Testimonial letter from Ma Yoga Sudha
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 Yoga Sudha (Linda Valdes). It is "Exhibit A-392" 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.
 Ma Yoga Sudha To Whom it May Concern: I am writing with reference to the visa application of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. First, I would like to tell you something about myself. I was born in New York City thirty-seven years ago into a black family who were first generation immigrants from Cuba. I was raised in Spanish Harlem and attended both public and parochial schools before getting a state scholarship to university. I studied psychology with a minor in philosophy. In 1968 I was invited by the Maudsley Hospital Institute for Psychiatry and Research to England to help run their first experiment in drug-free therapeutic communities for drug addiction rehabilitation. I lived in London for five years, and during this time I was working for the U.S. Air Force on a consultant basis running therapy groups for their young people with drug problems. I first heard about Bhagwan while living in England. My attraction to Bhagwan’s teaching at first was purely professional. In using some of his methods of meditation on myself and with my clients, I was achieving unprecedented success with character disorders and with de-pressives. The more I experimented with and explored Bhagwan’s methods, the more familiar I became with his teaching, the more I grew to respect this man as a master psychologist, a prince in his understanding of the mind. The techniques were powerful, but there was a certain something about what he said and how he said it that was even more intrigueing. I went to India to meet him, saw immediately that he had something I had never in my life before come across in a person (call it an aura of peace, of silence), and became a disciple. And he has been the only one in my life to answer my deepest questions. In the ten years that I have been his disciple, he has shown me over and over again how to change despair into hope, anger into love and fear into courage and clarity. With his guidance I have become more finely attuned to life, more open to the heart, more meditative. Now that Bhagwan has entered his silent phase, the work on myself and my work with people has gone into new and deeper dimensions. There is no need for him to speak - his presence, his silence, his love are the teaching. All that can be said Bhagwan has already said in his discourses and in his darshans where he spoke to us individually. Now it is a question of living a life style which reflects his vision. Bhagwan's presence here at the Ranch is an inspiration. To see him every day on his drive, to dance and to celebrate life in his presence is a gift without which we could not work and worship in such an extraordinary way. Without his silence his teaching would be incomplete. Now, I and thousands of his disciples can look within ourselves to find the truth that he has verbally shared with us for so many years. And we can live here together in such a way that this truth can go deeper in us and become our own. He is a reminder of what is possible for a human being. His silent presence is like a challenge, a call to deeper aspects of myself where there is boundless energy. Because of the love he has showered on me I am more capable of love. He just loves...it needs no words. Bhagwan once said that the world needs therapy because the world lacks love; therapy is a function of love. This is exquisite wisdom, and more people’s lives have been up-lifted because of the way of love that he embodies than by all the techniques and psychological theory that I have ever learned anywhere. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is unquestionably a religious teacher and an extraordinarily gifted being. He has something which happens rarely on this planet - enlightenment. I think that he has something which America needs: the wisdom, the clarity, the intelligence, the knowledge of someone who has travelled the inner recesses of himself and found home. We are a society that is rich in the outer world and impoverished, starving to death in the inner world. Bhagwan is a master of inner wealth, and his silence says it to me, and says it unequivocally. His silence is the most eloquent religious statement I have ever heard. Yours 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.)
