Testimonial letter from Lanfranco Binni
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 Lanfranco Binni. It is "Exhibit A-353" 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 original letter, written in Italian, appears first, followed by its English translation. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file with the whole original letter, the translation and a notary statement attesting to the validity of the translation. It has 3 pages.
 20129 Milano, vía Goldoni 1 To Whom it may concern Milano(Italy),18.7.1983 Nella mia qualità di editor e scrittore di storia dell'arte, sono assolutamente convinto della grande importanza che l’insegnamento del maestro Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ha nel rinnovamento dei metodi di lettura dei fatti artistici.il suo recente commento a Desiderata costituisce in questo senso un contributo straordinariamente nuovo,generalmente apprezzato dalla critica d'arte italiana. Mi sento perciò personalmente interessato a che Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh possa continuare a svolgere il proprio insegnamento a Rajneeshpuram,sul fertile terreno del contesto socio-culturale americano,e mi appello in questo senso alla responsabilità degli organi competenti affinché concedano a Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh un visto permanente di lavoro in quanto maestro spirituale . Convinto di inserire la mia richiesta all'interno dei tradizionali valori di libertà della democrazia americana,porgo i miei più cordiali saluti [signed] translationElecta Editrice TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: As an editor and writer in the history of art, I am absolutely convinced of the great importance that the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh have in bringing to life a renewal in the reading of artistic facts. His recent comments on DESIDERATA, for instance, are an extraordinarily new contribution and are generally appreciated by the Italian art critics. I thus take a personal interest in the fact that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh be allowed to continue his teachings at Rajneeshpuram in the fruitful social and cultural soil of America. And I appeal to the sense of responsibility of the competent authorities, and ask them to grant Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh a permanent visa in His quality of spiritual leader. I am convinced that this request lies within the tradition of freedom of the American democracy. With my best regards, |
(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.)
