Testimonial letter from William Pat Patterson
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 Pat Patterson. It is "Exhibit A-752" 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.
 To Whom It May Concern: I am forty-six years old, married, with two sons. My profession is that of a journalist. Currently, I am regional editor and San Francisco Bureau Chief for Industry Week magazine. I cover the fields of telecommunications, computers, semiconductors and biotechnology. Prior to this, I was editor-in-chief of Food Management magazine, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., in New York City. This magazine dealt with institutional Foodservice and won many journalistic awards; among them the Jesse H. Meal award for the best business publication op 1975 (the Neal award is akin to the Pulizer prize For consumer journalism), I was also co-founder and editor/publisher of In New York, a consumer magazine, and before that worked in advertising for International Business Machines Corp., J. Walter Thompson and BBD&O, three of the country’s largest and most respected companies. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, where I majored in English and minored in philosophy. For many years I have practiced meditation and read much of the material available in this field. It was quite clear to me when I first read Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s book, The Mustard Seed, that he spoke out of realized experience and not cogitated intellectualizing. But his books can be enjoyed on many levels. For example, he is splendid storyteller with a wonderful sense of humor. That after speaking and teaching for so many years, he should come to a state of silence is not at all surprizing. In point of Fact, it is the destination of all who follow a metaphysical path. It is quite traditional and so to hold this against him is somewhat akin to being angry at a caterpillar for becoming a butterfly. I am not a Follower of his and neither do I intend to be, but I do value his interpretations oF ancient scripture in terms of their often original insight, vigor and deft handling of seeming paradox -- as well as his sparkling wit. I do have reservations but none that would impede my asking that he be given citizenship in this country as an "outstanding person" or "holy man."
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.)
