Testimonial letter from Sw Paritosh Yogena
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 Paritosh Yogena (Douglas J. Matteson). It is "Exhibit A-807" 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 3 pages.
 From the desk of: TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN My personal background is: Bachelor of Science in Engineering, University of California, Berkely. I am a licensed civil engineer in California, Nevada and Oregon. My employment history is: ten years with the State of California and fifteen years with the County of. San Mateo, California, employed in Public Works Engineering. Most recently I owned and operated an engineering consulting firm, known as Squaw Valley Engineering at Lake Tahoe, California. During my career I also accumulated substantial real estate holdings. I was born in Oregon of pioneering families, was raised a Christian, and studied Eastern religions. As a part of my investigation into religions, I read some of the books by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Impressed by his teachings, I traveled to India and studied with him in Poona. There, in March 1981, I joined his following as a sannyasin. In his teachings Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh says that with proper care and loving concern, a productive land can be reclaimed from the desert. At Rajneeshpuram, that is happening. With scientific knowledge in all areas, careful planning, water and soil reclamations, a beautiful city is being built. Although Bhagwan remains silent, his presence is clearly felt. No direct evidence can be given for the effect of his presence. Each person involved in any aspect of the operations at Rajneeshpuram would be able to cite examples of the unique way this aspect of the project progresses. Ways to demonstrate the effects of his presence vary; stories of individual co-operation and timeliness of events can be told. From my viewpoint, the sheer volume of work substantiates the positive effect of his presence. Although there are not generally titles in the commune, my work can be described as Public Works Consultant and Structural Engineer. The Public Works projects we have undertaken are: Fifty to Seventy-Five miles of new or improved roads An eleven hundred acre foot (3,000,000 gallon) flood control and water conservation dam, with facilities for irrigation and recreation. The dam was constructed in less than six months. The heavy equipment moved, removed, excavated, subexcavated, placed and compacted more than 350,000 cubic yards of earth. The work was all done by his followers, of varied backgrounds, male and female. All of the above projects require careful and accurate surveying. Surveyors, with one exception, consist of previously inexperienced novices, who now operate electronic survey equipment, design and lay out roads, plot topographic maps and record the location of utilities. In addition, we have installed our own concrete ready-mix plant and aggregate and sand production plants. We have placed nearly 5000 cubic yards of concrete at this date. We have had three quarters of a million cubic yards of rock crushed. I have been involved in all of this work - some hands on, some in a consulting capacity and some at the periphery. In my 25 previous years experience in public works any single phase mentioned above would have required full time attention. In my capacity as structural engineer I have been directly involved in nearly every building erected. We now have 9 concrete and steel frame buildings completed or under construction as follows: We have large buildings of various construction materials as follows: In addition we have provided temporary infrastructure and housing for two annual world pilgrimages. The last provided for 15,000 guests in tents and circus tent assembly areas. Along with the temporary buildings, we built an eating area of 130,000 square feet with cooking facilities to suit. The building is a sophisticated truss and metal roof open-air structure. At the time of writing it is being dismantled to comply with festival permits. The parts will be salvaged and re-used at other sites in permanent buildings. This listing of projects is made not to demonstrate fiscal and physical achievement alone - but to show that such an undertaking has been especially made possible and inspired by the presence of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Rajneeshpurm. My involvement in these projects required the development of additional personal engineering skills and required working on several projects simultaneously. I am continuously impressed at the achievements of others who were previously untrained in the construction areas. People who were clerks, professors, artists and actors and actresses, now do beautiful journeyman work in construction. To attempt to explain exactly why and how all of this is achieved in his presence would require an entire essay. But I can positively say that such a record of achievement could only be made by people inspired by such an exceptional man. I strongly urge that permanent resident status be granted to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh [signed] |
(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.)
