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.

Peace
Thank You

This CD was sent out to followers of Prem Rawat whose financial contributions during the previous year met a minimum standard. It contains songs sections of Rawat's speeches sometimes set to music in an attempt to enhance them. Mp3 copies of these excerpts are recorded at high quality (256Kbps) to ensure no nuance or climax is missed. The CD included an inset containing a photo of him with a hint of a moustache.

Rawat repeats his assertion that some people attending his speeches will say "I don't understand this." As his message is extremely simple, this seems unlikely. It is far more likely that a normal response is "I don't believe this." The likelihood that Rawat's claim to be the unique Giver of the Gift of the Possibility of Human Peace is so remote that even people who don't know that his method comprises touching your eyelids, sticking your thumbs in your ears, rolling your tongue backwards in your mouth and remembering that you are breathing will rightly conclude he is a charlatan cult leader.

The first extract highlights one of Rawat's regular refrains: "The grass is always greener". In this case he claims that his followers in India have become incredibly helpful and organized even though he says they have always been the opposite, "incredibly scattered." In Rawatism terminology 'scattered' means not being focused on the Knowledge, it's practice and Rawat himself. While Rawat's claim that his Indian followers are now helpful and full of teamwork is probably not be true, his aspersions about his own devotees can certainly be accepted.

Rawat's pleading for teamwork, no more excuses, "need to get over the hump", "all the disaster" and "get rid of the fear, of that guilt, of that confusion" in 'propagation' shows that propagation is not successful despite his extravagant and false assertion that "the amount of propagation that is happening right now has never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happened before". In 1971, the young Rawat claimed to have 7 million Indian followers and within 3 years over 100,000 mainly young Westerners had been initiated leaving a core of around 20,000 people actually meditating, attending meetings and providing funds and voluntary labour for Rawat's Divine Light Mission. The number of Indian followers is only a fraction of that total and outside of India he probably has no more than half the peak nuumber of followers he had in the early 1970's despite 40 years' of 'propagation'. Since 2003, there has been no noticeable increase, despite what he said here.

One of Rawat's core teachings is that to have peace outside, you must have peace inside and he can provide the second which will create the first. This is nonsense. There are billions of people with normal human fears, insecurities even neuroses, who do not have "peace inside" and yet live kind, decent, caring lives and do not hurt anybody. Rawat's activities have no effect on peace in the world except in his own mind and the minds of his devoted followers.

• Track 1: "Be excited to know that peace is within you and always will be within you. Be excited to know that this is your opportunity. Be excited to know that the greatest of all miracles has taken place, you are alive."
  
  
• Track 4: "What is this existence? I will tell you what this existence is. It's pretty special and you know why it is special. Because it is a bridge. It is an incredible bridge between the finite and the infinite. This is where it happens. This is where the two meet. This is the threshold where the two can meet, where the mortal can experience immortality." ... Fades on strings and woodwinds "
  
  
• Track 6: "Nothing withstands time, nothing. Except for the time, itself, and this is your time and if you ever want to see a wonder, a wonder. I suggest you take a look at yourself because you are, in that place within you, marvellously wonderful. Not the concepts, not the ideas, not the goods, not the bads, not the anger, not the disappointments but a parity, a timeless parity of existence.."
  
  
• Track 9: "Those people,who share my enthusiasm and those people who share my excitement, they want to make this possible. There many, many ways to help and I certainly wished that there would be as much help as possible so that as many people as possible, at least, hear about this possibility."
  
  
• Track 14: "Every moment that was wasted. Don't waste another moment on a wasted moment. That's a good quote (laughter and applause) because that's what we do. We waste one moment and then we waste four more on that moment so don't waste another moment on a wasted moment. Go forward, because your life, your breath, your existence is all about what worked, not what didn't."
  
  
• Track 18: "And I just, first of all I just want to thank you for your help and secondly I wanna encourage you to keep helping, (applause) because uh I think good things are coming."
  

  
  

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.