Testimonial letter from Ma Anand Gayatri
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 Ma Anand Gayatri. It is "Exhibit A-2565" 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.
 Ma Anand Gayatri TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN : I have been a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for 3 years now, two of which I have been living in his commune Miasto in Italy. It is an unbelievable gift to live - in our dangerous, nervous, superficial and aggressive age which is menaced by total destruction without anybody really caring or even seing - in an oasis of peace and silence, in the energy of a living spiritual Master. I Think it is hard to imagine how rare this presence of a Buddha is in the history of mankind and what an immense change of the course of mankind he could provoke if enough people could become available to love. What I experience every day together with the friends here, is that life is by no means for granted, that it has a universal sense, a dynamic and guidance. The world as it is outside is guided by superficial values as ambition, desires for wealth and power. The essence that I can draw out of the teachings of my Master in the moment is my experience that more I can realize and then understand my egoistic desires the more I relax and let myself go to life and what it wants to offer in any moment. We call our work worship, it is our meditation, the link between ourselves and the universe and our Master, whose presence we can feel in the silence of nature, in the silence within ourselves and to express our growing gratitude we sing at the beginning and at the end of the day the mantra, which means in English: "I go to the feet of the Awakened one, I go to the feet of the truth of the Awakened one, I go to the feet of the commune of the Awakened one." It is sheer joy to see these increasing moments in which we are really able to live in harmony with ourselves, with the others and with the universe. [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.)
