Hello Andries,

I'm always a bit hesitant to regard anything that's got the label "syndrome" on it as being authentic.  One reason for this is that there are many mental illness labels that are authentically called syndromes (in the U.S anyway) and "True Believer Syndrome" is not one of them.  Another label that gets used a lot that isn't considered to be a real "syndrome" is False Memory Syndrome.  But I digress...

I don't think that the actual belief, or the feeling of "knowing" the belief to be true is necessarily the case with premies and Maharaji.  I don't think it's based upon a need so much as on being convinced (obviously, for some the need does exist).  There is a lot of seeding of the belief-system that I think constitutes mind-control or thought-reform.  It's persuasion, whether or not it's coerced in an overt way. 

Anyway, here's an interesting article about a guy named Marjoe Gortner.  I've posted this here before because I find him to be quite the character.  He was a bible-thumping faith healer practically from the day he was born.  Then, he had a sudden turn-around and exposed the fraud in his own (and others') faith healing.  Even made a movie about it.

This article is a reprint online from the book Snapping by Flo Conway and Jim Seigelman, but it's on another website called Positive Atheism.  It basically tells Gortner's story as told to Conway and Siegleman in the book:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/marjoe.htm

This is the article Gortner wrote for Oui Magazine, in May, 1974 after he covered Maharaji's Millennium Festival (from EPO):

http://www.ex-premie.org/pages/ouimag74.htm

Best wishes,

Cynthia