Testimonial letter from Gary W. Bickel

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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 Gary W. Bickel PhD. It is "Exhibit A-348" 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.

U.S. Department of Agriculture
Food and Nutrition Service
Park Office Center, Room 1009
Alexandria, Virginia 22302
July 18, 1983

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I am writing this letter, in my personal capacity, upon hearing recently of the current appeal on behalf of Bagwan Shree Rajneesh to the U.S. Iranigration and Naturalization Service. I am an economist by profession, for many years a college professor (Cornell University, University of Colorado) and currently staff economist with the Office of Analysis and Evaluation, Food and Nutrition Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. I have maintained an active and continuing interest in world cultures, religions and philosophy over the past thirty years.

I have followed B. S. Rajneesh’s career since his arrival in this country with interest. A distant relative of my family, by marriage, and a good friend of my wife’s and mine, has been one of Rajneesh’s enthusiastic adherents for a number of years. It is quite clear that the impact of his work and teaching upon this person and her immediate family has been entirely constructive and nothing short of profound.

In observing this positive effect of Rajneesh’s work for one individual person, and in reading a number of his published works, I have become convinced that he is an authentic religious leader and teacher of substantial importance and stature.

I believe that it would be a serious error --truly unfounded and inconsistent with the traditional policy and best interests of our country— to refuse this man continued residence in the United States.

I hope that that action, in my judgement mistaken, unfounded and detrimental to our country, will not be taken by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and request that my concern and opinion on this matter be registered with the Service before its final decision is rendered.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Gary W. Bickel, PhD.


(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.)