I am at a loss to know how that financial paradox can be explained. As we have no way of knowing the actual number of people that donate money to Prem personally and how much they donate that will probably stay a mystery until his death at which some information will become available.
Unfortunately, that logic has validity but its not meant to be used to excuse. I find the subject of the children so abhorrent that I don't go there.
I think I've come to believe that the same dynamics are used in all cults (using its now common meaning rather than its historical meaning) but they're not secret, demoniac or so amazingly powerful that people are helpless in front of a cult recruiter.
We were especially recruitable because of the times: the emergence of bowdlerised Eastern religious ideas in the West that we then had no way of knowing were mainly spurious, we, the cossetted TV generation becoming teenagers, the prior use of LSD and marijuana by nearly all premies. The gurus require no special talents as we can see by thinking about how pathetic and unattractive we find other gurus than the one we fell into. The Moonies felt the same way about Rawat and thought we must be crazy to join a cult when we could become part of God's religion sweeping the world.
His business model has been a success. Maybe there's a secret in the Secret.
