Thanks for those comments, I really appreciate it.  Those were my perceptions as well, and I also recall a lot of sickness in the ashrams in the final years, much of which I think was psychosomatic, although some people did have true physical problems.

You can check out the Elan Vital Website stuff under a section called "ancient history" in which they talk about darshan and arti, both in a very dishonest manner, which will be immediately obvious to you.  The ashram stuff was up before, but isn't on there anymore, although I have copies of what was originally there.

Regarding the "hate group" idea, what Elan Vital is saying  that there is this organized group of ex-premies that are on some kind of a mission to attack premies and Prem Rawat and that somehow they are obsessed with it and they even have these bogus studies by bogus "experts" who say that the internet makes people crazy.  There is no acknowledgement, whatsoever, that there is any legitimate complaint about anything that has ever happened in connection with with Prem Rawat, and that these critics are just motivated by hate.

What I have seen is that there is sometimes anger from ex-premies for what they (rightly or wrongly) resent about what happened when they were premies, and how it wasn't what they were told it was.  So, what you might be seeing is anger.  But look at what EV says and you'll see they take it a lot farther than that.

I just wondered if premies knew about it and what they thought about it.

Thanks again.