Of course, the damage that has been done to people's lives who abandoned potential marriage partners or got divorced in order to follow Maharaji's command, has been incalculable. Maharaji's inhuman demands upon his devotees has caused long term mental and physical illness and rather than bring peace to people, he has caused inner conflict and turmoil which has lasted for years.

Here is another quote from Maharaji, undoubtedly something that drives both he and Elan Vital nuts to see quoted, because it exposes the lies of the FAQs on the Elan Vital website.

I remember listening to Maharaji tell this story on more than one occasion. It is illustrative of a number of wonderful things that Maharaji indoctrinated his devotees with, including:

1. You must dedicate your life to Maharaji 100%, be completely focused on him and allow nothing else in your life to interfere;

2. Human relationships are just part of the 'world' and get in the way or 100% dedication, which is the purpose of your life, and are a form of 'entrappment';

3. If you move into his ashram you shouldn't ever move out, even if you fall in love and want to get married, and if you do you will be 'in a state of misery';

4. It's all Maharaji's 'grace' that 'saves' us from our own minds, which is your very own devil living inside you.

What do you think of this? God, no wonder we were all so screwed up and most premies still are. This is Maharaji around 1978:

The Premie who decided to get married

Mind lulls us away into something, but everything's here, like that example, that story of this premie who came to Guru Maharaj Ji's ashram to dedicate his life.... He moved into Guru Maharaj Ji's ashram and stayed there and he would do service every day. One day he decided he wanted to go off and get married.

And to me it's so real; Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace, saving us every moment. He went off to be married. And in the Indian marriage custom the bridegroom rides a horse to the bride's house and picks her up there. There's where the whole ceremony happens.

And Guru Maharaj Ji - all these devotees wanted to go to his marriage, too. All the brothers who were in the ashram - 'ashram mates', I guess - wanted to go there. I don't know. Probably another excuse. Nothing much. Guru Maharaj Ji was there. What's in a marriage being performed? Seeing another creature getting entrapped, perhaps.

They went off and Guru Maharaj Ji handed them a letter and said, 'Listen. Give this letter to him, but wait until just before he hops on his horse to go to the bride's house' - because that's were the final ceremony happens. 'Give this letter to him.'

And just as he was ready to ride the horse, they came and handed him the letter. 'There is a letter from Guru Maharaj Ji'.

And he was pleased. 'Oh, how fantastic. Guru Maharaj Ji remembered me.' And probably in his concepts he was thinking that Guru Maharaj Ji has probably said, 'Congratulations. Have a nice marriage,' or something like that - what he really wanted to hear, I guess.

But he opened up the letter and it didn't say that at all. What it said is you came into this world to surrender to me, to completely focus yourself on me, to completely let go to me. And now you are wearing this whole costume of a bridegroom, and are going to get entrapped into this world. You came to get away from this world and now you're going right back into this world. You came from that place of misery to an incredible satisfaction and now you're going back to misery.

And I guess it really did him in. It was 'the right place at the right time,' plus a lot of Grace from Guru Maharaj Ji. He really realized. He took his horse and headed right to the ashram. And he went there and then he really realized, he really could see.

From John H B

Brilliant Joe, how could anyone sweep this one under the carpet by saying it was part of the Eastern trip that the mahatmas brought to the west, and as we know he is still saying the same sort of stuff to the Indian premies now.

From Disculta

This was the worst part of the whole trip for me. I got married in 1976 when we were all being encouraged to leave the shram and go back into the world. Actually, I left and moved to England with my beloved, and we gradually planned our wedding, but by the time it was happening, the turn-around had already happened, and my fucking bridesmaid, while helping me with my dress and all that, was giving me satsang very similar to the letter in the story. It was extremely conflicting and weird.

Then we became full-time servants as a couple, and because of bucks had access to lots of in-crowd events, where we were subjected to these kinds of 'satsangs,' in particular the Ecknot story, which was repeated about ten thousand times during several tours. The essence of that story was that a young boy leaves his aging parents to join Guru Maharaji's ashram, and a good thing too!

I went into a level of conflict and stress that almost did me in, and simultaneously started getting really ill, and I am still dealing with this illness nearly 20 years later. I consider this to have been the mind-fuck to end all mind-fucks, and it did not help my body. There were definitely other factors, such as my pre-created tendencies and patterns, which exacerbated this conflict. However, I don't quite see how anyone could find themselves in this kind of reversal, while believing someone to be the true master, and not get really damaged. This kind of damage used to be considered some kind of spiritual initiation, but I consider it to be damage. I'm healing it, and regenerating myself. And, it is amazing how long my body is taking to unravel this particular imprint.

This is the one thing that I really hold him accountable for, in terms of damage to my life. My question to him would be, (after giving him a shor of sodium pentathol) 'What was your real motivation in closing the ashrams. What was your real motivation in reopening them, and pressuring everyone - even married people, to move back in. What was your motivation in re-closing them?' I know that the answer is that it was for his own benefit, now, and this has really helped unhinge any last spasms in my nervous system long after my mind let go of the whole thing.

Thanks for posting this, Joe.

From Joe

Yes, it was really a mind fuck that Maharaji performed on us.

Almost everyone who moved out of the ashrams in 1976 were made to feel extremely guilty by about the middle of 1977, by which point Maharaji had abandoned the 'humanitarian leader' mantle and resumed being the incarnation of God, unabated. And the people who got married were especially spat upon, because they had ruined their chances to dedicate their lives and couldn't get back into the ashram if they had kids. Well, maybe next lifetime, right! This did not stop a multitude of divorces and abandoned children, however. Such was the power Maharaji had over people.

The ashram premies got to feel smug about this. The householders were slightly pitied, because Maharaji considered us 'special.' Little did we know that not only didn't Maharaji give a crap about any of us, by 1983 he was quite willing to dump us onto the streets with no explanation whatsoever.

According to Michael Dettmers and KK, another PAM, Maharaji didn't really give closing the ashrams all that much thought. He just directed that it be done and took no responsbility for their existence nor their elimination, and especially not for the many devotees who had wasted years living in them, believing his lies that this was a life-long committment.

The reasons for closing them were that:

1. The ashram premies were aging and would likely no longer be the cash cows they had been, and since they mostly worked menial jobs, they didn't have health insurance. Increased medical costs for worthless ashram premies might cut into the funds available for Maharaji's watch collection, latest jet, and yacht, and that would never do.

2. Apparently, a stated reason was that the ashrams interferred with propagation, because they were unrelatable to most people. This is because the ashrams and the weird people in them, made it more obvious to more people that Maharaji was heading a cult. No shit, Sherlock!

Note, however, that closing the ashrams does not appear to have helped propagation much, as Maharaji had more followers then than he does how, 15 years later.

Also, something that Maharaji's insightful mind did not anticipate, was that treating thousands of his closest followers with such dismissive, uncarring, disdain, would likely result in quite a number of people who would hold a major grudge against him for the rest of his and their lives, perhaps becoming a thorn in his corpulent side.