Forum V: Archive
Compiled: Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 23:24:11 (GMT)
From: Jul 06, 2001 To: Jul 15, 2001 Page: 1 Of: 5


Forum 5 Admin -:- Forum 5 closed - Forum 6 now live -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 19:39:07 (GMT)

suchabanana -:- here's another spiritual empire builder...deja vu -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:28:45 (GMT)
__ such -:- Tomorrow, Day 2: Seduced by the guru....deja vu -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:33:31 (GMT)

Tim G -:- What's come over ye? -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:15:57 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- What's come over ye? -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:38:49 (GMT)
__ JHB -:- What's come over ye? -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:27:49 (GMT)
__ __ Tim G -:- What's come over ye? -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:31:47 (GMT)

AJW -:- I'm having second thoughts. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:20:52 (GMT)
__ Brian Smith -:- just one question for you anth -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 05:53:41 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- At last a topic to engage my interest. -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:13:56 (GMT)
__ Salam -:- I'm having second thoughts. -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 03:30:56 (GMT)
__ silvia -:- you have to kidding, aren't you? -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 03:23:53 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- yes silvia, I'm kidding. -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 11:47:39 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- Will you be teaching M's grandchildren, Anth? -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 21:16:50 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- No, I quit. (ot) -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 11:50:51 (GMT)
__ __ __ Richard -:- No, I quit. (ot) -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 14:43:41 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Good entertaining Saturday Post, Anth........./nt -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 20:55:59 (GMT)
__ Francesca -:- Having second thought on bantering you -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:18:49 (GMT)
__ __ MrT -:- be warned, Anth -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 23:37:32 (GMT)
__ __ __ Francesca -:- That be me -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:09:54 (GMT)
__ JHB -:- I'm having second thoughts on banning you -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:05:59 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- John, -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:13:12 (GMT)
__ Marianne -:- The Mad Mexican is en route -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:22:28 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- The Mad Mexican is en route -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:55:24 (GMT)
__ Jethro -:- I'm knew you were a plant. NT -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:34:32 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- I'm a mammal and I can prove it. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:48:06 (GMT)
__ __ Steve Quint -:- He's Driven By Plants nt -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:41:05 (GMT)
__ __ __ AJW -:- No, it's Privet by Dante Steve. (nt) -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 11:54:53 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Steve Quint -:- Thanks For The Vocabulearn, Anth -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 15:57:42 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Steve Quint -:- Speaking Of Poetry, Anth... -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 16:20:36 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Steve Quint -:- One More For Now -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 16:23:42 (GMT)
__ Abi -:- Oh, not you too! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:55:32 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- All I want is to be on the winning side. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:52:13 (GMT)
__ __ __ PatC -:- You mean the whining side, Anth -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:09:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ Abi -:- Ivan is on his way. Too late! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:08:11 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ AJW -:- Ivan the terrible. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:21:55 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Abi -:- Art and drugs -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:45:10 (GMT)
__ Sir Dave -:- I'm having second thoughts. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:55:21 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- You don't fool me Sir Dave. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:01:58 (GMT)
__ __ __ Sir Dave -:- You missed a fierce battle -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:09:18 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ AJW -:- Hmmmn. -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:03:12 (GMT)
__ __ __ JHB -:- You don't fool me Sir Dave. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:10:06 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ CD -:- You don't say -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:59:15 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ JHB -:- Hey Chris, I'm honored! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:14:42 (GMT)
__ Steve Quint -:- I'm Happy For You Anth -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:44:21 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- Thought you were still in prison Steve. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:10:35 (GMT)
__ Michael Read -:- I'm having second thoughts. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:58:33 (GMT)
__ __ AJW -:- The battle for my soul. -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:06:17 (GMT)
__ __ __ Michael Read -:- channeling god -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 12:40:19 (GMT)
__ __ bill -:- Not all second thoughts are worth it -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 13:23:09 (GMT)
__ __ __ Michael Read -:- hey, Bill, it's a trick -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 12:57:42 (GMT)

Professional Eye Guy -:- To all FA's and page owners (Katie, Brian, all) -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:14:31 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Question for you -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:26:09 (GMT)
__ Katie -:- Maybe you ought read details of ex-Mormon case -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:20:20 (GMT)
__ __ Deborha -:- Hi, How are you today? -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:38:03 (GMT)
__ __ Selene (SF) -:- why they need anonymity -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:04:36 (GMT)
__ __ Francesca -:- Right on Katie!!! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:32:06 (GMT)
__ __ __ Katie -:- Deborah, Selene, Francesca (sorta ot) -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:37:30 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Selene -:- online too much -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 02:31:58 (GMT)
__ __ P-E-G -:- Lighten up, please -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:38:12 (GMT)
__ __ __ Katie -:- Headbiting vs the tone of your post -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:26:48 (GMT)
__ __ __ Ian Dury -:- Lighten up, please -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:00:38 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ HL -:- It's probably Rob (nt) -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 00:05:10 (GMT)
__ AJW -:- You're an American right? -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:28:15 (GMT)
__ __ Abi -:- NY or Texas -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:44:37 (GMT)
__ SF -:- Utah sucks - hey is that on record? -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:36:05 (GMT)
__ __ SG -:- ok I contradicted meself -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:54:36 (GMT)
__ JHB -:- Hey PEG! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:31:32 (GMT)

Jeffrey Donner -:- A Metaphor -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 21:55:10 (GMT)
__ Lesley -:- gross individualism??????? -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:42:02 (GMT)
__ AJW -:- Hi Jeff' -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:30:45 (GMT)
__ __ michael donner -:- Hi Jeff' -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:07:20 (GMT)
__ __ __ AJW -:- No Mike, -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:20:38 (GMT)
__ Jerry -:- A Metaphor -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 02:07:14 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- Welcome -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 01:16:57 (GMT)
__ __ Jeffrey Donner -:- Welcome -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:46:32 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Amazing Grace!......This is a KEEPER! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 00:50:48 (GMT)
__ Mark N -:- Sorry to nitpick your fine message -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 00:48:59 (GMT)
__ __ Jeffrey Donner -:- Sorry to nitpick your fine message -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 20:52:56 (GMT)
__ __ __ Mark N -:- I really like what you say about......... -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 08:53:04 (GMT)
__ __ __ Jerry -:- Let me nitpick -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:52:59 (GMT)
__ __ __ Mark N -:- ah - I see your point ........buuuut -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 00:28:15 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ bill -:- There is Larry the cook to consider -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 02:00:02 (GMT)
__ Tony -:- I was an altar boy. -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:42:34 (GMT)
__ Katie -:- Thank you, Jeffrey **BEST OF FORUM** nomination -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:29:00 (GMT)
__ __ Helen -:- Thank you, Jeffrey **BEST OF FORUM** nomination -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:42:07 (GMT)
__ __ __ Jerry -:- 2000 years from now -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 02:24:54 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Katie -:- Good grief, Jerry! -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 04:53:58 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Jerry -:- The end is nigh, Katie -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:43:52 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Katie -:- The end is nigh, Katie -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:50:52 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Helen -:- 2000 years from now -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 04:42:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Deborah -:- less than 200 yrs. from now -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 20:50:41 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Jerry -:- 2000 years from now -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:51:43 (GMT)
__ Joe -:- A Metaphor -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 22:59:45 (GMT)
__ __ Jeffrey Donner -:- A Metaphor -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:57:41 (GMT)
__ __ Henry -:- A.A. does have a philosophy -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 04:46:45 (GMT)

Joe -:- It Ain't So response from Owen Plant -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 21:36:09 (GMT)
__ Ian Dury -:- By the way, Joe, -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:27:05 (GMT)

Steve Quint -:- Knowlede And Fun -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:29:00 (GMT)
__ Steve Quint -:- Knowlede And Fun And Vive La France -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:31:57 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- So did you memorize the number?............./nt -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:41:59 (GMT)
__ __ Steve Quint -:- Yeah -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 18:30:09 (GMT)

Francesca -:- A real case of Internet shenanagins -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:25:17 (GMT)

Dermot -:- Jerry,Pat,Katie,Glassner, uncle tom cobbly and ALL -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:17:47 (GMT)
__ Katie -:- Just a wild guess, Dermot -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:22:09 (GMT)
__ __ Deborah -:- Katie, unless there is more than one Carlos... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:03:33 (GMT)
__ __ __ Katie -:- There's only one -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:06:58 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Deborah -:- Here's excerpt from post by Jim. Read Carlos' name -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 18:52:42 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ bill-Jim TRIED to evoke -:- this stuff out of people. We dont want it anymore. -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 19:15:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Deborah -:- Sorry chump, this was a continued dialogue w/katie -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 20:11:00 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Katie -:- Deb, please listen -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 20:57:30 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Deborah -:- Katie, in regards to CW's neg. twist re: Carlos -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 01:55:13 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Katie -:- Deb, I can't follow this whole thing -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 03:00:33 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Deborah -:- Allow me to help you straighten this out -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:09:13 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Katie -:- Appreciate it Deborah -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:22:29 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ JohnT -:- Allow me to help you straighten this out -:- Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:01:42 (GMT)
__ __ Katie -:- And PS Dermot -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:23:41 (GMT)

Two Feet -:- A BIG Thankyou... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 13:52:37 (GMT)
__ Henry -:- Eloquent post, Two Feet. thank you! (nt) -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:04:01 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- And thank YOU Two Feet -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 18:58:04 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Really enjoying your posts, Bon Vacance.../nt -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:25:25 (GMT)
__ michael donner -:- A BIG Thankyou... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:13:01 (GMT)
__ __ Mercedes -:- A BIG Thankyou... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:39:08 (GMT)
__ __ __ Disculta -:- A BIG Thankyou... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:49:50 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Lesley -:- Two feet down and planted -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 20:15:59 (GMT)

wolfie -:- Mainz was unbelievebale....Bing Bam Boom. part II -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 12:38:13 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- Believable insights part II -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 19:14:00 (GMT)
__ la-ex -:- Thanks. also,anyone have that video? -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:18:18 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Mainz WAS unbelievebale..but Your post IS better -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:58:21 (GMT)
__ michael donner -:- Mainz was unbelievebale....Bing Bam Boom. part II -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:11:39 (GMT)
__ Joe -:- Thanks for those insights -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:56:40 (GMT)
__ __ Mercedes -:- Thanks for those insights -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:00:16 (GMT)
__ __ Disculta -:- Thanks Wolfie... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:58:28 (GMT)
__ __ __ Mercedes -:- Thanks Wolfie... -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:05:16 (GMT)

Marianne -:- Dissent, Destruction and Reformation -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:03:30 (GMT)
__ Joe -:- Dissent, Destruction and Reformation -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:07:06 (GMT)
__ Abi -:- Agree, well said Marianne nt -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 09:09:50 (GMT)
__ Loaf -:- Dissent, Destruction and Reformation -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 07:05:59 (GMT)
__ __ Jerry -:- Dissent, Destruction and Reformation -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:41:06 (GMT)
__ Selene -:- isn't hindsight great? -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:20:16 (GMT)
__ __ Marianne -:- isn't hindsight great? -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:31:53 (GMT)
__ __ __ Selene -:- haha good one Marianne -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:32:57 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Marianne -:- haha good one Marianne -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:34:25 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Selene -:- thanks Marianne that is sweet -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:38:17 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Marianne -:- Real life and death struggles -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:44:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ PatC -:- Real life and death struggles - thanks, Marianne -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 07:32:53 (GMT)

bill -:- Chuck's post from AG -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 04:09:50 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Chuck's post from AG -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:19:17 (GMT)

bill -:- Jim -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 23:26:23 (GMT)

Steve Quint -:- Margie And Knowledge -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:47:18 (GMT)
__ such -:- er, like, it's cheat and receipt... (nt -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 03:01:05 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Margie and the bastardized version of Knowledge -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:02:15 (GMT)
__ __ Exited -:- Guru As Lord -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 03:36:32 (GMT)
__ __ __ Deborah -:- Guru As Lord, or was that LORD as GURU -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:31:24 (GMT)
__ __ Disculta -:- Margie and the bastardized version of Knowledge -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:17:35 (GMT)
__ __ __ Deborah -:- No Disculta: You just CHANGED his diapers :}.../nt -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 02:13:40 (GMT)
__ Gregg -:- Our Beloved Marjoe...um, I mean Maharaji -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 23:15:09 (GMT)
__ __ Joey -:- Our Beloved Marjoe...um, I mean Maharaji -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:17:27 (GMT)
__ __ __ Deborah -:- '...and a little child shall lead them...' -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 03:06:02 (GMT)
__ __ Deborah -:- Good question! -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:10:14 (GMT)
__ Disculta -:- Thanks for stimulating our thoughts, lovely SQ nt -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:53:35 (GMT)

Sir Dave -:- Forum 6 and blocking software -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:20:58 (GMT)
__ Deborah -:- Forum 6 and blocking software -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:14:03 (GMT)
__ __ Sir Dave -:- See all the different forums here -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 02:14:39 (GMT)
__ __ __ Deborah -:- Oh I like that feature............../nt -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 02:19:17 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- Here's a complete package -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:15:08 (GMT)
__ __ Sir Dave -:- The conclusions I've reached -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 00:33:31 (GMT)
__ __ gErRy -:- Let's go for it! -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:29:49 (GMT)
__ Selene -:- Forum 6 and blocking software -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:37:25 (GMT)
__ __ first -:- can use your own prgrms at HtBrds maybe not -nt -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:31:55 (GMT)
__ __ __ Selene -:- huh? -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:39:18 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Wm -:- Hot Board Admin msg -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 21:31:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ SF -:- thanks Wm that helps -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:56:26 (GMT)
__ gerry -:- Shhhh, Dave -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:32:15 (GMT)
__ __ Sir Dave -:- I can see why it can't be done -:- Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 00:43:22 (GMT)

Steve Quint -:- Choosing A Guru/Master -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 17:18:23 (GMT)
__ Joey -:- history of m 101 -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 19:10:09 (GMT)
__ __ Joey -:- here's how Mishler put it. -:- Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 19:31:55 (GMT)
__ __ __ Henry -:- Thanks Joey for the info. (nt) -:- Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:08:26 (GMT)


Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 19:39:07 (GMT)
From: Forum 5 Admin
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Forum 5 closed - Forum 6 now live
Message:
Forum 5 is now closed for posting. Forum 6 is now live.

Forum 5 will remain here for read only for two days, and will then be archived. Forum 6 posts will continue to be archived on EPO.

Sir Dave has agreed to manage Forum 6 although he will be assisted in day to day administration by anonymous FAs. Of course, the administration of Forum 6 will reflect Sir Dave's style. In particular, no current bans will be carried over to Forum 6.

Forum 6 can be found at here Forum 6

I will be retiring from forum administration. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported me while I have been doing this job, and also all those who have criticised me. The open expression of this forum has always been stimulating and challenging:-)

John Brauns

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:28:45 (GMT)
From: suchabanana
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: here's another spiritual empire builder...deja vu
Message:
found this article on the net today -- cut and paste the link and click go:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/guru_day1.frame

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:33:31 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: suchabanana
Subject: Tomorrow, Day 2: Seduced by the guru....deja vu
Message:
Securing a spiritual empire
From Indiana to a Portland manor, Swami Chetanananda, once named J. Michael Shoemaker, has attracted educated people as followers, but dozens of ex-disciples accuse the guru of financial, sexual and spiritual abuse
Sunday, July 15, 2001

------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Richard Read of The Oregonian staff
An architect, a computer science professor and a doctor gather with friends on a sun-dappled evening in a brick manor in Portland's leafy Kerns district.
For them the stately 1910 manse radiates a benevolent calm that belies its location just steps from a seedy stretch of Northeast Sandy Boulevard, where a Jiffy Lube screens the house from passers-by.
Inside the building lives their teacher, Swami Chetanananda, a 52-year-old self-styled spiritual leader. A heavyset, shaven-headed man draped in orange cloth, the Kentucky-born guru claims to transmit a divine energy so powerful it can knock over a disciple or provoke shrieks of ecstasy.
The sprawling Gothic structure houses about 75 devotees of the swami -- raised Catholic in Indiana as J. Michael Shoemaker -- many of whom hold respected jobs ranging from lawyers to business managers.
The swami's followers also run a yoga school, The Movement Center, that offers classes to hundreds of members of the public, ranging from professionals to expectant mothers. Sometimes, yoga students go on to meditate and become disciples.
Yet periodically, traumatized people emerge from the gated compound of the Rudrananda Ashram, or spiritual center, saying they surrendered their hearts, minds and souls at the behest of the swami. In return, ex-members say, the swami abused them and other followers sexually, spiritually and financially, from the 1970s to the present.
During the past three years, former disciples of Chetanananda slowly have summoned courage to describe their experiences. The Oregonian interviewed 54 former followers and 14 current members of the Nityananda Institute, the tax-exempt religious organization that runs the Portland church.
The former followers of Chetanananda -- pronounced chay-tahna-NAHnda --include a 44-year-old owner of a Massachusetts sheet-metal company and a 75-year-old healer from India. A New Mexico chiropractor, a Portland psychiatrist, a Tennessee homemaker and a Boston cook also came forward to tell their stories.
Many of these former followers say Chetanananda controlled their lives and threatened people who tried to leave him, inflicting severe psychological and spiritual damage. One woman says he persuaded her to give him more than $400,000 that vanished in failed investments. Eleven ex-disciples say that despite his proclaimed vow of celibacy he had sex with them -- sometimes violently. They say their awe of him as a spiritual being, father figure, teacher and counselor left them incapable of true consent.
Chetanananda repeatedly refused requests for an interview. Last Thursday, he sent The Oregonian a five-page typed statement in response to a letter summarizing the allegations.
'I have never abused any women or children or men,' Chetanananda wrote. 'I have never threatened any person who wanted to leave our community. I have never coerced anyone, period.'
Chetanananda wrote that he long ago renounced his vow of celibacy and has had sexual relationships with mature, consenting adult women over the past 30 years. He said his conduct was appropriate in his community. He denied trying to control his students and said they were free to come and go.
'I find it incomprehensible that people could say these things,' Chetanananda said. 'It breaks my heart.'
Alexis Sanderson, a professor of Eastern religions and ethics at Oxford University in England who has lectured at Chetanananda's ashram, says the swami is a 'generous-hearted and pleasant individual' who leads an open and tolerant group. 'Accusations of sexual malpractice are the standard way of attacking religious practitioners,' Sanderson says.
Like the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose followers built a Central Oregon commune during the 1980s, the swami appeals to educated people from middle- or upper-class backgrounds who yearn for deeper meaning in life. Unlike the Rajneeshees, who perpetrated assassination attempts, poisonings, buggings and fraud, the guru and his followers are not accused of such crimes.
Kent Burtner, who directed the former Cult Resource Center in Portland, has counseled several former disciples of Chetanananda. Burtner says the swami's organization exemplifies the kind of smaller group that is becoming more prevalent than the large organizations that once publicly recruited members at airports and bus stations. Sociologists, therapists and authorities on cults say smaller groups can recruit more dedicated members privately through yoga and meditation classes, for example.
City records show that the swami's followers have held top positions on the Kerns Neighborhood Association board since 1994, when Sharon Ward -- the institute's executive director and the guru's sister-in-law -- began her first term as chairwoman. Nine other disciples have held elected positions on the board in the neighborhood of about 5,500 residents.
Inside the big house off Sandy on that sun-mottled evening, the architect, the professor and the doctor enter a meditation hall with other followers.
Devotees prostrate themselves toward Chetanananda's empty, spotlit couch. They chant together. The guru's languid, disembodied voice addresses them through ceiling speakers.
The practice isn't always easy, says the swami's recorded voice. You must bring your attention inside.
The disciples fall silent. The sound system hisses, then clicks off. The only reminder of the sunny day outside is the faint rumble of traffic on Sandy Boulevard.
'I graduated from Connersville High School. . . . My favorite hobby was the hereafter test -- that's when you take a girl out in the country on Friday night and say: 'Honey, if you're not here after what I'm here after, then you're going to be here after I'm gone.' '
-- Michael Shoemaker, Indiana Daily Student article, July 25, 1975.
Michael Shoemaker, an Indiana University dropout, changed his life forever when he walked into an Asian-art store in New York in 1971.
Years later he would repeatedly enthrall his followers with his own life tale: In those days Shoemaker was a seeker himself. The cocky 22-year-old with wavy dark hair was a former football player and swimmer powerful enough to boast of winning barroom scraps.
The son of a pharmacist and a nurse, both devout Catholics, he studied yoga in Bloomington, Ind. Someone gave him a photograph of guru Albert Rudolph and the address of his Greenwich Village art and antiques shop.
Shoemaker introduced himself to Rudolph, a plump man with gentle brown eyes set below bushy eyebrows and a bald pate.
'I looked at him, and I felt my heart shatter into a thousand pieces,' Shoemaker said during a 1997 lecture. 'From that moment on, I never had one second's doubt about the power of the experience into which I had entered.'
At 42, Rudolph prospered from importing antique Asian religious statues and paintings. The Brooklyn-born son of Jewish immigrants welcomed a constant stream of spiritual seekers to his store and home. They knew Rudolph as Swami Rudrananda.
Rudi, as he was nicknamed, traced his lineage of enlightenment to the late Bhagawan Nityananda, an Indian guru whose name means 'eternal bliss' in Hindi.
Shoemaker moved for six months into Rudi's ashram, in Big Indian, N.Y. There, as many as 200 disciples labored on weekends to refurbish two ramshackle hotels the art dealer owned in the Catskill Mountains town. Members of the ashram's full-time community of about 50 people opened a bakery, a restaurant named Rudi's, a construction company and an advertising agency.
Shoemaker returned to Bloomington in August 1971 to begin a satellite ashram for Rudi. Before he left New York, the budding spiritual leader raised an awkward subject with his mentor.
'I said to him, 'Rudi, I'll need some money to do this,' ' Chetanananda said during the 1997 lecture. 'And Rudi looked at me and smiled and said, 'Michael, any schmuck can do it with money.' '
* * * * * * *
Shoemaker, it turned out, was no schmuck.
Rudi died two years later in the crash of a plane piloted by a disciple. Former disciples of Rudi's say Shoemaker beat out rivals for the title of successor. By the late 1970s, the kid from Connersville, Ind., who told disciples he once aspired to be a Catholic priest, had built a spiritual empire.
Bloomington's newspaper, then called The Herald-Telephone, ran prominent stories at the time about Shoemaker, reporting that he held majority shares in the Rudi Group, Inc. The stories said the corporation included five bakeries called Rudi's and the Tao Restaurant, a natural-foods eatery that moved Bloomington beyond chicken-fried-steak fare.
Shoemaker headed the Rudrananda Ashram and a related foundation, both tax-exempt organizations, the newspaper said. And he owned an antique store, Rudra Oriental Art, the paper said.
More than 100 followers inhabited five houses in Bloomington. Shoemaker claimed hundreds more students nationwide, with ashrams spread from Massachusetts to Ohio, Michigan and Colorado.
In 1978, an Indian guru named Swami Muktananda initiated Shoemaker as a swami, as Hindu spiritual masters are called. He went through a ritual in India, to be reborn as Swami Chetanananda. The Hindi name is translated as 'the bliss of pure self-awareness.'
Disciples say Chetanananda told them he was initiated as a sannyasi, which -- as he said, and experts agree -- is a spiritual master who abandons all worldly desires. Eastern religions scholars say these desires include wealth, status and sexual gratification.
* * * * *
Some people came to the guru after Western religions failed them.
Ruth Knight, who as a girl ducked out of the family pew in Catholic church, says she wanted more out of life than a small-town Midwestern existence. Knight sat up and listened one spring day in 1978 when an Indiana University psychology professor urged his students to leave Fort Wayne and do something significant.
She moved to Bloomington. One day Knight attended one of Chetanananda's retreats. She clutched flowers in a sweaty hand while lining up in 'darshan,' a ceremony in which the swami greeted disciples individually in front of a room full of followers facing him cross-legged on cushions.
Knight was so nervous that she said in a 1986 talk that she couldn't remember handing the swami her flowers or receiving his gift, usually a piece of sweet food that he blessed. But she vividly recalled the reassuring look she received from Swamiji, as she called him, using a respectful title disciples describe as a term of affection.
'It became clear that I wasn't the shy person I thought I was,' Knight, who is still a devout follower of the swami in Portland, said during the talk. 'It is said that simply to sit in the presence of a teacher brings great benefit, and judging from stories about Nityananda and from our own experiences with Swamiji, that is true.'
For Knight, meditation felt completely natural, a way to explore the depths of her soul. She dropped out of college and ran the ashram's kitchen.
* * * * * * * *
Others came to the guru shattered by trauma. They had endured incest or other sexual abuse, illness or injury, suicidal tendencies or drug use, the death of a parent or divorce.
Gunner Anderson says he was a college dropout, depressed, confused and doing drugs, in 1974 when he heard Michael Shoemaker speak at the Ann Arbor, Mich., ashram.
Shoemaker quoted Rudi. Life is a s--t sandwich, he said. But you don't have to eat it.
A year later, Anderson reached his lowest point. Then he remembered Rudi's sandwich.
Anderson moved into the ashram.
Shoemaker taught Rudi's breathing techniques, designed to draw divine energy into the body. He told students to 'surrender' the mind, shedding thoughts and emotions so that dormant energy coiled at the base of the spine could rise and eventually bring enlightenment. The energy, recognized in yoga and tantric teachings and known as kundalini, may be awakened by a guru's word, touch, look, thought.
'The force enters between the eyes of the student as he sits before his teacher,' Rudi wrote in his book, 'Spiritual Cannibalism,' published in 1973. 'It works down through his chest, into his sex organs, then up the spinal column.'
Anderson says he stopped doing drugs. He took Shoemaker's advice and returned to complete his architecture degree and attend graduate school. He started a design business.
By 1978, Anderson sat each day at 6:30 p.m. in the meditation room of the Ann Arbor ashram, a former fraternity house, gazing at towering oak trees outside. He took his attention deep inside. Tension began to melt away.
Sometimes the meditation frightened Anderson, it was so intense. At other times his heart, which felt leaden like a rock, began opening with an incredible, euphoric sensation.
People talked about love and sang about it, but he says he felt love actually surge through him. He couldn't explain it to people who had not tried meditation.
Years later, he left the swami, feeling that the spiritual practice had drifted from its Hindu roots and become institutional.
Still, Anderson says, the ashram probably saved his life.
* * * * *
Former followers say that Swami Chetanananda demanded obedience.
A 47-year-old marketing executive says she recalls every detail of an encounter with the guru in 1978 that changed her life. The former disciple spoke on condition that her name be withheld, because she still feels she could be drawn back into the group if members knew how to find her.
Back then, she was a college student from a small-town working-class family. She approached the guru's elevated chair in the dining room of his Bloomington ashram as disciples finished eating. Large air-brushed paintings of Rudi and Nityananda loomed above rich Oriental carpets.
The swami listened to her attentively, his smooth brow furrowed below a shaven scalp.
She was learning to surrender. She gave him her complete trust. He held that power over a growing number of disciples, who would gladly take his word on which colors to wear, whom to date and what career to launch.
The woman told him about the break-up with her boyfriend, her abortion and her loneliness. She felt vulnerable and lacked direction. But she was excited to be departing on a college year abroad, and relieved to find someone who could make decisions for her.
Shoemaker paused, she recalls.
No, he said. You should stay here.
The woman left the room and canceled the trip.
She says that Chetanananda told her not to date anyone, and to focus on her spiritual work. She says that later he orchestrated her marriage to a fellow devotee and conducted the ceremony, as he did with other marriages between disciples.
The swami now says: 'I have never conducted a fraudulent marriage ceremony.' He also says that while he has occasionally given advice, he has never forbidden anyone from doing anything..
The woman says she didn't hesitate to do his bidding. Any doubts, she felt, were mere expressions of ego.
* * * * * *
But some relatives and friends saw their loved ones' transformation differently.
Lawrence Eyink, a Cincinnati building contractor and ex-Marine, and his wife, Mary, a former teacher, told reporters in 1979 that their 24-year-old son had been brilliant, a top runner and vice president of his high school senior class, before joining the swami's group.
The couple said that four years before, Dan Eyink had dropped out of college, moved into the Cincinnati ashram and begun working as a dishwasher. He had cut himself off from his family and former friends, they said, calling home for money and cursing out his mother.
'It seemed like his eyes were dead,' Lawrence Eyink told a reporter. 'He had a mechanical smile.'
Family members had abducted Eyink in 1978, but he escaped. So the couple got a court order granting them temporary guardianship over their son.
Three men helped family members grab Eyink again late on March 15, 1979, as he left work as head chef at Cincinnati's Mecklenburg Garden Restaurant, an ashram-linked business.
But ashram leaders fought the parents in court. Headlines turned ugly.
'Fear Backdrop in Cult's Fight for Ex-Member,' the Pittsburgh Press said. 'Cult Case 'Captive' Freed by Judge,' said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Eyink, now a Portland doctor who says he still sometimes attends classes in the big, brick manor, was allowed to return to the ashram.
'In terms of the audience for Eastern spirituality, there's no one like me. I will automatically become the dean of Eastern spiritual figures on the East Coast.' -- Chetanananda, quoted in Bloomington's Herald-Telephone, Dec. 13, 1981.
Some followers grew disenchanted. Craig Benson, a student of Rudi's who had moved with his wife into the Bloomington ashram in 1976, said years later he felt Shoemaker's initiation as a swami had been a mistake.
'I don't mind if someone says, 'I am God, and so are you,' ' said Benson, who quit the ashram in the early 1980s after he says meditation sessions turned into lengthy devotional chants. 'But when they say, 'I am God, and you're not,' that indicates a spiritual limitation that I do not agree with.'
Chetanananda told followers that he longed to move from the college town to a place where he could make a national mark.
By 1982, Chetanananda decided on Massachusetts.
'What surrender means is that you open yourself deeply: that you suspend your feelings of fear, resistance, doubt and misunderstanding. . . . In this way you become a manifestation of the teaching.' -- Chetanananda, spring 1982 issue of Rudra, an ashram publication.
Tomorrow, Day 2: Seduced by the guru.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:15:57 (GMT)
From: Tim G
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: What's come over ye?
Message:
Dear contributors
I've been attendiong to other business but looked in a coupla times over the last few weeks and find most of the posts either incomprehensible, offensive personal squabbles or off topic.
What's come over Ye?
This used to be a useful free for all about the demerits of the cult with occasional skirmishes with premie visitors, also a mine of insider insights into the bankruptcy of the cult.
What is it now?

Maybe I've lived too long in the country.
Love
Tim

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:38:49 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: Tim G
Subject: What's come over ye?
Message:
You are fortunate to have missed the debacle. Many of us who really enjoy on topic discussion have been wondering the same as you: what is it now. Or, more specifically, what is it to become?

I, for one, do sincerely hope that what we are seeing here is the last bit of smouldering ruin of the meltdown of Forum 5. As bizarre as it was, at the very least it proves we are human beings and not one-dimensional cardboard characters like the anti-ex sites are populated with. Once people get used to what went down and move forward, we can once again create a dynamic place of exchange, humor and collaboration. Sir Dave has set up a parallel Forum Forum 6 that, at this point, strives to replace Forum 5 and it's reliance on EPO.

Richard

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:27:49 (GMT)
From: JHB
Email: None
To: Tim G
Subject: What's come over ye?
Message:
Don't worry, Tim. Peace is returning. Forum5 will be closing soon and Forum6 will take its place, independent of the EPO website. But no doubt people will still find things to argue about, but hopefully it won't get too personal for a while:-)

John the retiring FA.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 18:31:47 (GMT)
From: Tim G
Email: None
To: JHB
Subject: What's come over ye?
Message:
Thanx John
That's good news at least.
Hope those wide open spaces are inspiring.
From one paradise to another (geographically speaking)
Best
Tim
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:20:52 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: I'm having second thoughts.
Message:
Hi Everyone,

I thought I should let you all know I'm having second thoughts about quitting Knowledge and the Captain.

I should have seen it coming when Jim got zapped when he went through the darshan line in Amaroo, dressed in drag. (I assure you his present predicament is merely a consequence of the 'bolt of grace' that struck him when he confronted the Captain on his throne.)

And then there's the bold of lightning that struck my computer recently, blowing it up and rendering me offline and incommunicado. (If a bolt of lightning isn't an 'Act of God', then what is.)

And finally, when I get online again, I discover that the Forum Administration structure has collapsed, and the POWER is now in the hands of the raving loony, Anarchist recluse, subversive, cyber-nut-aristocrat, who ate too much lead in his game before he became a vegi-, Sir Dave. Catweazle would be a safer pair of hands. Surely the end is nigh and the enemies of the Lord are shaking under their duvets.

Surely the Lord has made his move- for yeah, not a worm farts without his will.

Anyway, all these so obviously cosmically connected events made me sit down and think again. I decided to do the rational thing, and practice with an open mind- just to see what would happen.

Well- first I felt this incredible peace welling up inside me. All my thoughts seemed to stop. Then my inner being started to glow to the extent that I was first surrounded by, then became one with a light that is not a light, yet more than a light, brighter than a thousand suns, and yet glinting in the eye of a new born baby.

Then from this light emerged Captain Rawat, wearing his pilot's uniform and carrying a bag of Duty Free cognac. It was as if he was at the very centre of creation.

The he spoke, 'Anth, once you were one of my favoured children, but you betrayed me. Before I cast you down to hell, to become decorations for Kali's party dress, I am offering you a final chance of redemption. Jim took it. Now it's your turn. Get out your standing order form, and authorise regular monthly payments of £50.00, or you will burn in hell for eternity. This is your last chance. Next time it won't just be your power supply and modem that gets blown.'

Well, I can take a hint. I went to the village and borrowed a photo of the Captain. You know, he doesn't look so bad after all. If he lost a bit of weight, cut down on the cigarettes.

Anyway, I'm feeling more peaceful than I've done for ages.

I'm thinking of checking out the local video next week.

I'd just like all my ex-premie friends to know that I still want to be friends, no matter what happens.

Anth, blinded on the road to the Damascus Arms.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 05:53:41 (GMT)
From: Brian Smith
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: just one question for you anth
Message:
Where do you get your olive oil? You simply can't trust those pagens down at the local market you know. They will sell you anything under the pretence of extra virgin.

Brian the ex-scrumpy drinker no stranger to a good flashback

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:13:56 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Brian Smith
Subject: At last a topic to engage my interest.
Message:
I've been waiting for ages for someone to ask me that Brian.

At the moment we;re buying Spanish olive oil from a couple of folk who import it directly from Spain, where they have relatives. They have a wide variety of excellent Spanish oils at reasonable prices. They do an organic oil too. I'm sure they won't mind me putting up their details.

Green2Gold Olive Oils, Redferns, Brentor, Devon PL19 OLR.

WWW.GREEN2GOLD.COM

Email, oils@green2gold.com

However, my favorite olive oil is Tuscan. I've got a pal with an olive grove in Tuscany, and hope to go and help him harvest his olives again this autumn. Last time I brought back 15 litres, which lasted us just over a year. They gave me a free seat on the plane for the can.

Tuscan olives are much smaller than the Spanish and Greek olives, and not much oil comes out of region. The 100% Tuscan Extra-Virgin that you buy in the shops is only one fifth Italian oil.

Anth, so glad you asked (but people will think it's a set-up).

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 03:30:56 (GMT)
From: Salam
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: I'm having second thoughts.
Message:
I told you there should be a metal plate on his head, didn't I. now all is lost.

What do they call ex-premies that become premies again?

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 03:23:53 (GMT)
From: silvia
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: you have to kidding, aren't you?
Message:
for real you want to be HIS devotee? Yuck!
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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 11:47:39 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: silvia
Subject: yes silvia, I'm kidding.
Message:
and even when I'm not kidding, most people who know me will confirm I still can't be trusted.

Anth, 90% bullshit, 10% furtive imagination.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 21:16:50 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Will you be teaching M's grandchildren, Anth?
Message:
What goes around comes around and I'm certain you'd make a totally synchronized teacher for the Grand Ji's. If anyone doubts this, just look at how smart M's kids are and AJW taught them. Anth, to show how open we are here, I trust you will drop by to spam us once in a while.

Richard who still has a copy of All God's Children for sale

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 11:50:51 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: No, I quit. (ot)
Message:
Hi Richard,

No, I've quit teaching for the forseeable future. I can't think of circumstances where I'd go back. It the UK it's become a nightmare occupation. The teachers are snowed under with bullshit bureacracy, related to the National Curriculum, which has all but driven any imaginative teachers out of the profession.

My wife quit last year.

Do I know you by the way?

Mr Ginn, Art and Drama

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 14:43:41 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: No, I quit. (ot)
Message:
Do I know you by the way?
Mr Ginn, Art and Drama

Only as a fellow participant on the forum and, of course, from the occasional synchronized astral traval on Rawat Airlines.

Richard who has no real friends so must make up imaginary internet friends

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 20:55:59 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Good entertaining Saturday Post, Anth........./nt
Message:
hahaha
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:18:49 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Having second thought on bantering you
Message:
Not an anth farts without his will, with or without those visions of duty free cognac.

Francesca who is staying on this ship until it sinks into the cyber sea

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 23:37:32 (GMT)
From: MrT
Email: None
To: Francesca
Subject: be warned, Anth
Message:
... there's a Francesca checking out the prototype Forum6
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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:09:54 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: MrT
Subject: That be me
Message:
In cyber land, one can travel on many ships. This one be going down on July 31 or so. Maybe sooner?

--f

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:05:59 (GMT)
From: JHB
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: I'm having second thoughts on banning you
Message:
Anth,

Not many people know that the bolt of lightning that zapped your computer was just my way of banning you, but now that you're returning to the feet, you are hereby unbanned.

John the more powerful than ever before.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:13:12 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: JHB
Subject: John,
Message:
John,

What have you been doing with the forum?

Did you break it? Or did Sir Dave put behind the scenes pressure on you to sell it to him at a giveaway price?

Anth the investigative reporter

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:22:28 (GMT)
From: Marianne
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: The Mad Mexican is en route
Message:
to Cornwall to divert you from the video program. Have a few pints with him and these nasty desires will disappear too. And I somehow just envision your tongue planted firmly in cheek as you wrote this post... (as opposed to up the back of your throat).

How's life on the cliffs?

Marianne

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:55:24 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: The Mad Mexican is en route
Message:
Hi Marianne,

Life on the cliffs was wonderful, until somebody put a tablet in my beer and I forgot where I lived. I'm surviving in a bender on the beach at the moment, eating raw shellfish and seaweed.

I think Dot has taken advantage of my absence, sold the hut and moved on the greater things in Birmingham.

Anth the sunburned.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:34:32 (GMT)
From: Jethro
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: I'm knew you were a plant. NT
Message:
nt
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:48:06 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Jethro
Subject: I'm a mammal and I can prove it.
Message:
I'm warm blooded and have got hair on the palms of my hands.

Hiya Jeth.

Anth the Plastic Banana

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:41:05 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Jethro
Subject: He's Driven By Plants nt
Message:
nt
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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 11:54:53 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: No, it's Privet by Dante Steve. (nt)
Message:
anth the obscure plant
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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 15:57:42 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: AJW
Subject: Thanks For The Vocabulearn, Anth
Message:
I always appreciate learning new words. Life is great, innit, with so much to learn. So many roads to travel, so much to experience. To have journeyed a million miles only to find the journey is only beginning.

Steve The Poet

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 16:20:36 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Anth And Everyone
Subject: Speaking Of Poetry, Anth...
Message:
I haven't posted lyrics in a while. I think great poetry can uplift the spirit and, gods know, ex-premies need all the spirit lifting they can get.

Here's one:

AFTER THE GOLDRUSH by Neil Young
------------------
Well, I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
There were peasants singing and
Drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing
To the sun
That was floating on the breeze.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.

I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst thru the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home in the sun.
Flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 16:23:42 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Anth And Everyone
Subject: One More For Now
Message:
Californication Or Kali Fornication?
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:55:32 (GMT)
From: Abi
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Oh, not you too!
Message:
No Anth, don't do it! Not now! Or I'll set Ivan on you and believe me you wouldn't want that in your chalet. He's only a few miles from you as we speak.

Can't you see it's a plot to destroy us. First Jim, now you, then the rest. One by one the 'leaders' will be heavied by the EV mafia. The PEG leg is right: we are in danger. I'm expecting a knock on my door at any moment. I think they're on to me. I too tried to 'return' when I was scared but I think they might have taken offence at the 'hindu wobble dance' thing and so refused me salvation.

Be afraid, be very afraid. And as one of them said to me a few months ago 'Abi, be very, very careful...'. But I'm not frightened any more because I've gone mad.

Abi

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 16:52:13 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Abi
Subject: All I want is to be on the winning side.
Message:
Hi Abi,

Hope all is well with you down under.

Don't worry. I had another vision. This time in the shower. I saw a light even brighter than last time, and felt more peace than ever before.

Then this red face with a couple of horns on his head appeared, and said, 'Anth, I am the one true Lord. Get back to your evil ways or you'll be in big trouble. Rawat is finite. Hell is for eternity.'

So naturally, I obeyed.

Anth the born-again disciple of Satan.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:09:40 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: You mean the whining side, Anth
Message:
As Sir Dave said, while you were away, the war was won and now all the Captains' army can do is lick their wounds and whine while we wine and dine and whoop it up.
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:08:11 (GMT)
From: Abi
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Ivan is on his way. Too late!
Message:
The idea that you are indeed a plant freaked my already fragile sense of sanity and I made a quick call to Ivan on his mobile as he heads down to Penzance with his girlfriend. I said 'Hay Ive, Anth said you could stay in the chalet for a couple of months, free booze and dope, food, the lot'. He's on his way. Did I ever tell you about the time I let Ivan stay with me for a couple of weeks and three months later he was still there and my marriage almost fell apart. He makes Withnail look serene. He will consume every known mood altering substance within reach. He even likes eating fungus. As for his girlfriend... Well, let's just say she has taken A LOT of acid in her time.

You will indeed need the help of the Dark Lord when Ivan the Terrible crawls up your path.

Sorry, but now you know what a dread foe I can be. EV beware!

Abi

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:21:55 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Abi
Subject: Ivan the terrible.
Message:
Hi Abi,

We've already had the experience of Ivan staying with us in London Abi. I think we got off lightly at the time. All we had to do to get rid of him was buy a painting so he could get a ticket home. He was no problem at all, and behaved himself very well. (Not like stories I heard from elsewhere.)

The painting we bought was an amazing picture of a woman with a really dreamy look on her face. Ages after we bought it he told me he'd copied the face from a photo of a woman who was about to be shot by a firing squad. it rather put a different perspective on the picture.

Is he really down in Penzance?

Anth already packing for London.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:45:10 (GMT)
From: Abi
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Art and drugs
Message:
Anth,
he WAS on his way to Penzance but I'm afraid he's now walking up Donkey Lane. Just got a call from him on his mobile - sounded a bit pissed. Just popped into the D and C and recited a great deal of poetry, drank some whisky and did an little dance on a table and lept out. He seems in good spirits but sadly he doesn't have a painting with him for you to buy. So you'll have to think of something else Anth.

He did me a wonderful painting of a man sleeping surrounded by Klimpt flowers and shapes, really beautiful. Interesting shading on the face, very serene too. But then a year later he told me it was Egon Schiele on his death bed having just had necrophilic sex with his TB ridden wife's body...

Have fun and make sure there isn't too much fungus about near the chalet.

Abi

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:55:21 (GMT)
From: Sir Dave
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: I'm having second thoughts.
Message:
I think the war is over now. There is enough information on the net for people to make their own informed decisions on whether they want to follow Maharaji or not. If people need support in this, then Forum 6 is there for them to discuss things.

I'm just a caretaker. A bit like Rober McClennan who took over the SDP Alliance when the two David's lost the election. I stepped in to keep the forum continuing and because there was such a rift between two opposing camps of ex-premies that I felt compelled to act. I am not looking for a fight or power. When someone else comes along who wants to take over and who is agreeable to people, then I'll pass it on to them.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:01:58 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Sir Dave
Subject: You don't fool me Sir Dave.
Message:
I know damn well that since you lost your seat in the House of Lords you've been working on taking over the world by other means. And seizing control of the forum is just the first step.

So...Wozzapenin to Forum Five then man? Is it staying around alongside Forum 6?

Anth it must be time for another tablet.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:09:18 (GMT)
From: Sir Dave
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: You missed a fierce battle
Message:
between JHB and I. It was a fight to the forum death but I had Salam on my side and he only had Katie so the result was a foregone conclusion.

Now I must check the fish cakes.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:03:12 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Sir Dave, JHB and Nigel.
Subject: Hmmmn.
Message:
So you and John had a fight and broke the forum did you? Well you're a pair of naughty boys.

When the Canadians and Americans started doing that, we had to take it off them.

Well I hope you've both made up, and are going to mend it, or I'll have to consult with the secret committee which is the hidden powers behind EPO, (no not Brian and Kate, they're just puppets).

I don't know, if only Jim hadn't gone to Amaroo and put on that lovely peach dress the Fat Fag chose for him, everything might be different.

And Nigel, why didn't you shout at them and tell them to behave themselves?

Anth, just picking up the pieces, reading the entrails, looking at the signs, staring at the tealeaves, consulting the cracks in the burned skull, reading Jonathon Cainers column in the Mirror.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:10:06 (GMT)
From: JHB
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: You don't fool me Sir Dave.
Message:
Anth,

When Sir Dave has Forum6 configured the way that no one likes it, then ForumV will join Forums I,II,III,IV in the memory of the great website in the sky, EPO. Brian and Katie will will get their first night's sleep in years, I won't bother reading every post any more (actually I gave that up some time ago), the premies will be more confused about exes than ever, and other wondrous things will occur that will surprise no one.

John the profit.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:59:15 (GMT)
From: CD
Email: None
To: JHB
Subject: You don't say
Message:
>the premies will be more confused about exes than ever

Only in your dreams.

>other wondrous things will occur that will surprise no one

Yes, every day we see the signs.

I'll bet there will be big suprises.
After all, nobody can predict the future.

CD

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:14:42 (GMT)
From: JHB
Email: None
To: CD
Subject: Hey Chris, I'm honored!
Message:
You don't normally deign to speak with me:-)

But apart from the transcendent experience of melting consciousness inside you, why the fuck do you follow that fat bloke from India?

John.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:44:21 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: AJW
Subject: I'm Happy For You Anth
Message:
If you go to the next live delayed satellite event please check out if the new Rawat ash trays are available yet.

Steve

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:10:35 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: Thought you were still in prison Steve.
Message:
Hi Steve,

Did you escape? Or did you get parole?

Have you been struck by lightning recently?

Are you, or have you ever been, a member of a religious cult?

Can you lend me $50 until payday?

What is the square root of £3.24?

It's a good job this isn't on film. You'd like me even less.

Anth, going away for a long think about where his life is going. (Not back to work, that's for sure.)

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:58:33 (GMT)
From: Michael Read
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: I'm having second thoughts.
Message:
Having thoughts is the clue.
Having the forum on is more like it!

Sure, meditation can make one feel peaceful. That's what meditation is supposed to do. Any 'how to' book on meditaion
will tell you that much.

Light and visions? All in the head of the visioneer! Mere phenomena. So, if you see a bum/wino standing on the street
corner turn into light - you gonna think it's special?

Well, it is and it isn't. Special that is. :-)

Consider this, or not.

*******************

Dear boys and girls of all ages, please do enjoy the day. Take delight in all things that come your way.

As the weather is indifferent to our opinions about the weather, be you indifferent to the weather. Neither curse the rain, nor rage against the heat. Do dress appropriately and take shelter if need be.

Care for and love one another. Let the natural joy of living have its way with you. Do not expect that your neighbor will be agreeable. Nor, count yourself more blessed than those who oppose you.

As much as you are able, see that god is playing all the parts. Yes, even yours. In this way you can be earnest without lapsing into seriousness.

Do the best that you can with what you have. Make effort without
striving. Failures and setbacks, what are they other than new
opportunities? Successes and praise are only temporary.

Learn to listen. Underneath the raucous babble a symphony is playing.

Learn to see. That which appears also disappears.

Learn to feel. Touch one another with gentle hearts.

Learn to understand. All is not what it seems to be.

Learn to remember. Who you are, what you are is beyond compare.

Each and every one of us is eternity made flesh. Whether we believe it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we even care about such things or not, we are the universe. We are not separate.

Finding god, your true nature, peace beyond measure, is not running away from the illusion of life. Rather, it is embracing life and the drama the play with a totally open heart. We will and do find beauty without cause.

If you must know why creation exists, because it is passionately open to itself.

Peace - at play in the fields of eternity - Michael

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:06:17 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Michael Read
Subject: The battle for my soul.
Message:
Hi Mike,

Don't worry, I'm selling to the highest bidder and Satan just made me a better offer.

Did you make all that stuff about the weather and touching hearts up yourself, or copy it from a new age book?

Anth, stepping bravely and optimistically into the next moment.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 12:40:19 (GMT)
From: Michael Read
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: channeling god
Message:
Nah, I channel god.
Problem is the son-of-a-bitch isn't consistent! :-)

That 'new-age' stuff is quite a circus though! Gotta get one's
tarot read to find the auspicious moment to recharge the crystal dimension to the right level to bring the spirit guides in for tea! heeheehooha!

Here is a piece of humor (read bullshit) that I wrote some time ago. Can you guess what percentage of those who read it thought it was true?

*******************
Channeling Zolton

I've been keeping my role as an interdementedial scout under wraps but last night in my quarterly meeting with Zolton of the 5th demention (not his real name but he has this flair for the camp), Zolton said that it was now time for me to speak fourth. I don't speak fourth and have no interest in that language so the rest of this xmission will be in a language approximating English.

I had only one burning question for Zolton.

MR: Zolton, many of us here have been itching to get to the bottom of a most sensitive issue concerning interdementedial visitations. It is an issue that has struck most uncomfortablely at the very base of human existance. May I, dare I, put this question to you?

Z5: Depends, on which end you are speaking with. :-)

MR: That's it exactly!

Z5: What's it?

MR: Well, rectal probing, what's up with that?!

Z5: (unrestrained laughter for about 15 minutes)

MR: No, seriously, what is all this probing for, anyway?

Z5: Sorry, I just couldn't help myself.

MR: Not a problem. Do you have an answer for us?

Z5: Gullibility.

MR: Gullibility? I am afraid that I don't understand.

Z5: It all goes way back to first contact with your species. Our scouts, after observing you for some time, came to the conclusion that you were probably the most gullible species ever encountered. This was based on the incredible things you would tell each other and how quick you believed them to be true.

When we performed some routine medical scans we were somewhat perplexed. Your species has, for all appearances, what appears to be a highly developed brain. However, we could detect very little activity in this organ.

MR: Yes, we know that about ourselves already. But what does that have to do with - you know - our rectums?

Z5: (chuckle) It really started out as a kind of joke...

MR: A joke! You're shitting me! Really?!

Z5: Yes, I am shitting you - Really! Look, here's what happened. The entity in charge of the first contact team wasn't too bright. He only got his position through family contacts - you know - politics.

Anyway, he thought it would be really funny if your species actually used some other organ for cognitive thinking and rationization. So he began modifiying standard reports and adding a subsection entitled - something like - Rectal Intelligent Factors of Species #3405798 - and sending them to his cousin in Records just for a laugh. He actually never did more than the standard number of rectal probes. The probes were small and painless sample gathering to check for possible biological hazards in your species. Nothing more.

MR: Well that doesn't sound too bad. How is it that we have all of these reports of huge probes being used?

Z5: It was an accident.

MR: An accident! Do you have any idea of how many people were traumatized by those probes! Shit! I fail to see what is so funny!

Z5: Yes, sorry for laughing a minute ago. But, well, it's just so funny! Especially when you know the whole story.

You see, what happened was that a newly admitted species was assigned some minor communications job. A member of that species who was working a late shift sent a copy of the joke to his cousin back on his homeworld, accidentally misrouted the transmission and a species even more gullible than yours picked up the message.

They thought it was real. They became so fascinated with the idea that there could actually be a species with its brain up its ass that they felt compelled to investigate.

MR: Let me guess. They were just technically advanced enough for interdementedial travel but not sophisticated enough to join the commonwealth? And they were the unwitting dupes of a minor joke.

Z5: Basically.

MR: So, you're saying that the whole affair with rectal probing...

Z5: Doesn't mean shit! (more laughter)

MR: Damn! So what became of the whole affair.

Z5: Unfortunatly we were unaware of the problem for quite some time. When we did find out what was happening we put a stop to it.

After a lengthy review of the 'data' collected by that species we did arrive at one conclusion.

MR: What is that?

Z5: As far as rectal probing and your species is concerned - about one out of ten doesn't really seem to mind it!

Well, at that point I broke xmission with Zoltar. His laughing can get to be quite insufferable!

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 13:23:09 (GMT)
From: bill
Email: None
To: Michael Read
Subject: Not all second thoughts are worth it
Message:
Learn to remember. Who you are, what you are is beyond compare.

-One thing people that think -we are god but forgot or we dont recognise that we are god, ignore,
is the reality that no one is able to attain godhead status
and all experiences that they think are divine are all really temporary and dont last but minutes, except perhaps if you are on drugs, then they may last for hours, depending on the drug.

Each and every one of us is eternity made flesh. Whether we believe it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we even care about such things or not, we are the universe. We are not separate.

-Another great idea that doesnt match up with actual reality is
the notion that there are no fixed boundries that constrain us
and constrain our conciousness. People that think like this never are able to explain Murphy's Law, or Human Nature.
-It is enticing to think there is no god because relgion
is nuts, but Human Nature and Murphy's Law are clear indicators that there IS a god and you cannot find a way to become that
god because that is the way it is set up and that is the reality.

Finding god, your true nature, peace beyond measure, is not running away from the illusion of life. Rather, it is embracing life and the drama the play with a totally open heart. We will and do find beauty without cause.

-Why tie the idea of 'open heart, embracing life', ect, with the false idea that you can 'Finding god, your true nature, peace beyond measure'.

-Popular notion, but to think -you can and are god and the only thing in your way is your ideas about yourself-sets you up
in life to live life through a view that is fundamentally
false.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 12:57:42 (GMT)
From: Michael Read
Email: None
To: bill
Subject: hey, Bill, it's a trick
Message:
That 'finding god' stuff is a trick. You make some very good points in your response to my namby-pamby feel good post.

Here's the trick. Ordinary life is it! It is the big deal.

In other words, everything from dog shit to the shining stars is god.

The aliens are not going to come and rescue humanity, Jesus isn't heading back to kick ass, Buddha isn't on his way to show us how.
And, of course, Maharaji never was the lord of the universe.

There is compassion and respect and caring for one another. If we humans ever learn to be nice, we may just accidentally wake up and enjoy life. If we don't, things will pretty much continue the way the have since for as long as we have thought that our shit don't stink.

Oh, by the way, Murphy was an optimist.

Peace - Michael

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:14:31 (GMT)
From: Professional Eye Guy
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: To all FA's and page owners (Katie, Brian, all)
Message:
It's all fun and ganmes till someone loses an eye...you ought to know some stuff.

First, knowingly linking to a page that defames, violates copyright, privacy, trademark or privacy IS a violation of law. It does not immunize you from legal liability to say 'hey I just pointed to their page, I didn't host it. It's called 'vicarious liability and IT IS REAL.) Some former members of the Mormon Church learned this in Utah the hard way: at a cost of more than $100,000 each.

Second, the e-mails, archive postings and record of the whole EPO/premie battle is cast in stone. In other words, no one here could look a court in the eye and say they didn;t know what was on the page they linked to. Too late for that.

So, if EPO links to the new Forum 6, they (their owner and webmasters) will STILL be legally liable for wrongs comitted there. I guarantee it.

Wanna risk it? Not my fight, but that's my two cents. If you think this is the last time Glasser or Deborah or whoever is going to threaten suit, you are crazy.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:26:09 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Professional Eye Guy
Subject: Question for you
Message:
Hi there, could you please tell me where you got that information.

Has Glasser pointed to this site or has he taken the posts and inserted them on his page and if so, is that just as bad or worse?

This is a good topic of discussion because no matter how ablaze my passions are and can be I do want to compete within the confines of the law so that any case I may have now or in the future will not be contested.

Thanks Private-Eye, I appreciate your input.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:20:20 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Professional Eye Guy
Subject: Maybe you ought read details of ex-Mormon case
Message:
I did - and it's not as simple as you appear to be attempting to imply. You also might want to check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's web page for more information on internet lawsuits and freedom of speech.

You know, I'm really tired of people talking about potential lawsuits around here. If you, EV, or anyone else here has unlimited money, time, and patience (not to mention sound legal grounds) to spend on a lawsuit against anyone here (premie or ex-premie), then good for you. But the facts are that neither Elan Vital, or Charles and Deborah, or anyone else here has so far even MENTIONED bringing a lawsuit against the EPO site, or the EPO forum. YOU are the one who is bringing it up - and although you say 'it's not your fight'. I have to wonder why.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:38:03 (GMT)
From: Deborha
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Hi, How are you today?
Message:
Thanks for the tip Katie, I'll go take a peek.

Private eye should of clarified his intention for bringing up that point. Good detective work on your part.

Talking about eyes, how is Brian's eye-surgery recovery coming along?

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 19:04:36 (GMT)
From: Selene (SF)
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: why they need anonymity
Message:
PEG is concerned for us.
His kind have been observing and only want to help.
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:32:06 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Right on Katie!!!
Message:
I'm so tired of people who don't know the first thing about the law popping off as if they are certain of the reach and extent of it. The Salon article I posted yesterday (my subject header was: A real case of Internet Shenanigans), although not directly on point here, does show how fact-driven each particular situation is, in this envolving and unsettled area of law.

And it does seem that over the course of this brou ha ha, anonymous posters appear to have the ulterior motive of wanting to threaten or 'scare' you and Brian and John into having no involvement with presenting the truth about Rawat and his cult.

Anonymice talking through their hats.

love, Francesca

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:37:30 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Francesca
Subject: Deborah, Selene, Francesca (sorta ot)
Message:
Hey y'all -
I just got a notice from my ISP that I spent 100 hours on-line already this month! I have never done that this early in the month, even when I was into buying things on eBay. Sort of a wake-up call, IMHO.

Deborah, Brian is doing a lot better - thanks for asking. It's kind of tough to have three surgeries in just a few months, and the last one (detached retina) was the worst. (The cataract surgeries weren't too bad, although it's a drag to get cataracts when you are not even 50).

Selene, thanks for the link. According to your information, Brian is definitely a space alien (I'm not kidding!). Do you think I should check into this, or do you think most techie-geeks are space aliens :)?

Francesca, appreciate your postings about Internet law. I learned a bit about it after EV started threatening ISP's to get some of the ex-premie sites off-line. Learned more from Roger and Marianne too. I thought that PEG's post was an attempt to intimidate as well, but who knows?

Thanks, take care, and see ya around -
Katie

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 02:31:58 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: online too much
Message:
Me too.
But am not expecting much improvement til the weather changes.
This last couple months have put us both through it. I'm glad you are feeling better and Brian too.
Glad you liked the link I especially liked that it was from a high school and silly after our 'warning'.

Love ya,
Selene

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:38:12 (GMT)
From: P-E-G
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Lighten up, please
Message:
1- You know me, but if I used my name, people would flip
2- not my fight because I am not a web page owner
3- just a thought, please don't bite my head off
4- Im not a lawyer
5- If the Maha hasn't sued you by now, he isn't going to, but the crazyness of last 2 weeks saw a lot of threats...
6- please don;t bite my head off. I said the Ex-P. pages are VALUABLE and shouldnt be at risk.

not a legal opinion, just from th peanut gallery.
end of discussion

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:26:48 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: P-E-G
Subject: Headbiting vs the tone of your post
Message:
I'm not sure if I should apologize for the headbiting or not because the tone of your original post was, IMHO, pretty provocative. And as I said, you appear not to have have all the facts about the Mormon Church lawsuit, so attempting to make a point based on that lawsuit seemed to be an attempt to intimidate. I really don't want anyone involved with this site in any way (even if it's just posting on this forum) to be intimidated like that. Hence my reaction to you.

Sincerely,
Katie

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 18:00:38 (GMT)
From: Ian Dury
Email: None
To: P-E-G
Subject: Lighten up, please
Message:
Is that you, Raja Ji?
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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 00:05:10 (GMT)
From: HL
Email: None
To: Ian Dury
Subject: It's probably Rob (nt)
Message:
nt
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:28:15 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Professional Eye Guy
Subject: You're an American right?
Message:
Only Americans have such a profound fear and respect for authority that you obviously display.

So, who's going to take me to court if I publish an offensive link on my website? Are the CIA going to send a squad over to Cornwall to kidnap me and take me to the States, to stand trial for inserting a hyperlink on a computer on the other side of the world.

Get real mate.

Anth the cream tea anarchist

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:44:37 (GMT)
From: Abi
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: NY or Texas
Message:
I think that really he is very frightening and that if you provoke PEG leg he might sue you or in fact sue everybody.

I wonder if PEG is the same as Richard 11 and Charles or if they are different lawyers?

Someone is very angry.

abi

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:36:05 (GMT)
From: SF
Email: None
To: Professional Eye Guy
Subject: Utah sucks - hey is that on record?
Message:
There are also cases that proove the oppostite of your claim.
Who are you anyway and why be anonymous if you are so concerned?
Anywone interested do a google search on anonymity lawsuits to start or read the post by Private on
AG or whatever it is.
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:54:36 (GMT)
From: SG
Email: None
To: thread
Subject: ok I contradicted meself
Message:
Quoting an anonymous post! Blame it on astrology.
The point is the link he/she gave:
Excellent Rights Article
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:31:32 (GMT)
From: JHB
Email: None
To: Professional Eye Guy
Subject: Hey PEG!
Message:
PEG,

Let's be brutally honest here, if your friend Maharaji, and his lapdogs, Elan Vital, really thought they could use legal means to close down Ex-Premie.org they would have done it by now, wouldn't they?

John.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 21:55:10 (GMT)
From: Jeffrey Donner
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: A Metaphor
Message:
Friends --

I’ve been lurking for several months. In mid-March, my much older and much uglier bro, Michael Donner, alerted me that an interesting discussion was underway in Forum 5. I’ve been fascinated since.

I’m a Catholic priest, pastor of a parish at a state university, studying anthropology. I’m most interested in how religions evolve. My chief interest is in Catholicism which is attempting a significant in-house transformation. I would never have imagined that listening to you guys would be all that useful to my own project -- I got reading because Mike’s life has been so, ahem, interesting. But I got hooked -- especially by people trying to sift out some zone of comfort between being a group and being individuals. I can’t imagine a topic which better defines the difficulties of modern life. And you have faced it in spades with the explosion over Jim.

I just wanted to offer the following metaphor from history as a lens you might use to get another slant on what’s been going on in Forum 5. I am extremely grateful to you for the sharing of your lives that has gone on here, tough as it has been. I send this metaphor as a token of my appreciation and hope it helps a little in the planning underway for forum 6.

One of the issues illuminated by the flap in forum 5 is part of the history between Catholics and Protestants. Here's the metaphor: in the 16th c., the Catholic hierarchy is Maharaji, Luther et al are the ex-premies. What has happened to the Protestants is that once badly burned by a religious bully drunk with his own power, they have become extremely, almost genetically, on alert for anything that smacks of 'Catholicism'. When 'Catholicism' rears any of its old signs in a Protestant group, a part of the group gets allergic and splits. Protestantism continues today to split into smaller and smaller pieces. Lesson: one of the really touchy, and most interesting, issues in religion is the complex relationship between the individual and the group. Brian says his actions were in large part in defense of his individual rights to express himself without being bullied by a flame-thrower, but gets accused by the other libertarians of selling out the group. Jim, the loudest of the libertarians, wants a cohesive group with a coherent point of view. He even seems to want to speak for the group. Ironies are flying in every direction.

So here's an issue worth watching, I think: the world's experience of Catholicism through the 19th c. has spawned a reaction of separatism and splintering in the religious world in defense of the individual. That reaction was a very important move for human beings to make. That splintering, though, has led to a loss of the experience of transcendence that comes with belonging to something/someone bigger than the self. So move two has been the recognition of alienation and the destruction to the human spirit from gross individualism. The question, then, is: what's move three? I think the ex-premies are trying to figure that out at the moment, working out the new game plan about the big issue, group vs individualism, through the details of how to set up forum 6.

If the metaphor is useful, some questions seem to follow. Isn’t part of the issue you’re facing the degree to which the exes want to imagine being a group? And isn’t part of THAT issue the negotiation of how to deal with your personal histories while at the same time trying to offer the benefit of your COMMON experience (which defines you as a group) with those who are still stuck in a cult? By what method, in what style of personal sharing, do you clarify your own anger and disenchantment and how do you translate what you’ve learned about THAT for the sake of those who are still in the cult? I think you’re trying to balance the benefits of owning your own lives against the dangers of collapsing into a gross individualism, and trying to sell that balance to people who think they have experienced the joys of belonging to a group and are not aware of the degree to which they have sold their souls as a guard against the alienation of modern life. That’s a very tricky little proposition to pull off. But it is extremely important, I think, for people to try it, because all over the planet today people are caught between the alienation of modern individualism and the offer of a safety net from every sort of fundamentalism. Any group, and every group, which takes a step in the healing of this issue in the world is a grace given from the future for everyone.

With all my heart, then, I thank you and I wish you the very best.
Jeff Donner

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:42:02 (GMT)
From: Lesley
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: gross individualism???????
Message:
Thought your post interesting, and liked very much what you were saying about the needs of the individual and the group, but I have to say I think your cult skirt is showing with the comment about gross individualism.

Or are you referring to the desperate, often hedonistic efforts people are making in the face of bureaucratising institutionalising overcrowded, need to have a fight to make some space, but can't afford the nuclear fallout, way we're living today.

There are so many of us, and we make such a huge impact that it seems we are going to have to merge our will, like an ant colony, or, of course, dramatically reduce our numbers and our powerful ways and live in small groups, which currently seems to be the way we like to live, but are losing fast.

Personally my choice is that I would prefer to live without an answer to the question of how big is the universe, is there a wall round it like in that movie The Truman Show, a vaster reality to know, if it means that I can live in emotional comfort in a world where coconuts still drift onto the beach with the tide.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 12:30:45 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: Hi Jeff'
Message:
Can you tell your little brother he still owes me £4.25 from 1978 and he can have his Peter Frampton cassette back when he pays me.

Thanks.

Anth who has to make the most of his remaining bits of memory.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 17:07:20 (GMT)
From: michael donner
Email: None
To: AJW
Subject: Hi Jeff'
Message:
that's where my tape is! i've been wonder all these years. did you steal it while i was sitting at m's feet in the dining room and you were waiting with what's her face in the little office at rigate??
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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 10:20:38 (GMT)
From: AJW
Email: None
To: michael donner
Subject: No Mike,
Message:
You swapped it with me for 20 Embassy Tipped Cigarettes deposit, and the loan of my blond wig. (I never got those stains out by the way. I had to dye the whole wig purple.)

And by 'What's her face', I guess you mean Jane. She would have been giving me elocution lessons.

The last I heard of her was a strapping Texan threw her on the back of his horse and rode off to his ranch with her on the back.

Anth, getting the facts straight.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 02:07:14 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: A Metaphor
Message:
By what method, in what style of personal sharing, do you clarify your own anger and disenchantment and how do you translate what you’ve learned about THAT for the sake of those who are still in the cult?

Just state your case plainly and truthfully, Faddah. If premies on the fence (and there really ain't any other kind worth addressing, I'm beginning to see that REAL clear. Some are just OUT THERE, gone forever), can relate or identify with what you're saying, than they're on their way to freeing their own mind. In the long run, all the ex-premie is, is a nudge to the still struggling premie who knows something isn't right, but just can't make the break, just yet. When they come to this site, read all the materials, hang out on the forum for awhile, they begin to understand what side of the fence they're on because of how they find just how deeply they feel the same sentiments as ex-premies do. And then they become ex-premies too.

Simple.

I think you’re trying to balance the benefits of owning your own lives against the dangers of collapsing into a gross individualism, and trying to sell that balance to people who think they have experienced the joys of belonging to a group and are not aware of the degree to which they have sold their souls as a guard against the alienation of modern life.

Well, as far as dyed in the wool premies go, the real hard cases, they'd beg to differ with you, Jeffrey. They think their souls have been saved. If you want to have some fun, try to convince them otherwise. But, no, I'm not trying to 'sell' anything to premies. If a premie wants to be a premie, and is really sure that's what they want, who am I to get in their way? It's their life choice. But if a premie is struggling with his premiehood, and not so sure he wants to continue wearing that mantle, I'd say hang out for awhile, see how you feel about what's going on here. Do you warm up to the ex-premie angle, or do you find yourself repulsed or left cold by it? Just by doing that, everybody finds what side of the fence they're on quick enough. We don't have to do or 'sell' anything. Your own response or reaction will tell you everything you need to know.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 01:16:57 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: Welcome
Message:
Wonderful insights and observations. I'm totally amazed that anyone could have witnessed the recent debacle and meltdown here and found such an interesting take on it. Thanks for posting and welcome.

One question: how did you resist your brother's persuasive appeal to become a premie? (Assuming he did try to 'convert' you at some point.)

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:46:32 (GMT)
From: Jeffrey Donner
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: Welcome
Message:
Hey, I'm a Catholic priest, up to my eyeballs in the cult the church was at the time! I didn't need to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

J

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 00:50:48 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: Amazing Grace!......This is a KEEPER!
Message:
Well Father Donner, I'm sorry, it's been over 30 something years from my last confession and these are my SINS.

What an interesting family dynamic you have going on there, I must say.

You painted a wonderful metaphorical synopsis of the situation. However, I feel that you have thus far brushed out is the broad strokes. Can you go in with one your finer brushes and detail the significance of how someone like me who unemotionally faded away only to find myself here.

For instance, I do not have the immediate emotional investment as current premies because I expanded both my spirituality and social life beyond the MAHA/K cult freak show which used to be my life.

I seldom reminisced about my involvement with M & K, and when I did I thought of it as an extended adolescence but never never felt closure. Many memories were actually repressed.

Digesting the unforseen truth of the matter has been painful, like I'm on a journey in a train going both backwards in time to see where I used to live as well as what has become of the old town today. Weird, eh?

So the camp is not divided into 2 distinct groups, not that the Catholicism and Protesism ever were. How does this fit into the picture for us.

I'd love to hear more. Thank you for posting.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 00:48:59 (GMT)
From: Mark N
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: Sorry to nitpick your fine message
Message:
Dear Jeffery,

You wrote about the splintering of the church:

'That splintering, though, has led to a loss of the experience of transcendence that comes with belonging to something/someone bigger than the self.'

I don't think you are saying that by belonging to a group, a transcendent experience is available that is not available by not belonging to a group. If that were the case, transcendent experiences would be available every time one went to a football match as that is a shared group activity.

I think that what you mean is that by belonging to the Catholic Church, transcendent experiences are available that will not be available once splintering occurs.

My own feeling is that whatever you do or don't belong to is irrelevant because ones spiritual journey (whatever that is) is an intensely and unbelievable unique and personal experience that happens completely internally despite or in spite of outside influences.

I personally feel that whether one decides to hang ones hat at the door of a group, be that the church or a cult, or if one goes it alone, if ones commitment to oneself is high, growth or change will happen, if ones commitment to oneself is superficial, nothing will happen.

What I am saying is that to me membership of any external community is less important than ones commitment to ones own growth and that transcendent experiences are 100% internal and if they occur, they occur because of ones internal work not ones group.

This point is critical because when people join the cult, they are hughly motivated and put a lot of work into themselves. They then have experiences that may be transcendent. The cult then claims to be responsible for those experiences and in a superficial way it is because it motivated them to work on themselves. Unfortunately, the cult then uses the experiences as a tool to bind the individual to itself. It says 'see, I told you, this is my gift, stay with me and I will give you more'. In fact this point is the central marketing tool of the cult. Its called loyalty marketing. It is cheaper to market to existing clients then to go and find new ones.

In fact the real resonsibility for having the experiences lies with the people who put in the effort for themselves. What matters is that whatever internal work they did on themselves would lead to growth, no matter what group they belong to or if they belong to no group at all.

M used to say that hhis path was quicker, it was the direct route to the destination, no dead ends, no forks in the road, no bends and twists. In fact every group makes the same claim (they could hardly do otherwise). As I keep saying here, to me the path is individual and progress comes from ones own effort and nothing else.

I wonder whether joining a group actually slows ones spiritual growth by introducing extraneous conceptual material that distracts the individual from her efforts.

However, I can see how the Catholic Church has stood the test of time probably because it does provide enough space for the internal spiritual needs of many people to manifest.

I suspect that M and K will slowly fade away as the limited space they provide people for their internal spiritual growth becomes apparent to each individual.

I am sorry to lump the Catholic Church - a great institution that is a cornerstone of Western thought, in with a cult but from the point of view of the individual, to me both are external supports (of differing quality), for a process that is 101% internal and individual and unique. No external support can totally satisfy the needs of this internal process.

Thanks for your thought provoking message.

Mark N

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 20:52:56 (GMT)
From: Jeffrey Donner
Email: None
To: Mark N
Subject: Sorry to nitpick your fine message
Message:
Mark -- nitpick away! You got my meaning right. I do think joining the group, any group, is the first 'transcendental move'. In that sense, it doesn't make any difference if it's a bowling league or the Nazis. I really think people want to experience getting past their own skin. I think people experience being shut up in their own bodies without connection to anyone or anything as a living hell. That's why sex sells.

But you're absolutely right, I think, that it makes all the difference in the long run whether the group you join promotes individual human growth or death. And how those get defined is the really tricky part. The Nazis were selling life by killing Jews. For a long time Catholics sold life by killing, imprisoning, proscribing the civil rights of anyone who was not. So the importance of defining 'life' and 'death' is huge. WHo makes the definition? HOW does it stick? etc.

My sense is that the exes bit big on a promise of life, and found it was a rotten apple. Finding the most useful and effective way to share that experience is really important, I think, because learning which are the good and bad apples is going to determine the next phase of our human history.

Thanks for letting me gab!
Jeff

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 08:53:04 (GMT)
From: Mark N
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: I really like what you say about.........
Message:
learning which are the good and the bad apples for the sake of the future.

If one was to set a number of criterea and apply them to all groups one would be able to figure out which were good apples and which bad.

For example, the first question that I would ask is 'is this group self-critical'? You Jeffrey have shown that as a Catholic priest you are still able to look at your religion objectively and at its history critically and you are free to do so. Score 1 for the Catholic church.

In the world of M and K however, objective self-criticism is non-existant. But then I suppose Premies feel that its impossible to criticise something that is inherently perfect. Score 0 for M.

By the criterion of self-criticism, EPO would be a way to instant nirvana as its is super self-critical. The fact that this is not happening means that additional criterea are needed.

Thanks for your interest.

Mark N.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:52:59 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: Let me nitpick
Message:
Finding the most useful and effective way to share that experience is really important, I think, because learning which are the good and bad apples is going to determine the next phase of our human history.

Are you trying to suggest something, Jeffrey? Like what's the right way to make your case? I don't know if you read my post, but I tried to explain to you that all an ex-premie has to do is honestly state what his experience with M & K were, and how ultimately we decided to just let go of it. I don't know that there is a 'most useful and effective' way of doing that.

I understand your point about reaching out to be a part of something bigger than yourself, but I don't see how that ties in with remaining a premie or becoming an ex, unless that your point is that it's either or. Maybe what you're suggesting is that a premie will remian a premie only so long as it seems that's the only group to belong to, and only becomes an ex when he sees there's an alternative group to join (concerning the subject of M & K) that's more in tune with how he or she feels about it.

I don't know that you are suggesting this, but hey, even if you're not, I think I might have hit on something. For myself, I never listened to what people had to say that was negative about M & K until I heard ex-premies doing so. When friends and family spoke negative about M & K, I just brushed it off, figuring what do they know. But when I heard people who'd been where I'd been expressing their misgivings, I responded more readily.

That's probably a staple of group consciousness. People have a tendency to respond more favorably to others if they share a common background, and reject advice and opinions from people who haven't travelled in their shoes, like you, Jeffrey. I don't really think you understand what this is about because you've never been there.

You have interesting, intelligent theories, but unless you've been there, you'll never know the heart and soul of it. Only a premie or an ex can know that.

Sorry.

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 00:28:15 (GMT)
From: Mark N
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: ah - I see your point ........buuuut
Message:
Embarrasingly, I now find myself arguing on the side of the devil so to speak. You metioned the Catholic church killing, imprisoning etc etc.

For all his faults, M and his group are actually quite mild compared to other cults of today and historical groups of the past.

People will no doubt correct me if I am wrong (I have been uninvolved for a couple of decades) but M/EV whatever is not like Scientology or the Moonies or Raj Neesh or many Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalist groups that all tend to make huge demands on their followers and insist on extreme obedience, mind control, tithing, behaviour codes, have punishment regimes and on and on.

To the best of my knowledge premies are pretty free to tap in or not. M relies on the power of his own speeches to keep people tied to him, there is no systematic big brother organisation policing each person, creating fear in the followers, etc etc.

Using your own arguements, in this light, how rotten is EV really, and if it is in fact quite rotten (which is my personal view) where does that leave so many other groups - many of which purport to be mainstream religious groups, (the very ones that are the 'safe proven and established' choices?

I totally agree with you that we have to use discrimination to determine what groups are good and which are bad but how does one do that, what criterea does one use? By many criterea, EV actually looks quite good because it is very well pitched and relevent to the clients that it seeks to influence. Bad criterea are eliminated so that potential objections can be overcome right from the start.

I hear what you say about people finding being shut up alone in their bodies hell and I have no doubt whatsoever that your experiences with people are orders of magnitude greater then mine, but the process of discriminating good groups from bad group is an individual choice and is a choice made in order to find a way to maximise ones own spiritual development which is unique to each person. So surely at the end of the day the nature of ones development involves lonliness, if only because choosing is an individual process? If you do join a group that does not pan out, the lonliness will be magnified but your spiritual needs (whatever they are) continue unabated inside you.

Mark N

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 02:00:02 (GMT)
From: bill
Email: None
To: Mark N
Subject: There is Larry the cook to consider
Message:
Not to distract from Mark's post and the points he brings up,
but to tack on to his last subject, maybe the good Father Donner
has heard of St Lawrence. The monastic cook.
He found his solitude tolerable because he he had a peace he claimed came from a relationship that he felt he had with the
god.

Truly people dont need others to drive them nuts, people do drive themselves nuts with thier thinking, but others do not
drive themselves nuts with thier thinking.

If something interests you, at work, I work by myself and my mind is mine, I dont have to think about work except occasionally. I could be driven nuts but I find myself interesting and think about what I want.

...well,
there is a BIG difference between taking a walk and walking somewhere you have to go or think you have to go.

There IS the breath, without the rawat family doing a vampire act
with the breath as part of the come on, a case can be made that
feeling it is comfortable. I feel it quite a bit.

The catholics might be focusing on the mother theresa angle more, the one commandment more.....

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:42:34 (GMT)
From: Tony
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: I was an altar boy.
Message:
G'day Jeffrey,
This post comes from 'down under'.I never thought I would see a catholic priest posting here.Thank you for your comments.I am like joe below.I was raised as a catholic,became an altar boy,was sent to a catholic boarding school,became a premie for 26 years and am now a happy ex premie.I hope to see more comments from you Jeffrey.

Cheers, Tony.My father always called priests 'Father trick 'em up'.He was a very irreverent soul.lol.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:29:00 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: Thank you, Jeffrey **BEST OF FORUM** nomination
Message:
I really liked your post - thanks for taking the time to think about all this and write it. I printed it out and have shared it with Brian. I am somewhat burned out right now, so don't have specific comments to make, but I think you were really 'right on' in identifying some of the problems we have faced on this forum.

I particularly appreciated this part of your post:
Isn’t part of the issue you’re facing the degree to which the exes want to imagine being a group? And isn’t part of THAT issue the negotiation of how to deal with your personal histories while at the same time trying to offer the benefit of your COMMON experience (which defines you as a group) with those who are still stuck in a cult? By what method, in what style of personal sharing, do you clarify your own anger and disenchantment and how do you translate what you’ve learned about THAT for the sake of those who are still in the cult? I think you’re trying to balance the benefits of owning your own lives against the dangers of collapsing into a gross individualism, and trying to sell that balance to people who think they have experienced the joys of belonging to a group and are not aware of the degree to which they have sold their souls as a guard against the alienation of modern life. That’s a very tricky little proposition to pull off. But it is extremely important, I think, for people to try it, because all over the planet today people are caught between the alienation of modern individualism and the offer of a safety net from every sort of fundamentalism. Any group, and every group, which takes a step in the healing of this issue in the world is a grace given from the future for everyone.

I would very much appreciate future comments from you, should you care to give them. (Warning, not everyone here will agree with you, and you may face some tough opposition. But, since you are a Catholic priest, I imagine you are used to that :)!)

Thanks again from,
Katie (the lapsed Episcopalian)
and, indirectly, from Brian (the former Missouri Synod Lutheran - you can imagine!)

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:42:07 (GMT)
From: Helen
Email: None
To: Jeffrey
Subject: Thank you, Jeffrey **BEST OF FORUM** nomination
Message:
I agree, great post Jeffrey. Alienation does seem to be our modern curse. I was reading a magazine article today that warned of the effects of children being neglected and the lack of empathy those children grow up with as a result. NOT being empathetic is an adaptation that those children make in order to survive.

The article talked about evolutionary adaptations, like a species of fish that lives in caves and now has no eyes. I hope that we, 2000 years from now, will not be species with no empathy as some sort of twisted adaptation.
Sorry for the tangent, thanks for the post.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 02:24:54 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Helen
Subject: 2000 years from now
Message:
I hope that we, 2000 years from now, will not be species with no empathy as some sort of twisted adaptation.
Sorry for the tangent, thanks for the post.

Sorry, Helen, but I don't think that we, as a species, are even going to be here 2000 years from now. In fact, we're building our own replacements. Carbon based life forms are on the downside of their reign on earth. Silicon is taking over. You think technology is just going to be whatever humans make it? What's going to happen when these machines start making machines that make machines that make machines.... that declare war on human beings. If you think this idea is just science fiction, now it is, but that is the route things are headed. If we're not very, very careful, we could be our very own extinction.

That's, of course, if the bomb doesn't get us first.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 04:53:58 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: Good grief, Jerry!
Message:
You sound like me on a bad day. I really don't know about the extinction of all carbon-based life forms (although humans all killing each other could happen). We can't even get rid of kudzu:).
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:43:52 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: The end is nigh, Katie
Message:
Well, maybe not ALL carbon based life forms, but the bipedal ones known as man, that'a possibility. Why should we be any less subject to extinction than other species that have gone that way before us? If we look at it, realistically, in the 15 billion years that the universe has been evoloving, humankind, of the cro-magnon variety, has only been here for 40,000 years. And that's on a planet where life has been evolving for 4 billion.

Now, we're in the age of the machine, and the research being done on AI isn't going to stop anytime soon. What do you think the result of that is going to be even 100 years from now given the evolutionary pace of machines going from, in just a couple hundred years, the steam engine to the computer? They're even starting to make computers out of DNA for chrissakes! Movies like AI and The Matrix, though fictional, are based on fact, not fiction. I'm not saying the world they predict is EXACTLY what's it's going to be like, but how far off the mark can they be?

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:50:52 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: The end is nigh, Katie
Message:
Well, I won't argue that human beings have done a pretty good job steering themselves down the road to extinction - and trying to take as many carbon-based life-forms as possible with them. And I don't know enough about the rest to comment (suggest energy supply might be a potential problem though!)

BTW and OT, I LOVED the movie 'The Matrix' - I read a lot of cyberpunk science fiction but have never seen a movie that was as good as most of the books I've read.

Take care, you doomsayer -
Love,
Katie

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 04:42:47 (GMT)
From: Helen
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: 2000 years from now
Message:
You really think that could happen--machines making machines? You been smoking some wacky weed? Or maybe you just saw the movie AI???
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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 20:50:41 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Helen
Subject: less than 200 yrs. from now
Message:
Hi Helen,

I jokingly called jerry a carbon chauvinist but jerry does have a valid point about machines making machines and this is not just tauted in sci-fi circles.

I split my reading between science and sci-fi and the lines in the sand are blurring moe every day.

Rocket Scientists are currently designing rockets that will land and the pods will build themselves in order to continue their journey. Why? The need for fuel will hinder the quest for space travel. Not only that but these robotic ambassadors continue to travel but they will constantly improve on their offspring.

At the Silk building in Berkeley engineering R&D, supported by a huge conglomerate of hi-tech leaders like Microsoft, Hewlitt Packard, Intel, and other leading schools in technology are collaborating on the future computer. The intent is to develop organic hardware. Hardware is obstacle to computer technology like fuel is to space vehicles. Another interesting development within this group is SmartDust. The smart dust will eliminate the need for wired communication. This stuff is beyond our current comprehension but it is fully supported by the advanced science community. Intersting?

Don't know about human race will be annihilated in 2000 years but it certainly looks like it will be transformed.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 15:51:43 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Helen
Subject: 2000 years from now
Message:
No, Helen, I haven't been smoking any wacky weed. Clean and sober for 15 years, in fact (can you imagine if I WAS still smoking the weed?) Anyway, ever hear of robots? Right now, they're in a primitive stage, mostly working in factories, and yes, making OTHER MACHINES. What do you think, the evolution of that is at a standstill? Hardly.

Pull the plug on all your appliances, Helen. You never know what they might be thinking. Shhh! What's that? I think I heard something..... gotta go....

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 22:59:45 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Jeffrey Donner
Subject: A Metaphor
Message:
Hi Jeff,

Very interesting. I guess I'm a triple hit, here, somebody who was a Roman Catholic, a premie and now an ex-premie. Amazing, huh? I was interested in what you said, and I had a few quesions.

My chief interest is in Catholicism which is attempting a significant in-house transformation.

It is? What kind of transformation is that? It seems to me that the Catholic Church has been in a very conservative, almost reactionary phase since the 70s. I do note that the Pope has been going around 'apologizing' for things recently, is that part of the transformation? I noticed that he 'apoligized' to the Eastern Orthodox Church for the Fourth Crusade. I don't think he mentioned Crusades one through three, though. ::))

Lesson: one of the really touchy, and most interesting, issues in religion is the complex relationship between the individual and the group. Brian says his actions were in large part in defense of his individual rights to express himself without being bullied by a flame-thrower, but gets accused by the other libertarians of selling out the group.

I guess I'm not convinced we even have a 'group.' The only thing we have in common was that we were once premies, but even that was a very different thing for each of us. We have as many views on the values and disadvantages of knowledge as there are participants, and we also have many different views on sprituality, religion, the new age as well. We are athiests and christians, you name it. What is it that you think makes 'ex-premies' a group?

I think people have gone on to become part of other 'groups,' that never had anything to do with Maharaji. I know I have.

The Lutherans broke off to start an improved christian religion because they disagreed with the actions of the Catholic Church and the way Christianity was conducted by it. They didn't become 'ex-Catholics' but really they thought they were becoming 'improved Catholics' or 'improved Christians' through reformation of the church.

Ex-premies aren't doing anything of the sort. They are ex-premies, but there isn't any kind of consensus or even an implication that we are trying to become 'improved premies' or that we think we can do what Maharaji does better than he does and therefore are trying to get premies to join our improved cult. We just, basically, no longer believe he ever really did have much of anything to offer and we talk about it.

I think you’re trying to balance the benefits of owning your own lives against the dangers of collapsing into a gross individualism, and trying to sell that balance to people who think they have experienced the joys of belonging to a group and are not aware of the degree to which they have sold their souls as a guard against the alienation of modern life.

Well, premies claim they aren't a part of a group. And many of them actually don't like the group very much anyway. I don't think ex-premies have any kind of 'group' to offer, except an opportunity to discuss a phenomenon with somebody who has already gone through it. Maybe that's a bit like AA. It's a discussion group, maybe, that helps people question what they have been doing, but it isn't some 'group' with its own philosophy to sell in replacement of the one premies already have, because we all have different 'philosophies' if you will.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:57:41 (GMT)
From: Jeffrey Donner
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: A Metaphor
Message:
Hi, Joe --

Yes, certainly, the hierarchy of the church is in a reactionary mode. But, to borrow another metaphor, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Most Catholics liked the church they saw through the lens of the Second Vatican Council, and they're not about to give it up. I think most are simply waiting until the hierarchy grows up. Some are pushing in small groups, the Women's Ordination Conference, etc.

Yes, whether the ex-premies are, or want to be, some kind of group is what looks to me like one of the questions all over forum 5, one of the contributing factors to the blow-up of forum 5, and part of the energy behind plans for forum 6. Certainly the exes are not trying to sell a 'new, improved!' version of M and K. But I think they ARE part of a significant group of people who know something very important about religion and modern life. HOW they decide to share what they know is a big question at the moment.

J

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 04:46:45 (GMT)
From: Henry
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: A.A. does have a philosophy
Message:
Joe wrote:

'I don't think ex-premies have any kind of 'group' to offer, except an opportunity to discuss a phenomenon with somebody who has already gone through it. Maybe that's a bit like AA. It's a discussion group, maybe, that helps people question what they have been doing, but it isn't some 'group' with its own philosophy to sell in replacement of the one premies already have, because we all have different 'philosophies' if you will.'

Henry responded:

Hi Joe,
You made some interesting points in a great thread.

Perhaps I misunderstood your comment about AA (and the 12 step programs in general). It's definately more than a discussion group. I think it has characteristics of a religion or at least a philosophy. In fact, there is even a 12 step called Fundamentalists Anonymous, which helps people recover from their addiction to fundamentalism.

I spent a couple of years in a 12 step program for codependency. By working the steps, one can experience a mental-emotional-spiritual process of acknowledging the addiction, making room for a 'Higher Power' in one's life, asking the HP for help, and consequently reorganizing one's life and behavior on a more sound ethical foundation.

The 12 step program helped me understand more of my emotional issues and how I got hooked into mj's cult. It was a step towards my becoming an ex.

The 2nd edition of Marc Galanter's 'Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion' (the 1st edition has been quoted on the EPO site for its discussion of DLM) contains a new chapter analyzing AA and the 12 step programs.

Best wishes,
Henry

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 21:36:09 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: kevjo@mindspring.com
To: Everyone
Subject: It Ain't So response from Owen Plant
Message:
I note that It Ain't So hasn't had anything new for about two weeks. I'm sure Pia is just inundated with all those articulate 'responses' from premies just really getting to the heart of the matter and clearing up, once and for all 'what Maharaji said' and 'What he didn't say.' So far, not ONE of the responses posted have even addressed that KEY point, despite the now somewhat very misleading, intro to the 'It Ain't So' website. I know we are all waiting with baited breath for those really insightful and information-fulled 'reponses' that will finally clear that up from all the confusion we ex-premies have caused by having the audacity to actually print Maharaji's quotes.

One of the 'responses' Pia has chosen to include actually includes a real name, and it's Owen Plant. I remember Owen Plant from the 70s when I lived in Chicago and he was the coordinator in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Owen is originally from Jamaica and I remember him as a very nice guy, but very much a a 'true believer' premie, but then so was I. Anyhow, here's what Owen says on Pia's website and my response thereto.

Owen, if you read this, I truly hope you are having a great life and I hope you take no offense from the fact that I am concerned about what you have had to say. I also hope that you might correspond a little about this.

It's A Simple Offer

Congratulations on a comprehensive and well-rounded website.

Well-rounded? Owen, come on. The website hasn't printed even ONE of the MANY emails sent in by ex-premies about their concerns. In fact, although the website paints negatively all vocal ex-premies as some kind of small hate group, and vaguely references some 'false' allegations, nowhere does the site even say what those allegations are, and it provides no link whatsoever to any of the websites where they are expressed. This is hardly a 'well-rounded' presentation.

In terms of Maharaji, my singular comment is that over twenty-six years ago he made a simple offer to me. That offer did not include all of the issues being discussed and argued about on websites today - his personal life-style, any money he may or may not have, or who he wants to associate with. Frankly, none of those things are of any concern to me. What I am involved with on a daily basis is that offer and the resulting experience.

Okay, so here is the universal premie excuse, which, with all due respect, Owen, is amazingly arrogant. You don't care that Maharaji is a filthy rich, philandering alcoholic, who was using drugs at the same time he was telling us to be celibate and to avoid even alcohol, and who got his money largely on the backs of premie donations while 'propagation' floundered for lack of funds. Okay, so you don't care about that, but can't you see that others might think it's important when considering accepting someone as their 'master?'

But I also wonder if you also don't care what Maharaji actually SAID to us. I say this partly because recently I listened to the coordinators conference tape after the Atlantic City program in December, 1976. [I have it if you want to hear it.] I recall hearing your voice on that tape, with your cute Jamaican accent and all. Anyhow, do you recall in that meeting Maharaji said getting married was equivalent to blowing your brains out with dynamite? I know you heard it at the time, because I recall you asked Maharaji a somewhat frantic question after that because you said (by his grace you said) you were married before you received knowledge. I recall Maharaji said not to divorce your wife, but he re-emphasized that anybody who left the ashram and got married had made a horrible, almost fatal mistake, and that seeking a relationship with another person was just 'a substitution on the path of knowledge.'

Now, Owen, do you think that might have messed up a few people? Do you think Maharaji should take responsibility for making those damaging comments to us, as well as the many more damaging things he said over the years that are recorded and discussed on this website and forum? Do you have any 'concern' about that, or does that, also, mean nothing to you and doesn't 'concern' you?. Why not? Do you think the fact that Maharaji has never taken responsbility for those incredible errors reflects on his ability to be a teacher of that which satisfies your thirst and fulfills your heart?

The offer, so many years ago, was a personal invitation to accept a tool that may allow me to enjoy my own life. I was then, and continue to remain, free to use that tool or not, as I wish.

Well, sure, that's true, but then, Maharaji also told us that if we didn't 'use that tool' that vegetables would rot inside of us, we would explode into thousands of pieces and we would go to hell? Isn't it just a little disingenuous to say that you were always 'free' to not use the tool, if you believed what your 'master' told you? Does this 'concern' you Ownen, even just a little bit?

Regards, Owen. I hope you will consider what I'm saying, and I hope you might engage in some discussion about this. I hope you and your family are doing well.

Joe Whalen

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:27:05 (GMT)
From: Ian Dury
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: By the way, Joe,
Message:
Owen is the father of Rawat's personal secretary, so he must have a very unique perspective.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:29:00 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Everyone
Subject: Knowlede And Fun
Message:
I went to a bar last night and had a great time. This may sound simple but what's really interesting is comparing such fun times with the 'festivals' that Margie used to put on.

The last multi-day program I went to was Long Beach, 1997. It was my first multi-day in 12 years, but I was a very regular video attendee over that period, going to seven programs a week for several years.

The highlight of Long Beach was meeting a Malibu-dwelling pwk friend of a pwk friend who had spent time in Malibu himself. He was a musician who had played or planned to play with Daya and had her personal phone number with him. If I recall correctly, the cappuccino was good too.

The sales area was overwhelming and, artistically, was infinitely more interesting than the actual program.

I was shocked by the apparent dismal mood in the convention center hall. Thousands of people and not a drop of joy to be found. I finally left the fold last year - I guess I was so brainwashed that even the funeral-like atmosphere at Long Beach was not enough of a jar to get me out immediately.

Steve

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 14:31:57 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Steve Quint
Subject: Knowlede And Fun And Vive La France
Message:
Oh yeah, and I met a really nice father and daughter in the hotel restaurant. The father was a pwk from Australia who was both a lawyer and computer software developer working on legal software. The daughter, around 19, wanted to be a Shakespearean actress. They were from Adelaide, if my memory serves me well.

The hotel, on the south part of Long Beach just a bit north of the Queen Mary, I believe it was the Westcoast Hotel & Marina, had a reasonably priced and great dinner buffet. All you can eat. Actually my most lasting memory of that 'festival' is that the steamed buttered salmon in that buffet was better than any restaurant salmon I've had in British Columbia, which is renowned for its salmon. I also remember the warning at each entrance to the restaurant that said something like 'we are not responsible if you get cancer from our food'.

Steve

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:41:59 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: So did you memorize the number?............./nt
Message:
Just kidding.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 18:30:09 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Deborah
Subject: Yeah
Message:
Forty-two, thirty-nine, fifty-six
You could say she's got it all

AC/DC
Whole Lotta Rosie

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:25:17 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: A real case of Internet shenanagins
Message:
This one makes our own little FV tempest in a teapot look very tame. From BNA Inernet law news, which I am reading with more interest (snicker) lately.

Cheer, f

'TESTING THE LIMITS OF NET LIBEL
Salon runs an interesting story on an Internet libel case
that will test the limits of net libel by addressing issues
such as jurisdiction and the applicability of ISP exemptions
to email newsletters.'
salon article

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:17:47 (GMT)
From: Dermot
Email: Dermot@mullan.net
To: Everyone
Subject: Jerry,Pat,Katie,Glassner, uncle tom cobbly and ALL
Message:
Yo

Jerry...Liked your post in Marianness 'Dissent..' Thread, especially the last paragraph.

Pat...and yours too Pat in the same thread..Perhaps the Premie forum should be called 'Life's Great when you lurk anonymously and spit venom '

Katie...the MK dual Identity...why do you automatically think it's an ex and not a premie?

Glassner...couldn't find how to contact you on your website and I, for one, don't have your email:) I wondered...in the interests of fairness whether you'll be copying some of the premie posts from LG onto your site...you know just to show that it's not just EX premies who are emotionally sick, drug crazed individuals ? :)

To all ..for me it's time for a break...for a while or for good ...who knows such things? :)

Those who stay online ...keep up the good work of intelligent, perceptive, humourous,angry,tender,provoking and challenging (or in short, human)posts. Tell it like it surely is.

Sincere Regards

Dermot.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:22:09 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Dermot
Subject: Just a wild guess, Dermot
Message:
It could be anyone. Notice I said 'I think'. I'm open to suggestions.

BTW, there are some premies posting on Life's Great who I respect - I knew a few of them from F5, but didn't know Carlos and Isabella. They are able to disagree without being insulting or rude, and aren't out to convert people. I try to read selectively over there and have had some good conversations. (I agree that there are some nasty people there, but try to avoid them.)

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:03:33 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Katie, unless there is more than one Carlos...
Message:
you are mistaken. Carlos' post was the violent message that CW fueled to the unmentionalbel THREAT against Jim.

I have taken those post VERY seriously and copies of all threatening posts are copied and put into a file I'm preparing.

So, if it is another Carlos you are talking about, please clarify that and disregard the above.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:06:58 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: There's only one
Message:
And I have never seen him post anything violent, although he has taken a stand against verbal abuse on that forum - by both premies and ex-premies.

Why not try talking to him first? He and I had a few defensive exchanges when I first started posting there, but I have found him to be honest and straightforward - and willing to view ex-premies as fellow human beings.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 18:52:42 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Here's excerpt from post by Jim. Read Carlos' name
Message:
This was probably one of damage control posts CD eliminated by I printed out a copy of this message and other correspondances that were equally sick between CW and Carlos:

This is Jim's post:

OKAY Premies. Tell me about this one. This came from a PEACE and LOVE member of the premie cult: Yesterday, SC, explained that he wasn't really talking about Fakiranand's attempted murder when he said that M had ideas about how to deal with critics back in '74. He was just talking about dumping dog shit on people.

Then, I notice that Catweasel, the cowardly anonymous creep of all time, threatened to burn me or smash me with a baseball bat:

I'm with you Carlos

Lets not ban the bastard , let's BURN him. This is far more elegant and more the treatment he needs and expects.The schmuck thrives on abuse. I think his father may have been Ariel Sharron. Take it from someone who has played patti cake wth Jimbo for a long time. The only thing that will stop him playing hardball is a Baseball bat.

Is that the sweet nice Carlos you would like me to talk to?

I can't find the original posts on LG's forum. But I did print out the whole page which includes time, dates, and other traceable information. Would you like to see them?

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 19:15:47 (GMT)
From: bill-Jim TRIED to evoke
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: this stuff out of people. We dont want it anymore.
Message:
WIthout Jim feeding that kind of energy, it will go away.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 20:11:00 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: bill-Jim TRIED to evoke
Subject: Sorry chump, this was a continued dialogue w/katie
Message:
So mind your own bees wax.

Boy, I'm giving you a run for your money. Hope you're in good shape. I got lots of energy. You must be on the payroll or you're just a weirdo!

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 20:57:30 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: Deb, please listen
Message:
Catweasel was, I believe, responding to a post by Carlos where he was against banning Jim. I do not think you can find ANY posts by Carlos where he advocates violence. Please do not try and implicate Carlos because someone addressed a post to him! This could happen to any of us.

By the way, Bill is an ex-premie and has been around since Forum I - he's not on anyone's payroll but his own.

TC,
Katie

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 01:55:13 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Katie, in regards to CW's neg. twist re: Carlos
Message:
Hi Katie, thanks.

Just to let you know I got that message from Dermot.

How come no one corrected that error before? CW is implicating others to go for the ride. Imagine the insanity of stealing other people's post to support his sicko twisted posts.

What do you think about this whacko MK pretending to have handle used and then saying he wasn't there, then saying it's an ex.

Aussie Mole, who outed CW/MK et al said that he was a rebel hell bent on destroying the EPO who has also bragged about his shitdisturbing and has also negatively incited many of the good ole boys in Australia.

This is where and why we need discretion in who we allow ourselves to open up to some of the flamers. Discretion is Good, it's very real world. I know for a fact, that idiots like him are not the average premie. My premie friends were incredibly cool people. It's flaming jerks that make premies out to be morons.

People think they need to remind me of their humaness. Well dogs, cats, and oak trees don't receive Knowledge or pledge their life to the BigHead. Of course, they're human. And humans can be unpredictable at best, and extrememly dangerous at worse.

You may want to read my post to SirDave regarding my extension of the Jim post NotEmail point of view. While I have you're attention I just want to say that CD left a damaging statement that can easily be proven.

Solution: Have someone email or call Glasser and ASK him how many emails Jim sent. One prooves CD wrong and he apologizes, enough said.

I am not initiating a pissing contest, and I won't apologize for something I am not doing. I'm asking CD to prove his defamatory allegations. Katie, Jim is not here any more to defend himself. I would do it for you or any other decent person whom I have grown to trust.

Your bad blood with Jim has nothing to do with my request. I've told you in previous posts that I respect your emotional privacy in that regard. Let's finalize this, once and for all.

Take care of yourself, hope you're doing well.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 03:00:33 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: Deb, I can't follow this whole thing
Message:
First, I didn't understand why Carlos was implicated in the first place? Because CW addressed a post to him? Don't get it. CW could have posted the same thing to me or you.

Next, I don't understand what CD has to do with this whole mess (really, I do not). Did he say that Jim's post to Charles was an E-mail? If so, why is this defamatory? If it's not a threat on-line, why is it a threat in e-mail? I guess that is what I am wondering. I personally believe it was a post, not an e-mail, if you are interested.

Thirdly, I think the multiple CW's and MK's are trying to mess with people's heads. I don't know who is doing it (my guess is either 1)CW and MK themselves, or 2)exes who are sick of anonymice), but I wish they would stop. My advice (which you don't have to take) is taken from my eight year old nephew's favorite saying 'This is BORING - just IGNORE it.' I am guessing that either Sir D or CD will get sick of it and turn on the IP viewer on their forums.

BTW, I think Jim can take care of himself. I am not saying this to be callous, but I don't think even Jim would want you to get so involved on his behalf without his express wishes, especially as it seems to be making you feel real bad.

I wish you wouldn't get so upset about this stuff, honestly.

Take care,
Katie

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 22:09:13 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Katie
Subject: Allow me to help you straighten this out
Message:
Hi Katie.

Before I clarify myself I want to say that the whole thing has gotten me very upset and thanks to a post from Dermot, I subsequently resoved a lot of these issues myself.

First, regarding Carlos. And this is ONLY to my current understanding, I am not trying to start up anything, OKI-DOKE

You stated:

First, I didn't understand why Carlos was implicated in the first place? Because CW addressed a post to him? Don't get it. CW could have posted the same thing to me or you.

Carlos had made a post saying something about being burned at the stake, apparently now I know it was innocently referring to what was happening to Jim.

CW, turned that point to his own psycho-mischief and responded with the post saying, 'Yea Carlos, I agree, blah, blah, blah, BASEBALL BAT. I went to the forum and found a very bile dscourse (2 posts) of CW responding to Carlos and left two disgusting responses. This is what CW was doing, he was creating allies by using familiar posters name. I think that's dispictable for the innocent posters, I do. I fell for it and flipped. Dermot kindly brought that point to my attention. Dermot has earned my trust.

By the way, I found a post of Carlos posting to Abi under her farewell to Jim thread, and found it to be quite sympathetic and reflective and so I now agree with you on his sincerity. Please convey this to Carlos, if you like for me.

Now in regards to the CD. You stated:

Next, I don't understand what CD has to do with this whole mess (really, I do not). Did he say that Jim's post to Charles was an E-mail? If so, why is this defamatory? If it's not a threat on-line, why is it a threat in e-mail? I guess that is what I am wondering. I personally believe it was a post, not an e-mail, if you are interested.

Yes, Katie CD insisted and continues to insist that it was an email. Sending this as an email to Glasser and merely posting it as a taunting joke for our own EPO twisted anti-bunking entertainment is entirely another matter.
Jim would never have sent that as an email, he was shadowboxing an idiot who is conveniently beyond reproach. Do you not think Glasser would have responded to that email. He responded to emails all the time. He responded to Moley's emails. Do you not think he would have brought that one to YOUR attention instead of the silly little two-liner. He cried like a baby over mine.

Jim is a very strong advocate against violence and the intention to ruin people's careers. He is, however, notorious for teasing people, to the point of confusion, and anger.

Nobody took the post as a threat when it was posted, it was only marketed as deception when CD's ego deflated and attempt to silence expired. CD wants to believe it was an email, but that does not make it an EMAIL. CD has never been able to match Jim's argumentive skills nor anyone else's for that matter. He just throws puerile assertions about and avoids any questions requiring him to be real.

Katie, asking Glasser if his colleagues know about his involvement is a senseless taunt intended to illuminate the irony and lunacy of Glasser's defensive cult life and inflammatory web page. M's bizarre cult and inherent belief system is a bloody joke in the 'real world'. I bet dimes to darshan he does not boast about his involvement with the Master around the water cooler. It was taken as a joke by all readers at the time.

However, in the throws of the tumultuous fighting which insued, CD presented it like evidence. CD re-pulled a post that few remembered seeing. People fell for mistakingly fell for it. I was beside myself when CD pulled that shit, he confused a lot of people. It was a cheap and cowardly shot. The issues that you, Brian, Bazzo and Jim were engaged in were at least based on truth. Peppered with accusations of deception, maybe, but firmly based on true events. That's the difference.
We can heal from these kinds of wounds.

Thirdly, I think the multiple CW's and MK's are trying to mess with people's heads. I don't know who is doing it (my guess is either
1)CW and MK themselves, or
2)exes who are sick of anonymice), but I wish they would stop.

Yes, like I said earlier, I am now aware of the game. However, I seriously doubt that it was an ex because CW was involved in all posts.

My advice (which you don't have to take) is taken from my eight year old nephew's favorite saying 'This is BORING - just IGNORE it.'

Look out for those 8-yr. old perfect masters Katie:

'There like KITTENS, They grow up to be CATS'.

I am guessing that either Sir D or CD will get sick of it and turn on the IP viewer on their forums.

I'm not aware of all the technicalities at play, here, but I hope this cannot be avoided in the future.

BTW, I think Jim can take care of himself. I am not saying this to be callous, but I don't think even Jim would want you to get so involved on his behalf without his express wishes, especially as it seems to be making you feel real bad.

He's not here, nor is he reading the pages. There is no reason for CD to leave a lingering impression of something that did not exist, ie. the exposure of the revealing EMAIL. This does not promote closure but leaves a bad taste about deceit. Nothing good can come from that. People will refer back to 'THe deception' in the future and this whole issue will rise like a phoenix from the ashes again. Let people think what they want but feeding them fodder is cruel and unnecessary. We should be beyond that, premie or non-premie, or ex-premie.

I wish you wouldn't get so upset about this stuff, honestly.

I believe you. I apparently can move on when I feel that issues resolve as far as they possibly can. Time and Proximity take over from there. But CD has left a festering wound in the minds of a lot of people. I'm not the only one upset by that cruel hoax. Others, who have left are disappointed also.

Thanks for taking this up me and hearing me out. Take care yourself, Deborah

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:22:29 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: Appreciate it Deborah
Message:
But I'm really trying to reduce my involvement in the various controversies on these forums unless they involve me (and maybe even if they do.)

Glad you feel OK about Carlos now. Also, I agree that Jim's post on LG was NOT a copy of an e-mail - for whatever that is worth.

Hope you are able to resolve this issue.
Take care,
Katie

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Date: Sun, Jul 15, 2001 at 01:01:42 (GMT)
From: JohnT
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: Allow me to help you straighten this out
Message:
Catweasle's tactics were used against him to great effect when he started a thread called 'My Alias' over at anything goes. It came undone! and as you say:
This is what CW was doing, he was creating allies by using familiar posters name. I think that's dispictable for the innocent posters, I do.

The real MK is grateful.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:23:41 (GMT)
From: Katie
Email: None
To: Dermot
Subject: And PS Dermot
Message:
I like Jerry's last paragraph too.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 13:52:37 (GMT)
From: Two Feet
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: A BIG Thankyou...
Message:
This has been an incredible month for me. Thank you to everyone who has been instrumental in helping me find my way. I feel like I’ve just stepped off a roundabout … my legs are a little shaky, my head is still spinning and, for the moment, I feel:

Angry, for having been mislead
Vulnerable, for having been so available
Stupid, for having been so gullible
Abandoned, because I thought I belonged
Sad, because I knew no better
Helpless, because I can’t change anything

Relieved, because it’s over
Free, because the questions have been answered
Scared, because I am now responsible for my own life
Hesitant, because I don’t know what the future holds
Thankful, because my heart is still open
Happy, because I'm off on holiday for a week!

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:04:01 (GMT)
From: Henry
Email: None
To: Two Feet
Subject: Eloquent post, Two Feet. thank you! (nt)
Message:
nt
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 18:58:04 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: Two Feet
Subject: And thank YOU Two Feet
Message:
Thanks for that clear emotional inventory - such honesty. And thanks for your contributions here so far.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:25:25 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Two Feet
Subject: Really enjoying your posts, Bon Vacance.../nt
Message:
zzzz
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:13:01 (GMT)
From: michael donner
Email: None
To: Two Feet
Subject: A BIG Thankyou...
Message:
wow great sister!
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:39:08 (GMT)
From: Mercedes
Email: None
To: Two Feet
Subject: A BIG Thankyou...
Message:
You are pretty clear on what you feel, that is fantastic.
Great work.
Mercedes
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:49:50 (GMT)
From: Disculta
Email: None
To: Mercedes
Subject: A BIG Thankyou...
Message:
I love your list - it could be a really good 'exiting' song.

And the second half MORE than makes up for the first half, to the detached reader (moi).

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 20:15:59 (GMT)
From: Lesley
Email: None
To: Disculta
Subject: Two feet down and planted
Message:
Wow, what a beautiful summation, wishing you all the very best in what is to come, I've been out for over a year now and it is still getting better. giggle

I felt like I was reunited with my pre K 18yr old self. It was a profound pleasure though somewhat disturbing to feel again the uncertainties of a teenager, but 'looking into the void is the thrill of the ride', sorting through 46yrs of personal experience has at times been pretty intense, let us not just play the fun side of it, but fun I have been having, a lot of it, and one benefit I have derived from sorting through all the 'satsang' I sat back and absorbed over the years is that my sense of humour received a massive irony injection!

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 12:38:13 (GMT)
From: wolfie
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Mainz was unbelievebale....Bing Bam Boom. part II
Message:
Hi everyone,

now it's a week ago that I went to Mainz. And I can say that I enjoyed everything besides the programm itself.
I don't call myself a premie anymore and I don't call myself an expremie. The feeling inside of me, the level were I recognise me as me, once I tried so hard to label it with Maharaji is still there, whatever I think, wether Maharaji is, a 'Master, a Comedian, a Monster, a Dictator or just another guy playing a strange game, like many persons do, or have done on this planet.
MJ seems to be an extreme person. My wellfare and wellbeing is totally independent from him. I say this because there was a time were I tried to convince myself from the opposite. It takes it little bit of courage not bow down before MJ, he has to stand the proof, blind faith can not be required. I can not allowe anyone to censore my inner awareness, if I would do this I never can enjoy my precious life.
I once thougt MJ is a honest and mentally healthy person, so far I could accept him and tried to give knowledge with him as a master a fair chance over many years.In this years I realized a lot and my life developed in the sense, that I don't feel anymore so caught up with hope and fears. I don't regret anything and my perspective is more relaxed than it was. No need to run, no need to hide.

Before my post gets too long. What I want to tell everyone is, what I realized for myself, why MJ was so attractive for me. It has something to do with being narcistic.
On this programm I saw that MJ enjoys to be narzistic. His gestures and his bodylanguage seemed to me very narzistic. I never saw this before. His narzissm somehow goes together with my own narzissm and this made me blind for his behaviour.

As an own psychoanalyses I accept, that there always was a part inside of myself that wanted to sit on a thron like MJ and speak and joke as powerful like he does. I wanted to be loved like he was loved by his premies. I wanted to be a little bit like him. But this somehow is a destructive motivaion, but I haven't seen it, and this mechanism I think still works for a lot of people. My darksided narzissm was always powered by his narzissm and cause I was blind to this fact I supported his narzissm by supporting his organisation. Maybe this is a little bit to personnal for this forum, but maybe this view is helpful for someone else.
I think it is not too absurd, when I say that I even can see that a lot of premies enjoy to behave narzitic and in the moment this is my peronal key to unmystiefy the phenomena of MJ and his followers for myself.
Whatever MJ really is, he is an extreme figure and he will still attract people. On one video we saw in Mainz, and it was announced as a very special one: The Master himself talks about, how we can talk about something, we can not talk about. MJ gives a teaching 'Talking about Knowledge'.
He stood there like Napoleon and said what he always said. He is so used to his terminlogie,that after two sentences he starts to use the same examples like he always does. The Premies were exicuted to listen and eventhough it only was a video, I could easiely imagine the fear amongst the listeners, everybody seemed scared to death to ask even a little question.
After this video, I sart imagine around 100 people sitting in the hall sarting humming and stumping with the feet and then we go crazy with singing: ' Maharaji we'll, we'll rock you...bum bum bum...we'll, we'll rock you.....bum.. we'll rock you' I think that would be fun and more fun it would be when this could happen, when he is personnaly on stage. Come on let's test his humor, he is so proud of.

So, have a nice weekend, and I wish everyone a good time.

ciao ....never more love and no more homesick .....wolfie....we'll, we'll...rock you ....Bing Bam Booom...........

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 19:14:00 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: wolfie
Subject: Believable insights part II
Message:
Nice work wolfie. By the way, I love your inadvertant typo 'narzissm' which is a combination of 'narcissism' and 'Nazi' - a very appropriate new term to describe this type of behavior.

Your post and the rest in the thread so far make reading the forum worthwhile. Thanks everyone. I especially resonate with thes comments re: self esteem and certainty. Of course I would have looked up to someone so sure of himself and so vain when I was so uncertain but narcissitsic as well. He could be whatever I was afraid to be and we projected a lot on him. As said before here, we gave the best of ourselves to him because we were afraid to be powerful. When I grew some balls and learned to believe in myself, M appeared as an arrogant and not very well informed tyrant.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:18:18 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: wolfie
Subject: Thanks. also,anyone have that video?
Message:
'Talking about Knowledge'?

It might be interesting for someone to purchase it.
We might all gain some kind of insight into how m currently thinks, and plans to continue the indoctrination process...

I know he warned the premies a few years ago that there would be no great influx of people to get knowledge, at least in the West.
'A person here, a person there'....that was the way he worded it...

I think this video would be interesting to get and watch, especially in light of his Atlanta tape, which had many revealing quotes in it...

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:58:21 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: wolfie
Subject: Mainz WAS unbelievebale..but Your post IS better
Message:
Good and honest post Wolfie. This will help a lot of premies understand that M is only a piece of their experience.

Calling it as it is important, especially for you. You'll see things one way today and another way today and then it will change again. But they'll be your perceptions.

Stay in touch with your friends, they're invaluable.

I really liked, 'He stood there like Napoleon' RIGHT ON.

So what exactly does it mean to 'rock Maharaji'.

In my own twisted way it sounded like a premonition,

.....'We will, we will.......Stone you one day!'

Better leave before I get in trouble, take care.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:11:39 (GMT)
From: michael donner
Email: None
To: wolfie
Subject: Mainz was unbelievebale....Bing Bam Boom. part II
Message:
really good post wolfie...narcistic...more then correct...and how either that part of m or some other part of m exists inside me (us) is truer then true and an interesting place to look for insight into where and how we can continue to grow up into fully conscious humans. thanks again for your courage in going and reporting so honestly.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 14:56:40 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: wolfie
Subject: Thanks for those insights
Message:
They make a lot of sense to me.

Just carrying on from the discussion below, about how the Maharaji cult seems to be a cult of 'low self esteem,' I found interesting your comment that Maharaji's extreme narcissism might mean that there will always be people attracted to him, and once attracted to him, find it hard to ever move on from him.

I think if you believe there is something wrong with you, and you accept the notion that there really is someone who can give you the solution (all of which is indoctrinated in the cult aspirant process), it's clear that the cult selects for people who really are needy, and accepting of the idea that someone can take over their essential problem and save them.

One thing about Maharaji, is that at least in his public persona, he appears to be completely 'sure.' People speaking with absolute confidence about this kind of thing is pretty rare. How often do you actually see that in everyday life? Not very often. Maharaji doesn't say much of anything that makes any sense, he is uncharismatic, not very coherent, and not too smart or attractive, but one thing he is, is 'sure,' or is at least able to project that. From what I understand, this is one of the characteristics of a narcissistic personality.

Add to that, the other 'nice' things you mention, like going to programs with other PWKs, seeing your friends, feeling part of a 'group,' feeling you have something that other people don't have and feel 'lucky,' and given that you don't have to do much of anything anymore to be a premie, except maybe believe in all that, I can see why people stay involved.

But I really think the theory is interesting. When people start gaining self-esteem, and gain enough to start looking critically at Maharaji and with some distance, like you are doing right now and did at Mainz, that's when they begin extracting themselves from all of it.

Wolfie, thanks for your post. It's very insightful.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:00:16 (GMT)
From: Mercedes
Email: None
To: Wolfie
Subject: Thanks for those insights
Message:
Thank you wolfie, yeap something in us resonated with mj for sure, and as Joe said once one starts gaining self esteem one can view mj more critically and therefore one can get out of the cult.
That is what happened to me and I am very grateful, I was half a person all those years, never believing I could take care of myself.
Growing up hurts sometimes and the key word is growing up which while I was in the cult didn't happened.
Thanks again, take care

Mercedes

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 15:58:28 (GMT)
From: Disculta
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Thanks Wolfie...
Message:
I think this is a really powerful way to release yourself from what hasn't really been real for you - by looking at what attracted you and what about MJ is also in you.

In my opinion, this is a really good shortcut to a faster, easier transition, as long as the self-examination is done in a really self-honoring way (which it sounds like you are doing).

As Joe said, this is the cult of low self-esteem, and one of the problems with 'taking responsibility' is that it can easily be mistaken for 'blaming oneself' and the first is empowering, whereas the second... well...

There is a sensitive edge here, which can appear like prevarication to dyed in the wool premies OR ex-premies, who might think that a person should 'logically' jump right into the opposing camp. I love it when I see a person riding the sensitive edge and staying self-loving, like Wolfie here and Two Feet above.

If there is anything I aspire for these forums to do, it is to sensitively help people at this edge.

love Katie Darling

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 16:05:16 (GMT)
From: Mercedes
Email: None
To: Disculta
Subject: Thanks Wolfie...
Message:
Hi Katie,
You said:
If there is anything I aspire for these forums to do, it is to sensitively help people at this edge.

That is exactly my sentiment, thank you...

Love,
Mercedes

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:03:30 (GMT)
From: Marianne
Email: MarianneDB@aol.com
To: Everyone
Subject: Dissent, Destruction and Reformation
Message:
To Everyone: For the last month or so, I have checked into the Forum, and the recently erected, apologist premie websites, and have read the heated debates reflected on these sites. I decided not to wade into these discussions -- even though my instincts are to mediate these disputes -- because my death row clients need and require my attention right now. I see that the forum is about to undergo another transformation.

It seems that Jim's involvement is ground zero for the changes in the forum. Whatever my own view of Jim's and the FA's activities, I believe that Jim's role as the philosophical rabid dog of the forum has been indispensible to the discussion which has occurred here. I sometimes do not agree with what Jim says, or with his approach to some of the posters, but I do believe there is a time and place for his incisive, sometimes painfully observant insights. On the other hand, Jim has rubbed some people the wrong way, and has not listened to their meaningful complaints about his verbal behavior.

Heartfelt and hard hitting dissent causes destruction from time to time. I hate the destructive aspect of this sort of dissent. I wish it did not occur on EPO. I like the dissent which skips destruction and ends up in reformation. That is my baggage as the child of alcoholic parents.

When I realized that I had to determine my own life's destiny, and that Captain Rawat had no role in it, I accepted the painful and joyful consequences of such a decision. As people who have taken control of our own destinies, we are bound to have battles over issues close to our hearts in this environment. There is nothing wrong with these battles, no matter how difficult they appear in writing. The most important thing is that we are free to do battle, and to say all that we feel, without fear. That is the beauty of the recent verbal dissent and destruction that we have experienced here.

I do not like that anyone I love and care about is hurt by the words we exchange. I trust that the ex-premies who post here can ultimately process and move beyond the harsh words that sometimes are tossed around. When the words are too tough or change seems necessary, we change the forum. That is a good thing.

Let's process the lessons of the recent past and move on to the future.

Love to all, Marianne

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:07:06 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: Dissent, Destruction and Reformation
Message:
Marianne,

I agree that all the dissent and argument is very healthy. Part of what I like about it is that it's real, not a made-up fantasy world like you find on Maharaji's repulsive site, on the enjoyinglife unctious cult-talk, and on the EV website, that allows no comment or discussion what so ever.

I do disagree on one point. I don't think anyone is 'indispensible' on the forum. We do need someone to maintain the site and the Forum, and I'm grateful to the people who have done that, but I disagree that Jim, or anyone, is, or has been, essential to the discussion.

I am strongly of the opinion (to premie Juan over at Lifes Great that makes me both BIASED and COERCIVE), that it doesn't matter so much what gets said, it's just the fact that analysis of the cult is happening, and information is being made available, that is the key. Maharaji has done all he can to try to limit both information and discussion (everything from 'x-rating' premies at the residence and on his staff, eliminating the ability of PWKs to give satsang, and extreme censorship of information, th because) because it's very damaging to the programming he wants premies to maintain.

I agree with you and am sometimes kind of surprised that people get so upset about the fact that virulent disagreement takes place, or that we reveal ourselves as a group of very diverse people with very differing viewpoints. Actually, that's the kind of world I very much want to live in, and it's one of the reasons I'm no longer a premie.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 09:09:50 (GMT)
From: Abi
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: Agree, well said Marianne nt
Message:
x
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 07:05:59 (GMT)
From: Loaf
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: Dissent, Destruction and Reformation
Message:
Its a strange world.. premies must be filled with an enormous sense of synchronised self righteousness watching us rip into each other...and yet the only thing that stops civil war breaking out in elan Vital is the fact that they all have Maha to be obsessed/fightened/fixated on. Take him away and all hell would break loose.. it will be interesting to see how many factions emerge when he croaks/throws in the towel.

And yet, the cost of having a 'leader' is enormous, (but hidden) in such delicate psychological matters. Leaders/ Monarchs /Priests/ Gurus / Evangelists/ Fuhrers focus the internal energy outwards... and can motivate armies.. but internally the cult of entrapment has a high cost.

We scraggy, fighting, bitching, laughing , drinking, meditating rebels learn so much by having our armour dented and our corners knocked off us.. premies merely get polished and subjigated into a corporate style. It can never be allowed to happen here.

I should like to suggest that the FA in FUTURE be an anonymous position as it always has been.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 10:41:06 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Loaf
Subject: Dissent, Destruction and Reformation
Message:
I should like to suggest that the FA in FUTURE be an anonymous position as it always has been.

Too late. Sir Dave has already announced he's going to do the job. Hats off to him. At least we won't have to worry about wasted time on squabbles about who should be blocked and who shouldn't be. Dave doesn't really have such a bug up his ass about what's proper and what's not as has frequently been the case with FA's on these forums.

It's incredible the amount of energy that's been poured into the argument over whether Jim should have been blocked or not, where if he had just been allowed to have his say, which he was entitled to, btw, this thing would have blown over by now, a vital participant on the forum would still be here, and no mention of moving the forum or even starting a new one would have occurred.

And if people think things are going to be different and better now that these changes are being made, I'd think again. A lot of us are really fucking upset about what's recently transpired here, and it's put a real damper on our interest in continuing to post on these forums. Maybe it's for the best. All these forums wind up being is an obsession, anyway.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:20:16 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: isn't hindsight great?
Message:
How to harness it? Time travel?
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:31:53 (GMT)
From: Marianne
Email: None
To: Selene
Subject: isn't hindsight great?
Message:
Hindsight -- does that mean you want to come and visit again?

Marianne

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:32:57 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: haha good one Marianne
Message:
I travel to SF a few times a year. Want to see me again?
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:34:25 (GMT)
From: Marianne
Email: None
To: Selene
Subject: haha good one Marianne
Message:
My door is always open to you. And my heart too. You must know that by now.

Marianne

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:38:17 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Marianne
Subject: thanks Marianne that is sweet
Message:
i'll email when I am going up that way on a training work thing or whatever.
I'm sad, relieved, and yet have not really questioned my stand on the reformation. I think it will be for the best. I hope so.
And dealing with death row and all I'm sure you know as well as I that there are many many important battles to fight in life as well as many other ways to spend time and have fun and grow.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:44:47 (GMT)
From: Marianne
Email: None
To: Selene
Subject: Real life and death struggles
Message:
I have a client right now whose right to have contact visits has been cut off. He is so brain damaged that he wants to give up his appeals so that he can get his contact visits restored -- which happens when you are about to be executed. He is so impaired that he doesn't realize that once he's executed, there will be no visits of any kind at all. A bigger and more important issue to sort out than what is happening on the forums.

Marianne

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 07:32:53 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: pdconlon@yahoo.com
To: Marianne
Subject: Real life and death struggles - thanks, Marianne
Message:
Thanks for your timely ''summation.'' Like Selene, I know you and love you. Thanks for putting it all into proportion. I have been lucky enough to meet many of the people on this forum. Like you, today I was hoping that the best thing happened for everyone here. I think it did (even for Jim) but I am an optimist.

I'm hopeful about Forum Six but as you say that's small potatoes compared with the cases you deal with in real life and the hopelessness of your clients. Well, at least I was hopeful up until a few days ago.

When Sir Dave offered to host F6, I was thrilled and offered help and money (the money offer still stands and many others have said the same) but I had to withdraw my offer of help as I saw that he didn't need any because he intends to do as little as possible in true libertarian fashion and which I applaud. He definitely has my moral support but does not need me interfering in his business. Mostly I want to avoid any semblance of ''synchronization'' or officialdom. But Dave knows that I support him wholeheartedly in his approach to F6.

Why was I thrilled? Because I had been visiting AG and LG and seen that there could be an open unauthoritarian environment for a forum. If EPO stepped in and attempted to influence AG as it did with FV (and reaping an an outcry of dissent,) saucy, Ophelia, Heidi and all those grinning heads would cry foul! If EV attempted to step in and control LG I think Chris and Carlos would protest but all the premie anonymice would disappear suddenly.

But something else has happened at LG: exes and premies are talking. This made me feel very excited at first as I thought that it may the beginning of the ''Love Club'' under the benign guidance of Sir Dave and Chris. Today I received a chilling reply to a post that I made to one of the premie anonymice which suddenly made me realize that Jim really does need a break if he has been doing this for 6 years. I've only been doing it for a couple of months and I'm feeling hopeless.

This is supposed to be the Hate Club yet I've met most of you personally if only briefly and know you fairly well. Some of us have even lived our lives out here for everyone to see. Most of you post under your own names and those who don't have told me who they are by email. Jim even posted his address and phone number. Put my name in a search engine and you can find out were I spend 14 hours a day. We love, trust and respect each other. I also trust most of my fellow human beings not to be crooks. I know I'm optimistic but truly evil people are few and far between. Most human beings are perfectly decent, not perfect but definitely decent.

Contrast this with the premies who post here and over on AG and LG. Except for Chris Dickey and Carlos Harden, they are all anonymous. Only Chris and Carlos have had the courtesy to email me. No one even posts their email addresses. Most of us do. What are these anonymous premies (including the brave CG - hah)afraid of? What are they ashamed of? Who or what are they hiding from? Why are they so paranoid?

Katie and Bill and a number of others have called for a moratorium on premie baiting. I am beginning to agree. I feel as if I am dealing with some deeply disturbed human beings. Some people (including Saint Jim) tried over and over to save scorpions and were bitten again and again. I'm not a saint and tend to stomp on anything that bites me. But I am beginning to see that their bites are impotent and urge everyone (especially Deborah) not to treat premies as enemies but as frightened, wounded and lost souls almost crippled and unable to stand on their own two feet and so desperate and lacking in optimism that they have to cling to a Master.

I know it's awfully hard work to try to imagine who the human being is behind the anoymous cyber stocking over their face and to sympathise but please try. Yeah right, which is why I am definitely not going to walk down the road Jim walked. I don't have the patience. Sorry premie anonymice you're playing a silly hide and seek game of delusion and you will always be treated as illusions.

The post that got me thinking such pessimistic thoughts about anonymous premies today said something about ''that feeling'' and didn't I remember it. Well that premie picked on the wrong ex. I know 25 of the exes here and I think they will all tell you that I know all about ''that feeling'' and so do they and so do most people in the world which is why I trust most people. That feeling is the feeling of being glad to be alive and wanting to use that feeling to add more love and joy to this world not take away from it by posting paranoid, smarmy, creepy little digs at exes.

Apart from the 12 premies whom I count among my closest friends, the only two premies for whom I have the time of day on line are Chris and Carlos. The anonymous spiders are fair game and I am hoping that the FAs of F6 will not hesitate to publish everything that they know about these anonymice. With F6 being separate from EPO there will no longer be any conflict of interest leading to silencing and banning dissent. Those of us who are not anonymous need be to be able to use everything on the net at our disposal to find out who is maligning us.

By the way, if you think the premie forum, Lifes Great, is the Love Club, take another look and see how the nasty little biting spiders sting. No it's not the exes Hate Club vs the premies Love Club. It is more like the Sane, Out and Proud Club vs the Paranoid and Ashamed Club of anonymous premies. So let's be as kind as we can. If I find that I don't have the patience, I'll retire for good.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 04:09:50 (GMT)
From: bill
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Chuck's post from AG
Message:
(Previous Message) (Next Message) (Next Thread) (View Entire Thread) (Message List)
Posted: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 20:18:12 (BST)
Original: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 19:30:03 (BST)
Posted by: Charles Sprague Recipient: PatC
Email Address: bctanda@hotmail.com
Browser Type: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)

Subject: ''AHEM!''..
Message:

Pat said:
''Chuck also wants to do one for exes to talk about what they do now - something like ''Life's Great without the Guru'' or ''Enjoying Life without a guru.'' But he is more authoritarian than me and wants it to be anonymice free and civilized.''


I wouldn't call it ''Life's Great without the Guru'' or anything like that. I'm not trying to create a mirror opposite to ELK. I want to do something more natural.

I feel that many of the exes who were posting on FV would tire of dissing the Goober so much, and wanted to talk about other, OT things more. If exes like each other's company, it's only natural that they would want to talk about other things. I'd like to provide a place where we could do that more, talk about things other than the Goober, more comfortabley.


Katie and Brian lately have been saying that they feel Ex-Premie.org is for PREMIES, and that if you have read EPO and are now an Ex, then it's done it's work. While I may not agree with Brian and Katie about everything, I have to conceed that does make some sense. Perhaps F5 or F6 will have to maintain a certian seriousness for new people, and we may be better off doing most of our socializing elsewhere.

The theme of the forum I am thinking of doing would be something like: ''Life Post-Maharajism, is more like a bowl of cherries, NOT a web-van of rotting vegetables''. But like real life we would talk about the good and bad, it wouldn't be some phoney edited saccarin thing like ELK (sorry premies, it's my opinion, if you like ELK, well, good for you.)

As for being more ''authoritarian'', I agree with Louella Parsnip, my legs are not cat scratching-posts. If an anonymous person hassled me in real life from under a sheet, I'd pull the sheet off, or not let them in my house, at the very least. I would do a forum the same way. I appreciate the Duck Hunter's on this site, but anonymice who bite, I'm not crazy about. If that makes me authoritarian, so be it.

Louella Parsnip made a website and forum to show me how easy it is to do. I'm urging her to post it online, to show everyone, Premies and exes, how easy it is to do. Perhaps she will soon.


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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:19:17 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: bill
Subject: Chuck's post from AG
Message:
You say,

Katie and Brian lately have been saying that they feel Ex-Premie.org is for PREMIES, and that if you have read EPO and are now an Ex, then it's done it's work. While I may not agree with Brian and Katie about everything, I have to conceed that does make some sense.

Thank God for different opinions. If everyone left after they figured out MahaBigHead and his flying circus of ex-con Mahatmas, this site wouldn't here.

To me, this isn't about,

'OH yea! I could had a V8'

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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 23:26:23 (GMT)
From: bill
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Jim
Message:
This from anything goes,


Posted by: bill Recipient: Jim
Email Address: Not Provided
Browser Type: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; AT&T WNS5.0)

Subject: You cant do that bud, your family now.
Message:

Look,
maybe Joe's post hit a bit, maybe you were surprised that I
posted a comment.
Families fight and that is the way it is supposed to be.

Hey, my wife says to tell you that she is fighting with bill right now
and that doesnt mean bill can leave.
Hmmm, she just said that I CAN leave! But then she said 'right out the door to paint the house.'
So, fine if you want one of your vacations, I usually take them when you do in case you never noticed, and when you came back it was
always motivation for me to plunge back in.
I do think that now it is the time to end the harshest of rages against the stuck cult victims.
But if you dont lead or join the new tone, it is doomed.
So, I say we have consequences doled out to anyone who gets
too hot.
As part of normal operation, not at the end of a creshendo.
I will post this on The real forum 6.
You will go nuts without the forum.
If we dont move into the improved methods, it will be to deny
our own forum evolution.
Yes, as I said before, I love you for all your help and all your dedication to the destruction of the cult.
Anonomousie also says HI
So, drop a line to forum 6 then take your break as usual, then
like the rest of us, after leaving for a while, we all come back.
And for good reason.

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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:47:18 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Everyone
Subject: Margie And Knowledge
Message:
I very recently took a book out of the library entitled 'Hindu Scriptures'. It looks very interesting and is edited and translated by Dominic Goodall.

Without going into much detail, as I have only begun reading it, I would like to reproduce the first line, from an excerpt of the Rg-Veda:

We meditate on the lovely light of god, Savitr:
May it stimulate our thoughts!

A footnote translates 'Savitr' as 'a sun-god'.

My point is this. I have only read two pages of the introduction and one line of the text so far but already something is becoming very clear. Not only is Margie fairly ignorant of Western traditions and knowledge, leaving school after ninth grade, but he also is ignorant and contemptuous of beautiful Eastern Indian traditions and knowledge.

May the lovely light of god stimulate our thoughts. Our former twentieth century rugu didn't have the education or sincerity to even come up with a line as beautiful as that. Instead he continually over decades shit on the mind and its thoughts. What tradition does that come from?

Margie talks about something formely called knowledge, now called auto-knowledge. What good is a teacher of knowledge who ignores and is contemptuous of beautiful traditional thought. His bastardized excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita and Kabir do not qualify as knowlege, only as cheat and deceipt.

Sheesh.

Steve

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 03:01:05 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: er, like, it's cheat and receipt... (nt
Message:
nt
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:02:15 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: Margie and the bastardized version of Knowledge
Message:
Hi Steve,

I'm glad a lot of these topics are being threaded because I am currently researching Rhadasaomi and other traditions of Indian Religion to piece together my spiritual attraction to Knowledge.

The BigHead use to quote scripture in the 70's and that was the carrot. Many of his Sanskrit parables smacked of a spiritual truth. The sanskrit words carried a deep meaning. After all, they were composed from the enlightenment of holy men and mystics.

Question: Isn't it amazing how all of us let a smart ass kid direct, intimidate, and mentally abuse hundreds of thousands of people. Not only that, he had the nerve to use us to mess up each other. We looked to initiators and our peers for guidance and understanding. We all perpetuated this scandulous perversion on behalf of the BigHead. We didn't perceive our 'own' truths. The confusion was spoon fed to us, dammit. We willingly ate it.

I'm reading a book called GURU AS LORD by an author named Gold.
He has researched the history of Indian Guru and obviously met with many gurus and devotees. It's amazing how the BigHead has twisted even the Indian religious tradition of SatGuru. He has violated every aspect of the SatGuru tradition.

Gold talks about the initiation hooks the devotee to the master and how the group experiences a unique and (many times) exclusive
truth.

Gold also mentions how the Guru plays contradicting games with his devotees, this is obliquely similar to the Buddist koans, experiences that are meant to dispel the tendancy for complacent concepts. We learned early what maya and lila meant. M violated the 'spiritual' meaning of these ancient anecdotes. He used them to justify his inconsistencies and mind-fuck games. All of us were exposed to inconsistenies that bloody mind wasn't gonna spoil our fun, was it? I'm sure the PAM's have loads of examples.

This is interesting for me because I have to understand WHAT exactly my experience was. Many exes throw out the whole baby but I think that's a retrospective viewpoint. Something happened. What for sure, I don't yet know.

In the 70's people who were not seekers never heard of the vocabulary we used on a daily basis. Our new paradigm of inter-personal utterances confirmed our exclusiveness. Today, the collective nod of fellow premies give the new initiate a soul level confirmation. The carry over of our indominatable faith and trust in M is effective. They don't need the sanskrit parables. The longevity of M's history as SatGuru suffices.

But today the word Guru has undergone a perjorative definition. Has nothing to do with the universal God. No, it just means someone who can enlighten you, in the technical profession of computers.

As an aside, I used to be a technical recruiter in Northern California. I was successful at finding the gurus for the Hi-Tech companies. Why? I knew to look for the techies that could enlighten the team. I knew to search for candidates that were BEYOND good. My deeper understanding of the word resulted in commissions for our company and my pocket.

Even the word 'Devas' has been demoted. Today it is used to merely ascribe the accomplishments of singers like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, etc. Ironically, Deva is not even a feminine form of its word in Sanskrit.

In other words, the power words of the 'exclusive club' we bought into have been assimilated and milked down to Hollywood and Silicon Valley idioms.

This is why it's so ridiculous for M to continue this charade. The truth is bubbling to the top for most of the cult members. It's amazing how much time the apologists and antagonists spend on line screaming obscenities at us, they are threatened at a deep level that we are right. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here.

Notice how many new 'exes' introduce themselves announcing:

i left, i wondered, i reminesced, i searched, i found, i freaked.

It's like somewhere inside of us, we all have to let go of this damaging belief so we can grow and embrace a fuller truth, the truth we deserve. It's not enough to just leave.

In conclusion:

Gold mentions almost every possible sect, how they work, differ, inner politics, female SatGurus, court cases amongst Satgurus, etc.

The Clencher: No mention of Maharaji, Shri Hans at ALL

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 03:36:32 (GMT)
From: Exited
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: Guru As Lord
Message:
Dear Deborah,

I'm so excited as I also picked up a copy of The guru as Lord by Gold from a second hand bookstore. I was practicing knowledge every day and considered this an auspicious omen (or something!)

I am also now looking for a pocket-size copy of the Bhagavad Gita I once had that was heavily underlined as I experienced the benefits of Knowledge. If any of you exes or old premies have a copy I would love to buy it off you. It was 3' by 4', bright blue fabric hard-back cover and translated by Annie Beasant. It was published by the Theosophical Society out of Adhya, India.

I am another who has definately not thrown out the baby with the bath water after many attempts since finding the forum (Hi Katie!)

Would love to correspond with you, Deborah, via email!

You too Katie!

Best Regards,

Exited

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 17:31:24 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: stars@uvic.ca
To: Exited
Subject: Guru As Lord, or was that LORD as GURU
Message:
Hi, exited. I think I wrote that backwords.

Yes, I'd love to correspond with you via email. See above

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:17:35 (GMT)
From: Disculta
Email: darlingwave@aol.com
To: Deborah
Subject: Margie and the bastardized version of Knowledge
Message:
Well, I really chuckled at this line:

'M violated the 'spiritual' meaning of these ancient anecdotes. He used them to justify his inconsistencies and mind-fuck games.'

That did something for me, just reading it.

love Katie Darling who hasn't thrown away the whole baby

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 02:13:40 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Disculta
Subject: No Disculta: You just CHANGED his diapers :}.../nt
Message:
Was that funny?
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 23:15:09 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: Our Beloved Marjoe...um, I mean Maharaji
Message:
Good point, SQ. Now answer me this, someone: how come such a truly second-rate guru became such a big cheese?

Seriously. I know, right place (the West) right time (post-Sixties) right client base (acidheads)...but there were so many other gurus, more profound, articulate and charismatic, also around in those days. What did M have/say/do that the others didn't?

Any ideas?

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:17:27 (GMT)
From: Joey
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Our Beloved Marjoe...um, I mean Maharaji
Message:
He was a kid. And as it was written,

'...and a little child shall lead them...'

The other gurus may have been more profound, articulate etc., but face it Gregg, we loved the fact that our child-guru would drive his motorcycle into his mother's bedroom.

As Abbey Hoffman said,

'If this kid is God, then he's the kind of God America deserves.'

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 03:06:02 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Joey
Subject: '...and a little child shall lead them...'
Message:
I forgot about that one. I wonder what others will remember.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:10:14 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Good question!
Message:
I think it was because he was cute.

He was a novelty and he was here in America. Many of us traveled to the middle and far east because it vogue in the 70's. Santji traveled and swept up our youth movement. We were like a little microcosm of Earth.

Little santji smoked pot with his devotees and played childish games. Pot dealers financed his journey. He did not adhere to the Indian traditions and discipline required to follow other gurus.

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression:

Playing God, doesn't it?

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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:53:35 (GMT)
From: Disculta
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: Thanks for stimulating our thoughts, lovely SQ nt
Message:
poaifh
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:20:58 (GMT)
From: Sir Dave
Email: sirdavid12@hotmail.com
To: Everyone
Subject: Forum 6 and blocking software
Message:
I'll be hosting Forum 6. For the most part it will be completely uncensored like the AG forum. I will probably be initially using Hotboards software since I understand it and it can be set up quickly and will only cost about $30-$50 per month although I'm not sure what the bandwidth is on this forum. It needn't be on Hotboards forever, of course.

In the future, I would like to see if I can incorporate software that enables the user to block people from appearing on the forum as you can do with Usenet and a newsreader. This would be preferable to endless requests to block people. If anyone already knows of a forum software that already does this then please direct me to it. Otherwise I'll see if Hotboards.com can write it.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 01:14:03 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Sir Dave
Subject: Forum 6 and blocking software
Message:
Sir Dave, I don't have the answer to the questions but I know techie gurus who might. What I need to have is the right questions?

Would you or did you post all the information and questions you would like answered before I approach the subject?

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 02:14:39 (GMT)
From: Sir Dave
Email: None
To: Deborah
Subject: See all the different forums here
Message:
I think I answered my question myself, Deborah. The question was, is there a forum where the individual users can put their own personal blocks on other posters so that they don't see those posts?

I don't think it can be done, as I've said in the post below.

Anyway, just so people can see just what kind of different forums are on offer, Click here to see all the different types of forums.

Perhaps you'll see why Hotboards isn't so bad after all, unless I've missed something.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 02:19:17 (GMT)
From: Deborah
Email: None
To: Sir Dave
Subject: Oh I like that feature............../nt
Message:
zzzz
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:15:08 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: Sir Dave
Subject: Here's a complete package
Message:
InfoPop has an off the shelf CGI package that has numerous features. It appears to be straightforward to set up and maintain. It is a little different in that it is a Bulletin Board type configuration. You still get the forum-like continuity but with the added benefit of continuous archiving within specific topics. A 'topic' could be a thread similar to here or it could be an actual topic like J-M recently set up for the Best Of Archives here. Cost is one time $200 which I would be willing to donate if this system looks good to the other geek-meisters here. Check out some of the examples.
Ultimate Bulletin Board

Further, I am willing to have this forum hosted at it-is-so.org which I registered in a fit of wimsy.

I would also be willing to collaborate on the design of this or any other new forum. Let's get the ball rolling.

Richard

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 00:33:31 (GMT)
From: Sir Dave
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: The conclusions I've reached
Message:
Thanks for that info, Richard. I've had a look at the UBB system and it's not easy to program and requires programming knowledge. It also looks and feels totally different to a Forum 5 type forum and requires registration to post on yet with no clear advantage. And like everything else I've looked at today, the user can't block a poster as with usenet newsreaders. I guess no forums can do that.

The nearest thing I've found to Forum 5 is Hotboards. I guess this is because a Hotboards forum was in Brian's mind when he made this forum.

No, I've looked at a whole load of forums and Bulletin Boards today and there's nothing remotely like this one (except Hotboards) and nothing as easily customisable and user friendly as Hotboards. I'm gong to stick with a Hotboards forum.

If anyone looks around at all the numerious forums available they'll come to the same conclusions as me.

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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:29:49 (GMT)
From: gErRy
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: Let's go for it!
Message:
I nominate SirDave for housefather, Richard as treasurer, I'll be secretary and Thelma can be the house mother..er, i'm feeling kinda woosy...i'm spinning...someone call the community coordinator !!!!!
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:37:25 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Sir Dave
Subject: Forum 6 and blocking software
Message:
Hi Dave
JohtT mentioned slashdot has a rating system that allows the user to pick what to read. Not quite the same as a killfile but similar.
But as I told JohnT I think slashdot is hard to maintain though I haven't tried.
As I said I am evaluating conf. software anyway so I'll be looking. So far it's hard to find a free one with good features that doesn't need a programmer.
And I agree with you about not gettting dependent on any programmer or getting the software so highly customized by any one person that it cannot be easily passed on.
I wouldn't want to be that person anyway :) but email me if I can help.
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:31:55 (GMT)
From: first
Email: None
To: Selene
Subject: can use your own prgrms at HtBrds maybe not -nt
Message:
errrrr
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 22:39:18 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: first
Subject: huh?
Message:
sorry I didn't get that. I'm sure that IF hotboards has PERL installed one can use PERL. IF hotboards has Java installed , etc. etc...
I don't know how to work with these kinds of sites since I have full access to install whatever I need so I am totally dumb about web hosts like Hotboards. Only programming I have seen has been done client side with JavaScript or something.
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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 21:31:47 (GMT)
From: Wm
Email: None
To: Selene
Subject: Hot Board Admin msg
Message:
Welcome to the Hotboards Help Forum


Home Admin Login FAQ/Feedback
Guestbook Help 'Test' Board
Hotboards Password Retrieval System
Click here to get your own Message Forum Click here to Upgrade Your Forum

Please note - this is a Help Forum. Flames and other messages not dealing with legitimate questions
relating to Hotboards will be deleted.

(Previous Message) (Next Message) (Next Thread) (View Entire Thread) (Message List)
Posted: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 13:49:12 (EDT)
Original: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 19:06:52 (EDT)
Posted by: Martin. Recipient: Wm
Email Address: Not Provided
Browser Type: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)
Message Count: 3 visits (3 today, 3 this week, 3 this month, 3 this year)
IP Address: Decode-SWM.SJK.SM.S


Subject: Re: question about cgi etc,,,,,,,,
Message:

We dont allow forum owners to run CGI scripts on the server that host the message forums.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 23:56:26 (GMT)
From: SF
Email: None
To: Wm
Subject: thanks Wm that helps
Message:
That means if people don't like HotBoard we'll have to go back to the DrawBoard
I hope not. I don't think the forum should be dependent on programmers. It's hard and time consuming .
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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 21:32:15 (GMT)
From: gerry
Email: None
To: Sir Dave
Subject: Shhhh, Dave
Message:
dave this is a great idea. don't tell anybody about. it could make you a lot of money if you could develop and market it. that is if it's not already in existence.

To clarify what i think you mean...I could set my browser to delete any poster I didn't want to read and I wouldn't even see their names and posts on the page, right? that would be awesome.

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Date: Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 00:43:22 (GMT)
From: Sir Dave
Email: None
To: gerry
Subject: I can see why it can't be done
Message:
Yes that's right Gerry and yet there's nothing available to do that. Stupid really when you can do it with a Usenet newsreader easily.

I guess one reason is because web browsers aren't configured like newseaders and do a different job. You'd have to get a custom made web browser to stop the posts, I think.

With a web browser, you're getting a whole page of HTML all in one lump but with newsreaders you're getting lots of seperate messages in seperate lumps.

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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 17:18:23 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Everyone
Subject: Choosing A Guru/Master
Message:
When Margie's father Shri Hans died in 1966, by all accounts Margie replaced him at the age of eight. One wonders how Margie convinced many people, including family, mahatmas and premies that he was perfect master to the point where one does not hear of any rivals appearing at that time. It is well known that in many cases, including the accession by Shri Maharaji, there have been opposing factions supporting various people for the role of next perfect master.

So why was Margie virtually unopposed. I have my theory. It is that nobody else really wanted it.

Then why did Balls Be Gone Ji rival Margie around 1974 when a rift occurred? Why did he wait so long?

Interesting question, IMO but not crucial to understanding. People change their minds all the time and why should this case be any different from changing one's mind about where to have lunch on a given day?

Food for thought.

Steve

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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 19:10:09 (GMT)
From: Joey
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: history of m 101
Message:
So why was Margie virtually unopposed. I have my theory. It is that nobody else really wanted it.

Sorry Steve, but this comes from Margie's camp itself. There was someone who wanted it and believe it or not...it was Mata Ji.
Now while there are a few precedents of female masters in the rhadasoami tradition the mahatmas in the upper echelons of the cults power structure opposed this idea, claiming that she was the 'Holy Mother' and had to continue in THAT role and not that of 'Satguru.'

Apparently, they were hammering it out backstage and arrived at a compromise solution...Bubblegumji...when a group of younger more agressive mahatmas led by Sampuranand and Charanand and a few others decided they would simply seize the moment and lead the little Sant ji on stage and him sit on the seat reseved for the new satguru. The rest was history. Sant ji made his shpiel, in effect: why are you crying? Maharaji is here. Recognize him.
All the time the younger rogue mahatmas are modelling the adoration to Sant ji that they had previously shown Hansji and the crowd goes nuts. They put the crown on his head, and that's it-it's a done deal. A new Satguru comes into being.

Then why did Balls Be Gone Ji rival Margie around 1974 when a rift occurred? Why did he wait so long?

Mataji decided to go along with the power grab when she saw that little Sant Ji had really won over the mass of Indian premies and had become a dynamite asset for the family business.
Bubblegumji had no choice but to go along with his mother's wishes and it was only in 74 when out of vengeance against Sant Ji, that she gave her blessing to Bubblegumji to take over....meaning to take as much of the movement away from Prempal as possible. In this, he was quite successful in India, but not so outside of India.


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Date: Thurs, Jul 12, 2001 at 19:31:55 (GMT)
From: Joey
Email: None
To: Steve
Subject: here's how Mishler put it.
Message:
This comes from the Mishler interview on this site. Just to let you know that I based my post above on this, and also a post by Sampuranand which appeared on ELK which I can't seem to find right now.

How Maharaji was selected to succeed his father

Bob: Well, that's a very interesting story. I don't know if we have time to go into it. Gary's nodding so I'll try and explain it very quickly. The story as it is told to the Divine Light Mission members is that when guru was going to go into his Maha Somadi - he doesn't just die, you see, he transcends into some other dimension - he had to pass on the mantle of spiritual authority that he bore.

He indicated that it was to be his younger son who was going to succeed him and become the Guru Maharaj Ji. What actually happened was that when the guru died, there were some very dubious circumstances surrounding his death, but that's another story as well.

His mother, the former guru's wife, who was known as Mataji and was part of the so-called Holy Family before they split apart, wanted to ascend the throne herself. At the father's funeral, at which time the new guru was supposed to be proclaimed, she was in a meeting with the governing body and some of the very influential devotees - the Mahatmas - arguing this point view.

She had one Mahatma who was very influential arguing on her behalf. Most of the governing body was resisting this, because they were saying that it flaunted the Hindu tradition that the 'perfect master' must in fact be a man. They couldn't go over to a 'holy mother' kind of belief structure when all along they had been operating in this 'perfect master' one.

While this was going on, some other younger and not quite so influential but nonetheless aggressive Mahatmas had a much closer relationship with the younger son. The one who was most instrumental was a Mahatma known as Mahatma Sampuranand. They seized upon the opportunity of absence while this argument was going on behind closed doors in another part of the Ashram.

They put the youngest child who was eight years old at the time - the Guru Maharaj Ji that we're talking about tonight - on the throne and crowned him. He was already accepted as the guru by the devotees by the time that they had finally come to an agreement in this other meeting that was taking place.

In this meeting, they had decided to put the eldest son on the throne, because that was in line with Hindu tradition that the eldest son always inherits from the father. This eldest son would then be under the control of the mother anyway, as he was about thirteen or fourteen at the time. The mother finally agreed to that.

When they came out, they were really shocked to find that the youngest son was already sitting on the throne, wearing the crown and already accepted by the devotees. So they accepted this, but nonetheless there was the enmity that existed between the eldest son, who felt that his inheritance was robbed, and the younger son.

That dynamic eventually exploded in 1974. The mother then, at that point, when the youngest son was really defying her authority, said she'd back the eldest son now. But it was a bit late by that point.

Host: I think the same thing happened with Esau and Jacob.

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Date: Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 05:08:26 (GMT)
From: Henry
Email: None
To: Joey
Subject: Thanks Joey for the info. (nt)
Message:
nt
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