Down below, I mentioned that I went to a Rawat cult intro event and was made almost comotose by the time I left.  It was beyond dead.  After the video, an "instructor" spoke and she was even more dead.  She literally had nothing to say.  She seemed nice, in a lifeless sort of say.

Anyhow, what happened?  At least in the early 70s there was enthusiasm.  Where did it go?

Here's what I think.

I believe that part of the reason that propagation has been so unsuccessful for Rawat is that the whole process has been fundamentally dishonest since around the late 1970s, like around 1978 or so.  And I recall when that began to happen.

 Before that, while the absurd claims about Maharaji and Knowledge were not true, premies thought they were true and that matters enormously when dealing face to face with anyone showing interest. Maharaji was the Lord, he was here to show you God, and this would save the world.  The Lord was here, come receive knowledge.  It was nuts, but it was what we honestly believed, and that kind of honesty, openness and enthusiasm attracted a lot of people.  Maybe up to 100,000 received knowledge in the US alone during that period, from 1971 to 1977.  After that, hardly any did.

But that was limited and times changed.  Around the time of the Jonestown cult suicide, we began to make the aspirant process a process. People couldn't be told what we really believed because they weren't ready, so we could only tell them a little bit, and then hope to bring them along until they were ready to hear that the Lord was here to show you God. And since then there has always been an organisation "line" or story that premies were supposed to adhere to.

As time went on and premies could no longer honestly talk about the wonderful effects that they believed knowledge manifested for them.  So the premies no longer had the earlier excitement, nor the constant  reinforcement they got in satsang.  So the whole emotional bang fizzled out, and it has never returned.

So, this is the key problem with the keys and all the other, countless "new" and "this is going to do it" programs Rawat has put forward.  The premies believe he's the Lord, but they can't say it, and they also can't reinforce it in each other.  So, when they talk to people about Rawat, they are hesitant, unable to show that genuine, honest enthusiasm and openness (no matter how misguided it is), that we used to show, and attracted most of us in the first place.

It's the dishonesty that people sense and are not attracted to.  This is an inherent problem for Rawat, and it seems he hasn't a clue how to deal with it.