Testimonial letter from Marcia Ryan
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 Marcia Ryan MSW. It is "Exhibit A-1291" 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.
 Marcia Ryan, m.s.w. To whom it may concern, I am a Psychotherapist. My special area of expertise is working with Adolescents - especially the delinquent, the deprived and the seriously disturbed. I have known much success treating these youngsters and their families. I have directed two Adolescent Family - oriented Day Treatment facilities. I also have had a private practice for ten years. I have a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California in Los Angeles. I have a Master’s Degree from the University of California at Berkeley. I have had a license to practice in the state of California for the past ten years. As part of my desire to grow professionally, I traveled to Bhagwan’s ashram in India in 1977. I wanted to learn from him. As a direct result of this trip, I concluded that Bhagwan’s teachings are the most important statements being made today in the Social Sciences and in the field of Psychotherapy. He is a great proponent of Meditation as a tool toward mental, emotional and psychological growth. He is an expert in the application of Meditation in the field of Mental Health. The West is beginning to absorb the teachings of this great thinker as a means of coping profoundly with issues of survival. It is also important to realize that his concept of Love has deep and far reaching impact on the healing professions as well as on the world at large. Bhagwan is one of the leading theoreticians of our time. It is a credit to us Americans that he chose the United Stated to pursue and teach his ideas. All he has. said is on tape and written in volumes of books. Now he teaches by example at Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. I strongly urge that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh be allowed to become a citizen and remain in this country. He is of the caliber of men like Einstein, Fermi, Von Braun and many other foreigners who contributed so much to America’s predominance in the world’s intellectual community. Sincerely yours, [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.)
