Rawat trapped us with a false worldview circled by enough fears -- fear of our own capacity to think and doubt chief amongst them, to keep and milk us dry.  You know that.

You were trapped, I was trapped, but others weren't, Jim, even though they were subjected to the exact same onslaught.  Nobody held a gun to our head and dragged us against our will into the knowledge room. 

First, of all, I'd say that anyone who ever became an active premie in any respect whatsoever was indeed trapped to some extent.  But, sure, some were trapped more and longer than others.  As for your gun analogy, I'd say you need to think about this better.  Rawat did most definitely waive a "gun" at us and that gun was the mind, our minds. The only difference between us lay in how seriously we chose to take the threat to heart.  Frankly, I think it was plain foolhardy and reckless the way some premies reacted.  I'm talking about the ones who believed that Rawat was the Lord of the Universe, heard what he said and chose to disregard his threat.  I chalk it up to human nature, I guess, in the same way people keep smoking despite their knowledge of the risks.  Only difference being that the threat we faced, the threat he confronted us with, makes mere physical health concerns seem trivial in comparison. 

But let's extend this a bit.  Say it turned out for some reason that smoking's not harmful after all.  Would that mean that all the people who adhered to the medical establishment's warnings were inherently flawed or "susceptible"?  Should they all be questioning why in the world they'd fall for the warnings about smoking when, after all, there were other people that kept smoking all along?  Of course not.  Yet that's how your argument goes.  You're condemning the character of people who took Rawat seriously when there was, in the circumstances, ample reason to fall prey to this scam.  You're blaming the victims and it's unseemly and unfair.

In fact I think there's far more deception going on now than there was back then.  Back then the cards were on the table - 'the lord's on the planet - receive his 'knowledge' etc'.  Nowaways people are inveigled in under a false premise so I'd say the stakes are higher - at least we pretty mush knew what we were getting into.  On the other hand, there aren't ashrams any more,  new premies in 2005 aren't going to become the way we were - the times are totally different.

Apples and oranges.  There's more deception now in the sense that Rawat's more deceitful regarding who he is, what he offers and what he expects of people but, considering the fact that he never was the Lord, his "honest" admissions that he was back in the day were deceptions of a different order.  The stakes were higher then because more was demanded of people.  But it's still an insidious, odious fraud that should be confronted and exposed.

...But then, most ironically, just after you strike down your own straw man you resurrect him again by implying that the forum itself engages in a certain kind of "mind control"!

Can you see the irony? 

Yes of course I can, but of you'd read my post properly, you'd have realised  I was talking about 'group-think' (rather than 'mind-control') and the individual susceptibility to it in both cases. 

This "group think" thing is bullshit.  You're getting the reaction you deserve with your insulting speculations, that's all.