Testimonial letter from Ma Deva Nartano

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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 Ma Deva Nartano (Christine Grasemann). It is "Exhibit A-1088" 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.

Psychologische Praxis
Christine Grasemann Dipl. Psych.
BahnhofstraBe 23
3440 Eschwege
Telefon: 05651/32218
July 18th, 1983

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Hereby I want to emphasize the great importance of the work and the teachings of BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH for my work as a psychologist in Germany.

I got the M.A. degree (in Germany: Diplom-Psychologe) in psycholog y from the University Munster, Germany , in 1978. In 1979 I started working in a catholic pediatric clinic in Regensburg, Germany. There I worked for two years, concerned with counselling for parents of disabled children and therapeutic treatment of the children themselves.

During that time I also taught psychology at a college for social workers and conducted psychological courses for housewives.

Since 1981 I work as a freelance psychologist, assisting and conducting psychological therapeutic groups, individual sessions and courses. For one year I now have my own counselling office in Eschwege, Germany. I also conduct groups in bodywork and breath therapy all over Germany.

About the beginning of 1980 I started to discover, that it was impossible for me to work with people in the psychological field without a glimpse of the spiritual path. To clarify that: My work is a work of a specialist, who is confronted with high expectations of his clients. The clients often expect total healing of their bodies and their soul and want to be released of their depressions and hardships. Thus, going deep into this work, I felt to be highly responsible, because people trusted me in an extraordinary way. In my opinion, this responsibility has to be taken and acknowledged by the psychologist, but that can’t work without the spiritual growth, i.e. meditation, and the spiritual guidance of an Enlightened master.

I came to know first about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through a friend, also a psychologist. I started reading his teaching and also personal reports from his disciples about their experiences. Being a searcher myself for the reasons explained above and through the sudden death of my beloved mother, I started to meditate and 1 found Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to be my spiritual master. He most certainly is an outstanding religious teacher and spiritual leader.

Since I became a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in April 1981, I feel my work has much improved and can happen on a much deeper level, helpig clients to get real help rather than treating them on the surface.

As I watch the scientific research in psychology, mostly through contact with friends working in that field at the University in Mainz, Germany, I can see, that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's teachings are more and more influencing the scientific psychology since even international known psychologists see the impossibility of creating methods for responsible helping only by means of the human mind and good will. Real help cannot happen only with methods born out of scientific research.

In my personal life and psychological work, scientific methods and the influence and presence of the enlightened master Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh have to join to do responsible work in this subtle, difficlut field.

[signed]
Ma Deva Nartano
(Christine Grasemann, Dipl. Psych.)


(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.)