I am not sure why you address so many of your posts to me (but I have a good idea).

In any case, I thank you for the fact that you are concerned about my leaving Maharaji, and that you clearly wish to set me straight. But I have to tell you that your compassionate attempt to guide me back is wasted.

Here are a couple of points from your post which sum it all up for me - my own position, and your misunderstanding of that position.

...but the process of turning your awareness inward through Knowledge does, without question, increase your knowledge of self. So I find it intriguing that if you had an experience anywhere close to mine -- which could not be anything but the case if you sat and quieted the mind to any degree -- that you would not value highly such an experience.....So Mike, it makes me wonder just what you came to him for if satisfying a need in the heart was not what drove your initial acceptance and continued adherence for all those years

Of course 'satisfying a need in the heart' was what drove me (I use your premie way of expressing it). The whole point is, that Maharaji does not satisfy that need in the 'heart'. Yes, I had the experience you describe - in fact I had very profound experiences while practising Knowledge. And like you, I had this belief in Maharaji to the extent that I ascribed my having those experiences to him and his grace.

Now I am able to make a separation between my actual experiences (before getting Knowledge, during my 30 years, and now) and my interpretation or belief about those experiences. It is not having particular experiences that define a premie, it is having the belief that one's experiences are in some way caused or enhanced by Maharaji and his grace. And that is what I now reject.

Your experiences are, well, experiential, and cannot be doubted. What or who you think is responsible for those experiences is a belief system. That belief-system may be true, or it may be false, but it is a belief. It is a defining characteristic of a premie, that they deny it is a belief, and say they 'know' their experience comes from Maharaji.

You can opine all you want about the motives of the man... Or has the role of “victim” become a refuge from the self-criticism stirred up by such questions? Guess that’s why you have no choice but to degrade anything positive he ever did for you, to the point of demonizing him.

I don't opine at all about his motives, for me they are secondary. If you read what I have written about him, you will note also that I do not attack him personally (his private life or his personal characteristics). I only write about his public stance and statements. Nor do I demonize him.

And you say it went nowhere. If experiencing what is left when thought subsides and no longer controls your attention is “nowhere” then I have to ask what you consider to be “somewhere”! (Or do you have no idea what I’m talking about?)

You are too intelligent not to know that you are deliberately mixing metaphors here. 'It went nowhere' is a phrase meaning the outcome of a sequence of events was not what was promised or anticipated. Whether your experience when thought subsides can best be semantically described as Nowhere or Somewhere (or Everywhere) is a whole different question. Do you have any idea what I am talking about?

Your points (a) to (h) are just facetious and stupid, and not worthy of you.

At the risk of wearing my heart on my sleeve, I loved Maharaji more than you can possibly know, and I had a desire for inner fulfillment more than you can possibly know. He failed me on every count.

It will not do for you to then say that in that case I never understood what Maharaji was all about. I did and do understand very clearly what Maharaji was and is about. He peddles a belief-system that encourages gullible people to take their good heart and their desire for self-knowledge and place their life in his hands (or at his feet, as we used to say). It makes them doubt their own capacity for learning and self-understanding, and to rely on him for these things, which he cannot possibly fulfill.