Testimonial letter from Sw Sangeet
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 Sangeet. It is "Exhibit A-817" 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 2 pages.
 Jesus Grove, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon 97741 USA (503) 489-3333 To Whom It May Concern, As Fire Chief of the Rajneeshpuram Rural Fire Protection District, I wish to express how Bhagwan Shree Rajneeh’s influence has changed the very nature of the emergency services in the community that surrounds him. My first contact with fire departments came in the mid-seventies when I spent 3 1/2 years as a full time fire fighter and emergency medical technician for the city of Monterey, California. Like all over the country the city departments were plagued with human pettiness, competition and complaining. I left to find something better early in 1976. By the end of that year I had become a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh at his ashram in India. Seeing all the transformation that happens around Bhagwan it is certainly no surprise the extraordinary uniqueness with which the emergency services have evolved here in his presence. What has happened in this past year since the formation of the fire district has never been seen before in this country. Where so few months ago no form of protection had ever existed, for a large area of central Oregon, we now have a modern fire district witn an entire community of volunteers ready to support us whatever or wherever the need. This true feeling of community and support we find here is spreading far beyond the small boundaries of Rajneeshpuram. Due to our willingness to learn and help, there has been great co-operation and mutual training with the Bureau of Land Management, State Forestry Department and the United States Forest Service, amongst other local and state agencies. We manned a fire lookout all last fire season in an area that had been left unprotected due to state cutbacks. We traveled over 75 miles to help the Bureau of Indian Affairs with a fire at Warm Springs Indian Reservation. Also, the fire district, with the immediate support of the commune's heavy machinery department stopped a major fire that was threatening a nearby town. This understanding of the true meaning of community has created an overlapping of training and response in Rajneeshpuram that other cities are striving for. Here individuals welcome training and are eager to help out in all areas of emergency medical, radio dispatch, fire and police services. At the first Association of Oregon Fire Chiefs Conference I attended last December, one of the topics we discussed was the need to combine the emergency services into a more streamlined cost effective unit. Yet due to competition between fire, police and ambulance companies there seemed to be no way to effectively enact it. Although I am Fire Chief I am also an Oregon Certified Emergency Medical Technician and after attending the Oregon Police Academy was presented the Lee M. Bown Memorial Award by the Board on Police Standards and Training for most outstanding officer of the class. So you can see as people who have been effected by Bhagwan we are not going to allow any pettiness to stand in the way of building community services that are an example and a benefit not only to the immediate area but the state and the entire nation. The necessary element for a truly dynamic community service and emergency response capability is co-operation without competition. This trait has become the very nature of the people here in the presence of Bhagwan due to their ability to understand his silence and grace and bring it to their everyday lives. 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.)
