Testimonial letter from Lyn Goswell
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 Lyn Goswell. It is "Exhibit A-160" 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.
 83 Sea Mills Lane To whom it may concern. Dear Sir, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I am writing to support the application on behalf of the above-named for a residents permit to live permanently in the U.S.A. I myself am at present a Senior Educational Psychologist for the local Education. Authoirity of the County of Avon, England, for whom I have worked in Child and Family Guidance for the last sixteen years. I hold a First Class Honours degree in Psychology from the University of Reading, England, and before my present post was Research Officer for The National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales , and subsequently at the Psychology Department of the University of Bristol. I fist came across the writings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1978, and was deeply impressed by their wisdom, sound grasp of human psychology and relevance to our present day problems. I visited the Ashram, the:: at Poona, India, and attended several of the psychotherapy groups there, which in my view were conducted with a high degree of professional competence and responsibility, and which made a marked contribution to my own personal growth. I was able to meet Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh on several occasions, and he impressed me personally as quite outstanding in his qualities as a man of the highest integrity and wisdom, and as a spiritual teacher. This is in my view in no sense diminished by his subsequent withdrawal into silence. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has thousands of American citizens among his followers, drawn, moreover from the most educated and caring sections of the community, as well as thousands from Western Europe who would see his acceptance by the American Government as a prestigious mark of intellectual and religious tolerance and breadth of vision. America hes a reputation envied throughout the world as an enlightened and democratic country whore liberty of religious thought and dedication is respected. To us in Western Europe this is one of the must important characteristics of what we know as the free world. I feel confident that we shall not be disappointed when this present decision now under consideration is finally made, and that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh will be allowed to continue his exceptional spiritual teaching within the freedom and protection of the U.S.A. Yours sincerely, |
(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.)
