Testimonial letter from Ma Anand Shanti
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 Shanti (Cynthia van Densen). It is "Exhibit A-1473" 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 Shanti TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am a 37 year old American psychotherapist with a Master’s degree in social work from New York University. I have had further training in primal, gestalt, and healing work and I am certified to practise in New York State. I have also studied anthropology in Africa and have a teaching credential from the University of California at Berkeley. I first heard of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1979 at a primal therapy weekend in which the group leader who was not a disciple of Rajneesh led us in dynamic meditation, one of the forms of meditation created by Bhagwan. Following this experience I began reading Bhagwan’s books, listening to tapes of his religious lectures, going to the meditation centers and participating in therapy groups run by sannyasin therapists. Immediately it was clear that Bhagwan’s insight into the therapeutic process is profound and that it far surpasses the teaching of any of my graduate school professors. Bhagwan’s active meditation techniques allow anyone to quickly express the pent-up frustrations and the "pathology" they are holding in their bodies and minds so that they feel freer, more relaxed, and peaceful and are able to experience life in a more joyous way. They move easily into a healthy way of functioning without having to go through long term traditional psychotherapeutic analysis. The emphasis of Bhagwan is on health and fully awakening our human potential. Since Bhagwan became enlightened in 1953 he has been showing others the way there. He is an internationally recognized religious teacher and spiritual leader. Anyone who feels there is "more to life" would be especially served by their therapists knowing Bhagwan’s teachings. As a psychotherapist, I recognize Him as the most outstanding therapist in the world. I have seen miracles happen around him. Sincerely, |
(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.)
