Testimonial letter from Sw Prem Gunnar
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 Prem Gunnar (Gunnar Puhze). It is "Exhibit A-216" 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.
 To whom it may concern I am qualified as a high school teacher, psychotherapist (Gestalt therapy) and have a university degree in education (Diplom-Pädagoge). I am experienced in rehabilitation work with drug addicts, alcoholics, and people released from prison. I usually worked with groups of people in agencies which were financed by the state (commune for drug addicts, holpital for alcoholica), using psychological and educational treatment. Interested in ways and methods to change people’s negative attitudes and behavior, I came into contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his religious teachings in Poona and later in Rajneeshpuram, and I saw the rapid positive transformations that happened around him. Like many other therapists, teachers and social workers all over the world, I started using Bhagwan’s meditation techniques in my work and I saw the healing effect they had on the clients. Later, with the understanding of Bhagwan's approach towards social work, I found that he adds a totally new dimension to it. His religious teachings and their very positive effect show that he is a really outstanding and revolutionary person in the field of social work. [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.)
