Contents
2 Community in the Golden Age
4 Guru Maharaj Ji speaks at Bicentenary Luncheon
6 News
8 The final link-up
9 Doing It For Maharaj Ji
10 National
12 Sydney
14 Interview with Michael McDonald
16 Peace Now
22 What This Heart Really Needs
24 Communication
26 Mr A and Mr B
28 Jos Lammers
30 State News
32 Meditate and Serve
36 Let Go (AMP ad)
Four years ago, there were two premies in Australia. David Lovejoy was living in an overcrowded terrace house in Surry Hills, Sydney, telling everyone who knocked on the door about his fourteen-year-old guru. Julie Collet, back from India, was giving satsang to her friends in Melbourne. Since then, something has definitely happened. From two premies in two cities five hundred miles apart, Divine Light Mission has grown to a family of over a thousand, and spreads from Perth to Cairns.
Over thirty years later, the "family" is smaller. All of Prem Rawat's ideas - which are printed in these magazines around this time - about how to present this "Knowledge" to make it attractive to Australians, at least, have been complete failures and most of those people who "practised this Knowledge" have given up on it.
Plus it gives the community the opportunity of seeing various Directors, different people practising Knowledge, different satsang so that they don't get too familiar with the people that they are dealing with, because as they say, familiarity can breed contempt. So this is just a means of making sure that everybody is kept awake.
6 News
Michael Donner, DLM Vice-President, is returning to Denver this month after 12 months of imprisonment for charges stemming from antiwar activities in the sixties. Michael is being released on a program which will enable him to do service at International Headquarters during the day while living at a halfway house in Denver.
In a way, there are less external distract ions in a place like Hobart. But through experience we've realised that if you let go of meditation, there's always a danger of being lured into this vignette of beauty. It's evident we have to be energetic in a place like this, always moving to apply Maharaj Ji's direction in our lives.
One striking thing about the accounts reaching the editor's desk in Sydney was the remarkable similarity of activities and realisations they had to report.
12 Sydney
Looking back over the years from the Second Coming campaign to Guru Maharaj Ji's program at the Opera House, you can see we've changed. The Sydney community has moved from simply a bunch
of ex-freaks practising Knowledge to what a community should be - 'a friendship between premies - premies who are dedicated to Guru Maharaj Ji.'
Gone are the bholie-shris after after every song, the nosedive pranams and the WPC.
14 Interview with Michael McDonald
"Guru Maharaj Ji said a few years ago that if you know the Lord of your time then it's the most far out thing that can happen to you. We've got that opportunity, and the way we learn to know and love him is through serving him. It's like putting our lives at his disposal to use them. The only thing going to Denver really means to me is that it's another opportunity to serve Guru Maharaj Ji."
Michael McDonald has publicly renounced his beliefs in Prem Rawat.
16 Peace Now
Guru Maharaj Ji's satsang at a premie program in Lima, Peru. 14 January, 1976.
"Whenever this world has really been insane, really been afflicted with that problem, there was only one thing that ever worked. When Jesus came in this world, he revealed this Knowledge to people. And that was a long, long time ago. You know? Today, again, people have the same exact problem. Like I was saying in Orlando, the difference is that today we have air conditioning, while in the time of Caesar they used to have servants who had gigantic fans to cool them off."
"When we really understand the importance of this Knowledge, we really realise Knowledge and see the importance in our life, that, "Yeah man, we really need Knowledge," then we start doing meditation."
22 What This Heart Really Needs
Durga Ji's satsang to the premies in Lima, Peru on 14 January, 1976
"It's so beautiful because today I realised so much that Guru Maharaj Ji saved me, the day I received Knowledge. But, it's not like it stops at that. Guru Maharaj Ji saves us every day, every hour, every minute. He's always saving us, and he always will save us." … "Maharaj Ji's grace never ends; it is the ocean of mercy." … "We tie ourselves to each other and we tie ourselves to Guru Maharaj Ji when we have satsang. And when we meditate, we're really tying ourselves so close to Guru Maharaj Ji. Then when we do service with each other, when we do service for each other, we're tying ourselves again to Maharaj Ji's feet." … "The vibration, by his grace, is so light, and there is so much love."
So helping someone understand about Knowledge takes patience, and takes care. It takes being sensitive to that person, to their experiences of life, to their understanding. It takes a willingness to go back to basics when necessary, to move forward when the time is ripe. It means leaving our ideas behind and sharing our experiences honestly. And of course, for all this to happen, it means being surrendered to Guru Maharaj Ji, inside and out, so that experience and understanding are there to be shared.
From Guru Maharaj Ji's satsang at the IHQ Conference in Denver, 19 December 1975.
"So Mr. A goes and gives satsang to that person and says, "Yes, you should dedicate your whole life to Guru Maharaj Ji, you should dedicate everything you have to Guru Maharaj Ji. Just give up everything because this world is not good." Well, what exactly is he saying wrong there? I mean, that's a fact. He's not saying too much wrong there."
"Maharaj Ji explained in that same meeting that he will remove everything that is in his control that is a block in spreading this Knowledge. Because the only reason why this Mission is here, the only reason why we are here as premies, is to spread Knowledge; and Guru Maharaj Ji is very determined to remove all the things that keep us away from it."
From Guru Maharaj Ji's satsang at the IHQ Conference in Denver, 19 December 1975.
One of the highlights of Ira's visit to Brisbane was the meditation retreat. Altogether one hundred and fifteen premies and aspirants from Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast,
Toowoomba and Mullumbimby left their homes and minds behind for the camp at Southport. A continuous downpour keeping everyone indoors, added to the incredible feeling that we were really one
big family. There was absolutely nothing to do except service, satsang and meditation, but that was all anyone wanted to do anyway. As someone commented, "If there's anything better than
service, satsang and meditation, it's doing service, satsang and meditation together.""
Ira Woods gave this satsang to the Melbourne premie community at a meditation retreat on 17 February, 1976.
"I guess it's one lesson over and over again, but we never seem to learn it enough: just how Guru Maharaj Ji's grace is always there for us. When we're in the deepest hole and we're really
sinking low somehow we just cry out and scream, you know. You try to stand up against your mind, you try to stand up against all the negative drives that are inside of you, and you just let
out that one wail,"Hey Daddy, don't forget me! Please remember I'm here!" And sure enough that finger comes. For myself I just experience this so much."
'The grace is there,
The Knowledge is there,
everything is there with us,
so just give yourself.'
