Testimonial letter from Sw Bodhi Willy
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 Willy (Willy Alvarenga Lacerda). It is "Exhibit A-1095" 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.
 WILLY A. LACERDA To c/o Rajneesh Hotel My name is Willy Alvarenga Lacerda. I'm 47 years old, have 4 sons ( from 16 to 22 years old ), and a Civil Engineer, witha B.S. degree from the National School of Engineering of Rio de Janeiro, 1958, I have also M.S. and Ph.D. degreeas obtained in 1969 and 1976, respectivaly, both at the University of California at Berkeley, in the specialty of Soil Mechanics. Since then I've been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses of Soil Mechanis at COPPE-UFRJ (Coordination of Graduate Programs in Engineering, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro ), where I'm now a Full Professor, having had and having more than 25 M.S. and 5 Ph.D. Thesis under my advisorship. I also do a lot of consulting in my field, travelling extensively in Brasil, having as my clients consulting firms and State and Federal Agencies. 1 have published more than 20 technical papers and am no preparing a book on Soil Mechanics; I have attended many national and international Conferences of Soil Mechanics, having been recently selected as ono of the panelists in one of the sessions of the next International Conference of Soil hiechanis and Engineering Foundation, to ba held in 1985 at San Francisco, California. Well, enough about me. In 1978 I was visiting a friend, and browsing in his library a copy of the “Book of ths Secrets, volume 1 " came under my attention. I could not stop its reading, and had to xerox it, for my friend wouldn't lend it to me under no hypothesis ( I now understand why ! ). I then began to read eagerly all that I could of and about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, for I was having my internal strings plucked with such a force, giving forth such a harmonious melody, that I felt that that was that - I had arrived at the right man. Before knowing Bhagwan I had the pretension of reading everything that the human mind had elaborated through the centuries, and then do my own personal view of the world. After Bhagwan, I saw the non-sense I was pursuing, for then it became crystal clear to me that everything already is, that there is no way of reaching Trut by mere intelectual speculation. I began to see and feel life as a tremendously enjoyable play, and 1 discovered ( or rediscovered ! the enormous pleasure that intelectual games affords us, including my profession. I relaxed more and more into it, I lost my “serious ness", and my classes and consulting jobs became more and more enjoyable. My God, how I have fun doing what I am doing for a livi Through Bhagwan, I rediscovered my creativity. That was a keystone for me. In everything that I do, there's always the possibility to re-create, to discover new facets that were neglected or hidden. All my professional designs are now more free, I’m experimenting more. But, as a Good Engineer, I play it according to scientific methodology, abeying established rules and experience; the only difference is that I know I can change a rule, if I find it outdated or false. Besides this tremendous push in my profession, I began to experi ence meditation, to attend growth groups under the guidance of Bhagwan’s sannyasins. My personal relationship with people changed, at first imperceptibly, and, since I had the courage to finally recognize and accept Bhagwan as my Master, which happens in late 1981, the changes have been very big, yet subtle. People that don’t see me for a long time sometimes say they wouldn’t recognize me, were it not for my face and identity card. My feeling now is of a growing Love. Yes, I Love Bhagwan. And through him, I’m more and more loving towards living beings fof this Universe, tremendously respectful of every aspect of Creati Not only I am learning to love more, I am also accepting love ( which I now recognize I didn’t, before ). What can I say more ? Bhagwan is a Master, and I trust his guidance. He gave me a new name: W Swami Bodhi Willy, which means Conscience, leading to illumination. He kept the old name Willy, as if to remember me to accept the world, and live in it, but not be of it. I hope Bhagwan stays with us, and where he is now, for a long, long time. With love, |
(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.)
