Testimonial letter from William A. Palmer
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 William A. Palmer MD. It is "Exhibit A-1711" 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.
 WILLIAM A. PALMER, M.D. To Whom It May Concern: I am a General Practitioner in Pahoa, Hawaii. I graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina in 1970. I did a rotating internship at Gorgas Hospital in Panama, Canal Zone. I returned to Charleston, South Carolina, for a stint in the Navy working as a G. P. in the clinic and then spent two years as a Mennonite missionary and moved to Pahoa. I am intensely interested in Psychiatry. I first became aware of Bhagwzn's work through his book on meditation and since the meditations seemed to have a sound psychological basis, I tried them. I was very impressed by the results. My level of stress decreased markedly, I was able to work longer and the quality of my work improved. I also enjoyed my work more. During this time I proceeded to read a great deal of Bhagwan’s books, probably thirty or more. I was amazed at the brilliance of his psychological and medical insights scattered through his work. They represent a quantum leap in our knowledge of human nature. I live in an area with considerable drug problems and since there is virtually no successful treatment for this illness (Habilitat has a success rate of only 1% and they are considered the best), I proceeded to use Bhagwan’s meditations with the guidance and encouragement of a psychiatric colleague, Dr. Rosenberg. My compliance rate was poor which we had predicted, but I had an excellent success rate with those who followed through. We treated only people who were addicted to narcotics and had a success rate of 70% over two years. A mundane example of how this might be applied. I was at a meeting in Honolulu which was entitled “New Advances in Psychiatry." As you might imagine, it was well attended. At a round table discussion, the problem of drug addiction was brought up and I rather timidly presented my observations and was surprised at the familiar and lively interest which his work has created and afterward was approached by several doctors for more details. Out of interest, I also went to India to see him and his ashram. I was very favorably impressed with the quality of the people, but to stick to the point I saw no drug use. This man has made a number of observations of people, medical and psychological which are found nowhere else in the medical literature. He is an incredible genius Sincerely yours, |
(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.)
