That is, the overall tone of your post seems angry and impatient.

Not angry… just impatient. And not much time to mince words.

So then, what draws you here?

Middle child syndrome. A keen desire to address what I consider to be gross injustice.

"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?

What I’m saying… and perhaps somewhat impatiently… is I do not want anybody’s view of reality to over–ride mine without having ‘seen’ it to be true. So his view is not something I automatically incorporate into my reality just because he says it. It is however something I do take seriously, so I guess I really do ‘give a damn’.  Impatience...

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?

Yes, more or less.

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.

Of course it is overly tidy, but as a model it helps understand the dichotomy. I thought about it a lot since posting, and I am convinced it is a sound and simple explanation for most of us that fall within the bell curve. After all, it is a fact that most ex-premies came out of the era when his “Lord”-ship, or at least his divine pre-eminence, was a big thing, and for most of them it was the biggest thing. As for the feeling, if that was really the focus they would either be still involved, or a fool for having walked away.

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.

Well, that is certainly the picture that has been painted on EPO. But surely you realize, that picture is self-serving for the authors of the site. It is far from a true representation of Maharaji. I have been around him enough to be clear on that point.

He is quite convinced of his enormous importance.

As am I.

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…

What did he do that was a breach of trust? He said, “Come to me I’ll give you peace”. He has done that for so many.

He has lived his life for crying out loud! Maybe he smoked dope… so what! Maybe he sought female company while living a life on the road… I don’t know. If he did, so what! Maybe he fell in love with someone other than his wife… I don’t know. If he did, so what! He had somebody working for him that allegedly did some reprehensible things to minors… bad as it is, one in 35 years is not a bad statistic. Maybe he hit and killed a man while driving to the airport in Delhi. That’s not a crime. Maybe someone else took responsibility so he could carry on to the next engagement. It made no difference whatsoever to the outcome. Maybe he pissed a couple of honchos off, and they got back at him by exposing their version of the "truth” about the man… so what! They probably deserved a good bullocking.

Through all that, he made a point of coming back time and time again to make good on his committment to you… give you peace.

But what I tried to dig into with you once before - which incidentally you never really followed up on - is how do you know? That is, what you call "knowing" I might call interpreting based on certain assumptions which are not shared in the common view. In other words, you have xyz characteristics in your experience of meditation, and because of certain assumptions which you may or may not realize are even there, you arrive at certain conclusions which cause you to feel that you "know" a certain thing. But it is not necessarily so at all.

How do you know anything, or trust anything about your intuition? You are tying your common sense up in knots mate.

You might just have gotten convinced that there is a relationship between things which doesn't hold out under scrutiny. And maybe that's why you disdain the process of critical thinking, and close examination - because it makes you uncomfortable, because you know deep down that it won't hold up

Please! I do not disdain the process of critical thinking nor does it make me uncomfortable. You my friend are making a gross assumption just because it’s the only explanation you can come up with for why I continue practicing Knowledge and following Maharaji. What I ‘know’ is the only thing that does hold up under critical thinking.