That was a generous view of things Bob. I'm not sure if my first wife knew of the contents of the book at that time. Setting fire to the shop wasn't revenge. Her and her friend were paid by the old man to do it!
Remembering that song, 'we are all one' has reminded me of those days and the company I kept amongst the premies. I was a little bit younger than most and brought up in the sticks. So maybe more naive than most.
Looking back with hindsight, it was quite a mess really. Fooling around with dtugs, a bit of youthful experimentation ended with at least 4 people I knew well become addicted to heroin. Two are dead, one just seems to get along with it somehow, and the other has spent 20 years in prostitution to pay for the habit.
There was the guy who worked in Divine Sales. What a business that was... Premies would put leaflets through doors offering house clearances or furniture removal, taking stuff away for charity. The charity being Divine Light mission. We'd go round collecting furniture and then selling it it from a shop. We thought it was 'service'. Dave always had his eye out for the occasional extra valuable item, usually pianos at the time. Anyway, he branched out into his own house clearances business, at first scamming old people out of their most valuable possessions - gaining their trust or making them drop them guard by generously valuing some useless junk and offering far more money that it was worth. At that, people would then get him to value everything else they thought he might be interested in. He'd offer really low valuations for the really good stuff. Quite often he'd pay good money for a crap painting he'd throw away as soon as he left the house, but he also had much more valuable items he'd paid a pittance for. Burglary was a last resort to get his hands on valuable things he'd been unable to buy. There were premier addicts willing to do that for him.
Those times, sitting in satsang night after night, all those connections made and careers started. Something good must have come out of it all surely, but also, so much scamming, burglary, robbery, prostitution, fraud, drug dealing and drug addiction.
I wonder whether that was just Leeds where I spent my most Divine days, or whether the cult attracted/encouraged these sorts of activities in other premie communities. There was always pressure to donate, do 'service', and very frequently drop everything to get to an all important festival. Those pressures weren't exactly conducive to people living stable lives and keeping steady jobs going. There were few I knew able to keep a 'straight' job together and pass you themselves off as a proper devotees.
