Testimonial letter from Hans-Joachim Heiner
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. Hans-Joachim Heiner. It is "Exhibit A-730" 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 2 pages.
 SEMINAR FÜR DIDAKTIK DER SPRACHE, To whom it may concern My work at University consists in teaching German literature and German language and how to teach them at school. My teaching is a preparation for student-teachers to learn teaching. It reachs on one sinde to educational science and to literature critique on the other. I published two books, one about Friedrich Schlegel, a famous romantic thinker and the other about education in the German "Gesaatschule". A new publication concerning the religious dimension of the poetry Hermmann Hesse is in work. Bhagwan is a man of great insights about poetry and literature. His teaching revealed to me a new understanding of literature as a world in between the scientific approach to reality and the religious approach. It is a discovery of the inner dimension in the outer world . In his words: "Science and religion are polar opposites; science is extrovert, religion is introvert. And between the two is the world of aesthetics. It is the bridge; it is both and neither. (...) It is scientific in the sense that art creates objects, and it is religious in the sense that whatsoever art creates is first envisioned in one's own beeing. It is the bridge between science and religion." (The Book of the Books. Published by Rajneesh Foundation International. Antelope/Oregon 1982 ) Vol I p.208 Bhagwan's teaching works deep down into my interpretative approach of German literatur. His teaching comes from a certain space of beeing, the meditation. Hearing his teaching he connects you with this space - and soon you will see poetry and literature in a new light of tremendous beauty and harmony. My students too are very thankfull. They say, that they never have had such insights as when they work with mo on literature. [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.)
