For over a decade (70s), aspirants/interested people had to consistently attend satsang, come and see mahatmas/instructors, participate in week-end satsang sessions, ask for k etc to be allowed to the initiation ceremony.

That was more or less the routine, and public knowledge.

Then came the western initiators/instructor era, with its different phases, where the process got a bit more structured and sophisticated.

Rawat wasn't very satified with this, for various reasons, blamed the instructors, and then came the video era (beginning of the 90s) where the word and the pisture of the master himself (through the countless videos - sometimes more than 100 new videos/year) was going to make it and solve all the problems.

During that era, the aspirants and newcomers were carefully monitored by the 'aspirants team'. They were invited to come to video events - and had to come consistently to their meetings, everything they would say, comment etc was carefully noted and kept by the aspirants team. Then they were invited to the k selections by the special instructors (Belkis and Charnanand) whose task was to assess who was ready or not. I've been a part of many of these meetings for years, as assistant/translator/ex-part time instructor.

The videos they would watch during that era were selected videos, public programs, aspirants meetings, etc. They were not allowed to watch videos specially made for premies. During that era, the videos were chosen among the dozens of new available videos by the team.

There is not much difference now with that 'key system' !
There are 5 groups of videos. Each aspirant has to watch all the videos of one group, and then he/she'll be interviewed by one of the new facilitators/instructors, and hopefully allowed to the next 'key'.
This is just a new way of monitoring the aspirants. The videos, as always are more or less the same of course, and the message still the same of course !! Rawat keeps repeating the same stuff, year after year ........
What's different is how it's presented, and supposed to solve all the 'problems' !

This is basically what it's all about. Always been the same. Of course we can go into countless details, how endless procedures and check-lists were made.

The core of the mystery is that the vast majority of premies are not allowed to participate, and keeps the mystery alive.

When there is no mystery !!