I too was a seeker of more enlightened states, higher consciousness or whatever one might care to call it, and like many premies, cast my lot with the guru in order to find it....this was his main selling point, and was what differentiated him from religions that didn't offer "an experience"....of course, you needed the "living master" in order to get the "living experience", so the two went hand in hand...

And today, it's still "the experience" and "the experience" alone, that premies refer to as the main reason why they stay and choose rawat over other forms of growth, enlightenment etc.....they realize his "teachings" are inane, he rambles and offers nothing new but a rehash of old stuff, but they get "the experience" when they see him...

(Of course, for the gopis, there is the added bonus of rawat himself, and any interaction with him, although this is definitely downplayed publicly today, and only whispered about amongst old timers...)

To me, the problem with "the experience" philosophy for choosing rawat, or any guru for that matter, is the "the experience", while promoted as the only thing that lasts and can be counted on, doesn't last, plain and simple......it's totally dependent upon seeing rawat in a carefully contrived setting, not too often, in a certain type of guru-disciple way, with him talking and a crowd of adoring devotees projecting their energy upon him, which he reflects in some manner back to them.....take away the programs, and premies have very little, if any, extraordinary day to day experience to draw upon, no coherent teachings to reflect on, no type of moral code from rawat (and certainly no semblance of one from his own personal life) ,a spiritual life they are embarrassed by, a teacher they have to "cover" for in order to explain his many hypocrisies (and this affects possible new recruits far more than premies realize..)and in many instances a rather dysfunctional personal life, way behind and too far to catch up,  many times, which makes things tougher...if you believe rawat holds the key to happiness, then you simply try harder, and the cycle continues...

For me, the major con that rawat pulled on me was convincing me that "the experience" was always there, HE was always in it, and that although I wasn't, I could be and should be, if I were only devoted enough....what rawat told us for years was that we weren't doing it well enough, and that's why the mystical permanent state of grace that he claimed to have and be in, eluded us....(remember,"Who has realized this knowledge?".....a totally meaningless statement, but imbued with great significance, because no one seemed to have done it, except rawat, mainly because no one even knew what it meant exactly...)

When a guru who is supposedly "perfect" (whatever that might conjure up was never sure, and better left to each persons imagination, which would then be a guaranteed selling point, since it was your own fantasy that fit you ...), keeps telling the quite "imperfect" devotee (and he never stopped delighting in telling us all what Bozos we were, especially the instructors) that they need to try harder to achieve an unachievable goal, the devotee (if they are true devotees, according to the guru) will implicitly listen to the guru and try harder....this perpetuates the guru-disciple relationship and guarantees that the devotee tries  harder, always convinced that the "promised land" of experience is just around the corner....it also guarantees that the cycle continues, with the devotee constantly trying harder to reach an impossible goal...there will never be enough effort made to reach it, although the guru keeps insisting that it can (and must)be done for life's fulfillment....

When I started to understand just how rawat behaved off stage, and how imperfect he really was, and how screwed up he became if not continually holding court on stage, the whole idea of a permanent experience simply unravelled in front of me...(Mike Dettmers accounts of rawats follies were especially revealing and helpful-I still chuckle over rawat getting Dettmers to start smoking cigarettes, Dettmers getting hooked, then quitting, and rawat being jealous that he couldn't quit himself--oh well, so much for being "Balyogeshwar"-Born lord of the yogis))

When I stopped trying to gain this mythical peace or higher consciousness, I immediately felt more peaceful, happier, and more myself....peak experiences seem to come from everywhere, and I felt the wall of disconnect that I had constructed between myself, people and the world (remember, always  keep maharaji between you and the world satsang?) disappear...suddenly there was nothing to 'attain', nowhere to go, nothing to be, and many things things seemed possible that didn't before...I felt that in leaving rawat I was closer to feeling what I wanted to feel than in staying...I saw that rawat was indeed a drag on my system--disempowering, infantile, silly and quite shallow....I think that his philosophy, derived from his life experience and world view, reflects that....he lives in an artificial bubble that neither he nor any one around him has the guts to pop....in other words, it doesn't play too well in "Peoria", or any where else besides India for that matter...it would be so much more "truthful" to pop the bubble, but then the whole game of 'truth seeking" would be over, and rawat would be out of a job and premies out a fantasy....."regular" life would seem such a bore without the perfect master and knowledge of all knowledges (or would it?)...

A few things I learned in leaving:

1)These states of consciousness come and go, and can be achieved by so many means...rawat holds no patent on them...it is a lie to infer that one can always be in those states as rawat did for decades, and in fact would lead to a disasterous life if one could be in them all the time...(nothing to worry about there, as we all now know that he and all of us, never were in any danger of being too blissed out...)

2)I believe rawat is only "blissed out" when playing guru in front of adoring sycophants, not from his own practice of knowledge...in fact, when asked the question, he has consistantly ducked the answer, of whether or not he even does the meditation for an hour a day or not...(my guess is that he doesn't and never has in any consistant way...).....what would he do if he could no longer dress up, be adored and act important on stage....?

3)For me, the main hold that rawat had on me was the "Just around the corner" philosophy, combined with a healthy dose of fear if I left.....what this tends to do is to prevent premies from really looking at some of the core, basic issues in their lives that hold them back, which in turn makes them more screwed up...the pain in their life which they originally were promised would go away by rawat if they were devoted enough ("mind" is your only problem, and this knowledge is the antidote to it..), is never addressed, which in turn makes their pain worse, which in turn drives them back to rawat to get blissed out again and hear him tell them that they are ok....a vicious cycle of plati-babble (platitudes and babble) and denial....

4)When I left, I "turned the corner", looked fear in the face, saw through rawat, and became a much more authentic and empowered person.....

I encourage anyone else to do the same.... keep up the original spirit of finding the truth, see through the mirage-y, and reclaim your life and all of its possibilities....