Testimonial letter from Ronald O Clarke
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 Ronald O Clarke. It is "Exhibit A-29" 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.
 437 NW 35th To Whom It May Concern: I have just completed two months of intensive study of the published discourses of the religious leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. On the basis of a careful examination of twenty of his published writings, plus a background of 20 years of professional teaching and research in the field of religious studies, I am persuaded that Rajneesh is a man of gifted intellect and extraordinary erudition. He exhibits an amazing command of both Eastern and Western intellectual, social, and cultural history. He has produced an impressive number of commentaries on mystical thinkers and traditions; ranging from Yoga, Vedanta, Tantrism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen in the East; to Greek, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mysticism in the West. I am not a member of Rajneesh’s religious movement. Nor do I concur with a number of his ideas. Nevertheless, I find his published discourses a source of much wisdom, insight, and poetic beauty. And I regard his teachings to be a significant contribution to humanity’s enduring quest for spiritual understanding, growth, and fulfillment. 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.)
