Testimonial letter from Frederick Partington

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 Frederick Partington. It is "Exhibit A-7" 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.

8, Cecil Road, LONDON 1__5EL. 18 July, 1983. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I wish to suggest to the American government that; BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH be considered to be a person of distinction who should be allowed to take up residence in the United States as a religious teacher. I am an Anglican priest, ordained in 1961, and I served 6 years in the parochial ministry in two parishes. Since then I have been a full-time educationalist, and until 1981, when I took early voluntary retirement, I was the Head of Counselling Courses at Middlesex Polytechnic. I therefore see the work of Bhagwan from the twin perspectives of religion and of humanistic psychology. Knowing both subjects in depth I am immensely impressed by Bhagwan’s range of insight and understanding. His analysis of the psychological pressures of modern society show his grasp both of depth psychology and of current existential thought. Yet his teaching of these complex issues is done with great simplicity and sensitivity. Following on from this, his originality is particularly evident in the use within his communities of the best methods of Western group therapy alongside Eastern techniques of self- awareness and meditation. The result is, to my mind, a great enriching of our understanding of the person,-and the healing of the person. Theologically I find him equally exciting. He gives to us in thè West the treasures of Eastern spirituality, yet his writings on the Sayings of Jesus are his fullest and most profound. But there is a synergy operating from him; he is more than just the sum of his psychological, philosophical and spiritual parts; from him there flows an energy of love and creativity which is enabling many people to find a new meaning to life, to work and to worship. yours sincerely [signed] Rev. F. Partington, B.Sc., ARCM, AMBIM, Cert. Ed.

(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.)