Testimonial letter from Ma Punito
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 Punito (Margaret D . Bier). It is "Exhibit A-755" 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 3 pages.
 Ma Punito To whom it may concern: I was a career journalist for fifteen years, during which I worked on several major newspapers in New York, Virginia and North Carolina. In the course of my work, I became conversant with the most forward-moving trends in several fields, including education, psychology, criminology and the judicial system, and others, and was often called upon to interview experts and figures of importance in those fields. My writing has won more that a dozen state, national and Associated Press awards for investigative reporting, news coverage and feature writing, and I have enjoyed a reputation as a responsible, fair-minded and well-informed journalist, and a writer of quality, among editors and others involved in the profession. I also was city editor of the Roanoke (Virginia) World-News and then assistant city editor of that city’s Times and World-News when the two papers combined, during which I was responsible for the supervision of up to 25 reporters and the daily planning and implementation of the paper’s entire coverage of local and area news in a metropolitan center of about 200,000 readers. I also served as a consultant to the Associated Press during that time. Before undertaking the newspaper career, I studied fine and applied arts for two years at the Rochester (New York) Institute of Technology, and afterward made my living as an artist for two years. I am acquainted with the work and concepts of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in person, through recorded tapes, and through the manuscripts and books of his discourses and darshans published by Rajneesh Foundation and Rajneesh Foundation International. I have read almost the entire body of his published and unpublished work. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who in my opinion is the most significant religious leader of our century if not of the past twenty-five centuries, has also made outstanding contributions in three fields in which I feel qualifies to speak: psychology, education and the arts. Bhagwan's innovative and unique contributions to the field of psychology are too numerous, complex and pervasive to be cited in a letter such as this; how--ever, there is one concept, the one I feel has the most far-reaching implications, which I would like to put forth as a contribution worthy in itself to place him in the forefront of the profession: his "psychology of the Buddhas." Particularly in this vision, he consistently challenges the field of psychology to extend itself beyond its self-imposed limits and reach for experimentation in and understanding of mankind's higher capabilities. As he said in October 1976 in The Discipline of Transcendence: "Psychology has developed through the study of the pathological mind. Psychology has remained at the level of the pathological; it is not even at the level of the normal man. And the Buddhas are certainly not going to come to your leboratories; you will have to go to them. They are not going to lie down on your couch. You will have to develop different methods, different structures, to understand them. And if you don’t go, they are not at a loss—psychology suffers." In the field of psychotherapy too, he has -- personnally and through the work of his disciples -- taken major new steps. The Rajneesh communes, in Poona, in Oregon and elsewhere in the world, are living, breathing, experiential laboratories for the concept he expresses over and over again during his speaking career: That therapy is, first and foremost, a function of love and compassion, and that only love, however various the forms its manifestation may take, can heal. Therapy and its natural extension, the raising of consciousness, are taking bold new strides with this man, at a higher and more comprehensive level than any other place in the world. In 1976 (A Sudden Clash of Thunder), he told a psychotherapist: "Don’t help people just to be normal--help them to grow; help them to become unique. Normal, they will be just part of a collectivity. Help them to become individuals." The entire body of work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has been, and is, permeated with a new and unique vision of psychology...and with clarity and his understanding of the deepest needs of his disciples, and of mankind. Once in 1978 a Swedish research psychologist who had been studying the work of this enlightened Master said to me that Bhagwan is the greatest practicing psychologist alive in the world today. I can only agree. Bhagwan's insight and understanding in the realms of education also are outstanding in my experience. His concern, expressed again in a multitude of ways, is the development of intelligence and inventiveness in mankind, if we are ever to cope adequately— let alone creatively—with the "knowledge explosion" that has been happening in the past century and is still accelerating. There is, of course, much more. But, as is the case with psychology, Bhagwan's contribution to education is not necessarily for the sake of education as we usually think of it; there is a higher purpose: the flowering of consciousness. As a person who was immersed in visual creativity, painting and design, for a number of years, I can appreciate from my personal experience the insight Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has in the field of the arts. he knows from the inside the agony, the ecstasy and the total meditative immersion of the creative experience. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has experience as an artist, whether he has ever painted a painting or not. But of course there is more. One of the contributions he has brought to the arts that I find particularly valuable is his understanding of what Gurdjieff called "objective art"—the art, consciously created, that was in a larger sense mystic, because its effect on body and spirit is beyond what is usually defined as aesthetics. And Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is the first artist I have encountered who has the clarity and the ability to communicate necessary to convey to others his vision of the arts and their role in the development of higher consciousness. Bhagwan also has contributed an absolutely vital connection between art, which is so often considered a luxury, and the very real and tangible need humanity has for it. If the world today does not make sense, that means more pictures, more music, more poetry is needed that makes sense--to help humanity to come out of this absurd state. Otherwise how is the world going to be helped? It needs music, it needs poetry, it needs dance, it needs paintings, which can help it to rise above its misery, its schizophrenia, its neurosis, its psychosis. While Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has made contributions far beyond the norm in specific fields of human endeavor such as these, I find that the most outstanding contribution he has made, and can continue to make, is in the overview he has of all the pursuits--his unique perspective and his ability to unify all perspectives. In a divided world, in a world of divided persons, this ability is so sorely needed...in fact, we may find, if we are willing to look deeply enough, that this ability is all that can save us from ourselves and what we are doing to ourselves. In September 1980, in Guida Spirituale, he said: "Up to now religious people have also thought that their pursuit is one-dimensional. After me they will have to redefine religion! And I would like to say that I am strictly sticking to my pursuit, but my pursuit is not one of the pursuits--it includes all." This to me is the essence of the contribution Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has made, and is continuing to make today in a more subtle way, through his disciples and his commune. It seems to me a gift to humanity which cannot be ignored. [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.)
