It's funny, but we've just been challenged elsewhere on this forum whether it was all bad or the other side of that whether there were times we enjoyed Maharaji and Knowledge.

After reading the report about Maharaji's latest appearance in Malaysia, I see how desperately premies and myself wanted to believe.  Yes, to believe.

The whole hype from the very beginning of time to now has been that Maharaji is from a lineage of Perfect Masters that goes from Mohammed, Buddha, Christ, Moses, Krishna, Ram, etc.  And as a new premie in 1973 I just wanted a powerful inner experience.  I had done other meditations and they were powerful.  I felt something.  I went inside.  I was sold by the concept that Maharaji could put you 'there' permanently and it wouldn't take you ten years to get to Cosmis Consciousness.  Ok, I'm lazy I wanted a short-cut.

Well, Maharaji's meditation techniques were ok and they kinda worked for me except for the hype that was attached to them.  There was so much hype.  At one point we were all seeing Maharaji in the light.  Well, I saw him too, but that's because I needed to see him in the light so I would be like everyone else.

I'm watchin on PBS TV a Grateful Dead come-on fund raiser.  And it's a DVD you can buy of a film done in about 1974, a year after I got sucked into the cult.  I remember handing out leaflets for Millennium outside a Dead concert in St. Louis.  And I remember the people coming out all 'high' on the scene.  And as a premie who had given his life to the Perfect Master of the time who was saving us or me from the maya of the world I felt horrified for the Deadheads.  Alas, I wish to God that I had been a drug-addled Deadhead instead of a guru cult-head.  I think if I was a drug-addled Deadhead I would have had more fun and fewer regrets and I probably would have gotten on with my real life a whole lot sooner.

And the fact is that I never really felt comfortable as a premie.  Singing arti made me feel uncomfortable.  All of it just made me feel uncomfortable inside myself because I was never sure that I believed in it.  I was never sure that it was real.  And, alas, it wasn't real.  It was only as real as I made to be.  I see now that the 'experience' was always my own experience.  And it was a experience that a clever showman like Maharaji could incite.  At this point in time Maharaji's little shows start on the atomic second.  All the songs leading up to him start and end precisely on a computer driven schedule.  This is way different than a Dead show.  And worse at Maharaji's show the music is all canned and lip-synched. At least it was in 1997.  It's just a bunch of fake posturing and manipulation.

So, here we are a whole lot of years later.  We've got this report fresh from Malaysia and we've been told that us Forum 8 Lifers need to move over to let the new ex-premies have their opportunity whining and complaining.  And, better yet, we've been told that we did have a good time and that we shouldn't forget that fact.

Fuck no!

It wasn't a good time.

It was a twisted time.

I would have been better off chasing the Dead around the country and taking acid everynight.

It was a bad time.  It was the worst of times.

It was hell.

It was nothing but constant confusion and self-doubt.

Christ, who the fuck needs that much self-doubt in their 20's?

Nobody!

Rotten vegetables, shattered mirrors, and all sorts of bad karma for the next million lifetimes.  That was what we got from our Master, our Teacher, the World's Leading Expert on Inner Peace.

It was sickness taught by a sick man.  No, he wasn't and isn't a man.  He was and still is a spoiled brat son of a rich con artist named Shri Hans who had met his Guru in Lahore, which is now in Pakistan, and went back to his hometown and became SatGuru.  It was a way for dirt poor Shri Hans to make money.  It was a gig.  And was Shri Hans' Master going to chase him down for his stealing the schtick?  Heck no!  Shri Hans had a franchise, but never paid the franchise fees.

So, Who is Guru Maharaji?

Yeah, that's what I asked myself a million times.

Other premies with more experience and more time in the cult told me that he was God.

I rather doubted the claim, but still I felt that I had a need to find out since in order to receive Guru Maharaji's precious Knowledge that I had dropped out of College for I swore that I would surrender my mind to Maharaji as well as cut off my head.

So, obviously I had a real need to find get the answer to the question.

Come on!  This was a setup.  I had made personal choices where I had climbed way out on a limb (e.g. left my family, dropped out of college, gave all my belongings to DLM, moved into a premie house or pre-ashram, etc.) and I'm more than curious.  I needed to know.  I needed to get the 'right' answer.  Like I said, it was and still is a setup.  I had set myself up as well as being setup by other premies who had more experience than I had.

So, let's look at this report from Malaysia.  Sure, there's all the ha-ha funny he's our regular guy God incarnate stuff.  But, did you notice the pin-drop silences?  Yes, that's the key (no pun intended.)  It's those moments where Maharaji turns on the turbo charger and hints, yes, hints that he is God.  I'm not sure if Maharaji has ever said the exact phrase, "I am God".  Although, all you have to do is read, watch, and listen to what he has said there is no other plain meaning to his message.  He said and still says he is God.

And that God-ness is what premies, or at least me, go to see Maharaji for.  We need or needed that validated.  We needed Maharaji to give us the wink-wink, 'Yes, I am God and you've done the right thing all these years. And the money you give me is for a good godly cause.'

How ridiculous is it that you have everything already inside you and Guru Maharaji doesn't give you anything, but Knowledge or the meditation techniques will not work without his........  Will not work without his what?  Why won't the meditation techniques that are so supposed to be so simple and already inside every human being not work without Maharaji?

What is that intangible thing?  Come on, what is it?  Put a name on it!  Is it Bhatki?  Is it juice?  Is it grace?  Is it God?

Whatever the name of 'it' is it is obviously not oridinary.  And if it isn't ordinary then it is extraordinary.  And that implies one thing only.  It is of the spirit, it is God.  Yet, Maharaji claims Knowledge or is it the Keys is not a religion.  It's so confusing.  Yet, Elan Vital is classified as a Church.

That's right.  It's all just a good time.  No confusion.

Careening to my point, I wanted and I needed to see Maharaji as Divine.  And I know I'm not the only one who had the same need at every program.  And if Maharaji picked his nose just like Shri Hans did in a video it meant that Maharaji was from the sacred unbroken lineage of all the great Perfect Masters (and the one I cared about was Jesus Christ) and all was good or is that God.

For me going to programs was always an effort in validating that I had made the right choice by throwing my lot and my whole self into Maharaji's world where he was my Living Perfect Master of our Time (aka Jesus Christ returned.)  I had to have that validation or else it meant that I had really made a huge, huge mistake.

So, of course, that's what going to see Maharaji always meant.  And that's why you get these reports like the one from Malaysia and all the fawning and the hype and the whole boatload of Maharaji crap that one learns to suck down again and again.  Anything and I mean anything is better than coming face to face with the fact that you've made the biggest mistake of your life and you've thrown away years and years of your life following the liar who is Guru Maharaji or Prem Rawat or whatever freakshow name he wants to use.  He's always been a fake whether he believes it or not.  I actually think that he does believe that he is the Perfect Master and all that crap.  But, that doesn't make it true.  Nope, it can't because it's not true and Maharaji is just an aging old fool.

Ugh! Ick! If I wasn't listening and dancing to this Grateful Dead music I'd be pulling my hair out.