I really think the most powerful posts here are when people talk about how they felt and coped with leaving the cult.

Lately, I've been reading a lot about obsessive/compulsive disorder, and one of the characteristics -- which many of us have when we are stressed and fearful -- are obsessive thoughts and trying to order reality.  Like superstitions, really.

For example, have you ever feared that something dreadful might happen and then you interpret unrelated events as related, or even predictive?  "If I make it across the street before the light changes, that means that the biopsy will show I do not have cancer."  Irrational, but coming from something in us that wants to order things, or be assured. 

Or, how about, the reason I fell and cut my head open might be evidence that I am really going to hell, or rotting vegetables inside, because I rejected Prem Rawat and his cult.

The Rawat cult brings to the forefront those things and puts names on them.  So, good things are interpreted as coming from the grace, and bad things are due to inadequate devotion, practice, dedication or understanding.  The Rawat cult is FULL of this kind of shit, and most premies have no distance to see it, only ex-premies begin to see it.

But it doesn't go away immdediately because it's programmed into you, and it's based on something kind of animal and instrinsic, I think, this need to find order and cause and effect for why things happen.

So, I don't know what Gubler or John actually experienced when the wrath (see I CAN spell it), of the Lord of Universe came down upon them in the form of cult lawyers and goons, I wouldn't doubt that something like that played a part.  For John, I am almost certain it did.  Those old tapes continue to run even though you think you got rid of them.

The only way to destroy them is to shine light on them and then they shrivel up and die, and you can be free from it.

I can relate completely to what you said about what happened after you left the cult.  I have stories just like that, too.  Thanks.