This is an interesting topic.   Some people didn't fall for the cult  in the first place, others got involved, saw through it (or not), and dropped away quickly, others stayed in for a very long time.  I think it had a lot to do with where people were in their own psychological make up, and I also think the longer somebody is in, the harder it is to see the destructive programming, because it becomes so much a part of you, it's second nature.  And like somebody else said, most of us were very young and impresionable at the time we got involved.

I also have an issue of not wanting to hurt feelings of other people, wanting to avoid conflict, etc.  After a lot of work on that in myself, I think that kind of behavior comes from a lack of confidence in your own perception -- that your perception of reality might well be wrong, and that you aren't entitled to, or feel guilty having, your own personal, survival and happiness as your goal and that really, you aren't entitled to your own feelings and thoughts.  It's like you are supposed to be selfless, and you need somebody else to tell you what reality is.

Enter Prem Rawat, his entourage of Mahatmas, other, spiritual-ego-centric and controlling premies, and a belief system that tells you to ignore, avoid, and be afraid of, your own perceptions of reality, and that you are to  ignore your ego and surrender completely.  THAT is a recipe to stay in a cult for a long, long time, happiness, growth and any kind of human development be damned, as it mostly is.

I just recall for myself, that there was SO MUCH PRESSURE in the Rawat cult to SURRENDER, and be devoted, and be selfless, and be "IN LOVE" with Malibu Prem in the late 70s and early 80s, and then the ashram was being terrorized by psychos like David Smitha around then, that I think I just shut down almost completely.  Then, when there was a slight let up, like around the time the ashrams closed in 1983, then, the pressure reduced alittle,  the floodgates opened, and I began to see what a sick cult it all was, and how Rawat wasn't worthy of devoting to and how very dearly my involvement in the cult had cost me.  Crash, bam, it was over.  That was really disorienting, but also exciting.    I credit the ability to see that from some very close, patient,  non-premie friends I had during that period (and felt quite guilty about having, thinking that it was a distraction from the path of devotion and surrender).

But that's how, I think, people like me, with certain, shall we say, "co-dependent qualities," who don't want to displease others, tend to behave.  It's like you accommodate, you surrender, you kill of parts of yourself and try to get by, and then there comes a point when you can't do it anymore, the damn breaks, and there is this "aha" experience of reality breaking through.  It's almost like there is a place inside you that wants to survive, and it becomes a matter of survival that you get away from the destructive cult.  That's what it was like for me.  There was no just kind of fading away like there seems to be with lots of other people.   That's not the kind of person I am, I guess.

And as for just forgettinga about it, like somebody suggested, for the most part I have.  I hardly think about it anymore, and for a good 10 years before I saw EPO I almost forgot about it completely, and rarely ever mentioned it to anybody.  But I do feel a responsibilty to put some effort in contributing to an effort to help people get out, and to inform the public of the other side of the story of Malibu Prem, which Elan Vital and Rawat, in their dishonest revisionism, aren't about to do.