Testimonial letter from Penelope A. Jones
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 Dr. Penelope A. Jones. It is "Exhibit A-156" 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.
 Dr. Penelope A. Jones TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am a dental surgeon, graduated from Sydney University, and now practising in the specialty field of endodontics. At present I hold the position of Vice-President of the New South Wales Society of Endodontology, a very vital and active Society in further increasing the knowledge of our members in this special field and other overlapping dental specialty fields. My work involves dealing with many patients who come to me with acute and chronic pain and are referred to me by general dentists who do not have the expertise to help these people. My diagnosis involves not just a knowledge of the technical aspects of healing and diagnosis, but also an awareness of how people can and do behave when they are ill, and the origins of illness. Because of my contact with a wonderful and exceptional religious leader, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I have been able to develop a far more extensive concept of healing and health than was available to me through conventional training. At present I feel that the practitioners of conventional medicine, and especially of dentistry, are limited in their ability to help their patients by their striving for knowledge in a mainly technical field. After reading many of Bhagwan’s religious texts, listening to Him on tapes and videos, and working with some therapists who have had much personal involvement with Him, I realised that He had a very special and exceptional concept of healing and health. Because of Bhagwan’s insights I have been far more able to help my patients. I have now been inspired to find more avenues within alternative medicine, behavioural sciences and man’s need for spiritual or religious expression, to help those with chronic pain. I can only hope that more practitioners are able to hear Bhagwan’s message in the future. He certainly has courage, insight, and has made an outstanding contribution to my field of the healing sciences. Yours faithfully |
(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.)
