Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Bijen
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 Sw Anand Bijen (W. Zerkel (?)). It is "Exhibit A-1726" 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.
 Swami Anand Bijen TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN As a scholarship holder of the Hans Böckler Foundation I completed my studies in the fields of political economics, industrial management, sociology and law. I worked on a treatise on management models in West-Germany. At the moment I’m working on a treatise on the reasons of psychological diseases and their effect on the economy and possibilities of prevention in enterprises. During my academic training my main interest focussed on man. This happened strongly through the teachings of my Master Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. After hearing about Bhagwan in Germany through radio, television and newspaper articles, I read some of the more than 300 books by Him and heard His discourses on tapes. Soon I was able to bring more and more suggestions from His religious teachings into the university, discussing them with professors, students and friends. Many new creative possibilities emerged from that. For instance, we started seminars on industrial management with meditations devised by Bhagwan. The achievements of the students increased considerably. Bhagwan's insight about facts, context from sociology, psychology, economics, politics and health goes far beyond the experiences I had through practice and theory.. His indications and suggestions for solution are ingenious. And this applies for many areas of humanity. In 1982 I met him face to face for the first time. In that moment I experienced that His words are only indications for something else, alive, something to be experienced. Words are for me now quite unimportant compared to what happens with me when I communicate with my Master in Satsang in silence (heart to heart communion). Now after and with this experience there's only one word I find to explain this phenomenon. What happens is religiousness. Religion, lived with Bhagwan, means for me to live, laugh, love, be silent and fly. The moments I can spend with my Master in silence make me dive into a state of stillness, clarity and strength which I can't reach without Him. I’m grateful that Bhagwan is alive, that I became and can be His disciple and feel His love. [signed x2] |
(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.)
