Testimonial letter from Ma Prem Amiyo
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 Prem Amiyo. It is "Exhibit A-857" 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.
 P.O.Box 10 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am Ma Prem Amiyo, working at Rajneesh International Meditation University as dance teacher and body worker. Before meeting Bhagwan, I was for 8 years dance teacher in France, dancechoreographer in the "Art et Mouvement" modern dance company, and co-director of "Art et Mouvement" association that was spreading dance all over the south of France. My whole life, my whole research, my whole passion was rooted in dance, theater, body expression. Even though I was successfuly working and expanding in this field, I somehow saw the limits of the work we were doing. The inside dimension, the depth was missing. I heard about Bhagwan’s meditations and, stuck in my own research in France, went to Poona, participated in various programs, meidtations, happening in the Shree Rajneeh Ashram. I immediately got tremendously excited by the new vision of art through Bhagwan’s teachings there. Dance as a meditation, not only any more as so-called esthetical creative gestures, dance as an inside fulfillment, not as an ego-fulfillment. Bhagwan opened the doors in the field of art that haven’t been open anywhere else. Everything I experience now comes from him and it still is a fantastic nourishing journey that I am discovering every day by His side. He brings a total new vision into the field of art and science: depth and totality. One day, as I was sitting in darshan in front of Him, Bhagwan told me (Darshan Diary - "99 Names of Nothingness", May 20, 1978) "Help people to dance here and develop your own style, develop your own ways, develop your own technique.. One has to know the technique and one has to be capable of being free of the technique. Then something in you starts growing, something takes form -something that is yours and can only be yours, something that has your signature on it. And dance is not really a thing to be learned. To think in terms of art is to miss the whole point. You can learn it technically and you can become a technical dancer, but you will miss the reality of it. It will be just the body and the soul will be missing. The soul comes through being meditative. The dance is not the real thing but a dancing soul Then the body moves of its own accord. You can make the body move but the soul will not move. The centre never follows the circumference but the circumference always follows the centre." Even though he is now in silence, his presence, his silence, triggers in me the silence necessary to open up the doors of my dancing soul. I watch him passing by every afternoon and for a few seconds my scattered noisy mind becomes quiet and peaceful, and by consequence, my body as well. Going back then immediately into workshops and groups has a totally new fragrance. Everybody is more ready to receive, integrate, create, because the chaos of the loaded mind disappeared for a few seconds. This scattered, conditioned mind, is the one that is reflected in the world of art, often more pathological than healthy. I experienced it in my non-sannyasin life, and also in the outside people we receive in workshops at the Rajneesh International Meditation University. Every day, I do with them Rajneeshercize (aerobic dance) classes, as well as with Rajneeshpuram residents and the difference on an energy level, and so on a technical level is obvious. This living experience shows me how much being able to see him every day, to work close to him every day, affects the whole dance of each human being. He brings people more in touch with their inner center so grace and harmony follow of their own accord. This is far more efficient than any other technique I have experienced anywhere in the world. And this is revolutionary: the creative body opening as a technique no longer has the primordial role it had before. Being a dance, I have never been really touched and sensitive to words, but much more to gestures, expressions, vibes coming out of a being. That’s how I can sense Bhagwan's work beyond words. I feel affected every day through a glimpse of him passing by, during the festival, through being meditative with him for 7 days during one hour. And the dance classes that were immediately following satsang those days were particularly limpid and joyful. [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.)
