Testimonial letter from Sw Jivan Jerome
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 Jivan Jerome. It is "Exhibit A-1888" 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.
 P.O. Box 10 To whom it may concern The purpose of this letter is to support the permanent resident status of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. My first contact with Bhagwan was in 1980 when I was a pipe-fitter foreman at the largest nuclear power plant ever built in California. After reading just four of his books, I was on a flight to Poona, India. After 2 weeks of meditation camp, I became a disciple. The following four months were of group therapy, morning talks, evening darshans, meditations, and finally working in the ashram. I returned to the U.S.A. with a totally new insight of myself, based on love and personal expression. The following two years, one year outside of his presence, one year directly in his presence, have deepened my awareness of myself. For the last 15 months I have been living in the commune as a resident watching everything get better, especially myself. I have no questions to ask Bhagwan, nor a desire to talk with him. Every day in his drive we look into each other's eyes, Love expressed without words. The seven days of meditation in his presence with 15,000 Friends can't be felt on a video or on paper, and is beyond words. I have had two years of Art in college, but Bhagwan has given me my greatest challenge in creativity. The freedom and space to create myself. Swami Jivan Jerome |
(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.)
