Testimonial letter from John Sunderland
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 Sunderland. It is "Exhibit A-1155" 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.
 To whom it may concern July 21 1983 After spending six years as a physics teaching technician, two years as a university student, and a further two years as a plasma physics research technician, I came into contact with the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through books and work of mouth. I had spent years reading not only scientific and technical works but also a very broad spectrum of philosophical and religious authors and thinkers. The first chapter of Bhagwan’s book ’I am the Gate’ had such an impact that my whole attitude and approach to my work changed. It seems that through Bhagwan's vision boundaries to traditional methodology melt, and a much more creative awareness is open to function. In my own case this took the form of a brighter ability to the usually hidebound world of undergraduate physics teaching - not only this, but also a new world of writing and drawing took shape, all I feel had being lying latent and was unlocked by the genius of Bhagwan. From my own point of view this exceptional man has something to offer to every profession and craft - not least, my day to day living has taken on a whole new quality of spontaneity and aliveness. I feel a great depth of gratitude to this man, whose work is available to all with intelligence to take advantage of right now. [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.)
