Testimonial letter from Rudolf Wormser

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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 Dr. Rudolf Wormser. It is "Exhibit A-207" 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.

Dr. Rudolf Wormser
Max-Planck-Institut
f. Psychopathologie u. Psychotherapie
Montsalvatstr. 19
D-8000 München 40
W-Germany
19th July 1983

To whom it may concern

During research work in experimental psychology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 1977, I came in contact with the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through his books. I studied his teachings mainly in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy, and for personal exchange I went to see him in Poona, India, in March 1978 for the first time. Since then I have studied his religious work intensely, through books and personal contact, including two visits to Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, U.S.A.

I studied with many teachers of psychology known all over the world, e.g. Prof. Carl Rogers, Prof. Dr. Ds. Ph.D. Johannes C. Breugelmann, Prof. Dr. Peter R. Hofstatter and moreover, I took part and presented my own research work on international and national congresses of psychology, e.g. in Tokyo, Japan in 1972, Moscow, USSR in 1966, and Munich, Germany in 1974, where I was chairman of one of the main sections of the 17th congress of experimental psychology.

Attending these congresses, I had the opportunity to meet the best and well-known psychologists of the world, hence I definitely can say, that the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in the field of psychology not only meet the standards of modern scientific psychology, but go much further and surpass anything else available in the world. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is the most outstanding and most experienced teacher in psychology in the world today, and the same is true in the field of psychotherapy.

Not only he understands profoundly all the existing schools of scientific psychology, e.g. behaviorism, psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, all of which he resumes in a comprehensive view, but also he founded a new kind of psychology, called The Third Psychology. To understand the progress and change, the subject of scientific psychology has gone through by the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, it can only be compared to the progress physics has gone through by the worth of Albert Einstein, or the theory of scientific measurement changed through Werner Heisenberg’s discovery of the Principle of Indeterminism ("Unscharferelation").

I worked as a teacher and lecturer for 10 years at Max-Planck-Institute and at the University of Munich and did research in various fields of experimental and social psychology, which resulted in the publication of five books and about 15 articles and research papers in well-known psychological journals.

Moreover, the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh on the "Third Psychology" are nowadays shared by many of my colleagues, who are far from being followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In fact, every intelligent person can see the mere fact that for to-day’s world, there exist only two possibilities: Either man drifts unconsciously into global suicide, or man goes through a new stage of evolution, bringing forth - according to the principles of the "Third Psychology" - a new mankind, which has transcended violence, war and crime. This New Man is already living in many places of the world.

That’s why each and every country should be happy and proud to have Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh doing his work there, which is not restricted to mere theory, but works very practically in form of a big commune, creating material wealth and ecological harmony in a very significant way, which anybody can easily see in the work done in Rajneeshpuram: the greening of the deserts of central Oregon.

[signed]
Dr. Rudolf Wormser


(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.)