Testimonial letter from Sw Veet Sandeha
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 Sandeha (James Grant Henningham). It is "Exhibit A-790" 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.
 P.O. Box 10, TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN My name is James Grant Henningham also known as Swami Veet Sandeha. I am 46 years old. I graduated with Honours in Economics from the University of Sydney, Australia in 1958 and subsequently became an Associate of the Australian Society of Accountants. I worked for more than 20 years for CSR Ltd. one of the 5 largest companies in Australia. My experience covered accounting and systems, and more extensively the field of employee relations. I also worked as a senior administrator for PT Koba Tin, a tin mining company in Indonesia and subsequently as a consultant for the same organisation. My first contact with the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was through the Newsletter published by Rajneesh Foundation in India. This served as an introduction to publications of His discourses which I was able to order by mail. Eventually I visited Poona in India to experience the Master more directly and I became a sannyasin. I am now a member of the Rajneesh Neo-Sannyasin International Commune located at Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, U.S.A. During the last few years of my work at CSR Ltd. I headed a project of organisational change which aimed to bring about major changes in the way people in the organisation related to each other, their work and to the organisation itself. It was a major project reporting directly to the Chief Executive Mr. R.G. Jackson OA. My colleagues and I travelled in most of the Western world and met with most of the people who were thought to be leaders in this field. With ample resources available we applied the techniques which seemed to be appropriate to our organisation. The impact of all this effort was minimal. I reluctantly came to the conclusion that Western man's conditioning was such that it was not possible to bring about the fundamental changes we were looking for. I now know that I was wrong. It is possible for people to live in harmony, to work in harmony, to strive for a common purpose without strife, without power trips, without incentives or bribes or rewards or punishments, without crime, mental disorders or suicides. I know it is possible because it is happening here. And it is happening here because a community of up to 1000 people are following the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, working together to fulfill his vision. Any organisation, any country in the world could benefit by following the example of the community here. To have such a person as Bhagwan actually living in a country is something which can only be of immense value. This exceptional man, with his message of love, can be an inspiration to people everywhere to live in harmony, to create wealth and to ensure the very survival of the world. [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.)
