The first question:

Osho,
Senator Bob Smith has quoted you as saying that all Oregonians are idiots. Please comment.

I am not disappointed. He has proved my point. I have never said what he is telling people that I have said. What I have said is so clear that even an idiot would be able to understand it, but poor Bob Smith has missed even that.

I had said, “I have seen all kinds of idiots, and I was thinking that this was all: there are no other kinds of idiots. But after coming to Oregon I came to know that I was mistaken. The Oregonian idiot is a class unto itself”

In this statement, where am I saying that all the Oregonians are idiots? I am only talking about the Oregonian idiot as a special class. I am a generous man, but not too generous either. I cannot make the whole of Oregon so special in the world. It will become a unique place if all the Oregonians are idiots. Then there will be no other place comparable to it, it will be simply extraordinary.

Bob Smith has simply proved my point. I was waiting… Somebody is going to prove my point. Now Senator Bob Smith is the first of that special class of idiots in Oregon. He should be happy that he tops them all. Now anybody else doing anything will be second. Bob Smith has won the Nobel Prize. He should change his name – it does not suit such a great personality: Senator Bob Smith? No, “Senator Don Quixote of Oregon, Russia.” That will be the right place for him to belong.

He has also said, “Rajneeshees should not be allowed to remain here.” We have not committed any crime. We have not been in any way harmful to anybody. We are minding our own business. But why are these politicians so shaken, worried? And just one and a half years back the same man had said, “Rajneeshees are absolutely legal and I have nothing to say against them.” Now, within one and a half years everything has changed.

We are the same people; but his political situation has changed, and now anybody who wants to make his political status solid can cash in on us. All the politicians are doing it. We are doing them such a great favor; they should be obliged to us for it. Any politician wanting to win an election has only to do one thing: he has to talk nonsense against us – that’s enough, and he is going to win. All the politicians are doing it.