Captain: Damage Control, come in.  Give me your report!

Damage Control: Sir, the front and rear compartments have been breached and are totally flooded.  We're still trying to seal them off, but we're probably going to lose at least another compartment or two.

The engine room has been destroyed by the torpedo.  We have about two hours of auxilary battery power.  And we're unable to surface, Sir.

Captain: Ok, carry on.  Is my supply of cognac intact?

Here's what happened to me that I feel was both debilitating and devastating.

I grew up in a pastoral bedroom community with a population of about 15,000 north of the city of Chicago.  I dropped out of college in 1973 and became a premie in the fall of 1973 and soon moved to the premie community in Chicago.  In particular, the south side of Chicago, which was a pretty intense place to be for a kid from the suburbs.  Ok, it was near the esteemed University of Chicago.

Later I lived on the near north side in a neighborhood that used to be the Haight-Asbury of Chicago 'Old Town'.  Well, Old Town had turned into a drug infested dirty and dangerous part of town by then.  We had sisters fighting off muggers in our doorway when they came home from work in the evening.

And then I moved to other neighborhoods that weren't as bad and I had a fling with living in Denver.

To make a long story short, I hated living in Chicago.  Hated it!

I've been an outdoors person all of my life.  And for me there was no outdoors in Chicago.  I mean none.  Where I grew up there were a lot of woods and lakes and ponds and farms that I would visit and hike all year round.

I had lived in California for a couple of years as a kid and I loved it out there.  I loved the mountains and the whole west coast feel.

So, in the fall of 1976 I sold my ten speed bicycle for about $200 and loaded up all of my stuff into my 510 Datsun sedan and headed out to Oregon to live.  I ended up at the 'Divine Meditation Retreat' about 20 miles of Eugene on the Goshen-Divide Hwy.  I was living in a tiny shack in the woods.  It was great.  Ok, it was a little difficult at times, but it was good.

The jobs in those parts were few and far between.  And most of them were in low paying agriculture or logging or in the mills.  I had done a stint at a Christmas tree farm where we were working for $2 an hour 7 days a week with no overtime.  It was hard work, but not as hard or dangerous as logging.  I really didn't want to get into logging.

There was a lesser logging job and that tree planter.  I had talked with people about that and it sounded pretty harsh.  Basically, you're out in the rain from the crack of dawn until dark working your way up and down slash covered hillsides planting little trees that hang on your belt all day long.  And, it's minimum wage.  I think today tree planting is done by illegal aliens because nobody wants to do it.

When the Christmas tree farm job ended I scrambled looking for a job, any job other than logging.  Anyway, it took over a month and a half and I was really out of money.  The starter on my car was out and I had to park on a hill to get it started by rolling and popping the clutch.

But I landed a good job and I was quite happy with it.  I was a room service waiter using golf carts to deliver food at a fancy hotel resort.  It was part time with flexible hours and scheduling.  I was making more than minimum wage and tips.  I had a few other duties like setting up banquet rooms for which we got tips as well.  Other intense duties including policing the hotel lobby and emptying the ash trays and running a little sweeper.

And to top it off we got free food from the kitchen.  Not only that, but there was plenty of time to just sit around and read the newspaper or do homework.

Wow, I could do homework on the job and get paid for it!  I was going back to school.  That was my plan.  Of all my friends and family I was the only college dropout.  Going to back to school was something I always wanted and especially so after doing so many horrid and brain numbing minimum wage jobs.

I was all signed up to go to community college in the spring or summer of 1977.  Gosh, this is great I thought.  I'm living my dream.  I'm making something happen for myself.

Not so fast!  There was one fly in the ointment and that fly's name was Guru Maharaji.

1977 was the beginning of the Super Devotional period after about two years of premies spacing out and branching out to have their own lives outside of Maharaji's tight and rigid rules.  It felt good to loosen up and begin to feel one's self after almost what seemed like a period of hazing at the direction of Maharaji and his army of sexually over-active mahatmas from Mother India.  What a nightmare that was and still is for the survivors of that debacle!

And it seemed that Maharaji had even kicked back during that time period starting with his marriage in 1974.  Although we know better now from X-rated inner circle premies that Maharaji was always 'kicked back' drinking, smoking, and smoking pot and very much enjoying his very debauched Playboy lifestyle just as his mother, Mata Ji, had said he was.

For whatever reason, in early of 1997 Maharaji started off the year castigating everyone for spacing out and living their own lives, basically for losing focus on him.  What were the reasons for this?  Was he having cash flow problems?  Did he realize that he was losing the flock?  Was he missing the adoration?

The first blitz-program was Atlantic City.  The announcement of the program was very short notice, yet many premies paid full fare airfare to be there for the one event program (I think it was a one event.)  The next program, also announced with virtually no notice, was in Portland, Oregon.  Again, premies from all over the country dropped everything to be there.  And on and on it went with a program every 28 days or something ridiculous like that.  It was totally disruptive in terms of having a life.  The peer pressure and the pressure from Maharaji to attend these programs was enormous.  I believe that people from Europe and South America dropped everything and begged and borrowed to attend many of these programs as well.

I believe Maharaji said that he was doing this blitz of programs just to throw us off our feet and bring us back to him.  Maybe someone can provide more details.

That was all fine, but I was going to school and I had my dreams and my plans for my life.

But, I completely threw out my dreams, my goals and aspirations and ambitions when I quit my job on the spur of the moment to spend every cent I had to fly off to Denver for the program there at the Brown Palace.  All of my friends had taken off driving for Denver days earlier.  I had to work that weekend and I couldn't get out of the schedule.

And in giving up my goals and dreams I was embracing being impoverished and being at the whim of Maharaji as a my normal state.

Days prior to the Saturday program in Denver I began to 'fry'.

I was at war with myself.  I was completely confused.  I was 'in my mind'.

The responsible part of me with my own goals and dreams was saying don't go.  The brainwashed God fearing part of me was saying that I would go to hell and waste my life if I didn't go.

And why would I be so God fearing?

Well, just read those quotes that Hilltop put up.  Here's my favorite from 'Fight the Unseen Demon' in Denver, July 8, 1975.

 "He never does that, because that's just the way it is."  Gosh, that's so reassuring, isn't it?  But, isn't that really saying that 'he could do that'?  And 'that' is God (aka Guru Maharaj Ji) is going to come down out of the clouds and tell everybody who does not realize Knowledge is going to be chucked into hell?

There's so much in Maharaji's statement.  The statement is exceedingly rich in return of Christ with his 'He even comes down into this world, bears the suffering of this physical planet'.  Is there any doubt as to what Maharaji's intent is with this message?  And it's really impossible for me to believe the same guy who said that is being 'invited' to speak at a college. That's pretty sick.  Oh, but he's paid them to give him that invitation, so he's earned the right.

So, for me the life I wanted for myself ended on that day when I called the airline and booked a one-way flight from Portland to Denver later that afternoon.  My second phone call was to my job and I told them that I wasn't going to make it in that weekend knowing that the guy who could have covered for me was out of town in California.  I was fired.

At the Denver program it was either announced that there would be a program every 28 days or it was pretty apparent that was going to be how the rest of the year was going to go.  Perhaps, there was a mention of the whole tour that would include Holi, in where else except Florida.

It was too late for me.  I had committed myself for whatever was in store for me.  With decent non-logging jobs being so difficult to get in Oregon and knowing what my 'new' priorities were going to be I reluctantly resigned myself to make the trip back home to my beloved Chicago with my tail between my legs.  In Chicago I knew I could always get a job driving a taxi cab.  And with taxi driving it was always temporary so quitting to run off to a program would never be a problem.

And now I was back in Chicago driving a taxi cab part-time at night and crashing on the floor of the premie house I used to live in.  God, what fun!

I quickly became very depressed and felt very hopeless about my life.  I wasn't making that much money driving a cab and whenever I had enough to consider renting an apartment there would be one of those 28 day or was it 18 day programs in some other corner of North America.  I hated it.  I didn't even want to go.  I told people that much and they gang tackled me and threw me into a van and on the way to Toronto or Montreal I was.

Ok, I made the decision to quit my job in Oregon and I made the decision to return to Chicago.  But was my decision making process in my control at that time?  Looking back and reading these horrible satsangs from the Lord, I'd have to say no, I wasn't in control of my decision making process or my life.  I was totally brainwashed.  I was afraid.

I was afraid that Maharaji was God and that if I didn't surrender everything and uproot my life to follow him I'd be going to hell.  And I don't mean hell after death.  No, I'm talking a living hell.  You know, one of those Hindu karma fable hells that we heard so much about all the time from Maharaji or his Mahatma army or Arthur Brigham or Joan Apter or all the rest of the war criminals.  Heck, that includes myself because I parroted the same shit.  But the ultimate source was Maharaji.

And I would see my friends from Oregon at most of the programs.  And they were beat and haggard.  They would drive from Oregon to Miami.  And a lot of them had kids.  And they'd tell me of the jobs they quit and how they're living on welfare and food stamps.

Maharaji shook up our lives in 1977 and I believe that he stated that was his purpose.

I lived a hellish three more years in Chicago driving a taxi cab and running off to guru programs.  I hated my life.  I hated living in Chicago.  And worse, I hated myself.

I felt hopeless.  I felt that I had no future.

And didn't Maharaji chide us back then about going home to our little rat holes?  Yeah, I was living in a cockroach infested rat hole and not a Malibu dilapidated shack like he was.  But, if he needed help with some money he was never too shy to have his henchmen ask for money, was he?

I finally got out of Chicago and moved back home with my parents who had moved to a nearby state.  At the age of 28 I came home to live in their basement.  I started going to community college and I did well, but I certainly felt out of place because I was an old man compared to all the kids who were fresh out of high school.  I took out student loans and upgraded the university.  Again, I was an older student.  I limited to my going to guru programs to what was nearby, which was often in Chicago after taking a 12 hour train ride.

I finally got out of college at age 35 with a pile of debt in student loans that would prevent me from ever buying a house.  I was told by professional headhunters that I was ten years behind my peers and I was.  And age worked against me in a lot of jobs.  I had know-nothing bosses ten years my junior.  But, I was still a premie I shined it on knowing that I had followed my Lord when he called to me and said, "Come."  Yeah, somebody came alright.

Looking back at that time in my life I see that I was really miserable.  I feel as if I gave up what little control over my life to obey Maharaji's whims and to satisfy his needs to be worshipped.  People always say to go after what you want in life and to make it happen.  I was trying to make my life happen, but the one who claimed that the key to existence rested in my hands took away my ability of self-determination.  My locus of control shifted from myself to Maharaji as I waited on his word like the song goes.

I'm always amazed at how some people have the courage and conviction and maybe more importantly the self-confidence to make things happen for themselves and to really take care of themselves.  I don't have that.  I feel that I lost that to Maharaji.  Maharaji and I had a battle of wills and he won out.  I was his student and he was the Master.

Finally, (yes, this epic post is over) I'm really appalled and totally disgusted to see Maharaji's machinations where he is bootstrapping his legitimacy by buying invitations to speak at colleges, of all places.  And worse, because he managed to rent a United Nations facility in Thailand some years ago and have his picture taken with the UN emblem in the background he's become one of the World's leading experts on world peace speaking to members of the United Nations.  Sorry, Maharaji, but that's nothing but a big fat lie.  And if you really believe it then I really have pity for you.

There's one thing that Maharaji was right about and that is that 'this world' is a sick place.  You're so right, my Lord.  And you're the World's Number One sicko, bar none!