What led me to suspend my initial impressions was hope. It is the fact that Maharaji's promise is so absolute, promising everything, that I believe makes otherwise perceptive people take the gamble.

If the odds are heavily against you, you generally will not bet - but if the prize for winning is huge and enormous, you will still play the game even though the odds are so against you. This is the logic of the lottery - the odds of winning the jackpot of x million are so fantastic that you will not win in millions of lifetimes (no position on reincarnation intended here), but the hope of winning will make you play; the thought that 'someone will win, why not me' and the fact that you bet a small amount you can afford to lose, makes you bet, even though as a matter of logic and odds, you know it is not worth your while.

This is similar to Pascal's wager. Blaise Pascal (17th century French mathematician and philosopher) maintained it was logical to believe in God, since if God did not exist you would not have lost too much believing that he did. On the other hand, if God did exist, and you believed that he didn't, then you would lose a lot.

I think it is the same with Maharaji. After all, what is the prize? What is offered? Absolutely everything - the enlightment of enlightenments, the ultimate of human life, the experience that is the culmination of millions of existences that only someone with more power than Jesus, Buddha etc could offer. When I took Knowledge, it was expressed like this, and although for many years it has not been put like this publicly, it is still, even now, the subliminal message. I believe that it is the real qualification of an aspirant being 'ready for Knowledge' that they in fact get this message.

So there are only two options: either this possibility is real, or it is false. The fact that the odds of it being real are 0.00..(x zeros here)..1% and the odds of it being false are 99.99..(x 9's here)..9% has to be weighed against the thought that IF it were in fact real, it would be the supreme and ultimate jackpot.

So that is what kept me interested in the beginning - the thought that IF Maharaji were really the Lord with more power that Jesus et al, then it would be stupid not to follow him. And if he were not, then I had not invested too much, and could leave - I could afford to pull out - lose my stake - with only a minimal loss.