Testimonial letter from Sw Veet Sangharsh

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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 Veet Sangharsh (James R Agee). It is "Exhibit A-41" 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.

July 21st 1983

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

As a former member of the Lutheran clergy, one who has spent his entire life in a search for truth, I feel that Bhagwan Shnee Rajneesh is one o£ the most outstanding religious figures of all time. My training at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, as well as ten years as a pastor and counselor at three Lutheran congregations in the midwest prepared me to delve deeply into the religious and psychological areas of life. I have also worked several years for the American Friends Service Committee in its Pasadena office to ensure the freedom of all men to exercise their religious liberties. Also for several years I studied under two Zen masters in California and Hawaii and learned the profound effects of silent meditation, of which Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is such a Master.

These life experiences led me quite naturally to visit Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in India. His profound effect on my life has led me to become one of his disciples. His presence in this great country o£ ours must be one of our historical highlights.

Having taken part in his meditations, doing many o{ the group programs, and now living and working at Rajneeshpuram, I can state from personal expedience there is no greater religious personality in our times.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Swami Veet Sangharsh
a.k.a. James R. Agee


(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.)