Testimonial letter from Gerhard Marcel Martin

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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 Gerhard Marcel Martin. It is "Exhibit A-84" 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.

FACHBEREICH EVANGELISCHE THEOLOGIE
PHILIPPS-UNIVERSITÄT MARBURG
SEMINAR FÜR PRAKTISCHE THEOLOGIE
Prof.Dr.theol.Gerhard Marcel Martin
LAHNTOR 3. ALTE UNIVERSITÄT
3550 MARBURG/LAHN, DEN 22.7.1983
SEKRETARIATE:
FERNRUF: 06421/282825
064 21/26 42 62

Statement concerning person and teaching of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

As a Christian theologian and professor for practical theology at the University of Marburg/Fed.Rep.of Germany I like to express shortly my opinion of the meaning of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for contemporary religious life and religious-cultural movements:

I myself have visited the Ashram of the Rajneesh-Foundation in Poona/India and found the immediate influence, the teaching and the books of Bhagwan most stimulating, giving a lot of impulses to keep religious traditions alive and to transform them into present myths to live by. Though I did not become a disciple of him I will not miss or underestimate his influence on my theological insights.

According to far-eastern traditions (and in structural correspondence to certain ways of Christian ascetism and monasticism) it is quite normal that a teacher-"guru” like Bhagwan stops speaking and teaching by words (cf. Sri Aurobindo/Pondicherry-India) at a certain time of his life. His meaning is not hindered by that going into the realm of silence (his close disciples continue to speak, his books can be studied, some loo books!). His teachings are not obscured by that fact. His influence and importance remains or will even-increase.

[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.)