Long before he became one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the Hindi film industry, Mahesh Bhatt As a follower of the god-man Rajneesh, popularly known as Osho, he went through a profound stage of spiritual transformation. His association with the Pune guru eventually ended abruptly, with painful consequences that are still vividly remembered by his daughter Pooja Bhatt.Pooja recalls the drama that followed her father’s decision to quit the Rajneesh movement. “My father was a Rajneesh sect. He pulled the beads from his neck and flushed them down the toilet,” Pooja recalled. “Then he was banned. He was an outlaw. I remember one message was passed Vinod Khanna‘Bhagavan was very angry. Bhagavan will destroy Mahesh. When I was a child, we were taken to a safe house in Pune in the middle of the night,” she added in an interview with Cyrus Broacha.Pooja went on to compare Osho’s reaction to that of a “jilted lover”, claiming that he found it difficult to accept his followers leaving him. “He doesn’t like people leaving him. The same goes for Ma Sheela. The ultimate threat is, ‘Why can’t you keep me revered?’ Whether you are a god or a politician, you want to be worshiped,” Pooja said Ma Anand Sheila Served as one of Osho’s closest assistants for many years.Recalling her childhood visits to the ashram, Pooja shared some of the practices that followers must follow. “I have been to Osho ashram. I used to touch Osho’s feet as a child. They would smell you because Bhagavan did not like any perfume as his aura would permeate it. You cannot use perfume or shampoo,” Pooja revealed. Osho Ashram is located in Koregaon Park, Pune. Mahesh Bhatt has previously spoken of the circumstances that drew him to Osho. After the commercial failure of his films Manzilien Aur Bhi Hain (1974) and Vishwasghaat (1977), he said he found himself looking for answers outside cinema.“I went to Osho Rajneesh, a charismatic guru from Pune. I went to him and devoted myself to him… wearing an ocher robe and meditating five times a day,” Mahesh said on Arbaaz Khan’s talk 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 project. “I thought I was still jealous, but I was speaking the Word…I felt like a hypocrite. I couldn’t lie to the world and myself.” “It was worthless; I was such a fool,” he recalled telling 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 disappeared to Oregon. I even flew across the United States once to try to bring him back. But he was too far gone,” Mahesh recalled. Vinod Khanna quit the film industry in the early 1980s when his career was in full swing, joining the Osho Commune in Oregon, before eventually returning a few years later.