...This belief system has been pretty consistent from the earliest days till now....

This is quite obviously true, & is the only reason Rawat maintains a following; he's never, at bottom, & however he wraps it up in front of an audience, changed his tune. This was clear to me during the many years when I had no connection with his 'work' at all, & just went to Progs/Events once or twice a year or so, as a spiritual tourist. I could afford to do that then, so there were no conflicts between me & my non-premie wife, but if there had been, then I wouldn't have gone.

The times someone phoned me up to say........''Maharaj Ji's going to be in Barcelona next month, we're going, & if you can make it etc, etc'', but I never could (not Barcelona anyway, Rome was generally ok), so there was a little frisson of disappointment, that's all.

I knew I had the eternal connection is the point. That was always the point wasn't it? So the fact that it wasn't possible for everyone to be in the presence of the lord 24/7, wasn't such a big deal for me, & I suspect for many others.

The beauty of being an Oriental Potentate is that you can burn people up, the better to satisfy your desires. Having burnt up the most committed, all the people who did the ashram thing, especially in the US with the DECA project, you're left with the equivalent of sucking moisture out of a stone.

The stones are the only ones left, & as to why we got into it in the 1st place, a question you didn't ask, but I'll answer it anyway....we fell for a fairground trick.

Why people do that as a regular thing, is something I can't answer.