Newspaper Articles:Divine Light Mission finished it's early growth period by the end of 1973. It had large debts following the Millenium 73 festival. It suffered terrible publicity following the 16 year old guru's wedding to his 23 year old "secretary," his disowning, disinheriting and deposing of him as the Satguru by his family and Indian followers and the young guru's opulent lifestyle. It is possible that his greed and materialism and his personal use of the majority of DLM's financial resources were as detrimental as the bad publicity as it severely hampered the organisation's ability to function with up to 60% of the total income going to Rawat personally. By the end of 1975 the initial enthusiasm of conversion, millenial expectations and hope of spiritual enlightenment had faded and most premie administrators had compromised their ashram lifetsyle.
Jos Lammers dicussed life for the top DLM administrators:
Exactly there, right in the centre of the Divine Light Mission, other matters too were, to a growing extent, just like the rest of the world. Nobody except his security people, his personal aids and 'president' Bob Mishler ever got to see Maharaj ji himself. But his lifestyle did affect the people that had to arrange it all for him. The job of my ashram mate Joe Schwartz for instance, was to rent films for Maharaj ji whenever he exchanged his 'divine residence' in Malibu California for Denver to discuss business with Bob. As soon as he left for Malibu again, Joe dragged projector, screen and rented films into our ashram, where we in all secrecy and taunted by the strangling question of whether we had now definitely fallen of the path watched Little Big Man and the Godfather. Two favorites of Maharaj ji, Joe assured. And while watching a rented movie apparently was all right, then why not in a theater, Tom White, another house-mate of the ashram in Franklin Street wondered. He worked at the 'petty cash' on Finance and because of this could always get his hands on some money. So together we went to Denver's fifty cent theater … And because Maharaj ji had a motor home as huge as a public bus in order to see America, with a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping room and all, Tom figured we could take the Ford Capri of Finance to Aspen … More mistakes together were hardly possible.
Sophia collier's recollections are similar:
Even though Matthew had, like me, adopted the ashram lifestyle, which did not allow drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes, he had never quite adjusted. Sometimes in the office he smelled of Scotch, and he kept a stash of marihuana tucked away up in the Divine Times office's false ceiling to enjoy late at night with some of the other people on the Divine Times staff. … I was having a less serious love affair. Although in coming to Denver I had agreed to live in a monastic way, I found it rather difficult to do so. From my short experience, there was no substitute for the deep and happy satisfaction of making love. On a few occasions during that cold winter of '73-'74, I broke my monastic commitment. … he (Raja Rawat) began expanding his existing fascination for guns and violence. Like Maharaj Ji, Raja Ji had started to drink. Though I love to drink from time to time, I never do so before the end of the afternoon. Raja Ji sometimes started much earlier than that. One evening I sat with him and Claudia as they drank. Slowly the conversation turned from an interesting discussion to a series of slurred comments about where do the bubbles come from in champagne. This is spirituality? I thought to myself.
Michael Dettmers became involved in the administration as he was one of the few premies with management experience in a large organisation. One of his ideas was to have focus groups amongst DLM administrators to determine exactly how they felt about their roles, Rawat's role and their lives. Sophia Collier wrote:
"It had all started the month before (11/75), when Maharaj Ji came to the Denver community meeting and said that all the people in DLM should have "understanding." He seemed very emphatic about this, although it was rather vague just exactly what he wanted people to understand. Each person, according to her/his nature, interpreted Maharaj Ji's statement differently. Michael Dettmers and some of the other executives assumed people on the HQ staff needed to understand the organization and their commitment to it more fully. To this end, in the middle of December (1976), they set up a large conference for the entire staff at the Hilton Hotel. They secured the services of a premie who was a professional in group dynamics. Maharaj Ji came to the conference and told everybody that he was completely behind this effort and the premies should relax, cooperate, and 'not be paranoid.' "
Collier and others may have thought Rawat was in favour of these workshops but this was not the case as Downton explains:
Actually, Guru Maharaj Ji had not liked the idea of the workshops and had not supported them. This came out later when he said he felt the workshops were not of any real benefit to a person seeking an experience of the Truth, then reaffirmed the necessity of satsang for that purpose. In fact, he had been saying that premies should be seeking "real understanding" of their experience and that satsang was the key.
Downton received much of his information from Lucy Dupertuis and other DLM staff in Denver IHQ and so much of his information is DLM propaganda but in this case he has been able to use the benefit of hindsight. It's possible that Rawat may have been in favour of the workshops until he saw the results. His understanding of his followers, at this time if not others, was very poor. Rawat used the word 'understanding' regularly but examining his available speeches from the last half of 1975 shows he meant it in his normal way, that premies should understand that they should obey him, worship him and dedicate their lives to him through satsang, service and meditation. WHile Downton's ?? of the events of 1976 is correct much of Downton's comments about premies beliefs in 1976 is wrong and is the result of believing that what he was being told by his sources was a reflection of their actual 'experience' when it was merely their parrotting of the official line being propagated by DLM administrators. As soon as Rawat reverted to his normal public persona wearing a Krishna costume premies reverted to worshipping
These "training workshops" used basic brainstorming and synthesizing techniques to get members to think about what the organization was actually trying to accomplish. They were told to reflect on their experience of "Guru Maharaj Ji" and Knowledge and what is Rawat's role in spreading knowledge, what is the best way to "spread this Knowledge", the ashrams, etc. The administrators encouraged people to leave the ashram as they and most others were not actually "experiencing" the bliss that that had been promised to them. Many of the administrators were in illicit sexual relationships (illicit for ashram residents that is) and they wanted out. It was already obvious to them that Maharaji's "Knowledge" was not producing the results he had originally and so blithely promised and many administrators thought the ashrams were creating problems in their members. David Lovejoy head of DLM, Great Britain reported after a meeting held in Leicester during Guru Maharaj Ji's visit there, with members of DLM, Bob Mishler and Jos Lammers that premies had failed "in the development of responsibility and maturity as we practise Knowledge for a long period of time" except for other people like himself who believed they didn't require "intensive care" any longer. Lovejoy returned to Australia shortly thereafter and turned his attention to a career and chess.
And by then there was a crisis at the IHQ. More and more people left the ashrams to, just like Maharaj ji, get married and have children. As a result the revenues dropped, while only a few years back the organization had built up a mega debt by renting the Houston Astrodome. The worlds largest indoor stadium, at that time, where Maharaj ji was going to announce his thousand year kingdom of peace. Which he did, but the tens of thousands of followers that came to listen to that and kiss his feet, didn't bring enough money to pay the rent of the stadium and the thousands of hotel rooms around it. Everything would work out, was the idea, until one property after another became vacant and it became a hassle to even pay the grocer that supplied the ashrams with food. The management team, of which I was a member, had meeting after meeting, until we saw only one solution: Maharaj ji. His allowance of five hundred dollars a day had to be cut in half. Cars and houses had to be sold. Maybe even his motor home. Bob Mishler would fly over to Malibu to tell him.
A decision was made that the best way to present Maharaji was as a "humanitarian leader" and the instructions to premies and the publicity began. Mishler believed Rawat had agreed to these changes. This was truly bizarre as Rawat had been promoted as the boy God, the Lord of the Universe, the Lord of Universal Peace, who proclaimed he had come to rule the world with more power than any Perfect Master before him. While premies were obedient and changed the way they spoke about Rawat publicly (while not changing their beliefs) the media were, understandably, not so obedient. As Bob Mackenzie had written "The 16 year-old guru Maharaj Ji has decided he is God, I understand. That is not a bad job for a 16 year-old kid, except that there's no chance for advancement." There also is no possiblility of an acceptable and reasonable demotion.
In an unlikely scenario, an extreme right-wing lobby group, The Citizens' Congress, that was well-known at the time for their strong support of President Nixon, invited the Guru Maharaji to speak at a Bi-Centenary function at the Mayflower Hotel. Speakers at the luncheon included infmaous far-right segregationsit Senator Strom Thurmond and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz who was convicted of tax-evasion in 1981 and who resigned in disgrace after making his most famous speech: "I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit." Rennie Davis would have rolled over in his grave had he been dead.
As Dettmers explained DLM were going to be audited by the IRS due to the publicity re Prem Rawat's luxuries. DLM was incorporated as a church and the spending on and by Rawat as the church leader was far beyond the amount acceptable to the IRS. Bob Mishler, who had come to see Rawat up close and personal from the time of the "family feud" was completely fed up with Rawat's alcohol abuse and out of control spending that was destroying the organization, decided to sell the Malibu mansion and haul in the reins of Rawat's spending binges.
Plans to create an investment fund to allow Rawat to maintain his opulent lifestyle were decided upon but the DLM cash flow dropped enormously as people left the ashrams and stopped donating their entire salaries and premies became involved in a more normal life. Rawat came to Denver to meet the Executive Committee of DLM, fired the non-sycophants (as Downton so quaintly phrases it: "the guru took the initiative halfway through 1976 by asking two members of the Board of Directors, including the President, to step down from their posts and to assume a different form of service within the movement.") and installed Dettmers as his Personal Manager. Rawat stated "Knowledge without devotion to Maharaji is nothing". He took steps to ensure that his total control would never again be challenged and began a new era of devotion, along with a reinstatement of the ashrams.
In Andrea Cagan's sleazy "biography" of Prem Rawat she writes that by July, 1976, the organisation's administrators' had so little respect for him they were saying that he should have only a figurehead role. She also wrote that Rawat claimed that during the summer tour he had given Bob Mishler a place of honour and asked him to speak first. However, it was not uncommon for Western premies or his wife to speak first and remind everyone of the need to pay attention to the young Rawat's "satsang" as he was so simplistic and his English so poor that his "incredible depth and wisdom" might be missed.
From an article in the Golden Age magazine it can be seen that 20% of ashram finances went to the help defray DLM administration costs. While it would never be published we know from ashram residents that a percentage was sent directly to Rawat to help pay for his opulent lifestyle and the remaining went to support the ashram residents themselves. In figures provided by Bob Mishler to the press, the percentage ashram residents used to support themselves was 30%. In Australia ashram income was $AU600,000 pa so we can deduce that the US figure would be (ballpark) $US6,000,000 so from there alone Rawat's annual income would have dropped $US1,200,00 as would DLM's.
Excerpts from a tape recorded by English national director David Lovejoy, summarising a meeting held in Leicester during Guru Maharaj Ji's visit there, with members of DLM in Britain, Bob Mishler and Jos Lammers.
Well, I guess the largest part of the time was taken up with the question of the ashram. We've had a generation of ashram premies, some of whom have been in the ashram for five years now, and in many cases their development seems to have gone contrary to what we would like to see in the development of ashram premies-counter to what Maharaj Ji has expressed that he would like to see in the development of responsibility and maturity as we practise Knowledge for a long period of time. It just seems that the very controlled environment of the ashram, by reducing choice and reducing initiative, has in fact had the opposite effect on many premies - that they've not increased in maturity and they've not increased in responsibility.
On the other hand, there are those ashram premies that have survived, intact, the rigors of the ashram system, who are maybe in positions of direct service and coordination and who do feel that they've got their discipline together internally. They have more or less been in what Maharaj Ji called the intensive care unit for four or five years now, perhaps, and they are just beginning to wonder why they need to be in such an intensive situation when they have got their practise of Knowledge pretty much together. They are committed to serving the movement, to serving Maharaj Ji, and yet the contradictions, the paradoxes of the lifestyle of the ashram are beginning to build up on them. It's like, 'Are these chaps going to continue in this exact same lifestyle for another five, ten, or fifty years?'
The meaning of ashram has undergone a shift from having been external - a practical arrangement to spread Knowledge by people committed to the task (still many times on a small basis of understanding but with a lot of sincerity). We used to call the ashram the spiritual nucleus of the community, and the ashram premies were some sort of avant-garde in the spiritual revolutionary work. Then we understood that everyone is a spiritual nucleus himself, and that every practising, active premie belonged to the avant garde of human-kind. The shift went from external arrangements to internal understanding on an individual basis. In that process many ashram premies had to face their passivity and reevaluate themselves and their living situation. Many took the consequences of that. Many still have to follow through with this reevaluation, I believe.
In November, of 1976 at the "Frankfurt Conference" Rawat reinforced the simplistic, fundamentalist view of himself as the Lord of the Universe and only source of true Knowledge in the world. Those followers who found a broader view of life more attractive voted with their feet. Rawat said in a satsang to his German followers on 29th November, 1976 in Frankfurt: "Basic thing right now a lot or things are happening in premies' lives, a lot of things are happening in the organisation. There were all these changes brought forth, and I'm taking all these changes right back to where they belong. Taking premies to where they belong, taking everything and putting it back in its place. Right now it's just like a big mess, somebody really threw up and that was mind - it really threw up bad. And so right now I would just like a lot of premies to get strong in their experience of Knowledge. That's about it."
References:
This appraisal of the changes in DLM in 1976 is based upon:
and the newspaper articles listed above and personal memories.
Prem Rawat (Prem Pal Singh Rawat) whose devotees call him Maharaji (meaning Ultimate Ruler) first came to attention in the West as Guru Maharaj Ji, the self-proclaimed Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe ridiculed in the media as a fat, squeaky-voiced God boy. He had inherited his titles and position as the Satguru, The True Revealer of Light and Spiritual Master of the Divine Light Mission, India (Divya Sandesh Parishad) when his father died in 1966. His father, Hans Rawat, was a successful Indian guru, self titled HRH (His Royal Highness) Yogiraj Param Sant Satgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj. As a child the youngest Rawat son was informally called Sant Ji, more formally Balyogeshwar ("Born King of the Yogis") and even more formally Param Sant Satgurudev Shri Sant Ji Maharaj. In the West Rawat dropped these more verbose titles in the early 1980's and instructed his followers to call him Maharaji. He has also changed the names of his organisations many times: Divine Light Mission (DLM), World Welfare Association (WWA), World Peace Corps (WPC) and Divine United Organisation (DUO) became Elan Vital in the early 1980's and in 2001 The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) was created and from 2010 his major orgs are Words Of Peace Global (WOPG) registered in Holland, Words of Peace International (WOPI) in the USA, HDSK (Human Development through Self Knowledge) in Great Britain and Raj Vidya Kender (Royal Knowledge Society) in India. He no longer claims to be an Incarnation of God but an internationally famous humanitarian leader and teacher of peace. He's neither.
Prem Rawat's "Knowledge" has three parts: regularly listening to his speeches, doing voluntary work for organisations serving him or donating money and daily meditation correctly practicing the four techniques he recommends. The techniques are so simple it's hard to see how they could be practiced incorrectly. First technique ("Divine Light") involves sticking your thumb and middle finger on your eyeballs (NB: with eyes closed) and your index finger between your eyebrows. Second technique: ("Heavenly Music") poking your thumbs into your ears and listening. Third technique: ("Holy Name") thinking about your breathing (NB: continue to breathe). Fourth technique: ("Nectar") curling your tongue backwards and tasting. Rawat's father taught slightly different techniques but either way it's difficult to see how these could produce the benefits claimed for them especially as Rawat claims His Knowledge is the only method of attaining real happiness and love in this life.