Testimonial letter from Alexander Malta
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 Alexander Malta. It is "Exhibit A-623" 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.
 Alexander Malta REGARDING VISUM Mr. Bhagwan Rajneesh From newspapers and my Sannyasin friends I hear, that the U.S. government is considering to not renew Mr. Rajneesh,s residance permit in Oregon. As an internationally well-known opera-and concert-singer I must express my surprise and disapproval about these plans. I am not a Sannyasin myself, but after having read several of Mr. Rajneesh's books and speeches, I decided to contact the Bhagwan community. My experiences within a serie of meditations and therapies have been extremely positive. I enjoyed the completely unaggressive and enchanting atmosphere at the RajneeshAshrams and experienced for the first time a definite decrease of negative tensions and signs of stress(?) my mind and my body, which are normally a part of my strenuous profession. Without having met Mr. Rajneesh personally, I estimate him as an extraordinary personality in the philosophical and religious field. It would be an unforgivable mistake and affront to thousands of people worldwide, who feel the same way I do, to force this man out of your country. The U.S. is well-known for it’s racial and religious liberality and freedom. This image, which is constantly used by your politicians in foreign-policies, would be seriously damaged by a simular step. I personally, as an artist and Swiss citizen , who loves the United States and it’s people, cannot imagine, that something like this will really happen ! Sincerely Yours |
(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.)
