Thursday, October 18, 1973        THE UBYSSEY        Page3

Rennie at the feet of Maharaj Ji

Greatest show on earth

Rennie at the feet of Maharaj Ji By LINDA HOSSIE.

The general co-ordinator of the greatest event in the history of the world played to a nearly full house in SUB auditorium Monday.

Rennie Davis, Chicago seven defendent, organizer of Mayday in Washington in 1971, leader of the JOIN community organization project in Chicago and well known cog in the new left wheel, has received the knowledge of the 15-year-old perfect master Guru Maharaj Ji and was on campus to give satsang or truth giving to devotees and unwashed alike.

"Guru Maharaj Ji gives his knowledge to anyone who seeks it, anyone who wants it," a covey of reporters, radio men and television cameramen were told by eager premie (disciple) Maria McEvenue at an early abortive press conference in the Divine Light Mission on Fourth.

Davis, fogged in at the San Francisco airport, was not there as advertised to speak about Millenium '73 but the devotees carried on manfully for 20 minutes before revealing it.

Millenium '73, "the greatest event in the history of the world" is a huge jamboree to take place in the astrodome in Houston, Tex. Nov. 8, 9,10.

According to the devotees of GMJ this event will herald 1,000 years of world peace.

The festivities will begin with Soul Rush, a mass pilgrimage of devotees from Plymouth Rock, down the eastern seaboard of the United States, through several historic cities to Houston.

Jumbo jets will fly devotees in from al l over the world . Every hotel in Houston, except one, has been rented so devotees will be able to stay free of charge.

About 140,000 persons are expected and a world-wide media hook-up will allow the event to be broadcast internationally.

When GMJ intends to reveal his practical plan for world peace and the subtlety of his knowledge, he doesn't fool around.

Convert

So who is this Rennie Davis, anyway? Well, now. He's the general co-ordinator of Millenium'73,the vice-president of the Divine Light Mission, founded in 1960 by the GMJ's father Shri Hans Ji Maharaj - also a perfect master, and he's a soft spoken, apparently sincere convert to the ways of the knowledge of the guru.

Davis's lecture in SUB auditorium opened with the recorded music of GMJ's elder brother's band, Blue Aquarius, "God is love and love is God, God is truth and truth is peace" with a rock beat and good old hand-clapping, foot-stomping participation from the devotees, who knew all the words.

Annie Bishop, who travels with Davis and sings at GMJ's programs too, sang three songs in praise of the guru: "Is there truly a master plan, can this planet be saved by man?"

Then, after a long pause, Davis began to speak, slowly, almost painfully, not about Millenium '73, but about the knowledge of the Guru Maharaj Ji.

Red alert

"If ever there was a time for a general alarm … a red alert for human civilization … it seems to me … people feel that time … is now.

"The deepest bitterness threatens to suck the whole world into world war three." The stakes are so high - the stakes of oil, power, territory.

"The democratic regime in Chile has been brutally oppressed by the military.

"The crisis is so vast the Gallup poll shows most people in America think we're not going to make it at all."

In a weary voice Davis told of his travels across America where everyone from airline stewardesses to people in laundromats said they don't know what's going on.

"It's like a whole people caught in an incredibly narrow tube with the tube stretched out so no one can see what's at the end," Davis said.

White light

And his conversion, his receiving the knowledge of Guru Maharaj Ji?

"When I think about it honestly, if the situation had been reversed, (if another member of the Chicago seven had received the knowledge) I can't imagine being anything but incensed.

"I would have imagined every con-ceivable possibility except the impossible one. That it's true."

Obviously this is some inside joke. The devotees chuckled up a storm at Davis' confessions.

"It sounds even worse than a religion," Davis continued.

"Right on!" an audience member shouted.

Davis described the "very intense, very brilliant, very clear, white light" the devotees see inside their heads and discussed the scientific theory that the pineal gland is behind this vision, that the body of a meditating devotee actually un-dergoes a psychological change where the glands that secrete in situations of fear and anger are affected.

"This is not a faith or a belief. It's a direct experience," Davis reiterated throughout his talk.

"Everything I say here can be verified." Davis said according to the teachings of GMJ, the mind creates the world we live in.

"We must turn to the problem of the mind. And if civilization is to save itself there must be a complete overhaul of the mind. The Guru Maharaj Ji has the strategy and the tool to carry out that strategy," Davis said.

Davis said the one vibration or pure energy at the centre of creation and at the centre of every individual being is called primordial vibration.

"The body is precious because it can directly experience and know this life, he said.

"It's only purpose is to experience this vibration.

"If you unplug your mind from its ego and plug it into the vibration that created you, the intelligence of the creation will flow through you."

Cream pie

Pockets of resistance to Davis' ideas cropped up in varying degrees of violence throughout the audience composed largely of devotees:

Why is the knowledge of the Guru Maharaj Ji different from the knowledge of Jesus? What about the devotees who killed a man for throwing a cream pie in GMJ's face, in Detroit? How old is the Guru Maharaj Ji, really? What about the smuggling charges laid against GMJ for bringing a case full of money and jewels into India?

At a press conference after the satsang in SUB, Davis said he doesn't see any argument between someone who sees God through Jesus and someone who sees God through Guru Maharaj Ji.

"Guru Maharaj Ji says: 'I have not come to establish a new religion or sect, but I have come to give you knowledge of truth … Jesus gave this knowledge, Krishna gave this knowledge, but now we must look again for the new master to show us the light'," a Divine Light Mission leaflet reads.

Davis said he deplored the murder of the man in Detroit.

When the pie was thrown, Guru Maharaj Ji said he wanted to apologize to the man and asked that no one hurt him, Davis said.

"Anyone got a pie?" someone yelled. Davis also said the smuggling charges may have been laid against the guru because he is so powerful in his affect on people that the government of India considered him a threat.

"Members of the Indian parliament have even said this," he said.

Davis answered charges against Guru Maharaj Ji's accumulation of wealth by saying the houses, cars, jewels and air-planes do not really belong to him. They are gifts from devotees.

He keeps them to show the valuelessness of material things, Davis said.

"The Guru Maharaj Ji has said : 'Don't judge what I am until you have received what I can give you'," Davis said.

Davis continually implored people to "check out" the claims of the devotees before condemning them.

"If it came over the news that Jesus was back and He was going to deliver the sermon on the mount everyone would empty out of their houses to check it out," he said. Answering a charge that the Divine Light Mission was filled with fascistic mentalities, Davis said all kinds of people have been attracted to the movement.

"Our minds may not like the idea that God is omniscient, omnipresent but people should overcome these mental blocks," he said.

Four-year-old

Annie Bishop's four-year-old son, Tristen, brought the meeting close to an end when he stood up and led everyone in a chorus of "When the Saint's Go Marching In".

The Guru Maharaj Ji says we should all be like children, according to earlier testimony of Davis', and the devotees joined Tristen with enthusiasm.

The thrust of Davis' arguments was anti-rational . He said he didn't know why Guru Maharaj Ji was playing games with peoples' minds.

He responded to questions about social responsibility by reaffirming the value of receiving the knowledge of Guru Maharaj Ji.

In short, if you do not have the knowledge you do not understand. If you have received the knowledge, questions dealing with social issues evoke genuine smiles and laughter, as premies showed during the evening.

The Divine Light Mission is a vast en-terprise. It is legally incorporated in 31 countries. It has established Shri Hans productions and Shri Hans publications to spread the good word. In 1972 Guru Maharaj Ji established a World Peace Corps in America.

A slick, professional magazine called And It Is Divine, the Divine Light Dance En-semble and Divine Stores for recycling unused articles are all part of the movement.

Shri Hans Humanitarian Services provide medical services to communities.

Shri Hans Aviation operates a single-engine Cessna Cardinal RG and a twin-engine Cessna 340 out of Riverside Calif.

There's no argument like success. The devotees of Guru Maharaj Ji claim to be happy.

And for the non-believers, all un-derstanding must wait until you have received knowledge.

As GMJ himself said: "If you come to me with a guileless heart, you will surely receive this most ancient spiritual knowledge which, if practised upon, will give us perfect peace of mind."

Page 4        THE UBYSSEY        Thursday, October 18, 1973

Cosmic fascism grabs left

In days of old when the New Left was really new, rock music, breakfast cereals, religion and comic books were denounced for taking people's minds off The War and The Struggle.

Now it appears all are acceptable, if not important, no longer worth denouncing because Vietnam and the campuses have died, fizzled away, gone off the front pages.

Rock music, always big, is bigger, former radicals can be seen buying Wheaties in supermarkets, hustlers manipulate the value of comic books like a penny stock on the exchange and religion is back - in a big, brash, youthful manner.

Jesus freaks and mystics compete for the attention of drinkers, dopers and shoppers in the downtown of every North American city.

However, Guru Maharaj Ji, a 15-year-old rolly-polly font of all knowledge, goes further.

This flat-nosed, pimple-less punk wants everyone's attention - now.

Those who don't join his Divine Light Mission movement will miss out on the Knowledge (with a capital K) and, even worse, get it in the end. They could come back as pigs or goats.

This greasy guru, complete with his Rolls Royce, jets and minibikes, can only be tolerated as an example of the type of person to be avoided.

Rennie Davis, one of the guru's principal North American disciples and a former New Left heavy, was on campus Tuesday evening with the word Ubyssey reporter Linda Hossie's story is on page 3.

To watch Davis in action was incredible. To see the disciples or premies from the Vancouver DLM chapter was frightening.

Davis would smile as a member of the audience would ask, either politely, rudely or cynically, a question. He would then answer, with great pauses, as if the audience was a collection of children who seek to know what is right. As Davis explained the truth, the premies were even more gross, laughing at the audience and the disbelievers. They were content and knew the truth.

The guru's movement destroys a person's will to think and to do.

Instead of dealing with questions and criticisms in an objective, rational manner, laughter is used to put down the disbeliever.

It is cosmic fascism, using laughter and the promise of bliss to promote the power and ego of the guru and his mountain-top family .

The Divine Light Mission is authoritarian, just the antidote for all the New Left types like Davis and the brainy kids of the '60s tired of directing their lifes and seeking some kind of direction.

They have their uniform - smartly-cut suits for men, long skirts and high shirts or sweaters for women - their daily duties, their chants and their ceremonies. They are controlled - for and by the leader.

It is a creepy movement, a road to bliss that people should avoid.

The only truthfully liberating movement is a collective where people can think and do without answering to The Man and his power. A blissed-out Rennie Davis, unlike many people in the New Left when it was really new, isn't going to see this.


THE UBYSSEY

And they came to sit at the feet of the Perfect Masher. And they heard him say "Don Hubbert will inherit the earth. On the other hand, Ricky Lymer, Peter Liebeck, Alan Doree, Joan Schwartz and Ralph Maurer will inherit the wind. Joanne Hinchcliff will inherit $1,000 from her granny." Andthey sighed."Tom Barnes shall reap as he shall sow. Laura Crockett, Lionel Pugh, Peter Arbuckle, Gary Coull shall sow as they reaped. And Mike Sasges will get away with it." They danced ecstatically. "Dru Spencer, Vaughn Palmer, Lesley Krueger, Ryon Guedes and Jake van der Kamp shall go forth and multiply. Ken Dodd, Ben Gelfant, Linda Hossie and Kathy

Bairdon on the other hand should divide. Marise Savaria, Mark Hamilton, Peter Cummings and Don Peterson will come up with the wrong answers." And they hugged each other and grabbed at his Divine Feet. He smiled.

Co-editors : Vaughn Palmer, Michael Sasges

OCTOBER 18, 197 3

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