Testimonial letter from Sw Prem Islam
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 Prem Islam (Andrew White). It is "Exhibit A-1422" 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.
 21st July 1983 To whom it may concern My qualifications are those of B.A. Honours Class II (1) in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, and M.Sc. with Distinction in Mathematical Logic from the University of London, and 1 was formerly employed as a computer programmer by the British Post Office. I have studied the writings of many philosophers, therapists and religious teachers. Bhagwan is outstanding among them all. His intellectual clarity cuts through philosophical confusions which tie other writers in knots, and he can make plain to Western minds the original intended meaning of the words of the great Eastern religious leaders with an authority of experience few can match. Practising his teaching in my own everyday life has led to great psychological changes and religious understanding, far more so than the work of any other leader I have experienced, including the Christian church, the "growth movement", and EST. I just can't imagine how anyone who has seen him, read his books, or seen his disciples' maturity, can possibly regard him as anything other than a most outstanding teacher. [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.)
