Testimonial letter from Peggy Taylor
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 Peggy Taylor. It is "Exhibit A-789" 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.
 NEW AGE JOURNAL To Whom It May Concern: I am writing to express my concern that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh be granted residency status in the United States as a religious leader and spiritual teacher. As the editor of a magazine which provides ongoing coverage of world wide religions, I feel that it is extremely important that we open our doors in this country to the religious teachers of the world. From my understanding of eastern religion, the fact that Rajneesh has taken a vow of silence in no way diminishes his power or effectiveness as a teacher. I strongly urge you to act in the spirit of religious freedom and diversity upon which this country was founded. 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.)
