Testimonial letter from Thomas L. Grunden
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 Thomas L. Grunden. It is "Exhibit A-537" 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 18, 1983 To Whom It May Concern, I, Thomas L. Grunden, was born in Texas and lived there during my school years. At the age of 12 due to outstanding works, I was given an I.Q. test. The result of that test was 168. A follow up test at age 18 showed the same genius score of 172. I attended both Texas Technological University and the University of Texas. I graduated with high honors with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Physics. I began my graduate career in Social Psychology with Elliot Aronson. I coordinated a project with 80 public school teachers in Austin, Texas, testing the usefulness of different teaching techniques. I then became interested in meditation and began a ten year study of Tai Chi. Tai Chi is a three thousand year old Taoist moving meditation technique which also is the basis for most eastern martial-art techniques. I became a teacher of Tai Chi after the first four years. During these ten years I studied metaphysics and relgion extensively. As a result I became co-editor for a Theosophical magazine (The Seventh Ray) and contributed articals to that and other publications. I then began lecturing to various Theosophical and religious groups. The Theosophical Society has been a well established organization for a hundred years and has educated and trained Krishnamurti. They continue to sponsor and promote people and research that better creates an atmosphere of understanding between all the world religions. During my travels and continued reading I came across books by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. These books appealed not only to my schooled mind but brought clarity to many of the inner experiences of my meditation. As it became clear to me that Rajneesh was an exceptional person, I began to attend groups lead by Bhagwan’s group leaders. Having participated in the group process during my Unveristy training, I was pleased to see that these groups were a step beyond any I had experienced. This lead me to read over one hundred of Bhagwan’s books which added to my understanding of physics, psychology, metaphysics and religion. I have sat with Bhagwan in Satsang and Darshan in Oregon and I say with no hesitation that, he is a man with a beauty and understanding unlike anyone I have ever met. The presence of such a man in America at this time is of immeasurable value. 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.)
