Testimonial letter from John W. Tevake
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 W. Tevake. It is "Exhibit A-891" 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 This letter is to support the application of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to be able to remain in the United States of America. His work as a religious teacher and spiritual leader has had a profound and beneficial influence across international boundaries and has led to new insights in many fields. One of these is the field of clinical psychology, of which I am a practitioner. I graduated from Sydney University with a Master of Arts (Clinical Psychology) Degree in 1974, and worked in the New South Wales Department for Youth and Community Services before coming to Western Australia in 1975. I graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1978 with a Master of Psychology Degree and since that time have worked in the Western Australian Department for Community Welfare. I am a registered Clinical Psychologist in this State and my work involves treatment of children and families who come to the notice of the Department because of physical child abuse. My contact with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s work was during my training in 1977 through one of his disciples, Swami Deva Indivar, who is also a well-respected Clinical Psychologist and one of the Field Supervisors of the Clinical Psychology course. Indivar brought to his students new and powerful techniques for dealing with mental disorders and for enhancing personal functioning. He ran numerous intensive group experiences and individual sessions utilising Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's methods and assisted a great number of people. I consider Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s contribution to the field of Clinical Psychology to be an outstanding one, both in theoretical conceptions of human functioning and in the practice of enhancing personal growth. His international standing in this regard is well-established and it is of considerable importance that his work be allowed to continue. I strongly urge that he be permitted to remain in the U.S.A. to enable this. Yours faithfully, |
(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.)
