Group discussion began in an uninspired way until the participants opened up during a workshop on team skills building. Some directors expressed impatience with the classroom atmosphere surrounding certain topics yet became involved in intense discussion on subjects such as Guru Maharaj Ji's image and the need for Mission members to understand realities rather than concepts in their lives. The desire for real communication seemed the first concern of the conference. The directors called for more participation in planning and decision-making, an interchange of resources and perspective, and greater honesty and friendship amongst directors and IHQ - devoid of white-washing and self-congratulation.
1Dealing With Change / Part of the Mainstream
BOB: I would say that there are a lot of members that we don't see unless Maharaj Ji's in town. On our mailing list we might have 50,000 names but maybe out of that we only have 15,000 who are participating and of that we only have 8,000 or 10,000 that we would classify as active members. … The people living in the ashram is a very small number actually. That's a group of maybe 600 in the United States, of which about 250 are here in Denver because of the International Headquarters. Most of our membership isn't in the ashram; the monastic life doesn't seem to appeal to very many people. … We were relating to our experience of something that was an incredible thing in our lives, and we knew that, but in order to be able to share that with others it was as though in the retelling it became more than we were experiencing. You know how a person has a tendency to exaggerate something when he is retelling it.
2Another International Meeting with the International directors in Orlando, Florida, November 11 1975
You see, premies receive Knowledge and some of these premies don't understand, they space out. Let me ask you one question. Whose responsibility is it really to get those premies back? I am not talking about the freakos. I am talking about the premies who freaked out because they did not have enough satsang, because they did not have enough inspiration, because they did not have enough stuff going on in the community for them to plug in to. Whose responsibility is that? Mine, or yours? It's definitely your responsibility to get the premies together so that you can form one strong foundation on which you can build a house. … There is nothing much to say except that you have a duty to perform by Guru Maharaj Ji's agya. You have an agya to fulfill before you that there is no escape from - unless you want to escape the truth, the fact, the realism of this life, that devotion.
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6In following Guru Maharaj Ji, I have followed him out of the religious concepts of Eastern spirituality, out of the concepts of apocalyptic salvation, out of the concepts of austere asceticism, out of the concepts of organizational elitism, into a pretty good place. If anything, I understand myself now as a committed volunteer in a movement which serves humanity by helping the evolution of consciousness. And that to me is a very calm, real, and non-glassy-eyed approach to my own life and to helping others. And for those of us who have actually followed Guru Maharaj Ji through and become freed of those concepts, we can see, as always, it has been the result of a very phenomenal piece of leadership. That phenomenal leadership is still going on. Unfortunately, many of us (myself included) and the bulk of public opinion tend to remain focused on where we came from as if we were still there.
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