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Documentation & History of Mishler Interview(Chronology of a transcript) Date | Activity | | Feb. 12, 1979 | Bob Mishler, former president of Prem Rawat's organization, Divine Light Mission, gives a live interview on Denver News-KOA radio station. The station was then headed by station director Jim Hawthorne. This interview includes much personal information about Rawat that appears to undermine his position as a spiritual teacher. | | ca. Oct. 1996 | Former student of Rawat, Ric Wallace mails audio cassette copies of this interview to another former student, David Stirling. | | ca. Nov, 1996 | David Stirling commissions a secretarial service to transcribe the cassettes into writing. | | Dec. 20, 1996 | David Stirling receives completed transcript of the interview from secretarial service, completes upload of transcript of the interview to the public Usenet at: Mishler Transcript Part I, Mishler Transcript Part II, and Mishler Transcript Part III | | ca. Dec. 28, 1996 | The original webmaster of the ex-premie.org website, Scott Perry, reformats Stirling's transcript with an HTML cross linked topic index, posts it to the new ex-premie.org site at The Mishler Interview. Perry uses a copy of the transcript emailed to him by Stirling to make the HTML'ized version of the transcript. Perry was also present in Denver at the time of the interview and recalled personally hearing the original interview. The ex-premie.org site was originally designed to act as a public resource of verifiable and uncensored information about Rawat and included a very active discussion forum. Many current students of Rawat take exception to much of the information posted on this site, and begin to consider it as hostile to their teacher. | December 29, 1996 -
Jan 2006 | The interview transcript is widely circulated amongst both former and current students of Rawat. Nobody raises any questions about the validity of the interview or of its source. | | Sep. 24, 2004 | A Wikipedia user first inserts a reference to the Mishler transcript into the Wikipedia Prem Rawat article. While the accuracy of the Mishler transcript itself is initially not questioned by anyone, several followers of Rawat initiate numerous attempts to undermine the credibility of Mishler himself.
From this point forward, various debates about Mishler's personal credibility appear to consume very large portions of the Rawat article talk pages. | | Jan. 29, 2006 | One current student of Rawat posts his first comment on the Prem Rawat talk page questioning the "reality" and the "correctness" of the interview. In this comment this user posits, "Even if the interview was maybe a real interview, and even if maybe the transcript is correct, it is still hearsay..." Former students of Rawat soon object to the implications being made that the authenticity of this transcript is somehow questionable, being made without any positive proof. | | Feb. 13, 2006 | Adding to the apparent momentum of the attempt amongst the students of Rawat to discredit the Mishler transcript, now another Wikipedia user claims on the Rawat talk page to "remember" reading on the ex-premie.org website that the transcript was a fabrication. Again a claim is being made without any supporting documentation. This user states, "When the interview first appeared on the EPO website back in the mid-late 90s, it was never claimed that it was a real interview. It began, if my memory is accurate, with a statement to the effect that this is what Mishler would have said." The momentum of the apparent push to discredit the transcript appears to be gathering steam, but still without a single piece of positive documentation.
This same user then begins to edit the article inserting the word, "alleged" before each mention of the Mishler interview. | | Ca. Mar. 10, 2006 | Two prominent contributors to the Rawat article contact KOA for information on the interview and transcript and then announce this on the talk page. | | Mar. 11, 2006 | The Wiki user who had been inserting the word "alleged" agrees to wait for KOA's reply before further such edits. | | Mar. 21, 2006 | One of these two prominent contributors receives a reply from former KOA station chief (of 1979) Jim Hawthorne, stating that Hawthorne clearly remembers this interview, has reviewed the transcript, and that it appears to Hawthorne to be accurate. (see below) This Wiky user posts Hawthorne's email to the Rawat talk page in the hope that this will be accepted as reasonable proof of the accuracy of the interview, and also as proof that the transcript does indeed accurately represent the interview performed by KOA in 1979. The other prominent Rawat article contributor who contacted KOA only manages to speak with the KOA archivist, who informs him that the station does not maintain audio archives from such old interviews. | | Mar. 24, 2006 | One of the two Wikipedia contributors who contacted KOA states that Hawthorne's endorsement of the interview is "unattainable" as Hawthorne could not "possibly remember what was said and endorse its accuracy."
Surprised by this reaction, the other Wiky contributor who contacted KOA places a request for an RfC at Wikipedia. He also links this page as a citation to the interview in the Rawat article. |
From: Jim Hawthorne <jimhawthorne@*******.net>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:10:20 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: The 1979 KOA broadcast on the Mishler interview.
Yes, I personally remember the interview
was live, with live telephone calls. The transcript
you provided (at http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/mishler.htm),
appears to be accurate.
Sincerely yours,
Jim Hawthorne
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Related link: Documentation & History of Mishler Interview by Scott Perry
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