Testimonial letter from Ma Deva Shariro

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 Shariro (Ulla Kaufmann). It is "Exhibit A-1940" 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.

Kulsviervaenget 25 2800 Lyngby Denmark TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN Before I came across Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh I was educated as an actress in Denmark. I was studying three years in an acting school for professional acting in Denmark’s second biggest theatre, Aarhus Theatre. After finishing the drama school in 1978, which included teaching in traditional drama, like Shakespeare; modern drama like Harold Pinter; music comedies like Cole Porter etc. I was at once engaged for a period of three years as a member of the company at Aarhus Theatre in Denmark, which at that time was headed by Henrik Beering Liisberg who now is the leader of the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. My work in this company was very satisfying as I was always from Mr. Liisberg given big parts with lots of possibilities for dramatic growth and expression, and in the papers was talked about as very talented and authentic. In that search, I just had to stumble over Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I never before came across a person who is able to teach me that much about drama. Exactly what I was looking for: a teacher. Practically I found that doing his meditations developed, as good as well all the aspects of an actors daily work with himself: body awareness, voiceawareness, emotional awareness .... together with a growing consciousness about the dramatic resources from which get able to create stage life. Also from doing therapy groups I got able to drop old personal habits which are in the way, because an actor has to be absolutely clear with himself, to let a fictitious person's universe take over and make the reality on stage. In my private life Bhagwan has been and will go on being an incredible teacher, as friendly and loving as any teacher can ever be. The first thing Bhagwan taught me was to stop fighting with myself, to love myself, my nature and to enjoy whatsoever life gives to me, and out of that I stopped comparing myself with other people, stopped copying people I thought were clever. Bhagwan taught me more about not being separated from the parts I am playing - but to be it, truly. "To be or not to be", the famous words of Shakespeare, is in the heart of every actor all over the world as the universal question ..... and it is exactly here Bhagwan comes in as a perfect mirror of existence. He can help us to understand the underlying processes which make us capable of creating miraculous manifestations on the stage. "All people are actors, and the world is our stage" are some other famous words of Shakespeare, and that is what Bhagwan tries to make us understand, to live in this world, totally, truly, joyously, but like an actor on the stage, knowing somewhere deep inside, "I am not that ... I am playing it, this reality, it is here and now, and I can see myself being this .... but in the same moment I know that I am not that." To be and not to be is Bhagwan’s answer to Shakespeare’s question - to be total without identification - he puts together the truth of Stanislavsky, the joy and courage of Crotowsky and Bertolt Brecht searching for the witness! When I came to learn that, my being on the stage became surrounded by a light which was to immense joy for both the audience, the actors I was sharing the stage life with and finally myself. "What is it you know, that we don’t know?" somebody asked me, "try to explain," and at that time I started getting interested in how I could be able to communicate these experiences to other people. I went to see Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in India. It became obious clear to me that I wanted Him to be my master, as I never before in my life had met a human being who was able to guide me with totally love ...... and I became one of his disciples in May 1981. And from that date, the transormation which I had already been searching for years, speed up, one door after another opened, and when I went back to Denmark, my old companions from the theater world gathered around me, curious about this. Half a year had already transformed me from a shaky girl to a woman starting flowering of energy and consciousness. Then I started teaching, and words can't describe how deep satisfaction I feel by sharing my experiences and communicating this love for the magic world of art. And what’s happening now. Bhagwan is staying in America. A man of that value moves to the western world, to America, to the country which is always trying to be the first in the world to accept, take in and live out all new ways and waves. The American actors have always been known as the most professional, and from Europe we always travelled to the States to study the hottest news. It is atremendous gift for the American stage that Bhagwan is here, and I am sure that more and more American actors will get attracted, as I did, to Bhagwan's evidence of truth. America has always praised its actors, even chosen one to be the president of the United States, and will for sure appreciate a religious teacher that says that the art of acting is the most spiritual way of art. As all actors know it is not the real art that happens in the words you are saying, but in between THE WORDS. It is here in this moment, you breathe with the audience, it is here in this moment we as an audince can get a sublime feeling of being taken over by something beyone, some unknown mystic can happen. What I experience sitting silently with Bhagwan in satsang is that he creates a certain space around us in which we get able to open up our hearts, wake up and see that we are made of the stuff called god; god is not something to be achieved, god is already the case in us. To find the hidden harmony is the goal of Rajneeshism, and Bhagwan’s whole effort here is to help our spiritual growth. Truth is intelligence functioning as its optimum, and can only be expressed through silence. Bhagwan gave me the name Deva Shariro, which means "divine body", and feeling it in silence turns my life into bliss. With love, [signed] Ma Deva Shariro (Ulla Kaufmann)

(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.)