The Making of A Spiritual Movement

This book is the product of over five years of extensive research. It began quite simply as a term paper for a Religious Studies class at California State University, Northridge. However, after sending my first paper to Eckankar's headquarters and receiving a letter from their attorneys threatening me with a lawsuit if I published my work, the project quickly evolved into a full-time investigation. The controversy over the paper primarily stemmed from my findings on the early life of Paul Twitchell, the movement's founder. They were completely contrary to what Eckankar had written. After about a year more of study, I wrote a second paper, The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar. Little did I realize then that the work would cause such an intense dispute within Eckankar. Through a process which I do not completely understand, and which is probably best described as "through the grapevine" , the manuscript found its way throughout different parts of America and even went so far as Europe. [1] The large response that the paper elicited is best indicated by the fact that Darwin Gross, the then Living Eck Master, had to devote part of his October 1978 article in the Mystic World concerning it: