I think what we're seeing with rjchinook's strong reaction towards Maharaji after attending an introductory meeting and doing a simple Internet search for more information is exactly what you describe.  The reaction is immediate and strong.  And it should be.  My guess is because today's new introductory events are overly glossy and completely devoid of anything that might resemble content or an original idea, that they should be suspicious by the conspicous absence of anything meaningful.  However, I'm sure it's all by design.

I think that from our years of experience with Maharaji it's clear that the surrender of critical thinking is the number one requirement of getting sucked into his cult.  And there's no better place to start than the meaningless and innocuous introductory event.  And from an event that has absolutely little or no content that can hardly be objected to, it's a downward slide from there.

The last introductory meetings I attended were in the late 90's and they were very low key.  The videos that were shown contained a mix of soothing new age music, scenes of gentle waterfalls or beaches, and shots of flowers.  There were a few minutes of Maharaji speaking and there were some nice words on screen too.  We were told emphatically not to talk to anyone and if they had any questions that we should hand them a card that had a phone number on it or we were to direct them to whoever was in charge of answer questions.  Of course, no questions were ever answered.  Rather, the new people were told that their questions would be answered if they kept coming back to see more videos.

Eventually, we, the PWKs, were strongly encouraged not to show up to the introductory events for fear of scaring away new recruits.

The last time I saw Raja Ji he was doing a pitch for money, fo all things, and he stated in complete candor and quite cavalierly that he no longer even tried to tell his non-premie friends about Maharaji because he didn't want to lose them as friends.  That was sometime around 1997 or so.  I mean, isn't that the strongest vote of non-confidence you've ever heard?  This is Maharaji's own brother!