Some pundit news from a well-informed inside source:
. The pundits were not given a clear idea of what their living conditions here would be. They were not told they would be cloistered behind fences. They understood that they would be free to move about and see new things here. Most of them are very frustrated and stir-crazy in their confinement. . The tuberculosis rumors are true. I don't know how many are infected, but anyone who has had contact with the pundits has been tested. . In his sales pitch to lure them here, Bob "Raja" Wynne promised them a $300 monthly stipend, but they are only getting $30. . The pundits are indentured to the TMO for at least 20 years. They were all obligated to take out loans to help build some SV structure. It's not clear to me what the structure is. Perhaps their living and chanting facility in India. I'll find out. Anyway, as long as they are punditing, the movement covers the payments, but if they leave, they have to cover them. If they don't Anand and Prakash Srivastava sic the police on them. This happened to the ex-pundit from whom I got this information. . This pundit also said that the Srivastavas are very rich and basically say to MMY, "Look, you're very old. Don't worry about these financial matters. We'll take care of them." On a related note, I'm always arguing that MMY micromanages the movement and no one tells him what to do. I think that generally this is the case, but I can think of one incident which refutes this. When the Natural Law Party was doing its thing, John Gray donated $50,000. He was promptly invited to come to Vlodrop. When he got there, there was a tussle between Bevan and Hagelin, Bevan arguing that John wrote "inappropriate" books and shouldn't be permitted to meet with Maharishi and Hagelin arguing that the books helped people and that he should meet with him. Apparently MMY let the two of them work out the issue, although I've often seen him do that and then in the end, do what he wanted to do anyway. A compromise was reached in which John talked with MMY on the phone. I don't know whether that reflected MMY's desire or not. In the conversation, MMY tried to recruit John to do stuff for the movement, but John declined, saying he liked the way his life was going.
