Testimonial letter from Kay Lorraine Eggan
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 Kay Lorraine Eggan. It is "Exhibit A-472" 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 2 pages.
 To Whom It May Concern: I am writing this letter as an expression of my deepest gratitude in having come in contact with the world and being of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Both in a personal and professional capacity, the genius of this man has made a remarkable impression on me; one that has changed irrevocably my whole life’s orientation. Trained at N.S.W. University, Sydney, Australia as a Secondary Teacher in the subjects of Remedial English and Drama, I was primarily concerned with the individual’s expression through spoken, written and nonverbal mediums. I looked forward to working with the young adult as he grew to maturity in a society that highly valued his initiative, intelligence and creative talents. The first year of my teaching career was a disappointment in the sense that while ever the public school system concerned itself with controlling the increasingly outrageous behaviour of its students, it reduced itself to operating at the level of the lowest common denominator. We as teachers puzzled over different reward and punishment systems and various other forms of psychological control. This naturally inhibited our freedom to experiment in the classroom and left us feeling impotent. At this point I came into contact with the works of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. What was contained in these works was much more radical than anything I had previously come across. His brilliant logic and novel insights cut right through both professional and personal dilemmas. His trust in the individual is a complete one. While, as teachers, we worked from the outside, He worked directly with the inner. Reaching into the world of the child, being concerned at any given time with their own understanding rather than their agreement to given codes or ideologies, something unexpected could happen: an open ended experience I call learning, an experience for both teachers and students alike. I had begun working at a Government institution, a reformatory jail for criminal boys aged 5-12 years and criminal girls aged 12-18 years. Working in the highly restrictive atmosphere of a prison with young and often violent social delinquents demonstrated in a surprising way the accuracy of His insights. The unfriendly, alienated attitudes and angry, rude and aggressive behavior in less than three months had changed to animated self-expression, laughter, and a sense of teamwork that had been formerly impossible. My own orientation as a teacher had changed dramatically and very positive results flowed from it. In His discourses Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh does not advocate anarchy in any form, stressing that order and discipline come from within and cannot be imposed from without and that our sense of freedom is one of our deepest felt needs. I see as a recurrent pattern in adolescent delinquency the need to express built-up frustration that comes with any order imposed simply from without. The way of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as I see it, is to communicate to the individual in each of us, to acknowledge our own free will and to understand what we are doing and why. In this way we are responsible for our own actions. His way is very provocative. The whole being is confronted, questioned and explored. When the student understands this, he inevitably responds to the challenge, and in this opening comes a great capacity and excitement for the learning process itself. Much of my decision to experiment with the teacher/pupil situation is directly attributable to my coming in contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and His remarkable vision. In a personal sense, all aspects of my life have been touched by this man, his insights, his loving clarity, and by something much more difficult to express, his emptiness. This is an experience that culminates in silence, a state of unhindered receptivity that was apparent even as He delivered His verbal discourses. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has enriched and influenced the lives of many of us and in this day and age stands as light and beacon on the hill, a very modern man, a mystic. It is exciting that America has the chance to house such a being amongst us. His Blessings, |
(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.)
