Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Svarup
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 Svarup. It is "Exhibit A-458" 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.
 P.O. Box 10 To whom it may concern. I have known and been in personal contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through darshans and discourses for nine years. In that time he has spoken widely on psychology and mental health and his understanding and elucidation of the psychological problems of modern man stand way beyond any other contemporary work on these topics. In my professional work, as clinical psychologist, social worker and psychotherapist, his insight into the relationship of the human mind and the social and psychological unrest so prevalent today has enabled me to help people in a more profound and meaningful way than I thought possible. The clarity with which he has been able to communicate his ideas has enabled me and other colleagues to share his deep and profound understanding with all sorts of people, regardless of their previous intellectual understanding of psychology. For someone to be able to cut through all the technical and intellectual complexities and yet present a complete and indepth understanding of the human mind is a sign of genius, and outstanding ability, rarely, if ever, encountered before in the field of psychology and mental health. I have a degree in psychology and studied at the internationally known Tavistock Institute of Human Relations for over two years, as well as working as a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Both these institutes are recognized as representing the most advanced ideas in mental health, but my experience with Bhagwan's teaching far surpasses their influence. Amongst many experiences coming out of my contact with Bhagwan’s teachings on mental health, I would like to mention that when I was a group consultant for a London social services department many people from individual clients to senior social work officers were influenced by the psychological ideas of Bhagwan that I discussed with them. It is absolutely clear that Bhagwan's contribution to my personal field of mental health far surpasses anyone else in recent years and his influence continues to spread as more people come into contact with his ideas. 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.)
