Testimonial letter from Anastas Harris
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 Anastas Harris M Ed. It is "Exhibit A-201" 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.
 THE INSTITUTE FOR NEW EDUCATION To whom it may concern, I am writing as the President and Executive Director of an organization dedicated to the reform of our education system. The Institute for New Education produces conferences for educators and counselors, teacher training programs, and even publishes books and newsletters, creates and markets tapes and videos, and supports local educational network groups. Our membership is national. While I do not pretend to speak for all our membership or our boards of advisors or directors, I doubt that there are many among them that would not agree that Bagwan Shree Rajneesh is an exceptional individual and a man of extraordinary intellectual ability. Be that as it may, it is not my business to speak for others and I speak here on my own behalf. Many of the great thinkers of our time and of previous ages have been controversial and have aroused intense emotions polarized in opposite directions. I’m thinking of thinkers and visionaries such as Fredrich Nietzsche, Malcolm X, Machiavelli, Jesus Christ and Buckminster Fuller, only the last two of which I favor. People such as these have contributed immensely to our heritage - opening up new option and rich options in the areas of philosophy, ethics, politics, spirituality and so forth. We would be far less without their contribution and would have considered it a stain on this country’s record of justice and good judgement to have evicted any of these individuals from our shores. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is such an individual. His contribution is no less. One does not have to agree with his ideas to be impressed by their profundity, clarity, scope and immensity. Most of those who would have him out of the country have read none of his volumnious works and have not heard his tapes. Their source of information is the popular press and the popular press did not favor Jesus Christ in his time. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh greatly adds to the heritage of this nation. By any criteria he is an outstanding and exceptional individual - any criteria, that is, that relates to the intellectual and spiritual domains of the individual. I recommend that you welcome him to this country and know that his presence is a gift not a curse. 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.)
