Testimonial letter from John G. Southward

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 John G. Southward. It is "Exhibit A-577" 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.

17 July 1983 PO Box 23 Hikurangi NORTHLAND To Whom It May Concern I have a Chemical Engineering degree from Auckland University. I graduated in May 1972. I have been working as an Industrial Engineer for NZ Forest Products for four years. I left that company recently to pursue my own business interests, I had been offered the managers position in that department, which is the largest Industrial Engineering department in New Zealand. I came to know of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through his books and subsequently became a disciple. Industrial Engineering is all about productivity and how to increase it. Hence Job motivation is a key aspect. Bhagwan’s teachings on the beauty of work and the Joy and satisfaction available through work are more profound than any teacher I have had contact with. The obvious practical proof of these teachings is to be seen at Rajneeshpuram where worker productivity is simply phenomenal. I believe that these teachings are being carried to all parts of the community by his disciples. In my opinion Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is an authority who is outstanding in the world in the field of Job motivation and satisfaction. Yours faithfully, [signed] John G. Southward B.E. (Chem.)

(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.)