Testimonial letter from C. I. Levene
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 C. I. Levene MD. It is "Exhibit A-1177" 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.
 telephone 0223-61200 Satya Puja, To whom it may concern I am writing in support of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a very distinguished Indian spiritual leader, presently in Portland, Oregon. I am a physician - an experimental pathologist who has spent 3 years at the Mass. Gen. Hospital, Boston; U.S.A. (1956-1959) 4 years in Oxford (1959-1963) 2 1/2 years at the University of Chicago Pathology Department (1963-1965) and have since been continuously in Cambridge firstly at the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory and presently in the Pathology Department, University of Cambridge. I am a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. I got to know something of the Bhagwan’s teaching through the former Chaplain of my College, who is a follower of his work, and through several other adherents. These are in my view, people of undoubted integrity who have been sufficiently impressed by the teaching of this great teacher so as to give up in many cases very successful careers and life styles in order to be able to follow the Bhagwan’s teaching. I would stress that I myself am not an adherent but have in past years been sufficiently interested in the work of another great teacher of similar ideas, P.D. Ouspensky, that I believe I recognise in the Bhagwan a man of immense spiritual quality who offers leadership to those interested in his ideas which clearly enrich their cultural, intellectual, moral and practical lives. I write to support those who seek to consolidate his residence in the U.S.A., since his presence, I am sure, is bound to bring nothing but good to those within the orbit of his influence; he would be a considerable asset to your great country. 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.)
