>But if somebody can explain me why you fell for somebody who lacked all intellectual depth, unlike Cohen and SSB? This is something I find a bit difficult to understand.<

The perpetual revisionism of Rawatism precludes any satisfactory definitive answer - and I wouldn't disagree with anything that Cynthia says in her reply.

Certainly in the early - say pre 1980 - period there was a very strong 'anti intellectualism' within the alternative culture that Rawat drew his western membership from. I don't think Rawat deliberately set out to appeal to 'anti thinking' but like much of what has ended up being his 'teaching',  it happened to fit with his interests. He constantly derogated the mind and 'ego' - although he has never given any definition of what he means by those terms - the interpretation was left to premies in a kind of populist absorbtion of prejudice and hack psychology.

However even in the 1970s  Rawatism as amovement was ambiguous about 'intellectualism' and various scientific theories were regularly invoked to explain the truth of of Rawat's teaching and what the Knowledge was. Rawat himself stayed away from these areas leaving it to those who could make the arguments (often spurious) sound plausible.

One interpretation of why Rawatism's anti intellectuallisim was attractive could be that it offered a sanctuary for individuals who were experiencing an unbearable personal pressure to succeed academically. Rawat's anti mind teaching offered an excuse to quit for those who otherwise would have felt obliged to meet family and social expectations.

How this applies in more recent times is difficult to understand - but the very nature of Rawatism encourges a lack of questioning - so the individual follower is not going to be beset by questions such as "why am I listening to this load of complete bollocks ?"

Rawatism in it's later incarnations can probably be most accurately compared to a Revivalist Christian movement - all being moved by the spirit - except that it happens in a perculiarly dour non Conformist environment and the lead protagonist is inexplicably indolent.

Precisely what psychological need Rawat satisfies in his follwers is difficult to say - but it certainly does not look pretty and seems to become more unhealthy as the years go by.