Testimonial letter from Ma Anand Geha
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 Geha (Cheryl Edwards). It is "Exhibit A-1914" 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 don’t know where to begin or how to put into words what I feel about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. A few times I have sat down to write a letter on His behalf, and yet feel so inadequate and unable to express the essence of this Gift-of-a-Man that I feel the world has been blessed with, right here, on American soil, in this day and age! All I can say is that I really love Him and I will try to express a little if it means in any way that I could be part of helping Him to stay here in America. Bhagwan, and now the City of Rajneeshpuram, is the culmination of my whole life’s search, and I would humbly ask that you consider His application to stay in America as one of the most important decisions of your life. From my very limited knowledge of the American Constitution, it would seem a positive decision on your part,/& would give you the opportunity to show to the world that you are indeed people of great integrity and genuinely are supporting the ’freedom of the individual' that America is known for all over the world. A little of my background: On one level, my life has been extremely full and successful. I have travelled extensively, worked as a private secretary in England, South Africa and Australia, taught Ballet, danced professionally, choreographed, have been involved in selling and had two •businesses, one of which was very successful financially. I was married for 10 years and thoroughly enjoyed being a mother to two beautiful children. This was followed by living alternatively in the heart of the Australian Karri forest alongside many other people who had achieved much on a material level, and yet felt that there was something wrong and missing from our present day society. Spiritually, I have been searching for a Master all my life. I grew up with a father who used to get up very early of a morning, do his Yoga, Breathing, and teach me much about energy, and the esoterics. I went to Catholic Boarding Schools. When I finally left school I joined, tasted, tested, and jumped into just about every religion I could find. My search was SO intense for this inner fulfillment that I KNEW was able to be tapped, that after my husband and I returned from the disillusionment - albeit very educational pioneering experience in the Karri forest -I attended a therapy group, purely out of curiosity, and there I found my Master! I lifetime of longing just exploded inside me when I heard his voice on a tape and when lines from his book were quoted to me. WHO was this man I wanted to know! I then proceeded to devour every book I could get hold of and listen to every tape I could find and I finally took sannyas in Australia without going to India as I knew that this man was my life and I trusted that whatever happened in the future was entirely in His hands. From a practical point of view this may be a little hard to understand but I had tried everything in life and sannyas to me meant that I would now move into a new dimension of meditation that I had only dreamt of. In a religious context a simple way of putting it is that Bhagwan became my "Father" and Rajneeshpuram became my "Heaven". This is possible for all humanity. Please let Bhagwan stay in America. [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.)
