Testimonial letter from Ma Deva Waduda (2)

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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 Waduda. It is "Exhibit A-843" 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.

This is one of two letters written by Ma Deva Waduda. The other is at Waduda (1). The numbering is according to their appearance in Noles' collection, not chronological.

In fact, the other was written two months after this one and was one of a focused group of letters mostly around that date from "important" members of the commune, in which all stated their religious titles or educational positions in "Rajneeshism", hoping to expedite Osho's residency application as a religious leader. This letter did not mention her title in Rajneeshism, "Siddha", hence a new letter likely was requested for that campaign. It is not known why both letters were kept, but likely only the "Siddha" one was submitted to the INS. See also Testimonial letters#duplication for more on this.


Transcription

Ma Deva Waduda
PO Box 10
Rajneesh puram, OR 97741
July 26, 1983

To Whom It May Concern:

This is about the significance and importance of the religious teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I understand the difficulty in understanding how religious teaching can happen through silence. Perhaps through describing my own experience I can make this more clear.

I have been a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for five and a half years.

During these years I traveled to India on three separate occasions with my husband Swami Deva Wadud and on the last trip, also with my new-born daughter, Ma Prem Tarika. We were there for two to three months each visit and went to Bhagwan’s lectures, did the meditations, and had an opportunity to ask questions and listen to His answers at several evening darshans. He gave us guidance regarding the meditation center in Berkeley which we started and worshipped in, also about cur love relationship with each other, and the most significant guidance was when I was one month pregnant. He gave a few suggestions about what I could do during the pregnancy. I have enclosed a copy of the transcript.

[That transcript did not get into the pdfs supplied by OHS; therefore, contents are unknown.]

I followed those suggestions as best I could and something began changing in me which has continued ever since. He suggested that i avoid negativity, avoid anger, jealousy, possessiveness, nagging and fighting. This was a tremendous turning point for me. I actually didn’t even know what negativity was at that time. I not only found out that anger, jealousy, etc. could be dropped but also many many thoughts in my mind were also negativity in a more subtle way. Slowly I began to see that I could also drop negative ideas, that I had previously believed were just facts about the way things were. That opened up many possibilities for new creativity. My own mind continuously limited me by telling myself you can't do this or that, it’s too much for you, it'll take too long, you don't have enough energy, you have to be careful, etc. as if it was simply facts. Although my mind didn't stop, whenever I stopped listening to my mind's negative thoughts, many many things became possible for me that I never imagined I could do. I felt tremendous courage to carry and give birth to that child, to swim and dive to the bottom of the ocean, to climb mountains, to write a book and obtain my M.A. degree and much, much more. I began to give my love to everything I did, without even thinking about what will I get out of it. I began to really love my husband, perhaps for the first time very deeply, as well as my child, and everyone and everything. This has continued and deepened since Bhagwan has been silent. My mind still rattles on with its negative thoughts and sometimes when I am afraid I can feel Bhagwan's silent love surround me and my heart gathers courage and it's almost as if I can hear him whisper in my heart, "you can do it, you can really do it!" And now I am living what he was saying to me all those years of talking, living his teaching now, instead of listening to it. And somehow his silence calls upon us to "walk the walk instead of just talk the talk". This is an American slang expression that means to do what you talk of instead of just talking empty words. That is what this silent teaching is about for me. We are being and living his teaching. His presence is vital in creating the mile.au where this can happen for those of us who are Rajneeshees.

Actually since he has become silent the creativity I spoke of has increased tenfold or even 100-fold. His inspiration, just because of his presence, is so great for me that now living here in Rajneeshpuram I am able to work many hours each day - at least 12 hours and often much more. I have been teaching in the university, working on creating a new Tarot deck, designing new methods and creating teaching aids for astrology classes, as well as coordinating energy courses. Sometimes after I’ve worked on a few astrology charts and done several tarot readings as well as taught classes in energy perception all day, I still have energy to go in the evenings doing reserve duty on our Peace Force, or help package books or even spend the evening doing more tarot readings - whatever is needed. Someone who came here during the festival asked me, "don't you ever get tired of tarot readings?" And I answered, that sometimes if I feel tired, I just think of Bhagwan, and tune into him and I receive energy if needed, and with his silent inspiration, I just look at the next person who's come for a reading and no matter how many i’ve done, my energy is new, fresh, ready to give a reading to that new person.

Without Bhagwan I know I couldn't do the work that happens now that I am with him. And the work happens with so much joy, so much love, it's relaxed and easeful.

As a religious teacher, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is absolutely a genius as much so as Buddha or Jesus. It is not possible to measure what he gives any more than one could measure the value of Buddha or Jesus.


Ma Deva Waduda
[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.)