Regarding "no chit chat," Dr. wow states that no one was more responsible for creating concepts than Prem Rawat. In hindsight, it's as if Prem contributed mightily to the very darkness he purported to save us from. I say that because nothing in my life was darker (and more onerous) than my nearly ten years living (if you can call it that) in Prem Rawat's ashrams.

Premie suicide atempts, mental and physical breakdowns, the twice daily Arti ritual, relentless money issues, wack job* initiators, morning 'till night indoor satsang and meditation marathons on sunny days in July and whatnot aside, it was the entirely unnatural repression of twenty and thirty somethings in 1970s western culture that took its toll.

As one very small example, imagine yourself sitting down at the dinner table with perhaps fifteen others in an atmosphere of stiff, awkward silence. You know these people. You live with them. But you can't talk to them. The only vocalizations were things like "please pass the salt." Inevitably someone would slip-up and comment on something. That's when a pious premie would raise their index finger to their mouth and shush them. I remember times when "please pass the salt" was reduced to finger pointing.

Indeed, "no chit chat."

Then, after a brief interlude, the local community would file in (leaving a mountain of shoes by the door) or everyone would pile into a few vehicles for a trip to the satsang hall where there was typically a feature presentation such as a video of Maharaji giving satsang or a forty-five minute slide show of close-ups of Maharaji set to music by One Foundation or mutually agreed upon (acceptable) popular songs like Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"

(It's funny the way premies dodged all that and made things up about that crap gap in their resumes.)

I'll say it again: a certain premie apologist/revisionist had the temerity to say that the ashrams were no more onerous than little league of summer camp. This time, however, I'll leave out his absurd re-writing of the cause of the unnatural, pervasive and crippling social and sexual repression that harmed so many premies.

Meanwhile, we all know that Prem Rawat was secretly engaging in the polar opposite behavior of sex, drugs, rock & roll, alcohol, cigaretts, insatiable greed and materialism, and treating followers like playthings. (What does that say about the "self" in his so called "self-knowledge?" ) Premies were so damaged by then that the rationalization was that he was so enlighted that he could do anything he wanted in the playground he created. 

Sadly and unfortunately, as Maria77 points out, the damage to the moral core of far too many of them only got worse over time.

* a crazy or extremely eccentric person.