Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Narangu
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 Narangu (Peter Grace). It is "Exhibit A-1775" 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.
 August 1, 1983 To Whom It May Concern: I have been a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh since May, 1982. Before taking sannyas, I had been exposed to His teachings through books and tapes of discourses which He gave while still in India, as well as through doing meditations which He had devised. I chose to become His disciple without ever having seen Him in person or hearing Him speak live. There is no way to satisfactorily put into words why I made this important commitment. The only thing I can say is that what my exposure to Him conveyed to me was the vastness and beauty of His love, and His message as I received it was that God exists as continual creation, and that the way to adequately worship is to rejoice in this creation—to realize that we all partake of the divine every minute of our lives in our diverse ways. Bhagwan opened my eyes to perceive the beauty of existence, to be aware of its divinity, and to respect and enjoy my life and the lives with which I come into contact. Since taking sannyas I've had the opportunity to sit in satsang, silent communion with the Master, during the two World Celebrations held at Rajneeshpuram in July 1982 and 1983. Being in Bhagwan’s presence has strongly intensified my feeling of being with a spiritual Master who is here to show to those who are open to receiving it the fullness of God's unconditional love and our responsibility to live life with awareness and joy. The sight of this beautiful being is a most powerful reminder of this love, and in His silent presence it is possible for the heart to understand simply and quietly what the head can never quite formulate or articulate. When one has heard or read His words from discourses, and seen that He spent years repeating and amplifying essentially the same message, as seen from the perspectives of many of the worlds' great religions and spiritual Masters, it is perfectly clear that words can go only so far, and that silence was the next and only possible step. Because His presence, His silence can reach deeper and farther than words, I rejoice to have come to Him in this phase of His work. Love |
(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.)
