It's interesting to hear your thoughts about this, Hussain.

The premies of EV told me that M gives Knowledge away for free, and I was welcome to video tapes of his lectures to aspirants. When I later saw the EV catalog, I felt bad to know that the premies were buying me such expensive tapes, on behalf of the ex Lord of the Universe. I thought how generous, and legimitate, that EV makes videos and gives away at no cost, and no profit to the organization.

This has always been the basic scheme or con of the cult.  "Knowledge is free."  They sell it as if that were actually true, when in fact, premies end up footing the bill to "spread Knowledge," so Prem Rawat and his family can sit like fat cats in his Marble Malibu Mansion that sits on a bluff over the Pacific Ocean.  And if asked, premies will say they are paying for it "out of gratitude."

Interestingly, the EV people did not use the term "premie" to identify themselves... just simply by first names, which were regular Western names, and explained that they had received Knowledge from M.

That's standard operating procedure too.  It's "People With Knowledge" PWK for the public, and premie (roughly "lover of truth) behind the scenes.  Back in the 70s it was openly "premies."  When somebody hides something so insignificant as how they label themselves, that's a big red flag that it's a cult.  But, that's not the only thing they hide.

The meetings were with me, and about one or three premies at the most, in a home. They organized a somewhat larger one once in Washington DC where about twenty people showed up for information on receiving K, where videos of M were shown. It was at a hotel auditorium, an expensive place it seemed. Little did I know that the handful of premies had to pay for all of this out of their work salaries. They must really hurt for money to pay for their own expenses, like a heroin habit, after giving to M and the EV organization.

That's exactly how it was back in 1999 when I left.  There were very few people left, especially in the northeast and we were responsible for footing the bill for the costs on a local level.  That included the monthly subcription costs of video tapes that Elan Vital/Visions International would send to a contact person.  Even if the very same tape was already owned by someone because they had personally purchased it through Visions, we still had to show the actual tapes that were part of the subscription package and sent to us by Visions.  Elan Vital claimed it was a copyright issue, or some other nonsense.  The fact is that the tapes were identical but were simply were packaged differently:  the ones sold for private use had photos and other "inspirational writing) on the jackets, and the subscriptions were just plain grey with printing.  Money making scheme.

I remember that a premie couple (the wife was the contact person) in Vermont went to the trouble of renovating their farmhouse and adding on a whole (very nice) room so that programs could be (conveniently) held there, and then they were told that they couldn't hold the local programs there because of "liability" issues.  The EV said they could, then they couldn't.  We ended up using it only for premie meetings when satellite feeds were for PWKs only. 

It got so bizzare because there was always so much to hide from new people.  There were lists of tapes for the aspirant contact to study and give to new people, as their understanding grew...

The cost of those hotel meeting rooms also got prohibitive and the majority of the time, no one new showed up!  Actually, I remember times when it was just me and one other premie.  We had just (each) driven something like 70 or 80 miles, round trip, through the Vermont snow, pay for the hotel room and both of us would just sit there and watch the tape, when we could have stayed home by the fire.  Hussain, we were given written instructions from Elan Vital for everything about how to conduct those meetings, down to even how to dim the lights in the room and how to turn on the VCRs! I'm not kidding, either.  It got to the point where I just said to myself, why is Maharaji hindering progapation by doing these things/  Yes,very  bizzare, and it's still going on. 

There is great pressure to do it Prem Rawat/Elan Vital's way, (and no other way)and we were given strange, convoluted instructions rationalizing those "ways."  We were made to feel that if we didn't do it as instructed, that we were not complying with what Prem Rawat wanted, i.e., propagation, or spreading his message.  Not only was it totally bizarre, it also took away any sense of humaness and spontaneity, not to mention inspiration.

Apparently, nothing's changed...

Thanks...