Long before he became one of the most famous filmmakers in Hindi cinema, Mahesh Bhatt he went through a deeply transformative spiritual phase as a follower of the godman Rajneesh, popularly known as Osho. His association with the Pune guru ended abruptly, leading to a bitter fallout that his daughter, Pooja Bhatt, still remembers vividly.Pooja recalled the dramatic events that happened after her father decided to walk away from the Rajneesh movement. “My father was part of the Rajneesh cult. He took the mala off his neck and flushed it down the toilet,” Pooja recalled. “And then they banned him. He was the outlaw. I remember a message that came to my mother Vinod Khanna‘Bhagwan is very angry. Bhagwan will destroy Mahesh. When I was little, we were taken to a safe house in Pune in the middle of the night,” she added in an interview with Cyrus Broacha.Pooja compared Osho’s reaction to that of a “bewildered lover”, claiming that it was difficult for him to accept that followers would leave him. “He didn’t like people getting away from him. Same with Ma Sheela. The threat at the end of the day is, ‘Why can’t you keep me on the pedestal?’ Whether you are a man of God or a politician, you want to be worshipped,” Pooja said. Ma Anand Sheela served as one of Osho’s closest aides for several years.Recalling her childhood visits to the ashram, Pooja shared some of the practices followers were expected to observe. “I have been to Osho’s ashram. I have touched Osho’s feet as a child. They would sniff you because Bhagwan would not like any fragrance because his aura would be permeated. You cannot use perfume or shampoo,” revealed Pooja. Osho’s ashram is located in Koregaon Park in Pune. Mahesh Bhatt has previously spoken about the circumstances that led him to 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 was a charismatic guru from Pune. I went to him and dedicated 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 project. “I thought I still feel envy, but I’m saying holy words… I feel like a hypocrite. I can’t lie to the world and to myself.” “This is worthless; I’m a damn fool,” he recalled telling longtime collaborator and actor Vinod Khanna, whom he had also introduced to Osho. Mahesh later reflected on Vinod Khanna’s decision to stay with Osho even after he decided to leave.“When I moved away, he stayed, and then he disappeared to Oregon. I even flew to America once, to try to bring him back. But he had gone too far,” Mahesh recalled. Vinod Khanna walked away from films at the height of his stardom in the early 1980s to join Osho’s commune in Oregon before returning to the film industry years later.