According to Osho, power‑oriented people are not needed to build a commune; whatever they create is fundamentally criminal and destined to collapse. True, enduring communes arise from meditation and love—creations in the service of godliness, not death. The Sheela episode proved this: a salutary lesson that deepens responsibility, ends dependence on authority, and empowers us to transform mistakes into a more beautiful, eternal community.
Bossy power builds fast but breaks; calm love and meditation build something good that lasts, and we learn to share responsibility instead of obeying a ruler.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, is it true that power-oriented people were needed to create this commune? Is it also true that meditative and loving people cannot create such beautiful and rich communes?
Power-oriented people can create much, but their creation is basically criminal. And sooner or later, it is going to fall apart. Meditative people, loving people, can create higher things, better things. And whatever they create is never in the service of death and destruction. Whatever they create is basically godliness. Whatever they create remains forever; it is eternal. Adolf Hitler used to say that the regime that he is creating is going to last for one thousand years. I want you to know, what we are creating is going to last forever. Love is immortal. Love knows no death. Meditation leads you within yourself to eternity. So don't think that I had put Sheela and her group to create the commune. They turned out to be power-oriented. Perhaps any one of you would have turned out to be the same. You all carry the same desire to be somebody special.…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, AM I MOVING RIGHTLY OR AM I JUST A HOPELESS NUTCASE? They are missing now because that small commune in Oregon had become suddenly more important than Washington itself. All the eyes from all over the world were concentrated on the commune: "What is happening there? Why are people so happy? Why are people so loving? Why is there no fighting? Why is there no murder? Why is there no suicide? What has happened to those people? Their jealousies, their conflicts seem to have disappeared, they have entered, it seems, into a new state of consciousness." But as far as I am concerned I have no complaint against anybody. My own feeling is it was good that they destroyed the commune. It helped my people to spread all over the world. And wherever my one sannyasin is, he will create the right atmosphere.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, THE OTHER NIGHT WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT YOUR VISION OF A MODERN COMMUNE, AND YOUR OFFER TO GORBACHEV TO ESTABLISH A MODEL COMMUNE IN RUSSIA, I WAS DEEPLY TOUCHED. AFTER YOUR COMMUNE DISSOLVED ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO, I WENT BACK INTO THE WORLD AND GOT QUITE A BITTER TASTE OF LIFE IN WESTERN SOCIETY: POWER, MONEY, FRUSTRATION, COMPENSATION. YOUR VISION OF A COMMUNE SEEMS TO BE THE ANSWER FOR MANKIND -- TO FIND A FULFILLING WAY TO LIVE; YOUR VIEW IS SO VAST, SO CLEAR. BUT LOOKING AT MY OWN REALITY, I STILL DISCOVER POSSESSIVENESS, NARROW-MINDEDNESS, UNLOVINGNESS, GREED, LACK OF HUMBLENESS, DESIRES, JEALOUSY. I FELT ASHAMED LISTENING TO YOUR WORDS BECAUSE THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR VISION AND MY REALITY IS SO HUGE. BELOVED MASTER, SOMETIMES I THINK THAT YOU HAVE TOO POSITIVE A PICTURE OF US. OR ARE YOU SIMPLY SUPPORTING THE GOOD SEED?
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF A MODEL COMMUNE? This is as far as human growth is concerned. One thing for the inner growth is that everybody, irrespective of whether he is a man or a woman, should be allowed to choose a method of meditation suitable to him, so that he can not only experience the joys of life, but he can also experience the joys of his spirit. Communism is missing only one thing: a spirituality. A model commune should be a spiritual gathering of seekers, of lovers, of friends, of creative people in all dimensions of life. They can produce paradise here on the earth. The time for families is over, and the time for cities is over, and the time for nations is over. The world should be one, consisting of small communes.
Most of the people who had come were hippies. They did not want to work at all. They did not want to take baths. They did not want to be clean. They did not want to have clean clothes. So what you do with these people? You explain to them -- they don't listen. They think they are very progressive. You are talking primitive ideas: cleanliness. So what Sheela did was absolutely necessary. She made it clear: either you do it or get out. And they did it. And she changed those hippies. They are no more hippies here. But if you leave them without any responsibility, they may fall back to their old habits. They were a... They were all addicted to drugs. And I am absolutely against drugs, that in the commune no drug can enter. And if you cannot live without drugs, then live somewhere else.