Testimonial letter from Sw Prem Bhadra
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 Prem Bhadra. It is "Exhibit A-1580" 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.
 Swami Prem Badhra TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am working as a free-lance artist dancer all over Europe. In 1978 I experienced a crisis in my work, I had to give up dancing because it had become too much of a technique and I felt imprisoned in it. On the search for something new I cam across Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and with meeting him my whole life changed. I became his disciple and participated in meditations and therapy groups. To be in his presence was and is a deep religious experience for me. I found a new approach towards my work. To express it with Bhagwan's words: "Dance is not really a thing to be learned. It is a meditation; to think in terms of art is to miss the whole point. You can learn it technically and you can become a technical dancer, but you miss the reality of it. It will be just the body and the soul will be missing. The soul comes through being meditative. The dance is not the real thing, but a dancing soul! Then the body moves of its own accord." (The 99 Names of Nothingness, pp 327-328.) I have been working as a dancer since 1980 again and also leading dance improvisation groups in Europe. I am experiencing my work as fufilling. For me, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is the greatest religious teacher of our times and I am grateful to be able to be in his presence. The United States of America can only profit by his presence and should definitely grant this outstanding being permanent residence status! Very truly yours, |
(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.)
