Testimonial letter from James Oldham
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 Oldham MD. It is "Exhibit A-206" 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.
 JAMES OLDHAM & ASSOCIATES The Department of Immigration, To Whom it May Concern: I am a consultant psychiatrist in practice in Melbourne, Australia. I have worked in Toronto, Canada, San Francisco and other cities in the world and currently hold medical licences in Ontario, Canada; Connecticut, U.S.A.; and Melbourne, Australia. I am a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. I have written articles for the medical press and the general press as well as a book on psychotherapy. I wish to testify on behalf of BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH who is a man of exceptional ability and creativity. He is known throughout every country of the world and has produced a number of very important spiritual and psychological books as well as providing inspiration for a great number of people through his direct teaching. I know about him through the people that follow his teaching and through reading his books. You can recognise the quality of a teacher through the effect they have on their pupils, and Bhagwan allows his students to become more receptive to others and to be more flexible in their behaviour, more adaptable. Although some of his followers appear to be alien to our western concept of individuality, in their common dress and values, I believe he teaches a deeper level of individuality and that his teachings will contribute to a stronger western world. In conclusion Bhagwan Shree Ragneesh is a man of exceptional ability, whose philosophical and psychological understanding and performance is well above most people alive in these times. He is a teacher and spiritual leader of great importance and relevance in these times. [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.)
