Testimonial letter from Jane Wavell
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 Ms. Jane Wavell. It is "Exhibit A-1497" 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.
 9, Chalcot Gardens To whom it may concern I wish to testify to the exceptional nature of the abilities of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I received the National Diploma in Fine Art and Design (the equivalent in the U.K. of a B.A. Hons. University degree in Fine Art) from Goldismith's College School of Art, London, in 1970, after four years of study there. I have since been a practising artist, specialising in abstract expressionism, and part-time lecturer at numerous Adult Education Institutes in England. I first came into contact with the religious teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1974, through a friend, and soon sensed the rare breadth of his understanding of all fields which appertain to human consciousness. He has greatly influenced my own development as an artist, for I have encountered no art critic or art historian with an ability comparable to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's to explain the fundamental motivations of artists throughout the ages, nor one with such a clear overview of the underlying purpose of this form of human expression. Yours sincerely, |
(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.)
