Testimonial letter from Ma Deva Nandan

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 Nandan (Cornelia Chaitanya Schlüter). It is "Exhibit A-429" 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.

July 28, 1983 Cornelia Chaitanya Schluter, Ma Deva Nandan, P.O. Box 10, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. 97741 To whom it may concern; I am a permanent public official ( lifetime tenure) with seven years teaching experience in Munich Public School system, I graduated from Munich University as a secondary school teacher after four years of study in education and psychology. Through this experience I have become aware of the problems confronting education today. The emotional stress and nervousness resulting from the tremendous social pressure to excell and achieve inhibit the learning process. These pressures remain, even with the best curriculum, and a child's natural thirst to explore and learn of the world around him seems to disappear. While searching the fields of psychology and family therapy for solutions to these problems, I came across the meditations and books of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He has eloquently spoken of real education as developing the natural intelligence and abilities within; that teachers should be more like gardeners, preparing the ground, caring for the plant to come to flower. The key to this kind of education is love and acceptance. Kahlil Gibran says in his book, 'The Prophet': "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not you thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house pf tomorrow, which you cannot visit, even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday." The clearest example of the impact of Bhagwan’s approach to education I have seen is in my daughter, who is living with me and my husband here at Rajneeshpuram. In Germany, although always a good student, she was bored with school. Here, she is once again excited with school. She spends half the day involved with her regular studies and the other half in a vocational training program. Through this program she has experienced a wide variety of work situations, enjoying the responsibilities and challenges of being part of the adult world. I am grateful for having found my ultimate teacher in Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. His teaching is now through his silent presence, nourishing each of us to sprout and blossom. At Rajneeshpuram, Bhagwan’s vision of joyful and loving humanity is a reality. [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.)