Testimonial letter from Robert W. Armstead
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 Robert W. Armstead PhD. It is "Exhibit A-399" 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 2 pages.
 Robert W. Armstead, Ph.D. To whom it may concern; I obtained a license to practice psychology in California in 1978. I received my Ph.D. in psychology with clinical specialization two years earlier. Prior to that I was granted an M.Ed. in Educational Psychology, Rehabilitation Counseling emphasis. I utilized this background to work with multi-ethnic populations of varying levels of education and awareness in areas of drug abuse to crisis work with emotional problems, short and long term therapy with nerotic and psychotic children and adults, and more innovative holistic health programs. I was conducting some supervision of graduate student and professional peers, and the therapy I was conducting was quite satisfactory according to my peers’ standards. It was at this time which I first became aquainted with the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Although my fellow workers would have said that every thing appeared to be fine, I was aware of something lacking in the quality of all of the Psychotherapy which I saw happening around me, as well as a similar lack in the quality of life I knew. It was upon first reading Bhagwan’s books that I felt I found someone who not only knew what that something was that was missing, but Rajneesh had some insight as to what could be done to work directly with it. This is more remarkable because I found no one in the field of psychology who could offer such insight. The effect of my initial experience of Bhagwan and his work was sufficient to interest my mother enough so that she too sought out the works, teachings, and finally the presence of Rajneesh. Many others have seen and felt the beneficial effects of this experience on me. I continued to work with people in the area of personal growth, and I feel a whole new dimension of life opened to me. Much as a blind man who can see has difficulty expressing what he sees, I find myself quite unable to specify all of the variables and their qualities. Perhaps it will suffice to say that as a Psychologist who thought he knew about human relations, intra- and inter-personal I feel I have been totally reeducated. The depths of the being of myself and others which I now see far surpass what I knew or even guessed. The qualities of love and acceptance which Rajneesh teaches have been essential for me for without them I do not know if I would have been able co go on in my own personal growth. His presence alone is a strong influence for me for in his silence there is such depth and beauty that it is tangible. I am sure that when the research is done, and it will be done, that we will find certain physiologic factors accompany the physical presence of Bhagwan. I venture that those factors are similar to those of a relaxed and receptive physical state as those observed of people in delta and theta states of consciosness. I would also hypothisize that there would be a lower incidence of stress related diseases and concommitant emotional problems which are of such high prevalence in the country today. 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.)
