Testimonial letter from Ma Deva Anandi (German)

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 Deva Anandi (Susanne Wohlgemuth). It is "Exhibit A-1953" 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 Deva Anandi (Susanne Wohlgemuth) C/o Anand Sagar 5000 Cologne 1 Lutticherstr 33/35 WEST GERMANY TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I’m writing to you as an experienced artist. I embarked upon the study of the performing media, i.e. film, theatre, TV and video at the same time I took up the study of the free painting with famous contemporary German artists like Stephan Wewerka, Gunther Shrack. The creativity that I had always imagined to be the soul of my art eluded me, however, even in association with these men. Around four years ago, in a friends place, I happened to listen to a tape discourse by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh about creativity and art. He also talked with congenial empathy about artists like Vincent Von Gogh and Pablo Picasso. I was deeply impressed by the wealth of Rajneesh’s love and the unknown depths that he seemed to be pointing towards. I understood that here was somebody who knew what was happening to me in my dark space and through his love and understanding would be able to help me to move, expand and come to a new orientation of my painting. It took me a long time to realize in my life as well as in my art, that we are not here to spend our time, our lives, in the brittle limitations of the shadow land, but that we can experience for ourselves and even deeply share with others, even with an anonymous public the reality of freedom and love. I am convinced that without the enlightened perspective of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh which enriched my life when I was most desperate and done so since, my personal creativity would simply have stopped. For me there is no doubt that wherever Rajneesh’s vision and influence is felt, the people and the society as a whole will be enabled to share something of this enlightenement and be blessed. Love, [signed] Ma Deva Anandi

(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.)