Testimonial letter from Lenore H. Gay
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 Lenore H. Gay. It is "Exhibit A-525" 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.
 HUMAN RESOURCES, INC. To Whom It May Concern: As a counselor working with alcoholics and their family members, I am aware that my clients need spiritual guidance as well as help in learning to express feelings and in changing destructive behavior. In fact, my belief is that alcoholism is a disease of the spirit as well as the mind and body. I have read several of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s books and have found them useful in my client practice. In addition, I have personally learned much from Bhagwan about the nature of love, Sufism and Christianity. My brother became a disciple of Bhagwan’s six years ago and I came to know about Bhagwan through my brother. I believe my brother’s association with Bhagwan was a major factor in helping him work through emotional difficulties, increase self-esteem and provided meaning and direction in his life. I doubt my brother would be as happy and productive a person as he is now without this association. For this transformation in my brother I feel very grateful to Bhagwan and his teachings. It is clear that Bhagwan is an asset to the United States. Any country, in fact would be fortunate to have such a spiritual teacher. I do hope that religious prejudice, fear and discrimination will not win over the reality of a loving religious leader who has given so much to so many. I am deeply concerned about the possibility of Bhagwan’s expulsion from the United States and hope you will give this matter the attention it deserves. I would be most happy to discuss this topic further if necessary. Yours Truly, |
(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.)
