Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Ravi
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 Ravi (Dr. Robert T. Jaffe). It is "Exhibit A-264" 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.
 July 24, 1983 To Whom It May Concern: My name, Dr. Robert Jaffe and I’m a medical doctor at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Weiss is a middle size hospital, well known for its quality of patient care and its staff of nationally and internationally known doctors. This year I’m doing my residency in general medicine at Weiss. The past four years I’ve been a Medical Student at The University of Illinois in Chicago. The University of Illinois is one of the top thirty medical schools in the country and one of the top fifteen state medical schools in the United States. My reason for writing you then, is to let you know that for the past five years I’ve been working hard to learn a profession where I could help people. This is one of the few significant things I have found in life. For the past seven years I’ve been a follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I took Sannyas (Initiation) as a college pre-medical student at the University of Illinois in 1976. Three years later I flew to Poona, India for the first time. I stayed six weeks and then came back to Chicago to begin medical school. Bhagwan was the most significant thing that had happened to me at that time. I knew I loved this man and the people drawn to him, yet I was also clear that I needed a trade, so I could be creative and not be a burden to society. I left Poona in the summer of 1979 and returned a year later in the summer of 1980 on my summer vacation. This time I spent three months in Poona, and again I returned to the U.S. to complete medical school. Then in 1981 Rejneeshpuram Oregon was begun. I was thrilled to have Bhagwan so close. Yet, I didn’t need to run to Oregon or Poona to be at his side. Bhagwan tells us to learn a way of life, a trade or profession so that we can take care of ourselves, be self-sufficient and not a dependent parasite of our social security and welfare systems. This past summer I completed my medical training and finally succeeded in learning a profession where I could be of use to society and people. This past July I began my residency at Weiss Hospital. Concurrently with medical school in 1982, I became the center leader and coordinator of Yojana Rajneesh Meditation Center in Chicago. During the past year we’ve grown to offer both followers and non-followers of Bhagwan’s programs in meditations, therapy, encounter groups, Polarity and Rebalancing massage, counselling, and study of Bhagwan’s teachings. We have several meditations, three times a week and an open house on Wednesday nights. Living in Chicago as Bhagwan’s Sannyasin, I have found it both rewarding and an opportunity to practice Bhagwan’s teachings in a major city far from his side. There are many Sannyasins like myself who love Bhagwan, practice his philosophy and live all over the United States. I am very close to Bhagwan and have chosen him as my preferred religious leader and I live here in Chicago, just as the majority of Sannyasins live around the world. Of 350,000 followers, only 800 are living in Rajneeshpuram. Bhagwan’s teaching us to live lovingly with people, with our families and our friends. I wish you could drop your fears and see how much he has to offer us. Let him stay here in the United States! Lovingly, |
(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.)
