Before he became one of the most popular filmmakers in Hindi cinema, Mahesh Bhatt underwent a profound spiritual transformation as a follower of the godman Rajneesh, known as Osho. Her association with the Pune-based teacher eventually ended abruptly, triggering a bitter outburst that her daughter, Pooja Bhatt, remembers vividly.Pooja recalls the dramatic events that took place after her father decided to stay away from the Rajneesh movement. “My father was part of the Rajneesh cult. He pulled his mala off his neck and threw it in the toilet,” recalls Pooja. “And then he was banned. He was the robber. I remember a message that came to my mother through Vinod Khanna‘Bhagwan was very angry. Bhagwan destroyed Mahesh.’ When I was a child, we were taken to a safe house in Pune in the middle of the night,” he added in an interview with Cyrus Broacha.Pooja went on to compare Osho’s reaction to that of a “jilted lover”, claiming that he had a hard time accepting followers who had left him. “He doesn’t want people to walk away from him. It’s like Ma Sheela. The threat at the end of the day is, ‘Why can’t you keep me on a pedestal?’ Whether you are a god or a politician, you want to be worshipped,” Pooja said Ma Anand Sheela served as one of Osho’s closest assistants for many years.Recalling her childhood visits to the ashram, Pooja shares some of the practices followers must follow. “I’ve been to the Osho ashram. I touched Osho’s feet as a child. They smell you because Bhagwan doesn’t like any perfume because his aura gets stuffy. You can’t use perfume or shampoo,” Pooja revealed. The Osho ashram is located in Koregaon Park in Pune. Mahesh Bhatt has previously spoken about the circumstances that led him towards Osho. After his films ‘Manzilien Aur Bhi Hain’ (1974) and ‘Vishwasghaat’ (1977) failed commercially, he said he found himself searching for answers beyond cinema.“I went to Osho Rajneesh, who is a charismatic guru from Pune. I went to him and offered myself to him … ocher robes and meditation five times a day,” Mahesh said during an appearance on Arbaaz Khan’s chat show.Explaining what prompted him to leave the movement, the filmmaker admitted that he could no longer reconcile his inner feelings with the spiritual image he was trying to portray. “I thought I was still jealous but I said holy words … I felt like a hypocrite. I couldn’t lie to the world and myself.” “It is worthless; I am a damn fool,” he remembers saying to longtime collaborator and actor Vinod Khanna, who he also introduced to Osho. Mahesh later reflected on Vinod Khanna’s decision to stay with Osho even after he chose to leave.“When I turned away, he stayed – and then disappeared to Oregon. I even flew to America once, to try and bring him back. But he was too far away,” Mahesh recalled. Vinod Khanna left films at the height of his stardom in the early 1980s to join Osho’s community in Oregon before returning to the film industry years later.
