Any philosophy that embues its adherents with a sense that the vagaries of life don't really matter will necessarily give people a certain detachment.  It could be, as in Rawat's case, the belief that all you need is your breath.  It could just as easily be the belief that all you need is a conscious relationship with Jesus.  Or Allah for that matter.  I'm sure Osama Bin Laden impresses many, many people with his "level-headed" detachment and wisdom beyond years as well.  I'm not kidding -- it's all in the way one wears one's beliefs.

But life is more than pretense.  I remember when I first read Ram Dass's hippie bible, "Be Here Now".  I was 18 and travelling for the summer and when I returned home I spent a few weeks feigning some newfound awareness of the "observer" within.  I smiled softly, knowingly.  I toned it down a bit.  I dropped hints.  And it worked.  People started saying, not just to me but to each other, that they could see I'd changed, that there was something deeper, more "grounded" about me, more spiritual even.  Alas, it was all a show, a young man's promenande down the invisible catwalk in his imaginary fashion show.  I was parading my "depth" and "sincerity" and getting some recognition but it was all a show.

Rawat's message, once you get past his knowing smiles and those of his cult members, is a very negative one.  All he does, basically, is criticize the world.  People are stupid, hypocritical, directionless and shallow.  Oh, but don't forget, life's beautiful.  If you sit through these and can't see that, I'd suggest you're being caught up in the sense of exclusive knowledge and membership with which he seduces his followers.  I say that because, once you see through that and see the man for what he truly is -- read EPO and learn his real history -- the last thing you'll see him as is charismatic.  You think you're "smart enough to not get caught up by the surrounding nonsense" but I suggest that, to the contrary, you already are.  You need to really learn what this trip is, where it came from and the extent to which it's supported by desparation and hypocrisy if you hope to get free.