Hi Cynthia Those NRM scholars may not be important for you but they are very important for outsiders, like me, who are caught in the middle of a propaganda war and do not know whom and what to believe anymore about Rawat. I have to admit that it was somewhat inappropriate to post this to Mike, who explicitly wrote that he was not interested in collecting evidence for his essay "denial of the past"'.

I may sound like a broken record if I say that I think it is wrong to generalize about CESNUR afiliated scholars. I also think that is wrong to generalize about all their academic works. And at least people should read their academic works before critizing them.

Dr. David C. Lane wrote, "Melton is a genuinely nice guy and has a wonderfully encyclopedic mind, but I think in his desire to legitimize new religions he loses sight of how sinister these gurus can be."

Andries

(amended 22 Dec 8:54 EST)