Testimonial letter from Horst Wehowsky
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 Horst Wehowsky. It is "Exhibit A-1041" 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.
 HORST WEHOWSKY TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN! I have been asked to write about my experience with Bhagwan and his Idea. I will do it. Who am I : I am a Psychiatrist, neurologist and psychotherapist. I am born in 1924. More than 25 years I have worked as an official of the government in West- Berlin. At last I had been a Medical Director at the B F A (Bundesversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte ) in the medical rehabilitation branche. In 1969 and 1970 I had a reward of the WHO in Finland and the Netherlands to study the therapy of alcohol- and drugaddicts. Then I have lead and built up the first alcoholclinic in West - Berlin. Afterwarts I have been the Director of a hospital for addicted persons for many years. After that I worked at the BFA and was responsible on the medical sector for the rehabilitation of employees in cure hospitals in western Germany in Psychotherapy, Psychiatry, Neurology and addicts. I am married and have four children. My son 30 years old studies human medicine in the last term. Some years ago he had been in the Poona ashram of Bhagwan. My daughter, 21 years old, is since January 1983 in a Bhagvan ashram in Medina near London. She makes there an education in Rajneesh therapy in a one years course. My youngest daughter 19 years old, goes sometimes into the Vihan ashram in West Berlin. So I had to analyse and discuss: who is Bhagvan and what happens there?! So I read books of Bhagwan and heard tapes, went into the ashram in Berlin and saw the activities of the sannyassins. It was marvelos and surprising. My son had been in the Poona ashram only 4 till 6 weeks. He had been afterwarts much more effective to do his work and was more adult ( ripe He had not become a Sannyasin, but till now he is friendly to this inst tution and accepted it. Since years I am interested in the essence of different religions as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufitradition, Islam etc. as a hobby. I believe Bhagvan to be competent. He has the ability of a real spiritual l-eader. His organisatin spread over the world. Some of my patient had been in the groups of the ashram with good success. I am no follower of Bhagvan. But I think, that we need in this world more personalities, as Bhagvan is one , who are able to be a model for the people. I think it to be good, that he combines the therapy of the modern humanistic psychology with meditation. Only practicising meditation most of the neurotic will stay further in his neurotic habits and hinder his progress. So this Combination will brig back people to a deeper religious feeling and better kind of living. The idea of Oregon to build up an own town in a desert is a good beacon. We should help that. [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.)
