Testimonial letter from Sw Gyan Pathik
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 Gyan Pathik (Andreas Hage). It is "Exhibit A-905" 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.
 Sw. Gyan Pathik TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am a pianist, trained by two of the leading West German artists in the seventies at the Academy of Music at Hamburg. Throughout studies and after finishing studies with the diploma, I performed classical music (solo, concerts and chamber music) as well as the contemporary field of experimental music. I have performed in West Germany, England, Holland, Switzerland, including the premiere of a Jazz Mass for Choir, Piano (leading part) and Jazz Quartet at Hamburg in 1980, composed by one of the most important German Contemporary Composers, Claus Bantzer. This performance, my first as a Rajneeshee, was recorded live and broadcast nationwide on radio and television. From my extensive experience performing music I must say, that the approach to art and life itself changed tremendously after becoming a disciple of this living Master. Previously my motivation for playing and composing music came from need, the need for a career, success, acknowledgement by society. Now for me, making music is becoming more and more an expression of devotion, towards Bhagwan and thus towards life itself. The more I let go of any idea about how music should be performed, the more alive, the more vivid and rich the music becomes. Even my technique changed in a remarkable way. I discovered that each individual has his own physical conditioning which can be trained and perfected through systems and teachers up to a certain point, and in my opinion, beyond this, the development of the tool of the body (in my case it is the hands) happens through meditation, improving technique through awareness. For a performing artist this means watching the body, observing the hands while playing and finding the moments of total harmony between the feelings that want to be expressed and the means that express them. This process of learning never ends. It was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who opened the way for me to start a new relation to music and art, a way that leads to discovery as an individual and becoming able to feel God within myself, even if it is only possible for a few moments. 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.)
