Testimonial letter from Ma Prem Gayan
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 Gayan (Sylvie Winter). It is "Exhibit A-663" 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.
 Ma Prem Gayan To Whom It May Concern, My career as an artist began in the late sixties. After having been Germany’s most famous cover and fashion model, appearing in all the leading fashion magazines and on dozens of covers, I began working all over Europe, particularly in Milan and Paris (Vogue, Grazia, Elle, etc.) Work with my four agencies - Eileen Ford in New York, Modelie International in Paris, Riccardo Gay in Milan and Klages in Munich has taken me all over the world. As an actress, my first feature film, "Love as Beautiful As Love" was awarded the "Silver Lion" at the 1971 Venice Film Festival. An extremely successful feature film for television "Sylvie" shot in the United States and Europe documented my story as a model. Other film work included a movie for C.B.S. Also my paintings and sculpture have been successfully exhibited in Europe and the United States. My first book, When The Heart Is Free, published in March of this year by Langen-Mueller in Germany describes my relationship with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. At present I’m working on my second book which treats Bhagwan’s current influence on my life and work. Since meeting Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1976, my work was strongly insfuenced and inspired by his - tremendous understanding of Harmony and Beauty in the arts. My work began to flower in such a way that my breakthrough was inevitable. Soon I had interviews and dozen of articles in all the major European newspapers, including the famous "Spiegel Magazine" and Stern, Quick, Bunte, Vogue, etc. Bhagwan’s exceptional ways of perceiving made it possible for me, also to "see" in different ways which made the incredible difference in my painting and in my sculpures. People of the press even started to write about this magical difference, and were sometimes also personally very strongly affected. That Bhagwan is the most outstanding Person and Genius of this Century is very clear to me, since our first contact. Without him my work would have never been what it is now, without him my life would not be as it is now. A constant unfolding of never-ending possibilities and creativity. His absolute Religious approach to Life and existence has inspired not only my outer activities - and the activities of thousands of others -but also the flowering of an inner fulfillment. Ma Prem Gayan |
(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.)
