At last, a response that actually addresses the issue at hand.  Thanks Susan - I'm not looking for agreement, just a discussion about a particular subject.  With your thoughtful post you have pinpointed a difference between susceptibility and responsibility.

So - next point for debate - at what point are we responsible for our susceptibilities?  Never?  Ever?  At a certain age, perhaps?  What age?  If a 22-year-old boy makes a voluptious and willing  girl pregnant, should he then take he responsibility for the baby?  At what age should he be seen as responsible for his actions, rather than young and vulnerable?  A lot of us were about 22 when we succumbed to M.  And don't you think some young people are more likely to be susceptible than others?  What is it in one young hippy in 1972 who falls for an Indian guru, when her best friend takes one look and instantly smells a rat?

To be honest, I don't think M was deliberately subjecting us to a massive con when it all began.  I think he fully believed all the hype for a while, but a highly significant crunch came when Bob Mishler sussed that he was just an ordinary person, and tried to give him a get-out.  This was in about 1977, I think, when M was 20 and well on the way to becoming old enough to know better.

At this point he could have come clean and told us all "I don't have any special powers, I'm not Satguru.  "Agya" is over.  Carry on meditating if you like it but for heavens sake don't devote yourselves to me because I'm just like you inside."  But he didn't, most likely because he'd got to like the money and the lifestyle too much by then, and couldn't face giving it all up.

But that's another story - back to susceptibility and responsibility - OK, yes you're right.  So we were, like the person who is robbed or raped because they left their door open, naive, unwise and stupid.

At what point should one start taking responsibility for one's naivety, lack of wisdom and stupidity?

Back in 1970 I left a large stash of records with a "friend" and went off hitching round the country.  When I got back, the records were gone - he told me they'd been stolen.  I believed him.  Later someone told me my "friend" had sold them.  To be honest my anger has never been at him for selling them but for myself for being so stupid, naive and unwise to have left them with a person like him.  I should have guessed what he'd do.

Perhaps I have a problem with feeling anger where anger is due...

But having had some experience of junkies, a few years later when a freind who'd got some problems with smack asked if he and his girlfriend could stay with me for a weekend while they attempted to clean up, I said no, because I had a strong feeling they wouldn't be able to help themselves clean me out while I was asleep.

Recently a friend of mine in his thirties was ripped off in the night by a junkie friend he was trying to help.  Was my friend naive?  Yes.  Was he partly responsible for what happened?  In a way, yes.

This brings up the whole debate of "could we have behaved any differently in any given circumstance?"  Should we have seen M coming?  We obviously didn't, but others did.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that unless we try and work out why we were so susceptible (OK, more susceptibility, less responsibility), we'll never really know ourselves, and unless we really know ourselves we're likely to go and make more messes  if we've got enough years left.  And that the reasons we were so susceptible, particularly if we stuck around for years, well into our 30's, 40's and even 50's, are well worth examining, particuarly as so many others abandoned ship in their 20's and 30's.  What took so many of us so long?

Livia