Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Punyo
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 Punyo. It is "Exhibit A-2429" 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.
 Vienna, August 3rd 1983 To whom it may concern! When I read the first time books of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh I just had finished high school and was studying on computers. The main thing that fascinated me was His clear understanding of the things of everyday life - like relationships, politics, science and so on. So in 1980 I decided to take a close look and travelled to India to see Bhagwan. And this insight was overwhelming. The people living together in what Bhagwan calls a 'Buddhafield' with all their positivity was something for me like an old dream of humanity comes to fulfill - living together in harmony, peace and love. After one month of growth-programs and meditation-courses I became a disciple of this outstanding man. Sitting in front of Him, listening to Him and being touched by Him was a feeling of being in my centre, being home. When I came to see Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in America this year at the Second Annual World Celebration outer things had changed a lot but the feeling and the inner silence were the same as 3 years ago. Sitting in His presence at Satsang - a morning meditation - is an experience hard to describe, almost impossible. For me it feels like I am full of joy and peace. It feels like all the ordinary wants and needs disappear, become irrelevant. It's finding my love again - by experiencing His love. Back in Europe my religious activities are simple but effective; In the morning I start with a short prayer and in the evening I end the day with the same thing. This is an old greeting from Buddha’s time and makes me aware that the only important thing in life is to search for truth whatever the costs are and a living master helps a hundred per cent! So all the activities I do in between during the day I always do with Bhagwan in my mind - and work is no longer work, it becomes worship. There’s no doubt: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is a spiritual leader and America can be proud of Him. With lots of love and much fun |
(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.)
