Testimonial letter from Maria Marcus
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 Maria Marcus. It is "Exhibit A-763" 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. To introduce myself, I may mention that I am a MA of Comparative Literature. My work during the last 25 years has, however, mainly consisted in journalism, art criticism - and publication of 6-7 books. Two of them are for teenagers, the rest concerned with topics of psychology, feminism, sexology etc. There exist translations of my books in Germany, Sweden, Holland, Italy, and even in England and USA ("A Taste for Pain"). Recently I have taken the consequence of my interests and have become a Gestalt therapist (GIS-diploma) and a bodypsychotherapist. I am now working on a new book combining sexual and psychologi(?) issues with material tending more towards meditation and spirituality. It is in this framework that I have become acquainted with the works of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and although I have never met him in person, reading him is almost like meeting him because of his simple, penetrating and sensual way of expression - a style which I admire vividly. Apart from this, I am thankful to him for the inspiration he is giving me in my own work of trying to communicate some of the things which are difficult to communicate and which concern as important issues as process/goal orientation, existance/essence, breathing, experiencing, living somewhere on one’s way towards consciousness. I admire him and hope I can learn from him how to make more of this available for everybody who wants to get closer to life. Maria Marcus |
(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.)
