Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Heeren

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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 Heeren (David L. Barratt). It is "Exhibit A-469" 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.

David L. Barratt
Swami Anand Heeren
PO Box 10
Rajneeshpuram OR 97741

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

My first degree was a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Leeds University in England, 1973. Postgraduate degree was a Diploma in Business Administration from Manchester Business School, 1974, one of the top two Business Schools in England.

I worked in Financial Planning for Air Products Ltd., a multinational corporation, in their European headquarters in London.

My father, Sir Lawrie Barratt, is founder and Chairman of Barratt Developments, the largest building company in England, and one of the largest in California, with gross sales last year of over $600 million, and profit of $60 million.

I became a sannyasin (a disciple) of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in 1975, and lived at the Shree Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, India from 1975 to 1981, attending Bhagwan’s daily discourse nearly every day during that time. When I first started listening to Bhagwan's discourses, I was astounded at the tremendous depth of his intellect and profound understanding of people.

Having worked as a Site Engineer on construction sites during my vacations as an engineering student, I find it quite remarkable to observe the different attitude to work happening on the contsruction sites in Rajneeshpuram. Every day when Bhagwan drives through the city, everyone stops work to greet him and share a few moments of his silence. That silence and love is carried through to every act of the everyday practical work, whether it is pouring concrete, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting. A carpenter, hammering a nail in a piece of wood now becomes God hammering God into God: Everything is Divine, and this quality of love is even more noticeable on the interpersonal level, where the whole emphasis in this amazing community is that no work is important enough to ignore someone’s feelings. To always be aware and sensitive to other people. And the miracle is that so much more work happens because of this attitude. The more we learn to carry this love and acceptance more and more of the time, the more beautiful everything becomes. The inspiration to keep encouraging us to let go of negative feelings and emotions and choose to start seeing the Divine everywhere, comes from a one second glimpse into the eyes of a man who lives every moment in this state, which Jesus called Christ consciousness.

I find Bhagwan to be a person of exceptional and quite outstanding ability, not only as a psychologist and philosopher, but also as a religious teacher and spiritual leader.

I can personally testify to the current widespread acclaim and international recognition accorded Bhagwan by people from every strata of society in many countries around the world.

(David L Barratt)
[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.)