Testimonial letter from Sw Anand Nirgrantha
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 Sw Anand Nirgrantha (Gerald M. Emmet MD). It is "Exhibit A-158" 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.
 18 July 1983 To whom it may concern: I am writing in support of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in his attempt to remain in the United States, which I consider an extraordinary opportunity for those of us who live here, First a word about myself and my background-- I am a board certified psychiatrist and accredited psychoanalyst trained at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City. I was also trained in group therapy, child analysis and other mental health practices. In addition to twenty-five years of practice in psychiatry and psychoanalysis I worked to bring mental health programs to ghetto schools in New York City, taught at the White Institute and Albert Einstein Medical School, and have presented professional papers at many scientific meetings in America and abroad. In 1975 I first came into contact with the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh through his earliest published books and tapes of his early discourses, which I found sufficiently powerful both on a personal level and for what they offered to the practice of the helping professions as to warrant a trip to India to meet this remarkable man. The experience was so profound as to take me all the way back to India annually until he came to this country. And what is his unique contribution? Rajneesh offers not only a spiritual synthesis of the world’s major religions but his own unique world view that can be of profound use to people in the fields of religion, natural and social sciences, and the arts. And the vision that he offers is compounded by a remarkable ability to communicate his views to others and affect them deeply. As a result of my contact with Rajneesh I felt the beginning of a personal transformation that also influenced my professional point of view. What evolved over the next few years was a total revision of my understanding of psycho-dynamics and human behavior based on Rajneesh’s work. Eventually this evolved into a three-month growth/therapy which I called The Shunyam Process, replacing all the previous therapeutic techniques which I had used. The life changes in the many, many people who participated in this work are not only testimonials to its effectiveness, but also a statement of how Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's presence and influence can produce a positive ripple-effect, spreading out through so many of the people who have come into contact with him. I can only hope that those who are responsible for the immigration policy will be able to recognize his profound contribution and will help us to keep him in this country where we can most benefit by his presence. Very truly yours,
[signed] |
(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.)
