Testimonial letter from James Coburn
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 James Coburn. It is "Exhibit A-587" 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 18, 1983 To whom it may concern: My name is James Coburn. I am an actor. As an actor and as a person, I am always seeking inspiration from the great minds of our time. I came across the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh some ten years ago while travelling in India. Immediately 1 recognized him to be a world teacher. His incredible taped discourse lectures and books have inspired me (and millions of others) on the path of self evolution. His words and work live within me to this very day. In a country as great as ours and in a country with such great problems, we should welcome such an enlightened world thinker to remain on our shores. Not only should we welcome Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, but insist that he stay to feed the millions of individuals here in America who are starving for the food of the objective impressions that he manifests. I am only too glad to lend my- support. His presence here is like a great bell tolling...awaken, awaken, awaken. With all my love, |
(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.)
