Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Samadhana
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 Samadhana. It is "Exhibit A-2020" 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.
 Sw. Anand Samadhana TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN My discovery of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was the resolution of a 6 year spiritual search. It started in 1970 at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, where I first saw how huge and mysterious the human potential is. During the next 5 years I passed through many spiritual schools: Hindu, Sufi, Western mysticism, then settled on Tibetan Buddhism. I was all set in Boulder, Colorado, baking whole grain breads, climbing rocks in the mointains, meditating with a Tibetan Lama and playing my oboe (2 years at New England Conservatory) in a local group, when I first heard of Bhagwan. The intuitive attraction was immediate and was deepened as I read his books and met more of his sannyasins. All that I trusted within myself said, "Go". In ’76 I went to Poona. When I first saw him a great resolution rang through me and I decided to take sannyas. I’d been in the presence of Sufi and Tibetan teachers, but none had radience like this. This guy was something else! Since then I’ve been thriving in his Buddhafield. Contact with him induces growth, love, happiness, wonder in existence, a deep sense of beauty. There is tremendous love and tremendous challenge, all you can take. This "Buddhafield" is a field of transforming energy which forms around an enlightened one and his people. It can be felt. Try it if you ever come to the ranch or the hotel in Portland. I now bake at the ranch and in Portland, play my oboe with other sannyasins and hike the hills of Rajneeshpuram and everything is full of an intensity, a vitality I’ve never known before. We live in an environment of love and beauty in which people grow and bloom. It is all thanks to Bhagwan’s genius, his very tangible energy, his endless love. He is the craftsman, the gardener, the visionary without whom this is impossible. In Poona he spoke about his vision of a "New Man". (One who among other things, would not blow up his own planet in frustration.) And of a way of life which could be a seed of intelligence, sanity, celebration, for the humanity of the future. He envisioned a hard working commune, far from the maddening crowds, where we could experiment with our lives in a great Buddhafield. Enough other people were excited at this opportunity and now we have built it here, causing harm to no one and enormous good to humanity on the whole. Our very existence has been known to cheer up gloomy people! ...perceptive ones anyway... (see Berlin). And of course our doors are open to any who sincerely want to join in the experiment. Finally, Bhagwan is a living Buddha, an enlightened one, and a master in a unique historical context, the modern world. Naturally his methods are new, innovative, but rooted in the same truth as those of Christ, Buddha, Lao Tzu, the Zen Masters. He can, as says he will, produce more Buddhas from among his disciples. This is the highest work possible on this earth. It is a great blessing to have him among us. Swami Anand Samadhana |
(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.)
