Testimonial letter from Hugh Ruttledge
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 Hugh Ruttledge. It is "Exhibit A-491" 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.
 Heriot-Watt University To whom it may concern: I am an academic computer scientist who has spent the last four years as a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Prior to this appointment I spent six years with the Medical Research Council of Great Britain as a researcher developing systems for the automatic computer recognition of human chromosome abnormalities. I have obtained B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science and published a number of papers on computer pattern recognition in medical applications. I have also spent the past year as the Secretary of the Scottish Branch of the British Pattern Recognition Association and as a committee member of the Edinburgh Branch of the British Computer Society. I came across the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh about two years ago through friends who had developed an interest in his work. I subsequently took sannyas and became a follower of his teaching. I have read and heard many of his recorded discourses and visited the city of Rajneeshpuram, Oregon where his teaching finds its strongest practical expression. Bhagwan is clearly an exceptional individual with a profound insight into the nature of human relationships. I have found a clarity of explanation and understanding in his words on many topics which I have not found elsewhere. His teaching on human relationships has led me to a greater understanding of my interactions with my colleagues and students and a consequent improvement in my ability to be an effective lecturer. He has also thrown much light on traditional religious teachings and Christian friends have expressed to me their appreciation of his lectures on the scriptures. He has contributed substantially to our understanding of ourselves and our fellow men. [signed] |
(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.)
