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I've been following your posts on this subject so it was great to read this and be brought up to date on your research. Thank you  Anna
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I am glad that you made contact with him and he responded so positively to you. I'm also really pleased that he seems to have a very full and good life. Having his dad and step-mother pass away in the way they did must have been very traumatic. It would be great if Aaron were to dig up some old pictures of Bob, but of course that is his call totally. I do hope Aaron understands how much help his dad provided to many of us here through the various radio and telephone interviews he did after he left the mission. Thanks Susan. T
Modified by T at Sat, Jul 15, 2006, 04:05:31
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Years ago when Michael Dettmers and I were talking more often when he first started posting here....well...I had lots of questions for him. One was about Bob Mishler, what was he like, and how had his perception of Bob changed. Because obviously, Dettmers sort of took the helm ( though I don't recall if there was a mission president) as first advisor to the Guru after that. It may have taken Dettmers a few more years, but both left similarly. First trying to get Prem Rawat to stop "playing God" and take more responsibility, and more care with, the many human lives he took into his hands when he played that role. When they both, and I think Mike Donner came to this to, as well as Mary Moore and Mike Finch, when all these people around M realized that he wasn't going to change, that he had little true human compassion for anyone but himself...they left. Over time I think the truly courageous among the PAMS have all spoken out. I remember back then Mike mentioning Bob had a son, which I did not know, and wondering how this child was today and if he had any inkling of the impact of his father's courage on so many lives. What is unique about Mishler is his speaking out occured quickly. It also occured when the premies and cult were at their most zealous and truly, his speaking out could only be seen as a courageous act for others against his own self interest. Mishler said back then that it was Jonestown that caused scared him to the point of doing those interviews. To me, it sounds like he was a man of real character. I am hoping Aaron comes and reads this. But if he doesn't click over to our site I will send him all the posts everyone makes. I think it would be a very small, if anyone can think of a better one let me know, thing to have in his treasure box of memories of his father. All the thank you from the ex premies helped by Bob's bravery. If anyone can think of a better idea, let me know!,I know I think a handwritten card, or a plaque or something....maybe something tangible we could contribute to for him to have that says these hundreds ( or maybe we are really just a group of five of people all remain grateful to my dad decades after his death. Handwritten things would be nicer but given the difficulty of that maybe posts. I would even take responsibility for mounting each post in a book, if you all like that idea...I just think it is a small thing we can do for this son of this former "brother" who did so much to help us. I could also give my address to people via email that who could mail handwritten cards, or photos. I am just trying to think of something nice we can do for the "original ex-premie" and his son who grew up without his beloved father.
Modified by Susan at Sat, Jul 15, 2006, 09:03:10
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Hi Susan and AaronHere's one of my main memories of Bob. I met him for the first time in the Montrose Guru Puja in July 1972. I was no longer in the inner circle then, and he was hovering on the borders of it, so we spent a lot of time talking together, and became quite good friends in the space of a few days. He was talking about the organization that Maharaji and his mission needed, and his various ideas on that subject. I was already jaded even then, but he was refreshing and sparked my interest anew. Then at the end of the festival, he had a private talk with Maharaji, where Maharaji asked him to take over and make everything 'ship shape' (I am not sure if that was Bob's own phrase or he was reporting Maharaji as saying that). Anyway, he was very excited, but tried to keep cool about it! That was certainly the turning point, in my mind anyway, between the ramshackle non-organization before July 1972 and the attempt to organize DLM properly, which really started then and there when Bob took over the helm. As we all know, he was thwarted constantly by Maharaji, whose idea of 'organization' was simply that everyone should do exactly what he said, when he said. I don't know any juicy private details, since I was in the outer darkness by then and was not to climb back into the inner circle until the 1980's. But I met Bob from time to time, and we talked occasionally. He was by then at the top of the tree, and I was an ordinary humble premie, so I was not privy to the inner secrets. But it was clear that Bob was very frustrated, and in my mind I could not see why! He had the plumb job with all that darshan and agya, that I would have given my right arm for. When he finally left Maharaji, I was very sad for him, thinking he had blown it. Of course, now I see that he was far ahead of his time. He saw and understood how things were 25 years before I did! And he had the courage to try and do something about it, talking and saying his piece - and that was in the 1970's with no internet or anything. A very brave, courageous and far-seeing man. I take my hat off to him! -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
Modified by Mike Finch at Sat, Jul 15, 2006, 14:52:48
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Hi Mike read your site . Some how after reading journeys on XPO. All and all The 70's was an extreme time for all .we all had good intentions some how I believe that with out the ashrams a lot of us could of ended up in worse circumstances with our lives I am not justifing all the Craziness or deceptoins ,I know I could of went down a worse road , Basically thanks for your effort . I got K in 82-83 . You gave alot want you to know between the good and bad it was not a total loss and I feel you helped me
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I don't know what you really feel so forgive me if I am making assumptions. Rawat and Co. have perpetuated a self serving myth that the Ashrams were some sort of halfway house for drug using losers who were lost in life anyway. Perhaps, a few people in Ashrams fit that bill. But I must say, my memories of the the people who joined the ashrams really WAS NOT that they were people who were going no where in their lives. There were a LOT, a whole LOT, of people who dropped out of successful college careers, who were really, intrinsically, very bright good creative souls, who joined the ashrams. Also, when you joined, you took a vow of chastity, poverty and odedience. The poverty meant if you owned ANYTHING, trust funds, banks accounts paychecks...it was now property of cult. I personally knew a lot of people who had some large amounts of worldly goods that got deposted at the lotus feet the day they joined the ashram. When I think back about the individual ashram premies I knew, these people were not the "life losers" of the cult. They were really in general just the ones who were following Rawat's message to its logical conclusion, total surrender meant devoting ones life to HIM, and that meant the ashram. For me, as an individual, and I think I was a little rare, joining the ashram was the best move I ever made in the cult. I was 16 and still in high school, Randy Prouty had to get the Guru's personal ok to let me in ( I wonder if he has forgotten that too) he came to my mom and told her the cult might even let me to to college while in the ashram ( yeah right). But the net result was good. I was a teenager and there was a lot of rebel in me. When the housefather told me the dress I was wearing was too sexy ( and it sure wasn't a sexy dress...it had a sash, no cleavage, was loose and down to my knees...)...I got mad. When they put me in a room on the floor with an annoying roomate....I was uncomfortable. When I sensed that the working premies of the house resented me terribly because I was allowed to go to high school ( the deal that had been made with my mom) while they worked their butts of to bay the rent and the guru's boat payment......I hated feeling like a drag. I was getting older and I was getting rebellous. When I saw the RAMPANT hypocrisy in the ashram ( all the secret relationships, trysts etc, saw that my most admired initiators were secrety bending that chastity rule).... I quickly became confused... It helped jiggle mister mind quite a bit... I was 17 now and losing my baby fat and cleaning the Guru's boat in the driveway in a bikini ( very unashram like) and gosh, the brothers were NOTICING me! and GOSH...I liked it!!!! and I swear to you...I was 17 years old and had never been kissed...no boyfriend ever...I had taken this cult stuff VERY SERIOUSLY It was very soon after that that at the festival in Philly when GMJ got up and jiggled in his Mala and the premies swooned and dropped to the floor and my ashram sister told me she had an orgasm as the guru danced. Well, at that moment Mr Mind won and I decided I was in a cult. And that happened only a few month after I joined the ashram. I think all that stuff, and my age....helped those "drips" coalesce.
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YEAH I was never in an ashram except for meetings,Iwas just trying to console mike and others there seemed alot of saddness there , we all had good intentions ,however............. This is what I needed to hear because in 82 83 the premies never answered my questions . Sorry I meant no offence Thanks
Modified by geo at Sun, Jul 16, 2006, 14:04:33
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Hi Susan, I'm using somebody elses computer right now. But I wanted to post this and a few more attachments about ashrams. CD's are great! I'll have to post the dates, ect. some other time because I'm on a vacation, so I don't have everything with me. Sorry about that. This has to be one of the all time best threads Thanks to You and Everyone! I just wanted to be a part of it. Great Post! Sincerely, Hilltop
Modified by Hilltop at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 00:17:17
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Best Thoughts Always... Hilltop
Modified by Hilltop at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 00:14:46
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Thanx ,I did not mean to change the subject we need to mourn Bob , I still think we ( ei most Premies )all had good intentions . Like I said I was trying to console .
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Hi GeoThanks for your kind words about my site, and I am glad it helped. Thanks also for trying to console me. I know my time with Maharaji was not a total loss, and clearly my 30+ years taught me a lot. As Huxley's quote on my site says: The important thing is not so much what you live through, but how you deal with what you live through. I am sure the ashrams prevented some people from doing even crazier things with their lives, but that is still no excuse for them as an institution. They were basically a transplant from India, totally out of synch with western values, but we were idealistic and if Maharaji said to be in them, well we had to be in them. From his side, of course, they provided a pool of free labor for his projects and a nice cash cow. The ashram premies were in general treated very badly, little more than slaves, and many suffered hugely - mentally, emotionally, physically, and of course we all lost our career-formative years. I got Knowledge in 1970 before the ashrams got going in the West, so the ashrams did not save me from anything. But getting Knowledge itself probably did. That is no recommendation for it, since any lifestyle which helped me clean up my act would have straightened me out - it just so happens it was taking Knowledge. -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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Thanks for your imput and time GEO
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Ashrams, DLM or otherwise, were and are not totally out of synch with Western values. There is a long and even continuting tradition of monasteries in the West. If by "Western values" you mean the worst of Western values then maybe. And if you have some sort of idealistic idea about Eastern values then you should examine them.
Ashrams and joining ashrams in the 1970's would have been a really great and valuable thing to do if Knowledge was real. If the four techniques didn't turn out to be pretty well worthless the whole thing would have been fantastic. And that's a bit of a puzzle really. Even if it was just breath meditation, why did people suffer hugely, mentally and emotionally. Is the whole Eastern values trip bullshit?
So the institution of ashrams is only a bad idea because of the failure of the techniques that were supposed to produce love and light. Hell, once you get the kinks ironed out of your non-sectarian, non-religious methods of cumulatively effecting changes of love and light in all through meditation (or whatever) I'm planning on joining your ashram. But I promise I won't kiss your feet or even want to.
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Ocker:Ashrams, DLM or otherwise, were and are not totally out of synch with Western values. You clearly do not understand the ashrams, or what they were really about. There is a long and even continuting tradition of monasteries in the West. If by "Western values" you mean the worst of Western values then maybe. Ashrams were not monasteries; they were much more (or much less, if you like) than that. And if you have some sort of idealistic idea about Eastern values then you should examine them. Thank you for the advice, I will sit down later today and examine them. Ashrams and joining ashrams in the 1970's would have been a really great and valuable thing to do if Knowledge was real. If the four techniques didn't turn out to be pretty well worthless the whole thing would have been fantastic. And that's a bit of a puzzle really. It is no puzzle. Yes, the whole thing would have been fantastic if K were real, and M really were Lord of the Universe, wouldn't it? Even if it was just breath meditation, why did people suffer hugely, mentally and emotionally. Is the whole Eastern values trip bullshit? Ocker, I am not even sure why you post here. Your view of how things were, and in this case your view of the ashrams, shows that you have no understanding of what Maharaji was and is really about, and what it means to be a committed premie, giving your life and everything to M and the system he set up. This comment of yours is so far off base, I don't even know where to begin, so I won't even bother. So the institution of ashrams is only a bad idea because of the failure of the techniques that were supposed to produce love and light. I give up. Anyone else who lived in the ashram got the time and bandwidth to explain to Ocker what it meant to follow the living Lord and surrender your life in his ashram? Hell, once you get the kinks ironed out of your non-sectarian, non-religious methods of cumulatively effecting changes of love and light in all through meditation (or whatever) I'm planning on joining your ashram. What makes you think you would be allowed in to any ashram of mine? By the way, this is sarcastic - I would never in a million years institute anything like an ashram. But I promise I won't kiss your feet or even want to. That's a relief. -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
Modified by Mike Finch at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 01:00:42
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I was told 'the Lord is here' which I didn't have to believe on blind faith because I could recieve His Knowledge.
I received K and 'it worked', ie I began to experience light, sound, primordial vibration/holy name and nectar and also began to notice all sorts of synchronicities that I hadn't before.The ashram was the only way to be under His agya 24/7 at the time although many householders were made to feel that they were in the ashram too. Many of these these householders(like Bobby Hendry) had a direct service and were were in the inner circle. I saw these people as special cases who were allowed to live outside the ashram to 'show the world' that not everyone needed to live in an ashram.
So, it made no difference to me what the ashram was. Whether it was Eastern, Western, Northern or Southern thought. It was the way of being under his direct agya for an ordinary premie. He could have told us to do anything at all and we would have obeyed.(Well certainly most of the ashram premies I knew). There was no real room for criticism in the ashram. Rawat instructed us that we must implicitely obey directions from the supervisors/coordiantors etc as if they were direct agya. This took a lot of surrender( or should I say self abandonment!). The ashram manual became my Bible, because it was written by the Living Lord, again which was my primal belief.
Related link: The Ashram Manual
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Hi Jethro, nice weather, do you still experience synchronicities? I tend to.
I think the first manual was the work of general secretaries, and treasurers of the mission at least as much as maharaji or his itinerant mahatmas, to start with.
He would probably only have outlined his wishes, and then corrected it into shape. He could always bin it if it didn't work.. The 5 commandments are an example.
They were testing a new printing press and when it got working, m was invited to see it in action.
"Print something" said maharaji. Everybody was too shy. "You make up something.. maharaji"
He thought a moment and scribbled something on paper, a lot of type setting ensued and and then proudly the printing press started working.
And they showed m their sample.
Of course they still had the plate and they printed and they printed with their first new plate and it wasn't long before they were being photocopied and sent by post and everybody had a copy.
It was, basically, a (testing,. testing,. 1.. 2.. 3..) for the printing press. (from fly-on-the-wall). Any way Jethro; I hope you are well. Will write.
Here is caller no. 6 and Bob's answer:
Caller #6: I am just really confused right now about
Maharaji. I didn't actually receive the knowledge, but I
went to a couple of those seminars. I've just been really
confused about what to think about the whole thing. Since I
dropped out of it, I feel like I may have been sort of
brainwashed into it, and yet maybe not. I was halfway
believing that stuff for a while. Now I'm just at a point
where I'm confused about what to think of the whole
thing.
Bob: Well, the people who are trying to convince you
that he is God probably really believe that. The thing is,
they don't know who he is. There are very few people who do,
because he keeps who he is very well hidden from people. He
plays that role and he wants you to believe that he is
God.
If you believe that he is your Lord, then you become his
willing slave. You completely dedicate your life to him. In
the course of serving him, of dedicating your life to him,
you provide his means of support and income. That's really
what's at the core of it. It's sad, because there's no
provision being made for these people.
There are so many of them in his ashrams. That word is
roughly equivalent to the English word 'monastery'. He has a
number of people living in them in a state of poverty,
chastity and obedience. These people give all of their fruit
of their labour to him.
Some of them are probably under the impression that he is
using it to spread his knowledge, to spread the practice of
meditation and the means of inner peace to the people of the
world. In fact, that's really not what happens. Most of the
money just goes to support him in his lifestyle.
As far as the brainwashing aspect, well, it is similar to
brainwashing in the sense that you have a great deal of
social pressure. Usually, people that do get involved, and I
would guess that this was the same for you, get involved
because of other people.
You're always in a situation where there are a lot more
people around who believe than there are people who don't.
Just the sheer number of people around you who believe, all
talking about how they thought the same things that you
thought, they had all the same doubts, etc, etc, and
continuing to testify that now they know, now they have the
truth...
It's all set up that you really must go along with it if you
want to continue to have that sort of social interaction
with that group of people. As far as being an aspirant; even
that condition makes you vulnerable to the pressures to
conform, because you're in a situation where you're seeking
social approval.
The biggest approval of all is being selected as being ready
to be initiated into the 'perfect knowledge'. Of course,
nowadays, I guess that's probably why you had to leave. You
have to accept him as God before they initiate you. You have
to essentially take the whole religion and accept it before
you have even got any inkling of what the experience that
they are talking about is.
That's just the reverse of the way it started. In the
beginning days, he used to say: 'You'd be a fool if you
accepted anything that anybody says about me before you
experience this knowledge'. Of course, now, they won't even
initiate you until you accept this.
Modified by LP at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 07:55:44
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LP, I think the manual was the work of presidents, general secretaries, and treasurers of the mission at least as much as maharaji or his itinerant mahatmas, to start with.
He would probably only have outlined his wishes, and then corrected it into shape. He could always bin it if it didn't work.. The 5 commandments are an example. Maharaji said that he wrote the ashram manual. That's what's the important part to anyone who lived there. He instructed us how to live in an ashram: Q: How closely should the ashrams be run by the book ?
Ans: It's not the question how close they should stick to the book. The question is, 'Who wrote the good book' ?
Q: You did.
Ans: There is your answer. I dictated it and I sanctioned it, and if you are really a premie and a devotee who is dedicated and who is going to obey Agya, then you are going to follow the good book (read The Ashram Code). Otherwise you are not. (Maharaji - 1975 - Orlando Conference)
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"do you still experience synchronicities?"
Yes, only now I see it as a very natural part of life(ie that which I called 'grace') and also the fact that most people have the same in their lives. I have alot of grace with the Godess of parking spaces when I go to London :>)Regarding the ashram manual see Cynthia's reply below. All the best Jethro
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OKER I understand .you are pissed off. But when we OPEN a new assh ram you can kiss our ASSH & RAM it up your own if you don't chill , stop insulting every one here Be angry but please stop insulting pepole I do not understand why you can not accept that other people have the right to think there own thoughts maybe you should go back and get a job working for M you would fit right in .Quess M got to you and taught you well ,think about that for a while
Modified by geo at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 11:04:42
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Who (apart from Sean) have I insulted recently? Insulting someone is not preventing them from thinking their own thoughts or expressing them. As a matter of fact, Sean had called me (mistakenly) a liar earlier on and did the same to others. And I have nothing but contempt for Prem Rawat except for a little curiosity about how he really sees himself and his place in the world. I am perfectly capable of insulting people wihtout being angry if I think an insult is appropriate.
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It seemed you were insulting Finch . I do not like the lies which is why I am here to sort the truth out .You had a different experience . Espescially with K ,hey that is OK.Sorry But I felt Like I was being treated with hostilty by a lawyer over dates times and places from over 20 yrs ago . But I understand . They did try to close this site .It is the same as when all the DLM pubs where banned , I am glad people are posting those . We can all take consilation that XPO set a president on the matter . And on 3 contienants M and his menions would be laughed out of any court .
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It certainly seemed Mike thought so but I wasn't. Disagreement over certain points of understanding is not insulting, it is debating.
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I thought it was all pretty simple. People went into the ashrams who wanted to dedicate their lives to practising Knowledge. Maybe some people thought of it as dedicating their lives to Prem Rawat but he made it very clear what that meant, surrendering to him by practising Knowledge which was total satsang, service and meditation and in their case celibacy. If that isn't an identical premise to a monastery, what is? Sure it's a different religion and has different meditation techniques but so what? Just cause the capital created by the system is used for the luxurious opulence of Prem Rawat isn't even unusual. The Catholic Church did much the same using capital from monasteries for the luxurious opulence of the Popes for centuries.
Maybe you'd better explain why you think I don't have any understanding of what Maharaji was and is really
about, and what it means to be a committed premie, giving your life and
everything to M and the system he set up. I find your response puzzling.
Including this idea that Prem Rawat aka Maharaji set this system up. The system was copied from the Indian model and it doesn't appear that Shri Hans' ashrams were really any different to other Hindu ashrams. Prem Rawat hasn't been able to set up any adequate systems, he has just leached off his father's work.
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I believe they have health care, gosh often nuns were and are nurses and providing health care. I don't believe nuns and priests are decieved about the Pope's lifestyle at least recently. I think priests and nuns are often educated. Sure, some of it seems very similar to Catholicism, and certainly they way they handle pedophile priests is the same way Rawat handled Jagdeo...scold him and move him to the next unsuspecting country. The biggest thing is there is a long standing tradition of monastaries in many religions. I am sure abuses go on in many of them. But these kids ( we were the kids ) were handing over their futures when they joined and it rarely was with the support of their families. Absolutley, real similarities. But so what? It doesn;t make it right. And the vast vast majority of ashram premies I am sure now see those years as wasted and being fooled, not some sort of spiritual quest.
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but Christian priests and nuns often minister to the worlds needy, providing true charity to the poorest among us. Not a lot of that in the ashrams day...but now you might get some rice and a flashlight, which is sure a hell of a lot better than contributing to a Gulfstream Jet with Gold toilets.
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I'm a little rattled by the crticism my post received so I've got 2 windows open. One with the post I'm responding to and one with my original post. I didn not say anything about the Rawatism ashrams being good or even OK. I was responding to some specific points in Mike's post and I distinctly differentiated ashrams as an insitution concept and ashrams as they actually were in Rawatism and I made the following points: "Ashrams and joining ashrams in the 1970's would
have been a really great and valuable thing to do if Knowledge was
real. If the four techniques didn't turn out to be pretty well
worthless the whole thing would have been fantastic."
I said not one single positive thing about Rawatism's ashrams unlike Mike who said: "I am sure the ashrams prevented some people from doing even crazier things with their lives" and I'm the one getting hammered. Go figure!
Just in case you didn't read closely enough I also said: "why did people suffer hugely, mentally and emotionally". I didn't say they didn't. I was wondering if Mike had some specific ideas on that pooint.
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It was about absolute obedience and surrender. Frankly, quite a few ashram premies were failing with that too. But that was the idea. I think a lot of people in describing ashram life have explained pretty well why they suffered. Like I said, I was lucky, I didn't like the suffering stint one bit, and the hyposcrisy among the premies bothered me tremendously. Frankly though, I started copying the hypocrisy, because they were the ones on the PAM track, and I figured that well...?? I was out pretty quick after that. I still think it had to do with my age. I went from rebellion against the housefather, cult and weirdo's pretty quick. But the ashram premies threw me a lovely touching 17th birthday party. Just a little cake at dinner, but I loved it and was incredibly touched, and if any of you are reading I remember it fondly to this day.
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As you say absolute obedience and surrender. But Rawat wasn't going round to the ashrams everday giving 4 really really stupid orders before breakfast. Obedience and surrender meant satsang, service and meditation. Meditation didn't work anymore than any different meditations work for different people. If the meditation was on the level, ie it really did connect you to God as it was explained then then everything would have been hunky dory.
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I am enjoying the conversation. I am really not mad at you at all. I think I get some of your points. I just think it is one of those things you have to have lived through to get how far the reality was from the ideal.
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Good point.
One thing I've kept discovering in my life is that I'm always more naive than I thought I was last time I realised how naive I am. I think I knew enough ashram premies after they left the ashram to realise it wasn't all love and light.
BTW I did want to say earlier congratulatons on trying to track down the real story re Bob Mishler. A few years ago I was camping in Lauterbrunnen which is this fantastic spot in Switzerland and in the tent next to mine were two US army colonels and their baby. We chatted away half the night and I wondered how could the old hippie surfer cult member and these two straight arrow ramrod Americans defending the free world be so similar in the important ways. My point being Bob Mishler's son in the US Navy, who would have thought of it but all the important things seem to be there in him in spades.
I'm glad you're not mad at me cause I didn't think you were and I'm glad I wasn't mistaken about that too.
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When I was listening to M's cassette tapes ( as an asperant ) my dad borrowed them and said he liked what M was saying ' But as we all know now the difference from GMJ's Front and his Back
Modified by geo at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 07:38:42
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Thirteen years ago I was at Montparnasse Station in Paris waiting for a train.( the silver bullet ,which goes to Bordeaux ) I was travelling to visit an english premie who lived in Vendome. My son was three months old and in one of those baby slings. He was wearing cute socks that said "cool baby". An older and very handsome couple came towards me on the platform .The glamorous french wife,speaking perfect English was asking me about the socks and the baby and her tall good-looking American husband joined in. He said that while he had been in the US Navy they had had ( I think it was) eight kids and they had moved seven times. We chatted on and she got her family photos out of her bag. Turns out that one of their daughters was Tina Weymouth from " Talking Heads" and Tina's Dad was none other than Admiral Weymouth ( obviously retired).I found that out later ( read it in a music mag.); he was a lovely humble man and never mentioned it.
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The tradition of monastaries migrated from the east .You have Ashoka sending out Bhuddist to Greece and Egypt , Essenes ,Theraputai , then early Christian monastries in Anatolia 1st cent ad to the evolution to what they are now in the west
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This is where we differ .You said to practice K the meditation .It did not work for you .So why were you there ? I am not defending M .But for me meditation worked , and not because of M , if other people have a different experience than you please allow it . I am not trying to convert you to my way of thinking . We are all here to heal wounds and wrongs .
Modified by geo at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 07:40:47
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Sorry if you misunderstood my point. I was one of the meditation enjoying premies. But enjoyment is something available in all sorts of activities and meditation is supposed to have life enhancing properties. You know, liberation, realisation, samadhi, nirvana, bodhisattvahood ... Prem Rawat's form was obviously not changing any of his premies in any real way after the early rush brought on by conversion.
I can't be sure but it seemed that if there was any change it was negative. People would accept lies and deceit if it was supposed to be for the betterment of Prem Rawat and propagation of his Knowledge. We now even know what sort of moral compromises you had to take if you were a PAM. Well I'm not here to heal wounds but highlight wrongs. I certainly don't want to create new wounds though.
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I am sure some did. Maybe you would have loved the whole thing...housefather, housemother, favored children, scapegoats....forbiddentrysts, gossip....arti tray waving, chanamit.... I for one think it was akin to stealing a person's soul and potential.
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Ocker, I am puzzled by your comments about ashrams and agree with Mike's response to you that you have little understanding about the DLM ashrams. I'll try to explain. I lived in the ashram during the heavy, Catholic (as Joe puts it) devotional period of the 70s. Post 1976. Ashrams, DLM or otherwise, were and are not totally out of synch with Western values. Western or eastern values had nothing to do with joining and living in a DLM ashram. To live in an ashram had everything to do with giving up (surrendering) one's entire life in every aspect: Poverty, chastity, and obedience. Submitting to Maharaji's agya in a total way -- giving oneself up completely, and following the ashram code that he wrote. Total devotion to the Lord and giving up everything for him alone was the meaning of ashram life to me and just about everyone else I knew there, unless they were lying to me at the time. Even if it was just breath meditation, why did people suffer hugely, mentally and emotionally. Is the whole Eastern values trip bullshit? Being able to meditate more (and better??) wasn't the main goal of an ashram premie. The entire goal was to completely surrender oneself, body, mind, and soul -- our will -- to Maharaji. Living in the ashram meant we were doing service to him 24/7, every day of the year. By living in an ashram, we became Rawat's subjects, his possessions. It was just like slavery. Mixed in with that were the imperfect humans that ran the ashrams -- from the community coordinators to the house-fathers or mothers, and ashram-mates, we had to completely obey those that had total power over our activities. When Maharaji or DLM wanted us, we moved ourselves and our belongings (what little we had left -- our clothes and altars) to another location. When I lived in the ashram, I was moved around about 25 times in the course of three years or so. I can't even remember all of the various places I lived because after a while everything became a blur. Being in the ashram also meant that we were given more attention by the Mahatmas, Initiators/instructors. Whenever Maharaji had instructor conferences, he's set these fanatics loose on us. Of course, I was also a Maharaji-fanatic, so I welcomed this. But, I remember having many weekend retreats where there was nothing but satsang all day and all night, except for the marathon meditation sessions. The purpose of those marathon weekends was to fry our minds out of concepts. Maharaji fried the instructors, and they in turn fried us. That's a real expression we used, too: "frying our minds." Maharaji made it very clear in the meetings that he held with us ashram premies that 1) we were the backbone of his mission; and 2) we were the worse of the worst people. You cannot imagine the pressure Maharaji placed upon ashram premies to succeed in fulfilling his wishes. Most of the premies who did service at DECA were ashram premies. I don't even need to get into the pressure Rawat placed us under at DECA.
Modified by Cynthia at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 06:12:48
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Cynthia Thanx for your post .I came in to K as all that was ending , ei (ashrams closeing ) it was ZOOM ZOOM hey what is goin on and I got no answer ,there was alot of deception going on
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Hi GEO, I came in to K as all that was ending , ei (ashrams closeing ) it was ZOOM ZOOM hey what is goin on and I got no answer ,there was alot of deception going on Maharaji closed the ashrams, but he never admitted it or even spoke to the residents about the closings. There are some people who had planned to spend their entire lives in ashrams, devoting their lives to Maharaji. As a result of the closings, some were left to carry the burden of financial debt left by the ashram communal living situation. That didn't happen to me. I left the ashram voluntarily in January, 1981. I was unhappy with how things were going for me there, and I missed (and had neglected) my family because they lived in Connecticut and I was in Florida. Yes, there was deception, but there has always been deception going on because it's a personality cult. Best, Cynthia
Modified by Cynthia at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 07:26:00
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Yeah I was even thinkin wow maybe I should join an ashram ,but I was with a girlfreind premei ,But they sure kept quiet about the goings on . I was told by premies I did not have to stop being a christian and I did not have to worship GMJ .all the dlm pubs were bieng destroyed at the time .I never heard of the Lord of the Universe.I was 27 back then .But I remember in 72 I think it was ,I was in a head shop and bought a pamplet about the divine light and how to see it .I am sure it was DLM ,I thought I want some of that ,but it was not till 81-82 tell I ran into the premies and got K . again thanx for your imput oh do you think it was because ashrams were a liabilty $$ and or somthing else . it is ok if you do not respond , I am not trying to pour salt on a wound
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Geo, oh do you think it was because ashrams were a liabilty $$ and or somthing else . it is ok if you do not respond , I am not trying to pour salt on a wound I think that money and liability for ashramers' getting on in age had something to do with Maharaji's closing them. I'm not one to say anything about this specifically, because this is my speculation. I'll tell you something though. I left the ashram in January, 1981 and moved back to Connecticut. The Gainesville, Florida sisters ashram tried to bill me for dental work I had received while I had been in the ashram there during the previous year or so. I refused to pay, mainly because I was feeling upset at the time with the Gainesville ashram premies. I became particularly angry when the sisters' ashram cashed my last paycheck, which I had specifically asked my last employer to forward to my new Connecticut address. I kept waiting and waiting for the check, and alas, the ashram endorsed my paycheck and unless I wanted to take legal action, I was out that money. I don't harbor any bad feelings towards anybody with whom I lived in the ashrams. We were all in the same situation and trying to do the right thing for ourselves and Maharaji at the time, even knowing now how wrong-headed it all was. Now that I'm older and wiser, I don't blame premies for much. I lay a lot of fault at Prem Rawat's feet. He's the one who set the tone of how things were to be run. Like I said many times before, if anyone doesn't believe that Prem Rawat runs everything, especially things concerning money, they are mistaken. I'm thinking that this thread that was to be for Aaron Mishler has turned into something else altogether.
Modified by Cynthia at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 12:36:31
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Hi Cynthia,
I agree with everything you've posted there and I don't see why you would think otherwise from my post. The Western values part was because of Mike's claim that ashrams were totally out of synch with Western values, something I disagreed with. That doesn't mean I think the ashrams were valuable. But to me the problems were not caused by the ashram system as such but by Prem Rawat and his "leadership." This is an internet Forum. I don't bother to post every bit of information I have on every topic, life is too short. As Mike is far more aware of the problems involved in living in the ashram than I am I didn't bother to write anything about that.
Miek is still a firm believer in meditation. It seems to me that if meditation has the benefits claimed for it then even though Rawat's Knowledge is basically just breath meditation then it should certainly have prevented or ameliorated any problems caused by ashram life, after all, there have been millions of people living in ashrams and monasteries over the centuries. I wrote "And that's a bit of a puzzle really" that some people suffered from the ashram experience despite all the meditation they did. I suspect that it was not in many cases the ashrams themselves or the ashram life as lived by the manual that caused damage but by Rawat being a charlatan and the deceptions involved and the booting people out (twice).
I thought Mike might answer somewhere down along those lines and I got quite a shock when someone emailed me about his actual response.
Modified by Ocker at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 22:40:53
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Sleep on a mat in the floor in the back room with a sister I don't know. Sleep poorly. Wake up at five. Wander into living room converted to altar with giant picture of guru and empty chair in case he drops by ( did that really ever happen, to anyone?) Sit down with blanket and baragon. Blanket over head. Try to meditate. Fall asleep. Hate myself. Wake up, try to meditate , fall asleep. This goes on for an hour or two, NO PEAK EXPERIENCES...just self loathing and fantasies of sleeping. Breakfast, I often helped prepare, This part sort of fun, I liked, generally the communal meals and conversations. For me, go to school. Try to convert the South Miami High School class to the guru in the era of Saturday Night Fever and polyester shirts...no takers. Revel in my outcast state. Go back to ashram. Do premie laundry, clean things, help with dinner....enjoyed this too. Eat. I liked ashram meals. GO to satsang, which I believe was not at the ashram where I lived. Get home 930 or 10. ready for bed. Drag blanket and baragon to where I started morning. Repeat experience of fighting sleep for an hour or two while I tried to meditate. Bed. Miss my mom. Scared of some roomates, scared of housefather. Fantasize about being Premlata's babysitter someday if I am really good. Think about how I really suck. Fall asleep and have BAD dreams. Repeat in morning. I believe there could be a little misunderstanding . I took the post you made to imply the ashrams were some sort of spiritual retreat. Honestly, the first one I ever saw, the one I didn't live in in 1975 but did service in everyday....well- it did have an element of that. I still have some fond memories of that special group of premies and when I got invited to have dinner with the and the sense of community. Those small gains are just totally meaningless with what happened to Cynthia, and so many, who when she says were like slaves, they WERE. Moved over and over again like chesspieces. Treated as a free labor pool. Very very little dignity. Almost no health care. Whatever romantic notion I sense in you about the possibililty for the places to be a place for spiritual growth. Well, maybe for a few months in 1975. Maybe not. But the vast majority of the time they were hellholes.
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I've been rising at 5 since I was 14, no problems. I liked meditation, so for me that was no problem. I don't have romantic ideas about ashrams being places for spiritual growth now though I would loved to have been in one then. That was a life that has always appealed to me, theoretically.
It's astonishing to me how some theoretical questions and a quibble about the "Western tradition" can generate so much misunderstanding and heat.
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We could rent a cool old house. We can all come. I don;t want to meditate but hey, maybe I could listen to my IPOD under the blanket and jerk my head nodding off. Jim can spank the monkey under the blanket. Then we'll all have a couscous breakfast. I'm a lousy cook but I volunteer to pack lunches for the boys when you go off to work. Cynthia and I can do your laundry. We'll notice that whoever is playing the CC role will have nicer clothes than anyone else. When the seven dwarves ( the boys normally) get home maybe one of us will even have a secret tryst with a brother in the closet...ooooh la la Maybe Pat can cook us up a nice indian meal? Well find a dodge duster and drive off to satsang. We can all get up and do our best renditions. Then the fun part will be when Jim sings "I can see clearly now" and Joe sings dance dance dance. Maybe a video? But the absolute,primo best thing you missed was Arti. We'll have a silver tray and NAR will make the ghee, he is quite taken with ghee. Can I swing the arti tray? Can we sing in Hindi...that was cool. Then well all meditate, but I am bringing my IPOD and Jim the monkey, and night night. But I think to make it real their might be Pauline Premie sneaking into Roger E Dreks room for a forbidden pleasure. Well all go home in the morning. It'll be fun.
Related link: arti tray
Modified by Susan at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 02:15:00
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Mine is a little too tongue in cheek...or uvula?
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I'd really really love to see the Wedding video again if that's available but I'll make the breakfast as I'm a reasonable cook. With that ashram lot I'm sure I'll be the last one left in the meditation room ... again! Believe it or not, I can still get my hands on a chair from the old Satsang Hall. Guru Maharaji didn't ever sit in it but various initiators and instructors did and I'm sure you'll be able to feel the vibe. But Jim can only come if he promises not laugh at my tears during Arti.
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It was a car that seemed to be an ashram favorite vehicle..I like the wedding video too. You can cry at Arti I'll cry when Suzie Bai sings "oooh oooh sweet and lovely, ooooh ooooh see her Premlata....she's come she's come into the dawning....in a cradle of grace...in a cradle of love....she's come" Every baby deserves a song like that to welcome them into the world.
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Well that song I don't remember but I confess my all time favourite song - and I have nearly 2,000 CDs so it's not as if I don't have a huge selction to choose from - is the one that goes:I never imagined such a place
Where love it could be known both night and day
Where love is the only reality
And the fruits of love are the only things you see Oh yeah, that's right I don't really understand anything about Divine Light Mission and Guru Maharaj Ji. But acutually I hate the Wedding video. It's the most embarassing thing I've ever seen. I nearly collapsed with shame the first time I saw that scene of them running towards and maybe swinging around each other each other being filmed from above. My God a Lord of the Universe who sees himself as the star of a Busby Berleley scene. True confessions should be good for the soul.
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yeah my roomate pulled that out and showed my the vidieo of M & his wife running onthe beach into each others arms . when I saw it it was 1985 .I busted out laughing .My roomate said I wasn't suppose to show you that . I said yeah I can see why .
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I even liked the beach scene. I didn't notice her boobs like all the brothers..I was a thirteen year old girl. I just liked the cute baby that came along later.....
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I think there is still one down in the garage somewhere but these things can slip by you sometimes. Somewhere in about 1985-90 I met an old mate who used to do the AV in my community. He had somehow still ended up with copies of the Wedding video, Satguru Has Come, etc. He had just drifted away after 82 and he was quite surprised when I drove an hour to his home to pick them up as he knew I done more than just drifted away. So for a few years we played them to guests of a certain background after my wife swore them to secrecy.
Age must have destroyed quite a few of my brain cells cause I found I even enjoyed that reverend reading from Schlemiel Gibran's books and could laugh at the beach scene instead of beig embarassed as hell. Once digitising music became available I started copying the old tapes onto CDs and then when technology got cheap enough to do the movies I went to the drawer in which the movies were hidden. Too late, they were consigned to a place where the Rawat thought -police can't get to them.
As I'd been a surfer / brickie's labourer and there were oh so few working class people in DLM in those days, was that the same in your area? I didn't need the help of a beragon then but these days I think I'd need some sort of device that you could strap every limb into and pain killers for the knees and hips and back. I suspect premies are only getting by because they are now allowed to meditate lying down.
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Gosh, I got knowledge in 1975. In Miami. Before Rawat moved there I think it was pretty much like most american Premie City communities. I visited some others and it was a lot the same. Miami of course changed a lot once Rawat moved there, but that was right around the time I left. When he used to have festivals in Florida ( Miami and Orlando ) the bigshot came in set up the things and left again...so there was a core community of real locals. Here are some of the jobs I remember them having.. Several cabinet makers ( good ones too ) made gorgeous stuff. Woman who worked for a non profit. A flight attendant A nurses aide. A psychiatrist ( she didn't last long) A medical researcher PHD A juice bar owner. Premies who worked in the juice bar! Lots of waiters and waitresses. An accountant sort..young nice together couple...made the whole thing look normal A chiropractor. One owned a dry cleaner/wholesale clothes? Several people who were wealthy and rumored to be drug dealers and made many South American trips. Maybe more than several of those. Lots of moms staying home with babies while husbands worked at above jobs...I think it is cook that these people chose to have mom home with baby and be poorer rather than have two incomes. I think the "professional" or educated people were few and far between and they got special status because they gave legitimacy to the Guru. The insanity of the idea that the guru snared what I can tell was one MD in all those years...Dr John Horton....and that he sort of had some special status because he was a doctor. That's just so stupid to me now. I work with doctors and I know quite a few nutty ones, some so nutty that I wouldn't be shocked if they were in some sort of cult. But our cult was pretty nutty. But I always percieved that people who were a little older, wealthier, or had more education had special status. As I kid because I was so young, and I enjoyed that, premies used to fawn all over me telling me how wise I was to have found the guru while I was so young. I ate that up. Loved the attention. Yeah, a lot of men seemed to work at jobs that made them look damn good...no need for a gym! Well, that sounds good but actually I always thought as a group the premie guys didn't look that healthy. I think it was being vegetarians and not being encouraged to exercise. The ones out building houses probaby did get some. Us sisters on the other hand often tended to plump on the vegetarian diet, though I also knew a lot of very thin women as well. I didn't like at all that study that said that people who had "low value in the sexual marketplace" joined the cult. We had our share of geeks, but there were some really very attractive women and men, at least looks wise. Maybe our low value was in regard to our earning potential etc rather than looks. Or maybe we just be a homely lot.
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Some how I thought you were an ashram preimie wow this is taking me back so and so is this and so and so is that and so and so is the intiater and so and so is the community this or that . No wonder why I went off on my own . hang in there ocker seems like we are all being drawn into that old bullshit we all did not want ,even back then . I just cannot believe how much mistrust has been generated from GMJ . if that aint the bottom line I do not know what is sorry oker --GEO
Modified by geo at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 10:24:39
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Hi OckerIt gets tedious correcting you all the time. Are you deliberately misunderstanding me, or can't you grasp it? Miek is still a firm believer in meditation. No I am not. As I have explained in another post, 'meditation' as a word covers too many different practices to be thought of as one thing. I gave the analogy of the word 'sport' - if I hate soccer but love cricket, do I like sport? Well, I like one sport (cricket) but not another (soccer), so you need to be more precise. Yes, I believe that out of some meditation tradition and styles, it is possible to create a useful meditative practice. But I do not believe 'in meditation'. It seems to me that if meditation has the benefits claimed for it then even though Rawat's Knowledge is basically just breath meditation then it should certainly have prevented or ameliorated any problems caused by ashram life, after all, there have been millions of people living in ashrams and monasteries over the centuries. It goes without saying that I do not believe Maharaji's Knowledge is a valid meditation. But just in case, I have nevertheless just said it. K is not 'just breath meditation'. As a meditation it is 4 techniques, but which can be practised many different ways - see my article on my site about this. But on top of that, it is much much more than a meditation style, or a collection of meditation styles - it is the way to allow the Grace from the living Perfect Master of his time to flow into your life and save you from your own mind and open up your heart, if of course you are truly surrendered and devoted. I wrote "And that's a bit of a puzzle really" that some people suffered from the ashram experience despite all the meditation they did. I suspect that it was not in many cases the ashrams themselves or the ashram life as lived by the manual that caused damage but by Rawat being a charlatan and the deceptions involved and the booting people out (twice). I think it was all of that. I don't think the 'meditation' (by which you mean Maharaji's Knowledge, which is ineffective as a meditation as I have said) made any difference positive or negative. It was definitely the ashrams themselves - the way they were set up and run, with no concern for the inmates, only concern for how much was flowing out of them to Maharaji, both devotion and surrender, and of course cash. Ditto for the ashram life. And of course you are correct in that Rawat being a charlatan with all the deceptions on top of that added to the pain of it all. -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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Hi Mike,
You've got to give me a little slack in terminology. It seems to me that "still a firm believer in meditation" says the same thing as "believe that out of some meditation tradition and styles, it is possible to create a useful meditative practice." though much more quickly and includes a nod at your/our whole past and our experiences with meditation through DLM/EV. Anyone who posts here nearly certainly has read your posts and web site and can extrapolate the meaning without me having to qualify every sentence ad infinitum.
You believe Rawat's meditation is not a valid meditation as I do. The techniques of Knowledge's meditation are more than just breath meditation but breath meditation is the technique that is used/ has been used by millions of people with no connection to Rawat and so is something that could be used as a comparison. Now breath meditation alone is considered by many as being of great value and surely must be as effective as mantra meditation and yet despite all the hours of practise by DLM ashramites in many cases it did not appear to have an ameliorative or positive cumulative effect. You seem content to accept this as a given but I find it interesting. As most ashram people got on with their lives and many if not most stayed premies as would be expected as in many cases they were more committed originally it would seem that it may have prevented them from becoming disenchanted with the ashram life and it's ending.
Now if you don't want to bother with these ramifications, fine but there is no need to be insulting because we disagree about this and possibly many aspects of life. Why do I bother to post on this Forum. Well certainly not to become your chela. I respect you and your views but I post here because I wish to contribute to and learn more about a true understanding of "Knowledge" and it's effects on people and have those truths publicised.
Nothing puts me in a snit more than ignorant people patronising me. Looks like we have that in common but it takes more than disagreement to prove ignorance.
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Hi OckerYou've got to give me a little slack in terminology.... Anyone who posts here nearly certainly has read your posts and web site... Granted. But I think there are many many more people who read this Forum than post on it, and it is good to be accurate even for the skimmers. You believe Rawat's meditation is not a valid meditation as I do. Depends what you mean by 'valid'. Obviously it *is* a recognised meditation that lots of people do, so it is certainly 'valid' as in existing. But I don't believe it is of much value. One of the main reasons for this is what I outline on my website article - it is not taught as a meditation precisely, but very vaguely. So in fact if you go into detail with a number of premies as what they actually *do* when they sit to meditate, they may all be doing the same things with their hands etc, but they are all doing different things with their concentration, mental attitude, focus etc. ...but breath meditation is the technique that is used/ has been used by millions of people with no connection to Rawat and so is something that could be used as a comparison. Now breath meditation alone is considered by many as being of great value and surely must be as effective as mantra meditation and yet despite all the hours of practise by DLM ashramites in many cases it did not appear to have an ameliorative or positive cumulative effect. You seem content to accept this as a given but I find it interesting My same point as before : 'breath meditation' is not one thing. There is a huge difference between practising M's 3rd technique, as he waves his arm up and down in front of his chest and tells you to imagine that God/Maharaji/The Master is inside you on a swing, and the 'breath' meditation in say one of the Buddhist styles. And that is exactly *why* it did not help DLM ashramites, as you call them. I accept this as given because I look into the details; your brush is too broad. Your syllogism goes like: 'Breath meditation good; Knowledge includes breath meditation; therefore Knowledge good'. My version goes: 'Some breath meditation good, some mediocre, some worthless; Knowledge includes the worthless kind; therefore K not good.' Why do I bother to post on this Forum. Well certainly not to become your chela. You are an intelligent guy. You must see that this is the kind of cheap shot that angers people and goes nowhere. Its only purpose it to annoy. If you really *really* think that I am out after devotees, like I am some wannabe guru, then we are on different planets. If your purpose is just to annoy, well congratulations, because you have succeeded. I respect you and your views... That's better. Likewise. Nothing puts me in a snit more than ignorant people patronising me. Likewise again. By the way, this is why you attracted so much anger on this thread. In this case it was you that appeared to be the ignorant one, not having lived through the ashrams or really understanding what they were all about (thinking they were just a benign Eastern import where premies could meditate on their breath meditation without distraction - ha!), and yet patronising others who had lived and suffered (and I mean *suffered*) through them, and I include myself. Looks like we have that in common but it takes more than disagreement to prove ignorance. Yes of course, but gratuitous insults go a long way towards such proof. -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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We've had quite a reasonable amount of communication over the years and in private communication I've always found you the epitome of reason and acceptance of another viewpoint. So this misunderstanding/conflict completely took me by surprise. I remember listening to your music session with Hamzen and thinking how completely different we are. I'm not sure if they are still available but if it is have a listen to my chat with Hamzen and you might see some of the differences in our communication style. You were tlaking about your youthful rebellion via rock and roll and I was talking about the most intensely religious time of my life. "Well certainly not to become your chela." was not meant as a cheap shot making the snide point that you want to become a guru, but more as a grinning cheeky aside that establishes your seniority (which as a former senior premie, sometime chauffeur, ex-premie and co-owner and moderator of the forum you certainly have) but my independance especially cause if I apologise too much for what I considered to be a perfectly reasonable initial post it'll look like grovelling. I come from a society where irreverance is as much part of our culture as class is a part of yours. And after all your dismissive comments to me included "have no understanding of what Maharaji was and is really about". If the ashram premies around here were going through hell they certainly hid it well. Lot's of them rejoined the ashrams in 76/77 when they reopened and the final closing down didn't come from residents' requests but from above. But then I thought it was pretty straightforward that I was talking about ashrams in the general: "DLM or otherwise" and "Western values" and their "synchness".
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Hi OckerWe've had quite a reasonable amount of communication over the years and in private communication I've always found you the epitome of reason and acceptance of another viewpoint. So this misunderstanding/conflict completely took me by surprise. Cynthia puts it well in her post to you below 'Why do you continue to trivialize our lives, Ocker?... '. In this particular instance, understanding the ashrams and what us long-term inmates of them went through, the misunderstanding is all on your side. And after all your dismissive comments to me included "have no understanding of what Maharaji was and is really about". If the ashram premies around here were going through hell they certainly hid it well. Yes Ocker I am dismissive of your attitude in this thread to what DLM ashrams were really all about. If you want to question us, and ask 'why was it like that' and 'surely it was really like this' then OK, I at least am up for discussion. But you are not discussing, you are stating how it was like, when in reality you have no idea. Ignorance is OK (we are all of us ignorant about many things); laying down the line is OK when someone really knows what they are talking about; but when you are ignorant of something *and* you lay down the line on it as if you really know that topic, when you don't, well then that is too far. That is why you find yourself in the middle of 'conflict' if you like about this question of ashrams and what Maharaji was and is really all about. ...I was talking about ashrams in the general: "DLM or otherwise" I am not sure that makes it any better. DLM ashrams might have started out imitating non-DLM ashrams, but they soon became very particular to the DLM cult, and everything that went with it. Maybe your experience of ashrams in Australia is different - more laid back or something. Although I don't think so, they were a gobal phenomenon - any other Australian want to comment on the ashrams as they were in Australia (who had first-hand experience of them, that is).? "Well certainly not to become your chela." was not meant as a cheap shot making the snide point that you want to become a guru... OK I accept that; I did not understand it as a 'cheeky aside', but so be it. I am no longer annoyed in that case. Take care -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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Ocker, I don't think anyone got insulted because you did or didn't diss the ashrams. That's not the point. I think some of us got upset because you wrote about the ashrams as if you experienced the ashrams and what you wrote was incorrect. Off the mark. Wrong. Filled with misconceptions. You can have piles of information at your fingertips but that doesn't mean you've lived something. You obviously hit a nerve and maybe it's better if you ask questions of people who lived in the ashram instead of making incorrect statements about them as if you know. I don't need you to agree with what I say or disagree. The ashrams are a very sensitive issue to many of us for a lot of reasons. Some regular posters here spent many, many years in them. Please don't minimize that by saying Knowledge was just a breath technique, another statement that's puzzling. I wrote "And that's a bit of a puzzle really" that some people suffered from the ashram experience despite all the meditation they did. I suspect that it was not in many cases the ashrams themselves or the ashram life as lived by the manual that caused damage but by Rawat being a charlatan and the deceptions involved and the booting people out (twice). That paragraph puzzles me. All what meditation? Ashrams weren't just for blocking out large amounts of meditation time. It seems to me that you understand so little about ashram life that I don't know where to begin to explain it to you, especially when so many have done so well in this thread already. Western monastaries inmates don't usually dedicate their lives to a living, walking lord of the universe. I'll ask you a question though. How did ashram life and the closure of the ashrams by Rawat affect your life in the cult?
Modified by Cynthia at Tue, Jul 18, 2006, 06:38:10
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It is a rare soul that is suited to the renunciate lifestyle. How many 'volunteers' do you think populated the "tradition of monasteries" in the west. Historically, many were there for economic reasons connected with inheritances and lack of dowries or to salve the religious consciences of their parents.I did enter an ashram and it cost my degree. There are hundreds of premies who gave up education, inheritances, careers and families because the ashram was extolled as the superior option for anyone really serious about devoting themselves to the practice knowledge and the 'Living Lord'. Bunny P.S. Are you squiffy when you make these ill-considered posts or does it just come naturally?
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Does squiffy mean drunk or stoned? If so I am pretty well a teetotaller re alcohol and a renunciate in all other directions.
How did anything I posted disagree with your ideas. Your personal complaints are no doubt true but I didn't say otherwise, I didn't say living in the Rawatism ashrams was a positive thing.
Sure it is a rare soul who is suited to the renunciate lifestyle but I didn't say otherwise. At some historical periods some monasteries were populated by those categories you mention but certainly not all of them at all times but that is irrelevant to my post.
Why don't you read my post instead of reading into it. Were you squiffy?
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Your post was in the very least insensitive and at the most appears rude both to the poster as well as to ex-ashram premies. Your response to me implies the former. I don't think you mean badly but you don't appear to fully consider either the context or impact of many of your posts. You have been posting on the forums for a number of years now (with different handles)and this characteristic has been fairly consistent as has the antagonism it has provoked. Clearly posting on the forum is fulfilling some function for you - I'm curious as to what that is. Bunny
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Learning more about the truth of Prem Rawat's "Knowledge" and contributing to the truth being more widely known is the reason.
Now you can answer my question: In what way was my post rude to Mike Finch and why does it show I am insensitive (to him)? I have made posts in the past that were deliberately provocative, some deliberately rude but I cannot see what was wrong with that post. I am really looking forward to your reply.
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In addition to what Mike said, with which I agree, about the ashrams not being monasteries, etc., the other issue is, even if "knowledge" and Maharaji were what they were cracked up to be, there is still the question about whether the ashrams were necessary, which Rawat said repeatedly they were, that they were for life, etc. Years later, Rawat said, oh, what the hell, they were a "failed experiment" and not really necessary at all. How many premies would have entered (or stayed for years) into the ashrams with that information? So that's another issue. Agree also that Rawat's ashrams damaged the lives of many people, in many ways.
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I'll agree with you Joe that Rawat's ashrams damaged the lives of many people, in many ways as long as you agree that I didn't say otherwise. I said "Ashrams and joining ashrams in the 1970's would
have been a really great and valuable thing to do if Knowledge was
real. If the four techniques didn't turn out to be pretty well
worthless the whole thing would have been fantastic." see the importnat points: "if Knowledge was
real" and "If the four techniques didn't turn out to be pretty well
worthless"
And as you should know, I consider Rawat to be a terrible liar and so I have no intention of trying to defend his statements.
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Even if the four techniques had been truly some connection with God or whatever you sure as hell did not have to be in an ashram to medititate. The ashrams, like the others said, were about total surrender of your life to Maharaj Ji, not meditation.
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Guru Maharaji said that total surrender was total satsang, service and meditation. It wasn't engaging him in a boxing match and surrendering during the third round. If the four techniques had been truly some connection to God then Prem Rawat would really have been the incarnation of God and the LOTU and then even the ashram premies would have become realised or liberated or whatever and we would all have lived blissfully for ever teaching everyone in the world the Knowledge.
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by 1977 it was service. It was obedience. It wasn't satsang and it wasn't meditation. A lot of his closest devoteees , the Pams, never seemed to meditate and they REALLY liked to skip formal satsang. If he meant that they were all equally important...well, he didn't...that changed. Read any satsang from 1977 to 1980 or so.
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"A lot of his closest devoteees , the Pams, never seemed to meditate"
How do you know that?
But if it is true it certainly explains a lot.
I'll read some of the late 70's satsang and get back to you but I don't remember any such change. Computer work over for the day, adieu.
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Close to the time I left I had risen enough through the ranks that they let me do some super cool service. Things like getting the houses Rawat would stay in ready for him in Miami the day before he arrived. I remember cleaning one house on Key Biscayne, the bathroom, for hours with a toothbrush. I remember the pepper plant they brought in ( they said he liked to eat hot peppers right off the plant) I remember the really sweet girl I met who at that time was his cook. I also met the guy, maybe his name was Dennis Murphy, who had the shock of white hair and he might have been a cook too? Anyway, I met a lot of the more well known PAMs as they arrived to check out that all was up to his specifications. I truly got the impression, and may have been told, that these people were service hounds, slept little, meditated little but were devoted and service was the main thing they did. Another time he rented a house on the bay on Rivo Alto island. That was a pretty cool house. I helped get that one ready too. It was a lot bigger, and prettier. I remember hearing it was also rented to rock stars when they were in Miami. That time I got a bit closer to the service I dreamed of, and got to prepare what they called Wadi's room, though I was told the kids usually slept with their parents, which I thought and still do, was pretty cool, given all the servant types they had around. But we put a fish tank in her room, and I loved the idea of putting little touches in it for her. But we non PAMs were all herded out well before the arrival of the Rawats. But I did get to meet quite a few of the people that spent a lot of time with him. They probably brought in the booze and pot after I left. All these places were cleaned by professional cleaners first, but then the premies would come in and clean away and meet many strange requirements he desired. Lots of expensive changes were made just so he could stay in these places a week or so. It is weird for me to think now that seriously, after we left, they probably brought in the cognac and all that. In fact I do think I had some sense that there were secret preps that happened after we were shoed out. I think this was mostly the residence staff types.
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Luckily enough I had a quick way of testing your hypothesis this morning. In 1978 a booklet was published containing the five satsangs he gave at the Holi events in Miami and Malagar. I have scanned copies of the booklet. There is software available that can scan the text for words and the results are:
meditation 51 times
meditate 7 times
service 57 times
serve 0
obe* 0 (any word like obey, obedience, obedient etc
surrender 40 times
satsang 121 times
So he mentioned satsang twice as often as meditation and service and meditation beat service into second place. Relying upon your memory is tricky. I'm building up my library and maybe in a year or so I will be able to give you a breakdown over the whole decade. I'm sure you can hardly wait.
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I don't quite know if the "word" count thing really proves the content of what he was saying or meaning and importance...I reading it would be more helpful. It was my VERY strong impression however, that in 1978 and 1979 the focus of most satsangs was total surrender to Rawat. Ask other people who were there?
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But so is Ocker - 78/79 was period of emphasis on surrender to Guru Maharaji, but he still stressed that this was through SS&M. I think if Ocker does a similar exercise on satsangs from 74/75 he would find much less use of the word 'surrender'.John.
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Ocker, You astound me. I explained, indeed many have explained to you what living in the ashram was like for us, what it meant to us, how we were treated, and how it affected our lives. Then you came back with word counts, of all things, which in my opinion makes you come across as trivializing our lives. My life in the ashram and in service to Maharaji cannot be reduced to satsang word counts. That's an insult to every ashram resident there ever was, and demonstrates further how little you understand about the DLM ashrams of the 70s. Indeed, if my life in an ashram had been as trivial and insignificant as the number of times Maharaji had said certain words in 1978, I certainly wouldn't be posting here because there'd be no reason for it, and I wouldn't continue to speak the truth here about my life with Maharaji and talk about my feelings and opinions about all of it, which you're so handily revising for all of us former ashram residents. Like I said, maybe you ought to ask the questions of people who actually lived that life, not redefine it for us here. You know no more about ashram living than I know about how to raise a family and kids in the world of Maharaji. You became strongly displeased and angry with me when I tried to tell you about what your life was like as a householder premie. Why would any of us former ashram premies feel any differently about how you're now rewriting our lives? Don't you believe us when we tell you about these things? Cynthia
Modified by Cynthia at Wed, Jul 19, 2006, 10:34:50
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Hey Ocker, You know something? I really do like you and I want to clear up this misunderstanding that we seem to have going here, that's mucking up Susan's thread that she dedicated to Bob Mishler and his son Aaron. Apologies to Susan and Aaron. This forum has a way of running away. Ocker, I like your contributions to this forum and I do value you as a sort-of cyber friend. I think you're a smart person too. I'm trying not to blow smokeup your ass, but, what the hell. If you're feeling defensive, please try to put it aside to being a flawed human, just as I am a flawed and very imperfect human. Isn't that one of the major points of all of this? I'm sorry for what I wrote about you that minimized or trivialized your life when you were a premie long ago. I wrote those things based only on what I read here and that certainly cannot describe you as a living, feeling person. It wasn't fair. Just as I don't thinkyou've been fair to us former ashram folks. And I don't want you to stop posting here because we've gotten to this strange place of -- hmmmm.... Oh let's face it! I'm stubborn and you're stubborn. Many of us are very stubborn. We very opinionated, too. Everyone wants to be right about the things that they think say and believe./ I admit I am wrong about you and hope you and I -- and everyone else who posts here -- can come to a common ground about all of this without stalking off mad or sad or feeling rejected. What's our comon ground? We all have our own individual experiences and rememberances of our lives as a premie. We are each unique human beings. That's something Rawat never valued, or instilled in us -- that's for sure. I just hope we can let some of this stuff just for now. I don't believe you meant any harm at all. So can we start over here? Cynthia P.S. This is just until the next time we disagree, and mutually, we'll be all over each other like white on rice. 
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Cynthia, doing a word count on Rawat's satsangs in 1978 to see if he was talking more about service than meditation does not trivialize your life in the ashram which I gathered from one of your recent posts you enjoyed or at least you liked it when the heavy hitting satsangers came to your town cause you were a real 110% ashram person.
Discussing with another premie what Rawat actually said in 4 satsangs in 1978 says nothing whatsoever about your life in the ashram. I have not said anything about your life in the ashram. If I say other people enjoyed their time in the ashram and went back for more, what has that got to do with you? It's not personal. If you post about your terrible time at DECA do I post and disagree? Do I say tough titties I was having a great time in Australia so you must be wrong and stop trivialising my experience?
Talking about different ranges of experience and attitudes doesn't negate and attack and trivialise others' experience. I didn't say Mike was wrong about his life in a DLM ashram, I was discussing the "Western tradition", ashrams as monasteries and the complete failure of Knowledge and it's techniques of meditation to ameliorate some peoples' ives in the ashram.
I'm not about to talk about personal expereince in the ashram, I didn't have them. I'm not going to talk about the awful effect ashram life might have had on you, you're the person that should talk about that, not me. Why should I have to start every post with "Life was hell in the ashram for Cynthia and etc, etc etc, but Rawat used the words ... Some things are understood and don't have to be constantly reiterated.
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Cynthia, doing a word count on Rawat's satsangs in 1978 to see if he was talking more about service than meditation does not trivialize your life It does trivialize it. Also, some of my joking around could trivialize it to some people. If you think that you can learn more about what Rawat was saying from a word count than reading and anal;yze or better watching an unedited video---or being there.....I would just call that sort of stupid. It sounds like analysis ala Jossi. But I didn't take what you said all that seriously, I thought you were sort of kidding with the word count thing. Also I found it sort of interesting. Like I said I went back and read a satsang Hilltop posted to see if maybe my memory was shaky. Maybe he did emphasize meditation...but it was as a means to surrender..."and meditation is GMJ" etc...really in those years...it was all about him. It really was. in the ashram which I gathered from one of your recent posts you enjoyed or at least you liked it when the heavy hitting satsangers came to your town cause you were a real 110% ashram person. Ok Ocker this one is a slap in the face. When Cynthia says you don't get it I think she may be right. I really think you need to listen to us on this. First of all, GMJ was emphatic about this total surrender stuff. NOTHING ELSE MATTERED. If you really believed it, and I did, Cynthia did, Joe did, Jim did...lots of us did.....really tried to surrender. Devote your life to GMJ. And he said it sometimes in satsang directly in satsang, that ashram was the BEST way to totally surrender. This, I think, for some reason, he didn't like to say directly. Perhaps it was that he didn't really want every premie in the ashram. I don't think it was he was afraid to hurt the non ashram premies feelings. We know they didn't want anyone in debt in them, no bongos...(some slipped though)..I think he also had pet premies like say Tim Gallwey or John Horton or Raja Ji who were more useful the way they were. But the push for every person who could to join was HUGE. Huge like the push to drink the Kool Aid, or come to Jonestown, or submit to the marraige ritual....in other cults. And then, the push to never have a bad thought, to constantly meditate and remember holy name, to conform to a model of absolute devotion was HUGE. Now, as I have alluded to, many many ashram premies screwed up, cheated on rules. But really most didn't. And no one did openly. And people I knew who cheated felt tremendous shame. Which then increased their sense of unworthiness...and that sense of shame, not being good premie....it would feed into the need to surrender. So when the heavy hitters came around, it reinforced our decisions and probably helped with our doubts some too. If they bashed us and told us how unworthy we were, and they did, that also reinforced it. So Cynthia could say honestly she was 110% ashram premie and still mean very much she didn't like it. It wasn't about you. Liking it wasn't what it was about. Sort of what liking it isn't what being a soldier in boot camp...and there were boot camp elements...it wasn't all ghee and communal dinners.
If I say other people enjoyed their time in the ashram and went back for more, what has that got to do with you? I think there may be a person or two out there that enjoyed ashram life. Certainly almost all of us might have enjoyed some aspects of it. But when a person emerges from them having planned to live in them forever, and believing in them....it really does have to do with all of us. It's not personal. If you post about your terrible time at DECA do I post and disagree? Do I say tough titties I was having a great time in Australia so you must be wrong and stop trivialising my experience? Again, all the joking, which I enjoy a lot, aside, it just is personal to those who really, really bought the whole thing hook line sinker and sacrificed years of their lives. Ashrams were total surrender....people were moved around like pawns....the whole idea was to stop caring about yourself or your own needs or comfort. The whole idea, was that K alone should be enough to make you happy...in the ashram...if you were made uncomfortable....Holy Name should be enough. Serenity in the face of humiliation.
Talking about different ranges of experience and attitudes doesn't negate and attack and trivialise others' experience. I didn't say Mike was wrong about his life in a DLM ashram, I was discussing the "Western tradition", ashrams as monasteries and the complete failure of Knowledge and it's techniques of meditation to ameliorate some peoples' ives in the ashram. And that I agree with, because like you said, if K could have delivered its promise of total surrender to GMJ where you could feel nothing but placid bliss all the time..you could be happy in a burn unit, when your children die, in a torture camp...or in an ashram. Yeah, that was the promise of K. I agree with that part. Not sure about the western part other than there was a mixture, always, of messianic Christian type theology with the hindu stuff. I think ashrams reflected both.
I'm not about to talk about personal expereince in the ashram, I didn't have them. I'm not going to talk about the awful effect ashram life might have had on you, you're the person that should talk about that, not me. Why should I have to start every post with "Life was hell in the ashram for Cynthia and etc, etc etc, but Rawat used the words ... Some things are understood and don't have to be constantly reiterated. I don't think she said anything that implied you should. There is a Christian monastery near here where people can go on retreat. I have sort of taken your posts to mean that this sort of thing might appeal to you. Also, as you have seen, I actually have some nostalgia and even fondness for certain things that happened in the cult. I liked Holi a lot for example. I still think, if Prem Rawat wasn't being worshipped, I would love to attend a real Indian Holi. I liked Arti..esp the old style...with the tray and the charnamit and the rituals. I liked the aspects of a sort of communal life where we took care of eachother. Also, the pre 1977 ashrams were much more I think what your idealized vision of them might be. They just felt more like places where people cared about eachother, not just GMJ. More like a monastery and less like a prison you had a choice to leave if you didn't really believe. I wasn't "there" after 1979. Well, I went to some festivals with my ex husband ( who was still a premie and I think is still a premie). My true sense is that people still believe Rawat is some sort of diety worthy of worship. It does sound like a lot of things have changed, but not that ultimately, its all about him. A lot of people like to argue to sort of flesh out what they really think, or even should think, about issues. But I do find it pretty easy to see why a lot of people found your posts offensive to a degree, not every word, just some parts. Something to think about. And I have very much enjoyed talking with you and especially joking with you.
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Did you go to university and get advanced degrees while you were living in an ashram? If so, how did that happen? I never heard of an ashram resident being able to do that.
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Hi JoeWhen I was in India in 1970, I spent several weeks traveling with Bal Bhagwan Ji (Satpal, M's elder brother) and we talked a lot about science etc. He then gave me agya to go to university and get a science degree. Mataji then confirmed it. So yes, back in England while I was in the ashram I studied full time to get my degree, but it was under agya, and so a sacred duty! -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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Didn't Lola, the general secretary at the Boulder ashram in the early '70's, go to college while in the ashram? I vaguely remember that she did. OTS, does this ring a bell with you?
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Ha ha, no they did not! I was in the ashram, where all the money flowed one-way: out of the premie inmates and to the Lord.That particular situation was complicated by the fact that it was my house originally, M had stayed there twice and so there was considerable mystique about it ('his bedroom' was kept pristine and ready for him and treated like a shrine, which it was). And of course the ashram regimes changed over that three-year period, so different things happened at different times. Sometimes it was a struggle to keep it going. -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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Hi Joe,
When I was living in the ashram in Kew Gardens in Queens, NYC, there was a lad there who was getting his advanced degree in physics. Neither I nor most of the others there really knew what that was all about. It was even weirder because he more or less refused to help out in any way around the house other than repair the van now and then. Everything else was beneath him I suppose. He also did AV at the satsang hall. Anything technical was his domain. Otherwise I guess it was all too much girlie work for him. So while the rest of us were slaving away, he was futzing around with some laser at college. Then when it all came falling down he just had gotten his degree and was ready for the job market. The lord works in mysterious ways.
But I had nothing against the guy at all. He was nice and all and I liked science so it was fun to talk to him when we got the chance before we were discovered by the "chitchat police". It just was weird and unexplained and seemed unfair. But for all I know his parents or someone was giving him money for room and board so it didn't matter all that much. Anyway, that was the NYC ashram where a lot of weird things happened that happened nowhere else. Like at one point I got to live in the girl's ashram in my own private room which was actually supposed to be the room for Maharaji. It was all fancy of course and I kind of had my own bathroom. Maybe the CC decided that boys were a bad influence on me.
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Hi geo,
If you received Knowledge in 1982-83 what do you know about the ashrams and how come you're saying 'us' could of ended up in worse circumstances in the 70's? The 70's an extreme time for all, I thought it was the 60's that was the extreme time.
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there were 2 ashrams in town and they closed just after I got K .By Us I mean me and other pepole I met not you ,obviously I was kept away from hearing the negative effects ,and the premies around were not answering my questions back then . I was a teenager in the 60'S. I was 27 when I started to go to satsong which was phased out and then we watched vedios .When the ashrams closed and I asked why I was not really given an answer. I like that time in my life ,and went on and took what I thought was good for me , but after viewing XPO I finally got those nagging questions answered that persisted for years . oh ! it was 81 82 sorry we are talkin some time ago . The girl I was dating at the time was a premie ,which is how I heard about M and we would go to the ashram for satsong then that got phased out .Yeah I remember talk of arti only for premies back then but that stopped before I got K .I'd see videos at the ashram and borrow cassete tapes. I never heard the lord of the univerese stuff till last month when cruzin XPO . I heard rumors back then about why but that was part of the lie and rumor control .But never got the reason why the ashrams were closed till recently
Modified by geo at Sun, Jul 16, 2006, 18:04:21
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Thanks Mike, I also think highly of you for your surrent support of premies and exs who are now dealing with M. and his crap. I read with interest you post on Bob, and am wondering.....did he in his radio or conversations with others, or in person ever acknowledge his direct involvement and participation in defrauding and manipulating others around him in this scheme? Thanks in advance, Stephen B
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Hi Stephendid he [Bob] in his radio or conversations with others, or in person ever acknowledge his direct involvement and participation in defrauding and manipulating others around him in this scheme? I am not sure what exactly Bob said or did not say. There is quite a bit about him on EPO, including the transcript of a radio inverview. At the time, when Bob went manmut (left Maharaji, which made him to still-committed premies the worst of the worst!) I stopped all contact with him, and did not listen or read anything from him. Rather like present-day premies who will not read this Forum or any website critical of Maharaji. I have only read his interviews recently. Take care -- Mike
www.MikeFinch.com
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You really can't answer that question unless someone finds a news story, a diary, or had contact with him. He may never have been asked the question, and really, he left in 1976 or 1977. He didn't start speaking out about the cult until after the Jonestown tragedy in 1978. And Bob died in December 1980. He really didn't have a lot of time. There was no internet then. Michael Dettmers told me he got a call from Joe Anctil after Bob died. He also told me that he was the one to inform Rawat that Bob and Eileen had died. He said that Rawat's reaction was very quiet and that he felt that Rawat reacted in a way that someone who had known someone very well, and found he had died tragically, would react. He did say that at the time Bob was "persona non Grata" in the cult and he didn't know of anyone who made further attempts to do the normal things people do..attend funerals, contact loved ones.... I guess that what I am saying is Bob probably at the time would have a hard time just finding the ex premies to say "I'm sorry that I helped Rawat" to. They were spread out. What he really did was more important. When the two events of Jonestown, and the Rawat cult getting crazier and more devotional, happened at the same time---against his own best interest Bob went public. He did interviews and spent time with people who had left the cult ( in the interview ones who had been forcibly deprogrammed ). We ALL have to acknowledge our direct involvement in manipulating and involving others in this scheme. I tried to convert everyone I met. I wasn't very good at it thank God. But I did suck in one friend in 8th grade, but thankfully she saw through it and left soon. The other, that was worse, it was a friend who I loved dearly, the same girl I played with when I was eight and told her their was no Santa Claus and we had a big fight about it as she had "seen" Santa. Well, my dear friend moved to Salem Mass. I used to visit her from Miami every summer. Well, one summer, when I arrived, I had become a premie six months ago. The girl, now 14 like me, was enchanted and believed in Maharaj Ji the moment I told her about him. We went to satsang in Boston and she was hooked immediately. I warned her, that although most premies were our brothers and sisters, a few were "bongos" and to not just trust them all as she seemed to be doing. But I went home to Miami as scheduled. This was in the summer of 1976 because I remember the rest pretty well too. A letter arrived where my dear friend told me she had been raped by a premie who offered to give her a ride home from satsang. Brutally raped, a pudgy, virgin 14 year old girl. Again, I didn't consider calling the police. The cult was my world, the idea of contacting outsiders was just not in my thought repetoire as a premie. Frankly, at age 14, I didn't even being sort of naive really totally understand how brutal the attack she endured probably was. But I knew she was raped, and I think when I called her right away, and god knows what I said because my brand of comfort could have been guru platitudes, but I did understand something horrible had happened to her, and I know I asked her if this rape meant that he had attacked her "all the way". And she said yes. Listen, I cannot convey the joy this girl had about Maharaj Ji when I told her. I can not convey the immediate trust, and I did tell her to be careful about all premies weren't nice, but I don't think she really believed me. K was a very chubby, juvenile young girl with red hair and freckles. Have you seen the movie Spanglish? Adam Sandler's daughter, she had that smile and looked like that girl and that age. There is just no way there was anything in this but a deranged man driving a 14 year old home from Boston to Salem and brutally raping her. I was doing service every day then at the DLM offices at the YWCA building in Miami. I think it was sort of at the end of Brickell where the Miami River meets the bay. We had all sorts of premie functions there and it is where the community coordinator, whose first name I believe was Shelly last name was maybe Kaplan but not sure, any way, he was a balding and very nice man. He left the ashram himself soon after this. I gave him the letter. I watched his face go pale. He called Booth Dyess in Boston who I think was the CC there and they discussed it and I think they tried to do "something" like banning the guy--gosh wouldn't it be great if they could have stuck Fakiranand on him, but I don't think anything even remotely like reporting him happened. And I introduced her. What I am saying is all these Pams that everyone accuses of helping M perpetrate his fraud did not start out saying, "Hmmm I think what I would like to do is find a fraud and help him lie to people" They were premies just like the rest of us. They believe they were part of some great amazing miracle, just like we did. We all knew he lived in a palace and cut Mazerati's in half for fun. We all knew that he, and us, talked and acted similarly to Moonies, Krishnas and the Children of God. We all figured we were the one's with the TRUE guru and they had the false one. WE ALL HAD HUGE AMOUNTS OF LOGICAL EVIDENCE HE WAS A FRAUD. Unless you never hurt your mother, your father, your friends...with some of the crappy ways we premies we treated non premies then I just don't see where all the judgement about them perpetuating it isn't a tad hypocritical. They gradually got deeper and deeper involved, they had some skill ( management, pilot, cook, mistress) Rawat could make use of...they had something that could make him look legitimate ( actor, doctor, writer of tennis books) and some how they made their way into that very coveted inner circle that most of us wanted so very badly. They were gradually introduced to the real M and they also, as Dettmers said, were X rated--made to feel the most exalted of devotees and trusted to have made the mental transition that the guru himself could handle all this worldliness. That it was a test, that it was Lila, that it was Agya. On top of that they got all this status because they around him. Sure its ugly, cults are ugly. If they had ex rated me, and boy, as a premie I longed to be ex rated, I wanted deeply in every pore of my being to have the service of babysitting those beautiful kids of his. But if I had seen the drinking, pot smoking, womanizing, cruelty and sadism to the premies...I am sure they would have regretted ex rating me. I would probably have needed to be locked up I would have been so traumatized. I was very idealistic. But lets say I had been introduced little by little, as I bet most were....and I had this support network that really believed in Lila. Could I have gone along? I think maybe I could have. I think the premies around M to this day still "believe" he is perfect master, the drinking the womanizing, the meaness.....its all lila....just a test. Some of them, like Dettmers, feels huge regret that he helped M get wealthy and perpetuate his fraud. But please dont think he wasn't defrauded too. Now we can't ask Mishler that. But we can look at what he did do. He went out there and tried real hard, at his own risk, to help premies get out, and to help the ones who were out understand what the real inner workings of DLM were. If actions speak louder than words, I think we all know the answer of what he would say if we could ask him.
Modified by Susan at Mon, Jul 17, 2006, 02:22:59
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Good post Susan. I agree.
In those days I lived in a community of maybe 50 people at its peak, in a town 20 miles from the nearest big city where there were probably 3/400 or more in total, including the ashram. We had a couple of badasses amongst us, but mainly left it up to their nearest & dearest to deal with. One time I got involved with trying to sort out one of these people, he tried to strangle me as I was driving him away from the problem. After that I left well alone.
It never occurred to me or anyone else to get the police involved, or more appropriately the social services, as the belief was that Knowledge was the solution to all ills, & taking the normal course of action would've been to tacitly admit that it wasn't really. Also word of that & other things didn't spread much beyond those directly involved, which in such a small group is maybe surprising. I don't remember there being much of a premie rumour mill at that time, chit chat was discouraged.
I heard whispers that a premie in the city had raped a woman who answered the door to him when he was selling Divine Times, but who he was & what happened afterwards.........never a word. I'm ashamed to say that we laughed about it ; quite why, I'm still not sure, but it had something to do with lila, that most pernicious of the cult belief concepts.
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Here is a link it's a lot easier to read than my post. I just wanted to make sure he changed anything he wanted to before I posted it. http://mishler.cc/main.htm
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Does he have photos of his dad that were published in DT? I may have some of those still. I do remember hearing his dad speak in Providence RI. and I remember at the time thinking he was only saying accurate things, and did not touch the subject of rawat. I am glad to know that Aaron is doing well. There is an issue that perhaps he could help us with. I was told, that Bob Mishler was in the islands finishing up his manuscript that was an expose of rawat. Perhaps this manuscript is somewhere? He says on his response that on the islands with Bob, was his "best freind Scott". Who and where is this Scott? He may have the manuscript. We can pay for this manuscript, it can benefit Aaron in this way. Would you ask him about it? And what Scotts last name is.....where he might be found, and if his mom knows about the manuscript.
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I had the same thoughts. I haven't asked Aaron that yet because I didn't want him to feel it was the primary reason I made contact with him. I wanted Aaron to know I was very grateful to his father and that his father is still having a positive impact on people's live so many years later, because of his courage to speak out. The other reason I contacted Aaron was to just see if he could finally put to rest, or not, the issue of foul play in their deaths. As far as I am concerned, he did. The idea that some evil premie caused his heart problem and plane crash is ludicrous now as far as I am concerned, it was just one of those many horrible tragedies that happen. The idea that Eileen was so close to delivery the baby would have been fine if born really makes it even worse. I have to say I got tears in my eyes when I read that. In fact, the whole feeling of what Aaron had to live through, that he had a strong bond with his Dad, his stepmom and new sibling to be...and then the story of Scott coming to pack him up. All I can say is those Mishler genes must come jam packed with courage and strength. But yes, I will ask Aaron if the book rumors are true, who Scott was, and if there is any hope of what he was writing existing somewhere....like Scott, or maybe the grandparents, or Eileen's parents? I am still hoping more people might right something directly to Aaron. My sense is that it is meaningful to him.
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with more exciting experimental data ("What happens when I stick this fork in those funny holes in the wall?"
a very contracted view of Cary Quadrangle. 
