Sacred Journeys
The Conversion of Young Americans to Divine Light Mission
James V. Downton, Jr.

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.

From Slogans To Mantras
Stephen Kent

An interesting study of the movement of many of the 60's "counter-culture" from radical political action to quietist 70's "spiritual cult". It also suffers from a too critical acceptance of the degree of sincerity and committment people had in these groups. It 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 that most of the proselytisation was going on and the counter-culture press 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".

CULTS: Faith, Healing, and Coercion
Marc Galanter

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

ALTERNATIVE RELIGIONS: A Sociological Introduction
Stephen J. Hunt

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.

Gurus, Godmen and Good People
Khushwant Singh

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."

The World Of Gurus
Vishal Mangalwadi

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."

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

Radhasoami Reality
The Logic Of A Modern Faith
Professor Mark Juergensmeyer

p207: Influence of Radhasoami on Divine Light Mission
p43: Problems of succession in modern "Sant Mat" religions

The Light Of Wisdom: Shri Hans Ji Maharaj: Life And Teachings
Professor C. L. Tandon, Secretary Divya Sandesh Parishad (Divine Light mission, India)

This book is a history of Hans Rawat's career with many stories collected from his Indian followers. It appears to have been written in the late 1960's or early 1970's but revised after 1974 when any references to Hans' youngest son, Prem Rawat aka Sant Ji Maharaj aka Balyogeshwar aka Guru Maharaj Ji and his 8 years as the spiritual head and Perfect Master of his father's Indian followers were removed after his mother disinherited and deposed him and enthroned his eldest brother as the new Satguru.

Hans Yog Prakash
Shri Hans Ji Maharaj (Hans Rawat)

I recall one premie I knew had a copy purchased in India and copies of typewritten draft English translations of this were available in DLM in the 1970's but were only a small part of the book which is available through Shri Bhole Ji Maharaj's organisation, Hanslok Ashram. This gives a much fuller exposition of Hans Rawat's teachings and includes sections on Ashtanga Yoga and the Subtle Nervous systems, the Nectar Technique and the Celestial Music.
"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."

Antidote To Nuclear Bombs
Shri Hans Ji Maharaj (Hans Rawat) (or his ghost writers)

(Radio-activity is nullified by the Divine Energy generated from the Union of the Consciousness with the Shabd Braham. For details read this article).
The Divine Light is realised and experienced by a precise process. Its realisation is a system, of knowledge organised around experienced principles. It is a science, the only true science. It has no fallibility. It is not subject to change by further revelation or experiments as is the case with the material science. Its truth is the only eternal Truth - the knowledge gained from the revelation of the Divine Light and communion of the consciousness with the Divine Light is the only true knowledge of the Reality.

Satgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj
editor, C. L. Tandon, Secretary Divine Light Mission

"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

Shri Paramhans Advait Mat
Shri Anand Pur Trust

Prem Rawat's father was not unique but part of a tradition. A tradition that did not accept him as being the bona fide inheritor of the mantle of his own guru, Shri Swarupanand. There is nearly always considerable dissension and controversy on the succession of the Satguru after the death of the living incumbent in panths of the Sant Mat tradition of Northern India. (see "Radhasoami Reality by Professor Mark Jurgensmeyer, p43) Hans Rawat was not accepted by his peers at the death of Swarupanand if for no other reason then he was a married householder. This decision is certainly validated in the light of the failure of Hans Rawat's nepotism and the family dissension in his heirs which saw his youngest son deposed by his mother because of his drug-taking and the later fall-out between the elder brothers, Satpal and Bholeji Maharaj. This book is published by people within the accepted lineage.

Without The Guru
Mike Finch

Finch has written a personal memoire of his 30 years of thralldom to Prem Rawat or Guru Maharaj Ji as he initially called himself. Many academics of New Religious Movements have disparaged apostate evidence about their former membership as "atrocity tales" in an attempt to destroy their credibility through pejorative labelling. It would be interesting to read their comments about Finch's book in which he has deliberately withheld the many "atrocity tales" he saw first-hand and attempts to maintain an air of imperturbable high-mindedness widely at odds with the behaviour of the guru he spent decades revering: Prem Rawat or Maharaji (the "Ultimate Ruler" as he prefers to be known), the former teenage Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe, Guru Maharaj Ji.

The book would appeal to a wider audience if the didactic sections were replaced by racy details of Rawat's vulgar venality but it is by far the best (and almost the only) book available about life in the Rawatism cult and it is truthful and accurate, though very personal.

Mescaline, Maharaj Ji and the Mojave Desert: Abandoned Roads

Jos Lammers, ex-President Divine Light Mission, Holland and Director International Operations (Europe and Australia), International Headquarters, Divine Light Mission has written a short but interesting memoire, in Dutch and English at www.verlatenwegen.info and available from Amazon in which he recounts his life as a university drop-out in 1970 taking too many drugs (he may disagree it was too many :-) and looking for the "meaning of life" who becomes a "premie" of Guru Maharaj Ji. He moves into the ashram where he discovers a talent for business and organisation that makes the Dutch DLM financially successful. So successful that he is called to Denver to join the international executive staff of DLM as Director International Operations (Europe and Australia). There is a summary of his DLM career here and two excerpts from his book, Abandoned-Roads, here and here.

Soul Rush
Sophie Collier

An insider's look at her 2½ years in Divine Light Mission in the eraly 1970's. She is interesting, intelligent, immature, foolish, pretentious and the book is as deeply flawed as the organisation was. It is remarkable how uninsightful she is but the gossip gives a good picture of life in DLM administration in the early to mid-1970's. It is the only published memoire written by a premie from that period and provides a picture of the lives of some of those premies and their hopes, activities and hypocrisies.

"(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.");"
... I wondered why Maharaj Ji did not want the truth known. Already AP, the wire service, had carried parts of what he wished to suppress.
... "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."

The Way Out: Radical Alternatives in Australia
edited by Margaret Smith and David Crossley

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, unrealistic picture of the Divine Light Mission of the early 1970's.

Between Dark and Dark
David Lovejoy

David Lovejoy, one time President of Divine Light Mission, Australia and Great Britain is a former 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.

"Maharaji is an incomparable public speaker and a wise strategist, and if he chose to hone everything down to the delivery of the techniques of meditation in a respectable, non-religious and noncontroversial way, then he did so in order to maximise people's opportunities for receiving Knowledge." But since Rawat has "honed everything down" the numbers of his students has halved despite 25 years of expensive attempts at gaining new adherents and many of those who consider themselves followers live lives in which Rawat is a very peripheral figure, as has Lovejoy. Of course, Rawat is, in a sense, an incomparable public speaker, there is no-one else any where near as awful a public speaker with whom to compare him.

Fighting Spirit
Lauren Burns

Lauren Burns seems to be an admirable young woman. In her autobiography she mentions the events that occurred in her family's life after her father became involved in Divine Light Mission and Guru Maharaj Ji and here are the relevant passages. She evokes the family spirit that infused 1970's Divine Light Mission, in Australia at least. As the daughter of a minor Australian celebrity who was a good friend of Johnny Young who was able to provide financial support and positive publicity for "Maharaji" she was probably treated with significanly more attention and "love" than the daughter of a neurotic single mother.

Back Cover Blurb: WHEN LAUREN BURNS WON a gold medal in Taekwondo at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, she became an instant Australian hero and the proverbial 'overnight sensation'.

Me Of Little Faith
Lewis Black

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.

Baba: Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi
Rampuri

Will Ganz aka Sitaram who now calls himself Rampuri is a legend in his own chillum. The author of 'Baba' and a star of the Ethnobotanical (drugs) "spiritual scene" he has spent decades in India sucking at the sadhu's source of spurious stoned saintliness. He left his early spiritual career in Divine Light Mission with a bhang and doesn't mention those days in his biography. Exactly why he was involved is lost in a hazy mist of marijuana and paranoia but there is no doubt he had a strong initial impact in helping the young Rawat go to the USA and to provide him with an audience once he got there though he did his best to sabotage the movement once he realised Rawat's vision did not include him and any intellectual grooviness in the 'inner circle'. There are copies of two emails he sent in 2002 in which he claims full credit for Divine Light Mission off the ground in the USA, calls everyone else involved stupid, ignorant and low-caste - yes 'low-caste'. He discussses early Divine Light mission and his role within it here and makes intelligent criticisms of Indian Rawatism here.

Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions
Janet Liebman Jacobs

This book includes a case study of the travails of a married premie couple as they negotiate the many changes in Divine Light Mission. It is obviously authentic as nobody could recreate the language and experiences of premies so closely without actually living through it. There are some minor errors which may be the fault of Ms Jacob's incomprehension. For example, nobody actually received Knowledge from the guru himself; married couples could not live in an ashram; premies did not "chant the Holy Name.

• Case 1. Mark and Sandy: The Premie Experience in Divine Light Mission
• The Regulation of Social Life
• Various Excerpts relating to Divine Light Mission

All God's Children
THE CULT EXPERIENCE: SALVATION OR SLAVERY?
Carrol Stoner and Jo Anne Parke

"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."

Youth, Brainwashing And The Extremist Cults
Ronald Enroth

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. While this was definitely the correct decision, he could have put up a bit of a fight.

Odd Gods: New Religions and the Cult Controversy
ed. James R. Lewis

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 against 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.

Larson's book Of Cults
Bob Larson
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois

An accurate, ironic look at Prem Rawat when he was Guru Maharaj Ji by a Christian author who actually attended Millenium '73 and listened carefully when premies tried to explain their beliefs to him:

"God has retired and now resides in comfortable affluence amid the placid splendor of a Malibu, California mansion." That might well be the epitaph on the tombstone of Divine Light Mission. In the early seventies Guru Maharaj Ji commanded one of the largest and fastest-growing followings of all imported cult leaders.

SPIRITUAL TOURIST

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."

Peace Is Possible
by Andrea Cagan

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 and who was paid $60,000 by the Prem Rawat Foundation for her trouble.
It is, however, an invaluable source for determining the revisionist history and "spin" Rawat wanted printed about his life in 2005. Some interesting sections are available below:
Bihari Singh's version of the "Succession" when the young Sant Ji inherited the Satguru's throne.
Rawat's version of his association with Michael Dettmers, his long time personal assistant and revealer of the guru's secrets.
Rawat's version of his association with Brian Kitt, the first Western "mahatma", Mahatma Saphlanand

The Living Master

A collection of excerpts from speeches given by Prem Rawat in the period 1971 to 1978 (mainly 1976-77) 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.
Guru Maharaj Ji, are you permanently in God-consciousness?
Yes. I am permanently in God-consciousness.
Because you will have then realized and fulfilled your destiny. The speck, that little speck, then will have become everything, because it will have merged with infinity, it will have then merged with the most incredible, most indescribable thing that there is!

Holi 78
Malaga & Miami
Satsangs of Guru Maharaji

Prem Rawat's love of technology has been given full rein 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 that are no longer reliant on his Indian religious roots and not succeeding too well.
the first priority, when you have clearly seen that there is no ands, ifs, and buts about this whole thing, and that you're there for one purpose, and it's to serve your Guru Maharaj Ji, and it's just to meditate on that Holy Name, and it's just to understand what this life is all about.