I remember that there were some videos that were shown in the local community halls around the time that the "Expressions" events were starting to take place.....there were strict instructions that the video HAD to be shown ONCE and once only, to premies only, and then destroyed in some manner or another....I think that only the designated community contact person could handle this "Too hot for public consumption" video (kind of like those Jerry Springer-"too hot to handle" videos you see in the stores), which featured extremely tear jerking "expressions" of the devotees and their lord and master....my take on that one was that it was obviously only for premies, and served to whet their appetite for that "once in a lifetime" chance to really "let it all hang out" with their lord...it also previewed how the process went, and further reinforced the "one way" method of praise from the devotee, "humble" acceptance from the master, with no questions wanted or accepted....

The other video, which may have been Passages, had some history in it, and served to "tie up loose ends" concerning disturbing questions coming from the epo forum at the time.....I know one premie told me that an EV person came with the video to their community, specifically explaining the "cultural confusion" story about how we never really worshipped prem rawat, but with the indian cultural confusion and the sari brigade, it may have looked that way, but it really wasn't, except for a few confused premies who wanted to worship an indian god....of course, the moral of the story was that the premies were SO lucky to have a living master like prem rawat, who could steer them away from such dangerous "curves in the road", and get them back on track in the currently approved fashion...

I heard mixed reviews on the passages video.....

1-the more gopi like brain dead followers seemed to lap it up, especially the historical part about "masters", and liked the explanation about how it got from India to the present day status...of course, no real critical thinking there, but nice to see those old Indian pics of shri hans and little prem...I think it was supposed to divert questions and present a unified front to them, while explaining how it all REALLY happened, so that everyone could be on the same page in explaining how it really wasn't as wierd as it looked, and was now approved for public consumption.....

2-I heard other, more critical views, about how they felt they were being coached or instructed on how to express their feelings about prem, and also about how some of it looked too staged...in one video, one premie swore that marilyn was reading from cue cards or a teleprompter, trying to look as if she was experiencing and expressing some sort of spontaneous feelings, when they could see her eyes and head folowing the written responses in front of her...

I got a kick out of the complaint about marilyn, and asked the premie what he thought about that, but typical for premies, he simply explained that no one could really do it like prem, and that in the end, they were all just bumbling premies trying to help, while not screwing it up too bad for prem...