Testimonial letter from Yasumi Nagai

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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 Mr Yasumi Nagai. It is "Exhibit A-258" 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.

KYOTO WOMEN’S JUNIOR COLLEGE
(Kyoto Joshi Tanki Daigakubu)
35 Kitahiyoshi-cho, Imakumano
Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto, 605, Japan
Telephone 075-531-1111

To Whom It May Concern,

I am a reseacher in ancient history, predominantly western history. I became aware of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through a friend in the summer of 1980 and read His books on Lao Tzu and Tantra.

I was interested in the period of human self consciousness around 500 B.C., which Karl Jasper has called " Achsenzeit ". I have become familiar with the creaters of world religions that are still in existance today. While I was reading comentaries on these religions I found nothing but dead theory and wrecked concepts. However I have been deeply touched by His lecture’s and books. When reading I had a kind of mysterious feeling and no rejection of His interpretation. Two months later quite by accident I met some disciple’s of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and felt a religious atmosphere around them which I had never experienced before. I was really surprised, so in the spring of 1981 I visited His ashram in Poona, India. Since that time, for me, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has become a great and meaningful being.

Concerning my field of research, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has given me insight and understanding into the philosophies of Socrates, the sages of the Archaique period such as Pythagoras and Herakleitos and some of the mysterious aspects of Plato. This between the line understanding does not mean a logical expression which makes it possible to understand His words intellectually. It means to reach oneself, experience oneself through the meditation's of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who has attained truth and silence and is still living in our presence.

To me it seems to be completely impossible to deeply understand those sages from the period around 500 B.C. with out the assistance of a master such as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who has attained to enlightenment

My name is Mr Yasumi Nagai and I belong to the Japan Association of Western Classics and Historical Science Academy. I teach Western History as a professor at Kyoto Women's College and Kyoto Women’s Junior College.

Mr Yasumi Nagai
436-3 Imajuku-cho
Moriyama-shi, Shiga
Japan 524.
July 15th, 1983.
[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.)