I'm the 23-year-old son of a pair of premies who continue to practise Knowledge.

All throughout my childhood I've had the ideas surrounding knowledge with me all the time. My father in particular has very strong concepts about knowledge (which he refuses to see as concepts, they're 'just real', because to him, knowledge is the only thing that is 'real'), involving Maharji being the only true conduit for some higher level experience, even while he told me that he was caught up in ideas that Maharaji was God that all the premies in the 70s got lost in, when they shouldn't've (his words).

I spent most of my teenage years ignoring or at best being bored by the videos that my parents watched on a semi-regular basis. Upon leaving home and going flatting I ignored knowledge except as some vague thing that I might follow up later (my father had told me while I was being bored by the videos that one day I'd feel the thirst, so I suppose I was just waiting for that to happen).

I've been going to video events for a little while now, and I've lately become increasingly worried. I watch my parents pouring thousands of dollars in donations into Elan Vital while having no interest in where the money was going (they haven't seen a cent of my money), for a message that told them that they were already complete, the experience was within them, etc etc (as my father always told me).. and I became aware after a while of the circular reasoning going on, of the way Maharaji talks about this wonderful experience and then subtly but surely pins the experience onto himself.

(And it does sound wonderful, often, and he really is a total charisma machine, so even when it doesn't you get so carried away watching his public speaking process that you just don't care.)

Having said all that, I find myself left in an interesting position. I grew up being told constantly that there was this incredible experience inside me, and that that was what people meant when they said 'heaven' or 'love' or 'beauty' or whatever, and more importantly, that that was all I needed to be fulfilled, just breath.

As a result I am a remarkably level-headed individual, friends tell me I seem much older than I am, I'm one of the most grounded people they know, things like that. I /know/ on some deep level that the only standards I need to measure my life by are mine, because my experience is by necessity the most important thing in my life, and I am alive on a breath-by-breath basis, etc etc, and I feel that gives me a very deep-seated sense of perspective where my life is concerned. Following the arguments made on [Mike Finch's] website, at least some of that is possibly due to the presence of Maharaji's message throughout my childhood, but minus the connection of the message to Maharaji, indirectly delivered or otherwise.

In as much as Maharaji's message allows people brought up in Western capitalist individualistic societies to listen to someone speaking about life and peace in Western individualistic terms, I think it is fine, so long as the connection to the man himself isn't there. But the experience is always tied back to Maharaji himself, and so I don't know what to think.

I'm not sure at this stage why I keep going back to watch videos. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that no-one else talks about life in these terms, and I like having someone that charismatic talk about life for an hour a week. I think I'm smart enough to not get caught up by the surrounding nonsense.