Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Rahasya
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 Rahasya (Mogens Rasmussen). It is "Exhibit A-534" 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.
 To whom it may concern I write to you concerning the spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. First, some words about my own background. I am a Ph. D. of psychology (University of Copenhagen), clinical psychologist and during the past lo years I have been involved in consciousness-research and practical application of humanistic psychology in Denmark. I have also been translating and editing several books on psychotherapy, consciousness research and religion. After finishing my Ph. D. I met a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who introduced me to hos writings. These writings seemed to express extraordinary wisdom and insight and evidenced a close acqaintance with all the major religious traditions of the world and also with modern western psychology, psychotherapy and consciousness research. Inspired by this, I went to India and was initiated as a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Having watched the growth of his work during the past lo years, it is my opinion, that he is a religious teacher and spiritual leader of extraordinary dimensions, who not only in his teaching has been able to incorporate the best of the Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, but also has been able to attract thousands of disciples from all over the world and through his work has had a deep transformational impact on a number of people unequalled by any other religious teacher in the world to day. I am convinced, that the state of Oregon and the U. S. A. in giving him the opportunity to continue his work, in the eyes of a large part of humanity will come to stand out as a shining example of that generosity and openness, which is the hallmark of the great American tradition of religious freedom. Yours sincerely |
(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.)
