It’s very hard to apologise comprehensively and not seem pathetic. But when you’ve done wrong, what can you do?

I feel like I’ve snapped out of a long spell.

In the last few years I have sparked an amount of bad feeling and acrimony which now staggers me. What has lately befallen me and my family has caused grey hairs to sprout all over my head, and has led me to get treatment for depression, anxiety, ‘suicidal ideation’ and recurring nightmares.

This is a long way from the abstract battle of ideas which is played out on various websites, which sometimes resemble a Boys’ Own game. It is horribly real, and it basically destroys any ability one has to enjoy life. I’ve now had 14 months of it. Every day of that 14 months there has been deep fear - it’s there when I wake up, and it’s there when I go to sleep at night. Then I dream about it.

In the end, you either die or start to learn something. The first thing I learnt was to stop blaming others, and start to look at what I have done to bring this situation about. Unsurprisingly, all the other lessons flowed from that.

In relation to the various proceedings against me, my legal advice was always to attack back. That always made me uncomfortable; now it no longer seems either sensible or (of course) even possible. Being thoroughly defeated in court, several times over, was a very painful experience. Defeat isn’t a happy time, and was not something I was used to.

On the psychological level, one response to such pain is to harden your position, to get more entrenched (Slobodan Milosevich-like). The other, which I have belatdely come to, is to examine my own actions - to see what responsibility I have for the hideous mass of pain my life has become. Pathetic though it probably appears, this is my attempt to do that.

My lawyers are in the process of offering IRCC a hopefully generous sum (courtesy of my ever-kind father) to settle their costs in the present conflict - so both sides can eventually walk away from this battle. But these words are not mandated as part of any agreement, nor have they been requested or demanded (or even hinted at) by IRCC. I hope it’s accepted that, were it my intention to use them to somehow gain advantage, I would have held them back and used them as a bargaining chip. But I make no request, implicit or explicit, for Maharaji or IRCC to give anything in return. I think things will take their course regardless of what I say now. This post is the result of nothing but the very belated stirring of my own conscience. It is freely and sincerely written - the result only of a painful look at my soul. I have written it unprompted, on my own initiative, against legal advice, and against the advice of all my ex-premie friends and supporters without exception.

The events of the last 14 months were, so far as I can guess, sparked by a press article I wote two and a half years ago, about my time as a devotee of Maharaji. I now painfully appreciate that the article was written with a bombardier’s mentality. Bombadiers press their button, watch a few dark shapes fall toward the ground, maybe observe the odd distant flash, then fly home and have a meal or a beer. Meanwhile in some village far away, homes have been levelled, and women and children torn limb from limb.

Whilst I didn’t kill anyone, I displayed the same kind of callousness. Maharaji is a human being, as are premies, and it is obvious that what I wrote caused him and his family, and premies, great distress. I apologise deeply to him and them for that. I would hate to have a lifetime’s worth of claims relating to my faults and mistakes spread across a newspaper. It would no doubt be a longer article than the one I wrote about Maharaji.

I now see that the maturer option by far would have been to walk away from Maharaji and Knowledge without rancour, and keep my feelings to myself, at least till they were a lot clearer. Engaging in an attack on Maharaji not only hurt many people needlessly, but violated the first principle of life - taking responsibility for one’s own actions. No-one (least of all Maharaji) forced me to be a premie for 28 years: it was a choice I made every year, every day.

I have often deplored the media’s tendency to exploit the private lives of public figures, yet I walked straight into the trap of doing so myself. I’m appalled at how I managed to separate myself from my own principles so easily, because it suited me. There’s always a ‘noble’ rationale or excuse for such journalism, but it usually doesn’t stand up - and certainly not in this case. If there’s anything further I can do to publicly correct the record (such as a letter to the newspaper concerned), I will.

I should have had the sense and maturity to realise that becoming a premie was my own choice, and to have taken responsibility for that choice. No-one drugged me or locked me in a room. I did pay some lip service to that ‘self-responsibility’ sentiment, but I was too consumed by anger to understand it in any depth.

As numerous people know, the last year has left me very depressed, and I have spent a little too much time contemplating suicide (the ‘long-term solution to a short-term problem’ as one of my clinicians wisely described it). I’m not revealing this to attract sympathy - I doubt if I’ll get any - but to explain the process which has led to my seachange in attitude. Basically, only now that my own pain and distress have reached unbearable levels can I appreciate the pain I have caused others. That’s sad, even pathetic. This post is part of my effort to climb out of that abyss.

I am grateful that this one silver lining has come, belatedly, out of the ordeal. I would hate to instead have been desensitised and hardened by the experience, or to have become stuck forever in ‘I am right’.

I’ve resented having been dehumanised in recent times, though I have hidden this behind a wall of amused detachment. That was just a mask. Really I’m devastated by it - it is fatally undermining of one’s self-esteem.

Much more importantly, I now see that ‘dehumanisation’ is exactly what I tried to do to Maharaji. (To put it mildly, I was trying to punch way above my weight.) To me, he was no longer a real person with feelings and sensitivities and good qualities, but an impersonal force to be attacked. Such insensitivity, and such stupidity.

Pain seems to be the best teacher, unfortunately (words are next to useless by comparison), and I am grateful that I have, I think, had this capacity in myself to dehumanise ‘enemies’ extinguished. I shall not do it again, whether the object be a political leader or anyone else. I’ve enunciated such ideas before, but regrettably it’s only now, with my health broken, that I finally feel and understand them. Some of us like to learn the hard way.

This is definitely not the time to complain of what has happened to me, but to settle my own conscience. Whilst only deep suffering could have prompted me to write what I am writing now, I’m not writing it to escape more suffering - but because through suffering this much I have come to understand the hurt I have caused others. Sadly, I simply did not see this before.

Premies just want to be left alone to do their thing, and this is a right I will (belatedly but respectfully) accord them. I used to feel that my writing public words about Maharaji was something premies could ignore, and so should not complain about. That was wrong too. Words have power, change perceptions, alter social climates - and wound. Certain words need to be spoken (of course), but, as my first year in the East has taught me, there is another very important category of words: those which are best left unsaid. There’s something dignified about silence and discretion. I was anything but silent or discreet.

I was born angry, and have always been on my high horse about something or other. The events of the last 14 months have been so hideous, and yet so perfectly tailored to knock the irrational anger out of me - and the pride in my own brilliance out of me - that I’ve began to think again that there might be a God. It just seems too perfect otherwise, dreadful though it has been.

I was very angry when Damian Scattini told The Australian in March that I was ‘obsessed’ and ‘irrational’. But he was right. No doubt there is a place for discharging the large emotions which sometimes arise in ex-premies. However what begins as therapeutic can soon become obsessional, and addictive. A good thing soon becomes a bad thing. Discharging one’s feelings can turn into one-sidedness and bitterness, and a constructive examination of one’s own illusions can, instead, turn into a destructive attack on those one perceives in others. That’s never helpful, and never right. Self-knowledge vanishes, and war begins.

So I deeply regret becoming involved in publicly criticising Maharaji, mainly for the needless pain it has caused him and his followers, but also because it was an attempt to flee responsibility for life choices which were one hundred percent my own.

It will be hard for my ex-premie friends - in the unlikely event that I have any by the end of this post - to grapple with these ideas, especially coming from me. But no-one else has had my experiences of the last year. To be surveilled, or successfully sued, or to have all your savings drained away, or to be put through the shame of bankruptcy, or to put your friends in danger, is horrible. To have had all of it happen at once is beyond description. Worst of all is the realisation that you’ve brought it on yourself. A psychological breakdown brings about profound self-examination and profound change. Walk a mile or so in my shoes before you leap to judgement.

Exes advise me to fight on, as do others. One of them, a Brisbane journalist, said, ‘It’s a fascinating saga’. All I could say was, ‘You have no idea.’ Unless you’re in the middle of something like this, as I have been every minute of every day since October 2003, you really have no remote concept of the damage it does to your mind. By far the worst aspect is the realisation that it is self-inflicted. So I respectfully decline to perpetuate my daily suffering for the sake of someone else’s battle, ‘fascinating saga’, or whatever. And, really, this is no longer my fight anyway - I lost interest in it a long way back.

As it is, I’m about to lose a fair slice of my inheritance; and my life will not be as it was before, or at least not until after what I think will be a lengthy emotional recovery. But I definitively do not say this with any sense of complaint. I alone bear the blame for my fate. In litigating against me, IRCC was defending its work, something they or anyone else are entitled to do. And all the humiliation is a small price to pay for ending some of the acrimony which now exists, and for learning some of the lessons I have learned. (There are worse mottoes than ‘live and let live’, for example.)

The idea of taking sides again makes me feel physically ill, or iller than I feel already. There’s something strange and unbalanced about publicly and endlessly raking over the coals of your youth in middle age. It was something I’d realised two years ago - but foolishly I got sucked back into the fray one more time with the IRCC document I posted. As many already know, the feeling in me of ‘wanting out‘ of the premie/ex-premie dispute is long-standing. But, unhappily, the document-posting and the subsequent litigation forced me back into battle mode. Though it seemed a small thing at the time, posting the document was the stupidest decision of my life. Then came the litigation etc., and, just when I’d hoped to enter a new phase of life, I was right back in the middle of the old one.

That, in turn, led to endless defensiveness and self-justification. I am now deeply tired of trying to justify myself. Indeed I’m tired of the sound of my own voice.

As I said above, the realisation that I should apologise to Maharaji has sadly come very late, and only after my own pain had reached such a level that I can finally appreciate the pain I have caused others. However, as my premie friends will attest, I have for a long time felt I owe George Laver an apology. When I posted the document in September 2003, I made a few unkind personal remarks about him. To the best of my recollection I have never met George Laver, and so those remarks were founded on nothing. An apology was impeded by the legal processes, and my need to keep a low profile while they worked themselves out. But now it is definitely opportune - so I offer George Laver my full and unreserved apologies now.

It may be suspected that this letter is a bid to get myself out of a tight spot, or the product of my impaired psychological state. Firstly, I’ve deliberately made it separate from the legal/settlement processes, and I have little doubt that it won’t affect them. It’s Maharaji’s choice whether to continue proceeding against me, and he has the right to do as he chooses. I’m not asking for or expecting anything in return for these words of remorse and apology. Secondly, whilst my mental state is indeed impaired (so my clinicians tell me), I believe I have the utmost clarity on these matters at least. I will not be privately telling anyone that I don’t mean these words; nor revising them down the track when and if the pressure is off.

I’m posting this now, rather than waiting to offer it as part of any settlement. That, I hope, means that no-one will be able to say it is forced or insincere, or that I did it for an ulterior reason. I’ve written to Maharaji separately, to offer my co-operation in the event that there’s anything further I can do to heal the situation. I’ll also be writing to individual premies I might have offended.

My first response to what happened to me was moral outrage. That lasted about a year. This month, to my horror, I learned that a draft post I’d written earlier, about those events, had somehow found its way onto the Web. Those in touch with the website concerned should be able to confirm that this was very much against my wishes. Those from the ex-premie forum will hopefully confirm that I asked for the draft to be taken down the moment I learned of it. (And for the record I now disown the draft, and decline anyone permission to re-post it in the future.)

The reason for my dismay was that, by the time that draft appeared, I was pretty confused - talking (via email) to premies as well as ex-premies, and (in a nutshell) in the middle of a seachange in my attitudes. Now that seachange is complete. The moral outrage has gone, and I have belatedly examined, and now accept, my own role in furthering and fueling an entirely unnecessary war between two parties.

The premies I know are by and large good people, and my role in demeaning them I now see as infantile. I was stupid - it is stupid - to insult people’s cherished ideals, or to show disrespect to the person whom premies respect more than anyone.

A doctor/counsellor who has treated me, and has consequently learned a lot about these matters, noted that I have an ‘incendiary streak’. She likened me to a man who stands on top of a hill in an electrical storm with a lightning rod in each hand, and is surprised when he gets a jolt. Like all good therapists, she is more interested in leading me out of my own stupidity than in propping up my ego. I owe her a lot.
I’ve long believed that mental illness sometimes has a moral component, and now I’ve had direct experience.

A couple of years ago David Lovejoy told me I was a zealot. That was also true, and I trust that that particular madness has now left me too.

There are some other real fundamentals that I’ve missed in recent years. I failed to understand, for example, that by allowing yourself to remain angry at a person, that person wins without firing a shot.

Most of the lessons of the last year have been brought on by great pain and humiliation. I’ve never been publicly humiliated before, and have never been so crushingly beaten, and it has not been fun.

One ray of light has been that in the earlier part of the year I had to relocate to Asia, where I have wanted to live for many years. One can’t escape one’s troubles by travelling, but being here does at least keep a physical buffer between me and Australia, which sometimes makes life a little more tolerable. A major benefit of travelling around Asia, as I do - of almost never seeing people I know from before - and a major benefit of a future outside Australia, will be that I remove myself from those who have strong feelings for or against Maharaji. Those feelings are extinguished in me, and I have no desire now to influence or be influenced by them. I now long to fall silent on that issue for good.

Last Sunday morning I was woken by my guest house rocking violently from side to side. Later in the day news came through of the tsunami devastation throughout Asia. The day before, after a two-person family Christmas, I’d farewelled my daughter for a flight to the Thai islands. The thought of anything happening to her, after everything we’ve been through lately, was unbearable. Heart in mouth, I frantically tried to make contact. I eventually learned that she was safe. Now I’m surrounded by news of death and grief. It’s entrenched the realisation (again very belated) that life is brief, and best spent not starting conflicts. As a premie friend, Jon Puckridge, wisely told me years ago: ‘Life’s too short for them and us.’ I wish it had sunk in better. I wished it hadn’t taken my own life going down the tubes before I to realise it.

Now I’ve finally applied some of my brilliant psychology to myself. I thought it was premies who were possessed by an illogical madness, when all along it was me. In my obsession with ‘exposing fanaticism’, all I was doing was engaging in it. And to think that I was the person lecturing the world on ‘projection’.

I now appreciate that what has happened to me in the last year or so must spring from very deep feelings, and very deep hurt. I much regret having caused this. I wish I could turn back the calendar five years, and have myself walking out the gate of IRCC and discreetly moving on to purely constructive endeavours. That’s not possible unfortunately, but hopefully this confession and apology to Maharaji and all premies is a start.