Testimonial letter from Heidi Derendinger (1)
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. Heidi Derendinger. It is "Exhibit A-411" 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.
 Dr. Derendinger is also the author of another letter, written nine days later. There is enough commonality between the two letters to establish definitively that the same one person has written both letters, not two different people with the same name. There are 22 other such cases known. We may be amused by the illicit possibilities here but just as likely was simply giving the organizers two letters to choose from. See also Testimonial letters#duplication for more on this. The transcript of this letter follows below. DR. HEIDI DERENDINGER TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am a veterinarian M.D. graduated in Zurich, Switzerland. I have been working as a Small Animal Practitioner in my country for ten years, having also completed a post-graduate study at the University of California in Davis in Small Animal Surgery. Beside my work I have always been looking into different schools of personal growth, for my profession above did not satisfy my inner search. I have gone through several trainings in the humanistic-psychological field and found what I was looking for in the person and work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh! I first met Him three years ago when I went to visit Him in Poona, India. The experience of meeting Him has had a great impact on my life ever since. In the meantime Bhagwan has become well known all over the world as a spiritual Master and a religious teacher. His vision of creating a new man with a new consciousness is becoming more and more reality in hundreds of meditation centers and communes throughout the world. There is no living human being with such outstanding deep knowledge of the human psyche. He can certainly influence and lead mankind towards a better future.. I do hope that more and more people will appreciate and acknowledge the value of this so exceptional man! 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.)
