2Prem 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.
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Satsang Towards Guru Maharaj Ji Excerpts from Raja Ji's Satsang in Atlantic City, New Jersey December 18, 1976 And what we have to do, you know, that's why Guru Maharaj Ji has come at such a young age. He has heard. He hears us. And that's difficult enough. We talk about propagating him, this Knowledge, to the whole world, and it's difficult enough for him with 5,000 of us around the world maybe. You know, even really good premies, it's difficult enough for him to control us, because we never know when the overdrive goes off, we never know what happened. I know for myself, seventy-five percent of the time I'm always thinking. I'm always thinking, "How could I do this, and how could I do this, and how could I do anything that I wanted to do." And most of the time it will be probably monetary matters. "Oh Raja Ji, how are you going to make a million dollars?" It's like a big question. How am I going to do it? And then I go in the plane and I read this article about this rich guy who has a private 707, and I think, "If he can afford a private 707, why can't I afford a private Concorde? Why not? I mean, everything is possible, everybody says that. Where there is a will there's a way. You can do it." |
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That Unsmiled Smile Guru Maharaj Ji's Satsang in Portland, Oregon January 30, 1977 When I first came to Los Angeles I would give some satsang and it was like, "Man, this is just not happiness, this is all going to go away, this is not true, this is not sincere." And at that point a lot of premies understood, and a lot of people understood, but majority of them just didn't understand what I am talking about. Well, here we go: It is predicted that by at least 1984 our oil reserves are going to run out in the Middle East. In New York the president goes, "Well, the situation of heating is not a temporary one, it is permanent." What do we have? All these orange crops got completely ruined in Florida. It was snowing in Miami. In the Bahamas it was blowing, there's not a fruit on the trees, there's not a leaf in the trees. Here we go, world. Why don't we just call it that this is it? Because there are all these alternatives; okay, you can run your car on solar energy, but what about these millions and millions and millions of cars that are supposed to run on gasoline? What's going to happen to them? I mean it's like, what is going to happen? |
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Service To The Ultimate Goal Excerpts from Guru Maharaj Ji's Satsang Latin American Conference in Lima, Peru November 18, 1976 There's a change happening out of a change. And as Raja Ji puts it, the changes that happened in the past were only cosmetic and totally unnecessary. It's like trying to take a cow and put lipstick on it - you can do it, but it's unnecessary in practical terms, in terms of any practical purpose. Already these changes have severely affected the premies in America, and these changes have also brought about questions that were put to me. And these questions were nothing but mind. Mind dictating to a person. What was so different about it this time was that premies couldn't discriminate between their mind and the questions that they truly wanted to ask. The changes were intended to make the organization more efficient. But you see, you have to look back; there's nothing like an efficient organization. |
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So, this is our story: live years of growth with the Perfect Master. Not that we've understood the individual steps, for our perspectives as individual premies are very limited. The point of importance is that we can feel the love and understanding growing within our hearts. As one sister in the community put it: "What we're trying to do is experience Knowledge and give satsang to people. That's the real thing. That's the substance of Knowledge … The thing that I really feel is happening here in the community is that there is a good collection of really strong premies who are here to do one thing. They are all individually motivated from within. There's a really good snowball rolling in this community … I just sort of figured that it was grace all along." |
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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.