Testimonial letter from Ray Willbanks
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 Ray Willbanks. It is "Exhibit A-1117" 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.
 MEMPHIS STATE UNIVERSITY To Whom It May Concern Dear Sirs: I am writing in support of the petition of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to remain in the United States. I first began to read the books of Bhagwan five years ago, and for this many years, I have used his ideas: and his meditations for consciousness raising in the creative writing classes which I teach at Memphis State University, and I have used aspects of his commentary on the psychological nature of modern man in the classes, both undergraduate and graduate, which I teach in contemporary literature. I have found that because of the concepts I have learned from Bhagwan I have grown professionally and hundreds: of my students have benefitted immeasurably. I have a Ph.D. in literature, have published a book on contemporary literature, have read a great deal of modern thought, but I have never come across as profound a mind and as stimulating a teacher as Bhagagwan Shree Rajneesh. What a. tragic and unnecessary loss if Bhagwan were deported. It is sheer ignorance to fear him. Read one of his three hundred fifty books and find out what this philosopher, scholar, psychologist, master teacher is all about. Sincerely yours, |
(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.)
