Testimonial letter from Sw Deva Sugata
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 Sugata (Wolf Schneider). It is "Exhibit A-1419" 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.
 Wolf Schneider TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN As a persistent student of science, arts and human possibilities I now want to testify how Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh deepened my search and insight into human nature and even changed my whole approach to life. As the son of professor Dietrich Schneider, an internationally renowned scientist, I also started studying sciences and related fields. Getting deepr into the matter I went on to theory of science, logic and philosophy (B. Russel, R. Carnap, K. Popper), then including anthropology and the study of the Eastern cultures. I gained a B.A. at the University of Munich, but when the issue of my Ph.D thesis came up, I realised that my knowledge was bookish and I have to experience life more directly before I could claim to know anything about it. I started travelling, studying Asian cultures and languages, such as the South Indian, Indonesian and Thai. In fact I was searching for a Master. But after two years of travelling I had almost given up hope that I would ever meet a man who would comprehend both East and West- not just adorning his preconceptions with the jargon of others. But then I met Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona. Through his own vision he combined and transcended both: Western Encounter Psychotherapy and Eastern Advaita Vedanta, Vipassana and Bio-energetics, Human Growth through unconditional love and Zen. Listening to his daily discourses and seeing what happened in his presence made me realise that our Western universities, once avant garde Centers of Creative Intelligence and human science, had lost their spirit and creativity. Only a spiritual teacher like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who is not clinging to words and symbols, can lead us beyond mere knowledge - collective mentality - that our universities produce. In Central Oregon, USA, a commune has been created, where industrious people have come to live in peace and harmony; no competition, no violence, no crime. Only a man who is beyond words, who is able to teach in silence, can inspire such a commune. His sitting in silence with us at satsang and darshan, generates the energy which manifests itself in so much unbounded joy and enthusiastic creativity. I hope there is more to come, and that America will welcome such a genius in their country. Sw. deva Sugata |
(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.)
