Testimonial letter from J. Douglas Knott
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 J. Douglas Knott. It is "Exhibit A-1202" 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.
 J. DOUGLAS KNOTT TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I am a lawyer in private practice in Southern California. With respect to the inmigration question of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I feel he is making an excellent contribution to the well-being of our nation, even if he is unconventional as a religious leader. His is a religion of the spirit more than the word, anyway. He does represent a change in values, but a very positive one: through his books, and the artistic energy he seems to generate around him, a great contribution is being made. I deeply feel he should be allowed to stay in the USA, and see no reason to oppose him, as he is a bonafide religious leader, and we are constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. Yours truly, |
(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.)
