Testimonial letter from Margrit Johansen

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 Margrit Johansen. It is "Exhibit A-2128" 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.

Margrit Johansen Papenhader Str. 34 D-2000 Hamburg 76 Germany Hamburg, July 17th, 83 To whom it may concern. My first contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was four years ago when I met a sannyasin who was a group-leader for a teamwork-management seminar. He led the seminar so easily, so full of joy and humor that the usual masks of the participants, who all were top managers, could slowly, slowly drop. I was deeply impressed and so I started reading Bhagwan’s books and listening to Bhagwan's lectures. This helped me in an unexpected intense new way of running my department in a large German publishing house, and in handling my private life more joyful, more relaxed and all together more successful. After high school I studied economics from 1966 - 1970 at the universities in Berlin and Hamburg. I received a diploma (MD) in economics. After that I started to work in the publishing house "Gruner and Jahr", in which the well-known magazine "STERN" is published. My several jobs were re-organization of the sales department, controlling the efficiency of many different departments, figuring out whether small companies are worth to be bought, several jobs in the financial, accounts, and computer departments; six years as a sales manager for the distribution of magazines and for the direct marketing business. For a long time I co-ordinated the top manager seminars concerning teamwork, communication, understanding, motivating the employees. I was very happy to bring Bhagwan's love and laughter to many people. And it is sometimes really amazing how fast the behavior, the communication between people who are working with each other, changes after having listened to Bhagwan's lectures or read some books. Some of my friends - and also me too - have visited in the meantime Rajneeshpuram, and we all are deeply impressed. To see that the old dream of the humanity "to live together in love without problems" is becoming reality! This is absolutely gorgeous, overwhelming!!! Here is a center of religious teaching and living which has an impact all over the world. As a spiritual leader Bhagwan enjoys international recognition. Happy America that Bhagwan is there! With all my love and best wishes for this beautiful experiment to transform mankind. [signed] Margrit Johansen

(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.)