Hi!

I was had just said in that post how the so-called Rev. Jim Jones, like Mr. M., sought recognitions from legitimate places -- such as receiving the Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award in San Francisco a year before Jonestown.  He had the Mayor of San Francisco, Mascone, and Councilman Harvey Milk, as close friends and allies (Maharaji, however, hasn't been able to get that kind of support, in fact, it seems like he is becoming a flop among cult leaders in the USA, there are just a handful of premies here on the east coast).

There's a wonderful book that I tend to mention from time to time here about Jim Jones that was written by Tim Reiterman, called Raven, The Untold Story of Jim Jones and His People.   Tim Reiterman accompanied Congressman Leo Ryan and the Concerned Relatives to Jonestown as the investigative journalist for the San Franciso Chronicle, along with other journalists who went.  The entire story of how Jones manipulated (weaseled, really) his way into the political scene of San Franciso is amazing.  The book is the authoritative chronicle of Jones's life from birth to the tragedy, and is the best reserached and documented book there is by an outsider.

Everything Jones did was calculated and very, very cold -- he designed it to further his own objectives, which was to control his people and even those in the outside world that he perceived (always) as his enemy.  Anyone outside of his inner circle was a dreaded threat to him personally.  Jones used everybody, including the politicians in SF, because of his insatiable need to have ultimate power over people.  He groomed himself to be this way from very early childhood and his legacy is that he killed nearly 1000 people.  And, you know, it never ends.  People still suffer from what he put them through, just because they survived that whole cult.  Suicides still happen, and people will just never get over it. 

The book was recommended to me by Marianne Bachers, who is also an ex-premie, but who left the cult and went on to become an attorney (she is now a death row attorney and is held in very high esteem in San Francisco as well as among her professional peers).  She represented Larry Layton who was accused of shooting Congressman Leo Ryan on the airstrip in Guyana on the day of the Jonestown tragedy (which wasn't a mass suicide but a murder/suicide).  I go as far to call it Jim Jones's murder of all those people, but others may disagree with me.  I'll argue that point with them gladly.  If you look below on this forum, I posted about a play that was written called "People's Temple" that will be opening soon in Berkeley, CA.  Marianne was a consultant to the writers of the play.

The reason I recommend this book so much is because the first time I read it I couldn't put my pencil down.  There were so many similarities between the dynamics of how the Rawat cult operates from the inside out, with how Jones's cult operated (especially their inner circle) from the inside out, that I found myself underlining practically the whole book.  Plus, it's a riveting true crime novel. 

Anyway, it's good to hear that Prem Rawat is not getting too many new followers. It does make me feel quite sad to know that there still are some premies that hold on, giving him all of their trust, love, and money.  I can't tell you how stressful it is to figure out how you're going to get to the next Maharaji program.  He places so much undue stress on his followers.  When I left the cult around 1999, it was much the same as you've described above:  so few people under a lot of pressure to perform and provide for Rawat.

He's been a grown man now for many more years than he ever was a child guru.  It's time for him to give up the charade, grow up, and live off of what us older ex-premies provided him with when we were his core group of devotees, and leave people alone already.  Nobody wants him, and he's lost whatever "boyish" charm he ever had, long, long ago.  He's a has-been.

I've been enjoying reading your posts.  Stick around.  We're a motely crew around here. And as you've probably noticed, sometimes us ex-premies argue like siblings.  I think it's swell because when you're in a cult, you always have to agree.

Btw, I also live on the east coast.  Er...not really a coast because I'm land locked.  I live in Vermont and I was born and brought up in Connecticut.  So we're sort of neighbors.

Cynthia