Books Dealing with Prem Rawat

Published in 1973 this is the definitive look at the beliefs of the Rawatism religion before Prem Rawat was disowned by his mother in 1974.

"When a devotee makes the outrageous statement that Guru Maharaj Ji is the Lord of the Universe, it's cause enough for a chuckle. But it also happens to be true. Guru Maharaj Ji is the Lord of the Universe and anyone can find out who sincerely wants to know. Every fiber in me says that America is going to find out. It's too big a secret to keep quiet. And I'm starting to feel that America is going to be the most fantastic place on the planet because America is going to be the first country to realize Guru Maharaj Ji is here. America will teach the whole world the Perfect One has come, and that now there is a way to end the craziness of this century and wipe away the tears of its victims and teach us all how to be human beings again."

A remarkably fair-minded, sometimes credulous, study of a "typical" group of young Americans and their experiences of conversion to devotees of the Guru Maharaji in the 1970's. Suffers from the use of a small and possibly atypical sample group and a relatively uncritical acceptance of the explanations given to Downton of the travails of the organisation and the "personal evolution" of the devotees. Valuable as a reputable academic outsider's evidence of the beliefs and doctrines of the time and the devotional message of Prem Rawat in the late 1970's which contradicts the revisionism of Elan Vital's current public version.

An interesting study of the movement of many of the 60's "counter-culture" from radical political action to quietist 70's "spiritual cult". Suffers from a too critical acceptance of the degree of sincerity and committment people had in these groups. Has a good section on the author's personal response to young Prem's "satsang" and his incomprehension that intelligent friends and associates could become devoted to the fat-boy guru. Kent reveals the extent of the hostility to Prem Rawat in the 1970's underground press. It was in the counter-culture readers that most of the proselytisation was going on and they had a much greater knowledge of the methods, success and results of the practice of "Knowledge". A typical example is R. Crumb's comic, Mr. Natural Meets "The Kid".

Excerpts
The Charismatic Group
Bringing about changes in the thinking and behaviors of individual members in single episodes
A Charismatic Religious Sect The Divine Light Mission
History of DLM
A study held at a national festival held by the Divine Light Mission

A reasonable introduction to the topic that suffers only by a lack of rigour when it comes to describing individual groups. One wonders why New Religious Movements (cults) have ever caused any public controversy if they are as innocuous as he describes. Did the Rajneeshies really not try to murder their neighbours in Oregon? Did the Children of God guru Moses David not promote paedophilia and prostitution? The page on Divine Light Mission has an awful authorial/editorial blooper where the "Knowledge", "mahatamas" and "simple set of instructors" are mistakenly identified in the same sentence. It also has significant errors of fact: the so-called "Indian influences on his followers" were not a hindrance to the wider acceptance of his teachings. Since the early 1980's when he changed the name and public face of his organisation the number of his followers in the West has halved despite 30 years of proselytising. In fact, it is in India where Indian influences are paramount that any growth in his following has occurred and even there hs is not as successful as his eldest brother.

This book contains a series of chapters dealing with a dozen of the more well-known "Godmen" of modern India. The chapter on Balyogeshwar as Prem Rawat or Maharaji is known in India is based upon Singh's story "The Guru Business" in the New York Times of April 8, 1973.

"Balyogeshwar's Divine Light Mission is only one of the innumerable religious organizations that proliferate in the country. There are many other self-styled bhagwans (gods), swamis (lords), rishis (sages), maharishis (great sages), acharyas (teachers) and sants (saints) and gurus who have larger followings. It is not possible to make an estimate of the number of their followers because wildly exaggerated claims are made by each holy man. But it can be assumed that most religious Hindus and Sikhs (together making 85 per cent of the population of India) and some Moslems, Christians and Parsis as well, pay homage to one live saint or the other whom they regard as God incarnate."

PART V - THE AUDIO-LUMINOUS GURUS
Chapter Ten - The Divine Light Mission

"THE SPECTACULAR RISE and the scandalous fall of the Divine Light Mission has made it the most publicized sect of our day. Its recently dethroned leader, Balyogeshwar, alias Guru Maharaj Ji, was claimed to be "the brightest event in the history of the planet." Balyogeshwar's father, the founder of the Mission, had declared him to be be the "born saint"; his mother, the patron of the Mission, and Bal Bhagavan, his oldest brother and the new leader of the Mission, called him the "perfect master." Like Sai Baba, Balyogeshwar claimed the he was Jesus Christ come again and Krishna reincarnated. Millions believed him and surrendered their minds to him. They testified that he had given them the experience of divinity. This brilliant star has turned out to be a meteor that flashed across gurudom only to sputter out into darkness."

"In order to evaluate charges that Divine Light is a destructive religious cult, it is important to compare the Mission to both the most deceitful religious cults and to the self-help programs which neither offer communal life structures nor encourage practitioners to give up all outside interests. Some compare Divine Light's meditative "knowledge" techniques to the meditation practices of Transcendental Meditation, explaining that both are do-it-yourself systems that can be used to enrich one's life.

But the comparison does not work. The Mission's three-pronged program does not depend solely on the techniques of meditation, but also on satsang, or reinforcement of a belief in the benefits of meditation through discussion with others who do it, and on service work performed for the Mission without pay."

Chapter 7 of this book written in 1977 gives a pretty accurate, if idiosyncratic, view of DLM and the experience of one, Jim Ardmore (real name?) Some of it is nonsense - meditation turns your brains to jelly beans - but not very much. The most astonishing part of the book relays his deprogramming by Ted Patrick in 45 minutes after he returned home after chopping the ends of his fingers off cutting up tomato sandwiches at Millenium, '73 festival.

This book purports to be a primer on the "cult controversy" and a source of material on a wide range of New Religious Movements - Lewis eschews the use of the word 'cult' due to it's popular pejorative connotations. While I agree with book's conclusions I found the lanuage and arguments slanted aaginst critics of NRM's and the descriptions of many of them absurdly uncritical. The section on Divine Light Mission / Elan Vital is identical to the one in Lewis' book The Encyclopedia of CULTS, SECTS And New Religions and contains numerous errors of fact.

Unfortunately this book just isn't very funny. Maybe Black's material requires his personality or delivery to add the magic or maybe it requires the tension of living in a society where religion actually matters to make it funny but this Australian irreligious skeptic found it bland and hohum. The chapter on the "13 year old Guru Maharaji" is not a researched history nor even an exhaustive memoire. It's a minor vignette written over 30 years after the events recounted and it tries to be funny. Nevertheless, it makes some interesting points that would be relevant for most people who have been involved with Prem Rawat's cult.

A biography written by a biography-mill author who didn't interview Rawat, used no newspaper, magazine or academic articles about Rawat and whose "sources" were all close, confirmed, long-time devotees of Prem Rawat.

It is, however, an invaluable source for determining the revisionist history and "spin" Rawat wanted printed of his life in 2005. Some interesting secrinos are available below:

Bihari Singh's version of the "Succession"

Rawat's version of his association with Michael Dettmers, his long time personal assistant

Rawat's version of his association with Brian Kitt, the first Western "mahatma", Mahatma Saphlanand

Divine Enterprise Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement Lisa McKean Introduction to the Fieldwork Maharaji and the Holy Family Question and Answers to The Manav Utthan Seva Samiti

The editors were followers of Prem Rawat at the time (though no longer) and so some thinly disguised attempts at proselytisation were included.

A MAGICAL MYSTERY - A Tour Of Communal Life by Penny Watson
Penny, who became disenchanted with Prem Rawat in the 1980's, wrote this early biography as a "coming to the truth" through attempts at communal living" story. She was a particularly sweet, loveable and intelligent person who now works in environmental science doing some real good.

THE DIVINE LIGHT MISSION IN AUSTRALIA by Derek Harper & Michael McDonald was a very positive, rosy picture of the Divine LIght Mission of the early 1970's.

David Lovejoy, one time President of Divine Light Mission, Australia and Great Britain is an editor of the Byron Bay Echo, a local newspaper published in the resort town of Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia. He has written a "memoire" about his life which most people would find extremely boring but is of interest to his friends, family and anyone wishing to read about the "hippies" who became followers of Prem Rawat in India circa 1971 and the Divine Light Mission in Australia in the 1970's.

A collection of quotes from speeches given by Prem Rawat in the period 1971 to 1978 edited into a reasonably coherent exposition of the Divine Light Mission doctrine as it was current in 1978. It contains 23 black and white photos of the young Guru Maharaji some of which are so jowly and unflattering as to make you wonder what on earth were the editors thinking.

Prem Rawat's love of technology has been given full rain in his version of this ancient Indian religious festival. This booklet contains his speeches at the European and US celebrations. It shows him attempting speeches no longer reliant on his Indian religious roots and not succeeding too well.

An insider's look at her 2 1/2 years in Divine Light Mission. She is interesting, intelligent, immature, foolish, pretentious and the book is as deeply flawed as the organisation was.

"(As I discovered later, we were not the only ones for whom some alcohol was the festival's high point. Bob Mishler told me Maharaj Ji got "sloshed.");"
"If Maharaj Ji wanted to run a little religion based on his father's teachings and he was able to find people to join, so what? That was his business, not mine."

A PERSONAL ODYSSEY THROUGH THE OUTER REACHES OF BELIEF
Mick Brown
BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING PLC

Brown also wrote a piece for the Texas Monthly in January 1974 about the Millenium Festival.
"It was very odd,' remembers Michael Eavis, the dairy farmer who runs the Glastonbury Festival. 'Somebody said God had arrived and could we put him on stage, and my thought was: Well, the festival's for everybody really, so why not? By the time he went on stage everybody in the audience was completely stoned out of their minds, and you could hear this ripple going around, "Wow! That's God!" Then he started preaching against drugs, which I think everybody there found a bit disconcerting."

"O my Guru, Lord of all Lords, I ask for nothing more than to serve You day and night. If only I might see my living Master, I would tell Him all my sufferings, weeping, and rest my head on His Holy Feet. I would tell him everything. When he wishes for the means to experience the essence of Truth, the devotee must accept a Guru. In the spirit of adoration, he should salute his noble Guru who is God Himself, who is enthroned in the thousand jewelled crown. The aim which the yogic scriptures set us is the union of the individual soul with the Supreme soul. When a devotee remains in the company of his Satguru, in the spirit of devotion, his body of dust becomes filled with bliss. I bow before my Guru who reveals the Lotus Feet of the Supreme Lord permeating the whole universe."

The text formatted for a more concise printing is available here

"In the annals of mankind there has always appeared a great Spiritual Master at every critical juncture who has saved humanity from an impending crisis. Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, the founder of the Divine Light Mission was such a Divine Master. His contribution to the moral and spiritual uplift of mankind is too great to be expressed in words. Even the scriptures try in vain to sing the glory of a Satguru. Guru Nanak aptly said 'Sant ki Mahima ved na Jane ...' The greatness and glory of Saints can not be depicted even by the Vedas."

The text in a single file formatted for a more concise printing is available here

Prem Rawat's father was not unique but part of a tradition. Parts of this book reproduced here.