Clinical, as in cold steel sterile. So locked down that there was no room for spontaneity - or feeling. Suffocating. Paralyzing. Constricting. Meditation becomes an escape, a coping mechanism to deal with the stress and tension resulting from the pressure to deliver the best standard and maximum level of performance. Performance anxiety. Harsh judgement lurking behind the facade of contrived premie love.
You had to constantly remind yourself why you were subjecting yourself to all that and the (strangely robotic) people around you. It reminded me of the Team Trainings that were so intense they were paralyzing - the primal fear of being judged harshly and banished from the tribe (a tribute to 13) if you failed to perform impeccably.
I distinctly remember going back to my hotel room one evening and consolidating my notes. On one page, I wrote L O V E ! ! out of desperation in tense, quivering and very large pencil strokes. At one point, Valerio noticed a few wholly fractured and reduced premies who were conspicuously clinging to their breath as a last place of refuge. "What are you doing that for. You should have done that before you got here!"
All of that, imo, was a direct consequence of Prem Rawat's sociopathy, resentment, combustible temper and contemptuous/abusive attitude towards premies who were holding him back. The sad part is that by then, premies were so broken and conditioned that they had no resistance and fully accepted that they deserved to be treated that way - the annihilation of self-esteem.
"Oh common Bob, it's wasn't that bad."
As easy as it would be to back-off a little (because I wrote the book on going along to get along), I look at it as the gradual and very real degradation of good, beautiful and sincere people who through no fault of their own got swept-up and trapped in something they never could've anticipated. The results are painfully obvious. It's that heart-wrenching perspective that, among other things, justifies such harsh criticism.
