I'd give anything to be a fly on the wall when these executive decisions are made and orders are given to proceed with Project X, Y, or Z.

Who are the players?  What are the dynamics?  How long of a process was there to decide to make Passages?

Does anyone dare play devil's advocate in the face of Maharaji when it's his idea and it's not a good one?

I'm wondering if Passages is a project that was born out of the Amaroo "Let's Get Those Ex-Premies" summit conference around that time (2000 or 2001 or so)?

Clearly Passages was a failure.  Worse it's a PR nightmare.

So, who was the target audience.  Or really what was the purpose of this video?  Who was it intended to convince?

First, I believe that there's no way that the general public was the target audience.  Why even introduce information (e.g. saris, Is He God, Hinduism, ashrams, etc.) that you are already trying desperately to suppress and ignore?

Were the ex-premies the target audience?  Probably not.  It's not like the contents of Passages would bring us back to the flock after our misunderstandings were cleared up.

Was the target audience the Press?  Again, why introduce information that the organization is trying to suppress.

So, that leaves us with aspirants and active or fence sitting premies.

I'm not sure whether Passages was shown in the local community video halls (LCVH).  And I'm not even sure how many local community video halls existed at that time.  My guess is that at that the time of Passages the LCVHs were winding down as the return on investment was deemed inadequate.  I know that in my community the monthly tab for the full time hall was $1500 or more a month.  And the local community was paying for all of it including the video fees to Visions.  Yet, turnout was small.  Certainly, Maharaji would probably prefer having that cash sent directly to him.  And I see now that the community is just using "free" space in libraries and such maybe once a month or so.

I believe that today the preferred distribution of the Master's message is through Dish Network where fees get paid by premies and some of the money goes to Maharaji.

Was Passages toured around by the likes of Raja Ji or Yoram Weiss as a special treat?  I don't know, but that was a typical distribution channel as well as a fund raising activity.

So, let's say the above was the case where Passages was toured around like a reunion concert of a long dead mediocre 60's rock band.  Ok, the original drummer, of course, died and was replaced some big hair guy from the San Fernando (aka the Valley).

For myself having been a premie from 1973 thru 1997 I had accepted and welcomed the changes and was not sorry to see the bad old days end.  In fact, I thought it was long overdue.  So, I'm trying to understand what premies might have thought when they saw this dinosaur act, Passages.  I suspect and I think we've heard from one premie that the revisionism (lying) made them feel uncomfortable.  I mean, how can they expect premies who had been "there" to accept this amount of deception without feeling confused or even insulted.  With the message so strange and twisted then one other reason to see it would be to see and hear the old familiar faces of the famous premies like Glen, Tim, Joan, Charanand, and the others.  But, come on!  It's more like a freak show.  Hey, maybe that's it?  Maybe the rank and file premies get to feel good about being just who they were and still are - silent contributors.

Certainly, Passages was a bad idea from its inception with both the message and the targeted audience being totally wrong.

I think that if this had been Donald Trump's Apprentice TV show we would have heard, "You're fired!"  But, I'm not sure that the "Boss", Maharaji, can be fired even though he should be for giving the go-ahead for the Passages video.