Testimonial letter from Gail E. Hartman
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 Gail E. Hartman. It is "Exhibit A-760" 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.
 July 23, 1983 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: The books of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh have been a profound source of wisdom and inspiration in my life as well as many others. My former business, "Books of India," imported and sold them by mail order all over the United States and they were our most popular sellers. His writing is timely, lucid, scholarly as well as profound. I regard his as one of the most important voices of the 20th century — an exceptional man of letters both in productivity and vision. Internationally recognized and acclaimed, I predict that the books of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh will attract a growing following in this country in the years to come. As an artist with words, his contributions to the arts are not to be overlooked. We are indeed fortunate that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has graced this country with his presence. Like his fellow expatriates in the field of the arts he has found a haven here, both to his benefit and ours. 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.)
