Testimonial letter from Sw Dhyan Yogesh
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 Yogesh (Hendrik Jan Pama). It is "Exhibit A-1818" 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.
 E. DA (?)ONTE R.S.A., LESOTHO, BOTSWANA & BOPHUTHATSWANA TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: My full and legal name is HENDRIK JAN PAMA and I am nearly 42 years of age. I am professionally a practising Attorney, Notary Public and Conveyancer and have been practising as such in the Republic of South Africa; Swaziland; Lesotho and Botswana for more than 15 years. During or about April, 1981 I ventured to Poona in India on holiday, having been persuaded to go there by a friend who was concerned about the state of my mental health which had come about through a painful and recent divorce. This friend had previously visited the Ashram of a certain Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona and had experienced such an amazing emotional benefit for herself that her enthusiasm was sufficiently contageous to persuade me that I had very little to lose. I was due for and badly needed a holiday anyway! Having been trained as a Lawyer I was and to some extent still am a sceptic, it was customary for me not to accept anything purely at face value, but to examine the available evidence first hand, analise same thoroughly through mental processes and to come to an objective, crystal clear result. Fortunately I am also somewhat curiously minded and adventurous and have never been too dogmatic, but, upon my arrival at the Ashram in Poona, I was confronted with a set of circumstances that literally blew my legal mind! Due to a Chickenpox epidemic which was prevalent at the Ashram during my visit in April, 1981, I never actually even saw Bhagwan, but something managed to penetrate my conditioning and skepticism with such monentum that it irrevocably altered the course of my life. In retrospect it appears that something happened for me after some two weeks there when I first picked up one of Bhagwan's many books and read same from start to finish with what must have been an open and receptive state of mind. With a flash of amazing clarity I realised that he was saying essentially what I had believed all my life, but had somehow never been able to verbalise or trust. There was no sudden belief in him being a God or the returning Messiah, but rather an understanding that what he was saying was exactly the way things were, are and always will be. New, sane two years and a few months later, I not only recognise Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as a religious leader, a man whose message could save the world and deliver man from his self imposed misery, but also as someone I love deeply and for whan I feel deep gratitude for having managed to awaken something in me that has been dormant for too long. This something has altered the quality of my life in all respects. Yours faithfully, |
(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.)
