That's hilarious! "Ex Ex Smart Cards" and penitentiary-style seating assignments. Maybe the reserved "ex" style seats include strap down chairs, replete with head braces and eye-lid openers.  There's no escaping Rawat now!

Just to give you some background, in 2003 I went because I was pretty sure everything was a farce, but still wasn't sure how damaging attending the event could be to me mentally. After the 2003 event, my mind was made up.

Although, in 2002, there were some weird occurences that sparked my curiosity, like the trance music and Rawat's wobble dancing. Also, people's applause seemed inflated and false.

But, in 2003, security guards side-bridled and swarmed a toothless dancing woman out of the auditorium. She was not seen again. Granted, nobody else was dancing, but, in all fairness to her, she was merely doing what she had probably done in events long gone, dancing expressively, that is, and was physically extricated because of it.

One of my biggest lifetime regrets is that I was too scared to stand up for her, or at least check to see that the goons were treating her with dignity. Cults are strange, and they make people do (and not do) strange things. Before getting up to dance in the aisle, she was sitting in the chair next to me. In the brief moments before the event, she indicated that she had taken many buses to attend the event. Bundles and parcels under her chair looked like they contained mostly clothes. To be polite, she generously offered me an apple before Rawat's grand entrance. All in all, she was harmless.

Like everyone else in the auditorium, I showed her zero compassion as the security guards "swarmed the bongo." My failure to do the right thing haunts me. Cult or no cult, when the situation arose, the strength to defend the defenseless eluded me. Guess I failed out of the cult, for reasons that shame me.