Testimonial letter from Paul Halley
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 Paul Halley. It is "Exhibit A-2077" 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.
 To Whom It May Concern: My name is Paul Halley. I am 30 years old, and am employed as a computer resource specialist with the Bank of America. I graduated with honors in 1975 from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in English. In April 1982 I was initiated as a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The initiation took place at Geetam Rajneesh Sannyas Ashram in Lucerne Valley, California, and was over a year after Bhagwan went into silence. My acquaintanceship with his teachings took place through a volume of his collected discourses, The Book of the Secrets, Volume 3. While at Geetam, which at the time served as the central location for the therapy groups that had originated in Bhagwan’s ashram in India, I saw and heard him speak on dozens of videotapes and audiotapes. Certainly I had an opportunity to listen to his voice equal to many who had become disciples in the days when he actually delivered discourses. I have since been in his actual physical presence any number of times within the last year during my frequent visits to Rajneeshpuram, where he now resides. Along with many other disciples, I have sat with him over the past year in a total of 12 satsangs and 5 darshans, which is evidence enough to me of his availability, regardless of his decision not to speak. Communication is strictly a matter of subjective perception; who is to say what I do and do not hear? Bhagwan communicates through silence a music, a harmony far beyond the capacity of words, even his words, to describe. My experiences sitting in Bhagwan's presence have given me more grist for self-knowledge than any of the millions of words I have read written by artists, psychoanalysts, and sages of all varieties. How is this alchemy accomplished? This, I think, is a useless question; scientific method has always been impotent to explain (and often even to recognize) the interrelatedness of every living substance. Bhagwan’s magic, on the other hand, far more than explaining this interrelatedness, demonstrates it to anyone ready to receive it. Yours truly, |
(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.)
