of Rawat's message are funded by donations. According to the Prem Rawat Foundation, it is supported by people who appreciate Rawat's message and wish to help make it available to others. Members In a comparison of new religious movements, Gartrell and Shannon noted that people appeared to seek out such religious organizations to get answers to questions about ultimate meaning as well as answers to more prosaic issues. In discussing the differences in recruiting tactics employed by these groups, they placed the Divine Light Mission in the middle ground between movements in which recruits were love bombed, or overwhelmed by waves of intense sentiment, and those in which affective bonds were discouraged. They reported that close ties between newcomers and DLM members developed gradually over a period of three to four months, between initial contact and their attending a "Knowledge session", and the emergent friendships were an important forum in which recruits aired doubts and discussed DLM beliefs. These relationships thus supplemented a very cognitive conversion process, in which active consideration of the movement's ideas and beliefs was encouraged from the outset. They found little evidence to suggest that social rewards were orchestrated by the movement, either in degree or timing. The sociologist James V. Downton, who studied the DLM for five years, reported that the "idealism of these premies was one of the motivating forces behind their conversion [to DLM]. They wanted to create a more caring world". Five years after the subjects of his study became premies he wrote: "There is little doubt in my mind that these premies have changed in a positive way. Today, they seem less alienated, aimless, worried, afraid, and more peaceful, loving, confident, and appreciative of life. We could attribute these changes to surrender, devotion, and their involvement in the premie community. Each of these undoubtedly had a positive impact, but, if we accept what premies say, none were as critical as their experience of the universal spirit. Meditating on the life-energy for five years, they report having more positive attitudes about themselves." According to Carroll Stoner and Jo Anne Parke, when they visited an ashram the premies "appeared to be in control of their own lives and seemed to be achieving some measure of peace as a by-product of a lifestyle they feel is constructive and healthy". When the same members attended an appearance by Prem Rawat a week later, "they lost