Testimonial letter from Ruth Vischherr
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 Ruth Vischherr. It is "Exhibit A-1912" 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.
 Ruth VISCHHERR TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I would like to introduce myself: I am a teacher of nurses, married and a mother of two children. I have been working as a lecturer at a postgraduate training-school for nurses of the Swiss Red Cross. Furthermore, I give management courses for head-nurses in various Swiss hospitals. I have been a sannyasin (i.e. a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) for one year now. All I am learning through this I can use in my personal and professional life in many ways. Let me describe some of these effects: I do Bhagwan’s meditations very regularly - one hour a day. They help me to cope better with the stress of my private and professional life. I have been able to normalize my high blood pressure. The meditations quite generally have a very good effect on my relationships, my profession and my health condition. I can use several of Bhagwan’s principles in my teaching and lecturing work. Let me describe some of them in detail: Bhagwan teaches that every activity or work can be done in a meditative way, in which you give all your concentration to the thing one is doing. He recommends vegetarian food and with his dynamic meditations and body therapies he offers means and ways to look after your body and the body of the patients and to live in harmony with the body, the mind and the soul. His understanding of health is quite holistic. Bhagwan emphasizes that I have to live in harmony with myself before I can live in harmony with other people and nature. He speaks about self-responsibility of each of us. His exercises sharpen our consciousness, they make you awaken, alive and sensitive. Bhagwan has convinced me that human beings have many more forces than they normally realize. In the nursing field this means to me that it is more and more important to support the forces of the patients, rather than just fight the symptoms of the illness. Since I met Bhagwan my attitude to death has also changed enormously. Before, I associated death with much more anxiety, defense and fright. I now start seeing death as a great step from my actual way of living to another one. Death looses its shadow and gains fascination. Let me say something as a mother of two children. Since I am a sannyasin my style of education has changed too. In some fields I now let them much more freedom because I am convinced that they can only learn through many experiences and that I cannot give them these experiences through talking. I now trust much more their own forces. But I also set them very clear limits because I can feel very clearly my own needs and my own limits of acceptance. In brief: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh supports the health, the strength and the beauty of every human being through his meditations, his therapies and his lecturs (books). This is how well-being, love and peace can grow. I do hope he will be able to remain in the United States and I would like to ask you to do your possible for him. [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.)
