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| Response to a premie who thinks the ashram damage isn't Rawat's fault. |  | ||
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Someone called "D. Thomsas" (which I think stands for "Doubting Thomas), said the following and after that is my response. Nothing new about premie rationalizations, is there? From D. Thomas: Maharaji makes a general statement: 'Dedicate you life to the perfect master.' And someone, probably on the initiator or ashram level, interprets what that means in specific terms. Someone decided that meant no College and that was that. But someone else could have taken the same statement and interpret it as 'I'm going to Medical School and become a Doctor so I can better serve Maharaji.' So, now people are at fault for taking what Maharaji said at face, literal value? That just isn't true. Maharaji was very specific about these things and initiators for the most part didn't just make things up or interpret them in wild ways, they repeated what Maharaji said to them. If you listen to (or read) what Maharaji said at Atlantic City Coordinators Conference in 1976, or in the many ashram meetings I attended with him, it was crystal clear that if you wanted to dedicate in the ashram, education was out. So was marriage, relationships, friendship, careers, strong relations with your family or any kind of financial, intellectual or professional development, unless somehow you happened to get that in the cult, like you might learn the airplane repair business by working as a slave on Rawat's plane, or learn the health food business by working as a slave in one of the cult stores, but that was pretty hit of miss.. Sure, no one would be preventing you from going to medical school, if that's what you wanted to do, but the point is that to do that, you would have to ignore Maharaji's very strong statements otherwise. Look, the ashram was the means Maharaji created for total dedication. And you couldn't be in the ashram and go to medical school, and Maharaji wrote the ashram manual and gave specific instructions on how it was to be run. So, if you were skeptical of what Maharaji said, and what he told the Initiators to say, in retrospect, you were very lucky. And in retrospect I should have been more demanding of proof as well. And as has been said here lots of times, premies who stayed on the fringe and didn't give up everything to be devoted to Maharaji, in other words if they either didn't believe, or didn't take literally what Maharaji was saying, well, they probably have less to be angry about than some of the other ex-premies, particularly the former ashram premies. I think the people who got the most ripped off, were the ones who were the most idealistic, the most willing to jump in head first and go all the way, who, once believing that Maharaji was the Messiah, which he reinforced everytime he sat up on that throne and has us sing Arti to him, decided there was no reason to compromise and to go for it. Unfortunately, there were quite a few premies like that. Sure, we got concepts from satsang too, but then we were given directive by Maharaji to never delay in attending satsang, and I would submit that most of the 'concepts' we got were from Maharaji himself. For the most part, the premies just repeated the stuff Maharaji said, or what he said to Initiators who said them to the premies. Maharaji, being the slimeball that he is, took advantage of us. He did nothing to dissuade the wide-spread belief that he was God, and, in fact did lots to reinforce that belief, thus resulting in the damage he caused a lot of people. Just because he doesn't do it anymore, isn't much of a redeeming quality. On the other hand, I am noticing another (small) crop of very dedicated and (somewhat) enthusiastic premies who are once again putting themselves out to serve Prem Rawat. These are the ones making fools of themselves getting caravans, doing "art shows" and giving people satsang in pubs. They should know that at any moment if he whimsically decides to do so, Rawat will cut them off at the knees in a second. People are expendible to him. Just ask the (many) people Rawat has fired from "serving" him and he didn't even have the common humanity to tell them himself, and left them to deal with the financial and other consequences for themselves. Of course, he probably got confidentiality agreements from them as well. Modified by Joe at Thu, Mar 03, 2005, 14:25:21 |
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