Testimonial letter from Sw Deva Bhavito

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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 Deva Bhavito (Bruno Ruggeri). It is "Exhibit A-658" 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.

19 July, 1983

My name is Bruno Ruggeri (Swami Deva Bhavito), and I am an architect from Italy. As assistant professor in the faculty of Architecture, Palermo University, I am giving a course on ’architectural design’.

I heard of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ten years ago, through friends who had become disciples of his. At first I knew very little about him and was rather critical.

Then - four years ago - during a journey to India to study Indian architecture, I met him in Poona. Attending the courses of the Rajneesh University on arts and craft, and doing some therapy groups. I could experience the power of his techniques, and I realized how important they were in developing the creativity of human beings.

It was actually my research study that brought me to Bhagwan. I had been working for years at the University trying to find methods to develop the artistic creativity, and bring a meeting-point between the physical space in architecture, and the essence of life.

Bhagwan is teaching always go to the root of the problem, so it became clear to me that all the old techniques needed to be renovated. This I have been doing for the last four years, and the results have been surprising. I have organized workshops of professional training using the psycho-synthesis techniques that I learned in Poona, and the quality of the work has improved so much that they are now constantly used. But the most important outcome of my meeting Bhagwan has been a project that is now under study in conjunction with the faculty of Architecture in the University of Milan concerning the new social and cultural experiment that is happening at the commune of Rajneeshpuram in Oregon.

The actual deep crisis of human values that is affecting society to-day, and that has endangered humankind, is well-known. Studying the community in Rajneeshpuram, it became evident that all these problems are non-existent there - that a new alternative society has been created. Such a phenomenon can be studied and imitated in the future.

All the relations that have been researched between human beings and society, between money and work, between society and family, the new alternatives concerning free time, child education, the elimination of violence and drugs, are already set up in this community, and are available to humanity. We are witnessing an event as important as the discovery of nuclear energy - that makes Bhagwan one of the greatest geniuses humanity has ever had.

[signed]
Bruno Ruggeri
Via Della Leva n. 84
90142 Palermo, ITALY


(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.)