"Life is accidental. We are talking just an accident, nothing predestined. Somebody else may have been in your place taking the interview, so just by chance.

"Her…"

So she was just by chance, do you think?

"Just by chance. Everybody is by chance. There are only two ways to understand life: either everything is determined, then freedom disappears, then you are just puppets, machines; the other way is that everything is accidental, then everything is free and you are not a puppet, you have an individuality.

"And I respect individuality, I respect freedom. In a democratic world, determinism has no place. Otherwise, Adolf Hitler is simply doing what is determined, killing ten million people; he's not responsible. Responsibility is possible only if life is accidental.

"So everything is accidental, and it is a great excitement because it is unpredictable, too."

We've seen that.

"Yes."

Do you think your life personally was in danger here?

"It is always in danger, everybody's life everywhere, because life is between two points, between birth and death. One point has happened, the second is bound to happen. So how it happens does not matter; and where it happens, who cares!

"So my whole insistence is to live in this moment and live totally, because the next moment may never come."

Do you believe these things happened, though – the deception of you and others – for a reason? Why?

"No reason."

None?

"None. Just human nature, just lust for power."

A power struggle?

"Yes."

How can a power struggle occur in a religious setting like this?

"Every religion is a lust for power. You may call it spiritual power, you may call it divine power; it does not matter. But every place, wherever human beings are, unless they are all unconditioned – which is very difficult and rare… A conditioned mind is trained for ambition, for power, to reach higher and higher, to climb to the very peak. So whenever there is a chance, your mind starts climbing the ladder.

"I was in silence for three and a half years, so it was good opportunity for Sheela. I was completely absent to the commune. I was living in isolation, in silence; she alone was my communication with the commune. Whatever she informed me of, that was all I knew. What was going on in reality I came to know only when I started speaking and people started informing me."