Testimonial letter from Carol Cameron
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 Carol Cameron. It is "Exhibit A-289" 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.
 Law School To Whom It May Concern, I have a Masters degree in social work and an Honours degree in Anthropology and I have been engaged for a number of years in the practice of psychiatric and medical social work and also as a university research anthrolopogist specialising in comparative religion. In particular I have spent 2 years of research for a Ph. D. in anthropology, studing the value systems and behavior patterns of disciples (sannyasins) of the Indian religious teacher and spiritual leader, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In connection with my work in the above areas, I have become acquainted with a wide variety of psychological conditions and religious groups of varying persuasions. I first became aware of the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh after reading books, published by the Rajneesh Foundation in Poona, India, whereafter I visited his community on several occasions to obtain material for my research. In my opinion, having studied the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for seven years, and having observed the behaviour of his disciples, I consider him to be a man of exceptional ability, whose contributions to the fields in which I specialise, namely, psychology and anthropology, have been outstanding. In my experience, there is no other religious teacher or spiritual leader in the world at this time, who has the knowledge or ability to synthesise both eastern and western schools of psychology, philosophy and religion. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has done what appears to be the impossible. He has devised a religious system that embraces all existing religious and philosophical approaches to life and combined them into one, harmonious whole. There are members of every country, religion, class and occupation amongst the disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He has been able to bring together under one umbrella, representatives from every corner of the globe. I have studied in great depth the emergence of new religious groups in many western countries, which form part of a general search for deeper levels of personal and social understanding, and it is my finding that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his teachings can only promote greater peace and harmony in this world. Yours truly, |
(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.)
