Testimonial letter from Ma Sambodhi Lino
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 Sambodhi Lino (Ruth Schnidrig). It is "Exhibit A-1941" 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 24, 1983 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I live in Switzerland and am 28 years old. After finishing school at 15 I went to a School of Commerce. I worked in various professions, as a sales assistant, in a bakery, in the vineyards and at a gas station. Village life was based on tourism and seasonal work allowing me to travel Europe between seasons. When I was 20 I moved to Zurich and worked in a team of 12 at a travel agency. Later I led this team with another colleague. I have always been fascinated by people and their lifestyles and read a lot of philosophy and psycology books. I somehow never found a real answer to my question, only more questions. I practised yoga for two years till I. became dissatisfied. I was interested in bodywork and on reading Arthur Jarov's book "The Primal Scream", I decided to take part in a primal therapy group. This primal group was my first contact with Bhagwan, as it took place in a Rajneesh centre. I saw how his disciples lived together in a unique way. Never before in my life had I experienced so much beauty and love. Bhagwan enables us to do everything with a greater love and awareness. I had a new positive attitude to my work in the travel agency, which helped my colleagues too. I'm currently visiting Rajneeshpuram and am amazed at the amount of energy people here have. Working long hours in a relaxed and happy way. This is made possible by Bhagwan living amongst them. His presence is the foundation on which we can build. With best wishes, |
(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.)
