Testimonial letter from Ma Anand Laila
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 Laila. It is "Exhibit A-1892" 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 Laila To Whom It May Concern: I have been brought up in a well educated, Swiss, Catholic family. My Grandfather was a well known teacher and a musician, my father an artist and an architect. At their contact I learned to appreciate music, painting and theater, to behave with honesty and courage and to fear God. Studying was easy for me and at age 18 I started the Medical School without knowing exactly why. I graduated from Geneva’s Medical School in 1975 without difficulties and began work in Geneva’s Hospital as a psychiatrist first and then as a medical practioner. Those were full time jobs - I had no spare time for anything else and had to drop painting and theater. I was confronted with my inability as a physician, to help people in at least 80% of the cases. In all those where the disease wasn’t acute enough or long enough to leave prints in the body. I soon started looking for new ways to help sick people, heard abut new approaches in psychotherapy, attempted a few "groups" (gestalt - bioenergy) and in 1977, in one of them heard taped discourses from Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Something in them touched me. At that time, my English wasn’t good enough to understand everything, nevertheless, I started to read one of his books. The Tantra Vision, and was impressed by a new way to relate and to be, an approach similar to the one of the "gestalt" of Perls, to be here and now. I was very successful in my work, but confused and sad inside myself. I decided to go to Poona for my summer holiday. I attended the morning discourse and was shocked not to hear about gestalt and therapy, but about religion and God. I never realised Bhagwan was a Master and not a teacher or the leader of some Philosophical school. I took Sannyas in August 1977. Back to Geneva I decided to drop my residency in the hospitals and to study homeopathy. That seemed to be a more successful method to treat people. I went back to Poona in March 1978 and told Bhagwan about my confusion. He told me: "...all kinds of "pathies" help. If the doctor enjoys his work, is thrilled by his work, is enthusiastic about it, his enthusiasm cured people. That is therapeutic, medicine is secondary ...the first thing is the thrill of the doctor, the joy of the doctor, the confidence, the trust of the doctor." It took me a few years to get it. A few years when after completing the study in homeopathy I decided to work and stay in the Poona Ashram. When I had to drop all my ideas about love, doctoring, etc., experienced the bottom of misery and finally the beauty of being alive, alone, aloof. When I went back to practice, back to Geneva, as a general practioner, an allopath psychiatrist, I felt good, strong, filled with something I wanted to share. My approach toward disease was different. I tried to help people to realize what they could do for themselves, to be responsible for their life and their body, instead of blaming the husband, the wife, the kids, the parents, the society. Working was hard, only a few would get it. The majority would rather be sick than change anything in their life. I’m fortunate to have met Bhagwan. His love, His great intelligence, His clear vision helped me as well as thousands of others to discover joy, gratitude of being just alive, in this world, now. [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.)
