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This website first began in the summer of 1996 when Scott Perry, the first Webmaster, composed a single page on his Miracle Vision Internet server, devoted only to the former followers of Guru Maharaji (ex-premies), and began to advertise his new site and his email address on the web. Soon some emails and letters began to dribble in to Scott. At this time he also began to trawl Usenet doing word-searches on the words "Maharaj Ji" to see if he could get any nibbles, looking for any information he could find about his former teacher.
In the Fall of 1996, in a cult related newsgroup on the Usenet he met Jim Heller, who for some time had also been trying to make connections through the internet with other ex-premies. By that time, Jim had already had somewhat better success than Scott at finding good information and contacts via his Usenet work. Scott and Jim found in each other exactly what each of them had been hoping for. They both wanted to uncover something. Something which at that time was still for them a bit of a mystery. What exactly had become of their elusive former master about whom so little information was available? Jim was looking for someone who could master the technical aspects of successfully setting up a good website about Maharaji. Scott was looking for someone who could be an avid promoter of his site, which up until that time had experienced only moderate success in generating contacts with former ex-premies.
With Jim's assistance, Scott soon posted the first major article to his site: the Mishler article, which Jim had first "discovered" through his Usenet connections. Jim directed Scott to another ex-premie, David Stirling, who had carefully saved and transcribed the text of the Mishler Interview, not knowing when or how anyone else would ever use it. Next Scott added the first forum, Forum I. Soon it was decided that as a result of the level of participation in the new forum, the purchase of an exclusive domain name was justified. At that time Scott organized it so that he, Jim, and the third most active participant in the forum, David Stirling, each pitched in a few hundred dollars and the new, all volunteer, joint venture: ex-premie.org was born.
In the summer of 1997, David Stirling stepped forward to become the next webmaster. David, a graphic designer, added many professional touches to the site and continued to expand and catalog its growing body of information. Still, the forum remained by far the most popular feature of the site. A place where people could at last meet freely to openly and honestly discuss their experiences.
For many of us, the forum presented the first opportunity to
talk about our past since going our separate ways from the
people who had shared it.
Forum
I was located on a
server at
www.purgatory.com,
and the words that we shared there are preserved in
HTML-formatted archives.
As the Forum participation increased, and the server began
experiencing large delays in load time, we abandoned
Forum
I and moved the
discussion over to a new Usenet newsgroup,
alt.cult.maharaji.
The load time problems were gone, but we soon experienced
difficulties participating in the discussion, since
responses to a particular post would often appear on a local
news server before the original post did. The conversation
appeared to take bizarre jumps backwards and forwards
through time. Referred to as 'the
newsgroup',
alt.cult.maharaji
is still in existence, although there is not much traffic
there anymore.
When the original forum server delay problems were solved,
we moved back to the Purgatory forum server - which had been
renamed
www.paradise.com.
The new web-based forum, sponsored by ex-premie.org, was
referred to as Forum
II.
While ex-premie.org grew in content under David's
management, he eventually found it necessary to turn the
site over to someone else. Brian took over as webmaster in January 1998. He was greatly
assisted by Katie. The information on the site was
subsequently restructured, and the pages underwent a format
change and further expansion.
In early 1998, it became apparent that the Paradise forum
server was once again becoming unreliable. Web-based forum
software was written and installed on ex-premie.org in April
1998. This newest forum was referred to as
Forum
III.
In May of 1998, we expanded to include a
French
version of the site with its
own forum ( Le
Forum ). Page translation and
administering of the forum were supervised by
Jean-Michel.
Forum
III ran on-site until
July 1999, when it was decided that the Webmaster and Forum
Administrator should be separate jobs to lighten the
work-load. An off-site forum was started on Paradise, and
the online discussion was moved to
Forum
IV.
The forum was moved back to the EPO site in early 2000 (
Forum V), although it was administered independently from the main site.
Several changes of Forum Administrator occured, until it became apparent that the freedom of speech allowed
on the forum was incompatible with ensuring that the main site remained safe from any legal action.
A new forum (Forum VI)
was independently set up on Hotboards (formerly Paradise).
At the same time, Brian and Katie decided to retire as www.ex-premie.org webmasters and John Brauns, the current webmaster, agreed to take over. Jean-Michel agreed to continue to help with updating site content.
Forum VI had a short life as its owner was one of the victims of a new site, www.stopcyberstackers.com (since removed). For the full story read the CAC report.
The first version of Forum VII was also on Hotboards, but later moved to Anyboards.
In December, 2001, and again in January, 2002, the servers hosting www.ex-premie.org were subject to serious attacks by illegal uses of technology (Denial of Service attacks) that took the site off-line. After the second attack, the site was moved to a more secure service provider, and three mirror sites, were set up (ex-premie2.org, ex-premie3.org, and ex-premie4.org) to ensure that the information will stay on-line should any future attacks occur. ex-premie4.org has since been closed down, and ex-premie2.org and ex-premie3.org are redirected to ex-premie.org but are kept current in case of problems with ex-premie.org.
The current forum, the Prem Rawat Talk forum was set up in December 2005 and is managed by John Brauns and Mike Finch.
Descriptions of the forums can be found
here.
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