Before I decided to "try out" life with K, I made sure I had built some internal security mechanisms in order to protect myself and, above all, my child. In retrospect, I come to the conclusion, that it was my child protecting me (from him)!! I was not allowed to move into an ashram though that life style looked kind of nice from the outside: a group of ppl living together in a small community, but a bigger unit than a normal family would be ... that was very appealing to an old hippie soul! Thank God I just had finished my university education and thus a good basis to build my life on - at least so I thought.

What frightened me most respectively made me insecure was the possibility of ending up like those "children of God" or these "Hare Krishna ppl" flooding the streets back then.... and in my eyes made fools of themselves - also their severe rules (hare krishnas) were not appealing at all for me. 

And the danger of getting sucked into a cult? Well I was aware that it might be a possibility, but then, I thought I have my own head and can think and see and hear for myself. I would surely realize it before it came to that, not? The danger of giving everything away to a cult was non-existent, he had promised his K would be free, and I decided to take him by his words and never ever gave any money for any of his "causes", and as to "propagation" on the Streets - not my style, no thanks. I tried to keep up my independence and also my critical thinking.  Nonetheless I was sucked into that whole thing, it was just like a mass hysteria among the premies and its flames were fanned by the mahatmas touring the country. So, slowly but surely I was one of those naive kids who believed what he and his mahatmas were telling us. My motivation to stay in the cult, was his promise that he could "show me God". 

It took me quite a few (i.e. many!) years to understand that it was *not my fault* that this never happened. I always thought that I didn't meditate enough or perhaps not really correctly ... or whatever. However, I enjoyed the company of the premies around me, and so I lived the half-hippie-half-premie lifestyle of those days.

The hardships which you (and probably many of your fellow citizens) had to go through due to a completely imperfect social system were not a danger for us. In Germany, if you get a job, you automatically get social security, and if you don't work for some time, you're kind of out of the system, and then: not really. We had a wonderful social state system back then (by the 90s it was exploited by greedy politicians though), and at the end of our work life, we would get a pension according to how many months we had worked and how much we had earned. The SS fee was automatically deducted from our salary, so we didn't even have a choice to not have SS.  So basically, you could not really fall into bad poverty or so. There would always be a mechanism to avert the risk, and basically, in Germany it was hard to starve --- you would have to actively try but chances were, there would always be someone (or some institution) to help you back on your feet.

So anyway, I was aware of all these things and prudent enough not to allow myself to ever even get close to any desperate situation. I worked whatever work was there for me, and by my mid 30s I realized "If I have to waste my days with working for our living anyway, I can as well strive for a career." Which then I did and rather successfully so over the years --- and thus, I always was capable of narrowly avoiding desaster.

So - ex-ing for me was a different process as I couldn't really blame anything on M ... for me it was all my own decision. Only reading here on the forum about the fate of all you ashram premies or other full-time devotees, made me understand what was *really* going on behind the scenes, that M is NOT Mr. Niceguy, never was and never will be - on the contrary, the latest revelations show that he was and is much worse than I could have imagined in my wildest nightmares!

So - while I am not personally angry with him, in my eyes, he failed the test of life, by 1000 per cent! I have no personal anger towards him, but am appalled and look at him & his wife full of contempt.