Testimonial letter from Ma Dhyan Prashanti
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 Dhyan Prashanti (Rosalee A. Peterson). It is "Exhibit A-1339" 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.
 July 29, 1983 Dear Sir: I am writing in behalf of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In 1979 I was reading any material available relative to spirituality and my purpose on this planet. Everything I read seemed dead until I was advised to read Bhagwan. When I did I felt like an excited kid because here was someone expressing in a beautiful way my own feelings about this world and our purpose in it. So, on July 11, 1979 I officially became a disciple of Bhagwan’s as I wanted to be able to let go of preconceptions and ideas of the past and live in the now with more love for others. I could not go to Poona because I was in an executive position with the company I was then working for but I read his books, listened to tapes and saw videos. I desparately wanted to see him but could not afford to do so until he came to the U.S. Of course, we didn’t know if we could ever see him when he first came to the U.S. because he was so ill and was very protected. Last year when it was announced we could visit Rajneeshpuram and see Bhagwan I was estactic. Up until the time of the Festival I had been around just 20 others like myself so it was an astounding event to attend a celebration with others and see all those laughing, smiling faces and see so much love and joy because we could see Bhagwan again, or as in my case, for the first time. I am not some brain-washed juvenile. I am 50 years of age with two grown sons who I raised virtually alone and as you can see from the tax returns for years 1979 and 1980 (I also have ones for recent years), I remained in the professional world while others went to Poona. Somehow, however, even though I had never met Bhagwan personally I feel as if he is an old friend. I feel his coming to the U.S. has benefited our country immensely in revenues alone and if you could go see Rajneeshpuram, you would be absolutely amazed at what has been created from a muddy ranch. One of the things I was taught as a child was being busy kept you out of trouble and Bhagwan advises that work is the best device to keep you from feeling troubled and unhappy. The harder you work the less time you have to think about your mundane problems and Rajneeshpuram is a living concept of his ideal for the new man. With deepest regards, |
(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.)
