Testimonial letter from D. A. Cunningham
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 D. A. Cunningham. It is "Exhibit A-481" 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.
 17 Cleaveland Road To Whom it May Concern. It has been my intention for many years to testify to the influence in my field of adult education of the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and I am delighted to take this opportunity. Originally a research sociologist, a research project in adult education (cf. Adult Education and the Working Class, publ. ILEA 1972) propelled me into the more practical work of teaching, and then into organising adult education in the service of the Inner London Education Authority. The work for which I gained a reputation (see, for example, the guide to Adult Education "Poor Cousin", by Michael Newman) was the very successful introduction of a wide range of religious and metaphysical programmes into London's adult education service. Many great thinkers from Lao Tzu to Einstein came up time and again in various courses., but the modern figure who came to be the most quoted, who came to be. the greatest guide to the students in their searches was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Somehow through his books and through contact with his followers, he spoke clearly and directly to many of our students. London's adult education service is an exceptional service: it deals in education for education's sake, being strictly non-vocational and noncertificating. Many people, like the personnel manager of IBM, a research astro-physicist from Cambridge University, a professor of sociology, sat side by side with people of more humble vocations. It was heartening to see a stratified society like London's dropping all that division to pursue a vision of sincerity and understanding. Both the inspiration and the content of these programmes took reference again and again from the work of Bhagwan, and for that I personally, and the Inner London Education Authority generally, are amazed and grateful. Yours faithfully |
(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.)
