For a while it went well because I was not entering the cities. But politicians cannot sit silently: they were living so much in the fear of being thrown out of their power positions that they started creating trouble for the meditation camps. Hotels were reserved and when we would arrive the government had canceled it.

Now the hotel manager would say, “We cannot do anything. It is from higher up; for these seven days the government wants to have a special conference, so we cannot give it to you.” And there was no conference. The hotel remained empty just so that we could not have the camp.

When even to have a camp became impossible, that was the time I moved to Pune – just to remain there. “Now, anybody who wants to come should come here” – because they had made it almost impossible for me to move.

In Pune, thousands of people came, and not only from India but from all over the world, because now I was staying in one place. This became even more troublesome to them. I was not even going out of my house. In those seven years in Pune, I had gone only twice out of the house: once to see my father when he was dying and once when Vimalkirti was dying. Otherwise I was just remaining in the house for the simple reason, because now they were so desperate that they wanted to kill me. Now it was not only a question of preventing me, now people were coming! I was not going anywhere so they could not prevent me.

And before ten thousand sannyasins they tried to kill me by throwing a knife. It was something unprecedented, because attempts to kill somebody are not made so publicly – ten thousand eyewitnesses. The knife was there, twenty highly posted police officers were there because they had got an anonymous phone call in the morning: “Some people will try to kill Osho this morning in the discourse.”

They rushed to the ashram, they informed us, and they were sitting there. Before those twenty police officers, ten thousand people, the man threw the knife. He missed. But the court…it was a police case; we did not put a case, there was no need. The police were present and not one policeman – twenty police officers. Ten thousand witnesses were ready to go to the court to be witnesses, the knife was there, the man was caught red-handed – but the court released him saying, “There has been no attempt at assassination.”

The magistrate must have felt guilty. He said to a doctor who was coming to listen to me – and they were friends; through that doctor he sent the message to me: “Tell Osho to forgive me. The pressure from the central government was so much. I am a poor man, I cannot stand such pressure. And I am just going to be promoted, and they threatened me that my promotion will be dropped and I will be transferred to some far-removed area – that my whole life I will not be able to get any promotion. I knew…because everything was clear – there was no question of doubt in it. And it was a police case. Now twenty police officers are not going to tell a lie for no reason. But I had to release him; otherwise, you know these people – they can even kill me.”