Hi Mick

I cannot tell from your story when you received Knowlege but your description of events made me think about the time when I received Knowledge - which was early 70's -. The bait that I went for was the " I can show you God face to face." claim. This was an offer I could not refuse. And I went for it. However, this was also a time of great clarity. M presented himself as the living Lord who had come to save mankind and in doing so he would play the Great Game with his devotees. In those days people were not let into the House of Knowledge through the back door quietly but through the front door. There was absolutely no ambiguity surrounding the concepts of devotion or surrender. Many could barely wait to move into the ashram to join in the fun. 

Night after night every mahatma and every premie (and M) gave satsang about devotion and surrender. M himself made it clear that without the Perfect Master joining all those dots Knowledge would simply not work. Most of us knew then that without the Grace of the Master all efforts would be futile and to have that Grace in my life I needed to become , yes, a devotee.  

I bought the whole package because I 'believed' M to be the Lord and in all fairness I knew what was involved.

These days the whole trip is surrounded by ambiguity: Knowledge is a 'possibility', M is a motivational speaker, devotion is probably a taboo word and the concepts of Grace and surrender are not even mentioned. And yet 'the package' of today has exactly the same ingredients as yesterday but as you point out it is all camouflaged. All this to attract more people and yet all these so called changes have failed to achieve that aim. This is partly because re-packaging does not always work and it can be a very costly failure (see Coca Cola and their disastrous attempt to re-bottle Coke)

I believe the re-packaging of Knowledge and M has not worked. It freaked out some of us with its nonsense about the past, it confused some with its ambiguity and it has not helped propagation. 

I am sure most premies would find your accusation of cheat and deceit unfair, however I think they would do well to consider it very seriously.

All the best