Yes, great post Jethro.

And this is totally the clincher:

Oh yes, one last thing about my conversation with Ron. When I asked him if he ever believed that Maharaji was ‘The Lord’, he blushed, looked down and shook his head, signifying ‘NO’.

Aaarrrgh!!!!

This is one of the things that made me ex - premies saying stuff like that.  At that point I realised the cognitive dissonance that was now the inevitable by-product of remaining a premie.  Of course Ron looked down when he said it - he couldn't bear to look Jethro in the eye because he knew he was lying.  And he blushed because of the intense emotion stirred up by having to lie.

When I got into a dispute with a close premie friend on the street a couple of years back on the very same issue, his eyes went all weird as he denied we ever called M Lord.  I was gobsmacked, because I can vividly remember us singing "The Lord of the Universe" together at programmes with hundreds of other premies.  He tried to argue his way out of it by saying he never actually believed M was "the Lord", but that he represented a "higher power" or something...

But then I remembered him crying about M and calling him "his Lord", and doing full-length pranams on the floor...

The vast majority of us believed it 100% and it's what kept us there, no mistake.

And Ron is absolutely no exception.

Livia