Testimonial letter from William R. Esher
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 R. Esher. It is "Exhibit A-1250" 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.
 Box 7173 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I am writing in connection with the immigration application of the philosopher and teacher, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I am writing to urge that he be permitted to remain in the United States. My only qualification to make this recommendation is as a ordinary citizen, taxpayer, property owner, disabled veteran of the armed services, and a concerned and involved voter. The contribution of Rajneesh to the literary, artistic and scientific wealth of our nation can be first glimpsed by the publications in English of which he is the author and inspiration. My first contact with this great body of work was over five years ago and I have yet hardly scratched the surface of this material, which can be compared to the complete works of the great psychologists: Carl Jung comes to mind immediately. Another teacher whose work is comparable to that of Rajneesh in many ways is Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Although the form of her work during her lifetime seemed to be exclusively in the area of Religion, it’s great depth and comprehensiveness gives it stature in the area of the Arts, Thus it is with Rajneesh’s teaching today. In my own life, Rajneesh has done for me the philosophical groundwork which made it possible for me to enter the study of music in midlife without any previous musical background. My prior training was in the construction trades. It was only the impact of his consciousness which made it possible for me to tune into these subtler aspects of my own possibilities. To sum up, it is a great gift to this country that he is now in the United States. I hope and pray that those to whom we have delegated power will have the wisdom to permit him to remain here. 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.)
