Authoritative father figure? Rawat was half our age and a funny looking fat boy with poor English and satsang based on a few Indian stories, a few Bible quotes and his fascination with technological toys. He was the most ridiculed of all the Indian gurus of the time, not only by the press but by other Eastern religious and spiritual groups.I notice that on the whole your projected reasons are negative rather than positive. Remember, there was one very positive claim being made by Rawat and his 'mahatmas': they could teach the meditation techniques that would reveal God, or at least the path to God realisation in a practical manner.
It turned out that those claims were false but the mahatmas I saw were doing a very good outward imitations of "enlightenment" and quite a few of the premies were at least dedicating themselves to this practice and claiming and showing some positive consciousness changes. Seemed worth a try.
