Testimonial letter from Sw Veet Rob
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 Veet Rob (R. H. J. Bunnik MD). It is "Exhibit A-466" 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.
 20th July 1983 To whom it may concern Herewith I would like to express my views on Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his great contribution to the medical world. To introduce myself, the following: I finished my pregraduate studies in 1970 (cum laude) and stayed for one year in the U.S.A. at the age of sixteen in an exchange program. Back in Holland I started my studies at the Biology Faculty of the University of Utrecht, later also at the Medical Faculty, (Medical Biology cond. degree 1974, Medicine 1975, Medical Degree 1980, all with Honor) and completed my specialization recently as a general practitioner. During my studies I’ve also been working as a teacher in nurse training programs, and worked for two years at the university institute of medical psychology and psychotherapy leading groups of medical students in communications training programs and sexology courses. In 1979 I came in contact with the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and later that same year I took sannyas in Poona, India. Since that time my attitude towards the medical profession has gone through constant changes. Bhagwan's lectures are a constant source of inspiration, and he has been focusing a lot of attention to the medical work. First of all he talked a lot about the role and the person of the doctor. His contribution in this area is truly immense and unique, and medical schools and universities are completely unable to offer their students anything like it. At the best they seem to be occupied with the transferring of information to the students but in fact, underneath, they transfer a lot of fear together with the cover-up: the phoney image of the modern, reliable, self-confident and efficient doctor. This lack of, let's say, room for and stimulation of, inner growth of the medical students cannot be replaced by modern technology and leads eventually to a lack of contact between the doctor and his patient, and finally to therapeutic failure. Bhagwan's contribution to the inner growth of the therapist goes far deeper than any modern western form of psychotherapy. Apart from this, Bhagwan has been giving a clear understanding of how a patient creates his disease unconsciously, and how these processes are influenced by society. How a symptom or disease might be part of an unconscious strategy of the patient to achieve a certain goal. Especially disorders such as cardiovascular disease and tumor growth have had his attention. Also several psychiatric syndromes up to suicidal behaviour have been topics in his lectures. Insight in the processes involved can be of great importance to any physician. Bhagwan has also been sharing a lot of his insights with us in elementary processes of birth and death, the growing up of children and aging processes in older people. Last but not least he has explained much of the differences between western traditional medicine and other forms of medicine like homeopathy, acupuncture, praying and meditation, as well as paramedical therapies as massage rolfing and acupressure. All of these get placed by him in a deep integrated insight he has in the human being. These are just a few examples I can give in a short letter like this and also I realised I have to restrict myself to the medical field in which I was educated. Thus I hope to have been able to make clear that Bhagwan has a lot to offer to our medical world, moreover since he strongly supports our modern technical development. He offers however an integration of this development with eastern insights that have been lost in our western world. I don't think it's a mere coincidence we can count so many physicians among his disciples. Finally I’d like to share something with you of the great personal impact meeting Bhagwan has had on myself. Its hard to explain what it is exactly that I'm experiencing in his presence, but one thing is for sure. It goes far beyond the mere meaning of the words he spoke. Maybe its comparable to chatting to the one you're in love with. You don't really need to go into deep discussions with the other, into what's the meaning of the word being uttered. You just enjoy the other's presence and trust your feelings. Being with him gives me a great feeling of peace inside, a uniting, integrating and healing force. An experience you can call meditation. Presently I'm happy to be visiting the ranch in Oregon, a community where Bhagwan's presence and inspiration can be felt everywhere. A community like this would never be possible without him. People are amazed by the progress achieved here in developing the area, but all these achievements are nothing but mere by-products. The real thing this experimental commune is about is trust and love. Self-acceptance is one of the strongest healing powers and constantly stimulated here. It is my utmost conviction that being in the presence of Bhagwan meant far more to me than all personal growth programs I participated in or will ever participate in together could ever mean to me. It has brought me in contact with inner riches that will make my life and work never the same again. Thinking of the fact that anyone interested can come to visit the ranch, I realize how many people could be benefited by him. Bhagwan is of immense value not only to the medical world, but to our entire civilization. Yours 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.)
