Testimonial letter from F. A. Schaepers
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from F. A. Schaepers. It is "Exhibit A-1072" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
 To whom it may concern Under Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s spiritual guidance, his disciples created a completely new, unique style of music, a yet unknown synthesis of Eastern and Western styles. This is only one further step towards Bhagwan’s approach to bring the East and the West together, for a better understanding and the benefit of both cultures. And this step was a successful one, since the way Bhagwan used to merge and melt these opposite cultures is completely different from, say, a Kirtan group touring Boston or the Rolling Stones performing in Bobmay (if this will ever happen). I myself, as a recording engineer with more than eight years of experience, can tell you that this music, originated in Buddha Hall, Poona, and now performed in Buddha Hall, Rajneeshpuram, is unique (and, personally, I’d recommend you to take your time and listen to one of the records). There is no other music in the whole world, totally free from commercial requirements and ever changing, since it is Bhagwan's spiritual presence flowing through the musicians, rather than the dictates of a sales manager regarding the demands of the market (at least 95% of today’s music is suffering from that problem), that creates the music. Bhagwan himself gave the guidelines for this exceptional art, saying: "If real music happens, there is no more musician. The musician disappears, there's only music left." And that’s the difference. [signed] |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)
