Testimonial letter from Nicholas Guppy

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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 Nicholas Guppy MA. It is "Exhibit A-603" 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.

THE POND
HADDENHAM
CAMBRIDGESHIRE CB6 3XD
ENGLAND
Telephones Ely (03531) 740448
17th July, 1983

TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

In my opinion the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as shown by his writings, his words and his actions are of philosophical and religious importance. I believe they are socially punitive in effect, and likely to be of lasting benefit in a world where negative thinking and behaviour, including violence, criminality, and drug addiction are all too common. I am prepared to defend these opinions publicly if necessary.

Yours sincerely
[signed]
Nicholas Guppy, M.A. (Cantab. & Oxon.)
Author and Editor of many books and magazine articles on botanical subjects, travel and anthropology
Former Chairman of Sovereign-American Arts Corporation, a publicly-quoted United States Corporation
Former Research Associate of the New York Botanical Garden
Etc.


(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.)