Testimonial letter from Susan Urquhart-Brown
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 Susan Urquhart-Brown. It is "Exhibit A-2072" 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.
 Unison To Whom It May Concern: I am writing this letter to express my concern that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh may not qualify as a spiritual teacher because he is in silence. I have read his books and listened to his tapes for five years and for the last few months have been doing one of his meditation techniques daily. I feel I have gained much spiritual insight as a result. Although I have never met or spoken to him personally, I have asked to take sannyas or become a disciple, because his teachings and especially the meditations have had a profound effect on my life. I am the mother of two young boys and I know that the inner peace and calmness I feel after meditation assists me in being a more loving and responsible parent. America was founded on the belief in freedom in religious practices; it would be very hypocritical and even unamerican to deny a religious man such as Bhagwan the right to remain in his religious community in Rajneeshpuram, Oregon. 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.)
