and still aimed at attracting the young.  yes little children play together.  Ooh isn't your skin dark or isn't your nose long or don't your ears stick out, god forbid you wear a funny jumper.  but yes they play together.  someone gets their hair pulled, their crayon taken, and there's always someone in a group of kids who wants to hurt the others on their way to the front.

and then his comments about peace are just plain icky.  Fortunately I rejected them so effectively I can't remember a word even tho I just read it.  I did look at his face.  and looked again.  

He is ageing quite well from the looks of it, or at least still produces a good photograph.  I still wince at the memory of having spent so much time looking at his face as if he were the most important person in my universe.  Fortunately I am able to recognise now that I never really loved him.  I knew that right at the start, I was brave enough to say so like so many of us were, and the premies and mahatmas just said wait and do satsang service and meditation and it will come.  

Nurture it and it will grow like a plant from a seed they said.    now I've had a laugh, always good to end with a botanical flourish.  

HAAAAAAAhahahaha

That was US, his independently wealthy status.... we used to make sure people knew he had investments , he didn't need donations, but we did give them... and they were asked for,   a wee phone call from the community coordinator, an invite to a fundraiser ...and you know a personal pledge of 4 figures is going to be needed if you want to get special merit in the eyes of the lord. If you want him to mention you at amaroo make sure you leave whats left of your entire wealth to him when you go.

We sang that song with such sincerity..

point one.  yes you're right.  I guess I am expecting him to end up looking sensationally ugly and I still think he will but he's not quite there yet.

point two about the narcissism.  yes I am confident you are right, it's dyed in the wool, he has that unbridled and greedy selfishness trademarked.

so yes he is qualified to stand as a leader.   

so sweet and precious the stuff of devotion, so important.  so unattainable for these people.  Rawat always knew he was a faker and he still does.  all he can do with devotion is trample it underfoot into the muck.  As a father biologically, or physically speaking he must have a love for his children but he is not a loving man.

and he certainly isn't a father to the premies!  I hope they don't give him their inheritances.  oh yes that's what our fathers said beforehand.     

so there's this track that passes by her porch where we are sitting and this man is strolling past and engaging us all and there's a bit of banter.  Pat behind me is quietly happy and he just looks amazing and then the next moment I am seeing very old and oh very old and I notice the walking frame is a bit of an effort for him  and oh wow, the courage in him. I felt privileged to be there, he was wonderful to see like that.

"It's ironic perhaps that so many people seek to avoid the sometimes sharp poignancy of feelings in so many ways --

 Rawat likely being one of them -- even while many ex-premies and mind control cult survivors seek to embrace and reconnect to them.

The only feelings that were allowed were those towards him. 

It's strange that 'Knowledge' was meant to bring us TO our true 'true selves'.

Remember this:

Spread this knowledge to every land

To show them true love is here

So they can know the treasure within

For their true selves to appear

It's ironic that he ended up taking us away.

He had an opportunity of creating something wonderful" 

The only feelings we were allowed... yep

It feels like irony- because the reality proved to be opposite to what I thought I was getting,I was told a mirror to my true self as you say. It feels like irony subjectively yet in the big picture it is more like deception. 

More like smoke and mirrors and hypnotism. 

I left after harrowing times of being too far from my true self for too long. I actually prayed to understand, i remember, I was at my ropes end,I prayed to understand what it was I had to know, to learn, from the previous years of suffering, because I couldn't deal with anymore of it, and I obviously hadn't got the message because I kept finding myself in situations i could not handle with narcissists in particular. I did not pray to rawat, that had stopped working years before for some reason, I now struggle to remember if it ever did, but that night I prayed in absolute earnest to jesus and mary. I had actually forgotten that until recently. Anyway long story short, not long after that after a pretty steady succession of 'drips' that ive described before, i did understand! incredibly clearly and almost painlessly. I realised with a a massive dose of irony that I was in a long distance obsessive relationship with a narcissist all this time and this was the root of the 'weeds in my garden'

I was so surprised and shocked actually to find myself seeing rawat as just an ordinary person with the a solid gold ego to match his toilet seat that i forgot to feel sad. I have since of course, i've felt so many emotions through that process but still now i feel kind of thrilled! that i somehow came out of that narcissists prison.

I feel so lucky, escaped by the skin of my teeth kind of thing. And the further away I get the more I see what serious trouble I was in under his spell. i had actually wanted to serve god, not this deceiver, but the road to hell they say is paved with good intentions

Even the so called love or respect or sick adoration of him is tainted because he knows it's all a ruse. so on reflection what has he gained after all that. A fear of the dark

I used to think that if he had accepted Bob Michlers advice(1975ish) and stepped down from being LOTU by being honest to the premies, a different organisation of people could have been born. 

Instead he stepped up the devotional aspect over the following years, until it was only him who could 'give satsang'. 

(I was one of those who bood Bob Michler when he came to London in 75. I  'knew' he(bob) was in his mind. I also 'knew' the reason he died, just as most of the premies I Knew at the time 'knew'.)

It's become especially clear from this forum that we all had different reasons for joining the cult. Maybe it didn't matter much what Rawat said on stage, we were all reading into it and interpreting things in a way that made us think we were achieving our goal. For me, it was the blissful state that would apparently impart wisdom. For others, togetherness, a place amongst others. For some, it was the notion of being a follower of the living messiah.

So yes, maybe the altered state thing was a delusion of mine, and a few other people I met who thought meditation was the key to it all, and who did it persistently until something just had to happen.

so the promise was, well - peace love wisdom god consciousness bliss and fulfilment of your life - pretty much covers it I think.

why did we fall for it?  why was it so easily accepted as a possibility,  what instinct in us was involved.  why was the idea of god so easily accepted.

So when I started writing I had a story I had ideas, I thought I knew where I was going but it rapidly shifted and what came bursting out was a romance.  It was simply the only way I could bear to write it and after a while I noticed how many cliches came up and I liked them so much.

and so I think there's this instinct.  maybe it's something like those impulses that start the beat of your heart.  (there are a small number of larger ones and it is one of those that sets off the wave.  and it is the same one until it dies and then one of the other large ones takes it's place.)  Or maybe it's more simple than that, and it is only one and that is the love that gives your life definition.

or both - like a bag of marbles, one extra large marble, a handful of larger ones and the rest smaller.

  

Funny as I was reading the 1st paragraph I saw in it the description of similar behaviour from an old premie, who non premie friends have met. A few days ago this was the description of her behaviour that they were giving me. The relationship was one of commerce and also of neighbour and this is how they found her to be. Mostly dis-honest. re writing history so as to gloss over anything uncomfortable, blaming others, thin skinned, erratic, seems always ready to attack and never showing gratitude for leeway and kindness done. It surprised me a little bit because I know she doesn't know this is how she comes across. Deluded. I wondered and felt embarrassed for my former self, raving on a lot of regurgitated drivel direct from the cloven hoof, which is where she inevitably ends up. She of course then feels the conversation went well, but everyone switched off a while ago....

stirred some ashes in me...

There seems to be a thing where narcissists marry kind-hearted generous people, where cult leaders trap the best of a generation and we're all too polite to even want to think about what our leaders are really like.

I've been stirring the pot a lot these last few days, pot after pot after potful of jaboticaba fruit.  and I feel deconstructed enough to take a shot at saying this - the stuff of narcissism, the deconstructed stuff of it is still perfectly good shit in the hands of a goodhearted man.

Buddhist Vippasana/Insight for many years. (Spent 4 years in DLM way back when). Meditation is a science/skill that must be explored, refined and practiced with integrity. There are so many nuances and levels of experience that when explored make the practice fruitful. For me in DLM in Philly, I was chasing God in the form of vibration, light, music and nectar. Experiences, though potent, were not built to impart wisdom that provides insight into the causes of "Dukka" or suffering. They were techniques that were used to align with God and Guru...even though dysfunction was abound in the DLM communities and around the Guru. The nature of cravings and aversion that run so, so deep in our being and and form the foundation of our conditioning weren't intellengly explored because the Guru and the initiators were not at that level and in turn not capable of guiding sincere meditators beyond the getting high phase. There are very qualified (non-Guru!!!) teachers, facilities and retreats abound here in the US that are wonderful resources for meditation instruction and practice. Anyway...thought I would offer my 2 cents as the discussion moved towards the pitfalls of meditation. Sitting crossed legged at 60 is not the same as sitting cross legged at 20, but with enough support pillows and a good cushion, i don't do too bad ...and then there is always the straight backed chair.

Until one day I could no longer evade the recognition that I needed some real peace - being a premie had put me at odds with myself.