Testimonial letter from Gisela Böhm
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 Gisela Böhm. It is "Exhibit A-970" 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.
 Gisela Böhm I’ve been working as a teacher in the field of languages and literature at grammar schools for seven years now and during that time experienced a lack of any positive, life-affirming direction in the curricula as well as in the attitude of most of the teachers. Nobody really seems to know how to handle the task of preparing young people for a responsible and creative life in harmony with society and nature. The consequence is dissatisfaction, desorientation and aggressive negativity on both sides. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh sees this plight of the modern Western man - who is being reproduced again and again in our schools - very clearly. His writings gave me courage and led me towards his meditations, therapeutic techniques and his vision of the new man. The transformation of the individual is the only chance for our planet, and our schools have to contribute in this process. Under the inspiration of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh this new way of being is coming into existence in Rajneeshpuram and at other places of the world - a man and a concept that should not be missed. [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.)
