When this video came out, I sent a letter to Ron Geaves asking about his participation in this revisionist, dishonest video. He never responded to the letter. Here is part of that letter that quotes the "Indian Traditions" section and names the speakers, with my comments. Tim Gallwey is the biggest liar of the group, in my opinion.
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Letter to Ron Geaves (last part):
...In addition, I hope you can comment on the following statements made in the same video, which I can only describe as curious if not absurd:
Narrator: By the end of the 1970s Maharaji had successfully introduced knowledge to a number of countries.... But he was becoming increasingly aware of the need to separate knowledge from its Indian cultural packaging. Too many things that are simply a part of Indian culture were considered, incorrectly, by Westerners to be an integral part of what Maharaji was offering.
Sandy Collier: We brought a lot of Indian attachments with us, you know, we thought that because knowledge came from India, that somehow we had to adapt some of the Indian things, that somehow our Western way wasn't good enough.
Bobby Hendry: The mahatmas came to give knowledge and it was a way of spreading knowledge. The ashrams then, I found, were a way of disciplining yourself, your life, to practice knowledge. Unfortunately, we held on to the Indianness (sic) of it instead of the real practice of knowledge, you know, and incorporating that properly into our lives
Glen Whittaker: [After telling a story about giving satsang at a Young Conservatives meeting.] ..and they asked how they could go further and I told them where the nearest ashram was and how there would be a meeting the next Friday. They went there but very few people turned up after that. The week after about three went and the week after none went, because they came across the white sari brigade.
Linda Pascotto: I wasn't fascinated with the whole Indian culture. That's why when I first went to hear him speak and I saw these women wearing saris, I though oh, I don't want to wear a sari. Do I have to do that to listen to him and to be in this company and receive knowledge? Because I didn't want to do that.
Ron Geaves: But Maharaji always said from the very beginning he had no intention of creating a religion and it seems to me right from day one he's resisted attempts to try and make a religion around him. It seems to me that throughout his life whenever we have attempted to build any box around him, he's always broken out of it and when he does there are those who prefer to be in the box.
Narrator: For some people the changes that needed to take place were confronting. They had become attached to a lifestyle they associated with Maharaji and knowledge that was based on Indian tradition.
Linda Pascotto: I had friends who lived in the ashram who stopped practicing when the ashrams closed, they felt betrayed, abandoned....(hard edit, cut off mid-sentence)
Joan Apter: And it was difficult and challenging for Maharaji. I'm sure it was difficult for everyone...
Tim Gallwey: He undertook the challenge to get rid of the fluff, the conceptions that might have attracted people, that in fact some people loved, more than they loved the real thing and that left people with a choice. Do I love my quote "religion," my "Maharaji religion," or do I love my actual recognition, my actual understanding of what I am seeing and experiencing. And some people said "no, I'll take my religion, thank you very much (laughs), and some said this is real enough for me that I'm gonna stay with it.
Dr. Geaves, don't you agree that the "sari" discussion is absurd on its face, especially when the discussion refers to "the end of the 1970s?" Clearly, by the end of the 1970s, Western premies were not wearing saris, and, in fact, I don't believe I ever saw a Westerner wear a sari (except for Durga Ji (Marolyn Johnson) at a couple of programs and presumably this was with Maharaji's approval), in my entire time as a premie from 1973-1983. Isn't that just a bit ridiculous as an example of "Indian culture" to which, according to this video, so many Westerners loved and were attached such that they had a difficult time parting with them as part of their "lifestyle?"
Also, taken in the context of the historical fact that Maharaji was dancing around on stages wearing Krishna garb and crowns well into the 80s, the strange theory that it was Maharaji's devotees who were "attached" to Indian and Hindu traditions, and that Maharaji himself didn't promote them extensively, that he had to work hard to eliminate them, and that people stopped practicing knowledge because he did so, all seems a bit incomprehensible, and quite frankly, a lie. Can you comment on this as well?
Your comments in the video are also used with those of Linda Pascotto, and especially Tim Gallwey, to support the proposition that when the ashrams were closed in 1983 some people so loved the ashram lifestyle that they left Maharaji as a result. Do you agree with this? Do you know of even one person for whom that was true? I have never even heard of such a person and I know quite a number of former followers of Maharaji. Do you know on what factual basis these statements were made?
Moreover, this section of the video also presents an even more generalized proposition, espoused by you and more specifically by Tim Gallwey, that some people were more interested in "the Maharaji religion" than in Maharaji or the practice of knowledge, and as a result, when Maharaji got rid of the "religion" element, or the "box," as you describe it, they found they preferred the "religion" (apparently ashrams, saris and other Indian traditions), and they stopped practicing knowledge as a result.
Speaking as someone who left Maharaji around the time the ashrams were closed, and who was by no means "attached" to that lifestyle (nor do I know anyone else who was), this simplistic generalization is not only false for the vast majority of people, it also could be seen as insulting to those people. Can you see that point of view?
And one other point: given that Maharaji has never eliminated some of the most glaring "Indian traditions" in his organization, darshan and Arti for example, isn't it a bit disingenuous to suggest that Maharaji got rid of all the Hindu trappings in the first place? As a reminder of this, I noted with amazement that an instrumental version of Arti is ironically played at the end of the Passages video.
