Testimonial letter from James E. Baum
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 E. Baum. It is "Exhibit A-123" 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.
 MAUI PAIN RELIEF CLINIC July 26, 1983 To Whom It May Concern: I have been requested to write a letter in behalf of one Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I am an Osteopathic Physician and Surgeon, General Practitioner also specializing in inoffice Orthopedic Medicine. I know only of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through his discourses which have been placed in book form. I also recently viewed a T.V. documentary which brought other points of his existence to my attention. In my opinion, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is a truly profound and exceptional intellectual. He is one of todays most creative and prevailing spirits. He makes all of us look deep to our center and at the same time at our outer most region beyond a precise boundary to find the middle ground. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is truly provocative in his ability to make us all think. He helps us over come knowledge by actually providing an intellectual path for knowing. In our darkness, (horridas nostrae mentis purga tene bras - "cleanse the horrible darkness of our mind" - the Aurora Consurgens). Sincerely yours, |
(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.)
