Testimonial letter from Sw Deva Rajendra
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 Rajendra (Karten Stodte). It is "Exhibit A-1469" 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.
 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN As architect, townplanner and teacher in university, I have been involved in studies and plans about how cities are functioning, how they should be planned etc. One basic concern was to create a healthy environment in which human life could be made possible without the negative effects of modern industrial environments - but also have people live close to their places where they work. In short: to get away from the separation between work and home. Bhagwan’s vision which led to the establishing of communities all around the world, who live and work together, is for me the answer to this question which I was looking for during half of my life. The City of Rajneeshpuram is the first example in the world that I know of where a society functions on the basis of togetherness and love instead of competition. The energy that usually is wasted in the fights between people to establish their own individual rights and ways of living is used in Rajneeshpuram for positive development. In my work as an architect I have witnessed many projects from the first plan to the last screw. I would say more than 50% of the energy which put out to make things possible is used in sorting out the different people’s interests instead of the actual problem to be solved. Bhagwan’s teachings are the key to the solution to the problem modern urban societies have been creating. The United States of America are lucky to have the space for a person like Him to make his resources available to mankind. [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.)
