I was transfered from Chicago in May, 1979.  I remember coming back to Chicago for a brief stay in the Summer of 1980.  I remember the premies had ripped out all the plumbing and were tying to convert the place so it would be presentable for Rawat to stay there.  A lot of the premies had been farmed out to the community.  It was a mess.

Kirk Ritchie -- man, I could tell you stories there...  Strange dude.

The cult was in many ways a very small world, wasn't it?

I remember in 1976, Dory and Steve got married.  Dory had left the ashram to marry Steve, and I think she felt kind of guilty about it, especially when the Catholic Devotional period began, and Rawat began condeming people who had left the ashram and gotten married.  They certainly were not rich then.  Dory came from a wealthy family, I think, but Steve was just paid a salary from Rainbow, as far as I know.  That's what's astounding that he converted that into being a millionaire.

And really, those stores would have never made it were it not for the slave workers, and people like me who supported them in the ashram.  Not to mention the other premies who lived in poverty in the community for the chance to "do service" for Maharaji at Rainbow.

Towards the end of my time there, and I think relating to the "holiness" issue, Maharaji started taking more of a direct interest in the stores, and there was this directive that business is business and we shouldn't act like al cult business anymore.  I remember, for example, that it came down from Rawat that the stores shouldn't close down for Festivals as they had done in the past.  So the ashram premies who worked at Rainbow did a "split shift" and could only go to half of the Kissimee swamp festival, for example, all so that the stores didn't close down.  There was this idea that they were going to be incorporated into the cult's mission more than they had before.

Another example of that was that the Rainbow Groceries in Chicago became more incorporated under the "Premark" umbrella.   I remember a premie being transferred from the Denver ashram who had worked in the Denver Rainbow to be a buyer for the new Rainbow store when it opened in 1979.  Prior to that, ashram premies were not sent to Chicago for the purpose of working at Rainbow.