"Experience is gained from f*cking up. 

Wisdom is gained from learning from your f*ckups."

-Anonymous but smart 

All joking aside, Maharaji is certainly a lot richer but aren't we all.   -POV

All joking aside, no we all are not a lot richer, as in paying the rent.  Maybe in wisdom like the quote above says, yeah, we all might be millionaires in experience of being taken for a ride, but that does not pay the rent.  Many people went bankrupt and even worse, never realized their career potential while with Prem because he used to say 'It's OK to get in trouble with your 'little boss' (your employer), just so you don't get in trouble with your 'Big Boss' (him)" when programs ran overtime and people missed their flights and rides just to listen to one more of his satsangs and maybe even see his jello like dance that most of us went nuts over in his controlled mob hysteria climax.  God, what were we thinking?  We were thinking what he wanted us to think, that he was the Lord incarnate and we were his gopis and premies who would sacrifice our jobs and our livelihoods and our families just to see him shake his thang and give us that two handed blessing at the end of the show, which of course would hold us over until the next divine group tryst.  And somehow, we would find other work and everything would be just fine.  Well, everything was not fine, and many premies including myself were always on the ropes when it came to money.  And what did he say about that?  He said stuff like how hard it is to be a millionaire because you have to keep making it to protect it, etc....he said stuff like it's OK to be poor, just so you have that perfect thing inside.  I recall the Lord's Prayer saying 'Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven', to mean that being rich inside AND outside is our divine birthright.  Well, maybe on the 'inside' everything is perfect, but as for the financial accounting, while we were losing jobs and becoming itinerant premies, he was amassing his fortune with seed money from his 'gifts', no doubt.  And I don't care if that is not exactly how he did it, and some premie with a calculator up his or her ass comes here to correct my claim, because one way or another, the moneys collected from premies in the NAME OF GOD became his seed money to be worth $55MM now.  There is no other way it could have happened, not in his case.  I mean look at it.  If he was totally dedicated to his father's mission for him as he claimed to be, where in the hell did he have time and resources to accumulate  55 big ones?  Nowhere.  But because he claimed to be the Lord, he attracted alot of folks who were adept in the financial arts and they helped him (maybe even at no charge, in the name of 'service') to parlay his collection box or some legally fenagled part of it into what it is today.  I challenge anyone to refute that.  Maybe the details are not complete, but the essence is what it is.

It's kind of like Bush.  If that were not his name, do you really think he would have ever become a governor or president?  He got into the game by association and namedropping as a way of life, not by his own achievements.  If Prem Rawat had come to America as a Motivational Speaker or as a budding success as an Investor and not as the LORD ALMIGHTY, LIVING PERFECT MASTER, INCARNATE OF GOD, do you really think he would have attracted the following he did and collect the kind of loot he did?  

Personally, I don't think I would have even looked twice at the poster or gone to see him and leave my vows and the monestary I was in for less than what he claimed he was.  I think there are many of us who would not have gone near him if he had not claimed to be fulfilling that unique role in the universal scheme of things, and therefore he would not have had the fruits that he had literally laid at his feet to begin his financial empire.

Let's get one thing straight...I am not opposed to the concept of a wise teacher being righteously financially loaded.  It can happen and I think that would be really cool.  It's that in this case, due to events in the lives of some premies and some premie kids that were a direct impact of him or one of his close associates, I question his wisdom.  And now he has his great wealth despite his non-delivery of compassion and love to those who got caught in the defective cogs (like Jagdeo) of his global juggernaut, I feel that he has received gifts and compensation for services that were not rendered and that he did not act like the just and merciful king that he said he was and that compelled so many to give so much that he could be where he is today, while so many people who helped to get him there are still trying to get back on some kind of a career track to take care of their families.  While Prem is going car shopping with one of his kids, many premies and ex-premies are trying to pay their bills and stay afloat and keep a job.  That is not condemning in and of itself, but connected to the history and how we all got where we are, I find it sickening and it angers me to the point of action in my own life to get it together. 

Kabir, who Prem loves to quote, said something that Prem will probably never recite from a stage anywhere.  Kabir said something about a Master never accepting money from his devotees.  So he pickes and chooses what suits him, but leaves out what does not suit him.  Kabir also said something about why go and look for God anywhere else?  Your spouse laying in bed next to you, your children sleeping in the other room, they are God and so are you.  Charity begins at home!

Go ahead POV, make my day and prove me wrong...when you are done with #9.