Testimonial letter from Dieter Duhm
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 Dieter Duhm. It is "Exhibit A-780" 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.
 BAUHÜTTE TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am working as a specialist on adult education, as a writer-journalist, and as a professor of cultural research. I have gotten to know Bhagwan through his publications and through his lectures in Poona which I attended for six weeks. I am deeply impressed by his ideas concerning a new humanity and culture. The communities that have been inspired by him all over the world represent a new model for living together which leads to much less frustration, deviant behavior, violence, and criminality than the statistical average in society at large. Bhagwan’s religious philosophy is not sectarian in nature, but rather a synthesis of eastern and western thought, that casts a new light on the therapeutic, pedagogical, and philosophical questions of today. Bhagwan must be allowed to stay in the country that we Europeans still appreciate as the land of unlimited opportunity and freedom: the United States of America. Sincerely yours, |
(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.)
