Testimonial letter from Wesley van Linda
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 Wesley van Linda. It is "Exhibit A-995" 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.
 NARADA To Whom it May Concern, Narada Distributing DBA AUM Books and Records is a retail bookstore specializing in the religious traditions of the world. We carry books on both eastern and western traditions and have been in business for the past seven years. On of the authors we have carried for the past few years is Bhagavan Shree . Rajneesh. He is an Indian man and a spiritual teacher who has had a great and benificial effect on many of seekers in both the east and west. For those not familiar with the spiritual traditions of the East it is difficult to understand a person like Bhagavan. He comes from the tradition of Hinduism which is not just one specific religion but an amalgam of belief systems and teachings that have there origins in the pre Christian era. It is a religion that fully intergrates spirituality and psychology as well as health and wellness and works, like most religions to serve the needs of the entire person. I am not a student of Bhagavan but feel his teachings are benifical and that his form of spirituality, though hard for most americans to understand, is pure. 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.)
