Testimonial letter from M. L. Berson
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 M. L. Berson. It is "Exhibit A-1131" 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.
 M. L. BERSON, f.b.oa (h.d.) TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN RE:BAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH Having gained great personal benefit by my long association with the Rajneesh Centre (Sangeet) in Leeds I have pleasure in supporting the work of this great man. His exceptional talents are firstly to express in very clear and inspiring terms that life is a loving celebration and not an isolating competitive conflict which is the experience of so many people today. Secondly, he adopts an open attitude to re-educational processes (many of which originated in the U.S.A.) as a means to personal and interpersonal experience of that love and celebration. Those who are active within the movement form a cohesive group available to visitors who seek skilled teaching. I have found no evidence of aggressive proseletizing which can be a feature of less enlightened leaders. What Bagwan says is singularly free from dogma and intellectual theorising and his practical approach has a direct appeal to people of all ages and nationalities. The benefit I have derived is certainly of great value in my contact with everyone I meet both socially and professionally. [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.)
