Prem Rawat's "Holy Breath"
"Holy Breath" was a ritual that Prem Rawat, or Guru Maharaj Ji as he called himself before the early 1980's, considered extremely important. Every new person that had been initiated, ie taught Rawat's system of meditation
and that he was the incarnation of God on the planet today, was also taught that on the first time they had his formal darshan ie line up and walk past
and pranam to him and kiss his feet after they had received Knowledge they should cup their right hand behind their right ear as they approached him.
So as you approached his throne during the darshan line (this was usually done in a large group in single file), Rawat would then be able to recognise that this was your first time and make a
symbolic megaphone-move with his hand, blowing through it into your ear…
This was an important step - a necessary step - in becoming a premie according to his dogma:
the Perfect Master recognising and accepting you as one of his chosen.
(On February 10, 1979 in San Francisco, Rawat was asked, "Can I receive Holy Breath when I haven't received Knowledge?"
He replied, "You haven't received Knowledge yet? So first receive Knowledge and you can receive the Holy Breath.")
But Rawat (Maharaji) did not want to discuss "Holy Breath" publicly and when he was asked:
"Q: I'm not very clear on Holy Breath. Can you give me some satsang about it? A: Well, why don't you ask some initiator about it. Okay?" He did make it plain that it was to be received only once:
"And of course there is going to be a darshan program where everybody will be able to come and do pranam, and have Holy Breath. Premies who haven't had Holy Breath, they will be able to have Holy Breath."
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Prem Rawat removed many of the superficial Indian trappings from his organisations in 1983 when he closed the Divine Light Mission ashrams, ended the nightly satsang meetings his followers held all over the world
and renamed Divine Light Mission to Elan Vital. But while his followers were no longer
allowed to call him the Lord of the Universe or Guru Maharaj Ji but only Maharaji (ie Great King) he continued with the most controversial ceremonies in secret. This image is from a video filmed at Amaroo, his
cult compound near Ipswich in South East Queensland after the year 2000 and shows a young woman in a darshan line there requesting "Holy Breath."
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In the 1970's before the number of Rawat's followers began to decline there were on a couple of occasions nearly 20,000 people in the darshan line. To speed up the darshan process at the Guru Puja festival in 1974 a double line was trialled.
This was not a success as Rawat could not keep up with the Holy Breath as he had to observe 2 lines of people approaching and pose for photos and so he became confused. Picture printed in The Divine Times, Vol 3 Issue 4, October 15, 1974.
Published by Shri Hans Publications.
On May 4, 1974 he spoke of a new 4 day long program he wanted to have:
"where everybody can receive Holy Breath, can receive Darshan,
can receive Knowledge Review, can get rid of the doubts, do a lot of meditation and I mean just a very cool, beautiful, lovely - as they say in English - program. Just a beautiful, just like a premie program
and of course Guru Puja is a function where, you know, it's like a really premie's function it's like really a devotee's function so that they can go and worship Guru Maharaj Ji"
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People queue past to do pranam in Copenhagen in a mid-70's darshan line. Note photo on left where Maharaji has nearly finished giving Holy Breath to one of his followers .
This was not something discussed in public very often but some early Bennington premies spoke of it in an interview in
August 1972 in the Bennington Banner of August 8, 1972.
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