Testimonial letter from Felicitas D Goodman
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 Felicitas D Goodman. It is "Exhibit A-22" 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.
 CUYAMUNGUE INSTITUTE Route #5. Box 358-A 114 East Duncan St. To Whom It May Concern I am a retired university professor of anthropology and linguistics (Denison University). My specialty is psychological anthropology and comparative religion. My publications include Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (University of Chicago Press, 1972); Trance, Healing and Hallucination: Three Field Studies in Religious Experience (with Henney and Pressel, Wiley Interscience, 1974); and The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (Doubleday, 1981), in addition to many articles about my research into the religious altered states of consciousness in various scientific journals here and abroad. I have known of the work of Mr. Shree Rajneesh for some time, although I am not one of his adherents. In his writings, he has created a a successful synthesis between the Eastern meditative approach and Western psychological techniques. How successful this attempt has been has become clear to me in conversations with a number of his disciples. The fact that the community in Oregon is a well functioning organization is testimony to his executive ability. Principally, it seems to me, it is important in our pluralistic society that we lend our support to anything that contributes to the spiritual health of a group of people, be that small or large. Mr. Shree Rajneesh*s contribution cannot be overlooked and promises to be even more important in the future. Sincerely yours, |
(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.)
