Howdy,

Marolyn’s letter was written almost 12 years ago, and following her scary and
life-changing health event, so I’m not inclined to tear it apart piece by
piece as was my first impulse.  But suffice to say this from is a very
frightened person in a very weakened state, struggling to stay positive and
make sense of things, but at the same claiming her fullness with delight and
love.  It is sad to see how hook, line
and sinker her rationale is with respect to her dependence on the GMJ mythology
and catechism.  It also seems she is
trying to diffuse your (Inis’) anger, do damage control.

It is also sad to see how her neediness and narcissism disallows her ability to give
anything but lip service to a bad situation that she likely could help with.  I wonder if she has been able to shift some since then?

But the point I felt to elaborate on is her comment about not judging Knowledge by
those that don’t practice.  I usually
have heard that one should not judge GMJ by those who DO practice.  But at any rate, what if any, IS a standard
by which to evaluate the efficacy of any so-called spiritual practice (of lack thereof)?

And what good is a spiritual practice if it does not bring about better behavior?

So looking at the GMJ thing, there are certain governing principles involved, but it
seems to point at ‘love and peace’ as its central core values.  There is also listening to and being guided
by a 'teacher' (wink), meditation practice and such, but the path is based on a
deepening experience of peace and love, no? 
And it does not focus on life after death and ‘salvation’, but on one’s
experience while alive.

And peacefulness reduces neediness, and I'd say that feeling love expands one’s boundaries
beyond themselves and their self interest.

So if someone diligently practices Knowledge, it would seem they should be able to arrive
at a somewhat stabilized state of equanimity, especially after decades, no?  So what does someone that has arrived in the
embrace of love and peace look like?

The actions of those that are experiencing benevolent love and peace are not so mysterious to
discern.  It reads in how they treat
others and interact with the world around themselves: how they speak to the waiter, how considerate and polite they are, if
they can see past their own sense of need to help others, if they live without angst, if they can listen well
and courageously, if their attitudes are not based in fear and so on.  I am not saying that only those that have
cultivated a deeper sense of love/peace can be considerate and helpful and good,
but that certainly that someone who is truly peaceful/happy will be less needy,
allowing them to behave accordingly. 

“Be happy to make happy" seems to be a pretty good truism.  Can we help to make the lives of those close to us better if we ourselves are unhappy and struggling?  Obviously, it is tough.  And we know that when we are happy, it is much easier to spread it around.  I think it is a good thing to be able to discern someone else’s suffering.  It is a better thing to feel compassion for and empathize with that person.  It is a betterer thing to have the skill to really help that person.  And it is an even betterer thing to utilize those skills and really make the effort to help that person.

Spending a life trying to cling to a tenuous ‘experience’ that can only be apprehended
by trying to frame reality in the very narrow world of GMJ, darshan, 'mind' avoidance, breath awareness
and his ‘Knowledge’ is a deadening and fearful way to go through life.

I
mean, if that is the goal, to feel better through meditation, adhere to a religious
belief system than involves chasing GMJ around the world to have those few inspiring times at programs, be a member of the devotee club and ignore the overwhelming
body of evidence that there is something really goofed up in premieland, then
so be it I guess.  (and I guess also so be it about the
various and sundry, odious bastards in close proximity to GMJ that have cause so much grief to well-meaning folks)

But I still know a lot of still-practicing premies, and I am so not impressed.  I don’t care as much about mansions in Malibu
and shifting messaging as I do that whatever he is teaching just does not
fucking work well.  It is very, very
obvious.

Of course, this can probably be said about any ‘spiritual practice’.

No
big deal, likely preaching to the choir, but just sayin……...…..

M

Rawat even managed to keep her parents away, her family and
friends all excluded.  Not him tho, not him - he would have gotten
unprecedented access to her.  She'd have been at her most vulnerable and
he gets to be kingpin in her rehabilitation, in the rebuilding of her world and
to me that letter is evidence he took full advantage of the situation and made
a real mess of her like we can only imagine. 

She had diminished capacity ...  It is entirely
possible she is helpless in acting as her husband's puppet.  Sorry to say
it folks, but if there's one thing I learnt from watching my mum in rehab it is
how much damage a selfish liar for a husband can do if he gets the chance at
it.

Trying to parse your reasoning, Lesley, your emotion, your past, and the events of twenty years ago
of Marolyn's situation, I don't see how you got to where you may have wanted to go with that.   [But maybe you will beg the question claiming something about "knowing what you know without knowing it"   ]

I'm afraid it seems to me you're imagining quite a bit there; and very true are your words "we can
only imagine."  

Or maybe you're inferring things about which you haven't quite fully expressed the connections to
conclusions in your quickly written train of thought?

I have to say I have read (similar to most anywhere I look on the internets on any and every topic it seems)... I have read a great
deal of folks imaginations posted here on this site about the inner psychology and workings and intimate family relations of the Rawats, imaginations often written of course in heat of personal emotions, emotions  triggered by various aspects of a personal past experience and strongly of someone's values, imaginations pieced together for assumed understanding out of fragments or things posted by others, sometimes imaginations triggered in normal deep human compassion, or imaginations arising alongside strong righteous indignation against crimes and heinous acts or omissions.  ...but surely much imagination and even much  blather, as well as much heartfelt expression or accurate reporting of experience.

Seems to me you have reached quickly, Lesley, from a bar on phone calls after her brain surgery, right on to
his "rebuilding her world" "with unprecedented access" (!?) to her , as "kingpin in her rehabilitation" "making a real mess
of her" "at her most vulnerable" making her "helpless in acting as her husband's puppet."  ...all this reasoned out of the barring of direct phone calls to her, for a time, a medically critical time it seems. You certainly draw a mephistophelean image of this.  Are you maybe overreaching a bit?  ...going at making a case for identifying, even judging, Marolyn's history and entire psyche in a few paragraphs?  Surely you do have ideas to express and
reactions in all this as to inis' injury about which she started the thread,
and things to say as to the great twists you recognize in Rawat's and Marolyn's
characters in general, and as to all the flaws in cult experience we suffered,
and you and everyone else here continue to post these, but I'm asking for care in reasoning these things out before posting.

Again trying to parse the meaning in your train of thought and statements... 
Aside from the crux of the separate matter of Marolyn responding or not responding appropriately to inis' very surely legitimate but own personal concerns...  For how long after the brain aneurysm surgery on her head did Marolyn's husband keep his wife isolated
from phone calls, Lesley?  Do you know?  I don't.  (Perhaps it was that quite all relations were kept from
visitation, everyone kept away but for himself and their children for awhile, though that seems
not stated in her letter.)  Do you know?  

I know the residence was shut down during that time banning presence of anyone but for a very few necessary
support staff, rather than the normal scores of staff and volunteers.  Maybe isolation was maintained so for as long as necessary during the critical period after surgery while she was in a fragile state of immediate recovery while her parents and siblings and many more were naturally seeking to immediately speak with her by phone.  For how long a period was that, and how should anyone not involved intimately know for how long a period it was?  Maybe her speech hadn't returned to normal for some time.  Maybe she was somewhat mentally disoriented yet for awhile after brain surgery, such that to speak on the phone was not possible or appropriate.  Maybe it could have been thought quite in her best interest to keep even parents and siblings away for some period, for awhile anyway (...at least kept from direct phone calls into her room?  But maybe also her parents and siblings had already been seeing her, as this letter only indicates she knew that at the time no phone calls were being put through to her.) 

She seems to be saying in the letter (or is this just my own interpretation, knowing something of the working of the residence
infrastructure) only that the staff who answered all residence incoming phone calls had standing orders to put no call through to her, none at all, this at a time in that December just after she returned home from the hospital when she was as she says "still in crisis stage of my recovery".  

Maybe her husband was being very protective or even over-protective out of genuine and normal extreme care for his wife, and was
precisely careful to be sure of preventing staff from inadvertently putting unexpected phone calls directly through to her at any inopportune or inappropriate moment?  We reading here don't really exactly know do we?

After some time her family did come see her, certainly.  It isn't known by these postings when that was, is it
known?  I don't know.  Maybe you know Lesley.   I don't know how it is you devise of this, Lesley, that this was such a time in
her life of greatly advanced imposition of isolation -- an unprecedented time, you say, for her husband to gain vast control over her will.  Seems to me her will was bound from times prior to their marriage, bound to that of her "Master", as she describes of herself and her husband (20 years ago it was then).  Maybe it's me now imagining, but to me it seems your characterization of your mum and her husband in medical crisis is what you are describing, not the Rawats' relationship in their crises, though you relate a matching identical in the two different family situations.

You seem to have developed a strong theory of various aspects of Marolyn's psychology and the influencing factors and forces in her long and rather unusual marriage and try to be very explicit about the dynamics of her relationship with her unusual husband in their circumstances of life, very unique and far from normal family dynamics (if any family relationship can be used as a standard of "normal".)  ...a theory you feel strong enough to publicly avow by posting on the site here.  (Sorry to pick you out to respond to among all who have such curiously strong but possibly imaginary personal theories posted here; it's just your post has so conveniently struck a chord calling for response.)

I do not know at all very well the intimate dynamics of that Rawat family, among whom I spent many hours inside their household (and all the while there seemed to me loads of evidence of deep love, strong allegiance, and great mutual affection in all I have seen of them, aside from occasional squabbles among the children back then.  Though I suppose surely they would have kept private from staff and others all or any rents in the relationships).  Nor of course do I know anything of the dynamics of your family, Lesley, other than your brief comment.  But it kinda seems to me you could be less than accurate in comparing the two married relationships, the Rawats' and your mum & her husband.  As I say, it seems to me your comparison and comments are more like a reflexive casting onto or a mirroring onto the Rawats of your own experience formed of watching your mum in rehab and her husband's treatment in taking advantage of her (which you say was damaging -- and I'm very sorry you and she had to suffer that which must have been awfully hurtful).  You seem to assume that scenario in your family as being somewhat identical with the scenario of the Rawats' relations during Marolyn's recovery period, while you and we the readers here had no part at all in the Rawats' situation and about which we can only speculate and make assumptions.

Now and then I'm prompted to posting obsessively in detail like this reaching for probity about comments that seem far from empirical observation but gone rather too far into surmise and imagination, as I'm trying to understand what's going on when descriptions contrast so much with what I think I know about my experiences with the Rawats.  ...like in this instance.

Lesley:  Thanks for
caring.  Sorry about your family
abuse.  Travusit was making a point.  I don’t know if you got it.  It was that the extrapolation is causing him
not to want to get involved with this shit and both of us might need to take a break from the drama expressed. 
And he used your name about five times to drive home the point that his
message was specifically for you.  Your
response, instead of eliciting the sounds of RRRRRRRRRRRrrrrr (cat fighting), perhaps might have been posted a day or two later, after much reflection.  Travuist typed
til his fingers dropped here.  He really sounded sort of upset to the point of trying to point out something very
clearly.  And all of us not named you got a free lesson as well.  So, I write
to say, take your time, we’re in no hurry or fret here.  Things pop out here.  I need not stand up for Travuist in the
least, though I appreciate his support. 
My points being that I’ve not had the joy of experiencing a marmite on toast and a cuppa tea
with you personally among the wallabies, as I recall on my many wonderful trips Down Under, and don’t
really know you or your personal situation, nor had the at-the-time pleasure of doing "service" with you. 
But, I know what’s being said here. 
I also had some personal time on the residence staff and personal
relationships with R&M, and really don’t want to comment on all of this,
and won’t.  My outrage with Dr. John’s
admission to Innis is such that I won’t even mention it to his former
housemother, with whom I related to by marriage, who will freak out. 
We were as linked to the good doctor as any  premies can be and lived
with and near and about him for 30 years. 
His smirk and drool were real as described here.  So, Lesely, feel free to post, but take time/be
wise.  No need to be defensive to
Travuist’s heartfelt comments.  I’m glad
I’m off today and had time to digest them. 
I’m going to take an Alka-Seltzer now. 
Good Day.  One doesn't need to have been personally close to R&N to express any feelings here, but use caution, I think is a good rule of thumb.  Thanks, and I liked reading your comments anyway, though I get the response they elicited.

Goodness Tarvuist.  You feel the need to question the quality of my thinking...

But yours seems actually to be a powerful skill  being used now in these United States of America, by which one tries to manage the nation using such brief means to very critical but often damaging ends foolishly and crazy it seems.  And I'm more concerned about that than your posts, Rawatism, and others' states of mind and writing skills.  

what is so terrible about what I said compared to other posts?

Can we "Carry on and Keep calm" now ... ...or is there more to say, to ask, about this? Anything I can help for you to understand my post to anything I've said, I'll try to explain.  Though I'm gonna be hopefully taking a vacation break from computers for awhile.

You said:

My view on states of certainty, of which I have quite a few, is that I'll keep
them until proved otherwise. Then I'll change my opinion.

 

...for all I know

I agree though with the general drift on this thread, that trying to get inside
the head of the cult leader & his wife is pointless. On the other
hand...they asked for it.  

I never met Marolyn ... Any speculation I might have about how much control, choice, free will she exercises in the matters of her cult involvement and the perks and challenges of that, is pretty much a reflection upon my own strategies through the cult stuff as well as relationships, along with my own patterns and culture around those things, i never knew her, only me

One thing I observed over the years (long ago) was that there was a sub-sect of premies, who on the surface appeared erudite and enlightened, but in reality were burdened by their own complexity. Despite their ability to argue persuasively supporting their obscure points, they rarely appreciated simplicity in it's true form.