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I've been thinking
about something ''Been There'' asked me. It was why
I feel like the way Knowledge is being presented to
aspirants is brain washing, rather than incremental
learning.
Before I got involved with M and K, I was a
seeker, and had explored other religious paths. I
had found that some Christian groups made very
emotional appeals to recruit members. They would
talk about very noble and universal feelings like
love, peace, happiness, joy. Jesus Loves You, don't
you know? And he accepts you just the way you are,
you don't have to do anything to recieve his love,
other than accept it. So simple, so nice, just like
the people telling you all about it, right?
Yeah, right.
Once they think you've chomped on the bait, then
the REAL stuff comes out: ''Now that you have
accepted God's love, you DO want to love him in
return, don't you? As evidence that you have
accepted God's love, you must now obey his word, as
told to us in the bible. And the Bible says, NONE
OF THIS, and NONE OF THAT. And you MUST DO THIS,
and MUST DO THAT (proselytize and tithe and all
that good stuff). And if you DON'T do these things,
here is all the terrible things that God's word,
the Bible, warns will await you (blashpemy of the
holy spirit, hell, damnation for eternity, etc.)''
And eternal damnation for anyone who doesn't buy
into the Belief System, including all the people in
your life that you love, who don't buy into the BS.
Gee, doesn't that make you feel filled with joy?
The more fundametalist fringe CULTS even try to
make you paranoid of non-believers and evil
spirits, and dance with poisonous snakes. Great
fun.
They would try to suck you in with all this nice
sounding, ''God Loves you and all of humanity,
isn't it great to love everyone kind of stuff'',
and then when they felt they got you hooked, they
had this harness to put on you , and the harness
was attached to a whole wagon-load of SHIT they
expected you haul, their shitty
negative-soul-destroying Belief System. YUK! No
thank you.
So I had seen through that game, when I moved to
San Francisco. I had not lived here long, before I
got a boyfriend, a good job, eveything was going
great, and WHAM! Two tons of steel fell on me, my
life went to pieces. The brush with death left me
feeling very mortal. I realized life was very
precious, and I wanted to stay with that, without
having steel beams fall on me to remind me.
So when I met these wonderful gay hippy premies,
who were so warm and nice, and learned about this
guru who could reveal to you an experience that was
already inside of you, it was too good to resist. I
HAD to find out.
But I remembered the Christian bait and switch
tactics. I wanted to be certain this was not the
same thing. I was assured it was not a religion or
a belief system, and that I could experience it for
myself. I wasn't asked to give up anything. I was
not told ''none of this, none of that''. I was even
told that I didn't have to sing Arti if I didn't
want to. I was asked to:
Keep the techinques a secret.
Give Knowledge a fair chance.
Keep in touch.
Nothing like the Knowlege Vows posted here
recently that so many of you had to take (Yikes! I
definitely got K. Lite!) I hated the idea of
keeping a secret for anyone, but I agreed. I HAD to
find out. I didn't know about DLM then, it was Elan
Vital now. I was told not to listen to old premies,
just listen to M. There were some religious things
about it all that I didn't understand or like, but
these all began falling away quite soon. It really
did seem like M. was stripping away the religion. I
learned to enjoy the meditation, and some of the
things M. would say. He would say things that I
didn't understand sometimes, or that just didn't
help or do anything for me. I would just ignore
those things.
Two things he said that impressed me greatly
were, that we shouldn't worry about propagating
Knowledge, that is what he was there for. Just
leave it all to him. That was around the time that
Premie Satsang stopped. I was rather glad that I
was not expected to proselytize, because I never
could stand the idea that I had to ''convince''
anyone of anything. Another thing he said that
really impressed me was, that he never wants to try
to talk anyone into believing anything. He said
that the day he walks out onto a stage with the
intent that he has to convince anyone of anything,
is the day he will stop talking about Knowledge. I
thought that was just great.
Over the next 20 years, I kept in touch. After
the first 3 years, I began to ''Support Maharaji's
work'' I sent a monthly check. We went to programs
occasionally, and collected some videos. We were on
the fringe, and didn't get involved the the
''organization''. There were little things here and
there, that I felt uncomfortable with, but could
not piece them together, so I just ignored them. M.
contradicted himself at times too, but as a premie
you just get used to that. If he said things that
were of no use to me, I just ignored them.
In the 1990's, the discomfort factor began to
rise. M. started refering to himself as The Master,
more and more. I had accepted a Guru, which meant
''Teacher''. M. kept emphasizing how a Master was
NOT a mere teacher, but somthing much greater. He
began quoting scripture a lot, which is something
he never used to do. In fact, when I recieved
Knowledge, the premies used to say that scriptures
were like ice cubes, frozen and dead, but the
guru's satsang was like living water, with a living
guru, you didn't NEED scriptures. Now here was M.
using scriptures. And not only that, he was using
them to authenticate himself as some kind of Master
as presented in scriptures. He often talks about
the Master in the third person.
Darshan began again, (in Amaroo), and he started
to insinuate paranoia into his satsang. Spider
webs, fish nets, beware of the world and people who
don't have this Knowledge, kind of stuff, and
constant warnings to NEVER DOUBT. I kept thinking,
''Never doubt WHAT? My breath?!?'' Beware of the
''Doubtmaker''. I did not think of my mind as an
actual ENEMY. It was, after all, MY mind. I did
begin to have doubts. I began to doubt wether or
not I had been suckered into a Bait and Switch
after all. You know, ''Here is a nice teacher who
will show you something simple inside and how to be
happy and enjoy life, and feel real love... isn't
it great? Dontcha just love it? Oops! Sorry, I
forgot to mention, he's also really GOD, he's the
MASTER, NEVER DOUBT the purity of the MASTER. He's
your Father, your Mother, your Lover and Friend,
he's your ALL to you. Don't you go through that
darshan line unless you are ready to show some
RESPECT. And sing Arti, like you MEAN it. Think of
HIM when you die, and you will recieve HIM.''
Well, I never agreed to any of THAT. I was
starting to feel betrayed, like someone was trying
to pull a fast one on me. But I didn't really
understand what was happening, or why. And since I
did have some good experiences being involved with
M and K, I kept ''accentuating the positive'', the
things I liked or could tolerate, while holding at
a distance the more uncomfortable parts.
So I clung to the ''Guru'' I had accepted many
years ago, and became well aquainted with my own
''Excusemaker''. (Master and Guru are sort of the
same thing, right? And one has to be careful about
believing everything one reads on the
internet...etc.) If you don't listen to the
Doubtmaker, the Excusemaker automatically kicks in.
I did mental backflips and contortions, till I got
more information and pieces started to fit
together. I tried to actually get involved more, to
see if I could recapture that 'old feeling' that
drew me into M and K in the first place. Getting
invovled in ''participation'' was great, because it
showed me what I was really involved with, make me
look deeper and ask more questions, and eventually
help me find my way out, by seprating what worked
for me from what did not. ''Participation'' made me
end up feeling like a resource to be exploited,
instead of a human being wanting to share
something. Where was that love that drew me into it
all in the first place?
So why do I think the aspirant process is
brainwashing, instead of learning? Because it is
deceptive. When you learn, you build up
information, and what you learn first supports what
you learn later, not contradicts it.
I was told at the begining of my 'journey' with
M. that this Knowledge was common to every human
being, and that the guru simply reveals it to you
by showing you some simple techniques. Premie
Satsang often made me feel closer to people, ALL
people. It seemed to be about something that was
common and Universal to all people.
NOW, the story is that this Knowledge is his
''GIFT' and can only come from him, and will only
work WITH HIM. So, what had once been something
that was common to every human being, and had
actually made me feel closer to humanity, was now
somthing in M's private domain, to be witheld and
kept secret. So much for humanity, in fact, they
are the ENEMY, because they might make you doubt
the high mucky-muck powers of the Master. I began
to feel restricted, that I could no longer just
feel free to love people, because there was now
this belief system in the way. Deja-vu the
Fundamentalist Christian experience.
Current Aspirants are being fed Knowledge Lite.
That is the bait. Once you are in the asprirant
process pipeline, you are put through a process of
trying to convince you that M. is an essential
ingredient to your happiness. The distinction
between teacher and Master is blurred, then the
''Teacher'' is switched for the Master, and then
there is a wagon load of shit and a harness to pull
it with waiting for you, once you have been
''convinced'' that M. is the Master, with whom you
cannot do without.
M. lied about not wanting to convince people. He
tries to hook peoples emotions, and use that as a
handle to manipulate them. It's training to get
people to trust their emotions to the point of
excluding their reasoning minds, so they accept M's
contradictions. ''The words don't matter, it's That
Feeling that is important.'' Once you're in that
space, it's easier to buy into the Master concept,
while believing you have no concepts at all. And
once you are in that space, that dependency, you
are much easier to manipulate.
I doubt this is very effective nowadays, I think
most aspirants see through it eventually, which is
why the drop-out rate is so high. I think they are
curious as to what the Knowledge is, they may even
like it when they get it, but M. himself is so
boring, they drift away afterwards, especially as
it becomes so expensive to ''Keep in Touch'', and
the cult-like aspects become difficult to ignore.
And especially if they learn about the history
behind it all, and that the secret techniques are
Yoga that is freely given by many teachers.
So in short, it WAS ''Bait and Switch'' after
all. I liked the Bait a lot better than the Switch.
M. really IS trying to convince people that he is
the MASTER, to be idolized and worshiped, and he
uses paranoia to hold people under his spell, just
like so many other megalomania cult leaders before
him. He lied and is lying, and it sucks.
That is why I see it as brainwashing, and that
is why I left. It was not what I was led to believe
it was. I am not a resource to be exploited. He
doesn't even know my name, and he doesn't WANT to
know. Fine. I want no part of it. The truth about
anything doesn't need defending, it simply holds up
to scutiny, because it is true. It doesn't have to
hide behind smart cards, secret finances or a
sincere but misguided premie with a terminal
illness, like M. does.
More than angry, I just feel dissapointed and
embarassed. Really embarassed.
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