Hi, Livia,

2 points:

'How much free will did we have at that time?

Well, from the start, he didn't make us do it.  All of us who received K did it of our own free will.  Those of us who did it before 1975 knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into, as no secret was made of the fact that M was widely thought to be the Lord incarnate etc. No one can possibly say they were made to do it..'

I think you are viewing things retrospectively. If you were convinced that the Lord had come, or had your belief sufficiently suspended to consider this a possibility, then after that the amount of free will you had was definitely curtailed. Also, I don't think at all that anyone really knew what they were getting into. It was a question of trust and acceptance during an extended process.

'Why did we do that?  Because we were 'seekers of truth'?  There were plenty of 'seekers of truth' out there who went to programmes and smelt a rat.  Why didn't we?  Or why did we suspend our initial disbelief?'

I would say that most people I knew who joined up were most definitely seekers of truth, with the 60's or early 70's counter-cultural experience behind them.

The people from my circle who didn't buy in were the ones who weren't sufficiently strongly seekers after truth. The urge just wasn't that strong, if there at all. I can't really think of any seekers I personally knew who didn't buy into M, at least initially. Later on quite a lot seceded, to follow Bhagwan, SSB, or others. But M came first.

I don't think there's a great mystery to it. Maharaji hoovered up great swathes of the 'aware' people of the time who were in the appropriate time and place.

'However, there's one thing that rarely gets mentioned here, and it should get mentioned because it's true - M also often said (way back in the early 70's and all the way along until he closed the ashrams) - that you could 'realise the Knowledge' in or outside the ashram and that it made no difference - all you needed to do was satsang, service and meditation.  It all depended on which of his utterings you chose to focus on.  You could take a course of action and justify it either way.'

I think there may be a small degree of false memory here.

What Maharaji actually said was that the ashram was the proper place for single people to be. The exemption he made was for married or family people. That they could still realise K by doing satsang, service and meditation. People in unmarried relationships felt the dilemma of whether to abandon their partner to do the 'right' thing of entering the ashram.

Certainly, the pressure was very intense. Although being single, I resisted joining the ashram, because I felt it wasn't for me. But the amount of self- and social justification required was enormous.

To rekindle the feelings of the day, all that is necessary is to remember the figure of Gurucharand. Once exposed to his charm and charisma it was a very hardy 'seeker' who would not have initially given great credibility to the Happening.

People who walked after first encounter generally had no particular empathy from the start. While I was sitting through about 8 hours of satsang daily at the POP London, followed by jumbling, nightly programs and K selections, my girl friend in Paris attended one Event with Maharaji in Paris and left disgusted.

Mind you, that was the one where he was pelted with fruit by 'gauchiste' revolutionaries (definitely not seekers), and fled the stage. This was later written up in Divine Times as a perfect program.

Incidentally, I left you a private message with fraternal greetings. Hope you got it.