Testimonial letter from Sw Bodhi Ajita
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 Bodhi Ajita (Manfred Rennschmid). It is "Exhibit A-1471" 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.
 Sw. Bodhi Ajita To whom it may concern I am a Diplom- Psychology, working specially with retarded children. Before studying psychology at the University of Munich, West Germany, I served with the German Air Force for four years. During studying and still after I visited all possible kinds of courses to get acquainted with as many psychological schools and techniques as possible, and began an additional education as a "Psychodrama" therapist. In the summer of 1982 I spent 4 weeks in a therapeutic group led by therapists who were disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I was very impressed by the directness in their way of handling peoples’ problems as well as their loving care. This was my first contact with Bhagwan. During the following weeks I read books and listened to lectures of this man, and was astonished to find so many deep insights in the psychology of the human being. I had never read anything like that before. When I studied Freud, Jung, Perls, Fromm, etc., I often had the feeling that they were not at the root of the subject. Something was missing which Bhagwan possesses in his total and existential way of looking at the human being. In October 1982 I became a disciple of this great religious teacher who also possesses exceptional abilities as a teacher, a psychologist and a philosopher. Out of this description you can see that in my eyes it is a great privilege for any country to have him as a resident. The United States of America are States which proclaim "religious freedom", and in their historical beginning had to go a long way to get it. They know how important it is for man to be free in this personal field. Swami Bodhi Ajita |
(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.)
