I sent my work to Oates sometime in June or July of 1999 asking if he would review it and if possible write something. He had nothing to say at the time of any earlier problems between us, but politely agreed to have a look at it. Nothing was forthcoming for months. However, I later found out why. It seems that Oates became embroiled in a flame war with Art Bell, one of the most popular talk show hosts on the radio, making a number of unsubstantiated allegations about him, and thus became the subject of a $60 million lawsuit. Obviously he had other things on his mind.

Apparently his personal and legal problems got the best of him as another radio talk show host said that he seemed to be in "self-destruct" mode. It was finally in October I sent the email that Oates posted in his editorial to VNN last Monday, and the readers have had the opportunity to observe some of that self-destruct mode in his reply.

Did David and I not see eye to eye? Well, obviously not from his side, though he never clued me in on the problems until he sent the above-mentioned letter. He kept these issues so much to himself that I had to ask him if I had offended him.

No I wasn’t a submissive student. Hey, this wasn’t my college degree I was working on that I had to suck up to the professor and regurgitate to him whatever he wanted to hear. This was an interesting hobby to me and nothing more. I also heard things in recordings that Oates didn’t hear. But probably in every Reverse Speech class ever held the students hear things different from the teacher. The problem is with his authoritarian approach, where he says "I'm right and you're wrong" instead of "what can we discover by working together". I guess I get a bad grade for hearing other than what he heard (but I still trust my own senses). Actually I didn’t get any grade. Neither did others and it got to be a problem. He seldom graded papers for anybody in my class that I knew of, so his certifying of students appears to be whimsical and capricious, as the students had no feedback on how they were progressing. I guess he certified those who he liked, and denied the ones he didn’t. The non-grading of papers continued at least through 1998 according to other former students, and got to the point where the California Board of Education began putting the heat on him to run his school properly or they would deny him the opportunity to teach!

Further, one of his requirements to get his Reverse Speech Analyst certification was that his students had to allow Oates to go mucking around with their subconscious in what he called Session Work, restructuring the metaphors of the subconscious. I put that off until I got to know him better and also could query the other students about their experience with it. None of those who engaged in this expensive "treatment" could clearly tell me that it was a positive overall experience with benefit. So I refused to do it. (That was the real reason that I could not receive his certification). Good thing, as I am beginning to hear many stories of the unfavorable result of this practice. However much experience Oates has with Reverse Speech, he is not a licensed Psychotherapist, and many of the people he has "treated" have had very negative results. You can read more about the aftereffects of this "Metaphor Restructuring" at www.reapthewhirlwind.com.

The point is that if Oates had wanted to offer some constructive criticism he had months to do so. Had he taken a more constructive approach I probably would have worked with him. Instead he wanted to "order" me not to write my book. Well why should I be ordered to do anything by David Oates? However he may not like it I’m not going to be controlled by him. I’ve had enough experience in cult organizations (ahem) to know what was going on. Do as the cult leader says or else! The fact is that this man has left such a debris field of broken and bad relationships behind him that he finally had to go back to Australia. I am just another of those who he has found the need to flame because I didn’t do it his way. See his web site for a long list of disavowed heretic non-followers of his cult.

I think the real issue here, if I’m seeing through all of the flack, is that Oates is upset that I used what he sees as his technique and in a way that he doesn’t like. In the first place he is not even the discoverer of Reverse Speech as he claims. In one of his own books he cites research conducted at a San Diego naval lab in the early eighties, prior to any of his own investigations. Further, although he still thinks he is the discoverer of what he calls "Reverse Speech" he is not, nor can be, the absolute controller of it. Oates would like to call Reverse Speech a "technology" that he developed and therefore owns and can control. However, it was his former fiancé, Karen Boone, who correctly stated that Reverse Speech is a phenomenon of nature, like gravity, like light, and although he is the discoverer of it he is not the sole proprietor of it. That would be like Sir Isaac Newton saying that you need his permission to use gravity, or an elementary school teacher controlling when and where her former students could use the arithmetic she taught them. I have studied with Oates and learned a good deal from him. In my opinion he has made a great contribution to humanity with his work, and deserves great credit for what he has done.

It was only my intention to give him that credit by including references to his work, his web site, and testimonials to him in my book. It was my intention to point people to David Oates if they want to learn about this phenomenon, but apparently he doesn’t want me to do that, and that’s his prerogative. I will definitely remove all references to him and his work in future editions, not only because of his request, but because I can no longer do so in good consciousness. In preparing to write this rebuttal I have spoken with several other former students of his and learned of what can only be described as horrible treatment, exploitation, unethical behavior and downright manipulation of people who have come to him for psychological help through his methodologies. He has also "borrowed" and, as of yet, not repaid tens-of-thousands of dollars from those who were his well-wishers, some of whom are filing suit to get their money back. As I have understood from these contacts there will be much more bad news about David Oates coming out in the near future.

I guess we’ll have to start calling it something else also. How about Backward Speech? Or Time Distorted Speech? In any case I will continue to study Backward Speech as my hobby, as have others who have left his association. Others who continue doing Reverse Speech analysis by other names have included Karen Boone (Embedded Communications) and Jon Kelly, the person who formerly organized local Reverse Speech hobby groups around the country (Retropics).

The second thing is that this was my book and as the author and publisher why should I need his permission to publish? I was not working for him, or representing him in any way, nor do/did I make any claims of that nature (despite his illusions to the contrary). I gave full credit to him for any and all references to Reverse Speech right up front, and make no claim to anything except the work that I present there. It is my name on the byline, not his.

The third thing is that this is not some dry academic exercise that I was working on. This was an investigation into the death of my spiritual master–an extremely important and emotional issue for me. In my very strong opinion the need to be academically correct was by far overshadowed by the case that could be made by including more marginal speech reversals. So are all of my speech reversals accurate according to his list of checkpoints? NO! I’ll be the first to admit that. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Is what I hear the ONLY thing that this could possibly be? In many cases no. A syllable or two or a consonant may be missing. But CAN they be what I hear? YES they can. And that is what I wrote. To see how extreme this can get, if you were to apply Oates’ checkpoints to Srila Prabhupada’s forward speech it probably wouldn’t be accurate either, given that he was often weak and speaking from his deathbed. The accurate speech researcher would therefore have to conclude that he didn’t say anything! Well we know that often a consonant or syllable is often slurred or mispronounced when we speak, but we still understand what the person was saying. In the same way many of the speech reversals I present can be questioned. Fine. Listen to them yourself and if you don’t hear what I hear, ignore that one, or two or even ten or twenty. There are over 400 there to choose from. I say as much in my book. So far however, my readers mostly concur with what I hear, and also with my conclusions–Srila Prabhupada was deliberately given poison with the intention of taking him to an early grave.

The bottom line here is that my work is offered to the community of devotees so that they can hear the evidence that I offer, along with all of the other evidence and make up their own minds on what actually happened in this sad and unfortunate affair. My opinion is that every devotee must hear and weigh the evidence for themselves and not let the GBC, nor David Oates, nor anyone else make up their minds on this important issue.

There is a great deal of other significant evidence, both direct and circumstantial, that this crime took place, catalogued in Nityananda’s book Someone Has Poisoned Me, which is included in its entirety (with his permission) in HTML format as an appendix to my book. My work simply adds to that voluminous evidence, and for most devotees twenty or forty questionable speech reversals are not going be the deciding factor in their conclusions of the matter. My work is not offered for the court of law. Reverse Speech will not stand up in a courtroom anyway. My work is instead offered to the court of public opinion and it stands on its own merit. David Oates doesn’t think its good science. For those who want to look into it, his is a whimsical and arbitrary opinion when you compare the work that I have done with others that have his blessings. Check out the speech reversals on his own website: www.reversespeech.com or on those that he endorses. You will find mine to be no worse than many on those web pages. However he draws his opinion, biased or not, he’s entitled to it, but his is not the opinion that counts–yours is! This is not some philosophical exchange to be viewed as a spectator sport by those on the sidelines, but is participatory for everyone. I post the speech reversals so that you can hear them. If you have two ears and a brain use them and draw your own conclusions.

Oates is neither a follower of Srila Prabhupada, nor an interested party to his movement. My work is not for him but for those who are devotees of Lord Krishna and interested parties to the legacy of Srila Prabhupada. The essential point is what do you, my reader, think? I simply offer it to you, but you must hear the evidence for yourself and make up your own mind.

I won’t bore (or titillate) the readers with a point-by-point defense of Oates flaming allegations and character assassination here, except for the one ridiculous charge of "looting" his burned house. Had David had the common sense to inquire at the time (okay he was stressed because his house just burned down, but he could have inquired a week later) he would have learned that his live-in fiancé of the time, Karen Boone, insisted that she had no place to keep the many things that were salvaged from the very large refrigerator, and told Nelda, myself and the others there to take some — otherwise they would just spoil and be wasted. I repeatedly asked her if she was sure that was what she wanted to do, and she repeatedly told me that she had no way to keep all of it from spoiling. She was the lady of the house and I accepted her authority on the matter. That is how I, and others, came to "loot" his groceries. But just in case you still feel sore about it David, I’ll be sending you $20 to cover whatever your fiancé insisted I take, or do you need more? (Like I needed your stupid food, get real!)

If Oates made unsubstantiated allegations about Art Bell is he likely to do that with others? In my case it is more of my word against his, but he has already shown his character in earlier episodes with others, and it is now only more of the same. Anyone who is really interested in the other petty details is invited to email me at Dhanesvara@excite.com and I will privately explain my side. Suffice it to say that Oates’ charges are either blatant lies, or extremely exaggerated renderings of long-past and mostly irrelevant events. Had he taken the effort to inquire on other things, like the groceries, many may have been cleared up. Maybe not though as I never was a cult follower who blindly accepts being told what to do, how to think and what to hear. I hope my readers aren’t as well.