Testimonial letter from Sw Bodhidharma
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 Bodhidharma (Shogo Kitada). It is "Exhibit A-2638" 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 1st, 1983. To Whom it May Concern, Six years have passed since I got to know Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, but I will never forget how greatly I was struck when I read His book " Tantra: The Supreme Understanding. ". Each word was so fresh and touched to the depths of my existence. Since then I have been very attracted to this feeling and have read many of His books. All of them have suited the steps of my inner growth. I was very shocked when I heard that Bhagwan had gone into silence. Till then, I had thought that I would always be able to reach Bhagwan through His books. His silence meant that there would be no more communication through words. I wanted to feel Bhagwan directly so I took sannyas on February 6th, 1982 at Shantiyuga Rajneesh Meditation Center. When I met Bhagwan inJuly of this year, and felt the fragrance of His silence, I realized how powerless and crude words can become. Bhagwan does not communicate to us directly through words, but says everything through His silence. In fact He doesn't just communicate He shares His whole existence with us. He is a living temple showing us the very fruit of existence, love, meditation, truth and god. 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.)
