Testimonial letter from W. Kirk Braun
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 W. Kirk Braun. It is "Exhibit A-756" 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.
 FOCUS...on OREGON To Whom It May Concern: A man who has lectured for 20 years to hundreds of thousands of people on almost every subject known to modern mankind, and who has subsequently converted these lectures into 360 books, can certainly be classifed as one who has demonstrated "exceptional ability" in the fields of philosophy and literature. I refer to the Indian spiritual leader, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who is presently in the United States on a temporary visa. Long after he is gone his contributions will live after him not only in the minds and hearts of the 300,000 disciples of his new religion, Rajneeshism, but in millions of others as well. It is not often that a man of his intellect comes to the United States from a foreign land and to allow him to be lost to this country would be a tragedy. I feel I am particularly qualified to assist in the nomination of this man as a candidate for permanent resident status on the basis of his exceptional ability, as I have made a detailed study of him, his teachings and his disciples for the past year in the course of writing a book on the Rajneesh concept of life. As a syndicated columist, whose column Focus on Oregon appears in 12 Oregon daily and weekly newspapers and an author, I can relate directly to one who has been so eminently more successful in the field of writing and philosophy. As one who has literally lived with the Rajneesh and was the first non-disciple to have an audience with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh since he came to the United States, I feel my observations have considerable first-hand credibility. I am a native-born American, have lived in Oregon for the past 40 years, have a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Oregon in journalism and have done graduate work in psychology at Portland State University in Portland as well as some business management graduate study at Syracuse University. I have been active in community affairs having served on school boards, planning commissions and was an unsuccessful candidate for the State Legislature. I would be most pleased to have Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as a neighbor and fellow Oregonian as I feel he would be a great asset to this state and the nation. 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.)
