I'd like to respond to your post, but before I do, I'd like to look at a larger issue. That is, the overall tone of your post seems angry and impatient. So then I have to wonder, well, what is drawing you to post here? I mean - to take your testimony at face value, you feel really good, you're enjoying life with knowledge, you love and appreciate Maharaji's contribution in your life. On its face, no real problems.

So then, what draws you here? It's pretty obvious you aren't here to save us - obvious by virtue of the contempt you apparently feel is our due. Are you here to set the record straight as you see it?

I guess why I'm asking is because I shouldn't like to assume you want to have a converstation before impolitely trying to engage you on a topic. Seems the least one can do in the service of courtesy.

So I'll jump in here with some thoughts, but I hope you'll indicate one way or the other whether the discussion has any value to you, and if it doesn't I won't continue to be confused as to your intentions. (Had to ask Reporter the same question - wouldn't you know it? no answer.)

"I don't give a damn what Maharaji said about the subject."

If this is true, that is a strange way to feel about someone whose tuition you feel to have been the most important in your life - isn't it?

I don't recall ever having thought "I am a premie because Maharaji is the Lord." I certainly believed that there was something extraordinary about the man, but I became involved with Maharaji because I was consciously looking for a transcendant spiritual truth. Yeah, I went through the whole re-education phase of being an aspirant where it was endlessly explained that you had to abandon your ideas becasuse, as Maharaji himself explained it, if you found an incredible paradise but it wasn't quite how you pictured it, you might reject it - and that would be kind of a bummer, you know, to have gotten so close and then tossed it all in. So I was duly afraid of this happening, and pretty well abandoned any ideas I had about what I was looking for before I "received Knowledge."

Anyway, I think your point is that the people who became exes were attached to their perceived idea of Maharaji's divine status, rather than being in it for what you conceive to be the right reasons - that is, for the big feel-good. Is that more or less correct?

I didn't always enjoy "practicing Knowledge" but it was sometimes a pretty nice experience. I can say I enjoyed it. I couldn't do it anymore though because it will forever have unpleasant associations, and frankly, I do love to escape from the onerous obligation of practicing. It wasn't that great that the discipline required to practice consistently emerged spontaneously - it was a discipline, and one that for many years I took as seriously as I have ever taken anything in my life.

So I think your assesment of the two types of premies is too tidy, and I think if you are being intellectually honest with yourself, you will probably agree. Ex-premies are all over the board on this one - some still like to practice, if you can believe it.

But life is actually pretty much just fine without practicing. One of the things that I think is actually not that great about "practicing Knowledge" is that you kind of need to insulate yourself from the world with it. I don't think that was healthy for me. Although, and I'm sure you'll make this point - I shouldn't assume that is everyone's experience.

For me, it was not that Maharaji was not the "Lord" (whatever the fuck that is - personally I think it is just a really weird idea that here's a human being who is really god, but just pretending to be a human being .... I could really get into a discussion about this because it is a really rich vein. But maybe at another time.) If I continued to believe in Maharaji's essential nobility of purpose, and perhaps that his was a majestic and a beautiful cause, I might have soldiered on a bit longer in spite of the fact that "Knowledge" never really did deliver anything but a kind of pleasant warm bath solipsism, in spite of mighty efforts to use it as tool to be a true astronaut of inner space.

As it was, I couldn't hide from the growing and horrible realization that Maharaji's nature or purpose was far from noble - but actually, sadly, small, tyrannical and fearful. The only thing grand in Maharaji's world is his self concept. He is quite convinced of his enormous importance. And in service to that tragically distorted sense of self, he is quite capable of great damage in the lives of those people, like myself, who put their implacable trust in him, and were badly used.

Were we naive to have given this trust? Certainly. And if you did not do this, you were smart - but you are also disingenuous to suggest that we placed that trust in him without his implicit and explicit encouragement.