Good analysis, Nik, spot on.

Like most of Maharaji's Public Relations, they would do so much better to admit it all - it is the constant hiding, secrecy and evasion, that is obvious to most people straight off and makes the whole thing look so weird. Of course your experience is shaped by your belief; of course Maharaji made it clear in the 70's he was the Lord of the Universe. Why not just admit these kind of things? It is the mark of a truly paranoid and dysfunctional group to want to not just hide the facts, but actually deny things that everybody who was a premie then, and committed premies even now, know well.

In the intervening three decades, human thinking has moved on.... Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Neurology, and Neuro Psychology have all advanced in practice, theory and in capacity to describe the reality of the human mind/brain.

I think an excellent summary of what recent advances in Cognitive Science really mean, is spelt out in the book 'Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought' by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (you can read about in on Amazon, and there is a good review of it in Philosophy and Literature).

The book has been criticised as only relying on the research of a close-knit group of Cognitive Scientists, centered around Lakoff. But I think it is pretty solid, and it lays out clearly what real-world conclusions one can draw about things that matter (how you think, form concepts and beliefs, relate to yourself and the world in general) from the recent finding of empirical Cognitive research.

I noticed a little sub-thread down below about consciousness and brain etc, but no one mentioned this book - I think the ideas it proposes are revolutionary.