Testimonial letter from Brigitte Koch
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 Brigitte Koch. It is "Exhibit A-1190" 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.
 Textilwerkstatt to whom it may concern My name is Brigitte Koch, I was born in Nürnberg/W-Germany on the 24/May/58, where I've been living with my parents until I’d finished High School. I always had an interest in fine handicraft. After visiting the Orient, where I learned the old technique of carpet-making, I decided to study Textile Art and Textildesign. these studies took ne some years at the Academie of Arts at Nürnberg. Hot only wall-hangings, textile pictures and hand-woven clothes, but also textile sculptures grew in my workshop outside of Nürnberg, in the silent surrounding of the countryside. I take part in different small andbig exhibitions, also had own exhibitions. Of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh I’d heard a lot from friends here in Germany. When I was in India in 1981, I'd first done a lot of silent meditations in another ashram. Then I visitet Poona and felt much better among all the orange-dressed people, who shared a lot of honest love among each other. I did not want to become a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in a flow of overwhelming emotions, I felt it had to go deeper. During the next year I read some of Bhagwan's books and knew: this is my way, I want to go this way. This was my decision to take Sannyas, to accept Bhagwan as my master. When I say Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is my master, he doesn't take the role of a father for ne, who tells ne what to do or not, he is the living (personified) expression of divine energy. Such a person is to ne like a catalysator, one's personal development is happening much faster than usually. Seeing him, living amongst his disciples helps me to find myself more and more. Out of that experience I am living a live more intensly, with more trust in myself, more vitally, more happy and more creative. 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.)
