Testimonial letter from Sw Anurag Dhyanam
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 Anurag Dhyanam (Jay Schlechter PhD). It is "Exhibit A-1549" 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 received a Ph. D. in 1971 from the University of California, Los Angeles. I was teaching at the California State University, Los Angeles at that time, and this continued until I took a position at the Australian National University in the Psychology Department. In 1977 I began to leave these research and teaching pursuits and became more involved in humanistic psychology. After leading groups throughout Australia, I settled in Sydney, establishing a practice there. I was gratified to share some approaches with the New South Wales State mental hospital staff, looking at new ways to alleviate chronic and acute psychological distress, as well as addictive disorders. It seemed clear to me that our treatment schemes were at the beginning stages of development. I thought to travel to India to see whether the "meditational" approaches had something to offer. In Poona, I discovered a new quality of being. I heard it said that love is the only therapy. This struck a responsive chord in me. I knew that when 'techniques' did work that 'lovingness' somehow was there. And now, I found a man who lives in 'lovingness'. "Aha!”, I said, "perhaps there’s something here". Then I discovered, that while living in that loving state, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has used every technique I have ever known and more. His talks with seekers over many years have been recorded in over 200 volumes and will remain a rich source of information for the psychologist. Now, while his disciples continue the transmission of his verbal work, he teaches many of us how through silent communion we can contact our deeper beings. In silence, the false drops more and more away and our loving shining natures emerge. It seems that he gives us a taste of lovingness, then meditation, then back and forth. Although religious and peak experiences have always defied exact psychological categorization, we can say that his contribution to psychology transcends itself. With his amazing breadth and artistry he weaves a many-layered approach to alleviating distress and moving towards growth, love, meditation, and the human happiness that is the birthright of us all. No other living being has ever addressed themselves in so much detail to so many levels of being, from the depths of human suffering to the heights of human experience. Yours truly |
(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.)
