answer you must know)....Hey Joe, remember thatcampaign, with suzy bai and allan thomas , complete wth bumper stickers (Who is guru maharaji?) and even a one time reference on Jeopardy? (boy, we were flying high then, just thinking it was a small matter of time before the whole world knew, and according bal bhagwan ji, the whole universe knew....)

About the lord/perfect master vs. motivational speaker identity crisis tht prem and the premies find themselves in, I think his strategy is to go with whaever works best for a particular crowd at the time,  fudge it when he has to, leav the dirty details like explaining the vast discrepancies to the premies (although they are supposed to shut up and shepherd the new people to the videos, so basically the question goes unanswered and he hopes that people give up the question at some point and get so intrigued by the waiting process that they rceive the techniques..)

I think this identity crisis is at the heart of the propagation failure today, and always has been........he is definitely portrayed to the public as a unique, gifted speaker on peace, with no divinity implied.....however the old time premies still believe he is the one unique perfect master, and the public is not ready to understand or accpt this, so only few with the "right understanding" dribble in....

However, when I left 3-4 years ago,  concepts like the "unrecognized perfect master, in his own time", or the "darkness of the kali yuga" or "worldly people" were bandied about as truth amongst the old timers, along with an obsession with figuring out who the next "motivational speaker" would be after prem....

In India, the perfect master schtick seems to still play well, so he enjoys it there, and hints to the indians that they "realy understand"......

Ultimately I think he needs the indian base of worship to keep him going, along with the american-europen-australian money, and he's playing with his ever changing persona, with the hopes of a few new premies......he chided one instuctor, julio castro, for the US not having a huge influx of new premies....when julio asked him how big it could really be in the US, he replied that it could be twice as big (that would make it about 3,000 supporters instead of 1,500 who give $500 each/year, and another 3,000 instead of 1,500 who give 1-$500/year......slim pickens for the master these days, and definitely lowered expectations....