Testimonial letter from Daim Batangtaris
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 Daim Batangtaris. It is "Exhibit A-329" 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.
 July 21, 1983 Dear Sirs, Having had the pleasure of delivering a lecture at the Rasjneesh Therapy Institute here in Holland, I gladly respond to the foundation's request to state in a few words what I belief to be its main contribution to world society. In my work for the United Nations, I have come to realize that what is most urgently needed these days is an international synthesis of not just arts and sciences, but corereligious values as well. As you know, it has always been the basic attitude of UN organizations to emphasize Unity in Diversity throughout all fields of human endeavour. Abiding the mandate of tolerance, we found that ideological pluralism is a quite practical concept for bringing about a fruitful co-operation between the nations. This relatively new, inter-cultural attitude towards matters of universal significance is what I found to be experimented with in sannyasin communities as well. The wealth of psychological know-how, which is being accumulated and tested there is something which I consider to be of great value to peace education. Being a member of the UN University For Peace and as such professionally interested in conflictresolution on all levels of human functioning, I can assure you, that much of the psychotherapeutic research stimulated by Sri Rasjneesh is of eminent relevance to establishing World Peace. In this light, I would like to plead in favour of allowing the sannyasins to maintain their international community in Oregon. I am absolutely confident, that if their branch of the human potential movement is given the opportunity to mature, it will eventually be of support to a better "condition humaine" for all generations to come. Let us remember, that it was the spirit of synthesis, which united the States of Amerika. It is that very same spirit of synthesis, which will unite the nations. With the very best wishes, 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.)
