I don't think everyone's experience of the cult was the same or that they had the same attitudes, and I hope you don't think I was implying that everyone did.  I'm sure that's not the case.

But my observation is/was, that it was quite prevalent that premies thought/think that they are humble and "dust at the feet," and then they lord it over aspirants and others that they have and understand something they don't, and they can express that with varying degrees of arrogance and pride.    It's revolting.  So much worse than being arrogant about business or material success, if you ask me, because it is so unwarranted.

As I have said many times, one of the things that premies fear ever giving up is the feeling that they are special, or allowed into some special club of people who have something others don't.  Ex-premies make them nuts, because they call that into question.  But that isn't a characteristic of only the Rawat cult, it's true of all cults. 

And when I was being arrogant, I didn't see myself as arrogant, I saw myself as lucky and special.  But it is the height or arrogance to assume that your "experience" is better than somebody else's experience, because how the hell do you know?  And Rawat is the most arrogant, because he goes around saying that people "need" what he offers, and are somehow deficient in not having it.    He has no basis or evidence for making these arrogant pronouncements, he just makes them.  How the hell does he know what people are lacking?  He doesn't, he just says he does.  It's like just saying it is evidence that he has a clue what he is talking about.  Why would you believe that?  Oh, yeah, listen with your heart -- in which case he can get away with it.

And I still see the arrogance in premies today -- I don't want to say all premies, but I have had premies tell me that they are not only "special" in relation to non-premies, and ex-premies (who should be pitied as confused people who really blew it), but even other premies, who do not have the rarified understanding and clarity they do.  It's quite prevalent among premies and always has been.

I mean, really, there is no fucking way you could have interacted with David Smith, or Anne Johnston, or Padarthanand, or any number of other premies, and not find them extremely arrogant in thinking they knew something you didn't, were clearer or had some kind of divine understanding to be imparted, or were the vessels of divine action.  They were insane to believe that, but they did and because they acted so sure, people listened to them.

I remember David Smith telling me that Maharaji (who he believed to be God at the time, I'm not sure what he believes now), was operating through him, and therefore anything that came into his head to do, he would do, because he was the divine tool of the living lord, and damn the feelings or needs of anybody who got in the way!  Don't you think that is arrogant?  And given that at the time David Smith was a pretty emotionally disturbed individual, it was also dangerous.  And he wasn't the only one who acted out some really disturbing things because they believed they were surrendering to the lotus feet.

But I also agree, that this didn't apply to everyone, and at different times premies behaved differently.  But I recall before the end of my time in the cult, I was really offended by that behavior.  And the next time I saw Rawat in 1990, I walked out on him while he was blabbing when he was talking about how screwed up "the people of the World" were, as if he should talk.