Testimonial letter from Koen Schurmans

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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 Koen Schurmans. It is "Exhibit A-1307" 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.

To whom it may concern,

This letter is written by a well-known artist painter sculptor and poet from Belgium, who came in contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh some years ago. Raised in a flemish catholic family that has several of his members in high political positions, I studied Dutch Literature at the Free University of Brussels, which is basically atheistic.

Reading the numerous books of this master I was impressed by the immense knowledge on all the important religions in East and West. The clarity and vividness as well as the impressive sincerity of his speech makes him the most outstanding brain in religious matters that is living on the earth. I don’t feel able to judge upon the fact that he calls himself a master like Jesus or Buddha were masters. What I can see is that he brought and brings so much joy ,happiness and positiveness to a generation, which I have experienced as a totaly desperate one.

Therefore it is hard to believe that a strong religious country as the United States is trying to expell this beautiful man. In the hope that the feelings for freedom and democracy that are the basis for the Western culture will prevail, I greet you sincerely.

[signed]
Koen Schurmans
Tiense Steenweg 88
3030 Heverlee
Belgium


(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.)