"everyone knew you were not supposed to take Arti literally"
Or course not! Arti was just a traditional song sung, for example, by a sister to her brother upon his return from a long journey. It said so right there on Elan Vital's website.
I've been harping on how Knowledge and life in that cult degrades moral charachter. One of the best examples is how easily and without question premies accepted the whitewashing revisionist re-writing of historical facts (like Arti!) and the preposterous excuses that were made-up to justify it... the labels confused premies stuck on poor Prem and all that.
Sometimes I'm still gobsmacked by how outrageous it is that they can't see themselves, especially when that's what was supposedly shown to them.