Testimonial letter from Sw Sagar Sundar
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 Sagar Sundar (Dr. Hartmut Kroll). It is "Exhibit A-1739" 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 3 pages.
 FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has widened my scientific perspective since 1977 . At that time I had already be teaching at the teachers training department of Freie Universität Berlin for seven years (biographical summary attached to this letter). My teachings and scientific work had focussed on Humanistic Psychology by that time and by reading the books by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and listening to his tape lectures I was discovering many similarities between the basics of his teaching and Humanistic Psychology. At the same time I felt that what he taught in his lectures exceeded by far the limits of any scientific discipline and opened the sciences up to a religious dimension. The books and tapes of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh continued to widen my scientific approach in regard to my research strategies as Well as my teachings significantly. This particularly conserning the integration of Human Growth and instititutional qualification, which I became more and more interested in. All this led to my first visit to Poona in 1978, where Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was giving lectures every morning. Experiencing the effects of the meditations designed by him I felt that taking sannyas and becoming one of his disciples was the best way of taking meditations as a part of my life. The effects of my being a sannyasin for almost five years now on my work at the teachers training department may I describe as follows: Whithin my teachings I feel more open, spontaneous, joyful and creative. My professional relationsships have improved towards a higher degree of harmony and acceptance. I feel a higher degree of sensivity to wards the actual needs of the students, particularly in regard to the psychological requirements of the teaching situation. The process of interaction whithin the courses has become more authentic and growth enhancing and less ritualized. Concerning my scientific work and research the books and tapes of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh widened my perspective and resulted in a research project I am working on right now whith the working title : "Institutional Qualification and Personal Transformation The ideas of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his teachings are - concerning .my discipline -not only fully in accordance with the international standard of the discussion, but also seem to open the gate for a reintegration of science and religion. Particularly the status of educational sciences seems to be such, that they have lost their genuine spiritual dimension, which they had until the end of last century. The teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh seem not only to open the possibility of a revival of historical approaches but also to combine them with the latest scientific discoveries in the field of humanistic sciences. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's approach to look at man as a seed with the potential for growth and development in the direction of love, acceptance, creativity and spontaneity opens the possibility for I wide range of research in the field of humanistic sciences, particularly with reference to personal transformation. [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.)
