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I opened this 1st class message from 2000 this morning. They'll both be at the National Propagation Meeting (January 2000) and A. has heard on the rumours on the grapevine. changing the vocabulary was an ongoing part of Rawatism but a "one door policy?" WOE is a one door policy?
Dear Jenny, Information meeting at NPM (National Propagation Meeting ?) Yes, 7 to 8 on Saturday evening sounds good to me. I guess that time could be fine tuned if there is the need to go out for food - if that is the case, then, perhaps 7.30 to 8.30. Or, have it before dinner and then people could go and eat somewhere together and continue chatting if they wanted to. M. G. is also attending the NPM and is very likely to take on a key role in this service area for the Gold Coast, some time in the future when she obtains a computer. In the meantime, I would really like for her to attend the meeting also. As for “reports” - I don’t feel I have the need to give a report as we find everything flows along well with the systems that are in place eg. sending titles to Shelley for checking, using Julianne for the production of the flyer/s etc. and then the follow through here. Also because we are able to be in touch electronically, I don’t see any “issues” waiting for us to be able to get together to discuss. I am very interested to hear input from yourself and Derek, who may have things to tell us about what is in the pipeline in the future (e.g. changes in vocabulary and the prospect of one door policies etc. and how this will impinge on printed materials/information etc.) Chiefly I will enjoy meeting up with people who are participating in the same service area.
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Yeah what does that mean? You can feel the tension of trying to be impeccable but human in that message.
Agree, changing to vocabulary and being up on latest seems like it still is and it certainly was very important part of being in the know of Knowledge.
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"changing the vocabulary and being up on latest seems like it still is and it certainly was very important part of being in the know of Knowledge."
First, to answer Prembio's question, I attended a KIT (Knowledge Information Training). It was a full Saturday/Sunday and we added a Monday evening public event. I collected the registration fees, which were the highest ever for a local community event at the time, in part because the covered the travel expenses of the specially trained facilitator.
As for Susan's comment, being up on the latest was more than very important. It was all about status and control within the community. Again, that's why I refer to the 2000's as the desert era. Maybe the best word to describe it - as Prembio keeps illuminating - is sterile, as in cold steel. It wasn't warm, loving and peaceful and it certainly wasn't any fun. Major donor types, many of whom leveraged their privileged insider information for local control, along with their local clique and newly minted part-time instructors dominated the scene. This reduced ordinary (for lack of a better word) premies to worker bee status and woe unto those who didn't fall in line.
Things deteriorated so much that it eventually caused Prem Rawat and his minions to develop the Team Trainings. As much as I've posted about them, I don't recall describing how they came about in the U.S. The first round was secretly held with major donors who were active in communities and the one person identified as the community contact in communities with no major donor. Those individuals were then asked to submit the names of the two or three most active premies in their community who were then invited to a second round. I know of three rounds that ensnared perhaps the five or six most active premies in each significant community.
Each round was top secret and required the signing of an ominous (but not legally enforceable) non-disclosure agreement. Confidentiality was so important that the trainings were held in secluded areas of hotels that were off-limits to hotel staff (negotiated as part of the rental agreement) and we were sternly instructed to not leave any notes in our hotel room because they might be seen by hotel staff.
All of this further divided communities between the in-the-know elites, the team training insiders and everyone else. I left in the middle of all that and I doubt that anything got better. My sense is that most communities limped along with the core group of diehards.
(What's worse is that after the Team Trainings, the focus shifted from communities to nationalized teams that were dominated by privileged in-the-know types on steroids - but I won't go into that because it was one of my many irritating last straws.)
My point is that after thirty years or more of practicing Knowledge, there was very little peace and happiness in Prem Rawat's premie communities.
PS, I never heard of a "One Door Policy."
Modified by lakeshore at Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 17:57:49
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The bizarre seating with the large space in the middle? Was there a training activity going on in the middle?
(Hopefully not what Bob Mishler reported Prem Rawat commanded the followers to do while he watched)
Seating arrangement
Mishler quote - though I believe Mishler for many reasons I doubt Prem would have been sexually sadistic with this large an audience. Even he realizes the past catching up with him is dangerous.
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I can't remember who Derek was? Was that Catweasel?
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I would like someone who remembers the circa early 2000s forum better than I do to summarize
Bjorn Catweasel Roupell Harper
It's a bit of a blur twenty years later for me, I didn't read everything and there were so many posts back then.
I did just find this thought was very interesting.
"Well, it didn't work, did it? It strengthened the resolve of those on the forum rather than demolished their position. If EV continues to exist, it will need a press kit and a PR policy at some stage. In the meantime, ignoring EPO and its attendant issues may prove to be the most effective strategy, especially when your leader is not prepared to face his critics or the media head-on. He knows what will happen if he gets angry with the sleeping tiger. He does not have the kind of rhinoceros hide (lot of animal metaphors here) which politicians develop to deal with journalists, nor will he give an inch of ground publicly on his status or lifestyle. He's unlikely to publicly renounce the idea of master like Krishnamurti, or say, 'I fucked up and am going to make some changes', or 'Fuck you, money and morality have got nothing to do with spirituality, and I'll live my life how I please' (which would be an honest opinion to present to the media), so his PR team has no room to move. Consume, be silent, and die."
https://www.prem-rawat-bio.org/premies/mcduck.html#epo
Also, if above is true, that Prem Rawat was editor of the responses, despicable in light of the way they responded to the Jagdeo issue when they initially wrote their PR statements...
https://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi/forum?cmd=get&cG=9313735353&zu=3931373535&v=2&gV=0&p=
Modified by Susan at Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 12:53:21
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Just seeing those names again makes me feel unclean, but apart from being people who took it on themselves to defend Rawat almost entirely by disrupting the conversations on the then forum, who they were is an interesting (maybe) question.
Bjorn I have no idea, but I think he was the least objectionable, in fact I can't remember having much of an emotional reaction to what he said then, & now can't recall even the general tone of it.
Not so the other two, as Catweasel was eventually revealed to be Derek Harper. He was the worst with a prolific & never ending outpouring of vile insinuations, personal attacks, & what one might call psychic threats. If Rawatism had a developed theology, which it most certainly hasn't, then he would've fitted into the manic hell fire preacher role like a hand into a glove.
It was alleged later that he had a serious drink problem, which if true explains quite a lot.
David Roupell was a different type. He actually revealed quite a lot about himself in the course of trying to defend the indefensible, though whether he intended to is moot.
I would say he was a classic in many ways. The black sheep of the English upper classes were often sent as far away as possible, but whether he went down under of his own volition or not I couldn't say. I was disgusted when he boasted about stealing paintings from his mother in order to finance trips to see Rawat.
I think his defending Rawat had a large element of his own malicious entertainment to it.
I never thought then & still don't that either of them were getting any direction from the top. If there was any of that it was the guy who worked for Bloomberg whose name I've forgotten.
I'd guess that the more professional PR approach by the cult since was a reaction to the above dreadful freelancers.
Whether the slow on the uptake Perfect Master used to read the early extrusions from the likes of Catweasel & go 'that's my boy' we'll never know, but eventually even he must've realised it was counter productive.
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I have even bested some of the Cat's Whisker posts.
https://best.drek.org/catbox_catweasel_welllookatthis.shtml
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If you happen to see Prembio, please let him know that he's completely wrong about no propagation in the 2000s.
According to Alan (2005): "I guess the millions who are seeing Prem and the hundreds of thousands who are receiving Knowledge need to bow to your superior wisdom." "
Modified by lakeshore at Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 16:59:07
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Did the one you attended have that?
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Hi Susan,
I don't know if the Team Training was the same training you're referring to, but you could've easily fit a boxing ring in the center of it. The Team Trainings were held in empty hotel banquet rooms with no chairs. We were on our feet all day.
There were typically about eighty premie attendees along with Valerio Pascotto and a few non-participating monitors taking mysterious notes. We stood in a large circle most of the time except for when we split into smaller break-out groups. Valerio typically stood in the middle of the large circle of premies.
The intention was to break premies down and rehabilitate them with the clear understanding that they are totally dependent on Maharaji Prem Rawat for everything - useless without him.
Unfortunately, it was highly effective and it worked. As much as I wept with gratitude at the time, I look back on it as an extreme form of abuse (to put it mildly!).
Modified by lakeshore at Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 19:37:34
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Wow, Lakeshore, I am so glad that I was a BONGO and would never have been selected for that kind of ABUSE.
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At the time of the Trainings, (1999-2000) Prem Rawat was known as Maharaji and Maharaji was known as Maharaji and Prem Rawat called Himself Maharaji.
That does make me think of the question "When did Maharaji start calling Himself Prem Rawat more often than he called Himself Maharaji?"
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I just was thinking how much these descriptions remind me of NXVIM-
Seems like he destroyed the only genuine thing I remember about the cult and that was the friendships between the premies. I think he never understood it was controlling people’s lives, opinions, money that made it a cult not the Indian rituals. Sounds like the cult got more culty not less. Just less bizarre photo ops. Though anyone who knows cults would hear the nervous and fawning laughter at his not so funny jokes on the clips on those would recognize it as a cult right away. Even without the lotus feet.
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That is very helpful: thank you.
Bjorn was very objectionable in his obsession with the Jagdeo issues and his obsessive interest in the details of the sexual assaults.
I did not know the mystery of who was Catweasel was solved. Do you think he also posted as Harper? Someone named Harper I recall as being especially nasty to me once. It fits, there were nasty stupid people and nasty smart people- Harper was the latter. He wasn't dumb- just cruel and horrible.
I just saw name Roupell and I knew he used to post here but I couldn't recall much else.
The former Bloomberg guy is Glasser, the one who is quoted on the "don't post this on public forums".
This one...
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyCJt-cvnw8/?igshid=MzU4NDJkNWYwNA%3D%3D&fbclid=IwAR3er6UxA9EpwJRumEOyiuSmJh3Qz4BMP9XKQ1WphWa2Og8HNtZBOy3Fpj8
My takeaway is he is Prem Rawat's Roger Stone.
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I found the Jagdeo issue to be above my pay grade & so probably didn't read much of what Bjorn posted. I can see of course why you would find him appalling.
I came to believe without any evidence, just my own assessment of human nature, that if Prem Pal were to be long term loyal to anyone it would likely be the three young men whom his father had chosen to look after him as a child, & who were instrumental in getting him anointed as the successor after Shri Hans' death.
That is Charnanand, Sampuranand.......& Jagdeo.
I think Harper probably did post as himself as well as Catweasel, but I can't really remember now.
Yes, Glasser. I think his guns were spiked by someone a lot smarter than me, but again that's just a guess.
So much time has passed I sometimes wonder what has happened to the dedicated lifetime servants who must now be well into retirement age. Not the likes of any of the above, but the people who have kept the show on the road all their lives.
Do they get a pension?
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Had to look that up!
What does spiked his guns mean? [British] to prevent someone from carrying out their plans, or to do something to make their actions ineffective.
Modified by Susan at Wed, Nov 01, 2023, 10:33:56
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Seen more than one cult insider get sick and post a go fund me for their health care. I wonder if Prem even winces at all to see someone who devoted their entire adult life to him have to resort to that?
Others, this is just Facebook, seem to be ok. The cynic in me thinks that Prem Rawat’s love of mob films makes him aware of that some of his insiders should not be made desperate.
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I think Derek Harper had something to do with Catweasel but I wasn't involved at that time. He was the grey eminence of DLM in Australia and obviously held onto some power and position in EV. He has the distinction of being the only premie (AFAIK) with the arrogance and self-absorption to contradict Guru Maharaj Ji to His face. He had years in DLM to develop that arrogance. Actually he was also involved in the development of the concept of pseudo-Knowledge. 'Pseudo-Knowledge' was the explanation some honchos in Australia came up with in the mid-1970s to explain why Knowledge didn't work, because it was obvious it didn't. This was forgotten when Rawat turned on the Super-devotional period and nobody cared about if Knowledge worked until 1999 when Rawat brought it up again and blamed Knowledge not working on, guess who, the pwks, and decided they needed re-training.
https://www.prem-rawat-bio/dlm_pubs/goldenage/31/changinggears.html
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