Guys

In all the recent revelations about the sacrifices required by Rawat to be in his band, there was a point raised by Tao of Joyfulness.

Karen, I find your post incredibly moving, and I think you must be a pretty special person to be able to give so selflessly.

Now, I did walk in the door in the ashram days, but walked out again as I could not find an ashram to accept me. I then walked back in the doors in the 80s.

There was no trace of the ashram abuse and malpractice. It was swept under the carpet, and there was a complete revisionism of the doctrine and dogma.

In fact the reason I hung around for so long was the following.

I was enthralled by the legend of an arcane secret knowledge that was so powerful and so precious and so beautiful and so rare. That it had been handed down for countless generations from one perfect master to the next. And that Rawat was the last incumbent, the present day guardian of the knowledge , a powerful force for good because of his holiness, saintliness and realisation of this truth (Dan Brown eat your heart out, I am turning to writing bestsellers next).

OK, given this assumption, everytime I heard Rawat talk about Maharaji (the guru bit had disappeared), I thought he was talking about the custodianship of the knowledge, handed down through countless generations through countless maharajis. Honest.

So whenever he praised Maharaji to the sky, I thought he was being really humble and praising the long line of perfect masters that had preceded him, by whose grace he was there.

Call me duff, but, this made sense to me.

It was only a couple of years ago that I actually found out what other people believed, and lo and behold, it was not the same as my belief system, that I had constructed.

The first drip.

Then of course I had to go digging until the girlfriend tells me first hand experiences of his gross and disgusting drunken behaviours, and then there was the proof that my hypothesis was wrong. Duuuuuuuuhhhhhh.

I write this because I know there are premie readers who did not have the experience of the ashram days, when all you young acolytes gave your all for a man who promised peace in our time. I would have been there with you, except I was a reject.

So I guess we have to look out for the current crop of premies, as I don't think there would be many old-timers left by now. You are all here, practically.

Just for the record, the word mate, so abused by Jonx, has it's origins in the outback of Australia during the dfficult and terrible pioneering years when men and women helped each other out in the face of drought, plagues of flies and other great hardships.

Jonx sounds to me like one of those Australian wannabes. He wants to be in the club. He wants to be a fully fledged inner circle man. There is also an Australian word for the Jonx's of this world. We call them 'knockers'. That means they 'knock', criticise other people as a way of getting on in the world, to mask their own insecurity.

However ToJ sounded to me just like a nice guy who is still deluded by the cult spin.

best

Nya