Hi Jonathan,

I've been thinking about your statement below and wanted to respond:

I can't find where anyone (other than active premies) has applauded John for his acknowledging Rawat's humanity and for his publicly flagelating himself for taking liberties with journalistic boundries.

I'm not applauding John because I don't think that he dehumanized Prem Rawat in the article at all. Quite the contrary. What that article did was humanize someone who has been sitting on a throne and deified all of his life. The article demystified the God-man on a throne not the opposite. 

Prem Rawat is a public person and as such, his self-appointed position leaves him open to public criticism and scrutiny, that includes both his public and personal life.  That's a reality about his life that Prem Rawat doesn't seem to like or accept.

It's well known that cult leaders and other avatars do not like criticism or scrutiny at all, on any level. It's one reason that they tend to live such secretive lives -- almost black and white lives.  Prem Rawat gives introductory programs offering something to the general public and his organizations support and promote his efforts and message. They also put out press releases about him. What premies often mistakenly think and try to asssert is that ex-premies are also public figures. That's false.  Unless one of us is a public person for some other reason, just being an ex-premie posting on this forum doesn't make us public figures.  I pretty sure that there are legal definitions of these distinctions too.

Whether someone is personally close to Prem Rawat or not, it's not a premie's responsibility to make sure Prem Rawat lives a decent, moral, honest, and ethical life.  That's his responsibility and choice to make about himself and his own behavior.  In "Maharaji's World" Rawat has always been exempt from the consequences of his own personal and public behavior.  Prem Rawat freely makes his own choices about how he lives his life. He seems to want his cake and eat it too on this issue. But, that doesn't surprise me.

Also, it is not a premie's responsibility to hide or keep secret how Prem Rawat leads his life.  Further, should a premie become aware of any behavior of Rawat's that might tarnish his public image were that information to become public, well, it's just too much to ask any premie to be secretive for him.  This reminds me of the saying "A family is as sick as the secrets it keeps."  I've heard it many times in reference to incestuous families and it's quite true.  I suppose one could also say "A cult/religion/NRM  is as sick as the secrets it keeps."

I'll say it again:  It's Prem Rawat's own responsibility to make sure that he lives his life in a way so that he doesn't have to worry about criticism from anyone. If he doesn't do that, that's his personal life decision. I believe it's wrongheaded thinking for anyone to feel they are responsible for protecting Prem Rawat from his own behavior, and in essence, from himself.  He's a grown man.

Don't forget, none of us would even be here discussing any of this if Prem Rawat hadn't had a huge influence in our lives in one way or another.  Personally, I don't want to put a drape over the elephant in the room anymore. 

I also wouldn't congratulate John for flagelating himself because I don't believe it was necessary.

I hope this expains some of my thinking and feelings about this.

Finally, here is a link to a post I made recently listing how to develope a good "BS Detector" about groups and their leaders:

http://www.forum8.org/forum8/posts/11941.html

Here is item 5. from "Ten Signs of a Safe Group/Leader":

5.  A safe group/leader will not have a paper trail of overwhelmingly negative records, books, articles and statements about them.