Testimonial letter from Sw Bodhi Savyasachi

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 Bodhi Savyasachi (Mr. Yoshiaki Kikuchi). It is "Exhibit A-2660" 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.

August 5th, 1983 Mr. Yoshiaki Kikuchi Swami Bodhi Savyasachi C/O Ueji Nakamura 41 Maekouji, Iwakirijyo, Ninoheshi, Iwate-prefecture, Japan 028-76 To whom It May Concern, I got to know Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for the first; rime through reading his books. His lectures are free and unrestrained, and they extend to all religions, ne gave me an answer for something I could not understand, xt was not something serious but something full of humour and love. while I was reading His lecture books, I could not help but feel that He knew what an enlightened man was. I did not want to have Bhagwan as just knowledge, so I started going to a Rajneesh Meditation Center. The Meditations of Bhagwan were happening there. I became able to live in a more relaxed way, without having tension. In the group meditation, all of us became one and shared our existence. I felt great happiness that I cannot express with words. It was the first experience for me. I felt that this was the way of human beings. While I visited the Meditation Center, I started feeling that I wanted to be his disciple, so I took sannyas on May 16 1983. Now Bhagwan is in silence. He does not give any lectures, but I feel that He is working more toward each of us, through His silence than through His lectures. Scientific techniques have improved and we have abundant material possessions, but they have not brought us happiness. Rather, we have began to feel that life is worthless and vacant. I believe that in this diseased society, Bhagwan makes me feel that life is worth living and He also helps many other people. Yours, Yoshiaki Kikuchi [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.)