I was only peripherally aware of the Cat Whiskers site until your recent post indicated that there had been responses to my posts. I followed your link and read the posts directed at me.

Um, what was said about me was disturbing, and struck me as odd on a couple of levels. One, they challege me to post unmasked while they themselves are posting with pseudonyms. Isn't that kind of weird?

Also I was accused of "self loathing." And directing that hatred of myself towards Maharaji. This is part of a familiar pattern of abuse I have also received in face to face discussions with premies where any difficulties I have with Maharaji's inconsistencies and so forth are described as being examples of MY problems. I think they call this "pathologizing the victim."

What I find so odd about this characterization is that it is so profoundly at odds with the truth. In fact, the healthier I become, the angrier I become at Maharaji. The better and fuller my sense of self, the more sorrowful, shabby, and sick seem the tactics and effects of involvement with Maharaji, and the starker the contrast between his high flown rhetoric, and the nuts and bolts reality of his scheme: money, power, ego aggrandizement on a breathtaking scale, and an equally breathtaking disregard the genuine well being of his followers.

In the beginning of my dissaffection I really feared Maharaji and projected on to him the ability to do me great harm. Yet I view him now as less fearful, and more contemptible, and somehow in a strange way pathetic. Could I be feeling sorry for Maharaji? In any case, pathetic or not, the degree of scorn and outrage I feel with regard to the very effective way in which Maharaji damages people, to his own benefit, is directly proportional to the increasing measure of self esteem I am able to recover.

True to the inversion of meaning which Maharaji fosters, the guys on Cat Whiskers ascribe that increasingly healthy self-image to the exact opposite - "self loathing." I guess if it weren't so offensive I would be inclined to regard it as fascinating.

But if these guys want to talk, it seems that there is nothing stopping them from entering discussion here. I won't even require them to abandon their pseudonyms, as long as they post consistently under one pseudonym, so that there can be an attempt to follow a continuity of line of reasoning.

MM