I think that, like any other teachers of the past, there were always different strands of followers.

Every teacher seems to have had a 'hard core' strand of followers, on a monkly type of maybe fast path, while the laiety were immersed in the requirements or natural features of external life, which required a certain adaptation to the basic requirements of 'belonging'.

There's no great mystery at all to this.

Thus, non-ashramites might feel rather guilty about their predilections for 'outside' temptations, such as a bit of drink, possibly dope, sex (it's seemingly impossible in any human activity to exclude the latter, with all its subsequent ramifications of fidelity/non fidelity, desire and so on). The marrieds are probably also susceptible to the latter.

The fast-track inmates possibly buoy themselves with the idea that their abstemiousness will pay dividends.

The laiety tell themselves that, while they feel a bit inferior, they possibly encapsulate the everyday humanity of the teachings.

Interestingly, the teacher will probably say things to encourage both parties, or which can be construed as an understanding of both situations. There is thus always a sense of reasonable equality of followers.

Thus, it was quite possible too for a reasonable piss- or dope-head with a greatly loving and meditational nature to be well-respected as a non-conventional yet highly respected person because of qualities of soul and humanity.

Cults are never totally hermetic structures. They are by their nature also subject to comparison with followers of other previous ‘supreme’ masters.

This was consequently true also of DLM/EV.

The 70s were a period in which these various factors were very volatile and had possibly dreadful repercussions for many.

I escaped this in the late 70s by meeting a very decent woman who smoked, drank, was extremely human, yet was refused K by Anne whateverhernamewas because she still smoked the odd tab.

When I saw Maharaji at Rome 1977, I saw what I thought was a superlatively beautiful loving power vibrantly emanating through him.

I came home and adopted the age-old Christian values (street-level-wise), combined with my free conscience, and found it fitted very nicely with Maharajism.

And yes, I used to talk freely in the evening satsang seat about the need for absolute personal conscience, tell people to be absolutely individual, and to believe and act according to our personal nature.

I think that in the long run certain teachers are somehow still channels for a good and natural power, yet if they themselves fall into great materialistic temptations, they fuck up their followers.

The trick seems to be to realise that there is always a great power of soul inside. This manifests, e.g. at Wembley, which I visited recently.

Yet, if people don’t understand that the ‘speaker’ or teacher is only a focus for the same, and not some fallible human, they will remain extremely fucked up.

Thus, the requirement is to understand that teachers are always fallible, yet the love and beauty inside is totally natural.

They are possibly good in that they point to a nice point inside in which we can find a very valuable sense of being ourselves, and through which we also hear a quiet and human teaching voice.