Testimonial letter from Ma Dhyan Satpriti

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 Satpriti. It is "Exhibit A-2268" 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.

Ma Dhyan Satpriti Box 10 Rajneeshpuram, Or. 97741 July 23, 1983 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: This letter is in support of the visa application of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to be granted permanent residency in America as an individual of exceptional ability in Arts and Sciences. For 5 years before becoming a desciple of Bhagwan, I was Director of Employee Assistance at the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. For your information, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is one of our 7 National Laboratories for science with 8 Nobel Prize laureate winners coming from this single population of scientists. I directed a staff of approximately 10 psychologists and psychiatrists as well as supervised graduate students in their fieldwork in psychology. My work experience before this was as a psychotherapist in private practice for 10 years, drug counselor for 2 years and I have a Masters in Business Administration from Vanderbilt University. I first became acquainted with Bhagwan through reading roost of his more than 100 books published from his discourses. I lived with Bhagwan in India for 1 year and after Bhagwan left India, I traveled for one year visiting the many Rajneesh Meditation Centers in almost every country of Europe before coming to be permanent resident in the commune here in Oregon. To my knowledge Bhagwan has over 300,000 followers across the world - including Russia. I have lived and worked among them and found them to be for the most part well-educated and many of them influential people in their respective countries. Bhagwan’s work and teachings are apolitical - politics are not his concern. The focus of his work has been to eleviate human suffering brought about because of our ignorance of ourselves and of our own inner workings. Bhagwan’s commune in Oregon is an experiment in religious life. Our purpose is to bring about a new consciousness in man - in ourselves - so that we can live and work in a new way -a way of love, compassion and intelligence. Bhagwan’s presence is essential to our purpose. His energy as an enlightened being is our source of energy. In relation to my expertise in business, how the work happens here is of interest. As I have indicated, I do have a degree in business management and what happens here defies all theories of how work has been organized and carried out in organizations in the past. Out of seeming chaos the job gets done. There are no systems or logic that I can discern and yet a city is being built where there was essentially barren land. There are no "bosses" and the job gets done. There are doctors doing garbage collection and someone that I reported to for work who was only 14 years old and she was tremendous at the very difficult job she was doing. A very extraordinary experiment in living is happening here as a result of Bhagwan’s teaching and presence. I believe what is happening here will have a far reaching impact on many areas of living and fields of endeavor: roles of men and women, family life, religion, psychology, farming technology, business theory and practice, city management, etc. Given my background and work in the field of psychology, I have found Bhagwan to have exceptional understanding of man and his problems and his work has far surpassed any other teachings I have come across. Bhagwan’s presence in the United States is a gift and an asset. He is a man of exceptional intelligence. His presence brings economic, cultural, technological and spiritual growth wherever he chooses to live and work. Bhagwan should be granted residency in America and I sincerely hope this matter can be settled as soon as possible. Respectfully, [signed] Ma Dhyan Satpriti

(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.)