Testimonial letter from Sw Deva Satyarthi
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 Satyarthi. It is "Exhibit A-846" 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. Deva Satyarthi To whom it may concern: I am writing a letter as a professional and a sannyasin who has lived and worked with Bhagwan for 7 years. I've been in the healing arts for over 12 years. I danced professionally for 2 years in San Francisco in an Afro-Jazz Dance company led by Bob Spriggs. This led me to start to look at movement from a different point of view then just performance, but more as a way of seeing habits that constricted the body, creating tension. This led me to work with a dance and movement theripist named Anna Halprin. I next went to Eselan Growth Institute in Big Sur, California. Here I got Rolfed (a system of structural integration). This was such an opening for me that I felt I also had to learn this work. In 1973 I studied Structural Integration at the Rolfing Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Then I started working as a Rolfer professionally in San Diego, and at the same time, teaching Dance Movement workshops. Lots of sannyasins were coming to the workshops and for sessions in Structural Integration, and this is how I became introduced to Bhagwan. One sannyasin gave me a newsletter with a discourse of Bhagwan’s on Prayer and the Body. I had never heard anything that went so deeply into the body as our connection to God. I loved the way he brought religion down to earth. I was so impressed I found myself reading more and more of his works. He opened up something in me that was sleeping for so long. This was the first time I felt a connection with religion. In 1976 I went to Poona, India to meet Bhagwan. I had never met anyone like him. He was very confident and wise and so articulate, and at the same time he was like a child - so simple and innocent, trusting and full of love. I had read many times about Jesus and Buddha - where they talked about these qualities - and here was a man who was living them. He was relating from his own experience. He also kept pointing out that the words were just an excuse to feel his silence, to keep our attention because in his silence there was God. Many times he said that when we were ready he would stop talking and communicate his silence with us. Many other theripists, dancers and body-workers were there and all of us were being transformed by this man Bhagwan. I found my own work going much deeper, and under his guidence other bodyworkers and myself worked together to develop a new system of Bodywork, Rajneesh Rebalancing. This is a unique situation, for all over the world bodyworkers are competing and constantly declaring their system to be the best. Competition limits their ability to work with people and creates an unwillingness to share. Here in Rajneeshpuram Bhagwan’s silent presence is so strong. It links us together to build this community to provoke God - a space without competition. We are working together, cooperating and sharing our expertise, I’ve been sharing mine with doctors, chiropractors, Riechian therapists and many others, and what makes this possible is Bhagwan's silent presence. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose love is opening up such a strong commitment for truth in all of us, gives us a vision that goes beyond systems. This has expanded Rajneesh Rebalancing beyond what’s happening in bodywork, as far as I’ve seen, any other place in the world. With Bhagwan’s silent inspiration, we never get caught in a system, but keep exploring, reaching out, opening into new layers of our work, constantly finding the courage to move beyond our limits. His message was always that love is the main healer, and Rajneeshpuram is a community where the love is so strong that I’m finding places in myself that I didn’t know were possible. For the last four years I’ve been teaching courses in Rajneesh Rebalancing to people from all over the world. I’ve also been leading Dance and Movement workshops. Lately, I’ve been developing a new kind of Dance Exercise program called Rajneeshercize which I’m putting into a book and an audio tape. It is almost completed. [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.)
