The Vampire that ate Kissimmee. LOL  Those 1979 and 1980 Florida week long events with their darshan recovery rooms and wild flowered-top and silk pajama bottom costumes and dancing by Mr. Rawat is worthy of a 90 minute documentary on cults. With its customized airconditioned throne in the swampy humidity. Really, a devotee's dream come true.

But, Karen, your poem was the bedrock of my life for many many years.  I was a devotion addict.  I heard the story of Ms. Bilni in an English patois Hindi dialect here and abroad; and like you gave up everything to live in an ashram.  Everything.  It was my religion.  Service and tasting those berries was my life. 

This thread blew me out.  I didn't want to write, but you've touched a deep nerve.  Do you readers get the weight of the publicity surrounding Karen's poem in our former cult?  It was seriously the talk of the town for about five years or so, until it just melted into the foreground, cause it was hailed as THE THING.  I mean, that story and the come-back poem of the year kind of thing, when the supressed devotion was once again respected and brought back out of the closet was so great for us little people devotees, the meat and potatoes satsang people who would never miss a night, or a meditation, or a video or a broadcast or a program.  Who truly believed Guru Maharaji was going to spread peace on this earth.  And stop big corporations from polluting everything because they'd all realize who he was.  Really, that was basically the plan.  Your bringing Bilni back into the top of the nightly news was so great for the people who just sent in the money regularly and had a job and a family and tried to do as much as they could.  And for many that meant getting into a service that would pay off with good seats -- like living in either Florida or LA, where he did programs all the time.  Hooray, we all felt, when we heard abouat your poem on his wall in a frame. [Personally, I didn't have much else back then, 'cept that lousy "designer" suit that no buyer in New York would buy.]

The unbelievable shit we heard for so many years (thanks Hilltop, PRMI, Bablu, et al.) from 1970-87 was so deep and we just went along with the entire self-delusional psychological ruination of our selves: Over-the-top-devotion overload to the exclusion of all common sense?  (Is it all just friggin maya anyway and we've got the Lord so who cares about anything?  Not a cult since 1971.)  

Maharaji's quote about our dollars in retirement will be deflated to worthlessness so why worry now was priceless. But his students mostly left to TCB (take care of bidness, for you newly younghead ex-chillers.) 

I think I read here on this website that we don't need no stinkin Gurus. Anyway, so glad we're both able to regain our worldy citizenship perspective and shed our sheep's clothing of SuperDevotee 20th Century USA in your Chevrolet.  The 21st Century smells better. Love to you.