Testimonial letter from Warren Robertson
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 Warren Robertson. It is "Exhibit A-656" 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.
 WARREN ROBERTSON THEATRE WORKSHOP, INC. To Whom It May Concern: In the professional field of performing arts, I am considered one of the three or four most successful living drama teachers in the world. Putnam published my textbook on acting three years ago called "Free To Act." I am the owner-director of Warren Robertson Theatre Workshop in New York which has trained over 25,000 performers in the last fifteen years. I am also the founder and artistic director of Actors Repertory Theatre which produces from five to eight professional plays a season in New York and employs many of the finest talents in the theatre. I am a graduate of the University of Texas in Fine Arts. I also attended Texas Tech in Lubbock and Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. My theatrical training has been with Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, Stella Adler and most of the prominent teachers in the field. I have worked on Broadway with Joshua Logan, Elia Kazan and other great directors. Recently I completed an acting role, portraying myself in the Twentieth Century Fox John Travolta-Olivia Newton John movie. Bhagwan Rajneesh’s books, of which there are three hundred, were brought to my attention by the British actor Terrence Stamp. The effect of Bhagwan's depth of knowledge and poetic insight was staggering for me. I learned he was a professor of philosophy at Jabalpor University in India. Further exploration revealed that he had some of the formost practitioners of the psychological and human potential movement conducting work with him in Poona. I attended some sessions at his center in New York and found them very advanced and therapeutic as well as spiritual in essence. And after training personally some 20,000 individuals I was qualified to know a true creative process from the fraudulent. In 1982 I attended the first World Celebration at Rajneeshpuram in Oregon. It was joyful, enriching and very positively productive. In his presence, I experienced the rare feeling of love and innocence that is so vital to the human spirit. He is a truly rare and exceptional man. His insights into the arts and sciences are so fresh, original and valuable. May I highly recommend that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh be kept and treasured in America. He is so good for its failing heart. 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.)
