Testimonial letter from Sw Samvedo
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 Samvedo (Ernst Kobler). It is "Exhibit A-1205" 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.
 Ernst Kobler To whom it may concern I am holding a B.A. as a teacher in French language and literature and physical education. With this qualification I worked in a high school for 3 years and at the University of Erlangen, W-Germany for another 8 years. I am also holding a B.A. in psychology since 1979. That means 10 years of studying and 8 years of teaching at an university. I met Bhagwan for the first time in 1978 and became His disciple. I could immediately see the importance and the impact of His teaching on what I was doing, so that I decidet to quit my job and live near Him in order to absorb as much of His teaching as possible. You can belief that I could do this only because Bhagwan is a person of exceptional ability. In the field of education he set up new standards of how to deal with children in order to let them become mature and happy persons. In fact it was His deep insights into this domaine that helped me to understand human nature and its laws of growth better than all the books and teachers I had to face during my period as a student on 2 universities. The same applies for my work as a psychologist. A sincere therapist must admit that today’s psychology, despite some hopeful findings, is at a loss. The growing number of neurosis on one hand and schools and therapists on the other hand are proof enough. It was again Bhagwan who familiarized me with a radical and unexceptional change of point of views which allow people to grow so high that finally they are fullfilled beings. Fortunately His teaching has attained meanwhile international recognition via His books (350 sic!) which have been translated and continue being translated into all important languages of today. It is evident that only someone important is able to arouse debates like He and His teaching. Like most of the real great religious leaders He is a object to pursuits and fails being recognized during His lifetime. Jesus, Sokrates are only 2 outstanding examples. "History teaches that it teaches nothing" is the famous statement of Herodot, a Greek historian about 2500 years ago. Will the INS be a proof of this statement or brake finally the chain of prejudice? This is a unique chance in human history to make a quantum leap with the help of Bhagwan, a being of outstanding, exceptional ability in order to get out of the mess in which we all are. Yours sincerely |
(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.)
