Testimonial letter from Morton Schatzman
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 Morton Schatzman. It is "Exhibit A-1870" 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.
 MORTON SCHATZMAN, M.D. Medina Rajneesh To Whom It May Concern: I am an American medical doctor and psychiatrist living and working in London. I am the author of several books and articles in my field, including SOUL MURDER* PERSECUTION IN THE FAMILY (New York: Random House, 1973 and New American Library, 1974) and THE STORY OF RUTH (New York: G.P.Putnam’s Sons, 1981 and Zebra, 1982). I have been asked to write about Bhagwan by his followers. I have read two books by him, seen him on television and read a few articles about him. I consider him an interesting, perhaps outstanding, spiritual leader who on balance has done some good in the world. Whereas I cannot endorse everything he says or does, I regard him as a benevolent influence. [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.)
