Testimonial letter from Ma Prem Sami

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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 Prem Sami (Ingeborg Wenning). It is "Exhibit A-1071" 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.

Ingeborg Wenning
Ma Prem Sami
Steinweg 26
5400 Göttingen
Germany-West
Diplom-Designerin
Margarethenried, 19.7.83

To whom it may concern

Dear Sirs,

I have attained a degree as a scientific designer at the university of educative arts in Braunschweig. After that I gathered experience in different fields of work: for several years I was a stage designer at the theatre, I was an art teacher, I worked in the advertising business, and now I produce graphic programs for audio-visual medias at the university.

Due to my education and the following professional activities I had to be occupied a lot with psychology, which led to specific studies of authors and characterroles at the theatre, of school psychology and later on of advertising-, perception-, and working-psychology. After having studied Freud, Reich, Fromm, Mitscherlich and others, I in 1975 came upon the first "informations" about Bhagwan in the mass media: about his teachings and his ashram in Poona.

At that time I myself was attached to the ordinary narrow-minded scientific thinking, and secondly the informationen through the mass media tende to be one-sided and proved total ignorance of the facts (as I had to find out later).

At the end of the seventies the limitations of the so-far practised science became more and more evident to us. A certain dimension was missing. So we became seekers.

Used to the analytic procedure I went into the depth of history and after reading the Christian mystics of past centuries, like among others the scriptures of the ’’Esseners”, I suddenly became aware, how ingenious the present is that Bhagwan is offering us through his work: the essence of long forgotten ancient knowledge and wisdom of different cultures - this totally adapted to our present way of thinking.

To understand his work, life, man - our being - in its wholeness is not a matter of intellect, but involves being in harmony with oneself and the cosmos and touches the deepest levels of emotions. For that purpose Bhagwan offers us - which is again ingenious - a lot of meditation technics.

He is leading us to the source. The necessity of this has also been recognized by for example the psychoanalytic school and Adorno, but nobody has been able to make us understand what it is about in reality. How to live it.

Meanwhile I have tried Bhagwans offer, I have come to know his disciples and ashrams, and in connection with his teachings I have found a completely new quality of life.

This shows through more real joy of life, outwardly as well as deep within. This shows also

1. in my professional artistic activities (since last year I have again made new pieces of art and exhibitions)

2. in more creativity in my field of work and more loyality towards my colleagues: This tensionless climate (meanwhile we are two sannyasins who work on a special project) brings not only advantage for all who are involved, but also for the products, which are of higher quality.

It is highly important for me to tell you about my experience with Bhagwan, far more since I find it dangerous to ignore positive energies like these at the verge of human self-destruction.

Yours sincerely
[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.)