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of crime, fill all the jails with all the young people and keep them there.
After twelve days I was brought to the court. That was the last fascist strategy to be seen, because there was no case. So the U.S. Attorney was worried: now what were they going to put before the court? So they asked my attorneys for negotiations -- before the trial began, for negotiation.
For twelve days they harassed me in every possible way: they did not let me sleep for twelve days; I could not eat anything -- I lost eight pounds in weight. Just before the trial began, they asked my attorneys for a negotiation. And the proposal that they brought was really cunning and absolutely inhuman.
The proposal was: "We know that Rajneesh will say he is not guilty, that perhaps finally he will win the case, but we are not going to give him bail; the whole government is bent upon not giving him bail. If he says he is not guilty then we will not give him bail. And you can understand that if the government wants, it can prolong the trial for ten years, and he will have to remain in jail for ten years.
"He may win, but then you have to understand that it can take any amount of time. We will go on changing courts, we will go on postponing, we will go on changing judges. We can do anything" -- they said it clearly. "The only way is for Rajneesh to agree to plead guilty. Then we will not go for a trial, we will release him."
My attorneys came back with tears in their eyes -- and they were not our sannyasins, they were the best attorneys in America. But during these twelve days they became very much involved with me. One of the best attorneys perhaps in the whole world, the head of the law department in a California university, Peter Schey, started loving me so much that he came to see me in jail. He said, "I cannot sit on a chair in front of you. I will sit down just as your sannyasins sit down."
They came with tears in their eyes saying, "The Attorney General's people have made such a proposal that we will have to choose a jail for you for ten years to twelve years. And who knows what they will do? We cannot know. They may kill you. And your sannyasins all over
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