Testimonial letter from Esther Marjorie Johnson
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 Esther Marjorie Johnson. It is "Exhibit A-1099" 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.
 To whom it may concern, I am writing to express my support of the petition of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for residency in the United States of America. I am Esther Marjorie Johnson of Adelaide, South Australia. I am an Educationalist in the early childhood area and am responsible for the delivery of high quality services to young children in a large area of this state. I came to know of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh first through the interest of my daughter. Since my introduction I have read several of his books and have found them enriching and enlightening. In my opinion Bhagwan is a man of outstanding creativity and wisdom, a man with rare understanding of the mysteries of life, of science and art. He is an inspiration to many people throughout the world, those who decide to become more closely involved with his work, and those who do not, alike. I believe the presence of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in any country could be nothing but an asset to the quality of life and consciousness in that country. I eagerly await news that he has been accepted as a resident of the United States of America. 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.)
