Ex-premie.org

The Book of the Website. v 1.4

Contents

Introduction    3
Welcome    4
Introduction to the website.    5
The True Spiritual Heritage of Prem Rawat.    6
Bob Mishler Radio Interview    8
Open Mikes    38
Mike Finch letter    38
Mike Dettmers Interview    41
Mike Donner letter    52
Mike Donner answers questions    54
Darshan for Sale    61
Who Owns What around Prem Rawat    67
Trouble around the Heliport    69
Amaroo    71
Rawat's 106 foot yacht, Serenity    73
The Gulfstream IV    74
The Gulfstream V    77
Bell 430 Helicopter    77
The "Residence" in Queensland Australia    78
The CAC Attack    79
Victims Statement    80
Marianne Responds to CAC    83
Maharaji's Trainings    84
The Jagdeo Issue    96
Corresponding with the cult about Jagdeo    101
Anth Ginn's letters    101
Mike Dettmers correspondence    107
Susan's correspondence    109
An Ex-Unity School Teacher reports    117
The cult view, an "Internet Hate Group"    116
Elan Vital tries to shut down Ex-premie.org    118

Journeys (in alphabetical order - not really)    

Introduction

"In the summer of '71, a few of us knew that the Lord had come."

Popular premie song from the 70s.

When the 13year old Guru Maharaji, now known as Prem Rawat, arrived in the West, in 1971, he was greeted by a handful of his western devotees, called "premies" and a few Indian "mahatmas". The living Lord had come to gather his disciples and establish Peace on Earth. Eastern mysticism was fashionable, and after a few LSD trips, young, malleable, hippy minds were ready for anything. The Lord of the Universe was on the planet in his greatest ever incarnation. It was time to join the cause and establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, probably starting with a Divine City, maybe in America.

Well, the years passed and we all grew up. The guru, married and had four children. Life continued outside the cult and slowly, some of the "chosen few" began to wake up and look objectively at what they were involved in.

The cult continued, albeit with dwindling membership, regularly changing its name and image, presumably to avoid association with its previous incarnations. Premies are not usually happy to talk about the past. They like to tell you things have changed, and critics are, "stuck in the past". Meanwhile the expensive tickets for cult meetings, indoctrination sessions, and frantic fund raising continue. The guru's taste in luxury cars, private jets, boats and gadgets continues unabated. A dwindling number of devotees are regularly invited to meetings where they are encouraged to give more.

In 1997 a couple of ex-premies decided to create a website, to provide an online resource of information about Prem Rawat and his cult. A handful of ex cult members were already chatting on an online forum. www.ex-premie.org was the result.

Since 2001, the home page has carried an invitation for Prem Rawat or Elan Vital to correct any inaccuracies on the site. They have yet to do so. The organisation did claim copyright on quotes by Prem Rawat in which he likened himself to Jesus, and pictures of him dressed as Krishna, but so far they have made no attempt to rebut any of the first-hand testimonies published on the site.

The cult has produced thousands of publications over the years. They have websites, books, rent a satellite TV channel, produce DVDs and other paraphernalia. This book tells another version of the fascinating tale of Prem Rawat and his cult. It is a collection of material from ex-premie.org and contains the personal testimonies of many disillusioned followers, and describes some attempts by cult members, to prevent them talking about their experiences.

This printable version of EPO doesn't contain everything on the website, but we thought we'd better stop including stuff as we were nearly up to 400 pages. If you want to read the rest you'll have to go online.

Welcome<</h2>

Welcome to the ex-premie website, the most comprehensive information resource on the internet covering Prem Rawat and his work.

The primary purpose of this website is to provide information to current and prospective followers of Prem Rawat, that is not made available on Prem Rawat's official sites.

This website has been in existence since 1997. Since the current webmaster took over in 2001, the home page has included a request for Prem Rawat or Elan Vital to correct any inaccuracies on this site. They have yet to do so.

Elan Vital did claim copyright on quotes by Prem Rawat in which he likened himself to Jesus, and pictures of Mr. Rawat dressed as Krishna, but so far they have made no attempt to rebut any of the first-hand testimonies published on this site.

Those unfamiliar with the history of Prem Rawat, and some of the terms we use here, are recommended to read this introduction, and the links from that page.

While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the content of this site; which is based on first hand accounts (usually corroborated), Elan Vital/Divine Light Mission/DUO publications, and other sources; we are grateful for any factual corrections.

Corrections, comments, criticisms and thanks are all welcome, and should be sent to the webmaster, John Brauns, at epowebmaster@yahoo.co.uk

So, once again, welcome!

Introduction to the website

It's been said that you can trap a monkey by placing a shiny trinket in a jar tied to a tree. The jar opening must be large enough for the monkey to put his hand in, but small enough that he can't remove it after closing his fist around the bait. We are people who have reached into the jar, been trapped there, and ultimately walked away with the trinket by breaking the jar that trapped us.

The shiny trinket offered was the experience of "Knowledge" of one's life-force via the four meditation techniques taught by Prem Pal Rawat - currently known to his followers as "Maharaji". Hailed by his entourage as "The Lord Of The Universe" and boldly stating "I declare that I will establish peace in this World", he first came to the West from India in 1971 as a 13-year-old boy who went by the name "Guru Maharaj Ji". Professing himself to be "greater than God", Maharaji built a following of "premies" by offering to reveal the supposedly-free experience of Knowledge to anyone who would reach "within inside".

The jar that held us was the belief instilled in us by Maharaji, through a slow and careful exposure to it, that experiencing this Knowledge is only possible for those who become devoted to him personally.

In the years since his arrival in the West, Maharaji has changed. The former Lord Of The Universe has become "The Master". Devotion has been re-bottled under the label "Gratitude". His earlier Divine Light Mission has evolved into "Elan Vital", and he is now repackaging his image with a new "Foundation", and paid for advertorials in free magazines for business leaders. No longer needing to be driven to borrowed lodgings in devotees' cars, he now parks his fleet of luxury cars within the walls of his estates located around the world. The young boy who needed his followers to pay his airfare from India is now a middle-aged man who owns a luxury jet which he pilots himself - after commuting to the airport in his own private helicopter. Another teaching aid he has recently acquired is a $7 million yacht.

And many who contributed our services, our money, and our devotion to his professed "mission" of establishing World peace have grown disgusted with his having used those contributions for his personal enrichment, and have broken free of the personality cult surrounding him.

Ex-premie.org exists because new "aspirants" and existing premies are still being encouraged by him to become, or to remain, steadfast in their devotion. Maharaji attempts to surround himself only with people who are reluctant to reveal what they have learned about him. Those who have broken away from that devotion want to make available what's been learned in the process:

That the jar of devotion only serves Maharaji's personal interest and wealth-building, and is not required in order to experience anything in this life.

That the shiniest trinkets to be held in this world are ours by birth to discover, to enjoy, and to share freely.

That having looked up to Maharaji only enabled him to look down to us - the people making monkeys of themselves before finally Breaking Free.

The True Spiritual Heritage of Prem Rawat.

Just like Prempal Rawat, there is an Indian group claiming descent from the gurus Swarupanand and before him, Dayal Ji. In fact they have the very same photos of these gentlemen that Maharaji himself has posted on his website at www.maharaji.org (in the 'Masters' section), where he states firmly 'This is the traceable history thus far'.

On these sites you will see that their 'Shree Dada Guru' is none other than Maharaji's 'Dayal Ji' aka 'Advaitanand' (same photo) also their 'Shree Nangli Niwasi Bhagwan aka 'Guru Maharaj ji' aka 'Swarupanand' is of course Shri Hans' guru (Prempal's father's guru).

Shree Nangli Sahib

######### The great work of renaissance of the world which was assigned to Sri Param Hans Dayal ji Maharaj by lord, keeping that selfless service as his goal, Sri Nangli Niwasi Bhagwan proceeded in the direction of revival and reawakening, successfully spreading the light of devotion and learning flowed from his mouth. …

Shree Nangli Niwasi Bhagwan
SHREE GURU MAHARAJ JI

Shree 108 Paramhans Dayal Ji Maharaj
SHREE DADA GURU

Great people incarnate into this world to do some great work and for the fulfillments of some goal. Your incarnation was for salvation, impartiality, truthfulness and justifiable behaviors. You preached on preceptor devotion, sahaj yoga, theosophy and theology. The nature also bowed before you when the nectarous preaching flowed from your beautiful, lustrous and divine statue . There was no discrimination between rich and poor, high and low for you. …

Sadgurudham Shri Nangli Tirth

"The nondescript village of Nangli was sanctified in Dec. 1935 by the auspicious advent of the Holiest of the Holy Saint Swami Swarupanand Ji Maharaj, Who said of it, " Other places are my hermitages, but Nangli is my Guru Mandir, Gurudwara….. I will make it my permanent abode"." ….

Over a Century ago, his holiness the most revered Sadguru Dev Ji Shri 1008 Shri Swami Swarupanand Ji Maharaj came to live in the earthly abode on the holy land of India for her spiritual upliftment. He was born on the auspicious day of Basant Panchmi, the Ist Feb. 1884 at a small town of Teri, Distt. Kohat. North West Frontier, to the Fortunate parents, Lala Prabhu Dayal Ji and Ma Shri Radha Rani Ji. …

The Spiritual Emperor, His Holiness Shri Param Hans Dyal Shri Swami Advaita Nand Ji Maharaj took to human form on a Sunday of 1846 at Chhapra (Bihar) in the house of Shri Tulsi Ram Ji. Since it was the auspicious day of Ram Navami, the Child was reverentially called as 'Ram Roop', 'Ram Yaad' or 'Ram Narain'. …

On these websites there is a link to a 'Gallery' of all their favourite 'divine' personages. At the top you will see Dayal Ji and Swarupanand and below literally dozens of photos and details about the subsequent Mahatmas. According to all these documents, it looks like when Swarupanand died he empowered all the named mahatmas (100s of them) mentioned on the web site to continue his work - without giving special authority to any particular leader. It is somewhat strange that Hans ji wasn't mentioned . However it is clear from the early DLM documents (reproduced on this site) that Shri Hans was a very controversial guru who attracted major opposition because, for example, he initiated women (which was unthinkable to some people). In fact DLM say that his denigrators went to considerable lengths to blacken his name - rather like EPO I guess - circulating 'tracts' etc. History repeats itself. Furthermore, SHRI NANGLI SAHIB is clearly mentioned in the 'Sant mat book'. There is no doubt that Prempal Rawat and the Shree Nangli Sahib group claim the same heritage.

Beside the Shri Nangli Sahib/Sant mat tradition, the Radhasoami tradition is also claiming the same heritage, born with Swami Shiv Dayal (Shiv Dayal Singh), see David Lane's comments on this issue. Its is also very clear, according to David Lane (reported by Kirpal's personal secretary at Sawan Ashram in 1978), that Shri Hans had also been initiated by Sawan Singh of Radhasoami Beas in the 1920's.

Bob Mishler Radio Interview

The following is the transcript of a 1979 radio interview with Bob Mishler, ex-President of Divine Light Mission (DLM).

Bob Mishler was President between 1972 and 1977. During those years, he acted in the capacity of Maharaji's number one right-hand man and confidant. The interview was recorded in Denver Colorado USA at radio station KOA on Feb. 12, 1979. Gary Tesler was the radio talk show host.

The first one-third of the interview is a discussion between Mishler (Bob) and Gary Tesler (Host). The remainder of the interview was an open, phone-in discussion which tends to ramble, yet contains some good insights into the psychology of cult devotion and of Maharaji himself.

Tape supplied by Rick Wallace, transcribed by David Stirling, and indexed by Scott Perry.

Beginning of closed discussion between Bob and the radio talk show host:

Radio Host: We'll be talking about the religious cult mystique and the Divine Light Mission. If you don't know what he Divine Light Mission is, it is an organisation that was established by people who follow the Guru Maharaj Ji. He is an Indian, and he came over to this country some seven years ago to establish his mission. In that period of time, the goals of the Divine Light Mission have changed. The attitude of people in the Divine Light Mission has changed and has now become something entirely different. That difference is something that we are going to discuss this morning with Bob Mishler. Bob, welcome to the show.

Bob Mishler: Thank you, Gary.

Host: Let's talk a little bit about this. It started about seven years ago, is that right?

Bob: About seven and a half years ago. It was in the summer of 1971, when he first came to the United States.

Host: And at that time, he was fourteen years old.

Bob: He was thirteen, actually.

Host: And his brother and his mother were selling him as a perfect master.

Bob: Well, yes, you could say that! At that time, he was saying that he was the perfect master. On his first trip actually, his mother and brother did not accompany him. He came by himself. People in the United States got their first chance to meet them in 1972 when they came back, and it was then apparent that they were in fact running things.

Host: All right, let's talk about this. There was a time when he had a large number of followers.

Maharaji's first lectures in US

Bob: Yes, there was a time. In fact, when he came to the United States in 1971, you could say that this country was very ripe for that sort of thing. In fact, I remember seeing him in Boulder in August of 1971. At that time, every spiritual leader from anywhere in the world who happened to come to the United States would come through Boulder. When Maharaji came, at least 2,000 people came to see him on his very first appearance at Mackie Auditorium in Boulder. During the course of those few years, between 1971 and 1974, we probably initiated something between 50 and 60,000 people in the United States in Denver.

Host: That many in Denver?

Bob: In Colorado we had a large following. In fact, in the summer of 1972 we had one program which lasted for several days. We held it in Montrose, Colorado, in an outdoor type thing with a stage out in a field. At that program alone, we initiated 2,000 people.

Host: When the Guru first came over here, what was his message?

Bob: When he first arrived, his message was that he knew the truth and that the truth was within each and every individual. He sometimes used to talk about that truth, whether you called it God or something else, as the perfect energy within each individual. He said that this was something he could reveal to everyone. That, in fact, was his purpose. He was called a perfect master because he had mastered something that was perfect; presumably this perfect energy inside us which was responsible for life. In revealing that to other people, he was revealing the only thing which could claim to be perfection, the primordial energy of the universe.

He would essentially ask people to come to him and ask for this knowledge, which would be freely given. The only thing that was required was the sincerity on the part of the individual asking. If you would ask sincerely, not just because you wanted to do it out of curiosity, but because you really wanted to know the truth about life, then he would have this knowledge revealed to you. Actually, he never really did any of the initiating himself; there was always one of his disciples to do that. These disciples at that time were called Mahatmas. In the beginning years, they were all Indians as well.

He billed himself as a humble servant of God who was essentially in charge with the responsibility of revealing this knowledge to people by his father who was his guru. At the same time, although there were some people who would say, well, he has to be a god himself in order to be able to reveal God, he would always deny this. He would say : "I make no claims of this sort at all. What I am revealing - it is not even as if I am giving you something - is something that is there inside you. It is there inside everyone. By recognising it, by having it revealed to you and then by meditating on it, you can attain the peace that comes through knowing the truth. Once you have found peace within yourself, this is the way towards ultimate world peace".

Host: How did he reveal this truth?

Bob: Like I said, he never really actually revealed it to anybody.

Maharaji's first initiation ceremonies in US

Host: How was the truth revealed?

Bob: OK, it was revealed to people in what was known as a knowledge session. This is an initiation that takes place with one of his disciples who has been essentially sanctioned to perform this function. Like I said, they had a special title. They were called Mahatmas. Presently, they call them Initiators. That was really what their function was; to initiate new people into this practice of knowledge.

This practice of knowledge turns out to be a whole lifestyle. At the core of it, the primary thing that was taught to people in these initiation sessions was a form of meditation that consisted of four techniques of concentration. These four techniques of concentration were supposed to reveal to you the inner light, or divine light, within your own being, and also the divine harmony, or vibration, that was going on inside you all the time. There was supposed to be a divine nectar which was a source of internal sustenance and an elixir of bliss of sorts. Of course, the main thing was the primordial vibration itself; the holy name or the word as spoken of in the Bible.

Host: What was the elixir?

Bob: The elixir was supposed to be this divine nectar.

Host: What was it?

Bob: First of all, you've got to understand that we're talking about techniques that are actual physical techniques that you practice. The physical technique for the nectar was a yoga movement that is performed by inverting your tongue back into your throat. Now some critics have said that the only nectar that is experienced that way is the post-nasal drip.

The belief is that the physical technique is just a means of attaining some sort of transcendental awareness, so the nectar would be something that you couldn't really describe. You would have to experience it, and it would be the same for the divine light and for the celestial harmony and the primordial vibration as well.

Host: When people first came into the Divine Light Mission, was it originally called the Divine Light Mission or did it have another name?

Bob: It was called the Divine Light Mission in India. When Maharaji came here, there was no organisation and in fact he asked me to found the Divine Light Mission for him here in the United States, which I did in September 1971.

Host: Were the people who got involved with the Guru from all religious backgrounds?

Bob: That's correct.

Bob Mishler converted by Bill Patterson

Host: How did you come to this?

Bob: Well, my actual coming to Maharaji took place because of a former student of mine. I had studied yoga in India in 1968, and when I came back to the United States, I started teaching my friends to practice yoga. It accelerated through my involvement with the Denver Free University. During the course of teaching yoga through the Denver Free University, I had a student named Bill Patterson. Bill had attended a number of my yoga classes, and he decided that he wanted to go to India to pursue his studies. We had talked about his trip before he went. Anyway, to make a long story short, he told me that when he came back he had joined a guru.

This was, I believe, in June 1971. He told me about this 13 year old boy who was his guru. I thought it sounded very interesting. It sounded as though the teachings that the guru was giving Bill were in harmony with the Yogi tradition. He told me that his guru might in fact come to the United States. I said that if he does, be sure and let me know as I would like to meet him. I didn't expect that he would come so soon, but actually he did.

He came in July. He came to Los Angeles first, and within a couple of weeks he was in Boulder. When he came, of course Bill asked me to come. As soon as I went there, Bill immediately showed me into the room and I met Maharaji. I was impressed with him as he spoke with a great deal of confidence and authority. For the most part, I felt that unlike a lot of other Yogis who had come to the West and were essentially commercialising the Yogi tradition in my opinion, he put no price tag on the meditation. He used to say that you can't put a price on something that's priceless.

He said that something that's this important for people to have, you have to give to everyone freely, and the only requirement is that they be sincere in wanting to know the truth and then it will be revealed to them. I felt that he was somebody that was sincere, and when he said that his mission was to spread this meditation as widely as possible, I offered to help in any way that I could.

Host: Would it be fair to say that you became a follower of his?

Bob: Yes, it would be, because in fact he was the leader, and in order to assist him in any way, you had to be a follower.

First US premies selected for initiation

Host: All right. Initially, people were coming to him to receive this knowledge. I understood that they received it in a blinding flash of light, that there were allegations to this effect

Bob: Well, like I said, you had these initiation sessions. First of all, you had to be selected for them. In the beginning, you would listen to Maharaji give satsangs primarily…

Host: What?

Bob: Excuse me - that's a group term within the Divine Light Mission. It comes from the Hindi which roughly translated means 'company of truth'. It's the name that's applied to the lectures that the guru would give. In fact satsang is something very important in the Divine Light Mission practice of knowledge. Anyway, you would listen to him giving his lectures - the satsangs - and you would also listen to some of his devotees also giving these satsang lectures.

After you were convinced that it was something that you wanted to try, and that you sincerely wanted to know, then you would make that known. You would ask to receive knowledge and then you would be selected, depending upon whether they thought you were ready or not, whoever they were. They at that time were a Mahatma and one or two of the devotees who were assisting him. As soon as you were selected, you would get to sit in one of these initiation sessions, which sometimes lasted anywhere from six to eight or ten hours.

Host: OK, I have talked to people - as a matter of fact I met the Guru Maharaj Ji's mother and I believe that was in 1972 - and there was a get-together that you had put together at Redrocks also. That was also in 1972, I believe?

Bob: Yes, that was in 1972.

Maharaji says devotees don't have to leave religions

Host: I had the chance to be there and thought it was interesting, but not any more interesting than anything else that I had heard. But it was amazing to me to watch the young people who were involved, how devoted they were and how this translated and somehow kept pace, always within keeping of their formal religions. If they were Catholic, they had a very Catholic view of the whole procedure. If you didn't accept the Guru Maharaj Ji when the light was offered to you, then you weren't going to be saved, very much like some religions today. That whole thing changed. How did it change?

Bob: Well, I don't know whether that appeal changed really very much at all. It's just that in the early days, Maharaji was very adamant about how he had not come to start another religion. In fact, he felt that what he was offering should not interfere with your present religious beliefs at all. If anything, it should enhance them in that you would suddenly, for the first time, really know what the Bible was talking about because you would be experiencing it yourself.

The idea was that he was doing something that would unite all the religions of the world. Therefore, people were encouraged to bring their religious tradition into the Divine Light Mission. That's probably what accounted for the thing that you were observing in the way that people would interpret the Divine Light Mission practices in terms of their own religious background. I think that, to a certain extent, they would still probably tell that to people who were interested, or trying to get interested, in the Divine Light Mission now.

Serious devotees always left their religions

In the meantime, it has become a religion in its own right. I don't think that anybody could deny that. They have a whole body of dogma; a complete lifestyle, a way of life which they call Knowledge. It's not simply a singular kind of experience that you translate into your everyday life, as it was purported to be in the beginning, it's a whole system of idol worship where you must accept the guru as God.

Host: Today, what they are saying is that the guru is the reincarnation of God. He is God. He is not simply a messenger; he is, as the Christians, or other religions would say, a Messiah. In the Christian sense, he is like Jesus.

Bob: I think that would be pretty much what they would say. He is an embodiment of that power, and that power is God. That's what we have come to know as God. In India, you have some people argue with you for a long time saying, "no, no, no, he is greater than God". For us, that loses value in that we tend to interpret the word God as being that which is all-powerful. That's how they see him, as an embodiment of that all-powerful force which created and sustains and enlightens all being.

Host: What happened as you saw these changes taking place in the Divine Light Mission, and really the embodiment of what the guru represented changing? How did that affect you?

Bob: Well, it was a little bit more complex for me in terms of the changes I went through during that period myself. In general, it affected me in that I felt that we had a responsibility to be what we purported ourselves to be. To change it into something else was not something that I agreed with. Ultimately, my disagreement with Maharaji, particularly on this basis, led to my resignation.

During a large part of the period that I was involved, I essentially went along the prevailing belief structure. Whether Guru Maharaj Ji was God or not really wasn't important. The important thing was that if you were devoted to him, you followed him absolutely. Whatever he said, even if it didn't make sense to you, you would find a way to make sense of it. I used to do that myself as well. I certainly did that a great deal for the devotees as well. I was one of the major spokespeople of the movement.

Parallels between DLM and Jonestown mass suicide

Host: The People's Temple hit the news a while back with a mass suicide, among other things. Shortly after that information hit us through the media, you made some statements regarding the Divine Light Mission and some of the practices of it which you felt corresponded to the People's Temple. Could you tell us about that?

Bob: Yes. First of all, let me explain my reasoning there. When I left the Divine Light Mission in 1977, I felt that I personally couldn't agree with what the guru was doing. I had come to that conclusion probably a year and a half before that. I never really lived with the guru except that I travelled in the same circle as him. I never really lived with him or became the kind of personal confidant that I was to him until after he split with his family.

There was a period during 1974 when there was an outright war, really, in the Divine Light Mission, between his mother and elder brother, whom you met. Maharaji took control of the mission. During this time, he began to rely on me very heavily, and then after that I lived with him. In living with him, I began to see a lot of the excesses in the devotion and practices that I felt were detrimental to the spiritual development of the devotees.

I had attributed these to his mother and brother, and with them out of the way, that didn't necessarily need to be the case any longer. This was in my opinion, at least, as I had always found Maharaji to be very sincere and reasonable. In fact, during that period, we did decide to make some changes. At the beginning, well, around the end of 1975, we started what I would call a major change of emphasis in the Divine Light Mission.

Maharaji changes mind about retiring in 1976

This was something that Maharaji and I arrived at as being necessary not only for the devotees but also for his own welfare as well. That was to change this belief that he was God, by actually coming out and denying it, and by taking some responsibility to de-program our own membership away from this belief. This was so that he wouldn't become the kind of cult leader that in fact he has become today.

About half way through 1976, Maharaji got very insecure about what was going to happen to him if we continued with this. He realised that he was going to lose his automatic hold over the devotees that he had had up until that point.

Host: Was this a conscious thing on his part?

Bob: Oh, yes. This was a very conscious thing. We discussed it, and we outlined all the different perspectives that would be involved. At the time, what I had planned for him and with him, and up to the middle of 1976 he was largely agreeing with, was to use a lot of the money that had come to him in the form of gifts from his followers, to set up some investments. This would enable him to become financially independent from the continued support of the devotees.

He had grown accustomed to a very luxurious lifestyle. A lot of the necessity of keeping the members believing that he was God was to ensure that they would continue to support him in this lifestyle. If it meant that he was going to have to make any sacrifices in this lifestyle (and it had become apparent by the middle of 1976 that this was going to be the case) then he didn't really want to have to do that.

That's where we came to a parting of the ways, so to speak. As a result of that, I just left, because I recognised that I couldn't change him. If he wanted to change on his own, then that was something I was very willing to assist with. If he wasn't going to change, then I certainly wasn't going to continue to stay while he turned what was originally a mission to spread meditation to people freely into something that solicited donations to do this type of work and had all of its funds essentially going to support his luxurious lifestyle.

So I resigned from the Divine Light Mission in January 1977, but for the last month or so of 1976 I really wasn't involved. It was understood that I was resigning. I didn't say anything, because at the time, I felt that a lot of the things that I knew really wouldn't be that well received. I had been the head of the Mission, after all, during that whole period, and people had all sorts of different conceptions about me. Really, I didn't feel that it was of any interest to people other than the present members, and most of them really didn't want to know the kind of things that I knew.

Maharaji's authority 'dangerous and corrupting'

After that incident in Guyana there were just so many striking similarities between what had happened with the People's Temple group and how it had changed over the years and the kind of psychological deterioration that Reverend Jones had purportedly gone through. The whole belief structure, this separate reality that they existed in…

Host: His people…did they go through a suicide provision?

Bob: No, I don't mean that there actually was a suicide pact or anything like that. What I meant was that this kind of belief, absolute power and control in one person, and belief that no matter what this person says, it must be obeyed. That kind of power, the impact that power has, even on the person who has it. The kind of corrupting influence that kind of power over others has on an individual.

I'd see Maharaji go through a tremendous psychological deterioration during the time that I lived with him. These things were, I felt, his private affairs on one level. I also felt that the premies' beliefs were their own private affairs on another level.

Maharaji attempts to hide behaviour

Host: What is a premie?

Bob: A premie is a name for a member of the Divine Light Mission. That comes from the Hindi word prem which means love. Premie roughly is someone who is a lover of God, Guru Maharaj Ji, whatever you want to say. A lover of truth. Anyway, I made this statement, and the reason I made it was that I felt that there was a lot that needed to be pointed out. These were things that were deliberately hidden from the members of the members of the Divine Light Mission.

Host: How did he take advantage of his position other than simply to acquire some fairly worldly goods?

Bob: Well, taking advantage is a matter of interpretation. I know that any criticism you make of Guru Maharaj Ji can be rationalised by his very devoted followers, simply because they give all matter of license to him in that if he is God, well , he can do anything.

That means that, to my own way of thinking, it is very hypocritical to teach one lifestyle as a means of fulfilment to people, as a spiritual truth, and then live entirely opposite to that yourself. That becomes even more hypocritical, when in fact you don't just do the opposite, but you also make a great deal of effort and take a great deal of care in making sure that nobody knows this either.

Host: There were rumors, and I don't know whether these rumors were based on any kind of fact or not, that he took advantage of several young women who were members of the Divine Light Mission, because of his position. To your knowledge, is any of that true?

Bob: No, to my knowledge, that's not true. Although it was true that a number of his Mahatmas did that, and we had a number of problems with some of the Mahatmas on that level, I am not aware of Maharaji taking advantage of women followers.

Maharaji's opulent lifestyle

Host: Is the Maharaji a rich man today?

Bob: I don't know what his personal worth is, but you would have to say that he is a rich man. That might sound a bit ambiguous, but his whole financial condition is a bit ambiguous, because he has so much of his wealth being provided for him by the Church.

He has a great deal of income that comes to him in the tax-free form of gifts from his followers. How he uses that; well, when I was there, he was spending it. It was just amazing how much money he could spend.

Host: He has several sports cars, I understand, I mean people gave him things.

Bob: Yes, and he also had the Divine Light Mission buy him things. Whenever he wanted something, it really didn't matter whether we had the money for it or not. We were to get it, somehow or another.

Host: I remember when he bought a Mercedes. There was a lot of flak about that.

Bob: Yes, well, by the time I left, he must have had at least three Mercedes, a couple of Rolls Royces, and least three or four other luxurious automobiles in the 30 or 40,000 dollar range. I mean, it wasn't just a question of having one, he had a whole fleet.

Followers afraid of Bob Mishler

Host: How do the members of the Divine Light Mission see you today? Do they see you as a Judas?

Bob: Well, I suppose you would have to ask them. They have a special name for someone like me which, I guess is a sort of a Judas. The call it a Munmat. That is someone who has become anti-guru. I think that with the exception of a few, and it really is just a few, of the present members who still believe in Guru Maharaj Ji who have had the courage to talk to me and still relate to me, most of them are really afraid to talk to me. This is because I'm seen as someone who is completely in their minds.

The mind is a very dangerous thing to a premie. That's symbolic of everything that makes you doubt the truth which Guru Maharaj Ji has revealed to you. In fact, he has even commanded his following never to allow any room for doubt in their minds. They are supposed to control their minds through the practice of meditation. So, to talk to someone like myself, who is completely in the mind, supposedly, would be a very dangerous thing to do, because I could confuse them.

Beginning of open discussion between Bob M., the Host, and random telephone callers:

Caller #1: It's really a relief to hear somebody who has left one of these cult religions rather than being on the air to convert people. What is your purpose now in speaking out against the Church? Are you just simply stating your own case or are you involved in trying to win other people away from the group, to get them to look at it more objectively?

Bob: I think that I have to agree with you in that I am trying to get people to look at him more critically now, particularly people who are in a position to influence current members. I don't expect that very many current members are going to even really listen to what I have to say, but maybe their families will, maybe some of their friends will.

In fact, since I made the statement after the incident in Guyana (mass suicide of cult members), I've had phone calls continuously from parents and concerned friends and family members from all over the country. They have been asking if I could give information or they have just wanted to talk to me about what they can do, how can they talk to their loved ones who are still involved, because they are really at a loss to know how to reach them. It's such an all-inclusive belief system.

Caller #1: Is it a problem for you to get them to listen to you? Is it hard to get them alone? Do they just hang around with each other for the most part?

Bob: Yes, they have their own world in a way.

Caller #1: I tried to talk to them myself. I would characterise them basically as being young, not street-wise or hip, in fear or confused, with very little ability to cope with the world outside of a group. Another thing I am thinking about is perhaps they are looking for the good parents that they didn't have. Maybe they've come from basically unhappy family situations, which isn't that unusual. It might even be typical, you know, people in society.

Bob: Yes, I think that certainly what you have said would apply to some of the people involved. It's hard to capture everybody with a generalization.

Caller #1: Oh, sure, I've met some people who are basically intelligent. I was talking to some guy who had advanced degrees. I went to one of the satsangs. The guy sounded pretty intelligent, and I said: "What about the guru's behaviour? What about the fact that he's overweight? What about the fact that he's had speeding tickets in his Maserati? He's a young guy and he got married to a woman maybe ten years older than himself and he's already got several kids. He seems to carry on a lot". This guy was saying: "This doesn't concern me that much". I guess different people in the church have their own degrees of what they will accept, just like in any other church.

Host: However, there are professional people, attorneys, certainly not your wandering little lost souls. I don't know whether that is still the case, but it was at the time that I was familiar with the Divine Light Mission. There were also people who were very street-wise.

Caller #1: Just because a person is a lawyer or something doesn't mean that he's not an easy mark. I mean, look at the psychics, like Uri Geller. They took in some scientists, as they knew how a person could be fooled by optical illusions, etc. The only ones that could show up these guys like Uri Geller were the magicians - the real sceptics. They knew the various tricks - the hand is quicker than the eye, etc. They always said: "Well, let me be in the room when Uri Geller is performing one of his tricks and I'll show you how I can do the same thing".

Host: Well, they can do the same thing by trick. However, there were a number of studies with Geller. I don't want to go into that.

Bob: I think that what you are talking about is that there are a lot of different reasons why people need to believe in something. One other aspect that you must consider is when a person does believe that things do happen for that person. That has happened to a lot of people who have been involved in the Divine Light Mission. They have experiences that are very satisfying and fulfilling to them.

The only thing that I object to is the way they are taught to attribute whatever experience they have to the guru himself. This is actually where they are actually being taken advantage of.

Caller #1: I believe that each person is God, and that God is in man. It is up to all of us to find the God in ourselves and develop it to be best of our ability. Do the best you can, and good will come to you'. I think that's basically my own belief, and I was wondering if your guest has come around to this point of view if he is still working for divinity somewhere.

Bob: Well, I don't think I was ever really looking for divinity except within myself. Essentially, Maharaji was teaching that in the very beginning himself. It's only over the course of time that it has changed and become an idol worship cult.

Caller #1: I remember in 1971 back in New York, from the very first, the impression of the advertising was that the guru was God, yet he didn't say that himself, everyone else around him said that he was God.

Bob: Well, again, that just shows the latitude that there was. You could believe he was God if you wanted to. I didn't really want to believe that he was God, and so I didn't.

Host (to caller): OK, thank you. Bye bye.

Caller #2: Bob, I assume that you are out of the Divine Light Mission altogether?

Bob: Yes, that's correct.

Maharaji drinking alcohol to relieve stress

Caller #2: What are you doing now? Have you changed your spiritual beliefs substantially since that point? In other words, what did you see or not see in the guru that caused you to get out of it?

Bob: Well, I essentially saw that the guru wasn't what he was being purported to be. In fact, not only was he not God or divine in any way, but he wasn't really even capable of guiding his followers. He didn't know enough about the meditation himself really to be able to even instruct the disciples that were teaching meditation on his behalf, when critical questions came up.

Even though he was supposedly revealing the means to perfect peace to all of his following, he himself had tremendous problems of anxiety which he combated with alcohol. It even developed into a high blood pressure condition caused by essential hypertension, which is a form of internalising anxiety. So here was a man who was supposedly revealing perfect peace to everyone else, and I figured he couldn't even guide his own life, let alone guide others.

Caller #2: How could people ever think that a 15 year old kid could be God in the first place is beyond me. The accounts that we have of Jesus in the New Testament are so vastly different.

Host: Remember only that those accounts are long after the fact, and they are as his followers saw him, and not necessarily as he really was.

Maharaji 'off-stage'

Bob: Also remember that Maharaji puts on a good show, and the theatrics involved are very appealing to the kind of mass consciousness that you get in the crowds he appears in. Most of the members have never really seen him as he actually is. They have only seen him under very well-staged and planned conditions.

Caller #2: I think the bottom line about the whole thing is that the Scripture says that in the latter days many false Christs will come out, professing themselves to be Christ.

Host: Except we've had those for the last 2,000 years, for the last 3,000 years.

Caller #3: Bob, may I compliment you on choosing the most gullible people in this universe for the adventure of your mission.

Host: I wonder what that meant.

Bob: Well, if anything, I think they are self-selected. The call is put out, and maybe it is gullible people who come. I think it is people who are maybe have as their one great fault that they are naive and innocently trusting.

Host: Isn't that true of really almost any totally devoted religious follower?

Bob: I would say so. In that sense, I don't really feel that they are that much different than anybody else. I think that some of the people that I met are some of the finest people I have ever known. It's a shame, in a way, that they are being deceived, but nevertheless, as I tried to explain to one of the other callers, they get a lot of benefits from their association with each other and certainly they have their own experience.

The problem is when you see people taking such a toll upon themselves, because the nature of their belief is such that when anything goes right in their lives, well, that's the grace of Guru Maharaj Ji. When anything goes wrong, well, that's themselves. That's their minds. So they are kind of in a bind, where anything that's beneficial they have to credit to the guru, and anything that's bad, well, they know that they're just not trying hard enough. So a lot of them have a great deal of difficulty. They are very hard put-upon.

A lot of the professional people that you were mentioning before had to give up their professions, simply because part of their calling now is that they must attend these festivals that the guru has all the time. In fact, he's having one here in Denver in about two weeks' time. They have to travel all over the country and to other parts of the world to attend these on average of every three or four months. Consequently, they can't hold a job. They can't maintain a profession. They get very impoverished as a result of this. They have to not only pay to get into these festivals, but they are also expected to make a cash contribution to the guru, when they go through the ritual of kissing his feet.

So these kinds of beliefs do take a toll on the people, even though they may feel that they are getting something from it. It's very captivating, and there is a sinister element to it that is hidden from people.

Caller 4: Everything is within yourself, within your body and mind. I agree with that, as far as he was preaching. But how do explain his character? Do you explain him as a magician, or somebody who has extraordinary power? Of course, I've never seen his performance.

Bob: If you ever knew anything about him, you would know that he inherited a following from his father. It was his father who really started the Divine Light Mission. When he was eight years old, his father died and he was put upon the throne of his father. So he had a tremendous following in India, and he had played this role for that following for five years before he ever showed up in this country.

So he had had a lot of practice, and it's a kind of a mass consciousness phenomenon that takes place. In a crowd, people are receptive to images that they might not really be receptive to in a conversation one-on-one; at least, they are impacted in a way by those images. He used to tell his story to a receptive crowd of eager seekers who wanted more insight into their own spiritual practice.

He was saying the kind of things that you could relate to, and there was a kind of reaction that took place between the crowd and him. He was portrayed in such a way that he was the master. He was the one who was sitting on the throne up on the stage.

Caller #4: So what you are saying is that every thirteen year old boy who would have that type of training and background could be able to perform that way.

Bob: I'm not saying that everyone would be able to. Obviously, you would have to have certain aptitude for it.

Caller #4: And charisma.

Bob: Yes. Charisma is the concept we are talking about. In fact, it's not only the capacity on the part of the individual to speak with absolute authority, but it must also be reciprocated by the crowd. The crowd must be receptive to it.

For example, I have been with this same person in lots of situations where he would not seem significant. You wouldn't notice him. In fact, for the most part, he had a very difficult time with just getting people's attention or handling normal day-to-day interaction with people. When he was out on the stage on that throne, speaking into the microphone and being amplified, he had the charisma.

Host: There have been many young people who have been religious leaders in the past. There is a young kid now who preaches.

Bob: Krishnamurti was another example of someone who was picked out at an early age to play that role. Of course, when he got older, he realised that wasn't correct. He bowed out. I sort of hold that out for Maharaji too. Maybe someday, he'll let these people go and he'll quit squeezing them for their money. It would probably be in everybody's best interests if he would do that. He hasn't reached that point yet. [Editor's Note: Click here to read Krishnamurti's resignation speech.]

Caller #4: I sure appreciate your effort in sharing all your experiences and thoughts with the public. I hope more people listen to you and don't fall into something that you did.

Bob: Thank you.

Caller #5: Hello. I am a Christian calling from Albuquerque. I assume you are Jewish, is that correct? (to Host).

Host: Yes. My statement, though, would apply to any religion.

Caller #5: Well, I am a Christian, and it kind of bothered me because I know that as a Jew, you don't accept Jesus as your Messiah. I'd say that the differences between Jesus and Maharaji are substantial.

Host: Well, let me preface what I am going to say by saying that I don't want to change anybody's religious belief into anything or away from anything. One of the responsibilities that we have as individuals is to recognise our freedom of choice, and to recognise also the similarities in all religious movements.

That same thing is true in Christianity, or the Divine Light Mission, or in various times in Jewish history when there have been Jewish Messiahs that have popped up. They developed a tremendous following; there were numbers of them. The same thing is true in Islam and Hinduism. You have to recognise that aspect of all religious philosophy.

Caller #5: I am glad that you have brought that point out. It's not that I'm afraid that Jesus can't stand up with Buddha, Mohammed, Maharaji or any of these individuals. I believe that the Bible stands on its own merit. The scepticism of myself or anyone else cannot reduce the fact that Jesus, I believe, was who he said he was.

Host: The important thing here is that you believe. As long as you believe, that is fine. But it is a system of belief, because in any religion, there ain't no proof!

Caller #5: Well, as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

Host: Well, that isn't necessarily true. I think that ultimately whatever you believe in, if you believe in it strongly enough and feel that it changes your life, then it provides satisfaction for you. Really, that's all a religion can do.

Caller #5: I think that it's possible to be sincere, but it's also possible to be sincerely wrong, as he is proving very well this morning.

Bob: I don't think that it's as simple as being sincerely wrong. One thing you don't have the capacity to do, except through your own faith, is to put Jesus to the test. In your faith, you can do that. With the premies, the members of the Divine Light Mission, they can in fact put Maharaji to the test because he is here.

They tend to rationalise everything that he does. I lived with him and I saw him as he actually is, not as he is staged to be. In doing that, I saw that he isn't what he purports himself to be. To that extent, I don't even think that he is sincerely wrong, I think that he is deliberately deceiving people.

Host: You see, we don't have people around from the early foundations of Judaism that we can put on the grill and who are willing to come forward, because they are dead! The same thing is true of Christianity, or Hinduism, or Islam, or anything else. We don't have those people around. So all we have are the books about them.

There will be a time in the future when the guru will no longer be around, and when the Bob Mishlers will no longer be around. At that point, what will the followers of the guru believe, and how big will it become?

Caller #5: I believe that there is more to life than just this one world. I believe that, based on the Bible, each and every one of us will give account to God someday. I believe in the person of Jesus Christ. This of course would relate to Maharaji, in that what our faith is placed in will determine our eternal destiny. We all have to believe, but we all have to have the proper belief and have it channelled in the right area.

Host: Thank you. Do you have any comment, Bob?

Bob: Well, you said it. Our belief is a personal matter.

Caller #6: I am just really confused right now about Maharaji. I didn't actually receive the knowledge, but I went to a couple of those seminars. I've just been really confused about what to think about the whole thing. Since I dropped out of it, I feel like I may have been sort of brainwashed into it, and yet maybe not. I was halfway believing that stuff for a while. Now I'm just at a point where I'm confused about what to think of the whole thing.

Bob: Well, the people who are trying to convince you that he is God probably really believe that. The thing is, they don't know who he is. There are very few people who do, because he keeps who he is very well hidden from people. He plays that role and he wants you to believe that he is God.

If you believe that he is your Lord, then you become his willing slave. You completely dedicate your life to him. In the course of serving him, of dedicating your life to him, you provide his means of support and income. That's really what's at the core of it. It's sad, because there's no provision being made for these people.

There are so many of them in his ashrams. That word is roughly equivalent to the English word 'monastery'. He has a number of people living in them in a state of poverty, chastity and obedience. These people give all of their fruit of their labour to him.

Some of them are probably under the impression that he is using it to spread his knowledge, to spread the practice of meditation and the means of inner peace to the people of the world. In fact, that's really not what happens. Most of the money just goes to support him in his lifestyle.

As far as the brainwashing aspect, well, it is similar to brainwashing in the sense that you have a great deal of social pressure. Usually, people that do get involved, and I would guess that this was the same for you, get involved because of other people.

You're always in a situation where there are a lot more people around who believe then there are people who don't. Just the sheer number of people around you who believe, all talking about how they thought the same things that you thought, they had all the same doubts, etc, etc, and continuing to testify that now they know, now they have the truth…

It's all set up that you really must go along with it if you want to continue to have that sort of social interaction with that group of people. As far as being an aspirant; even that condition makes you vulnerable to the pressures to conform, because you're in a situation where you're seeking social approval.

The biggest approval of all is being selected as being ready to be initiated into the 'perfect knowledge'. Of course, nowadays, I guess that's probably why you had to leave. You have to accept him as God before they initiate you. You have to essentially take the whole religion and accept it before you have even got any inkling of what the experience that they are talking about is.

That's just the reverse of the way is started. In the beginning days, he used to say: 'You'd be a fool if you accepted anything that anybody says about me before you experience this knowledge'. Of course, now, they won't even initiate you until you accept this.

Caller #6: Did you actually experience the knowledge while you were involved in this and living with him? Did you really have good experiences from that? Did you really feel happier in you life? Or did it just get you more confused until you finally decided that it wasn't for you?

Bob: I think meditation is something that could be of value to anyone who could learn these relatively simple practices to be able to focus their concentration inward and enhance their own consciousness in that manner. I still feel there is a value in that.

But the way that it is being taught in the Divine Light Mission now, this whole way of life… it's a whole religious dogma that goes along with it. I think that's very detrimental. In fact, meditation - even the way they encourage people to practice it - can be detrimental. They encourage people to use meditation to suppress their minds, their questioning, their doubting.

This to me is something that is not necessary to attain peace. There is a certain amount of uncertainty that exists in the world, and you don't have to eliminate that in order to have peace. To me, this a distortion of the Yogic practices that were essentially at the core of what was being taught originally.

It's being done deliberately now, because what they want people to do is find fulfilment in the belief that they are saved by accepting Guru Maharaj Ji as their Lord. Then, the only purpose in their life is to serve him. That means just working at your job for two or three months at a time, and then going to his festivals.

Caller #6: Another thing I'm really confused about is all those kind people giving him all this money. Was it really just a big financial racket for him to get rich? Does he really want people to find peace?

Bob: Well, the kind of peace he's offering is not real peace. It's called annihilation of your individuality. If you can call that peace… well, I guess a frontal lobotomy would do the same thing. It would be a lot quicker, and would probably have very sure results.

He wants people to continue working because it's by them coming to the festivals, paying their admissions and giving their donations when they're kissing his feet that he makes his money. He doesn't have any other income. He lives a very, very extravagant lifestyle.

Caller #7: There are just a couple of things bothering me. Firstly, you have a man here (Bob Mishler) who says that because he sees wrong in the Divine Light Mission, that makes it wrong for everybody. Therefore, it is wrong for everybody because it is just objectively wrong.

Bob: Well, I didn't really say that; you're attributing that, but go on.

Caller #7: Well, it just seemed to me that because you were saying that it couldn't possibly be right, it was evil and bad for anybody to be in it, because they were going to lose their individuality, their personality, all kinds of things. It seems to me that you are starting on a road towards anti-religion in general, because all religions do this to some extent or another. They ask that you believe in something that cannot be proved. If examined closely, it may even be unlikely.

Host: Well, yes, but understand something. Firstly, Bob was President of the Divine Light Mission from 1971 to 1977. His differences with the Divine Light Mission are not over practices of meditation, but over the financial aspects of the mission itself, and over the motivation of the guru.

Caller #7: What motivates the guru? Possibly only the guru could answer that.

Host: Well, he had an opportunity (and I don't know whether you heard it earlier in the show) to find out because he lived with the guru.

Caller #7: I didn't hear that part. But the thing that bothered me was that the financial aspects. He's obviously getting donations from everybody. So does any church.

Host: But does any church then use those donations to have Maseratis and Mercedes? Do the ministers of the churches lead an opulent lifestyle? Do they want to continue with it only so that they can? You didn't hear the beginning of the show. Those were some of the inside things that were discussed in meetings that Bob had with the guru.

Caller #7: One of the reasons my father left the Presbyterian church was because ministers were kept in large mansions in the best part of town.

Host: Did you hear what I just now said?

Caller #7: Yes…

Host: It had to do with the motivation of the guru. His motivation. The guru's reasons why.

Caller #7: OK. The other thing that bothered me: a couple of people have come on and said that the guru is nowhere like Christ. At the risk of sounding pedantic, I must say that Christ was supposed to be (at least, when I was taught) 100 percent man as well as 100 percent God. Also, he was famed for going to parties, keeping company with moneylenders, and changing water into wine.

Host: Are you a member of the Divine Light Mission?

Caller #7: No.

Host: OK, I'm just curious. There are similarities, you're right. I wouldn't argue with that.

Caller #7: It's just that so many people are saying that Christ wasn't human. That seems an atrocity to me. That's about all I have to say.

Host: OK, thank you. Bye bye.

Caller #8: Bob, I wonder if you'd go along (and I think you will) with the thought I have that we wouldn't have any cult without a leader with exceptional charisma. Would you go along with that?

Bob: Well as I explained before, charisma is a by-product of the individual in the crowd.

Caller #8: Well, assuming it's a by-product, an exceptional leader then, say.

Bob: Well, to follow what you are saying to its logical conclusions, then presumably if you got rid of the leader, the flock would disband, and there would be no cult.

Caller #8: I'm not talking about getting rid of them, I'm talking about their existence in the first place.

Bob: I'm trying to bring it back to that. There may be certain dynamics of different groups that necessitate a leader.

Caller #8: We don't have a group of any size without a leader of some kind, do we? Even the Republican Party and the Democratic Party does!

Bob: I think that what I'm trying to address was your original question that you've got to have some kind of exceptional person with charisma.

Caller #8: If you have a cult, the leader is likely to have exceptional charisma.

Bob: That would certainly be a by-product of that interaction between the leader and the group.

Caller #8: With your experience with the guru and a cult, do you see any similarity between that group, the group that Jim Jones had, Scientology, or, in the present instance, what is happening in Iran with Khomeini?

Bob: I see a lot of similarities with Jim Jones. In fact, the aspects of his own personal psychological degeneration that were publicized after the incident in Guyana were very strikingly similar to a similar sort of psychological decaying process I saw Maharaji going through myself when I was living with him.

As far as the phenomenon taking place with Khomeini and certainly in our social movement, I don't even think you have to limit it to religious figures. It can also happen with political figures, or any case where an ideology becomes a major component in assembling a mass of people who then look to one person to take their lead from. It certainly happened with Hitler. I'd say there were a lot of similarities.

Caller #8: Some of us see a considerable difference between an ideology and a religion.

Bob: I agree with you, there are differences. But I think that the similarities are in terms of the behaviour of the crowds of people who follow.

Caller #9: Mr Mishler, I've been listening to you speaking about the Guru Maharaj Ji. I'd like to compliment you on your courage to walk away from such a situation. I assume that it was rather difficult for you.

Bob: It was a pretty difficult thing to do.

Caller #9: And quite painful?

Bob: Yes, I would say it was very painful as well.

Caller #9: Assuming you were looking for something just like millions of others, some kind of truth…

Bob: It's a hard thing to give up your dreams, when you realise that they didn't turn out the way you had expected.

Caller #9: A lot of that happens with different religions to other people, the same for myself. I have this feeling that you are being marauded with phone calls from people that don't seem to quite understand. In other words, they are saying that they wouldn't make the same mistake, which we are all capable of doing. I just wanted to say that I think you are very brave and a very strong person to be able to have that sort of insight.

Bob: Thank you.

Caller #10: I've been listening to your program. What you are saying about the guru is really interesting. I've attended a few of the satsang meetings. To me it always seems ridiculous how the premies all seem to be cut out of the same mould. Why is that?

Bob: It's not so much that they have been cut out of the same mould. It's that they have been re-moulded into the same mould. You'll find that there is a tremendous amount of diversity in the backgrounds of the members in the Divine Light Mission. Over a period of time, they are really re-programed into a whole new way of looking at things.

I think one way to look at it is to view the Divine Light Mission as a sub-culture. It has its own perspective on reality. People are in fact finally assimilated into that sub-cultural group. That accounts for the similarity you see in them.

Caller #10: Another thing is that somewhere along the line I heard that there is basically a conflict throughout his own family. I take it that after his father died, he supposedly was the one that became the new guru. Somewhere someone told me that his brother believed that he was. Is there any truth to that?

How Maharaji was selected to succeed his father

Bob: Well, that's a very interesting story. I don't know if we have time to go into it. Gary's nodding so I'll try and explain it very quickly. The story as it is told to the Divine Light Mission members is that when guru was going to go into his Maha Somadi - he doesn't just die, you see, he transcends into some other dimension - he had to pass on the mantle of spiritual authority that he bore.

He indicated that it was to be his younger son who was going to succeed him and become the Guru Maharaj Ji. What actually happened was that when the guru died, there were some very dubious circumstances surrounding his death, but that's another story as well.

His mother, the former guru's wife, who was known as Mataji and was part of the so-called Holy Family before they split apart, wanted to ascend the throne herself. At the father's funeral, at which time the new guru was supposed to be proclaimed, she was in a meeting with the governing body and some of the very influential devotees - the Mahatmas - arguing this point view.

She had one Mahatma who was very influential arguing on her behalf. Most of the governing body was resisting this, because they were saying that it flaunted the Hindu tradition that the 'perfect master' must in fact be a man. They couldn't go over to a 'holy mother' kind of belief structure when all along they had been operating in this 'perfect master' one.

While this was going on, some other younger and not quite so influential but nonetheless aggressive Mahatmas had a much closer relationship with the younger son. The one who was most instrumental was a Mahatma known as Mahatma Sampuranand. They seized upon the opportunity of absence while this argument was going on behind closed doors in another part of the Ashram.

They put the youngest child who was eight years old at the time - the Guru Maharaj Ji that we're talking about tonight - on the throne and crowned him. He was already accepted as the guru by the devotees by the time that they had finally come to an agreement in this other meeting that was taking place.

In this meeting, they had decided to put the eldest son on the throne, because that was in line with Hindu tradition that the eldest son always inherits from the father. This eldest son would then be under the control of the mother anyway, as he was about thirteen or fourteen at the time. The mother finally agreed to that.

When they came out, they were really shocked to find that the youngest son was already sitting on the throne, wearing the crown and already accepted by the devotees. So they accepted this, but nonetheless there was the enmity that existed between the eldest son, who felt that his inheritance was robbed, and the younger son.

That dynamic eventually exploded in 1974. The mother then, at that point, when the youngest son was really defying her authority, said she'd back the eldest son now. But it was a bit late by that point.

Host: I think the same thing happened with Esau and Jacob.

Caller #10: When you did try and leave the group, did you have to go through de-programming? What happened there?

Bob: Actually, I had pretty much been de-programed in a sense, if you care to call it that, as a natural result of the experiences I had dealing with the guru myself. When I left, the main difficulty for me was leaving behind all those years of my life and all the work that I had put into it.

Losing the relationships that I had with all the people that were involved was difficult, as my life revolved around that group of people. When I left, I was an outcast. I had to start all over again materially, because I had given everything I owned and I left with nothing. I also had to start all over again in terms of building new relationships and so on.

Caller #10: I'm a member of the US ski team now and I'm also a former Moonie. I gave up my position in the US ski team many years ago to follow Reverend Moon. There is a great deal of similarity there.

Bob: No doubt there would be.

Caller #10: I didn't go through a de-program. Even afterwards, there were repercussions of meeting different people with the groups. It seemed that even if you did leave the group, there would still be someone knocking at your door trying to make sure that you got back in with it.

Bob: They didn't really do that with me. I had a different kind of situation, given that I was the President. I was in such a high position. I knew so much more, and they never pursued me. In fact, it was to the contrary; I was an outcast and they deliberately avoided me.

Caller #11: Regarding the PTL Club, and several other similar clubs that are devouring the nation right now, do you feel they are a threat? In the overall view of this nation, do you think they might be too powerful, too influential? For instance, the PTL Club now has its own network. I understand they are going to start doing their own news show. Do you think they might be able to influence everybody up to a point where it might really hurt this country?

[Editor's Note: The PTL ("Praise The Lord") Club was an organization headed by US televangelist Jim Baker, subsequently charged with fraud and imprisoned.]

Bob: I'm really not qualified to speak in terms of the capacity of the PTL to influence people. Regarding what can hurt this country, I don't feel that we have that much to fear from any group organising itself in such a way that they are capable of having a voice in a mass society.

We have a diversity of opinion in this country; that's one of the principles that we cherish the most. It is through the competition of all these different ideas that the choice exists for each individual to make his decision.

On the other hand, there are practices of certain groups where once they have a person in their sway, they then systematically rob that person of any capacity to be able to leave the group. In fact, they try to deliberately hold that person and exploit them for economic gain.

Host: How do they try to rob them of an ability to leave? What kind of methods are you talking about?

Bob: First of all, they strip them of their financial independence. The way that this is done is to have them live in some kind of communal situation. Ultimately, if possible, they try to get them into one of their monastic type living situations where they are actually under vows of poverty.

Anything that they produce doesn't really belong to them, it belongs to the organisation. Therefore they really haven't got any financial capacity on their own. All of their possessions have been turned over to the organisation. In addition to this, they also have the individual systematically sever their ties with anyone who doesn't believe as they believe. This includes family members, former friends and associates. An effort will be made to convert family members and former friends. After a certain point, they are just supposed to leave contact with these people altogether.

Over a period of time, what happens is that everything on a physical, emotional and psychological level is really being controlled by the group. That gives a tremendous kind of ability to manipulate the individual.

Host: What about spiritual blackmail, in terms of salvation?

Bob: Well, that's part of it as well. When you have a person in this position, you condition them with fear. The fear is that if they leave, they will suffer some horrible fate. I think that, whether you're talking about the Hare Krishnas, the Moonies or the Divine Light Mission members, they believe that their belief is the truth. If they leave that, they are subject to all kinds of eternal damnation.

I know that the Maharaji threatens his devotees at certain levels, once he gets them to the point where they've sacrificed everything. At this point they will have become initiators, which is the final degree of surrender. He threatens them with eternal damnation if they ever leave.

Caller #12: What did you turn to? (after you left the Divine Light Mission) What religion are you now?

Bob: I think I've had enough of religion for a while. I didn't really turn to anything.

Caller #12: OK, but you don't believe in anything now, any person or whatever?

Bob: No, I don't.

Caller #12: OK, so you don't believe in Jesus Christ?

Bob: I'm not a practising anything.

Host: OK, we're going to talk about the whole religious phenomenon of the believer. I'm a believer, there are other believers of various religions… that whole thing is rather interesting.

Caller #13: I have a question for your guest. I recently read an interview in 'Playboy' with Ted Patrick (He abducted and attempted to de-program cult members on behalf of concerned parents. I think he was successfully sued for kidnapping). I'm curious about these methods he describes. Does your guest agree that there is a certain kind of mind control involved in recruitment for the Divine Light Mission?

Bob: I didn't read that article, and I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'mind control' in the recruitment. I definitely think that there is a systematic process of thought reform that goes on. The ultimate outcome of that thought reform process is that there is definitely a mind control that exists with the members.

Caller #13: In his interview, Mr Patrick seems to be of the opinion that the Krishnas, the Divine Light Mission, the Scientologists and others like them are using a great deal of mind control in order not only to recruit, but after recruitment to place these people in a sort of controlled state. This is so that they will not only turn over their earnings, but will also continue to serve as robots. I was just curious whether you felt that was happening.

Bob: Oh yes, I definitely do.

Caller #13: So doesn't that make this sort of a subversive activity?

Bob M.: If you mean subverting the individual, yes. I don't think that with the Divine Light Mission there are any larger goals other than to subvert whatever individuals they can, and then hold them in this state of servitude for the perpetuation of the group. As far as the subversive nature of it is concerned, yes, it does subvert the individual's ego. The individuals will say, yes, I appreciate that, I like that; in fact I'm in bliss because of that.

Caller #14: I have a question for Bob. Earlier in the program, you said that you had received a lot of calls recently from people who have had loved ones they were concerned about who were premies. I just wondered what you told them when they called.

Bob M.: Well, it depended. A lot of the conversations were very individually oriented around what they could do in their particular situation. If I can generalise a bit about it, a lot of these parents just really needed someone to talk to to help them understand what was going on with their child or family member. In fact, in one case it was a daughter worried about her father.

Inner experiences not due to the power of Maharaji

What I would usually try and tell them was to try and keep some respect for the individual's experience and for their faith in their beliefs. If the family member suddenly challenges that, and says: 'How could you believe such a stupid thing?', it reflects on the individual as if to deny their experience altogether.

These people really do have an experience. They may be mistaken in attributing whatever inner spiritual peace they find within themselves to the guru. In fact, he really doesn't have anything to do with it, but they are sincere in placing their faith in him.

We must try to help them see that the guru really isn't responsible for whatever positive benefits they are deriving from their belief, and that therefore they shouldn't continue to allow their lives to be dominated by subservience to the guru.

Friends and relatives are going to have to try to understand the experience enough to be able to really relate to the people by not regarding them as mental defectives. A lot of the conversations have centred around just how to make a much stronger contact. I know that a lot of the people involved are getting a lot of psychological strokes from the individuals that they associate with.

If the parents just treat them as naughty children and take a disapproving attitude, they tend to take that personally as though the parents were disapproving of them as a person. This not only further alienates them, but actually severs those ties altogether. In that sense, it actually aids and abets the cult.

Caller #14: The person I have in mind happens to be an ex-wife. She is a very intelligent person. I wonder if you thought a tape-recording of this program might help open her eyes.

Bob: Well, it could possibly, particularly if she is not aware of some of the hypocrisies that I have pointed out, maybe not completely in this program, but certainly in other statements I have given to the news media. I think it helps, given that so many of the people that are involved are very sincere. If they begin to see that what they are being told and what is actually taking place are two different things, then they begin to see that possibly they could have had the same experiences without having had to attribute it to the guru.

Look at all these hypocritical practices that the guru engages in. There was never any response from him. Of course, he couldn't really respond. To respond, he would either have to admit it, and he is not likely to do that, or he would have to deny it. If he denied it, we could get into a whole protracted court battle.

'Need to believe' masks truth about Maharaji

I haven't said anything about him that I'm not capable of proving. So consequently they tend to just try and ignore it, hoping that they control the communication within the premies' world strongly enough to be able to weather it out. To that extent, I think it is up to relatives and friends to actually use that relationship to get the person to listen to the truth as it gets exposed, and not to just let it get shoved aside as though I were some crackpot.

I mean, I was the President of the Mission for five and a half years. Somebody who was essentially responsible for organizing the Mission throughout the United States, and was the personal secretary to the guru, is not just any crackpot who comes along! The things that I'm saying are true. If they can't deal with that truth, if they tend to just ignore it, well, I think that their need to believe is so strong that there's really not a whole lot we can do.

Persistence on the part of people like yourself who have a relationship with members is probably the most important thing.

Caller #14: Let me ask one more question. Approximately how many members are there in the Mission at the present time?

Bob: Well, it would be hard for me to say for sure, but from what I understand, they get 10 or 15,000 people showing up at these meetings where they invite essentially all of the premies in the United States and Canada, and even Europe as well. Maybe there's as many as 10 to 15,000 in the United States. That's down considerably from the amount that there once was. Nonetheless, it's been holding pretty much steady for the last couple of years.

Caller #15: I have some friends who are devotees of the guru, and they've been telling me to come to their meetings. I can't find out who the guru really is to them. Do you view him as a Christ or what? It's really hard to get inside their heads.

Bob: Well, I think a lot of that comes from a confusion that has served them well in terms of an ambiguity about who he really is. If, in fact, they say that he is their Lord, what do they mean by that? I know it's hard to pin people down, particularly if they don't want to be pinned down by somebody who they are trying to attract, because they might put you off.

Caller #15: Yes, but who do they think he is?

Bob: Well, I can't speak for all of them, but I think at this point, given the way that he has been running things since I left, they pretty much have to believe that he is God. They think he is the incarnation of whatever that power we call God is. They believe him to be the living Lord of the Universe.

Caller #15: OK. These people I know are super-nice people. I really like them. But I'm not into their ideas at all; it doesn't tie up with anything I was brought up to believe in. I have now become an agnostic,and I find it hard to believe that he's going to be the Messiah incarnate or anything like that. They've been urging me to go to these meetings, and I just wandered what would I be getting into?

Bob: You'd be getting into an idol-worship cult.

Caller #15: I want to get in there and find out what is going on.

Bob: It's really set up that way. Members are obtained through association with other members. I know that so many of the premies are really nice people. I've often even thought that they are better than most, because a lot of them seem to be really concerned about other people.

You'll find, as I did when I no longer believed as they believed, that it is a completely different story. All of that love and brotherhood that we had shared was suddenly gone. It's because the belief that they have is all-encompassing.

Part of the way that this technique of thought reform works is to get you to come to the meetings. When you come to the meetings, you are subject to the influence of the group. I'm talking about the psychological influence that takes place just when you're in a group of people who all believe in a certain way, and you don't necessarily.

Nonetheless, just because they are your friends, and because they are all looking to you, thinking: 'Isn't this wonderful, and now you're going to get into it too', you're under a great deal of pressure to conform, just out of your own social nature.

If you go to enough meetings, you'll probably then begin to get interested in what they call 'knowledge' and that's the whole idea. Once you get interested in receiving knowledge, they've got you on the way to having this whole process take place.

In order to receive knowledge, you've got to be an aspirant. As an aspirant, you're already subjected to so much social pressure. You are under this incredible pressure to succeed. The way that you succeed is to be selected to receive knowledge. When somebody says: 'You are finally ready to receive knowledge' you just go along with it.

In the knowledge session, you come out afterwards and everybody says: 'Isn't it wonderful, it's your spiritual birthday. You're a new person. Quite likely, by that point you are, because your ego has been reformed. It has been reformed around a whole new belief system. You asked what you were getting into; well, it's an idol-worship cult. The idol is Guru Maharaj Ji and the role of the premie is to worship him.

Maharaji's family & 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?' book

Caller #15: Are you familiar with a book on the career of the Guru Maharaj Ji?

Bob: Sure. I was President of the Divine Light Mission. It was my idea to have that book published. Charles Cameron, a premie originally from England but now living here in Denver, was the one who edited it and put it together.
[Editor's Note: The book is "Who Is Guru Maharj Ji?"]

Caller #15: So you had quite a bit to do with it?

Bob: Yes, it was part of a whole campaign. In 1973, we were still trying to attract people out of curiosity. Maharaji was saying: 'I've got something to reveal to you. It's free; there's no continuing obligation. All you have to do is sincerely want to know the truth and I'll have it shown to you. It's the truth within you; how can you pass it up?'.

So we tried to get people to question themselves. Who is this Guru Maharaj Ji? What kind of a person can make these claims? The idea was that he really was somebody special and he really was going to unfold a plan for world peace. That's what he told us he was going to do, and we were going along with him.

We set up a program in the Houston Astrodome in the same year that the book was published. That was in 1973. We had media from all over the world there.

Caller #15: Can you tell me some of the fallacies in the book?

Bob: Try reading the whole chapter on the Holy Family. Then get the premies that you know to explain that to you. In that book, it talks about his Holy Family. They have a story about how every one of his brothers and his mother are divine incarnations. If they are, where are they now?

Caller #15: I don't know. Where are they?

Bob: Well, they had a fight over who was going to control the Mission, and they split up. The mother and the two eldest brothers are now running their own Divine Light Mission in India. They don't have anything to do with each other. There was a big fight; lots of court battles and so on. My point is that this book isn't a Gospel of any sort, believe me!

Caller #16: I'd like to ask your guest: What would you say is the current average age of the followers of the guru?

Bob: The people in their teens and early twenties are now getting on, because it's been seven or eight years now. They don't necessarily drift away. Most do; most of the people who have been initiated have left. But there is a real 'hard core' of people who have been involved for a long time.

There have always been a number of older people. There has always been a spread in the membership from the really young, I mean teenagers, to elderly people. At one point, even children were being initiated in the very early years, but that changed after the first couple of years.

It's not just that it appeals to young people, although young people, especially those in their late teens or early twenties, are prime targets. This is because they are going through a natural kind of ego reformation at that point in their lives anyway. So they are very susceptible.

Caller #16: I just wondered if, with the particular insight that you have, you have considered writing some kind of book.

Bob: A number of people have suggested that to me. About a year and a half ago, I worked up a proposal and circulated it to a number of book publishers. I just received rejections; nobody was really interested in publishing a story about a guru cult.

Caller #16: The reason that I brought this up was that I think there should be a publisher somewhere who might have more interest in it. They might urge you to consider re-drafting your proposal and circulating it again. I think there are a lot of people who would like to have something like this. I think it would be a great service to a lot of people.

I don't look upon what you have to say as necessarily just insight into the DLM, as much as it is insight into any religion, whether it be called 'cult' or 'mainstream religion'. To me, it's a real problem when people just get so blind that common sense just wanders astray.

I'd like to add one more thing: I certainly would like to offer my empathy to you. When you say that you are not a practising believer in anything, I can very easily understand that. You had a few callers inquiring about what your present belief is. After going through this, I am sure that if you want to place your faith in something else again, it is going to have to be earned. You've been 'burned'; anyone who doesn't understand that is a little out of touch with how the human being works.

Host: Well, it would be something akin to Paul suddenly saying: 'I made the whole thing up because I wanted to get a bunch of disciples or Moses saying: 'Look, I'm really an Egyptian, and I was trying to get you to follow the same guy that Akhnaten was talking about'. It would cause some waves!

Caller #16: Right. I thank myself that I have been as well educated as I have. I continue to reach for knowledge and hope I always will. But we're always, always in need of more information about this kind of thing. In my particular area, I deal with a lot of people. I just really feel that nobody should ever get into a thing where any human being becomes so almighty and important. It just seems counter-productive to me.

Maharaji cries on Bob's shoulder

Caller #17: Bob, how old is the Maharaji now?

Bob: Let's see…He'll be 22 this year (1979).

Caller #17: And he started when he was 8?

Bob: He became the Guru Maharaj Ji aged 8.

Host: He didn't really come over to this country until he was 13.

Bob: That's right.

Caller #17: As he was so young, do you believe that he was somewhat brainwashed into this thing too?

Bob: Oh yes. I feel that he is as much a victim as he is a victimizer. I've tried to make this clear in other interviews that I have given. He was set up for this. He certainly didn't have a very normal childhood, having to play God on weekends!

Caller #17: I can imagine that! Did you discuss this with him?

Bob: Oh yes, we talked about this. I had to be very diplomatic with him. I was a devotee after all, but I probably had as frank a relationship with him as anyone.

Caller #17: In other words you were his confidant.

Bob: Yes. He literally used to cry on my shoulder.
Drunken 'stupor' every day, says Mishler

Caller #17: Did he ever let go of this facade at any point in time?

Bob: His own doubts? Oh yes, on a number of occasions. He is a pathetic person in this respect. Earlier in the show, I made reference to his own psychological degeneration. The anxiety that is caused to him by the role that he is in is tremendous.

Unlike what he advocates, he is not capable of dealing with it by means of meditation. He ends up drinking excessively in order to cope with the stress. It was very sad to see him drinking himself into a stupor day after day.

Host: It's really interesting that some of his followers can handle their problems through meditation, through what they received from him. But he is unable to do it himself.

Bob: I don't think he ever really meditated. He talks about how, when he was 8 years old, he meditated for a few minutes and realised the knowledge. Presumably, that was all he needed. But he doesn't really use it.

Caller #17: That's really sad. I can't imagine being in that type of situation myself. Would you communicate this to him now?

Bob convinces Maharaji to retract Messiah claim

Bob: No, we came to a final confrontation prior to when I left the Divine Light Mission. He knew how I felt. We'd talked about it. At the beginning of 1976, we had agreed that we would in fact change his image.

I had persuaded him to see that he was going to lose his popularity and ability to do any good at all in this country, if he became a cult leader. If he continued to allow his devotees to believe that he was God, that was inevitable. He agreed, and we started de-programming our own membership and telling them to see Maharaji as only a human being who had a great concern for humanity.

In fact, he went along with this image change for about half a year. Then, when he saw that he wouldn't have the same kind of ascribed status that he had as the guru being God, he suddenly realised he wouldn't have the same kind of control over people. He started worrying about what was going to happen to him in terms of his finances.

Caller #17: He started having self-doubt?

Bob: I think the self-doubt was there all along. At that point, he got out the picture of his father and put it up on the wall. He started worshipping it the way his devotees worshipped the pictures of him. That really made me feel sorry for him.

Caller #18: I'd also like to congratulate you on your ability to break away and seek some sanity and rationality in life. I'd also like to congratulate you on your moral rectitude in wanting to let others know the truth about the situation. I think it's extremely important that people of all beliefs hear this sort of thing from the inside, as you're telling it.

Somebody brought up the name of Ted Patrick earlier, and I wanted to ask if you have had any contact with him?

Bob: I haven't had any first hand-dealings with Ted Patrick, although when I was President of the Mission, I remember that I had to deal with situations in which members of the Ashrams were abducted and deprogramed by Ted Patrick.

In the early years, he didn't have a very good success rate with Divine Light Mission people. In fact, he couldn't de-program them. He didn't really know enough about the group at that time to be able to do it. Recently, however, that has changed, and he has a few former premies working with him. He is having a very good success rate with the Divine Light Mission premies.

Recently, three individuals who were de-programed by Ted Patrick within the last three months, called me. All three of those people told me that they felt he was not at all like the images that exist of him in the Press. They felt that he was a very sensitive person who treated them with a great deal of respect.

During the whole period, what he did was keep them questioning and talking and talking, until they were finally able to use their own reasoning to recognise what had happened to them. This would enable them to recognise what had happened to them, and to work their way out of the belief structure that they were trapped in.

Caller #18: They started to listen to what they were actually saying, in other words.

Bob: Right. By talking it out, they began to listen to what they were saying. It helped having some former members there to point out the things that they didn't really know, things that they had just learned to accept by rote.

Caller #18: That's fascinating. I was really interested in hearing whether or not his methods were as bad as people had been portraying them.

Bob: Evidently not. I guess you hear about that when he fails. When he fails, obviously when somebody escapes or something like that, they are going to portray it as a terrible thing, because they say they are being physically kidnapped.

In all the cases I am familiar with, the person is usually being detained in their family's home. Some family member has arranged to get the person there, and then they do detain them. They have to keep at it until the person has managed to go through the whole thing and gets to the point when they can start reasoning again.

Caller #18: That's very interesting. In that case, I hope he has more success. In the same vein, there is a recent book out by a man and woman who have researched a variety of cults. It's called 'Snapping'. I was wondering if you were familiar with that.

Bob: A number of people have recommended it to me, but I haven't seen it.

Caller #18: Apparently they were on the Carson show the other night. From what I gather from their conversation, they refer to the mental process that goes on when a person is subjected to high pressure indoctrination or propaganda that some groups give out to new members. They say that something actually 'snaps', that they actually do 'turn' and become mentally different.

Bob: I think that this is something that social philosophers and social psychologists have talked about for a long time. In a crowd, the person loses his individuality. In fact, their intellectual capacity is debilitated in that situation.

If there is a systematic attempt to transform that person's thinking, you could hypothetically say that there could be a point at which they would 'snap' and start seeing things differently.

Caller #18: It's good to know that the situation can at least in some cases be reversed, as shown by the experiences of Ted Patrick.

Bob: Human beings are such complex creatures. We have all kinds of possibilities in our lives. I'm not willing to write anybody off.

Caller #18: I was wondering if you'd mind stating your age.

Bob: I'm 34. I was 26 when I got into it.

Caller #18: That's interesting. I feel that some of these groups are appealing to a specific kind of immaturity in people.

Bob: I don't think it's just necessarily an immaturity. A lot of grown people are immature at times. I think that everyone is susceptible at certain times under certain circumstances. I know there are a lot of people getting involved after the death of a loved one or maybe a divorce.

There are all kinds of circumstances that can even affect mature individuals, rendering them psychologically vulnerable.

Host: Most people who will suddenly embrace religion at any point do it because of some deep need.

Bob: Maybe it's some disillusionment with what they find going on around them. Let's face it, during the early 1970s there were a lot of people who were disillusioned with what was going on in the predominant culture here in the United States, as a result of the Vietnam War, Watergate and so on. So you look for something better, and somebody offers you something that's supposedly perfect. It's a good ploy.

Caller #18: It's powerful. It seems like there is a tendency to revert to something simpler. That happened to the young people in the Sixties. I thought it was fascinating to hear your comment about the Maharaji putting up the picture of his father and worshipping it.

Bob: When he had doubts, he looked to the way it had been taught to him for strength.

Caller #18: He looked to the situation he was in when he was young, when he had guidance from someone stronger.

The tape ends abruptly here!

Open Mikes

Mike Finch, Mike Dettmers and Mike Donner were all prominent members of the cult for many years, who also knew Rawat personally. They have all since left the cult and talk honestly about their memories and feelings.

Mike Finch

An Open Letter to Maharaji from Mike Finch

Mike Finch was one of the first Western followers of Maharaji, and in the early years spent a lot of time in his company. He counted Maharaji as a close friend, as well as his teacher and Master. Mike still meditates regularly, and values the extraordinary experiences that can be achieved through meditation. Mike originally posted this letter on the public ex-premie forum, and has requested that it be posted here.

This letter, and other essays from Mike about his time with Maharaji, can now also be found on mikefinch.com

Maharaji,

You are known now to the public as Prem Rawat, but for the 30 or so years that I gave my life to you, I knew you as Maharaji, or Guru Maharaji, so that is how I will continue to refer to you.

I have had a long and involved relationship with you, ranging from sublime moments of incredible beauty, good times, mediocre times, through boredom and frustration, to pain, abuse and feelings of desertion.

I have withdrawn from you in stages.

For the 20 years up to 1990, you were my Lord - someone who could reach into my heart whatever my situation, and rescue me. I practiced Knowledge almost everyday, and begged and prayed for your grace to make the Knowledge work, in full confidence that you could and would do this if I were open to it. And if it didn't happen, well then I was obviously not open enough, and needed to surrender to you more.

In the early 90's, I had my first doubts that you were the Lord; perhaps you did not control this amazing grace that could enlighten me. But that was OK, because the Knowledge was internal, between me and God, and could still take me to the deepest place; even if your role was just to give the Knowledge, and remind me of the importance of it periodically, that was enough.

In the mid 90's I met you briefly backstage at the Atlantic City event, and that was the last time I spoke to you. Since then, the accumulation of 30 years pursuing an impossible goal - or to be precise, pursuing two goals which are mutually impossible to fulfill - had become an overbearing weight from which I had to escape.

The two goals I refer to that a premie has to fulfill are these: The inner goal of finding their heart or center, and the outer goal of being connected with you. The essence of your message for 30 years has been that you need to pursue both goals, and that you cannot get one without the other.

I see now that achieving these two goals together is an impossible task. It is quite possible to achieve either goal on its own. I believe that the first goal, the human search for ultimate meaning and freedom within the human consciousness, is both possible and a worthwhile endeavour; in doing this, other people can be teachers, but no other person can become the master to whom you dedicate your life.

It is also of course possible to attain the second goal - a connection with you as a person, devotion to you as the Master. For most premies this meant being near you physically, or at least having access to you; selling family and career to be with you at an event on the other side of the world, selling anything to be seated near you, and so on. A particularly virulent form of this devotion was the urge to be in the inner circle around you. During my 30 years as a premie I have observed this phenomenon closely and intimately - sometimes from the inside, as someone in the inner circle, but usually from the outside, as someone who was trying desperately to climb up the ladder to the inner circle.

The interesting thing about this phenomenon, is that I really did not want to be near you, or rub shoulders with other inner circle players - I only did so because I thought it was the passport to the first goal of inner contentment. I now see that it actually prevented inner contentment. Ironic.

So that in a nutshell is why I no longer consider you my master, nor practice your Knowledge. The first goal of inner discovery I have always wanted, and still want. I took you as my master to help me fulfill that goal, which you promised to do; but you introduced another goal, centered around yourself, which in fact made it impossible to fulfill the first goal. Unfortunately, for 30 years I accepted your message that the second goal of a connection or devotion to you was necessary to attain the first goal.

To see and logically understand the dynamics of the last 30 years is one thing, but of course there is a lot of emotion and feeling too. As I have said, there were good times and profound experiences. At the time, I thought the deep experiences I had were due to your grace; now I think they were due to my grace, meaning that I had them independently of you. I did of course learn much from you; the problem is that I had to invest so much - way too much - to learn what I did.

So my predominant feeling now is one of grief and anger. I grieve for the last 30 years: for the careers given up to be ready to go anywhere anytime to do your bidding; for the relationships given up to be in the ashram or 'available for service'; for the money given up in order to be free of ego (I gave you a house, inheritances, wages and enough spare cash over 30 years that would have left me financially comfortable for the rest of my life had I not given it all to you.)

I grieve for a book I wrote that was suppressed after writing it, because the initial suggestion for writing it came from your brother SatPal. I grieve for the lost thoughts and dreams, my own thoughts, lost because they were not allowed to exist in a premie, otherwise he was 'in his mind'. I grieve for what might have been, had I not been marching up a dead-end alley, all the time proclaiming to myself and the world that I was marching along the golden highway to liberation. I grieve for all the people that I tried so earnestly to convince that this dead-end alley was the glorious road that they should be marching on too.

I am not sure how you see yourself these days. Do you see yourself still as the Perfect Master, needing of course to tone it down for public consumption, but still the living embodiment of that grace, without which no one can really benefit from the Knowledge techniques ? Or do you privately think of that as a Hindu myth, and you are content to live off it - and live very well off it, like a family business, as your detractors maintain ? Or was it a gradual change over the years from one to the other ?

To be honest, I don't really care - my grief is felt and expressed, and now I intend to move on. As the English expression says, there is no point in crying over spilt milk. Although I left you 18 months ago (I first publicly posted on the ex-premie Forum in January 2001) it has taken me these 18 months to fully extricate myself from your influence.

So I thank you for the good times; for all the rest, and the grief I have expressed in this letter, I drop them from my shoulders - thus ! The dream I had before I met you, I still have; and I am going for it, unencumbered and feeling very much lighter.

-- Mike

Mike Dettmers

Michael Dettmers Interview
Posted by M. Finch on Forum VII - Feb 12, 2002.

A friend of mine had this chat with Michael Dettmers 14 months ago, and transcribed it. Michael has recently re-read this, made some minor changes, and approved it - so here it is

Questions to Michael Dettmers - 2 December 2000

Q: What is purposefully hidden from premies and why?

MD: Well, the stuff that I've talked about - his drinking and pot smoking, that was pretty prevalent in the 70's and 80's. I don't know if that's still the case. And his affairs with various women, and his long-standing affair with Monica Lewis.

Q: Why would he want to hide these things?

MD: Oh, well he would basically take the view that it's his private life, his private business but in fact it's because it's inconsistent with the stand he's taken in public vis-à-vis the premies, i.e. what it takes to lead a spiritual life or whatever, the ashrams for instance. He's concerned that people will recognize that he's acting in a very hypocritical manner.

Q: And what steps does he personally take to cover up information, or make sure that people don't find out about it, which is rather the implication of what you're saying?

MD: You create an inner circle. This is not unusual with many leaders, and you could certainly say that this applies to cults. You create an inner circle, and they somehow have to be sworn to secrecy about the inconsistencies, and that was what the whole "X-rating" scene was about. The belief system was that Maharaji can do anything because he's the "Perfect Master." He isn't subject to the influences of the world. They presumably don't have any effect on him as they do on everyone else. Hence, for supposedly our own benefit, he created the ashrams and all of those rules, but simultaneously he exempted himself because as the "Perfect Master" he's above and beyond it - that's what the Lotus is. So the rationale is, because most people wouldn't understand, it's best to keep it (his lifestyle) a secret, and that's what the X-rating ritual was designed to ensure.

Q: And that was something that Maharaji instituted personally was it?

MD: Yea.

Q: Can you just say again the extent to which you witnessed this drinking and how it would have affected him? Any comments about that?

MD: Yes, well I was X-rated by Maharaji's pilot when he was touring Canada with his mother in '74. At that time, I wasn't part of Maharaji's inner circle, but I was integral to organizing the tour and that included arrangements for Marolyn who was not known to be his girlfriend at that time. But they were at the beginning stages of a relationship. Maharaji was unhappy that the tour had been organized for him to stay at ashrams. So, one of the first things I was asked to do was to see if we could organize his arrangements in hotels rather than in the ashrams, which I did. This made it easier for Maharaji to have some time with Marolyn, but to do all this organizing and to get things in place, I was X-rated so I could be around Maharaji. That's when I first learned about Maharaji's drinking. So Maharaji's been drinking ever since '74 in my personal knowledge and, as I learned, even before then, and throughout the seventies and throughout the eighties and perhaps even today, I don't know.

Q: So there's nothing wrong with moderate drinking? I don't think that anybody could be accused of that. So what makes this immoderate in your opinion?

MD: Well, first of all there was something wrong with it because Maharaji made it very clear that drinking was not something that the ashram premies could do, so one could argue then, why would he perpetuate these rules if they weren't good for everyone? That's the hypocrisy issue - number one. Number two, my experience is that Maharaji didn't drink moderately. Now, I don't have experience of alcoholism either personally or in my family so I didn't have any reference point at the time to know if it was moderate or not, but it just seemed like he could polish off five or six cognacs in an evening and get a little bit inebriated, not dead-drunk. And sometimes he would get rip-roaring drunk. In any case, he drank every single day.

Q: Over a period of how many years?

MD: All the time I knew him, which was fifteen years.

Q: So apart from the obvious hypocrisy that you mentioned was there any other way that you perceived that to be corrupt or bizarre? Did it affect him negatively in other words?

MD: Well, it's corrupt, yes. When he gets drunk, he becomes very negative. He becomes abusive in the sense that he verbally trashes certain people, whoever happened to be on his negative list for that day or that period, or he could be very rude in public at restaurants, just the kind of behavior that you would perhaps see in a person who is drunk and not in control.

Q: Any particular examples of that sort of abusive behavior?

MD: Oh yes, I remember that during the San Ysidro conference when, at the end of one of the days, we went out to dinner with all the people that were participating as well as Will Schutz and his associate, I forget her name. Yea, we were having a general conversation and, I think I've pretty much reported how he found the whole thing very confronting. I remember at one point Will's associate made some comment, and he made some kind of drunken remark like, 'Listen sister - let me tell you something!' I can't remember exactly what he said but she got up from the table and said, 'And let me tell you something! Nobody talks to me like - listen sister!' She could recognize that it was very abusive the way he spoke to her, and he was clearly drunk. And that's a person who wasn't a premie.

Q: What do you think Maharaji's family make of it? Are they all just like premies?

MD: Maharaji's family has grown up considerably since I was involved. When I was involved the kids were very young, early teens, now they're adults in some cases. So with Marolyn, say…she went through a couple of phases. First there was the phase in which she was Durga Ji. So she worshipped Maharaji and people worshipped her because she was declared the ''Durga," whatever the hell that means, right? And then that ended. I guess that ended around the end of the seventies or so.

My interpretation is that she started to get her life together. She went back to university to complete her degree at Pepperdine. I don't know what Maharaji thought about that. At different times I think he tolerated it, at other times I don't think he liked it. But that was a period during which she tried to develop her own life. But I didn't have a lot of contact with her. Sometimes when we were on tour, a little bit, but most of the time she wasn't on tour. The only thing I remember is that we used to get together, for an annual luncheon or something about a month before Maharaji's birthday. She wanted to organize some kind of gift and she engaged me in that, but I didn't have a whole lot of contact with her and very little with the kids. When Maharaji wasn't on tour, I would meet with him in his office at the residence when I was around, maybe every other day or so. And then I would leave. So I had very little real exposure to the children, and certainly no dialogue or anything with them. So it's not fair for me to say what they think or not.

Q: You said on the Forum 'I was a willing accomplice in a conspiracy of lies and hypocrisy for which I have no excuse'. What are the main lies and hypocrisies that you refer to and what, do you think, are the most serious of those in their consequences?

MD: Well, that was in response to Sir Dave's question. You see, when I started talking about the drinking and the smoking pot, Sir Dave asked a very reasonable question which was, "How was all this kept a secret?" That's when I talked about the "X-rating." His next question was, "How do you feel about yourself being a perpetuator of that?" and that was my response. When I look back and realize that was what was going on, that's all I can say that's honest about it. At the time, we were all serving Maharaji, and we had some kind of story about why it was OK for him to do whatever he wanted to do and not OK for us, and this was just a way of protecting his privacy. So that was the rationale then. When I look back at the whole thing with a great deal of disgust, I have to say, of course, I was foolish to have ever been a part of something like that.

Q: Can you tell me how you perceive fear to be a dynamic around Maharaji and if he is intimidating? A lot of people have said he's intimidating. How does fear play role around him and in his work, if this is the case?

MD: It's a game in which he holds all the power. Obviously you're only afraid if you feel you have something to lose and the people around Maharaji have many things to lose, given the world that they live in. One is their position. It's more a question of 'What happens to me if I'm not in this position?' A lot of these people are not thinking about a life without Maharaji, and can't envision one without Maharaji. So then, what happens to people that stay in the cult but who are no longer around the master? They always feel like they've blown it, like they've blown some opportunity. So there's the fear of blowing the opportunity, the fear of displeasing Maharaji, the fear of losing position, the fear of uncertainty ('what's going to happen to me? What am I going to become, what will people think?') The people around Maharaji are accorded a great deal of respect by premies who would like to be in that position, and think that these people around Maharaji have something to say, or some unique story - a darshan story or whatever. And, 'what happens if I'm no longer in that position?' They see what happens to other people who get - quote 'dismissed'. They're shunned. It's a cult kind of behavior. Nobody wants to be shunned, of being ostracized from the community because the vortex of the community is Maharaji. So if you get outside of that vortex it feels as if you're being shunned. That's another form of fear. Maharaji plays on that, he's aware of that. I think he likes to keep people in a state of uncertainty. It even rubs off on the kids.

I remember one of the people who did the laundry at the residence was shattered because one of Maharaji's kids said to her, 'You know, I could get you fired if I wanted to'. And the interesting thing is that the person who did the laundry actually knew that that was true. And so it's a kind of attitude that exists. I don't know if that answers the question?

Q: Yes, and also how would that fear come across say, in the context of Knowledge and the Master - in the philosophy rather than so much around the house or whatever?

MD: Maharaji used to talk all the time about how people were terrified of Shri Maharaji - that he was such an imposing figure. And I think even Maharaji used to fancy himself as being far more compassionate compared to the image he had of his own father who, I think, in stature was bigger than him, and who was very demanding. So sometimes I think Maharaji saw him as a kind of role model, as something that is needed in a leader, that you really have to be on top of people in a sense. And somehow, he felt that he wasn't like that - he felt he was more compassionate - and any time something happened to him that he didn't like, then he would feel like he should have been more like Shri Maharaji. I don't know if it's the culture of all gurus, it could very well be, but it was certainly part of his own upbringing. Shri Maharaji was a very intimidating character.

Q: What are his good points and how do they balance with his faults? Because one would expect such a Master to be exemplary in kindness and consideration.

MD: The thing is that he was often very kind to me. He accorded me, in general, a great deal of respect and a great deal of autonomy. He certainly gave me gifts and he engaged with me in a more personal way than with a lot of people. I went out to dinner with him lots of times, we would sit together, share a meal, drink some wine. So I didn't personally find him intimidating but I'm talking about a lot of people around the residence. I was part of the inner circle, but I also had my own autonomous realm. I wasn't part of the residence situation. That's where I saw a great deal of demeaning and intimidating behavior.

Q: How was Maharaji when he was stoned? Was he a different person?

MD: No, just like everyone else, laughing at jokes. Sometimes he'd put on - when we'd get stoned - not only "Frampton Comes Alive" but sometimes he'd put on some comics, and everybody would be howling with laughter. It was very funny. I mean, let's face it, when you get stoned, things do look funny, and he would fully enjoy that.

Q: Apparently Shri Hans was a great smoker, a "Ganja" smoker. Charananad or somebody said that, I believe.

MD: I would certainly think so. Whenever I went to India, especially around Holi, we would all drink "Bhang" which is a kind of "Lassi" drink laced with a lot of hashish, or have these er…I forget what they're called, but they were like - little cookies or something filled with hashish and, you'd get completely ripped.

Q: How do you think Maharaji could tell us in the ashram to live so austerely? What was his purpose? And did he care for us? Did he know about us? Did he know what was going on? We were told to give up everything.

MD: People liked to believe that Maharaji is all-knowing and that he knows what each person is thinking and feeling, and I think that's just a pure projection. He hasn't got a clue and doesn't care - doesn't really care that much about people, in my view, in general. But the ashrams were basically an extension of how things were done in India, and the general premise is that it's a hierarchy. So, some people say that I lived very well. But, I was dealing with financial and legal affairs, and meeting with lots of lawyers and accountants and people who were not premies. Sure, I didn't do that out of an ashram. How could I do that kind of work out of an ashram? I had an office and a house in Miami, but I didn't set the standard.

If you go to the ashram in India, you'll see that, when Sampuranand was the National Organizer, he had his own house with his own cook and houseboy and whatnot. So he was accorded certain privileges, whether it's drinking or smoking. In fact, he did smoke a lot and that's why he had a couple of heart attacks and had to quit. In any case, he was in a position of responsibility and that's the kind of privilege that came with it. So that same kind of status was accorded me in the West. So what I'm saying is that I didn't set any standard here, this was how things were done.

Q: What I'm really driving at is, what was Maharaji's attitude towards us? What did he really mean for us when he made such elaborate arrangements for us to be in ashrams? He said that if you were really truly dedicated you had to live in the ashram. What was that all about? Was it a mistake? Some people say that he said it was a mistake to do that.

MD: Well, I certainly think it was a mistake.

Q: What did he think?

MD: I don't think he thought it was a mistake because he brought them back with a vengeance in 1976.

Q: But he's done away with them now though.

MD: Yes, at first he thought it was a mistake to do away with them but then finally they went away because they simply couldn't be sustained financially and all the responsibility that was implied. I've already talked about that.

Q: Did he really believe in the philosophy that he was prescribing? Was his heart in it or was it just a sort of 'Oh Well this is what happened in India and we'll just do it' type decision? Did he care?

MD: Oh no, no. I relate more to his meetings with instructors - which is ultimately what the ashrams became. They became, not so much a place, but standards applied to people who were instructors, and even as late as '85 he was still very strict about being vegetarian and abstaining from sex. He was very strict about that and absolutely believed in it.

Q: But didn't follow any of that himself?

MD: Oh no, of course not.

Q: Of course not?

MD: No, I'm saying "of course not" because that's what I've been trying to make clear. As the Perfect Master, as Sat guru, he considered himself to be above and beyond all of that.

Q: You don't think that he would have had any remorse for putting people through so much?

MD: None. I don't believe that Maharaji has any remorse about anything. I think he feels like everything he's doing, he's doing out of … See, to get into the mindset of Maharaji, in my opinion, he truly believes that he is whatever he means by Perfect Master, the Sat guru, the one who is bringing enlightenment or whatever he thinks that Knowledge is. I think he believes that. I don't think he's playing a game. And he's adopted a certain leadership style that allows him to think that whatever he's doing, it's for people's benefit. Now, I don't know if that's what he thinks today, but certainly when I was around that's what he believed. The point I'm getting at is that he doesn't have any remorse that I've ever seen. He always feels like people just don't understand and are ungrateful.

Q: Premies would say that his gift of Knowledge is a wonderful thing and that justifies the way things are now i.e. him carrying on propagating Knowledge. Do you think that is valid? Do you think that the fact that he gives people Knowledge justifies his behavior or his role, or is necessary?

MD: It depends on what you think Knowledge is. To me the only thing Maharaji is offering anybody - I don't care what you call it - is devotion. And I don't even want to use that in a reverential sense. It's people worshipping him, that's what he wants. That's what he truly believes is the only way to experience whatever the hell he's calling "Knowledge." And he's in a bit of a dilemma in some respects you see, because if he was really interested in offering people freedom or allowing them to experience a better quality of life, he would create an environment in which people were totally free - he would find a way for them to actually learn to live more consciously - in fulfillment. But he's not doing that. That to me would be one way to interpret what Knowledge is, but what he is perpetuating is dependence. What he is perpetuating ultimately is that, the way you experience Knowledge is through devotion, through loving him, through surrender of some kind. Now, it's kind of hard to sell that today so he may have to whitewash it, but if he whitewashes it, it dooms him to irrelevance. He's kind of doomed either way because I don't believe the world is interested in gurus, and worship and surrender to another human being, especially to a human being who is so flawed as he is. And that's why all these stories of the hypocrisy and the lies and the deceit are so devastating. And that's why it is necessary that he be exposed in this way because he's not worthy of surrender.

Q: You're talking about trust here?

MD: Yes, trust as well. I mean you can trust another human being without having to surrender to them. But that's really what he is offering and if you listen to what he has to say - and I haven't followed him at all in the last ten or twelve years or whatever - but I do read the Forum and people post excerpts and you can see this recurring theme. It's the same stuff and I don't care what words you use. it's about surrender to the Master. So basically that's to me what he calls Knowledge.

Q: Do you think that he needs his boats, planes and wealth to spread Knowledge or is there some other reason why he has those things?

MD: There used to be an argument that a plane would be a useful tool for his travels, and I believed that at the time, and that's why I put a lot of effort into securing a Lear 55. For the work that he's doing - if you want to even call it that -anything beyond that makes no sense on any level, other than gratifying his own insatiable desire. So I think it's a terrible misuse of resources. If this guy says he's here on a specific mission and certain resources are available to him, the way that he uses those resources for his own personal pleasure and aggrandizement is disgusting, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Knowledge. It has everything to do with him having an image of himself as worthy of these things. But I don't believe for a second that they have anything to do with Knowledge or his so-called mission. It's a sham.

Q: Premies have often said in the past, when he's been criticized for his affluence and luxurious lifestyle, that he puts up with a lot of inconvenience and hardship to spread Knowledge and that a little luxury is nothing. What would you say to that?

MD: That is complete bullshit - complete bullshit. He puts up with no hardship whatever. I mean - by what standard? I remember when we didn't have any aircraft back in '77 and he traveled with his family to a big program in Rome in First Class on SAS, Scandinavian airlines. He practically had the whole First Class section of this 747 and I remember he came back to my seat and said, 'This is the worst experience I have ever had in my life'. The point being that this was justification for securing a private jet because he was putting up with the indignity of having to use a public washroom.

Maharaji claims that he's here for humanity but he has this almost antiseptic phobia about even coming in contact with other human beings. It's strange. Everything has to be prepared especially for him. So by what standard? Maharaji travels in the highest standard that anyone can travel. I understand that he's purchased a G5. I know the corporate aviation business and that is the best corporate jet there is in the world. That's what he travels in - and his corporate jets are outfitted better than any other corporate jets and, because he flies them, they also have the latest avionics. So Maharaji has the best of everything that the world has to offer, and he continues to aspire to the best of everything. So what hardships are we talking about? This guy, as far as I'm concerned, does shit when it comes to really rolling up your sleeves to do the work. But it's not about the work - it's just about him.

Q: I know many premies who seem to love and respect Maharaji and accept all his behaviors no matter really what he does - however so-called "immoral" or inappropriate. Do you think these people have any responsibility to question this?

MD: Let's be clear about this question of morality. I don't personally have a problem with anyone who drinks or gets stoned or smokes. His behavior is hypocritical because it contradicted what he preached for so long. That's where it becomes an ethical dilemma. The second thing is when a person drinks to excess and, as a consequence, doesn't exercise good judgment.

Q: What responsibility do premies have to analyze Maharaji's behavior and come clean on it? Do you think people should come forward? Do you think people are not acting integrally?

MD: I think that if there are people who were around Maharaji and can substantiate, in their own words, the kind of behavior that I've reported, that would be useful. If they felt comfortable to do so, and I realize that that may take a little bit of doing, I would encouragement them to do so. Does that get the core of your question?

Q: Well, I suppose that what I'm driving at is that premies obviously believe that Maharaji is a good force in the world, and they support him because of their experience of Knowledge, which let's face it now doesn't involve so many unreasonable demands. They don't come into contact with the hypocrisy, because Maharaji doesn't ask them to give anything up. He just tells them to practice. There is some encouragement to give money - but that's about it. Do think that Knowledge is good? Do you think that it might be taught by somebody else? Perhaps that is the valuable part of the package and Knowledge could be taught without him? Without the devotion in other words.

MD: In my opinion the answer is yes. But then Maharaji wouldn't call that Knowledge. That's why he's made it very clear that it's his Knowledge and this is the method by which you experience it. My opinion is that you don't experience growth in consciousness by surrendering to someone else. It's a skill - you learn to live life consciously. So it's not a question of just giving people some techniques. I don't think anybody can personally benefit just by having some techniques. My own experience of learning, in general, is that it takes time and practice, that there are some elements that are needed to learn. This is just my opinion. You need a certain structure, you need certain practices, you need certain tools, and you need certain coaching. So I'll give you a mundane example. I wanted to attain better health and, for me, that meant to exercise. I'm the kind of person, and not everyone is like this, but I can't exercise on my own. I may have the best intention to exercise, and I may get up in the morning fully intending to exercise, but I'll go down to my office and I'll start working on the computer and, before I know it, I'll get so absorbed that the time I have allocated for exercise has come and gone. So that doesn't work for me. I need a structure - so what structure? I join a gym. And the gym has certain tools, certain equipment and the coach has certain practices (exercises) that I engage with in a certain routine and in the process of doing this recurrently over time, I develop a degree of confidence and experience. That's just a metaphor, an analogy for what I'm talking about.

So, let's say the purpose of Knowledge is to grow in consciousness, to grow in truly expanding your potential. I mean people use different words for what it means to increase your capacity to experience love. Then I would say that, in as much as that is not the norm in society then there's something to be learned. So there may be a role for some teachers in that process, and there may be a role for some structure. There may be ways to connect an inner experience with the pragmatics of living. And so, you may invent, not just practices for meditation, if that's one of the practices, but you may also want to take a look at how a person is living their life, and what are the kind of issues that they confront that they claim are preventing them from experiencing love or beauty consistently. Maybe it has to do with certain ways they're living. So there's ways to discover what's incoherent between this beautiful experience and how you live, and if you learn to deal with some of those issues, you may develop some consistency. But the purpose of learning is always to free the person to expand their potential.

Q: Yes, you see the thing is that I know what premies are now saying - which is that they see Maharaji as just being somebody who just goes around giving Knowledge to people and giving them meditation techniques. Basically he has become a meditation teacher to the general public that come now. And so they say 'Well, what's wrong with that? What is wrong with that? He's not making people live in ashrams, he's not telling them to do this, that and the other. He's just showing people how to meditate. Nobody else is doing it. What's wrong with that?'

MD: What do you mean nobody else is doing it?

Q: Well that's what they say. That's the question. What's wrong with that?

MD: One could maybe argue that there's nothing wrong with that except that there are a lot of people who feel that they've been deceived by him, and therefore he isn't trustworthy. People may think that he's doing it for their benefit, but at the end of the day, people will recognize that it's all for his benefit. People are saying, 'you can believe what you want to believe and we'll just tell you what our experience is.' And at the end of the day, I don't think that you can do more than that. Point people to an alternative and say, "this is a trip that produces dependence." No matter how this thing is cloaked, it's a cult. It has a certain belief system. In Maharaji's world, Knowledge is about gratitude to the master, which is just a different word for devotion. That's what it's all about.

Maharaji used to say 'Go and search the whole world, and if you find this Knowledge fine, and if you don't, come back to me, I'll be here.' That was kind of a standard line, I don't know if it's still used or not. But the premise is that there's this thing called "Truth," and somebody has exclusivity over it. If you subscribe to the belief that there is such a thing as Truth with a capital "T" and if you think you've found it, the only way you can know if you've found it, in a way, is to give yourself completely to it. And in the Maharaji game, when you give yourself completely to it, you're stuck because you get caught up in the cult. You get caught up in the belief, you get caught up in the self-reinforcing game, and then it looks like there's no other alternative. But how could you possibly know? Because you've cut yourself off from the process of exploring - of being open.

So I think the issue comes down to a belief system that is endemic to our culture. You can trace it to the Greeks and their premise that there's an inner self and that inner self can get to know the Truth and that's the highest goal to which one can aspire. That's deeply ingrained in our culture. I don't think Maharaji understands these things but he's capitalizing on that fundamental, nonetheless. I think that what we have to do is get away from the idea that there is a so-called "Truth" and, instead, realize that life is an unfolding wonder and that it's a process of discovery. When you get yourself caught up in a belief system, in a cult of this kind that is so self-referencing, you lose all perspective of that. So the very thing that brought people to seek some kind of understanding, gets destroyed. And then you get into this thing of "there's no alternative to Maharaji." I mean there's a whole goddamn world out there! There's amazing opportunity and wonder and whatnot.

Q: Jagdeo - is he a pedophile?

MD: As far as I'm concerned he is. I've had many conversations with Susan; her story is well documented. I absolutely believe everything she said and that is clearly the behavior of a pedophile.

Q: What should have happened in your opinion?

MD: I've already made that very clear. He should have been interviewed personally by Maharaji. I think it's an absolute sham for Élan Vital to suggest that the appropriate person to interview Jagdeo was the National Organizer of India, a guy named Deepak. He should have been interviewed by Maharaji. These instructors have a lot more fear of Maharaji than they do of any organizer. They definitely were made instructors by Maharaji, and not made instructors by him. I believe that if Maharaji had taken this seriously, had sat Jagdeo down and gotten the facts, he could have acted. What should he have done? He should have publicly defrocked him. He should have turned him over to suffer the legal consequences. He should have made a public apology to everyone that had anything to do with him, making it clear that he is embarrassed and ashamed that such behavior could have happened by one of his mahatmas. He should have sought out the victims, personally apologized to them, and offered some form of restitution.

Q: So what does this tell us about Maharaji?

MD: It tells what I said - that he's a coward, that he isn't a leader whatsoever, that he is not interested in doing the right thing, and that he is only interested in covering his ass. It tells us that he lives in fear, that he isn't a person worthy of respect, never mind love and devotion.

Q: Why are these things not a "Lila?" (Indian term meaning "Divine play')

MD: Well, what is "Lila?" Lila is just a particular interpretation about a certain reality. So you have to look at the whole package - there is a Perfect Master who manifests in human form but who is above and beyond the frailties of humanity and, therefore, all of this life is just an illusion that's his to play with. So, if you believe that, then I guess it is a Lila. The question is, why would any sane person believe that?

Q: What are Maharaji's weaknesses then - that contradict the notion of him being a Perfect Master?

MD: Well, he's a coward - just look at the Jagdeo situation. Another weakness - how about alcohol? The guy's an alcoholic and that severely limits his ability to exercise good judgment. He can't possibly be trusted.

Q: How can he be a pilot and be an alcoholic? Aren't there very rigid rules?

MD: Because, as people have pointed out who understand this, he plays the game.

Q: i.e. he doesn't drink when he flies?

MD: Well no he doesn't just not drink when he flies. I think there's a particular hour by which time a person who's going to be flying the next day has to stop drinking. So he plays the game. And, as several people have pointed out who have experience with alcoholism, it's quite normal for people to limit their drinking to specific times. But I've also pointed out that he didn't apply that same rigor to driving. He has driven several times that I know of when he was drunk. Purely amazing that he didn't have an accident or… you know the story that I posted on the Forum, right?

This was sometime in the mid 80's. Maharaji and his family were staying in a hotel in Palm Beach. That evening everyone went out to dinner. By everyone I mean Maharaji, Marolyn, the kids, I was there, one of the drivers, and security person. We were having dinner at a very posh restaurant and a group of 3 or 4 men came in and sat at a table next to us. Actually, it was behind me so I didn't actually see them, but Maharaji got very upset because he thought Marolyn was flirting with one of the guys, or one of the guys was ogling her. Anyway, something was going on and Maharaji got really pissed. We hadn't finished the meal yet, but he had had several drinks and he was pretty drunk and he just got really upset and he immediately demanded that we leave the restaurant. Everyone got up and left and he brushed aside his driver and took the wheel with his wife and kids in the car. I got in the car behind and watched as Maharaji's car swerved from side to side on the road and almost crashed into another car. It didn't happen fortunately for him. Perhaps, unfortunately for all of us, he wasn't arrested. That would have been a useful lesson.

Q: Was he ever drunk giving satsang?

MD: No, not that I'm aware of. In fact, I'm sure he wasn't.

Q: So he did make the distinction between speaking from a sober place and being drunk as a pastime.

MD: Yes.

Q: Does Maharaji ever blame others for mistakes that are clearly his?

MD: All the time. He does not take responsibility for any of his decisions. He always looks for someone to blame if things don't go the way that he would like them to go. And from what I've learned, that is typical alcoholic behavior.

Q: Any other weaknesses?

MD: Apparently for blondes! I don't know if that's a weakness that's unique to Maharaji!

Q: Is this rumor about his mistress Monica true?

MD: The thing is, I left before that thing really blossomed. However, I know that it's true.

Q: How?

MD: Well, how does one know? I wasn't in the bedroom with them! But I know that there were other women before Monica so let's put it this way, what I do know is that Maharaji has definitely had affairs. It appears that the one with Monica is more than an affair, it's been a long-term relationship because, from what I gather, it still exists. But what I'm saying is that I don't know much about Monica because when this thing began, I was leaving.

Q: Do you think that Maharaji has any self-doubt?

MD: Well, I would suspect strongly that alcoholic behavior is a form of self-doubt.

Q: You said that Maharaji will never budge from his belief that he is the Perfect Master and the Living Lord, etc. You said that there is a chink in his armor and that is, that his fear and arrogance have warped his character. Can you explain what you mean by that?

MD: When someone believes that they own or give Truth, that kind of absolutism creates arrogance and blindness to the need for life-long learning. A person who is not arrogant will admit his mistakes and will engage in open dialogue with people. Maharaji will not engage in open dialogue because for him there is nothing to discuss. He has the truth and either you accept it or you don't. End of story.

Mike Donner

Mike Donner was National Coordinator of Divine Light Mission in the USA in the mid 70s. He then became an initiator and after touring for a year, was called into Maharaji's inner circle to 'coordinate' his personal staff. At the same time he was the contact for the initiators worldwide until 1984 when he left and married. After a later spell as a part-time married instructor he left Maharaji in 1987.

In March, 2001, Mike posted a letter he'd written to Maharaji in 1987 on the ex-premie forum. In the series of questions and answers which followed, he confirmed much of what Mike Dettmers had told us'.

This is a letter that I wrote to m in 1987. I copied it to about 50 others at the time, ex-instructors, then current instructors, mainly my circle of 'friends and those I wanted to influence at the time. so…fyi

Dec. 19, 1987

Dear Maharaji,

This is a hard letter to write. We have 'shared' so much over the many years together. I have been faithful to you and 'your' work through many ups and downs. I imagine that you will take what is written here as a betrayal, as I have seen you react that way so many times in the past with others. In taking this that way, however, you will miss what I am saying and what is in my heart.

I do not write as a devotee. There was a time when that is all that I wanted and tried to be. I see now that devotion to another human being is destructive to me and to you. I write instead as a simple human to another with a deep and growing experience of life, due in part to the practice of meditation and the opportunities that the work of spreading knowledge has provided me. That part of me that was a devotee needed a guru and you were it. I see now that that codependent relationship is unhealthy and it is time to move from that to some more mature relationship, if that is possible.

As things have changed and evolved over these past 15 years, I've seen you try to deal with some of the CONTRADICTIONS as they became more obvious. Yet, these contradictions (go inside and know yourself/trust only in me, etc) continue and you, who can do something about it, choose not to. Hence, I am no longer able to continue in 'service to you'.

You speak of feeling valuable and capable yet the set up of serving you, not doing this work TOGETHER makes that impossible…implicitly impossible. You want me (us) to do it 'for you', at 'your command'. I guess you mean then 'valuable and capable' within the context of knowing my place, staying in my place at your feet, not at your side.

You view Knowledge as if it were yours. Ownership of a technology so to speak. You assume the sole responsibility of spreading Knowledge as if you owned it. You have often spoke to us about 'your work', 'your mission'; never us, ours etc. Mutual respect has been lacking from the beginning. I use to accept that as my calling (good fortune even) to be a devotee.

This type of relationship makes feeling 'valuable and capable' impossible.

For a while it seemed that you were moving away from these attitudes but I see that, fundamentally, you are not. This is a very heavy load for you to carry. You say that you do not want us to put you on a pedestal but you yourself will not come down from it. I have at times seen your dedication to spreading Knowledge but you seem dependent upon some role that was given to you when you were very young… and inappropriately given no doubt. This role, the roles we have both played.. the matching book ends of devotee/guru is not healthy for you and the world does not need another personality cult, no matter how benevolent.

These must seem like strong words, especially when filtered through the old view of devotee/master. I have wanted many many times to have an honest and open conversation but fear has always stopped me. That has been part my own lack of courage, but you have created a system of fear that has kept us all in box for far too long. I am still feeling fear as I write this, but mostly fear that you will simply blow this off and discount the love that we once shared.

Recently, when we shock hands at your birthday party, it was quite significant for me. I came around a corner and there you were. I had not seen you for some time, and when our eyes met I felt joy and I know you did too. spontaneously, I offered you my hand (married and living in Oregon, that is what we do first with old dear friends… perhaps before an embrace). You took it but it was the 'cold fish' hand shake and you immediately proceeded to joke about it… 'gotta wash my hand now…what if everyone wanted to shake my hand', etc. I was hurt and disappointed because my simple spontaneous gesture could not be accepted and reciprocated (I was not accepted).

Upon reflection, I should not have been surprised. Such a reaction I have seen countless times and it flows from who you see yourself as and how you perceive others in relationship to that view. I stongly believe that perceptions such as that must change if you ever hope to be successful in actually spreading Knowledge to more then a few… really to only those 'devotees' looking for a place for their devotion.

Even now, I hope that perhaps one day you might want to know why so many of us (caring, intelligent, dynamic people) have chosen recently to leave. Could be fun even, a working retreat… brainstorming together to identify the blocks that exist within ourselves that are keeping us from doing this important work TOGETHER.

More personally, I hope you can find a way to get healthy and to respect your bodily temple.

In at least memory of love,

Michael Donner

Here Mike answers questions about his first hand experience of Prem Rawat's behavior:-

Date: Fri, Mar 16, 2001 at 18:31:00 (GMT)
From: La-ex
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Questions for 'Salty Mike'….(Donner)…
Message:

Hi Mike-

Maybe we can call you 'Salty Mike', so we don't get you confused with the other guy, 'Cerebral Mike'…

Thanks for taking the questions.
Some of these have been asked of Mike Dettmers, but I think it is valuable to continue to ask them of others, to see if their experiences were the same, or if they have anything else to add…
Here's a few for starters…

1) Drinking:
Did you say that Maharaji was drinking EVERY DAY, from 1972 on?
Was he drinking regularly from the age of about 14 or 15 on?
Did you see him drinking at the Millenium Festival, as Sophia Collier reported in Soul Rush?

When you say he has a drinking problem, can you be specific?
(The reason I ask this is because a 'drinking problem' means many different things to many people. If you state specifically what you saw, I think it helps so much more for people to get an accurate picture of M in his personal life.)

I have the same questions about drug use.
How much?
What drugs?
How often? (recreational, or habitual, in your opinion)
Any outrageous party stories?

Did any of the PAMS ever talk about how strange and hypocritical M's off stage behavior seemed, in contrast to his stern,and at times 'fire and brimstone' presence on stage?
Was it hard to go out into the communities and present the 'staight, SS&M premie' approach, when you knew that life at the Rez was far different?

Ashram premies, for the most part, would have been appalled to learn of these things at that time. Was it hard to keep the secret?(not judging you, just wondering how I could have done it…guess it was AGYA, and kind of clandestine fun in a way..)

2) Affairs:
Was Maharaji having affairs since 1977, as Mark has suggested?
Are you comfortable commenting on the procurement of women for M, as Mike Dettmers has?
When. How many, how were they treated afterwards?
Have any of them spoken up? Or been given special treats, to NOT speak?
Were you ever in touch with Claudia after the break up?
Was it true that she wanted to write a book called 'From Riches to Rags'?

3) Hit and Run in India:
Can you confirm and or elaborate more on this issue?
Was it ever talked about further?
Did M ever talk to you about it?

4) Jagdeo:
Do you have anything to add to the Jagdeo/sexual abuse accusations?

5) Maharaji's moral sense:
Did you, or anyone ever talk to Maharaji about his seeming lack of ethics and hypocritical actions?
I heard that someone at the residence questioned M about this and that M responded 'I'm not here to follow your middle class morality trip'.(Kind of like when he told the wood shop teacher he wasn't here to 'chop wood'….)
Does that sound about right?
The sense I am getting is that when someone was around Maharaji, they just followed orders and tried not to think too much about ethics.Morality was just doing what the 'boss' wanted…he has his own special code…(or lack of one)….

6) Did anyone ever tell Maharaji off?
Do you know of anyone who ever really just levelled him? Really just confronted him about all of his bullshit?
Mike Dettmers is the only one I ever heard of, but I'm wondering if anyone ever really got in his face, and told him he was full of shit, and that he was a hypocrite.(I respect Mike Dettmers for his actions…just wondering if you or anyone else ever did anything similar..)

7) Special Powers/Miracles:
Although we were told of M's supposed spiritual powers,we certainly never saw any. Did you ever witness any?

For instance, there used to be this story about someone (I think it was John Miller) who was driving M around the hills of Malibu. M said: drive off the cliff, and he did. They drove off the cliff in Malibu, and landed in an alleyway in NYC.(M said he could turn the universe around for a premie if he only believed) Ever hear that one? Did you ever witness anything resembling miraculous or spiritual powers around him?
Did he ever talk about them?

8) Your personal friendship with Maharaji:
I know this is personal, but anything you might share about any of your personal interactions with him, would be helpful.
Good, bad or ugly….

9) The Future:
Where do you think this thing is going?
In your opinion, what do you think is the best thing that could happen right now, or in the near future?
You suggested in 1987, in your letter, that maybe everybody could get together and talk.
M obviously isn't big on this.
Do you think he will ever really open up and put all the cards on the table?
I know that sounds idealistic, but I think at this point, the dam is ready to burst, and honesty may become the only policy left for him to salvage the sinking ship.
Would you suggest something, or agree to become part of something between exes and M?
Where do you see him going from here? Just curious…

10) M's personal power/appeal:
In retrospect, and with your personal experiences with him, how would you describe his abilities or talents?
Some people look at him like a god, others as a complete fraud, who came here as the figurehead of a hindu cult.

Even after the family split, he did continue to 'cast a spell' for years over many smart, talented and well intentioned people.
How would you describe that?
Were we all so needy for some sort of spiritual authority in our lives?
Was the experience so powerful?
Group dynamics, group highs?
We were all still tripping, after all those years doing drugs?

I'm just curious for your opinion.
I've got mine,as we all do, but people who were around him in his private life definitely have something unique to share.

It's for that reason I'm asking these questions.
Thanks for reading them.
Anything you can add helps many people in many ways.

Thanks, La-ex
Have a nice weekend…

Date: Sat, Mar 17, 2001 at 18:21:18 (GMT)
From: donner
Email: None
To: La-ex
Subject: Questions for 'Salty Mike'….(Donner)…
Message:

hi la ex sat. am and beginning to work on your 20 questions…big later

Date: Sat, Mar 17, 2001 at 20:11:27 (GMT)
From: donner
Email: None
To: la ex
Subject: Questions for 'Salty Mike'….(Donner)…
Message: yes, some or most of what you have asked has been addressed by dettmers and myself to some extend earlier…preface to say that i concur completely with dettmers' accounts, their accuracy and the tone of his replies.

1. drinking? my personal experience is that m has been drinking since i began in denver in 1973…told then by bob mishler that he was drinking daily…that is daily…since he arrived in america.
i know that it was daily…that his daily routine was created around his evening drinking…usually always began about 5pm…minimum 4 or 5 very large shots (probably 2-3 oz per drink) each evening, before dinner…usually later in evening about 9pm
interesting by the way that he never or extremely rarely if ever eat with his children. they were feed earlier.
so he drank cognac every evening til dinner, sometimes after dinner.
often he would drink more, never less.

2. at the millenium program? yes, in houston at the residence he drank daily. i never saw him in all the years drink at any program until after he spoke…then always after. michael Dettmers might know otherwise and i would believe him.
i never experienced m give 'satsang' while drunk or drinking.
dettmers talked about his personality change with more then the usual drink and i certainly witnessed that often enough.
the scene was comical/pathetic (in retrospect). alvaro or john miller would bring a crystal glass out to the dinning room, m at the end of the table, perhaps a couple people sitting against the walls of the dinning room…sometimes 5 or 6. the glass would be on a smallish tray with the glass covered (all the way from the kitchen to the dining room). the serving premie would have the other hand over the heart…the glass placed on the table in front of m and the server bowing with eyes closed….backing out of the room. i witnesed this ritual countless times.

2. drinking problem? you be the judge…my experience was that his whole schedule was set up…covertly around his drinking time.

3. drug use? i witnesed m smoking pot beginning 1973 (my witnessing began then). how often…not sure really, lots more then i saw i know for sure. most likely often weekly during most of the time i was around (1984…then i left and got married, returned as part time instructor til 87 and saw little during those years except it was the same when i was around sometimes as an x-rated premie til 1987).
i personally doubt that m ever tried acid or stronger then hash drugs. not his style to be that out of control. anyways, i have no personal knowledge of anything except pot and hashish nor did i ever hear of more between 1973-87.
hashish was added to a yogart drink at holi festivals, at all holi festivals, india, n. america, spain etc. part of the indian tradition as i was told. very strong. somethimes just pot was ground up with the drink…both were referred to as bong i think.
i never saw m give satsang while stoned.
most often my experience with m and pot was (always) at the residence, late in the evening, maybe 20 x-rated staff around the living room…m would start a large joint, maybe two…to his own lips making it of course more special to us!) he would have as much as he wanted and then pass it to marolyn (usually) and from there to the rest of us til it was gone.
he would play music for awhile and go upstairs to bedroom after 30-60 minutes. we would mill araound and begin to clean up the house and kitchen til quite late on most of those occasions.
for me, this was maybe 2-3 times a month. i found it generally part of what was so boring. Dettmers expressed somewhere on epo that he enjoyed the music…more then me i guess…i prefer to engage with those around me when smoking, laugh and connect with others…none of that ever happened…silence, some whispering perhaps, fairly loud music, some folks sleeping from fatigue until m said goodnite.
( i really liked the community aspect of the k/service experience and that was not the vib around the residence…all single pointed focus of course…very boring)

4. did PAMs ever talk about how strange and hypocritical…?
never with me or to my knowledge. this was the last group of people that i nor anyone would speak with honestly, share any concerns with etc. i had my own network of others who i would speak with about my doubts and concerns…many still my friends and most who left around the same time …
this is interesting perhaps as it points to the fear or at minimum the lack of ease that existed around m. mostly everyone was 'happy to be there' and would do nothing if possible to risk losing tha place at his feet. everyone knew there was a mile long line of others wanting to be there in our place. so we were all individuals in our own closed systems walking round never really connecting with each other. reminds me of lots of painful feeling of how isolated i felt during…especially…1980-84…bored to.
god, what took me so long to make the break?

5. was it hard to keep the x-rated secrets? yes and no. there were those who i did speak with about it, close friends (which i remember m trying to break me from). i guess having a few that i could speak to was enough to 'take the edge off' the potential conflicts.
plus, clearly m used the x-rated status as a means of coopting us into increased loyalty….playing on that part of us (me) that liked to be special…probably power related also….at least i noticed how others felt more powerful once inside the circle, so it must have been something in me too.

6. was m having affairs since 1977 as mark a. suggested? i really don't know, but it seems like if he were i might have known about it and did not. monica lewis came on the scene in what? 1982? and seemed to be the first to me…or whatever that was about. honestly not even sure personally about that affair and what it was really about.

7/ did i procure women for m? i arranged to have a premie woman at decca to be standing in the 'right place at the right time' at m's request…to 'check he out'. he had me arrange on follow up to that 'darshan' with a meeting at the residence with her, daytime and in the dining room, meeting lasted 15 minutes, not sexual then…and i 'saw' m with her twice after that ..and not sure what or how far that went.

the only other situation was speaking with one resident premie who had sex with m and was devastated afterwards when m would not communicate with her, avoided her etc. the sexual experience was not very satisfying for her…and worse was the avoidence afterwards.

the other names that mark mentioned i do not know about nor have i heard about…grace m i personally doubt, but…
one point here to understand clearly…there were lots of women who would have loved to have sex with m. who shared their fantasies with him via letters, conversations, actions, innuendo etc. he had no shortage of willing companions…but when the power is so imbalanced, even willing takes on significance. of course, all the hindu stories of masters and mistresses go way back and told and retold.

8. have any of those women spoken up? i guess not really.
re: claudia…no, i never spoke with claudia after her break up with raja ji…never heard of the book…i know she was very angry and blamed both m and raja ji for fooling around etc. surely there were threats (felt or implied)during the settlement. i know of no other 'settlements'

9. hit and run i was not aware of that story but believe dettmers about it. sounds like the m that i knew, sounds like the willingness of prouty and others around m that i remember.

10. jagdeo…strangely i never heard of this trip. since reading this forum i have been told of another situation on the east coast in the 70's. i do not feel at liberty to discuss this but will continue to encourage those involved to speak out. i very reliable story to add to the mix.
as i have mentioned elsewhere, m always had the back door channels that he would use…usually the residence staff or those few like randy prouty who were in and out and conduits of info and tasks..leaving those of us on the more 'official side' in the dark. his style of secrecy and divide and conquer.

11/ challenging m? calling him on his immorality? no, i never did except once to wonder (cautiously) about his responsibility towards the instructors he was letting go of so callously. there was a presumption that he was above any standards of course…doubts of that = mind= disloyalty=grounds to be put outside the circle etc.
his general response to the gentle questioning of his dismissal of the instructors , most of whom thought it was for life literally as was the agreement…was (paraphase) 'i made them instructors i can unmake them, that is what their surrender is all about'.

12. did i witness any mircles? no, never. i did see lots of wonderful, talented people working hard together…often inspite of m's disorganization and secrcy and blaming, do great things together. lots of that seemed miraculous to me then and now.
re; the miller story of driving off a cliff, i do vaguly remember that story and never believed it…miller was quite the story teller.

13. my personal relationship with m? cannot really say that i had a personal relationship with him…certainly not the kind that was warm, friendly, conversational, sharing mutual stories, questions, doubts. in retrospect, the feelings that he care about me were based upon the cosmology at the time…all that he did for me…like keep me hanging around endless in a waiting mode because i was the active type…he did for my own good out of his love for me. that he had some special, personal plan for my life to help me become a 'better person' (read better devotee). this is the mantra i chanted most of the time that both provided a context to explain all the uncomfotable feeling i was having as well as provide a foundational understanding of some personal relationship.
did i ever feel i could speak openly with him? no never.
did i ever see anyon else speak openly or honestly with him, no never. i believe michael dettmers (small question about what happened after that one time with michael and m left the room without saying anything…how long before michael left his service and bow did m change towards michael after that??)

14. what about the future…what is the best thing that could happen now? something between the ex s and m?
at this point i have zero interest in trying to arrange anything with m and us or others. i have no reason to believe that he will or could change and become a serious world leader using his charisma or something to affect change. his credibility is completely shot, and unsalvageable in my small opinion. i have too many things in my life that i enjoy and am doing to on a smaller local scale to be at all interested. my co housing community here, raising my daughter, on the board of the local waldorf school, learning about myself via my close relationships etc.
ironically and in some very strange way apparently there are those still working thru that part of themselves that is a devotee and it often takes a guru to have that. so long as there are devotees, there will be those willing to be gurus.
our most important work is to grow that devotee up within ourselves into more wholeness and personal power and self love.
i can't imagine what m will do. certainly he could leave it all and retire as he has often threatened to do…unless he is stillhooked on the 'love' and adoration of others…probably.
honestly, i care very little what will happen, except to be willing to reach out and spend some time with those who might benefit from someone on the outside who has been there.>

bye for now…what do you think la ex.?

Darshan for Sale

Major Donors Conference - Darshan For Sale

During 2002, reports surfaced of exclusive unpublicised events, attended by Maharaji, where only those supporters of Maharaji who could pay the large entrance fee were invited. The cost to attend these events ran to thousands of dollars. Darshan took place (that's where the attendees kiss Maharaji's feet), and the attendees were exhorted to donate and pledge more. Until now, no one who had attended such an event had spoken out. This is not surprising, as the greater the investment, emotionally, financially, and in time dedicated, the harder it must be to entertain the idea that maybe trusting Maharaji is a mistake. Many thanks then to Nya for submitting this account of the conference she attended in 2001. Those who weren't invited, and never knew that such events happened, should ask themselves if this is about love and devotion, or hard cash.

Big Money - Big Joke

I'd been drip feeding money by direct debit to Elan Vital Australia, a non profit organization that works for Prem Rawat, a religious cult leader, for many years - a monthly sum averaging about $80 Australian, with occasional bigger sums when a heartfelt plea came round from EV management for more funds along the lines of - 'we desperately need money, because (awed hushed tone) the Boss (Rawat) says so'.

I really thought Amaroo, or Ivorys Rock Conference Centre, near Brisbane, Australia, a centre funded by the premies (followers) in Rawat's name, and the target of my donations, was going to be a facility to promote world peace. This was to be the place where people who had a sincere heart, could come and practise the gift of inner knowledge, connection with the infinite, the true prayer, the true way to spread peace on this planet.

At least this is what Prem Rawat, also known as Guru Maharaj Ji, also known as Maharaji, had been preaching for many years, and I had been listening.

When I first heard him, my reaction was that he was a fake, a charlatan, but after repeated urgings from various musicians of my acquaintance that he was the real thing, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and believe that his message was true.

At the time, 1976, in Melbourne Australia it was being propagated that the Lord, incarnate on the planet as Guru Maharaj J, had come to save the world, by giving this gift of perfect Knowledge, a way to connect with universal love and the divine, to anyone who asked for it, for free. And this in fact was what I heard him say himself, on tape and in person, at public speaking events.

Let's face it, it was a great line as sales pitches go in the God business, and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

I was finally shown the four techniques in 1984, and diligently practiced them for 18 odd years. I did experience peace and bliss and harmony, and still do, though I no longer practise the techniques. And so I should have, as they are quite a high form of Yoga, practiced widely in India, although Rawat claims he is the sole custodian appointed by divine succession, as he claims on a former version of the website www.maharaji.org, viewable on the internet archives.

But another message came to me via his premie followers, and that was I should be infinitely grateful to the person who showed me the techniques, and that it was my deepest privilege to show my thanks in any way I could, to help this very very special person to stop the insanity and madness that exists on this planet, by exercising his divinity.

I had seen over the years how money donated to charities was more often than not misappropriated, and had been so pleased that I could channel spare cash into something that really did work, and that was guaranteed 100% to go to making this world a better place to live ……. or so I thought.

And I could show my appreciation in a tangible way. I could give money to help him do his work around the planet, and give more people this gift. When enough people had this gift, when critical mass had been reached, surely then there would be world peace.

Hence the direct debits to the bank account.

I was not happy with many practices I saw at Amaroo, the Australian land parcel that had been transformed into Prem Rawat's international conference centre by mainly volunteer labour, such as exploitation of workers, insensitive building practices and lack of accountability, and made a number of attempts to ascertain whether my money was being misused by followers of Maharaji, as he was then known.

I could not believe that the living incarnation of the universal principle of love was misguided. His will was obviously being subverted by less conscious individuals who ran the place for him. After all, they were either volunteers or badly paid, because this was all that could be afforded, in the need to stretch the money a long way amongst many worthy projects, so no wonder there seemed to be a marked lack of professionalism about the place, almost as though it were a typical badly managed small business with illegitimate labour practices.

In this way, I suspended disbelief for a number of years.

My father once taught me a rule of business - never gamble more than you can afford to lose.

The stakes got higher when, out of the blue, I received a call about a year ago, from an Elan Vital finance coordinator, asking me did I want to have a very special opportunity to be close to the Master. That he wanted more cash to spread his Knowledge further, faster and better. And that a team of people from round the world were going to have the privilege to attend a private conference with Him. The minimum donation required was USD $5,000. A very small price for attendance with the greatest CEO (sic) on earth.

I thought about it and realized I could just and barely afford to lose about half this sum. The dot.com bust and subsequent tech wreck was affecting my income, but how could I refuse a plea from the Teacher to whom I owed an eternal debt of gratitude for the gift of the Knowledge of all Knowledges?

So I offered half. It was accepted, as long as I guaranteed the other half with my credit card details.

I suppose I was to a small degree flattered to be asked. But really I thought this was my opportunity to really get close enough to find some answers. Was my money to be well spent, how did the chain of command work? Was there some way I could get the message across that Amaroo was not, in my opinion, working as a centre for world peace because it was being badly managed as a despotic small business instead of an well-oiled international corporation accountable to its shareholders. Would I at last be able to tell someone that nepotism and cronyism were rife?

The event was to be held at Amaroo, an hour's drive from my home in Queensland.

Then at the last minute there was a change of venue to the Scottsdale Fairmont Resort, Phoenix Arizona.

I still felt committed, so I booked a return ticket to the US, a long journey from Australia, about 20 hours with 14 hours flying time. And reasonably expensive.

I'm not impressed by money, wealth and resorts. I've grown up in a very beautiful resort town with pristine beaches and white sand, rainforest and tropical gardens.

I had arrived a day early at the Princess Fairmont Scottsdale resort. It was an oasis in the middle of the Arizona desert, ancestral lands of the Navajo people, who arrived in the area from the northern regions of the Americas somewhere between 1000AD and 1500AD. The landscape is stark and sculpturesque, as dramatic outcrops push up out of the sparsely vegetated desert plain.

The hotel is a veritable oasis in the desert, well appointed and with some interesting neo-hacienda style architecture.

The Elan Vital convention participants started to arrive in drips and drabs, as I watched from my sequestered spot under a shady tree by the rock pool shaped swimming lagoon.

By that evening, there were about four hundred people ($5,000.00 USD x 400= $2,000,000.00 USD) who turned up to attend this special event for major donors. The idea being sold was that giving money was a team effort too, and this was to be a conference for money givers to get a chance to team up.

On the evening before the event started, all these people were mingling and socializing in a convention foyer in a way that I am personally never comfortable with. The 'who do you know' session, a chance to see and be seen, to impress with dress, catch up with old friends, make new contacts. After a few turns it was apparent that I knew very few people, and wasn't about to meet any more.

Starting the next morning, there came was a few stage managed conference sessions, over two and a half days, where we were captive audience to a person renowned in the cult for his service of soliciting money, Yoram Weiss.

He and Prem Rawat gave some rather embarrassing presentations from the point of view of contemporary good corporate practice. That is, statistics with no real context, graphs with little explanation or definition, and a relentless hard sell message, that we were here on sufferance really, as someone had to provide the money.

It was barely a week from the tragedy of September 11th, so Prem Rawat played the role of divine comforter, noting that there were always going to be tragedies.

To an outsider, the Americans at the conference seemed very naive about the horrifying tragedy, and were looking for answers as though there were an explanation for the ignorance and stupidity of the war mongering that is all too prevalent on this planet. And of course Rawat was perceived as having answers to September 11th.

Meanwhile there was no mention of an agenda for the participants, it was as usual, a one way communication, from Rawat to his audience.

At dinner, I was surprised by the number of my dining companions who expressed an intent on revenge for the awful twin towers tragedy. This was supposed to be a conference of people focused on inner peace and inner knowledge. Didn't they know that violence begets violence? And that it is all too easy for a retaliatory action to perpetuate as splinters of violence for centuries to come?

I told the story at dinner of the East Timorese people who had to decide what to do to the traitors in their midst who had hacked their own people to death with machetes at the behest of the Indonesian military. They decided to forgive them, and attempt reconciliation, as the only practical way to advance out of a past fraught with such a depth of despair, sorrow, torture and deprivation. It didn't cut much ice.

Over the life of the conference, which comprised sessions by Yoram Weiss on how much money was needed and which program it was needed in, expression sessions by Rawat, with vague allusions to money making activities and the importance of his work, a question session where the stern Master could chide the questioner or the benevolent master could bask in the embarrassingly sickly gratitude of the gushy devotee, there were two really interesting events.

Firstly, the foot kissing ritual, where the devotee goes through security checks and has the opportunity to surrender their will to that of their Master, meanwhile showing practical gratitude in the form of gifts of money laid at the 'Lotus Feet', a sectarian Hindu religious practice, surely a little of out of place in the 21st century Western society.

Secondly, during the conference there was a very strange session. It purported to be a training session to build the money team.

No input was requested from team members. No formal method was applied to form into teams.

However, an exercise was set by some person who was called a team trainer, for team building, everyone was asked to gather themselves in functional units to carry out some simple task.

Now I don't like group activities, so I just sat and watched. The people at the event were so efficient that within a couple of minutes, they had formed themselves into coherent teams and were well on the way to completing their tasks.

But then subsequently, there was a session where they were told by Rawat that they were complete failures, and that they were hopeless and they just were totally terrible at the training.

What? I'd seen excellent responses with my own eyes!

But what happened next was even more puzzling in terms of the well ordered and organized conferences I am accustomed to attending in my professional capacity as an IT architect.

The money collector proceeded to harangue the audience about the desperate and crying need to give the Boss money, money and more money so he could do his work properly. All in all, this cowed crowd, who had just been told they were abject failures, had a chance to make amends, and pledge money for the next year.

The kinds of sums cited made me feel that the least I could do was to pledge the absolute minimum of $10,000 USD for the next year. And I'm ashamed to say that in all conscience I fell for this hard sell and pledged.

Obviously the event was then over, and everyone could go home, after another lunch of indifferent food served in a marquee, (No Fairmont catering for the likes of us - we breakfasted out in the open courtyard in the hot desert sun that reached 100 by 9am, and ate lunch and dinner in a marquee.)

On reflection, this was much more like a pyramid sales conference than a serious agenda to build a team ready to take up the challenge of funding the propagation of the inner knowledge that held the key to world peace.

It was only a few months later that I spoke to somebody who had seen where the money went at Amaroo. To a sumptuously appointed residence with lavish décor and the latest electronic gadgets and fittings for Prem Rawat. Somebody who had seen it with their own eyes, despite it being a closely guarded secret with a top security rating. They also told me about the dozen empty cognac bottles that they'd cleaned up after Prem Rawat's night of fun with his mistress. Now those behaviours I might be able to rationalize. But the final clincher for me was when my confidant told me about Prem Rawat's very nasty temper tantrums, irrational verbal abuse, and primitive psychological tactics on volunteers if he thought he wasn't getting his own way at Amaroo.

Lord of the universe, as he once claimed? Urbane provider of peaceful meditation techniques, as he now claims? Or complete charlatan and fake?

Dear reader, I'll let you be the judge.

So here is my challenge to Prem Rawat.

I've donated around $30,000 Australian over the years because you told me you and your inner knowledge were going to spread peace in this world. I recently came across a group of young Europeans who are doing a splendid job in working to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. If you care to contact me through this site, I will give you the name of this charity to write on your refund cheque to me. They are doing something for world peace.

As you, and all your charities and non-profit organizations around the world, with tax exemptions, and your offshore tax haven companies have not, and never will, with your fraudulent use of money given in good faith to promote peace in our time.

I believe it is high time your personal finances were audited to see exactly how these multi millions of US dollars raised annually, are actually spent.

Nya Alison Murray
IT Architect
December 2002

Who Owns What around Prempal Rawat?

Prem Rawat is very rich. He left India in 1971 at the age of 13, with no money, no education, and was disowned by his mother three years later. He has never had a paying job, never run a business, and does not own the patents to any successful inventions (contrary to rumors amongst his followers). His money has come from donations from his followers, including inheritances, trust funds, and shares in some very successful businesses. The statements on Elan Vital and Prem Rawat Foundation websites that he supports himself and his family by independent means, and that he is a successful private investor, are lies. All his money has come from the guru business.

The question is, if Rawat was a fraud, who continued playing the guru after he grew up because he realised he could make a lot of money, he would be behaving exactly like he does. So, if he is genuine, he is deliberately acting like a fraud in order to…. what? … test his devotees? … ensure that only the true students will find him?

The fact is, if Rawat was sincere in trying to reach as many people as possible, he would remove all obstacles, especially the appearance that he is obsessed with material possessions. He could also use his wealth to advertise his message, instead of constantly soliciting funds from his followers to pay for every propagation initiative.

The fact is, even when Rawat attends speaking engagements, the emphasis is on ensuring that Rawat, his family, and his mistress, are kept in levels of luxury usually reserved for heads of state, all at the expense of the premies in the area where the event is held.

Fundraising has always been an important activity in Divine Light Mission and Elan Vital. Although 'Knowledge' is free, there is a constant need for cash to maintain expensive properties around the world, and the expensive lifestyle of Maharaji and his family. Expenses, which include a $40 million private jet, two helicopters (a Bell 206L and a Bell 430 worth over $4.5 million), a $7 million yacht, a multi-million dollar home in Malibu, a large house and grounds in Surrey, England, land and a home at the 'Ivorys Rock Conference Centre' in Australia, as well as a 'residence' at "Fig Tree Pocket" (Brisbane suburb) in Queensland, Australia, have been justified by saying they help spread Maharaji's teachings. The ownership of these assets has always been clouded in mystery, but some curious ex-premies have been doing some research.

"You know some people don't like rich people. They have this idea or that idea of what it is to be rich. But they really don't know. It's not easy to be rich. It isn't. Once you've made your first million, you need another to protect it. Then you have two million, and you'll need another two million to protect those two million. Then you'll have four million and you'll need another four million to protect those four million, and then you'll have eight million. Of course then you'll need another 8 million to protect those eight million and then you'll have 16 million… it isn't easy, it's not what you think."

Maharaji - Long Beach, December 1995

Who owns the Malibu Residence and its Heliport?

Estimated value: $20-25 million.

In brief: Mary Holle, who is a premie and received knowledge in the 70s, is the president of Seva Corporation (the company that's owning Prempal Rawat and his family's residence). Seva Corp. is the actual owner of various valuable items used by Mr Rawat: his residence in Malibu, a single engine aircraft, at least one of Prem Rawat's helicopters (see also Bell 430) and a glider. All the following information is public and can be accessed via the Internet.

Note: the premies purchase the house for $250,000 in 1974, then Maharaji sold it in 1978 for about $5.8 million to Seva Corp.

"I would say that the current house would be worth at least 20 million or more… If the original was worth 5 mil,this one is much higher…
The house is, I believe, 28,000 square feet, which had to cost at least $300-400/sq. ft., due to high CA. building costs, earthquake specs., and m's ridiculous sense of luxury that he requires.
Plus, the land that was bought about 10 years ago, all around the place, plus a new road to the house, plus land appreciation, plus incredible landscaping, guest house, recording studio…
I'd say 20-25 million…"

More information on land purchases made by Seva Corp. for Maharaji's Malibu Marble Mansion are available on the EPO website.

Some obvious questions:

1/ The most interesting thing one can notice is the sale of Maharaji's house on 5/31/78 to Seva Corporation for $5.2 million. Who got the $5.2 million?

One very likely scenario:The premies bought the house for Maharaji (the delapitaded one that Maharaji wrote a letter to the premies saying was so 'beautiful') in 1974. Then, in 1978, it was sold to Seva Corporation for $5.2 million.

2/ was the sale of Maharaji's own house to a shell corporation controlled by his cult-devotees, used as a way to transfer cash to the former Lord of the Universe, when it was DLM money (raised from the premies) who bought the house in the first place?

The site contains a link to: Los Angeles Real Estate Records/Copies.

Trouble around the Heliport

Westside; 9; Zones Desk
Maharaji Denied in Bid to Triple Copter Use at Heliport

JUDY PASTERNAK
Times Staff Writer
7 July 1985
Los Angeles Times
(Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1985 All Rights Reserved)

The one-time "perfect master" of the Divine Light Mission has been denied permission from the county's Regional Planning Commission to triple the number of helicopter landings annually at his Malibu mountain-ridge estate.

Maharaji-the professional name now used by Prem Pal Singh Rawat, formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji-can continue descending from the skies to his landing pad 12 times a year, the annual limit imposed for five years in April, 1983. Six landings were originally allowed in 1980 because Maharaji agreed to install a 45,000-gallon emergency water storage and pumping system that would be available to county Fire Department helicopters.

But planning commissioners rejected, by a 3-1 vote Wednesday, Maharaji's request to increase the limit to 36. The majority said it was constrained by a commission policy adopted in September, 1984, that forbids additional copter flights except for those that provide a public benefit.

"First, you wanted six; then you went to 12; now you come back and want 36," said commission Vice Chairman Sadie Clark to Maharaji's attorney, Linda Gross.

"I can absolutely see no reason why this is necessary. We cannot favor one applicant over another, and there's not any justification for this."

Maharaji's need for more flights "has to do with a change in circumstances," Gross said. Until the spring of 1984, the one-time guru was seldom at his mansion, called Anacapa View Estates, off Trancas Canyon 600 feet above Pacific Coast Highway.

He and his family visited there a few times a year but they also spent time in Miami and abroad.

Then Maharaji dropped his ties with the Divine Light organization and settled full time at the Malibu estate, Gross said.

He continues to lecture around the world on self-awareness, however, and needs the helicopter mostly for travel between Los Angeles International Airport and his home, the attorney said.
Is it predicated on additional flights?" Gross said it was not.

Only Commissioner Norma Bard supported the increase, saying few helipads provided the added fire protection that Maharaji's does. "I do not regard this as precedent-setting," she said. "I don't think we will ever find a similar situation."

A representative of the county Fire Department, Capt. Jerry Peskett, said Maharaji's helipad is "acceptable, but not necessary" for battling blazes in the brush-covered Malibu hills.

That led Commission Chairman Stanley Gould to say, "I can see nothing to gain by granting the additional flights."

Gross said she did not know if Maharaji would appeal the decision to the county Board of Supervisors.

Gross said the firefighting equipment at the helipad should qualify as a public benefit. She said that Maharaji also intends to place utility lines underground near his estate, to minimize the danger to copters flying over Trancas Canyon.

But when questioned by Commissioner Delta Murphy, Gross said that Maharaji would continue to allow county access to the emergency equipment even if the limit remained at 12 flights.

Then Murphy asked about burying the utility lines. "If it's really a safety factor, wouldn't he want to do it now?

Amaroo - The Ivorys Rock Conference Centre (IRCC)

According to a testimony posted on the forum: "The land content of Amaroo is owned by a company based in Jersey UK (Myrine Investments). The company then lease the land to elan vital in australia for 99 years. Elan vital owns the company Ivory's Rock Conference Center and has given the company the rights to run and develop the property. Elan vital raises millions of dollars in loans from its members to develop the place via Ivory's Rock Conference Center.

See also Ivory's Rock Conference Centre's website.

In brief: Amaroo is owned by Myrine Investments and rented by Elan Vital Inc. Funds are provided by Prem Rawat's followers.

Ipswich centre spends up big

The following article by By David Wheatley) appeared in "Business Queensland", 3 November 1997. © 1997 Business Newspapers Australia Pty Ltd.

According to Elan Vital (1997): "Ivory's Rock Conference Centre, near Ipswich, will spend $1 million in the next 12 months on an upgrade which will allow the facility to cater for live-in conferences of up to 400 people.

This is in addition to close to $1 million spent earlier this year to provide additional facilities and basic infrastructure to cater for a 4,000-delegate international convention for the Australian educational and self awareness organization, Elan Vital.

Jan McGregor, director of Ivory's Rock Conference Centre, says the planned expenditure will provide for construction of 200 deluxe cabins in bushland beside the newly opened 400-seat conference hall.

"These, along with the necessary dining facilities, will allow us to target the executive retreat market in much larger numbers than is normal for this type of facility," says McGregor, who with partner, Terry McKinnell, owns the company which operates the centre for American investment company, Myrine.

"This will allow us to develop a unique four-star centre just a 45-minute drive from Brisbane's CBD. We will be able to target a local niche market, but also make a bid to attract large conferences of Asian executives who want to sample an Australian bush experience in a luxury setting."

She says while the additional accommodation will allow Ivory's Rock to target larger conferences, it will continue to focus on "bread and butter" one-day conferences because of its proximity to both Brisbane and Ipswich.

In addition, the centre will market its new 4,000-seat amphitheatre for special one-off outdoor events.

The amphitheatre, along with sealing of roads and provision of town water for Ivory's Rock, accounted for much of the $1million spent earlier this year.

"We needed to provide it to accommodate Elan Vital's 4,000 delegate convention," McGregor says.

"We had 1,200 accommodated on site with the rest coming in on a daily basis."

McGregor says that Elan Vital has a 15-year contract with the centre to stage its conventions on a biennial basis.

"In essence they sub-let the grounds from us to ensure that their conventions always take precedence," McGregor says.

"It means that every two years we retreat from the market-place for several months to put their convention in place.

"However, having this long-term contract and the assured income it provides has allowed us to develop our facilities much more quickly.

"Some of these, such as the amphitheatre, would not have been given the same level of priority if you were aiming at a general market without having to concentrate on that one special event."

McGregor says Ivory's Rock is also able to target the budget market, providing luxury tent accommodation for delegates.

"With our current infrastructure, we can cater for up to 1,000 people with the on-site infrastructure we now have in place," she says.

"Even easier to handle are smaller groups, around 500, which is still a large number as far as most live-in convention facilities are concerned."

As well as targeting existing markets, McGregor says the centre is also examining developing its own product in joint venture with other providers.

"One we are looking at is the provision of a conference aimed at executive health and well-being, involving people from the health industry," she says.

McGregor also says that the size of the property means several events can be run at the one time.

"We can have a 1,000-strong convention with everyone living in, and at the same time run a one-day conference, and keep the two events completely separate," she says."

The previous article ("Ipswich centre spends up big", by By David Wheatley) appeared in "Business Queensland", 3 November 1997.
© 1997 Business Newspapers Australia Pty Ltd.

Rawat's 106 Foot Yacht - Serenity

In brief: Serenity was owned by Premo Marine Inc., which in turn is owned by its 'beneficial owners'. Estimated value: $7 million. It was sold in June 2004.

If you go to the National Marine Fisheries Service web site, enter Serenity, in the query box at the bottom of the page, then click on 'Submit Query'. The search will take about a minute. When the results come up, use your browser's Find menu option to find 'Newport Ri'. Serenity is presently # 370 in the list.

The record shows that Kathleen M Gliebe is the president .
Address: 516 North Pennsfield Place, Ste. 108, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360, USA.
The 2000 Annual Report, which is in TIFF format, is linked to from this page.
See Annual Report Image, 00Annual. To see it, you might need to download it and view it in a graphics viewer, or you can just see the info below.
The Annual Report shows two more familiar names: John K. Bale and Robert A. Jacobs. Jacobs is Rawat's lawyer. Both Gliebe and Bale are involved in Rawat's financial dealings. The Thousand Oaks address is a familiar Elan Vital/Prem Rawat related address.

The activity page shows: NEW CORPORATION CREATED 4/17/97. Serenity was built in 1997. Given these two facts, one can assume it was purchased by Rawat in early 1997.

EPO contains more details of the yacht and the owners.

It's pretty clear that Premo Marine is the successor to Seva Marine. Seva Marine dissolved with their last filing on 4/18/97. In the meantime one day earlier Premo Marine had been set up to take its place.

The question is this. Do we know if m owned any yachts previous to Serenity under Seva Marine, or was Seva Marine just used to accumulate the capital with which Serenity was purchased by Premo Marine?

The Gulfstream IV

- G.1159C SP - N#: N-41PR
Since fall 2000, Maharaji owns a new Gulfstream V.

Maharaji's jet in Katmandu, Nepal - November 1998.

Given the secrecy surrounding Maharaji's jet's operation, one can wonder how we've found that information. Here is the answer. The first vital information was the jet's ID number that we've received from an anonymous poster on the Forum. Then we used that number to perform a general search on the Internet, where we discovered that some jets' fan spotted that very G4 at Tokyo-Narita on 30/3/98 (where Maharaji actually was for a program). And then we made a search on an aviation database, where we found the final details (The G4 is owned by Prime Resources, L.L.C.). And finally a simple search in corporate records showed who is actually owning the aircraft (well known 'Persons Around Maharaji'). Estimated value: $25 million.
In case you wonder how Maharaji has been able to purchase such an aircraft, here are some helpful documents.

The Gulfstream V : N-54PR

Prem Rawat's Gulfstream V on the tarmac of Brisbane airport in the year 2000.

Due to Elan Vital's total lack of transparency, very few details are available about Maharaji's present jet. What we know is that M purchased his Gulfstream V in the fall of the year 2000. It was a second hand aircraft, and its previous owner was the late king Hussein of Jordan. It was about $40 million worth.

Bell 430 Helicopter

We are reliably informed that Prem Rawat acquired a new Bell 430 in 2000. The Bell website does not quote a price for this model, but other sites quote prices above US$4.5 million.

If anyone knows the registration number of the 430, and whether Maharaji still has the 206L, we would be very grateful so that EPO can be kept up to date.

Oh, and in case anybody is worried whether Maharaji's piloting skills can handle such a top of the range machine, he trained to fly it at the Bell Training Acadamy in Fort Worth.

With this propagation tool, it's no wonder propagation has boomed since 2000!

The 'Residence' in Queensland, Australia

236 Jesmond Rd, Fig Tree Pocket - Queensland, Australia

Here is an excerpt of an article that appeared on September 7, 2002, in the Courier-Mail.

"… Conference organisers revealed the security threat when pressed on whether the no-frills "guru" was staying at a multimillion-$1.7ha riverfront mansion owned by an associated company in the western Brisbane suburb of Fig Tree Pocket.

Media consultant John Arlidge, spokesman for the guru's Elan Vital organisation, said the Mahariji had remained "on-site" at the Ivory's Rock convention centre during the four-day conference - and did not fly in and out by helicopter daily as he had in previous years.

… John Macgregor, who claims to have been a confidant of Mr Rawat for more than 20 years, last weekend alleged the Mahariji had a secret tax haven in the Channel Islands (Jersey, UK), owned luxury homes from Brisbane's Fig Tree Pocket to South Africa, and flew money out of Australia into Swiss bank accounts.

Elan Vital, in a written statement, rejected allegations made by both men claiming they were nothing more than "disgruntled former employees".

The statement also rejected claims the Mahariji was in any way involved in criminal activity or benefited from a secret tax haven in the Channel Islands or owned luxury homes in Brisbane.

Convention organiser Cath Carroll this week said any inquiries about the centre should be referred to the site's owners Myrine Investments. However, company and property searches conducted by The Courier-Mail reveal Myrine Investments, a Channel Island company, owns not only the 529ha Ivory Rocks convention site, a neighbouring 176ha cattle breeding property and 2.2ha homesite, but also a prized multi-million $1.7ha river-front home site at 236 Jesmond Rd, Fig Tree Pocket.

Elan Vital, in a written statement released yesterday, conceded the Fig Tree Pocket property was originally purchased in 1986 by devotees of the Mahariji for his personal use.

"The Fig Tree (sic) property was originally acquired by a person unconnected with Myrine as a place for Mr Rawat to stay on visits to Australia," the statement says.

"It was subsequently transferred to Myrine to be held for Mr Rawat's use when he visits. …"

By Tony Keim

The CAC Attack

MAHARAJI CULT MAKES CRIMINAL ATTACKS ON EX-PREMIES

In August 2001, and again in November, ex-premies were given a very unpleasant insight into just how low those who wish to silence former followers of Maharaji were willing to stoop. They are apparently willing to engage in criminal conduct in order to intimidate people from criticizing him and his cult on the Internet, especially if they do so using their own names.

August, 2001 was when persons unknown, but assumed to be followers of Maharaji, first took a chapter right out of Scientology and other cults that ruthlessly attack former members when they put up a website with false and twisted information, accusing certain ex-premies of engaging in criminal behavior equal in gravity to kidnapping and child abuse. Even ex-premies who were concerned about possible threats from premies were shocked that their former cult compatriots were capable of such vicious, criminal attacks.

Fortunately, the attack was unsuccessful, and has backfired against the cult in a number of ways, causing many current followers of Maharaji to question their involvement in an organization whose members appear to be capable of such conduct. Although the original website (located in Russia) was removed from the Internet, it did reappear in two US locations temporarily in November 2001. The two reappearances of the website were closed down following letters to the hosting Internet Service Providers. Maharaji has yet to make any public statement that he disapproves of what his followers did. We believe this speaks volumes and suggests that Maharaji, himself, may have instigated, encouraged, or at least tacitly approved of these criminal tactics.

Since this incident, many people have requested sight of the material on the CAC site. As much of the material is libellous, we will not republish it here, even to demonstrate its nature. However, Anth Ginn, one of the targets of the site, has published his own page from a later version of the CAC site for those interested.

The following is a statement from 10 of the 12 ex-premies who were victims of the attack. The other two support the contents of the statement but for personal reasons do not wish to be signatories.

Statement of victims attacked by the Maharaji Cult.

August 30, 2001

The undersigned were recently attacked by unnamed premies (devotees of Maharaji), by means of an Internet website called "Citizens Against Cyberstalking" (www.stopcyberstalkers.org) which, at first glance, appeared to be a public service to the victims of harassment. These premies targeted the twelve of us, who are all former followers of Maharaji ("ex-premies"), by labeling us criminal "cyberstalkers," and by listing our names with eight other alleged "cyberstalkers" who included child molesters and kidnappers.

The website was an incitement to anyone viewing the site to contact our employers, families, professional associations, licensing bureaus, and other entities to inform them that we had engaged in criminal activity. The website provided corresponding addresses, telephone numbers and email links for them to easily do so. The website also included our pictures, disclosed addresses of our homes and businesses, telephone numbers and email addresses. In one extreme attempt at intimidation, the authors of the website even went so far as to provide the picture of the young child of one of the ex-premies, and listed the address of where the child lived. It also included false, out-of-context, and misleading information about all of us, including twisted and fabricated quotes these premies used as "proof" of their allegations of our mental illness or criminal activity.

The obvious goal of these premies was to blackmail and intimidate us so that we would refrain from posting about Maharaji and his cult on the Internet. The perpetrators specifically offered to refrain from further blackmail if the victim did so. Sadly, one of our numbers, so frightened about the safety of his daughter whose picture and address were displayed, capitulated publicly to the blackmail and his name was then removed from the "cyberstalker" list.

We believe we were singled out for attack from among the hundreds of ex-premies who have posted on the Internet because we are perceived to have been effective in helping premies who no longer want to be a part of the Maharaji cult, who were staying out of fear or other reasons, to leave the cult by supplying information that has been kept secret by the cult for many years, and by generally offering them support. Some of us were targeted because of what would appear to be our particular vulnerability to blackmail. Three out of the twelve appear to have been chosen because they are gay, one appears to have been chosen because his child was vulnerable to attack, and most of us were chosen partly because we have posted under our own names on the Internet, and hence were easily identifiable.

The website authors claimed that as premies they, themselves, have been the victims of defamation, harassment and other illegal activities at the hands of ex-premies, but no proof whatsoever was provided. Much less, no proof was provided that any of us, the actual victims of the website, had engaged in any such activities, and we categorically deny that we have done so.

Although the perpetrators claim to consist of four individuals, we have reason to believe that Elan Vital, the front organization for Maharaji, and Maharaji himself, may have instigated, contributed to, or condoned this attack. We have been informed by reliable sources that Elan Vital has been "monitoring," collecting data on, and even doing external investigations of, ex-premies who have posted on the Internet about Maharaji. We have also been informed that Elan Vital has assigned monitors to review our postings to compile extensive files on all of us, and we feel there is good reason to believe, based on the nature of the attack and who was chosen for the attack, that that information compiled by Elan Vital was used to prepare the website, and to defame and attempt to intimidate us. Whether the Elan Vital hierarchy officially condoned the use of this information is difficult to know.

Under the circumstances, we find Elan Vital's press release of August 23, 2001, both utterly inadequate and insulting, because it does not specifically condemn this attack, and it blames the victims for causing it. We are concerned because the press release is yet another "dig" at ex-premies, and might encourage the more fanatical of Elan Vital's members to do something similar. We also suspect that Prem Pal Singh Rawat (aka Maharaji) may have been personally involved, at least to the extent of tacit approval, since to date we are aware of no public statement by him disavowing the website and its perpetrators.

After threats of legal action were made publicly by several of us, the website was modified on August 23, 2001 and replaced with a statement that the premies behind the site would be contributing their "database of resources" to two unnamed organizations. This statement, which implies further dissemination of the defamatory material, as well as the possibility that it or a similar website could appear at any time, makes it even more alarming that we have yet to see any statement whatsoever from Mr. Rawat about this, nor have we seen any evidence of attempts by him to attempt to stop his more fanatic devotees from doing anything similar in the future. Since the perpetrators claim personal allegiance to Mr. Rawat and his teachings, we feel Mr. Rawat has a moral and ethical obligation to make such a public statement.

This event is an ominous sign. Until recently, most of us believed that the more fanatical elements had died out years ago after the Mahatma Fakiranand incident in the 1970s. But these events, as well as earlier attempts by Mr. Rawat's lawyers to shut down the websites through which ex-premies share information, lead us to believe that the Maharaji cult may be headed in the same direction as other destructive cults, such as Scientology, which attack former members who disclose critical information and opinions. Since we the undersigned stand behind our statements and opinions, and do so by not being anonymous, and because we intend to continue speaking about the subjects of Mr. Rawat and our former cult, we are understandably concerned about our safety.

We can understand why the cult is concerned about us, to the extent of wanting us to be intimidated off the Internet. In addition to providing a support for premies leaving the cult, ex-premies have been extremely effective in publicizing the fact that Maharaji is not at all the person he has tried to project, and in fact he has serious personal flaws that he has attempted over the years, with great effort, to keep secret.

We have also pointed out that Maharaji's priorities do not appear to be what he professes. During the same time he has amassed immense wealth for himself personally, he has failed utterly in "spreading knowledge" and has thousands fewer followers today in the West than he had 20 years ago. He rarely does "introductory programs," rarely advertises his existence or that of "knowledge," and has shown little interest in doing anything other than retaining his core audience, his dwindling group of devotees from the 70s, and engaging in technological gimmicks, pretending that these are finally going to spread the word, after 30 years of failed attempts.

If anyone needs any proof of the fact that Maharaji has reverted to his "Lord of the Universe" roots to retain these devotees, they need only note that as recently as a few months ago, in a high-security enclave in Australia, Maharaji had these devotees sing ARTI to him, a lengthy Hindu song premies sang to him in the 70s, which clearly describes Maharaji as a deity, and more extreme yet, Maharaji had those same devotees line up by the hundreds to kiss his feet. Neither Maharaji, nor Elan Vital, are about to tell any potential aspirant that such events occur in the year 2001, as Elan Vital deceptively presents Maharaji to the unsuspecting world as northing more than a entirely secular, modern, meditation master. But if these people happen to turn to the Internet, they just might learn the whole truth, and armed with more complete information, make up their own minds about who Maharaji is and what he offers. For these reasons, we will not be intimidated from providing a public service by speaking out freely about Maharaji.

Joseph Whalen
Anthony Ginn
Marianne Bachers
William Williams
Michael Dettmers
Patrick Conlon
Jim Heller
Jean-Michel Kahn
Gerry Lyng

Marianne responds to CAC

I have been a poster on ex-premie forums since 1999, when I found www.ex-premie.org. I posted my journey shortly thereafter, and began posting on ex-premie forums. As many of you know, I am an attorney who has dedicated my life to defending death sentenced inmates in California. In fact, it was entering law school in 1976 that finally allowed me to leave the cult behind.

Because I was willing to speak out about my experiences and because I forcefully supported women who had been sexually abused by Mahatma Jagdeo - and because of my professional position - premies began writing libelous things about me on the internet. This culminated in an internet site called Citizens Against Cyberstalking - we call it CAC. The CAC site contained profiles about a number of ex-premies, with personal and professional information, and savagely and libelously attacked many of us. The site explained that this was done because of our opposition to Prem Rawat. The site invited readers to complain to professional organizations about our commentary on Rawat and his cult. The site appeared in late August, 2001, I believe.

Around the same time, a premie attorney in New York named Charles Glasser (or Charles J. Glasser, Jr.) erected a site attacking ex-premies and calling us members of a hate group. If I am not mistaken, that is the first time this description was used. Glasser then worked for the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He now works for Bloomberg News, and has recently published a book about libel and the internet. I wonder how he learned so much about it?

Anyway, the CAC site came down several weeks later, after Joe wrote to Elan Vital and threatened legal action due to the statements that were made about him on the site.

But the damage had been done. Ever since that time, websites have appeared making the same kind of attacks, and urging people to write to our employers or professional assocations and complain because we have exercised our right to free speech when we discuss Rawat's past. This is a past that those around Rawat are scurrying to blur each day on the internet and through carefully orchestrated media events.

Statements were made on the internet which falsely accused me of criminal conduct and of being convicted of criminal activity. I finally decided someone had to stand up to the cult and I filed a libel lawsuit in February 2004. I could not name the people I intended to sue as they had carefully concealed their identities so they would not have to be responsible for their actions, as I was, by using my real name in my posts about Rawat and the cult.

This post is dragging on. I will start another and continue the story.

Marianne

Maharaji's Trainings

Over the last year or so, people have pulled back from service, all over the West. There are many factors behind this - including ex-premie.org, people getting older and wiser, and continuing disillusionment with EV's apparently permanent state of dysfunction. Poorly chosen and unpopular leaders have played their role.

But interestingly, Maharaji's 'trainings' have also caused many people to revise their commitment to M. Revise it downward, that is.

'Trainees' haven't generally analysed why this is. They express vague discomfort with the trainings, but are unable to say what this stems from. This is hardly surprising. To examine the trainings honestly, and come to one's own conclusions about them, would lead one to the largest 'Do Not Enter' sign in the premie catalogue: the one which involves an objective ethical examination of Maharaji's activities.

Thus the vague, unsettling feelings persist - but (with the exception of the minority whom the trainings propelled out of Knowledge) nothing goes further than that.

Yet the fact remains: now the trainings are finished, people have withdrawn from service en masse. Why?

Firstly, just about all premies have a bad attitude to EV thesedays. Given that EV is just a bunch of volunteers - people like you and me - this is curious. It's not exactly a monolith, and it has virtually no paid staff. Indeed the latest reports suggest that it is fast sinking beneath the waves.

I believe - and it's only a belief - that EV plays a role in displacing premies' anger at Maharaji. EV is a 'safe' way of resenting M. It is a safe place to direct blame for the pain, stunting, inconvenience, cost, fear, guilt and anger which often lie below the surface of the premie's much-vaunted satchitanand.

It's interesting to note that the instructors played a similar role in the 1970s and early 1980s: in satsang after satsang, Maharaji himself set them up as targets for anger and abuse, which of course drew such emotions away from himself.

But this time around, tho antipathy to EV is nearly universal, it has been impossible to contain all the anger in this single vessel. For the first time, considerable anger is being directed at Maharaji himself. Some premies have gone the whole hog and left K; others quietly mutter but stay in the fold; and others do not divulge their mutinous thoughts to other premies, but think them nonetheless, divulging them only to outsiders.

IMO, more than any other factor, the trainings of the last few years are responsible for this change. For large numbers of premies, the trainings brought the EV cult psycho-dynamics - basically the techniques of thought reform which are the basis of Maharaji's influence - into the daylight for the first time.

The trainings also revealed something like the real Maharaji, to people who had never previously been exposed to him - and those people have been troubled ever since.

Maharaji's trainings were EV's central institutional methodology of the 1990s. They were to the 1990s what ashrams and satsang were to the 1970s. Their importance in deepening and entrenching the Maharaji psychological 'spell' should not be underestimated. Their chief psychological weapon was the mixed message (which I've discussed below).

Just as ashrams created a top layer of heavy-metal devotees with a 'single idea' in the 1970s, so did the trainings select and create the same cohort in the 1990s. In both cases the aim was to bring about a 'core' of 'clear' devotees - clear as to who was Boss, clear as to organizational methods - around whom a global mission could be built.

Among its other functions - many of which were highly enjoyable - satsang in the 1970s was the vehicle wherein these clear devotees could deliver the message (the 'truth') to the rest of the community, and bring everyone into line with the general philosophy. Teams - which mixed core premies who tended to lead with community premies who tended to follow, just as satsang did - were meant to become this ideological delivery vehicle in the present era. And the team thing was one of the main messages of the training.

So the trainings not only entrenched the message (Maharaji is always right, et al), they also created the means for its further dissemination (teams).

Why did the trainings arise? Let's look at the timing.

Significantly, the trainings arose after the Amaroo Mutiny - the first blip on the radar which alerted M that there was trouble brewing in Paradise: that people were challenging the authority of his small group of appointees, and therefore his authority. Amaroo was and is the jewel in M's crown. A challenge to his authority there was probably very difficult for him.

There have been several mutinies in Maharaji's world over the last decade - some of them attracting emergency interventions by M's envoys. There has been an Indian mutiny, the PR Team mutiny, and various mutinies at local level throughout the US and Australia. But perhaps the most famous mutiny was the Amaroo Mutiny (as Maharaji himself named it) of December 97-January 98.

The mutiny at Amaroo - Australia's cult-within-a-cult - brought the place to a halt, saw its management team implode, scrambled the international team to red alert - and nearly saw Amaroo sold off by an infuriated Lord of the Universe. ('This is a mutiny! How dare they!' he said when told about it.)

Basically, the Amaroo Mutiny was an attempt to democratise Amaroo - to spread and diffuse the power to make decisions. The Mutiny began when the management team imploded on December 21, 1997; it was led by several former management team members.

The Mutiny was put down when Valerio Pascotto was sent to Amaroo (first by the three-man facilitators' team, then, when M heard about the Mutiny, with M's blessing). From memory, Valerio arrived in late January, 1998.

After his arrival, Valerio sat the perpetrators down and instituted workshops which included self-criticism sessions - written and oral. These lasted several days, and in time broke down all resistance. On Day One, all participants were sat in a large horseshoe - with Valerio and his note-taker at one end - and one by one asked to confess what role s/he had played in causing the trouble. (The question was handed to participants the night before on paper, so they could spend the night contemplating it.)

One attendee stated out loud that these sessions were 'medieval', and refused to take part. However everyone else joined in.

For me, the most surreal aspect was that maybe a dozen people who'd had nothing to do with the mutiny - who hadn't even heard of it in some cases - took the blame for enough sins to fill a Catholic textbook. The word 'hysteria' barely does the atmosphere of these sessions justice. Some people were so distraught they could not speak, when their turn came to confess. Others seemed utterly destroyed at the thought that they had offended the Master.

Before the sessions even began, Valerio had made it extremely clear that Maharaji was very angry at us.

The Angry Daddy gambit is one of Maharaji's crudest yet most effective psychological techniques. The Rawat psychology does not need to be subtle. Because of our sincerity, we were extremely easy to manipulate: for Valerio it was like taking candy from a baby. Some of the techniques may have already been in place, from the 1996 international organisers' conference, where these workshop-style settings began - specifically:

Childhood parental models were invoked to terrify potential dissenters; philosophical closed-loops were reinforced, in which the master could never be wrong; the 'group dynamic' was strengthened to dissolve individualism.

In the end, after some spirited resistance, we all caved.

Valerio told me I should be feeling 'grief' at what I had done to displease M - and by the end of these sessions I believed he was right. I mention Valerio's name here because it is simply unavoidable: he was central to the Mutiny, and central to the trainings. Personally I always got on extremely well with him, and we parted cordially. What I write here should not be construed as an attack on him, but on the crazy psychology which possessed us all. I don't use the word 'possessed' lightly. Like myself, Valerio was in the grip of a powerful daemon, and under its influence we were as mad and inhuman as each other. I participated in the sessions as fully as he did.

Anyway, Maharaji should perhaps be grateful to the Amaroo mutineers: the Mutiny provided not only the impetus for a global re-education program, but many of the techniques employed in it.

In early 1999, the first prototype training was held at Amaroo. The model's bugs were ironed out.

At this training M yelled at participants that they - the Amaroo premies - were 'insane' and 'lunatics'. He used frequent war analogies, swore violently, and was extremely angry much of the time. This is what convinced many attendees that the Mutiny was on his mind.

He was so angry on one occasion that his hands shook, and he dropped his whiteboard marker. After he'd done one of his 'storming out of the room' routines (I think he trialled the technique at this first training), a PAM came into the hall in tears: 'Maharaji's going to leave Amaroo unless we get it together,' he sobbed. 'Unless we do what he wants.' Significantly, what he wanted was never made clear.

One brave participant told Maharaji he thought that training's techniques were reminiscent of the Nazi Party. He has not been singled out for promotion!

After this trial run in early 1999, the trainings began in earnest in various major centres.

The trainings were for premiedom's top 'resources' - mostly managers and those with money. A seldom-appreciated refinement of this is that the trainings were directed at 'resources' who were, with advancing maturity, displaying symptoms of independent thought.

So - throughout the trainings - once again childhood models of authority and obedience were 're-booted' within the greying skulls of Maharaji's flock. Wealthy businessmen were reduced to obeisant, trembling children who sometimes went dry-mouthed with fear; normally balanced, competent women were driven, in several cases, to hysterical breakdowns. (NB: I don't want to be sexist about it: there was ample hysteria on the male side as well.)

My training cost each of the 80 participants $A1000 to attend. (Tho I think some full-time staff probably got freebies.)

Each training was different, and there were specialist trainings for (for example) propagation and the residence/personal area staff. But the overarching purpose of the trainings was what the Chinese call 're-education' - the Chinese approach and Maharaji's having considerable common ground. These were the main elements, as I saw them:

- Insufficient loyalty to the master/government is profoundly stigmatized.

- Individuality is stomped on. The Chinese call it 'degenerate individualism', Maharaji the 'Lone Ranger syndrome'. In both cases self-criticism plays a central role in eliminating it.

- Mutual monitoring is stepped up and refined.

- Certain more trusted group members are secretly recruited by the trainers to work against the interests of those who are to be made an example of.

- Blatant untruths are stated and restated, and eventually accepted, despite evidence which contradicts them staring participants in the face. (E.g. M's stating how hard he works to 'keep my body fit so I can carry out
this work'.)

- Disabling of logic, and destruction of will and volition, by organized 'mindfuck' games which nobody can win. (In some trainings, not a single exercise was completed successfully, and not a single game was won. I guess
the subliminal message was: 'You cannot win.')

- Creation of confusion and thus compliance, by recurring mixed messages. For example: M makes mistakes/M can't be challenged; claim your territory/obey the master; if the food is no good, don't hesitate to tell the kitchen/don't criticise others, or be 'political'.

- The inhibition of independent action by the ratcheting up of fear and of paranoia. (Every participant could become the object of severe criticism, could be expelled from the group, or could even be responsible for the cancellation of the entire training, at any time.)

- Revival of the old 1970s fears in 1990s form: exclusion from the perfect world of Knowledge, from the group's approval, and from the Master's blessing. ('Cult members are systematically programmed with phobias so they
will be in terrible fear of leaving the cult. They are enslaved by this mind control technique in thinking that there is no other way for them to grow.' Ilona Cuddy, mental health degree masters project.)

- Recurrent use of what cult psychologists call 'the cult of confession' to undermine the credibility of individuals acting outside of the master's command. (The trainings began with a round of confessions, accompanied by hysterical crying, a dramatic collapse or two, and claims of absolute, total unworthiness. Interestingly, confession had not been called for by M at this stage: premies had merely been asked to say what they expected and hoped to learn from the training, and what they thought would be the most difficult aspect of it. Yet out came the confessions of unworthiness and shame. This undoubtedly says something about the psychological climate within the wonderful world of Knowledge! In another session, participants had to confess what their 'buckets' contained. People interpreted this to mean, 'What are my faults?' The hyper-critical self-descriptions came tumbling out: anger, fear, haste, hate, judgement, envy - and so on. More tears, more wailing.)

- Closed circuits of logic were dusted off and re-presented for the group's approval. (To put it at its crudest: 'We know Maharaji/the Communist Party is the unchallengeable source of truth, because they most purely represents that truth. We know they most purely represent that truth because they have often told us this. We know that they are speaking the truth on this matter because they are the unchallengeable source of truth.')

- Premies' sense of powerlessness and dependence was entrenched, partly - and bewilderingly - via a set of complex and demanding training rules which participants were led to believe that they created, but which were actually insinuated into the process by the trainers.

- Fear and praise were alternated to implement the above and other dynamics. (E.g. two trainers would play good cop/bad cop.)

- People's time was 100% occupied with pointless tasks - long, circular meetings; unwinnable games - to obviate thinking and analysis, especially about the high levels of mind control in evidence.

- In some trainings, long hours were employed to break down resistance to thought reform. In others, participants were blindfolded for long periods, to sow confusion and emphasise powerlessness.

- Acceptance of the amorality and immorality of M's world were further entrenched. E.g. in one training, M said: 'If the team decides it's dark outside, and you look out and see that it's light, IT IS DARK OUTSIDE!'

- Diminishing of individual discernment - and of individuality - by giving exaggerated value to the 'team'. One whole exercise was directed to getting individuals to 'merge with the team'. If that was the individual's goal, what was the team's? It was, of course, to realise Maharaji's desires. Thus the team dynamic was a kind of front for implanting Maharaji's control.

- Entrenching of top-down hierarchical structure, and unquestioning obedience. E.g. M said, 'If a manager tells you to dig a hole immediately above a buried electrical cable, the only thing you are to say is, 'How deep?!'

- Demands for devotion were escalated. (E.g. one premie was quizzed on why he spent his days in his high-profile job and ONLY his evenings, when he was tired, doing service for M.)

- A system of rewards and punishments was instituted in ways that undermined trust among members, but increased emotional dependence on Maharaji. And in which no-one ever wins. (There is a broader, analogous pattern of competition between PAMs for M's approval - a pattern M has profitably maintained for 30 years - in which no-one ever 'wins'. No-one ever gets to be Arjuna - he makes sure of it. The trainings utilize the same 'rewards and punishments' model - though it's an intensified version of it. In essence, the trainings aimed to take cult psychological manipulation to the highest level that people will tolerate, and not begin to smell rats.)

The trainings more than fulfilled cult author Steve Hassan's 'four criteria for cult mind control':

(1) They had strict rules of behaviour. (Indeed one whole session was on 'What are you going to do to follow the rules?' M stated 'the whole purpose of the training is to follow the rules'.)

(2) They employed thought control. (Thoughts expressing individuality or challenging M were violently criticised; others such as 'Are we being manipulated?' or 'Is M wrong?' were off the agenda altogether.)

(3) They employed emotional control. (Provoking M's anger - which happened almost daily - threw participants back into childhood emotional states; guilt and shame were employed repeatedly; and the group was frequently divided against individuals or sub-groups.)

(4) Finally, the trainings restricted the flow of information to members. (E.g. participants were led to believe that they themselves invented the training rules, whereas in fact they were predetermined by M, and insinuated into proceedings via an apparently 'democratic' process. Also many of the group votes, and some of M's temper outbursts, were pre-scripted. Those secretly approached to catalyse events such as the expulsion of the scapegoat were told not to tell others about this.)

The trainings were run by psychologists, and other professionals.

The 'team' dynamic which dominated the trainings was not about democracy, as the word 'team' might suggest, but was actually a mechanism for reinforcing Maharaji's authority. I would not characterize this as another deception, though, because it was made pretty clear from the beginning that M alone stood outside the team - not only its membership but its ethics - and the take-home, whole-of-life, bottom-line message that was driven home on the last day - the rule of all rules - was simply 'Maharaji'.

It was a powerful bit of final programming that left no-one in any doubt as to the focus of the training, and the expected future orientation of its participants.

As I said above, the chief psychological weapon of the trainings was the mixed message - of which Maharaji is a master:

If you don't like Knowledge, walk!
If you stop practising this Knowledge, you 'll go rotten inside.

I make mistakes.
How dare you criticise me!

Claim your territory.
Follow the master.

Trust yourself.
Trust the master.

Speak your mind when you see problems.
Don't criticise, and don't be political.

Are the tapes running? I am not God!
I have come to the world with full powers.

Everything is within you.
Everything is within Guru Maharaji.

The mixed message is (IMO) a double-barrelled shotgun which has blown away even some of the cleverest of minds, because it is installed at a level where intellect does not operate. Whether this is at the level of the God archetype, the sub-conscious, or whatever, depends on your psychological viewpoint.

The mixed message is a powerful thing. Typically, one half of it empowers and expands, the other half intimidates and reduces; one half provokes love, the other half fear; one half liberates, the other half enslaves.

People are powerfully hooked by both elements of the mixed message: everyone wants to feel free, but we also want to obey a legitimate authority. (Especially if we believe that authority to be God, or God's representative.)

Above all, the mixed message strategically confuses.

We are 'freed' by Knowledge, but we find ourselves subjugated to the person who gives us Knowledge.

At the surface level, a very reasonable explanation is put forward: that person to whom you are now subjugated is the ocean of compassion, and is thus the one person you can trust in this life. Unlike other people - employers, friends, family: all of whom let us down eventually - he has our best interests at heart, and will never let us down.

It would be pathological to be subjugated to any other person. But to be subjugated to this person is acceptable, because he is the one person who will not abuse this status.

Trusting souls that we are, most of us took many years to dig below this logic. Because it brought us great comfort, we bought the surface explanation. This allowed the freedom/slavery contradiction to disappear below consciousness, where it long troubled us in strange and unpredictable ways. Some of these 'ways' include the sapping of will or ambition, an inability to promote or even explain Maharaji to outsiders, ethical lapses we would not normally be prey to, clinging to 'safe' channels of thought, and an almost wilful failure to follow 'risky' trains of thought through to their logical conclusions.

The standard premie defence against criticism - I've heard it a lot lately - is 'I'm just having a nice experience inside - what's cultish about that? That's what this whole thing's all about.'

I usually point out that this whole thing is only partly about that: the second half is about embracing Maharaji as your master. It's about following his guidelines, obeying him implicitly, and it's about never criticising him. That is, it's about putting him above the requirements we apply to all other human beings.

Thus the first half of the M/K equation is about feeling good, freedom, personal liberation, and so on. The second half, however, is about obedience, never criticising, and following somebody else's agenda. The entire Maharaji/Knowledge paradigm is founded on a mixed message.

Thus the premie's world is founded upon a dichotomy - a dichotomy which usefully enough) helps to disable both thought and volition.

Has Maharaji worked all this out? I doubt it. Masters like him - and there are many - intuitively know how to place their cards: when to raise the eyebrow, or voice, or standards, or stakes, to make people do their bidding, or part with funds. When things don't work, he simply adjusts to something that does. I doubt if he's thought through the mechanics of it any more than I had till recently.

The trainings being an intensified form of the M/K paradigm, the mixed message was naturally intensified within them. One need look no further than some of the training rules - 10 seconds, conscious, respect, confidentiality, honesty, unanimous - to see this:

No-one was allowed to talk for more than 10 seconds without permission - though this didn't apply to Maharaji.

Participants had to be 'conscious'. Yet all participants remained profoundly unconscious of the manipulation to which they were being subjected - and even of how the training was constructed.

Participants had to be extremely respectful of each other. Yet this rule did not apply to Maharaji, who frequently unleashed obscenities at those who angered him, or at the whole room.

Confidentiality was emphasised over and over, as a way of creating a 'safe' environment for participants. Yet the trainings were emotionally unsafe in the extreme - as evidenced by the fear and hysteria frequently expressed. The likely real role of instilling confidentiality - to keep information about M from outsiders - was never divulged. (I guess it was confidential.)

Honesty was urged on participants. Yet neither M nor the trainers were honest with participants as to the real purpose and modus operandi of the trainings.

Decisions had to be unanimous. Unless Maharaji disagreed with them.

The ostensible purpose of the trainings was to instil teamwork - to convert EV from a hierarchical model to a team model. And there seemed to be a genuine attempt to do this at times. Yet the take-home message was extremely hierarchical: Maharaji is the Boss. Anyone who showed signs of disagreement with that was publicly shredded.

There were sincere if muddled attempts to practise the teamwork model in the year after the trainings. However the wheels duly fell off: no-one could ever quite make it work. This was for the same reason that the wheels have fallen off every premie enterprise - including the original one, of lasting happiness: mixed messages don't take root.

It's within me, but I kiss Maharaji's feet. I'm free, but I'm a servant. I contain the source of all wisdom - yet he is the real source of all wisdom. On the conscious level, we were pretty good at rationalising such contradictions. But on the levels which are important, where people secretly and quietly grow, the psyche can't make any sense of such messages. Plants won't mature if you pour on nitrogen and herbicide at the same time.

My notes from the training make scary reading, now that (two years later) I've deconstructed the experience. I noted down various people's statements, motions and amendments throughout the week - for example:

I propose that we all apologise to Maharaji. (This was a popular one, given that the thing was set up so no-one could do a thing right.)

I take personal responsibility for failing the rules and the team. I wish to re-commit to the rules and the team.

I accept responsibility for the team's failure. I apologise. I will follow the rules.

I propose we renew our commitment to the team and the rules.

You get the picture.

Some premie readers will find the comparison with Chinese-style 're-education' offensive. However I suspect that those who actually attended trainings will be slower to take offence. I don't know one of these people who doesn't have lingering doubts.

To really identify these doubts - to drag them out into the daylight - would necessitate entering the mental no-go area wherein Maharaji's behaviour is evaluated like anybody else's. It's a place to which many are not yet prepared to go.

Who knows? This may have been one purpose of another of the training's rules: no dark thoughts.

Maybe a description of the darker side of the trainings will bring some better definition to this process. (You thought you'd already read the dark stuff, right?)

The Scapegoat:

The ritual humiliation, victimisation and frequently the expulsion of the designated 'black sheep' in some (but not all) trainings has left even some of the staunchest premies with dark thoughts.

This scapegoat would be picked on the basis a minuscule personal sin, which was then magnified out of proportion by M. S/he would be verbally humiliated by Maharaji at some length.

Most premies are basically nice people. Thus the group - often around 80 people - would not want to hurt the scapegoat by supporting M's abuse, but would not want to offend M either. So everyone would listen to the voluble obscenities in silence - many weeping.

Everybody realized that there but for a throw of the dice were they: the scapegoat was picked because s/he was a personality who would absorb humiliation, not because of anything s/he had done wrong.

Eventually Maharaji's anger at the scapegoat would prevail in the room. After much equivocation and many attempts at compromise, finally someone would stand up and move the motion that everybody had been dreading: the motion to expel the scapegoat from the training, and cast him or her into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The motion would be duly carried by a shamefaced but intimidated group. The scapegoat would be sent out of the room permanently - everybody avoiding his gaze as he left.

After the expulsion from Paradise, the scapegoat was to be seen sitting alone and unloved around the campfires, silent and morose, like a recently disembodied spirit unsure of whether he was alive or dead. I tried to talk to the scapegoat from my group one night: he was unable to talk.

To make it worse, this 'spontaneous' collective scenario was a set-up:

Typically around Day 3, a suitable candidate would be taken aside during at dinner, and told that something 'really serious' was going to happen next day - that someone was going to 'take a fall' in order 'to bring the loyalty issue to a head'. And that s/he would be a suitable person to get up at that juncture and organise an apology to Maharaji, and move the scapegoat's expulsion. (Naturally the word 'scapegoat' wasn't used.)

Sure enough, at one stage during the next day's session, a member of the group would make the mistake M had been waiting for - and all hell would break loose.

After a protracted period in which the group failed to expel the member - which they were clearly required to do - the pre-chosen person would stand up and say: 'I move that ________ be expelled from the training.'

And so he was.

(Incidentally, the person so expelled in my training was subsequently flown to the Delhi training free of charge, on Maharaji's instructions: M is a tyrant/M is compassionate!)

I suspect that pre-chosen people were also employed for other crucial tasks, such as the Ritual Humiliation of the Dissenter, and the Begging for Forgiveness Ritual.

During one training, an attendee begged to differ with M on a particular point. Maharaji screamed that it didn't 'matter so much as a fart what you think!' After some more generalised screaming, he stormed out of the room.

When the wailing and gnashing of teeth stopped (that's not poetic licence this time), a (pre-selected?) person would step forward, and propose that a group apology be devised. There would then be endless argument and discussion and voting re the wording: this could literally go on for two hours because of the requirement for unanimity on every word. Finally a card would be drawn up, and signed by all.

The card would bear such wording as 'We are truly, deeply sorry', 'We apologise from the bottom of our hearts' and 'We wholeheartedly beg your forgiveness'. (The word 'pathetic' barely begins to describe these rituals.)

The card would then be sent to Maharaji, who would - after an appropriately suspenseful interim - reappear at the training, and gravely compliment the group on 'finally learning something'.

Anyway, what was the upshot of all this nonsense?

1. As a result of the trainings, there was a rush of 'trainees' to the doorsteps of physical and even psychological therapists. Several attendees quit Knowledge altogether.

2. Since the trainings tuned everyone up for 'greater and more focused participation', nearly the entire global community has 'stepped back' from doing service.

3. Back at Amaroo, because of the trainings' overwhelming emphasis on 'confidentiality', team meetings became covert operations.

4. Other than for the all-pervasive secrecy, and whilst teams do exist, the actual teamwork mechanisms instilled by the trainings are now widely viewed as unworkable.

Ultimately, the trainings were not at all about learning things like 'respect' and 'consciousness', as the training rules suggested. If they were, Maharaji himself would have been frogmarched out the door in the first hour. Nor were they about learning the techniques and approaches inherent in the exercises: most of these are now passe in the corporate world from which they derive.

The trainings were about re-learning and reinforcing deep psychological attitudes of gratitude and subservience to an omnipotent father figure, whom many of us encountered in our impressionable teens or early twenties. Basically, they were a mid-life re-boot.

For the founders of ex-premie.org (who deserve all the praise that comes their way) here is what a long-term insider, and a participant of two trainings, says:

'I have no doubt that the fanatical insistence on confidentiality which the trainings instilled - absolutely everything thereafter was 'on a need-to-know basis' - was to stem the flow of information to ex-premie.org. So all of that mindfuck was about Maharaji getting scared of the information being gained by the ex-premie website.'

So, that's all on the trainings.

Whilst I'm fairly confident that everything of a factual nature in these posts can be supported, I doubt there is any final 'truth' in the psychological realm. I put all that out there for what it's worth. For me, the real 'truth' lies in just being able to think it and say it.

Posts like this one are often initially seen by premies as 'the product of a bitter, twisted mind', a 'wild distortion of Maharaji's work', 'vengeful, malicious fiction', etc, etc. Hate, rage and personal attacks (shooting the messenger) are very much to be expected. (I gather we've seen some of it here lately.)

In my experience, all this generally continues until one has had the chance to sit down and discuss the subject one-to-one. On these occasions - when real communication can happen - the hostility gradually melts away, concessions are made, and in some cases the exiting process begins.

So I only regard this stuff as 'information' - useful to back up statements, and so on - but somewhat less useful than personal contact when it comes to changing premies' ideas, which are deeper-entrenched than any of us could have imagined.
The post I'd really like to write - if I knew how - is what caused us to have the experiences we had? I had some extraordinary experiences in meditation - which I'm fairly satisfied can be attributed to some rather complex brain chemistry.

But I also had some extraordinary experiences around Maharaji - and equally extraordinary ones around Bal Bhagwan Ji. Others have entered sublime states of consciousness around Mata Ji, Rasputin and Adolf Hitler. What causes this stuff? I've got a few superficial answers - e.g. projection - but they don't really satisfy me. Maharaji's cognac intake is all very interesting, but to me this is the real nub of the matter. After three decades - all thoughts are welcome.

Best wishes to all,
John

PS: These posts seem to be circulating through the premie community somewhat. Those premies who wish to discover more about their master and his activities might have a look at www.ex-premie.org

The Jagdeo Issue

The cult protects a paedophile

The most disturbing issue to be raised on the Ex-premie forum was that of Mahatma Jagdeo. What began as two small references to child abuse, committed by this man, became a big issue, partly because of the cult's response to the initial allegations. This is illustrated in the section containing correspondence with the cult..

This a picture of Mahatma Jagdeo, who sexually abused and raped childrenwhile working for Maharaji. The webmaster of this site believes that Maharaji has known about this for many years and yet did nothing to bring him to justice, or to keep him away from children, or to warn parents. Read the webmaster's personal view here. Even after victims recounted their ordeals publicly, Maharaji's and Elan Vital's actions and inaction have been inadequate and shameful.

Although no one has explicitly said so, the webmaster of this site believes that Maharaji's representatives have reached a settlement with one of Jagdeo's victims. Hidden on their website, Elan Vital are finally, but clearly reluctantly, inviting other victims to come forward. To further publicise Elan Vital's invitation, it is repeated here

POLICY AGAINST HARASSMENT Elan Vital has a strict policy against sexual harassment or other forms of sexual misconduct. If you have been subjected to any form of sexual harassment or abuse by anyone associated or formerly associated with Elan Vital or other similar organizations, please contact Elan Vital's General Manager at P.O. Box 6130, Malibu, California, 90264-6130 or at generalmanager@elanvital.org. Complaints will be responded to promptly and treated seriously.

Anyone who is considering writing to Elan Vital and needs further advice is welcome to write in the first instance to the webmaster of this site at epowebmaster@yahoo.co.uk.

Mahatma Jagdeo

Mahatma Jagdeo was a full-time official in Divine Light Mission for many years. He has known the cult leader, Maharaji since he was a small boy.

Reports of Jagdeo sexually abusing children first appeared on the Internet in 1998. Two of his victims, 'A' (who wishes to be anonymous) and Susan, have since given harrowing accounts of his crimes. Although there are several accounts of his offences being reported to senior people in Maharaji's organisation, he was allowed to continue in his full-time role for years.

Since the story became public, Elan Vital first tried to disassociate themselves from Jagdeo by saying they had nothing to do with the old 'Divine Light Mission'; who employed Jagdeo. When this was shown to be untrue they changed tactics and tried to play the matter down, while attempting to appear sympathetic to the victims. Elan Vital (USA) then issued a press release saying that DUO, Maharaji's organisation in India, had issued a civil writ against Jagdeo. At the same time, however, they issued a background statement attacking the victims!

Maharaji has been publicly silent on the issue throughout.

According to recently disenchanted followers, Jagdeo continued as an official and representative up until the mid 1990s. Jagdeo has been reported to the police in the UK, and the British Sunday Express almost ran a story on him. It was dropped at the last minute, around the time one of Britains best paid journalists, Maharaji devotee, Jonathan Cainer dumped his old paper, the Daily Mail, and went to work for them.

Two victims of Jagdeo, 'A' and Susan, have come forward and given accounts of his crimes. There are also other disturbing reports from victims who wish to remain anonymous.

In the 1970s, cult schools were opened, in England and the USA. 'A' and her family were part of Unity School UK. After the school closed, in 1975, the cult retained the property, an old Manor House in Cornwall.

During this period Mahatma Jagdeo visited the house and, under the pretence of teaching 'A' to meditate, raped her. Over twenty years later, her father, who had already reported the incident to another cult official, Mahatama Gurucharanand, told Anthony Ginn, a former teacher at Unity School about the incident.

Anthony subsequently got in touch with 'A', and then reported Jagdeo to the police in Cornwall, where the crime took place. He also corresponded with the cult about the incident and posts on the forum as AJW.

Around the same time 'A''s story came to light, a second incident of abuse was reported from California, by another victim, Susan.

Susan is an ex premie who currently lives in California, USA. She was a premie from 1975 (at age 13) and began the process of exiting the cult when she was 17 years old. When she was 15 years old she had a disturbing encounter with Mahatma Jagdeo. The details of what happened to Susan and her subsequent reporting of Jagdeo to DLM and EV officials are described below. Susan became aware from another victim in 1977 that Jagdeo had molested several girls in the Miami community between the ages of 8-12. She did not only report the incident that happened to her, but the even more serious molestation that had happened to the children of premies in the Miami community.

Susan's story is published here, along with her correspondance with the cult.

Mahatma Jagdeo was a full-time official in Divine Light Mission for many years. He has known the cult leader, Maharaji since he was a small boy.

Reports of Jagdeo sexually abusing children first appeared on the Internet in 1998. Two of his victims, 'A' (who now wishes to be anonymous) and Susan, have since given harrowing accounts of his crimes. Although there are several accounts of his offences being reported to senior people in Maharaji's organisation, he was allowed to continue in his full-time role for years.

Since the story became public, Elan Vital first tried to disassociate themselves from Jagdeo by saying they had nothing to do with the old 'Divine Light Mission'; who employed Jagdeo. When this was shown to be untrue they changed tactics and tried to play the matter down, while attempting to appear sympathetic to the victims. Elan Vital (USA) then issued a press release saying that DUO, Maharaji's organisation in India, had issued a civil writ against Jagdeo. At the same time, however, they issued a background statement attacking the victims!

Maharaji has been publicly silent on the issue throughout.

According to recently disenchanted followers, Jagdeo continued as an official and representative up until the mid 1990s. Jagdeo has been reported to the police in the UK, and the British Sunday Express almost ran a story on him. It was dropped at the last minute, around the time Britains best paid journalist, and Maharaji devotee, Jonathan Cainer dumped his old paper, the Daily Mail, and offered to work for them.

Jagdeo now lives a life of ease

Posted on forum V, on November 26, 2000

From Kelly

I have spent some time in the Delhi ashram in the past few years. Jagdeo (aka Mahatma ji) lives a quiet privileged life, waited on hand and foot by sweet humble young Indian premies, who put up with his incessant demands for attention and pander to his every whim. He is obsessed wih keeping a good supply of bottled water in his room, he has boxes and boxes. Not for him the regular ashram tap water. He must be too pure!

On several occasions I have seen ordinary premies touch his feet.

Personally the only thing I have against him is the very loud and intrusive way he has of clearing his throat and sinus passages. He is also very fond of his food and usually the first to every meal.

Sure, he always sits with the other Mahatmas at events, or did when there were Mahatmas. I don't know what they are called now I have not been there in the last year.

From Susan

That is really disgusting that he is still living a life in which he is revered.

Do you recall if there were ever any kids at this ashram? I really hope that at the very least they are at least keeping children away from him.

The way you describe it, if premies are touching his feet and waiting on him hand and foot, they probably would be just as honored now in India if he wanted to spend time with their children as the premie parents were in US and England when he wanted to spend time with theirs. This is truly appalling.

The women who were once the children of Divine Light Mission wish to thank everyone who has been so supportive of their telling the difficult truth about Mahatma Jagdeo. All these years later, to have the truth acknowledged, and to have people care, it is still very healing for those who were victimized both by this predator and by those who seek to cover up the fact that Jagdeo was reported, on at least two continents, in the 1970's and early eighties.

Susan and 'A' especially wish to ask the help of anyone who may know more facts about this situation. They both know other victims of Jagdeo who do not wish to speak out and these wishes are respected. But anyone who knows anything about other incidents of abuse by Jagdeo or is aware of evidence to corroborate the fact that they reported this man in the 70's and 80's is encouraged to come forward. Of course, being ex premies, we know that the prospect of telling the truth about this is frightening. But as the years pass, if no one tells it, Jagdeo, and those that are willing to protect him in order to protect their "Master" stand a greater chance of never being held accountable for what happened to the children who were unfortunate enough to cross paths with Jagdeo.

Please write epowebmaster@yahoo.co.uk.

Corresponding with the cult about Jagdeo

Forum posts from AJW

Hi,

I had some private correspondance with Glen Whittaker, organiser of Elan Vital in the UK, about Mahatma Jagdeo's paedophile activities, involving children who were in my care, as a schoolteacher, some years ago.

This correspondance came into the public arena with the first letter from Elan Vital, retyped below.

Elan Vital seem extremely paranoid about the attention being given to this matter on the forum. Jagdeo has been reported to the Police, and the British press have been interested in the story for some weeks, increasing their fears that this matter may somehow reflect on the cult and its master.

The two letters from Elan Vital, and my reply to the first letter, have already been published on the forum, but I thought I'd put all four up together, so they can be read in context.

Anth the Archivist

FIRST LETTER FROM ELAN VITAL

26 August 1999

Dear Anth,

I've noticed that you've made allegations about Mahatma Jagdeo, on the ex-premie.org website. These allegations are that he was involved in paedophilic activities.

You will recall that when you raised the matter with me privately in the early part of the year, my response was that I knew of no evidence to substantiate the claim or even to suspect that it was true. I am of course concerned that the allegations and your strength of belief being such that you have made this allegation publicly. As a result of this, I have conducted some enquiry but can find no evidence to substantiate the allegation, including any record of any contemporaneous or later complaint made by the alleged victim.

Allegations of this nature are of course extremely damaging. If untrue, they may destroy the life and reputation of an old man and of course may also cause damage to any victims of the alleged acts who might rather put the matter behind them or have it approached more discretely.

If however the allegations are true we would of course deplore any such activity and agree they should be exposed. If you have any further information which would assist an inquiry let me have that information as we would wish to pursue the matter with appropriate discretion as so as to cause least further distress to the alleged victim.

I should make it absolutely clear that Elan Vital was not aware of the allegations until you raised them recently, which raises the question of why you waited so may years before making them, and did not and would not approve of or condone such appalling behaviour.

Please take care that any publication on the internet or implication that Elan Vital or Maharaji knew of, approved of or condoned any such paedophile behaviour would be false and very damaging. We would have no option but to take legal advice.

Yours sincerely,

Glen Whittaker.

Anth's Reply

Hi Glen,

In response to your letter of 26th August, 99, I did indeed make allegations on the ex-premie website, last year, on November 1st, in my 'Journey', based on communication with a parent and ex pupil of Unity School, earlier that year. I'm sure you remember when my story appeared on the Internet, as you wrote to me about it soon afterwards. (I'm not sure if by reminding you of this, you'll have to take legal advice, but what the hell.)

In your letter you mentioned that you conducted some enquiry. I'd be interested to know what form this took. You knew that the alleged offence took place at Unity School 74/75, as this information was in what I'd published in November. Did you ask anyone who was at Unity School at that time about what happened? If so, who? Both Dot and I were there, why didn't you ask either of us? It doesn't sound like a very thorough enquiry to me Glen. Do you even know the names of his 'alleged' victims.(there is more than one).

You say that allegations of this nature are extremely damaging. They are only damaging if they are untrue. Sexual abuse of young children is extremely damaging, and allegations of such acts, if true, are the first step in healing the damage done.

You also say if the allegations are untrue, they may destroy the life and reputation of an old man and may cause damage to any victims who might rather put the matter behind them or have it approached more discreetly. Surely Glen, if the allegations are untrue, how can 'not putting the matter behind them' cause distress, if nothing actually happened.

I do have further information that will assist an enquiry Glen. There are reports on the Ex-premie website of offences commited by Jagdeo in the United States, in the Journey's section, in the Journey by Gs mom. You should read it.

More detailed information about the crimes and the victims have been given to the Police, who've probably contacted you by now.

I've been in close communication with both victims, at every stage since this affair floated to the surface of the pool. I can assure you that they are both extremely glad that things have finally been taken seriously and been brought out into the open.

You say that Elan Vital wasn't aware of these 'alleged offences' until recently, and then hint at legal action if I disagree. If you read G's mom's Journey, on Ex-Premie.org you'll see she told two instructors, both close to Maharaji, who have both since been named on the Internet. The instructors were Randy Prouty and Judy Osborne, both of whom I know, respect and like. I'm quite sure they would have passed the information on.

You say you'd like to pursue the matter, you could start by asking Randy and Judy what happened, who they told and what the response was. You could also make an announcement through your organisation, worldwide, that any possible victims, or parents of children may have been sexually abused by Mahatma Jagdeo should contact you. You could then pass this information to the police.

The reason I did nothing for 25 years Glen, was because I didn't know about it until last year. As you've noticed, I've now done something.

So, I guess you'd better go and get some legal advice.

Anth the Whistle Blower

SECOND LETTER FROM ELAN VITAL

5th September 1999

Dear Anth,

Thank you for your response. Although you did not, as I requested, provide information on the name(s) of the alleged victims, or any details of the alleged offences, your news that any information is now in the hands of the police is very welcome. If we can assist them in any way we shall be happy to do so, and it would help to know details of whom the allegation has been reported to. On our part, we are also seeking advice from the relevant authorities in the field to ensure appropriate actions are taken.

I assure you Anth, we have researched extensively by asking people in this organisation and in the American Elan Vital about these allegations, but so far no-one, including people you mention, has any recollection of them. This is not to suggest that the alleged incidents did not take place.

Despite what you may believe, the sole aim of Elan Vital is to promote an inner experience of peace and an enrichment of the experience of what it means to be alive.

I would like to re-iterate that your allegations are as upsetting to us as they are to you and should the alleged victim in the case you speak of come forward we will offer her all the help we can in co-operation with the relevant authorities.

Yours, sincerely,

Glen Whittaker.

Anth's Reply

Hi Glen,

Looks like you've been to see your lawyers. You requested the names of Jagdeo's victims. I didn't give them to you and I have no intention of giving them to you. I'll try to explain why.

Imagine, as an 8 or 9 year old child, you are taken to live in a place run by a religious cult. Or maybe you're a 14-year-old teenager who's become interested in meditation or something, and you start going along to cult meetings. Whatever, you end up being sexually abused by a full time representative of that cult.

Imagine, in the case of 'g-mom', after you've been abused, you report it to another full time cult official ('mahatma' or 'instructor' or 'initiator', whatever the current jargon was) in the case of 'g-mom', this person was from her home town and knew her personally. You ask him to tell your master. You meet him later and he tells you the master was informed. The instructor who assaulted you is still at large, so you tell another instructor. She gets back to you a week later, and tells you, 'Yes, the master knew already and was glad that this was not a new episode'. Or maybe in the case of the 9 year old, her parent tells yet another 'mahatma', and aquaintance of the master, and nothing ever gets back to them either.

The years roll by. November 98, I publish allegations about Jagdeo on the Internet. (I wasn't the first.) August 99, Jagdeo is reported to the police, the press get interested. , Lo and behold, the two 'instructors' 'can't remember' anything that they were told, can't remember telling Maharaji, and can't remember telling the victim what they'd done. Not only that, the cult are suddenly concerned and want the victim's names.

(And didn't you or Heather tell the 'Express' that Elan Vital was nothing to do with Divine Light Mission?)

Forget it Glen. They've lost faith in you. Your main aim seems to be keeping your master out of this. Their experience tells them the cult cares little for the victims of child abuse.

If you're really concerned about sorting this mess out, and, as you say, assisting the Police, you could start by telling them where Jagdeo is living. Is he still in the ashram in India? Is he still a Mahatma? Is he still a 'premie'. Does he still do special 'children's knowledge sessions' ? Does he still have access to children.? Do the Police in India know about his pedophiliac activities?

Your third paragraph is interesting Glen. You say, 'The sole aim of Elan Vital is to promote an inner experience of peace and an enrichment of the experience of what it means to be alive.' Hmmmmn, haven't you missed a bit out there, about the teachings of Maharaji or something, that justifies the personality cult that surrounds him? He's the one who gives you this 'experience of what it means to be alive', and 'inner peace', through his teachings, right?

You say in your last paragraph, how disturbing the allegations are, and if the 'alleged victim' comes forward (there are serious allegations of offences against at least three young girls), you will offer her all the help you can, with the co-operation with the authorities. I've already explained why they don't want to talk to you, but are happy to talk to the Police.

Whether Maharaji knew about Jagdeo's pedophilic activities or not was never an issue with me. You're the one who brought that up.

I'm not 'Anti Maharaji'. Now I no longer worship him, as a fellow human being I have sympathy for his plight and I hope he sorts himself out one day. He's a cult victim too, and I hold no personal animosity towards him whatsoever.

Yours truly,

Anth the Unruly

Another response regarding Jagdeo, correspondence between

Michael Dettmers and Terry Yingling (For the EV PR Team - USA)

Michael Dettmers wrote:

You may recall that awhile back I was "warned" not to continue posting negative information about M by an anonymous premie who called himself Bill M. I responded by basically telling him to fuck off.

Terry Yingling sent me an e-mail assuring me that the threat had not come from Elan Vital or Maharaji. She also added a comment on how EV handled the Jagdeo situation and why they thought it was the correct course of action. In my response, I strongly disagreed.

Since this was an official response from EV regarding Jagdeo, I thought you might want to include it as part of the post you just made, including my response. In any case, here it is:

I received the following e-mail from Terry Yingling, a member of the Elan Vital PR Team in response to my "I've been warned" posting on the Ex-premie Forum on October 15, 2000. My response follows.

October 19, 2000
Attn: Mr Michael Dettmers
Dear Michael

It has come to Elan Vital's attention from your recent posting that you have been the object of a threat. From what you appear to be saying, you are assuming the threat came from someone representing Elan Vital or Maharaji in some way. Though I feel saddened that it has come to a point where you could think this, I would like to assure you that the message that you received does not come from Elan Vital or Maharaji nor would it comply with any policies of either of them.

For some years now, Elan Vital, Maharaji, his family and the many people who choose to listen to Maharaji's teaching have been attacked by various web sites but have not, do not and will not engage in like behavior.

Everyone has the right to his or her own opinion, and if you wish to post on this forum, that is your choice and prerogative. Neither Maharaji nor Elan Vital would ever endorse harassments or threats of any kind. Maharaji has repeatedly expressed his wish for all people to grow in their lives, either with or without knowledge.

We would like to take the opportunity to clarify some of your statements regarding the Jagdeo situation.

Elan Vital did take Susan Haupt's assertions very seriously and did take action. It was largely through your efforts that Ms. Haupt brought her complaint directly to us. We offered to meet with her in an effort to help her and we asked what else she wanted Elan Vital to do regarding the Jagdeo matter. As her representative you informed us that she only wanted to be heard and did not wish to take the matter further.

When the Mahatmas in India were released, each of them was asked if he or she had done anything wrong that they needed to account for. Jagdeo's response was negative (which may or may not be true). The person who interviewed Jagdeo, following the allegations made on the Internet, was the person who is responsible for the organization in India and the appropriate person to do so. This is different from when you were involved. Jagdeo was informed that if there were any truth to the allegations against him, he would face the legal consequences of his actions.

We believe it is important for us to bring the above directly to your attention.

Sincerely

Terry Yingling
For the Elan Vital PR Team

Michael's reply

Dear Terry,

Thank you for your e-mail response to my "I've been warned" posting on the Ex-premie Forum on October 15, 2000.

In your response, you interpret my assertion that, "I have received my first warning, no make that "threat", from the pro-Maharaji camp" to mean that I am equating the "pro-Maharaji camp" with Élan Vital and/or Maharaji. While I can understand that you and others may have come to such a conclusion, I did not. In fact, I would have been very surprised if it came from Élan Vital and/or Maharaji if for no other reason than some of the specific threats that were made would be at odds with the terms of my contractual agreement.

By "pro-Maharaji camp" I was simply referring to those cult members who still feel that it is their responsibility to defend their Lord from attack at all costs - Fakiranand style. Of course, such a warning would never have come from Élan Vital because, as you point out in you FAQ's, Maharaji isn't running a cult, nor is he anyone's Lord, at least not any more. Obviously, Bill M has not yet come to grips with Maharaji's re-interpretation of the past.

Terry, I do not question your sincerity. However, I do believe you are being duped and used in much the same way Bill Clinton deceived those who were around him into believing that he was telling the truth when he denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinski. Based on his denial, Clinton's supporters, press secretary, and PR people strongly defended the President when he was under attack on this issue. When he finally confessed to the truth, they were justifiably angry and disgusted at being deceived and used to perpetuate his lies. I believe your situation is similar to their's. Let me give you but one example of what I am talking about.

In your FAQ "What were some of the changes made by Élan Vital?" you state that Maharaji "was recognized by several US cities for the significant effect his teaching was having in leading people away from the 'drug culture '. As such, ashrams worked for a while precisely because of what was going on socially in the era in which they came about." I think it is reasonable to interpret this statement to mean that the ashrams worked in the 70's because they were sheltering its residents (including me) from the dangers of the drug culture. If that is so, it is completely at odds with what was going on during that same period, night after night, in Maharaji's residence in Malibu. After Maharaji had dinner, he, and most of the residence staff, would gather in his living room to listen to music on his incredible sound system. As good and expensive as the sound system was, however, its effect was greatly enhanced by the joints that were freely passed around. Don't get me wrong, I liked getting stoned and there is nothing quite like being passed a joint that had just been toked on by the Lord. When everyone was ripped, Maharaji loved to play "Frampton Comes Alive" at full volume. To me those were great times, but please spare me the bullshit about protecting us from the drug culture. The awards Maharaji received in this regard were a joke. They were as ridiculous as Elvis Presley receiving an honorary FBI badge from Nixon.

Now, let's talk about something far more serious - the Jagdeo situation. In my opinion, you completely miss the point when you continue to put the onus on Susan to do more than what she has already done. You already had enough evidence to properly address this matter. But you did not handle it properly, and here is my reason for saying so. Without any need for your patronizing tone, I am aware that things have changed since I left. But I do not believe that Maharaji has delegated the responsibility of making instructors to anyone other than himself. Of course, the instructors may be employees of, or independently contracted, by Élan Vital, but they always have been and still are "Maharaji's" instructors. Just ask them whom they think they really work for.

You state that the person who interviewed Jagdeo was the appropriate person to do so. I strongly disagree that the person responsible for the organization in India was the appropriate person to interview Jagdeo - unless, of course, the intention was to distance Maharaji as much as possible from what was becoming a potentially dangerous situation. In my opinion, Maharaji should have put any such considerations aside. When in India, he should have confronted Jagdeo personally. And, because I have no doubt that Jagdeo is guilty of the allegations as Maharaji would surely have discovered, Maharaji should have publicly disgraced him and allowed him to face the legal consequences. Maharaji should then have made a concerted effort to track down Jagdeo's victims, personally apologized for the inexcusable actions of one of "his" mahatmas, and offered some restitution.

That's what a real leader would have done. But, of course, I forgot, Maharaji is not a leader according to your FAQ's. Well you are absolutely right on that count, but not for the reasons you cite. Maharaji is not a leader because he is a coward and a hypocrite who is totally lacking in integrity.

Michael Dettmers

The Jagdeo Issue

Correspondence with Mr Rawat

Susan and another victim were assaulted by Jagdeo in Miami in 1977.

What follows is a letter that Susan sent to Prempal Singh Rawat (Maharaji) which was delivered with the assistance of Michael Dettmers. Susan's letter was a response to a FAQ alluding to the Jagdeo situation which has since been thankfully removed from the EV website. Michael was able to send a letter to Rawat and enclosed Susan's letter. The following are copies of Susan and Michael's letters, a report of the response from EV as well as copies of letters from EV. Noticeably absent is any response, explanation or apology from Prempal Singh Rawat himself.

When Elan Vital were forced to respond publicly to statements by Susan and 'A', they again acted "innocently", claiming they didn't know the victims names and hadn't received any information from the victims.

This was despite the fact that Jagdeo had been reported to officials at least three times, and that 'A' and Susan's accounts had been published on a website that the cult's lawyers had tried to close down.

Posted on Forum V

My letter to Rawat and EV's response

From:Susan

9/11/2000

Dear all,

I took a break from posting because was in the process of responding to the Élan Vital's FAQ regarding Jagdeo, "Has Élan Vital covered up alleged past improper behavior?" Now that I have received an official response from EV, here is my report on the actions I have taken.

After much thought as to how best respond to EV's FAQ, I decided to write a letter to Rawat and try to have it delivered to him directly. I was able to accomplish this with the assistance of Michael Dettmers. Although Michael was not sure that he could succeed in getting my letter delivered directly to Rawat since he had had no contact with Rawat for at least a decade, he promised me that he would use whatever "residual influence" he may still have to see that my letter was delivered personally to Rawat by someone who has direct access to him. To that end, Michael enclosed my letter inside a personal letter he wrote to Rawat. When Rawat received Michael's letter, he did not know the purpose of Michael's communiqué nor that it contained my letter. Given EV's subsequent responses to our letters, I am confident that Rawat received my letter. What follows are copies of our letters and EV's responses.

Susan's letter to Rawat

(Susan edited the original letter to protect the privacy of another victim)

July 19, 2000

Dear Mr. Rawat,

My name is Susan Haupt. I am the person known as "Susan" who has made public on the "Ex-premie Website" my experience with Jagdeo when I was a teenager.

I am writing to you now in response to claims made on your Élan Vital website in a new section called FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). In response to the question "Has Élan Vital covered up alleged past improper behavior?" you state that "We are aware that some opposing sites make allegations in particular against one individual concerning events alleged to have happened 25 years ago. This kind of behavior, if true, is completely unacceptable to Élan Vital and we would be as appalled as anyone if this was found to be true. The only information we have comes from postings on these sites. We were able to contact two individuals who made these allegations and asked that they help shed light on what happened but as yet have received no cooperation from them. As it stands Élan Vital has still received no direct information from any of the alleged victims and to date no complaint has been filed with Élan Vital or with any authorities".

Mr. Rawat let me assure you that twice in the past I have reported what had happened to me and what I knew about Jagdeo. First to Randy Prouty and secondly to Judy Osborne who both allegedly now claim "no recollection" of the conversations I had with them. So naturally, I feel insulted that you think I am unwilling to come forward with a complaint, nor do I have any trust that Élan Vital really wishes to seriously investigate this matter. However, I still have deep concern that Jagdeo may still be molesting children, despite his advanced age, and if reporting this matter a third time might allow you to finally stop him, I shall do so.

Although I am now 38 and happily married with three children, in 1977, I was a 15-year-old premie living in Miami. I had been very involved with the Divine Light Mission for the previous two years and had received knowledge from Mahatma Jagdeo in January 1975. I was very sincere in my commitment to "Guru Maharaj Ji" and when I sang arti I believed every word. I also lined up with the other premies to receive darshan. I believed I was a part of the greatest miracle of the perfect master incarnating on earth to bring Knowledge and peace to mankind.
I point this out now because, had I not believed these things, I might have dealt with what I knew about Jagdeo differently. How I dealt with what did happen is something I regret tremendously. To understand what happened, and how it happened, one really has to recall the common premie beliefs of that time. These were beliefs that you were obviously well aware of and promoted. I went to satsang nearly every night, meditated morning and night, and attended every festival I could. I believed you were the perfect master, superior power in person, my Lord, my satguru. I believed you to be a benevolent, kind, messiah-like figure.

So in 1977, I was 15, when Jagdeo returned to Miami, I was thrilled because, as my initiator, he was special to me. He also seemed to have a special fondness for children. At my knowledge selection and session, several young girls with flowers in their hair sat at his feet. At this time in DLM, Mahatmas were treated with great respect, and certainly it was an honor for these girls to sit facing the crowd, at Mahatma Ji's feet. Everyone knew he seemed to love children. In 1977, he invited me, then 15, and another (edited for privacy) to the Venetian pool in Coral Gables. I felt honored. An ashram premie brother drove us there (I do not remember his name). While we were in the pool, Jagdeo rubbed up against me over and over. He did this especially in the caves there. But, I did not think too much about it, I thought it was accidental.

When we returned to the ashram (edited for privacy) and I were alone with him for the first time. He began singing songs and shouting "Bhole Shri Satguru Dev Maharaj Ki Jai" a lot. We would sing and cheer with him. After each song or cheer he would hug us. At first it just seemed like we were expressing joy over being premies and the fact that Guru Maharaj Ji, the living perfect master, was here and we were his devotees. But, these hugs evolved into something else. Each time he would hug us, his hands would end up on our breasts or buttocks. I would try to wiggle out of these hugs without being obviously disrespectful to him. I could not believe it was happening. I questioned my own judgment. I thought maybe in India people did not know not to touch these areas, I thought maybe Mahatma Ji was so "pure" that he did not know. But he was trembling each time he touched us. (edited for privacy here too, but this section of the letter makes it clear that I knew of worse incidents of abuse than what happened to me) also told me that the other girls at my knowledge session had experienced some level of molestation from him, as they refused to go near him and called him "nasty".
I was very upset about this and I knew that it had to end. I was certain as to the correct way to end it as well. I had to let Guru Maharaj Ji know. I did not even consider telling my mom, a non-premie, or the police. Not only did I not want to embarrass Guru Maharaj Ji by telling, I also genuinely felt that telling you about this situation was the ultimate way to find justice. I loved and trusted you completely, but you were not terribly accessible to the average premie.

I knew Randy Prouty fairly well from his days as a community coordinator in Miami in 1975. I thought highly of him and he had personal access to you. I felt that telling Randy would be the best way to let you know. So, when Randy came to Miami in 1977, I told him what had happened (edited for privacy here but I did make it clear to Randy that there was worse abuse and more victims than just myself). Randy said "You did the right thing to tell me," and that he would tell you. I trusted Randy, and Guru Maharaj Ji. I felt I had done the right thing. I was very aware that if Jagdeo did this over the span of two years to several children in Miami, that it was likely he did this wherever he went to many children. But I also felt that, in telling Randy, I was giving you the information you needed to stop him.

Later, I saw that Jagdeo seemed to be still traveling as an initiator. I even saw him in the entrance to a darshan tunnel. It was very disturbing to see a child molester as one of the people greeting people as they came in. I hoped that maybe you had a guard on him. Now, a few years later, when I thought about what I had seen, Jagdeo in the darshan line tunnel, Jagdeo at festivals, the idea that he had a 24-hour guard seemed ludicrous. I wondered if perhaps Randy had never told you as he said he had. Perhaps, he had downplayed the seriousness of it. One day I was watching a talk show and the topic was child sexual abuse and pedophiles. It was emphasized that these people never get better. Of course, I thought about Jagdeo.

At that point, I decided to tell my story again. I knew of Judy Osborne through some premie friends. I was very involved in natural childbirth education and knew Judy was Marolyn's midwife. I thought perhaps a woman, and a midwife, would understand how serious this was. I do not remember if I called her or wrote her, but somehow I got a message through to her to call me. She did, and I told her the story. I want to emphasize that I did not tell her I had ever told Randy, or anyone, about Jagdeo before. I did this because I wanted the issue presented to you again. I thought maybe with all the publicity about pedophiles, the seriousness of this situation would be recognized. Judy was very respectful and caring. I felt she did understand that this was important. She called me back about a week later and said that she told you, and that you had heard about this before, and was glad it was "not a new incident."

How did I feel? One thing I felt was guilt for not trusting Randy. Obviously, Randy had indeed relayed my story to you. I said to Judy, "Yes, I had told Randy years ago when it had happened, but I thought he must not have told you as nothing was done that I could tell." Judy seemed a little annoyed that I had not told her about telling Randy. She said, "Randy is a good guy, of course he would have told Maharaj Ji". I felt it was out of my hands. I do not know if I considered telling the police at that time. By now, I had two small children, no means of supporting myself, and a husband who worked at DECA. I also still could not imagine why you would not do something about Jagdeo, if only to protect yourself. Frankly, I still do not understand that.

Over a decade later, I was remarried and living happily in California. I had not thought much about you or premies for many years. But, when I got online and discovered the wonders of a search engine, I thought, "hmm….whatever happened to the Guru…." and I found "Ex premie org." When I relayed what had happened regarding Jagdeo, I was quickly put in touch with another victim, 'A'. 'A' lived in England when she was molested by Jagdeo much worse than I was. My worst fears about him were true; it was one thing to suspect he molested children all over the globe, now I knew it. This was very upsetting to me.

Given this background, I'm sure you will understand why I feel insulted by the statement on your website that you have contacted the two victims who refuse to speak to you. To make matters worse, Glen Whitaker's insulting letter denies that I ever reported this before when indeed I have reported it twice.

So why on earth am I writing to you now? Frankly, I have grave doubts that this letter will effect any change whatsoever. But, I do care, very much, that wherever Jagdeo is, children are in danger. I do want to do what is right and I do not trust your organization at all. Frankly, I do not trust you either. I have many bitter feelings; both about how the issue of Jagdeo was handled and about the years I spent worshipping you. Mr. Dettmers, whom I have found to be a very honorable man, states that how the matter of Jagdeo was handled was uncharacteristic of your response to other similar events of sexual misconduct among the Mahatmas. Even as a rank and file 'premie" I had heard stories which support this statement. If there is some possibility that my reporting this again will this time lead to a response which can allow me some closure on this issue, I would welcome that.
I would appreciate it if you would kindly acknowledge that you have received and read this letter. Because I have continued wariness and mistrust of your organization, I am hesitant to invite you or your representatives to call or write me directly. If you would contact Mr. Dettmers with your response I would be more comfortable with that. If you have, however, any questions about this matter, which I can answer, I certainly would consider making myself available to answer them. It would be very necessary though, if this were to occur, that I protect myself from further instances of an inability on your organization's part to remember what I have reported.

Sincerely,

Susan Haupt

Michael's cover letter to Rawat

July 25, 2000

Dear Maharaji,

I am writing to you because I believe you would want to be informed about the situation that is explained fully in the attached letter from Susan Haupt. She was prompted to write to you following a recent statement on Élan Vital's website under the heading "FAQ."

Specifically, she is writing to you about Élan Vital's response to the question, "Has Élan Vital covered up alleged past improper behavior?" She, quite correctly in my opinion, takes issue with Élan Vital's answer to that rhetorical question and wishes to make one final effort to set the record straight about a very serious allegation she has made repeatedly in the past about improper behavior by Jagdeo. She is qualified to do so because she was, at the time, a teenage victim of his sexual abuse.

Maharaji, I did not know Susan at the time the incident occurred, but I have since come to know her as a sincere person of integrity. I am confident that she is telling the truth. Her only motive in bringing this situation to your attention is to provide you with the information necessary for you to look into her allegation and take appropriate action.

I have assured Susan that it was my personal experience that, whenever Maharaji became aware of improper sexual behavior by any of his instructors, he took immediate disciplinary action. Thus, I am at a loss to explain why her previous efforts to bring this situation to your attention seem to have failed. My perplexity is compounded by Élan Vital's official response to this matter.

Nevertheless, as Élan Vital has chosen to make this matter an issue, I feel no compunction about bringing this matter to your personal attention. I am confident that you will do what is necessary to ensure that it is properly addressed.

Sincerely,

Michael Dettmers

About a week after this letter was delivered, Michael received the following fax from Marcia Leitner: ( a scanned copy of the original of Marcia Leitner's letter exists on the website)

Fax from Marcia Leitner

August 2, 2000

Dear Mr. Dettmers:

Your letter to Maharaji dated July 25, 2000 and the letter you enclosed from Susan Haupt were forwarded to the Board of Directors of Élan Vital.

I am a member of the Board of Directors of Élan Vital and I am also working with Élan Vital in the human resources area. I have been asked by Élan Vital's Board to review the issues raised in Susan's letter.

I will be contacting you next week to discuss this matter with you further.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Marcia Leitner

Marcia Leitner's phone call with Michael Dettmers

When Michael spoke to Ms. Leitner she was professional and friendly. But, some of what she had to say was very disturbing to me, though I expected it. She stated that Randy Prouty and Judy Osborne "did not recall" the conversations I relayed in my letter. She stated that Rawat "had not heard" of my reports. She added that my letter was the first official complaint EV had received by one of Jagdeo's alleged victims. They had heard of the allegations during the past year "from two other sources, but not from the alleged victims themselves", hence, their official response on their website.

She wanted Michael to assure me that Maharaji and Élan Vital do not condone the behavior I reported. She made it clear that Jagdeo is no longer serving in any capacity within Élan Vital throughout the world, that he in now in his late 70's, in poor health, and living in a village in Bihar, India.

Finally, she wanted to know if I would like to speak with her and if so, would Michael arrange it.

I considered meeting with Marcia, but ultimately I decided against this. I did not think I would gain anything by meeting with her, or any EV person, other than some satisfaction when they realized how credible what I am saying is. I did however, say that I would meet with them to answer any questions, if they have any, but this meeting would have to take place with a witness, for the obvious reason that no one can now recall the times I have reported what I knew about Jagdeo in the past.

Élan Vital's Letter to Susan

August 31, 2000

Dear Susan,

Your letter to Maharaji of July 9, 2000 was forwarded to the Board of Directors of Élan Vital for response. Thank you for bringing this matter concerning Jagdeo to our attention. The type of behavior described in your letter is completely unacceptable to Élan Vital and will not be tolerated.

I understand that Michael Dettmers has passed on to you the fact that Jagdeo is no longer associated in any capacity with Élan Vital organizations worldwide. He has not performed any duties as an instructor in the United States since the 1980's. He is now retired and living in a village in India.
Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention. If I can be of further assistance to you, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Marcia Leitner
Élan Vital Board of Directors

As some of you have already noted, Élan Vital has since removed the offensive FAQ from their website.

How do I feel about all this? I am upset that the reports I made in the past have been "forgotten". I still believe Rawat was told both in 1977 and in the early eighties. I think there has been a decision not to remember. I do not know how many people were involved in deciding that a response to "not recall" was the best one. I am glad though that the FAQ has been removed and that at least this report has been acknowledged without including any gratuitous insults. Of course, there is much they should say that they have not, but most of what they should say would leave them open to liability if they said it. It was carefully worded.

Thanks to all the ex premie org posters who were supportive of me when the FAQ was first published. There are so many really good nice people who post here.

As 'A' once said to me, we have won, because we figured out we were in a cult, and we got out.

Susan Haupt

An Ex-Unity School Teacher reports

Posted on forum V
Date: Wed, Jul 12, 2000 at 04:18:37 (GMT)
From: Unity school ex
Subject: Jagdeo's 'children's satsang'Dear forum posters - I have only learned abut Jagdeo's sexual abuse of children in the last 6 months or so. I do have something to add; although I didn't actually see him do anything, I do know that he did some of this stuff at the Unity School in Denver during the 1977-78 period.

I was a teacher at that time, and devoted premie. I volunteered to be a camp counselor for the summer at the Unity School, as I had the time off from my regular teaching job, and was very interested in doing service at the school and learning more about the waldorf philosophy as well. I worked there for two summers.

One day I learned that Jagdeo did special 'children satsangs' at the school. This seemed odd to me, and I questioned one of the other teachers about it. She replied that it was so beautiful that Jagdeo took such a special interest in children and regularly did these. He would get all the children in a room, turn off the lights, have them lie down in a circle, and tell them stories. He told them not to talk about it with others. The teacher told me it was 'kids satsang'.

I felt this was very wierd, as I clearly remember that Maharaji gave a number of satsangs about how we should not tell kids what to believe. He used to say that adults always wanted to jam their beliefs down the throats of kids and that he didn't like it. I agreed with this, and remembered numerous times that he had talked about this, so when I heard about 'kids satsang' it immediately raised a red flag.

I asked another teacher about this, but they didn't know about it, and I gave up trying to find out more. But I will tell you this - it's quite likely that he was playing his games with the kids at Unity School in Denver in those days (late 70's) and there are probably kids from that era who were abused by him.

It makes me sick to think of this. How can m stay silent about all this? These are the children of the people who gave their lives to him, lock, stock and barrel. If one of his kids were there, would he be so smug and silent?

You sicken me, Maharaji.

The Cult view - ex-members are an "Internet Hate Group."

Although they have toned down some of the really insane stuff, Elan Vital's main website still refers to critics of Maharaji as a "hate group."  Note the following from the "faq" section of www.elanvital.org :

First, they start out with this, with the usual, loaded, dishonest, biased, self-serving "FAQ." Not only do former premies criticize Maharaji, they are out to "negate" his work and are "dedicated" to that:

Is it true there is a group of former students who dedicate their time and energies to negating Maharaji's work?

Then the answer, again biased and dishonest, because there are many more than a "handful" and many of us, including me, are not anonymous:

Yes, it is true. For a few years, a handful of disgruntled former students operating under the cloak of anonymity have hidden behind the Internet's cloak of anonymity to disparage Maharaji, his students and Elan Vital.

Then, the cult immediately switches to calling us a "hate group" with no support or evidence, in the next sentence:

One of the hate groups' favorite dirty tricks is creating multiple web pages with the same hate speech, unsupported allegations and hearsay under different domain names to create the impression that more people support their views than in reality.

Isn't that special?

Then, in a later paragraph, EV uses pseudo-psychology to diagnose our problems (we are not only hateful, we are obsessed), and EV then turns Maharaji into a victim "voice for peace" who is persecuted like "Ghandi" and "Martin Luther King," who I dare say would roll over in their graves at being compared to the self-centered, obscenely materialistic, aging, boy-Lord:

Why do people become part of a hate group?

Sociologists and mental health experts have speculated about the reasons for Internet-based hate. Understanding the motives that lead to obsessive hate-mongering is difficult. Historically, most voices for peace have been targets of violent reactions. Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King were assassinated…

I note that the US EV website no longer includes a list of all the other psychological problems, and the mental and moral defects we all have that make us not "normal."  In fact, not only are we not "normal," we are not "ordinary," "functional?!" nor are we "law abiding citizens."  Golly.  [One wonders how they could have known any of that (to the extent there is a word of truth in any of it) if we are indeed all anonymous, but as we can see even internal consistency is not a problem for Maharaji and his cult.]

However, in keeping with the generally more fanatic cult membership down under, the Australian website still has that crap at

http://www.elanvital.com.au/faq/article.php?id=084

There, you can read the following:

Are the people in this hate group credible?

Of the 15-20 people posting as various anonymous personae on the hate site, it has been documented that:

One has been hospitalised for hallucinatory paranoia.

One has acknowledged suffering from multiple personality disorder.

One became a member of the hate group after surgery to remove a brain tumour that affected his cognitive abilities.

One receives a pension for permanent mental disability.

One runs a pornographic film production business.

One, a lawyer, acknowledged in writing having embezzled $18,000 from an organisation supporting Maharaji's work.

Another, also a lawyer, has acknowledged having been arrested three times. Although this same person insists that Maharaji "must" be guilty of some tax fraud, she herself has been levied by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for tax arrears of more than US$200,000.

NA from Australia, is in prison after being convicted for illegal weapons possession as well as possession of 150 lbs. of marijuana.

One, a notorious cyber-hacker, was subjected to a restraining order after being investigated for domestic violence.

Journalist JM from Byron Bay was recently held liable by the Supreme Court of Queensland for theft of private financial and credit data and convicted for contempt of court.

This is not exactly a cross-section of normal, ordinary, functional, law-abiding citizens.

From what I can tell, this "information" is almost completely made up and some of it has been specifically addressed and shown to be false, and most of it appears to have come from the "Citizens Against Cyberstalking" website that followers of Rawat set up to attack and blackmail ex-premise from posting on the internet.   The cult also has no problem being associated with that, nor do they have any problem with continuing to exploit, harass, libel, and abuse, John Macgregor for the cult's own ends.

Anyhow, I think the front page of EPO should have a general response to the Elan Vital websites that label critics as a "hate group."  I'll suggest a response that other people can comment on and edit, in the following post. 

Elan Vital tries to shut down Ex-premie.org

At the end of April 2003, Elan Vital tried to silence its critics on the Internet in a concerted action against the hosts of Ex-Premie.org and its mirror sites, and against Google (Google caches EPO's pages in order to index them in its search engine). Had these attempts be successful, it would have been difficult to find any reference to Ex-Premie.org on the most popular search engine of the Internet, and this website would have lost a fundamental part of its documentation on the origin of Prem Rawat's so-called teachings.

Elan Vital also tried to intimidate the website hosts, Verio. Details of the action, and subsequent response of Verio and Google, are contained on the next couple of pages.

Elan Vital tries to intimidate Ex-Premie.org's hosts

On 24th April, 2003, Verio, the hosting company for www.ex-premie.org (EPO) received a letter from Stroock, Stroock and Lavan, a law firm based in California acting for Elan Vital Inc. (EVI), claiming that pages on EPO infringed EVI's copyright. The letter included a list of 65 pages from EPO which included quotes from Prem Rawat, song lyrics, and photographs. Many of the quotes are from publications that Rawat ordered destroyed over 20 years ago. The photos include Rawat dressed as Krishna, Rawat dancing, Rawat having his feet kissed by his followers, Rawat with one of his previous aeroplanes, etc. The song lyrics are from songs that praised Rawat as the Lord. The research into what is owned by EVI and what isn't was clearly not thorough, e.g. Hans Yog Prakash, written by Rawat's father, is almost certainly the property of SatPal Rawat's organisation in India, if it is not in the public domain.

The disputed pages were removed, as later were links to the mirror sites, and legal advice was sought. This led us to believe we had every right to publish the text and photos in question, and so a counter-notification was issued. This set out our grounds for disputing EVI's claim. Under US copyright law as it applies to the internet, Elan Vital Inc. had 14 days to test their claim in Federal Court, or their claim fails. We were happy to take this to court, as it would allow deposition of Prem Rawat, who has avoided serious questioning for far too long. In the end, though, Elan Vital Inc. failed to take their claim further, and Verio's legal department gave permission for the disputed pages to be reinstated. The disputed pages can be browsed by following the links.

In the meantime, EVI became aware that there were three mirror sites for EPO, www.ex-premie2.org (EPO2), www.ex-premie3.org (EPO3) and www.ex-premie4.org (EPO4). As mentioned above, EVI complained that EPO still linked to the disputed pages through the links to the mirror sites, and Verio said that even though they were not hosted on Verio servers, the links should be removed. The hosts for EPO2 and EPO3 then received identical complaints from Stroock. EPO3 is in the US, and a similar counter-notification has been issued, and the disputed pages have been removed from EPO3. EPO2 is hosted by a company registered in Scotland. Under Scottish law, an internet hosting company has the same legal liability as a paper manufacturer has for what is written in a newspaper. For Stroock to take their action further would require them to study Scottish law a little more closely. The EPO2 host was very supportive, and at no stage were any pages removed from EPO2. We have no knowledge of a complaint made to the hosts of EPO4.

Current followers of Prem Rawat may wish to consider the wisdom of EVI's action. Clearly it was expensive, and even if they had been successful in getting the pages removed, there were only 65 out of over 750 English language pages, and apart from the song lyrics, the only words that would be missing from EPO would be Rawat's own words. The best EVI could hope for was a little disruption to EPO during Rawat's recent propagation tour. The disruption was minimal. Is that what Rawat's supporters made those donations for? And surely Stroock must have advised EVI that the action would fail, so why did EVI insist that the action was taken?

During the US tour EPO page reads increased by an average of 500 pages a day to around 2000 a day.

Elan Vital tries to intimidate Google

Not only did they complain to ex-premie.org's hosts, but Elan Vital (via its lawyers) also complained to Google.

On April 24, 2003, Stroock, Stroock and Lavan also sent a letter to Google, very similar to the one sent to EPO's host.

In that letter, EV complains about Google caching those 65 infamous pages (see above) - allegedly violating EV's copyrights, and threatens Google with legal action if they didn't immediately remove the offending pages from their cache.

It looks like Google is familiar with these sort of threats, and wasn't impressed by EV's lawyers' letter. And something that Stroock, Stroock and Lavan (and Elan Vital) probably didn't expect happened: Google sent a copy of the letter to the "Chilling Effects" website.

Chilling Effects is a "joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics" that's been set in order to illustrate how "some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to 'chill' legitimate activity".

And the case of EV's complaint to Google, it is used by Chilling Effects to illustrate how law can be used to try to silence critics !!

We didn't expect so much support !!

Journeys

A large part of the Ex-premie website, titled "Journeys", contains the personal stories of individuals who became involved in the cult. Some of the writers have used pseudonyms; some have used their own names. Their testimonies speak for themselves. This is a selection of the stories available on the website. To read more, you'll have to go online.

A. J. W.
JHB
Nya Alison Murray
Neville Ackland
Nigel
Marianne Bachers
Bob
Boris
Shelagh C.
Edmund (Edi) Cramp
Bryn Davies
Hughie Davies
Deena
Marsha Donner
Fran
Grace
Kerry Gray
Gregg
D. W. Greig
Hal
Hamzen
Hannah
Happy
J. M.
Scot Jamieson
Jennifer
Barbara (Babs) Johnson
Libby
Deborah Lisibach
Loaf
Tony Loffredo
Roberto Masera
Bobby Manrodt
Mark
M. Moore
Sean O'Grady
Peter
Michael A. Read
Reedo (ex-Jiva drummer)
Robin Reiley
Paul Richards
David Wimert
William O. West
Pat W.
John Watson
Leslie Veale
David Sterling
Bill Veale
Trent
Stephanie
Janet Schwartz
Daniel T.
Sofi
Seeker of Truth
Seymour
T. D.

AJW (Anthony Ginn)

God is Great but…

In the summer of 1972 my wife and I stumbled through Heathrow Airport, sick, penniless and owning only the faded cotton pyjamas we were wearing. Three weeks earlier, we'd been dropped, semi-conscious, on the steps of the United Christian hospital in Lahore, Pakistan. My wife looked like a skeleton. She was dying from dehydration. I was so ill with hepatitis I couldn't stand up. We'd been traveling around India 'looking for Truth', run out of money and become ill.

The hospital put us to bed, stuck a tube into my wife's arm to restore her body fluid, fed me on glucose and water, and called the British Embassy. Three weeks later, an English civil servant arrived, paid our hospital bill and handed us a couple of air tickets home. I was in hospital in England for another month, but when I arrived back to our house in the country I was a happy hippy, a year older, but much wiser.

I'd been to India, found a guru, given up drugs, and become a full time, seriously spiritual person. I'd read Herman Hesse, Ramakrishna, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Paul Brunton, 'M', and the Silver Surfer. From Zen Buddhism I understood that there was such a thing as 'Enlightenment', which would suddenly descend on me when the moment was right, and I was ready. From Ramakrishna I learned that the two great obstacles to enlightenment were 'women and gold'. From Timothy Leary I learned that I needed a guru, and from the Silver Surfer I learned that the inhabitants of Earth are not to be trusted. In India, I'd visited the ashram of Sai Baba, and decided he must be my guru.

Back in our terraced house in Staffordshire, I set about the serious business of realising God. I threw out all the books that weren't scriptures, quit 'worldly' activities, like watching TV, eating cake, playing music and having sex. I converted the downstairs front room into a temple, set up a massive shrine and meditated on my mantra every day.

I tried to spread the word, but my colleagues in the toilet factory were in darkness. My old hippy friends were deluded and ignorant, in love with their egos. Things weren't working out as I'd hoped. I was back from India, with a glowing aura, but it wasn't affecting people the way I'd hoped. It seemed to be acting more as a repellent. Realising God was a lonely path.

The initial excitement of having a new 'mission' in life soon wore off, and I felt more frustrated than enlightened. According to my understanding of the spiritual path, the lesser beings around me should become inspired in my presence, and bring me offerings so I didn't have to go to work. I organised a 'bhajan evening' in my temple, but only a couple of broke, lonely people showed up, and none of us could sing.

Maybe I wasn't surrendering enough. I needed to renounce more. Ramakrishna said worldly talk took you away from God. I'd start there. Next morning, sitting around the table, at tea break in the toilet factory, I told my work mates, that I no longer wished to discuss worldly topics. If they wanted to talk to me, I would only reply if the subject was spiritual.

Things were happening again. I'd taken a step closer to the Godhead. Enlightenment was imminent. Ramakrishna said, 'He who renounces women and gold is near to God realisation'. I'd not only given up women and gold, but a long list of other things too. In fact I'd given up everything I could think of. All that remained was to walk out the door, and God would take care of me forever. I'd never have to work, cook, pay rent, or participate in worldly activities again. My time in the world was over. I would return to India and gather disciples at my feet.

We lived in a Victorian terraced mining cottage, in Staffordshire, England. The door from the lane outside, opened directly into our temple. I meditated there, every morning, for half an hour. My mantra was based on the name of my guru, Sai Baba. My wife and I went to some of his conjuring shows, at an Ashram (monastery) near Bangalore, in South India.

One of my mantra's many magical effects was that it could change itself into the name of the England football manager, Alf Ramsey. It went, 'Sai Ram Sai Ram Say Ramsay, Ramsey. Ramsey.' One Saturday morning, shortly after my tea break declaration in 'Toiletworld', I finished meditating, put on a shoe, and the Universe turned on its axis. As predicted in 'The Way of Zen' by Alan Watts, the moment of Enlightenment was upon me. The world fell away like, a spent cocoon. Wings of devotion and renunciation would carry me to the Creator. Yeah, I would step out of my worldly prison and become a wandering monk.

The front door was open. It was raining. I looked down. I hadn't finished dressing. I was wearing one shoe. The second shoe was behind me. Raindrops splattered on the road. I wondered how far I'd get with only a sock on my left foot. Already I was doubting my divine destiny, and I hadn't even moved. I had renounced the world and was about to walk out of my home forever. But I was only wearing one shoe. The left shoe, which was behind me, was part of the world I'd just renounced. To retrieve it would be to walk back to the chains of materialism and delusion.

I leaned forward, but my feet wouldn't move. I leaned back. Nothing. I was trapped in the void between God consciousness and a wet sock. My wife walked into the room, stared at me for a couple of minutes, decided eventually I'd get hungry, and went back into the kitchen. Half an hour later I scrambled back from the brink of insanity by frantically stuffing my mouth with a cheese and pickle sandwich. Premies call this state of mind, 'Ready for Knowledge'.

The 60s had faded away. It was the morning after the Revolution and we'd lost, (except in Holland). We had scrambled brains for breakfast. Hippies were detoxing and finding other interests in life: the environment, whole foods, feminism, gay rights, drug trafficking, philately and God. Lots of folk who saw God on acid got into alternative religions, like the Hare Krishnas, Subud and Transcendental Meditation.

Several close friends had joined 'Divine Light Mission' and become followers of the fifteen year old, 'living Perfect Master', Guru Maharaj Ji. I'd seen Maharaji speak, a couple of years earlier at the 1971 Glastonbury festival. A group of us had moved down there for a month, to help build the stage for the first festival on Michael Eaves' farm. Maharaji, aged 13, had recently arrived in England, and appeared briefly at the festival.

We began to get wild letters and phone calls from friends who had become premies, telling us that the Lord of the Universe had incarnated into a human body, and was 'revealing God'. Although there was no charge for 'Knowledge', some were handing over their possessions, moving into 'Ashrams', getting jobs and giving up meat, drink and drugs.

We held a party. Walking through the house was a journey down the chakras. There were Bhajans in the front room, dope smokers in the middle room and a drunken woman, with her bare arse stuck in a plastic bucket, laying on kitchen floor.

Then the premies arrived. The brothers wore second-hand suits with large 3D badges of Maharaji, with flashing rainbows around his head. The sisters wore dresses and skirts down to the floor, cardigans and the same rainbow badges. Everyone carried a bundle of leaflets. They marched through the temple, where I was delivering a holy discourse to a drunken kiln-fireman from the toilet factory.

They stopped in the middle room, where they formed a circle, held hands, raised their eyes to heaven, and sang, 'Amazing Grace.' Before they reached, '…how sweet the sound,' the room was empty. Stoned hippies and incapacitated drunks from the factory, returned to consciousness, rose miraculously to their feet, and fled in terror, in every direction. The drunken bucket woman in the kitchen, who had finally managed to stand up, fell over again in the excitement. The audience to my discourse was chased into the street, by a premie clutching a leaflet.

My friend Tom, recently converted, explained everything. It went something like, 'There is always a Master on the Earth. Once it was Jesus, once it was Krishna, once it was Buddha, now its Guru Maharaj Ji. It's passed on, like the family silver. Maharaj Ji can show you God, face to face. When you meditate, you'll see this light, brighter than a thousand suns, better than acid. And you'll hear music, better than Pink Floyd. You'll taste the nectar of Heaven. And you'll know the unspeakable Word of God. Guru Maharaj Ji shows you all this. It's called Knowledge. He's fourteen years old and driving around in a Rolls Royce.'

It sounded exactly what I was looking for. So, after calling in sick at the toilet factory, and chasing a Mahatma (God realised soul, imported from India) around the country for a couple of weeks, in March 1973, I ended up in a room where Mahatma Umeshfee decided I was ready to be shown, what were then called, 'the four techniques of meditation ' and 'receive Knowledge'.

'Being ready' meant understanding that there was only one Master and only one method of attaining salvation, which was to 'practice Knowledge and dedicate your life to Maharaji.' I was shown the four meditation techniques. I didn't see light brighter than a thousand suns. Neither did I hear Ummagumma, but something was buzzing.

I was meeting loads of new friends, and we all had a mission in life. 'Bhajan evening' eat your heart out. No more ranting at drunken sanitary workers. Every night there was an eager audience for words of 'satsang' flowing from my mouth. 'Satsang' meant, literally, 'company of truth. There were 'satsang meetings' which took place every evening, in a hall, or 'satsang room' in a house or ashram. We'd sit around an altar of Maharaji, take it in turns to 'give satsang', or tell each other how fantastic knowledge, Maharaji and life were.

We'd also sing devotional songs, 'I love you Maharaji, your grace is overflowing. I love you my Lord. You are all knowing. You have given me life, out of your mercy and compassion. I am so grateful..etc'.

My wife and I were qualified, but inexperienced schoolteachers. At the 1973 Guru Puja festival, we went to a meeting of premie teachers, and were invited to sell our house, put the money towards a 'Divine School' for premies' children, and join an 'Education Ashram' in London. Amazing things were afoot. The Lord of the Universe had incarnated, along with a Holy Family.

Milky Cole, close companion of the Lord, informed us that Maharaji's three elder brothers were, respectively, the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the Universe. I kept getting them muddled up. Was Bhole Ji the Creator or the Preserver? No matter. There was the Holy Mother Mataji. We sang, '…and when the seasons change for you the last time, say thank you for your life to Holy Mother Mata Ji'.

Just as the Christian Church of the Middle Ages, explained the pyramidical hierarchy of Heaven, God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Angels, Apostles, Saints (all, over 'the other side') followed, down here on Earth by, Pope, Archbishops etc, down to the punters who funded it with 10% of their labour, so we had our own divine hierarchy. At the top was Balyogeshwar Shri Sant Ji Maharaj. Then there was God and the Holy family.

It may seem strange in these enlightened times, but the Mahatmas really did explain to us how Maharaji was 'greater than God'. The reasoning was summarised on a Divine Light Mission poster, which said, in English and Hindi, 'God is great, but greater is Guru, because Guru reveals God'. It was a difficult concept to deal with, so we usually settled for him being God.

Back on Earth, Maharaji's mother and three brothers, Bhal Bhagwan Ji, Bhole Ji and Raja Ji, were all divine beings, but not as divine as Maharaji. At the end of satsang, we all used to yell in unison, 'Bhole Shri Satgurudev Maharaj Ki Jai. Anandakanda Bhal Bhagwan Ki Jai. Jagat Janani Shri Mata Ki Jai. Satchitavar Ki Jai.' and a final, louder, 'Bhole Shri Satgurudev Maharaj Ki Jai'. We'd throw both hands in the air, in a kind of two armed 'Sieg Heil', on every 'Ki Jai'.

I assume, because Raja Ji and Bhole Ji didn't get a yell, they were a bit lower in the hierarchy. (This proved to be the case some years later, when Bhal Bhagwan Ji also became a 'Perfect Master, God himself walking around on Earth for our benefit', type of person. But that's another story.)

Below the Holy Family were special Mahatmas, like Gurucharanand, and premies who lived and perhaps travelled, with Maharaji. Below them were the ordinary Mahatmas. Then came the Ashram premies. Then the premies who were waiting to go into the ashram, followed by the 'community premies', (burdened by children, or ignorance), followed by the rest of the human race. They too had their levels in the divine hierarchy. At the top were the aspirants, people waiting to be initiated. Below them were people who had heard about Knowledge, and the more you heard, the higher you went. Even reading a leaflet would help.

In the ashram, you lived a life of satsang, service and meditation. We got up at six, sang a long hymn of praise to Maharaji, 'Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, bow their heads and pray to you…..', meditated, ate a magnificent breakfast, then went to work. At lunchtime I sold copies of 'Divine Times' on the street. In the evenings we went to satsang at the 'Palace of Peace' in London, where we organised childcare.

At weekends we planned our school and studied education. We discovered a 'spiritual' education system, devised by Rudolph Steiner and enthusiastically studied it. My wife and I were told to start satsang meetings for children. We opened a school in the ashram basement, in South London, and had a class of ten.

The population of the ashram increased and, as Unity School was going to take boarders, several children moved in. It became so crowded, we built a platform in the children's bedroom, and put children on top, and underneath. I moved into the garden and slept under an old table covered with polythene. Nine children and forty three adults lived in the house.

A government inspector came around to look at the school. We told him there were nine children and twelve adults in the house. His only comment was he thought it was overcrowded. He should have seen it at bedtime.

I remember when I visited friends and relatives, looking around their living rooms, thinking, 'What a waste of space. Ten people could sleep in here.' We raised about 360.000 and bought an old manor house in Cornwall. As well as the Waldorf (Steiner) curriculum, the children would work on the farm. Their education would include growing crops, grinding corn, milking cows, making butter and so on. My wife and I would look after the boarding children, out of classroom hours. This meant getting them up in the morning, putting them to bed at night and looking after them in the evening and at weekends.

In the Education Ashram we had a 'special mission', with agya (a direct instruction from the Lord) to start a school. Nobody argues with 'agya'. We were allowed to read books, paint, play music, discuss intellectual topics, activities forbidden in other ashrams. We went on courses at the Steiner college, made plans and knew we were part of something magnificent. Soon there would be so many premies in every town, Unity Schools would be needed all over the country. Why, by 1980, the ashram secretary will probably be the Minister of Education.

There was an understanding, that if you were serious about 'practising knowledge' you should live in an ashram. 'Non-ashram premies' were treated as second class citizens. Ashram premies went to special meetings with Maharaji, had special privileges at events and got free Herb tea and sugar free snacks at the Palace of Peace 'Sohungry Cafe'. On the other hand, they had no official sex, drugs or rock and roll, and had to hand over their wage packet to the ashram secretary every week.

If you were married and had children, you were stuck between a rock and a hard stone. You'd have to wait until your children grew up and left home before you could truly surrender to your Master. Unless of course you could dump them somewhere. And where better than Unity School, where they would be looked after by 'disciples of the Living Lord', who were ashram premies, in pure consciousness.

My wife and I went through the application forms. Sixty five children were expected to board. We checked their ages. Over forty were under seven, and most were four or five. You didn't need a third eye to see we were heading for disaster. It would have been insane to take children so young, away from their families, stick them in dormitories with over sixty other kids, and expect two old hippies in recovery to look after them night and day.

We expressed our misgivings at the next teachers' meeting. Everyone agreed with us. The dormitories were building sites, two of the classrooms hadn't been built. (We'd bought prefabricated buildings but there were no instructions and nobody knew how to put them together.)

This was around the time Maharaji married his secretary, Marilyn. It started a craze in Divine Light Mission. Our ashram secretary married the house mother and romances bloomed everywhere. My wife and I, having been married for four years already, took advantage of the new climate in the ashram, and slept together again.

While the ashram secretary and house mother were on their honeymoon, we had a revolution. They returned to discovered that Unity School would no longer be run by a headmaster, but a committee of teachers. Education policy would not be part of the 'chain of agya' but decided by the committee. The 'chain of agya' was the 'line of command' down from Maharaji, through his current close confidants, to 'National Coordinator, sometimes through a 'Regional Coordinator', down to ashram secretary. It trickled down the divine pyramid. We told him that we weren't taking any boarders until the dormitories were ready, which meant opening only as a day school. with about nine children, who were already living locally. At a later meeting, when we were preparing a classroom to start the new term.

A week before we were due to open, a parent, whose child had been sexually abused by Mahatma Jagdeo, on his visit to the ashram, told us, 'Even if the school opens next week, we're not sending our children.'

And that was the end of Unity School.

Word went back to Divine Light Mission headquarters in London that all the teachers had 'flipped out' in Cornwall. They sent someone down to repossess our Mercedes van, and later the Manor house, which became a retreat for ashram premies, vegetarian guest house, and was finally sold. We moved back to London and lived in 'the premie community'.

Divine Light Mission experienced periodic waves of fashionable activities, which were greeted with glee by the premies. There was always a lingering feeling that things weren't quite working out properly. Each 'leap forward' was greeted with the optimism 'things would finally get sorted out'. Then thousands of people would come pouring through the doors, receive Knowledge and establish 'Heaven on Earth'. And somewhere, a lion would surely lie down with a lamb.

There was the film, 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?'. After watching it people would know who 'He' was, and come rushing to receive Knowledge.

There was the World Welfare Organisation. We went around doing good works for the needy, hoping, through this, people would be attracted to Maharaji. For six months, at weekends, a group of us performed plays in children's homes and mental hospitals.

Then there was DUO, Divine United Organisation. This was an umbrella company, that would shelter new premie businesses, often staffed by premies 'doing service' and hence, receiving only heavenly rewards. We had a DUO factory, the Millennium Construction Company, Mother Nature Fashions, Rainbow Groceries, Divine Sales, Hansa Graphics and many more.

I sat in the Palace of Peace one evening, listening to someone who had been driving around London that day with Maharaji, tell us, 'Maharaji pointed to this big skyscraper, and said, 'That will be the DUO office one day.' The same person told us, 'In a few years, every other truck will carry the DUO logo. The pen in your pocket… it will be everywhere.' Most of the DUO businesses quietly fell apart when the next fashion hit the community, although some moved into private ownership and have lived on until this day.

In 1976 we had our own 'Great Leap Forward'. 'Workshops' instead of Satsang. We split into small groups with 'monitors', who'd already been to a workshop on running a workshop. We spoke not only of Truth, but also truth. We admitted we didn't blast off into God consciousness when we sat down to meditate. It wasn't just that we weren't surrendered, but maybe sometimes people did talk a lot of rubbish in satsang'. I certainly delivered more than my share.

Once again, it felt like things were finally moving forwards again. We were making progress, in preparation for the day when many more people would recognise that the Lord was on the planet. And, as the waves rippled down the pyramid, throughout the fads, there were festivals and darshan.

For a true devotee of the Master, there was nothing greater than His 'darshan'. Darshan means 'physical presence'. It is a true premie's greatest high. There is nothing better than being with the Lord in his physical form. As the Master is God, He is also within you, in the form of 'Knowledge'. So, 'darshan' is the physical presence of Maharaji, rather than the 'spiritual' presence'.

Throughout the years, Maharaji has travelled around the world, attending meetings which have been called, at different times, 'festivals', 'programs' and 'events'. Maharaji would speak to everyone, once or twice a day, and usually 'give darshan'. 'Giving darshan' involved Maharaji sitting on a chair, on a small stage, with his feet on a cushion at the edge of the stage. Premies filed past, kissing his feet.

On 'darshan day', we put on our best clothes, sat in the hall meditating until we 'felt right', then joined the back of the 'darshan line'. The back was in the hall, but at some point entered Maharaji's private area, often down a 'darshan tunnel', covered in blue fabric. 'Security premies' stood on both sides, vetting the line for 'bongo premies' (people considered crazy in world of crazies), and 'non-premies' (people without 'Knowledge'). Mahatmas and other premies gave out envelopes. You were offered an envelope about twenty times before you reached the 'darshan tunnel'. At the entrance to the tunnel was a table, with a big box. Standing behind the box were two or three high ranking instructors. They collected the envelopes, into which the premies had placed however much they could afford.

Of course, you didn't have to give money. In the early 70s, premies brought all sorts of gifts. But as the darshan line evolved, it became standard understanding that the most practical gift for Maharaji was cash. And what would Maharaji do with the mountain of stuff piled up after every program anyway?

Premies often gave things that had great emotional significance to them, but looked like junk to everyone else. 'Lord, I bring you this broken neck of a Fender Stratocaster guitar, which Pete Townshend smashed up on the stage of Nottingham Odeon in 1965. I carried it 3,000 miles around Asia, in my rucksack, and had it blessed by a Baba in Mysore. But now I offer it up to you. It still has a bit of Keith Moon's dried vomit on the corner. All I have left is the scar where it hit me on the head when Townshend threw it into the audience at the end of 'My Generation.' It's not surprising he preferred cash, preferably notes.

The darshan lasted several hours. At large international festivals, several thousand premies walked through. After entering the tunnel, you'd hear gentle music, emanating from the 'darshan room', where Maharaji sat, with a line of dipping premies passing before him. On either side of the cushion stood a bodyguard. One gently held your shoulders as you bowed your head. The other took your shoulders and motioned you away, after you had kissed 'the Lotus feet'. They were there to remove any premie who overstay their welcome, and to hand anybody who passed out, to the 'catchers'.

Passing out in darshan was quite common. I passed out several times over the years. Some people seem to drift into unconsciousness quite easily. It happens in many charismatic religious groups. If you passed out in darshan, you were taken to the 'darshan recovery room' where you were looked after until, you came round. At a festival in Wales, some premies even passed out when a darshan line filed past a life sized photo of Maharaji.

We had a programme in South Wales, in 1978. It was a national event, and the highest ranking premies in attendance were a few initiators. I'd been asked to organise the childcare. We borrowed equipment from a local nursery and set it up in a compound outside the hall. As the national dignitaries and officials entered the hall, they passed the nursery and noticed all the expensive, hired equipment.

They didn't see the hoards of rampaging eight year old ninja gangs, the lost crying children, peppered with metal ninja stars, premies doing 'childcare' running for cover or the gangs of distraught parents looking for their wounded children in the middle of the battlefield. They saw the expensive climbing frame, slide and toy house. 'Wow. This looks really together.' they said, glancing over their shoulders on the way into the hall. 'Who organised it?'

A couple of weeks later, I was asked to organise childcare at the large European programmes. Fashions changed, but the big events continued. I lost my teaching job because of the time I was taking off. Childcare, however was flourishing. After a couple of big programmes, I'd gathered a team of reliable people together and conditions improved.

As things got better, more premies brought their children to programmes, instead of leaving them with Grandma. The numbers steadily increased. By the time the Geneva event happened in 1983, we had a large area for mothers and babies, a toddlers area with sandpits, paints and toys, special activities for older children, a cinema, theatre with stage and lights, and a puppet theatre. We tapped into the vast amount of dramatic and artistic talent, and harnessed the bursting desire to 'do service'. The walls were all decorated by good artists and about 350 premies, were organised in shifts, with supervisors, manning everything. Over 800 children showed up, and most of them had a good time. I had built a formidable empire.

Maharaji visited the hall, the day, before the festival. The childcare area, was almost as big as the hall where the meeting with four thousand or so premies was taking place (children need more space). He asked what everything was for, and was told, 'Childcare'. Soon afterwards I was told, 'Maharaji said people shouldn't bring children to programs.'

Although my empire had been dismantled, my career wasn't over. I helped to organise the festival on Lingfield racecourse, where Maharaji told us, 'Every breath should be meditation, every word should be satsang and every action should be service,' (to Him).

My job at Lingfield was to co-ordinate 'Staff Support'. This meant arranging the food, transport and accommodation for everyone 'doing service' at the programme. This included builders, electricians, plumbers, office staff, transport staff, cooks, cleaners, carpenters, security, and administrators, or 'honchoes' as they were known. The 'head honcho' at the festival would get to talk to Maharaji occasionally, and receive his 'agya'.

There was nothing like 'agya' to get us moving. 'Agya' was very important to us. It was the direct command of the Master, one of the most powerful things on earth. To question 'agya' was to show a lack of spiritual understanding. When the Lord commands, it is your pleasure to obey.

Programs were put together very quickly. A large stage was always built, with rooms for Maharaji and his family. This area was always referred to as, 'backstage'. Backstage is a magical place in Premieworld. In festival heyday, the backstage area was built to a higher quality than most houses.

Premies from all over Europe worked night and day to build a complete apartment. Stud walls were erected, plastered and papered. Electricity and plumbing were installed, new carpets laid, TVs, hi-fi's, fridges, lights, doors. A luxury apartment was constructed, used for duration of the festival, then demolished.

As the festival approached, less and less people were allowed backstage. An elaborate 'Pass' system was set up, allowing different people into different areas. Access was always controlled by 'Security'. Security had their own special passes and hierarchies, but their primary role at festivals was to protect Maharaji and his family, from everybody, premies and non premies. Maharaji's closest companions were always exempt for the concentric circles of security around him. As backstage became ready, fewer people were allowed in. When 'the arrival' was imminent, the 'backstage co-ordinator' would make one or two, last minute, adjustments, then be told to leave, a few minutes before Maharaji arrived.

When Maharaji was in the building, security rose to red alert. There were extra guards and new commanders around. Extra rings were added. Everyone carefully briefed.

Back at Lingfield, Staff Support threw me into the thick of festival politics. During the years I'd been coordinating childcare, nobody ever showed any interest in what I was doing, even though sometimes I was responsible for several hundred children, from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. (It's not as daunting as it sounds, if you have three or four hundred willing servants, working in shifts, and a few half-sane organisers to help.)

When I organised Staff Support, however, everybody took great care to advise me how to do my job. This was because it was their food, their transport, and their bed that I was sorting out. It was a nightmare. As more people arrived, I arranged food, accommodation and transport for them.

A couple of 'honchos' told me that, as' their service was important', they couldn't be standing around in queues, eating the same garbage as the builders. They wanted their own dining room, special food, and people to serve them. I knew that all devotees are equal at the feet of the Lord, so I told them to join the queue with everybody else.

The next day they appointed their own, 'Coordinators Staff Support Coordinator'. She was given a generous budget, driver, and a list of 'honchos' to serve. This was much the same arrangement that was standard for 'mahatmas'. A couple of days later I was fired, then rehired, when the new 'Support Coordinator' couldn't find anyone to replace me.

I arrived home late one night from Lingfield, with Brian, a friendly giant from the Bronx. He was plumbing on the festival site. I'd offered to put him up for the night. There were always lots of people staying around festival times, as most premies couldn't afford to pay for accommodation. I opened the front door to our two bedroomed maisonette. It hit a pair of feet. Two people were asleep in the narrow hallway. We stepped over them and peered into the living room. People were on each sofa, and on the floor. I looked in the kitchen. Three people on the floor. I went upstairs. Two people on the landing. Somebody asleep on the bathroom floor, somebody asleep in the bath (I jest not). The front bedroom was full. I opened our bedroom door. My wife was asleep in our giant bed, with the two children. There was space for two. So we both got in. My wife awoke next morning and I introduced her to Brian. We've been good friends ever since.

After the Lingfield festival I did 'service' in the 'London Community'. As far as premies are concerned, the London Community only consisted of the premies who lived in London. The other 14,000,000 people or so don't count, unless they're interested in 'Knowledge' of course. We usually had a 'Community Coordinator', and sometimes a 'Community Council'. There was frequently a drive to get a 'Community Centre'. (In the early 70s, we'd converted the old East Dulwich Odeon to the 'Palace of Peace'). It was 1982, the Ashrams had survived the burst of breeding activity after Maharaji and Marilyn's marriage, and were still going strong.

In England we were getting a new National Coordinator every few weeks. The latest was David Smith. He passed through England briefly, leaving chaos and confusion in his wake. He told me to look for a building that would be suitable as a full time, premie community centre. I trekked around London, looking at empty cinemas and talking to local community representatives, stressing our secular side, 'whole food cafe, natural childbirth classes, meditation, yoga etc'. I didn't tell them we were about to transform an old cinema in Tooting into a magnet for crazy Guru worshippers.

But before David left town, and the project collapsed, my career took a dramatic turn. I was called to the 'residence', Maharaji's house in on the Sussex downs, near Reigate. I was directing a Christmas play, involving some 'community premies' and some of 'Maharaji's staff'. We arrived at one of the ashrams in Reigate for a rehearsal and I was told I had to go immediately to 'Beechurst', one of the 'support houses'. There were always at least a couple of 'support house', where premies doing service at the residence hung out. This included premies waiting to see Maharaji, premies 'doing service at the Residence', drivers on call and so on. When Maharaji was in town, the support houses were buzzing.

I was dropped off at Beechurst, only to be told I was wanted on top of the hill, in the Residence. Nobody knew why. It was as if I'd suddenly developed an aura. Premies were treating me, and looking at me differently. It is every premie's dream to be invited to the Residence when Maharaji is at home. Suddenly it was happening to me. I was taken into the Cottage, a support house inside the grounds of the Residence, where I was told Marilyn, Maharaji's wife, wanted to talk to me. I was led down the garden path to a small conservatory on the side of a large, Swiss style house overlooking the Sussex downs. I was left at the door. I knocked, Marilyn invited me in.

I took my shoes off, and kneeled on the carpet, carefully concealing my socks, which had holes. We had two small children of our own at that time. We were living in a maisonette in a council block in Brixton, South London. My wife wasn't working, I'd been spending time doing 'service' and we were broke. Maharaji and Marilyn had three children. The eldest, Premlata, or Wadi, was five and a half. Hansi was four. Daya two or three. None of them had been to school.

Marilyn told me that she thought Premlata was ready to start some sort of formal education. I was a qualified teacher, my name had been mentioned and she wanted to ask me what I thought. I said, 'She's five and a half, if you think she's ready to learn to read and write, she probably is'. Marilyn said she was thinking about getting the room we were in converted to a classroom, and hiring a tutor. What did I think about that? We talked about children and school for about half an hour. She didn't carry any 'airs and graces' and came across as a genuinely good hearted human being. I liked her.

She asked me what type of education I thought Premlata should have, over next couple of months or so. I said, she should perhaps concentrate on reading and writing and some maths in the morning, and do more active things in the afternoons. Finally she asked me if I would be prepared to come down, five days a week, and do the job we'd been talking about. It was my dream come true, so naturally I said, 'Yes'.

Less than a week later we had a classroom with desks and chairs. I'd ordered a pile of equipment, and been given money for clothes. I was asked how much a week I wanted to be paid. I said the same as if I was teaching in a regular school, and that is what I received.

On the first morning of school, the whole family arrived. I waited for Maharaji and Marilyn to leave, so I could get on with it, but they stayed. I assume they wanted to make sure they weren't leaving their children with a brain damaged British nutcase. Little did they know. And so began my career as the 'teacher of Maharaji's children', as I became known in 'Premieworld'.

For five days a week I went down to the classroom and spent the day with Wadi, and sometimes Hansi. She was a pleasure to teach, intelligent, creative and keen to learn. She roared through the 'Pirate' reading books and really enjoyed the art and crafts, cooking and so on, we did in the afternoons. Hansi drifted in and out. He was too young to start school, full time, so we agreed he could come and go as he wanted. He couldn't suss me out. I told him what to do, and even told him not to do things, which I suspect was different to most premies around the house.

He didn't really know much about 'school' and 'classrooms'. He had great toys to play with in his own room, and intelligent, patient adults to entertain him. Compared to life outside, there wasn't a lot to hold his attention in the classroom. They were in Reigate for about two and a half months, and I went down to the classroom every week day, and once or twice on a Saturday. I took the train to Redhill, and there was usually a car waiting to take me up to the 'residence'. I'd be dropped off at the gates, go into the cottage and wait until I was told it was okay to go down to the classroom.

I got to know the children and their parents. They both showed an interest in what we did at 'school' and visited the classroom from time to time, Marilyn more than Maharaji. I chatted with them from time to time, usually about the children and what they were doing, but sometimes on other topics. I was given a couple of Maharaji's old shirts, and sweaters. Maharaji's castoffs, aside from being extremely good quality clothes, were holy relics. Forget the Turin shroud, articles of clothing worn by the Lord himself, were endowed with great significance.

My new 'service' gave me increased status with premies. When I was teaching, I was hot property. Everyone wanted to know, 'Had I seen Maharaji?' that day. Everyone wanted 'fresh darshan stories'.

'Darshan stories' are accounts of personal encounters with Maharaji. For premies they are food for the soul. To find out about what Jesus and Buddha did, you have to read scriptures, often written long after the person died. How wonderful it is then, to hear a story about the Lord, from someone who was there. And if it was that very day!

Lawks a lawdy, you could feel the bliss, still emanating from that person's eyes. Any personal encounter with Maharaji, no matter how small, became a darshan story in the retelling. The most insignificant incidents become endowed with immense depth and importance, leading to great 'realisations'.

So, I'd arrive back in London, fat on darshan. If I was with a bunch of premies, and started telling a 'darshan story' the room would become silent, all concentration would be on the cosmic tale of my latest encounter with the living Lord. A darshan story, if carried carefully between two friends, may even retain a faint, ghostlike, afterlife:

'I was with A. He's down the residence. He was telling us this amazing story yesterday. He was in this corridor, and the door opened and it was Maharaji. They just stood there looking at each other. Nobody said anything.'

'Wow. That's incredible. Then what happened?'

'It gets better. O appears right, Maharaji knows O, and Maharaji points at A and says, 'Who's that?'

'Then what happened?'

'Well, this is the really amazing bit. A's ego completely shattered.'

'Completely?'

'That's right. He took it home in a cardboard box, fed it to his cat, and was a God realised soul forever more.'

'Amen.'

I taught Wadi, Hansi, and later Daya, and for a while their cousin Navi, when they were in Europe for about two and a half years. Amar was born and they spent less time in England and more time in America. Amar was born on Christmas day. Premies all over the world were called on the phone tree (the divine pyramid's communication system) and told that Maharaji wanted everyone to meditate while Marilyn was in labour. We had two children to look after. I had to disobey agya, watch a James Bond movie, eat chocolate and drink disgusting alcohol-free lager instead. Then about 3 hours later we got a call telling us Amar was born.

I visited America a few times to attend festivals and would usually get invited to the residence. There was a classroom in the house in Miami, and an American teacher, who I became friends with. I sat in on a few lessons. When I was teaching, I was on 'Maharaji's Personal Staff'. We sat in the best seats in the hall, in front of the initiators (previously 'mahatmas', later 'instructors'). Of course, we were all equal in the eyes of the Lord, so it didn't matter really.

If the programme went on all day, there was a private area for 'initiators'. Residence Staff were also allowed in. There were usually loads of nice vegetarian snacks and treats, laid out, fruit juice, mineral water, and a couple of premies to serve them all. The premies, of course were serving their Lord, not the initiators.

As the children spent more time in Miami, and shorter periods at Reigate, it made more sense for them to stick with their American teacher. Two years after I started teaching, if they came to Reigate for a week, it would take me that amount of time to find out what progress they'd made since I'd last seen them, then they'd be off. Although I stopped teaching at Reigate, I was often invited down to the residence when the family were around. The same thing sometimes happened if I went to America.

The last time I went to a programme in America was December 1996 at Longbeach. The day after the programme, I was invited to Maharaji's birthday party at Malibu. Earlier this year (1998), Daya invited me to her birthday party at Reigate. Although I've seen less of the children as the years have gone by, I have good memories of the time I spent with them, and get on well with them when I see them.

They've grown up in a very unusual environment. Lots of premies react to them, the way some people react when they see a movie star in the street. The children have had premies behaving strangely around them all their lives and seem to have survived remarkably well under the circumstances.

My career as a 'divine teacher' over, life went on in the community. The eighties was the period of yet more change. Divine Light Mission became Elan Vital. The ashrams were closed. People who had given up their possessions to live a life of poverty, chastity, obedience, vegetarianism, meditation, satsang, service, and being covered from neck to ankle (if I remember the Ashram manual) were told to sod off and look after themselves. Many saw this as a 'temporary test' and continued the ashram lifestyle for a while, not revealing their knees until some years later.

The Krishna crown was put away. We stopped singing Arti. Maharaji changed his title to Maharaji. 'Satsang' took place every evening, in premies homes. We continued going to festivals and doing service.

I was convinced that things were improving. There was a new climate and faith is a powerful force. We admitted things had been crazy. But Maharaji was maturing and sorting things out. Hinduism and public Guru worshipping were things of the past. People would yet start queuing up for 'knowledge'.

In the late 80s, at a meeting in Birmingham, Maharaji told us he no longer wanted premies to talk about knowledge to people. They should be brought along to videos, or better, to see Him personally, where they would get their explanation from the horses mouth.

Premies should no longer practice the first meditation technique throughout the day, but only do it sitting down, formally. This surprised me. Since I'd received knowledge, it had been drummed into me to, 'Constantly meditate and remember the Holy Name.' This was, in fact, one of Maharaji's five holy commandments of the 1970s. Thinking, and the 'mind' were what took you away from the Truth. The first technique of meditation stopped thought, because that was the root of all our problems. If we weren't supposed to meditate in the day, but we weren't supposed to think either, what the hell were we supposed to do with our minds? Sleep perhaps. Sing? Whistle into the wind?

My mind stumbled back into the daylight, dozy, hung over and curious. I'd continue to attend meetings and started to challenge accepted 'premie dogma'. If we really wanted to get Maharaji's message through, we had to stop looking and acting like a religious cult.

Along came the nineties. Maharaji has stopped instructors showing 'Knowledge' to people and now does it himself, in large meetings, with instructors to help. I was invited to fewer meetings. As I professional writer, I was frequently asked to contribute to premie magazines and publications. My pieces were rejected. Nobody risks publishing anything without Maharaji's personal authorisation. A single copy of a journal or magazine is prepared and shown to him for comments and approval. My articles usually fell at the final hurdle. I knew the type of, 'amazing, incredible, beautiful, now it's really happening' stuff they wanted, but could no longer write it.

I stopped attending videos and meditated less. (Premies heed this cautionary tale, of how the 'mighty' fall, when they neglect the 'inner experience' and become attracted back to the 'mind'.) I stopped accepting the dogma and religion. I still had knowledge and my Master, what more did I need?

I noticed the constant, unrelenting drive for more funds. Maharaji wanted a private jet. Then he wanted a better one. Then he wanted a bigger one. The family had moved to Malibu and a new mansion was built. There was an insatiable need for finance. I was invited to a 'fund raising conference' of specially selected premies, at a hotel at Slough, a I think we were being asked to donate towards some alterations to the house in Reigate. Maharaji came along to lend his support to the event.

I continued to attend events where Maharaji appeared, but my feeling of unease was growing. He gave a slide show at Brighton which was embarrassing. It was as if he'd got the idea that, to give a presentation, all you needed was a few Powerpoint slides and a few graphs. As long as nobody listened too carefully it didn't matter what was on the graphs, and what was said. 'And here's a graph of how many kilos of different vegetables were eaten at the last programme in Delhi.'

I thought, 'He should stick to talking about Knowledge.' When I expressed my thoughts, most premies felt sorry for me. They'd sat there and experienced bliss. I'd sat there and suffered my mind. I was the one who was missing out.

It was like the children's story, 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' Everybody was pretending. I came to the same conclusion about his poetry and music, 'Don't give up the day job Lord.' By the time the nineties had arrived, regular meetings for premies and the public, consisted of Maharaji or hearing him personally.

Premies and instructors were to keep their mouths shut. It was alright, however, for them to speak at private 'service' or 'fund raising' meetings. Instructors also met privately with 'aspirants' to 'prepare them for knowledge', but events for the public and premies, had become 'strictly video'.

I continued to see Maharaji when he was around, but went to fewer and fewer videos. After a break of a few months, in 1997, I went to a local 'video event' one Saturday evening. The next day I received a telephone call,

'Hi. I'm X, your local community contact. I saw you at the 'video event' last night. It was great to see you again. I wondered if you'd be interested in getting involved in any service?'

'What's that then?'

'Well, at the moment, Maharaji has this project going and the best way you could help would be in the fund raising area.'

'So you want some money?'

'Er, well, ….'

Although the public face of Maharaji's organisation has changed, no more darshan lines, Krishna crowns etc, at the centre it's still the same game going on. Premies in positions of authority, instructors, coordinators, residence staff, all treat Maharaji as their Lord and Master, which he is. Most premies believe this too. They get the chance to express it at 'premie only' events, by dancing in bliss while he sits on the stage, or sitting in bliss when he shows them graphs of lentil consumption.

A couple of years ago, my youngest son, a bright, broad minded 18 year old at the time, was down in Brighton for a party. He knew Maharaji was attending a premie programme. He was vaguely interested in receiving Knowledge and had attended a small 'aspirant event' with Maharaji the previous year. He decided to bring three of his mates along to the premie event. He told them, 'When you go in, if they ask if you've got' knowledge', say, 'Yes''.

They hated the videos and were horrified by the 'Maharaji worship'. When I asked him what he thought about it all, he lowered his voice, and said gently, so I wouldn't take it the wrong way, 'You know those old black and white films of Hitler.. and all those people in front of him. It sort of reminded me of that.'

I suppose his mind wasn't ready for such a high vibration. Without knowledge, he couldn't handle it. His ego reacted and rebelled against the proximity of the creator. As he was only eighteen, and knew little of 20th Century history, the association with the Nazis is of no significance.

For the past three or four years I'd been going to events wearing blinkers, only wanting to listen to what Maharaji had to say. I didn't like the videos, the elevator music, the rehashed 70's songs with all references to 'lotus feet' changed to 'sparkling personality'.

I didn't like the videos and slide shows, 'Not another bloody beautiful mountain stream, followed by quote from Maharaji, followed by a flower waving in the breeze, and another quote, then some waves, or a sunset or something.'

I hated the 'happy clappers', who burst into rapturous applause, every time Maharaji gives them a cue that could somehow point to his divinity. However, I wasn't there for all that stuff. I just wanted, very simply, to be with my Master and hear what he had to say, so I ignored it.

When I was about 15, sat in a chemistry lesson and learned about coagulation. A beaker of clear liquid, containing some dissolved solid, like chalk, had another clear liquid, maybe acid, dripped into it. For a while, nothing seemed to happen. Then, one more 'drip' and the contents became white. The chalk had finally been coaxed out into the open. It had coagulated.

At the programme in Wembley, earlier this year (1998) I coagulated. It took three more drops.

After the first day of the programme, I went to dinner with a couple of friends from America, who had come over for the programme. During the meal, we were joined by some premies I didn't know. They all appeared to be regular visitors to the residence. We were having a pleasant conversation. They were bright, intelligent people.

Then one of them mentioned 'the Logo'. Maharaji had just finished designing a new logo. It had become a an item of great interest in Malibu. I think Maharaji mentioned it in the hall, that evening.

'Have you seen the Logo yet?'

'No I haven't seen it yet have you?'

'Yes. It's really incredible. I saw it for the first time tonight. It's amazing.'

I thought, 'Are they talking about that cartoon swan I saw earlier?'

'Oh no. I missed it. I was backstage. I still haven't seen it yet.'

'Yeah. I saw it. It's really beautiful man.'

And on it went, talking about 'the Logo' as if it was a new cure for cancer. Why did these intelligent people suddenly sound like idiots? I felt uncomfortable.

Drip.

On the Saturday afternoon after Maharaji finished speaking, I left the hall, not wanting to watch another sugary video. I walked across a large empty space, reached the door and looked out through the window.

It was raining incredibly heavily, more buckets than drops. If you went out you'd be soaked in seconds. A few yards away, looking out another window, was a young mother, with a pushchair containing a baby, who can't have been more than three months old. The three of us were inhabiting about 500 square metres of space, in the corner of Wembley Arena foyer. Everyone else was in the Arena, watching the video.

We were spotted by a premie 'usher' doing his service. He walked up to the young mother and said,

'Sorry, children aren't allowed in the hall.'

'But it's raining outside.'

'Yes I know, but, you'll have to take the baby outside.'

There was no canopy or shelter of any kind out there, just God and ten million hose pipes. I walked over to them.

'But I don't understand why.'

My mouth opened, and from deep within (the rough housing estate where I grew up) poured a torrent of abusive insults, peppered liberally with the worst kind of swear words.

'What's your *** problem you *** ***. Can't you see she's got a tiny baby and it *** down with rain outside you *** *** *** ***. What kind of **** moron sends a tiny baby out into the pouring rain you stupid *** ***er.'

What a saint. He hung in there, strapped onto the holy name, dealing with this 'bongo' who was trying to stop him serving his Master. He opened his mouth, and from deep within his premie soul came the words,

'It's programme policy. No children allowed.'

I had two options. I could smack him in the mouth, freak everybody out, and be dragged, kicking and screaming from the hall. 'There goes another bongo premie. Hey, didn't he used to teach Maharaji's children?' 'Yeah. Put on a bit of weight hasn't he? It's taking six security guys to carry him out.'

The other option was to turn round and walk away. Which I did.

Drip.

The programme finished around lunchtime on Sunday. The band were rocking. Maharaji was sitting on the stage. It was nearly time to go. Most of the premies were up dancing a dance where you never take your eyes of the person on the stage. I was sitting on a seat near the back, to the side.

An old friend appeared. He'd just arrived and had missed Maharaji's talk. He sat next to me in the bleachers, and told me what a nightmare he'd had getting to the hall. A sister, dancing in bliss to the music, three rows in front, swung around. My friend and I, sitting talking amidst a sea of dancing devotees, caught her eye. She climbed back over the empty rows, leaned forwards so I could hear her over the music, and said,

'Would you two mind stopping talking. You're spoiling my concentration.'

We exchanged a little light hearted banter, which ended, 'You've got a serious problem brother.' 'Yes. It's you. Piss off.'

Drip.

When I talked about these incidents to premies, they all had the same reaction, 'It's the stupid premies. It's nothing to do with Maharaji or Knowledge.' But I smelled a rat. I got the feeling that there was one simple fact that would explain everything.

I asked some questions.

If Maharaji was the 'Perfect Master', teaching 'Knowledge of the true self' or whatever, how come people who were practising these teachings were behaving with the sensitivity of concentration camp guards?

How come it made intelligent people talk like idiots?

How come most people who come along for the first time run a mile?

How come most people who receive knowledge end up leaving it?

How come premies are always getting hit for money?

How come members of cults say, and do, exactly the same kind of thing premies do, yet premies are not in a cult?

Things started to unravel. A weight lifted from my shoulders. It was time to rejoin the human race.

And how I feel about it all now? What about Maharaji and his family, and all those 'wasted' years?

I don't have any regrets. I wanted a guru, and I got one. I wanted to live in a monastery, and I did. Okay, so I ended up sleeping under a table in a garden in West Norwood. I would have preferred 12th Century palace in the Himalayas, but what the hell, this is the 20th Century. Times have changed. At least we had central heating. I enjoyed my time at Unity School. Working with dedicated, idealistic young people in London, then Cornwall, was a fulfilling and rich experience. It's better to try and fail, than just sit around talking about it. I enjoyed my time teaching Maharaji and Marilyn's children too. I've always liked Marilyn and the children, and I my feelings haven't changed.

Many of the best people I've met have been premies. Many still are.

And what about my ruined career? I could have knuckled under, got promoted, become a headmaster, played in a blues band at the weekends and had my soul ground down by the system. Instead I joined a cult and saw the world. I have no regrets.

And what about Maharaji? He was a mystery to me when I was a premie and he's a mystery to me now. He used to be a divine mystery, but now he's a human mystery. Is he simply conning everybody and raking in the cash? I don't think so.

Maharaji was not born into a 'normal home'. His dad, Shri Maharaj Ji was not a normal dad. He was the 'Perfect Master' of his time. Everybody worshipped him.

A book, 'Satgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj', published by Divine Light Mission, in 1970, tells us,

'Shri Hans Ji Maharaj was a beacon showing the path of light to lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of people in India and was worshipped by them as their Satguru.'

And later,

'In the annals of mankind there has always appeared a great Spiritual Master at every critical juncture, who has saved humanity from an impending crisis. Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, the founder of Divine Light Mission, was such a Divine Master.'

Like the rest of us, Maharaji is a product of his environment. Maharaji was six years old, when his father died. It must have been a terrible time for all the children. And who knows what went on in the few days between the death of Shri Maharaj Ji and the time six year old little Sant Ji, was stuck up on the stage, crowned Perfect Master, and told he had to continue his father's mission?

People have worshipped him ever since. Who knows the effect this has on somebody's personality? If, for example, you are worshipped and given everything you ask for, from the age of six, is it surprising that thirty odd years later you want private jets and houses the size of hotels. If the Lord wants something, you get it for him.

Maharaji never stood a chance.

Day after day, year after year, premies tell him, 'Thank you for this incredible Knowledge Lord. It is everything. Without it I was lost… and so on.' Why should he doubt all this sincere response? It's all he ever hears.

He was born into the 'Lord in human form' game and has never been allowed to get out of it. It echoes a scene in 'Life of Brian', by Monty Python, where Brian is chased into a pit by his devotees.

'But I tell you I'm not the Lord.'

'See, a true sign of the Lord is that he always denies his divinity. Praise the Lord.'

Maharaji is as much a cult victim as everybody else.

And the bottom line?

He really is the Lord walking around on Earth in a human body, just like the rest of us.

No More Mr Nice Guy
When I posted my story, I thought I'd left the cult, but two and a half years later my ideas and understanding are still changing. I've found out more about Mr Rawat's shenanigans when he's not sitting on the stage playing Perfect Master. I've discovered how the cult and its leader has protected, and supported a paedophile, Mahatma Jagdeo, for years. I've experienced first hand, the different tactics the cult have used to stop information about Jagdeo becoming public. I've also had lively discussions on the forum, which have shaken a few skeletons out of my cupboards.

The first "Journey" was easier to write. It was a series of chronological events. There are several themes woven through the second part of my story that I've separated to make it easier to tell my tale.

So, here's why I changed from a tolerant, peace-loving, ex-premie, to a raving, angry, anti-cult, activist.

In Summer 1998, I sat at my desk in a soulless office block in West London, hypnotised by the screen. My heart beat fast. There was a tiny tremble in my fingers. I had discovered Ex-Premie.org. The effect was dramatic. Within a couple of weeks of reading the site, I was ready quit the cult.. Information poured into my head like a rainstorm on a parched desert.

I read all the "Journeys" on EPO (Ex-Premie.Org) and decided to write my own. It flooded out. Every night after work, all I wanted to do was switch on the computer and clatter the keys. I finished after a week and sent my story to Brian, who tidied up the reformatting errors, changed £s to $s, and posted it on EPO. After 25 years in the cult, my life as an Ex-premie had begun.

Posting my story had consequences I never imagined. I receive emails from all around the world, saying things like, "A friend from work took me along to a video, and I was starting to get curious about what it was all about. Then I read your story and it answered all my questions. Thank you very much. You may have saved me from joining a religious cult."

Friends, Acquaintances and Latvians
One of the most disappointing effects of leaving the cult, has been to find old friends have broken contact- or are, "unable to visit our home", presumably it would be a disastrous cult career move. (Or maybe it's because I emit such a low vibration nowadays, they're worried I may suck the very soul from their being, and draw them into the darkness and suffering in which I now wallow). I live in the hope that one-day they'll come and join us, back in an imperfect world, full of imperfect people.

Although I seem to have lost a few friends, I've made some new ones. One of the most enjoyable consequences of communicating with people on the Ex-Premie forum, has to meet them in person. I've made good friends, and had some great times, with lots of people

The first time I met anybody was in the Latvian Club, in London, where John (JHB) was once the manager. Charlie, Hamzen, Jethro, John and myself showed up. We learned to play Latvian pool, and around midnight, the barmaid gave us the keys and went home. The main business of the evening was sampling the different Latvian beers. I was awarded a cult T-shirt and John proudly displayed the two financial statements, linking Divine Light Mission with Elan Vital. Latvian nights became irregular events at the club, until it closed down earlier this year.

The Latvian Club was to be a centre for bizarre co-coincidences. About 3 oclock one morning, there was a knock on the door and an American lawyer walked in who knew Marianne, also an American lawyer. About a year ago, a friend was in prison in Burma, for taking part in a pro-democracy demonstration. She was making the national news in the UK. We had a Latvian night around this time, and who should show up in the club, but the Crown Prince of Burma. John asked me what I'd tell the prince about my friend, if I had the chance. He then walked over to the Prince and passed on my message. (I didn't know who he was at the time.) A few weeks later, after my friend was back in the UK, the prince told John he's helped get her out of jail.

In February, we had another Latvian night in London. This time about 25 people showed up. In a couple of years, we'll be able to fill Wembley Conference Centre. Well have two unpaid ushers per person, sell smart cards, and throw a couple of newborn babies out into the rain.

Mahatma Jagdeo
When Dot and I were at Unity School, in Cornwall, in the early 70s, we made friends with a family who had moved over to the UK from Spain, to be part of the school. After the school fell apart, in summer 75, the family stayed on in the area, Dot and I returned to London and Dot produced a couple of babies.

Many years later, I saw the father of the family again in London. He told me that Mahatma Jagdeo had sexually assaulted his eldest daughter. She was 8 years old at the time. Years later, when I read her account of what happened, it made me cry.

When her father told me, my reaction was different. It was as if I'd been given a very unpleasant, but completely useless, piece of information. I was angry. But the incident happened about twenty years ago. What was I supposed to do about it? Her father had reported it to Mahatma Gurucharanand, but nothing had been done. It was like I'd stepped on a piece of old bubblegum. Suddenly it was stuck to my shoe. I could ignore it most of the time, but it wouldn't go away. There was never a convenient time to tell anyone. There was never anyone to tell. It had happened 20 years ago. The turd under the settee had become covered in thick dust. Why disturb it now? Let's pretend it's not there and hope nobody looks too close.

Then, when I was battering the keys each night, writing my history as a cult zombie, I saw the opportunity to use the information. I included it in my story. I felt a mild relief. I had scraped the chewing gum from my sole. I didn't even give the matter a sentence to itself. Little did I realise what the repercussions would be.

The eight year old girl was now a University lecturer in Australia, and she had put her email address on one of the Ex-premie websites. I sent her a copy of my story and we began corresponding.

She was still burning for justice. She'd been carrying her anger and pain since she was eight years old, and nobody had even acknowledged that anything was wrong. The message had been consistent, "Nobody cares enough about Jagdeo to do anything about it."

I decided to give her my full support . It took about a thirtieth of a second.

The mention of Jagdeo's pedophilia prompted other responses. I received a letter from my friend Glen Whittaker, who has spent most of his adult life running the cult in the UK. It was a personal letter. He told me that he knew Mahatma Jagdeo well and Jagdeo was one of the oldest Mahatma's in the cult who had know Maharaji since he'd been a little boy. There was no way he would have done anything like what I'd suggested. Children liked him. Maybe he'd been telling a group of children a story, one of them had sat on his knee, Mahatama-ji's hand had rested on the child's knee for a moment, and it had been misinterpreted.

Another old friend from the cult establishment went out for a drink with me a few days later. He confronted me about the Jagdeo allegation, asking me how I could make accusations like that without any evidence. I remember sitting by the Thames with him, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, getting irritated by his insistence that Jagdeo could do no wrong. I ended up yelling, "The guy's a fucking paedophile. Don't ever let him near your six-year old daughter."

I received an email from another of Jagdeo's victims. He had assaulted her in the USA. Her friend had also been assaulted. She had reported it to two instructors, asking them to tell Maharaji. One of them reported back to her that Maharaji already knew about it. Nothing was done. Jagdeo continued touring, getting VIP treatment all round the world from cult members. She, like the other victim, was extremely angry and still wanted to do something about it.

The momentum to get justice for Jagdeo's victims was gathering

I received a letter from Glen, on cult notepaper, saying, if I suggested the cult or its leader were in any way aware, or condoned, any crime that may have been committed by Jagdeo, they would go to their lawyers. I published the letter on the Forum, along with my suggestion that indeed, the cult and its leader may have been well aware that Jagdeo was using his position to sexually abuse children. I didn't hear from the lawyers.

The next time I went to Cornwall, I walked into Torpoint Police Station and asked the Sergeant behind the desk if the Police were interested in investigating a crime that happened within their jurisdiction over twenty years ago.

He said, "What was the crime?"

I replied, "Child Abuse."

"Go and sit in that room, I'll fetch the Inspector."

In summer 1999 the Sunday Express, a newspaper in the UK with a circulation of a few million, picked up on the Jagdeo story. I think they wanted to do a piece along the lines of, "Internet Uncovers Cult Paedophile." The paper phoned and asked if I'd co-operate. I agreed. They then asked me to get in touch with the victims and see if they'd be willing to be interviewed.. They were more than willing.

The paper contacted the cult and they went into a panic. They sent a letter to the Express, saying they'd take legal action if the paper suggested Elan Vital was connected to Divine Light Mission. Any crimes committed by DLM officials were nothing to do with Elan Vital.

This letter precipitated one of my magical moments on the Internet. It was 5 o'clock on a sticky, Saturday afternoon in August. I was in a cabin on the cliffs in Cornwall, miles from civilisation. The phone rang. It was the reporter from the Express. The cult were trying to prevent the paper from publishing the story. They were threatening legal action if there was a suggestion that DLM had anything to do with Elan Vital. I posted this information on the Forum.

Five minutes later, John (JHB) posted from London, saying he had a letter from Divine Light Mission asking him to change the number of the account his standing order donation was paid into. He had another letter, showing that the new account number belonged to Elan Vital.

Ten minutes later, Joe from San Francisco posted a link the State of California legal archive, showing the official name change from Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital. I emailed the information to the Express.

The story was delayed a week. The cult were fighting hard to stop it altogether.

During that week, one of the paper's directors appeared in the editors office, excited with the news, "I've got Cainer." They were referring to another old friend of mine, Britain's best know astrologer, and reputedly, best paid journalist, Jonathon Cainer. Jonathon and I worked on the editorial team of the cult magazine, "Connect." He was also part of the team that set up one of the first cult websites, Enjoyinglife.org.

In England, there's a Sunday Express, Sunday Mail, Daily Express and Daily Mail. The newspapers are fierce rivals. They both aim at the Conservative middle class. The Mail had been steadily luring readers away from the Express for several months. The paper's owners had hired a trendy editor, Rosie Boycott, who became famous at the Independent for starting their "Legalise Cannabis" campaign. The word around Barnes pond was that she'd been lured from the big liberal broadsheet to the tacky, Tory tabloid by a salary fatter than Jabba the Hud and some good weed. The rumour was that Jonathon would bring a hundred thousand or so loyal astrology fans from their main rival. He'd obviously seen where the future lay.

Of course there was the matter of Jonathan's connection with a cult that that was involved in allegations of child abuse, and the fact that the paper was, coincidentally, about to run a story on the aforementioned cult. Jonathon resigned his cult positions, and membership, and ended up working for the Express, who dropped the Jagdeo story. Naturally, he couldn't be associated with an organisation that was the target of such serious allegations.

When I asked the reporter why the story had been spiked, he said, "For commercial reasons."

I asked him if these "commercial reasons" were the readers Jonathon Cainer was expected to bring from the Express. He wasn't at liberty to comment.

The Jagdeo campaign has its own momentum now. The cult has stopped denying he is a paedophile. They removed their initial response to the accusations from their website. They have conducted a recent enquiry into his activities, but refuse to release the results, or even admit there was an enquiry.

Earlier this year I was contacted by someone who I've known for many years, who has had many official positions in the cult. I was told that Jagdeo's sexual abuse of children had been discussed, by small groups of people, at cult conferences for several years. Eventually the solution to his child abuse was to limit his touring to the Indian communities in the Far East.

Somebody who had been at Unity School in Denver also contacted me. They told me that reading some of the stuff about Jagdeo had reminded her that he used to have sessions with some of the schoolchildren there in darkened rooms. This was now worrying her, and she'd decided to investigate further.

More recently, someone told me they had witnessed very disturbing scenes in an ashram in India, where a young girl was crying, pleading not to be forced to go to Jagdeo's room again.

The Jagdeo business, more than anything else, has hardened my attitude against the cult and its leader.

Captain Rawat
Just when you think you finally understand the Master of our age, he surprises you with another face of his divine being.

I've seen Maharaji on the stage, wearing his papiermache Krishna crown, emblazoned with glass jewels. I've heard him reciting his embarrassingly bad poetry to audiences who would have wept and grinned if he'd been reading the label from a box of pile ointment. I've seen him stand before a graph, pointing to the big column and saying, "They ate so much dahl, I had to shorten this column or it would have gone off the top of the slide. (CLICK) And here's a pie chart of everybody's favorite musician. That big green slice is Peter Frampton."

But I have never seen his favorite incarnation- "Captain Rawat".

He wears a pilot's suit, with golden spaghetti on the hat. He flies a private jet. The staff who travel with him are all instructed to refer to him only as "Captain Rawat". His life as Lord of the Universe in person is a big secret. Calling him, "Maharaji", or "Teacher", or "Balyogeshwar Param Hans Shri Guru Maharaji dot com," is a crime punishable by banishment from the Divine Kingdom.

When Michael Dettmers began posting on the forum, our understanding of Captain Rawat increased remarkably.

The Captain isn't as holy and perfect as we'd been led to believe. There are eye-witness accounts of his excessive drinking, abusive drunken behavior, sexual abuse of his female followers, leaving the scene of a road accident after a cyclist had been killed by a car he was driving, and getting one of his followers to take the blame. These all paint a picture of an unhappy, greedy, screwed up, abusive person with few redeeming qualities.

When I left the cult, Captain Rawat was still a mystery. I'd been conditioned for so many years to worship and adore him. It's taken a while for the picture to fade, and find out what kind of person he really is. It's ironic, that I followed him for twenty five years, but didn't find out what kind of person he really is until I quit. When you're a premie he can do no wrong. Any perception of fault is a reflection of the observers own imperfection. In Cultworld, the Captain and the Creator are the same thing.

Forum Frolicks
After I'd posted my "Journey", I began posting on the Ex-Premie Forum, under the handle AJW. I enjoy the forum. Some witty and intelligent people post there. It's entertaining to watch premies dodge difficult questions, like the bull-runners in Pampolona. The forum is also a great platform for people who have become disillusioned with the cult.

Within a few obvious guidelines, people are free to express their feelings, enter into discussion, publish information, and, therapeutically, take the piss. Occasionally, however, an internal feud flares up, usually in Cowboy land over the Atlantic, where they all come out shooting. When I began reading the forum, in 1998, these shootouts consumed lots of time and energy, and often involved the Forum Webmaster. It was the Wild West of cyberspace.

In Summer 1999, during a particularly nasty gunfight, the Webmaster had been fatally wounded. His last act was to throw his Sheriff Star to Marianne. She sent me a hasty email from the Saloon.. She was Webmistress. She didn't want to do it. Did I? Being British, I was instantly attracted by the job title. I asked if there was a uniform? She wrote back saying, "You can do it dressed as Princess Anne and sit in a tub of custard if you like. Here are the passwords. You are the Forum Webmistress." I rushed out and bought a tiara.

I did the job for over a year. My achievements were small and few. I did the job anonymously. I changed the title from Webmaster to Forum Administrator. I got other people to help. We developed a shift system, so the role wasn't associated with a particular individual all the time. It was reassuring to see that all the people administering the forum pretty much agreed on what should be removed and who should be blocked.

There were a few difficult periods when all the assistants went offline, around summer 2000. I made it my duty to check the forum at least once a day. This involved travelling around Paris on the metro looking for an Internet café that wasn't full, and stumbling red-eyed across the road from the Baakerei to the Laser Game Centre in Eindhoven, to log on, drink black coffee and cleanse the forum of nutcases.

It was tough in the Cult-cyber wars, but I made it through without getting Repetitive Strain Injury.

Wasting Time
I've spent lots of time in my life doing lots of stupid things. Most of them were for money, to support my family. However, when I've had free time and energy, I've often donated it to movements, causes, or forces that I wanted to help and support. I sometimes go on political demonstrations. We donate regularly to Greenpeace and Amnesty International. I helped organise a rock concert for famine aid a few years ago. But by far the cause that has taken the bulk of my freely donated time and energy over the past 25 years, has been the stuff I've done for Captain Rawat and his cult.

When I first quit, I felt OK about this. I'd had lots of positive experiences and made some good friends. I now feel differently. I resent all that time, money and energy I wasted keeping someone who turned out to be a confused, abusive human being, living in outrageous luxury.

At first it is impossible even to imagine that you are in a cult. Sure, Moonies, Scientologists, Children of God, Krishna chanters are in cults, but Premies have a true Master, and practice the True Knowledge. The others only have beliefs. Premies have a direct experience, which of course, is beyond belief.

"Knowledge" is another name for the divine consciousness within you, which you experience through the grace of Captain Rawat. There's no doubt. This is the "Knowledge of the Soul." Of course, if you don't quite experience infinite glory when you meditate, it's your own fault. You're too impure for the Grace to land. But it will keep circling until you clean up your act. It never seems to run out of petrol. Maybe it's a glider, and that's why we can't hear the engine. And maybe the clouds will clear one day and we'll be able to see it. Meanwhile, shut up and keep sending the money.

"Meditation, Yoga, Reality, Harmony, Peace", surely all this is good, worthwhile stuff. So how can you be in a cult? You are watering your soul. You've become a natural, cool, modern yogi with a modern master. How could you be brainwashed? That was the "company of truth", not brainwashing.

But you are in a cult, and there's a cupboard you're afraid to open. It contains nothing more than a different perspective, but as a cult member, this view is one you are forbidden to even consider. You dare not try it on, because if it fits, you may never take it off again. For the simple truth is, "You have a better quality of life outside a cult, than in one." And once you realise this you leave.

At some point, like a germinating seed searching out the light, you find information about the cult and its activities from outside. Normally you would discount this sort of thing without a second thought, but maybe the information comes from people who spent plenty of time around the Captain. Maybe you know and trust them. You soak it all up. The house shakes and cupboards fly open. You are initially in turmoil, as you begin to change one of your core understandings about what life is all about. It's the part of the story where you escape from prison. But getting a handle on it all takes time. You can't dump 25 years worth of stupid beliefs like an old suit, and replace them with a new outfit. I needed time, discussion, and information to sort everything out, and allow the natural process of unraveling to take place.

Mr Nice Guy
I think Mr Nice Guy is a product of the Love and Peace culture of the 60s. He found fertile ground to develop his persona in the Captain's cult. He wants to be nice to everybody in the world, all the time. Anything less is failure on one level or another. Theoretically, if I devoted my time and energy to worshiping the Captain, and practising and believing in his yoga techniques, then my effort would bear fruit. I'd become like one of those enlightened monks in a Kung-Fu movie. My aura of peace and wisdom would affect those around me, and I'd be well on my way to sainthood, surely a worthy vocation. The way to progress in a spiritual career is to be holier, more peaceful, wise and God realised than the next devotee. Anger is extremely uncool, unless displayed by a person in lower consciousness in a frustrated response to a disarming insight from an in the flow dude such as myself.

Oh how the mighty fall
Feeling my personality return has been an immense joy, even if it has blown my chances of stepping off the eternal cycle of birth and death, beyond the bonds of karma, and signing up for eternal liberation, or a go at being a Buddha on Earth. I think I'll go for the beer, football and sandwiches instead.

Somebody once posted the different stages you go through when you leave a cult. Understanding the theory doesn't make any difference when you're going through it. I'm at the "angry" stage right now. And I have a worthwhile use for the emotion. I've shed my threadbare, faded, rainbow monks habit, and put on a leather studded jacket. I've got an appointment to get 666 tattooed across my forehead. It's time Captain Rawat and his cult answered for the crap they've dumped in our lives.

Anth Ginn
Utrecht March
2001

JHB

It's strange trying to write this. 25 years believing something while trying to get on and live a normal life can't be written down. I'm still trying to make sense of it all, and also trying to remember my beliefs and feelings back then when I started this trip. Well, I guess I need to put some words down and see what they look like.

I was 20 when I received Knowledge. I was very immature, very introverted, and very lonely. Looking back, the loneliness really kicked in after puberty. I didn't have much understanding of sex and relationships, and in fact I had only one sexual partner before I received Knowledge. Also, I had read a book on yoga which said that a yogi could do all these amazing things. After years of reading Superman comics, I had this dream of having superpowers. These eastern religions seemed to include practical methods for reaching these amazing states.

Anyway, my girlfriend had been to satsang, and had almost received Knowledge, but a branch of a tree falling on her head on the way to the session convinced her it wasn't the right thing to do, and she turned back. I was doing a lot of acid around this time, not for pleasure, but to try to rip my mind open so that I could sort out my hang-ups. I went to buy some acid in Leeds, UK, but the man wasn't going to be there for another hour.

I wandered around and saw these pictures of M outside a hall. So I went in, and sat at the back. I thought the bowing down to the pictures of M really weird, but I listened anyway. I can't remember anything that was said making any impact on me. I left and bought the acid, and had an excellent night. I took more and more acid to try to understand myself, but it got to the point where it wasn't working any more.

A few things happened that convinced me that I should check out M again. So I went to the ashram in Leeds in November 1973 (many of the ashram premies were in Houston), and attended satsang. Unfortunately, no one explained what satsang was, so after chatting in the kitchen, we went to the satsang room, and I continued to chat. After a while, the famous Billy Graham (actually not the American evangelist, but the British premie) told me to shut up, as satsang could only be given by people with Knowledge. So, I became hooked, I longed for this magical thing, this step to the divine, to get those superpowers.

After 6 weeks, I received Knowledge in London from Mahatma Gitanand. It was M's birthday in 1973. I felt honoured. I felt scared, and I experienced nothing. That night I did experience something strange in meditation, but it didn't feel like anything divine.

It was clear to me that the correct way to practice was to live in an ashram, so I moved in to Brighton ashram in January 1974 and lived there for a year. In that time I became friends with some premies, and didn't have a hard time particularly with any. I saw M in the Palace of Peace in June 1974, and went to Copenhagen and had darshan in July.

I see now that I treated darshan like an acid trip, and really wanted something amazing to happen as I kissed those chubby feet. I requested to see a mahatma to talk about not experiencing anything. I was allowed to see this little fat mahatma whose name escapes me. He was useless. I don't think he understood anything.

I did have one experience in the ashram that convinced me that Knowledge was true. After a day when I meditated for several hours, I experienced the music technique. Suddenly, this sound appeared to my right, and moved through me to my left. When I say through me, I mean it was like something invading the most intimate part of me. And the sound - it was beautiful, like a guitar, perfectly tuned, with a billion strings. This happened to me, and it mattered. I was summoned for dinner, and when I walked into the dining room, another premie asked if everyone was remembering holy name as the vibe was so high. I couldn't say anything. The only other time when I really experienced anything that I felt was really important was about twenty years later.

I left the ashram after a year. I'm not sure why, but I had an independent streak. I moved back to Leeds, but moved into Leeds ashram after 5 months. I only stayed 2 months, as my brother, who had also received Knowledge, and had lived in Oldham ashram, developed schizophrenia. The ashram secretary wouldn't allow me to visit him in hospital, so I left again. Looking back, I think I didn't really believe that the ashram system reflected M's wishes, so it was OK to go against the ashrams when I thought they were wrong.

My brother remained ill for the next 21 years and took his life in 1996.

After leaving the ashram for the second time, I moved in with the housemother at Leeds ashram. She moved out of the ashram because she was treated callously after burning her arms after dropping a pan of hot beans. I took her to hospital and looked after her when the ashram premies just called her stupid for dropping the pan. We married the next year and lived together for 14 years. She died in 1996 from a diabetes related illness a few years after we separated, and 8 weeks after my brother had died.

During these years I continued to believe that M was the incarnation of God on this planet. I didn't always practice but I made the effort to see him, and I always gave money to help his work. I remember when M changed all the rules in the early 80's, and someone asked him at a program in Brighton about propagation. He answered that this is his job, and he didn't want us to do it. I felt so relieved, because I really felt embarrassed about talking about him. I can only remember one time where I told someone else about M after that.

The other memorable meditation experience was after a Knowledge review in Brighton in the early nineties. Practising the third technique, I experienced something where afterwards I understood the zen koan about one hand clapping. I can't describe it any more, but the feeling was that this is what I really wanted.

The Long Beach event in 1996 was memorable. My brother and my wife had recently died, and I needed support. One premie did give me a lot of care, and I am very grateful to him for that. I was also very pleased that the devotional stuff was brought back with Arti being played (instrumental only). I didn't question the secrecy of what was being implied.

I became an ex after discovering this site in January 1999. I had already allowed my mind to study other philosophies during the years of little devotion, and M's importance in my life had reduced to a feeling I should keep in touch, and give money to EV. My link to M was little more than a thread which was easily cut. However, the feelings that come with escaping are surprisingly strong. I think I will write a follow-up when I understand these feelings a little more.

I still meditate occasionally, but as others have said, it's hard to separate meditation from M. My reasons for rejecting M are that he is a poor meditation teacher, almost certainly in it for the ego and the money. I cannot remember anything meaningful he has said in 25 years of listening. I listened carefully to some of his tapes after discovering this site. He really does say very little.

I once had an argument with a premie about M saying he didn't like Coca Cola. I interpreted this as M saying that the thirst quenching quality of Coca Cola was because of the water, in the same way that the happiness experienced from worldly things was due to something within (like water) instead of the things themselves. The premie interpreted it as M hating big corporations. Maybe M could settle this argument.

My estimate of my donations to DLM, EV, and M over the years is $30,000. There's so much more I could say. I know my emotional development was stunted by membership of the cult. My career clearly suffered. However, it's possible I would have done something crazy instead of joining DLM so maybe M saved my life. Did membership of the cult damage my brother? I don't know, but I do know he deserved a better life. I am lucky in that I now have a close loving relationship with my parents. I know I hurt them with my cult membership.

The future? I still believe, from my experiences, that something valuable can be learnt when thoughts are stilled. I also believe that reading, thinking, and talking can also contribute to learning. I also still long for, and value, love and affection.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for caring enough to give me this opportunity to express this part of my life.

Nya Allison Murray

I was stranded forlorn and out on a limb in my life. Some people, musician friends, kept telling me about this guru who was the real thing. I didn't believe them and insisted he was a charlatan and a fake.

When I was on the horns of a dilemma, not knowing where to go and what to do next, I knew I could turn to a premie friend for help. So I did, it was a Canadian woman, Gwen, one of the most interesting people I've ever met, and very kind. I decided to have an open mind about maharaji, and I experienced an epiphany, an on the road to Damascus kind of awakening. Up to this point, in the wake of Vietnam, I had determined that either God was dead, or didn't care about me. I decided to support the hypothesis that the universe was benevolent, and that maharaji was the prophet of the age, and see where it led me.

I was never part of the premie social scene, but made a few good friends with some lovely sincere kind people. In fact I knew nothing about the ashrams and the lifestyle and the club and the clique. I vaguely wandered into 'satsang' sessions over 8 years, never once encountering the instructors or the inner circle.

Eventually in 1984, I decided it was time to try the techniques, and I did. It was the most wonderful revelation. The techniques for me were like a hidden secret pathway to my deepest self, my eternal self, the unchanging and the changeless, the divine and the miraculous. I practised them as best I could. At this point in time, I had never seen the guru, nor had he been in Australia for many years.

I finally saw him for the first time in Sydney at a bizarre event where there was a dinner afterward. I left after a couple of glasses of wine.

So I cruised through the eighties conscientiously practising these techniques, and focussing my efforts on discovering the nature of reality, truth and the eternal wisdom that human kind have always sought. This was my focus in life. Maharaji didn't really come into it. He was a remote absent figure, and I trusted he was going about his business saving the planet, in his guise as latter day Jesus.

In the nineties I discovered a lot of truth and wisdom and some wonderful people who were premies. I started travelling professionally, and in the mid-nineties started attending international events. By this time my mentors were Kahlil Gibran and Kabir. I was working on letting go of pride, stupidity, greed, attachment to materialism and fostering my interest in the environment, the peace movement and the development of complimentary medicine like naturopathy, herbalism, massage, acupressure, etc.

When I saw maharaji at these events I had some wonderful experiences by focussing and tuning in to myself, my inner thoughts and being with a large number of people who were also focussing on something real and true.

By this time Amaroo started to happen, and instead of drifting away at this point, I started to give money and try to get involved. It wasn't easy. Giving money was, but getting involved was weird. I was critical right from the start at the way recruitment was done, and how labour seemed to be exploited, so I withdrew and started having the opinion that the people around maharaji must be very flawed, because Amaroo was clearly a venture that was very badly run. I thought so for years, and was very concerned because maharaji seemed too busy saving the world to notice.

I continued my journey to my soul, and continued to focus on the meaning of consciousness, life and death, while I went through a very profound and wonderful journey with my mother over a number of years, as she slowly declined and passed on. A truly miraculous experience, and I was very glad I had focussed on the meaning of consciousness and existence as it gave me the moral strength to look death in the face, and find the meaning of the other side of spring and summer, that is autumn and winter. I was able to understand in some way the awesome nature of the creative forces of this universe. It seemed obvious to me that not only was death an ending, but in some other perspective, it was a beginning.

Meanwhile I listened to maharaji's words, and translated them to a simple profundity.

Amaroo was a constant worry, as every time I went behind the scenes, I saw splintered fractured chaos. I saw a place that had the hallmarks of a very badly run small family business. It appeared to me that everyone around maharaji was incompetent and had very imperfect flawed motives. This I rationalised as the master of the time working in a very mysterious way.

Eventually I was approached to give a lot more money. I was suspicious naturally, and decided that I would go close to the throne to find out what was going on, and attend a major donor's conference. The whole proceeding was strange, and I was even more suspicious, even though I had a great time in Arizona, complete with fling with premie from Paris.

I knew I didn't want to go to Amaroo ever again, or give any more money, but I still clung to the belief that maharaji didn't know about any of this corruption or stupidity. He was not his brothers keeper.

Then after a chilled out weekend with a woman friend, a musician with whom I'd done a recording session, we were having coffee at the Gold Coast Arts Centre. She decided to trust me enough to tell me that she was now an ex. As I was open, she proceeded to tell me her personal experiences of how flawed maharaji is. So did I believe my friend, or cling to my belief in the prophet of our time? Yep, I trusted my girlfriend. She had no reason to lie.

The first few weeks were rough, but really, I've emerged from my long association with exactly what I put into my experience. An incredible awe of the way the universe works, a healthy scepticism for every belief system in it, and an honest heart and a clear head.

Now that's not too bad, really. You have to laugh. Lord of the universe? Oh come on, I must have been born yesterday!

And the techniques? I am working my way back to contemplative yoga through the front door this time, learning the basics, and evolving my practise from simple physical techniques. At this point in my life, I am having a great time. I have a great career, a healthy lifestyle, good friends and money in the bank. I've sorted out my childhood traumas and put them behind me. I am no longer afraid of death and the unknown, and I now know the universe is benevolent. I'm just not at a contemplative stage in my life. No doubt when I am older I will return to contemplative practise. I feel for the first time in my life as though I am in the driver's seat, not my ego or my illusions or my fears or my doubts. And maybe god is not dead, after all, but I know that prophets and religions are props on the way to a universal consciousness. Been there, done that.

Neville Ackland

Hi, I'm Neville Ackland. I'm the one who staged a one-man protest at Amaroo during Maharaji's program in September 2002. I posted here a few years ago under the name Seeker of Truth. I'm would now like to post this poem that tells the story of my journey into and out of Maharaji's world.

YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET
By Neville Ackland

It was '72, I was 21
on a quest for the truth all starry-eyed.
Along the way I met a man
a boy in fact, who seemed so wise.

He told me of a dream come true,
a dream I'd dreamt myself one day.
He said he'd be my God for me,
a guru to surrender to.

I prayed to God, could this be true?
Is this the answer to my prayers?
From my soul the answer came,
the consciousness of bliss is here.

So surrender to I surely did
and when I did, I did some more.
Then at last came my reward,
to live a life to serve the Lord.

To please him was my only need,
he smiled at me and I saw God.
I told my friends, what could they say,
Divine light shone on my stage.

My mother lost her only son,
abandoned for a greater cause.
Broken-hearted, health was failing,
alone she turned to face the wall.

She died this way, no compromise.
I prayed for her to know the truth,
that I was right and she was wrong,
Maharaji was my living proof.

A surrendered soul knows it's home
when resting at the Master's feet.
He was my Lord, he told me so,
my spiritual journey was complete.

The years went by, the mission grew,
confusion reigned amongst the bliss.
The Ashram's closed, we never knew,
this was life, and life was this.

But the Master's game had just begun,
he became our God, in suave disguise.
Only premies knew the truth,
it became a sin to criticise.

An image change is what he said
would do the trick and make his day.
I'm now a teacher, not a guru,
and you're my students not my slaves.

Satsang service meditation
all were changed to suit his whim.
No more dancing, no more Krishna,
to mention guru was a sin.

The premies were his faithful children,
at father's feet they laid their heads.
To keep the secret of the master
was our duty, a solemn pledge.

An explanation wasn't needed,
we all knew his secret plan,
avoid the media and detection,
the Lord of Lords was just a man.

Behind the scenes he was our saviour,
he looked so good in new disguise.
So cool, so funny, such charisma,
and now it seemed, so worldly wise.

The dashing pilot, the super jet,
the mansions cars and all that stuff.
He deserved it, but didn't need it,
he needed no one including us.

Massive projects he demanded,
money was his greatest tool.
When useless spending came to nothing,
he played it cool, we played the fool.

As time went by it became apparent,
the boss' plans were sometimes mad.
We were only being tested,
the doubting Thomas went underground.

There were problems, and problem premies,
those who were close to him, the privileged few.
They protected their own interests,
and the boss' secrets grew and grew.

Now there was a mega mansion,
and Amaroo, a world away,
became the focus of attention,
not all was well, such fateful days.

Some brave souls, within their prison,
knowing where their motives lay,
tried to take the reigns of progress,
their cause was crushed, their spirit slain.

One fateful day amid the madness,
the penny dropped, at last I saw,
Maharaji, master of deception,
my heart broke, I smiled no more.

Catatonic devastation,
seething anger, revelation,
my child shattered, nothing mattered,
frightened friends head for the door.

I begged forgiveness from my mother,
dead and buried long ago.
Ten thousand hours of consultation
before the pain began to go.

Spiritual crisis, all faith shattered,
confrontation overload.
My life's focus all in tatters,
God is dead…religion sux…Oh no!

Alas for guru, lord and master,
it was too late to patch the leak.
Grief and anger, heartbreak sorrow,
were met with silence, disbelief.

He made it clear, the parent raged,
how dare they think and speak their mind.
It's either my way or the highway,
no one dared to cross the line.

Shock and horror, children crying,
fathers angry, we are failing,
surrender further to the lila,
we live to love another day.

Criticism from the airwaves,
information party time.
Accusations in the real world,
from those he thought he'd left behind.

Haunted by that hunted feeling,
looking for a place to hide,
the man withdraws within his fortress,
to play the game of mastermind.

Things not getting any better,
millionaire fat men aren't the go.
Support is leaking, it's very messy,
the mop brigade runs to and fro.

Whilst he's got his faithful premies
that come for miles to kiss his feet,
it's easy to forget his worries,
till next he looks in disbelief.

The internet in all its glory
kept his soldiers up all night.
As dawn broke the truth was spoken,
the master's ears were filled with fright.

Under cover, in the moonlight,
the phantom struck, confusion reigned.
Churches, councils, business leaders,
all were caught up in the game.

Meanwhile in the local town
his reputation got around.
Letters flying, spray paint splattered,
leaflets littered on the ground.

They called the police and blamed the Christians,
Peak Crossing seethed with discontent.
5000 leaflets, the town was covered,
the phantom struck with shrewd intent.

3000 premies, Sunday evening,
the sun was setting on Ivory's Rock.
The lord had spoken and they were leaving,
nothing prepared them for the shock.

Someone boldly on the roadway,
holding high a sign that read,
"Maharaji, master of deceit.
You broke my heart, you didn't care."

The message made it loud and clear
that in the court he would appear.

He dared Maharaji, stand and face him,
called him liar, coward, fool.
The premies fled into the darkness,
no one dared break the rules.

Gone forever the hurt chid victim,
in its place a new man born.
No more fear, no more anger,
the phantom's friend was 10 feet tall.

Secret's out, his cover blown,
the police and press are next to know.
Amaroo will soon be over,
the lord of lords will have to go.

And as for you, Maharaji
you gutless little shit,
the game is up, your cover blown,
it's time for you to quit.

Amaroo is surrounded,
there's no place left to hide.
You always were the god of nothing,
a victim of your foolish pride.

My heart bleeds, for the premies
so trapped within your snare,
for when you fall, so will they
be crushed by their despair.

When next you choose to come to town,
there's one thing you can bet.
I'll be there with bells on,
you ain't seen nothing yet.

Dedicated to the memory of my mum.
You were right, I wish you could be here now.

Nigel

Back in 1978 I was a twenty-three-year-old time-served aspirant.  I had waited, or wasted, nine months in readying myself for 'Knowledge' and had been twice rejected for reasons unspecified.  Maharaji's  divine 'gift', whilst promising from here to eternity, threatened to elude me forever.  I attended satsang nightly and travelled to retreats, programs and aspirant weekends with live initiators.  I traded rejection stories with fellow-rejects, meeting up to share furtive cigarettes in far-flung community co-ordinators' back yards  ('Anne Johnson doesn't appreciate some people have weak bladders…').

I no longer ate meat, fish or eggs, or drank alcohol.  I endured agonies of trying, and failing, to quit smoking.  Hash too was banned - but it had never done much for me in the first place, beyond the 'alternative' culture giving me a taste for eastern religion and the mystical twangings of the Incredible String Band. Mr Prempal Rawat's ('Guru Maharaj Ji's') teachings were explicit: you must become detached from the pleasures, desires, ambitions of this world and surrender to Guru Maharaj Ji.  Let Knowledge become the whole of your existence.  Even family and friends were but 'worldly attachments'.

I was also clinically depressed - but didn't really know it.  Knew my mind was the problem and was feeling wretched just about all of the time.  I had this strange, permanent headache - not like an ordinary headache -  somewhere in the centre of my skull from thinking too much.  But depression was 'of the mind', and Maharaji was the 'antidote to mind', so at least I was in the company of the people best placed to help me.

(BTW: the mind is rarely the problem.  Needing love is the problem.  That is why Maharaji is a rich man.)

There was that song on an early DLM album that went:
'Who can free you from your mind, when you dwell beneath its shadow..?'

The correct answer and chorus:
'Maharaji can with his light and love.  He sends you tidings from above, of a land of bliss where all may dwell…'

But the message had changed subtly since I was first told you only needed to 'ask with an open heart'; now it seemed you must become a devotee merely to qualify for Knowledge.  And where, to begin with, Knowledge was portrayed by a premie friend as 'free acid inside', it was now an experience and expression of 'Maharaji's love'.  An inner connection with the lord of creation now manifested in the physical form of the guru.

On the day I was to set off for my third and final attempt to receive Knowledge, my brother died of leukemia, aged 22.

But I had a new family now, and those 'brothers and sisters' whose advice I sought (premies) knew where my duty lay, and that was to be at the Knowledge session rather than with my mother and sisters.  No one said 'let the dead bury their dead…' but that meaning was implicit.  I am not trying to pass on any blame here: I would have offered the same advice to anyone in the same situation.  In fact, 'go and get knowledge' were the very words I wanted to hear, such was the extent of my conditioning.  I rationalised the decision by telling myself I would return with Knowledge, newly qualified to share priceless satsang with my folks in their time of need.  My own real needs had been long since buried.

Contrary to popular belief a cult needs to apply no coercion (it needs only apply for tax exemption).  It is more effective at every stage to allow recruits to exercise free-will.   But their motivation, emotions and world view are insidiously corrupted until the devotees exercise that free-will to comply with the perceived or expressed wishes of the Master.

I have since read that the best predictors of a person's susceptibility to cults and new religious movements are

a. having a mainstream religious upbringing;

b. being aged between 18 and 25; and

c. suffering a family bereavement.

All three were true in my case - and in droves: my father had died suddenly a few years earlier.  Interestingly, the same factors are often present as predictors of suicide.  The premie anthem 'Arti' told of the Perfect Master being the 'protector of the weary and the weak'.  Well, I don't know about that, but Maharaj Ji will always find a solid recruitment base among the vulnerable and the desperate.

Setting aside a few hours to explain to my folks how important was Maharaji's gift and how this world was only an illusion, I took a later (no doubt illusory) train and made it just in time to the eternal city of Bournemouth, UK, for the evening satsang that would kick-off the Knowledge weekend.  And there I stayed for the next four or five days.  On the floor of a satang room by day, listening only to the words of initiator David Smith, all day, every day.  On a stranger's floor in a sleeping bag by night, smiling knowingly as aspirants are wont, sipping coffee and eating the odd plate of dahl (is there any other kind?), doing my best to show I understood, was beyond concepts, worthy of Knowledge etc…  And thinking, too, a lot about my brother Peter and wondering how my mum was doing.  I still cringe at the memory.

At Mahatma Smith's whim, the drawn-out water-tortures of pre-initiation ran a day longer than expected.  We had arrived on the Friday evening.  Only on Tuesday afternoon did we know who was to be chosen.  Those who were rejected were told only that they needed to wait a bit longer.  I must have done something right as I was among the chosen few to be promoted to the discipleship.  (At each Knowledge session I attended, about half of those present were selected.  I wonder whether this proportion was maintained as a matter of policy - irrespective of an aspirant's readiness..?)  We were to receive Knowledge the following day.  Had it become necessary to miss Peter's funeral, I would have probably stayed on to receive Knowledge anyway.  Four days of soundsurround satsang will do that for you.  The insistence on unwavering dedication and 'one-pointedness' was, in retrospect, mindbending.

Here is the vow I was require to make whilst pranaming full-length on the carpet:

"Oh my Guru Maharaj Ji, I dedicate myself to You.  I am weak and ignorant and am filled with the impurities of this world.

Oh Guru Maharaj Ji, through Knowledge please purify me of the impurities I possess.  Reveal to me the Knowledge of all Knowledges.  Strengthen me, uplift me and reveal the Truth within inside of me.

Bring me from hate to love, darkness to light, death to immortality.

I will follow Your direction and never reveal this Knowledge to anybody for any reason.

I will keep in contact with You through my devotional love, satsang, meditation and service.

Thank you."

But, I hear you ask: What about the experience of 'receiving Knowledge'?  Did the earth move?  Answer: No!  But after four days in this isolation tank I was certainly relaxed and detached but no more so than from other meditations I had tried.  There was no magical moment of crossing from here to somewhere else.  But having come this far, I was at least going to 'give Knowlege a fair try' (as is the current directive), and I think it true to say that I gave Knowledge much more than that: it became the focus of my life.

So I was now a premie, and was soon a-doing all those warm-blooded thangs that premies do to each other and the folk around them.  We shared satsang about 'the crazy world' out there.  I remember the premie community being contemptuous of the ordinary, everyday acts of love and kindness that you encounter in the non-premie world ('not the real thing; not that real love; guru maharaj ji's love…').  Again, I cringe at the memory.   A world of short term, poorly-paid jobs you could leave at the drop of a hat when the next festival came around and your holiday entitlement was spent.  Guru Puja so soon after Holi?  - how the effing hell do I explain this to my boss?  Simpler all round to ask for my P45.  I went to Geneva, to London, to Malaga where I had darshan, and darshan again in Rome.  I brought three or four friends to their first satsang and watched with probably smug satisfaction as, one by one, they received Knowledge.   I have nothing but the greatest respect for those other first-timers I brought to satsang but who said 'thanks but no thanks…'  At the time, I pitied their bad Karma and limited understanding.

As for those who went on to receive Knowledge, I feel complicit in their corruption.  After all, it was usually the warm-vibe influence of premies you knew and their powers of persuasion, rather than M's charisma, that got newcomers hooked.

Forever skint from travel costs or making community donations, I nevertheless felt emotionally secure in the community and relaxed into that special sense of certainty known only to the privileged among us with superior lifestyles, diets, gurus, and a superior truth on their side.  I met my first long-term partner, told her about Maharaj ji, took her to see him and we married.   Weird marriage:  me at satsang every night, she at satsang almost as frequently, albeit reluctantly.  Big stresses never confronted, since Maharaji was the answer to everything and 'anger, desires, attachments, rob us of eternal life…' etc.  When she took up with a 'celibate' ashram premie it kind of soured things…  At this time I rediscovered who my real friends were, and - surprise, surpise - not one of them had once surrendered their lives to an Indian gentleman they had never met.

Met someone else, joined a band, moved away, 'spaced-out' for a few years, meditating intermittently when the need arose.  I never deliberately left the movement, but when I revisited the old community in 1986 it had dwindled and changed beyond recognition.  It was like going home and finding your house has burned down.  My earliest premie friend had just become an initiator (but now called an 'instructor').  The strangest thing was the lives of so-called practising premies, and this particular instructor were, no different to mine.  No community satsang any more, while the video era had not yet started.  Stereo where the altar used to be.  Ashtrays and coffee cups where cushions used to bedeck the floor of the community satsang room.  Pictures of Maharaji no longer on every wall.  Just a couple of small ones tucked shyly or slyly out of the way.

My friend gave me a Knowledge review.  And how things had changed: no satsang, no service - just the meditation '…and you can do it as little or as much as you like, when you like' he told me.  Just like TM.  In a way it was Knowledge as you would have preferred it to be - no heavy agya to 'constantly meditate and remember the Holy Name' - just this 'help yourself' experience, but at the same time, it was more like a clinical technique you might find in a library book.  They used to say Knowledge was a three-legged stool: satsang, service and meditation.  Take away any one leg, and it will fall over.  Now it was officially a one-legged stool, and looking pretty ricketty too.

I remember an interview given by Ian Dury, when Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick went to number one in the British charts.  The interviewer asked: 'But aren't the lyrics a little bit rude?' 

Dury replied:  'How can the lyrics be a little bit rude?  They are either not rude at all, or else they are very rude'.

This was how I felt about Maharaji Ji and Knowledge.  Either Maharaj Ji was 'the superior power in person', whose Grace would bring me 'from death to immortality', and therefore worth giving my all to - or he was nothing at all.  There are plenty of other meditation teachers out there, each telling the age-old inspirational stories and selling their own brand of introspection.  But I wasn't interested in inspiration or relaxation techniques; I could use the library ticket to find me any number of low-grade, feel-good practices.

I was trying to get back into Knowledge because Maharaj Ji was God.

But it seemed God had abdicated…

During the preparation conference for his becoming an instructor, my friend told me Maharaj ji had said: 'I'm exactly the same as you are'.   At another point - to blow their concepts?  - he smoked a cigarette.  Street-cred, perhaps, but I remembered the torment I had endured trying to quit the fucking weed.  Apparently, at the training meet, quite a few initiators (who I know in their time had turned down aspirants for smoking) had also enjoyed a sly drag between training sessions.  Like Master, like servant, it would seem…

Around the same time I went to see Maharaj ji in Birmingham - and the transformation was a shock.  I had last seen him in Rome in 1980, playing Krishna to the hilt.  (The Pope was displeased and wanted DLM events banned in Italy.  I mean, how many of God's only representatives on earth can one city take?)  He had worn his Krishna crown and danced in blue and white silk, garlanded with flowers and waving a flute which, disappointingly, he never played.  But the premies adored Prem's camping it up and would go apeshit.  You would think this grand climax in which the Master merely waved his arms about in slow motion was life's ultimate experience.  When the Lord of the Universe is dancing just for you it would be churlish to comment upon his appalling sense of rhythm…

The Birmingham event (1986) was more like a business convention.  No 'bhole shri's', no music, no pranaming, no talk of love, devotion or surrender.  Not much of anything, and still overpriced.  Maharaj ji, smart-suited in a simple chair gave a couple of addresses which, to my ears, were full of vacuous rubbish.   I remember a LONG story he told about a Robinson-Crusoe type castaway who found a mirror washed-up, but didn't know what it was.  He thought it was a photo of his father and spent years worshipping it.  Moral: that thing you love is actually you. 

I wondered for how long I might have interpreted M's new-age banalities as 'profound'; adding depth where none existed - as happened to Chancey Gardiner in the film Being There…

Maharaj ji barely mentioned Knowledge or the role of the guru.  There were a couple of brand new introductory videos, packaged in a soft-soap, born-again Christian style with happy faces,  trees and pretty meadows.  Certainly no hard data on who Maharaji was claiming to be these days or what was his message.  No wonder the eighties were a wastleland…

It seemed Prem was cutting his losses to salvage something from the ruins of DLM.  Something low-key and respectable.  He no longer referred to himself in the third person with the usual superlatives ('by that most amazing grace of Guru Maharaj ji' etc.).  He was definitely playing himself down - pretending the earlier existence never happened.  There was a question-and-answer session in which old premies asked things like: 'Why can't we share satsang anymore?' I don't remember many of the answers, but the experience was underwhelming, and many premies in the hall seemed dazed and confused.  Maharaji was impatient with questioners.  He didn't listen, but used the (pre-selected?) questions from the floor as cues to say what he had been meaning to say all along.  Known to politicians and cricketers as 'gentle lobs'

But two questions and their responses stick in the mind.  Both were from 'older generation' premies - possibly parents whose children had brought them to Maharaji back in the seventies.   Both, I thought, received pretty off-hand treatment.  One told Maharaji that he found the ageing process 'concentrated the mind' somewhat and wondered whether Maharaji had any advice on confronting one's own mortality.  The other questioner's son had just died and was hoping to derive comfort from Maharaji's (presumably) special insight.  In both cases, Maharaji seemed stumped for an answer.  To the guy who was concerned about dying, M made some comment about the older ones among us being the trailblazers on the path ahead 'for all of us' - implying that he too didn't have a clue as to what death might bring for people with Knowledge.  To the bereaved father he quoted some cliched saying about time being 'too long for those who wait', 'too short for those who..'(??  - can't remember), and 'for those who grieve, time is an eternity' blah, blah…

There was no intimation of Maharaji having a privileged perspective on the machinations of the cosmic clockwork or of a premie's ultimate destiny.  Nor did he seem to empathise with the questioner on a personal level.  But I assumed that Maharaji was giving each premie the answer they needed to hear, albeit in a personalised code which only the questioner would understand.  I remember that failure to comprehend Maharaji was always attributed to the premie's inferior understanding rather than to Maharaji's pronouncements lacking content or clarity.

I went home and never returned (there was nothing to return to, for one thing).  But a residual hope and belief remained with me for a while.  The last time I gave satsang to a friend was 1987 - the year I later read Richard Dawkins and took on board the full implications of Darwinian theory.

A measure of anger came later, as, over the years, I became far happier without Knowledge than I had been whilst practising.  Soon I was an out-and-out sceptic about all so-called spiritual paths, and I recognised the wasted years for what they were. 

My conviction grew that the whole thing was a sham - a confidence-trick without a con-man - the 'boy-god' being as much a victim as he is propagator of the whole grand delusion.  If he has been surrounded since childhood by people who regard him as lord, then what can you expect?  But I wish he would understand the degree of (worldly) power and influence he has held over people's lives, which seems to have been very destructive in some cases. 

I went to university and got a degree in psychology at the age of forty.  This was an experience of self-worth and wellbeing unrivalled by any I had previously known, greater than that ultimate satisfaction you are supposed to experience from Knowledge.  My final-year dissertation was about people's susceptibility to paranormal / superstitious beliefs and how you can prove experimentally how gullible most people can be in given situations.  I seemed to have a natural feel for the subject…

Until recently I worked full-time in a drug rehab and saw close up the kind of mess that people get into through heroin use.  But I think it is no exaggeration to say I would prefer my own kids to grow up to become junkies than join a cult.  You can do a full detox in nine days.  It took over nine years to get the poison out of my system.

It is two years since I discovered the ex-premie website.  And while it has been over ten since I ditched the guru, I still had unanswered questions.  I realised how badly I had missed out on the chance to talk to ex-premies at the time I jumped ship.  And ex-premie.org has certainly helped me reframe and understand what it was I had become involved with all those years before, and the psychological needs that attract people to movements like Maharaji's.  After all, I had to ditch the bloody Almighty and the whole of the paranormal before the penny finally dropped that Maharaji, too, was a fraud.  (By the way: you can believe in God and psychic phenomena, too, if you really want to, and still know that Maharaji is a fake…) 

I have since gone back into education to teach whilst studying for a doctorate. 

And from the kind of research I have been involved in (hypnotic phenomena) and past studies of paranormal belief, I have noticed many striking parallels with my own past premie experiences.  These further confirm for me that no matter how otherwordly an experience may seem (to a premie or non-premie), there is really nothing out of the ordinary going on.  Merely that 'ordinary' seems sometimes more extraordinary than we expect.  Everything depends upon the way we conceptualise and interpret those experiences.

But finding ex-premie.org has also helped me to reassess the damage.  You can stop practising Knowledge overnight, but it can take years to unpick the yarn when a guru has stitched you up. 

(Some of what follows has appeared in posts to the ex-premie forum.  Apologies if you have read any of this before.)

I have been thinking about the different kinds of harm that arise from the premie experience, and think it boils down to three distinct categories.  Maybe others would come up with more than three.  But, for me, the exercise is interesting in that the harm arising from my third category, 'motivational damage', has been the hardest to shake off.

Each form of damage also carries a perceived benefit or 'blessing' for practising premies that allows the damage to occur in the first place.

Emotional damage

Many ex's (and premies) posting to the forum have shown (and continue to show) clear evidence of this having happened.  It comes from the belief that Maharaji knows, loves and cares for each of us, and our main duty in life is to love and devote ourselves to him over and above all other people in your life.  The harm arising from trying to live like this doesn't really need explaining.  I think everyone has been affected to some extent - even those ex-premies like me whose less gushing style of satsang-sharing never spoke of loving Maharaji but tended to focus on Knowledge being a great experience.

The perceived benefit for the practising premie is a sense of emotional security, and of being looked after.

Marianne (who posts on the forum) called DLM 'a bhakti [devotional] cult with meditation thrown in as a hook'.  And she is right:  Maharaji made no secret of the importance of devotion in the early days.  With Elan Vital, the devotion is still there but is no longer referred to explicitly.   If premies lose that devotion they also lose any reason to stick around.

'Classical conditioning' explains quite well the process of becoming a devotee.  The premie learns through constant reinforcement to associate those moments of love and inner wellbeing with Maharaji and learns also that inner conflict and turmoil are products of their own  mind.  Confusion arises because people can, and do experience 'love' whilst meditating, just as they can experience inner conflict and turmoil whilst meditating.  As premies we take the love experience as simple proof that 'Knowledge really works' and the mental struggle as evidence that we still have a way to go; that we still need Maharaji's help and protection.  The net effect is to devalue natural experiences of love for people and things around you and channel such devotion as you can muster back in Maharaji's direction.  And that devotional bond blinds us to the truth that the love experiences were available before receiving Knowledge and are available to the same extent (or otherwise) irrespective of Maharaji's plushly-cushioned presence on this planet.

And I now have my own non-conditioned ideas as to why focusing on the breath feels nice in the first place.  If the technique did not have that potential, centering on the breath would not feature in so many meditation-based disciplines and Maharaji would not have his hook.

(Please bear with me while I summarise!)

Even more than food or physical comfort, a newborn infant needs to keep breathing.  Fine, they can usually manage to do so unaided.  But it would make evolutionary sense for very young babies to apply whatever rudimentary free-will they may possess to monitor their own breathing (when they are not otherwise busy puking and bawling, of course!) and take whatever limited steps they can to prevent their airways becoming blocked.   Since there is no way they can rationally understand the importance of doing this, evolution provides them with a pleasurable sensation from simply allowing their attention to focus on their breath and a desire to remain with the sensation.  For adults to rediscover that simple pleasure in later years might be less of a case of spiritual progress than one of arrested development…

Similarly, our ability to forge a strong connection to an exterior security figure or provider and to associate our inner wellbeing with the presence of that external figure is demonstrated both in infancy and in the cult.

Infantile crib-state = mother's love = happiness and security
Infantile premie-state = master's love = happiness and security

These ideas may not be original.  They may even be utter nonsense (wouldn't be the first time!)  But I am convinced that Knowledge experiences are by-products of our evolution, generated within the perceptual and emotional subcomponents of our central nervous system.

Emotional damage results primarily from the devotee rediscovering this internal experience / external provider dependency state and thereby forming a love for the Master that is dangerously non-reciprocal.  Love for the Master is expressed in the amount of time a premie spends attending events or under the blanket.  Also in financial contributions and 'service' rendered.  In each case, more deserving objects of our love, whether friends, family or children are neglected. 

'TD' in her excellent 'journeys' entry makes an accurate observation which will ring a bell with many ex-premies: and that is the way the practice of Knowledge can undermine your ability to cope with the outside world.  Difficult situations you would once have dealt with easily have a disproportionate impact.  You expect to become more emotionally secure the more you practice but instead your equilibrium is shaken by the smallest upset. 

It is significant that TD was a nineties, 'Knowledge-lite' era premie which suggests that beneath the surface, not a lot has changed within the cult.

The corrupted world-view (aka.  'toxic thinking')

We learned to believe that existence was for a purpose, that purpose being to realise Knowledge.  It was what we were born for, the Meaning of Life, no less.  No evidence was ever offered for this explanation and we were discouraged from looking for any beyond going 'within inside' and discovering for ourselves.

Many blessings here:

No need to look any further; here is the answer.  Everything that has happened in your life so far was surely meant to happen since it led you to finding the true path.  No need to concern yourself with finding real solutions to real problems, your own or those of the world, for there is but one solution.  And, lucky old you, you have that solution, as well as the joy and fulfilment that comes from being able to share it with others.

Marriage breaking up?  - Look to Maharaji, for there lies the one true, unbreakable relationship. 

Fallen out with a friend?  - Don't bother trying to patch things up; just go sit quietly in the satsang room and gaze at Maharaj Ji's picture. 

War and conflict all over the planet?  - No problem.  Everyone gets Knowledge, lays down their weapons and bounces up and down in communal bliss. 

Famine, earthquake and tidal-wave?  - Er, not quite so sure about these, but nothing happens in this world without the Lord's consent, and He has a plan which we cannot see but take his word for it, he's 'going to make the Ramayana look like Noddy'.  Magic and miracles are real.  Everything is His lila, so all you need do is trust and M will sort everything out.

Motivational damage.

This is the category that is maybe not so obvious, but rather more insidious in the long run, for me at least.

Remember 'introductory satsang'?  It used to strike me at such events that if it weren't for the blissful smile of the premie giving the address, you might interpret the words being spoken as those of somebody suffering from a mood disorder.

Remember how everything you do in this life is ultimately pointless (without K); how the things you own cannot bring you happiness (without K); how friends and lovers will let you down (but not K); how we are all searching for a deeper satisfaction that the world cannot provide (blah blah…)?

These are all symptomatic of what is known in psychiatry as 'automatic negative thinking'.  Your cup is half empty rather than half-full.  What goes up must come down, so why bother going up?  Because the world's joys and pleasures are delimited by time and will surely end, they cannot be worth pursuing in the first place.  In short, nothing is worthwhile.

(Maharaji used to give that example of how giving a dollar to a beggar today won't make him happy, since when you fail to show up tomorrow with another dollar, he will be upset.  Yuk!!!)

The benefit for the premie lay in being able to avoid plans, challenges and new responsibilities, and in being able to neglect those reponsibilities you already had.  Just relax and watch the crazy world go by.  Many premies became serious under-achievers through ceasing to plan for the future or look after their own interests properly.  In time you stop trusting your own judgement as to what might and might not bring happiness.  If it ain't Knowledge, it's the road to nowhere.

Leading an unmotivated life tends to lead you into doubting your own self-worth.  It was years before I even believed I was capable of going on to higher education.  Having got a good degree (twenty years late), I still can't quite shake off the idea that maybe I was just lucky and my assignment markers made a big mistake.

But it is more than a question of self-confidence.  Going for an interview not so long ago, one that promised long-term career prospects, I found myself feeling less worried about not getting the job than about getting it.  It was an irrational worry that however well I might do the job, I would somehow find it more trouble than it was really worth.  By doing well I would achieve nothing more than discover the rewards for success were not worth having.

Experience, has in fact taught me that personal effort is well rewarded in many spheres of activity (by the way, I love the job), but the momentary feelings of pointlessness I have had at such times I can still trace back to the negative messages of satsang.

Since finding the ex-premie forum my deepest sympathies have been for people who spent a whole decade in the ashram.  I have admired their battle-scars and war-wounds.  But I am not sure this the true measure of Guru Maharaj Ji's damage.  There are also 'fringe' practicing premies of 25 years standing who post to the forum who appear only marginally damaged (and to themselves, not at all).

The measure of mindwarp inflicted probably has more to do with how totally you committed yourself - however briefly - and the circumstances in which that commitment was made.  My initial involvement centred around my brother's long illness and inevitable death.  My recovery from that wretched episode I used to attribute wholly to my having received Knowledge.  As if non-premies never get over things!

My complete recovery from Knowledge I attribute primarily to one thing: education!!!  (Get one while you can.)

The other day someone on the radio asked the opera singer Willard White whether he had any regrets about his life.  He replied 'a life lived has no need for regrets'.  I did not gain anything from Maharaji I could not have found elsewhere and at less personal cost.  To that extent I do regret becoming involved.  I also feel that Maharaji who, I suspect, knows he was never anybody special is guilty of sustaining an illusion of personal divinity for private gain - and to hell with the consequences for those who sacrificed so much to serve him.

But I also feel I learned a great deal - albeit nothing from Maharaji's 'teachings'.  For one thing, I learned the truth that 'there's nowt as queer as folks', as they say in Yorkshire.  At least I am able to say that for over ten years now I have enjoyed 'a life lived' and would not wish for any other.

Anyway, I think I have gone on long enough.  Thanks for reading this right through.  Although the word 'closure' is not one I would normally use, it feels appropriate for describing how it feels to finally get all this down on paper.  My desire to join in forum discussions has been much reduced of late and I really don't know how much longer I will stick around.  In many ways I feel like I have explored just about every aspect of cult life and my past cult involvement and posting has started to feel like I am just repeating myself ad infinitum.  (Besides, there are so many intelligent, articulate exes out there it won't make a ha'p'orth of difference whether or not I stick around). Having said that, I have found some really good friends among the ex-premies and I doubt I will ever completely quit the place while they are still posting.

I would like to thank everybody, past and present, who have helped to keep this website afloat. It has done me a whole lot of good to be here.

Love to all,
Nige

(Here follows an addendum, written March 17/03/05)

Part of me if still raging within about the sheer, low-key horror of my past cult involvement; how the whole thing damaged my early adult life at a very bad time, and presumably still does for many other young impressionable adults. I am also quite pleased, having re-read this journey five years since I last edited it, to say I agree with every bloody word, and only regret I didn't come out with both barrels blazing re. Maharaji himself. Maybe later…

(Please note new email address)

Marianner Bachers

I received Knowledge on November 26, 1972, from Mahatma Rajeshwaranand at the Grand Rapids, Michigan ashram. I was 16 years old. My big brother Neil had received Knowledge a month earlier and told me that the premies were the people we had been looking for in our spiritual search. I was given Knowledge three days after my first satsang in Kalamazoo. I was living with my parents in a rural area just outside the city. I had been heavily involved in drugs, had been arrested 3 times, and was attending alternative high school because I was not welcome at my public high school.

Mahatma Rajeshwaranand was kind & gentle to me & seemed to recognize the depths of my emotional needs. I was blown away that he chose me for Knowledge when there were much older people who had been following him around for months trying to convince him that they were ready, and he was still saying no to them.

This was during the times when the mahatmas were asking, "Would you cut your arm off for GMJ? Would you cut your hair for GMJ? Would you leave your wife (& kids) for GMJ?" Hesitation in the face of these questions meant you would not be chosen. I remember aspirants saying that they had cut their hair, or fulfilled some other suggestion a mahatma had made in order to prove they were worthy, only to be met with another demand to prove their devotion. I remember thinking that the increasing demands seemed cruel and that the aspirants were sometimes humiliated. On the other hand, the fact that I had so quickly been identified as a "chosen one" gave me a feeling of specialness that I desperately needed at that point in my life.

I became involved with the premie community in Kalamazoo, then based at Summit Street ashram. The premies there were wonderful. George was the General Secretary and Carol was the housemother. I think that Brad lived there then too. It wasn't heavy or full of trips, just full of love. They taught me how to become a vegetarian. Satsang was inspriational, not judgmental.

The ashram closed and the premies there went to the cities -- Chicago and Detroit, for reasons I can't recall. A bunch of us moved in together at a house on Dutton Street, in Kalamazoo, in April, 1973. We decided to say we were a premie house, so that there was a place for satsang a few times a week for the growing premie community, which included alot of our friends. It was loose and not regimented. We got along well and were happy. We went to programs in Detroit and Chicago to see mahatmas and to do service.

I went to Guru Puja in London in the summer of 1973 with 3 others from the house. It was the first time I saw GMJ. The conditions at the campsite were pretty awful. I spent part of one day with my friend Nani and 2 Chicago premies travelling around London trying to find some public showers. Even though GMJ seemed so distant, I got darshan for the first time, a magical event.

When we came back from London, the whole focus of our existence became the Millenium festivites in Houston in November. We spent alot of time in Detroit doing service. I was at the event in Detroit when GMJ was given the key to the city. I was 3 rows from the front. I remember 3 people in the rows in front of me who had a huge bunch of flowers they were holding. They told some of the premies that they wanted to give them to GMJ.

After GMJ was given the key by the Mayor of Detroit, one of the guys threw the flowers on the floor, ran up to GMJ, and hit him smack in the face with a pie. Everyone in the room was stunned into silence and inaction. The pie thrower ran out with his friends. I thought it was kind of funny, but the WPC folks who were supposed to be GMJ's guards were mortified. They had allowed the Lord of the Universe to be hit with a pie. The head of WPC in Detroit at that time was a very close friend of mine (Dean). He was shattered that he had let GMJ down.

Elsewhere in the Journeys entries the repercussions of the pie incident are discussed. Mahatma Fakiranand took one of the ashram premies and beat the pie thrower with a hammer. He was a reporter for an underground Detroit paper and had been really critical of DLM. The pie thrower did not die as the other entry suggests, but he was at death's door. Fakiranand did go back to India. I don't think anything happened to the premie.

I can tell you that the Detroit premie community, and the other close premie communities, were devastated by this event. I was at the main ashram very soon after the assault and the premies were just reeling from what had happened. No one supported it and everyone wondered how a mahatma could commit such a violent act --- wasn't this precipitated by the "mind"? This incident was one that created doubt in lots of minds. It was suppressed in other premie communities.

With the intense push to go to and raise $ for Millineium, Richard Royal, the general secretary in Detroit, came to Kalamazoo and urged us to start an ashram. We decided to do it. A number of other premies wanted to join an ashram, so we found a derelict former frat house at 305 Stuart Street in Kalamazoo, renovated it and became the Kalamazoo ashram, in August or September 1973. We now followed ashram discipline --- arti and one hour meditation at 6 am, satsang from 7:30 til 9:30 pm, followed by arti, and one hour meditation. We went off to jobs during the day and donated all our money to the ashram.

I looked forward to Milleniun with anticipation. We were told that the Astrodome was going to take off from earth and that if you weren't there, you would die. I believed this and called friends to try to get them to come to the festival, and told them why. I am still teased by friends to this day about those phone calls.

I went on SoulRush, the cross country bus trip from Boston to Houston, which was designed to publicize the festival. I met premies from all over the US. It was an inspiring, if exhausting, event. I remember that there were protest demonstrations against us in one city, where people carried signs saying we were the devil, and crosses saying that Jesus died for our sins. It was creepy.

Millenium was not as advertised. I also worked in a very low level assignment (selling And It Is Divine) and missed a good deal of the program. I remember the premies all being tired and sort of shell shocked. Where was the grand transformation we had been led to expect? It was a grand disappointment instead.

It really affected all of us in the Kalamazoo ashram. When we all got back home, we all felt misled and deceived. We dropped acid together. That seemed to be the only appropriate response to the events.

Denver assigned someone to come to Kalamazoo to be our general secretary. I bear substantial responsibility for this happening because I told them we wanted it. They sent Bill Patterson, who was completely ill suited to all of us. I have regretted my role in his arrival ever since. He came in late November or early December 1973.

Most of us had family in the area and we were accustomed to having contact with them on a regular basis. None of them were happy about our involvement in DLM, but we tried to maintain communication. Bill announced that anyone who went home to visit family on Christmas would have to leave the ashram. This included any sort of visit whatsoever.

I was 17 at the time. In March, my father had committed suicide. I had 4 brothers, all of whom lived far away and would not be in Michigan for Christmas. It would be my mother's first Christmas after my father's tragic death, and she would be alone. I did not want to leave the ashram. I begged, pleaded, cajoled, cried to Bill to let me visit my mother on Christmas, and he refused to budge in his position. I did not go home (a ten minute drive away from the ashram), and hated myself for it. I am still ashamed that I did not go to my mother when she really needed me. 4 of my closest friends did go home and left the ashram. They were thoroughly fed up with Bill's militaristic approach to ashram life.

I moved to the Columbus, Ohio ashram in February, 1974, after Mahatma Vijayanand came to visit in Kalamazoo. He felt I needed to move away and arranged for me to be sent to Columbus. I moved to the Dennison Street ashram just days before my 18th birthday. Dennison was wonderful and so were the premies. It was a loving community and a good family for me. There was Mathew, the house jester, who made faces at me while we ate (in slience), and made me erupt in laughter. No one minded or criticized it --- it was about love and appreciation of each other. I became very close to my roommates, Kris and Karen.

We decided to consoliate the two ashrams and moved into a big renovated house on Broad Street in Columbus. Naomi and Aime were our housemoms and Carl was the general secretary. Greg handled money.

Things started coming unglued in the late spring of '74 when GMJ got married out of the blue. Everyone in the ashram started falling in love with each other. It was very natural and grew out of knowing the best and worst about one another. We evolved into a premie house (with couples living in closets for privacy!) and started thinking about new directions in our lives.

I convinced my roommates, Kris and Karen, to move across the country with me to attend New College of California, an alternative humanities college, in Sausalito, CA. We drove across the country together that summer, staying at premie houses along the way, or camping. I remember being in Denver in August, and seeing the Rocky Mountain News with the headline "NIXON RESIGNS!", and being thrilled. I had my feet back in the world again.

We ended up in a 2 bedroom apartment in Mill Valley, CA, with a view of Mt. Tamalpais out our window. I moved into San Francisco to a premie house in the fall of '74. The San Francisco premie community was also quite wonderful, full of quirky people from all over the world.

In 1975, as part of college, I began working with inmates in the jails in San Francisco. I loved my job (with VISTA) because I felt that I might make a difference for someone. Working at the jail brought me to the realization that GMJ was not interested in bringing everyone to Knowledge. Being in prison among poor people also made me critical of all the money that was going to luxuries for GMJ that could be making a real difference in the lives of desperately poor people. When I lived in the ashram and gave up all my money, I remember having to fight to get some new underwear…

These contrasts made me decide to leave DLM. It was hard emotionally to separate myself at first, but I was evolving in my view of the world and my place in it. It was the right choice to leave at that time. DLM was a good thing for me while I was involved in it. The disciplne, spiritual practice and premie families helped me through difficult times in my life. When the time was right to move beyond, I did. I still have many friends from my ashram days, and I love them.

I went to law school in 1976. After I graduated, my first trial (as the junior co-counsel) was the defense of Larry Layton in federal court in San Francisco. He was the only person charged in the US for the events surrounding the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan and the mass suicide led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana. I was hired to work on the case because of my direct experience with cults. If anyone wants to hear more about this, e-mail me. It is too long a topic to attach to an already lengthy note.

Today, I defend people on death row in California. I hope all my old friends are well and happy.

Bob

My name is Bob…. and I'm an ex-premie. It took me about three years to get in and finally out of the corrupt and spiritually bankrupt organization called Divine Light Mission. I don't know if it's changed…but the person who heads it, Guru Maharaj Ji is still playing people for the suckers that they are.

I was a premie from April 12, 1972, when I received "knowledge" in Hartford, Connecticut, until I left the Divine Light Mission (DLM) and Guru Maharaj Ji (GM) following the break-up of his family in 1974-75.

I grew up a devote Baptist going to church every Sunday…singing in the choir. My grandfather and uncle had been lay preachers, and my brother became a minister. Yet I decided that Christianity and other trappings of Judeo-Christian religion were not for me after reading Aristotle and other philosophers in junior high. While I attended church with the folks, more and more I yearned for a deeper spiritual understanding of the universe, myself and my place in it. I could not fully accept everything by faith alone and needed a more fundamental understanding of things.

I came to hear about GM through a close friend of mine from college. Ray and I had done a lot of spiritual and personal experimenting: we had plied our brains and systems with LSD scores of times and had visited Meher Baba's retreat in Myrtle Beach, SC. I practiced Transcendental Meditation and was into reading about Zen, Buddhism and other things spiritual.

Ray came down from Hartford to tell me that he had found the answer to a lot of our inner questions. He had found the answer to what we called "IT." So, I went to satsang with him, and something (at the time) did seem to ring true. Whether this was wish fulfillment or whatever, I can't tell you. I went with Ray and his girlfriend and future wife to hear Mata Ji in Hartford. It was an incredible event…one that filled me with peace and joy and most definitely love. This was something I thought was REAL. I went the next day to take knowledge. I was turned down. I went again and Mahatma Rajeshwaranand accepted me and then taught me and the few others in the room the meditation techniques and the Truth (with a capital T) that was GM. Little did I know then what a lot of BS the organization that surrounded the meditation really was….

Following receiving the knowledge, I moved in with three other premies in a small house outside Bridgeport, Connecticut. The four of us turned our living room and home into a devotional center. We had all been former Dead head and our hair was cut short and we wore ties. We put on programs at the University of Bridgeport and at Yale University where people would give satsang, trying to convince others that the "…'Lord of the Universe' has come to us today…."

I had, by this time, dropped out of college, and eventually contacted DLM in Denver, responding to an ad they had for people who had worked in radio, film and audio. I had done radio work in college and had volunteered to join Shri Hans Productions in Los Angeles. Denver gave me its blessings, I packed a duffle bag and a small satchel…and with $50, a one-way bus ticket to L.A. via Denver, and all my earthly possessions went to Los Angeles.

When I got there, no one knew I was coming. Apparently, things had gotten screwed up between Denver and L.A. I remember the person who headed the DLM in Los Angeles, a short, dark-haired guy by the name of David who asked me accusingly who I was. I never felt so out of place and unwelcome in my life.

Luckily, however, I was placed with a premie house…as I could only stay in the ashram a day or two. People in that house and I became close, close friends…whom I have unfortunately lost touch with over the last 10 or 15 years. But in that house we became very close to [?] 

Los Angeles

Our house was very involved in the Los Angeles DLM. We did flowers arrangements for the ashrams and for the major event when GM and the rest of his family were in town and for lesser events.

DLM's Shri Hans Productions could not use me. Their needs were much more specific for handling film sound synchronization. So, I had to find a job. Because of my background in radio and music, I eventually took a job with a sheet music company in L.A. But that was short-lived because I quit to fly to London in 1973 for Guru Puja. I drove cross-country with two others in a two-door Ford Pinto to get to New York City and the charter Icelandic Airlines 707s that carried us to London.

Coming back from London, I found another job, and our house continued to become more and more involved with GM and DLM. I did grounds keeping and some electrical work at GM's house on Sunset Blvd. We helped renovate a new ashram that DLM bought in mid-town L.A. (seems like it was on Wilshire Blvd. or just off it).

I remember working at the Sunset Blvd. house one day when GM drove in with a bright red Austin Mini Cooper S…a neat little sports car. GM was riding behind the car along Sunset Blvd. in his Rolls Royce, pulled the guy over and offered him cash for the car. The guy sold him the car on the spot.

We all had various jobs we did at GM's house on Sunset. One of the people in our house became involved with Raja Ji's security force, helping to guard GM and the family when they were in town. I did my turn of duty there, standing alert at the end of the drive way…which had a wrought iron fence installed for security reasons.

One of my house mates, Leslie, worked for a business in Santa Monica. She introduced the owner of the company to DLM, and the owner eventually took knowledge. John was much older than any of us baby boomers. Being a successful businessman, John was courted by DLM and introduced to GM. He eventually became very close to GM and the rest of the family.

John is very psychic. He had had dreams just prior to the event at the Houston Astro Dome that a man would try to assassinate GM and the rest of the family. Houston was in the middle of the Bible belt, and we knew that there would be demonstrations by Christians against GM…calling him the anti-Christ and the like.

John could see the man very clearly in his visions. One day he and one of the people from our house went to the Astro Dome. Lonnie could not get through the security, but John simply walked by security like they could not see him…leaving Lonnie outside. John went to an section of seats in the auditorium behind the stage area, the seats that he saw in his dream that the man would shoot a gun from.

John told us all later that a man that fit the description of the person in his dreams appeared. He took one look at John, John looked at him and the man fled with John in pursuit. John cornered the man in a nearby bathroom where they struggled. John was knocked to the floor but not before he had knocked a gun the would-be assassin had out of the man's hands.

John later showed us the revolver. A strange, old revolver that had only five shots and not the normal six.

Following this incident, John later became more and more involved with GM and the rest of the family. The man was never caught, and word of the assassination attempt was kept away from any other premies knowing about it.

Houston's A Bust….It was Downhill After That

Houston was a bust…but we continued to serve. We peddled copies of the DLM magazine And It Is Divine door-to-door in West Los Angeles.

Marolyn Johnson -- some know her as Durga Ji -- lived in our premie house for a while when she was a stewardess (that's what they called them then) with Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). She owned a VW minibus that she parked in the driveway and slept in. She would come in and eat with us and used the bathroom. Though she lived out of her VW. She really was very much a sexy, earth mother. She wore very long flowing dresses….picture her twirling at a Greatful Dead show and you get the picture.

We called Marolyn "Mini Corn" because of a nick name given to her by her niece. We believed she seduced the GM and then black mailed him into marrying him. Another reason for him marrying her was so that he could become a U.S. citizen and be declared legally beyond the influences of his mother.

This was in-keeping with other DLM-arranged marriages. A number of Americans, both men and women, married foreign-born premies so that the foreign premies could become legal U.S. citizens. Some of these marriages were in name only, the husband and wife never having consummated their marriage.

When GM and Marolyn married, all hell broke loose.

During this time, I had moved into my own apartment in Venice and became friends with members of Blue Aquarius….Bhole Ji's jazz big band. Some of the members were living in apartments in Venice, but Bhole Ji and other band members were renting a recording studio in Malibu called Shangri La. The place had separate motel-like cabins, but there were not enough to house all the band members.

When the split occurred, Bhole Ji and Bal Bhagwan Ji sided with Mata Ji against GM and Raja Ji. Mata Ji declared that GM had been seduced by maya and had lost his divine spark.

So crazy was it that Raja Ji's security team swooped down on Bhole Ji and the band in Malibu with guns and tire irons. Luckily no one, to my recollection, was hurt. But the band members split very quickly….this was during the time that the Paul McCartney album and song "Band on the Run" was popular…it was number one on the charts in May 1974…so it was totally appropriate. The band left in a couple of cars and vans and split for Oregon and the Crater Lake area.

Just prior to the split, people who I had lived with in the premie house and I had become aware of a lot of goings on behind the scenes that were not appropriate. It was common knowledge, for example, that GM's first U.S. visit was financed by a hashish deal that premies had made. Reportedly, an entire table of carved hashish -- that was shellacked to look like wood -- was smuggled in, then broken apart and sold to finance the place trip for GM and some of his Mahatmas. Most of us being ex-hippies shrugged our shoulders as the idea of good smoke financing GM's visit.

But there were other things that were even more disturbing that eventually caused us to leave the DLM.

John had secretly taped recorded some conversations that he heard over the phone at GM's Sunset Blvd. house. There was a five-button phone…and when GM went into another room to take calls, John secretly tape recorded some of GM's private conversations from the front sitting room.

One of these calls included GM talking about a mahatma that had raped a woman at an ashram in the East Coast of the U.S. Another call was GM talking about smuggling money in a suitcase into the U.S. over the Canadian border to support his now growing extravagant lifestyle. Him saying that he needed the money….

John brought those tapes back to us and played them for us, and we just flipped out. We could not believe the extent of the corruption that had infiltrated the Divine Light Mission. The marriage to Marolyn Johnson was the straw the broke the camel's back.

We wrote a letter from us concerned premies and mailed to ashrams world wide, basically outlining the facts that things were not as they appeared. This was not "lila" as some would called it, but it was downright criminal activity that was occurring. We now know that this letter never made it to the premies in the ashrams.

We were literally excommunicated, but we had all decided to leave DLM, to support Mata Ji, Bal Bhagwan Ji and Bhole Ji . . . but most definitely to leave DLM.

John continued to work with Mata Ji and the rest of the family….helping to get them safely out of the country. We met with Bal Bhagwan Ji and Bhole Ji a couple of times…wtih members of the band.

But my friends and I eventually parted DLM and even the rest of the hold family. We lived with each other on and off in shared homes and apartments for many years….but we eventually all have gone our separate ways.

I became totally disillusioned in organized religion that I've become probably more an atheist or at least an agnostic. I guess my spiritual beliefs system is closest now to the later Joseph Campbell…and am "Following My (OWN) Bliss."

t wasn't until I was doing some Web surfing and put a search of Guru Maharaj Ji into an Internet search engine that I came across the ex-premie.org Web site. I hope that my story, especially the things in the last few months during the break up and split, will be enlightening to current premies and ex-premies alike.

I think GM believed himself to be Lord of the Universe. We premies fed that diillusioned belief. This is a man (only a man) with a huge ego that needed stroking. Who had a lust for fast cars and many things of THIS world. This was the basis by which we gave up literally everything to follow him. It was illusion….we saw only one side. What most premies didn't see was the lying, the subtrifuge, the criminal on-goings behind the scenes. This was worse than the unravelling of Jim and Tammy Fay Baker to me. At least Baker was only a preacher. GM thought himself the Sat Guru, an incarnation of Krishna, the Perfect Master. But in the end, he was just like any one of us….and certainly he is no God, big "G" or little 'g."

This has all been interesting, remembering. Cathartic is the word for it. It has been a "long strange trip" for me. But I've moved on…

Boris

The date was december 1972. I was 18 and had been working and saving all the previous summer. I had 1500$ Canadian (which then was worth a little more than 1500$ US) in my bank account. The place was Montréal. The Mahatma was Fakiranand. The guy who, I was told, was later sent back to India after he beat-up a guy with a hammer for throwing a cream pie onto the guru's face. He had a reputation for hardcore devotion.

He asked all of us aspirants if we were willing to devote ourselves to our guru. Of course. We were there to be initiated. He then asked us how much we had in our bank account and to bring a check for the same amount if we wanted to receive k the next day. I did as everyone else in that k session. Maybe the Mahatma had streched the rules a little just this once. I thought I was told receiving knowledge was to be free.

***

It was in 1974. Guru Maharaj-ji had married and a family feud had followed. Suzan Butcher who, until then had been Canada's DLM director was said to be in India with Mata-ji and the rest of the holy family. «Suzan, you are a butch» was her favorite Mata-ji quote. I was living in Montreal's ashram. Everyone had left for New-Brunzwick (or was it Nova-Scotia) where Raja-ji was having a program on that three days week-end in September. I stayed behind, I had some service to do.

C… and S…, two « sisters » from Toronto popped-up. They had left their jobs and moved to Ottawa where they had rented a house and getting it ready to receive Mata-ji. I gave-in, sent a letter to my boss and took-off with them. It wasn't long before we received a visit from a mahatma. He had been sent directly by the Guru to ask us to renounce our project. We agreed. Mata-ji was to fly two weeks from then. C… and S… moved to Toronto's ashram while I did move into Ottawa's ashram. To this day, C… does not want to discuss the incident. The landlord did not like it a bit. I hope he forgot about it since.

***

The last time I saw Guru Ji, it was in May 1996 when he came to town. It is not that I am especially fond of the chap. It rather is that Judith who still is a devotee after all these years and lives in Toronto came to Montréal for the program. She called and invited me to join her for dinner. How could I resist an invitation from the "housemother" I once was madly in love with. Once, I must insist. The darn woman had even better looks at 43 that she had at 23.

If there was such a thing to be called "spirituality", I then thought, it must aim at having me fully occupy my shoes (be in contact with oneself, appreciating one's worth, know one's own values and stand by it, listen to one's heart, know one's self, being sensitive to the invisible and all these sort of things). From this point of view the rip-off may be subtle, yet well orchestrated. We must be in contact with "this most beautiful place inside", invest where it really counts and tutti-quanti, it remains that Guru Ji is promoting his own ideology in the process. I understood on that day the contributing premies were too much alike each other not to be suspect. A useful spirituality isn't one. While at it, what is Guru Ji's ideology?

Personality cult (me master, you disciple, pranam, agya, holy breath, holy lotus feet of the master, Charanand rit, lila, Krishna outfit ad nauseum).

Saint-Kabir, new-age, oriental religious culture, arti, holy feet-water, devotion.

An apparently spontaneous way of speaking that ends up so difficult to follow that one has to stop being critical.

Technology at the service of spirituality as an excuse to play with expensive toys (airplanes, computers, luxury cars, and synthesisers).

"Let me continue my own Guru's quest - give me your dough.

I may not say this clearly, but I let you subtly understand I am of divine nature". (guru gives grace, he talks about himself at the third person, "I worship the guru", "I am the guru", "guru, the father, the devotee and the holy-name", "I want to serve the cause my father initiated" and so on).

Be detached from worldly possessions. I did not believe when he added one's family is not as important as the spiritual experience since at the moment of death, family is bound to stay behind. He immediately excused himself saying, "Don't get all huffing and puffing now." I came to wish the National Enquirer would photograph him his pants down with money sticking out of his holy hole.

If she exists, God should do something about the chap. I got the thing and offer it to you for free. Enjoy it - and you may not use it very long without joining the cult. He even mentioned about the following program in Miami.

***

Lately, through this site, I came in contact with a lad who wanted to improve his chances to seduce a premie he has a crush for. I gathered for him the below lexicon and advised him to use it to impress her. The poor guy needed help to make sense of her queer behaviour and language. I'm posting it here hoping I'd be useful to more of us, premies included.

To be confused: She probably agrees with a dualistic interpretation of herself. On one hand there's her limpid soul, spirituality gives her access to and on the other, mind and illusion. To be confused, is to be « into one's mind », to lose focus from « this most beautiful place inside », this crystal boulder where calm and solitary her soul is resting. Try this one, you'll be glad you did. 25 points easily scored.

To be into one's mind: To think, to exist for oneself, outside the dogmatic mindscape. To consort with the devil.

Illusion: Interesting concept invented either by Buddha or by Buddhists, which consist to recognise as real only what is eternal and immutable. Everything that has a beginning or/and an end is but an illusion: life itself, a love relationship, motherhood, money (especially money used to finance her trips around the world where she meets her guru), her job. Premies are fond of fables. Their guru has used them to it. Tell her the story of Buddha, a young prince who lived a long time ago a protected life in his castle. One day, he came out and met the three messengers of wisdom: disease, old age and death. He realised the futility of illusion and dove into a state of deep meditation. When he came out of it, seven years later, he had reached Nirvana. Now the recipe is this: though you know all this is illusion, your soul is attracted to hers. Bingo, she won't resist this one. 75 points.

Not to listen to the inner voice (or « not to listen to the divine voice within »): The sin only practice of knowledge could protect against.

To be in contact with…: Universal formula that justifies the best and the worse. Baptist have a delicious formula for this that have them pretend « the devil made me do it. »

Concepts: Obstacles to a completely harmonious life. Push this a little and intellectuals and scientists are out to lunch.

You are a beautiful person inside: Sure bet. « My interest for you is of the noblest nature. I love you for spiritual reasons. » A proved technique to have girls fall into your arms. Many teenagers wouldn't exist without it. 35 points.

To be detached: A dignified goal to aim at since everything except - the guru - is illusion. Bonus points if you pretend the numerous letdowns she laid on you lately had you grow into understanding you were attached to her. From then on, you're playing « run after me and I'll catch you. »

Karma: Good shots, bad shots, destiny, the idea that states every action provokes a reaction, consequences from past lifetimes.

Having faith: Since fear seem to keep her from letting herself indulge into having a relationship with you (details deleted), call upon her faith into Guru Maharaj-ji's grace (Maharaj they call him nowadays) and she'll be impressed. In your case an understatement would be advised. I suggest you tell her about her faith into her good star. This would dodge her suspicion.

Saint Kabir: A spiritual writer from antique India her Guru cites regularly. Quite somniferous. You'd get scores just as high by asking her where you could find a copy of his texts. She'll probably get it for you for Christmas in which case, you'll have another chance to… never mind.

Death: An illusion, a passage towards a better life, a liberation, the right moment to think of the guru and be in contact with the crystal boulder where calm and solitary her soul is resting.

Body: An illusion, a carnal envelope, a tool, a vehicle and sometimes an obstacle, soul's reflection.

Sex: An illusion which could be transcendent if souls are in contact with each other. A condom still wouldn't keep her soul from getting to yours.

Truth: Dogma, soul, knowledge.

***

My favorite Bertrand Russell Quote: « I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. »

From « Introduction: On the Value of Scepticism », Sceptical Essays
[London: Allen & Unwin, 1928])
Bertand Russell (1872-1970)

My favorite Bertrand Russell sites:

The Bertrand Russell society
http://daniel.drew.edu/~jlenz/brs.html

The Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University
http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm

My favorite Bertrand Russell writing about faith and religion:

Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?
A Plea for Tolerance in the Face of New Dogmas (1947)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2795/atheist_or_agnostic.htm

A Free Man's Worship (1903)
http://daniel.drew.edu/~jlenz/fmw.html

Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)
http://daniel.drew.edu/~jlenz/brs.html#texts

What Is an Agnostic? (1953)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2795/what_is_an_agnostic.htm

Why I Am Not A Christian (1927)
http://daniel.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

Shelagh C

My Journey with Knowledge

I received Knowledge in December of 1981. All sorts of predisposing conditions went into that seemingly momentous "turning point" in my life, but it's only since leaving the fold of premiedom in June, 2002, that I've really begun to gain some perspective on the whole journey - how and why I got in, what kept me there, in spite of some doubts, and what finally helped me make the decision to leave. It feels important to try to trace this journey, and what it means, because it's a sort of prototype for all the self-deluding trips I've been on in my life, in the long, slow process of waking up to who I really am!

These are ironic words, in a way, because those are precisely the same words, "who I really am", that were used so much by Maharaji and premies, and were such a powerful draw for me! When I heard him say things like, "this is about YOU!", "this is about trusting your own heart", "this is about the beauty within, inside of you", "put YOURSELF in the picture!", "be the guest of honor in your OWN life!", well, I was hooked. That's exactly what I wanted to know, wanted to hear, and started to feel for the very first time in my life!

How could I know that language itself gets subverted in a cult? That all the usual words you think you know the meaning of - words like "heart", "light", "breath", "real", "simplicity", "love", "service", and so on - all get new and special meanings, a sort of secret code if you will, that brings a special connectedness to others involved in the same game? It's a dangerous game though, because it very quietly takes you away from the ordinary commerce of the day-to-day world on which, after all, your survival and emotional healing and success and yes, even your spiritual well-being depend! In fact, it takes you AWAY from yourself!

The Powerful Attraction of Knowledge

In 1981, I was a single mother of three children, a graduate student in the English department at a major university, and very lost. I was still very much grieving the loss of a family scene even though it had been an alcoholic/codependent nightmare. I was attempting to build a career, knowing that I would now have to manage alone in the world. I was 41 years old by this time, and very scared inside. Many things had happened to me as a child that simply did not provide me with the self-esteem, life-skills and confidence everyone needs in order to manage life. I was more than a good candidate for other people's interests and agendas! Most of all, I felt very lonely and isolated.

So when I met this premie who seemed so blissed out and happy in such a simple way, and who took such a special interest in ME, well, it was too good to be true! Even though I recognized from the beginning that this fellow had some problems, I saw that he was onto something pretty powerful, and I wanted a taste of that for myself! There was something else radiating from his being. And I fell for it - not for a minute thinking that I was just another recruit for his personal pleasure as well as new fodder for the community!

It was a high and blissful time - running around in Indian skirts, becoming a shiny premie, going to satsang at local houses, and -- the ultimate bliss -- those trips to Florida or New York or California, to see the Master himself, and hang out with all these beautiful, radiant people! And it was all so simple - just practice the service, satsang and meditation, and know that beauty within, and to heck with books, study, thought, or any of that stuff! Just "be who you really are!"

I felt liberated in a way I had never felt before - and free to be a kid or an adolescent in ways I had never experienced when I was actually a kid or an adolescent! It was playtime! And I played! I had this intense relationship going on with this premie who had introduced me to the whole thing, and somehow it all seemed to give me permission to forget this whole thing about having to live in the world as a responsible adult! It was heady stuff! When we weren't making love, we'd spend the time shopping for clothes for the next event with Maharaji, swimming in the buff at the local watering hole, hanging out in cafes, doing fasts or eating vegetarian so we'd be slim and brown and beautiful, and talking, talking, talking about knowledge and the good life! It was, in fact, as addictive as any drug, and beat the heck out of spending time in some dull library slogging over a paper about deconstructionist criticism or phenomenological approaches to James Joyce!

But my relationship with this passionate premie guy was a first-class addiction, too! I justified it to myself by saying that the "connection" between us in knowledge was what it was really all about - but in actual fact, the dysfunctional patterns that had us enmeshed were really no different than anything else I had hitherto experienced by way of romantic involvements, and it was THAT side of it that I was forced to deal with eventually, knowledge or no. And it wasn't knowledge that helped me there - it was the 12-Step program! So yes, I now had a foot in two different boats, just like Maharaji warned us not to do! I tried very hard to make it work though - after all, knowledge was supposed to be about self-knowledge, and self-discovery, wasn't it? How could a healing program like the 12 Steps really contradict that? They were all roads to enlightenment, as far as I was concerned, back then. I kept going.

I remember one notable occasion when I had just come back from that first Festival of Light in Miami Beach, in July of 1981, and had run into one of my professors in a restaurant. When he asked me where I had been, I said, without a moment's hesitation, "In the Kingdom of heaven!" He never looked at me the same after that, and who could blame him? And here I was supposedly working in a doctoral program in English, writing intelligent papers, and teaching other students who wanted to pursue the academic life! Now I'm not saying that intellect alone is a good thing - nor is following the heart, without reference to reason, a good thing! There's a balance that can be achieved between the two that helps a person find the integrity and success they need! I was fast moving from an extreme reliance on the intellect to an extreme desire to just throw away everything to have this bliss that all the premies, and Maharaji himself, kept talking about! Either extreme spells doom-but oh, the ecstasies on the way down! Satsangs, initiator visits ("to clear up all the misunderstandings"), regional events, programs, festivals, trekking around in overloaded cars with screaming kids and doped out premies! It's funny how much you can choose not to see, in order to see what or whom you WANT to see! I kept going for more.

There were "drips" even in the early days:

It struck me, fairly early on, that many of the premies were pretty dysfunctional people - all sorts of muddled relationships, split-ups, re-alignments, incredible family problems, and along with all that, lots of hippy stuff still going on, not the least of which was drugs. Because I'd never done drugs, I felt that I was superior in some ways - and of course, very "professional", by virtue of being at the university, teaching and working on a doctorate! But in all truth, I was as messed up as the best of them, emotionally, and made a very good candidate for the whole premie scene in that small community! But I couldn't help asking myself at times - if knowledge is meant to be the ultimate enlightenment, and we are all so busy doing this thing, why aren't we showing some improvement in our ways and our lives? It was a question not to be asked.

There was a video I remember seeing at someone's house, in the early 80's, and of course Maharaji's young, golden, and happy face filled up the screen through the whole thing, but right at the very end (and this was a mistake that would have been quickly edited out in later, slicker times), there was a very sudden change of expression that was actually quite frightening to me. He looked VERY sad, for that split second before the fade-out, and I asked everyone "Did you see that???!!!", but no-one said anything, and the race resumed. I quickly blotted it from my mind, too. There was such bliss and fun to be had, right? Keep going!

Initiator visits made me wonder, sometimes, if being "higher up", or closer to M, or dedication of one's life, etc, really made for a better human being? Of course, I worshipped them too in that I wanted to be in their nice shoes and good jackets, and spending all that time just talking about knowledge. But some of these people were a mess too, although I bent over backwards to NOT see that at the time! I won't mention names - they all know who they are anyway! If they were "clearer" than the rest of us, it's no wonder things got progressively dimmer!

But hey, I was having a great experience! I was meditating, going to programs, hanging out with premies, buying videos, sending money to Elan Vital, so there had to be some growth in knowledge for me! I surely clung to that belief, and enjoyed whatever experience I seemed to be having, here and there, now and then. There were moments when I felt very beautiful and connected within myself in ways I had never known in my life before - so I kept going. I was seeing a blue light every time I did the light technique, and feeling quite centered and sometimes quite powerful, on those days I gave meditation a fair go. There are probably fairly good psychological explanations for all of this, but of course at the time, and like so many other people, I put it down to the power of practicing knowledge, grace, the connection to Maharaji, and all sorts of things like that. I was doing what was required, and it felt good! I was also blissfully unaware of the things I was avoiding, by filling my life with knowledge and everything that appertained thereunto!

The direction that came down the pike in the early 80's to destroy all the materials we currently had was something I personally accepted as a good thing. Yes, sweep the deck clean! Let's get it straight! Keep it simple! Be sure we're "in sync" with the latest, etc. etc. etc. Still, though, several months later, when I visited the house of the "librarian" of our community, all those old materials were still there, and still being borrowed! It was all very confusing. But I was glad in a way, because I still felt new to knowledge and wanted very much to "get" it. Most of the other premies had been around through the seventies, and they spent a lot of time talking about those times too. I never quite felt I belonged, because I hadn't "been there" then. Kind of like being one of those who wasn't at Woodstock! You missed it, man! But wait, knowledge is now! Right? Knowledge is for everyone! Right? Well…no, not really. But I was determined to find out what it meant for me anyway, so…keep going!

Through the 90's, with the abandonment of satsang as we had known it, a very stiff and cold and non-communicative feeling overtook the local events. It felt like walking on eggs. Only certain people had the right to speak, it seemed, and only in a certain prescribed way (because they had been to more events, or been to special training sessions). It felt really weird, but because I enjoyed the videos so much, and later, the satellite broadcasts, I kept going anyway, and just accepted that it was "normal" for us all to just go to the hall, say a brief hi, watch the video, and then leave. Anything else seemed definitely discouraged or out of order. Questions or doubts? Forget it! And if a new person was there, the less said the better. The world of knowledge was different. But by now, I'd had lots of practice with recovery in the 12-step program, too - so I couldn't help feeling that the lack of open and direct and honest communication between people surely indicated that something was wrong. It was very uncomfortable for me, but I hung in there, always hoping that if I listened enough to Maharaji himself, everything would be clear eventually.

Along through the 90's. I also began to get a distinct feeling that "knowledge was really only for the rich", because of the rush and expense of programs, the class system instituted by those who could go everywhere and those who couldn't, the amount of debt people who were not rich had to struggle with, well, it was getting rather insane to say the least. I know of one person who borrowed a huge amount from friends and family to go to the Amaroo 2001 event. She will be paying that off for quite a while to come, I don't doubt - and was still willing to go through whatever contortions she had to, to go to other events even since then!

But I was just as influenced by the excitement and agony and thrills of being "with Him" as everyone else! I made last-minute decisions, borrowed money, called around to see who could share a hotel or travel expenses, put all my family and work stuff on hold for the duration, and skipped out of town to play with the rich and the blissed-out for a while. To be somebody else! To be free! And I danced and screamed and cried along with everyone else at those events. But it wasn't really my life. It was an escape from my life - I see it now.

At one of the Long Beach events of the mid-nineties, which I could ill-afford at the time but went to anyway, they had these "side-shows" out in the hall between times - the book stalls, videos and gifts for sale, photo exhibitions, and so on. One of these was a tent where they were showing some videos. I walked into the darkness of the tent, and felt myself being very rudely shoved aside by a premie doing service there - someone who felt justified, no doubt, by their high level of "service", to treat any latecomers as mere nuisances. I felt humiliated, standing by the curtain at the side, and at the earliest opportunity, slipped out. Maharaji's compassion? The true love? The kindness that knowledge promotes? Hah! And the name of this particular event was, "Only by Compassion". There were crystal glasses and prints for sale, with two swans intertwined and the logo, "Only by Compassion", to prove it. And did I buy some of those things? Yes, I did - I was still so entrenched in some aspect of all this that I was willing to even take abuse for it!

The Last Straw?

So what finally tipped the scales for me? It's hard to say exactly - it would be easy to say that accidently coming across the ex-premie website in 2000 and seeing some information, for the first time, about Maharaji's REAL wealth was the jolt that was needed. I'm not sure. I felt a lot of guilt and confusion at that time, and was ready to dismiss this as someone's sick grudge, and not real information at all. After all, I'd seen for myself how weird some premies were! How they weren't really understanding what M was about, etc. etc. etc. Even now, keep going! But I couldn't quite dismiss from my mind what I had now seen. I STILL went to Amaroo in 2001, at great expense to my husband (who isn't even a premie) and myself in rather poor physical health at the time! But something in me knew, I think, that the end was coming, especially when I was on the airplane coming home. I was NOT feeling the bliss of a major event like I had in the past, and I was NOT feeling sad about leaving there. I was actually glad. But I still went back to the community hall for events, and helped clean up the video library, and those sorts of things. An addiction, or a cult, can be a very powerful thing. There's no easy or obvious way out. It's a process.

In late May of 2002, word went out about an event in Pasadena. I was all ready to start my customary lurch into action, and then suddenly I heard myself saying, "I can't do this any more! I don't WANT to do this anymore!" With that, I logged onto the ex-premie website and devoured all the information about the other side that had been missing, and just knew, I was no longer a premie. For the next several weeks I was reading and communicating with people, good people, who had been where I now was, and were willing to be open and honest about it, sometimes at great risk to their own safety. I was particularly moved by John MacGregor's extremely well-written accounts of his long-time and inside experience with this whole trip, and knew then, that I was not such a freak in having come to the end of my own personal effort to hope for or believe in any further "realization" for me on this particular path. I feel that my trust and devotion has been hijacked by a dishonest person who seems to have some real problems relating to drinking, power-mongering, sexual dishonesty, obsession with material wealth, manipulation of information, and all sorts of things that are not very enlightened. From what I have now read about cults, I have no further doubt that this is one.

I have spent nearly 21 years being a premie - doing my best to learn, practice, participate and enjoy, in spite of whatever doubts had popped up along the way. There were many good times and very real feelings of love and gratitude at the time that I cannot deny. Otherwise I would not have kept with it as long as I did. And now I have had one year of being an "ex-premie", if labels are needed. Of course I am still the same person - just a human being looking for truth and meaning in my life, in a way that takes the realities of my situation and my evolving self into account. My head and my heart are intact and good! I value my uniqueness and I value what I share with other human beings.

It's been an interesting journey full of all sorts of things, and feelings, but ultimately, I am glad to be awake to the next phase of my life, and have no regrets about where I have been or whom I have known along the way. It has all brought me to the one person I REALLY need to be in touch with - me!

And there are miles to go with this (after all) not so bad companion!

With thanks, love, and good wishes to all who have shared this journey with me one way or another.

ShelaghC
May 2nd 2003

Edi Cramp

An Ex-WPC-Premie's Story

I found this web site a few months ago and felt that I had to write this - as much for my own satisfaction as anything - and also perhaps to put a few things into the record that might otherwise be lost. The following is as accurate as I can remember. I think that the dates are pretty much correct and the events are all more or less in the right order. Writing this down now it seems a lot more intense and convoluted than I remember it at the time . . .

Oxford - November 1971 - Just before my 19th birthday I moved into lodgings in Oxford, to attend the Oxford Polytechnic, and was introduced to Gillian Rosenburg by Sue Day, the daughter of the landlady and who became a good friend over many years. Gill was 16, jewish, smart and very pretty with straight dark hair and a vivacious personality. Her father was a Physics lecturer at Oxford University and her parents lived in Summertown, a very nice area of Oxford.

Sue thought I might be interested in Gill as she had just returned from London after visiting a Guru and now talked about nothing else. Sue and I had become friends and talked - she knew that I had been fascinated by India since I was a young child and briefly "dated" an Indian girl before I moved to Oxford. So, with Sues encouragement, I started seeing Gillian, and her group of friends.

Gill did indeed talk about nothing else other than Guru Maharaj Ji and had received "Knowledge" a week or so prior to my meeting her. After a few weeks I visited the London ashram with Gill and attended satsang with her. We stayed with my cousin at his rooms at the London School of Economics and returned to Oxford the next day carrying copies of various pieces of literature on Maharaj Ji and the Family.

I was doing my first year at the Architecture School at the Polytechnic and Gillian was in her final year at the local High School with exams to sit the following summer. Neither of us could afford to do anything other than return to school although Satsang at the time was advocating that everyone should leave whatever they were doing and move into Ashrams.

However, one week later on a Saturday, Gill and I returned to the London ashram and attended Satsang again throughout most of the day. In the early evening I, and about ten other people, received Knowledge from Mahatma Guru Charananda in a small room in the ashram. I was just twenty years old.

To this day I remember that evening - the look in the Mahatmas eyes and the quiet way that he talked to us about the futility of performing tricks to demonstrate ones spirituality. He seemed very tired and old yet his eyes bit into me whenever he looked at me. I knew that we were supposed to have attended Satsang for at least six months before getting the "Knowledge" and yet here I was and I didn't even know who Maharaj Ji was a month ago. I got the Knowledge partly out of my own curiosity, and partly because I wanted to see what it was that Gill found so fascinating about this.

1972 - Gill and I started dating seriously in January of the following year, consummating the relationship in February or March. She continued to live at home and I stayed in lodgings on the other side of the city. We both continued visiting the London ashram until the Oxford ashram started up. Neither one of us could become ashram premies. We both had exams in the early summer of that year, I was still in digs and she lived with her parents. We took our exams and both did pretty badly from what I can remember. It didn't seem too important at the time.

After her school term ended Gill left home and we both moved into a room in a shared house that she had found - with Laura and Mary, two other premies that she had met. Oddly enough, the other occupants of the house were a couple of university hippies that I had known and been hanging around with at the Polytechnic.

That summer the trip to India was announced at the local ashram and both Gill and I decided that we would go so we started saving money for it. We spent most of the summer working, me on various construction sites while the three girls worked in a Health Food shop which didn't pay too much but provided plenty of free food for the table. When we weren't in bed or working, we were at the ashram and by November we had saved enough money to get two tickets to India to the Hans Jayanti Festival in November.

At the festival in Delhi, we were separated from each other - the men at one end of the campground and women at the other. I rarely saw Gill except occasionally when we were queuing for meals. It was my first trip outside England and I found the difference between the drab winter countryside that I had left in England and the Delhi campground overwhelming at first. Attending Satsang and meditation became a very real escape from the pressure of the change.

After the festival we were all put into buses, with all our belongings tied on top, and driven for about 24 hours to the ashram at Dera Dun which was out in the countryside and very beautiful. I think that we stayed out there with Maharaji Ji for 7 to 10 days.

During this time I got sick with severe diarrhea and was introduced to the local Indian herbal medicine which cured each attack very effectively. I met Stuart, another premie from Oxford who taught me a lot about herbal medicine and meditation. I discovered that meditation can either cure or eradicate almost all of the symptoms of a lot of minor diseases.

After two to three weeks in India we returned to England - Gill immediately announced that she was going to become an ashram premie and within two or three weeks left for London. I did not attempt to stop her. I figured that any attempt to dissuade here would alienate her. Anyone wanting to join an ashram had to first go to the London headquarters where they would be interviewed and then assigned to an ashram. They were never sent back to the city that they came from or anywhere where they had lived before.

1973 - About three or four weeks later I got a letter from Gill saying that she was living in the Brighton ashram and so I went down to see her. She seemed very happy but somehow whenever I talked to her it seemed that she was in a different world. After visiting her a couple of times I have lost contact with her although I wonder where she went. I heard that she remained in the ashram system though the closings and continued as a premie afterwards.

I remained in Oxford, working on various construction sites and then in March I hitchhiked down to London and volunteered to join an ashram. I was interviewed by Glen and then sent to the Exeter ashram were I worked helping gather stuff for garage sales while I looked for a job. Almost everyone at the ashram was required to work in one form or another. Those who did not hold regular jobs worked collecting and organizing jumble sales (garage sales). These sales had all the appearance of casual sales to benefit a small charity but they bought in a large amount of money on a weekly business.

After about a month we were visited by someone from the London ashram who announced the formation of the World Peace Corp by Raja Ji, Maharaji Ji's brother some time earlier. I was getting fed up with the ashram premies who seemed to be a very complacent and sleepy bunch. I left the ashram and traveled back to London to join the WPC since they seemed to be a lot more interesting than the ashram premies.

Back in London, I moved into a house in East Dulwich in South London and was immediately sent to work at nearby Dolby Corporation where I worked testing Dolby noise reduction systems. It was pretty boring work but it bought in good money, although some questions were raised when someone in the personnel department noticed that they had about six unrelated people working for them who all lived at the same address!

In fact this was just the tip of the iceberg since we actually had more than fifty people sleeping in the house at one point. Food was provided by a couple of girls, Teresa and Delia, who more or less ran the house and provided cooking, sewing and laundry services to everyone. The girls ran the house very well, the sexes were segregated and everyone seemed pretty much together. There was never much room in the WPC for any small affairs or misbehavior. Everyone seemed to realize this and worked well together.

In addition to the house the WPC had a large workshop close by (The Factory) that later became the Transport offices. This provided free support services to the DLM for anything technical or mechanical. The trucks and vans that the DLM used were serviced here and recording and video support for the larger Satsangs in London was all organized from these offices.

In July we worked at Ally Pally and I spent most of the time in the control tower working the sound system for the event. Meditation and other tricks that I'd learnt over the years came in handy as most of the crew organizing the event got perhaps two hours of sleep each day for about a week. We topped off this with meditation in the van on the way to the event and on the return journey each day.

At the end of the circus at Alexander Palace we were exhausted but learnt that we'd worked well enough that almost the entire WPC members would be sent to Houston, Texas to provide support services for the November Hans Jayanti Festival (the Millennium Festival) which was to be held outside India for the first time ever.

So once more back to work outside the house to earn money for the trip. We never saw any of the money as we handed our pay packets (we were paid in cash) to the WPC each week.

Tickets were purchased and most of the people in the house flew out to Houston a few days before the festival started and were housed at a hurriedly constructed open air camp in an industrial area in South Houston. I was assigned to help a couple of American Premies who were trying to build a laser show to write Guru Maharaj Ji's name in the sky with a laser. It was a neat project but the control system technology wasn't quite up to handling the project and we were soon pulled off it and assigned to help the security on the Astrodome.

Most of the security services were being coordinated with CB radios and the local Houston red necks had figured out which bands they were using and were causing quite a bit of trouble. We started pulling in all the CB radios which had separate transmit and receive crystals so we swopped them out and moved most of the radios out of the CB bands so that the transmissions couldn't be intercepted.

The Astrodome show was fun but everyone stayed very professional and on the watch for trouble. The only incident that I recall was some locals putting sugar in the fuel tanks of all the cars at the local ashram on night.

1974 - I returned to London after the Astrodome show. The East Dulwich house was reorganized and everyone with any electronics experience was put to work opening a hi-fi shop in South London. This was an old restaurant which the WPC purchased. Most of the technical services were moved into this shop which we renovated. The downstairs was a regular commercial operation with a hi-fi repair shop above and sleeping accommodations for the staff on the top floor.

Most of the money to set this up came from one Premie who had moved down from the North (Leeds I think) who had run a similar shop before becoming a Premie. It seemed to me that he was slowly stripped of every asset that he had to support the creation of the shop. He seemed happy with this and it didn't seem my place to wave flags. I worked with the other technicians, on a number of products, including a digital clock and metal detectors.

Then, one day a request came in from Raja Ji for some miniature radio transmitters. We built a couple of prototypes but were never told what they were to be used for. Each transmitter and microphone fitted into a box of matches, so it was pretty clear that someone was being bugged.

At this point the split between the WPC and the DLM became more open. The WPC premies looked down on the ashram premies as lazy while the WPC premies usually worked very hard. The ashram premies looked down on the WPC as a bunch of gestapo types who never meditated. We didn't make care what the ashram premies thought of us. The WPC was basically a tool for Raja Ji to use and direct as he saw fit, and we were generally closer to the Family than any of the ashram premies.

About this time a house was rented overlooking Reigate as a retreat for Maharaji Ji and the Family as the Highgate House in North London was becoming too well known and they were having problems with the neighbors and with security.

A few of us were moved from the shop to the basement in the Reigate House to set up a "Skunk Works" where we built more miniature transmitters and microphones that were used to bug of the DLM headquarters. The DLM had purchased an old Movie Theater (I think in Brixton) and the WPC was used to renovate it. One team worked during the day, and at night another team installed microphones throughout all the offices in the building - even putting microphones in the bedrooms.

For the most part the microphones were hidden in ceiling lights and electrical outlets. All the microphones were run back to a small secret room built into the back of the projection room at the theater where someone monitored them 24 hours a day with a bank of reel-to-reel tape recorders running. The tapes were bought back to Reigate each night and transcribed for Raja Ji who would show any interesting items to Maharaj Ji.

This went on for quite a while - in the end to the point where Glen and the other people running DLM started to get very jumpy because Raja Ji and the WPC always seemed to know exactly what was going on at the DLM.

It all came to an end one day when I was doing the usual run to deliver fresh tapes and collect the day's take. I was up in the control room when the tape operator sat up and started pulling all the tapes off the machines and said that we had to get out now. We grabbed all the tapes, went down the fire-escape at the back of the theater and piled them into a car and took off.

As we passed the front of the Theater, we saw Glen and one of the Mahatmas outside looking at all the microphone wiring on the outside of the building and following it back to the projection room.

I stayed at the Reigate House for a few more months while the storm between the DLM and the WPC rolled over our heads, and then one day in late summer I packed everything that I owned into a rucksack and just walked away from the Reigate house and never returned.

I returned to Oxford and moved in with some old friends there and quickly found a job on the construction sites to pay the bills while I started to rebuild my life. I attended Hatha Yoga classes at the local further education centers in Oxford and started getting involved with human relationships again. I had always been friendly with Gills younger sister and the two of us formed a very solid platonic friendship based that lasted for several years. She had little interest in "dating" anyone and I was definitely not ready to get emotionally or sexually involved for a couple of years. Time and good friends heal a lot of things.

Since then I've moved to the USA and have lived here now for more than twenty years - working with computers and medical electronics for the most part. I am happy with my life. I have learned to accept the things I can not change and history is one of those. I still meditate but haven't met a premie in about fifteen years. Until I found the ex-premies.org website I had no idea what had happened to the DLM or Maharaj Ji, although I had heard about the ashram closings shortly after it occurred.

One of the perpetual criticisms that was leveled at the WPC was that we were not real devotees because we did not meditate. I can't talk for every WPC member, but everyone that I knew spent time meditating or trying to meditate. However, it was always an "as time and work permits" and everyone worked very hard. Anyone who didn't want to work was welcome to return to an ashram. I don't remember any of the WPC members being the regular ashram types, most of them were highly motivated individuals - although they may, like me, have been lacking a direction before they joined the WPC.

Whether a conscious decision or not, the WPC was a vehicle to keep people in the ashram system who would otherwise have left the organization. But, as far as Knowledge and Meditation went, I know that there were many nights when I did my meditation and fell asleep. Many of the people in the WPC house worked 16 to 18 hour days for long periods when there was something that needed to be done - whether for Raja Ji or Maharaj Ji. Meditation while you worked was encouraged. Meditation simply for show was not. With the exception of very occasional visits to Oxford to see friends (who I kept throughout the whole period) and my parents in Rugby, I worked full-time for the WPC for about three years.

It was always my feeling that Maharaj Ji lost control of the organization after the DLM took control in England and the whole thing started to resemble something out of Lord of the Rings. Some of the mahatmas and the organizers behind the DLM seemed to have totally lost touch with the premies in the streets and the ashrams and to have become gray people.

I was never personally worried about the differences between my life and that of the Family - even though, at times in Reigate, only a few feet separated us. It seemed irrelevant at the time and largely still does. I don't have any message for anyone involved in the current incarnation of the DLM other than, if you remember me then you're welcome to get in touch if you want too but I won't be offended if you don't.

I regret nothing and if I had my time over again I am not sure that I would change anything. But I have no desire, or need, to repeat the time again. I still meditate whenever I need to. I breathe, laugh, cry and joke as the situation suits.

My wife is a united Methodist and so we attend church on sundays and I am happy to join in. My daughter was baptized in church, and I was happy and proud to stand in front of the congregation. I don't have a problem with any conflicts over what I believe, or disbelieve, in.

Nowadays I try to be an ordinary man, older and wiser (perhaps). I am no longer looking for the Truth. I think that I found it in an old mans eyes in a small room in London all those years ago. But I still can't describe it.

Jai satchitananda - what a long strange trip it's been.

Bryn Davies

My name is Bryn Davies. I am 52, male, and live in England. I "got knowlege" at the Palace of Peace (what a name! I should have noticed at the time) in 1974. I was a model premie in my own mind, and in the eyes of "the community" for 26 years until Harrogate 2000. In fact the rot had set in earlier, about ten years earlier upon reflection, and upon further reflection even earlier than that! But one never left room for doubt in ones mind in those days!

I remember seeing M at Barcelona, and Manchester, (1999?) and thinking to myself: "This guy looks and sounds distinctly dodgy". There was also a "Presentation" by Raja Ji, in Leeds, around that time in which I had to fight back the urge to laugh out loud at the sheer ludicrousness of what was going down; the unspoken sub-texts and "hidden" agendas, the tacit assumptions! Walking out after that "event", I caught the eye of a friend and read in it the same unspoken admission that was going through my mind: "Fuck this. We're being HAD. Time for a re-think".

Same sort of thing happened as I left the hall in Harrogate. A very clear thought formed in me: "I'm afraid "phase two" is going to have to go ahead without me!". Maharaji had come across as tacky, philistine, ( I cant think of another word for this), manipulative and bored. So I just "walked" - and thank god. What a relief!

I could go on. With the benefit of hindsight there are many moments when the need to evaluate arose, but there was never any arena in which to express the ideas and perceptions. Consequently there was no language available with which to evaluate and evolve coherent paths of thought on what was taking place. I just went back to the solitary business of "satchitanand" and trusting "that connection".

Thanks to the internet, and the written contributions of a cross section of people who had shared the common experience of "being a premie", I began to evolve the language required for the examination of " this knowlege" and my relationship with it and "the Master". I reflected, and I did not like what I found in myself. I ventured to discuss with others the feelings and discoveries about myself I had made. It was not easy. I had a short period of direct professional counselling on the matter, in which the counsellor, (a "mainsream" NHS (state health service) pro.) observed that my mind-set had a lot in common with their long-term prisoner patients, and also military personel discharged unwillingly into society!

Anyway it all turned out alright and it is becoming possible to communucate openly and clearly on all aspects of my intentions, "this knowlege", "that place", "the Master? Speaker? filament? Lord of the Universe? Successful investor? Saviour of mankind? Satguru? etc. I am now doing a degree in Theology and Religious Studies, with a view to combining my life interests of performance, therapy and God. Hurrah!

Love Bryn

Hughie Davies

I became interested in Maharaji in 83/84. I moved in with some lovely people who had his picture all around the house. I started going to meetings, pretty soon I wanted "Knowledge". Someone said to me "this is better than Acid Man!". So I tried my best to get it a.s.a.p. Receiving Knowledge was a big disappointment and I felt peer pressure from all the smiling happy premies, when I got home, to pretend something amazing had happened (they threw a party for two of us). I felt bitterly disappointed, but felt like it might grow on me, it didn't. I spent the next 15 or more years thinking it must be something wrong with me! Trying out another so called Guru made me realise all the Premies I knew were insane, it never was better than Acid, in fact I took Acid the morning after I recieved "Knowledge", it was infinitely better than hiding under a blanket with a piece of wood and my thumbs in my ears. I went to see Whatsisname [Prem Rawat] in Bristol this Weekend June 2003, I blagged my way in, I couldn't wait for the hour - most people paid £16 - to end. I was the one sat outside with a can of Stella in my hand, and a fag in my mouth. Truthseekers try everything before you decide, I recommend Krishnamurti, Ram Dass, Anyone except whatshisname!

Love Hughie, (artist, truthseeker)

Deena

My Journey with Maharaji began in 1974 when he was called Guru Maharaj Ji. I was nineteen at the time. I had two groups of people that were my friends. One group were country hippies who enjoyed their beer and pot. The other group were premies that appeared to be naturally high. This appealed to me very much.

My hippy friends were good to me but were very critical of the premies because they felt that the "boy Guru" was a fraud. I was drawn to the premies lack of being critical of other people. They seemed child-like and full of love. I was not attracted to the Indian traditions, having studied many religions and spiritual paths. Zen Buddhism was simple and I felt more comfortable with it. But one of the first books I ever read parts of, was the Upanishads, so I wasn't completely turned off Indian spirituality.

I began to spend more and more time with the premies but never really understood very much of what they were into. I was a drifter and usually hung out wherever I felt most accepted. I did have definite reservations or gut feelings at the time but I was naive and enjoyed the family of love I was welcomed into.

My own childhood had been extremely dysfunctional. The concept of a teacher was one I embraced without much doubt because the detachment that devoting oneself to spiritual practices promised, along with the possibility of experiencing the author Burke's "Cosmic Consciousness", was very appealing. I had experimented with drugs and I thought I heard a voice within warning me that this was not it, as in Allan Watts "This is it", which I had thought I heard during other trips on drugs.

The idea that I could reach altered states without drugs fascinated me since I had experienced awakenings that came on out of nowhere and left as mysteriously. These glimpses teased me and I felt that since I was looking for the meaning of life maybe this was my destiny. I was picking tobacco at the time and I had a very intense hallucinatory dream. A dream I took to be of a mystical nature. I wasn't doing drugs during this period and never made the obvious connection between my ungloved hands absorbing the toxins in the leaves I picked.

The dream was about Maharaji and it was as if I knew him. Of course, again I never considered all the satsang I had heard because I never thought I was paying my attention since these were the days of children running around playing as someone shared their experience. I also didn't take into account the numerous photos I had seen around the house or the films I was shown. I felt as if I witnessed the evolution of Maharaji from child to Guru.

I followed him in the dream asking what Knowledge was and he played coy until finally he reached up and pulled an apple from a tree for me to bite into. I awoke at this point and lay there unable to move my body. A health problem I would later encounter in my 30.s. But this was the first time it had occurred and I believe that I was reacting to the work I was doing.

I hallucinated wide awake a blue star firework display above my bed. I was stunned. I don't know how long I lay immobile but when I did get up I immediately rushed into see my premie friends. They smiled and mumbled something to the effect that I had had a darshan dream. And my reaction is typical again of a young person. I never asked what that meant. I just knew that it was confusing for me but wonderful to the premies.

I had to return home to my family many miles from this place and didn't have transportation myself as this was my hitch hiking days. So when the premies offered me a lift, I gratefully accepted. I realized that,they were going to see Maharaji only when we got there. Again I must have had my head in the clouds half the time. They invited me and since I couldn't get in touch with my brother and had some time to kill I thought what the heck.

When I entered the facility I was shocked and frightened. Their were people prostrating themselves on the concrete floor and their were screams of what I later came to know as "Bhole Shri Sat Guru Dev, Maharaj Ke Jai". I wandered around looking for the premies I had been separated from. I finally was snagged by one person I knew, who dragged me over to a long line of premies. I had no idea what this line was about. I felt pushing and shoving and someone handed me a beaten up grapefruit.

I was very puzzled and became increasingly anxious about the situation but trusted my friends who seemed extremely happy. We followed the line until,behind a curtain,I saw many Indian people sitting on a stage. I hadn't a clue that this was the supposed "Holy family" of Maharaji's at the time. I didn't even know what people were doing until I saw a young Indian boy who I recognized as Maharaji, and the person in front of me bending down to kiss his feet.

I wanted to leave immediately. But I felt obligated and thought to myself that since I had done some professional acting that I could pretend without a problem. So I mimiced what I saw not realizing that this was a darshan line and I was doing pranam to what was then called the "Lord of the Universe". Apparently, Maharaji blew holy breath when I bent over according to one of my premie friends. To this day,I don't know why he did that or if only premies get this or even what it's suppose to be.

After I came out of the line I tried to find my shoes, which everyone had taken off at the beginning of the line. An odd request that I respectfully honoured. For the life of me I couldn't find my shoes and felt like a zombie which frightened me to no end. I rationalized for many years after this that because I didn't have knowledge that my mind had been wiped clean, when in fact I was in shock at having kissed a strangers feet!

Anyways, I tried to call my brother but I couldn't remember the phone number which also concerned me. I just wanted to get out of there. But my premie friends gathered round telling me how wonderful their darshan experiences had been and how excited they were for me. I felt accepted and safe again. I decided then that something wonderful may very well have occurred but I was too unenlightened to know it. I did not follow my gut feelings or entertain my doubts.

For 7 years after this whenever I heard of Guru Maharaji ji I was unable to say anything negative. I didn't meet anyone with Knowledge during this period and when I finally did I felt the same love and acceptance and this feeling of peace I remembered from my first experiences. All the premies I knew were genuine in their innocent love of Maharaji. I had serious reservations about a lot of things I encountered as an aspirant but rationalized everything because I was very romantic in my understanding of life.

I had many failed relationships and addictions that I battled. I was depressed much of my young life. I even stayed with followers of Roshi Kaplow (not certain of spelling ?) in Rochester New York. When he spoke I was unimpressed, just like I wasn't impressed with Guru Maharaj Ji's squeaky voice screaming what sounded like nonsense at the time I first heard him. The feeling around the Zen students was the same as the feeling I had with premies. But I forgot this conveniently when I myself became a premie.

I'm sure now that if I were to have met followers of Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven's Gate cult I would have experienced the same feeling. I say this with confidence after watching many videos on television of them. It was incredible how they reminded me of ashram premies from the past and present day premies who are at events with Maharaji or those who do his service, like instructors etc. I'm sure that I looked like them myself because it is their devotion that made them smile that way.

When I did receive Knowledge, I was 25 years old. I was in a destructive marriage and embraced the promise of true love. I was devoted and practiced faithfully. I remained a premie for 16 years until last February. I was involved in a lot of service and I have written a lot about this which you can find on the Forum and in the Archives.

I feel I am very fortunate to to have finally followed my gut feelings. The doubts were something I no longer tried to rid myself of because I felt they were something I should look at and consider carefully. I made the decision to leave Maharaji without the influence of anyone else. It was only after leaving that I discovered the Cult Watch site.

I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to it, both premies and ex-premies alike. It has helped me to de-program myself from years of involvement. I take responsibility for my choices but I do hold Maharaji responsible for the way he has taken advantage of the surrendered premies and their sincere love to bolster his continued need to be worshiped. I do not trust him now and feel he is his worst enemy and someday maybe justice will be served.

Marsha Donner

This Journeys' entry originally appeared as a post on Forum 5, and has been printed here with Marsha's permission.

thankyou forum Posters for your humanity. I have felt such heart and wisdom and connection with you. Thankyou for your persistence, your availability to those who are beginning their "rites of passage" to claim their own power. It takes courage. I did not have support at that time, mid 80's, and I believe if I could have fully greived the loss… loss of my whole Idenity when i left m and k. I wouldn't have been angry for so long afterward. (anger covers alot of the pain it seems to me) Now, I am 52, playing with a full deck and feel very happy to be alive. I have no regrets. I have been reading the Forum since Michael Donner posted, this will be my one and only post. I wanted to contribute because i appreciate the effort you are all making. It generally feels responsible, honest with good laughs to boot.

So I will share a few insights, nothing really new but just to support the forum and I believe to free my self up more of any m residue. Also because i will feel less like a voyeur. The beginning of my extrication really began after a year and a half of being the servant of the servant's in Miami Beach. (I had previously lived in Portand and Eugene - hi carol) Semi-close. Some fun, lots of laughs, tons of work, no recognition and burn-out …plus guilt cause i was sneaking into mikes room everynight… second hand Darshan experience you know!

I lived amonst a circle of exhausted, fearfull and confused young people, very sincere but way to stressed to be conscious of anyone but themselves and getting some form of attention from m. The exclusion game was a big one for me. not being invited to parties-trying to get a glimpse, to feel special. (how embarrassingly pathetic, but certainly socially acceptable in this circle, even encouraged.) After a few years of therapy, unraveling and relaxation, those years seem crazy and also perhaps normal for adocesents who lived through the 60's where all our heros were killed and nixon became pres.

It's my observation that m fit perfectly into my family scenerio. My dad was not around much , he did not know how to connect with me, he was at times mean and violent. M was the same, not a very nice boy, did not seem to know how to connect (even as he became a young adult) he often seemed to be entertained by others' misery, and was abusive (verbally abusive, and even physically… I remember when Mike blissfully recounted how M kicked him in the balls.)

There were 2 incidences that i would like to convey that cracked my tightly wound belief system around m and k.

first one: I was finally invited to become an instructor, part time in 85-86. M had basically totally ignored me up until this conference, i was living with mike donner and I kept finding myself in situations where i was treated like i didn't exist and it was not a spiritual experience. It was like I did not exisit. I was gaining enough sense of self at that point to realize that i perhaps deserved a bit of respect. duh! Well at the conference I had a very strange experience. m felt like we need a k review so Loring baker was going to teach us how to do the techniques.

But I thought … what.. are you kidding me, I have been faithfully doing this thing for 12 years or so and i even had 2 or 3 significant experiences. I know how to do this simple thing. well i think (rationaliztion covering up discomfort at questioning m) maybe there is something new, something that will really give me a great meditation.

So here comes Loring whom i know, he looks at me with these snakey blank eyes and says in a monotone voice "put the pads of your thumbs here", etc. It was absolutely the same thing i had been doing day after day for years. I suddenly felt weird and tried to connect with him. I said, "loring i know how to do this (nervous giggle) your kidding… right."…and then he restates exactly what he had just said .. "put the pads of your thumbs here", etc.

he was so cold, like a robot. well i felt punched in the stomach. Again that feeling of hey where is the respect for me, i am not stupid, i have been loyal for years, this is not what k is all about, putting thumbs in your ears just right? Where is the connection. I began to unravel right then and there. I talked to others but they kind of had the same snakey look except for the cynics like Mike and his buddies who were used to this stuff.

But i think i was beginning to see how i acted to others when they had doubts or were in their mind and it was not right. It felt cold. Funny little thing that became huge for me. I quit the instructor scene the day i got the call that i could be one. How we happen to unravel is so unique to each of us. for me I began to really see m's flaws and I began to allow myself to feel the feelings of hurt, disgust, loss. I guess i could go on and on but it seems everyone will see what is important for them as they individuate, as the system failsthem. It is quite an amazing process. it can be scary. but oh so worth it.

Grief struck me hard. i cried for a long time. Michael was on the edge also but this was a rites of passage for me, I had to do it alone. Our culture is not good at this sort of thing, honoring grief, so there was no room for me in the premie world. It was like being shunned, who would I talk to, cry to, as I told my revelation that m was a man and not a very nice one at that. It was a tough time for both of us. We did not do the break in a very conscious manner, it was strange for a few years.

So good job Forum. Please do consider a counseling site. I made it and i have appreciation for my resiliency and a trust to make choices that will further my opening to compassion and wisdom. It is a natural human process of growing up and i feel very tender towards all who are or have embarked on this journey.

The other incident that deeply affected me was in regards to a friend that disclosed how she felt greatly harmed by m. I would say that she felt raped, I will say that i felt it was close to rape and if it felt that horrible then it was. i will also say it was not violent physically but mentally and emotionally it was. I will also say that it was power over someone, a clear abuse of power from one who is narssisstic to extremes over one who felt powerless.

I will not write any details or answer questions regarding this incident because it is not my story, Only the effect it had on me. I felt a real sense of helplessness after i heard her story, of her abuse and then her long road to recovery. I told all the premies i could about it. i wonder what premies do to justify this kind of behavior in someone they profess to love. Any excuse i gave to m because of his lousy upbringing or that he was just a kid .or the sex, power, guru trip, whatever, could no longer be justified. Abuse (sexual/psychological/emotional) is not ok with me.

I feel anger, now when i imagine the pain of this woman, and i feel responsible to encourage those who hear this reality check regarding m that they disengage and stop supporting him. he does not practice what he preaches. H e is an energy suck. The sooner he has no devotees the sooner he will no longer be guru. Of course there are many accounts of his weak character. It would be a better road to recovery for him if his premies really let him go.

Thankyou again and namaste.
marsha ( fish mays) donner

Fran

I became a premie back in the hippie days. I was living in a commune and taking a lot of acid. I had reached the point where I "knew" that "nothing mattered." But, somehow, it mattered that nothing mattered. In other words, I felt an acute spiritual void and I didn't know what to do about it. Then, one day, a woman who lived in my commune came bursting excitedly into the house with the news that there was a guru who would give the "knowledge of god" to anyone who "asked with a guileless heart." That sounded like an answer to my deepest need.

A while later, I was walking in Golden Gate Park during a bad acid trip when I found a flyer about Maharaj Ji. I grabbed it and read it avidly. It said there would be a talk at a certain place in the near future. Needless to say, I went and brought a lot of other commune members with me.

I didn't receive the knowledge at that time because I objected to bowing down to Maharaj Ji's image before I verified for myself that he could give the "knowledge of god." I didn't see why I couldn't bow after I received the knowledge. Anyway, I changed my mind later on and ended up receiving the knowledge in New York.

My experiences were of an on again and off again nature after that. I would zealously follow the knowledge and go to satsang and meditate and all that. Then, I would turn off to it. I did notice a change in my spiritual state after I received the knowledge. I seemed to have passed a barrier that I had been stuck behind. But I went back to the commune and the drugs and didn't meditate. But I still felt spiritually a lot higher than before.

I moved to a commune in the country and, while I was there, I heard about a gathering in India which Maharaj Ji's followers could go to for a mere $300. I looked at it primarily as a cheap way to travel but, as I prepared for the trip, I began regularly attending satsang and meditating and I really got into it.

India was pretty traumatic for me. The sexism of women having to have male escorts to leave the commune really bothred me. The premies bothered me too. They seemed obsessed with finding fault with each other. It was always, "Sister, isn't that dress too low cut?" Always, "Sister" this or "Sister" that. I also noticed a tendency of everyone to become really closed up in hirself because if we have acted real, people might know we weren't as spiritually high as we were pretending to be.

Anyway, I did have periods of being a really zealous premie and doing service, satsang and meditation but at the end of my stay in India, I was fed up again. I returned happily to my parents' house where I enjoyed the material things I had been deprived of (and which I realized I was still attached to). But I started remembering how I had felt before I went to India and how high practicing the knowledge had gotten me so I again went back to it.

This time, I got in deeper than before. I moved into a Premie House. At the end of the month, everyone in that house had joined an ashram. I joined a teaching ashram in Colorado. We were going to build the perfect school. I was very happy there at first.

But, as part of our work, we studied various educational systems and our studies made me think. The more I thought, the more contradictions I found. It seemed the speakers we invited to tell us about their educational philosophies had more on the ball than Bhagwan Ji who came and gave us his ideas which sounded really trite. And I also became increasingly bothered by the way nobody ever wanted to be real but always had to act upbeat all the time. I tried being myself as an experiment and the results from the others were not positive.

Anyway, I reached a point where I knew that life was precious and a moment of freedom was better than a lifetime in a group where I wasn't allowed to be myself. So it ended positively for me. Leaving the ashram was just a detail which I managed to work out.

Here I am. I am free. And damned grateful to be, too.

Grace

Dear ex-premies,

Thank you for your candid and sincere contributions to this site. Having spent the latter part of yesterday thoroughly absorbed in the associations I could identity with in my own life, I decided to make my own contribution. As far as I am concerned the word "GIFT" has no strings attached whatsoever. Maharaji's gift has many strings attached, as well as fear and the possibility of rejection, and God forbid, damnation. When I began to realize after about eight years of devout meditation that I was beginning to feel worse instead of better than when I had begun, and when I began to feel like an outsider from the rest of society and began to wonder "Why do I have to make such a effort to be alive, to be happy, to be deserving of blessings? Everyone else seems to have their "Shit" (for the lack of a better word) "Together". They seem to be managing to deal with their issues without this so called special protection that Maharaji claims to bestow upon those who completely surrender to him." His talk about the illusions of life…the only illusion I can recognize right now is the illusion of Knowledge.

I officially stopped practicing knowledge about three months ago, completely. Today, I put away the four photographs of Maharaji that I had framed and strategically placed throughout my house. Having had the good fortune to visit your site again yesterday, (I had looked at the site over two years ago, but then felt guilty for even having allowed myself to partake in such a sacrilegious act of impurity). I find it quite dramatic and somewhat comical how my imagination can lead me to such unfounded paranoia at times. In any event, little by little, I too began questioning more and more the fruits of my labor and the actual benefits from M. and K. The last few programs I attended began to plant the seeds leading me to question my own sanity. "How can I continue to be supportive of such a greedy bunch? All these fakers, these brave souls (premies) trying to keep the front for Maharaji were not getting any better, they were looking more and more lost and desperate, especially in regards to his approval or benedictions." He was beginning to personify an aura of just another entertainer with a good marketing management team that knows how to play with people's insecurities. As far as I could see there was definitely an hierarchy thing going on with the money department. Although I never went to Australia, I did see a video from his 1998 or 1999 event. I found it somewhat distasteful, (although I quickly suppressed that unkind thought) that his family and his daughter were being glorified in such a manner. They are not royalty or rock stars or movie stars, although I was beginning to think that they were beginning to think they were.

Also, I was beginning to feel somewhat ripped off about the whole experience and the way my life was getting worse instead of better. Little by little I stopped going to videos or viewing videos in my own home. I lost contact with most premies that I had known from the past, except for one dear soul whose name I will not mention. Anyway, to make a very long story short, and with my long winded and long winding style of expressing myself, not only in the written word, but artisticly and verbally as well, I will summarize the key points of my personal revelations, inspirations and realizations up to this point in my 50 years of life.

The meaning of GIFT, according to the dictionary and the encyclopedia are as follows:

A gift is given freely. There has to be a willing donor and recipient.
The giver must have the right to give it freely. The gift must be deliverable.

Many so called gifts in our modern world are not gifts. They have obligations attached to them. As in the case of so many false advertisements that use a so called gift as a bait to lure you in. To me, Maharaji and his organization, as well as many other modern developments of our presently evolving civilization, use this "Gift" business purely as a marketing and manipulation tool. I have come to the conclusion that God bestows every gift upon us and there are no strings attached. Maharaji takes the credit for all your Good Fortune and regards your suffering as your creation… for not giving back enough to the whole K & M business. God (or whoever one wishes to call that divine spark) as far as I have observed and contemplated so far, takes no credit for our accomplishments. He/she/it leaves us the privilege of our own rewards for giving ourselves credit for our own faith and sincere effort(s). He does not claim our hearts or brains or pocketbook or assets. He encourages doubts and questions and investigations and explorations, because he does not have to defend the Truth. And Maharaji takes God's message and claims it as his own and he seems to want to lay claims on the souls of his premies. His gift has many strings attached. His gifts are far from free.

They are more like enslavement.

I believe that most premies are probably the sincerest, sweetest souls out there. Maharaji and his crew seem to know how to get to these beautiful souls and twist their identity, their divine right heritage into something that he makes you believe he is responsible for. "you've got to be kidding!" It seems to be like grand theft and deception on a massive scale.

My soul belongs to me. My soul belongs to God. My soul cannot be bought, bargained for, or stolen. My heart wants to feel real love. True Love between a man and a woman, not Maharaji's Love because he can't be there for me when I really need someone physically to hold me and love me and be there for me as I am for them. Maharaji seems to claim he is responsible for what we experience, and that experience ultimately comes from and belongs to him. I do not need any special privileges of protection from the big bad illusory world. I like the world, the one I can remember before I started doubting myself, and making myself believe that cruelty was permissable if it was justifiable, for example "You've got to be cruel to be kind" sometimes. I no longer buy into this form of unworthiness syndrome. God's law is Love, Love, and more Love and compassion and understanding and charity and kindness, free from some snub false sense of superiority to those in need. Not the satisfying of an unquenchable greed that many who acquire a position of power often fall prey to.

Although I feel this way today, I will not negate the fact that I did experience many beautiful sensations and a feeling of specialness and bliss when I did believe that Maharaji really loved me. But these were my experiences because I was in love with an actual physical man and because he could not/would not accept the simplicity and naivety of my true love, I somehow allowed myself to be believe that this Maharaji Love was best. Anyway, I make no excuses or apologies. I did what I did because I sincerely felt that was the right way at that time. Now that I have come through the journey K & M could no longer carry me through, I am feeling reborn. My eyes are beginning to see again. And I say Thank You, God, and thank you too Maharaji and all those whom I have explored, or thought I adored. I thank God, especially for having given me the curiosity, the courage, the spunk to believe in my own voices, my own worthiness. I feel that God has carried me through it all, never judging, just allowing me to know and always catching me and looking out for me in all and through all.

Peace and Blessing to all.

Love, Grace

[Webmaster's note: Grace then responded to an email from me, and later asked for her response to be included in this journey.]

I was surprised and delighted to receive your e-mail today. Thank You. I felt a little apprehensive after I sent you my journey entry. It took me a while to muster up the courage to allow myself to be that spunky and fearless person that was no longer afraid of being punished or unapproved of for being somewhat rebellious. There is one word, however, that I was not aware I had written. In the third paragragh, near the end: " longwided and longwinding..the word ANTISOCIAL is supposed to be ARTISTIC. When I read it I thought "well, it could apply, but it is not what I meant to write". If you are able to make this correction, I would appreciate it because I am an artist. God has been very generous to me and I am most grateful for this talent that has always come naturally, and which in fact was alwasy my highest and deepest connection to the sublime. Of course, I went back to the site immediately and lo and behold I saw my name at the bottom of column one. I clicked on it, and I was quite relieved that what I felt and wrote yesterday still applies today. I can not deny that I am still somewhat on shakey ground. I continued to read more entries, and with each one, I realized that although I did not experience the ashram life or any of that kissing M's feet, which by the way, I considered sacriligeous to God, my Creator, who led me to knowledge. I could never wholeheartedly accept that M was my master, let alone a God. I always made myself believe that it was some premies who had decided to give him that title. When I realized this was what he had led them to believe, my faith in him began to dwindle with each event I attended. But then, I would think to myself, "What if he really is God?, and I am not enlightened enough to recognize him." Scary stuff!

In my heart of hearts I could never consider him above God. This fact was a reason why I began to question my involvement in practicing K. because I just couldn't understand that whole concept that M. was some kind of God. I found myself feeling unconvinced and uncomfotable when I tried to tell myself or others that he was my master. I could never quite get that, and therefore considered it was because of my lack of so called enlightenment , I felt that maybe I wasn't practicing enough and that I should do service in order to fully get this whole package-deal benefit. But I did not want to do service. Not because I am selfish, but because I found that people who were involved in service acted as if they were somewhat more priviledged than the masses they had to direct and inspect and keep under control. I had never even remotely imagined that M. could have an enemy until I attended the Portland, Oregon event in 2000. Why or how could anyone hate M? He's such a nice man and all he's doing is showing people how to get in touch with their higher self. If you want something you have to earn it. You have to pay the price. Nothing is for free. etc..etc.. ad nauseum. Ah! the things we do to convince ourselves that we did not make a mistake, or to justify our guilt. Fascinating stuff that one could spend a lifetime contemplating…but that's just it. I grew tired of contemplating and wondering and wishing and waiting for my life to begin.I had begun feeling like a "Hollywood has been" and "I could of been a contender", and wondering why I was not living up to my full potential. God has been generous to me. I have many talents and abilities which I have somewhat neglected over the past ten years. I am, however, working towards a diploma in Marketing Management. If all goes well (God Willing, I always say), I will graduate in May 2004. I have been attending college for four years, and feel very fortunate that I accepted the fact that I needed to upgrade my academic acumen. At times I used to feel guilty because I did not devote as much time to K as I should. I had heard from well intentioned premies that one should not do anything that takes them away from M. & K. But the more I learned, the more I realized that nourishing my mind, challenging myself to pass these worldly tests was becoming more satisfying than just believing that M. & K. in my life was all I really needed. The more I found myself thinking that I had some special key that none of these people with whom I was interacting on a regular basis knew about, the more ridiculous and unsure I began to feel about myself and my commitment to M & K. Knowledge really is power. The knowledge of education. Education is truly magical. Education has a way of filling you up and giving you a feeling of purpose, direction, satisfaction, hope, open-and-broader-mindedness, humility and happiness. Nothing gives me more joy than knowing that I am doing something that is constructively contributing to my confidence, self esteem and hope of a more successful and independent tomorrow with all the material trappings that I enjoy…A beautiful home, dignity in the knowledge and ability that I can take care of myself in a manner that pleases and excites me, and shopping, travelling, money in the bank, donating to charitable causes that are helping mankind in general, and hopefully lots of grandchildren someday whom I can dote on and provide many practical and hopefully magical & wonderful extras.

Once again, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to express that which has been a source of profound perplexity in my life for quite soome time now. I feel somewhat cleansed, as if I have been to a confessional. I was brought up a Roman Catholic. Although I have immersed myself in many different ideologies and philosophies, I think I will always be a Catholic at heart, although I do not practice, nor have practiced this Religion for more than 30 years. I'm not really sure what I believe in except that I believe that God Loves me exactly as I am. We are all worthy. Some of us just behave better than other sometimes.

Love, Grace

Kerry Gray

I am retelling my Journey story with my real name. I've just been through a couple of months thinking, questioning and pulling apart my past mindset about being a premie.

My exit away from Maharaji, knowledge and EV was a gradual process. It's only recently, finally, that am I processing the transition. I thank those longer-term premies who seem to have taken the ex-press route out.

I received knowledge in 1975, a teenager. I was a service, satsang and meditation (SSM) twice a day type of premie until 1979, then I was a party hard and experience life type premie until 1983, then basically I bailed out of SSM (accept for emergency doses of meditation) but still went to see M. when he came to Australia. By 1997 I well and truly had to ask myself who I was kidding - I couldn't really call myself a premie. It was over.

Ironically it was a rare business encounter with a staunch premie where I learned of "the anti Maharaj ji website". He seemed upset. Who cares I thought, it's past history. Funny how the brain works - that wonderful human curiosity. A few months ago I found EPO.

Well I've really gone through a wide range of emotions, feelings and thoughts - that surprised me at first. I've had quite a few years to be philosophical about my involvement, so it's easy to say I don't have any real regrets about my time spent as a premie. It was fun, educational. I made friends and idols. Knowledge had been my catalyst to looking inward.

I was nearly going to say Knowledge helped me keep an open mind and heart, as well as an ability to reflect and learn from reflection, but that just isn't true. It was walking away from Knowledge that opened my mind and heart, all I had in the end was my ability to reflect and learn from reflection. Thinking has been good for me. Creative inspiration is better than meditation. I began to grow when I stopped practising Knowledge.

What does it all mean" What about all those moments of deep profundity - was it all an illusion? Some things seemed real. I saw light, the boing-buzz sound inside my head, drifted off on my breath, and tasted nectar. I don't really know what that was all about. I wanted it to be life changing, enlightening. It was I suppose, but not according to M's plan.

EPO's article describing the process of 'coming to Knowledge' fits me well. I wanted the privelege of being initiated into the mystery. I moved into an AMP house! I did service. I was so sincere. After about 6 months I went to a 'Kn.session' and yes it was 'amazing' but in hindsight perhaps I was so keyed up that even a fart would have been nectar. I remember though, that first night when I sat down to meditate all by myself, I was thinking, 'this is subtle, oh boy I'm in big trouble'. It was scary but the long months of aspirant preparation for the 'mind' backlash saw me through. Even if I wasn't good at meditation there was devotion, so I moved into the Ashram.

The innocent new premie phase ended. Virginity gone.

Many things don't sit comfortably with me, didn't back then. I saw and experienced mounds of bullshit in DLM/EV. To be honest a part of me doesn't want to look at it. Why? Because I imbibed and regurgitated that same shite. While living in the ashram I did full-time service in DLM's national headquarters. Nice people maybe, but … it was a trip - pretty hard not to have a 'smug' mind and ego some of the time. Toward the end of this period 'bad' Bob M. jumped ship. It had a strange impact in Australia. The ashrams closed down. All the 'closet' behaviour came out in the open. Wow! I felt thrilled that maybe some 'real' honesty would occur.

This somewhat chaotic, experimental period eventually resettled in the previous course with ashrams, an even more impenetrable organisational and/or devotional sophistication, and a fresh regrouping of honchos and plebs. I was disappointed. It just occurs to me now that it must have looked as though I was displaying sour grapes syndrome when I disappeared into the fringes.

It's hard to admit that I operated from 'believing that I knew', because I credited any of my insights to Kn. Now realise how I short-changed myself and all the other wonderful non-premies that shared their innate sense of wisdom, love and compassion with me.

The following list represents my confusion that resulted from my involvement in DLM/EV. This includes aspects of Maharaji's oganisation and his methods of indoctrination that I could not reconcile either as a young premie or now.

the DLM hierarchy, judgements, hypocrisy

the contradictory statements that M. gave in various speeches

M's obvious materialistic extravagance/greed

M's lack of real concern for the world, it's environment and people

the behaviours and incidences I witnessed around influential premies serving Maharaji.

Wolfgang's suicide was covered up, he died peacefully in meditation

a premie blissfully watched Maharaji repeatedly slam another premie who had fucked up against the iron gates at the residence while he wished it was him being graced with this new method for getting rid of the mind, then came back to Australia to share this amazing Darshan story.

darshan stories.

it was wrong to compare experience

people speaking from their heart was banned because they were speaking from their mind and honchos were elevated for speaking from their heart because they were speaking from their mind

all the old publications and pictures were banned and burnt

the devotional songs that M. loved to hear about himself - lord of the universe

arti, arti trays, krishna outfits, prasad, suits, briefcases…

nobody else really 'knew'

airs and graces (smugness and complacency)

the manipulation of my sincerity which was damaging.

the shredding of my self esteem in the process of being an aspirant.

praising the notion of humiliation in begging for the 'gift' of knowledge.

the feeling of being a failure or a fake in meditation.

meditating on Kn. made me happy (not), then ignoring the fact

guilt by association, by unfair privelege weighing in confusion with my feelings of integrity, sense of loyalty, and the conviction that I must need the Master to dispel my ignorance.

the guilt of leaving, my heart was at once heavy and light.

the part I played, the length I would go to prop up by belief, pride, power, confusion, doubt and humiliation

Lastly these things are true for me. The 'veges' did NOT rot. I have been working on my self-worth for a long time. I am doing more than OK.

Gregg

Like many of us, I used to take drugs, and I used to think it was a spiritual thing. Then, also like many of us, I grew tired of drugs and spent the Seventies more or less sober. I fancied myself a spiritual adventurer, moving from the mind-fuck spirituality of Castaneda's Don Juan to the otherworldly austerity of Zen. (Since I was a college student, I threw things like surrealism, structuralism, and free jazz into the mix.)

Then my friend Seth, from White Plains, went to India to see his guru. When Seth returned, he started teaching yoga. Yoga made me feel good. The physicality of spirituality. Moving shakti.

Then Seth went to India again (I don't know his guru's name), and when he came back this time, he started doing these trippy things with his energy. Walking down the sidewalk with him was like being on acid. One time I was playing hide-and-seek with him in a crowded municipal sweimming pool in Richmond, Indiana, and when I looked for him, every face in the pool, including the kids' wading pool, was Seth's face.

Then Seth left again, and when he returned, he had one thing to say to me: "Guru Maharaj Ji." I was aghast. My friend and teacher Seth, master of all things psychic and spiritual, had fallen into the clutches of a patent fraud, a greasy-haired charlatan, a kid! (It was a truism among those who condidered ourselves connoisseurs of the spiritual that Guru Maharaj Ji was to true spirituality what Liberace was to classical piano music.)

Well, you know how this is going to turn out. This is the ex-premie site, after all. I eventually accepted the possibility of my "mind" not having all the answers; I accepted the possibility of things not being what they seem, especially in the realm of the spiritual; I made my first stupid little step into the simplistic intellect-denying common sense-scorning guru-worshipping blissfully ignorant world of the smiling premies. I went to satsang.

My first satsang was in the basement of an Indianapolis ashram. Everybody was buzzing with the latest news: Mata Ji (Mata who?) had attempted to see Guru Maharaj Ji; Guru Maharaj Ji had called the cops. This was in the fall of 1974. Then it was weekly satsang -- check your Earth shoes and your critical faculties at the door. But it wasn't all bad, now, was it?

For me, raised in a very analytical and somewhat emotionally stunted family, having a God in human form was refreshingly juicy. It was miles away from home, which is where young rebels want to be, n'est-ce pas? It felt like what I needed: the hugs, the frisson of the new and strange, the bhakti buzz. Yes, we know all the negatives -- the dysfunctional dynamics of involvement with a cult, the fact that our Dispeller of Darkness was a confused young man (not a good thing in a guru), etc. -- but good things happened, even if we mistakenly thought they came from Mr. Rawat.

On January 19, 1975, I sat in an inner city gym in Cincinnati, where a bunch of black martial artist premies were giving a particularly vicious karate demonstration under the loving eyes of a middle-aged East Indian woman, one of the Guru's initiators. Her name escapes me. The next morning she revealed the Techniques to me and about twenty others.

My experience of Light was pretty cosmic, a fact which I would bring up to myself frequently during arguments between the Inner Devotee and the Inner Skeptic. Oh well. At least it wasn't the Moonies. Or the Scientologists. Or the Mormons. Or Amway.

The years rolled by in typical premie fashion. Propping up a state of bliss by monitoring my inner dialogue, ever vigilant for signs of the "mind." ("Mind" being a mistranslation/distortion of a Hindu concept, used to demonize all non-DLM thoughts and feelings.) Since I lived in small premie communities (Bloomington, IN and Grand Rapids, MI), institutional fanaticism was minimal, the satsang was pretty friendly, and I seldom got the feeling I was hanging out with spiritual Nazis. After all, the dogma promulgated by Goom Rahzhee and his followers was pretty basic. Not a long list of rules and regs.

Although this simplicity of doctrine was also part of what was to sour me on the whole thing eventually. I was to somewhat belatedly realize that there were a lot of issues that were key to spiritual transformation that were swept under the rug. Or stomped on. It was all "the mind," you know.

After a few years of this, guess what: I was still not "enlightened." I suppose I expected, from reading various books, that when one took a guru and meditated, one's consciousness became transformed, one became wiser and more loving, more peaceful. Well, it wasn't happening. I was the same old somewhat confused and somewhat happy person I'd always been, although I'd logged a few more "spiritual" experiences onto my Akashic resume. I'd been to a dozen festivals and hundreds of satsangs and spent countless hours propped up on my polished walnut barragon. But where was the upward curve, the falling away of gross perceptions to reveal the transcendent reality of unfiltered awareness?

The logical thing to do would have been to get off the DLM treadmill. But logic wasn't my strong suit back then. Instead, I moved to Denver and joined the ashram. This has gotta be it, I told myself. Commit myself wholeheartedly to my enlightenment (quite a selfish sentiment, looking back on it through Mahayana eyes), to the exclusion of all other wordly dreams. (Ohe yeah, it's coming back to me now -- it wasn't just "the mind," it was also "the world." Man!)

So, yeah, I enlisted. I stopped everything except satsang, service, meditation, and my low-commitment day job (substitute teaching). I even stopped playing the piano. I became the "house father" (the guy who responds to requests like, "Jai Sat Chit Anand. Can I have some money for a pair of socks?"), in an ashram that included some leftover International Headquarters premies, which meant that I got to do darshan service at the next festival. But was my spirit soaring now that I had loosed my earthly ties? Nope.

One night I was taking a walk in the ashram neighborhood and a thought struck me like a cartoon frying pan: I could leave! I could, you know, just leave! Rent a room somewhere; start over! So I did. I thought I'd have a hard time adjusting to life in the real world again, but it wasn't bad at all. I went to a therapist to help deal with some of those swept-under-the-rug issues. That helped. Then the post-premie years started rolling by. Good years, bad years, wasted year, blessed years…

Now I am forty-six years old. I am married, with a seven-year old child who is endlessly entertaining and endlessly entertained by life as it is. (As we should all be.) I have a great job teaching at an arts school, I have a play being produced this fall. And I have learned the kind of lessons that most of us learn as we approach the final curtain. So I am happy. Oldsters live with regret, too, as do I, but, strangely, I don't regret those foolish premie years.

Oh…and I have a guru now. I've studied with him off and on for ten or fifteen years. A teacher, not an idol to worship. He does not profer his stockinged feet for me to kiss; we hug like friends. He does not avoid the hard questions; he has spent his life grappling wih them and offers new ways to look at these questions. He provides a link to living spiritual traditions that have helped me to shed my many neuroses and open to the living moment.

I believe we all need to grow and to learn, and I believe there are many beings, schools, and books which can help us. And after giving myself up to the dysfunctional pleasures of the cultic womb for four years, once upon a time, I know that that can never happen to me again. I've been innoculated. Let the rains of grace fall down from the heavens to cleanse us all!

DW Grieg

I haven't been involved with DLM since the early '70's, or even given it much of a thought until now, having "searched" Guru Maharaji on the internet.

At the time of my first awareness of DLM, I was strung out on speed and walking down Madison Avenue in Toronto. There was a very attractive girl handing out leaflets and I took one and in the hopes of meeting her again (my weakness for women and the prospect of physical and emotional love figure prominently in my whole mystical experience with the DLM), went to the house (Ashram) listed on the cover. Satsang was good. The devotees were good. The cause (enlightenment) was good. Being a speed freak was bad. I was totally fucked up.

There was a programme the next evening at Jarvis Collegiate where a really nice and erudite Mahatma was speaking of Knowledge. He was an older gentleman; his enthusiasim and presence on the stage as well as his message captivated me. He was really devoted.

I received K a few days later after an all day session without food or break. Totally brainwashed! It was cool. I had new found friends with a common thread among us. I never did speed again. I stopped smoking, cut my hair, ate nothing but tofu. I was a classic case of total mind, body and soul deprivation. I t was cool.

Living in the Ashram was great! I developed a lot of insight into my new found spirituality. Meditation was not that awe-inspiring, it was mostly sleeping sitting up. I was the most selfless and devoted premmie you would ever meet - but horny. I used to meditate for women, and sure enough, the Guru would supply me with women, in the Ashram and out. It was too much! I flung myself into devotion and selflessness and sampled my Sisters with devotional abandonment.

Mahatmas would come and go through Toronto. Then Mata Ji came to town. She was great too. I booked the flight to India on the Jumbo Jets. By the time I had left New York, I was down to $15.00, the rest having been cajoled out of me by DLM operatives. So I arrived in Delhi with $15.00 to my name. We were there for about a month and I was able to buy presents for my whole family with that $15.00.

India was great! I became a fascist. I joined the World Peace Corps. I was one of GM's security guards. I manned the gates (of heaven?) at the Hardwar Ashram. I guarded the stairs up to his personal dwelling on the roof of the Ashram. It was amazing! People would come to me begging to go upstairs to see GM, but I wouldn't let them go. Only the chicks! I would let the chicks go and watch them walk up the stairs to GM's digs. The sisters didn't wear underwear.

I was totally out of control. Guru Maharaji was operating me. I was just a shell. It was like I, me was not there. Actually, I was there, but only watching. I was watching I, but I was being run by the Guru. We used to build fires at night outside the compound, and roast potatoes in the hot sand. I found a rope and hung it in a tree by the Ganges so that you could swing way out and jump or dive into the river, and then float down stream to the town. I used to brush my teeth in the river. It was no wonder I ended up with dysentry.

GM filled me with awe. His presence had the power of an electrical current. HE WAS GOD! He was God because I wanted him to be God. Everything that happened, revolved around Him and His will. It was a cult of "Wishing (meditating) made it so" It was remarkable and Miraculous, I was in heaven!

We had a circus. A bunch of premmies fashioned animal costumes from bits and pieces of material found around the Ashram. I fashioned a gorrilla outfit from coconut husks sewn to my jeans and shirt. When the circus began, we were performing for Mata Ji, I rushed out into the audience and picked up a sister over my shoulder and ran around with her kicking and screaming, just as if I were a real gorrilla and she were really frightened. Mata Ji loved it and beckoned me to her throne. I went there as a gorrilla but as I approached I suddenly fell to the floor in prostration. Even Mata Ji was divine, the whole family was divine.

We went back to our respective homes on the Jumbos. While I was involved with DLM, I attended much Darshan in very many places, including: India, London, New England, Chicago and Detroit. My journey through Michigan took me to a commune (but that's another story). I met and enjoyed sexually many women compliments of GM or so I thought (I knew we were supposed to be celibate but I was weak and the sisters were hot-to-trot, there's nothing like a stint of abstinance to get the juices flowing).

Finally, I met a sister, Janice from London, England, who stole my heart away. I couldn't get enough of her. I went to London and Chicago with her. She and I visited her ex-squeeze at the mental hospital in Toronto, he too was a premmie and it seemed that she befriended a whole lot of male premmies in her travels, leaving a wake of broken hearts in her path. I was just the next. I was deviststed when she went off with another premmie. (Apparently she also broke the heart of the infamous Milko or Milky, one of the DVM movers and shakers from London, possibly one of the brains of the organization). I quit DLM shortly after that, having been involved for a couple of years.

This is the first thought of or contact with anything resembling DLM since then. I have no regrets! I chalk it all up as experience. I think that if you believe in anything with your whole being, and devote your whole waking and sleeping existance to that belief, it will become real and that will become your realization. So Guru Mahara Ji became the focus of thousands of perhaps fringe or emotionally challenged people who used him for their own personal God. His handlers used him to acquire great wealth. And the Guru used us for his personal gain. Unfortunately, some people may have been hurt, but take heart, were still hanging in there.

Jaisatchitanand (Oh!Oh!)

Leave message if this reminiscence strikes a chord

Update - April 2, 2004

Hey! It's me again. 30 years since I was a Premmie in Toronto. Life's been good. I have a most dear and loving wife, one boy, 3 girls, 1 dog and 3 birds. Everybody's healthy (I just touched wood).

Reading some of the comments from disaffected DLM groupies has reminded me of some more experiences enjoyed on various road trips for darshan.

One memorable tip was to Chicago (1972?) for darshan with Mata Ji. I recall her staying at a hotel called, "The Heart of Chicago", which to us devotees was oh so appropos.

I was with my squeeze at that time, Janice Cook, a devottee(?) from London who apparently was quite familiar with some of the European movers and shakers of the DLM, most notably, Milky Cole.

I met Janice in Toronto; she was one of a string of sisters with whom GM provided me to fulfill the lust and desire commensurate with the cyclical bouts of sexual abstinence that inevitably led to an insatiable horniness. I fondly remember one instance at our flat near the Toronto ashram. Janice was standing with one leg up on the bathtub, ready to climb in, and as I passed by, I entered her very nicely and we finished off in that pose … .

But I digress. So here we were in Chicago, in a large hall, where the massed premmies ate and slept while we awaited our darshan with Mata Ji.

To amuse ourselves, we played games and "stayed on the word". I had a watergun with which I was squirting the sisters and I remember one particular sister being annoyed and threatening me with, "GM's going to get you for this".

I recall it being a sunny day, perhaps with scattered sun-showers. A few of us went out for a drive to see the sights of Chicago and I was sitting in the back seat next to an open window 'cause the weather was beauty. The next thing I know, as we were driving along, a car approached from the opposite direction, passing through the only puddle on the road and dumps a wall of water on me through the open window, soaking me to the skin.

Well, as they say, the lord works in mysterious ways, and it was quite a co-incidence and we were screaming and laughing and knowing that we were the victim of GM's lila.

The darshan was nice with Mata Ji. At one point during the programme, someone stood up and wailed away on a trumpet that went on and on, seemingly at Mata Ji's tacit will. It was a good time had by all.

I'm a confirmed atheist; however, I believe in an energy that sustains the universe by means of physical and natural laws. This is not an anthropomorphic energy; it has no human characteristics. It is neither jealous nor tyranical; it is benign and destructive; it is non-judgemental; it requires neither me nor I it; it is amoral; IT IS!!!

GM may or may not be the Lord of the Universe. It matters not; it's all in what you choose to believe. Of my time with DLM, I chose to believe in GM's providence which in fact proved to be all-sustaining. At times I was unemployed and the DLM provided me with sustenance. At times I was libidinous and the DLM provided me with an outlet for my sexual anxiousness. It was and is a perfect world.

From reading about some other persons' experience with the DLM, I get the impression their expectations outreached their needs and their dependance on GM became a millstone.

GM's OK in my books. He's just a guy that enjoys the finer things in life and you whiners (if I can be so blunt) helped sustain him in his depravity.

I was hurt when Janice moved on to her next conquest, but as it turned out, it provided me with the opportunity to move on to my next stage of life, and here I am, 30 years later. (You can read of my exploits on the Jumbos to India in a previous posting).

Regards

Dave

Hal

I joined the then Divine Light Mission in 1972 because of the enthusiasm of premies. I could seldom understand the meaning of Maha's stories or get past his squeeky voice but there was a good feeling at the satsang programs and the premies, to my teenaged perspective, seemed cool. I was selected for knowledge by Glenn Whittaker in the back garden of a house in Finchley, London UK, on the condition that I had given up meat as well as drugs, tobacco and alcohol for a period of six weeks and been attending a satsang meeting every night for the said period of time too. Sitting in the mysterious knowledge session I was excited because I'd been told that a light like a thousand suns was going to explode somewhere in my forehead and that all the secrets of the universe would be revealed. Well the techniques of God realisation were shown and the young people in the room asked after each technique to describe their experience. I heard people say that they could see light, stars, moons, suns, and yet I was not getting anything. Embarrassed to say that I stated what I'd heard someone before me say "the stars". Actually I didn't feel or see anything except excitement and the mystery of being in such a weird situation. I was told that I was now a disciple of the living Lord.

Apparently I needed to surrender my mind and ego and I recall not being sure that I had an ego to surrender. Maybe it wasn't developed enough at 17 to really know what the hell it was.

I soon dropped away from the premie scene as it seemed my hippy attire should be exchanged for a suit from a divine jumble sale, my hair cut short and I should find my joy in life by raising money collecting old clothes door to door.

In 1975 I bought some dope from a rather cool dealer who people later told me was a "premie". I said Jai Sat Chit Anand the next time I saw him and we became friends. He reminded me that I'd received the ultimate "Knowledge" and that combined with a chillum of Nepalese hash it could get me very high.

1976 in Leicester, England, I was recommended to go through something called darshan where you lay your head at Maha's feet. Why would anyone do that I asked; because you'll get a blast and feel high I was told - into the line I went.

I got serious about it all in the late 70's and stopped all my drug use, dressed like a jerk, and went to satsang seven nights a week. I also kissed Maharaji's feet many times. Apparently the ultimate dedication was to join an ashram (5 to 10 guys living in a house together, meditating lots, sleeping little, eating a vegetarian diet, giving their pay cheques to someone called a treasurer who did whatever with it and more importantly all being in love with the same man. Moroever, a man they'd never met!

Eventually worked my way up the ladder to hold minor positions within the organisation, ashram co-ordinator, community co-ordinator, aspirant co-ordinator; Then on to the heights of working full time in M's office in the UK. Smart suits, nice cars, great houses to live in complete with cooks and housekeepers, serious premies with little humour, elitist structures, snobbism towards "ordinary premies".

Called a friend one night and asked him to drive down and rescue me. Felt great driving into the night with him and my suitcase! Remained dedicated until the end of 1991 when the boredom of watching endless videos in crappy hotel rooms drove me away. I still called myself a premie though and upon getting my first computer in 1999 found the expremie site. I went on to the forum to give my defense of Maharaji and yet listening to the arguments so rationally put to me and not without fighting I succumbed to the logic of the situation, it had all been a beautiful dream - an illusion. I'd been in a cult for 28 yrs and was no more enlightened than anyone else.

I did have some great times and of course there were states of joy. I now realise that these states were no different than those anyone in extreme fundamentalist religion or cults experience.

Upon leaving in 2000 I experienced many emotions. Confusion, anger, low self esteem. I tried to cling on to my "spirituality" still giving validity to those blissful states as being something worthwhile.

Life is great now and my love comes from the simple interaction between myself and others. A wonderful relationship, great kids. I feel sad that I didn't continue my education due to the indoctrination of the cult and that financially I've always struggled to support my family due to lack of skills or profession, but I'm now at 48 studying to become an English teacher in Paris France. I hope my sons don't fall into any type of cult.

This is such a shallow version of my journey and I have said so much more about my experiences on the forums.

I look at the premie scene now and see a rather sad group of mainly middle aged people who are frightened to wake up and see what it really is; a personality cult, enriching a rich man and his family.

I guess this cult will carry on in a small way as there are always desperate dreamers and losers in life to feed from. Thanks to the ex-premies for helping me to exit. I hate to think that I could still be there lost in the illusion that 4 techniques of meditation could give me anything extraordinary.

Hal (2003)

Hamzen

Let's face it -- we were ALL involved in self-deception. You had to be to stay involved. But for me, I think idealism made it easier to do that.

I would like to dedicate this to Jethro Cadbury, the one real premie friendship of mine that has lasted over the decades, for me he is mr constant in his search for truth and his committment to the intensity and quality of the moment. So heart warming to see you continuing your journey outside of the cult Jed. And for introducing me to ex-premie.org and the quirky culture surrounding it.I would also like to thank those involved in this site's production and continuance, but especially Jean-Michel for describing the historical circumstances that the cult was born in, and from which Shri Hans and gm stole so much, and lyingly sold as uniquely their own.

The first part of this journey was a post I put up on the ex-premie forum, in a thread about the part of lila and the naivete, of my self and all the premies, in our involvement with der guru. A synopsis of my whole time around gm/k/dlm/ev is after that post.

The reason this post is the lead part of my journey is that I'm certain that the whole fake edifice that gm constructed, would have blown apart like a pack of cards in the wind without the lila concept, it was the binder for everything. Our hippy naivete and intellectual laziness, the 'it's all about feelings man' anti-analysis strand of the sixties, which was so disastrous, was the main reason we wasted SO much of our lives on or around a really third rate scoundrel. No wonder the punk/traveller scene happened.

I have made some minor grammatical changes, and expanded some parts of the post that weren't entirely clear before, but in essence this post is the same as before.

'The self-deception of ashramees that I was referring to here was relating to satsang. Except for a very short period around the time I "got" k, the only contact I had with anything official was at satsang. At satsang it was painfully obvious that people were being dishonest to a large degree. My idealism related to knowlege, gm was very much secondary. Satsang, I took to be, should be interpreted literally, as the company of truth. The company of truth I took to be emotional honesty, as well as an expression of the deepest spiritual experience, all connected to the 'one love' underlying reality.

Most ashram based satsangs left me feeling very sad and emotionally distraught. I could not understand why, if people were having this experience the same as me, they were playing power games, lying and trying to project what "should" be said, rather than expressing an honest description of their realities.

In community satsangs, which could be very dour and depressing, at least people tended to be more honest about their experiences, even if in the majority of instances they were describing their lack of experiences and the difficulties they were having with living.

The one period that I exempt from this description was 76-77 when suddenly everyone started to talk honestly. I loved that period. But the fact that it lasted for such a short period of time, and obviously was stopped by gm, not the premies, started to make me doubt his intentions or abilities. Before then I thought he was just shy & naive on one level, if a bit abusive at times, and completely absolved him of responsibility for all the craziness.

It did lead to one major problem for me regarding m. As with all of us, we could only justify the chaos and m's uselessness by resorting to the concept of lila. But for a number of us who were outside of the org, having strong meditation experiences, we had to resort to using a second-order lila concept. Not only was there some cosmic lila going on, but even within his followers there was another lila, how else could I justify to myself the obvious lack of experience of that one love reality that his followers, the very people who should embody the power of knowledge, were stuck in.

So I justified to myself that shramers were obviously in the ashrams because they needed protecting. The problems this justification caused for me in terms of spiritual arrogance is frightening, especially when mixed in with my strong meditation experiences. I know a number of people who took the same stance. I assumed everyone involved saw this whole planet as a sick joke. If there was a god, a concept I always had difficulties grasping, or if there was any kind of consciousness in some cosmic ground, it could only allow the continual suffering of the human race throughout all history because there was something that took precedence over that suffering, however hard I found this.

But the biggest black joke for me was that the one person who probably had an answer/solution to this, was running something that was producing farcical results. And the closer those people were to that person the more fucked up they appeared to be. Yet here I was having at last found a way to access the experiences and feeling of connectedness to a love that was irrestible through meditating, that I had also experienced on acid, and had been searching for for over three years. So I saw the claims for k that gm was making, as justified, even though everything else around him appeared to negate this.

The only way I could rationalize it was that the org existed as a place of protection for people unable to cope in the real world, and that was why gm had set them up. The organizational chaos I rationalized by thinking that it was an irrelevance in some greater long-term lila, the purpose of which I had no understanding of. Obviously people were not experiencing knowledge, so they were not ready for that experience yet. That is where the spiritual arrogance manifested for me.

But this was in essence, no different to the attitude that acid-taking grateful dead followers had already reached long before gm turned up. That was why the rumours spread about everyone who was at the '71 glastonbury festival. GM gave satsang at the festival to the core group of british acid head hippies.

After 'receiving' knowledge I was told this rumour, that everyone who was there was supposedly going to receive knowledge, and they were like some form of divine illuminati, which is how we were able to stay in meditation when gm was giving satsang, and would only hear, and be moved, by the higher level message behind the main message of guru sell. Not difficult really, because over a period of time gm would cover just about any spiritual viewpoint and angle, many of which were quite often in conflict. The only way I could see to deal with that, was by letting my own feelings guide me through to those bits I was supposed to be hearing, the deep stuff , and avoid the guru sell agya part of his message.

Thanks for pulling this out of me & aplogies for it being so long. Think it is the first time I've ever verbalized it to anyone who did not see things in a similar way. I hope also that my comments are not seen as an attack on ex-ashramees. I do not blame them in the least now, think we know who I feel is responsible for the whole house of cards.

Everyones route in was very different. That is one of the reasons I've been astonished by the background details and the understanding of the reasons and pressures why people were the way they were then. When you see the quality of the people here, and know that the people I had problems back then with, were from similar backgrounds, there is only one door that bears responsibility for all the damage.'

My Journey Around GM/K by dates.

1970 - first take acid and am blown away by my experience of a reality behind this normal reality, which was coherently connected by a love that was universal.

When in that experience/space, and I was either there or not, everything made total sense in terms of the true meaning and purpose of life, and when in those experiences I felt wonderful. My body felt connected and alive, sensitive to the moment in exactly the way those sportsmen describe when they are 'in the zone'.

This was best described in certain songs by the Grateful Dead, The Incredible String Band, Mighty Baby etc, a hidden world that hardly anyone knew was there.

But over the next two years my mind got stretched too far and I was in danger of losing it. I stopped taking acid, and was no longer able to access that experience.

My search began. That experience was the only thing that made any sense to me, everything else about the human race seemed completely fucked, and it was totally obvious to me that we would destroy this planet unless there was an absolutely TOTAL change of consciousness in the human race.

So my search was on, to enable me to re-connect to that orgasmic oneness experience, and to do my bit to save this planet.

I was alienated from the mainstream religions, apart from Buddhism, but I could not find anywhere in Buddhism that would give me a good chance to get to this experience fast, they were talking lifetimes, if ever, apart from zen buddhism and I didn't like the official zen routes I came across.

I wanted this experience, and I wanted it NOW, and I was not prepared to go the shamanic route and start taking drugs again, however sacred the context.

So I started checking out gurus, spiritual orgs and humanistic psychology where it was related to ecstatic experiences, the only places where that kind of ecstatic bliss was talked about.

The best way of tracking down that experience for myself seemed to be to find people following a route or practice who did have that experience. Naive hippy that I was, I was Essex boy enough to know that lots of people say they are having similar cosmic experiences to what I was after, but could be lying/fooling themselves or might be on the wrong route for me to access it.

So in all the groups I encountered I grilled people incessantly while avoiding the hard sell like the plague.

I finally met someone who I felt was having these experiences, we spent months going for very long walks where I grilled her about her experience.

I had met premies before but they obviously were nowhere near what I was after, and their guru was obviously a fraud, I spent ages trying to dissuade a friend that the boy guru was obviously a fraud and that she was just spouting words, but of all things her mother became involved, and she was having the genuine article, I believed, after my months of grilling her.

Once I felt I would also be able to access that experience, I was going for it totally, everything else, career, partners etc were a complete irrelevance.

The guru existed solely as the route to me getting k. The guru route itself I felt was another number, and not mine. Because this person was getting the mainstay of her experience from meditation, the guru seemed to me to exist solely to help people meditate better, especially when they were having problems letting go to that experience because of ego blocks, fear etc.

While on thr route to k, I remember that I always refused to ask for k, the mahatmas seemed to use that as a way of disempowering people, and with the background of self-worth my mother had instilled in me, I refused to be party to any such game. I used to go to the aspirant meetings regularly and one day found myself on a knowledge session without having to beg for it. We went to the room for k at the Palace of Peace after satsang one evening, at about 10 o'clock at night. By 3 in the morning the k session still hadn't started, some kind of mind game tester was going on. Around 5am it started.

I remember going home on the underground during the rush hour and their was a distinct feeling that something had shifted in my head, like a chemical change. Neither during the session nor after did I have any cosmic experiences.

For the first six months I had great difficulty meditating, I couldn't do more than five or ten minutes, my thoughts were all over the place. I decided to discipline myself by trying to sit for one minute longer on the bad days, and hoped I could build up my time meditating over the months. After six months or so, and even though I was still not having any grand experiences, except once with 'music', I did feel different in myself, not massively, but noticeable enough to me.

I felt confident that I was starting to move towards 'that space'.

Within the year I was comfortably doing half hour sessions morning and night, and sometimes during the day, while practicing holy name, a warm glowy feeling would kick in.

After a year something was happening with the light technique. My experiences were getting a bit 'zappy'.

With nectar I felt my ability to focus/concentrate on things in general was being affected gently. I was getting no nectar, but occasionally a sweet taste was there, no big deal, but better than pleasant, again like a gentle warm glow, but that was only occasional.

Music was not really happening at all, I got plenty of background noise type sounds except for once which was mind blowing. The background noises sounded like random brain stuff to me & were an irrelevance, the day I experienced that note was very different.

This happened very early after 'getting' k. From nowhere this note kicked in which definitely gave me a good feeling, and the more I went into this, the feeling increased. Suddenly, and I saw this visually as well, ( which was like a sine wave), I suddenly felt like a magnifying glass, and as I did I saw that the note wasn't one note. but many notes joined together. I kept slipping into different layers where each note was composed of other notes, it was very much like a fractal pattern in its structure and the way you could go into it. As I heard these many notes, I had this feeling like an electric surge go through my whole body. I reached a point where this experience was so intense I could no longer cope with it. It suddenly stopped.

Holy name was gentle, pulsy, but nothing grand, it did feel like the binder for the group of techniques.

After about a year I felt something had shifted, and I'd gone through a barrier. This feeling of exploring a level, and then after a period of time kicking into another level, was a recurring cycle of my meditation practice. I was now meditating for an hour, no sweat. Sometimes an hour and a half, even occasional two hour sessions.

Ninety percent of my meditations were now a total pleasure, quite often verging on ecstatic. The only times that didn't happen, were when I forced myself to meditate when I didn't want to. These times only happened when I began to absorb gm/premie sales pressure to conform to some norm, even though I knew from psychology and the taoist and some zen buddhist philosophies that this would mostly be counter productive.

Light technique was so strong I no longer used the finger technique, which I had adapted anyway because of my small hands.

I now was having the experiences directly. I would experience huge energy levels, regular surges, my body would feel like I was being stretched, I was getting gorgeous feelings. I know it improved my posture.

Music I did less, but even though I was hearing nothing but background 'noise', which wasn't that attractive, I was getting milder energy surges through my head from ear to ear.

Nectar was now a good feeling, with the sweet taste there occasionally, and very occasionally this huge lump of gumph would appear in my mouth very quickly, which was nothing short of ecstatic in its effect. I never got this anywhere near as often as I wanted.

Holy name was starting to get stronger, that pulse feeling which would rise to my head when I breathed in, and go down to the bottom of my spine when I breathed out, although not stunning in it's sweetness, was having a marked effect on my overall body feeling in a general way. Outside of the four technique formal meditation, I was starting to practice it and nectar for long periods during the day, and the random thoughts were definitely reducing.

I was starting to feel quite tripped out most of the time. When I had powerful light surges in formal meditation, on coming back to 'normal' reality it took a while to return, but after a quarter of an hour or so chilling out, my energy levels would feel phenomenal. By a year and a half of practicing I felt stoned most of the time, and would have a day or two a week where I felt like I was tripping, it wasn't exactly the same as acid, but close, like a sister version.

Alongside all these changes I felt I was being guided by some cosmic connectedness, that I did not associate with gm.

During this period, I was not working during the first few years of getting k, meditation was my career, I was trying not to control anything, just go with the flow. During this whole period, I was going to satsang, and avoiding those places where you were pressured into giving satsang. I would occasionally gain a buzz from odd individual satsangs, usually where people were having similar experiences to myself, but in general I was having a bad time around premies, especially the social pressure to conform to some premie mentality.

I avoided official service like the plague, I wanted to do the DUO type service, going to hospitals etc, but I was having such difficulties being around premies that it never happened.

In late 75 GM gave one of those satsangs where he gets very heavy, I had great difficulty with it, thought it was very abusive, any chance of me becoming a total premie drone, which was already very slim, was lost. Although going to all the festivals in britain, I stopped going to any abroad after that satsang of his. I just focused on meditating mostly. I starting going to, and giving satsang 76-77 when honesty was suddenly on the agenda, and cut down drastically when it stopped. This carried on til 85, when everything got very strong in meditation, when some very trippy states were getting activated.

Some very weird stuff was also starting to happen then. One day I heard this screaming like some animal was being attacked. I could not tell where the sound was coming from. I rushed downstairs and into the garden. Nothing. As I came back in, the screaming noise started again. As I climbed the stairs it was so loud it was hurting my head. I opened the lounge door and the cat from downstairs, who regularly visited my partner and myself, was wapping this moth. Each time the paw hit the moth I heard this huge scream. After absorbing what was going on and stopping her, the screaming stopped.

Another time I was in a Hare Krishna restaurant with my mum, I was feeling very trippy and gorgeous. She was talking and as she talked I saw this sine wave leave her body, go across the room to where the customers were waiting to pay, and as it reached the person paying it disappeared and he dropped his tray of food on the floor, and was completely bemused as to why it had happened.

Another time I was on an underground train with a friend, I said to her 'if that cosmic consciousness wanted to shut down this section of the northern line, no problem.' Shortly after an announcement was made that this whole section of the northern line had had a power failure.

Quite often I would just say whatever felt right and blow people out because it was what they were thinking.

I could recount an endless stream of odd experiences like these, most of which I had no explanation for, and could see no point to. By 78 I was vegan, by 85 a raw food vegan. I had no doubt that this, combined with the meditation techniques, were producing major chemical changes in my body.

As for the weird experiences, I could only think by 85 that I was starting to access some quantum level of reality that by-passed normal reality modes. In the mid seventies I would have probably ascribed them to god's grace, maharaji's grace, cosmic consciousness, by 85 I knew I was generating this stuff myself. This combined with the fact that so few premies seemed to be having the experiences I was having, and their numbers were not increasing, together with my increasing doubts about the org's dlm/ev, which just seemed completely fucked up, meant I was starting to question gm's validity on a number of levels. This even in spite of the success of k for me, which I still saw as magically passed down over the ages. It was so obvious that he had no idea how to help people integrate k into their lives, the pressure stuff was so obviously bound to be counter productive and fill people with guilt.

Lila covered it for me for a long time, what did I know etc etc, and the fact that genuine humility seemed to be a clear ingredient in the quality of my experiences. Whenever I got too confident/arrogant, something major would blow up in my face.

By 87 I was hardly ever going to programs or satsang, but once I can remember getting into a debate with Irene Hall where I pointed out the org's chaos, and the counter productiveness of the pressured conformity and guilt, and her reactions were quite instructive, as were the nodding heads of the premies who agreed with me but didn't have the confidence to speak up.

By 1990, I realized that IT, the magical moment when the human race would see the light, was NEVER going to happen, at the same time my involvement in the green movement meant I fully understood about global warming and the ozone hole problem. The scientific facts that backed up what I intuitively knew would be the human destruction of the planet in 1970, when I first tripped.

I went a bit crazy, walked out on my premie marriage, stopped all involvement around gm. Thankfully at a time of great despair for me the acid house revolution was happening in Britain. A total social change. This crowd taught me so much about that total hippy naivete.

I went to one gm festival in Brighton in 93-4, where I wore my headphones playing drum&bass all the time, to block out the bogusness of premie culture. Think the reasons I went, were a mixture of the return of despair for a short while, but really, to start trying to understand what the fuck was going on in gm's head. I saw through him completely much to my amazement.

Every year for three years, I would make one visit to a community video, to see how I viewed him during a period of large changes I was making. I primarily ended up looking at the language tricks and games he played, and the revisionism he used to cover his tracks. The communities at these events were tiny, soulless, immature, very sad.

98- on the net for the first time since 1990 and Ex-Premie org, at last a chance to verbalize what I had analysed and felt about this whole charade.

In the end what can you do, once you're past the pain of it all, and unless you sink yourself into another spiritual belief system to replace it like some spiritual neurofen, but utter a whole hearted gut bucketing laugh.

Our journey around him has been nothing but a mixture of some hippy monty python sketch mixed with kafka.

Without lila, and our acceptance of it, everyone would have been with the punks, laughing at the ludicrousness of it all.

Hanna

I am not an ex-premie, but the daughter of an ex-premie.

One of my earliest memories is lying in my parents bed staring up at a framed picture of Guru Maharaji. He was sitting on a podium with flowers around his neck. He has been a looming presence throughout my entire childhood and I am now in the process of realising that this has got to have had some effect on me. I am a cult kid. Of course like any member of a cult I didnt realise this until I was old enough to be away from it. I look back at my formative years and well as being amused by all the self righteous adults that surrounded and moulded me I also feel very angry. I think premies can be very manipulative and dangerous people. They all secretly want to be a Guru too.

I was always expected to receive knowledge and even attended many aspirant meetings and international events. Funny how they always seemed to be co-ordinated with family holidays. Like we had this silent family member who didn't even know our names. My mother used to tell me stories of the Guru like fairy tales and I was definitely lulled to sleep to the songs of praise that no one seems to remember these days. 'You are my Mother, you are my Father, Oh Guru Maharaji you are everything.' Something along those lines. I remember feeling very small and a bit disposable when I heard those words. Replacable.

My Dad used to jaunt off to see his 'Teacher' and get incredibly excited but wouldn't elaborate on what he actually taught him. Sometimes he would take me to see a video and I would feel really special to stay out late with Dad, and all the premies there would smile at me and treat me like I was special. I bet that's what Maharaji felt like when he was a little boy, I thought. But then I'd sit there and and feel terribly guilty because I had doubt. I remember one teaching about a little bird who wanted to be free but he was caged. Eventually he got let out but he was still so preoccupied with the concept of being free that he couldn't actually enjoy the feeling of being free. Maharaji said that bird wasn't really free. He condemned that bird, but I quite liked him. No wonder, I thought, being in a cage all that time must be horrid. It will just take some getting used to being free that's all. By then I'd drifted and missed the moral and felt bad. The drift was- conceptual thought is bad and feeling is good. As a result throughout my adolescence I learned to fear my own common sense and developing critical voice and then feel inferior because I hadn't experienced bliss and blame myself. I would inwardly question the Master and outwardly defend him so as not to be found out when non Divine Light people criticised. Sometimes I would pretend he didnt exist at all so that I could be a normal kid. 'Oh yeah, my Dads having a nap so we have to be quiet' to 'straight' friends that came round. I could hardly tell them he had a blanket over his head to increase his divine light experience.

My friend at school was from a family of buddhists and I just couldn't see why our God was more superior to hers. If anything I found hers more convincing because you couldn't actually see him. He didn't sit on a stage or star in his own videos or fly aeroplanes. Even at the tender age of 8 I could see that a man who was trying to save the human race and deliver peace to the world through self sacrifice, celibacy and other nonsensical ashram antics shouldn't be flying planes on his day off. He sounded more like Rupert the bear to me. I asked Mum once, 'If he gives out his knowledge for free, then how has he got a plane?' She mumbled something about donations and then said that she thought Maharaji could do whatever he liked. I wasn't so sure but listened anyway as she told me about the time she covered his car in daisies with a proud innane grin on her face. I didn't bother to ask why.

Friends my own age have received knowledge and joined the club and sometimes I bump into them and other old family friends that talk to me knowingly as if I'm one of them and I want to laugh. 'Can you not see? You're being had! He's playing on your insecurities and none of you are being honest about how you feel.

I have no problem with people wanting to get in touch with their inner joy, I think that meditation is a valid and useful practice, but I think the whole premie thing unnerves me.

If that which we seek is truly within ourselves then why do we have to spend our life savings on travelling thousands of miles every year to see someone who doesn't even know we exist? If Knowledge truly is a gift then why do we have to give something in return? Surely its better to take all that love and dedication and turn it in on ourselves? That is true devotion.

Happy

BEFORE

I was a teenager during the 60s, during the whole psychedelic, hippie, flower-power, make-love-not-war period. As so many others, I tuned in, turned on, and dropped out - did psychedelics, and lived in hippie communities. I demonstrated against the Establishment and the Vietnam War, and I took part in the student revolution scene. I threw stones at the police and I occupied university buildings. It was great fun. I was both idealistic and naive. We really thought we could change the world.

That period had to come to an end, of course, and to a tragic end for several of my close friends, who did not stick to flower-power, but got into heavy drugs. Some died. Others got into revolutionary/terrorist leftism. As many other disillusioned hippies, I went to India in order to find a guru, and, surprise, surprise, I found one. It was not M as yet, but a certain Swami xyz from Rishikesh, in Northern India. When I talked to him, it knocked me off my feet. I saw nothing but light everywhere, literally. Was it all anticipation and hype? Was he really something? Or did he perhaps put nitrous oxide into the interview room? (Like many gurus have done. Rajneesh for instance was hooked on nitrous oxide.) Now, almost thirty years later, I have at last received clear evidence that, while claiming to be celibate, swami xyz had in fact a mistress… And that he faked miracles. After that, I studied with another yoga-teacher (who claimed to have powers - siddhis - but not to be a perfect, self-realized master). Then, I returned to the West, told my hippie friends to stop taking drugs, there were better, natural ways of getting high! I had changed.

GETTING HOOKED

In September 1972, back in the West, I bumped into some premies with shiny, blissed-out eyes, who satsanged me with stories about the boy satguru who had come to change the whole world, Balyogeshwar Shri Sant Ji Maharaj, and his Divine Light Mission. He was the Messiah, Kalki, the one who all religions had prophesized should come and bring in the new age, Satyuga… He was none less than God himself, and his brother Bal Bhagwan Ji was the incarnation of Jesus! He revealed the secret of secrets, the Knowledge: "I Can Show You God Face to Face", he said, and "I Declare I Will Establish Peace on Earth During My Lifetime". This sounded absolutely outrageous, of course, but… I decided to give it a try, why not? Can't hurt to try. If it is true, you shouldn't miss it, and if it isn't true, you can always get out. Deep in my heart, I wanted to be in on something big, dedicate my life to something that would make a real difference in this world. At least I wanted the Knowledge. That was the bait. Satsang was the hook. I was the fish. I received K and was caught, totally unsuspecting of the fact I had joined a cult which would cost me 10 years of my life and many, many sorrows. And scars, still almost 30 years later.

ON THE HOOK

I was on one of those famous chartered jumbo jets full of Western disciples that flew to India in November 1972, to the Hans Jayanti in New Delhi. Then, we spent a month at the Prem Nagar Ashram in Hardwar. We slept packed like sardines in big tents, ate lousy food, it was cold at night, hot in the daytime. Many Westerners got sick. Still, it was an experience which I enjoyed.

Back in the West again in 1973, I helped establishing ashrams in several nations, and I became a dedicated ashram premie and ashram supervisor. I did the "right things", sang arti, did satsang, service, and meditation. Doubts were nagging, however, but I was skillful at silencing them. For instance, I was never able to believe M's promise that he would give K to the whole world during his lifetime. That was clearly impossible, and the first "drip". With two persons getting born in the world every second - he would have to spread K even faster speed than that! It was totally impossible.

I started to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the person cult, the toe-kissing, the atmosphere at the programs - it felt like nothing but mass hysteria. It did not fit in with my concept of spirituality at all. M's playboy lifestyle with incredibly expensive "Divine Residences" in all parts of the world, his fancy for fast cars and big airplanes, etcetera - these aspects were not known when we received K, but it started to dawn on us, and it was disturbing news. I don't think anybody really liked it and accepted it no questions asked.

When the Millenium program was held in the Houston Astrodome in 1973, there were the most unrealistic expectations. Some premies seriously thought aliens in UFO's would arrive at the Astrodome to see the Lord of the Universe in this incarnation! The hysteria turned me off and became for me a turning point, the second "drip", and I decided to leave the ashram. I started a relationship with a female premie, and we moved together out of the ashram and formed a family. We continued practising, going to satsangs and programs.

I think even the most devoted followers of M would admit that the Millenium program was a total flop. After that, DLM stopped growing. It had reached its maximum size, in terms of people in Western cities gullible enough to jump on the bandwagon. M also started to receive worse and worse press. When M at age 17 married Marolyn, it shook the whole Mission to its roots. And, there was the famous pie-incident… With Mr. Bang-Bang Silver Hammer Fakiranand.

Then I happened to see one of M's famous golden toilets in one his "Divine Residences". That was the third "drip" in my premie career. I understood that something was seriously wrong with his values. When one child starves to death every fourth second in the world, and many of them in his own home country - how can he be pissing in golden toilets?

Furthermore, I found it embarrassing that such a large percentage of people receiving K obviously had mental problems. I also found it embarrassing that DLM/EV did not differ at all from other cults - at least I could not tell the difference. There were more and more facts that I could not close my eyes to. One ashram premie in my home town hanged himself

Also, during this period, I was able to see and experience more of M than before. I was able to see him interact with people, and it became clear to me that he was far from perfect. He was a poor listener who often misunderstood what people told him, and he had a bad temper. His intelligence appeared pretty mediocre. And there were more and more disturbing reports of him drinking, smoking, and having mistresses.

GETTING OFF THE HOOK

I decided that I wanted to get myself an education, and live a normal life. I did not want to sacrifice more years on being first a hippie, then a premie. However, my wife was more dedicated to M than I was, and this circumstance created serious disturbances in our family. She wanted to go to all festivals/programs/events, which was impossible of course, and which ruined our economy. We also had children. She was upset with me because I wanted to get an education, she felt I should work only, so I could earn money for us (her) to go to festivals, and the rest should be donated to M. She told our children that she loved M more than she loved them… It was quite disturbing for them, I can assure you! However, I got myself an education, against her will, wrote a Ph.D., and got myself a career and a nice job.

I went to a K review with M in 1982, but I did not like what I saw. That was the last time I saw him. The magic was definitely over. Around that time, the early 80s, came the "Book-Burning Phase". M wanted the premies to get rid of all old pictures and "And It Is Divine" magazines - they included too many embarrassing satsangs by other members of the Holy Family, the very embarassing Peace Bomb satsang, which he definitely did not want new premies to hear about, and also pictures of himself dancing in Krishna-costume. So, the ashram premies, and others, too, destroyed their magazines and other evidence of the LOTU- period. M clearly tried to whitewash and rewrite history, pretending that he never suggested he was the Lord who had come to save the world. He did not want people to know the truth about himself and the history of DLM. This "Book Burning" was for me the fourth "drip" and the final straw. It was an obvious proof dishonesty from his part. I cut all contacts with premies and EV, and never went to any meeting or event again.

However, leaving M probably cost me my family: my wife and I divorced. Well, what was there to do.

A NEW LIFE

It is now more than 15 years since I had anything to do with M and his premies, and I thought I had recovered from it completely. I did not even think of myself as an "ex-premie", just as any human being. I am happily remarried, and I enjoy my job. However, when I found this website in November 1998, I noticed that I was absolutely fascinated by what I read. Obviously, there were still some wounds within me that were not fully healed. I guess one problem was that when I "defected" and came to my senses, I had no-one to talk to. There were no ex-premies around to talk with, who had shared the same experiences and gone through similar stages in the process of exing. There was no ex-premie.org, no web-deprogramming.

I realized I still felt angry about the lost years, the emotional pain, and all destroyed relationships with family and friends. I am still, to this day, angry and upset when I think about the disastrous effect M had on my family. My children saw the negative effect of cult life on my ex-wife, and neither of them has wanted anything to do with M. However, one has joined another cult, probably due to faulty upbringing, and I don't even know where she is right now.

I have become absolutely allergic against all cults and religious movements and think of myself today as a sceptic and an agnostic. When I see shiny-eyed people approaching me in the street with leaflets or whatever in their hands, I almost get aggressive. I feel like screaming at them, get out of it, you fools! Don't ruin your lives. Too many did. Listen to those who went before you. Cult life is a well-trodden path, tried by many, it doesn't work, and it is in fact very dangerous.

After some three months of reading ex-premie.org and the related sites, and participating in forum discussions every now and then, I had the following dream (February 1999):

I dreamt that I was up in a high tower with M, and we got into a fist fight. I won, and I pushed him out of the tower. He fell down towards the ground. During the fall, his shape changed into that of a plate. It reached the ground, and broke into pieces. I climbed down the stairs from the tower. I took one small piece of the broken plate, put it into my pocket, but left the rest lying there on the ground. And I continued my journey.

The Innocent One

When I lived in the ashram at the age of 19, I was so innocent that "I had surrendered the reigns of my life to Guru Maharaj Ji". One night after retiring for meditation in the sisters room, there was a mahatma (Mahatma Trebinand) who came in and ask me to come to his room for a foot massage. I, feeling chosen and blessed, went trustfully to do the massage. When the massage was finished, he ushered me into his bed. I was so innocent that I actually believed that since Mata Ji was in charge of all the mahatmas at the time, it must be something she approved of. I then "left my body" to the light - and came back as he was putting down his robes. From then on I lived with the fear of pregnancy (thank God, I wasn't). This all came back to me last night. I have been spending a week at Omega Institute in New York and the community living, the kirtan (where they actually sang arti) all brought this flashback to me. God I grieve for this innocence I lost that night in the ashram. In all my therapeutic work, I never touched the pain I felt last night about this incident.

Can you believe that the mahatma actually came back a second night when I was able to hold him back. The third night I was given a bodyguard (I still think of her with friendship and gratitude). She slept next to me and guard me when he came back for a third night. Of course the Canadian president at the time (Brian McDermott) made sure that I did not go back to my parents even if I was very distressed. Last night flashing back of that event, I could only see it as some spiritual rape.

I have since become a therapist and a writer and have had the chance to help hundreds of client in facing their shadows. Here is a piece of mine that I am trying to release by making it public.

P.S. After freaking out for a week the mahatma invited me to attend a knowledge session where I would get a better impression of him. Now that I remember this, I still can't believe that all this new premies were there trusting him and him allowing this while I was in the room recuperating from abuse. I might have other memories coming back to me but I won't be sharing them. Just writing them while doing service here for a week at Omega Institute has been my form of release - thank you so much for your site - i feel cleansed from breaking this silence.
Namaste.

JM

As I start to write, the word 'journey' reminds me of 'Amaroo Journey's End' which is the name M. gave to his conference land near Brisbane, in Australia. In that kind of place, or rather in the state of mind you are when you find yourself there, or in his land in India near Delhi, or in a conference with him or in his presence, being at the end of my journey was really what I felt so many times. Being at the place I really wanted to reach, inside of me and in this world, feeling so well, so elevated, so high, filled with so much love.

I really thought it was the best that I would ever get to feel in my life. And maybe it still is. But for 25 years I would never have imagine that I could question that feeling that was so true! How can you question what you feel is true? But do you ever try to think about what truth is? No, you can't do that at that state, because you are absolutely convinced that you know 'Truth'. You know what truth is, you have 'experienced' it, you are so much convinced of that because the person you love the most, the person you admire the most, said that so many times. You have said that so many times too, and you ' feel ' it so much. What can you say to someone who says he 'feels' what he feels/says/thinks is true, specially yourself ? Nothing.

Did you ever really try to understand what it is that you feel and you call truth ? What is really real about it? Did you ever hear anything about people hallucinating, group phenomenons, etc? Are you absolutely sure not to be a part of them ? Do you dare question this ? If you don't, why ?

There is something you can feel inside of you, there is no question about it. It is a great feeling, no need to put more adjectives, or add all the adjectives you like if you want to. Why do you call this 'Truth'? Why not just call it a 'great feeling'? The fact that you stick a name to that feeling does not change anything to it. But it changes a lot in your mind. Do you allow yourself to question that great blissful feeling? Could it be something else?

The mind is something very important. We are created to function with our mind. You are not a zombie or some kind of ectoplasm nor an Indian realized soul lost on this planet by any divine mistake/grace. Maybe in India, people have a very different cultural background and have a different theory about this. I am not sure. I assume they also have a mind and they also need it (they are Homo Sapiens Sapiens too). Maybe they don't use it enough (or at least some/many of them), for their own reasons there are probably many theories about this and that's why their country is in that shape.

Maybe also many people in many places don't use their mind enough, which is a wonderful god-given tool, and that's why there are so many problems everywhere. Maybe, maybe not, maybe it is a part of the reason. If mind was unnecessary, why would we have it? It would have disappeared in the course of evolution. Or at least reduced to a necessary minimum like the toes we don't use very much.

You may think that getting rid of it is just the ultimate divine challenge. That by the grace and with the help of the 'Master', in order to feel the ultimate. I don't believe in that crap. Maybe you want to believe this: that is your absolute right. You can choose to be a fool yourself, and think it is a conscious choice. But you can't do that, because to be able to make a conscious choice, you have to be free of your unconscious motivations first. Unless you don't (or you don't want to) believe in the existence of the unconscious part of your mind, which is one of the biggest and uncontested discovery in the realm of psychology. Maybe you think this theory only applies to people 'in their mind', but are you not part of them ? Like me and everybody else.

Maybe you just simply want to get rid of this bothering mind. You have heard it is not good to do that, even M. says so, but still you would like to live without it. Because you have felt these moments of bliss, where mind and thoughts were not bothering you, and you want so much to feel this again and again (are you addicted ?). As what you call 'mind' was not bothering you in these moments, you think that by getting rid of mind and thoughts you will automatically be in that bliss all the time. This is a nice but unrealistic dream. It never happened for me in 25 years of practice, even though I had quite a lot of very good times. You know that very deeply in yourself, but you don't want to face that ultimate contradiction.

Why ? Because it's a nice dream, and we all like nice dreams. We don't like nightmares. But life is not a nightmare, even though you can have some very difficult moments. With or without Knowledge, being or not being a premie (good or bad). Maybe you were just going out of a very difficult time in your life, like me when I first heard about Knowledge. I had a lot of questions in my mind at that time. I was really looking for answers, as many people do at one time or another in their life. And I remember the kind of feeling I had when I came to Knowledge/Maharaji in 1972.

Discovering and rediscovering a wonderful feeling inside of me, meeting plenty of wonderful people, a very blissful feeling in these meetings and in these ashrams, in these satsang programs, and Maharaji on top of that. And I automatically associated him with my feelings (these phenomenons have very well known reasons/explanations - see links of this site - there are quite a lot of books on these topics). And then I got involved a lot in this group phenomenon. It is so natural to actively participate in something you believe in and seems to give you so much.

I don't want to go into the details of what I have been involved in, but I can summarize: everyday satsang and meditation, ashram for 6 years, a lot of service and involvement in day to day activities, help for many programs setup, part-time instructor, lots of responsibilities in Elan Vital, etc.

If I go back to what was going on in my life at the time I came to Knowledge, I have to admit that I lost most of my common sense at that time. Exactly like what happens when you fall in love, or when you get over-enthusiastic about something. Why did I loose my common sense and fell into that? This is what I had to understand for myself, with the help of a psychoanalyst. It was not an easy process, because I felt so much frustration and I was so addicted to that childish blissful feeling. But this is another story.

I know some people, and I have some close friends, who are in the same process of clarifying all this and rediscovering what reality really is. It is not an easy process. Specially because you have to go back to your unresolved problems that led you there in the first place. If you replace Knowledge by another kind of meditation, I am afraid that you might again push away your real problems, and delay what you can do now.

What I now think is that I got into all this to avoid facing some difficulties, and to escape some problems that were bothering me deeply. And now I have to face them. And get really healed. And not by any superficial pseudo-therapy. Because pseudo-therapies, like meditation, anesthetize you, your mind and your common sense, and don't allow you to really solve your personal problems. Like alcohol or drugs.

And it feels very good to face and solve your problems. You feel like a real human being, standing on your feet, not depending on a very doubtful guru (even though he might be very good and sincere some very strange people are very good and sincere), and not depending on this group phenomenon which is also a very good/bad wall between you and the world of whatever you don't want to face. If you don't feel strong enough to face whatever you have to face, don't forget that you are not the first one in that case, that others made it, and that you also can.

Thousands and thousands of people received Knowledge. How many of them are still involved in it? 10%? Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. What happened to the rest of them? They are not in hell. They also understood something. There is nothing wrong in doing that. This is also a great thing that man can do: make mistakes, and learn from them. Even if it takes a lot.

Maybe it will be very easy for you to recover from that. It has not been very easy for me. Maybe you'll need a lot of help. But face it; is it not what you accept from a guru? Are you sure that the practice of Knowledge was an easy thing for you? Even with Knowledge you faced a lot of difficulties. Remember?

M. claims he is someone who can help. Help doing what? You can judge for yourself. If you need help, look for it, talk about it with people you trust, think about it, and accept it. And believe in yourself. Be critical. Why not try to discover what you don't know? Why not try to solve what can be solved ? Why not try to heal what can be healed ? Why not try not to depend on what you don't need to depend. And be a free human being.

Here is a list of a few things that helped me a lot:

1st and foremost: thinking and questioning is a good thing.

Mind is not a devil.

Guilt feelings are guilt feelings.

Talking with friends about my problems.

A good psychoanalyst.

A few Rebirth sessions.

Some good books.

Expressing my frustrations.

Talking with premies who were not as involved as I was.

Keeping my friends, even though I don't approve their involvement.

Being kind with myself (and with others).

Understanding that there is nothing I have to feel guilty about.

Questioning M. himself and what he is doing.

Questioning the people I know around him, and what they are doing.

Attending video programs from time to time and be critical about what is being said.

Attending M's programs if he comes around and be critical.

Keep what I understand for myself, and think about it.

It took me a year to be able to start understanding enough to be able to write what I just wrote.

JM

Scott Jamieson

On March 14, 2001, I visited this site for the first time. On my new iMac, via my new internet service set-up. I was learning how to add web sites to my Favorites file. For example, Maharaji.org. I had no intention of adding this one. I realized, "This must be the infamous Jim Heller site." (I was with him in a couple of ashrams for more than a couple of years. I felt we knew each other fairly well.)

"Michael Dettmers - oh yeah, I remember him," I thought, as I clicked on his name on the home page. A couple of days later, I wrote DETTMERS DETTONATIONS (sic) on the March 14th square in my appointment book. It was the 16th before I could sleep again. Then again, I like staying up all night sometimes.

About Maharaji's personal life, over the 27 years since I received Knowledge, (mahatma Jagdeo) I had heard very little: some tales, on the order of "Maharaji ate a steak, and it blew a lot of concepts," but they always seemed to be a trivial part of the banquet that was my experience With Knowledge & Maharaji. "He could have had any number of women he wanted, but he's always been true to Marilyn." That's another of the Divine Gossip items with which I was favored. It's always been the very iffy side of what, for me, has indeed been Maharaji's World. I mean, the Knowledge, the inspiration from Maharaji, has always seemed far removed from the ceaseless Jerry Springer consciousness we humans appear to adore. On the other hand, the dirt is where you find your roots.

So what do I have, could I have, to say about something that has been at the core of my life for about half the length of my life? Remembering all the years of Knowledge, I get such a sense of the Maya that is the past. From it can anyone can get a straight answer? There is so much background, context - so many shifting perspectives about even eye-witness events. I was part of a brawl in an all night restaurant once. We all went to trial, and of the 7 eye witnesses who told their tales, no two told the same story. We all told "the truth", though, I believe. And for Maharaji and his world, it's increased beyond any capacity of mine, at least, to track the whole process back, to make sense of it. Overviews are not really my turf. I let them pass.

But we can share our journeys, that we can do. And I don't mind sharing some of mine with you. I've been a good "lurker" on the site for a couple of months, and you have touched me with your humanity. "Getting Knowledge" is personal, and this comes alive here often enough, where you can talk openly. I don't seem able to declare myself as anti-Maharaji. But I am pro free speech. Though I'm disinclined to come out with any scathing condemnations, I can understand how some people need to get them off their chests.

A very enlightened guy - and I highly recommend his books ("Shaking out the Spirits" and "Everyday Soul") - named Bradford Keeney has given me his permission to quote him on this site. These words should mean something to anyone who was able at least once to gamble their hearts on Knowledge and Maharaji :

"Whenever you catch yourself judging another person or yourself, you are not seeing through your heart. Try to find something about the other person that brings your heart back into your viewing. Perhaps you need to imagine them as they were as a child or as they will be as an elder. Can you see them with their own children or as a starving person desperately needing some food and water?

. . . "Seeing with your heart is an essential part of soulful living. It brings us into the deepest rhythms of everyday soul. It is not possible to bring forth deep matters of the soul unless you learn to see more heartfully. One of the most powerful guides to heartful seeing is to carry an awareness of the inevitability of everyone's death. You and everyone you meet will die someday and remembering this fact can be a strong wake-up call to feel differently about how we relate to one another. Given that our time on earth is precious and limited, how can we afford not to see through our Hearts? Is there time to waste on heartless observation when our time with one another is so brief?"

For my own sake, I feel it is better to include the heart in the way I see anyone, surely. Here maybe I speak as a PNIAWAM (Premie Not In Any Way Around Maharaji.) I always felt OK about my longish distance from the locus of M power-ment. Jesus' parable about being called to the head table at the banquet was on my mind sometimes. Its moral: it's better to wait and be called up, rather than go there and maybe be asked to step down. I was a community coordinator for a couple of years, but that was because the community was electing a coordinator (it was the crazy year of '76) and some members begged me to put my name in the hat, to avoid some other candidates being elected, I believe.

I mean, the whole damn adventure has this gloriously hilarious side to it. God, there were such laughs! I was, in fact, asked to step down from the banquet head table. I wasn't a company man, so far as my hierarchic superiors were concerned. I failed to keep a document of every precious letter from Toronto, for God's sake! I got so used to the back, perhaps the second row from the back, seats at the programs, that I used to feel that Ji and I had the same perspective, that of the whole crowd in front of us, and so he was in that sense drawing me near. That's kind of beautiful, now that I think of it. Bliss is maybe foolish, devotion is foolish, but it's not really what you could call ugly.

And so I post : some of my journal entries, as raw as they were when first written down. They comprise a portrait of a long standing premie's thoughts as they encounter the facts on this site and attempt to deal with them. People can draw their own conclusions from these entries. This includes my friends who are still in Maharaji's world, who visit here from time to time perhaps recalling the days when there was a more democratic - well, the word forum comes to mind - for the "company of truth."

Monday, Oct 18, 1999
In my last journal I taped a letter I wrote to Maharaji but didn't send. I should like to write another letter. This time I'm writing it in the book, because I don't imagine I'll send it.

Dear Maharaji,
You are inviting me to "participate" - by sending money. O familiar invitation! Everyone does this for me. But I am not a good money-earner. You invite me to come to Australia - but, as my friend Greg M. said last night, "If I save $100 each month for a year, I don't have enough for even the air fare."

Ah, Maharaji, you are moving beyond me and I doubt if I can keep up. I am excluded - by your plans or by my poverty, I don't know. Or by my lack of inspiration.

My wife Norma says, "We do what we can do. If Amaroo is beyond us, don't worry about it." A good attitude. Maybe. Maybe a better one is,"how can I earn more money?" And, "How can I get down there, support myself, and give free labor?"
If I were a devotee - but that doesn't make sense. If devotion were "okay" why is it "hidden"? (Inside the aspirant programs, the introductory videos, the don't-say -anything, just-hand-them-the-videos instructions.) You don't trust us for anything, but we are supposed to trust you in everything. Well, it is a unique relationship. If you hadn't closed the ashrams, would I still be in one? I don't know. Now I am old, and my possibilities are not the same. Do I still have enough energy to fail and succeed, or am I only able to retire?

One thing I can say - as a devotee: the intensity of love has no concern for respectability. It should have no concern for respectability.

March 12, '01
This light is mine; was mine
before there was a me to claim it:
light eternal and omni-ternal
(outside of time's influence, yet for, and in, all time)
- immortal and omnimortal (loves, dies,
with everything) - omnipresent and absent,
omnipotent and helpless; the peace
which generates the ultimate kerfuffle . . .
the inborn kerfuffle grace to defer to
the ultimate peace. This peace is mine, was

March 14 - 2 AM - Near the ides, methinks.
Just read the Ex-Premies' web site. All the Dettmers revelations about Maharaji's alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, personal lack of responsibility, etc.

5:45 AM - I'm in shock, I guess. Haven't slept all night. I'm going out for a walk or a bike ride. Do I have anything to write now? Ah, no . . .

Saturday, March 17
A guy named Scot - can I count on him? As opposed to a guy named Maharaji? You assume, gentle reader, that the answer will be "yes?" I don't.

First, I failed to discount my friends' advice that I return to hear more "satsang' at the "center." But, people I like, I let them influence me. And I tend to like some fairly crazy people. Like Jack Kerouac says, they're the interesting ones, after all. Still, today, am I influenced by friends? To some extent, yeah. Like Joe Cocker said, "If someone told me sincerely enough to put my head in that toilet, I'd do it." But once I was in Maharaji's world - having kissed his feet on my knees - what LOVE, what love we shared, the premies and I. Night after night after night, for years. God help me, I'd gladly do it all again.

Of everyone there, some were okay with it, some were the occasional sour grape, but many as full of the wine of bliss as I was. "Dead drunk in the divine madness," as Charnanand used to say. And Charnanand? I remember seeing him surrounded by adoring "gopies" in Quebec. I was right there in "his" house. ("Borrowed" for his visit.) and to me it seemed to be quite innocent - no plonking going on, just much bliss. But can anyone say for sure? Jag Deo - what are the details with him? Various (some) mahatmas falling in love or just getting it on . . . and me? Yeah, I've fallen in love, but I didn't and don't "break rules." Should I break rules? Would that show a more advanced consciousness? Am I "inhibited?" Need to "break free?"

"Control your mind - you CAN'T", Maharaji has said recently. "Go by the FEELING." Good advice. The feeling is not good, my old master. Should I simply forgive you for your sins? But you aren't asking, you're skipping mentioning them. And I'm skipping mentioning you. The ointment, with its few flies, stinks.

It's over. Can I believe that? I've been living in his world for so, so long. His world, like Charnanand's house, is only borrowed. From the inhabitants of it is it borrowed.
Time to go to bed - I'm sleepy, nodding off and twitching awake. . .

You think a spirit can't die? It can! It can die drowning in the senses. Mine can, anyway. Maybe there are some spirits that have special privileges, but mine doesn't. "Beware of those who kill the soul, " says Jesus. Not to get an ego about it - I am guilty of all Maharaji is accused of, in the sense that I have a human mind, and it is omni-guilty. Who claims to be virtuous is delusional. But as we renounce those senses, we are naturally left with pure spirit. And we can love that pure spirit, and it doesn't judge us. We judge everything, including our sensual selves, our spiritual selves, even our judging selves. Hell is like Heaven - you don't need to die to get there, either.

Sunday, March 18
Not long after Maharaji's wedding, I was surprised to see a film of the marriage ceremony playing in a tent at a festival. Because, what did it have to do with satsang, service, meditation? But I sat down, and the beauty of it was very touching. Thinking of that long ago day now, it isn't possible for me to not hear the faint, sad music of mortality playing. For all of us. His personal life - he shared it when he didn't have to. Now he doesn't want to share it? That's his business. But mine is to know what I'm doing, and if I'm following someone, to know him, to understand.

I remember Kissinger talking about Nixon's last day in office - a very busy day for Kissinger. But he put aside everything in the end, just to feel the personal tragedy of his president, of the human tragedy there. Maharaji, I used to send prayers to you. No more. But I will pray for you. For you and us all.

I don't have dry eyes as I write, Maharaji, I loved you. I meant Arti when I sang it. But now it's over. O yeah.

The stuff in your world I despise - the elitism, the slickness, the top-down orientation - you seem to be going for it more and more. I liked you when you said,"This world is a cult!" which it is indeed. But you're not saying that now - oh, I don't know -it's your life.

It's not that I need to do anything. I heard that little "click," like a ripe mango detaching itself from its stem and settling into your hand, only this time the click was the coupling between your train engine and my caboose. After more and more separation the last 4 days, I notice that I am not actually a caboose. I am an engine. And I notice I'm pulling something - it's Maharaji. (Well, part of his baggage, anyway.) Hear that second click? Now the baggage is getting a bit further off. And it'll keep doing so.

Thanks for this, and no thanks, Maharaji. And thanks for that open door. And I'll tell anyone, it is truly open. I respect that.

Tuesday, March 20
It's the standing on my own that I have to warm up to. Is it a matter of believing in myself? Have I believed in myself? In a way, no. In a way, yes. Have I felt good about myself? That's a better question. Right now I feel the need for physical maintenance, for feeling good about myself physically. I am feeling pain in my abs, pain in my jaw, neck, shoulders, back, legs, arms - if I think about it. I am tired. Sleepy.

Talked to Irma about my new stance toward Maharaji - she seemed much affected. I prayed for her afterward. She's a staunch supporter like I was. I don't feel like condemning Maharaji, or joining his critics on the web - not just yet, anyway. The critics' tone is often glib - not all the individuals there, but some. I guess that's the point, the variety of individual expression. But joining them doesn't give me what I long for, which is - something to connect with in my heart. Something to focus toward other than money.

Saturday, March 24
This separation. Part, not all, but part of me is still unprepared for the implications of being truly separated from Ji.

What can I say? It must have been Maharaji - who killed the actual-human very very often beautiful satsang but GMJ? I'm sittin' here to tell ya, videos are not alive, and are no proper substitute for "Wherever 2 or more of you are gathered in my name." Ji doesn't get this point of view, it's all getting smoother and emptier, and that's the way he wants it. And I've given him enough time. Well, I don't know. It doesn't seem that there was anyone at the wheel if I look back to years ago. And now that there does seem to be someone there, I don't like it. It's all one way or the other. But, that's the deal. You leave your mind and enter the Shelter of Guru's Grace.

That's quite a power, isn't it? To have people give you their minds . . . because everything - body, soul, possessions and abilities come along with that mind.
I guess now I have to believe in myself. And I have to be worthy of that belief. OK!

It's something to have people really trust you. To really love you. It is a demand for great humility if people actually respect you. You can hurt them by not actually being respectable.

So, to Michael Dettmers, I send respect. And a sincere thank you. Some cold, grey dawn comes to every mother's child, but the love that includes knowledge of that cold grey dawn is the one you truly need. You may want the love that tells you the sun never sets, but does it get you through the night? Like, love has to realize its own limitations to be real. We do, too.

My heart feels like a bunch of oh so ripe grapes, heavy, shuddering, clinging to the vine by the straining stem. Love! Illusion. Victim of love. Ruined for anything else. How can I trust my own heart? Do I have a choice? If I want to feel, it must be my heart which feels. Where is that love which spins the cosmos? Love, come with me. I will go with you. Lead me, have mercy. Teach me to be true. You are a spirit. Be my spirit. Be mine forever. Let no consideration separate us. Take me up, cover me over, hush me down, light me on. Spirit of love, let me serve you. Give me love and I will return it. May I never shut down a heart. Let me love. Lead me. Love, let me go with you.

"Getting drunk in this special conscious way," said the sarcastic Bob Dylan. WAS talking about Maharaji, and maybe also Chogyam Trungpa, I now think.

Still, I saw the horizon line shine white as Chogyam lay dying here in Halifax. And the ice came and filled the harbour as far out to sea as the horizon as he died. As it did never before in memory, or ever since. Means nothing? Maybe.

And so may Maharaji, for all his "sins," yet prove a great saviour and a great master. But no one proves anything about a Master. You either follow him or you don't. It's not rational. And you can't tell anything by any signs. One quote I loved from Ji was, "It doesn't matter if they discover 4 new universes tomorrow, you'd still have to do satsang, service and meditation." (To go anywhere.) Unreasonable, yes, but I loved it.
And this guy, Scot? Does he, will he find the / his path of true walking? If he walks truly, the path will form beneath his feet.

That may be the nature of all true paths.

Be strong, therefore. Sober. Balanced.

Best foot … fore-WARD!

Monday, March 26
I recall this incident: in '74, very soon after receiving Knowledge, I went to a management training seminar in Dallas (in relation to my job.) I had been going every night to satsang in Ottawa, but now I was on my own lonely own with Texan rednecks for 2 weeks. Even though I meditated lots, my inspiration level was sinking and sinking. I opened my motel room Gideon's Bible, and this quote jumped out: "Faith without works is dead."

Did that really refer to Knowledge and Maharaji? No, it must refer to my need for satsang and service! I had the weekend off and I split for Houston, where I contacted the premies, did service - climbing up precarious ladders as the premies painted a city community center (good will outreach) - and sat cross-legged in satsang for my 2 or 3 nights there. And it was blissful. I helped make the pizzas in the ashram kitchen for a potluck. I remember gazing at this picture of a 9 year old Ji in his Krishna costume, playing a wooden flute, and laughing out loud at the look of gleeful joy in his eyes. I felt rejuvenated, and headed back to Dallas.

The Texas managers did what they could to get me to remove my Ji button. To no avail. Ji buttons not part of the corporate image, you understand. . . Risking my career was no problem. Risking my life, either. But it's a mortal condition, to live. We all risk our lives, just having fun sometimes. Go white water kayaking on the sea. A kick.

So, if it's my integrity versus Ji's integrity, as opposed to our integrity versus the world's, I'll stand up and take it face on. This is my knowledge - he only gave me the key. Key is paid off.

Belief in Maharaji or belief in myself - does it come to that? Of course. Because you let Ji into your control panels, he turned you on AND inserted an ad deep in the works for Prem Pal Singh Rawat. Now the you-or-him question is easier to answer - belief in him is the answer. And to get that Knowledge out of the belief in him zone and into new territory (belief in me,) that is that struggle across the life - afterlife borders in the multi dimensional darkness. Is Ji evil? Whatever you are, Maharaji, I'm standing up. Make way. I don't want to see you. Stay behind me.

10 PM - I guess Jim Heller is a kind of prophet. Years and years ago he split. Just an instinct on his part, I think. He does have a good "non-believer" intelligence. Different kinds of I.Q.s, as they say. And now I'm following him out of Maharaji's world? Only a True Follower type would put it that way. I'm not following. I'm actually doing something I feel to do.

I don't feel good - about myself. Again, doubt hits me. Am I really doing the right thing? Yes I am. The truth sets us free. Free. Free to then stand up and try to become an adult instead of a boy. Peter Pan, get real.

Tough. It hurts. It saddens. But I'm going to try, again, to grow. To grow up. God help me.

Tuesday, March 27
Give this knowledge a fair chance. 27 years - check. Never reveal the techniques to anyone (unless they're holding a gun to your head, added Ji one time) - check. Stay in touch - check. I don't see anyway I could know if Maharaji would be bad for EVeryone, but back in '74 I should have been able to know if it would be bad for me. I was not young when I got Knowledge - 28. Just immature. A person who needed to find something to dedicate to that was dedication worthy. Like, my own self interest was not worthy. Any criminal dedicates to that.

I have to learn to wish myself well, to do good for myself, to give myself a break, not judge but be kind, do service for myself, give (as in these pages) satsang about myself, and give myself darshan. And keep in touch. And don't reveal knowledge of myself to anyone (unless they're holding a gun to my head, OR I deem them fit to receive it.) And give myself a fair chance. Say 27 years?

Wednesday, March 28
I took the bus to work, but got off early and walked along the water to the Conservatory. On the walk, I came to see something pretty interesting in myself, which I realize is also there in every human: Omnipotence, in a defined sense. It is omnipotence, although the list of things I cannot do is so long it cannot be imagined. Because only me, only I, can say yes, or no, or don't know, or oh! No one else, not God Himself, can speak for me. I have that power because I exist, and that free will power in its restricted way, is unlimited. Even giving up my own free will is a gift of a free willed being. You can overwhelm me, but only I and I only can give you myself - you cannot take my free will, if you are God in the Highest or the Devil of devils, you cannot. And so I say it is omnipotent. God has given me a real part of himself, like in a marriage - for better or worse. He has created me. I am married to him for better or worse. He is just there. He is mine. Love is optional, only a possibility, but the gift is given anyway. Given to who exists. Get ready to move. . .

So, like the sibyl, who opened her mouth at Delphi, and delivered the oracle, I look about me and feel my mouth. It is simple: yes, no, don't know, or oh! And . . . I . . . say . . I feel my power, and let me feel it more. If I prophesy, I prophesy. Wait for it.

Friday, March 30
Maharaji is no longer someone I wish to support, and his cause, that of giving people Knowledge, is compromised by being associated with the Great King, which is, after all, the very meaning of the word Maha Raji. Knowledge can't be democratic? Why not?

Saturday, March 31
I tried watching a Ji video again, but I turned it off before too long. Yes, he's a speaker, and full of charm, but I want to say goodbye - by instinct, not by scandal and "Ex-premies."

He takes up a HUGE part of my consciousness, and without him, there will be space for others. Others such as First Nations contacts, John Gatto contacts, Runes guy Ralph Blum contacts. Well, there'll be room for others, anyway. And room for Scot.
I think I'll let a week go by, go past the first of the month, before calling in to cancel my donation. The $ can be goodbye money. Nothing to the decades of donations. It's okay, Scot. It's okay. You are moving on and it's okay.

11:30 PM - I feel lighter, I do. Something has lifted off.

Sunday, April 1
I don't feel screwed up by Knowledge, I feel blessed. And by Ji. That is what I feel. But these charges against him, specifically the Dettmers charges, but the many others behind Dettmers also, how can I dismiss them, or verify them, for that matter?
But I don't have to even have looked at the Dettmers charges to feel like leaving. Ji was a really, really big deal for me, but now? No satsang, or community, no devotion, or, worse, devotion hidden away like a dirty secret? It's over.

Dettmers defense of himself - why he didn't tell everyone the real truth about Ji - was a real killer for me. "The atmosphere" (I'm paraphrasing) "around Maharaji was isolating and everyone was afraid of losing his job and Maharaji always reminded everybody of this fact, that there were 20 in the wings waiting to replace anyone around him." Dettmers was working 7 day weeks with 18 hour days and was too tired to step back and get a good big-picture take on the scene. Ji drinking, smoking cigarettes and dope, and having affairs: this he already convincingly testified about earlier.

I think of the love in a darshan line, so thick you could pinch it, bounce in it - ah! But that could happen many places, I suppose: Jehovah's Witness meetings, AAA meetings, mosh pits? Visit of the Pope? Kissing of the black stone at the Ka'aba?

So easy it is for me to lose my way. But I'm not going to lose my way. The spirit of Love I found in Knowledge, with Ji - I'm taking that with me, even as I depart from Maharaji's camp. And Knowledge is mine. Ji himself has never said it wasn't.

And what about joining the Ji - trashers on the net? I feel to not join them. They have it wrong, so many of them . . . well, no, I can maybe understand their bitterness. But I'm leaving my own way. Not anyone else's. Not Heller's. He could probably use a bit of help getting over his "crusade." Well, I might call him. But his tone is all wrong for me. I can't go from devotion, deep love, to vitriolic frenzy in one breath.

But I'm tired of being isolated. And having the knowledge and using it is incredibly isolating, like Annie said in her post against the trashers. I feel like talking. To someone out of the loops - look out Jackie! Sacral cranial appointment on Wednesday. No, I don't like the hypocrisy of Ji, multiple sex liaisons, etc. No . . .
I'm going for a good bike ride, and then come back and - I don't know. I don't know. Some days, you have to take it 1 hour at a time . . .

Sunday, April 8
Kind of a rocky Sunday again. A lot of self examination and soul searching, etc. It's a drag. I have become self centered, self absorbed, ah well, it's me. I do need solitude, okay?

I downloaded the significant Dettmers files from the Ex-Premie web site this evening . I'm going to prepare a document to make available to people I know who have Knowledge. I'm going to talk to some old friends around and about Maharaji's world. And if I'm still an "Ex" after all that, I may call Heller.

I'm going to print my own reactions to the Dettmers texts and my own feelings about Ji and his mission.

But I don't, you know, feel good about crusading against the Ji. What do I really think? I may not know for months, maybe years. I'm not basing my departure upon the Dettmers stories. Dettmers just cut a tie that had been pre-stretched to fit the size of scissors - pre-stretched by me. I'd forgive Maharaji his "sins" if he asked me. Is my door open? For Maharaji to enter or leave? I hope it is, and will remain so. But he will have to stoop pretty low for my little house doorway . . .

What can I do? Be kind, but be honest. Too much kindness and you have to borrow from honesty. Too much honesty borrows from kindness. So keep the books balanced. In a wide world, balancing, and balancing.

Wednesday, April 11 - 4 AM
Up because of the spirits? In the dark, I gazed at my obscure reflection in the bathroom mirror . Clouds of subtle, silent light, wonderfully complex, like Northern Lights but more beautiful, wreathed about my head, and consoled my mind. I, and creation, are magical. Could write that last sentence again. I, and creation, are magical. It isn't any lie.

Maharaji, make room. Watch! It's okay, I just need room to say what I truly feel.

Thursday, April 12
I have to get my morning's dream down:

I am attending a university, but it's all fake like high school, no one is caring about what we learn, it's just a dull experience of routine learning. And we live in dormitories with 10 people in one room. There's almost no privacy, and I am only wearing tighty whiteys.

Madeline Albright gives a talk, but it's in our little classroom / dormitory. Prime Minister Chretien gives a short, perfunctory speech, talks to me afterward about his son, who is a short and uncertain copy of himself. (Son is in the next room.) Chretien is trying to groom the son to be the next Prime Minister, but he doesn't know if son has the right stuff. I just do not care.

I am sort of drifting aimlessly and get pushed onto the VIP airliner. I watch listlessly as the ground recedes - then we're over the ocean, it's receding. Then the ocean is not receding. It's getting closer and closer! Yes, we are crashing!

The water is beautiful as it swirls over the windows. Ev starts looking for an exit door. There are little windows at the back of the plane, not plane windows but like a bus. I swing up and kick them out with my feet, crawl out - and - we're on a beach. I open the doors, people exit.

Media crawling around immediately, interviewing, taking videos. Crews have boarded up the inside of the plane so it's like walking a hoarding near a construction site. Some VIPs were killed, somehow, in the front section. There seemed to be no impact back in the back.

I wander into town, there's a big private school there, some kids in uniforms, Chinese, about 10 - 12 years old, kicking a soccer ball around the street. I join in - barefoot all the way. I wear underwear only throughout, but I don't feel self conscious, just laid back.

My interpretation? Many changes, but I have no prob with them?

Norma says it all relates to Knowledge.

Good Friday the 13th
I hope I am worthy of being a servant of the spirit of God, or the good-wishing-to-humans spirits. The unknown must be faced with sincerity and seriousness. The unknown must not be ignored like most people ignore it.

No knowledge, of the urban sprawl of knowledge acquired by humanity, can ever supplant the need for the openness to the unknown. The value of this need is so underrated, it isn't rated at all.

I feel hope, though. I feel hope.

- So, that's the end of my journal entries. I depart from them on a positive note.

In typing them up, and editing them, I notice that during these weeks and months of what amounts to recreating myself to myself, I had to reassert my hope, over and over again, that I would be able to escape annihilation in some shadowy and fearful soul disaster. In other words, Maharaji had given me a security of soul beyond deep, beyond judgement. Necessarily, it depended upon a bond between us. A security versus freedom issue is "Leaving Maharaji."

I remember some scholar on radio saying that Jesus had been this huge force in history of judging a person or action by the intention behind it. This applies to me, and to Maharaji, and everyone. That is a kind of freedom, because you don't have to wonder about the intentions of others, just your own. Because it all comes out in the wash - the divine wash, you may as well call it.

2005 Update
"Ain't over till it's over"

Four years ago I stopped logging on here at Ex-Premies. I felt I just needed more time, and more detachment. And today, rereading the lengthy, overwrought "Journey" I posted back then, I feel that the decision to give it a rest was a good one. But I promised myself I'd come back after 4 years and have another kick at the Ex can. As predicted, I have had my problems in reassessing Maharaji, but I've made progress and I'm slowly developing a new attitude, and coming to my own understanding.

And for balance, I clicked on to the official PR site. The new feature there I observe after these four years is the proliferation of all those boring commendations from various officials and authorities: yeah, they all love him. This is sad and phony. I can't imagine many occasions more soul-numbing than official governmental presentations, pompous speeches full of circumstance.

I think back to the early seventies, and of Baba Ram Dass, a spiritual guy who happened to be a Harvard professor. He took to wearing simple Indian style clothes, and grew a beard, wore beads and tie-dyed shirts. A kind of reverse image to Rawat, an undergraduate Indian who took to wearing Harvard Professor style suits and ties. The East and West in a head-on collision, that is a big feature of our era, and the collision, in the words of the Yogi Berra, "ain't over till it's over."

So PR (and what a great Freudian-slip acronym that is) has developed, yes, his Public Relations and now collects citations and awards from government figures. He's following the Sun Myung Moon path to authentication. Maybe he could be invited to North Korea to receive one from Kim Jong Il. They might hit it off well. Both are short, ultra powerful, rather stout, asian, and used to total adulation from everyone in sight. (I just watched a TV special on North Korea, and could not ward my mind off from this comparison).

Already I'm getting crazy here - I mean, let me give Rawat credit: no, he's not to be compared to a dictator who has had unknown numbers of people killed. I guess I do want to respect Prem Rawat. It's too easy to get extreme. The part of me that was so emotionally abused by him (sorry, but that IS the way I see it) - that part wants revenge. It's irrational, but feelings ARE irrational. The theoretical new me, who has experienced nothing devotional re Mr. P.R., insists upon according him the normal respect I would give anyone.

Still, I think of Jesus going around collecting little plaques and scrolls of approval from the governor of Galilee, the mayor of Nazareth, etc. Sure.

So he's getting a bit scarier - all the more reason to let the true words ring out. The feeling for what is true - that is something governments and authorities never want developed. But if your soul is in fairly fit condition, what's true is an ever-fresh concern. It's an ever-fresh source, in fact, of nourishment for souls.

These crummy personal attacks that have been going on against the people who post here just disgust me. The attackers behave as if the Ex-Premie web site had been set up simply out of some kind of vicious personal spite, as if there were no legitimate interest in cover-ups being brought to light, as if no one could have a proper interest in the personal conduct of someone of great importance in their lives, as if there were no such thing as the true version of anything. I am outraged, totally.

It would probably be embarrassing to some of the demure souls here to be considered heroes, but hey, that is what some of us irregulars might be starting to do; I consider you just that.

My friends, I thank you again for this forum of openness. The freedom to say what I truly think and feel about the many issues evoked on this site is a beautiful gift. It's a striking contrast to the one-way-only nature of ideas in the shifty Rawat world, a world of taboo topics, serial revisions and renaming. The real history of the organization that I contributed to, is here, not on Rawat's site.

The series of quotes below, from diverse sources, including my own journals, are writings that resonated with my process over the last couple of years. I sincerely hope that they help others like myself who must come to terms with their own difficult departures from emotional codependency, and with finding their own way forward.

Scott provided a list of wonderful quotes, which you can read with his "journey" on the EPO website.

Jennifer

In 1972, I was nine years old. I believe this was around the time my mother's younger sister Susie and her husband Peter became premies. I don't know exactly when or how they heard about Maharaji. After my aunt became a premie, Maharaji was part of who she was. She was an extremely devoted and sincere premie. All she wanted was to be with Maharaji, to see and listen to him, etc. Peter eventually left her.

My aunt Susie was one of my favorite people. She was very creative, an artist, writer and musician (she played the harp). She used to write and illustrate incredible little books for her son Aeron and my sisters and I. She even made a children's board game for us once. She was a sweet, kind and gentle person to us and most of all, she was a lot of fun to be with. Every time we visited or spoke for the years after she became a premie, Maharaji became a focus of our interactions.

Because she was so much fun, our family wanted to do things with her, to visit her or have her visit us. She used to say, "You can make all the plans in the world, but they won't always work out." She didn't have a lot of money to travel to see us either. But, when Maharaji had a festival, she went to see him. It was quite obvious that he was the most important thing in her life.

My Aunt used to live on Cape Cod. Every summer we used to visit my grandmother there and that is when we would see Susie, too. Susie lived in a tiny house set back in the pines near the beach in Dennisport, close to my grandmother's house. Her home was full of photos of Guru Maharaji. I remember one dried flower wreath with Maharaji's photo set inside and also a wedding photo of Marolyn and Maharaji. Susie used to point to Marolyn and say, "Isn't she beautiful?" In fact, with Susie, everything having to do with Maharaji was "beautiful."

There were baragons lying around in the bedrooms, lots of nice premies coming in and out of the house, and all kinds of music for the guru played as well as Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Cat Stevens, etc. We went to the beach with premies, ate with them, hung out with them and sometimes spent the night with my Aunt. Premies were so nice, so gentle and peaceful. I loved being around them, listening to their ideas about life and God. There was one premie in particular I really liked named Kenny.

Susie told me not to go into the bedrooms of her house when a premie was in there with the door shut. I didn't know what they were doing in there, but knew it was secret. Later, I learned that they were meditating, and I was told that I could not watch because the meditation techniques were secret, whatever that meant.

My Aunt told me that this Knowledge that the guru had shown to her was the same knowledge that Jesus had come to teach. She said that when you meditated, you saw the "light" that Jesus talked about in the Bible. She said to me, "You will try drugs and alcohol to get high, but you can never get as high as you can with this knowledge that Maharaji can give you." I was young and she was an older authority figure and family member whom I loved and respected.

My parents hadn't told me very much about their own personal beliefs, but we had been to church off and on. I had also been to bible school in our neighborhood where I heard that Jesus was supposed to be our savior. I thought it was weird to worship a dead person from thousands of years ago. The eastern ideas of the premie "religion" with a live master seemed to make more sense to me.

When my Aunt and Uncle split up, Susie started to live with another premie, the one I liked named Kenny. They later had a baby that Susie named Heather. Maharaji re-named her Gita. Susie said she was honored that Maharaji had re-named her baby.

One summer Susie and Ken took me to hear satsang in Hyannis, another town on the Cape. I remember sitting on the floor in a large room. I listened as people told how wonderful their experience with knowledge was. They all kept saying they couldn't describe it, but that it was the greatest thing ever. It sounded really cool. Other times with Susie, we watched movies of the Guru speaking, the guru giving Holi , etc.

Eventually, I got to the point where I wanted to know what knowledge was very badly. I even wrote letters to Maharaji asking for knowledge. I loved premies and wanted to be one, too. Susie let me listen to tapes of festivals where Maharaji was speaking. I also got to read some copies of "And it is Divine" and I read the book "Who is Guru Maharaji" (still have it). She took me to the houses of her premie friends, where I learned about the three principles of following Maharaji: service, satsang and meditation. My aunt told me about ashrams where people went to go live and follow
Maharaji by giving up their wordly possessions and just experiencing these three priciples daily. I understood that my Aunt wanted to go into an ashram, but couldn't because she had a family.

One year for my birthday, my Aunt sent me a long white dress she had worn when she "went to see" Maharaji. She told me Maharaj had looked at her with love in his eyes when she wore that dress. I think now that this was something she wore while giving darshan.

My Aunt, Ken and Aeron (Susie's son) were always going to programs to see Maharaji. They had little to no money, but Susie always had faith that the guru would some how manage to get them there, by his grace. She told me that Maharaji liked to play "little tricks" on them to get their head straight about what was important. He would test her to see if they could overcome the odds and get to see him. These tests were called his "lila". Somehow, they managed to get to a lot of festivals, even if they didn't have any money. My aunt used to ask us to go to festivals with her, but my parents always said, "No."

My mother realized that I had accepted the premie belief system and she was worried. She stopped allowing me to see my Aunt or to go to her house. I remember being very angry with my mother and my grandmother for not allowing me to be with my Aunt. There was a big family discussion. Gradually, every thing blew over and, in time I was allowed to see my Aunt again. After that, I was confused about the whole Maharaji experience. On one hand, I thought it was cool, because someone I loved was into it. On the other hand, my parents, whom I also loved and respected, were telling me it was not a good thing.

Eventually, I saw things for myself that led me to believe my parents were correct about Divine Light Mission. One example of this was when Maharaji closed the ashrams and became a bit less public. My Aunt told me Maharaji's explanation for this and it didn't make any sense to me. I loved Susie and respected her right to have her own beliefs. After a while, I remember feeling uncomfortable when she would discuss Maharaji with me. By this time, I was a teenager, and more interested in boys than Maharaji anyway.

My Aunt killed herself in October of 1983. She had been ill for quite some time, but I do not know the details of her physical symptoms. My grandmother told me that she called premies near Maharaji to try to speak to him while she was ill, but that he never returned her calls. Finally she was so ill, that she was admitted to a hospital for depression and was supposed to be under suicide watch. She managed to get out of the hospital and commit suicide. My grandmother sued the hospital and won a very small settlement for Susie's children. The price tag put on my Aunt's life at the trial was an extremely low figure.

I was in college when I got the call from my mother that my aunt was dead. I was very sad. She had left these long suicide letters asking family members to please promise to see Maharaji one time because he was so incredible. It was very confusing to me because if this Maharaji had truly made her happy, why did she commit suicide? Why didn't she want to live if she had the knowledge that satisfied all longing, as she had once told me? I didn't even have that, yet I WAS happy. She left a 15 year old son and a three year old daughter. How could she leave them? There will never be any
answers for any of it.

Later, after I got married, I wanted to find out about knowledge again. I had spiritual issues that were still unresolved. It's kind of embarrassing now to realize that I still wanted to know about knowledge despite my Aunt's death. Even though I was interested, I was pretty confused about Maharaji himself. I wanted him to have something real, even though, to my rational mind, everything about him seemed wrong. He seemed to me the total opposite of someone who was spiritually realized.

I told Ken that I was interested in knowledge. He gave me some names to call and was very nice to me about the whole thing. To make a long story, short, I came across some fishy things and dead ends and that was enough for me. This makes me believe that more than wanting knowledge, what I really wanted was to resolve my feelings about my whole experience with Divine Light Mission. When I found ex-premie.org and read about the journeys of the people here, things became a lot clearer to me.

I still love Ken a lot. If premies are happy, that's fine with me. I do find fault with Maharaji for making false statements about being divine that have led to disillusionment for so many people. I feel that I could include my Aunt as one of the disillusioned. I do not believe that Maharaji is responsible for her death, but his trip promised to fulfill her longings, and it certainly didn't.

One reason I am writing this journey is to see if anyone, premie or ex-premie from Cape Cod, Massachusetts or Boulder, Colorado has any fond memories about my Aunt Susie that they might like to share. I would also like to touch base with any premies or ex-premies from that area who knew her. Susie had one friend named Margaret that she was close to and another friend named Rebecca. I would love to hear from either of these girls. Also, there were two young premies, a brother and sister, who lived across the street from Susie named Jack and Julie H. and I'd like to know where they are now.

Barbara Johnson

FIRST CONTACT

Steve and Teresa and Larry and I were roaming the Stanford campus on a warm evening in the late spring of 1971, looking for something to do. Steve pointed to a flyer advertising a thirteen-year-old "Perfect Master" and said, "That sounds interesting." The poorly-reproduced photo of a skinny child wearing a turban was just too weird. The photographer must have caught the kid in mid-blink, giving him a heavy-lidded, trancelike appearance. He was gesturing with three fingers like the Infant of Prague. Larry said two-headed fetal pigs in formaldehyde were interesting, too, and we went to see Death in Venice instead.

Steve went on to become an internationally-recognized expert in the field of Lucid Dreaming. Larry wrote the http protocol which enables us all to communicate via the Internet. Teresa drank kool-aid in Jonestown. Only I dissolved my forehead into the Lotus Feet, but at least I lived to tell the story.

FAST FORWARD

On May 8th, 1972, my twenty-second birthday, I stood on University Avenue in Berkeley, California holding a sign that said "East." I had already turned on and tuned in; now I was dropping out. I made it to New York in four days on seven dollars. "Not bad," I thought, "Might as well continue," and booked a seat on Icelandic Airlines, bound for London.

Please keep in mind that these were the glorious days, post-pill and pre-aids, when sex was okay.

I shared a room (and a bed) in Ladbroke Grove with Geoffrey, a former sailor in the Merchant Marine. We both lived quite comfortably on the insanity pension which he picked up every Thursday at the post office. Geoff's house was built on a "ley line," an invisible channel of power supposedly aligned with the earth's magnetic field. Many of England's ancient roads and abbeys were built atop ley lines. Many of these lines intersect at a town called Glastonbury. It was common knowledge, asserted my mad sailor lover, that a pilgrimage to Glastonbury along a ley line at Midsummer Solstice would definitely change the course of your life. I didn't understand why poor Geoff was so surprised when I left…

Stumbling around in the dark at the base of the Glastonbury Tor on Midsummer Eve, I lost the only thing I really cared about: my journal. I climbed the hill again at dawn the next day, without much hope of finding it, but I saw a man with a walking-stick propped against the old stones of the tower, reading my book. I sat down beside him, and he began to read my words aloud, answering even my unasked questions, explaining to me the nature of God and Life as no one ever had before. He drew a map in my journal and told me to follow it to the ashram and ask for Knowledge. So I went.

I arrived at the ashram at midnight and pounded on the door, demanding Knowledge. The ashram door didn't open, of course, but the neighbors took pity and took me in. I tried again after breakfast, and was told I was "too impure" to receive Knowledge, as I had tripped on acid once in the two preceding weeks. In those days, aspirants were required to be drug-free for a minimum of two weeks before receiving Knowledge. So I sat in the meditation room all day every day, gazing at a picture of Maharaj Ji until I hallucinated, waiting for the time to pass. Sometimes I was given the opportunity to do service. I swept the ashram steps. Then I was sent to sweep the steps at rich people's houses. They gave me money and I gave it to the ashram. I went to satsang every night and saw auras around the mahatmas. Life was simple and good.

On the day I received Knowledge, I wore silk. I carried flowers. I didn't eat or speak, and the birds sang in harmony. When Prakash Bai asked me what I saw, I wasn't there; but I came back from nowhere to whisper, "Diamonds… spreading out all over." When she asked me if I felt the peace, I whispered, "Yes." I was allowed to move into the ashram right away.

On the day the letter arrived from Maharaj Ji, instructing all American premies who were "spaced out" in Europe to return immediately to the States for Guru Puja, I collapsed sobbing over the ironing board. The housemother was jealous that I could shed tears of pure devotion, and told me I was fated to be the next Joan Apter. Before you could say Jai Satchitanand, I was back on Icelandic Airlines, dreaming of darshan. Hitching out of New York with a sign that said "West." Stumbling into the Boulder ashram during a rehearsal of the Krishna Lila. Expecting and getting miracles.

ECSTATIC UNION

Guru Maharaj Ji showed up at the Boulder ashram about twenty minutes after I did. The thirty or so premies all wept, pranammed, and sang "Lord of the Universe" while he beamed at us from an armchair on a platform. Then we followed him out to his car and clustered around it, still singing. He rolled down the window and beamed at us some more. My heart broke open and I knew he was my Lord. I worshipped him with every cell in my body. I gave him my life. I knew the meaning of bliss.

It was on a farm near Montrose where the heavens met the earth that we began to believe that Knowledge could really transform humanity. The darshan line snaked over rolling fields to a pavilion on a hill, and after we kissed his feet, our own feet didn't touch the ground. The mahatmas told us we needed to go to India, to Prem Nagar, to bathe in the Ganges, to pass under the seven arches, to achieve liberation in this lifetime. We signed up. We were part of something big. We threw our clothes on the ground for Maharaj Ji to walk on. He made the sun set and the moon rise. He made rainbows in the sky.

Maharaj Ji went back to Denver after the festival and holed up at 1560 Race. He sent word to the premies not to camp on his front lawn, but a handful of us laughed and did it anyway. During the night, my backpack was stolen. I lost everything I owned, all forty pounds of it: tarot cards, vitamins, travelers' checks, contact lenses, peppermint soap, the works. I started giving satsang about the divine lila that strips us of everything except our devotion, which is all we really need. A brother was so moved by my non-attachment to material things that he slipped me a little black purse and told me to spend whatever I wanted and give him back whatever was left. While sitting at the bus stop, overcome with curiosity, I opened the purse. It contained nine hundred dollars. I spent twenty at the army-navy store and gave him back the rest.

OAKLAND

There were forty of us living in the Oakland premie house, and none of us had jobs. We slept on the concrete floor in the basement while we decorated the rest of the house for Maharaj Ji. We ate food that we salvaged from dumpsters behind supermarkets. We did prachar on the sidewalks. A woman named Rekha who had been Mata Ji's cook came to live with us. It was Rekha who arranged for the mayor of Oakland to present the key to the city to Guru Maharaj Ji.

On the day of the ceremony, Maharaj Ji was invited to our house for lunch, and Rekha and I were cooking. I had managed to extract a very beautiful (and expensive) set of Dansk stoneware from my first husband, but Rekha said we couldn"t use it for Maharaj Ji if it had ever been used before. She said we could keep it and use it for the mahatmas, who were our big brothers, but Maharaj Ji was the Lord. She talked some aspirants who still had money into donating some new dishes.

Everybody from Divine Light Mission kept telling us Maharaj Ji wouldn't come to our house, because there were too many stairs to climb. The house was set atop a hill, way above the street. Rekha and I spread all of her beautiful saris out on those stairs for him to walk on. We knew he would come.

I felt rather than heard him enter the house and caught a glimpse of him seated in that armchair swathed with yards and yards of the most buttery bridal satin money could buy as I ran up and down the staircase with tray after tray of Rekha's otherworldly delights and then suddenly, inexplicably, he was gone and I collapsed on the stairs weeping with a full tray in my lap, and all my premie sisters who had been sitting at his feet were wiping the tears off my cheeks and touching them to their foreheads. Rekha was so sure he would come back he stationed me in the kitchen to guard the food all afternoon. I couldn't let anybody into the kitchen at all, couldn't even hand out a glass of water, had to have everything perfect for his return.

There was a big public program that night; Maharaj Ji was speaking at the Oakland Auditorium. The program was supposed to start at seven; it was quarter-of-seven; all the other premies were already at the hall hours ago; and I was still guarding the kitchen. The housefather screeched up in one of those vehicles that ran on grace and whisked me to the backstage area and handed me a garland. Another sister, blonde, in a white polyester pantsuit, was holding a garland also. I think we were chosen for the job because of our outfits. I was all dolled up like the Virgin Mary in a grade-school play: a bunchy, light-blue, ankle-length cotton skirt and a hand-knitted white shawl.

Maharaj Ji burst through the stage door and hurried up yet another long flight of stairs to his high throne on center stage.The two of us were supposed to follow him up all those steps in front of all those people and place the garlands around his neck. Somehow the other sister managed to do it, but I was so overwhelmed at being so near to his feet that I couldn't raise my arms any higher and simply placed the garland on his feet and then backed all the way down the stairs in that damn skirt without breaking my neck, no small feat especially when you consider how nearsighted I am and that I had been living without corrective lenses, in a lovely impressionist blur, since Guru Puja. I sat on the floor on the stage during Maharaj Ji's satsang. All the flowers on the stage appeared to be opening and blooming like in those old Disney stop-frame nature movies.

The day before I left for India, I received a pair of contact lenses in the mail from my parents. I thanked Maharaj Ji.

INDIA

We landed in Delhi in the dark. I remember looking out the window of the jumbo jet as the ground approached and feeling real terror when I realized that all those lights were fires. This enormous city had no electric grid…

I kissed the asphalt as soon as I got off the plane. Lots of premies were kissing the asphalt. We were taken to Punjabi Bagh ashram and given agya to rest for a whole day. We were given lessons in eating, showering, using the lota. Everything was different. From my spot on the mat I could hear tinny, nasal music coming through a cheap transistor radio and I could see a water buffalo. It took a long time to fall asleep.

Volunteers were selected to go on all-day, chanting-and-singing processions through the streets of New Delhi, proclaiming the glory of Maharaj Ji to the cynical, guru-weary native population. I was given a "service" to perform; it was my job to check the lines of women before they were allowed to pass through the ashram gates and make sure they were wearing bras. Wouldn't want the Indian people to think that Maharaj Ji's followers were a bunch of rag-tag hippies, now, would you? A mahatma coached us in some basic Hindi chants. After he would holler something, we would holler back "Santa himara piara hey!" No idea whatsoever what we were saying. It was hot and dry and dusty, but things soon got worse.

All two thousand of us moved into tents on the Ram Lila grounds for the actual Hans Jayanti celebration. It was just like a refugee camp: nothing but dirt and people. I was given a new "service" to perform: guard duty. I sat on a folding chair at the end of a tent and tried to stay awake all night. Toward dawn someone would bring me chai in a paper cup. It was the best chai Ive ever had. So warm in the hands, so warm in the throat. People walked back and forth from the tents to the latrines all night long, coughing and spitting into the dirt. The air was thick with dust and smoke.

I felt really bad and walked over to the hospital tent one morning. Dr. John told me there was nothing wrong with me but lack of meditation. Later that afternoon two sisters carried me back over to the hospital tent and set me down on a folding chair. I fell off the chair and landed in the dirt. "That one can stay," said Dr. John. And so it came to pass that I made the journey to Prem Nagar on the hospital bus, which was just like the other busses but not quite as crowded.

The tents at Prem Nagar were smaller and there were lots more of them, arranged in rows and columns with handmade street signs: "Bliss Lane," "Devotion Way." A tent city, with a P.A. system. And only a short hike to the Holy Ganges. I had heard stories about how cold the water was, and how fast the current, and how much fun it was to hike upstream, jump in, and let the river carry you back down. I was ready for some fun. So were we all. We spent one glorious afternoon playing in the river. The next morning we were told that playing in the river was forbidden.

We were allowed - encouraged - to get up at dawn and harvest roses, however. Mata Ji's roses. Acres of roses planted in rows. We picked them into baskets and dunped the baskets onto tarps, and the people of Hardwar, who couldn't afford food for their tables, came to the ashram every day to buy flowers for their altars.

One morning a call went out over the loudspeakers for all housemothers to report to the kitchen. The cauliflower was infested with caterpillars. I spent the day standing around an enormous round table in a tent with about twenty other women, picking caterpillars out of the cauliflower and singing bhajans. 2000 people ate cauliflower that night.

One afternoon a call went out over the loudspeakers for blankets. The American premies would be winging back to the States in a few days, but monsoon season was coming, and if we could leave our blankets behind for the Indian premies please thank you very much it would be very much appreciated it would be most blissful yes jai satchitanand premie ji, bhole shri! The quilt I had been sleeping on was a wedding present, made for my parents by my mother's grandmother in 1934. I cried as I folded it one last time and carried it to the donation tent. It was very tattered and dirty. It was still very beautiful.

CHRISTMAS

Whenever I hear people talking about "culture shock," I remember that, two days after leaving Prem Nagar, I was living with my parents in Fort Worth, Texas and selling ashtrays in the gift department of Monnig's Westcliff. People were giving each other a lot of ashtrays that Christmas. I sang Hindi Arti and burned incense and meditated every morning and every night. Kept fresh flowers in front of Maharaj Ji's picture on the altar in my bedroom. My poor father nailed crucifixes to the walls and left bibles on the tables in every room of the house. My poor mother would grab me by the shoulders, her eyes brimming with tears, and tell me, "I'll always love you, even when I don't understand you." Right after Christmas, I moved into the Houston ashram.

115 OAK PLACE

There were no sisters in the Houston ashram until I moved in. Larry was the ashram supervisor, and Booth was acting housemother - because somebody had to do it, he said modestly. He was actually quite good at running a kitchen. All the brothers agreed that I should be the housemother, since I was (nudge, wink, blush) the right gender for the job. Booth taught me how to make overnight yoghurt in a gas oven , and how to make porridge and chai. Cheap, simple, wholesome, delicious food. I fell in love with him right away. His father was a professor in the Rice School of Architecture. I had studied Architecture at Rice. We were obviously meant to be soulmates.

But Joan Leahy came to Houston on a spy mission from IHQ, bearing tidings that would soon transform our sleepy backwater into the eye of the hurricane. In order for the Millennium festival to take place, a lotta changes had to happen. First among them, the splitting up of Booth and Babs. Just as the first wave of worker bees flew in, I flew out, shipped to Denver to work on the magazine. These were heady times. I felt great sadness at leaving Booth, but great joy that Maharaj Ji had found a way to use my talents in his service.

1607 RACE STREET

As I was hauling my suitcase in, another sister was hauling her suitcase out. She stopped in the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb and held both hands with a brother about her height. They leaned forward until their foreheads touched, closed their eyes, and just stood there without moving for about half an hour. I felt bad for them, that they didn't have a private space to express their love and pain. Her hair was long and dark; his was blond and curly. I never knew their names. She could have been a Margaret. I hope they found each other again, somewhere, somewhen. I hope they embraced…

I was assigned floor-space in a third-floor garret room with a rickety wooden fire escape. About a hundred and fifty of us lived at 1607 Race Street, and another hundred and fifty across the street at the more prestigious former Divine Residence at 1560, but we all ate out of the kitchen at 1560. I celebrated my twenty-third birthday in complete obscurity among total strangers, but noted many wonderful moments of synchronicity which I attributed to Guru Maharaj Ji's grace; so I felt very lonely but completely loved at the same time.

The executive ashram was a block away, on High Street. Many jokes were made about the street names, the gist being that only the executives had time to meditate; the rest of us were all too busy racing around. On my first day in the Layout and Paste-up Department, we crawled around on the floor looking for a letter "e." Shri Hans Productions had not yet acquired a typesetting computer, and galleys of set type were precious, irreplaceable. We sat on stools at light tables with non-repro blue grids and waxed type and rubylith and razor blades, and drank coffee, and pasted up And it is Divine and interoffice memo forms and Soul Rush brochures until we were falling-off-our-stools tired, then we slept for a couple of hours and did it again. I actually went for a whole week without sleeping, once, trying to meet a deadline. I began dreaming while awake. Finally I fell asleep on my feet one morning, while trying to sing Arti. Bob Mishler even called me into his office and told me to get some sleep, but he was so pale and thin and hollow-eyed himself that I just laughed and went back to work.

It was hard to survive in the highly-charged political climate of International Headquarters where the rules kept changing all the time. Premies burned out, flipped out, and were shipped out, but there were always more premies anxious to move up the corporate ladder. When I became a Department Head, I schlepped my suitcase across the street to 1560 and was allowed to share a stinky rattletrap Plymouth with another Department Head. I was getting somewhere fast!

1560 RACE STREET

And it is Divine magazine reached its peak of perfection in the months before Millennium, thanks to two passionate Englishmen and my skill as a negotiator. Charles Cameron did the words and David Passes did the pictures. I flew between them like a tennis ball, wheedling and cajoling Charles to cut a word here so that David could have a picture there, begging David to crop or reduce just a bit so that Charles could have an adjective he just couldn't live without. I was the midwife who stood at the bottom of the chute to catch the first magazine and scan it for errors. I was the one who had to holler, "Stop the presses!" if I found any.

David and I has been educating ourselves in Magazine Design by poring over issues of a French magazine called Realites. We had decided to use pregnant cut-off lines in a beautiful shade of burnt-orange to separate groups of paragraphs in a story on the Mideast called "Land of the Eleventh Hour." The lines really perked up those grey expanses of type and harmonized nicely with the photos of Jerusalem's rooftops at sunset. Of course, the success of the design, as always, depended on the accuracy of the paste-up. I measured with calipers and checked with a loupe. I could touch-up individual letters with a rapidograph in those days - if I held my breath.

I'll never know how it happened, but one of those damn orange lines slid down about an eighth of an inch and no longer neatly bisected the white space between blocks of type. The run was complete and I was already back at the Kittredge building before I saw it. There was nothing I could do.

The Art Department of Shri Hans Productions occupied a former jewelry store on the second floor of the building. The jeweler had installed a walk-in metal safe. The first time Guru Maharaj Ji toured the Art Department, he asked about the funny little room, and joked that it was "a safe place for premies." Naturally we turned it into a meditation room after that - not that any of us meditated for more than five minutes at a stretch without falling dead asleep!

When the enormity of the horror of the misplaced pregnant cut-off line aborted my euphoria, I ran into the safe and slammed the door, threw myself on the floor, and rolled around, sobbing and moaning. Tearing out my hair, clawing at my face. You've seen news photos of Palestinian women mourning for their sons, right? That's what I must have looked like. I was in there for three hours abandoning myself to grief. Finally Bea Kuncisky, one of the housemothers from 1560, pushed open the door and, with great patience and compassion, held me, soothed me, and coaxed me upstairs to an office where Finnegan, a bit of a renegade premie but a born healer, administered Bach drops until my sanity was restored.

I still have my DUO photo-ID membership card from this period in my life. I was an unsmiling young woman with a bad haircut in a cheap polyester pantsuit, face dotted with sores, desperate eyes. I remember looking into the camera and thinking, "Maharaj Ji will see this picture. He will realize how miserable I am. He will help me."

A gigantic premie nicknamed "Tiny" was imported from Grand Rapids to get Shri Hans Productions whipped into shape. The first thing he did was call me into his office and ask how the magazine usually happened. "Charles edits it, David designs it, and I lay it out. We don't use work order forms because we don't have trouble communicating." Tiny saw it another way: "Basically, you and David get together once a month and have a baby."

I was shocked and humiliated. David was quick, dark, charming, enthusiastic; a lovely elf. I was a singularly unattractive female. He was kind to me. We collaborated. We didn't physically touch each other at all. I hadn't realized it was bad; I just knew it was working. I offered to disappear; I was told to change. Tiny put a wall of "production assistants" between David and me; we were no longer permitted to speak face-to-face. Tiny drew graphs, established a System. The pain in my left neck and shoulder was so intense that Divine Light Mission actually sent me to a real doctor for ultrasound treatments; but Maharaj Ji said he was pleased with the November issue, and when Bal Bhagwan Ji saw it, he touched it to his forehead.

BACK

The November issue was the Millennium Program. I was in the last group of premies to evacuate Denver: and, as I was in the process of packing, I was told to pack everything, since I wouldn't be returning. Maharaj Ji had decided he didn't want women in positions of authority in his organization. Sherri Weinstein and I were the only two female Department Heads, and we were both fired at the same time.

I moved right back into my old room in the Houston ashram, the day before the Millennium Festival. I slept through all three days of the festival on the floor of the Astrodome. Suddenly, it was over. The zillions of premies went back to wherever they came from and the Houston ashram was out in the boondocks again, poof! - just like it was before the Millennium Madness struck. And I was its assistant housemother, under Paula Hull.

My main responsibility as assistant housemother was doing the laundry for eighteen brothers who were all the same size and hadn't bothered to label their clothing. I was a failure as a laundress. I attempted suicide. It was a half-hearted attempt, but death briefly seemed preferable to the laundry, so I took a handful of muscle relaxers. I slept eighteen hours, and when I woke up, I wrote in my journal,

"One of the things that freaks me out is the contempt for the mind that all premies express. Sometimes it looks like Maharaj Ji has gathered all the best minds of a whole generation and stoppered them up in a bottle where they can neither function nor reproduce. Peace, yes, but at such a price! We are living in a Brave New World with no books, no outside news, no talk except satsang, no friends on the outside, no choice. It's just the sort of thing I've been warned about all my life. He's gathered all the rebels and taught their angry tongues to drink nectar… but what if there is something to rebel against? What if?

"It's really blind faith, you know, no matter how much we talk about 'the experience.' It's really about trusting Maharaj Ji. I don't see how a little doughnut of light that I see when I press on my eyeballs is more fantastic than an acid trip. I don't see how listening to myself breathe while I do the laundry can change the world better than designing a utopia. I still haven't figured out why I'm not following Paolo Soleri or Bucky Fuller instead of the Lord of the Universe. I don't know why I gave up listening to Mozart in exchange for a couple of notes, if I'm lucky, in my right ear. I still love green leaves against blue sky and the love in human eyes and the meshing of minds in human play much too much to understand all this talk about 'going within.'

I know it will end and I love it all the more. I love the humanly beautiful precisely because it is so fragile. I love the moment as it changes. I love the best, as I was taught to love. I hated Tiny because he discovered and stamped out the last pocket of sensitivity in Divine Light Mission. He has no concept of Art. 'Service is Service,' and everyone is replaceable, like cogs in a machine…

There is nothing wrong with doing what you love doing, doing it as perfectly as you can, and doing it for Maharaj Ji in a spirit of loving devotion. It is simply not using common sense to make artists into salesmen and geniuses into janitors. Why are they still persecuting us? Isn't this supposed to be the 'Golden Age?' I don't like the way this 'peace' is shaping up. The sameness is deadly. I have never wanted to be a sheep. My little life may be petty in sight of the universe, as I am often told, but I'd rather have hills and valleys and electric storms in it than all this heartless, mindless, robotlike, cloying, plodding Peace."

THE PUNCH LINE

I remained an active premie for six more years.

EPILOGUE

I was unable to produce art during those years unless directly ordered to do so by a superior. After leaving the Mission, I was unable to produce any art at all. Twenty-eight years down the road, my neck and shoulder still bother me just about every day. On the other hand, I am happily married and have a beautiful daughter. I am surprised that I have such a good life.

After my parents died of Alzheimers' and emphysema, I inherited enough money to afford a therapist. After I revealed the techniques to him, I had chills and fever for about a week; but since then I've been able to paint some mandalas. I seem to have a lot of repressed anger. Surprise, surprise. I meditate for ten minutes, three times a day, using the basic Buddhist techniques of Tong-len and Mai-tri.

Gradually I am learning how to be peaceful. Jack Kornfield has written a book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, which I found to be very helpful. Mostly I try to do as little harm as possible. My husband Ralph tells people he's a Zen Baptist, but I always say I belong to the Church of Science Fiction.

I have so much material locked up inside me, and set down in old journals, that I just might have to write a book someday. If anybody out there wants to hear more stories, let me know. I have some pretty racy ones from my days at COLL!

Finally, to those of you who remember me as "Babs," I want to tell you that the love we felt for each other was real, even though we were characters in a Looney Tune; and I feel it still when I remember you. If I hurt you, I'm sorry. If you hurt me, I forgive you. But I still haven't forgiven Maharaj Ji.

Libby

I received Knowledge when I had just turned 18 in 1978. My background was Catholic, and recently I had lost my beliefs, and also a year before this I had been raped by a stalker. Back then they were not called stalkers. Anyway not a lot of people wanted to know of my crisis.

My sister had been with DLM from the early days, and I regarded it as stupid, and when I went to Sydney to visit her I told her of my pain. She told me GM would fix it. For a short while that worked, but I took all my old Catholic stuff to the ashram with me, and really believed that GM was God, and that I was a chosen follower. As years passed and I lived like this total recluse, depression set in. I was only happy when there was a festival on or the Guru was in town. I will update this story at a later date.

The day GM closed the ashrams and set us all free was the day I left. In my opinion he betrayed me. I remember all the financial dealings that went on. Who got the furniture, etc. It was a bad divorce, and I never forgave him. I was 21 and penniless, and I had to start my life again, which after crying all night with my twin sister who also joined the cult, gave me courage to admit what a fool I had been. I had wasted so much time… good years gone forever.

Eventually I recovered, and have a good job, a degree, a husband and fantastic son. This web site is fantastic to tell these stories of someone who used us. All of my family are out of the cult thank goodness, and before my mother died I made my peace with her. When I was in the ashram I only saw her a few times over those years, that must have hurt her. Plus I refused to go back home and continue my studies. Only good thing to get out of the cult was the food lessons and also a bit of time out from the rat race, but overall I could have been doing something a bit more useful with my time.

Even though I left the cult at 21, it took me another couple of years to leave psychologically and also to move away from friendships. That was painful that I was not allowed to say my real feelings. Of course now I do, and I don't care what the premies think either. When premies say those old sayings I get the creeps, because GM turned out to be greedy, sexist, rascist and never ever told the truth. He surrounded himself with white males who all lived off our money from the poor depressed ashram premies, who were stuck with Catholic guilt syndrome.. if you leave you will experience eternal damnation. It took all my strength to ditch that one.

My younger brother died in an accident in 1984, and I had only re-established contact with him. That painful time really gave me a reality check. I will never go back to living like some doormat for the sake of enlightenment!

Devorah Lisibich

My name is Debbie and I'm an ex-premie. I've just discovered this website, and have read a few testimonies, and what I've been reading has deeply touched me because I had no idea of what has been going on and went on while I was a premie. I was never apart of the inner sanctuary as a lot of you were, and I can understand your pain and what you must have went through on discovering the deception.

I left Maharaji not because I saw through him but because after being a follower for 17 years, I wasn't getting the spiritual fullfillment promised, basically he wasn't delivering. I didn't hold him responsible, I just thought I wasn't devoted enough, so went into praticing my own brand of spirituality, involving many new age philosophies. This way I was only accountable to myself. I didn't need a master or Guru because my new beliefs gave me the power to direct my own life. I started this long before I actually left Maharaji, in fact after the first 2-3years of practicing knowledge, I came to this realization but because my entire social life revolved around premies and programs I stayed and attended all the events, pretending to myself and others that I was having an incredible time with knowledge.

Then one day something inside said, what are you doing, and where are you going. I'd built up a good business, I had an esoteric shop, a small group of clients who believed that I had psychic abillities so came to me for tarot readings and advice on their spiritual directions. I'd hit the same brick wall, I had no special power or abilities, all my advice came out of a book someone else had written. I realized I was lost, and if I had to depend on myself for the rest of my life I was most certainly in trouble. I workshopped my way through seeking out new enlightening techniques, crystal healing, looking for aliens, chanting mantras, that I could never remember so they constantly changed, until one day my heart heard the cry of my soul and I verbalized it. "God, if you really exist, help me".

Not long after that I met a Christian, one of those fanatic followers of Jesus, whom I'd for years concidered narrow minded and ignorant and blinded by their faith. This person spoke words of wisdom I'd never heard in the arena I was in, nothing really profound or outstanding, but the ears of my heart listened. What I was hearing was I don't have to rely on my own or anybody elses understanding because God loves me enough to sustain my mind, body and soul, and he wants me to know him personally. Because the Bible was the only book I knew of where I could learn about God and who Jesus really was, eventhough I was skeptical about who wrote it, I decided to do what this Christian said and ask God to reveal Himself to me through His written word. And praises to Him who delivered what he said He would.

I've been a committed Christian for 5 years now, those years have been both joyful and painful, but without a doubt I can say there is only one God and one Messiah, saviour of all who cry out "God help me". So I don't want to add to the list another hurt and broken journey, because there is life after Maharaji, he has been responsible for many things and he will be bought to account for them, but it isn't our job to pull him down and smear his name, there's no healing in that. God will deal with him in His time not ours. My prayer is for all who are still suffering, that you don't give up on God (the real God) but ask Him like I did, and He will deliver, but don't take my word for it find out for yourself.

God bless you ex-premies, and God bless Maharaji.

Loaf

On the eve of my 40th Birthday I think I should bring my Journey up to date.. as I have changed a lot since I wrote it !

I have been called Loaf by all who know me for the past 5 or 6 years. (its a long story) - so it doesn't really feel like a pseudonym.

I was a bongo, a darshan freak, a backstage gopi, an instructor candidate and briefly x rated…

After having spent 18 years in the Divine Light Missionary position - mostly very happily - when I first started to exit.. I wasn't going to indulge in random M bashing - feelings were too delicate and memories too precious to deny. The KEY for me is not whether I am a victim or not - and whether M is a baddie or LOTU - but to UNDERSTAND exactly what forces are at play here (social, psychological, emotional, economic, spiritual) which could combine to produce something as precious and beautiful as my feelings of devotion… and as ensnaring as a belief system which deeply implants itself into my mind and which was arrogance disguised as humility.

Maharaji isnt the issue for me any more. He is a figure now for journalists and sharper pens than mine to examine.

Prem Rawat was a catalyst for the construction of a huge INNER Maharaji which I built in his image.. and it is the displacement of this INNER usurper to which my attention now turns.

I remember the first time I saw him. Rome, Palazzo del Sporto February 1982. I was 18 - travelled over from London on the coach having received K on Valentines Day. No money - a few premies kindly gave me some bits and bobs to eat - Mina Stanton from Wales - thank you for the yoghurt!

I sat in the hall - 10.00AM the next day. It was softly lit, vast. There were slides of the Perfect Master being shown. People sat and waited for darshan. I took off my shoes and made my way…

I had wanted a master ever since I was 15/16 - I remember seeing Baba Ram Dass interviewed by Bernard Levin on the BBC- and that was it ! I needed a Guru. So I went out to get one - and I had no idea what to expect or where it would lead me. Gradually the carpet got better, then the tunnel …

Rome, Australia, USA, Argentina, Europe, India… In the 17 years since I first clapped eyes on him - I lost count of the events I had attended - well over 150.

I usually had a good time at events - when I was a tiny Premie I was so blown away to be even near the hall where he would be - I remember gazing lovingly at the outside of a few conference centres… so open… so vulnerable.

The hustling for a good seat began to annoy me. The social climbing gradually started to turn me off. The behaviour and the culture of the followers (at the residence it was the worst !) started to stick in my throat long before Maharaji ever did - he was great (certainly seemed clear - clean - blissful - I had been so very grateful to him for reminding me so gently over the years. An illusion it may have been - but I really feel that I have felt things which I may never have come across without the catalyst of a personal focal point. - whether or not I produced this stuff myself or not - it seemed to be his. Aye here is the rub.

Am I sounding a little too devotional? Hold your fire folks. I am not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Premie society may have been seriously manipulative and egocentric - everybody looking after number one - this may very well be a direct reflection of the culture of its leader (who by his fruits ye shall know him) - but I did have had a good time. (I was a lucky one… 1982 - 1999 were yuppie years and having a bit of money and wavy hair and a suit… what bliss !)

I am going to take some credit for this. I asked for a master - and so I got exactly what I asked for. I wanted to have somebody to believe in - and such was provided. Is it a trap? Yes. Did I walk straight into it? Yes. Willingly?. BUT would I do it again?

NO !

I don't need to. This is the great point. To have taken knowledge, to have taken darshan, to have taken the opportunity to create a Lord of the Universe - to have taken humility to heart - to have taken so many experiences and then to run away with them.

BUT has there been damage done ?

YES. Under the bliss.. and the bliss itself is a smoke screen for a creeping seperateness, an aloofness which set me apart from humanity… and as importantly, apart from my own humanity, my fear, my anger, my sorrow…

So in my late 30s I face many lessons which more fortunate souls have learned at 18 !

I have not donated much money over the years. I do not care if the fat one wants to pamper himself with yet another car - if people are kind/humble/stupid enough in this day and age to part with cash after some guilt trip/inspirational stroking by Yoram Weiss or whoever - then so be it - BUT we share the blame AND the credit.

I saw M recently. He really seems to feel that his videos are enough to bring the world to his feet.

I would no more bring a person to him now than shoot them in the foot - not unless they were ready to take the good stuff and run like crazy.

The cult of personality which blinds and deafens and mutes all criticism is nowhere more apparent than in the house of Rawat. He ain't so humble offstage - and nobody can tell me that he is. If somebody want so service their ego - and this includes all of us - then well and good. I really sincerely hope that anybody who wants to get knowledge does so with their eyes open. I am so delighted with some of the journeys read here - AJW's, The late Father Love's - we can benefit from our whole lives - take the orange out of the monkey trap - and then move on.

What does it matter to me if he is a selfish, greedy, flash little man?- Michael Jackson's fans too have had the scales lifted from their eyes - are we nothing more than adolescents with a crush on our star?

It matters because all the gratitude and joy and love which he claims for his own.. is rightfully intended for re-investment with our families, our friends, and our parents.

Our culture is made richer by what we put back into it. And ask yourself what manner of parent would milk his own children for 'gratitude' ?

I firmly believe that gratitude = income for the Rawat family.

The guru as an idol is not such a leap of faith. You like the product, you keep using it, you have the poster on your bedroom wall - and like any self respecting 13 year old girl issue a proclaimation to family and friends - Love me, Love my Lord.

The realisation that we are ALL vulnerable to popular suggestion, mass hysteria, and media manipulation may come as a big shock to the fragile egos of the spiritual elite - but we are not special, not clever, not saved. Nor is Maharaji. We are all in the same boat. My point is is that the forces which supported him in his 'deceit' are not new or unique to ourselves.

Let us invite more and more aspirants to read this site - they can make their own minds up - we don't have to rubbish him - they will chose - and maybe even he will be helped. In time.

Now here is a big (tough) point. I still have those feelings at times, the bliss, the gratitude - and don't want to lose 'em - BUT they are not connected to issues over M's identity - rather they are more to do with my own.

And gratitude is NOT to M. It is just a lovely and sensitive addition to my responses to everyday life. I have come to value and cherish the 'perspective' of Knowledge, in the right context - which is not one of EV - but one which suits me.

Mind you - I am a knowledge lite kid - and am not battling ashram scars - I would have loved to have joined the ashram when I was 18 - but they wouldn't have me (no job) - so I clung, frantically, to the fringes of the Premie world - in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Miami - drinking in every drop of inspiration I could.

It was really as I started to climb the slippery social ladder to the Residence that I deeply began to fall out of love with the world of M.

Yet - I have found treasure - and in all honesty and respect to myself, will not dis-own such a huge part of my life (as in many ways it was glamerous - having a guru, travelling round the world - but I was flying on borrowed money).

My finances came to a head in 93/94 - then the shit hit the fan. I found that I couldn't go Darshan chasing - and had to re-examine that part of my life - then I found that I was questioning other values as well. I had a slow and prolonged breakdown - in the middle of which all I wanted to do was to hide and lick my wounds - I moved back to my Mother's and became a student.

This was an incredibly raw and painful 'growing up'. IF EVER YOU FEEL THE NEED TO HIDE - ON STAGE AT A UNIVERSITY IS NOT THE PLACE TO DO IT.

Anyhow - I survived, and despite the weakening effects of Knowledge on motivation, commitment, self analysis and integrity, have come to find that in education and in Theatre - there is an incredible re-setting of context going on for me - in which the lotus of faith, clarity and devotion can bloom again.

This is a complicated way of saying that all the mass hysteria of Premiedom leaves me stone cold - but that I don't want to deny myself the good stuff - which is what took me there in the first place (along with issues like looking for an identity, a father figure, being an escapist etc etc) which I own and count among the good stuff too. I am responsible.

….. and the down side : I find relationships hard, that my 'relationship' with M has kept me trapped in a teenagers 'pop star' hero worship cycle. My career is in haphazard (may be a good thing artistically- ED) - and with such a huge and practiced temptation to say 'it doesn't matter… its not real etc etc' avoidance techniques abound - If I am upset i still want to dive under my blanket - stick my fingers in my ears and murmer 'there is nothing for me in this world… there is nothing for me in this world…'

In many ways I have been a 30 odd year old lost little boy - lacking much of the psychological armour which enables 'normal' people to forge ahead in a manly, small-animal-shooting fashion.

But what can I do ? (Rhetorical question before you all jump in with advice). Change is gentle and kind (at best).

When I lost my Master I gained the whole of humanity.

Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me to know that we have this safe place - and that we can be supportive and generous with each other - whatever stage of rejection/embracing we are at. Don't let the extremists of either camp get you down.

Post on the Forum or email me. Its always nice to hear from people - and I will reply.

Thanks

Loaf.

Tony Lofredo

I was a cradle Catholic. I was baptized at about five days old and I can remember going to church at a very early age. My father was a career man in the army so as a child I traveled around a lot. I very rarely finished a full year in the same school. This made it very difficult for me to make friends.

When I was seven years old my father was stationed in Japan and my mother, my sister, my brother and I joined him there. The army chaplain (Catholic) there took a liking to me. He made me his first alter boy. I also received my first Communion during this time. Back then, before you could receive Communion, you had to fast from food and water from mid-night. On the day of my first Communion I had a very sore and dry throat. My mother told me that surely it would be ok for me to at least drink water, but I wouldn't do it.

You see, at that time in my life I had a very deep love and devotion for Christ Jesus. My father abused my brother and I while we were growing up, both mentally and physically. He used to call us morons and beat us with a belt. I grew up hating him. When I was fourteen I sneaked out the family car and got it stuck in the mud. I was so afraid of what he would do to me that I ran away from home.

This trend continued and the year I was sixteen I ran away eight times. The last time I stole about $900 in savings bonds that were supposed to be for my college education. I moved into a motel and went on a spending spree. My father called the police and I went to youth hall. When I went to court I was ordered to leave the State of Florida for one year to go live with my Uncle Vinnie and Aunt Suzy in Brooklyn.

My uncle was an electrician and I was to be his apprentice. My Aunt was a very good cook, so I gained a few pounds in the process. After I had lived with them for a few months they got fed up with the company I was keeping and sent me back to my father. Since I was supposed to stay out of the state for one year I was ordered to either return to school or join the military.

In September of 1962 at age seventeen I joined the Air Force. I did not do well in basic training and almost got an unadaptability discharge. For some reason I felt that the reason I was having so much trouble in my life was because I was relying on God to take care of me. I decided that from then on I was going to do it on my own without God.

When I finished basic training I went to Technical School and became an Aircraft Mechanic. After I finished Technical School, I received a thirty-day leave, which I spent at home in Miami. During that leave I got back together with an old girl friend, Linda? In fact we became engaged. My first permanent duty station was Eglin AFB, Florida. Although Eglin is in Florida, it is in the PanHandle and 650 miles away from Miami. Since I had no car I hitchhiked back and forth to Miami on weekends. Linda and I had sex frequently. After this went on for about six months, Linda's father said something to make me angry and I wrote a letter to Linda to break up with her. She wrote me back saying how she had been a fool and that she would never trust another guy again. I felt really bad.

A few months later, I met a local girl, Emelia. We also had sex regularly. I still felt guilty about what had happened with Linda so I married Emelia. She was fifteen and I was eighteen. Nine months later our first son was born. Anthony Paul Loffredo III. As I remember I was very happy. Before Anthony was a year old I was transferred to Kadina AB Okinawa. Because of my low rank and short time in service I was forced to go alone. The first night on Okinawa, I went down town to the bars and went home with a prostitute. I felt very guilty but the more often I did it the easier it became.

While stationed on Okinawa, I went TDY to Korea and to Thailand. We were in Thailand to bomb Viet Nam. Once I watched a reconnaissance film on a napalm bombing we had done. There were people running out of huts with their backs on fire. I wondered how many people I had helped kill that day.

When I returned to the States and rejoined my wife and son nothing was the same. I had built up in my mind how everything would be, living as a civilian. However things were not wonderful. In fact my new job, as a life insurance agent did not pay enough to make ends meet. I ended up getting a second full time job working in a gas station. I was working sixteen hours a day and got burnt out very quickly. I missed the life I had had overseas of working a little and partying a lot. I discussed this situation with a friend who I worked with and he wanted to party too. I left my wife and son; he left his girlfriend and we took off for New Orleans for the Marti Gras. What a jerk I was!

When I returned to Miami, Emelia and Anthony had, out of necessity, moved in with my parents; also our car had been repossessed. I felt remorse for what I had done and begged Emelia to take me back. For some reason she did. My father agreed to help us out only if I re-enlisted in the Air Force. So I did. Emelia and I agreed that I should ask for a duty station far away from our parents so that we would become closer to each other. I was stationed at Williams AFB, Arizona.

A short time after arriving at Williams AFB, I had saved enough money to buy an old car and to rent an apartment. I sent for Emelia and Anthony. We were very happy to see one another, and life seemed good! We had two more children in Arizona, Michael and Nancy. However it wasn't long before I started going out with my friends to the local bars trying to pick up women. Once a friend and I did pick up two women. Unbeknownst to us, our wives had gone out looking for us, and, they found us. What seemed to up set Emelia the most, was the fact that they weren't even pretty. Again Emelia forgave me.

We lived in Arizona for two and a half years and then I was transferred to Hahn AB, Germany. This time I had enough rank and time in service that the Air Force paid for all of us to travel to Germany together. Emelia and I really liked Germany; we did a lot of traveling to see the German towns and castles. We also enjoyed the Restaurants. By this time, I was twenty-four and still wanted to be free. I had read, in men's magazine, about the American deserters in Sweden. This seemed like a great adventure to me. So an Air Force buddy and I took off for Sweden, leaving my wife and kids and his girl friend behind. We got no further than the Danish border. We were arrested and sent back to Hahn AB.

Emelia had had enough. She started dating a guy at the base. I sent her and my kids back to the States. The day they left was one of the unhappiest days of my life. It was then that I finally realized how much I loved them. I started to write Emelia letters trying to get her back but she wanted nothing to do with me. Then one night in a bar while I was talking against the war in Viet Nam and one of the sergeants threatened to hit me over the head with a barstool. Shortly after that incident I forged papers authorizing me to travel to Sweden and I took off again. This time I made it.

This began my life as a hippie. I let my hair grow; I let my beard grow; I got into sex and drugs and rock and roll. I had never been so unhappy in my life. I continued writing to Emelia trying to get her to join me in Sweden. I received no answer to any of my letters. In the meanwhile I had relationship after relationship. They lasted about three months and when they were over, all the pain that I suffered when I lost Emelia and my Kids came back. I lived in Sweden for about five years. During that time, I worked at several jobs and also dealt drugs. There came a time, when I decided that I was going to have the life style that I wanted or go to jail trying. I started to deal speed. My life style did change. I started eating in the best restaurants, going to the best clubs, and because I had money I attracted women.

Well, I got caught with 650 grams of amphetamine and was sentenced to two years in prison. When I entered the prison, I was made to take off all my clothes, take a shower and put on my prison uniform. Every thing I had on the outside was gone. But even then, I knew that there was one thing they couldn't take away because it was inside of me. In the evenings at the prison there were several groups that came in the evenings. One of them was a Christian Group but I was still not trusting in God to take care of me, so I really didn't have much to do with them.

Then one day I saw on the bulletin board: "Divine Light Mission" this kind of caught my eye. It sounded kind of Catholic. I went down to see them and they were telling me about a light they saw inside of them. I really wasn't impressed but there was a girl with them I liked so I kind of went along with it. Her name was Jane. At Jane's persistence I received the initiation. We were locked in our cells at eight o'clock every night, so I practiced the techniques of meditation. And when I focused inside guess who I found there? The Holy Spirit.

When I was released from prison and returned to the States, I continued to practice the meditation. I also went to all of Maharaja Ji's major events. I even went to Rome. Then in 1982 I met Charlyne who is now my wife of sixteen years. I told her about my experiences of Knowledge and Guru Maharaj Ji. At my persistence she received Knowledge. She practiced the meditation for a while but then she started to have bad experiences and quit. Also she heard about all of Maharaj Ji's cars and airplanes. She thought it was wrong to use the Knowledge to make money. Besides ever since she was a teen-ager she had wanted to become Catholic. She said it was ok with her if I continued with Maharaj Ji but she wanted nothing further to do with him.

I went to one more program after that in Ft. Lauderdale; in fact I did a lot of service getting ready. When Maharaj Ji showed up he only seemed interested in the aspirants and was almost rude to the rest of us. This discouraged me because I had done the service in love, thinking he was the Lord.

Then one day my sister-in-law invited me to her daughter's first Communion. It was to be held at St. Louis Catholic Church. We went. It turned out to be a Charismatic church. Scott, the cantor was singing, the Disciples in Motion were dancing. Theresa, a girl in a wheel chair was dancing in her chair with both arms raised praising the Lord. I was really impressed. I remember thinking this is a Catholic Church where I can really come to praise the Lord. We have been going there ever since. At first I was going there and praising Maharaj Ji. Charlyne and I went to a life in the Spirit seminar where the Holy Spirit within us was stirred up. It was then that I realized that the experience of Knowledge was the Holy Spirit and not Maharaj Ji.

We went to Discipleship training. We became youth leaders with the seventh and eighth graders. The best part was when we took them on retreat. Saturday night's and the praise and worship they would really open up. Some of them would start crying. Some of them would rest in the spirit. All of them experienced the Holy Spirit.

Charlyne and I also attended a Marriage covenant weekend where we learned how with Jesus' help we could make our marriage work. We also go out once a month to the streets of Miami to feed and pray over the homeless. I have gone to jails and prayed over inmates. They were so hungry, and open. The tears poured out of their eyes when they accepted Jesus as their Lord and savior.

I am a Lector, which means a read Scripture at Mass. And Charlyne is an Eucharistic Minister, which means that she gives out Communion, not only at church but also to the homebound and hospital bound. I often go with her and do one of the readings. I am also a member of the St. Louis adult choir. Two week ago one of the basses was in the hospital for brain cancer treatment and some of the choir members went there to sing for him. You should have seen his eyes light up. We also did a lot of praying over him and a hospital stay that was supposed to be a month turned into two weeks. So there is life after Maharaj Ji.

Roberto Masera

Hi! The time I was a Prem Rawat follower was a time of doubt; after I decided to leave this kind of spiritual mafia I felt better, again able to take my own life in my own hands for good and for whatever else, so I'm happy to say that I felt like back to life. It can happen to me and you, and each experience brings something, THERE IS NO RECIPE 2 LIVING, so don't stop thinking 4 yourself, because there ain't nobody like you.

Find your own solutions. Ciao, Roberto

Bobby Mandrodt

In the spring of 1971 I read Be Here Now. This book affected me strongly. Ram Dass spoke of a spirituality I strongly relate to. I couldn't put the book down. I read it through within a day. On the basis of what I got out of this book, I decided to stop drinking, smoking and eating meat. Ram Dass stated in Be Here Now that when an individual was 'ready' his guru would show up. Around that time I had gone to see Satchitananda but he didn't do it for me. Who was my guru?

In early Sep I listened to Bob Fass' all night radio show on WBAI, a radio station in New York City. A few folks -- Suzy Bai, John and Ken -- were on speaking about a 13 year old Guru, a 'perfect master', who was coming in New York City in a day or two. Anyone could come and help to prepare for his arrival.

I was interested. I took the telephone number and address they read on the air and hitchhiked into New York the next day. I went to the address that was given, the address of a printer who was printing leaflets about Guru Maharaj Ji. When I arrived, there was a sign on the door saying come back later. I called a number listed on the sign from a phone booth right across the street from the printer. It was Suzy Bai's parents' home in Bayonne, NJ. Someone there told me to wait where I was. He said there should be a couple of folks showing up at any moment. While still on the phone, I saw John and Ken come up to the printshop door.

Received knowledge Sep 10. The ashram was a townhouse on 10th street in New York. People interested in knowledge could crash on the floor on the first floor. Downstairs was the knowledge room and Maharaj Ji's room. In those days, one would ask Maharaj Ji directly for knowledge. I knocked on the door to his room. He opened and asked me what I wanted. I was on my knees. In a trembly voice I asked 'Guru Maharaj Ji, would you please give me knowledge.' He said yes.

Over the next few days, Maharaj Ji would come upstairs and give satsang to the mostly ragtag group of New York folks. A sheet was placed on an easy chair. We all sat around on the floor.

The 10th street ashram only lasted for a week or two as the owner wanted his house back. For awhile, satsang was held in private apartments. I went to satsang at the apartment of a German artist who painted exquisite unique pictures of groups of gnome-like people. Then a place on 6th avenue near 12th or 13th street was acquired. This was on the second and third floor over some stores. Maharaj Ji's residence was on the third floor along with the Divine Light Mission offices.

The talk amongst the premies concerned the upcoming trip to India. We would be guests of Guru Maharaj Ji and would stay in his ashram, Prem Nagar, in Hardwar. Early Nov was the Hans Jayanti festival commemorating the birthday of Maharaj Ji's father Shri Hans. Premies had organized a 747 plane to leave from England.

In late Oct, I flew to England with a bunch of US premies. We were to stay in London for a few days before our plane would leave for India. Some of us were to stay on the floor of an old church somewhere in London. The old wooden floor was very hard. I slept in my sleeping bag and had difficulty sleeping.

In the morning some of us went for a walk. We met a guy stumbling naked through the London streets in the early morning, apparently crazy from taking too much acid. Some of us went to the public baths were you got your own little room with bathtub for a quarter.

Towards evening I got sick. I came down with a fever. There was a big Satsang program to be held in a large hall near big ben. All I wanted to do was to lay down and get some rest. I ventured to communicate to people that I was sick. One of the first people I spoke with was a girl who berated.me, saying that my illness must be due to my karma. After a bit I managed to find someone sympathetic who took me to a London flat where a bunch of premies lived. Charles Cameron was around. He didn't impress me as very compassionate. It might be that I took his bed. I had a high fever.

The next day we boarded the 'jumbo jet' 747 for India. I was still sick. The plane flight was long. I remember flying first the Alps, then the long flat areas and azure waters of the Persian Gulf. We landed in Delhi, then boarded busses for Ram Lila grounds, a large field placed right between Old Delhi and New Delhi. Big striped tents were setup for accomodations. These were right behind the large main stage where satsang would happen. The toilets were concrete gutters that were periodically flushed out with water.

The first day in India we got up about 3 AM to a clanging bell and yells of 'premies of balyogeshwar! We must propagate this knowledge!' Most of us dutifully got up and lined up ready to do our service. Indian premies taught us some Hindi chants. These, sounded from memory, were: Chetto chetto rensensa. Balyogeshwar ey ata. Hindu, Musselman, Sikh, Issai, Satsang mesab aobai.

Immediately across the street from where we were camped was Old Delhi. Our procession plunged right in to the ancient streets in the pre-dawn hours. I was fascinated by the culture. I could have been in the 15th century. I saw many folks sleeping in the alleys and under vendor carts and stalls.

I walked for miles and miles still sick. I felt that I was obliged to. For certain we walked at least 10 miles, probably more. We walked for I think 4 or 5 hours at a fast pace, most of the time yelling the chants we had learned. The picture of me, sick, walking with this group through old India streets is a strange image that stays with me today.

The first day of the premie procession, most of the Western premies went. The second day only about half and the third day just a few. Many Westerners weren't up for the march and there were several remarks and blasts of 'get outta here' and 'fuck you' when the Indian premies woke us and attempted to persuade us to join the procession.

Mark

Meditations on the LAM (Life after Maharaji)

Who can forget that wonderful scene in the "Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy and her gang finally get to meet the "Great Oz ", and find out he's just a glorified snake-oil salesman (with quite an amazing marketing apparatus!). And yet Dorothy, with her true desire to get home, clicks her heels three times, and wakes up from her dream.

When you peek behind that curtain, and see that the great Oz or the great Guru isn't who you had hoped for or believed, and that the mythology as presented is not real, and is for the maintenance of the supposed "guru's" wealth power and control of your life - and not your soul's salvation - and that on some very fundamental level you've had your head up your ass for 20 or 25 years - it's a terrible moment indeed!

The air gets sucked out of your lungs. The "Guru's Boat" turns into the Titanic. The rarely disclosed, but closely held smugness of having "the real deal" in the spiritual world, now becomes a suffocating 10,000 lb. anvil - and you're sinking fast. Shame. Sadness. Disorientation. Neurological Short-Circuits. Confusion. The Whole Deal.

But eventually, you tear up your losing tickets at the God Realization Kentucky Derby, and move on. You were backing the wrong horse! It turns out the horse you should have been backing is Yourself ! I would certainly classify myself a "true believer" type. I was there for the "not a leaf moves without his knowing" period, where the three lesser Rawat brothers were Bhrama, Vishnu, and Shiva, and he was the all- 64 power Bhraman/Avatar. The "I've come this time with full power/I will establish world peace" period. I did service at Shri Hans Humanitarian Services ( Divine Light Mission's medical arm) in the early "70's, was at the Ashram/City of Love & Light in the late '70's, & Malibu & Miami in the 80's and 90's.

When Maharaji said that "Guru Maharaji creates God. Then God gives us form.Then I take a form myself to be with you" (Philadelphia, 1974), I was delighted and ecstatic. Here HE was- on our Earth- not mincing words! Here to save us all! And the thing was- it all seemed so real! The meditation techniques clearly altered consciousness (when I meditated Maharaji and other saints would often show up in visions) There were all these "high Beings" (Mahatma's) from India. The sense of common intention & noble purpose, to bring in the new order, was a heady brew (intention moves electrons, I would learn later) precipitating all sorts of synchronicity, magic, and mini-miracles.

It was a wonderful time full of Love and Light. At this stage 27 years later, the 1st (& 2nd & 3rd) blush has faded and I've seen and heard enough to keep Kenneth Starr hard at work for another 10 years; but I think it is wiser to say that after 20 years, I finally got my Master's degree. Learned and felt as much as I could in that institutional setting, and some years ago moved on.

Which is not to say that I don't see Mr. Rawat, at this juncture at least, as someone who could "come clean" on his past, present,and future. But I don't think that will be the case. Mr. Rawat seems to share a few of Bill Clinton's attributes; besides a well-documented eye for the ladies, a Clintonian penchant for political survival, and presenting himself however best suits his current audience & agenda.

He will not say he is in the Guru Business (i.e., take his $50 MM net worth and run).

He will not say that others offer the same (and more powerful) techniques, invoke similar spiritual lineages, saying they are the "One" or "Perfect One" (I keep remembering that old movie "Spartacus" where everybody gets up to say "I'm Spartacus- no I'm Spartacus- NO! I'm Spartacus!")

He will not say that these meditation techniques have not brought him peace in his own personal life, and admit he is not "Permanently Merged in God - Consciousness" any more than you or I.

He will not discuss the nature of the human desire for happiness or peace without, somehow, turning it into an Infomercial for Rawat, Inc.

Nor will he acknowledge the errors, omissions and damage of his past (the "perfect" Sagittarius!)

I'm not trying to be his apologist- but from his point of view, would you? There you are, with one of the top 100 homes in the world, one of the top 50 personal aircraft in the world, vacation homes on 4 other continents, a wife & 1,000's of women who dream of being your Gopi lover, a great set-up for your kids, people all around the world who will line up to kiss your feet and fill your wallet on invitation- and when you get on stage in front of everybody, this power just comes into you, and you can play the Big Cheese. You mean you expect him to give that up, and just walk away! For what? Truth, honesty, and the love of God? Genuine concern for his followers? Forget it!

In a perfect world perhaps, Mr. Rawat would do a Barbara Walter (or Mike Wallace) interview, release his students, apologize for his 62,000 repetitions equal a truth-"Brave New World" marketing techniques on people all these years. And premie/student/aspirants could emerge from their 1-30 year cryogenic stay on the"holodeck" of Guru Maharaji's Enterprise, and resume their own personal journey into the heart of love. Or any journey they'd like. With their own power.

But if the past tells the future, it looks like we'll have to do it ourselves. So will the last devotee out of the building, please turn off the lights?

Interviewer: So what makes you the Perfect Master?

1973- This voice came to me 3 times and said you are HE. So I accepted.

1983- My father left instructions to do this. He chose me.

1995- I'm a master because I care. It's not like somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, "you're a master".

One of my favorite Maharaji stories of the 80's was the one about the bird and the golden birdcage. Basically, people were like "birds" in a cage where the door out of the cage was always open, and they had an inbuilt nature to exit the cage. But the cage (the WORLD as he was wont to call it) would expand and glorify itself to the point that the bird would come to LOVE THE FEELINGS AND REWARDS associated with life in the cage, to the point that the bird forgot its prime intention to escape. And even if they remembered, they LOST THE WILL TO BE FREE. That's when the Master/Savior/ "Big Bird?" would show up- and save the little birds. It was a great story! I loved it, and repeated it for years. Later I saw other levels to the tale, that basically the little birds were only taken to a bigger cage.

With the promise of personal freedom and God-realization, Mr. Rawat has led aspirants into a full-blown multi-media devotional circus, a golden spiritual cage so entrancing that "lovers of God" get conned into a complex Hindu-style of concepts (so ridiculous when you're free of them) and experiences that endlessly "loop", while they become powerless to exit the CAGE and take flight into their true sovereignty.

Public Domain Meditation Techniques (in my opinion extremely valid- that pull the curtain on 3D, everyday life - exposing ONE aspect of our ongoing relationship with higher/greater consciousness) and Satsang (truth spoken from the Eternal Perspective we all have access to) are PRIVATE LABELLED as a divinely ordained part of RAWAT, INC, and used as cattleprods to enforce a "Yes Master" mentality, which once rooted, takes an enormous effort to shake.

So Big Bird and his little birds keep to the cage. Everytime someone feels the natural (might I say "divinely inspired"?) urge to take flight through the open door, one of the inherent "kill switches" in the master/devotee concept system takes over. A Neptunian devotional pellet is released, and the Premie returns to the happy little bird, devotional/multimedia, production line.

As one who has spent 20 years in the cage, and the last few out, I assure you, the difference is truly night and day. To take your power back, and engage your real self - well, as Robert Frost said, makes "all the difference" .

Q: What makes a Perfect Master?

A: Followers who think he is one.

Bhakti Yoga is a long-recognized Hindu approach, and is certainly mirrored in many Christian paths. Even the psychiatric community acknowledges transference as a naturally occurring phenomenon in the therapeutic process. Therefore, a feeling of gratitude for a priest, person who gives you a lift or tickets to the World Series, a guru, counselor, guy who passes you a joint, whatever, is natural. (In fact, an argument can be made for money being a tangible form of gratitude or thanks.) But what about the person who relieves you of your virginity and then says, "that's it-you're mine. Only sex with me." Or a dealer who introduces you to drugs and then addicts you to him or her by associating/ identifying himself or herself as inseparable from the drug. Or a person, who promises you safe passage, takes your money, but never gets you the boat. I'd call that a grievous misuse of power.

It is well-documented that people in any devotional relationship, be it sex/drugs/rock'n'roll/Jesus/god/messiah/or master, can both get off on it and have the time of their lives. History shows us this can happen, that people can regularly go "out of body" with Hitler/Jimmy Swaggert /Ike Turner / Manson (Marilyn or Charley)/ OJ/ Klu Klux Klan: even if the court of public opinion considers the participants a bunch of lying thieving scumbags. And a very legitimate way of thinking says Guru Maharaji's exist and will continue to exist because people consciously (or subconsciously) don't want to be responsible for their lives.

Call it the "Big Bird" complex if you like. Astrology calls it the Age of Pisces. Anyway, everybody's over 21 and they can do whatever they like. If it's a new religion/cult and doesn't put poison gas pellets on subways, why not just accept it. Earth is a Free Choice zone.

Which gets me back to the old DLM standard about the Alligators, the Blind people and the Sighted. I feel at this stage it is my service to speak my piece, stand up, and be counted. If you can't grant yourself the same power and respect you once or currently give Mr. Rawat, you are sabotaging your own grand and glorious nature! You've been tricked! Out of Yourself! As Johnny Cochran might say, "if you can see it , then you be it!" Or better yet "if part of you feels it's a bunch of shit, just walk away & quit!" In the last 50 years or so, lots of stuff that people put up with( or limited themselves by) is becoming extinct. Things are clearly accelerating, and certainly belief systems (BS's, I call them) especially ones that disempower participants, are becoming blatantly see-through. Information (TV, Internet, and attendant media) is moving too quick to control. Racism, sexism and a host of other isms are clearly endangered. And this includes Gurus/Messiahs, and people like Mr. M. Our entire human species is waking up. Call it the Age of Aquarius.

Young Maharaji was certainly in the right place at the right time. He was bringing a knowledge that was "so perfect that whatever it touched it made perfect." At first he said "You are not receiving me. If you are receiving me, you could have duality in your heart". He was bringing the promise of World Peace, a new chapter in civilization's history. The anti-war crowd and the LSD cowboys rode in. The "seekers" too. He was young, cute, innocent, radiant and clever. Surrounded by older family members and a squadron of saffron-suited holy men, to me it almost seemed like an interplanetary landing party. The real drug-free Haight Ashbury.

This was the LORD- saying he was greater than God, and bringing a knowledge that made you "higher than LSD". It certainly made allegiance and support a small price to pay. And when he promised "eternal life" and to "carry you across the 3 worlds" it seemed too good a deal to pass up- all he wanted was for me to surrender the reins of my life to him. By that point, it made perfect sense. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Wanna get to heaven. Guru Maharaji takes you there. All my sins are taken away." - that's how the song went in those days (& still does, if you read between the lines).

And I was a happy camper. Happy to assist at mankind's Millenium. Happy to get a small role for God's coming out party. As a post-premie ( I like that better than "ex"- its more reflective of myself and the 90% of initiates that no longer are dues paying members of the God Incarnate Society ) who was involved in the system as an ashram member, DUO Director, Premie business employee, DLM Counselor, Residence service person, and householder ( I have a 20 year marriage and college-age children) and was proactive and supportive of this movement for 20 years, internally and externally - I assure you I had everything invested in Maharaji and DLM/Elan Vital being what I hoped they were. So even as Maharaji and his mission to 'save the planet' went into its current 20 year decline ( it now curiously parallels OJ's "ceaseless" search for Nicole's true killer), I looked for the bright bits, rationalized like crazy, meditated constantly, praised the Lord, and passed the ammunition.

As many people who lived at the various 'Divine Residences' (and women M 'hit on') fled in horror, disillusion! ment and disgust, I congratulated myself on my sophisticated understanding of the "Lila's" of the living Lord. As the cooperation and camaraderie of brothers and sisters saving the the planet turned into impersonal "ChurchSpeak" and Darshan and festival seat acquisition strategies , I chuckled and developed my own.

The massive attrition rates and palpable lack of spontaneity in most who remained , I passed off as the natural Darwinism of the "true" spiritual path. It only redoubled my efforts to be a true heart,a true devotee. I can't tell you exactly when I sensed some fundamental ' disturbance in the force' in all this - but I'll guess sometime in the mid to late 80's. It had all clearly become a personality cult. Maharaji, while still hitting on all cylinders at public appearances, seemed to be losing amperage.

Most people sort of made peace with the changes - and a movement became a religion. Some developed hierarchical positions within the Rawat organization. Others became 'festival premies', using the Grateful Dead-style carnival atmosphere to say hello to old friends, sing the old standards, cruise for new relationship partners, and recapture the group magic. It's embarrassing to relate in retrospect, but I embarked on a personal attempt to invigorate and revitalize what was fast becoming another religious "brick in the wall".

Obviously, the problem was at the top. Maharaji just had to take off his Clark Kent costume and be the LORD again. We had all heard about Rama acting all laid back for 14 years, and then activating and kicking Ravanna's butt. All it would take were a few awake and loyal devotees to wake him up. Then everything would be all right. Polyanna City. So I spent the next 6-8 years ( at times along with a few like-minded premies) playing agent provocateur, attempting to hold the mirror up to Maharaji in a series of personal and group initiatives. Activate as the World Savior! Rama, please awake!

Finally some years back, I stopped looking at this all through rose-coloured glasses, saw things as they were, not what I hoped, realized what was was not what I needed, and moved on. (Not that it hasn't become a viable Bhakti cult.) When I did I went through a total emotional /mental death and resurrection. I had to root canal my CORE BELIEF that Maharaji was my conduit to the Absolute. And while on one level it all happened in an instant, on another level it was like Captain Pickard disengaging himself from the Borg. Millions of big and little beliefs and pockets of fear had to be faced. I had to learn to learn again, and discriminate and be open. And not lose the forest of God, for the antics of a little Napoleon tree.

And most importantly, I had to meet myself without an interpreter. And regain belief in that conversation with God.

POSTSCRIPT-1: I had the privilege last year of being initiated in Kriya Yoga from Shibendu Lahiri. He is the great grandson of Lahiri Mahasay, who received these ancient and timeless techniques (supposedly) from Babaji. I recount this, as as some of Shibendu's insights will be revealing to the reader. Kriya Yoga is a complete system of Self Realization techniques.

The 4 knowledge techniques most readers received are included in Kriya. Some of the variations in the Light and Word techniques in the 70's and 80's are due to the fact that there are multiple Word Music and Nectar techniques in the Kriya system. Many premies don't have a strong experience of meditation. This may be because we received a lightweight, fast-food version of Kriya. Secondly, with Kriya there was no aspirant/surrender/brainwashing trip.

Shibendu humbly explained that Kriya was a SELF Realization process. He was a catalyst but not a part of the final equation. HE EXPRESSLY WARNED THAT ANY MEDITATION TEACHER ELEVATING THEIR IMPORTANCE ABOVE THE PROCESS WAS PROBABLY A PHONY. Also, he indicated that in the process of "going inside", it was common to have visions of Jesus, Krishna, deities or even him. He indicated that this was sort of a "detox" of consciousness and also an attempt of the personality to maintain itself in the spiritual practice. Not that it was necessarily bad. Just part of the awakening process. "Sort of like watching a movie," he said, "let it go."

As my early visions of Maharaji were "an article of faith" for me, and kept me around him for probably an extra 15 years, it was remarkable to hear this discussed so matter of factly. (The Neural Surfer webside also has some amazing articles on this as well.) Finally, he was really a teacher! There was explanation, understanding, and a context for each of the techniques.

For example, there are two Nectar techniques. The one Maharaji teaches is the second in the Kriya system. The first is sort of like a Hatha Yoga for the tongue, improving its flexibility. Its purpose is to stimulate the pineal and pituitary gland centers, activate the internal consciousness and generate a sense of well being, etc., etc. There was an intelligence in the presentation. It was straight forward. This is your body. It is your connection to super-consciousness. It can be activated in this and that way. Proceed at your own speed. With love and reverence for your own true self. Avoid any and all substitutes.

POSTSCRIPT-2: These ancient techniques given to Lahiri have evolved into a wide range of teachings over the generations. One mutant strain of this was the 'Satguru' Phenomenon. Many of the Sikh, Eckankar, Rhadosomai, and other kindred teachers use this BELIEF SYSTEM ,as well as Mr. Rawat and his brother. It's mind boggling to see how uniform the 'BS's' are. Devotees excitedly line up to get the 'Darshan gaze' of the supreme Eck at yearly Anaheim convention center programs. Ecks meditate on light and music, while Eck musicians play devotional songs to Harold Klemp, Supreme Eck. He proudly discusses his spiritual lineage and how he is bringing his truth to the West for the first time and how as Mahanta he is closer to God that anyone. Any of this sound familiar? That is just one.

Then there is the Vietnamese woman, who gives the techniques and dances in front of her disciples after her discourses. They glorify her as the Perfect One, the incarnation to end suffering. Money comes from a 63-unit restaurant chain. And don't forget Kirpal Singh and his MLS (Multi-Level Spiritual) downline of nephews, sons, and followers. All playing Perfect Master, and spreading the techniques.

And finally, Bal Bagwanji (Sat Pal), Maharaji's brother who is alive and kicking as the 'true successor' to Shri Maharaji (successor to Saraupanand, who in MLS, was 4 levels down from Lahiri Mahashay.) Read his home page. It is the same mythology we were fed by Maharaji, except in Sat Pal's mythology, he, as eldest son, was asked to carry on. How's that for historical revisionism? Or wishful thinking ? Who's telling the truth? Who's the real deal? Or is it just two sons fighting for their share of the lucrative family business. Call it spiritual McDonaldism or Spiritual multi-level, but these techniques have become a way to make a living and play King of the Hill.

Question: What makes a Perfect Master?

Answer: Followers.

A final note: The LA Times on a recent Sunday did an article on Deepak Chopra called Nirvana, Inc. He's India's 90's 'happening' import, like Rawat was the 70's. Chopra makes a ton of money, disseminates a lot of the traditional Eastern information on meditation, conscious living, and health. He and his wife often go to meditate together for weekends at one of the centers he operates. He sees that he'll do his thing for 5 more years, and then retire. He acknowledges that there's a lot of attention on him right now, but figures it'll pass when he's out of the limelight for a few years. Sounds like somebody got it right. Spread the message. Empower, not overpower people. Look to disappear, not remain as an attention-addicted 800-lb. Gorilla blocking people's path. Practice what you preach! Know anybody that could learn from that guy?

As I have emerged from my cocoon the last few years, a few books have served to awaken, inspire or enliven me. I recommend them (for different reasons).

Starseed, the 3rd Millenium - Ken Carey

The 12th Planet - Zecariah Sitkin

The Great Turning - Rennie Davis

Conversations with God, Books 1 & 3 - Neal Walsch

The Pleiadian Agenda - Barbara Hand Clow

Ultimate Journey - Robert Monroe

The Pleiadian Workbook - Amorah Quin

POSTSCRIPT-3: I wanted to add an individual understanding I've come to, which has been helpful for me as I have left the "pond" of Guru Maharaji's World, and returned back to an awakening to greater awareness that remains my core desire. Merging, swimming, becoming the "ocean".

There is in each of us a Higher Self (or Soul or inner Being). It is the part of us that we"thirst" for. The time period that we are participating in, is one where individuals will demand and obtain personal awakening to their own Self or higher Self. This was actually what we are designed to have.Standard Operating Level of consciousness. Religions and Gurus are waiting rooms (though I agree they CAN be enjoyable and entertaining, they are the MENU, not the MEAL). They are actually one of the Plagues of the Kali Yuga!

In order to grow/integrate this aspect of oneself, two things are necessary. One - the genuine Desire or intention for it to happen, & Two - Personal Soverignty. As it is US individually who experience our SELF directly at this greater and more inclusive level, there cannot be an EMOTIONAL BODY commitment to an external MASTER.

Its true-to get the next level you "cannot serve two masters". This is why Bhakti Cults are considered "consciousness 101". They definitely give you an introductory taste/experience of superconsciousness, but YOU REMAIN INCOMPLETE, dependant. I assure you that when you experience your Higher Self, you will see that in truth there can no longer be "Saviors" of the type portrayed by Master Rawat or Others. And the genuine level of experience and joy, (without the dog collar of devotion), is what you came here for. To love your Self and experience the divinity you have ascribed to Maharaji, (reclaiming your soul), is the step through fear towards the TRUE LIFE that you came here for.

Information and awareness on the HIGHER SELF is available in media, and leaking into disciplines like Medicine,Science and Psychology, as well as through the media (Oprah) and the old New Age bookstore.

This Higher (Christ) Self awareness, along with increased awareness of how our intention & thought affect matter (and therefore that WE truly are responsible for our own lives) will be the "religion" of the coming time - the church of the Sovereign Individual.

While Maharaji and the techniques are not IT, YOU certainly are. I urge YOU to continue on and demand from the universe whatever it was that you were looking to experience before knowledge and this belief system took hold of you. And finally, have hope.

This will all be in the rear view mirror before you know it.

THERE IS A GREATER LOVE
THAT YOU ARE PART OF.
GO FOR IT !

M Moore

How did I end up here? I feel like I'm waking up from a long nap that started 30 years ago and can't believe so much time has gone by…

I was 18 and in my first year of college when I heard about a young Indian prince to whom a lot of people gave a lot of material things. That was my introduction; my college roommates had heard a mahatma speak at the student union. They took me to the ashram to check it out. I had a few doubts, but within a few meetings I was definitely in. I finished my second quarter and moved into the ashram, abandoning a college scholarship and the chance to get an education, for which I had been preparing most of my life.

The main hook for me was that I wanted an explanation for what life was all about. Why did God not give us an operating manual? I had rejected the Christian religion, seeing the hypocrisy. The "perfect master is always here giving the true knowledge" somehow made sense to me. I saw the "blissed out" premies. Their eyes were dilated and they weren't on drugs. I thought this is how it must been when Jesus was here.

I lived in the ashrams for about 7 years, till the phase-out started. Moved out in 74 for a year and a half to do propagation with a friend in W. Va. Lived at the City of Love and Light for about 6 months, then went to Detroit to be the housemother. Fell in love with a woman there, and we lived together for 6 months.

Then Atlantic City happened. I left the relationship and moved to a large East Coast city. I ended up moving back into the ashram. Was brought down to Miami in '79 and lived in the Broadripple for about 4 months. I was working opening the national donations to DLM and depositing them in the bank, and treasurer for the people living there. Was very surprised by the different culture there. How people would work all day, go to satsang at night, and then go do more service for a few hours before bed! It was also very "cliquey". Seemed like junior high to me.

I was struggling with hypoglycemia around then a bit. Too much vegetarian life without nutrition knowledge. The long hours didn't help.

They moved me to Gainesville where I was the assistant community coordinator for a year and a half. I really enjoyed this. The only problem was that I was very attracted to one of the premie guys. Every now and then we would sneak out and have sex, drink wine and smoke cigarettes, returning to the ashram about 3 a.m.! Then I would wake up the next day, feeling very guilty, and not speak to him for days.

I remember asking a visiting instructor, "Do you think I should get a diaphragm so I don't get pregnant on these episodes?" Her reply was, "I think you should decide if you want to live in the ashram or not". Anyway, an instructor came through and asked my boyfriend, me, the community coordinator and his girlfriend the housemother to move out. They did. I still was trying to make it work so he relented and said I could live in the "pre-ashram" and if I still wanted to, I could move back in 6 months.

Well, it was pretty tough. I was soon fired from my job because I had invited my boss to a program and she was alarmed by the pranaming. I had no car and now the satsang programs were on the other side of town. I remember crying and crying.

I lasted about a month. My boyfriend and I moved to Atlanta. I ended up moving to another East Coast city 2 months later to take a job and live in another pre-ashram. Boy was I stubborn!

We were definitely indoctrinated with the concept that living the ashram life was very important. It affected many decisions in my life, like even having children (I have no children - would I have? I'll never know).

After moving to the city, I started focusing on career. I also started a 3-year relationship with a premie who was in the ashram. So no more ashram for me!

The company I worked for did very well and I got to do a lot of different things. I guess my innate smarts and people skills helped me succeed even though I hadn't gotten the college education. I was not in a career though that I would have chosen had I gone to college, for sure.

I had a nine-year relationship during this time with a "non-premie" who introduced me to the lesbian community. I made lots of friends, played competitive softball, soccer, rode motorcycles, did downhill skiing, and cross-country skiing. I had a pretty nice life with her, and we had a very good love relationship. We finally broke up because I got more involved with "service" and traveling to international programs and she felt abandoned.

I then got involved with another woman for five years. I learned to white-water kayak and did a lot bicycling. During this time I went part-time at work and got my pilot's license, with instrument rating, thinking I would change careers and become a pilot. But after really considering it, I decided not to and went back to my company full-time.

During these years, the 80's and 90's, I still thought of Maharaji as my lord. I idolized him and loved him. I was a gopi, I guess. I was living a pretty normal life on the outside, even to my significant other, but with other devoted premies I could get pretty gushy and I would always cry at devotional programs and videos. I always meditated every morning and had good experiences with it. Mostly a good centered clear feeling, and a kind of universal love.

By about 1998, I was feeling like I wanted to do some real good. It wasn't enough to just send money so M could fly around and lecture. I started thinking about maybe volunteering at a soup kitchen or something. I admired my mother for her 30 years in AA and all the people she counseled over the years.

Anyway, I quit near the end of '98 to take a break and maybe start my own company. About a month later I received a call from M's personal secretary. She had received a card I'd sent offering my services and said she could use some help. My dreams had been answered! So I got my stuff together and headed out to California within a few days.

Once there, she put me to work opening and organizing M's mail. This was before the website. It was pretty heady feeling the devotion flowing off these letters. The way the mail worked at that time was that M's personal accountant looked through the mail for any checks and to see if any cards or letters were from people M knew personally. Those went to the residence. If any seemed really in trouble, they were sent to an instructor to contact the premie with counseling (or whatever they could provide). Others offering their services were put into folders by trade for future reference. Those unknown to M saying thank you, etc. were just put in boxes and shredded from time to time.

A few months later, the website where M can get mail went up. A very lovely person who was a very good friend to me while I was there takes the emails and organizes them for M by date. She also flags anything from a personal acquaintance or someone who is in trouble. It does bother me to think of someone with her potential, education, and personal skills is spending so much time doing such a tedious task, day in and day out. But she feels honored to be doing it, I'm sure.

My next project was to research and procure getting good fast internet access with good security (firewalls) for the residence and the office where his accountant, a few others, and I worked.

Around this time my girlfriend came out to CA and broke up with me. (This was a 5-year relationship where we owned a home together.) She said that she had contacted well-respected cult specialists and Maharaji was definitely a cult leader. I had been supporting her while she finished her MBA for the last 2 years. She was worried that I was not returning and had gotten a job to support herself. I continued to support the household expenses another 2 months then moved out permanently. Another relationship ruined because of putting Maharaji #1 in my life!

Then I got a very interesting project, to work on getting his Stemme motor-glider delivered from Germany. This is a $250,000 toy. I was there to receive it on the Baltimore docks and had it trucked to St. Louis where he received 2 days of flight training on it. He flew it around the pattern twice, once with Hans and once with Amar. He never flew it again. About a year later he decided he didn't think it was safe enough and I ended up putting it up for sale.

Apparently he thought I did a good job with this so I was then offered another job, to manage his transportation, starting July 1999, which included all his aircraft (a G-IV, two helicopters, the Stemme) and his yacht. What I mainly did to accomplish this was be a glorified purchasing agent, haggling with manufacturers like Gulfstream and Bell to get upgrades that he wanted. Also to hire and deal with co-pilots and set up M's flight training at Flight Safety.

About a month after accepting this new position, his personal secretary of 15 years was diagnosed with a very serious illness and went on leave for an indefinite period of time. We didn't even know if she would live. But she did recover and was back on the job, albeit more carefully for her health, about a year later. So I had no one to train me in the duties that only she had done for so many years. Sink or swim, baby!

For the first six months I worked full-time with no pay. This was my choice. Once I had been offered an official position sanctioned by M, I was offered a salary of $45,000 a year. At that time this was the highest salary paid to any of his personal staff, shared only by his accountant and secretary, but only one-third what I was making previously in the business world. I understand now that finally his extremely dedicated mechanic is making a good salary, thank god. Most of the instructors made about $30,000 and a lot of the residence staff made about $20,000, if that.

During those six months I was floating on a cloud. As he brought me in closer, it was a true honeymoon. We had lots of phone conversations and emails, he really buttered me up. But it was always business for the most part.

During the next few months I worked a lot with his premie dispatcher, who worked tirelessly through all time zones to support his travels. She recently was relieved of these duties to let a "professional" do it instead. She was extremely good at this and he did a very bad job of firing her. But this happened after I left so I'll leave it to her to describe when she leaves, hopefully some day.

Sometime about 4 months into the job, he was displeased with something I had been in charge of. It was some proposal I had sent for upgrades to the G-IV. Communication with him was very difficult sometimes; he wasn't that great at telling you what he wanted. It was very unprofessional; I remember thinking that being a mind-reader should have been listed as a job requirement. There were a number of times I would send a proposal that he had asked for and then I would hear nothing back for a long period of time.

Then I had a good success with a Bell Helicopter upgrade. I was back in his good graces. Shortly thereafter, he brought me in closer to be involved on-site with the completion of the G-V. The G-V is a $40 million aircraft which he wanted, since it is bigger and has longer range than the G-IV.

With these aircraft, you buy it mostly finished, then have it outfitted with your particular avionics and furnishings. This completion process usually takes about 7 months. It's very like building a house or a yacht.

So I went to the factory to be on-site for the duration. This was February 2000. Once he and his premie attorney, who specializes now in the aviation field, and the mechanic left, I was left alone there to work with the customer rep for Gulfstream. My job was to be the liaison between PR and Gulfstream.

The second day there, this rep took me aside and said that Mr. Rawat had a lot of people that didn't like him. Apparently he had done a search on the internet to see who this high-rolling guy was and must have found EPO. I gave him the party line that he had a lot more people that liked him than didn't.

So I would go on-site to the factory every day, observe, report, and interface. PR would call me or email me. Early on he was very demanding about the price of a certain enhancement. It seemed very unreasonable what he wanted, but I tried to accomplish it. It undermined his credibility to be so penny-pinching, I thought.

A month later there was a major donor conference in California and I asked him if I could go. He indicated through his new 21-year-old secretary, "But who'll keep an eye on the G-V?" I was just going to go on the weekend and they didn't work on it over the weekend at that point anyway. He didn't seem to get that I might be lonely out there and want to come back to see some friends and maybe have a little inspiration.

About a month after that the G-IV was sold and the mechanic came and joined me there. At least I had a friend and someone knowledgeable to help out. I didn't really have experience in building airplanes, just my pilot experience and business background. So the customer rep was not that nice to me; he only respected people with knowledge in his area of expertise it seemed. It made the job very difficult.

At one point before the mechanic got there, the rep got fed up with me and called the attorney. He wanted me banned from the factory. And this attorney then called me and indicated that it must be my fault. This really hurt. Here I'm doing my very best and he doesn't even think that it might be the other guy's fault. He didn't support me when I needed it. Keep in mind that I was a very successful business person. But I was in over my head.

I learned much later, after I left, from a friend, that from that point on PR would say negative things about me, including incompetent, behind my back to others close in.

I sent a note to PR explaining that I didn't think that I was the right person to be here, that the rep and I weren't getting along. I proposed that the co-pilot (a non-premie) come and help out. A couple months later he agreed.

About 3 months in, say April-May 2000, PR came with entourage to do some inspections, his mistress included. I didn't know at the time that she was the mistress. She was taking a lot of pictures. I learned this a month or two later from a friend who does security. I thought back to some of my instructions received from the secretary that the passenger manifests were never to be viewed by M's family. Now I know why. He tries to keep it from his wife as much as possible, but I'm sure she knows. Once I became part of the aviation staff she was kind of cold to me; now I know why.

I arranged for a house for him to stay in while he took his 3-week flight training. Had it set up with computer access, furniture, etc. etc. And a second house for his cook and valets. He had 2 at the time. One stayed with him and the other with the cook. When reviewing the satellite bill for Maharaji's house, I noticed a pay-per-view for a pornographic movie, something about Snow Bunnies. Well, a lot of guys watch porn, right?

During the flight training he would also visit the airplane everyday while it was being painted. I would be there, and his mechanic. One day the three of us were in the airplane and PR started talking to the mechanic about what various sexual positions he (the mechanic) was going to be using with his girlfriend upon his return to California. This offended me especially because I was friends with her, and I felt it was rude to be talking about this, especially in front of me. I left the airplane and waited outside. I have later learned that this actually qualifies as sexual harassment since he was my employer.

During the flight training we had a trailer set up outside the building so he could have his smoke breaks, not have to use the public restroom, and eat his lunch in private.

While the airplane was almost finished, PR was in town with nothing to do, staying on his yacht. He would fly the helicopter over to the factory every day to see how things were going. He had me look into seaplane training, but he didn't end up doing it.

Once the airplane was finished, (August 2000) he flew off to Spain and then Amaroo. He talked to me on the phone the day before he left. That was the last he ever spoke to me. I was left to pack up the office at Gulfstream, close down the houses, and continue arranging for a co-pilot for the G-V. He had decided that the one that went through training with him wasn't going to be good enough.

At this point I was quite exhausted, emotionally and physically. Over the last month, I had begun to feel like my stock with the boss was sinking. And when your whole world revolves around one person, and all the people you know and work with in your daily life have the same focus, this is a very queasy feeling.

I decided to go to Amaroo to try to reconnect with him as my master, instead of a very demanding boss. It worked a little bit. He was surprised to see me in the darshan line. Then I returned to California.

Once there, I continued to try to do my job but it just wasn't the same. He wasn't giving me any projects. He wasn't really answering any proposals. His secretary had come back on board and she was treating me like I was an idiot. We had been good friends, I thought, during her illness. This hurt too.

I learned 3 months after returning to California that he had told her to fire me right after the airplane was finished. She didn't tell me for 3 months because she was afraid that I would just quit and leave her to do all the work I was doing.

So during this time I was starting to feel like resigning. I had a mini-nervous breakdown about a week or two after returning to California and I remember being nauseous and looking at people in a park and thinking, will I ever have a regular life again, friends, time to socialize, time to do things I like to do? So about 3 months after returning to California I was out to lunch with M's accountant and expressed this feeling. He said that made his job much easier. He had been planning to tell me over lunch that M didn't think I was "the right person for the job". No other job was offered. I was asked to find my replacement.

Like an idiot, I agreed. I even helped with the Christmas shopping for PR. Every year he gives gifts to business associates to ingratiate them to him, mostly aviation contacts. No gifts for the premies, though. His co-pilot makes over $100,000 a year. This is low by industry standards, but a lot of money compared to what he pays his premies.

Several months later when none of the people I suggested were being really considered, I decided to just let the secretary choose who she wanted herself. That's what she was doing anyway. I was getting extremely depressed and needed to get out. So I gave notice, tidied up all my projects, let them witness my computer being wiped clean (this is required), and left.

Some anger and hurt started coming up. It felt like the biggest relationship of my life had just broken up. That Maharaji didn't even have the professional courtesy to sit down with me himself and tell me thanks for my hard work, but it isn't working out. That would have been fine. But no, he had someone else do it. He just gave me the silent treatment. I have learned since that he does this with everyone. When he's done with you, that's it.

So, in March 2001, I moved back to the same town where my family lives, to spend some time with my mother before she got too old. After all, I had been gone for 30 years. We had stayed in good contact after the first few ashram years, but it's not the same as living in the same town. I licked my wounds and was grateful for her support.

About 2 weeks after I arrived home, my brother was unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal cancer. I spent the next 9 months helping out with his care, trying to find an alternative treatment that might save his life. Sadly, he died at the age of 45 leaving a wife of 5 years and a 1-year-old daughter. It was pretty devastating for me.

I was still "practicing Knowledge" at this time. I had gone to a big event a few months after leaving CA and had a good time. I was trying to make a go of it as a rank-and-file premie again. But my devotion was hard to drum up again.

I started massage school in March 2002, a 7-month program. I didn't really want to go back into the corporate business scene.

About a month after my brother died, I started seeing a spiritual counselor/medium. I thought she could help me with my grieving process, and maybe help me get in contact with my brother (I believed in psychics at that time). I started seeing her once a week. She didn't charge too much and lived humbly. She was very personable and unassuming. A very nice change from what I was used to in the student/teacher relationship.

She taught me another meditation that would help me develop my sensitivity so I could communicate with my spirit guides. After a few months I found that I liked that meditation better than the Knowledge meditation, so I stopped practicing Knowledge. Around this time I stopped being a devotee of Maharaji.

She was saying that he was spiritual when I first got involved, but that he had gradually become much less spiritual. That when he spoke at programs that his guides spoke through him. I bought this explanation. Gradually she had more and more influence over me. I found I was consulting her about every decision.

I learned later that this happens frequently when a person leaves a cult. They want someone else to give them the answers, to help them form their worldview. Well, I adopted her worldview and abandoned Maharaji's. But at least, having been once burned, I would say, "This is what I believe now", but not being really sure.

Two years into studying with her, April 2004, an ex-premie friend came to stay with me for a couple months in between jobs. We had great discussions. Then I read "Cults in Our Midst", by Margaret Singer, Ph.D. The light bulbs went off.

I saw that I had been duped as had many others. I began to understand how coercive persuasion works. How perfectly intelligent people can be sucked into psychotherapy cults, Bible cults, Eastern religious cults, etc. How the meditation was really a way of making me more suggestible to the cult leader's directives and suggestions. How you get more flies with honey. How smooth Maharaji is (now I see right through it, but I was fooled for a long time.)

I immediately stopped practicing the medium's meditation. Did I really want to be letting "spirit guides" in to influence me? Maybe I should rethink that. :) And I stopped going to the medium's classes.

I've decided to go back to college and take up where I left off at the age of 18. I have been practicing as a massage therapist for a year and a half and had just decided that I would go to acupuncture school. But I think now that I'd like to study psychology, history, and figure out what I really want to do when I grow up, like I should have when I was 18. If I really want to learn traditional chinese medicine, then I will.

I want to form my own worldview. I've begun some counseling with a cult exit counselor. I really recommend this for anyone leaving a cult. I am beginning to see how I was affected on many levels by my blind devotion. The elitist mentality, the easy answers. Like they say, If it sounds too good to be true…it probably is.

The moral to this very long story is that life is surely a process, isn't it? I don't want to lose my optimism or faith in people. I just want to be more discriminating going forward.

I don't really want to hurt Maharaji or his family. For the most part he and his staff have been kind and considerate to me personally. My concern is for the thousands of people still in the cult, many of them my long-term friends.

I just want to provide another piece of the puzzle so people can make up their minds for themselves if this is who they want to dedicate themselves to.

Still on the path,

True Blue

Sean O Grady

I met MJ in 1972. I practised as well as I could. Lived in ashrams, premie houses, etc. for five years in South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Denver. I left in 1977 when I couldn't rationalize the bullshit anymore. Stayed drunk for a month. I didn't really let go until this forum started. This site helped me to start to exorcise some of the demons. I've run into quite a few active premies and aspirants over the years, in the US and overseas. I got some pretty violent responses from followers of the Prince of Peace when I showed unbelief or disinterest. Overall it was a waste of life and only served to slow my own maturity. These days I am finally feeling free and some genuine peace. M is very destructive. I often wonder where I would be if I had just not done it.

Saoirse, Freedom

Peter

Here is the story of how I entered and ultimately exited Divine Light Mission (DLM).

I entered DLM in the fall of 1975, at age 18. I had just moved from N.J. to Florida about a year earlier. I was in my first month of college at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I remember reading a pamphlet about campus activities that listed a Divine Light meditation club.

I remember thinking at that time that I would like to learn more about meditation. So when I saw a poster on campus with Guru Maharaj Ji's (GMJ) picture and learned that the meditation club was hosting the event, I decided to attend. I was surprised to learn that GMJ would not be there to offer instruction in meditation. So I attended a "club" meeting on campus a week or so later. At that meeting I still didn't learn meditation but learned that there was a process of preparation in order to receive Knowledge (receive grace and initiation).

Although I was disappointed, the people seemed to share a love for each other. There appeared to be a real communal spirit. So I continued attending meetings. About that time, I remember hearing stories about GMJ's vast worldly possessions and this caused serious doubts for me.

The answers I received went something to the effect: "Theses are all gifts from his grateful devotees, and GMJ certainly can't refuse them. Besides, GMJ is not attached to these things. All this is Maya (temporal reality, as opposed to ultimate reality) and GMJ is just showing us how to enjoy worldly things with out attachment." I was raised catholic, and that certainly wasn't what Jesus did. It seemed to me that if GMJ were the Perfect Master (one who reveals God) in a direct lineage that includes Jesus, GMJ would live the same way. Still, I continued to attend meetings.

Looking back, I think there are three primary reasons that DLM was attractive to me, in spite of my doubts about GMJ: First, I was only 18, in a new environment, and far away from my closest friends. Second, I was -- from about 16 on -- intensely curious about philosophical issues. Third, I realize now that I must have been quite naïve.

Over the next year and a half of being an aspirant, I became very serious in my commitment. I attended satsang (spiritual discourse) every night and listened to tapes of GMJ often. I read as much as I could of his satsangs. I absorbed all of the doctrine and internalized it completely. In 1977 I received Knowledge. We were in the midst of the heavy devotional period. The indoctrination and demands of devotion to GMJ took its toll on me. I dropped out of college and worked part-time jobs in order to earn money to attend festivals. I gave 10% of my earnings and virtually all of my spare time. I moved back home to live with my parents. I broke off all of my friendships from my good high school friends in NJ. I stopped watching TV, reading magazines, listening to the radio. I dropped my former activities like long-distance running. It's funny that no one ever specifically forbade me to engage in these activities and relationships. Avoiding all outside influences was simply a logical consequence of DML doctrine regarding the mind and the outside world. It is this doctrine that makes DLM such an exploitive and destructive cult.

In DLM doctrine, the mind was cast as a separate, insidious entity with its own will, very much like Satan in the Judeo/Christian tradition. Except with this doctrine, the horrible reality was that our mind was with us all the time. We were under constant attack.

When I received Knowledge, following my Knowledge session I received a letter from GMJ that said, now that you've received knowledge your mind is "really going to freak out." That is, the mind could be expected to wage war on me in order to prevent me from realizing Knowledge (attaining bliss and knowledge of God and self, via meditation). Furthermore, the outside world was under the influence of the mind, "in their minds." Premies that stopped practicing were "in their minds" and "spaced out." This meant something much more than lazy; it meant lured by falsehood into neglecting the sole purpose of life. So avoiding all of my former friends and interests was simply part of that battle with the mind and part of that total commitment to realizing Knowledge.

I developed severe headaches when I meditated. When I began meditating the headache would start; when I stopped meditating the headache would stop. When I entered satsang the headache would start; when I left satsang the headache would stop. The battle was on. As a premie, my doubts about GMJ still plagued me. And what was the source of those doubts? You guessed it, the mind.

So instead of realizing peace and enlightenment as I was originally promised, I was daily learning a type of mental illness, with exploitation as the ultimate goal. In effect, everything in DLM (satsang, service, mediation and so on) was absolutely true and good and everything in the outside world (family, friends, relationships and so on) was absolutely false and evil.

Not surprisingly, I was not a happy premie. However, I did make a few very good friends among the premies in my community, friends that I loved and remember to this day.

In 1978 the devotional period in DLM was quite intense. I decided to dedicate my life by living in an ashram in Gainesville, about two hours from Tampa. I told my parents about it in a Taco Bell-type restaurant. My father asked me about the obedience part. Would I be allowed to see my family? I answered that it would depend on the decision of the person running the ashram; I might not.

My father, a man in his 50s, just began to cry -- right there in public. He pleaded with me not to do it. However, this did not dissuade me in any way. All of this was Maya, and thus was only a test of my faith and commitment. The time for me to move to the ashram approached.

One day not long after, I was in my bedroom meditating when my father knocked on the door. He said that someone was here to see me. With that Ted Patrick and several other "deprogrammers" confronted me. I knew immediately what was happening: I was being persecuted and the former premies on the team were just spaced-out premies and in their minds. They were going to try to take ultimate Truth away from me. Nothing could be worse than that, nothing! I was not going to let that happen to me. I fought, shouted and threatened, but they would not let me go. They restrained me and kept me in my room.

On the second or third day of my "deprogramming" I developed a plan. I would pretend to be agreeing with them and act like I was being deprogrammed. Then when I could get my chance, I would escape. Actually my plan worked quite well at first. The next day I was not restrained. In a few days, I flew out for a rehab with the deprogrammers to get out of my DLM environment and to complete the deprogramming process.

Mind you, at this point I was still 99% indoctrinated. I only pretended otherwise. But when I was on my rehab two turning points occurred. The first was an experience I had in the shower. I recall that the quality of my thoughts, my inner dialogue changed suddenly. I remember thinking "This is the old me returning. All this time, there has been some other identity grafted over mine." That realization made a deep impression on me.

The second turning point occurred when I went to the beach with my deprogrammers. At one point they went to get something and left me completely alone. I thought, "Here is the chance I've been waiting for! All I have to do is to go to the gas station about 50 yards away, ask to use the phone, look up DLM in the phone book and call for someone to come and rescue me. Neither the deprogrammers, nor my parents will ever hear from me again." I knew that my entire life was being decided right there. Yet for some reason, I didn't have the will to carry it out. Something deep within me knew the truth.

In spite of the deprogrammers' best efforts, breaking through the indoctrination was very slow for me. Perhaps the most helpful thing was just their friendship, especially that of Teddy Patrick, Ted's son. I think that sustained me. I also recall a reunion I had with my friends from N.J. All my friends turned out for a get together and I clearly remember thinking that "This love is real."

The next 10 years were quite difficult ones for me. When I was deprogrammed, I was 21. My best friends from NJ were finishing college and starting careers. I, on the other hand, had little post-secondary education, no friends, and no experience in dating past high school, no career direction, no philosophy of life, and no sense of personal identity. Moreover, my cognitive functioning was severely damaged. At times, my mind still operated as the evil mind of DLM doctrine. My inner dialogue seemed foreign and tormented me. My severe headaches persisted. I was alone, and terribly confused, and no one understood what was wrong with me, or how to help me. I guess I felt a little like Humpty Dumpty. "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty back together again."

At this time, probably the most helpful experience was reading Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert Jay Lifton, which finally broke through the indoctrination. Another big help was meeting with some ex-cult members in my area, which gave me someone I could talk to. I also read I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. In this novel a teenage girl suffers from Schizophrenia. She is sent to an institution. She learns something there that helps her to go on: "the little maybe." That is, the little maybe that someday I might get better. Someday I might be made whole and live like other people. At this time, that's what I was hanging on to: the little maybe.

The years past and slowly I rebuilt my life. Decision-making was difficult and life itself was very difficult, but I did make progress. Eventually, my cognitive functioning healed and I understood that my mind was not something separate or evil. I found a career path studying mathematics. Religion was something I avoided. Still the DLM experience in some way affected my outlook so that religion still held much interest to me, even if I distanced myself from it.

Once I saw a commercial on television for a local charity. A pro football player was standing beside a crippled child. The football player said, "Sometimes in life, it's not what you achieve, but what you overcome." It's been over 20 years now since my exit from DLM. Today I am blessed with a wife and children. I earned a masters degree in mathematical statistics. I have a challenging and rewarding career as a statistical analyst.

But best of all, I found the Truth I was seeking. I found it in the Lord. Today I'd say that DLM focused my interest on religion and taught me what NOT to do in matters of personal faith. This time, my mind is awake and engaged. Music, art, sports, movies, science, history, world events, family and friends, both past and present, are all in harmony with my spiritual outlook. This time my religious faith consists of loving the Lord, my God, with all my heart, with all my MIND, with all my strength, and in loving my neighbor as myself.

My heart goes out to all premies, both past and present. In my experience, most are sincere seekers of truth. If I may be of help to any ex-premie struggling to free themselves, write to me and I will listen (read). I will help in any way I can.

RT

The Bored of The Yuga verse. - by R.T.

Read this to the tune of the 1970's TV theme song, The Beverly Hillbillies, which goes like this:

"Come and listen to the story of a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
Then one day Jed was shootin' at some food
And up thru the ground came a-bubblin' crude.
Oil, that is,
Black Gold,
Texas Tea."

…And now, my Bored of The Yuga verse:
Realize my mad song of Loud Balyogeshwar
Who marketed devotees to travel wide and far
He shouted "Take this Knowledge - I reveal peace for free"
(And Buy the Way: A Lifetime's Devotion give to me.)
Royal, that is.
Krishna Gold.
Rawat Glee.
Well, I heard about the Mission in my 2nd year in school
My peers' said "Truth is free - man, don't be a fool!"
They said "Kali Yuga is the age you want to flee"
So I vacuumed floor of Ashram to be a new Premie.
Toil, that is.
All Weak.
SWAT-sang.
This Knowledge was the cure for any karmic scar -
Dogma? Amnesia? Remember Who You Are!
Mahatmas said: Want Bliss? Prostrate to Shri Sant Ji.
My forehead's on the rug, I'm allergic to Bhakti!
Yoga, that is.
Baragons.
Wave candle.
I wanted more, in '74, I heard of 'IHQ'
DLM building where they live for Satguru
I volunteer for charity, but World Peace tempted me:
to hell with UNICEF, moved West at age 20.
Denver, that is.
Fool's gold,
Premie Ji.
6 years on, the Mecca is: Miami. Get a tan.
Go swimming after Serve-Us? Holy Name, Atman!
W drove all night from Denver, drinking black coffee,
Maharaji's playing Holi? You need optics to see.
Babies, we is.
In tents, cold.
Kissimmee.
Serve-Us! On his Aircraft! To His hanger towed…
Secret business DECA, where Premies spoke in code
"41" meant Darshan, "9" was Beans tonite -
Undernourished Slaves. It's Plane this isn't right.
Broke, that is.
Poverty.
Sleep in Car.
Common senses shook me, God, please help me mend.
This Mission drilled me softly. Brainwashed by my 'friends.'
I went back to my home state to get B.A. degree,
My salary shot up 10 grand; peace with family.
Confidence, that is.
OK to think.
Blind, see?
Then, Programs were recorded, which Visions sent to town.
Selected Premies shlepped the tapes and tubes around
Hours spent in community rooms at Library -
All the driving effort; few Aspirants you see.
Cult, it is.
Same old faces.
Ask Them Why?
What did I experience? Emotions (He can speak)
Occasionally remembered heart bliss (when I seek)
The 4 techniques? I feel good, but it's inside of me -
Meditation Teacher: with Personality.
One of 30, that is.
Hindu trip:
Buys a car.
What will I miss most? Travel and the fun
of Being - on the Ocean of Illusion (in the Sun)
'Going Inside' at big convention halls is hard -
So are the monthly payments of my Visa credit card.
16% that is.
3 grand.
Still I pay.
Lots of tapes and photos, see how the Fat Guru!
Discourse for Dedication, Repetition made it True….
But after 24 years, It's clear this Guru's boat -
is circling his Residence. That "Ocean"… is a Moat!
Chit-wreaked, that is.
Now Kabir this:
No Arti.
PS: On May 2 I found this 'Ex - Premies' web page…
Learned of other Journeys, and your tips were sage.
Sent copies to Maharaji, Visions and Elan -
On May 12, India exploded Non-Peace Bombs!
Peace - where is?
Satsang Told.
Divine might?

Michael A Read

Hello, my name is Michael Read. This is the story of how I came to be a premie, what I believed as a premie, why I left 'premiedom' and what I believe in and know today. If any body else gains something from reading this, that's all well and good. I, however, realize that I must write this journal. In doing so I hope to further my healing and aid in my true spiritual growth.

I first discovered the ex-premie.org site just before Christmas of this year (1999) and devoured large chunks of it. I have read all of the journeys. Each one seemed to release more and more memories of my days in the premie houses of NW Portland, OR. I especially enjoyed Father Love's journey. He was right. We did eat it all up and shit it all out night and day. And, we loved it.

For me, that was about twenty seven years ago. After being discharged from the US Navy in '71 I lived for a short while with my dying father in Houston before moving up to Oregon. My foster family lived in Mt. Angel. They put me up for a while and my foster dad got me job in the turkey plant in Salem.

By late spring or early summer of '72 I established myself in a large house in Silverton, a small community about 30 minutes south of Portland. I rented the rooms out to college kids, mostly. We were all attending the now defunct Mt. Angel community college, partying, doping and generally enjoying life to the hilt. I was surviving on GI bill money and the odd jobs on the local farms and in the food processing plants in the area.

Our house was commonly known as 'the crazy house' on Water Street. We had bad plumbing, no carpets, no plaster or paint on most of the walls and there was always dog shit on the floor in the main living area. But that was all okay. There was always plenty of food in the house and we all had our own rooms. This 'lifestyle' continued for me until spring of '73.

One day some of the gang came back from a trip up to Portland talking about this kid from India who was some kind of guru or teacher or something. I couldn't really make too much sense out of what they were talking about. It was obvious that some of them were really taken up with it and others weren't too sure. Then something kind of weird happened.

I have had on a number of occasions in my life those odd strange moments when I know that somehow someway my life was about to shift and change. I had one then when one of my friends showed me a poster with maharaji's picture on it. As I read the words on the poster everything seemed to stop. The lord was here. Truth would be revealed. There was an answer and an end to pain and loneliness. The universe shrank down and became the picture on the posture. The very next evening I went with my friends up to Portland and experienced satsang for the first time.

Because I had expressed such an interest in going, one or two of my friends opened up a lot more about what was going on. They had been going to satsang for a couple of days and seemed to know a lot about who maharaji was and what the whole thing was about. As a result of that and the feelings I experienced from reading the poster, I had already started to form some strong feelings about maharaji and knowledge. Those feelings almost caused me to stand up and walk out of that first satsang.

Those first premies I saw were clean cut, sappy, happy young people who all filed out onto the stage with hands folded in prayer. There was also a large picture of maharaji there. Then one of them introduced a mahatma somebody or other. When he walked out on the stage all of the premies bowed down to him! That's when I almost walked out. I had this instant concept form that they should only be bowing down to the guru. After all wasn't HE supposed to be god almighty? Who the hell was this other guy? Then, the mahatma started to speak about the guru and the knowledge.

The room filled with light. I was hooked. It was beautiful. It was all I had ever wanted. It was TRUTH! The encounters I had with the guru over the next few months were even more powerful! At that time I did not have any idea of what knowledge was. I just knew that I had to have it.

I started driving up to Portland at least twice a week to attend satsang. I wanted to receive knowledge, but on the few times there was a mahatma in town I wasn't ready to ask for it. There were some small doubts in my mind, it seems. Some of my friends did receive. Of course they wouldn't tell me what IT was.

Some things I remember about my quest for knowledge:
Going to California to try to get knowledge:
Being in a reviewing line to see maharaji as he came out of the airport. Seeing him and experiencing him then as a great power.
Going to his residence in hopes of seeing and talking to him. Being told by the people there that I couldn't stay. They wouldn't even let me sit on the curb to wait around. Slowly walking away from that place with my head down. Hearing a voice inside of my head that said, 'Don't stop now, he's here.' Looking up to see a limousine with darkened windows going by. Noticing that the people at the residence were all happy and waving to see maharaji coming then disappointed and confused as he drove on by. Sitting at a bus stop hurt and confused while some hippy brother offered to let me come live on some commune. I declined of course.

Back in Oregon getting a student loan to go to India:
Ostensibly to study Eastern religions. Got a loan for $1,000 from US Bank. I was told that it was a miracle because the loan officer I was working with never but absolutely never gave out student loans!

Going to India:
All of the premies had already gone. I had to stop over in NY City for a few days to pickup my passport and visa. Still did not have knowledge yet. Stayed in the YMCA. Walking down the street in NYC, going to eat; two drunk guys drinking out of paper bags giving me dirty looks as I walked by, twenty feet past them a huge beam of light went through my head like a lighthouse beacon, being able to see in 360 degrees on all tangents, seeing the look of astonishment on the guys' faces as I turned invisible, went and had Chinese food.

Finally, the long flight to India. Nice Flight but I won't go into that here.

Then India! Afternoon layover in Bombay. I had met up with an American businessman on the flight. We decided to take a walk around Bombay after lunch. When we met in the lobby he was all dressed in red and I in blue. As we walked around the city we were amazed by what we saw. The beggars were out in force and the extreme poverty was almost overwhelming! At least to our Western eyes. There was a small boy walking with his father. When he looked up and saw me, he started pointing and shouting, "Krishna! Krishna!" The combination of wearing all blue and having long dark hair must have really sparked the child's imagination!

Flew on to New Delhi late that afternoon and spent the night in a cheap hotel. The next morning I went looking for the Prem Nagar Ashram. I did not have a clue that it wasn't in or around New Delhi! I hired a taxi to take me to maharaji. We drove around half the day and finally found an ashram. It was one of maharaji's ashrams. Maharaji's oldest brother Bal Baghwan Ji (always made me think of Bubba Grungy!) had apparently arrived just before I did.

As I got out of the taxi this is what occurred: some spacey premie told me that I had to take off my shoes to enter the ashram grounds, the coarse gravel hurt my feet, I looked down the driveway, babaghwanji was giving darshan, light was coming out of his head, I noticed that the gravel was not hurting my feet anymore and looked down, I was levitating, babaghwanji whipped his head around to look at me, I lowered myself back to the ground but the gravel no longer pained, then I walked on into the ashram grounds. After exploring the ashram for a few minutes went back outside and sat down in a side entryway. I could feel babaghwanji and then see (through the solid wall) him walking towards me from around the corner. Before he came any closer I sent him a mental message that I did not come all the way from the other side of the planet to see him, but to see maharaji and to leave me alone. He stopped and turned around and left.

Later that day I boarded the train with a bunch of other premies and finally went on to prem nagar. Upon our arrival there the word was that m and the holy family would be doing a procession along the canal behind the ashram. We were told to line up along the canal if we wanted to gaze upon them.

After the procession maharaji went on the top deck of the ashram and waved his arms around for a few minutes. I saw him go up there and start to wave then everything began to turn into a swirl of light with a little dark dot in the middle. Then maharaji left the ashram and never came back during the entire two weeks I was there! From my experiences in California and this experience I began to develop a feeling that he couldn't face me! Funny isn't it? Most premies would feel that they were unworthy! Not me! Ha!

I got into a knowledge session within a couple of days. The session was extremely anticlimactic, to say the least! Nothing and I mean nothing happened. No Light. No Music. No Word. No Nectar. Nada, zip, nothing happened! There was one other person getting k and he was blown away!

Anyway.. I hung around the ashram doing service and talking to people and working up the courage to shit! You can only appreciate that if you were there! The toilets were all open air and outdoors. They were made out of rammed earth or terra cotta clay or something! The REEK! The FLIES! The unholy SHITTINESS!

One other event happened for me at prem nagar. One afternoon as I was walking around the ashram grounds I happened upon an Indian brother who had setup a little outdoor barbershop. Two English brothers had just had shaves. They were quietly complaining to each other how bad a barber the Indian guy was and how bad their shaves were. But, I had already sat down on the barber stool and asked for a shave. I heard a zinging noise and looked down. The barber's hands were so callused from a lifetime of manual labor that he was able to strop (sharpen) the razor on the palm of his hand! I just smiled, leaned my head back, and went into samhadi! The barber finished my shave and would not take any money from me. The two English brothers were standing there somewhat perplexed. When I asked them if they spoke Hindi they said yes. It seems that the barber was refusing to take money from a mahatma, me! Too rich!

I left prem nagar and India and went home to Silverton, OR. Then I moved up to Portland - got kicked out of the Crazy House for being an insufferable premie! Ha! Moved up to Portland and into a premie house. Met and married my wife (a premie) a year later. We rented our own house and a few years later we bought a house I Aurora, OR just south of Portland. After having two children and being a householder for about five years, I just grew out of needing to be a premie.

I remember my oldest daughter at about the age of three or four wouldn't kiss the feet. She just looked at m as if he were a piece of crap!

Now it is the year 2000. My wife left me with two children over twelve years ago. The kids are grown and gone. I'm a grandpa. I work on computers as an Oracle Database consultant. My mother died last year.

What else? I still meditate but not on k. I still see light coming out of myself and other people. I never used the k technique of poking the fingers in the eyeballs. I didn't need to.

Today I do not believe in god, jesus, buddha, religion, gurus, heaven, hell, the end of the world, evolution, the big bang, preachers, teachers, or much of anything that purports to be THE ANSWER.

I like love and kindness.
I like rock and roll.
I love women!
I believe in consciousness but only in a provisional way.
I do not want anything.

I do not care if I live or die! But since I am alive, supposedly, I try to enjoy all aspects of life.

MY ADVICE - TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT ;-)

Laugh when you're happy
Cry when you're sad
Eat when you're hungry
Be good when you're being bad (if you know what I mean!)
Even though there is no god - god is everywhere!

Life is a mystery - sweet and sublime!

Well that's about it for now!
Peace and Love to us all!

Reedo

I found this site and saw a question about a premie band Jiva. I'm the drummer and I never had trouble with GMJ. Jiva was outside of the comunity and GMJ liked it. When an ashram premie asked him "what if she wanted to stay out late or smoke a joint? and he said " go live with the Jiva's. She did and house vote let her. Thats when I moved out.

As for Jiva, Lanning is in NY working and is on the road with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Hilton is a producer in Woodland Hills, Strauss is producer/director/writer in LA. Pearsal is working with Tom Hiltons nephew, Tyler Hilton, Haulter is playing Keyboards in Burbank and I'm playing more percussion than drums in Winon, Mn.

So I write this because the GMJ trip was what you made it. We used it as a reason to do road trips. Others gave it the same BS as any religion. Cult? Come on, they're all cults.

Reedo

Robin Reily

I received knowledge on Sept 21, 1973 in New Haven Ct. My mother had been a premie about a year at this point. She got involved with Maharaji through a close friend named Gerhard who was a language major at Columbia University. He had translated and published the Heart and Diamond Sutras from the original Sanscrit a few years before and was friends with an inlaw of my cousins. He would come up to the Catskill Mountains,(about 20 miles north of Woodstock) to escape the City and visit. He had travelled extensively, living in a monastary in Taiwan, treking the Himalayas, etc. He was and still is a very spiritual soul. Before returning to Germany in the early 80's to raise a family, he snuck into China to do missionary work for Guru Maharaji. It was probably his spirituality that I was drawn to, more than Maharaji's, who of course was not exactly accessible to a 16 year old street kid from upstate New York. There were probably 10 or 12 of us in our little group who were seeking enlightenment in various ways, and Gerhard really felt he had found his true path through Maharaji. My mother attended satsang at various ashrams in the New York area with Gerhard and received knowledge sometime in 72.

I was searching very sincerely for truth at this point in my life, having had my dance with drugs, sex and rock and roll and needed something to anchor my life. I started attending satsang at an ashram in Poughkeepsie and made a trip to NYC to hear various speakers, and met Gurucharnanand who had been a disciple of Maharaji's father. He was travelling thru NY and New England visiting the ashrams and I fell in with some gypsie premies who were following him from town to town (kind of like Dead Heads). After a few weeks I ended up in New Haven and received knowledge near Yale University. Gurucharnanand told a story that always stuck with me, and if true may shed light on my next incarnation. He said that if a Mahatma leads you into devotion to a false Perfect Master, then the Mahatma will reincarnate as a snake, and his followers will come back as ants and devour him. I guess that's not so bad as long as you are not the Mahatma!

I was going to hitchike back to the Catskills after receiving knowledge,and was looking forward to the adventure, but the Mission was trying to maintain a clean cut image at this point and recomended that I have my mother come and pick me up, which she did. I attended the big shindig at the Astrodome that November and did not see any flying saucers, but I did get to debate with every vocal religious group I can think of who were trying to lure us away from Maharaji to follow their own particular path. There were Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Hari Krishnas, Mormons, Jehovas Witnesses, and probably a lot more groups who were very concerned with our souls. Being young and full of energy, I ended up spending alot of time at the loading docks unloading trucks, and supposedly being on the lookout for some guy who had made a death threat and was supposed to be coming in a Ford station wagon to test Maharaji's immortality in a concrete way.

It was here that I started to see the political hierarchy, and ran into the "holier than thou" elite of the movement. Up until then most of my contact had been with the sincere recently converted who were really looking for truth. I started to see the same egotistical,power hungry trips that had led me away from western religion in the first place. I flew back home and gradually lost touch with the organized parts of the scene. I used the techniques for a few years, and watched from the sidelines as the whole thing seemed to unravel around Maharaji. I met a lot of great people during that time who were only looking for the truth, whatever that may be, and who seem to be awakening once again, wondering where this world is heading. We still ask the same questions but are content to have the universe reveal it's secrets on it's own without needing an "Official Certified Spokesperson" to give us the Knowledge.

Paul Richards

Jai Sat Chit Anand all ex-premies! I received K in 1975 after many soul searching years. I was literally blissed out with M and could hardly contain my desire for darshan and realisation (which he did promise). However after many years of practice Satsang, Service and Meditation I began to realise that M is not all he professed to be. I found myself unable to discuss ANY topic with non-premies apart from propagation of K. I began to feel that I was in fact in a state not of bliss, but ISOLATION.

Ms tapes and videos and promises of visits to England became my whole lifes purpose and raison d'etre. I had previously experimented with LSD and other psychedelic substances and felt that even though I was practising fervently, the Light, Music, and Nectar were not a GIFT from Maharaji but an inherent part of ME! A favourite mantra of Ms was "Let us make potentiality actuality" so I did.

My Realisation came as a bolt out of the blue. I had potential already. Satsang only served to shut me up! We are ALL sentient beings on this planet searching for our own Inner KNOWLEDGE. No one person has the right to say that they are the sole purveyors of this Knowledge which is what M and his well-heeled Mahatmas were intending to do. I am now out of DLM or EV or whatever other name this crazy cult comes up with and I am blissfully happy in the knowledge that M will have no more of my devotional service.

To all premies and ex-premies I leave this message - "Know Thyself". Dont be fooled by leaders who proclaim the divine right to know you better than you know yourselves. You are unique,wonderful FREE souls.

David Wimert

Dear ex-Premie Ji's: Greetings from the People's Republic of Boulder which is nestled between the Rockies and Reality.

Give Me the Reins to Your Life and I will Give you Peace remember that?

I was trolling the Net and found this page. I was surprised, to say the least. For me, knowledge was everything. Knowledge was my whole life. As I remember, it was after he got rid of the ashrams and the community centers was when things started falling apart. What happened? Nobody seems to know. For some reason, I thought that in the end….Guru's grace would make it all work. But it didn't and life moves on. I really felt a strong connection to gmj and I'd had some very incredible experiences around him. But a guru has got to do more than just talk the talk…Everyone must be responsible for their actions and gmj must account for his own. But he sure has done well for himself considering that he didn't finish the ninth grade!

I've met many people in Boulder who had gurus and are ex-whatevers. They all seem to experience a lack of closure on that period of their lives. I know that I do. For many years, I've made a point of staying away from premies.

Meditation- I still do it. Is it better than someone else's technique(s). Probably not but it works. Any kind of meditation is better than no meditation. I used to have some awesome meditations and loved to see that light. Now I just sit. I don't care if I see anything.

Rick Wienir

I started following Maharaji in 1976. I'd heard about him since 1971, but somehow a bell went off in 1976 and all of a sudden I thought he was the Lord of the Universe.

I flew to Los Angeles from Hawaii (where I was living) to go to a satsang program. Something happened; either I had a spiritual experience or I was hypnotised. Some woman named Joan Apter was speaking and I was in another world. I was convinced the whole thing was real, flew back to Hawaii, found the premies and "dedicated" myself.

Two premies there claimed they could show me the techniques and knowledge, and that it wasn't necessary to get knowledge through a mahatma. I went for it, but then after having trouble meditating, I flew back to Los Angeles, found Maharaji's home in Malibu, and talked to a woman mahatma (the first and only one at the time). She was very disapproving and told me I could suffer for 25 incarnations just for having received the techniques from someone who was unauthorised.

Now I was afraid and paranoid on top of anything else that was happening. I flew back to Hawaii, determined to get the "real" knowledge. I had to go to satsang every night for two years and nearly beg to receive knowledge. It was my whole life.

I'd often feel extraordinary listening to satsang; temporarily soothed out of some misery. Occasionally, while meditating, I'd be genuinely uplifted. I desperately wanted to belong to something, and was finally accepted into the sick society of premies in Hawaii.

After four years, I just flipped out under all the psychological pressure to be a good premie. I had no bearing on my emotions, all of which were rationalised, and "put in my back pocket" as Maharaji suggested.

Although it seems some phenomenon happened while "practising" knowledge, my emotions and depression became more troublesome the more I tried to ignore them.

One day I just disappeared, and flew to the mainland and started over. I still went to satsang and meditated, but wherever I was I stayed pretty anonymous and didn't join the little premie societies.

I didn't disavow "knowledge" or Maharaji, but by taking some space, I saw how truly sick the premie society was. All these fucked up, manipulative and manipulated people, constantly lying to each other and guilt tripping each other. I continued to meditate and enjoy going to satsang, but also started paying attention and giving validity to how I felt emotionally.

This "grew" me and made me stronger, but I was still never able to reconcile the phenomena I experienced when seeing Maharaji or listening to satsang or meditating, with the terrible bad awful advice that Maharaji gave concerning feelings, emotions and communication.

Finally the ashrams closed in the early eighties and there was no more satsang. Occasionally, I'd go see Maharaji at a program, but mostly just meditated every day and followed a "psychological" self treatment of connecting and accepting my emotions.

In '86 I read some books called "Right Use of Will" and started following these "teachings". I continued to meditate and it has generally been helpful. I wouldn't think of not doing it any more than not brushing my teeth.

I have no idea about what Maharaji's intentions were through this whole thing. I read the interview with Bob Mishler and although I can't just dismiss his accusations, I'm not ready to "convict" Maharaji of much more than giving terrible advice and somehow getting me really "high".

But there was a lot of subtle fear tied in with what he said, and I refuse to buy into any of that. I don't know why Maharaji said those stupid things. I don't feel great resentment toward him. Obviously he gave some dumb advice and I followed it. But I think I felt more truly abused by the premies.

William O West

Howdy folks:

I was living near Detroit in 1973 when GMJ got hit in the face with a shaving cream pie. Premies who were present at the incident were full of Goomrodgie is SO beautiful. He wiped the pie off his face, without getting a drop on his clothes. It was SO perfect. Yeah, right.

The local underground press claimed that the pie hit him full in the chest. Someone was lying, most likely the press.

Later, one of the Mahatmas, with a premie along as an assistant, pretending to be a former devotee of the Guru's father conned the reporter into agreeing to receive the knowledge, and splintered his skull with something like a blackjack as he sat there, thinking, at first, that he was being initiated. He ran, screaming, into the hall, to escape.

A premie friend, Kathy Yoder, said she ran into the reporter somewhere, and he wasn't too happy with the guru. He died, shortly thereafter however, of a brain hemorrhage, almost certainly caused by the beating.

Richard what's-his-name, the main premie in Detroit, went to the police and told them that he could tum in the devotee who did the murder, but the police said that they didn't like those communists at the newspaper, and that they did like the premies and that they didn't care who did it.

Coming down to Millenium '73, according to press reports AFTER the mothership Rennie Davis had promised FAILED to cart the Astrodome and 144,000 premies inside off the planet (we were about 132,000 short) and earthquakes FAILED to destroy New York City.

The Guru's business manager was charged, by the FTC, with selling shares in a shell corporation. Good thinking. If the world had ended on time, he never would have been indicted. There are all kinds of ways of being crazy.

Best way is to be crazy for God. I believe that was attributed to Mahatma Fakiranand, but you may have more accurate information. My late father's watch and a number of other personal items were stolen from me by other premies to raise money for the cause.

Much was done that was illegal in that crazy environment.

Pat W

In 1997 I submitted a long and quite passionate 'Journey' to this website. A year or so ago I withdrew it, intending to revise it, but I haven't got around to doing it until now. This probably reflects the degree to which I have increasingly 'recovered' from the angst I was once going through and which had motivated me to put pen to paper. The following is a much briefer description of my 'Journey' as a premie.

In 1974, I was an earnest 17 year old school boy from Sussex, England. My hopes and dreams were to find 'Truth' or 'God' from amongst the plethora of 'paths' on offer, and to embark on a happy, fulfilling life preferably involving my passion for music. I ended up receiving Knowledge in London on Sunday, July 28, 1974 at the 'Palace of Peace' from Mahatma Krishnasuchanand. I had done my requisite time as an aspirant 'doing Service' and 'listening to Satsang' in dreary South London so I was quite glad to get back to my quiet parental country home and to get stuck into the meditation.

I practiced meditation very earnestly and enjoyed the results at the time. Guru Maharaj Ji (as he was then called) advocated the Indian traditional path of 'Satsang, Service and Meditation and Darshan'. This was his prescription for your life as a premie of the 'Perfect Master of the Age'. I readily swallowed the whole package and put my doubts on hold as Maharaji had formally commanded.

I took the instruction to follow the Master very literally. This resulted in my rapidly becoming an unusually well-travelled young man, although generally the most I would see of a country would be the interior of some big conference hall or echoey sports facility. I have lost track of the Maharaji festivals that I attended, as no doubt many other premies have too. Anyway, all that 'Darshan' and attention to the words of the Master left me in no doubt as to the gist of what he wanted me to do with my life.

There was however an insidious side to his message. This was that you basically started out pursuing the harmless-sounding agenda of receiving 'Knowledge' but often ended up, as I did, facing an agenda which required much more commitment - that you dedicate your entire life. This requirement Maharaji called 'Surrender' and by 1977 was something he evidently felt terribly strongly about.

So I duly ended up that year in a tiny basement flat in Hove that was the new Brighton 'Ashram'. There was some local resentment about the 'officiality' of this establishment, but the steady stream of visits from Maharaji's instructors (such as the 'patron saint of laundry' Anne Johnson, and the die-hard David Smith) eventually assured the stamp of 'Official Place of Surrender' on our humble rented flat.

I was soon thereafter posted to various ashrams around England, including Norwich, Newcastle and London, where I lived the prescribed lifestyle which roughly translated into the daily routine of getting up dog-tired to sing 'Arti' with a bunch of other over-tired males, sitting under blanket for an hour or two, traipsing off to work (preferably doing something that one wouldn't enjoy too much and hence wouldn't become 'attached to') going back to ashram vegetarian meal off to Satsang program or 'aspirant evening' back to ashram, and so on and so forth. All in all, not the most glamorous rota and one of course which , as I later learned, could not have less resembled the more indulgent lifestyle of our Master.

By 1981 all this ashram 'surrender your life' plan of Maharaji's was looking increasingly ill-conceived. 'Unworkable' was possibly a term that Maharaji might have used when taking a moment off from his 'tight schedule' to address the issue with organiser Mike Dettmers. Who knew what really went on in the dizzy offices of power? Nobody at my lowly level of the hierarchy for sure.

So in 1981 there was a general Ashram 'purge' and within a month or so the ashrams disappeared altogether. As it was, Dick Cooper (the UK co-ordinator) and 'Big Frank' (the ashram co-ordinator in Newcastle) somehow agreed that I was no-longer ashram fodder and so I was ousted during this purge.

Out of the ashram, I found myself aged 25 and in need of a job, a place to live and most urgently a girlfriend. I had 'surrendered' sex for long enough! Thanks to my father's will I had some money to make a fresh start, otherwise I would have had a lot more difficulty getting on my feet. By the mid-eighties, and after a lot of hard work, I had a career as a media composer and was 'on the up and up'. I was very relieved to be enjoying life again. The ashram experience had turned very sour and had been a singularly depressing chapter in my life but I still practised Knowledge and supplied Maharaji's media wing 'Visions' with plenty of soundtracks for their productions.

I became increasingly disenchanted on a gut level though. Maharaji's repetitive demands for respect and the general attitudes and dysfunction amongst premies grated. I became more uncomfortable at programs and even felt physically sick sometimes. My body was telling me that my heart was not buying this any more and gradually my heart and mind followed suit. I played guitar at some 'events' with the premie bands and even met Maharaji on a few occasions. All in all, I was gaining a more prosaic perspective on Maharaji and the way things were.

I attended an event in Amaroo in 1994, which proved a turning point. It was a fine social event for premies (if you were prepared to put up with the premie paranoia - 'no photographs allowed' etc) but I was tiring of these festivals. Maharaji's 'Master' appearances seemed less inspiring to me.

I guess the whole thing seemed more and more stage-managed and the premies sycophantic attitude to Rawat more unbearably precious. Afterwards, I rented a car, cuddled a Koala at the Brisbane park , drove down south with an old friend and decided to propose to my current wife! A new life beckoned.

And so far a great new life it has been. I have a wonderful wife (not a premie), two gorgeous children and lots of new friends. Sadly my 'apostate' reputation has alienated me from a few of my premie friends not all. Mostly they have all moved on - many ages ago.

I don't go to programs these days although I am informed by others as to the current gist. I am still concerned enough to have an interest in discussing this subject up to a point. To me, it is a matter of ethics that people are more completely informed about Prem Rawat's 'work', and his past, whilst he continues to outreach and influence people. As I see it, the organisation from the top down still displays an attitude of revisionism that stems largely from shame about the past or at least, fear that wider knowledge about 'the way things were' will put people off. In my opinion this is disrespectful towards those who made considerable sacrifices and who toiled to help make Maharaji what he is today. We hear of such former premies being now dismissed as liars and 'unlit matches' and effectively being made scapegoats for the past mistakes. I strongly feel that Prem Rawat should accept responsibility for his past words and deeds that affected so many people.

I went into this whole thing at 17 with the motivation to find the Truth. Now at 46, I find myself unfortunately feeling compelled to protest that truth is being buried in the name of 'Truth'. That is indeed a strange irony.

John Watson

First up, let me say I'm glad for the opportunity given to me by telling this story.

This is something that I've sledom thought of in the last ten years, but I've realised that has been as a result suppressing the memories of what happend. The questions I've been asking myself are pretty much the same as those whose stories I've been reading during the past few days since I discovered the web site.

I became involved with the Divine Light Movement and m in 1975. A childhood, friend Ernie Tyas, had been at the Alexandra Palace shows in London and received knowledge along with some of his friends from University. He came back to my home town of Guisborough in North Yorkshire and held satsang for all of his friends. I was immediately struck by how ernest and 'blissed-out' he was and began to attend satsang in Stockton a nearby town where there was a premie house.

Looking back i can see that I was the classic cult victim, from a not particularly close, typical, British middle class family, low self esteem, in need of some kind of loving, stabilising, supporting family life.

In the summer of 1976, I passed my A-levels, and started studying music, with the emphasis on singing, at the same University as Ernie in Bangor, North Wales. This became my real introduction to satsang and premie life, (although at that time not a premie myself) and through the premies I met, to Hashish, Maharaja and Psyloscybin (magic mushrooms). Throughout this time I was disturbed by the mental state of some of the premies, for example Witford (Richard) who had more scars on his wrists than anyone I've seen before or since, and Ernie who suffered (and still does) from depression.

It was amazing how many premies I met who lived in and around Bangor, and how many of them had a serious problem with substance abuse of one form or another. Ironic really considering what our perfect master had been up to!

In the course of that year I used more time on attending an aspirant program in Chester (two hours away by train) and enjoying various mind altering substances than I did studying. So, of course, the inevitable lay in wait, and after I dropped out of the University's Opera three days before the first performance to see m at the London Wembly Arena (back in the days when he could pack 'em in) I got sent down (that's thrown out on my arse for you guys in the US).

I attended a selection weekend in Manchester where the mahatma (a Canadian woman who I think was called Joyce) told me that if I wanted knowledge then I'd better move to Manchester. This I did in 1977, alienating myself from my family and friends, and began the process of becoming a premie. I lived in several premie houses, (including sharing a flat with Bazzer) and in early 1978 I received knowledge at the Manchester Ashram. Like many have said and written, this was an amazing experience. How much was because of the meditation techniques, and how much was because the whole aspirant program provides conditioning (roll over Pavlov) so the aspirant will have this amazing experience is open to question. (Incidently, at the same selection weekend a certain Jonathan [mad john] Cainer was told that if he wanted knowledge then he'd better marry his then premie girlfriend).

Shortly after this, I lost my job when I hitched down to Malaga in southern Spain to see m in a bullring. (Ah the incongruity of it all!) A year of travelling to festivals followed culminating in a trip to Kissimie, Florida, in November. This was an introduction into the harsh realities of how much of a rip-off culture was (and is) surrounding m.

I moved into a premie flat in Manchester with two premies, Ian Gosling and Chris Gribble and tried to get something out of my life.

After 18 months or so, things began to go very pear shaped, both in my life, but also in the mission. The closure of the ashram (I saw one of the Ashram premies, George Blodwell, on a low budget celebrity show from the US some months ago billed as an Image Consultant - nice work if you can get it!), the later de-Indianising and westernising of the mission to maximise revenues (we all know what happened to all the money from the ashrams don't we. It didn't go towards housing the homeless premies, that's for sure!), all contributed to the general unease and falling-apartness. This of course was always explained as being a problem with the interpretation of what m wanted by the organisation… this was of course nothing to do with m. (Didn't Nurenburg eradicate this as an excuse?….).

About this time I began to smoke hash again, and when this became known (within a couple of days… premies are such gossips!), I was shunned by a large number of the more holy premies (with the exception of some like for example mad John Cainer who turnd up looking to score one evening). It was like being shown the cold shoulder by a loved one, hideously painful. In the end I began to move out of the premie circle and eventually moved back to my home town in 1981.

Ernie still lives locally (Saltburn-by-the-sea) but otherwise I've lost touch with all the premies I knew from that time. I was left with a Hash habit that took until 1993 to break. I also had huge problems in personal relationships, I was frightened of rejection and could not accept criticism, which took me years (and cost a fortune in therapy) to get over. I have been a Radiographer (X-Ray tech.) since 1984, and moved to Denmark in 1990. This is not the direction I saw my life leading in 1976.

I haven't sung professionally since 1977.

All in all I've accepted the way my life has turned out, inspite of d.l.m. and m, but I do believe it would have been totally different if I hadn't attended Ern's satsang that evening in 1975. I'm no longer bitter, but I know that I gave up much for a handful of broken promises and unfulfilled dreams.

John Watson

Leslie Veale

We were born into a shell shocked world. We grew up with a subterranean silence that echoed to the muffled sounds of the terrorised and the call to make peace not war. And maybe in our youthful ebullience, the call sounded more like make love not war, or maybe we were being wise. I don't know for sure, do you?

The Nausea Factor

Whatever you ingest, good or bad, the next thing that is going to happen is that you will attempt to assimilate it. If it's a poison, it's not always that easy.

There's anaphylactic shock. I have an understanding of what this means from the inside of experiencing it, and I have also been given an explanation of the basic procedure. You overreact to the poison, an instaneous rejection, creating such a tidal wave of resistance that your whole system goes into shock, all the capillaries open in your skin at once, the blood drains away from vital organs, and so on, it is major trouble.

And then, I was watching a comedy show just recently, Black Books. An accountant was feeling bored and frustrated in his job, and he had a Little Book of Calm, which he accidentally swallowed, whilst reading it at work. The doctor in the hospital told him the situation was dire, they would be operating in the morning to remove it, and even then, the prognosis was not good. In the morning, the doctor arrived at his bedside with new x-rays. The Little Book of Calm has disappeared, he announces. "Of course it is impossible, but the only explanation is that your body has assimilated it overnight, that is, of course, impossible, you do realise." As the camera pans back, we take in the glowing aura, as our accountant smiles beatifically, and says something along the lines of "Consider the reflection a mountain makes in a pellucid lake." He then wanders out, still begowned in white, and tries it on a few skinheads, (fortunately rescued by a mad drunken black irishman).

I would imagine most of us have memories of that moment, that brief struggle before succumbing to the inevitable, that moment when your stomach insists it can't handle it's contents, that there is only one way to do it, and that is to send it back. And, despite the possible embarrassments associated with it, the relief, the pleasure that washes through you, the clean sleepy peacefulness that follows. And my goodness, aren't you glad not to be feeling so sick anymore.

Sometimes, we feel we are in a situation that precludes this easy resolution, and we are determined not to succumb to the natural way, and we pit all our strength, courage and fortitude towards this end, we believe that we have no choice in this, our heart, love, hope itself, is at stake.

This is a serious situation to be in, at least I found it so. In my case, the poison was ingested through my eyes and ears. It was trippy, I mean really trippy when it first hit, I was eighteen, it was London, Spring 1973.

You know, I'm just thinking about it, for a short period in my life, less than a year, I had it all together, thanks to my Grandmother who had a cottage in the woods which she lent to me. It was a lovely place, near Southampton, and I had somehow managed, with my mother's help if I remember correctly, to enrol myself in art college to study pottery. I liked my teacher, a Korean war veteran, and I had clay in my fingers. I was high as a kite on zen macrobiotics, believe me, I was a novice and consequently, according to the book I was reading, had to stick to the basics to be able to balance my yin and my yang, which meant rice, water and fire to cook it.

I had graduated to include gamasio and twig tea, and had started a vegetable garden when my hippy friends caught up with me. They reunited me with the delights of toast, porridge and a nice cuppa. The house grew distinctly more colourful. And then a premie turned up. A lovely genuine human being, who had recently got caught up in a hindu flavoured messianic religion without understanding what had happened, and passed it on to me. And that was that. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure when I gave up art college, I probably missed the start of term, I don't remember thinking about it.

Fortunately I met Bill soon afterwards, we fell very much in love, which had a calming effect, and made me happy. We moved to Australia. So, for many years I went about my life without recognising what idiotic things I believed, pretty easy seeing as we both believed the same things, actually all we premies believed them. Apart from, if I am to believe them, a few hardy souls who reckon they were hip to the whole thing right from the start. An assertion which, I think, begs the question: 'Just how much of an idiot do you want to make yourself out to be?

I mean, why on earth would you stick around if you understood what was happening. If you were clear that 'Maharaji' was naught but a stage show, managed in the early days by the robed, baldheaded Great Souls who turn out, behind the scenes, to be a collection of characters who range from nice if seriously deluded, to downright sickening.

A stage show starring Master P Rawat, billed as the Golden Child from the Mystic East, in reality, a teenager from Dehradun, whose airbrushed visage adorned the altars, who, on arriving at Heathrow, drove away in a limousine that was plastered all over with an absolute carnage of flowers. A teenager who probably was, my guess is, when he was still inexperienced at addressing westerners, both thrilled and terrified, not knowing whether he would swing it with us or not. I do remember, and it continued over the years, how he would often say something along the lines of 'As long as I stick to the same stuff my father said, I can't go wrong'. Did he have his fingers crossed?

The nicest explanation of why you stuck around is that you believed the same idiotic things we all did. You've just been so busy being a premie, sticking your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes, sucking your tongue. Meditation is so foetal, don't you think? You've just been so busy learning the ropes.

I am still in mourning for all the thoughts I never had.

Busy trying to assimilate alarming information such as that your mind is your enemy. I just want to put this straight now, your mind exists in your skull, you are a package deal, and your mind, just like your liver, is not your enemy. And don't go relying on that dummy of an idea that there is a split between a brain and a mind, any more than between a mind and a heart.

Busy staying hip to the latest reframing of the timeless, immutable message of truth, the latest rendition of compassionate love, the latest info on Mr P Rawat's attitudes to life. Too busy being loyal, and being way too trusting.

I remember one afternoon, sitting in a tent having a knowledge review. We had got to the second technique, you know, the one that used to be referred to as Music, the one where we are supposed to hear heavenly music, music that would touch, transmute our soul. That was the promise, and at least the Great Souls would have a go at explaining it, 'The silence from which sound comes', is one I can recall.

If you can cry, then you've got to laugh.

That's the one where you put your thumbs in your ears, both at once, which gets quite tiresome if you are sitting, beragonless, pillowless, anything at all to lean on-less, and so I gave up and opened my eyes.

He was still sitting there, facing us on his raised stage. I gazed over the placid forest of raised arms and waving heads. I was mildly surprised at how well everyone was doing, only a few collapsed sleepers, and not many with their arms down either. He shifted in his seat, and our gazes met briefly (oddly, I suppose, for a premie, I was looking at the other people in the tent, rather than 'Maharaji', and that was what he was doing too).

Another refrain of Prempal's over the years has been the complaint that nobody thinks about what it's like for him. Like many a parent, he feels a bit overworked and under appreciated, or, I would imagine, like many a guru, like many a Superior Power in Person, he feels that he does not receive his due. The reality of his life as Satguru has not lived up to the promise either. It hasn't, has it. Just imagine if we really had been transmuted by the celestial beauty of the experience of meditation.

'By His Knowledge, ye shall know Him', was the refrain of the Great Souls, and that was what was supposed to happen. We were supposed to adore him, worship the very ground he walked on, not ignorantly or blindly, because we had been tricked into it. But voluntarily, consciously, with happiness and gratitude, from the individual depths of our sublime hearts, because we recognised him as the giver of the transcendant life fulfilling experience we were having in meditation.

And we did our best, did we not, to live up to it all.

So there he was, gazing over the throng from the stage, and I was gazing over the throng from a chair somewhere towards the rear of a large white tent set in the backblocks of regional australia on a mercifully pleasant sunny warm winter afternoon, some twenty years on from 1973. Oddly, I suppose, for me, I was not at all fazed by exchanging gazes with 'Maharaji'. And I can remember precisely what I thought:

"It's lucky Knowledge is for real. Because if it weren't this would be an unbearable experience for you, how could you not be moved to contempt by the sincerity of these fullgrown men and women playing, at your behest, with their eyes closed, what looks for all the world like a game of Simon Says."

At that point, nature called. I could see the sunny colours outside through a tent flap. I got up and moved through the aisles to the exit. Now, I was looking the way I was going, and I was thinking about where I might go to pee, but I had a sense that he did not want me to leave the tent, and he was indeed looking when I turned to give him a reassuring I'll be back type smile, before ducking out the tent flap into the sunshine.

It strikes me as I read what I have written, that when I walked, in such a gentle confident happy mood out of that tent, it would have made a sunset ending if I had kept on walking. But I didn't. It didn't even occur to me to take my own perceptions seriously. It's not easy to leave a guru.

A game of Simon Says. Staying hip to what Simon Says does not in any way translate into being hip to what it was all about all along.

And it doesn't, it in no way takes the place of, or compensates even minimally, for the individual thought process that was stifled, as Simon told you to do, in exchange.

So, there you go, that's the nicest explanation of why we stuck around. Do you want to hear a worse one?

This spring afternoon, as I stood in the garden watering the plants, it struck me how frequently 'Maharaji' would make fun of people, for what? Just for doing what you want to do. Being a slave of the Mind, he would characterise it as. An endless list of wants that you would slave away at instead of, instead of what? Instead of being a premie, that's what. I am angry about that, dead right I am. How very pleasant, how very rewarding, how very damn healthy and plain out good it is to do what you want. Hah! to you Rawat.

Of course there are worse explanations. Lots worse. That Jagdeo stuck around for the easy access to children? That any number of lazy tinpot bullies and snivelling jackbooting toadies had found their spiritual home? Or, let's calm down a bit here, perhaps it's as simple as you can't face the embarassment. At least that's better than a plain out evil explanation such as you knew all along. That you know exactly what you are doing, that you like the sound of bleating fluffy idealists in the morning, and you don't care how dirty the game gets in the pursuit of, just what exactly are you in pursuit of by the way?

Can you answer that with something more than some hypocritical, sanctimoniously delivered, stupefyingly dull little pacifier of a phrase such as 'It is in the journey itself, not the destination, that fulfilment is found', some 'as long as I stick to the same stuff Maharaji says, I'll be okay' type phrase. Or, perhaps you're a martinet of a purist, no words allowed, and you just go for the breath, strike a meditational stance, a superior attitude, with a little aren't I blissful smile. Cat got your tongue?

Perhaps, perhaps, as it comes down to for most of us, there is something you can't face about the whole thing, something you might have to look in the eye, maybe you just can't face how bad it really is, the things you can never put right, the things that have happened for what? For no good reason, that's what.

And maybe, just maybe, like it was for me, you simply don't want to look at what is happening because you feel too distressed, too sickened when you question whether your loyalties are misplaced, whether you have given your affections wisely, and whether the trust you have given has been fulfilled.

It takes what it takes to break taboos, turn round and face those feelings of betrayal and fear and coolly assess exactly what they are based on.

And that's just the start of it really. That's when your roots break through the icy crust and you can finally get round to doing what you want and need to do. Finding answers, learning things and understanding yourself. Tackling the horrendous mess in your garden, getting your roots down into the nourishing soil. Growing up. Flourishing, flowering even, and making your own contract with the mites and the fungi and whatever else, even the honey and the trees.

Eat your eyes out, Rawat, I can speak much better than you!

I am in mourning that I listened to you for so long.

That icy crust, in case you think I'm joking around: I remember a program in Brisbane, it was, now let's see, easy, an Instructor Training program, complete with a written test at the end, multiple choice of course. And a caste system: those who had applied for full time instructor, part time instructor, or paid a donation to sit up the back.

Sitting at the back had its advantages. We were up a little higher than the rest of the room, and of course, just as we were under instructions not to ask questions, we could be pretty certain of the same thing, being asked no questions.

I was almost relaxed enough to feel disturbed when he started talking about the isolation booths. He expressed the wish, get this, he wished that instead of people being in chairs and able to see one another, that we were in little cubicles from which we could only see him. Only hear him. Only listen to him. When he chose to speak, of course.

Reminds me of the blinkers people used to put on horses, to stop them reacting to traffic. It is rarely done these days, it is considered cruel, because the horse cannot see at all with them on.

For those who gave me gifts when I was heedless, I thank you now for the buried treasure.

Friendship. Rawat on friendship: 'People are only friends as long as they are compatible, when that changes they split'. Good grief. I ask you, is Rawat right, is friendship all about compatibility? You can make a choice about that, can you not.

There are a lot of choices you can make, you can decide for instance that what is is. That you want to know the truth of the matter, come what may, you want the truth, it matters.

Divine love is such a phlurphy. Just dump it is my advice. And, as a fellow human being it is also my request. Just one of the many sins of God is that He steals the finest of our feeling that would otherwise be shared more wisely.

I became vulnerable again just as when I was a teenager, in my early 40's a time when life is shifting gears, and the infection flared up. All the old feelings, as in the early days, the bright dreaming, wanting to live it for real, finally resolve the anomalies, the confusing dark spots in my vision of life.

I was one of the chosen ones, staying on the promised land, and preparing for a visit from the lord, 1998. A couple of days before he was expected, I fell off my bike, breaking four bones. That's painful, believe me. As the thunderheads of pain approached through the nauseous mist of pethedine, the thought 'Beam me up Scotty' wandered wistfully through my head.

I learnt very quickly that meditation was not effective, that I needed to hang in and help myself. I could hear the cries of those who had lost it in the pain, it's an education, a broken bones ward.

Bill and I were awarded seats near the front at the next show in Brisbane. They needn't have worried. I never had any intention of seeking compensation, it was an accident, that almost inevitable accident children have when they first get the hang of riding a bike, get all happy and excited and go too fast. Unfortunately I was 42 when I went flying over the handlebars, hadn't figured out those gear things, and I landed with a crumpling thump.

You have to give me A for effort, as well as A for idiocy. We went to the show and I was still on crutches.

That was one thing that was different about my appearance, and, on an intuitive level, well I was not feeling cruisy, more grumpy than anything, stumping around on crutches whilst you say goodbye to the cocoon of the painkillers does that to a person, it's not a permanent condition, though, is it. At the top of the stairs stood a tall handsome premie, someone I would always share a friendly smile with, had considered, albeit casually, a friend. For the first time instead of smiling, he recoiled at the sight of me, 'must dash'. Look some people just don't do blood, or crutches, or frogs, or whatever, do they. But, in my little world, it was the dawning of a conscious recognition of how insubstantial 'The World of Knowledge', such a coy little phrase that, isn't it, how very insubstantial this thing that I trusted so implicitly and so importantly was.

He talked, in case you're interested, at length, about one work team constructing during the day, and another demolition team taking it down during the night. May I propose the possibility that Mr P Rawat experiences an inner conflict?

And when I returned to the Land of Love, peopled as it is with superstitious folk, I fared no better. 'It was like the paw of a Giant Wallaby swept you off the land', well really what else are you going to think, as a premie, but that I been removed by His grace in preparation for His arrival. Perhaps formed from the gritty experience, like a pearl in an oyster, I stubbornly knew that I had simply had an accident, I knew what had happened, and why.

That was the first line of satsang I heard, by the way, 'This Knowledge in the World is like the pearl in the oyster'. Ah, what fun, how rotund, I'm smiling now.

And like the bike accident, where I had gone from such a sunny high, to such a thunking low. In the ensuing months I did the same psychologically. Just because I knew why I had fallen off the bicycle did not mean I had my head screwed on, I still believed the same idiotic things. I was still struggling to reconcile the feudal court I had seen in operation at Amaroo with believing it to be a sort of latterday Garden of Eden, wonder where we all got that idea? I was still trying to understand what exactly my relationship was with 'Maharaji' satguru, or Mr Rawat, star of many a 'Maharaji' video, pilot, family man, the human being just like any of us, or the hardball playing CEO Mr Rawat who, in his own words, 'burned people out', or God of course.

Did I tell you that one day I flatlined in hospital, anaphylactic shock from a tick bite. When you have been told that the next time you feel an itch, just an itch mind you, one that you might scratch without even really noticing, that the next time, you might only have two minutes to live, well you really want to know where you stand with life, no messing around.

It's quite an experience, going mad. My goodness the visions you see. I went from just tripping out when I meditated to helplessly tripped out most of the time, without questioning what was happening. I figured the beautiful choral music I heard in the wind was just another manifestation of the holy K. What it is is the product of a bored, exhausted mind, and disordered senses. It really was the sound of the wind, it was my interpretation of what I was hearing that was wrong. I speak confidently, why wouldn't I, I had to undisorder my senses, and that is what I discovered. If I focused my attention externally, I could pick the sound source that I was translating into music.

Sound fun?, sound sublime, even? It was the most subtle beautiful choral music I have ever heard. But no, you are right, just imagine what it must be like when you are tired, and you want to go to sleep, and, rather frighteningly you can hear the same boring riff, a piece of chewing gum music, over and over again, getting louder and louder, closer, the more you turn away.

'You do realise you are depressed", the doctor said, when I finally went to see him. I didn't actually, not yet, I was still numb from terror.

I have understood something from this, something you can as well understand from any simple fever. You can't always regulate your chemistry, you can't always guarantee a well functioning brain, but you can have your head screwed on. It makes navigating a lot easier. Gee, I guess it even helps you have a healthy brain if you aren't trying to do the impossible; reconcile the idiotic things you believe are true non-negotiable unquestionable holy beliefs with what is actually happening on the ground, the evidence of your own perception. And moreover you are attempting to do this by, get this, focusing on your breath, sticking your fingers in your ears and your eyes, and listening to Mr Rawat.

Trust. Rawat whines on endlessly about it, we would be foolish indeed, just asking for it, to put our trust in anything else, but his prescribed method, according to him.

Read it and believe it. I went back again. Fortunately, though I still believed the same idiotic things, I had some time under my belt now of retracing my steps, no longer living as a premie and I was able to resolve the dilemma of how to leave your guru, at least gain a bit of distance.

As I sat near the back of the hall, it was a nice sunny afternoon at Amaroo, I said to him, silently in my head you understand, "I cannot keep coming to your call, I need to stand up on my own two feet and look after myself, it's a question of survival, and I am sure you understand that that matters." It is not a big hall, and I was on the centre aisle, it appeared to me that he was looking at me, and I had a sense that he was saying 'don't go'. Silently, you understand. "Don't worry, I'll be back" I replied reassuringly. "They never do." he replied sorrowfully. "Oh" I wondered. All silently, you understand. But of course, I meant every word I said.

The infection had run full course. And I had survived to tell the tale. One dogged step after another, I continued to retrace my steps. One evening I decided to go to the local video show. Well I ask you, was it helpful? No, it wasn't, how could it be.

Earthquakes rumble and explanations are the rubble. All that was on offer via the video was more of the same explanations, more of the same directions that I already taken, and was now on my way back from. If someone offers you some food that you have already eaten, and it has made you very sick, with the best will in the world, even if you think you should eat it, you won't. Not even if the very thought of not eating makes you feel absolutely, eternally and infinitely, helplessly depressed.

As I was walking towards my car, John MacGregor walked up. We sat and smoked cigarettes and talked. Like premies normally do for eachother after the show, we shared our company with eachother and chatted. Just imagine, it takes courage to share the company of the utterly at a loss and going down for the final count, doesn't it. It takes a whole different notion of friendship than that it is all about compatibility, does it not. Surely, that is something we all understand. At one point he said to me that I was like Ariadne in the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. He said to me that I had the end of the string in my hand, all I had to do was follow it.

And that was what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it most. Someone in that trusted World of Knowledge having a little trust in me, a little faith in my ability to think. What's that dreaded cliché? Ah I have it, A friend in need is a friend in deed. Neither of us knew then how precise, how accurate his imagery was, we have chuckled over it since.

I heard this man talking on the radio the other day. Ah, he was nice to listen to, sensible, and straightforward. It's an uncomfortable fact, he was saying, and now I'm using my own words, because I don't remember his well enough, and I have my own, I understood him well. The way I'll put it is that god really messes with your love life. It takes intelligence and caring on both sides to have a loving relationship. There is more to a loving relationship than being forgiving, that just means the relationship endures, and I cannot imagine anything more annoying than being in a relationship where you keep having to forgive eachother for being beastly, not much fun at all. Or a one-sided relationship, where one is superior to the other.

Read it and weep. I did go back again. Can you imagine? It really was an extraordinary time for me however, my proving ground, and I don't regret it. By the time I left Amaroo I had done the deed. I had worked my way out of the hall of mirrors. And now I had stopped blaming myself and the other premies for non-deliverance. I was observing the evidence in front of my eyes, and I was asking if our principal speaker had delivered on his promises instead.

I have learnt something about myself, my strengths as well as weaknesses. So loyal that I was broken in both body and mind before I refused 'Maharaji'. So easy to fool that I was sickened to the depths of my soul by the stench that seeps from beneath the golden throne. I felt sickeningly compromised by my association with him and my survival, literally, was at stake before I was able to start listening to myself, and accept the evidence of my own perception, which to put it simply is that oft pointed out little truism: The rot starts at the top.

But once I had realised, in a moment of black sobriety mid plunge into madness, that I had no further to go, no choice but to walk back step by step the way I had come as a premie, a follower of the Golden Way, if you will, that is what I did, retraced my steps. And I started out suffering under the enormous impediment of believing that it was I who had failed, not knowledge, not 'Maharaji'. Try failing God for a while, it's no fun, believe me.

I did a list once, all the things 'Maharaji' kept warning me would fail me. Family, friendship, the ground beneath my feet. Yes Rawat, I am still angered by the unconscionable drivel you parlay. But hey, let's keep this in perspective. Rawat is not the only idiot on the planet.

It was precisely those things he predicted would fail me which didn't, and I named a very few, I would have continued, but I felt a depth charge go off at mention of the earth. I like the stuff. Though I am bothered by all the indigestibles we, as a species, are piling into it, I am nonetheless much comforted by the whole ethos of composting.

So, just the ones I mentioned, family. Bill comes to mind, because he went to hell and back with me, and still stayed by my side, which has had a calming effect and made me happy.

John, we still meet quite regularly for a coffee, and like many an underappreciated and overworked friend he reminded me yesterday, with such a gentle twinkle in his eye, of how dreadful the sensations were that he struggled with as I started passing that string, that thread of reason through his fingers. The fearful thoughts that I had merged with the satanic mind, lost the heavenly plot, become evil, yes evil. It's not easy to leave your guru.

And the earth, well we all know the comforts and wisdom a little in your fingers will bring. But I do have my own story, the day I realised I'd been had. The day I understood I didn't have to keep Mr 'maharaji' Rawat's framed photo on my office wall, that he was, in fact, of no actual relevance to me.

I felt like I was hewed from granite as I walked to the studio. I was making some choices. I decided my anger was too valuable and too precious to me to waste on Rawat. I decided I wanted to get the benefit of all that energy. As I sat down and reached for some clay, I felt like my body was disintegrating under the stress of feeling so stony. And as the clay responded to the pressure of my fingers I utterly melted, and spent a very happy day. That simple basic most common substance in the planet's crust had the power to earth me. Take the rawest of emotion and gentle it into a productive enjoyable creativity. Now I have loved clay ever since I can remember and have spent a lot of time with it, but I had no idea it could do that before, pretty special, eh.

Out of many, out of many, do you have a few spare hours so I can tell you about my family, my friendships, and my life? My brother, who dropped everything and flew up to see me when I needed it most. The doctor whose first idea was to put his arm around me and give me a hug. Or McDuck, a gentle man of reason if ever there was one. He came round to see us, he must have heard that we were 'leaving knowledge' because he wanted us to know that whatever was happening he loved us. We talked for a short time, he understood and he never flinched, I think he was rather glad really to dump his guru so convincingly, he made it look easy.

Family and friends, good grief, they needed to be made of sturdy stuff.

Am I not glad that I can be grateful to whom I wish, for what I feel grateful for?

God is really a cuckoo, you know. Steals the lot with his big red gape. That, I am reliably informed, the tv this time, is how come the mother bird feeds the cuckoo. It has the biggest reddest gaping throat, and so her instinct is to feed it first, even though she is visibly bothered. Perhaps she wishes she understood her dilemma, perhaps she feels confused as she drops another worm in that big red gaping mouth.

Maybe the attraction wears thin after a while, it must be tiring after all, having to feed a dirty fat lout of a cuckoo as well as your own chicks. Maybe that big red gaping mouth starts to look like the Gates of Hell to her as she drops in another insect, as she sees her chicks tumble one after the other onto the ground beneath.

My creativity, my emotion, all of it, in my aegis, under my direction, is a productive and enjoyable force. Flapping to the capricious breeze that Rawat brings along with his game of Simon Says, ultimately it was terrible. Not just not as good as it was cracked up to be, terrible.

And am I not glad that I can be angry with whom I wish, for what I feel angry about? You bet.

It was precisely those which he said would never fail me, like god, like the four refried hindu yoga techniques he sold as Knowledge of God, like meditating on your breath, like listening to his drivel, like 'saviour at the bottom of the barrel' him, which did. Utterly useless, worse than useless when I trusted to them, moreover as I did accept the evidence of my own perception, a possibility now that I was no longer co-opted into the ranks of the hopeful, the consequent ridding of my system of them has indeed produced the requisite relief I mentioned up above. Peace has broken out in my gut.

And I have learnt that hope does indeed 'spring eternal in the human breast'. But, but it is not impervious to damage, and without hope living is no fun at all.

And I have learnt that sadness is indeed lit with beauty. And you can't lose it either, even if you wish you could.

Don't laugh, I went back again. It was one of those satellite broadcasts of a video that one was so encouraged to attend. Plus, I had been asked to come by someone I liked. I heard about the epo site from her, that there were premies who had problems with knowledge, had some complaints. 'Why is nobody talking to them then', I wondered. I settled back in my seat and turned the car for home, I had found the day recognisably, even if I was still mystified as to why, stultifying. I found the internet site the next day and I read and read, it was illuminating.

For one thing, I discovered that in according Mr Rawat his privacy, a reasonable thing in my opinion, I had had my trust abused. The x rating system was not protecting his privacy alone, it was hiding secrets, things that if they were known would cause comment amongst his flock. I knew he had planes, cars, watches and houses, but I did not know about the luxury yacht. Why not, I asked myself. Why the huge discrepancy between the way he conducts his personal life, and the videos shown to us portraying him as the happy family man. And then, and then, might I mention that he has a way of saying somewhat frequently how important knowledge is. If he is serious about that, how can he not make contact with the children who received his holy knowledge along with the attentions of a paedophile Great Soul. Great lila, eh?

And it was the jogging of my memory of the old days. Somehow I seemed to have forgotten exactly what it was that we believed back then. The basis of why we were premies in the first place. Why was that?

And back for one last time. It was about three weeks later, I had just walked into the living room and announced that I was an ex premie when the phone rang, an afternoon show at the ranch. Good, we're going. A chance to see for myself. Watching the show without joining in was an education. I sat and watched that elephantine flirt in action, nothing of substance, just a coy flirty game of divide and conquer. Give the 'instructors' privileges, and then threaten them with the back row. Flatter the common premies, make them feel they are the most dear to you, that you really might come to Melbourne, only if the 'love' pulls you, though. 'Playing with the hearts of the premies' is the terminology and I agree. How pathetic. The advice he gave, hopeless. Perhaps, I wonder forlornly, he has realised what a mess he has made and is working out the best way to deal with it (silly, I agree, but you have to remember that I had given him the benefit of the doubt for nigh on twenty seven years), but no. Despicable.

I left on a singingly clear high of a growing anger, and I have not looked back. Rawat can bite his ass. There is a certain bitter irony in having given him things such as my trust, things that are of inestimable value to me, and recognising that whatever he might think or say, he has placed no value on them at all, other than as a means to money.

And I have wanted to elucidate my part in 'The World of Knowledge'. I am briefly in a video of that name btw, a mugshot, wallpaper to enhance the main subject, his holiness speaking the truth. I have wanted to rip away, at least, the credibility that my belief gave it.

But, you know something, I was a reasonable human being as a premie, and I am one now.

I remember once characterising the cult as a particularly smelly, due to the close confines, microcosm of the world at large. Nothing happens in it that doesn't happen in society at large, that isn't happening in organisations in general. I have been gobsmacked since leaving it to gain the broader perspective again, yes it is as bad as I thought way back at eighteen years of age. The lives of good men spent in thrall to a process of corruption, to no good end. The cuts and running sores of countless stupidities and meannesses.

And still no satisfactory answer to the question I was pondering, my own question, my own ant trail, before I joined a cult. Does a carrot scream when it is pulled? I'll get to pondering it again, in my own sweet way, in my own sweet time. Or someone might help me with it.

In the last book I read, Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes, the author makes an intriguing comment. We all like to do it, do we not, even though we recognise the complex nature of things. His dividing line, his way of categorising human beings into two types was those who have understood that looking into the pit engenders calm, and those who run.

Believe me, I know the value of optimistic thinking, it is as important to me as brushing my teeth. But I have learnt that it is better to despair sooner, get it over with, and get your feet back on the ground, than keep vainly looking to a false hope.

And the best restorative for a damaged breast, an ailing spring of hope? Learning, learning from your mistakes, that's what.

So, I guess that's enough from me. It is not, of course, the whole of my memoirs as a premie. But it is the story of how I stopped, a harrowing tale, as Bill put it, and really, it is often enjoyable to hear those tales as they happened to other people, is it not? I hope you enjoyed the read. Those premies who shared fun times with me, and we did have plenty of them, will I hope remember me with affection, as I do them.

I once said to a premie friend, who was bravely visiting despite my by now fearsomely sad reputation in premie circles, that I loved him better than Mr 'Maharaji' Rawat ever had or ever would. He was touched, but it made no difference. It doesn't matter what you believe… like hell it doesn't.

My dividing line, my way of categorising human beings into two types? Those who are reasonable, and those who are not. Those who will listen to reason however frightening or confronting it feels and whatever the perceived cost, and those who won't no matter what, no matter how terrible the price.

I have sometimes felt such an ache, as if it is going to take us all to cry this one out. I am however delightfully practical these days, determinedly not an idealist, a ruggedly fluffy individualist is more like it. Ready to make the very best with what I have around me, after all what is is. And I still feel lucky, can you imagine, but I do. And my heart still works, I can hardly imagine, but it does.

"Doesn't it just get you", I wrote in a letter as I was exiting my erstwhile world of knowledge, "that that trusted love is how you feel about yourself."

Ah well, what the hell, s'pose I'll go back and get rid of the F word. Though heaven knows, I've earnt the right to swear.

David Stirling

It was some time around February 1972 when I was handed a leaflet which offered an escape from madness. I was just 19 and about to drop out of art school in Leicester, England, due to what the doctors called a 'mild case of paranoid schizophrenia'.

Like many others of my generation, I'd left school at 16 with little in the way of qualifications and even fewer ambitions. A high grade in art got me into art college and from there it was en easy step into the prevaling drug culture. It was enough to scramble my brain to the point where reality and unreality became blurred and panic began to set in.

They say that one in ten of us will experience some form of mental instability. Anyone who's been there will understand just how frightening it can be. Any escape route will do and this leaflet seemed to offer just what I was looking for. It was free, there were no strings attached and it sounded good. What had I got to lose?

I entered the white-walled house filled with the scent of flowers - a beacon of light in a seedy red light district - and was greeted warmly by people of my own age. I sat cross-legged and listened as they explained how they'd found peace and stability by accepting a package of meditation techniques called 'The Knowledge'. I was hooked.

An enchanting Indian called Mahatma GuruCharanand asked a small group of us to swear we would never divulge 'The Knowldege' to anyone else before showing us the techniques. I came away feeling mildly disappointed. Is he really asking me to believe that the lights I see when I press my eyeballs is God? It seemed he was.

For a week or two I forgot about the Knowledge but my mental problem was getting worse. I believed everyone else could hear my thoughts - it was making my life miserable and work impossible. My psychiatrist really couldn't offer anything more than mind-numbing pills so I tried using the meditation techniques.

It's at this point that the fish begins to get reeled in. I'd forgotten to read the fine print; the meditation techniques won't work unless you do unpaid service for the guru and attend what's called 'satsang' which is a form of group indoctrination. From there it's just a short step into what was called an 'ashram'. I was now a fully fledged 'ashram premie' with just a sleeping bag and a few clothes to call my own.

I was sent to Manchester where we opened another white-walled, flower-decked ashram. Then to Preston, a grim port just north of Liverpool where I became assistant manager of the local Timberland store. My leisure time was spent trying to persuade the locals that their only salvation lay in accepting a 14 year old Indian as their spiritual master. It was not an easy message to communicate! So when I heard that they were looking for someone to design the guru's newspaper and magazine, I was off to the bright lights of London like a shot.

I left DLM sometime around '75, following Maharaji's marriage and subsquent bust up with Mataji. I'd become increasingly frustrated by my lack of spiritual progress and the obvious hypocracy surrounding Maharaji and the London Management of DLM.

I had nothing more to do with the DLM until I decided to explore the internet and found people asking for advice on meditation. I'd always felt that the four techniques were very powerful but I still retained the feeling of guilt over breaking my promise not to reveal them to anyone else.

I started asking general questions on the newsgroups about whether I should or shouldn't reveal the techniques. Jim Heller responded by cutting through to the heart of the argument in his usual brusque but elequently reasoned style. That was in Oct '96.

Bill Veale

It seemed a good idea at the time

I was born in 1951, a second child and a Leo, in semi rural suburban Sydney into a childhood of yabbies, billy carts and the beach. Along with broken bones and sunburn I acquired the belief that a benevolent omnipresent god created me and looked after me. At the time I found this both irritating and comforting. I didn't question it. I was just a kid. Together with a rebellious attitude adolescence brought much hand wringing and head banging. Growing up required me to question religion, life, the universe and everything.

My Christian religion didn't fit anymore. The shelves of Theosophical Society bookshop groaned under the collective weight of truth. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Poems of Kabir, Zen Flesh and Zen Bones and other books filled my head with a potpourri of spiritual notions and aspirations.

By 1970 I was living in Kings Cross. This was before the over pass, when the Cross still had a sleazy innocence. The prostitutes out numbered the junkies and the pool halls were used for playing pool. Oxford St smelt of fish and Micks Café struggled to hold the line against health food and tofu. In The Courthouse Hotel at Taylor Square lawyers, hippies and students rubbed shoulders with the 'new australian' café owners and queens. The streets were awash with peace, love and acid. At last here was a religion I understood, worshipping the unholy trinity of sex, drugs and rock n roll.

I wouldn't say I took drugs seeking a religious experience but the cosmic connexion is hard to gainsay when you've merged with every molecule in the seventy-two universes and lived to tell the tale. With a little help from enlightened insects, breathing rocks and talking trees the inner journey to godhead made strange sense to me.

Now I had an inner cosmic energy experience to go with my god is love belief.

In 1972 I heard about a boy guru called Guru Maharaj ji, who was speaking in Sydney. I didn't go but it was the beginning of my odyssey.

By 1973 several good friends were involved and were going to the millennium festival in Houston, Texas. They encouraged me to go to one of their meetings called satsang. It was bizarre scene even for a hardened hippy. Sat guru Has Come, Arti in Hindi, garlands, bad suits and worse haircuts. Something screamed inside me… loony cult run away now.

Hanging out at the Yellow House and grooving on acid at Santana concerts appealed far more than sitting uncomfortably on the floor before an empty throne and large photo of a young m doing an impersonation of Mao.

However my friends looked happy and the idea that 'the energy that moves an atom moves you' fitted nicely into my paradigm. But the main game was to get high, so it wasn't until I took on the possibility of a natural high thru meditation that I became interested. I knew the knowledge was some kind of far out meditation but the whole guru thing was hard to swallow. I asked my premie mate if I could get knowledge by correspondence. He smiled shaking his head, he was sorry but if I wanted to see the divine light of a thousand suns in my own head, in the privacy of my own home, I must come to the ashram and listen to satsang on thirty separate nights. It seemed a pretty high price, but the promise of seeing all those suns blasting away constantly was tempting.

After a particularly cosmic camping trip in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney I decided I would pay the price. I did the first five or six satsangs stoned before someone told me it wasn't cool and hinted that stoned satsang didn't really count. That pissed me off because someone else had just finished telling me that you benefit from satsang even while asleep. They counted in my book and I did a couple more, invented the rest and received k from Paddy in Jan 1974 at the Mosman ashram. I was twenty-two years old.

I wanted it to be true. That the boy in the Mao suit was at least as good as Jesus and at best the lord of the universe. That meditation was the direct route to my soul. That m knew what he was doing.

Over the next few months I slowly started becoming a premie. I was exposed to a vast array of bizarre, ridiculous ideas and concepts. The holy family, that m was my mother and my father, holy breath and prasad to name a few. Still the high was there to be had, I just had to stop my pesky mind long enough to merge with the light and never-ending bliss would surely follow. I was ready to consider that I might need a guru after all.

M rarely came to oz back then, so against the advice of my now ashram premie friends I bought a one way ticket to Amsterdam and left in time to be in Copenhagen for Guru Puja in 1974. If darshan from Bal Bhagwan Ji on a tennis court overlooking middle harbour was trippy, then Copenhagen was surreal. It's the one where Marolyn said she was now our mother. It was all devotion and surrender, by his grace and bhole shri. It was like a Hitler Youth rally on ecstasy.

Several months later I arrived in England and set out to find the satsang hall, a large gutted cinema in south London. The huge picture of m on the outside wall of the modestly named Palace of Peace made this relatively easy. A sign in the lobby proclaimed 'work is worship'. The back wall of the palace was decorated with paintings of past perfect masters who looked down on the premie's bums as they kissed the carpet in front of the stage. The accommodation service that operated from the palace gave me the address for a nearby premie house. I moved in that day.

For the first time I practiced k in the prescribed way, daily meditation and regular satsang. Although I substituted sightseeing for service, I figured as long as I did it with love it was okay.

There was a lot happening, Reigate, DUO, schools, farms, businesses, warehouses, plays, mahatmas, special artist's ashrams etc. A new world of truth, consciousness and bliss presided over by the current and most powerful perfect master was manifesting itself all over England. Strangely this occurred mostly unnoticed under the noses of nearly everybody else on the planet who thought we were a bunch of wacko losers. But without the inner connexion and the grace that's what you get, a life of ignorance and maya.

Not me, I was making serious progress. I meditated for hours every day. My tongue licked my brain while my forehead became accustomed to sticky carpet and smelly pillows. I was pretty sure I could tell the difference between lila and maya. Lord of the universe still bothered me a bit but I concluded that m was certainly special and probably divine. What other explanation could there be?

Unbelievably I didn't seriously consider this question for another twenty years.

Late in 1975 a festival was announced for my hometown. I returned to Sydney with a gorgeous girlfriend, Lesley, to witness m wearing his Krishna costume at the famous opera house. We stayed on in Sydney, happily settling into the cult world of Wentworth Ave and William St. My transformation from fringe premie to church lady surprised me. I'm not much of a joiner but I wanted to fit in somewhere. I wanted to play a part.

Premies still gave satsang back then and often there was fabulous live music. The vibe ranged from deadly boring to electric depending on the night. But it was real people telling their story. Sincere, courageous, mostly young people who wanted to get it right, live a loving life and fulfil their potential as human beings. We needed inspiration and direction unfortunately we got foot kissing and fear mongering.

Fuelled by my addiction to the darshan high in the late seventies I spent a small fortune attending big international events in Europe and North America. Huge indoor and outdoor venues with gigantic stages and massive thrones from which m would tell us how fantastic he was and what dickheads we were, pontificate on some pet peeve for a while, remind us how lucky we were that he was prepared save us from our crazy minds, shamelessly exploit his children for a bit and finish off bare-chested with some mala swinging and arm waving.

I lapped it up. The more bizarre it was the better I liked it. Surely it was the real deal. The divine play was unfolding and lucky me I had a nice seat in the back.

The indoctrination was relentless. Stories and images of m were the staple diet, m with shri Hans, m being crowned, m looking sad, m looking coy, and m addressing the faithful. Mahatmas told us stories of a compassionate and powerful m. We were bombarded with tapes, photographs, music, magazines and videos. I absorbed it all. It became my personal understanding, my memory.

I needed to know how to take full advantage of his infinite mercy. He told me I had to put him first. I had to be his slave. I had to trust him. I had to understand that only thru devotion to him is it possible to be truly fulfilled. At every event he hammered the message home. Without him there is nothing. He is all-important and if you can't accept that then you're stuffed.

"Not only does Perfect Master have the key, but that answer, that solution, that experience, lies within him. He is the experience." Malibu May 28 1978.

Or this little gem from Dortmund Oct 1 1978: "Really what makes you a premie is if you obey me."

One last quote from Kissimmee Nov 5 1979 I call shutting down the options: "Only those devotees will know the joy and the true bliss who exist and devote themselves to Guru Maharaji Ji.'

It was all a tad intense if you thought about it. Luckily I knew thinking was evil and avoided it with religious fervour. Constantly meditate and trust m to safely carry me across the ocean of illusion.

It barely occurred to me that I was being isolated. K and m were the most important things in my life but I was repeatedly told don't think about them. Don't discuss them with your closest friends not even your partner. Never evaluate the experience of meditation. Never ever compare experiences it will lead to blindness. Just find a seat on the boat, sit down, shut up and start rowing.

We moved to Mullumbimby in 1981 into a small house in the forest, by a creek and started a new life. It was an adult life in many ways, a home, a career of sorts and a business in a new town. Beautiful beaches and stunning scenery provided the backdrop for an enviable lifestyle. I was still very much a premie but the scene in Byron Shire was laid back and besides my cult was one of the less obviously wally cults around town. I meditated every day, even did a stint as community coordinator, but the times were changing. DLM vanished, the big festivals stopped and the Krishna crown got mothballed. We had to make do with the occasional visit.

One visit managed to make it onto the surreal list. At a dinner dance in a Sydney hotel reception room m sat at the 'bridal table', which was surrounded by other tables full 'wedding guests' dressed to the nines. M proceeded to encourage everyone to get drunk and tell dirty jokes.

However the visits were mostly a bit dull. An impeccably tailored m speaking at introductory programs about peace, pretending he wasn't Krishna or Kabir while smiling at someone in the front row who thought he was but could not discus it with the person sitting next to them.

My life was really good. I had k, I could meditate as much or as little as I wanted. I could see m when he came to Brisbane if I wanted to. At the heart of my social life was a circle of premie friends unkindly nicknamed the country club who were in a very real sense my family. We shared our daily lives, our homes and gardens, births and funerals and when m came to town we would meet up with the extended family for a fine old knees up. I didn't have to be any more involved.

It was semi retirement from cult world. The door was ajar I might have slipped out, unnoticed and taken up permanent residence in my own life. All I had to do was ask the fucking question.

Conditioning is difficult to over ride. Years of meditation, thousands of hours of satsang and half a life time of going with the flow is not good training for the clear thinking necessary to answer the question …is m the perfect master and is meditating on my breath connecting me to god? As a premie it is almost impossible to ask yourself that, let alone answer it, because if the answer is yes, great, but if the answer is no, then you have to also ask yourself why am I still here? I could not ask myself for years.

EV started rearing its ugly head. It was the age of the video presentation with its endless shots of swaying grass and running water mixed slow motion shots of m walking, m wearing his captain's hat, m swotting flies. The content changed a bit, less surrender at the lotus socks and more psycho babble about the heart mind split. Basically it stayed the same mantra, the perfect master/teacher is always right/good and the devotee/student is always wrong/bad. The heart is good and the mind is bad. Everything good is only by his grace and every thing bad is courtesy of my own crazy mind.

It was Amaroo that finally did me in. I remember m boasting about how cheap the land was. It's inhospitable, hot and dry, real bushfire country complete with millions of flies and thousands of rabbits. It has an eerie beauty. I'm not surprised he liked camping out there under the great southern sky. It's a breathtaking experience. What is surprising is that such a simple pleasure could be the inspiration for a divine fiefdom where the faithful pay to kiss his feet.

The first time I went it was really hot and depressing. A heavy malaise hung over the place mixing with the desperate excitement of a child's birthday party. I wasn't the only person looking stunned, anxious and out of place.

My gut instinct was to run. I used to trust my gut instinct. But premie thinking is that the heart and the mind are the only protagonists involved in the human psyche, slugging it out in some cosmic boxing match. My belief about the heart/mind split defined my being. I had forgotten to give gut instinct enough credit. It's a warning. The warning is something is wrong.

I used to like to meditate enough to feel a little Teflon coated, so I wouldn't notice life's bumps. Extra bumps required more meditation. It works to some extent. Meditate a lot and it's possible to tolerate stuff that usually drives you crazy or makes you uncomfortable. It can even calm a gut feeling for a while. My gut didn't need calming it demanded recognition and forced its way into the ring and fought with mind and heart as I slipped back into cult world.

After several years of slowly escalating involvement, I knew a bit about how Amaroo works. It's basically a medieval court with m of course king pooh-bah, then an inner circle, an outer inner circle, an inner outer and an outer, outer circle. Then come the barons and dukes vying with the good ol' boys for his lordship's ear and so on down the line.

I was just one of the mass but I knew about the incredible squandering of resources. Millions of dollars poured into useless infra structure, decaying utilities and washed out roads. I know premies who put their blood, sweat and tears into that place and in the process became too poor to camp there during an event. I knew the windmill site and the private area. I knew about Monica. I got pissed at fine dining while Daya sang the blues. All the time my gut rumbled. The more it rumbled the more I meditated.

Initially Lesley was more taken with Amaroo than I was and became involved earlier and more actively than I did. She has her own story to tell. It's a harrowing tale. I learnt a lot from her courage and her pain.

Our journeys converged pretty much after she had a serious accident at Amaroo. After a week in hospital she came home to months of painful rehabilitation and terrible depression. We talked a lot. It helped us both. Still it wasn't enough to stop one last tilt at the windmill. We limped back into cult world, Lesley with broken bones and me with that nasty feeling in my gut.

I was on my last legs. During the summer of 1999-00 it all unravelled. I hated the videos and Amaroo made me ill. Chest thumping and finger pointing dominated cult politics. The way premies treated each other was careless and inconsiderate. The way m treated the premies was callous and demeaning. The trainings boarded on the criminal. The feudal order left me cold.

The evidence that m doesn't care about the fear and pain he causes is hard to accept. It is however plain to see if the rose colour glasses become dislodged.

After a lot more straight talking and some actual clear thinking helped along by my friends and the ex-premie site, I was ready to jump ship. Ready to discover what I really believed and how holding those beliefs affected me. Questioning the dynamics of cult thinking and behaviour helped me untangle the confusion of euphoria and fear I experienced around m. By any definition I was certainly in a cult and m was a cult leader not the Sat Guru. He really was only the client.

And then there's the subject of meditation. First up, I never saw any evidence that m does much of it himself or even actually knows much about it. For him it's a hook. It's the secret, special cosmic link he claims with his followers. Yoga, hyperventilating, pain, altitude, exercise, music, magnetic fields, sex, sonar, chocolate, laughter, drugs, grief, sensory deprivation and sleep all produce changes in brain chemistry. Meditation does the same. It was the context in which I practised meditation and the beliefs I held about it that made it so special to me.

When we went to Amaroo in April 2000 we knew it was for the last time. It was a sentimental journey, like a chance to say good-bye to a dying friend. It was an act of closure. M looked silly and uncomfortable as he made jokes about instructors and flirted with the front rows. I sat in the back. It felt like the last day of school with a boring old headmaster droning on about wonderful school traditions.

That last drive out the gate and down Mt Flinders Rd was the beginning of the real journey home. Of course my premie friends would disagree, to them it's a betrayal. Only a few are still in my life. We still love each other but it's tricky not mentioning the war. I wish them well.

I am yet to catch the smell of rotting vegetables seeping from my wasted life. I certainly don't feel like a spent match. On the contrary I have experienced movement and genuine personal freedom for the first time in years. I am delighted to have m out of my head and out of my life. It's great.

Bill Veale
Mullumbimby Creek
August 2003

Trent

I travelled to India in 1970 and received knowledge at Prem Nagar from Mahatma Dianand. I simply stumbled upon the place while traveling around India, searching for… They asked me to turn in my hashish and refrain from having sex while there. I ate wonderful small potatoes, picked roses in the garden, strolled the banks of the Ganges, and generally had a wonderful time… although it was difficult to keep concentrated on the "word" while Star and Moonglow fucked in their room.

I had no idea who the Guru was until he showed up one day in a Mercedes and everyone went down screaming and yelling and kissing his feet, etc.

I stayed several months and then went down South and landed in Goa with some ex-premiees. We drank beer, smoked hash with a Catholic Priest, ate lobster and shark and had a wonderful time.

Like all of us, Guru Marajahi, (Dai shtachand) is part and parcel of this mystery we all live in and embrace. Frankly, after all of this time, I have come to understand that God does not need us to worship,obey, patronize, or even love him/her. God does not NEED anything. God does not REQUIRE ANYTHING. We can all do exactly what we please to do, and if we do it so that it really PLEASES us, then I am certain that God will be pleased as well. And, we (you and I) are the only ones that know precisely what pleases us. Right.

Stephanie

Unlike most other Journals here, I was never a premie myself. However, my life and that of my family has been ripped by the Maharaji cult. I felt it was finally time to tell my story, this seemed the best place.

My parents fell into the Majaraji cult in the 70's. My dad was the first to find it, along with a group of his college buddies, then eventually got my mom to do so as well. Fortunately, mom saw through what they were being told and left the group, however dad refused to listen and remained. This produced bitterness between them that would last for many years to come.

For years as I kid I was dragged to events, made to watch his videos and go to presentations. For some unknown yet very lucky reason I grew resentful. I hated Majaraji as a child, possibly for all the time dad was away from home following the almighty majaraji around like a dog, being sent from the TV room when dad had his friends over to watch the majaraji tapes, or the picture of majaraji that sat on his desk, or even worse the entire album of photos from the cult. I hated seeing his fat, sneering face in my house.

Even before the divorce, during our financial hard times he insisted on going to majaraji gatherings, even on one occassion where I was sick. That was the first and hopefully only time I ever saw majaraji. I was sick as a dog, sore throat, coughing, body ache, you name it. Yet I was forced to walk throgh freezing temperature in New York city to get to the place. In a silent act of defiance, I neglegted to wear my contact lenses as to not see that sick man clearly.

As things tend to do, the bad got worse. Parents divorced two years back. I'm pretty sure the cult wasn't a direct reason, but it has succeeded in making our lives miserable since. We have had barely enough money to get by due to court mix-ups, while daddy dearest spent hundreds of dollars taking trips to whever maharaji is speaking, be it palm beach florida or sunny california.

Even today he has all the tapes and a new majaraji calendar on the wall. My attempts to reason with him have failed. I told him about the child sexual abuse by mahatma Jagdeo. About all the ex-premies trying to tell the truth. As usual he laughed at me.

I do wonder what life would have been like without the despicable cult in our lives.

Janet Schwarz

I started reading about yoga when i was 17, did acid the summer out of high school in 1970, and wanted a way to go further without drugs, once i opened my mind. A friend twisted my arm to get a TM mantra in 1972, and between the hatha yoga and the meditation, I kind of lost interest in my college classes. I dropped out to avoid flunking out, and hung around my college town, without a real aim, for another couple of months, until my mom wanted me back in New York . I kept doing TM, but had zero sense of community or fellowship with it. Then I had one frightening experience in meditation that no one cared about, and I stopped at once, aggravated that they didn't have any help for me.

About three months later I had a fight with my mother over her drinking, and she told me to get out of the house and not to come back until i was happy (!)

I had an appointment in NYC, so I took the train in, finished the appt, and then was at a loss what I was to do next. I was a sitting duck for the elevator operator, who asked me if I wanted to go to satsang that night in Greenwich Village, when he got off work at 5pm. Sure, why not? I can't go home. What the hell.

Rennie Davis of the Chicago 7 was the star speaker that night. I was wowed. Rennie looked blasted. His eyes shone like diamonds, and he was just awash in peace and visionary rhapsodies. If Rennie had checked it out, it had to be real, right? No charlatan guru could fool a member of the radical yippie Chicago 7! 'course not.

So I didn't go home. I went to Harlem with the elevator guy overnight (chaste sleeping - him in his bed, me on the livingroom floor) and in the morning, we packed small knapsacks and took the train to Philadelphia, to await being picked to receive the Knowledge techniques (light, sound, breath and nectar - the tongue fold-back). For two weeks we caravaned around PA in a VW bus with other kids he knew, from the very buildng he worked in, where I'd had my appointment, and they lived -- and finally, after getting the full satsang brainwashing treatment, for 2 weeks, 24-7, I reached the target state of utter blank readiness they were waiting for.

I was initiated on may 15, 1973, by one of Guru Maharaji's mahatmas. Had a stunning experience with the sound.

Went along for the next week until the whole vanload had been picked and initiated, then we all went home to New York. My mother was baffled when I came home. She had ordered me out, three weeks ago, and I hadn't come home till now.

And I was happy. I'd done what she had said, didn't i? I cleaned the cat litter box with supreme serenity. I smiled thru her alcoholic rages. I sat with her watching tv and did yogic breathing, which she thought I was doing to mock her smoking. Felt all my chakras open in succession while watching 'Kung Fu" with her one night.

Then she got word of a house she wanted to go housesit in Santa Barbara, and she packed up and left me there to sublet the apt for her. She had been waiting 13 years for a way to go back to California. So i showed the apt and found a renter, and I was now free and clear to take off into New York City, and become a true wandering renunciate in service to my Lord.

I lived by the ashram schedule and vows, but i never actually entered the ashram officially. I think somehow I felt that I was even more holy for not going in. I seem to recall that I saw the ashram as terribly flawed, with all the ego trips and the abusive humiliating and pushing people around, so I kept myself apart from it to be 'even purer' than that.

It was fun for the first year or 2 or 3. I was a gonzo devotee, with no aim in life but to tell people about maharaji and bring peace on earth in my lifetime. I slept on floors rolled in a blanket. I meditated constantly. I wore earplugs so I could only hear the inner music, and I read people's souls while I watched their lips move. We opened a vegetarian restaurant in NYC, dead center of midtown, to show the world what heaven on earth would be like when maharaji had shown everybody what he'd shown us. I went to the (ridiculous) millennium festival at the astrodome, and back to new york. Almost hit samadhi the next morning in meditation -- but the housemother threw the door open and announced breakfast, just as i was rocketing toward the infinite. I didn't get up, but everyone else did, -- and stampeded for the kitchen, destroying the stillness and my almost perfect experience!

Things gradually lowered by degrees from then on. They sent me out to the boonies to a godforsaken outpost, and I found a way to get back into the city. They tried making me a cook for these two ancient women in Queens, but I returned to the city again. then we heard maharaji was getting married in Denver, and i called my mother, now in caifornia, and she sent me plane tickets to fly west to see her.

I stopped in Denver and didn't get the plane on to L A. I lived in the Denver community the rest of that year, going from the ashram for aspirants, to a premie house, to another, to destitute homeless squatting, in a vacated, abandoned premie house with several others like myself. We begged at the back doors of homes for any food they had they didn't want. We picked straggly veggies in the garden. I once hid out overnight in the free clothes pile in the basement of the mahatmas ashram, and slept there because it had heat, and our empty house didn't.

By Thanksgiving, the utilities had been shut off and the landlord came round, to see where his tenants had gone. He found us, took pity, and let us stay until we could find other places to go. I finally called my mother on Christmas of 74 and finished my flight out to Los Angeles to see her again.

Her drinking was the same old tired nightmare. When she shattered a glass beer stein on the kitchen counter edge on New Year's Eve, and menaced me with it, I knew it was time to head back to premieland. I walked out to the highway to a pay phone, and called the nearest premies. While i was waiting for them to come get me, a cop stopped to ask if I was alright, and to my huge secret amusement, his badge said "L. Foote". My ride came and took me up to Los Angeles, and I became part of the L A community for awhile.

Destitution was now the norm for me and my buddies. The same people I had been squatting with -- first met them in NYC -- and before in Denver, now rejoined me in LA. We found yet another empty premie house, and did the same thing again. Ate off the trees. Dumpster foraged. 'Gleaned'. Never missed a meditation or going to satsang, despite.

By spring I was offered a ride east, and I took it. Went back thru Denver, got the application papers for entering the ashram, and, for some inexplicable reason, bolted, just before my interview. Got back in the car and went on to Boston instead.

Lived in that comunity till summer. My father came to town on business and he came to dinner at the premie house. I remember being apalled that he wouldn't take off his shoes at the door. He wanted me to come see him at his house after, and when i went, i got stranded out in the middle of nowhere in PA for 6 interminable weeks, while he tried to make me conform to his values. What finally saved me was his wife's relatives, coming to visit, and my packing my bags and slipping out with them, when they went to drive back to NYC. I got back into midtown and went straight to the restaurant. Then to satsang, and had a place in a premie apt by nightfall.

Didn't last. I found myself homeless again in a couple of months, and the neighbors two doors over took me in. I did manage to get a ride to Miami, that fall, to our Hans Jayanti festival, where I met up with the Denver premies I knew, and got a ride back to Denver with them. But things still went downhill. My roommate pushed me out. She wanted to be alone. A non-premie man heard the scene and promptly offered me a job as his housekeeper, in the basement apt. I really didn't want to go, but it was that or the streets, so I went. He was honorable. Didn't try anything gross. He was a foodstamps tech, and he got me on foodstamps for the first time in my destitute life.

I was miserable living there, but there were premies living upstairs in three other apts, and my former roomate used to come down to the basement to bake bread in our oven, since we had a full kitchen (painted a lovely battleship gray with exposed pipes). Looking back, i could have made that place much nicer with a can of paint, but I just wanted outta there.

I got my chance on my birthday. An aspirant I'd met at satsang brought his car around and said he was leaving his apt and I could have it, so we moved me over, on the spot.

He left for Las Vegas a week later, and right behind him, in came my former roommate. the same one who had kicked me out at the other building. But she got SSI checks, and I had no income, so I let her move in and pay the rent.

We lived there like that from summer 76 to spring 77. Maharaji called a program in Montreal in April and I caravaned there with a family I knew. We got separated at the hotel, and I didn't get my ride back to Denver, and I ended up homeless again . So I fell in with a motley crew of international leftover premies in this bare apt. in Montreal for 6 weeks, subsisting on bread and milk. Thru all this, I never missed satsang or doing my meditation.

I hitchiked to Ottawa next, and was a guest in their comunity for a number of months, on into June and July of 77. Another ride took me to Toronto for a week or so, and then maharaji called a festival in Miami in July for Guru Puja. I got a ride down the east coast with this crazy brother who floored the accelerator to 95mph on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and froze the engine. We left skid marks for 300 feet before coming to a stop, and everyone bailed out in wrath at him. I hitched the rest of the way south, down the east coast and made it into Miami at dawn. Got stranded again at festival's end, and became destitute again, with another leftover premie I'd seen in Ottawa.

I got a letter from my Denver roommate at summer's end, telling me to come back or I was gonna lose all my stuff. So I walked out to the road and stuck out my thumb, and was back in denver in 4 days, at her door. She had moved to a new, tiny place so small we had to stand the couch on end at night, to lie down and go to sleep on the floor.

At this point, I got word that my mother had left me an inheritance of 10,000 dollars, but my family promptly seized it to keep me from 'giving it all to the guru'. What they didnt know was, i would never have done that. I wanted to buy land and live on it," whole earth catalog" style, but they wouldnt listen, and wouldnt believe me, so i couldnt touch it. A friend who had been watching my strange behavior, ever since my mother's death, took me aside in the fall of 77 and said he could get me on SSI. I let him take me thru the motions, and was surprised when the checks started coming at New Year's.

And suddenly, all doors closed in my face. Now that I had an income, no premie house would take me! I found a crappy apt, got robbed while overnight at a brothers' house (and got pregnant that same night, btw) came back, and moved to a still worse apt, and underwent the crushing decision as to whether or not to go thru with the pregnancy. The father didn't want me to. My family didn't want me to.

But I came to realize I just couldn't do an abortion or an adoption. So I resolved I'd have it, and it proved to be the single most revealing decision I ever made.

People, premies, I had thought all these years were my friends, showed their true colors. They all ran off to see maharaji, while I struggled along, trying to prepare my world for motherhood. The father resented me and the coming child. He betrayed us, again and again, spending the rent on planefare, to go to see maharaji and losing us our home. He dragged me around the country, all the year I was gestating. I finally asserted my needs, and returned to Denver one month before my due date, regardless of him. He went to one more program before rejoining me, and getting us a decent place. The baby came on oct 6th 1978. and four weeks later, he committed us to go to Hans Jayanti again, this time to sleep out in a tent with 20,000 other premies, next to Disneyworld. He left me with the baby, there on the land, in a mud rain, to find my own way back to Denver, while he got a ride for himself.

I couldn't get back to denver.

One kind brother took me to his house in DC for 6 weeks, then north again to New Haven, CT, where the father's parents lived. There I begged planefare from his father, to get me and the baby back to Denver, to our apt, and when I got home, 8 weeks after the campground, dad acted like we'd gone to the 7-11 for diapers.
I overturned his drafting table on him for that. Incredibly, he did it to us again in April of 79, when maharaji called Holi in Miami. He spent the rent to fly us there, and we lost the apt. We got stuck in miami for two years, moving in together and apart, over and over, but at least the festivals were a walk up the street, now. maharaji was having the slave labor premies refit a boeing 707 for him to fly, and dad wanted in on that service. As always, he provided for himself nicely, and left the baby and me to rot in fleabag surroundings. He slugged me in the liver once, for yelling at him about it. Back money came in for the baby's SSI, and the day I went to buy the tickets to take baby and me back to Denver, I was purse-snatched in broad daylight. They got 800 dollars. I got my wallet back, but was re-trapped in miami.

When the father tried to choke me for yelling at him, I snapped, and left him for the last time. I went to Gainesville and tried to make a life for baby and me. Each place I rented, reneged on me, right after we moved in, and in utter desparation, I called my father, and asked him to come and get us in his company's jet.

It was a bad move.

He kept me out in the boonies again, like last time, only this time he foiled my escape. He intercepted our leaving on the child's 3rd birthday and instead diverted me into houston, where he succeeded in having psychiatrists lock me up for a year, while he got legal custody of my son. The hospital miraculously pronounced me cured on the day my insurance ended.

I crawled back to Denver to mend myself, and for ten years, refused to be budged out of the apt I got myself. I couldn't visit my son.

And maharaji had become a complete hypocrite. The ashrams had been closed during my hospitalization. Satsang was disbanded, and there were nothing but videos held. The community as we had known it, dissolved. We weren't allowed to discuss knowledge with new people anymore. I had four premie friends, but we never much mentioned maharaji. I went thru therapy. I joined a 12 step group for adult children of alcoholics. I worked for the mayor. I got lettters published in the papers. I went thru a domestic violence arrest wth the man I dated for 6 years, spent 4 days in jail and a year probation for it.

I went to metaphysics classes with premies in them, taught by non premies. I learned channelling, chakras, auras, crystals, other meditation techniques, but still went to see maharaji when he came to town. Still meditated, but it was not like before. I felt like I was crying in the wilderness. I felt that he was making a terrible mistake in the direction he was taking the whole thing.

As the 80's came to a close, I had reached irrevocable fallings-out with 3 of my four premie friendships. Two ended in court. One ended in cold rejection, over being used.

In the beginning of the 90's, I met a shaman man who had fantastic experiences to share. Then life brought me a young man, age 20 who wanted to learn what I knew. He moved in with me as his mentor.We had angelic visitations, astral traveled together, the Doors between the worlds opened, and we moved back and forth between the dead and the living at will.

It was this last that finally moved us to uproot and move to Los Angeles in 1993. We had divine orders from the angels and other celestial personages to go there and do what we would be shown to, Los Angeles was a phantasmagoria. The grand hope failed. He left me for a street girl. I had a nervous breakdown and put myself back in the psych hospital. The 12 steps gave me back my stability to check out and go home again. I got into another relationship with a strange and dramatic man, almost married him, and that too ended in a domestic violence arrest -- he at knifepoint, wreaking havoc to our home. My original friend came back, left again, returned, but moved in with his street buddies in a drug soaked haze.

Meanwhile my son has been found to have schizophrenia in his first week at college. had gone to psych lockdown and been taken off the class register. His father in CT, at my request, had gone and retrieved him and tried for three months to take him in and handle him, but the grandparents couldn't take any more of it. so they packed him up and send him back to me, after keeping him to themselves for 16 years. And I had to hit the ground running, to rope him in, find us a home before the boyfriend came back from jail, get him care, and somehow absorb the events of my life.

I went to see maharaji up until april 25th of last year. I snapped at that program.

I couldn't stand the falsity, the airs, the egos I saw and felt and heard at those programs. These were people, faces I had known since I was 20, who now looked right thru me, and didn't know me! My genuine greetings went unanswered. I may as well have been invisible. It was surreal, insulting and very cold.

Those who did speak to me were pompous asses, full of themselves and repugnant.

I went there alone and I came home alone, and I was so glad to see my neighbors: real people, without Knowledge, who were my friends, who knew me, who understood me.

I finally declared myself an Ex in october of last fall. Went on the forum and have been there ever since.

It isn't perfect, but it's real. I can say what I never could in the cult. I can arrive at my own answers. I don't have to hide anymore. My family still hasn't made up for what they did, to my son and me, to my money (it all got spent on the damned hospital and jail bail), but maharaji is gonna pay for what he did. I am so glad I made the decision to Ex before my son could ask for knowledge…. I would much rather he studied true yoga.

Daniel T

After somewhat accidentally bumping into the EPO website last night, I found myself unable to break away and spent many hours sifting through the mountains of fascinating information here. However this is not the first time I paid a visit. I took a look here several years ago. At the time I found the tone of the editorial writings to be annoyingly vitriolic and really unproductively primitive (fatboy jokes etc.). As a result, I couldn't take the website very seriously and thought that the people making it needed to get a life (after Maharaji).

As a result, I was really flabbergasted to see how the site has evolved over the years. The silly invectives have mostly been replaced with an unbelievable collection of cult documentation and insider revelations. I must then sincerely offer my compliments and thanks for the obvious amount of effort and good work that have gone into it. I also must admit that I was perhaps too quick to judge the merits and motivations of your online pursuits. Although I myself wasted enough precious years involved in this brain-sucking void of carpetbaggery, I have not experienced the kind of suffering that many of you obviously endured. I see too that I didn't recognize the extent of my own damage, as the course of reading through the material here has stirred a process in me again as well. I can now certainly see that simple "name calling" can also have its cathartic benefits, though I still think the aims of the website are best served when the contributors stick to the facts.

Once again, I think this website is performing a great service to anybody who has been, is or might consider becoming involved in the "M" thing. Indeed from a purely anthropological perspective, it is apparently the only accurate documentation of a complex and anomalous phenomenon which affected the lives of countless people. One might compare it to the Salem witch trials for example.

Having said that, I sit hear now both awestruck and sick in the stomach as to what I have just read - especially from Michaels Dettmers and Donner. Although many of these things I had heard about as unsubstantiated rumors, to now read first person accounts of the extremes of excesses of M and some of his partners in crime is overwhelming. It has also caused me to rediscover a pool of thoughts and memories that I thought were long gone. Even the story of Jagdeo jostled a few long encrusted cortical synapses to reanimation. This weird business about "childrens' satsang" and his "special affinity" for children definitely rings a bell somewhere in me. Unfortunately I can't remember whether I heard that from him directly or from someone else. I also remember hearing some unwholesome inuendos at the time about him - I think concerning ashram "sisters". Mostly I just remember him being a pain in the ass though.

The story about Anne Johnston also touched me deeply. Although she was not particularly liked by many premies, I really liked her, I suppose precisely because she was so intense. At least she wasn't so milquetoast boring like so many others. Actually she was rather an individualist in her own way and definitely had personality. That M would just abandon her like that breaks my heart! It is unfathomable. This whole thing makes me realize that I actually never really liked M so much, I think I more liked the idea of M and K. That whole open shirted "Miami Vice" look of his in the late 70s always turned me off. I had a hard time relating to the continuous accolades as to how sexy and beautiful he was. He looked more like a sleazy gangster to me. I guess at the time I believed that I needed to open up to this avatar reality and "let go" of my assumptions and external judgements. In fact, the first time I spoke with an "initiator" to receive knowledge, I honestly told her I was alienated and somewhat frightened the one time I had seen M at a festival. This obviously naive and at the time strategically unsound answer (naturally I was asked to wait) I now understand as an astute intuition.

I was one of the apparently few people to get K around 78. I was 18 at the time and had been going to meetings on and off for a few years (since I was 15). I had just missed the boat of getting K really easily. At that time, to get K you had to already be completely devoted to M. For about a year I had been going to the ashram and doing "service" there, going to "aspirant meetings" and going to festivals. After the big day came, I tried in my young innocent exuberance to be completely true to M and my promise to give my everything. I took it very seriously. I meditated usually 4 hours a day and spent most days at the ashram doing service. This went on for a year, when I was allowed to move into the ashram myself. This was also when my spiritual life more or less ended. Shortly thereafter, someone in the ashram noticed that I was intelligent and I got put to work organizing that weird premie business of importing Mexican kitsch and selling it on the streets. So basically what I thought would be my entrance into a spiritual shelter became my introduction into the world of capitalist enterprise. Unlike all the ashram premies around me (and many who were not in the ashram) I always seemed to have a load of cash in my pocket. I spent almost every day counting money and thinking about strategies to increase our sales. I also found my celibate and virgin self selling our wares in topless (and mostly topped) bars where my underage would have prevented me from even patronizing. I remember that during that whole first plane fiasco, there was this incredible fundraising drive going on. I managed with the help of some other people to set a whole whirlwind selling mania into motion and literally dropped about $20,000 on the community coordinator who was sitting on the floor. (I remember being suspicious as to whether the money would actually get to M. At this point I would have been relieved had the CC taken the money and flown to Mexico.)

I guess up until this point, the whole issue of M's lifestyle and money never really bothered me. It seemed irrelevant. As long as people were giving out of a genuine sense of love then who cares how many cars M buys. What did bother me was when there would be these hysterical fundraising drives. Then giving out of love became giving out of coersion and guilt. These firebrand speakers would get sent around the country to berate people into coughing up. This also happened at some of the festivals notably from Joe Anctil and I think also Dennis M. Although I found this annoying, I guess I still didn't make the association directly with M. I thought that this was just some weird people around M. (Don't they realize this isn't what M is about?) It also seemed that sometimes these fundraising speeches would all too often preempt the satsang that was supposed to be going on.

Then the plane thing happened. I guess that was exciting at the time. After that alot of weird things happened concerning the ashram and of course the outrageous selling of the plane. Eventually I found myself on the street like everyone else. I imagine I was pissed off, but I'm not sure at who really. I guess I was still venting my frustration toward the "confused" people around M. At this point I didn't exactly leave, I just gradually stopped participating, although I guess I meditated still for some years. I really wanted to distance myself from the whole weird premie world and start enjoying life again - with all its exciting ups and downs.

I know that one incident happened that more or less did me in. This was I suppose during the start of the revisionist policies (although certainly some of that had already taken place in the 70s). Some fundraising troops were being sent out around the time the ashrams were closing with what was supposed to be a "very important" message from M or something along those lines. All of a sudden these people were walking around with charts and graphs to "prove" that M really didn't have any money and that he desperately needed funds to continue his important work. I mean you don't have to be a genuis to figure out that if he was broke, then there must have been a pretty large black hole somewhere in the stream of finance. I couldn't believe that intelligent people were buying (and also trying to sell me) this bald-faced lie. This was a strange new change in tactic and an insult to my intelligence and I thought I'm not giving a dime anymore. I think it was also around this time that all of the old videos were being collected and sent back. Now we know why! Of course it was obvious what was going down. I actually wanted to steal of couple of the videos or make copies - not because I needed to see them for the 300th time - but because I suspected that a day would come when their existence or at least their access would be denied.

The process of savagely reading through all the material on this website has caused my brain to go into overdrive. The rather enormous premie universe, which had become somewhat of a half-forgotten dream, has vividly returned to my consciousness to commingle with all this new information. My thoughts have been running wild as my brain restructures and corrects this awoken universe to encompass all this new information. I had never really gone so far with my feelings as to accept what a bastard M is/was. To be fair I was also lacking the cold facts.

I also realize that I have repressed alot of my feelings about the situation. A few years after I stopped participating I got involved in a very unhealthy gay relationship that lasted about 7 years. It is one of those things that people like to label "co-dependent". My partner was often quite pyschologically and verbally abusive to me. I in turn directed all of the lost devotion I once had for M toward my new lover. (At least he was a lot more exciting and sexy!). Indeed my lover had many similar qualities to M (though NOT physically). He was very bossy, demanding, insecure, irrational and liked to blame others (me) for things. By the time I got out of this relationship I had lost all of my self-esteem. It took several years to get it back and I still have some scar tissue. Tthat was ten years ago.)

I realize now that this whole "journey" started way before M. I have a very problematic relationship with my father. As I became a teenager, I was desperately seeking a father figure or role model to fill the void. I looked for this in several men including M. All were insecure self-centered bastards who pretended to be self-assured. They were all my heroes, although I only got sexually involved with one. That I still needed to go through this after M shows that I was far from over it.

An amazing thing has changed in me after sifting through this website. I realize how extraordinary many ex-premies were and are. At the time I had alot of animosity toward premies and I realize now that this animosity was completely misdirected. Indeed what made the whole circus so rewarding at the time was the incredible sincerity, optimism, desire for purpose in life and deep-seated intelligence in so many of you - despite the negative energy coming from M. This is a genuine revelation for me which I only have all of you who have contributed to this website to thank. Of course this is exactly what we were taught not to think at the time. Everything that was positive in our lives came from M and the rest of us were garbage. Oh my god is this sick!

This is not to forget of course that there were alot of opportunists among us - many of whom I lived with and had to pay the rent for. But such is life!

There is one more thing I would like to say. One of the things that originally turned me off from this website is that some people seemed to want to blame M for everything that happened to them. Although one can certainly not be indifferent to the tremendous amount of manipulation that was forced upon our impressionable minds, I am completely convinced that a crucial step to regaining one's life - indeed to becoming a whole and mature person - is to take responsibility for your life. This means the good things as well as the bad. This applies to everyone, not just ex-premies. My aging father has still not learned this, and obviously neither has M. So many people I meet are bitter. Blaming other people for what happens to you and feeling sorry for yourself is a sign of immaturity and a dead end. One of the aspects of being a "devotee" is giving the responsibility of your life to someone else. Please don't become a "devotee" of hate! I accept my mistake in doing the M thing. I also accept the credit for putting my life back together and having a beautiful time of it today. M is certainly not a happy camper and someday he will choke on all his expensive toys. If half of what has been said on this website is true, I am quite sure that I am enjoying my life way more than he is.

Needless to say I would still like to see an end to his shenanigans. It is terrible to see how predatory people like him continuously take advantage and squeeze the sincerity and vitality out of young (and a few not so young) hearts.

Thanks for reading this and I hope some of you find it helpful. I would be happy to correspond or speak with anyone who would like some support.

By the way, just for closure, the relationship which I described ended in 1993. Since then I am living in Berlin, Germany, am very happily married (with a woman oddly enough) and own a successful and fun design business.

Sofi

It was in 1990 when I received knowledge. I was an Orthodox Christian but I had lost faith when I was studying for the department of Philosophy in the University. For years I was in a desperate position. In 1984 I was divorced and got more unhappy. Until 1986 when I met marijuana. I started smoking like crazy. At last! Something was helping me to get happier or at least forget the misery of my life working not as a teacher, as I was hoping getting my University diploma but in a bank.

It was the first time then that I came in touch of eastern philosophy. In 1987 my brother met a girl who was a student of Maharaji since 1974. She told us how beautiful is knowledge, etc. I went to hear him but I found at least naive his sayings.

In Decemeber 1989, after a small illness, being in my brother's house I first read Castaneda. I was amazed. I started reading his books with much attention. Then I got out of my mind for 15 days. My parents took me to psychiatric help. Then I realised that I was needing a living master, like Castaneda.

So in March 1990 I became an aspirant and I thought I was very lucky because the events were almost every day because Maharaji would be come in my country in July to give knowledge! It was the first time I had friends of my own. Friends that had the same preferences in philosophical quest as I had. I was very happy and got happier when I received knowledge from Maharaji himself in a luxurious hotel of my town. All kept telling me how fortunate I was to get knowledge from him himself! So I started practicing because I was decided to give knowledge a "fair chance". Like T.D., I was awake in 5.30 p.m. practicing knowledge for an hour.

In the same time I was introduced to Tai Chi and also a centre of self discovery that later I found that it was dominated by Sai Baba. Also I was introduced in the books of Osho that I found more than interesting, in Reiki therapy. I discovdered I Ching and kept asking it as well as the Tarot of Osho.My personal life was a misery still but knowledge was so promising and I was certain that my misery came from the ignorance of myself.

Three years passed. I was making the techniques every day at least one hour but when I had time three, four and even sometimes five hours per day. In 1993 I was convinced that I could find the ultimate with my body. So I left my job, I left my family without any news and began the journey for the truth, free now. "Maharaji helped me find my freedom", I was saying.

I ended up in a psychiatric clinic in January 1994 and remain there for 20 days.When I got out I could no more be alone as all these years after my divorce, so I went live with my parents. I was in pills and could not even speak. I was walking like a robot. In October the therapist allowed me to cut the pills. In December I went in the event of Maharaji in Long Beach. I found it an extra experience and was very happy. My brother who is lawyer helped me to get back to my job and so in April 1995 I went for the third time to the event of India where I met my current husband. "Maharaji gave me even my companion", I thought and was totally happy.

But in November 1995 my husband told me that he had understood that Maharaji was a liar and so for two years we were in fighting. He told me also about the book "The Last Universal Dictator", of Dwight Kinman and the conspiracy of New Age, New Order, New Era, etc. I stopped to go to the events and also to practice the techniques, but inside me I was not believing him even when he saw me the ex-premie organisation site.

Then December last year, the miracle happened. I read a book of a Saint Father, Father Paisios. I prayed to the Holy Ghost to give me a proof if Maharaji is one of the members of the Antichrist. I opened the book "The Gift" that I had bought in the Indian bajaar into his indian ashram and there, in the begging I saw that all the telephones begin with the number of the Antichrist.

From that day I found out that the techniques that Maharaji gives are luciferian techniques and that Maharaji is one of the feet of the big octopus of New Age. Now I confessed and hope that Lord Jesus would accept me with Him.

I wish all of you who read this and are still in one of this traps understand the Truth before it's too late. Lord Jesus may be with us. Amen

Seeker of Truth

Hi. This is my first time on the Internet. I've recently finally woken up to how I've been deceived by M. It's taken a few months for the upset to subside. The process has been helped by lots of contemplation, counselling and the Internet. I now feel liberated, awake, alive and ready to tell my story.

I received K in '72. Did 'full time service' and lived in ashrams until '76. But M's world was so dysfunctional I resigned and disassociated myself from D.L.M. until '81 when I gave it another go. Despite the fact that M had changed his image, the dysfunctional stuff was still the same and I dropped out yet again.

In 1988 I became involved once more, believing as I always had that K was real, that M had the key and had mastered the experience. I discovered the secrecy, dishonesty and insincerity had gotten worse. M didn't seem to know what was happening. I wrote him a letter but received no reply. I kept my distance not being able to relate, but could not deny my thirst or my experience of meditation.

A few years ago I decided to get involved yet again. Why..Why..Why??? The happiest time of my life was when I received K. The master was here, I was blessed, it was grace; I was sincere; I was high, filled with appreciation. I trusted; I had faith. When I became troubled and overwhelmed by the dysfunctionality of M's world, I couldn't meditate. I felt like a failure, I didn't deserve this gift. It was somehow my fault, my problem. I had to try harder, try again and again. My efforts to resolve the conflict became intense. Convinced M was surrounded by fanatical premies who had long ago lost the plot, I embarked upon a mission to be honest, to confront the issues with other premies.

I could write a book about the dysfunctional aspects of M's world. The darshan addicted, pyramid climbing core group of premies surrendered their minds (including commonsense and discrimination) to M years ago (After all, this was and still is the path of devotion to the living lord). They run the show like a bunch of frightened (vulnerable) children always trying to please, doing it HIS way, and blaming themselves. Being yelled at by a father who by any normal standards would be condemned as insensitive and uncaring.

I quickly discovered other premies were seriously threatened by my attempts to uncover the truth. I was intimidated and shouted down.

The crunch came when I was made aware of a blatant attempt by M to crush dissent in the ranks using classic mind control tactics, in particular, guilt. The process reduced some premies to tears. Admitting their sins, they became the vulnerable children and he the patriarchal angry father. Truth and understanding were nowhere to be seen.

The penny dropped at last. I realised M was ultimately responsible for the dysfunctional stuff! I had been deceived and he didn't care.

The grief and anger I experienced when I finally saw M's deceit was the most intensely traumatic emotional experience of my life. I had wrecked forever my relationship with my mother and given hundreds of thousands of dollars to this deceitful little man's organisation, but worst of all I'd ignored my commonsense and intuition many times over the years. I felt stupid.

I could write a lot about how I was deceived. But at the moment I need to keep my identity to myself, so for now I'd just like to publish the letter I wrote to M in 1989. It's still just as relevant today as it was then and I still haven't received a reply.

1989 Australia

Dear Maharaji,

My name is ______. I received knowledge sixteen years ago. I worked for many years in full time service as an administrator and lived in an ashram.

During this time I devoted myself to you and your work. The more I gave the more I received. The experience of bliss was overwhelming - not a series of fleeting moments, but a continuous flow punctuated by profound experiences that transcended this dimension.

I now find myself in a very different situation. Doubt in your judgement and the clarity of those around you overwhelms my faith in you. I'm asking for your help to confront a number of issues that when resolved will hopefully lead me to a clearer understanding of myself and what is true or false.

At this stage in my life there is only one thing more important to me than knowledge and my relationship to you and that's the truth. Without it I will never have a foundation upon which to build. So I'm writing in an attempt to confess my concerns and face up to what appears to be happening. I know what appears to be is not necessarily the truth. I'm aware I have a limited perspective and hope my straightforward approach doesn't offend you.

Despite your efforts and best intentions it appears you are losing support in Australia. I suspect from your opening remarks at a recent program that you do not know why.

Few of the original wave of 'premies', and only a small percentage of more recent recipients now attend programs, or have much to do with Elan Vital. Perhaps some are practising knowledge and don't feel the need to participate in other ways. Others may lack inspiration to meditate and not realise its value.

There is, however, a long list of unexplained anomalies and confusing contradictions directly related to you that have never been explained, and contribute to people's lack of commitment. Many of these unresolved issues date back to when you were very young and could be explained because of your naivety, cultural conditioning and family influences. For this reason, the past may be best forgotten and it could be, if there hadn't been an effort to cover it up. When recent recipients of knowledge hear rumours of you sitting upon the throne encouraging 'devotion to the Lord of the Universe' it raises questions that don't get answered. Even though you have gone to great lengths to bury the past, it will be a problem unless there is a clearer explanation. I personally think the image change was the only sensible course open to you, but making the change brought up lots of questions. Over the years you have only made passing references to the subject and never really resolved it.

Much could be said about the 'Lord of the Universe' era - extravagant gifts, 'Rolls Royces', fast cars, the ill-conceived passenger jet project and more. Forgive me for saying, for those who don't know, your past reads like that of a playboy with little sensitivity for the plight of the third world or the need to set an example of moderation to consumers in the west.

Your lifestyle was accepted and actually encouraged by devotees because of your spiritual status. Nevertheless it was something that kept us justifying your actions to parents and friends for years. It presented a barrier to many moderate Christian-minded folk who had an understandable image of a humble spiritual leader

In hindsight, your apparent lifestyle made knowledge unavailable to many who would have benefited from meditation and your wonderful non-conceptual approach.

Nearly all evidence of the past - tapes, films, magazines - have been recalled and most of it probably destroyed. There have been various debriefings by instructors where terminology was changed and we were told what we could and could not say. I believe your motives are good but your change of image was a sensitive issue that needed more direct communication from you.

One could be forgiven for suspecting we have not learnt the most obvious lessons from the past, as mistakes are repeated and there is more potential than ever for confusion.

Your attitude to money must be confusing to many conservative people. On one hand you never have enough (and as a result it is a persistent issue), and on the other you appear to condone it's waste. This was acceptable when you were happy to be perceived as 'The Lord'. As many devotees thought you held the divine purse strings and could open them at will. Obviously this was never the case. Money is a convenient way of using limited energy. Its waste contributes to the demise of the planet. Ambitious ill-conceived projects that cost, or lost, many thousands of dollars litter the history of DLM and Elan Vital. If I am incorrect I would like to be set right. No doubt you have lost support because others like myself have this impression.

We now have the unfortunate situation where knowledge is free but to see you even on video costs a lot. We must all suspect this is a major contributing factor to the decrease in program attendances. Who can blame people? Practising knowledge i! s a challenge as you have said; no immediate results are guaranteed no matter how sincerely it is practised!

For some premies to attend a program means taking time off work, going interstate or overseas, and paying a considerable amount to hear you speak. Knowledge is now virtually unavailable to the working class and the unemployed by virtue of the fact that an integral part of practising it is attending programs. Is this correct? Could programs be funded by budgeting and cutting out unnecessary expense?

Your choice of a $50,000 sports car for your birthday, to be housed at your Brisbane residence for your exclusive use whenever you visit Australia, adds to my doubts about your judgement.

Your attitude towards instructors and administrators appears to be arrogant and unappreciative. If you act like the 'headmaster' and chastise your students you will stifle objective criticism and be kept from knowing the truth. Most people I'm referring to have given a great deal of their time and effort and need encouragement. Passing the blame when ultimately you are in charge and therefore responsible is not on. At the last Adelaide program you said, 'They were supposed to bring the seed but they brought the whole tree'. In fact you watered and promoted the growth of that tree for years whilst 'Mahatmas' I knew (quite well) only tried to serve you according to their understanding.

Your suggestion that you don't need administrators and instructors, that you are choosing to let them help, and could do it all alone, may sound fine to some but sounds crazy to me. It sounded just as foolish to hear you quoted as saying you would give knowledge yourself and dispense with instructors completely. Since that statement I am told you have changed your mind and have ordained four instructors. Can you forgive me for thinking you say things off the top of your head and don't think things through? I could give you a few other examples but I feel it would be rather impolite.

I don't blame you when you get a bit frustrated by the efforts of instructors and administrators. There may be some excellent people amongst them but I've seen some hopeless cases with far too much responsibility blundering about making a mess of things. I can't work out why with so many amazing people in this world, working hard for world peace in so many different ways, more aren't serving you.

For years poor communication of your direction by instructors and initiators has been given as the reason behind so many decision changes dating back to the first dissolution of the ashrams. Poor communication has sometimes seemed like an excuse simply because there was no explanation, at least you gave none and others happily took the blame (eg. 'it must be us because Maharaji can do no wrong'). Lots of problems could have been solved years ago by the introduction of tapes and videos addressing a variety of issues, especially major changes that were difficult to interpret and affected peoples' lives dramatically. It was too much to expect others with second hand information could represent you accurately. In an age where international organisations communicate effectively by fax, tape and video, it's beyond me why you don't avail yourself of the same technology. If we have nothing to hide even if a few tapes etc went missing it wouldn't matter anyway.

At a recent meeting of regular contributors, in answer to questions put to Jan McGregor regarding a long term premie who was confused and distressed by some of the concerns I've expressed in this letter, she said, 'They are free to leave it's their choice'. These people deserve more consideration than that! An instructor recently said, 'People have to make up their minds to support Maharaji and practise knowledge or not'. I find these attitudes disturbing. They suggest to me a lack of understanding of the commitment people have made, the crisis they now face and the REAL issues at hand. These attitudes are too cold and clinical for me to accept. Surely they do not reflect your attitudes.

It's fruitless for me to talk to premies about the issues raised in this letter. Some premies have the attitude you can do no wrong, others are afraid of dissent, or afraid to examine their faith. Some honestly just think I'm out of it.

I SHOULD be confused considering you are my spiritual guide and inspiration and I appear to be questioning and criticising! Nevertheless, even though it's hard, because I have discriminated between the spiritual and the material it's not as hard as it could be. I have no doubts the experience we seek is inside and that meditation is the way to access it. I love your non-conceptual, non-dogmatic approach. I like your personality (when you don't waffle on, get off the track, waste words and appear arrogant). I don't doubt your commitment and sincerity. The saving grace for me is that above all I want the truth whether it suits my ideas or not. If in the light of that truth I'm a fool, so be it.

Even though I can't see I deserve it I have been blessed with insight and have an experience that is difficult to talk about. Even though it almost drowns beneath a pile of trivia and day to day mundanity, when I dive deep I feel it and I'm left with that warm 'of course, how could I ever forget' feeling and I sometimes remember the first time we met, wave upon wave of bliss.

I hope you're still reading and that this letter helps us both in some way. Forgive the heavy stuff. Perhaps one day we will meet.

Sincere regards,

A seeker of truth.

Seymour

I first met Guru Maharaji was when he was about 13 years old and living in a small house just outside London. I lived with a group of about 12 friends sharing a large house in West London and one night a friend who lived nearby told us that an Indian Guru had moved into the neighbourhood and that he had an open house every evening if anyone wanted to come along and meet him.

He said people just sat about talking about meditation, god and other spiritual stuff and as that was what we spent most of our time doing anyway ( I was practising Maharishi's mantra, and other friends were into Madame Blavatsky, I Ching, Tarot, philosophy, Aurobindo, etc.), we went along the following evening.

At first we only stayed for about half an hour. Taking our shoes off and squeezing in to sit on the floor of a crowded room to listen to someone go on about how philosophy, art, and science were a waste of time and that there was something called the knowledge that was going to change the world gave us an irreverent fit of the giggles, so we retired to the pub for a pint and a ciggie. We soon went back, however and ended up there almost every night.

All the talk was by people who had received the knowledge and I remember feeling that this was a bit unfair as we all had our own experience and accumulated wisdom to give satsang about. I soon found out that my previous forays into the search for meaning were considered worthless and that the only thing people worth paying attention to were those who had received knowledge - particularly mahatmas and of course ultimately Guru Maharaji who came down to sit on the armchair covered in a sheet towards the end of each evening and sometimes in the afternoons (we ended up hanging around the house day and night). When he wasn't downstairs he was up in his bedroom watching T.V. and it was sometimes weird to be listening to lofty spiritual discourse while hearing Guru Maharaji listening to Star Trek or some other popular programme above us.

The whole thing was very strange and although I was drawn to it, I did not find it enjoyable at all. One of the worst things was the destruction of the relationship that I had with all my friends. Whereas before we would sit about as equals, pondering life's perplexities and laughing a lot, now everything was very serious and there were divisions between those who understood satsang, those who had knowledge, those who were aspiring to receive it and those who were confused. There weren't many who thought that the whole thing was a load of rubbish, and any that did dissent were ostracised. We spent virtually our whole time at the ashram so there was no socialising with ordinary folk.

I went along because I was attached to my friends and because it soon became clear that what was really being offered was infinite bliss and the realization of the true purpose of my life. It was also evident from the start that this involved acceepting Guru Maharaji as Lord and Master. I sat a few feet away from him many times in that small room while he talked about surrendering the reins of your life to Satguru,there will be many false prophets but only one true Lord; Guru Maharaji is better than God,there is only one Satguru and all the other gurus are like weeds surrounding a tree, and so forth.

This last quote, along with many other premie satsangs about the uselessness of every other Guru, teacher, meditation technique, and philosophy as compared to the knowledge convinced me to give knowledge a go. However it was not that easy to receive knowledge. It was necessary to prove that you had a real thirst and that you accepted Guru Maharaji as the boss. Part of the process was that you had to show your humility by asking (I think begging was preferred) a mahatma to give you knowledge. This could be quite humiliating when you had to do it in front of a large audience of friends and strangers, only to be told that you were not yet ready by someone who did not know anything about you except the fact you had not asked them very many times before and thus had not demonstrated enough humility and perseverance.

I went through a bit of this (it became even harder to give up the quest for knowledge once you had gone through a few of these refusals) and eventually spent a few intense days in the process of receiving knowledge. This process involved moving between ashrams and premie houses, being kept waiting for hours (of course with plenty of satsang), and then being told the mahatma had gone to bed, and if we still wanted knowledge to come back the next day at the crack of dawn. When we did this, we were in for another 14 hour wait (the whole time dying for a cup of tea and a cigarette ) but finally received the techniques late in the evening.

Looking back this was a horrible experience which no doubt showed me the power of mind - I must have been really thirsty to put up with all that mental torture. I was motivated by the fact that we were always told that once we received knowledge all would become right with our lives: past karma would be dissolved, there would be no need for drink, drugs etc, there would no loneliness and depression, and we would be given the strength to cheerfully go through unpleasant experiences as we would be able to turn on the bliss. Another motivation was that nearly all of my friends had received knowledge and whenever asked about it just said it was far out , that it could not be described and that the only way to know was to experience it for yourself. Talk about peer pressure! ( I must admit to being just as persuasive to many others in later years for which I am very sorry and hope I am forgiven.)

When Ashokanand finally gave us the techniques that evening, the pressure of his heavy hand on my eyeballs certainly caused me to see something but I did not experience anything from the other techniques. On the way out there were a few disgruntled ex-aspirants who did not know what to make of it - the anti-climax was profound - and on the long walk home (no night buses in those days) we tried to talk about what had happened, even though we were had been told not to analyse and "chit chat". I was so cold and tired that I could hardly speak.

Over the following months I remained one of the few who could not surrender at the feet of the master - figuratively or literally. I could never do pranam (bowing down), engage in darshan (kissing Guru Maharaji's feet), or sing arti (a Hindi devotional song). When the satsang meetings erupted into the chanting of "Bhole shri Satgurudev Maharaji ki jai", I felt like a pacifist at a National Front meeting.

If Guru Maharaji came out into the garden or arrived at a program everyone would hit the deck (pranam) leaving me standing there about 2 feet. taller than Maharaji and feeling very embarrassed for not displaying my respect. It wasn't that I did not like him, it was just that it was such a strange thing to do. I was often told that it was pride and ego preventing me and there probably was some truth in that, but at the same time I was trying to be honest about how I felt. This was no easy thing in the devotional environment of the times.

After about 2 years of trying to meditate (at least 2 hours a day), going to satsang meetings nearly every night, and attending all the programmes and festivals in Europe and the U.S.A., I ended up living in a premie house near G.M.'s residence in London. It was only a 3 bedroomed house and although it started off with a small group of us, it ended up housing around 40 premies - all proclaiming the love and devotion that I had not yet experienced. A few friends and I ran away to the country but this soon got boring and I was glad to get back to the hustle and bustle of the premie scene in London around the time of Guru Puja at Ally Pally (July 1973). The feeling of not quite fitting in soon returned, however, and I drifted away over the following months.

Later that year that I went to live in Amsterdam where people seemed to be enjoying lives of love and peace without any Guru or meditation and I was only too pleased to blend in. As luck would have it, the kind art students who gave me a place to stay included a premie and an aspirant. Before I knew what was going on, I became a sort of go-between and gradually found myself leaning towards the premie viewpoint . In fact I got drawn away from the clubs and good times that I was having and into the premie world that centred on Amsterdam ashram.

I don't know if it was the Amsterdam air or what, but I finally got caught by "devotion", hook, line, and sinker. I believed that Guru Maharaj Ji was greater than god and that he knew more about me than I knew about myself. I thought that he was Creator, Preserver, Destroyer and guided my every moment. I believed that his wisdom and power knew no bounds and that the knowledge was the key to infinity.

I have to admit that the next few years were incredible. I felt confident, inspired, full of energy and often extremely happy that I was privileged to have knowledge and the love of Guru Maharaji. My greatest joy was telling other people about the answer to all their problems of which I felt I was living proof.

It felt so good being in the Lord's gang. I danced all night at the festival in Orlando when Maharaj Ji dressed as Krishna, and Durga Ji (Marolyn) sang 'take my heart, take my whole life too'. I was at last on the inside looking out - as the song went. There were so many good songs that seemed to express the feelings of a devotee cruising along the supposed six lane freeway to Nirvana and I really believed they were all inspired by Guru Maharaji, without whose permission not a blade of grass moved and who was going to make everything all right with the world, as long as we followed his teachings. I was dedicated to spreading the message far and wide.

The fact that I was lacking in any social or material responsibility and that many of the people I encountered considered me to be a proselytising pain in the neck hardly bothered me at all. (I am sorry for anyone who had to put up with me in those days. I hope I can be forgiven if I upset anyone - although I think I caused more amusement than upset.) After a year or so of this I gradually started coming back down to earth and began to appreciate other people's perspectives on life. Getting married and having children helped to bring me to my senses, although I continued to meditate. However the responsibilities of being a parent and a husband soon took over from those of being a follower of Guru Maharaji.

I finally made the decision to drop out at a knowledge review given by Guru Maharaji, at which, after having struggled to raise the entrance fee and leaving my children for a few days, I was subjected to some of the most schmaltzy, slo-mo, sentimental videos accompanied by the most bland music I had ever heard. Guru Maharaji's poetry recitals made me think what a shame it was that he is surrounded by sycophants who are not able to help him with some objective constructive criticism and save him embarrassment . I suppose some would say that it is a matter of taste - and I can only say that it was not to my taste. Did this mean that I was criticising my Creator and the sustainer of my life?

The review itself seemed to lay down the law about the exact way in which to practice the meditation. This surprised me as I had previously been to many reviews where slight variations on the physical positioning and so forth had been described, and had been told by initiators that such considerations did not matter so long as there was sincere effort and you were in tune. The present knowledge review seemed so different from the magic of previous years. I felt that what had been part of a mystical revolution had been transformed to something which felt like a hotel business conference .

The crunch for me came in the Question and Answer session after lunch. I disagreed with many of the answers that Guru Maharaji gave or thought they were so ambiguous that they made no sense to me. One chap asked how he could reconcile the practice of knowledge with his job, which involved gaining huge profits for a capitalist City company by misleading clients, if not downright lying. Guru Maharaji just said "don't worry about it - such things go with the territory" - questionable ethics, I thought. This sparked off other questions about practising knowledge in difficult situations/environments. Each one seemed to get Guru Maharaji more irritated as each time he gave the same answer along the lines of 'I have given you the greatest gift and all you do is put obstacles in the way of practising it'.

Finally a sweet little old lady got up and started to say something innocuous about her meditation and family life. Before she could finish Guru Maharaji appeared to reach the end of his tether - which probably had more to do with the previous questions than the one she asked - and she became the recipient of a lengthy admonishment on not appreciating the value of knowledge, and how he was doing all he could, and if it was not working correctly there was no one to blame but yourself for not following the instructions. I can't remember exactly what was said. I just remember an attitude that seemed to lack sensitivity and compassion.

I know it could be argued that he was acting out of extreme concern for the welfare of his premies and getting frustrated that they were not experiencing the joy that he knew they could. However, the knowledge that he was talking about was given by him, and he was presumably having that experience himself, yet here he was losing his temper. I know that these days some premies say that he is regarded as human with all the
failings that implies, and that he is just trying to bring peace to the world through distribution of the knowledge techniques, but during my two decades with Divine Light Mission he was always regarded as the 'boss' who had all the answers, rather than a fellow traveller on life's journey.

I remember being totally fed up with wondering who he was, what the knowledge was, and what was the best way to practice it. After trying sincerely for over 20 years, I decided that I may have been one of the many who are called but not one of the few who are chosen and made a conscious decision to drift away. This was four or five years ago and it has taken this time to let myself really question the whole business. It was hard to say to myself that the experience of all those years were based on an illusion, or wishful thinking, or the attempt to fulfil some pipe dream, and that I would not crash down and irreparably shatter after having reached such great heights.

Also there was the worry that I, a humble nobody in the great cosmic scheme of things, was refusing the gift that was being offered by Maharaji, who, if not the Lord or Perfect Master, was at least someone with greater wisdom, insight, spiritual experience than I would ever have. Without practicing knowledge, I was doing nothing to fulfill my human potential except making a living and trying my best to look after my family. After having all my past karma washed away when I received knowledge. what bad karma would I now reap? This is the sort of dangerous mumbo-jumbo I am glad to be away from.

Since reading your site and hearing the accounts of many premies who went through much more intense experiences than mine, I have gained more confidence in the realisation that many of my views on life while being a premie were not based on truth. Even if truth may not be the 'consciousness of bliss' I think it is important to find the courage to honestly seek it.

[Editor' Note: Seymour later added this follow-up to his Journeys entry.]

Hello All,

The response to my journeys post have been mostly encouraging - two wavering premies who thanked me for giving them something to help them abandon what they have previously relied on. I suppose they recognized their own feelings and hopefully saw that if I and others can move away (and towards something positive - even if only to become a 'seeker' again) then so can they.

It was a few years ago that I dropped out and it was a strange experience. I would have benefited tremendously from the present web site and newsgroup as I felt very unsure of what I was doing. Out of all my friends I was alone in rejecting the path of knowledge and it's hard disagreeing with the lord of the Universe and his followers when you have nothing to back you up but your own reasoning.

My friends were very sympathetic but they thought that one day I would come back to the fold and that I was just temporarily in my mind - which didn't help me at all. As time went by and the vegetables did not rot inside I gained a bit more confidence and enjoyed reading humanist philosophy, psychology and many other subjects dealing with the human condition.

I actually did a degree - something I would never have bothered with as a premie. I realized that all this study could not offer anything like the 'magic' of satchitanand but it felt like I was taking responsibility for my own understanding of life rather than surrendering the reigns to a master who I now consider to know as much about how to run my life as anyone else.

However , even though I feel distant from DLM and in less need of support than others who are presently going through the transition from devotee to freethinker, this ex-premie venture has proved helpful to friends of mine. I have printed out the archive of forum1 + some other items and given it to a long time buddy. I was amazed at the effect it had on him.

We always talk about G.M. and our opposing attitudes towards him and knowledge but my opinions were never enough to convince him that there was anything to doubt about it all. The week after I had given him the folder he had given his practice of the knowledge up completely! - and has since told me of the sense of relief he feels at not having to meditate everyday or drain his meager finances to visit Australia, Los Angeles or wherever else the festival are held.

Added to this he is now getting on much better with his partner who could never understand his obsession with the whole business and no doubt felt a bit hurt that he chose to leave her to visit his guru or sit under a blanket for an hour each day.

So let's hope the site & newsgroup keeps going - Although I know that we cannot convince the hard-liners, and I don't know if I want to suddenly dislodge anyone from their religions beliefs, it is a great help to those who have reached the end of their tether and realised they are getting nowhere. Without the support of others who have gone through this it can be a very difficult leap into the unknown.

What anger me is the fear that is instilled in premies - 'rotting vegetables' and the like. I remember G.M. saying (in Munich) that the most important thing was the link between him and his devotees. This link was a strong but complex cable that could be stretched almost endlessly. A premie might stop meditating, doing service or attending satsang but if the link broke ( the rejected the master) because of its complexity, it could never be repaired. This really stuck in my mind.

At the time I thought it was wonderful. As I sang Arti I knew that although I may be weak and undisciplined in my service or meditation I would always be connected to the all-compassionate Lord who would look after me forever. It was later when I began to doubt the wisdom of G.M. ,that this and many other similar satsangs played on my mind - putting the 'fear of God' in me. Wow , I am so glad to be out of it. I think even nowadays I get flashes of the fear of eternal damnation.

Cheers, Seymour

TD

In 1994, I met and fell in love with a premie who had had Knowledge since 1974. We had met in a different 'spiritual' context, in that we both had a deep interest in indigenous spiritual practices, and at it was at one of these ceremonies that we first connected. I had been on the searching spiritual path for a couple of years and was looking for some form of meditation, as it seemed to me, that in every book I read, that 'going within' was the key to the 'truth', the 'source'.

When I discovered that my partner was meditating every single day for a couple of hours and was very focused, I was impressed that he was actually doing it, doing it with apparent ease, and enjoying it. So many people who I'd met who said that they meditated, seemed to do so in such a lackadaisical nature. I myself had tried to meditate from techniques I read in a book, but found it extremely difficult to sit still and not be distracted for more than half an hour.

In the early days of our relationship when I visited his house, I noticed a photo of Maharaji. He told me that he was his Master, but I didn't make any connection between his Master and his meditation. He never really talked much about it. I do remember, being a bit jealous though, that nothing, not even me, ever got in the way of his meditation! Still, I was impressed by his dedication.

About a month later, he told me he was flying for a few days to the States to see his Master. I thought that was totally bizarre -- flying all the way to the States from Oz for only a few days. When he told me that that was normal, that people from around the world would fly to the States to see him, I told him that I didn't think it was a good thing, for people to be that devoted to ONE individual. Being somewhat younger than my partner, I had grown up with a lot of the bad press of 60's gurus, the Rajneesh, the Rev Moon etc. I thought all those guys shagged and fleeced their followers. Surprisingly though, I hadn't heard of Maharaji.

When my partner went to the States, he left me an invitation for a video event of Maharaji. Being in love and having a natural desire to get closer to my boyfriend, I was excited to see this Master who was so close to my partner's heart. Going to that event was extremely confronting. I came out and my head was screaming. Who was this little fat Indian guy with the squeaky voice who had challenged a lot of my pre-existing beliefs?

When my partner returned, I raised all my concerns and he explained to me why I'd had such an experience, because Maharaji acts as a mirror. He said he'd had exactly the same response when he first saw Maharaji in the 70's. He said that beliefs are meant to be shattered. I was enthralled and thus I became an aspirant. I went to an event with Charanand who addressed all the contemporary queries. He said that people travel all over the world to see Maharaji in the same way that fans might travel to see the Rolling Stones. That made sense.

He voluntarily raised the issue of Maharaji's wealth. He said that Maharaji's wealth was from a variety of ways, that he was very clever and had even invented things! It was also at this event that I finally realised what Knowledge was, that it wasn't some magical feeling of enlightenment that would dawn on me, but rather a set of four techniques that would be revealed to me later in a Knowledge session.

I enjoyed the (persuasive) process of being an aspirant, watching videos and getting thirstier and thirstier for this elusive Knowledge. I found Maharaji fascinating, and he had a good sense of humour which I'm always a sucker for!!

I eventually received Knowledge in Brisbane in 1995 and was very excited about it. Receiving it was one thing, practising it proved to be another! My partner who was only working part-time was able to sleep in and practise it at his leisure. I, on the other hand was working full-time and we were living in a cold part of Australia, so having to get up at 6.00am and practise in the cold when I was tired was a real test. I always felt bad that I wasn't as disciplined as my partner, and that much of the time when I practised I would have to try hard not to fall asleep.

My partner and I talked a lot about how lucky we were to have Maharaji in our lives, to have Knowledge and to have the experience that was written about in all the 'holy books'. I had grown up in a Christian family and to have THE delicious secret that supposedly JC had passed on to his disciples was pretty cool (at least according to the Gnostics)! I also devoured my partner's books on Kabir and Guru Nanak, Mara etc., and re-read the New Testament and all those historical books about Jesus and his time in Kashmir.

I felt such an incredible love for Maharaji, that true devotee's love, and it made perfect sense to me that not all the 'perfect masters' had carked it 2000 years ago. How silly of me to not think that each generation of mankind would be given a 'perfect living master' -- after all, that's only fair! I also went down that embarrassing path of giving satsang to a number of my friends and family, which now in retrospect I'm ashamed of. I remember berating my mother for worshiping a 'dead master' as I had a 'living one'. I was extremely spiritually arrogant.

I saw Maharaji whenever he came to Australia, saving up enough money to follow him around the country. I experienced my first darshan in Brisbane in 1996 at an event in the city. It was an event for people with Knowledge only, and as soon as Maharaji started speaking, all these premies started shouting out "Darshan! Darshan!". I remember that it felt awkward as Maharaji was trying to speak. I had no idea what darshan was and asked the person next to me. They told me that it was a time to pay respect to the Master. I thought I would shake his hand or say "Thanks" etc and joined the line. I was pretty amazed to watch everyone kiss his feet, but was excited to do so. It was a powerful experience for me, and obviously for all these other people, as you could hear the most incredible wailing in the line ahead!

At one point, while surfing the Net, I came across this web-site which was still in its infancy and it's old format. The Bob Mischler interview was on it as well as the story about the African dude with the same name as Maharaji. The Bob Mischler interview threw me into a tizz and I printed off a copy and showed it to my partner. He read it, and said that it was old news. He'd been a full-on celibate ashram premie from '74 until they were closed down and he had seemed to hold no hard feelings as that was the way it was 'back then.' (I also know he'd gone through a bit of self-therapy of those times with the help of some indigenous practices).

He had also seen Maharaji a bit drunk after one conference at Amaroo, and heard him say some pretty crass things in private. He also told me he thought that there was a period when Maharaji didn't practise Knowledge at all. So my initial despair was dissipated, and I subsequently wrote this site off as the result of some cynical disgruntled old premie who hadn't 'realised' the true beauty of the 'World of Knowledge'.

My relationship with my partner eventually broke down, but I was still committed to Knowledge and Maharaji. I still found practising Knowledge difficult and knew that in order to not waste 'this seed that had been planted in me' I would have to rearrange my life in order to make Knowledge a priority. I moved interstate, started working part-time, lived by myself and had all morning to practise.

So for the first time since receiving Knowledge I had the perfect environment in which to devote myself to K and M. It was so great having no distractions or any real concerns. I was back into fitness and yoga (which was great for my meditative posture sans baragon!) and got very deeply into practise. I'd managed to bypass the hour limit as I had no tight schedule to keep to. And so I felt like I now had it all.

The funny thing was though, that now that I had nothing left to blame for the 'seed' not growing, I became more aware of the effects Knowledge and this devotion to Maharaji was having on other aspects of my life, and surprisingly, they weren't good feelings. For those 8 months the more I practised, the more those feelings plagued me. Unfortunately, there was no-one to talk to about it, as I didn't make any real buddies during the aspirant process, and my ex-partner and I were having a period of incommunicado. There was no forum at the videos to speak to anybody and I didn't feel by writing to Maharaji that MY particular doubts would be addressed in the near future, or at all. But I carried on.

I went to the big event at Amaroo in 1997 which was very powerful in terms of my renewed commitment to Knowledge and Maharaji. I felt very guilty that I'd ever let other aspects of my life interfere with such a commitment, and vowed again to make it a priority. It was also very inspiring to be around long-time premies who seemed very happy. One guy on the bus told me that it keeps getting 'better and better'. I kept thinking of the analogy that Maharaji gives about Knowledge. That it's like an acorn that will (if treated right) grow into an Oak tree.

After the event, some Brisbane friends who aren't premies and who I was staying with, showed me the article that was in The Courier Mail, and which is also on this web-site. I was incensed. I couldn't believe what had been written. I had been involved with the media for a number of years and was used to 'lazy journalism' -- so this article really struck a nerve with me! My non-premie friends told me not to worry about it as "It's the Courier Mail and you're in Queensland, so what else you do expect?" [For non-Aussie readers -- their inference being that this is a Murdoch newspaper which has a monopoly in Brisbane. Brisbane, and the state of Queensland is known to be extremely conservative and right-wing, as up until recently it was a virtual police-state with a notorious history of corruption and intolerance, so many Australians often talk with cynicism about it.]

Anyway, I spoke to my ex-partner about aspects of the article which I had no knowledge of, such as the title Lord of the Universe. He said he'd never known of Maharaji being called Lord of the Universe. I remembered also him showing me some old newspaper clippings/photos/magazines a while back and there were a couple of articles on the 'Boy Guru' etc but nothing about the Lord of the Universe or Peace Bomb. So again any doubts were placated.

After this event, I was inspired to do Service. Up until this point, I had been wary of committing to some form of Service as I knew from my ex-partner, that Elan Vital was rife with politics, and I had experienced enough of that in the workforce so as to be a bit gun-shy. But I put those feelings aside and did so anyway, as it was for the Big M. I went to a participation meeting at Amaroo where I learnt of stuff that disturbed me about Maharaji and Elan Vital -- namely the excessive financial figures needed to finance Amaroo, not to mention some examples of Maharaji's pedantic behaviour behind the scenes, but which was described by one of the coordinators as Maharaji's desire for 'absolute quality'.

And then I hit a crisis point. I don't know what a nervous breakdown feels like, but I hit the bottom big time, and I had always felt that Knowledge would alleviate any experience like that. Maharaji is always quoting that verse "Even in your darkest hour, I will not abandon you". Well my dark hour came and practising Knowledge and going to videos didn't help at all. I felt really let down as I'd believed that I could rely on 'going to that place inside' to get me through the bad times. What is even weirder is that the problems that triggered this 'bad time' weren't that major, it was my now inability to cope with such problems that sent me into such a tailspin.

So I took some time off and went to visit my family for a month, thinking that my problems had to do with everything else other than for Knowledge and my devotion to Maharaji. It was there that I re-discovered this Web-site and I was blown away. It was extremely confronting. I sat and read all the journeys and the forums and it was like having this big fat load taken off my shoulders. I actually felt repulsed by the thought of practising and being trapped by it and had to go through a horrible few days of 'coming off' the addiction of it.

As some of you have said, it is like a junkie addicted to smack. My ex-partner also agrees that Knowledge is an addiction, although he says it's an addiction to 'love'. I now know that he and I have different definitions and experiences of this crazy ole thang called lurve! This web-site has now given me the courage to express and feel comfortable with all the doubts, issues and contradictions that I've had over the 4 years of being involved with Maharaji. I can't put the emergence of these doubts/issues into any sort of chronological order, so I'll just list them:

• Why was the mind so strong, deceptive and essentially evil (in that it didn't have my best interests at heart), and at what point in the evolution of mankind had it become so? Why was I always at war with my mind as a premie and feel like I was on the verge of going crazy? As someone here said, it's like you experience a mental backlash after practising. I had that all the time.

• Since receiving Knowledge, why did I feel a lot more fragile? By that, I mean, small problems seemed to effect me disproportionately -- to the point of deep depression. It seemed to me the world outside of Knowledge was becoming much much darker, and I became more reliant on seeing videos, listening to Maharaji and practising Knowledge to make me feel good.

• Why was no philanthropy or humanitarian work advocated by Maharaji and that Elan Vital seemed to be totally self-serving? I know that Maharaji has never claimed to me (via his events) that that's the role of the Master, but for some reason, this lack of service for people/causes outside of EV always plagued me! My ex-partner used to make me feel that serving Maharaji was above serving anyone or anything else, and those feelings I'd had serving others and doing work for charities was NOTHING like that which I'd feel doing for Maharaji.

• If I've always found people who were 'over the top' in terms of materialistic possessions and status symbols 'wankers' and that they must have some personality defect, why did I excuse Maharaji from that same judgemental attitude? My ex-partner told me that Maharaji once said something like "Do you expect me to be a carpenter and ride a donkey?" No, Maharaji, but do you really need that massive mansion in Malibu, the expensive suites at the hotels, the Gulfstream etc, when there are a number of premies who work in virtually a full-time volunteer capacity in order to help spread your message?

• I've always wondered why there was no premie I met who I really admired or felt was a good role model. Maybe I just never met the 'best ones' and this may be highly judgemental, but all the ones I encountered seemed pretty dysfunctional and their lives seemed very out of balance (including me and my ex!). For example, there were premies who obviously neglected their children in favour of their devotion to Maharaji, who got into horrendous debt to go to events, who seemed to have odd personal relationships (again, including me and my ex!) and some who worked themselves into exhaustion in their service for Maharaji. Also the fact that my favourite people on this planet, the ones who inspire and who are the most supportive of me, don't have Knowledge or any interest in Maharaji, despite me taking them to videos and public events.

• That if one of the spin-offs of people practising Knowledge was more consciousness in the world, I saw very little evidence of it in premies or in myself. In fact, I feel far more conscious and self-aware as an ex-premie than I ever did as a premie, especially now that my key critical faculty, my mind, is happily back on board! I remember thinking (in my naivete) that if only everyone in the world had Knowledge, all the problems of the world would go away. Now I think, lucky for the world, they don't.

• Why did Maharaji speak disparagingly of the Internet? Criticising the Internet to me is like criticising the television or the telephone, as it's a medium. Why has he indicated that premies should not communicate via any web-site, and yet e-mail addresses are encouraged for registration and for communication between EV staff?

So there you go. Just a few of the major issues that have contributed to my questioning, and ultimately extricating myself from Maharaji and Knowledge. I know that a lot of you ex-premies will concur as you've already covered many of these in the forums and in your journeys. It really is such an incredible relief to see them dealt with here.

I cannot express enough my gratitude to everyone who participates on it, both ex-premies and premies (although the premies arguments don't stack up very well, IMHO!). You've all saved me a lot of time, because I would have been in there for the long haul, as one old premie told me when I said I was having big doubts about K & M: "You can't honestly expect to be having the same experience [with my few years of practise and devotion] as someone who has practised for 25 years". As some of you have shown me, it's a hell of a gamble to make, only to find out 20 years from now, that you're still not satisfied!

I also know a number of premies will feel that people like myself have defected because we just didn't give Knowledge a 'fair go', that we weren't disciplined in our practise, we weren't sincere, thirsty, honest etc. All I can say to that is "Horseshit!" I have no doubt in myself about having been all of those things. And besides, if there is only 'a chosen few' who will really experience the true beauty of Knowledge and Maharaji's grace, then why won't Maharaji tell us that in the beginning and save us 'inadequates' a lot of time and effort??

For those confused premies/aspirants who may be reading this, I sincerely am amazed at how much happier I am now than I ever was being a premie. It has, however, been an extremely difficult process extricating myself and I've run through the gamut of emotions, and I know that I have to go through further self-analysis to deal with it.

It was interesting to read Katie's analysis about the role the relationship with our father can have in our adoption of a Master like Maharaji. I can understand the 'abusive' aspect in terms of other premies I know, but in terms of myself, I've come at it from a different angle. You see, part of the reason I've been propelled along this spiritual journey is that I have been over-reliant on my father, who is one of the most loving, kind, generous and gentle people I've ever come across. We've had our ups and downs over the years but we've still got a great relationship. He's getting old now and I know that I was always fearful of how I would get on if and when he died -- I was really scared to be without him. In a way, Maharaji provided me with someone whom I could transpose those same feelings onto, another father-figure who would be around a lot longer than my father would be, and someone in whose presence I felt safe and loved in.

You know how Maharaji gives the analogy of the boat in the ocean. Well I've got an analogy too. The best way I can describe it is like if a room was my life, I'd built a glass box inside it, which was Maharaji and Knowledge, and I'd crawled into it, feeling safe inside and totally reliant on it for survival, and was detached from my life that was going on outside the box. The allusion was that I was like the lotus flower, rising above it all, but the reality was that I was removed from my life and incapable of dealing with it. I now feel, with the help of this web-site that I've broken that glass box and am happy reacquainting myself with the room which is my life!

So where am I now in regards to Knowledge and Maharaji? Even though I have stopped practising Knowledge, I at least know the techniques and maybe in the future I will use them when I feel the need, as opposed to them being a prerequisite for me to start the day and heighten my own seemingly 'lack of consciousness'.

It would be a lie to say I didn't have some beautiful feelings practising Knowledge, but at the end of the day, they have never had the positive impact on me like those which I have felt by participating in indigenous rituals and ceremonies. These are incredibly egalitarian and always have as their focus the facilitating of an environment that encourages you to have a direct relationship with nature (and for me, my Creator), without any need for a middle-man to give you the 'key' or to interpret your experience, or to tell you how you should be experiencing your life.

At first, after I stopped practising, one of the hardest things to come to grips with was that I'd honestly believed that with Knowledge and Maharaji, I'd found the answer to life, the universe and everything, that my 'thirst was quenched' with this whole trip, and yet to admit (having told all my non-premie friends that I'd found THE answer!) that this wasn't really the case, was a bitter pill to swallow.

As for Maharaji, I believe that he has got some good teachings, and has some remarkable observations and perceptions of life and people. I mean, he should shouldn't he, after all he's had a fairly extraordinary life, and he's seen some pretty odd human beings and their idiosyncratic behaviour! Maybe it would be better for him to come out and go on the 'speaker circuit' where everything, including cash, is up front!

As for all the various details about Maharaji and DLM, and EV, I can only really talk about the experience I've had over the last 4 years and I just hope that 'truthful insights' and not 'speculation' will always be paramount on this site. Having been a lurker for a couple of months, I always found myself skimming over those speculative and bitchy bits (about Maharaji being a fatty etc) and embracing those posts where people are speaking of their own first-hand account and analysis of this phenomenon. The funny posts did however, provide welcome comic relief from the difficulties I had going through the extrication process!

Finally, sometimes it's hard to reconcile the experience of the ex-premies here and those like my ex-partner who seem to have few regrets about the whole ashram/celibacy period. When I confronted him about all their money going to DLM, he said that he was in charge of the finances at one of his ashrams, and every single cent stayed within the ashram, ie no money was sent to Maharaji or DLM overseas. He and another old premie here, said that some of the American premies have always been a bit 'out there' (apparently at this last Amaroo gig an American premie got in a taxi at Ipswich (redneckville) station and said to the unassuming taxi-driver "Take me to see the Lord of the Universe!!"), so who knows, maybe the American experience was more full-on than elsewhere?

As for me, when I read some of your stories, I'm grateful I wasn't around then as I would be pretty bloody angry at the obvious hypocrisy of Maharaji's life at that time (married, financially plush etc) in contras! t to the life and the sacrifices the premies made in the ashrams. I also have an inkling that some of those old premies have been selectively forgetful about some of the incidents that occurred in the past.

I've also given no money (other than the odd $5 contribution at a video event) to Elan Vital, and the last Amaroo event at around $100 for four days was pretty good value, considering the set-up there and all the transport etc. I heard (and this is speculative) that the event actually ended up costing Elan Vital money. Part of the reason I didn't give any extra money was that I didn't have any spare to give, and yet I certainly would have, if I'd had the means. I also have a whole stash of videos and assorted merchandise which if added up, would probably cost a pretty penny, but I don't feel swindled out of my money at all.

So there you have my journey, and I welcome any e-mails people may want to send me (although there may be a delay in replying due to my sporadic access to the Net and the fact that I'm getting back to a few of the things I neglected while a premie!). The reason I want to remain anonymous is that I don't want to hurt any of the people around me by association, who are still premies, but who I've made aware of my decision to leave. By deduction, they will know who I am anyway.

To tell you the truth, it's hard not to feel embarrassed about having had this experience, although maybe that's the E in the A-Z emotions of detoxing and deprogramming! You old (more figurative than literally old!) ex-premies were the Western pioneers of the whole Indian guru devotional trip and at the time, were unaware of what the effects would be on your lives. I, on the other hand, grew up well aware of the whole 60's/70's cult experience, and yet still effectively ended up in a diluted version of one!

Sometimes that's hard to deal with, but on days when I'm feeling positive I also try and put it down to like having had a bad love affair, in that it's painful 'cause you got in so deep, but coming out of it, you learn a lot about yourself and humanity as a result. In a strange way, to have felt that devotee's love, which is unlike any other kind of love, has got to be character building (more positive thinking here!), and hopefully will be a reminder to us of what can happen when you give up much of the responsibility of your life to an enigmatic, authoritarian guru. And let's face it, humans seem to love doing it, and will no doubt continue to do it!!

So, best of luck to everyone on the rest of their life journeys, and once again thanks for the courage and the honesty that you've all displayed by participating on this web-site, and special thanks to the ex-premies who give up their time, effort and whatever financial means needed to maintain this web-site. Please let me know if I can help.

Kind regards, The Defector.

TD for short! (Do you like my cracker of a pseudonym??)

Edward Stapleton

Luton, England 1971 - My friend and schoolmate Justin was the first to tell me about GM. He kept telling me that he had heard that the GM followers could give you "knowledge" which makes you feel like you were on acid all the time. We were 15 at the time, so that seemed like a plausible reason to check it out. One weekend we went up to London, and after three satsangs I had received the knowledge. It wasn't at all like acid, but I had bought into the premie pitch and believed that in time "all would be revealed".

Life in a working class English town was at best boring and at worst dangerous. You were either bored or being chased by skinheads. So the peace, love and message of GM was a welcome change. I went to satsang in Luton in a little flat belonging to a teacher. There were only about 5 of us all together. When I got knowledge I really didn't understand what they were talking about. It was over the next few months that I had to learn the terminology and get educated as to the broader teachings of GM.

At this point my family pulled up stakes and moved to America. Los Angeles, California to be exact. This was a culture shock for which I was ill prepared. I hated Los Angeles and everything American. I longed to go home. But fortunately for me there were ashrams here and soon I was going to satsang and making new friends.

I really had a good time with all the premies, going to Houston, all the picnics, dinners - all of it was fun and the people were great too. But, around the time we went to Houston I began to feel different about GM himself. I found myself embarressed by some of his behavior. It felt like the closer people got to GM the more uptight they got. Everyone had that false smile, which reminded me of the Moonies or Scientologist. You felt like you were being tolerated at the moment. Independent thought was so frowned on along with showing any interest in any other spiritual practices. Now looking back I can see that DLM owed more to Chritianity then Hinduism. It was as controlling as any right-wing born-again group.

I went to Colorado with 4 other premies to hear the "Shape Up or Ship Out" speech and that was that. I could not belong so something that hypocritical. They seduce you with love and rape you with intolerance.

My total involvement was a little over three years. Once I left I jumped head long into punk rock - which was a good place to scream against another fallen idol.

As for today, I now do real service by running a food pantry for the working poor and homeless. I am still involved in Hinduism, but cannot find it in my heart to ever join another group - Spiritual Anarchy

http://www.geocities.com/kalisthugs/index.html

Sir David

Rather than write an account of my life as a devotee, I would simply like to relate my thoughts that I wrote when it finally dawned on me that I'd been misled by Maharaji into believing that he was the Lord, God incarnate and the Saviour of Mankind. This really says it all…

It is not a joy coming to the conclusion that Maharaji, The King of Kings, Lord of Hosts, Lord of the Universe, The Almighty God in human form, The Lord of Love, Protector of the Weary and the Weak, The Saviour of Mankind, The Second Coming, My Mother, Father, Brother and Friend, my All to me.

It is not a joy coming to the conclusion that Maharaji is NOT all of the above. For those of us who gave our hearts, For those of us who tried Sincerely to devote ourselves, Believing that he was the Lord. For those who wept the tears of love For one we saw as God, For those of us who wanted To tear out our very heart And place it at his lotus feet Because he was the perfect one, Most radiant, most blessed God of Love in human form.

For us, there is an empty space, A shattered dream to come. Where is our Lord this darkened night? Where fall His footsteps in our world, What hope our friends to give? Pray God please help us all.