Testimonial letter from Ma Anand Yatra
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 Yatra (Andrea Renk). It is "Exhibit A-1120" 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.
 Berlin, 18.7.83 To whom it may concern! I am a 34 year-old teacher for sports and fine arts, teaching children between the age of 6 - 10 years and I became a sannyasin in 1977. After studying I started my carrier at school full of enthusiasm, good hope, and a lot of ideals. It took me a long time to find out that all the good things they told me about teaching at university was just rubbish and not relevant compared to the situation I found by being confronted with my students. It was shocking to realize that these children had no positive and loving contact to their bodies. In spite of my deep inner feelings I saw myself playing the role of a kind of mechanic who had to make good working, robot-like machines out of their bodies. I started feeling dissatisfied with myself, although everybody else, even my students, still gave me the impression that I was doing a good jpb; The phrase "I am the body" rather than "I have a body" got me in contact with bioenergetics and the Human Growth Movement. I joined a Gestalt Therapy Group for teachers and people working with people and in one of the sessions somebody told me about "a famous Meditation and Therapy Center" led by a guru in India. In 1977 the ashram in Poona was already well known for high-quality therapy and groups. I made contact to people who had already been there, saw that there was no time and reason to give my doubts much energy and decided to spend my summer holidays in Poona. It is nearly undescribable what happened to me in these 6 weeks. To sit in front of Bhagwan was like talking to the moon and laughing with the sun. He gave me a couple of groups and besides that I joined the Tai Chi Group, Sufi Dance, went to the daily lecture of Bhagwan, and had lots of nice talks with all those beautiful intelligent, well educated people gathered around Him, giving me the feeling that I was in the company of superior human beings. To become a sannyasin not only seemed to be a personal affair but rather an obligation to show my thankfulness and to share everything Bhagwan offered with my friends, parents, students and everybody I was working with. It would take too long to describe all the happenings and encounters I had with above named people. The feed-back I got from the parents of my students, the atmosphere of acceptance I felt around me, and the fact that the director of the school adressed me with my new name "Yatra" instead of "Mrs. Renk" in a general meeting, showed me that all of them were willing and helpful to walk with me on a path to a better quality of teaching. Actually I stopped teaching - I simply started loving my students. Now I believe that a teacher who is satisfied with himself and the work he is doing, doesn't have to worry about success: by working out of gratefulness and satisfaction, success is just a by-product; nothing to struggle and to work hard for. This is not only my own experience. After visiting Bhagwan every year in Poona and in Oregon, meeting my old friends again from all over the world we all discovered that similar things happened to everybody in their work and privat life. Nearly nobody had encountered difficulties by working in schools, offices a.s.o. wearing their mala and red clothes. The consequent sharing of the real experiences we made through working on ourselves in groups and meditations finally won over prejudices, missun-derstandings, ignorance and doubts. Needless to say we all owe Bhagwan a lot. Through His presence and the work He has inspired over the years, so many people have gathered the strength to become more loving and to bring their hearts into the daily life routine. And not only sannyasins have been affected by Him, but also many people they come into contact with. This just shows that Bhagwan's influence and inspiration reaches very far. And this is only one of the many reasons why I consider Him a most exceptional and outstanding spiritual teacher! Yours sincerly |
(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.)
