Hi Paddy

Nice chatting ....

You raise lots of interesting points but it is late here and I need to get to other things.

One thing though, I do think that if Rawat had not emphasised the devotional aspect at that time (the super devotional period) but rather had emphasised, as he seems to be doing now, the apparent benefits of meditation (apparent) as well as the need for premies to be focussed on helping the world he may well have been far more successful.  Rather he chose to get premies to be focussed on him and his whims, this led ultimately to his failure generally.

I do believe that if he had played his cards differently he may well have had far more followers, been more respected and frankly far richer.

But of course hubris trumped common sense.  And he turned into a failure, as compared to what he may have been.  Thank heavens.

I think his current endeavours such as the Keys and whatnot is to try capture this lost ground (of the 80s and 90s), but he has a big problem - his history.  That can not be hidden.  Just look at the first page of google.com when searching on Prem Rawat.  About 7 of the first 10 entires are either sites created by former followers or refer to his history that Rawat would otherwise like not be revealed.  I simply do not see how Rawat will ever be able to recover from such a history.  Of course this does in any way validate what he is trying to do now.  Ultimately the idea that there is someone is able to show people to some ultimate truth, by whatever means, is entirely bogus, imo.

T