I've looked back at Joe's post and I think he makes it pretty plain why ( IMO) many of us hated being premies. Right up until at least the early eighties the whole trip was intense...sometimes to the point of being scarey.I remember desperately trying to make sense of it all and then realising I was "thinking" too much and trying to " still my mind" in satsang and then to reach out for some kind of experience by doing some kind of service. Then I would wonder how big black bags of jumble related to the experience of God within....then berated myself for leaving room for doubt and so on and so on ...a ghastly treadmill of confusion. There could be no resolution to the conundrums....the answer was always "Meditation and the Experience" and if you couldn't meditate you did satsang and service...on and on...like hamsters on wheels...what a ghastly trap. I totally relate to Joe's explanation which I have pasted below.

"People do a lot of things they don't like because they think they are supposed to, or because it's the "right" thing to do, or because they are afraid to do anything else, or the alternatives are all worse, or out of a faint hope that it will get better, or in the case of the Rawat cult, that you are supposed to surrender, to not doubt, to just trust the master, do what he says to do and that he knows best.

By the time I really hated being a premie I did leave, but it was in spite of the rigorous programming Rawat instilled into us that doubt was not allowed, that we weren't supposed to be concerned about our personal happiness but we were just to devote our lives to him and he would give us what we needed.   Plus he said that if we left, vegetables would rot inside of us, we would go to hell, and jump into shark infested waters, among other things.  So, it took a lot of misery as a premie before I could overlook all that and leave. "

It was very difficult to leave...Joe forgot to mention the solemn "Vow " we made NOT to an Inspirational Speaker but to the Lord of the Fucking Universe . How scarey was it, to break that vow ??..and " Leaving the Lotus feet , where would we go ?? "...and all that leeching of our confidence. When did you get Knowledge Paddy?. Didn't you go through any of this shit?? Why do you often seem  so surprised by strong reactions form "exers" ? Surely you don't want to revise the past, too ?( I know you don't but I sometimes can't understand your stance )This kind of hardline crap must have happened at that time in Australia too ??