Testimonial letter from Michael Aisenpreis

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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 Michael Aisenpreis. It is "Exhibit A-739" 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.

Michael Aisenpreis
Eichendorf Str. 12
6900 Heidelberg
West Germany
15 July 1983

To whom it may concern

I’m studying martial arts since 1975, first at the University of Heidelberg, later on with the national instructor of Switzerland, and Sensei Hideo Otchi, world champion and national karate instructor of West Germany. I’m holding the first Dan Masters degree of the Japanese karate association, and I’m teaching since 1979 at the University of Heidelberg. I was supervised by Sensei Otchi together with members of the German national team.

I first came in contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1979, participating in meditations and inner growth processes, and went to Shree Rajneesh Ashram in Poona, India in 1980, where I learned about Bhagwan's innovative approach to the ancient martial arts.

The ancient spiritual content of the martial art, to experience the divine within onself being utterly in the present moment through physical exercise has been completely deteriorated to a mere competitive sport where people get physically damaged and the most cruel is the winner. The martial arts taught in Shree Rajneesh Ashram were used as a means to attain a state of higher physical and mental awareness, inner peace and restfulness. The real opponent to master is within onself.

Through these experiences, my whole approach to martial arts changed, as well as my teaching. Since I met Bhagwan, I consider martial arts as a spiritual path, that can help a large number of people to channelise their aggressions and to find inner peace and quietness.

Meeting many spiritual leaders and masters, Christians as well as Zen masters, and Tibetan Buddhists as well as martial art masters, yet only Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, having the divine realized within himself and working through utter silence, could really change profoundly my view of martial arts.

Now, more and more martial artists all over the world get interested in Bhagwan's teachings and meditation techniques, looking for a way to come in contact with the spiritual content of these ancient arts.

Undoubtedly, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is an outstanding religious and spiritual teacher who is able to transform the whole field of martial arts through his insights, taught through his spoken words, and presently through the higher language of silence.

To have the means to channelize and transform people’s aggressiveness into a higher consciousness, could have an important impact on our social life, help to diminish crime, give us healthier bodies and even could help to prevent wars.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Michael Aisenpreis
Martial Arts teacher, University of Heidelberg


(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.)