I have read the remarks of Jossi in the Wikipedia article. It makes me sad and bored at the same time.

In my article i stated that my experiences were influenced by three factors: (mark: influenced and not biased):

- my membership of a critical movement in the Catholic Church;

- what i called 'intensive study' of the literature about Divine Light Mission (almost everything what appeared in scientific and other articles and books in that time, see the references in my article)

- personal contact with many premies

I did send a draft copy of the article to several 'premies' in 1980, among those were the two dutch 'leaders' of the movement in that time, with the specific question to let me know whether there were factual errors in the article. As i have written in the 'Concluding remarks' in my article, there was no specific comment

90 % of the article was based on the analysis of literature, and my concluding remarks which are criticised now by the 'students of Maharaji' are almost identical with those of James Downtons 'Sacred Journeys' which appeared in 1979. My very careful formulated doubts about Maharaji and DLM, are among others founded in the writings of the Indian/American antropologist Agehananda Bharati ('The light at the center. Context and pretext of modern mysticism' and 'The ochre robe', books which influenced my opinions about DLM and Maharaji in many ways).

Then the remark that it is important to know what are the qualifications of an author (i.c. Professor, Scholar, Student etc.) to make a judgement about the value of a study or an article.

I think this remark is a littlebit strange in the mouth of people that put the emphasis on the fact that qualifications, religions, 'what somebody is' are not important, but only the experience, knowledge is important.

Indeed i have had some criticism about my DLM article from scholars from Holland and other countries. The criticism was that they thought I was to positive, that i could have been more critically.

And now, almost 25 years later, i read that my article was biased because of my membership of a 'critical movement within the catholic church'. That can only come from someone who hasn't read the article, and hasn't read any of the online articles on religious movements i have written in the following years.

Jossi states that an academic author who uses the word 'stupid' should be suspected. Jossi demonstrates with this statement that he doesnt know the 'academic world' at all. Heavy debate and harsh critics are the foundation of academic 'discourse'.

I close my case, quite disappointed though. But that is life