Testimonial letter from Sw Amrit Gerhard

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 Sw Amrit Gerhard (Gerhard Wolf). It is "Exhibit A-935" 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.

DIPLOM-PSYCHOLOGE GERHARD WOLF ( SWAMI AMRIT GERHARD) (?)THESTR. 7 6301 SCHÖNAU "To whom it may concern" I was born on September 30th in 1952 as the first son of a grocer's family. I have grown up in a smaller town in the southwest of germany, very near to the french border. I was educated as a catholic, and I visited the schools until I finished when I was. 18 with the highest school degree. Afterwards I had to go to the army. I served with the paratroopers and after the usual two years I left the army as a second lieutenant. Then I started the studies of psychology, which I finished as a certificated psychologist. During my studies I was very interested in the ideas and methods of the so-called "humanistic psychology" (Gestalt-Therapy, Bioenergetics, Encounter, Transactional Analysis), and I began a training with Gerda Poyesen in body-oriented psychotherapy. After the studies I lived in Vienna (Austria), where I worked in the international Gallun-Institut (market research). In autumn 1980 I went to Poona, India, where I become a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Being back to Europe I removed with my austrian wife back to Heidelberg. In April 1981 was the birth of my son Horitz. Since then I work as a psychologist in a rehabilitation-center for physical handicapped children and grown-ups near Heidelberg. This center is the biggest of its kind in germany. I am responsible for about 200 adolescents and I work as a therapist in a team with physicians, teachers, educators, physiotherapists and other collegues. My way to Bhagwan: As I see it now, I would say the coming to him started when I was about 15 - the age where I turned away from the catholic church. I saw her in her rituals superficial and rigid, her ideology and her representatives misanthropic. Since then I had nothing to do with religion until I met Bhagwan. Important on this way were several trips to foreign countries (Europe, South America, USA), which helped me out of my narrow german horizon and left me with a lot of questions. To start with therapy and selfexperience was only a logic step, which meant to work out my socialization, my reality , my concepts of the world and my possibilities. I've chosen the body-oriented way (bioenergetics), where I saw included body, mind and soul. I was fascinated by the experiences I made and by the profit I gain for my life. Nevertheless I realized by finishing the training that something was missing. But what? It was about that time I first heard of Bhagwan, first sceptical and then more and more interested. And I started to test meditation. As I knew that it was meditation what has been missed, I knew I wart to go to India to experience the phenomenon Bhagwan. I saw him and I felt him exclusivly positive, full of love, which become a new element in my life. His depth of wisdom brought me a living religiousness. There first in my life I got an idea to understand Jesus, as well as Buddha religion. But I’m a disciple of Bhagwan, cause he is a now living master. The connection between the eastern and western way of life, the living inwards (meditation) and living outwards (using my energy), the being in the here and now and the trust into the positive, gives me strength and joy to do my work. The experience was and is richer then I can express it with this words. [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.)