Testimonial letter from Sw Vimal Abheer
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 Vimal Abheer (Roland Zander). It is "Exhibit A-1848" 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 Vimal Adheer To whom it may concern. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is incredibly different from any other person I know or heard of. He changed my life completely. When I first met disciples of Bhagwan I was fascinated by them and their life and felt very comfortable with them. Nevertheless it took me more than one year before I became a sannyasin myself, for I was literally fighting him. The simple reason for that was, that I heard of him only by reading prejudiced articles in political magazines and newspapers. Everything changed for me immediately when I watched my first videolectures. I couldn’t believe that I had been fighting such an amazing, wise man. I deeply felt the enormous difference between knowledge and knowing. So far I had stuffed my head only with knowledge. In these days I was discontent with my life and was just about to travel around looking for a better place to be and a better way to live. Right then I met Bhagwan by watching this video lecture. He did not just offer another theory of what is "good” and what is "bad" as many other philosophers and so-called gurus do. He is a man beyond duality. He spoke on all great mystics and poets, explained their message and taught different ways leading to truth, instead of feeding us with knowledge. I became his disciple because I felt this man lives truth by his love and by his very being. I can’t imagine anybody else as patient as him to help us growing. It is the patience of an Enlightened Master. My life changed completely. Religion got a new meaning and work became again worthwhile. I joined a Bhagwan Ashram in Germany, where there is no competition and everybody loves his work. Bhagwan teaches how to enjoy every minute of our life. He showed me how to open my eyes to see what religion is really about! Its not about condemning yourself for your ’’sins”. It is not about hope that you’ll reach heaven sometime. Being religious means for me, since I met Bhagwan, to accept life, to be total, to be blissful. Religion means to be thankful for the way we are, for all we can feel and see. Bhagwan also made Jesus alive for me, what priests never managed. I really can’t Imagine anybody to make religion more alive than Bhagwan. I hope I could make It obvious to you, that with Bhagwan, an outstanding person came to the United States. He should be allowed to do his work where he finds the best environment for it. With love, |
(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.)
