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I wrote this to help anyone trying to fully untangle themselves. There's a few tidbits in here that are new that I hope you find interesting. I published this on Medium just now for anyone a member there. If not, it's posted here on the Resources for the Truth About Prem Rawat website. https://resourcesforthetruthaboutpremrawat.com/2024/01/02/how-to-free-yourself-from-the-prem-rawat-cult/
Have a wonderful day you all. DoJo
Modified by Dojo at Tue, Jan 02, 2024, 10:09:15
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Excellent piece, well written and incisive. I especially like #10-taking a private/public stand and ending the involvement with rawat with a ceremony or something similar. Thanks for your "standing up" actions-it's helping get a story out that needs to come out. I'll write more later...good work...
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Hi Don,
It reads like a breath of fresh air on a still and starry winter night. Clean, clear and pure.
With all due respect and deep appreciation, I burst out laughing (thank you for that!) when I got to this part:
"I lived a charmed life- private meetings with Prem, front-row seats at all his programs, status, power, a rolling expense account, a car, free medical and dental care, and my own room in the ashram."
LOL!!
Like Kate McKinnon said to NSA agents on SNL during her interview about being abducted by aliens... "It wasn't like that for me!"
I guess you could say I rode in economy class or steerage throughout those days. 
My laughter quickly dissipated when I returned to the serious and all too real nature of the topic, especially the emotional upheaval that you and practically everyone else endured when you/they sat down and faced the facts you presented.
Especially whatever it was you heard during your conversations with that family member.
Again and as always: thank you!
Bob
Modified by lakeshore at Tue, Jan 02, 2024, 12:22:15
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First, thank you very much for your effort to kind of get it sorted for the people who need it. Second, thank you very much for an interesting read - it helped me recall the beginning of my own story back in 1973.
My one remark relates to this part of your text:
8.)Understand the principle of psychological projection. Those of us who received and practiced Knowledge projected the peace we were experiencing onto our guru as the source of that peace. We listened to people we thought were more enlightened than we were raving about Prem and his magical powers. The community of followers around us supported our projection. In short, we became heavily brainwashed.
If we go back to how an 8 year old child could become "Satguru" we have to see that he was just this: an 8 year old kid! How then would he do his Satguru job? Easy: 1. he grew up with the boss of his early childhood, his father. In one very old footage we saw him as a 4 year old kid, parroting his Daddy's words and stage persona in a perfect way. So the mahatmas were obviously quite impressed with him and then *educated* him and taught him everything he needed to know and how to behave as "satguru".
They catered to the childish need for security and the (also quite normal) childish wish to be able to control everything around him, because to our little ones, this world is an unfathomable and therefore, potentially dangerous place. By the time he came to the West (and probably earlier already) he had undergone a heavy brainwashing himself! He probably believed all the sh*t they'd be telling him about his "mission". And he acted accordingly.
~~~~~
This is NOT to whitewash anything which happened with him, how he developed further on in life, all the bad decisions he made.... etc. I just wanted to make myself understand WHY he developed into such a monstrous figure. Talking about abusing others .... abusers are the ones who got abused themselves in their early childhood. They are deeply disturbed in their inner being --- and very often, pedophily (w?) is their soul's helpless effort to heal itself. Again, I have NO intention whatsoever to whitewash this guy, but rather my humble trial to UNDERSTAND the how's and why's. I cannot forgive if I cannot understand... and actually, I don't have the slightest wish to forgive him - because he grew up in a distorted environment, does NOT mean he has to stay distorted himself! He, like anyone of us, has a "free will" and the potential to make better decisions within the blink of an eye. AND THIS IS WHAT HE NEVER DID! He'd rather live a foul life of luxury and "maya" ... and therefore doomed himself to a presumably "not-so-nice" end. PS: Now the next question would be: HOW can we *forgive ourselves* to allow "them" to fool us to such an extent??? Common sense would have told us that a child is just a child, and not a philosopher, or a saint or what have you .... but we WANTED this stupid fairy tale to be true - hence the effort of all of us to do whatever he told us ... in a (childish!) trial to make it work. And because we loved fairy tales, not? 
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
Avoiding a problem does not make it go away, avoiding feeling does not make it go away either. (me)
Modified by Ash at Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 04:57:07
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How an 8 year old could become Satguru-
I think this is important. I agree, of course, he was a child himself and if you read on prem-rawat-bio he spoke about his father as being scary to the point of child Prem Rawat trembling in fear. I don't have a good impression of Mata Ji either, she seemed to function as a stage mother. Not only this, as a 16 year old he married a 24 year old premie, which reportedly was a relationship that had been kept secret for some time before.
I think of this more as mitigating in how to look at him. If he had stepped down as a child. It would have been to hold him responsible for being what he was taught to be.
In an above thread, the 1976, which I think is the year he turned 18, push to come down off the throne happened. He's a young adult, but what Mishler describes, is a decision, motivated primarily by financial self interest, to not just continue to be Satguru, but in the years 1976-1982/3 or so... he was ramping up the demands to devote your all to him, join the ashram, surrender... as it has been coined... "the heavy devotional era". There has been a little discussion too, about his very disturbing behind the scenes behavior during those 6-7 years. He had an enormous impact on his followers lives, many of whom took his "when you sing Arti mean it!" "when you say Bhole Shri Maharaj Ki Jai" mean it. Surrender. "guru maharaj ji is that supreme power, is and always will be" "when you have a perfect master you can't do anything but worship him". I agree, here, he is an adult, and he has already had one reported crisis of conscience, where he made a choice, to not step back, but ramp it up.
Then, Dettmers described the San Ysidro Ranch intervention. From what I understand, before that, Prem had already begun hiding from the public what the beliefs really were about him. But what premies believed sounds unchanged. When confronted, he again, became angry and balked. So he's had, at least two, adult opportunities to change it.
I have found many many pictures of Indians who currently have altars to him in their homes, and they not rarely post photos of their small children being taught to worship at these altars. There is a lot of evidence, that things, while not spoken of openly, are not really so different, about the importance of the Master in the scheme of the belief system. All one has to do is look at social media comment when he is criticized to see the cult is still a cult. Or look at the fawning praise when he published the Sara Sidner interview. Or the fawning praise in the South Africa coffee with potential PR girl with Marolyn and Paul Bloomfield. I'd point to the comments as demonstrating it's still a personality cult.
While nearly all abusers were abused themselves it isn't true that abused children usually become abusers themselves. I want to understand it too and explore it in a way that is fair and open. But I agree, it doesn't absolve him of his responsibility for exploiting others as an adult. What nature nurture combo resulted in this cult leader? A fair question.
Forgiving ourselves
As for forgiving ourselves. I would point to more, we need to do the work to learn about cults and cult members. We remain vulnerable if we do not. We may remain vulnerable, as all humans are, anyway, but less so if we understand it. We are social animals who desire meaning and belonging and to make sense of our world. Generally cult experts say cults members are not stupid nor are they defective in some way. They generally agree on two qualities of cult members, they are idealistic, and they fall prey at a vulnerable time of some sort in their lives.
Children
I think our cult, like many others, idealized to nearly fetishizing childhood. The boy guru, the guiless heart of a child, the children being on stage and in all the magazines, schools. In the cult now, they prominently focus on images of children, Prem writing a children's book promoting it with images of Japanese children. Prem proudly leading a group of child scouts in Malaysia. Prem feeding children in South Africa and visiting a school waving to toddlers as he departs. Images of him giving kids candy. They are so proud the Peace Education program is in schools all over the world. They show a group of US teens watching a TV monitor of Prem speaking. They show one teen boy talking about what "Prem's" words mean to him.
Fairy tale
Fairy tale is right. They are always scary. Who's the hero in this fairy tale?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNs_5M0eG-k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGgeiyslyOo
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Oh my! I was just a "normal" premie of the kind who will be the last one to know (anything) about what was going on in the Guruworld. Geographically far away from the US and logistically, a (periodically single) mom mostly preoccupied with educating my kids. So the base of what I think (and say) therefore is very "thin" - the hierarchy created around DLM (and whatever they called themselves later on) was functioning perfectly. Community leaders obviously were briefed to just spread to us "normalos" what came through the official channels. Anyway - mitigating was not the point I wanted to make, rather, I think that if you indoctrinate a child to believe that they are the "Perfect Master" and ppl bow down before them, spoil them in every way possible, such a child will very probably BELIEVE that "they" are right, and will feel very special and entitled to anything they want.
The first time I saw Prem from a closer distance was in 1973 - Guru Puja in England, satsang programmes in Alexandra Hall and Darshan somewhere outside the city in a green meadow (with me dripping eyes and nose because of a terrible hayfever). ...
THIS darshan was such a disappointment, probably THE most disappointing event in my young life .... HE sat there on whatever "throne" they had built for him and was more distant than when he spoke from his throne in the evening, when we were far, far away in the Hall. He sat there in a way which came over to me as most arrogant and smug. He avoided to look anyone in the eyes or even "see" them.
This was the moment when I should have run! But didn't. Instead, I tried to be "better", a better premie?, a better mother?, a better "human" generally? I don't know. Guess, I just wanted to understand the chasm of what, so far, I had heard and read of him to what I saw and felt in that one short moment of utter disappointment.
But this first "non-encounter" was kind of defining my "non-relation" to him for the years to come. And so it was not too difficult for me to move on when my time had come.
PS: In spite of this disappointing experience with the Guru - I quite liked the premieworld.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
Avoiding a problem does not make it go away, avoiding feeling does not make it go away either. (me)
Modified by Ash at Thu, Jan 18, 2024, 07:21:54
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<3