but I also knew premies who didn't succumb but never doubted the intensity of their devotion - they just saw what was going on in the ashrams and didn't feel it was for them.

but some people simply took no notice, and took M at his other word, which was just - s, s and m. 

How can you be sure what they thought at the time?  I knew many premies who didn't move into the ashrams because they couldn't -- like they had kids and couldn't, many of whom felt very deficient and guilty about it.  Others thought they couldn't live the lifestyle and so they didn't join, and many of them felt guilty too.  There may have been premies who made the kind of rational choice back then, like you say, but I doubt there were many and I just disagree that the mileu was like that.  It was not that cut and dried.  The reason you are being called an apologist, is the cult is trying to engage in revisionism and imply that was the case.

 As I have said many times, the ones who made it through with the least damage were the ones who didn't really take literally, doubted, or ignored, much of what Maharaji actually said, like that there was a WHOLE LOT more to it than SS&M, and that total devotion and surrender were required.

Some of this sounds revisionist to me, Livia.

Look, computers draw you in and take over your entire life.  Some people use a computer for what they need it for, and fit a lot else into their life.  Others become almost hermits, spending countless hours online.  Years later they might turn round and go "oh no, I've just wasted years and years of my life on the computer".  What are they going to do?  Blame the computer?  Hardly.  But if that computer was a guru, they'd blame the guru, because he's animate and the computer isn't.

There are all kinds of ways that a life can be wasted, but how, exactly, is that relevant?  If I am the victim of a robbery, how is it relevant that I could also lose my money in gambling?

Obviously, a computer doesn't become rich by lying to you and trying to get you to devote your life to interacting with it, nor does a computer claim that you are having some kind of divine experience, or saving the world by surfing the internet.

The only thing I'm trying to examine is how far the responsibility was ours.  Look, people left in 72, 73, 74, 75 and every year after that.  People got up and walked out of the ashram and never looked back - I can think of many examples over the years. 

Again, you make it sound like it was just some rational choice and people decided to leave much in the way they decide to change the style of their haircuts.  Most people who left the ashram did so in a very traumatic fashion because they were miserable, got pregnant, got thrown out, OR, it was a period in which the cult actually encouraged it, which was the exception until the ashrams were closed.  Around 1976 was the example, and then right before they were closed.  In any event, it was extremely difficult to do, again, if you actually believed and trusted, Maharaji.

As for the propensity to be in a cult, and to stay in a cult, I think the key ingredients are idealism, perhaps a lack of rootedness in other beliefs and institutions, and then, once in, someone who tended to persevere, trust and believe, and in the case of the Rawat cult, engaged in mental censorship, refusing to admit to, or entertain, doubt.