Testimonial letter from Wilhelm Kempf

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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 Dr. Wilhelm Kempf. It is "Exhibit A-515" 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.

Universität Konstanz
Dr. Wilhelm Kempf
Professor of Psychological Methodology and Statistics,
Client-centered Therapist.
Universität Konstanz Postfach 7733 D-7750 Konstanz
Dienstgebäude:
Universitätsstraße 10
Telex:
07 33 359
univ d
Telefon (Zentrale):
(07531) 881
Durchwahl: 88- 2564
Datum: 07-22-83
Aktenzeichen:

To whom it may concern:

I know Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through his writings as well as through some of his lectures which have been recorded on tape. I never met Bhagwan in person.

From my knowledge of his work, Bhagwan may be one of the most outstanding scholars in humanistic psychology. Although Bhagwan’s teachings are not new and whatever Bhagwan says has been said before, Bhagwan’s work brings an entirely new dimension into psychology: what psychologists have theoretically discussed during the last decades, Bhagwan makes it happen. In fact, Bhagwan’s work has become both the most intensive and the most extensive experiment in social psychology ever performed. Seemingly - and to use a metapher - Bhagwan’s understanding of psychology does not only originate from the intellect, but it does Come from the heart.

By this - and since Bhagwan combines western psychotherapy with the teachings of oriental philosophy - Bhagwan offers a new understanding of psychology which cannot be just ignored. You may attack Bhagwan’s teachings or you may become his disciple (as I did) but you cannot just pass him by.

[signed]
(Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Kempf)


(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.)