Tupe claims that he undertook the attack, because he believed Osho to be an agent of the CIA.

Osho believed humanity was threatened with extinction due to over-population, impending nuclear holocaust and diseases such as AIDS, and thought many of society's ills could be remedied by scientific means.

Especially after his move to the United States, Osho became increasingly critical of homosexuality and also believed that homosexuality created or caused AIDS, though it is unclear what he believed about the concrete biological mechanism by which a sexual orientation may create a contagious virus.

A few later said that, while Osho was not directly involved, they discussed such plans and activities with him in darshan and he gave his blessing.

On 10 April 1981, having discoursed daily for nearly 15 years, Osho entered a three-and-a-half-year period of self-imposed public silence, and satsangs — silent sitting with music and readings from spiritual works such as Khalil Gibran's The Prophet or the Isha Upanishad — replaced discourses.

Osho devised new " meditation therapy " methods such as the " Mystic Rose " and began to lead meditations in his discourses after a gap of more than ten years.

Osho developed other active meditation techniques, such as the Kundalini " shaking " meditation and the Nadabrahma " humming " meditation, which are less animated, although they also include physical activity of one sort or another.

Osho also spoke in favor of euthanasia of children with a broad variety of birth defects such as blindness, deafness, and dumbness.

The work was known, appreciated and quoted by Ramakrishna and his disciple Vivekananda, as well as by other well known gurus such as Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu, Swami Chinmayananda, Ramana Maharshi, Osho and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Teachers such as Osho and Anandmurti Gurumaa define yoga-nidra as a state of conscious deep sleep.

He attracted the attention of western writers such as Paul Reps, whose rendering of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, later used by Osho, brought Lakshman Joo and the meditation methods of his school to international prominence, and Miguel Serrano, the Chilean mystical writer.

The method was later adopted by Osho ( Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ), who made use of many spiritual methods.

The modern-day gurus Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ( of Transcendental Meditation fame ) and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ( Osho ) were born in the present-day Madhya Pradesh.

Honor Blackman, notable for her appearances in the James Bond film Goldfinger and the TV series The Avengers, was born in Plaistow, as were actor Jimmy Akingbola and comedienne, actor, and playwright Andi Osho.

A public statement by Sheela indicated that Osho was in grave danger if he remained in India, but would receive appropriate medical treatment in America if he were to require surgery.

Osho had withdrawn from public speaking and lecturing during the upheaval, having entered a period of " silence " that would last until November 1984, and at the commune videos of his discourses were played to audiences instead.

" Sheela initiated attempts to murder Osho's caretaker and girlfriend, Ma Yoga Vivek, and his personal physician, Swami Devaraj ( Dr. George Meredith ), because she felt they were a threat to Osho ; she had secretly recorded a conversation between Devaraj and Osho " in which the doctor agreed to obtain drugs the guru wanted to ensure a peaceful death if he decided to take his own life.

Negotiations to allow Osho to surrender to authorities in Portland if a warrant were issued failed.

On 28 October 1985, Osho and a small number of sannyasins accompanying him were arrested aboard a rented Learjet at a North Carolina airstrip ; according to federal authorities the group was en route to Bermuda to avoid prosecution.

Shortly before his death, Osho suggested that one or more audience members at evening meetings ( now referred to as the White Robe Brotherhood ) were subjecting him to some form of evil magic.

According to Osho, " homosexuals, because they were perverted, created the disease AIDS " and also suggested that " homosexuals should be given different localities.

In 2002, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the German government had violated its constitution in its treatment of the Osho movement, using deprecating expressions about it that were not based on fact.

Influential in spreading Hinduism to a western audience were A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada ( Hare Krishna movement ), Sri Aurobindo, Meher Baba, Osho, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ( Transcendental Meditation ), Sathya Sai Baba, Mother Meera, among others.

These " positive aspects " were seen as being subverted by Osho, who was portrayed as a reactionary religious ideologist of the monopolistic bourgeoisie of India, promoting the ideas of the consumer society in a traditional Hindu guise.

Osho said he ordered the book-burning to rid the sect of the last traces of the influence of Sheela, whose robes were added to the bonfire.

Osho ( Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ) commented that to understand the phenomenon it was necessary to understand that all that exists is energy and that " the way of consciousness is exactly the way of a river-it goes downwards, following the path of gravitation ".

Osho saw his " neo-sannyas " as a totally new form of spiritual discipline, or one that had once existed but since been forgotten.

Although the movement was without clearly defined and shared values, it was well known that Osho discouraged marrying and having children, since he saw families as inherently prone to dysfunction and destructiveness.

Osho ( 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990 ), born Chandra Mohan Jain, and also known as Acharya Rajneesh from the 1960s onwards, as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh during the 1970s and 1980s and as Osho from 1989, was an Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher who garnered an international following.

Osho was deported from the United States in accordance with a plea bargain.

Osho was born Chandra Mohan Jain, the eldest of eleven children of a cloth merchant, at his maternal grandparents ' house in Kuchwada ; a small village in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh state in India.

Osho was profoundly affected by his grandfather's death, and again by the death of his childhood girlfriend and cousin Shashi from typhoid when he was 15, leading to a preoccupation with death that lasted throughout much of his childhood and youth.

Osho later said he became spiritually enlightened on 21 March 1953, when he was 21 years old, in a mystical experience while sitting under a tree in the Bhanvartal garden in Jabalpur.

By the latter 1970s, the Poona ashram was too small to contain the rapid growth and Osho asked that somewhere larger be found.

Conflicts with various Indian religious leaders aggravated the situation — by 1980 the ashram had become so controversial that Indira Gandhi, despite a previous association between Osho and the Indian Congress Party dating back to the sixties, was unwilling to intercede for it after her return to power.

It was renamed " Rancho Rajneesh " and Osho moved there on 29 August.

Commune administrators tried to resolve Osho's own difficulty in this respect by declaring him the head of a religion, " Rajneeshism ": in November 1981 Osho applied for residence as a religious worker, which was refused on the grounds that he could not lead a religion while unwell and in silence.

Sheela later stated that Osho took sixty milligrams of Valium each day and was addicted to nitrous oxide.

Osho had coached Sheela in using media coverage to her advantage and during his period of public silence he privately stated that when Sheela spoke, she was speaking on his behalf.

According to the testimony of Swami Devageet ( Charles Harvey Newman ) she was admonished in front of the others, with Osho declaring that his house, and not hers, was the centre of the commune.

On 30 September 1985, Osho denied that he was a religious teacher.

Osho stated that because he was in silence and isolation, meeting only with Sheela, he was unaware of the crimes committed by the Rajneeshpuram leadership until Sheela and her " gang " left and sannyasins came forward to inform him.

Nevertheless Gordon ( 1987 ) reports that Charles Turner, David Frohnmayer and other law enforcement officials, who had surveyed affidavits never released publicly and who listened to hundreds of hours of tape recordings, insinuated to him that Osho was guilty of more crimes than those for which he was eventually prosecuted.

Osho was indicted on thirty-five counts in Multnomah County, Oregon on 28 October 1985: charges included immigration violations and making false statements on his visa application.