Testimonial letter from Sw Christ Chaitanya
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 Christ Chaitanya. It is "Exhibit A-533" 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.
 Sw. Christ Chaitanya To Whom It May Concern: Having graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1969 with a degree in general arts and sciences I decided to forgo law school and travel around the world. My thirst for experiencing other people's cultures was the great motivating force in my life at this time. My travels over the next two years saw me living with the aboriginals in the outback of Australia, sitting in Zazen meditation with the Japanese monks of Kyoto, experiencing the manifold business acumen of the Chinese in Taiwan, Malaysia and India, spending large periods of time with the Black Mao hill tribes of northern Tailand, Laos and Burma and also with the Nepalese and Tibetan sherpas who live in the small villages that dot the Nepalese landscape from the Kathmandu Valley all the way up to Tibet. During this time I also lived an ascetics life in Benares, India for 6 months -the only western student of a famous Sankhya Yogin in Varanasi. After experiencing all these people and myself in relation to all of them, my conclusion was self-evident: We all had different conditionings that had been instilled into us by our religion, our family, our society, etc. - therefore we had different intellectual beliefs. The common factor, however, was that we were all conditioned! And usually through fear! It was at this time that I came into contact with some pamphlets by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I was completely blown away by Bhagwan's words. Blown away not from the words themselves; blown away because his words served as a catalyst for something in me to say ‘Yes, of course this is true!' His words, for the time being, were reflecting something deep within myself, something beyond my normal fears, limitations, repressions and conditionings. Bhagwan represented the "higher me" to myself and this was my first experience of anything like this. I then went to Bombay and became a sannyasin, a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. This was in November of 1971. For me there are two areas in which Bhagwan stands far and away above any other religious leader. One is Bhagwan's vision of Homo Novus, the new man, who will use science and technology to enhance religion. His vision is of growth and creativity: wealthy both inside and out, emperors in both dimensions. Heretofore all religious people have told us you can have one or the other, the material or the spiritual, the World or God. For Bhagwan the world is God. His extraordinariness lies in the fact that he does not divide people in any way. We live in peaceful cooperation with each other, and generating the outer wealth through arts and crafts, university programs, books, tapes, recreation facilities, clothing, etc. The other area where Bhagwan stands out is his ability to devise meditation techniques for the modern age. Because of his extensive knowledge of all types of psychology and of all traditions of meditation, Bhagwan has devised meditation techniques that take the Modern Man into account. I have been given the rare opportunity of conducting these meditations daily. For ten years I have seen literally hundreds of thousands transformed through them. Bhagwan's "Dynamic Meditation" has been the single most transforming element as far as any method in the last ten years is concerned. It has deeply helped and changed the lives of more people than all the other “new age" or "old age" techniques combined. What I say is fact, I have been a witness to it. Bhagwan represents to me the highest possibility of man. His whole energy goes in to helping those who want to realize this possibility in themselves. In conclusion, I would like to mention something about Bhagwan's silence. For 20 years he has reiterated again and again that words are only important inasmuch as they may lead to the wordless. The wordless is the true teaching, the real transmission. Bhagwan had pointed out a number of times that words were only an exuse to sit with him for 90 minutes; the real message lay between the lines. The words were to appease a curious intellect; the silence between the words to quench a thirsty soul. And the latter was the important thing. There is a story about Gautam the Buddha who is to the East what Jesus is to the West. Buddha went to give a sermon; thousands of followers gathered around him to listen. Buddha just sat with a flower in his hand and said nothing. Some of the followers started to get uneasy: "Was he going to say something or not?" Suddenly, a disciple called Mahakashyap started to laugh , tears of joy pouring from his eyes. Buddha called Mahakashyap forward and said to the gathering: "Whatever I could have said, I have already told you all. Whatever I can give, I give now to Mahakashyap." And with that he handed Mahakashap the flower. Through Bhagwan's daily drives through the ranch, through sitting with him in Satsang and darshan during the celebrations that take place here, Bhagwan is handing us all this flower. Whatever he could have said, he had said. We are now ready as disciples to receive. The flower of love is showering on everyone. The understanding can not be of the intellect because the transmission is not intellectual. For a group of outside people to intellectually decide that Bhagwan is not a spiritual leader because he no longer speaks is like a group of people saying that two lovers are not in love because the love is not tangible, they can't see it anywhere. Bhagwan's love has dissolved into his people, his disciples. They are his biography. One needs only to experience the lives of his sannyasins here at the ranch to have a true understanding of this great spiritual leader. Sw. Christ Chaitanya |
(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.)
