Testimonial letter from William B. Collinge

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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 B. Collinge. It is "Exhibit A-909" 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 B. COLLINGE, L.C.S.W.
2165 Virginia
Berkeley, CA 94709
(415) 548-6014
July 19, 1983
Individual, Couple. Family Therapy
Consultation, Sex Education

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a mental health professional and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the state of California. I have practiced clinically in the field of community mental health for over five years and have taught an additional five years in professional education at two state universities. Currently I am involved in clinical research in the psychosocial aspects of the development and course of cancer, and related psychotherapeutic interventions, at the University of California-Berkeley and Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, U.C.-San Francisco, as a doctoral candidate.

The purpose of this letter is to support the status of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh as a person of exceptional ability and importance in the arts and sciences. In the field of health and mental health, researchers have been struggling for years to understand the relationship between the mind, emotions, spirituality, and physical health. The new field of psychosocial immunology is the latest synthesis of these efforts and is now producing promising findings which describe the direct impact of mental and spiritual health on the body’s defenses. The teachings of Bhagwan bear directly on these issues and have inspired my research in most fruitful ways. His teachings about the relationships between love, self expression, and health, while ostensibly coming from a spiritual teacher, turn out to be validated by the most rigorous scientific research in the field.

It is largely through his insights and inspiration that I have come to formulate the specific research questions I am now pursuing— how best to work with families of cancer patients to create the social/spiritual environment now known to promote healing and recovery. I have been studying Bhagwan’s writings for over two years, as well as those of some of his d'isciples who are health and mental health professionals' and have published in professional scholarly journals.

There is no question that Bhagwan’s contributions are having a profound and growing impact in the health and mental health community. I fully support his status as a person of exceptional ability in the arts and sciences.

Sincerely,
[signed]


(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.)