>I suppose that Maharaji began in such a more evolved mode, and gradually descended back into much ego-centredness through being accorded the unquestionable devotion and respect he was.<

My supposition is that Rawat had a pretty standard 8 year old ego state and has simply never had any encourgement to grow out of it - there isn't any evidence that he was ever anything other than a self centred little shit. All the 'darshan' experience is far more statisfactorily explained by evolutionary psychosocial processes - I'm not making the experiences reductive by saying that - IMO these are very powerful expressions of what it is to be human.

I do understand the conceptions of 'egolessness'  and the 'overcoming' lower impulses - I personally no longer believe those ideas to have any reality. The conceptual separation of self from ego or ego from some finer aspect of the self or the separation of self from any 'impulse' and the sepapration of impulses into lower and higher is a false, (IMO) ultimately damaging approach to what we are. And whatever that is, it's one single thing that isn't amenable to being split, even where one conceives of the self being comprised of something spiritual as well as something animal - the whole is far greater than the sum of those parts.

Rawatism is a dualistic doctrine - like all manicheaisms it leads to a self inflicted insanity - it litterally makes people ill.

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