Testimonial letter from Ma Anusati
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 Anusati (Ruth Gelmis). It is "Exhibit A-2260" 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 3 pages.
 To Whom It May Concern: This letter is written in support of the application of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for permanent residency in this country. I am an American citizen by birth, a citizen of Rajneeshpuram, and a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I am also a former housewife and mother of two, a graduate in English and comparative literature (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of Houston, and former LOOK Magazine reporter, registered (New York Stock Exchange, National Assocation of Securities Dealers, Chicago Board of Trade) Wall Street stockbroker and $30,000-a-year administrator for Albert Einstein Medical School. This last was the job I was holding when I left New York City for Poona, India to see for myself the man behind the books I was reading. At that time my youngest child was a freshman at Vassar. At Rajneeshpuram, I follow my second career--financial administration. But there is only the most superficial resemblance between what it is like to do this here and what it was like at Shearson Hammill or Albert Einstein. No pressure, no tensions, no backstabbing, no ego-trips, no being chased around the desks of pot-bellied executives who could not understand that I was a businessperson like themselves and not a sex object. And instead of all the above, I work with my friends--we hug and kiss a lot right in the office, with no sexual connotations at all, just out of overflowing feelings of love. And no fear of being misunderstood. We all work hard--often late into the night, but we work out of a sense of a common goal rather than because we are competing for a promotion or out of fear of losing our jobs. And there are such high spirits! This is an impossible thing to explain--because it arises directly out of the fact of Bhagwan’s presence here. We don't feel good because we've just been successful in getting a promotion, or been praised by our boss, or landed a big account. We feel good for no reason at all, or you could say we feel good for no reason that can be explained in a few paragraphs. And we feel so much gratitude! Partly because it is so beautiful to be here, in so many ways, and partly because our own inner beings have been very much transformed by Bhagwan—by His teachings, His love, and His presence. Because we work together rather than against each other, we work far more effectively and efficiently. There's no time wasted in argument or proving the other person wrong. There's no time wasted in "looking busy"--if someone runs out of work to do, he or she simply says so. We don't "call in sick" to get a free day off. We don't butter people up on the golf course to get their accounts. We don’t butter people up at all--we can afford to be totally honest. Wherever I worked before, there were always some workers who felt they were working, in a sense, "against" their supervisors or employers It's a subtle point--It was sort of "what can I get away with; how much can I get out of this job for myself?" If the employers' needs and the employees’ needs happened to coincide that was fine, but if they didn’t, there was no question that the employee would look out for himself first as much as he could without endangering his position. That is simply impossible here. Because we are employer and employee both, but also because we are inspired by Bhagwan's vision and are all sharing the common goal of making this city and this community a testimony to our gratitude to Him, and a shining, beautiful example to the world of what can be accomplished by a community that shares Bhagwan's vision of how man can be. I enjoy my work--we call it "worship" and that is also how I experience it. I t is the thankfulness of prayer made manifest in action. I am also much more effective than I ever was as a stockbroker or administrator because I can put my total energy, undistracted by conflicting personal considerations, ego-trips, competitive strategies, into my work. My energies are not drained off by worries, anger, little dishonesties, or trying to look good for the boss. Instead, my energy is high--high on Bhagwan’s presence, high on the love that flows all around here like perfume on a breeze. This is what Bhagwan’s presence has done for Rajneeshpuram. You can see it all around in the miraculous way this place has grown, almost overnight. If we were an industry, you could say, in stockbroker-ese, that we are the epitome of a growth industry— we’d look like a skyrocket on the charts. I'd like to say something also from the perspective of my first career--as a journalist and student of comparative literature. I am a product of the American educational system. I majored in, and took graduate courses in English and comparative literature, and minored in Philosophy, Psychology and Education. I read widely on my own in the literature of the East, but it was Bhagwan who brought it alive for me: the poetry of the Sufis, the wisdom of Gautam Buddha, the concentrated anecdotal gems of the Zen masters. For centuries in the East, men have explored that Inner Geography, the poetry of the soul, the search for the way to live in harmony with Existence. There is no way to find it in an American University, because courses that pretend to offer something of ”Eastern Religion” can offer only historical fact and theoretical analyses--the very heart, the essential juice, is always missing. In the East, the way someone learned "Eastern Religion” was always active and experiential. You didn't go to a teacher to learn theory or history. For centuries, what those who were genuinely searching for Truth, God, Soul, their own identities, would do was to follow a Master, who by his own example and by the wisdom of his teaching could guide them to a more beautiful way to live and a harmony with their own inner beings. This is what Bhagwan is. He is that rare phenomenon, a Master. He is a religious teacher of extreme intelligence and the ability to communicate the distillations of the teachings of great past Masters and of His own experience (witness the beauty of the hundreds of books that have been compiled from His impromptu discourses). He is a guide who teaches by His own example, by the love, beauty and grace that radiate from Him and the depth of His silence, the imperturbability, the humor, the twinkle in His eyes, the incredible gracefulness of His gestures. And He is a therapist par excellence--of a therapy that is really beyond therapy. Therapists try to help us overcome our miseries, the prison of our ideas about our own limitations. Sometimes, in limited ways, they succeed. Bhagwan helps us to transform our beings. In the beginning, He offered us the wisdom of His discourses, He introduced us into meditation, provided a safe and loving environment in which we could cathart our pent up frustrations. Gradually, He had created the nucleus of a community in which those of us who had grown, changed, could help newcomers our of our own newfound understandings. Now I look around me and see how much my own friends and myself have changed. And I see those who have arrived here only a few months ago: how the up-tightedness has dropped, the self-consciousness, the pettinesses, the comparisons and jealousies. How they’ve softened and become more open, more willing to risk being vulnerable--and yet stronger, more self-confident, more in love with themselves. This is called transformation. What kind of man does it take who can bring about this kind of transformation in people? To get them to drop jealousy, anger, frustration, rage, hypocrisy, misery, loneliness, fear, worry, selfishness? To fill them with love, gratitude, purpose, joy? Is there any wonder that when we see Him drive by each day, we laugh and giggle with love and joy? If someone had lifted you from the prison of whatever you feel you cannot transcend in yourself, in your emotions, that victimizes you and holds you down, and brought you to freedom from all that, wouldn't you also be filled with love and gratefulness to him? Can America really afford to close its doors to someone like this? Written in love, |
(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.)
