Testimonial letter from Ma Deva Rita
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 Rita (Rita Schmitt-Karhoff). It is "Exhibit A-1691" 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.
 Rajneeshpuram, TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN : I know Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh applies to stay in Amerika. As a Social Worker (Graduation in West Germany 1966) and Psychotherapist (Graduation from Akademie for Psychoterapie and Psychoanalysis in MUnchen 1975) I counselled people for almost 16 years and think I can say something to this matter. I worked 5 years for the City Government, 5 years in my own office and 2 years as a teacher for students on the College for Socialwork in Munchen. My first contact with Bhagwan was, several of my patients were sannyasins. The therapi with them was so different, quick, light and they never became the same sickness again. I started to read Bhagwan’s books, visited him in India and took a 4 weeks course in his University for therapists. Afterwards I added in my way of work breathing, dancing, singing and making my clients more aware of their relation to the body. The official way of Freudian terapi got enriched by Bhagwan's way of terapi and way of living life as joyful and intense as possible. His ideas and religious teaching helped me and through me my patients to believe in life, themselves, enjoy life and take responsibility for themselves and life support. [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.)
