Testimonial letter from Ma Prem Laurel
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 Laurel (Laurel A. Osborne). It is "Exhibit A-1508" 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 26, 1983 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I have a Master's degree in Librarianship from the University of Southern California and for five years I practiced my profession in the Public Library of Santa Barbara, California. I served in the high-level Reference Center, on the Bookmobile and was in charge of the Children's Division. My whole life has been involved with words - printed, recorded and spoken. The idea of communication, of communion, through silence was foreign to me. I met Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through an Italian physicist friend and through other Italian Sannyasins (disciples of Bhagwan). The loving way they treated each other, their boundless energy and joyful spontaneity gave me the desire to know more about the person who inspired their behavior. So I asked for books and magazines and was deeply struck by the truth and feeling of recognition I experienced on reading Bhagwan's discourses and darshans with his disciples. His books inspired me to travel to His ashram in Poona, Inda, where I became a disciple. I was blessed to experience both Bhagwan's words and His silence (He was ill and absent, then sat silently with us for some days before resuming discourses) and discovered that communion did take place in silence, that His loving presence was felt even more strongly and the sense of community was even greater when words were not there as a screen. But without words to guide me, to point the way, I would never have come to understand how totally inadequate they are even to attempt to describe what transpires in the energy of a Buddhafield, what happens between Master and disciple. I can only experience that connection, that sense of community, which has remained with me ever since and which is stronger for me in His actual presence. For the past year I have visited often and finally have come to live here at Rajneeshpuram, experiencing the daily communion when Bhagwan drives by, experiencing the intensification of that communion during the Festivals as we all sit silently, sharing the energy of Bhagwan's presence. I feel His energy every day as I perform my secretarial function, as I am so caught up un the play of getting out a report or writing a letter that I often go part way through lunch or past dinner time. It still amazes me how much happens, of such excellent quality, in such a short time. The energy grows and gets higher as we all play together, building this lovely City and transforming this badly neglected land into a haven where even the animals feel Bhagwan's presence as they become tamer and more relaxed around us. Bhagwan's presence, His very being, is helping us to become lighter and more playful with each other, more caring and loving, of each other and of the land. He is inspiring us to create an oasis in this desert of Central Oregon and already in one year the changes have been dramatic. Only an enlightened being such as Bhagwan could inspire such intense creativity. Sincerely, |
(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.)
