Testimonial letter from Sw Gopal Venu
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 Gopal Venu (Charles Staples). It is "Exhibit A-1783" 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.
 Gopal Venu To whom it may concern, I wish to clarify my position as regards Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I took saanyas, ( formally recognised Rajneesh as my spiritual master ) in November 1981, some six months after He stopped speaking publicly. I see His silence as a development from public utterance, not, as it may superficially appear, as an empty regression. The term " heart to heart communion " has been coined for such an activity. The words may sound trite, but how else to describe the very real communication I feel in his presence. Sincerely, |
(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.)
