Testimonial letter from Christiane Köhler
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 Christiane Köhler. It is "Exhibit A-1108" 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.
 Christiane Köhler From 1970 to 1978 I studied foreign languages, philosophy and pedagogy for several years at the University of Munster, North Germany, and for one year at the Sorbonne in Paris. On several trips within Europe, to the States, to the Middle and Far East, I had a chance to live and become friends with people from other races, cultures and religions. I am now a teacher at a comprehensive school in Dorsten, near Cologne. I got to know Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through a book by the former German reporter Swami Satyananda, in which seven of Bhagwan’s disciples told about how they became sannyasins. Since I have started reading Bhagwan himself or listening to him on tapes or video-cassettes, life has begun to make sense to me. My father being a protestant priest, I had been raised in an atmosphere that encouraged feelings of guilt and inferiority, denying the joy of life. I became interested in Islam, therefore, but it is through Bhagwan only that I have finally been getting close to religion again, and even to better understanding Jesus’ message. From all approaches that have been or are being made to bring happiness to mankind and peace into the world - e.g., Marxism, the various peace movements - Bhagwan’s view is the one that fully convinces me because I feel he is totally realistic. Moreover, he shows a way to live in peace and happiness that really works. I have experienced this in several Rajneesh meditation centers in Germany and especially in Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. If you are open, you cannot help being changed yourself in this atmosphere. Bhagwan helps people to really grow (up) and get in tune with existence. I am convinced that if anything can prevent us from extinguishing mankind in a world-wide nuclear catastrophe, it will be the changing of our consciousness, it will be practicing love in the here and now as Bhagwan teaches. [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.)
