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"Where it is a duty to
worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat." -
Novalis
Greetings to premies and
ex-premies,
Over recent years, as
one of Maharaji's organisers, and an occasional PAM, I've
seen many disturbing things in the world of Knowledge.
Additionally, in conversation with other premies, numbers of
equally disturbing things have been told to me. One, two, I
could walk over, but gradually a picture has emerged that
causes me concern for the welfare of people under Maharaji's
aegis.
I have come to the
conclusion that it is time to say something about all of
this. For a number of reasons that I do not wish to debate,
I am choosing to remain
anonymous.
For myself, it is now
clear, I am no longer a part of Maharaji's world, and though
I do not wish to become a regular member of the ex premie
forum, I would like to thank all involved for their insights
and information, and for providing this forum for those
people who are looking for
answers.
I started some time back
putting down in writing all the things that are disturbing
me. I've decided the best idea is to 'publish' appropriate
extracts of this document
here.
Information is a
powerful tool, though very little of it has been furnished
to us by Maharaji's organisation, or by Maharaji himself.
Indeed if I had to name the one pervasive theme of my
experience with M - from the very early 1970s till 2001 - it
would be secrecy. I am sure there are intelligence
organisations that have less secrets than EV, and
international spies who have less secrets than PAMs. For
three decades, I have been one of the worst
offenders.
Information, of the type
which has been provided at EPO and on the Forum - and below,
I hope - allows premies, aspirants and interested outsiders
to make informed decisions about joining or not joining,
staying or
leaving.
In a way, all the
opinions about M are secondary. The fact that Maharaji
killed the cyclist in Delhi, and shifted the blame to a
premie; that he drinks heavily; that he has selected premie
women as sexual playthings; that he is worth 50 million US
dollars; that for 25 years he has covered up, and declined
to act on, a close lieutenant's sexual abuse of children...
all this speaks volumes to those who want to make an
informed decision. Our commentary and analysis is close to
redundant.
So, here is some more of
that information - plus, admittedly, a bit of commentary.
Another little corner of the M/K/DLM/EV jigsaw which grew so
large for us over the last 30 years. A jigsaw which, till
the ex-premie organisation started changing so many lives,
we were only shown one or two pieces of at a
time.
The below is 18 pages -
at least on my PC - so you may want to download it to your
machine.
Warm
regards,
Pam
"How do you find a
lion that has swallowed you?" - C.G.
Jung
It's been a long trek
from the belly of the beast, up the esophagus, out the mouth
and into the daylight. I hardly recognize the landscape,
I've been in that belly so
long.
Quite recently, I've
been in the strange positon of doing service for M while in
my heart having left him. It was weird - but I got by. I
made the final leap when I was ready. In the meantime I
attended programs, did my work/service, and went through
darshan, without feeling anything. It's bizarre to be in the
cult environment and simultaneously deprogram yourself - but
it can be
done.
What caused the shift? I
think simply growing up was part of it. Believing in Santa
Claus in advanced middle age just seemed too silly for
words. Believing that Maharaji was the Living Master, to say
nothing of the incarnation of God, was truly beyond the pale
- especially when you'd learned enough of what he is like
behind the stage act. (See below for all
that.)
But surely Maharaji
hasn't taught that he's the incarnation of God since the
1970s?
Yep. Sampuranand
declared M to be Lord Krishna (the supreme God of Hinduism)
onstage before 80,000 people in Delhi, in the late 1990s. M
got up onstage straight after, to support the statement. The
Indians loved it of course, though many of us Westerners
were a little startled. What about the PR trainings we've
had, where we're taught to tell media people that M has
never claimed to be God? Maybe it doesn't apply if his
statement is not made on American
soil??
But in the end - in a
strange quirk of fate - it was something little that did it
for me. It was a conversation M had with a few of us about
computers. Basically he was raving about Macs - how superior
they were. I like Macs - though I don't own one - but
frankly they are no better than PCs. They just come with a
different set of pluses and minuses. M's brand chauvanism
seemed really petty to me, and it made me wonder for the
first time if he was such a wise figure after all. Funny how
a trivial thing like that can trigger all your subterrainian
doubts.
Once those doubts began,
they were like a torrent. Years of drips, then the Amazon in
full flood. Once the "doubtmaker" - i.e. your mind - begins
to awaken, there's no stopping it. I could no more regard M
as a special person now than fly to the moon. Even being in
a room with him, toward the end, I just saw the screen on
which I projected all my love, divinity, fear, and a whole
bunch of Freudian father stuff. He's so ordinary once you
see all that in
yourself.
But the last thing I
want to do now is to make him into a monster. That's giving
him an equal amount of power. In truth Maharaji is a
pleasant enough guy much of the time. He is relaxed and
relaxing to be with, and likes to make jokes and keep it
light. He certainly relaxes in the company of men better
than that of women - but he can get along with women
too.
He's just got the
equation round the wrong way. M's "doubtmaker" is actually
your self. Your discrimination. Your identity. His
"Knowledge" is actually the
illusion.
What else could it be?
You can't assess it or comprehend it. In practise (not in
theory) it comes and goes all the time. 90% of those who
practice it divorce their spouses. The organisation
comprised of those who practice it is chronically
dysfunctional - with leaders few people have liked, going
back 30
years.
Shattering stuff to
realise after three decades - virtually the whole of one's
adult life. A little like spending 30 years in Heaven, and
at the end seeing that the angels were just guys with 5
o'clock shadow and acne who were paid $5 an hour to dress
up; that all the singing was taped; and that the Almighty
and his throne were just a pretty
hologram.
Bitterly disillusioning
for a bit. But liberating thereafter - because finally you
have some
choices.
"Repetition and
forced attention are very conducive to the induction of
a
trance." - Steve
Hassan
"Because your mind
troubles you, give it to me. It won't trouble me." -
Maharaji
With some exceptions,
premies as a group are low achievers. The reason, of course,
is that premies' ideas about Maharaji and Knowledge
depreciate the value of all other endeavour. Whether it's
stated or not - and it isn't, thesedays - doing "other
things" just doesn't cut the ice that "achieving the purpose
of this life"
does.
So people who could be
flying jets or creating successful businesses end up
spending a lot of time sitting under blankets with their
fingers in their
ears.
And one person who
spends very little time with his fingers in his ears ends up
flying
jets.
If you speak to any
long-term PAMs - e.g. John Miller (captain of M's old yacht)
or Randy Prouty - they'll tell you than M cannot not do
events. He adores being
adored.
There's only one Major
Achiever in the world of Knowledge - not 10,000. And there's
only one person at a major event who is completely
comfortable in the knowledge of who he is. Everybody else is
shooting for the false moon he has installed in a false sky,
and can never know
rest.
"Whatever deceives
seems to produce a magical enchantment."
-Plato
I know others have said
there were no financial improprieties in EV. I can only
speak from my own experience - which is that EV was
substantially a cash organisation until the
1990s.
Money raised from the
membership for Maharaji's personal use - e.g. a new quarters
at the "Windmill" area of Amaroo, costing several hundred
thousand dollars - is still kept off the
books.
Assuming one could keep
Raja Ji's drink-sodden hands off them, the cash proceeds
from darshan lines were commonly flown around the world in
the suitcases of x-rated premies, till they found their
"home" in M's coffers. I'm talking two, three, four hundred
thousand US dollars at a time. These poor couriers would
freak out if hunger forced them to take out $10 to buy a
meal. They also suffered serious anxiety as they neared
their destinations, customs and immigration regulations
being what they
are.
Raja Ji still pursues
his traditional role of schmoozing, wining, dining and
flattering rich premies to extract $$$ from them for the
family coffers. This is not always successful, as some of
these people have class, and Raja Ji is a rather gauche
character.
Having seen things from
the inside, I'm still kind of shattered that thousands of
innocent premies around the West think this thing is about
Knowledge, love and the rest. It's a family business, and
it's about money. Every recent Indian guru is the same: Sai
Baba, Mukhtananda and Osho all trade(d) their spiritual
credentials (which, like Maharaji's, are mostly faked
anyway), and a convincing stage act, for cash payments from
westerners who see themselves as spiritually
impoverished.
Money is the main game,
but these people also get side-benefits from devotees, such
as sex: Sai Baba gives oral sex to adolescent boys in the
guise of some ceremony; Mukhtananda was well-known for
raping adolescent girls in the guise of transferring
"shakti"; and Osho (a.k.a. Shri Rajneesh) would bonk
anything that moved - telling his credulous followers that
sex and enlightenment were more or less the same
thing.
Most of the above
tolerate(d) abusive sexual behaviour by their lieutenants -
most frequently child sexual abuse. Sound
familiar?
On the home front, the
thing that concerns me most - as both a very-recently-ex-EV
international organizer and as a human being - is the sexual
antics of the
instructors.
The sexual frustration
of the instructors is not something (thank God) I've
experienced firsthand - but it is a kind of epidemic.
Numerous premie women I know are molested, propositioned,
pursued and worse by instructors, in many
countries.
Because these guys -
many of whom I've known since the early 1970s - have never
grown within a normal relationship, their approach to women
now is highly dysfunctional and dishonest. I can't bring
myself to name individuals - doing so would tarnish some of
EV's brightest lights, of longest-standing. And they're
mostly still my
friends.
We all got each other
into the M cult - and now we're forming networks and giving
support as, one by one, each individual is plucked out of
it. So even the sexually abusive instructors - and that's
the majority of those I know - are people I'd like to help
out the door, rather than simply attack and discredit
them.
Having said that, this
policy will change and names will be named, and incidents
described in all their shameful, gory detail, if these
practices continue. (And believe me, I know so many of the
heartbroken women involved that I will definitely find
out.)
Too many women have been
damaged by these serial womanisers/gropers/molesters (who
lie to their current woman about their affairs with women in
other 'ports') to allow this 'epidemic' to continue. This is
not abuse a la Jagdeo - but it is playing with people's
feelings in a callous, chronic
way.
I hope it's really clear
that I'm going to blow the whistle on these people if this
doesn't change. I don't want to hurt anyone - but at the
same time unless these guys start to grow a bit, they'll
continue hurting innocent, vulnerable girls all over the
planet. And there's none so vulnerable as a woman who
believes in the myth of "Maharaji's
instructors".
I should make it equally
clear that I'm not talking about equal, consensual, honest
relationships - e.g. Sampuranand and Bai Ji. And I'm not
talking about some occasional on-the-road flings - we've all
had those. I'm talking about using women as sexual
playthings, and serial dishonesty,
Maharaji-style.
People around Maharaji
(PAMs) get into power trips and bullying - the well-known
'mini-Maharaji' syndrome. Many PAMs drink a lot (or are
alcoholics), just like the Master: throwing up on the way
back to your tent after a night drinking with M around the
campfire is not exactly
unknown.
Similarly, just like
Maharaji, some instructors have misused their status for
sexual
gain.
At the very least these
instructors need to get counselling on how to form normal
relationships. Ideally this counselling will take place
post-K - because the inherently dysfunctional master-student
relationship is the fertile soil from which dysfunctional
approaches to women
grow.
A post-Knowledge setting
for this kind of change is important, not only because
Knowledge tends to replace/reduce normal growth, but because
EV will never act against this sort of behaviour. The system
thus encourages
it.
When reports are made
(which is rare), EV takes no action. The only exception was
when an instructor had to be spirited out of Australia some
years ago following a sexual incident: otherwise EV's record
is of no response, no action, no attempt to assist the women
involved, and no attempt to change the climate which gives
rise to the
incidents.
(In recent years
policies have been written on sexual harassment. Believe me,
they don't apply to M or the
instructors.)
M's attitudes to women
don't help much either. He once told a group of us at Amaroo
that he wanted to gather all the girls with "good tits" at
one end of the property, and all the girls with "bad tits"
at the other end. In his public satsangs he frequently uses
the example of when 'you come home from a hard day's work
and your wife doesn't have dinner on the table in time' and
the like. I'm not wild about PC myself, but this sort of
thinking surely belongs in the
1950s.
I've learned recently
from a PAM friend that the closest inner circle of PAMs -
e.g. the permanent personal staff, those in the personal
(now known as the "executive") area at Amaroo, the airliner
staff - have been trained to deceive Maharaji's wife in the
Monica
matter.
For example if Marolyn
enquires as to whether Monica is present in Maharaji's
campground with him - and she is indeed there - these staff
have been instructed to tell Marolyn that she is not. If
Maharaji and Monica are staying in a hotel together, Marolyn
is to be given the same line. I was surprised by this at
first, as Marolyn has obviously known about Monica for some
years. I can only presume that the depth and extent of
Maharaji's relationship with Monica is what is being kept
secret from his wife, via these institutionalised
deceptions.
It doesn't paint a
pretty picture of Maharaji - but it makes the inner sanctum
staff look even worse, IMO. It's a stark illustration of how
one's values can deteriorate when one is focussed on the
"greater good" of keeping the Living
Master.
Such training also
furthers the climate of deceit about this relationship. Even
until the mid-1990s, Monica was telling me, when she entered
an area where M was, that she was joining him to "show him
the latest videos" from Visions. As if everyone didn't
know.
The deceit - sorry,
"confidentiality" - is pervasive: the Monica thing is just
the most visible
example.
The Indian premies, for
instance, don't know that Maharaji eats meat, drinks and
smokes - let alone that he has selected premie women from
the audience for his sexual use. It would be a huge cultural
leap for them to accept him if they found this out. Most
would
leave.
For this reason
Maharaji's lifestyle is kept top secret in India. Even in
the West, no Indian premies (other than x-rated ones like
Sampur) are allowed to do service in the personal area or
Maharaji's kitchen, specifically because of the effect that
learning of Maharaji's lifestyle would have on
them.
"Today's cults know
how to effectively implant vivid negative images deep within
members' unconscious minds, making it impossible for the
member to even conceive of ever being happy and successful
outside of the group. When the unconscious is programmed to
accept the negative images, it behaves as though they were
true. The unconscious mind is made to contain a substantial
image-bank of all the bad things that will occur if anyone
should ever betray the group." - Steven
Hassan
By the late 1990s, EPO
was starting to crack through the dynamic described by
Hassan - showing just how powerful the Internet is. Premies
were reading posts and journeys from people they'd once
known and trusted - people who had left Maharaji, and left
knowledge, but - unaccountably - had not turned into rotten
vegetables. People started to leave. One of these was the
woman assigned by the PR team to monitor the Forum,
amusingly
enough.
To counter the rising
problem of EPO, M had spent a log time trashing the Web -
calling it, for example, "the world wide parking lot". This
didn't work: premies got wired as much and as
enthusiastically as everyone
else.
So the decision was made
by Maharaji in July '98 to inaugurate an EV website. Mark
Winter in the UK was given the task. The publicly stated
reason for Enjoying Life was to propagate K and give premies
a chance to express gratitude. Maharaji confided to the
group responsible for it that the site's real purpose was to
counter the anti-M sites - EPO
basically.
Latitude was given to
Mark W in creating the site - i.e. premies were
allowed/encouraged to diverge from the party-line devotional
blather and mention problems they might have had getting
their minds around Knowledge, and even a few jokes passed by
the censors. That was to give the Enjoying Life site a bit
of the "realism" or rawness that traditional EV propaganda
has usually lacked - and which EPO has in
abundance.
The Enjoying Life site
was basically established as EPO's online competitor. In
October 98, M told me he was extremely pleased with the
result: I saw his Net-phobia evaporate
overnight.
"The most curious
part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things
round them never changed their places at all: however fast
they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if
all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled
Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she
cried, 'Faster! Don't try to
talk!'"
Lewis Carroll,
Through the
Looking-Glass
EV has nearly come to a
halt at the present. Less people have received Knowledge in
the West in the past year than in any year since 1971 - a
30-year
low.
Currently there is a
participation drought throughout the West. People are
pulling back, and getting on with their real lives. EV is
being run by some of the old stalwarts, but the future of
both the organisation's structure and the personnel who run
it is uncertain. For once this is not because of mass
burn-outs or M's habit of firing personnel left, right and
center - it's because of a withdrawal of
groundtroops.
In Australia, the jewel
in M's crown, Amaroo is apparently laying off staff, and
activity is very low due to lack of funds. It's not clear
who's going to be running the country's organisation
overall. This follows a recent move by Derek Harper
(instructor), Lee Marges and Catherine Gavigan (organisers)
to oust Kay McKinnon (Pacific contact). It was generally
believed that her $50,000+ annual salary could be better
spent
elsewhere.
Kay McKinnon has
survived for now, but that status is far from certain for
even the middle-term. (A lot of people have been bucking for
her to be booted for years.) Thus no-one down under really
knows how to begin planning for the organisation's
future.
Ironically, all this
happens against a backdrop of Maharaji's statement to the
rich guys at the Arizona conference last month that he
"wants the politics to
stop".
The politics in EV can
never stop, as it's created by imprisoning people's
democratic instincts within a top-down theocratic heirarchy:
Maharaji, his family, PAMs, instructors, organisers,
groundtroops and church ladies. Thus there will always be
tension between instinct, conscience and common sense on the
one side, and the uncomfortable, ultimately inhuman
imperatives of the master-student relationship on the
other.
In kicking against this
spirit-shrivelling dynamic in themselves, EV people also
kick against each other - for they generally project the
problem outward. Thus other organisers - but not me - are
"petty", "insensitive", "manipulative" and
"power-hungry".
In a normal organisation
this could be ironed out with psychological growth. In one
where the expansive behind of the Living Master of The Time
sits like a lava plug on the volcano of our emotion,
self-expression and individuality, it wasn't possible. So EV
has seen nearly three decades of revolutions, changes in
style and terminology, trainings, team-building programs,
workshops, conferences, mutinies and purges - and everything
stays the
same.
"Direction is
essential for the continuing existence of the crowd. Its
constant fear of disintegration means that it will accept
any goal. A crowd exists so long as it has an unattained
goal." - Elias
Canetti
The politics M is trying
to amputate has been endemic to EV for 30 years. It's
getting more petty and vicious - not less - as the caliber
of those remaining dwindles, and EV's pool of available
managerial talent
shrinks.
The secrecy is getting
tighter too. Throughout the West people are getting really
sick of the endless emphasis on "confidentiality" - i.e.
secrecy. In some places people have to sign confidentiality
agreements before they can even do service. Managers and
local contacts are starting to feel they're not able to
share much with the groundtroops and church ladies any more,
and they feel guilty when they do. (When you sin against the
government, a corporation or even your family it's one
thing: but sinning against The Living Master and the Whole
Purpose of Existence is
another.)
I wonder how long the
loyal Valerio will want to keep cleaning up the
psychological messes created by the unreal relationships we
premies have with M. Having been to several of V's
trainings, I can vouch that he's a great trainer. But all
the trainings, and the "emergencies" Valerio is responsible
for dealing with, will not do more than deal with symptoms -
keep the lid on short-term. The basic dynamic needs to
change. People need to create proper lives for themselves in
the real world, and more importantly create proper inner
lives for
themselves.
It's pretty obvious that
most people who leave K start "moving" in their
relationships, careers, etc, better than before, when they
were in the golden cage. But maybe the biggest thing is
realising that the INNER life is better without Knowledge,
and without Maharaji. Cleaner, happier, more even, more
concrete.
I've been on the phone
in recent weeks to old friends who have done this. Sadly, I
cut them off when they did - but now contact has been
reestablished it's great. These guys have ended up happy.
Those who've stayed have just got more and more stunted. I
felt it in myself till I got
out.
Look around. EV is a
psychic graveyard. And it's not because people have not done
enough
trainings.
"The purpose of
Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for
the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of
Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.
It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and
for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought (that
is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc)
should be literally unthinkable." - George Orwell,
1984
One of the things I have
found most surprising since leaving is that so few people
followed orders to hand in the DLM magazines in the late
1970s. Ex-premies everywhere still have piles of them. The
attempt to re-program us away from our early history - when
Maharaji was God, his brothers divine incarnations, and we
an elect group more or less guaranteed salvation - was thus
a failure.
Probably one of the
worst aspects of the attempt to re-write history is the
claim by Maharaji and EV that the Indian concepts of the
1970s were promulgated by the mahatmas, and that M had no
role in this. In reality, one thing that M aways had direct
control over - even as a teenager - was the activities of
the mahatmas and
instructors.
And of course this is
relevant not just to the "Indian concepts" debate. It's
highly relevant to the Jagdeo
affair.
Even Glen Whittaker, who
hasn't strayed from the reservation in 30 years, believes
Maharaji's refusal to deal with the Jagdeo's sexual abuses
years ago - when he was given the opportunity - was a grave
miscalculation. Both he and Mark Winter are very pissed at M
for this, as they had to pick up the PR mess years down the
track - a mess M could have prevented by exercising some
responsibility several years
ago.
Running an "apologise
and explain" PR exercise for a master who shelters a child
molester is hardly the kind of dream service for which these
extremely sincere guys joined up at the start of the
1970s.
I've known Glen since
the early 1970s, and he is a decent, friendly guy. He'll
probably be manning the bridge on the good ship EV as it
sinks beneath the waves in about 2005, such is his loyalty
to M. But he is nevertheless disappointed with M over this
affair. And if Glen's disappointed, you can imagine how
others
feel.
Glen believes that
Jagdeo did commit the sexual abuse he is accused of - though
he personally didn't know about it before the revelations of
the last two
years.
Others did, however.
Jagdeo's crimes have been known about within EV, and by
Maharaji, for more than 20 years. For instance there was a
high-level meeting about Jagdeo's sexual abuse of children
in 1980. Jagdeo appeared to have abused the child of a
premie (a woman) then living in Florida. The woman was
extremely wound up about it, and the instructor Maria
Isabella - among others - was brought in to try and deal
with her.
Then as now, Maharaji
had a very direct control, and a very thorough knowledge, of
the activities of his instructors. In fact he controlled
this aspect of his organisation more closely than any other.
It's inconceivable that Maharaji was not aware of Jagdeo's
activities then. But he chose not to act, beyond having the
matter hushed
up.
The seachange finally
took place when the revelations on EPO became too hard to
ignore - especially in the UK. On January 22, 2000, Glen
Whittaker wrote an official EV UK communication to Deepak
(DUO India chief), informing him of the basic facts, and
inquiring as to Jagdeo's whereabouts. It was realised that
the Jagdeo "problem" had the potential for unraveling things
badly in the UK, because Maharaji's fingerprints were all
over the
cover-up.
The revelations on EPO
and the forum re Jagdeo's sexual abuse were the PR emergency
of the decade for EV. I think what's happened since then is
fairly well-known by people here. I'm fairly sure the civil
action in India was devised as a "blind" - to pacify critics
with the appearance of action, and to reduce the chances of
Jagdeo ever having to appear in a British
courtroom.
Glen wasn't involved in
having the Jagdeo story suppressed in the Express - though
he wasn't exactly on the side of the angels either. (When
others found out about what Maharaji had permitted to
happen, they left the cult - they didn't stay on to defend
the
indefensible.)
EV's current read on the
evil exes is that a kind of impasse has been reached: damage
has been done, but there's not much more they can do, with
Jagdeo in India. He'll never be allowed to set foot in the
West again of
course.
The rules of the recent
trainings
are:
10 second rule
conscious
respect
confidentiality
honesty
participate
unanimous
no brain farts
no dark
thoughts
But the rule underlying
all of these - at least the trainings I went to - was
RESPONSIBILITY. People who didn't take responsibility for
their actions were absolutely stomped on by M. I saw
hard-boiled businessmen stumbling around in the Delhi dust
in shock, and non-smokers take up smoking, after some of his
temper explosions around the question of responsibilty.
People were terrified: it is no exaggeration to say that
some shook from head to foot. Many probably thought the sky
was about to fall
in.
How does that all square
with sitting on his hands since the late 1970s, when he was
first informed of Jagdeo's criminal activities? Maybe
Perfect Masters are somehow exempt from preventing child
sexual abuse, because they have their eye on some larger
karmic scene which is invisible to the rest of us? Believe
that and you may as well believe in the tooth
fairy.
On a recent Delhi trip,
I chatted with Jagdeo in the IOC, in the centre of the
ashram - where we were both staying. He is not a "sick old
man" living in retirement in an Indian village. He is
sprightly, reasonably fit-looking, and till recently at
least had access to the centre of things in DUO India -
maybe still does. He also still has access to children - was
indeed spotted fondly patting one in the IOC in the last
year or two - though I have no evidence that he is sexually
abusing same, and hopefully this is unlikely after all the
bad
publicity.
The Jagdeo affair is a
towering example of the corruption that's set into the heart
of what I believe to have, once, been a genuine attempt to
help the world. That M is so central to Jagdeo's crimes
continuing is, alone, reason enough for me to leave. There
isn't a rationalization in the world that excuses complicity
in raping children. That my friends continue to defend M in
this respect seriously stretches my respect for
them.
"The disciple is
unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master's feet and guards
against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a
virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semi-divine
being. He can enjoy the archaism and infantilism of his
unconscious fantasies without loss to himself, for all
responsibility is laid at the Master's door." - C.G.
Jung
"Guru does not deal
with us as father or as friend, but as children. As
children." -
Maharaji
The first seed of doubt
was sown in my mind in 1997. In LA toward the end of that
year, Maharaji was depressed for two or three months - right
through till Christmas. I was quite shocked by
this.
Things had upset M at
the end of the 1997 Amaroo event - like a cow getting into
his private campground and shitting in front of his doorway.
Everybody certainly heard about that: "I almost stood in
it!"
(Not a cow shits
without...)
Also he was stopped by
some security person on a road for not having a pass.
Finally, the schizophrenic son of two premies dropped some
acid, then wandered into his campground for a chat at the
doorstep to the divine pent. M's radio calls to the security
personnel were misunderstood, and people raced all over the
property - except to where the problem was. His final radio
call was pretty
testy.
But the thing that made
him the most pissed was an article that appeared in an
Aussie newspaper. I think it said that he was a rich guru
who did rather well financially out of his devotees, or
words to that effect. Not something you could actually argue
with. He was really angry at the PR team for not somehow
stopping that article from
appearing.
And I remember thinking
- before I could censor myself in the time-honored premie
way: "Why doesn't he alter his own behavior if he wants to
stop articles like that from appearing?" The article just
described the luxury homes, the jet, etc, as far as I can
recall. All of these things are M's lifestyle choices - not
things invented by a malicious
journalist.
Naturally the PR team
accepted the spears in the chest, and various post-mortems
were done to ensure they performed better next
time.
NB: After this episode
of divine depression in 1997, I logged onto the forum, and
it definitely caused some drips. But there was so much
invective here that I decided it was safer and saner in EV.
(Which is really saying something.) The forum is still too
abusive and unsafe for many people to belong. Several have
left the forum for the same reason. There is a frequent
tendency for angry and abusive people to dominate the
debate, to shout down those who disagree with them, and to
spray the forum with dozens of
posts.
On balance, the forum is
a great boon to the ex world. But unless the above problem
is somehow redressed, it will never attract a wide variety
or large number of
exes.
"Who is Guru? The
highest manifestation of God is Guru... Remember, Guru is
God. Bigger than God. Bigger and bigger than God... So, see
that if you want to give devotion, give it to Guru. You will
find that Guru is the Supremest of all. It is said that 'In
a day I should bow many thousands, thousands, thousands,
thousands, millions, millions and millions of times to
Satguru.' Such a high thing, such a high power, has come. I
was seeking for God, but God has come in body! What can be
higher and holier than that?" -
Maharaji
"Who says I am not
under the special protection of God?" - Adolph
Hitler
It's fairly well-known
that the people around Maharaji tend to be heavy-drinking
and competitive, and to engage in internicine warfare. (They
even joke about it themselves.) They're also frequently ill
physically. Indeed most of the half-dozen people closest to
M are physical wrecks. I think a lot of this comes from the
chronic fear in which PAMs live - fear of displeasing the
superior power in
person.
The majority of people
who have been in Maharaji's company for prolonged periods no
longer acknowledge him as their master. The 'loyal'
exceptions - e.g. Marolyn, Monica, Sampur - generally have
an economic or power benefits to keep them in the fold
longer-term.
"When you meet the
friendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to
the most loving group of people you've ever encountered, and
you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring,
compassionate and understanding person you've ever met, and
then you learn that the cause of the group is something you
never dared hope could be accomplished, and all of this
sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be
true! Don't give up your education, your hopes and
ambitions, to follow a rainbow." - Jeanne Mills, former
member of the People's
Temple.
At the recent event down
at Amaroo, there were serious financial losses from a
malfunctioning credit card system - people's purchases
didn't register. In the months before the event there was a
premie revolt over the huge registration fees. Not long
before the event only a few hundred had registered. Panic
set in, and Padarthanand was sent on the road to explain how
the fee wasn't mandatory after all(!) Thereafter, a large
number of people were admitted for
free.
The upshot is that the
Amaroo finances are not in good shape. Some of the premies
whose loans and mortgages support its existence are getting
a bit
sweaty-palmed.
The official story on
the 2001 event is that it was all sweetness and light. But
the usual brawls went on. Most of the tent-erecting team
mutinied before the event, because of a "fascist" manager.
(It could have been 1974.) The manual workers, without whom
the event wouldn't have happened, were kicked off the site
at event time, as usual, which caused lots of bad feeling.
Probably they'll all swallow it, and come back next year for
more. Then complain again when the predictable
happens.
Serious intra-managerial
disputes lingered on from the Sept 2000 fundraising event,
where several relationships melted down amid that event's
howling dust-storms, especially in the front-of-house area -
which has always been a major source of potential revenue,
thus the importance of cohesion
there.
Attending the Sept '00
fundraiser, the thing I enjoyed most was the bar at night -
watching Yoram work the room (that guy should work for the
GOP) and catching up with old
friends.
Valerio didn't get the
respect during the day (the training) that he gets from
poorer, community premies: these guys are rich, and aren't
used to being patronized and belittled. He got put in his
place a couple of times - though the training as a whole was
fun and
educational.
Now, a year later, the
defections of higher-level managers - some of them from K
and M altogether - have left thinned-out upper EV echelons,
and people are doing senior jobs who would not have been
considered five years ago. There have been worried
discussions about the quality of the folks who are now in
quite senior managerial
positions.
"A striking
expression, with the aid of a small amount of truth, can
surprise us into accepting a falsehood." -
Vauvenargues
I'd guess that the
disgraceful CAC site was M-approved, simply because every
major venture of premies without exception is
M-approved.
(Not a penny
drops...)
A PR friend told me that
the American premie writer Scott Ritter (he's currently
hanging out down under I think) was deputized by the
international team, earlier this year, to help come up with
an online antidote to EPO that used "radical new
thinking".
Scott, I gather, was
stymied by this. How could you shoot down so many
well-attested facts? I woud surmise that CAC was born out of
this
frustration.
Personally I think Scott
is too nice to have created CAC, but the fact that he was
put on the case this year suggests that an offical concern
about EPO had reached sufficient heights for radical action
to be taken - by someone. And taken it
was.
One reason CAC was
pulled, I would guess, was that it was causing so much
disgust even among the senior EV managers. Giving away exes'
family's addresses, and tarring exes as pedophiles, is about
as low as it gets: even the brainwashed have
standards.
The big-eating Frenchman
would have kept this operation under the tightest of wraps,
were it an officially sanctioned one. Even most of the PR
team probably wouldn't have been told it was sanctioned by M
- let alone anyone
else.
All the above re CAC is
speculation - though not unreasonable speculation. It
certainly fits with EV's pro-active pattern on the Internet
since EPO began, of countering it. First came the large
technical task of "influencing" search engines so that
search words like "Maharaji" and "Elan Vital" brought up the
official sites first and the anti ones last. That job was
done by an Australian techie in the late 1990s, and took him
many months. Then Enjoying Life. Then Life's Great - which
reversed the original policy of censoring premies. CAC kind
of fits with a developing
pattern.
"A morality based
solely upon the tenuous thread of religious mythology is
only effective for a comparatively primitive mind, through
which God is invested with magical parental powers of
punishment and reward. As people in general become
emotionally healthier, more able to individuate from their
parents, the gods become divested of their power to
control." - Robert
Godwin
As we grow away from
this old, unhealthy parental relationship, I hope we exes
can also get away from an adversarial relationship with
premies. Their sins were till recently ours, and their
blindness was ours
too.
A master-student dynamic
distorts everything below it, but you don't see that when
you're in it. An exhausted housemother falls asleep in the
meditation room, and someone yells at her. A rich boy from
Hardwar who got very lucky with the Western zeitgeist wants
another Maserati, so premies forego things they and their
children need to buy it for him. Someone commits suicide in
the ashram, and the premie doctor fakes the death
certificate.
Not things people would
normally do - but a cult provokes deep, strange loyalties,
and 'abnormal' becomes normal. That's what a cult is, pretty
much. We lived within this strange paradigm too. And
accepted it, and propagated it to
others.
I think our task is to
support each other in getting out, just as we supported each
other on the way in, and for the duration. I strongly feel
that we're all in it together: some have manned the
lifeboats, and some have even rowed well clear of the
sinking ship. But others are still in the ballroom listening
to the band; and others still are fast asleep in their
staterooms. But everybody is leaving, one way or
another.
It's a co-operative
venture. We owe it to the church ladies, and even to the
Glens and Valerios, to make it that way. If circumstances
had been slightly different, they might be 'out' - building
EPO, securing the safe ground for us to step on - and we
might still be the front row with the arti trays, like those
guys at Amaroo this year - pledging undying love to the
womanizing, alcoholic Californian multi-millionaire whom
we'd persuaded ourselves was the most important person on
Earth - in blissful ignorance of the impending revival of
the self we'd been taught to
despise.
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