Yes, we were philosophers all and yet we thought we had the keys to the truth.  Not our fault though!  It is remarkable how we allowed ourselves to become so brainwashed but as you say elsewhere, it could be a trait within many people and I'd say it would be regardless of their background or intelligence.

There is one thing I've wanted to ask you, Mike, since you appeared on this board and that is about the incident of Maharaji claiming he could turn the universe round or something to that effect.

I read the incident as this (and correct me if I'm wrong):

Maharaji was in a car or van that you were driving and you'd gone the wrong way or something and so Maharaji told you to "Turn round here."

Here is my analysis:  I think that Maharaji said to turn round because he was ignorant of  the road system in Britain and that you are not allowed to do a U turn on a motorway or dual-carriageway.  However after having been told either by you or other people in the car that you could not turn round at that point, he figured out a way to save face and make himself look more powerful and omnipotent than the highway code ignorant teenager that he really was.

He therefore said, when back in the safety of the house, that he could have turned the universe round (or maybe it was the world or just the motorway)  and since people believed he might actually be God, the fact that you hadn't turned round indicated that you'd failed God's test when in reality, you'd simply corrected an ignorant teenager and prevented an accident.

It was a con trick, in my opinion.  Maharaji turned a mistake on his part caused by his ignorance of the British road system into a test that you'd failed.  And of course, he'd got you by the short and curlies because he waited until you'd all arrived home safely before professing to have been able to turn the road/world/universe round.  He did not have to prove that he could turn the road round because the incident had already happened but he played on your belief that he was the omnipotent force in human form to play this con trick on you.

I believe Maharaji has done a lot of this sort of thing many times over.  He is, if anything, a good trickster and plays on people's beliefs that he is God and upon their guilt as well.