Prem Rawat's Extravagant Lifestyle
Prem Rawat's extravagance and greed became obvious in the mid-1970's even to the press whose interest in him was already waning. In a court case in Vancouver DLM financial documents were tendered as evidence showing the young Rawat was spending 60% of DLM's gross receipts on himself and his inner coterie. That was around $1,200,000 per annum though the money began to dry up quickly shortly thereafter. Some of those press stories are published here.
Click here to see a well researched article about Prem Rawat's extravagant lifestyle and click here to see pictures of his unbelievable Malibu Mansion.
However, it wasn't until later that his drug use and sexual abuse of some of his female devotees, became known to any but his inner coterie.
Sophia Collier, who had been a journalist in the Denver headquarters working for Divine light Mission, and others were told by Bob Mishler, the President of Divine Light Mission, that the 15 year old boy guru was "sloshed" at the Millenium '73 festival.
Mike Donner, ex-President of Divine Light Mission, and Mike Dettmers ex-President of Divine Light Mission and personal assistant to Prem Rawat for over a decade both recounted stories of regular marijuana smoking in the Malibu "residence" on the internet in the 1990's after they had become disillusioned with Rawat and his "Knowledge".
Sometime in the later 1980's I met an old friend whose "service" had been looking after the audiovisual materials in Divine Light Mission in Brisbane, Australia and he gave me some material that had been overlooked and not destroyed. Unfortunately my ex-wife destroyed most of this before I could digitise it. However on an old audio tape I found this recorded interview with a young Rawat and like most people who grew up in the '60's I immediately recognised Rawat's condition.