Testimonial letter from Alfred Leder

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 Dr. phil. Alfred Leder. It is "Exhibit A-290" in the Noles collection.

The original letter was handwritten in German, a text transcription has not yet been created. A text version of its translation 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.

The image in the text box links to a pdf file with the original letter, the translation, and a notary statement attesting to the validity of the translation. It has 5 pages.

translation Dr. phil. Alfred Leder Forch, July 17, 1983 As a lecturer at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, I should like to support all efforts to make it possible for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to go on with his spiritual activity among his sannyasins and to continue his work in the United States of America. I have been teaching for fifteen years at the university. After my general studies in psychology, psychopathology, psychiatry, philosophy and Indology I became especially involved with the methods of humanistic psychology, as well as the merging of Eastern and Western ways of human growth. I published several essays in German magazines. My knowledge of the Sanskrit language allowed me to study the Indian religion from its original sources. In 1979, I spent two months in the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona. I am not a sannyasin (a disciple in a closer sense) of Bhagwan, but still, just as an outsider, have fully convinced myself of the significance of the religion there realized. My judgement is based on intensive observations in Poona and on a close reading of about twenty books by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I have been impressed to find among his disciples new possibilities to give meaning to life, to creativity, to competent work, to find newly awakened forces for personal growth. Furthermore, Bhagwan's method is in my opinion the best way to prevent and heal drug addiction. I consider it a complete catastrophe if Bhagwan should be hindered in his activities in the United States of America, a country with religious freedom, thus interrupting the work of his disciples, too. I therefore urgently request you to reconsider this decision. Yours truly, (signed) ALFRED LEDER [notary stuff]

(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.)