The last thing they did – because they had nothing against me: before the trial the government attorneys came to my attorneys, which is a rare thing. Only the weaker party goes to the stronger party for negotiations. They came to negotiate the case before the trial began; and the negotiations they were proposing…I will tell you exactly how cunning it was.

The condition was: “If Osho accepts the guilt on two small counts, then we will allow him to leave the jail. We will allow the judge to release him with only one condition: that he will not be able to enter America for five years.

“If you don’t accept the terms and you want to fight the case – although we know and you know that we don’t have any case against him – then we will not allow him to be bailed out. And the case can be prolonged for five years, ten years, fifteen years. We know you will win the case, so we will prolong it as much as possible. And the whole pressure of the government is on it; it is a question of prestige. We don’t want to be defeated by a single individual.”

My attorneys came with tears in their eyes. They were not sannyasins; they were the topmost attorneys in the United States. But in these twelve days while I was in jail they were coming to see me, and by and by something of love, something of respect had already happened. They would come into the jail and they would say, “We cannot sit on the chair in front of you; it feels strange. Allow us to sit on the floor just the way you allow your sannyasins to sit.”

They came with tears, and they said, “They have proposed such a thing that we are in a dilemma. We know you are not guilty and we know that you are not going to accept that you are guilty. But they are not going to accept bail at any cost – ten million dollars, twenty million dollars. They say no; at no cost is it possible to take him on bail. We are afraid that they will kill you, they will torture you, they will harass you.

“And they can continue it for years. Your whole movement will be suffering, thousands of sannyasins will be suffering. We have seen: there are many sannyasins who have not eaten anything since you have been in jail. So just think of those sannyasins, the people who love you, and accept on the two minor points.”

Seeing the whole situation, just for you I have accepted that I am guilty. And you can see the cunningness of the government: they had said that they would simply release me and keep me out of America for five years, but once I accepted the guilt, the judge immediately gave the fine of four hundred thousand dollars – and five years of no entry to America.

These four hundred thousand dollars were not part of the negotiations, but the judge was not part of the negotiations either – although he knew exactly on which points I was willing to accept that I was guilty. There were thirty-four points, but only on those two points on which I had agreed with the attorneys. The judge asked, “Do you feel you are guilty or not?” He was certainly aware of the negotiations, and the people who were negotiating were aware that four hundred thousand dollars would be the fine. All these liars, cunning people…