Testimonial letter from J. B. Ball

From The Sannyas Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

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 Dr. J. B. Ball. It is "Exhibit A-269" 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 2 pages.

DR. J. B. BALL
TEL. HORSFORTH
RESIDENCE : 45 COOKRIDGE LANE
LEEDS LS16 7LQ
PHONE LEEDS 677517
THE CROFT SURGERY,
TOWN STREET,
HORSFORTH,
LEEDS LS18 5BN
July 17 1983

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.

Dear Sir,

I would like to write in support of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who I understand is making an application for immigrant status in the USA.

My introduction to the teachings of Bhagwan occurred when I was working in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Leeds University in 1979, and at the time I was sufficiently impressed to introduce some of his meditation excercises to the programme for disturbed teenagers which I was supervising. The results were truly remarkable and some of the children who had been acting out their feelings for many months became much more cooperative and approachable.

When I transferred to General Practice in 1981 I was able toextend my treatment to include adult patients with similarly encouraging results, indeed some became converted to Rajneeshism, and through them I have met an increasing number of Rajneeshees. They have always impressed me by their friendliness and intelligence, as well as their diligence and self-reliance, qualities which appear central to Rajneesh’s teachings.

Thus I would whole-heartedly support Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in his effort to introduce a new spiritual life in the West, and feel strongly that he is a man of extraordinary vision and ability.

Yours sincerely,
[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.)