have taken her quiet manner to be proof that she was heartless, without emotion. Those people are speaking about themselves, not Puja.

When I lived in Jesus Grove, Puja was always around Sheela, doing her bidding. I knew Puja not so well, until we were locked up together.

I always experienced Puja’s role as being Sheela’s slave; she did whatever was demanded of her and never answered back. As I understand it, Sheela took Puja as her private nurse already in Pune, not long after Puja arrived there. It was Puja’s misfortune to have been a nurse and Sheela had a sick husband. Much like Anugiten who had the misfortune to be Savita’s boyfriend, which made Sheela aware of him and so conscript him to do all kinds of illegal things.

I, personally, am indebted to Puja. By giving me adrenalin to attack Devaraj, she saved his life, and mine.

Mahendra: Do you mean that it was a fortunate mistake on Puja’s side that she chose the wrong substance or dosage, or did she intentionally choose a substance that wouldn’t kill Devaraj?

Jane: Puja never spoke about it to me but I am convinced that she gave me a syringe filled with adrenaline because she knew, injected into a muscle, adrenaline would not kill anyone. Puja was a very competent nurse practitioner. She knew what she was doing.

Mahendra: Why would Puja secretly boycott Sheela’s intentions?

Jane: I think it is safe to say that she simply did not want anybody to be killed. She went along with Sheela’s schemes because she found herself in that position, but she always stopped, or thwarted, an act that could lead to the death of someone. It may not even have been a conscious decision but rather an instinctive act. She was a nurse practitioner. She was in the business of healing, not killing.

Let us never forget that that was a very particular situation we lived in then. We all knew, everybody in the community knew, that if we spoke up too loudly, we would have to leave. Each of us had our own investment in being there.

Osho was informed about Jane Stork’s attack on Devaraj; he suspected that Sheela had something to do with it and he questioned her. But she denied her involvement and covered up for Jane.

Two weeks later Osho answered to Burt Rudman from KOMO TV: [24]

Rudman: Bhagwan, we’re here to do a story on your personal secretary Sheela. I was hoping that you might be able to describe your personal relationship with her, and perhaps why it was Sheela with whom you spoke during your vow of public silence.

Osho: You can just see Sheela: she is so beautiful. Do you think anything more is needed? I have chosen her as my secretary because she has lived with me for many years, and I have seen not only her physical beauty, but also her spiritual beauty. I have seen her intelligence. I have seen that she can manage this whole commune of crazy people.

 Secretly, Osho, Sheela and Savita knew that the show might be over any moment. Various emergency plans had been pondered over for many months in case Sheela and/or Osho would have to leave because of various impending indictments—possibly in combination with a violent attack on the Ranch.

RLS (Rajneesh Legal Services, Rajneeshpuram’s own law firm) was told to research which countries had extradition treaties with the US government. They had found out that Bermuda was the closest country without a treaty, Germany did extradite under certain circumstances, Switzerland did not have such a treaty.

Sheela was ready to take Osho out of the country and in all likeliness Osho knew about her plans. Mayor KD told the investigators at the beginning of October 1995:[25]

In January or February of 1985, Plan B was put into effect. This involved finding locations to move Bhagwan to, if they had to leave the United States. That included the Bahamas, Singapore, Cayman Island and Bermuda. Plan B also included leaving the commune out of debt.

Without getting a divorce from her second husband Jayananda first, Sheela had secretly married Swiss Dipo (one of her trusted finance managers) in Mexico in autumn 1984. That meant she would be able to live in Switzerland where she couldn’t be extradited.

There was also a detailed flight plan for Osho in case he needed to get out secretly. A handful of trusted construction workers like Anugiten (Savita’s boyfriend) were chosen to build an underground room in Jesus Grove with hidden access, where the master could be hiding for a few days. From there a secret tunnel led to the Rajneeshpuram airstrip—where he could board one of the Ranch owned planes and disappear from the US.

Additionally, there were guidelines given out to the legal department and the private security force on how to act as a protective shield in case one of the investigating authorities attempted to arrest Osho.

Although they were close to collapse under extreme stress, Sheela and Savita were well prepared for every eventuality. While various emergency plans and escape scenarios had been meticulously worked out, the leadership remained clear on one essential point: an armed confrontation was to be avoided at all costs.

[1] Helen Byron Nothing Too Much: One Woman – Many Circles, iUniverse, Lincoln, 2003.

[2] Brian Gibb, The Imperfect Master, unofficially published 2000.

[3] Satya Bharti Franklin, The Promise of Paradise, Station Hill Press, 1992

[4] Osho, The Last Testament, August 21, 1985

[5] According to James Gordon. The Golden Guru. p. 177

[6] E-mail exchange with Jane Stork, spring 2020

[7] Roshani Cari Shay, Chronology of Events Relating to Rajneeshpuram, available on the Sannyas Wiki

[8] Stork, Jane. Breaking the Spell: My life as a Rajneeshee, and the long journey back to freedom. 2009

[9] A detailed description of the events is available in: Brian Gibb. The Imperfect Master. Unpublished.

[10]  James S. Gordon. The Golden Guru. The Stephen Greene Press. 1987

[11] Helen Byron, Nothing Too Much: One Woman – Many Circles

[12] Details of the case retrievable from: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Byron_v._Rajneesh_Foundation_International

[13] “From Bondage To Freedom”, September 16, 1985

[14] David Berry Knapp aka Krishna Deva, FBI Statement, Nov 15, 1985

[15] Stork, Jane. Breaking the Spell: My life as a Rajneeshee, and the long journey back to freedom. 2009

[16] Ibid. Jane describes the acquisition of the guns at length, Anugiten, KD and Ava describe the incidents in their testimonies.

[17] Veena Schlegel, Glimpses of my Master, 2015, www.3books.co.uk

[18] Prem Patipada, “Forever is not long enough”, Sedona 1997

[19] Frances Fitzgerald, “Rajneeshpuram” in The New Yorker, 1986

[20] Kate Strelley, “The Ultimate Game”, San Francisco, 1987

[21] My personal interviews with Anubuddha, autumn 2021.

[22] Zoom Talks with Samadhi in 2022 and 2024

[23] Stork, Jane. Breaking the Spell: My life as a Rajneeshee, and the long journey back to freedom. 2009

[24] World Press Conference, 20 July 1985 pm in Jesus Grove

[25] Oregon State Police report https://heritage.lib.pacificu.edu/s/rajneeshpuram/page/welcome