Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Saman
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 Saman (Frits van der Blom). It is "Exhibit A-1851" 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.
 F. VAN DER BLOM To whom it may concern....... My name is F.v.d.Blom. I finished my medical study in 1977. From then on I first worked for the Municipal Health Service in Amsterdam and meanwhile I was looking for a general practice in this city, which I found in 1978. I allways liked the work as general practitioner very much, because it is a quite allround way of working with human beings. As it proved to be rather extensive too, I had to stop the previous work at the Municipal Health Service after a few years of doing both jobs together. During my whole live I have been interested in things like filosofy and religion of all kinds. I have gone deeply into almost all important tendencies which are to be found in the world with his many cultural shapes. In this way I came in contact with the books and the idea’s of Bhagwan Shree rajneesh too. He was talking about all aspects of live, filosofy, science, art, ethics, psychology, religion, and so on, and I found a tremendous inspiration through His teachings, which appeared to be so highly intelligent and well integrated and, at the other hand, so normal, yes so ordinary, that I got the feeling of coming home again after a long seeking journey. It is through this inspiration, that my work as a general practitioner has been considerably deepened. In fact my whole live has got more depth and more meaning, than it ever had before. That’s why I became a sannyasin at may 1982 and I received the name Swami Anand Saman. This has just been a beginning of a gradual and never ending proces into more quality and a more conscious way of living, which has to be seen as a birth right of all human beings, said Bhagwan. I have been in Rajneeshpuram during the festival of July 1983 and I was very much impressed seeing, that His vision has allready got so much shape, that thousands of people are able to live peacefully and harmoniously together, hard working and with great joy. This may be of tremendous value for the whole world of today and tomorrow. A very important proces of a considerable human growth possibility has started in the United States. [signed] |
(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.)
