Testimonial letter from D. L. van der Waerden
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. D. L. van der Waerden. It is "Exhibit A-1102" 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.
 Amsterdam To Whom It May Concern: I received my B.A. and M.A. at the University of Amsterdam in Holland in 1968. Since then I have been working in developmental psychology, first in Holland and from 1970 until 1980 in Isreal. There I was part of the team of a developmental child center in Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon. During my stay in Israel I got acquainted with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s work for the first time, through an American colleague, Dr. Erwin Shaw, who brought the newest books in our field from the states. Since then I haven’t stopped reading his religious works. It is not a coincidence that so many of His disciples are psychologists, social workers or psychiatrists, as Bhagwan added a whole new dimension to the understanding of mankind. He went out not only above the behaviouristic theories, but also he went further then our depth-psychology-theories, which were inspired by Freud. He added what so many therapist had felt was lacking, namely, a wholistic, positive view of man, not only as an animal, neither only as a mind-body unity, but as a whole living being, where the whole is more than the parts. Now centers of Bhagwan followers from all over the world are known as the most outstanding centers for personal growth groups, encounters and individual therapies. I especially know about the Center for Dehypnotherapy in Soest, Holland, headed by Swami Santosh, formerly known as Richard O. Shoulders. I participated in a group there along with other colleagues from all over Europe. It is my direct experience that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s teachings added to the field of psychology in an exceptional and outstanding way. 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.)
