Testimonial letter from Sw Dhyan Govind
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 Dhyan Govind (R. Teppema). It is "Exhibit A-1762" 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.
 Arnhem, August 2nd, 1983. To whom it may concern, Hereby I’d like to draw your attention to the refusal of the stay in the United States of America of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I don't want to argue with you about this refusal. I just want to try to show you why it so important that Bhagwan should be able to share His religious teachings in the country of His choise. To me, the best way of doling this is by explaining what He as a master means to me. I’m now almost two years a sannyasin, one of His followers In these two years of spiritual search I’ve changed alot. From a person that was always trying to change the world exept from himself by fighting everyting that he thought was wrong, I’ve grown through the understanding of myself that Bhagwan gave me, to a person that fixes his eyes nolonger upon negativity but only spends his energy upon positive things in society and tries to support them. From a politically left-wing-teenager I became a positive person. This transformation happened even when my master was thousands of miles away from me, physically. I’ve seen Him twice only. But that doesn’t seem to affect my increasing love for Him. I hope I made you understand a bit why it would be so beautifull if Bhagwan was given the opportunity to share His teachings. To my opinion, America would profit enormously of His legalised stay. Sincerely Yours, |
(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.)
