Dear Ghi, please let me answer your post to Joe, step by step.

While you have a keen sense of the history and evolution of the premie culture in the U.S. and have a good memory of the late 70s and 80s, more and more your writing is not applicable to today. 

You are correct.  Maharaji has changed everything - even to the point of saying he never claimed to be God (Krishna, the superior power in person, the Lord).  Does that strike you as honest?

To keep trying to apply earlier times to today is like comparing rock n’ roll to trance music or fax machines to ftp technology.  I think that the early days and the adolescence stages of the organization were really a product of people trying to organize it according to their own ideas. 

Who were these people trying to organize DLM according to their own ideas?  Who was in charge?  Hmmmmmmm.

First the Mahatmas and DLM from India and later, the wanna-be CEOs and MBAs who didn’t make it in corporate culture.  Underlying all this is a steady point: the experience matters, not the party line.

Maharaji is and always has been in charge and to blame what happened in the 70s and 80s on mahatmas and Indian culture is absolute bullshit.  And there still is a party line by the way, or haven’t you noticed.

So today, as then, many people do have a genuine experience that is not dissectible with logic as theologians do with religion, because this is not a religion.  The experience of knowledge is honesty, not lies as you keep promoting. 

Yeah, the experience of the breath is honesty.  That’s why I became an ex because I couldn’t put up with the bullshit coming from Maharaji/EV.

The simple choice to follow Maharaji as a teacher or as one who inspires, is not forced, but a choice. 

Yeah, and I choose to not follow Maharaji.  I prefer to have a genuine experience that is not tainted by bullshit and party politics and training sessions.  I’d rather follow my own conscience (remember that word?) and my own ideas.

The key problem with propagation is the concept itself as something separate from our experience and living, not the inability to be honest or open or enthused.  There is a lot of enthusiasm and real, heightened, awareness of life.

That was the first chink in my premie armour.  When reading EPO my first thought was, “Geez, would I want to bring new people into this?”  My answer was no.

Keeping a reference point of some church ladies shields your perception from the many people in the U.S, and elsewhere of course, who enjoy Maharaji, his inspiration, and knowledge.  You know a lot of pwks, but there are more and more who are finding it real, helpful, and not in conflict with their professional or social worlds. 

From what I’ve read on EPO I don’t like (enjoy) Maharaji any more.  I think he is a hypocrite who is more interested in buying stuff, drinking, and sport fucking than inspiring people.  He is worth $55 million dollars and still asking premies for more money.  And claiming that he got rich independently is also pure horseshit.  I know people who gave their entire inheritances to Maharaji. 

And by the way it is not his Knowledge.  It doesn’t belong to anyone.  They are public domain techniques.  They didn’t belong to Shri Hans or Swaropanandji either.  And the supposed lineage is bogus too.

People are attracted to the energy and clarity that knowledge opens up, which is what attracted most of us in the first place (not the words or claims) as you noted.

Finally we agree on something.  I too believe that focussing on the breath can open up energy and clarity and people do find it attractive.  Words are not it.  I’ll take what I like and leave the rest.

I know you are convinced other wise, at this point, but I just wanted to offer another perspective based on experience. 

Everyone’s perspective is based on experience.  My choice to become and ex was based on the experiences I had while reading EPO and subsequent experiences I had thinking about what I had read.

There are not crafted lies and efforts to mislead but sincere efforts to show people a way to realize what already is.

What already “is” was there long before Prem Rawat and will always be there.  Let’s call it the Tao.  The breath will take you there.

It’s good the emotional bang fizzled out, because peeling back reality to the core, there is not emotion, nor thought, but stillness and energy. 

Talk that way at a premie gathering and you will be labelled as a bongo or lone ranger.  Stillness and energy has nothing to do with Prem Rawat.  Lot’s of people in other groups experience that - Buddhists, yoga practitioners, Sufis, Hasidic Jews, etc.  I have experienced stillness and energy while jogging.

Organizations come and go, like paper clips and notebooks we use for work.  But the experience and resulting kindness, energy, and acceptance from knowledge keeps growing. 

Become an ex and you will see it growing faster.  You will have less baggage.  And do you really see premies as kind and accepting?  Sure, some are.  And do you see them getting kinder and more accepting as the years go by?  Ironically, I found myself getting kinder and more accepting of others after I became an ex.  I had less to defend.  Funny isn’t it?

Maybe you can find something in this post that resonates before you react.  I do respect your passion for truth.

I did find something that resonated before I reacted.  Long live stillness and energy.  If you want to keep adding, stirring Maharaji into your stillness and energy, go right ahead Ghi, more power to you.  Not for me because I like to travel light.

Takes a lot of guts to come here.

~ Kind regards to you too,

BOD