Timothy Gallwey Timothy Gallwey
Timothy Gallwey was a small-time tennis coach and early follower of Prem Rawat who became a successful author of the "Inner Game Of .." series. His book "The Inner Game of Tennis", published in 1974 at the height of the US "tennis boom", taught that the player should focus "on direct and non-judgmental observation of ball, body, and racquet." This led to a successful career in writing and business seminars. It is particularly instructive to examine how this intelligent, Harvard graduate could be a long-term, heavily involved follower of a mediocrity like Rawat. He first came into contact with the young Guru Maharaj Ji in 1971 when Gallwey was 33 years old and a failed tennis pro whose "glory days" as Captain of the Harvard Freshman Tennis Team in 1957 and who was once ranked seventh junior nationally were well and truly behind him.
He went to Carmel to see the young guru speak with preconceived notions that Rawat was a 13 year old saint with 6 million Indian followers, "that All Americans are trained to see through con artists" and a boy would not easily be able to deceive me and might even have something more to offer than philosophy." In an unusual twist he believed Maharaj Ji really was God because "he's either the real thing or a con artist" and "he just did too bad a job as a con artist. A good con artist wouldn't wear a gold wrist watch or give such stupid answers." When asked if maybe Rawat was just a lousy con artist he replied, "Then how could he have six million followers?"
But the young Rawat
did not have 6 million followers and what followers he did have were inherited from his father who had spent 30 years preaching through the Punjab and Northern India and had cannily set up
headquarters in Haridwar, a sacred city on the Ganges, where enormous
crowds of pilgrims gather for Khumb Mela, Diwali, Holi and other festivals. Gallwey also showed a remarkably short-sighted view of the possibilities explaining Rawat's behaviour. He might have
been a young prodigy con-man who deliberately pretends to be a very poor conman to fool discerning people like Gallwey who accept Rawat's Catch 22, if his Knowledge isn't totally satisfying "then you were not
really thirsty". Some things are certain, Rawat is mediocre, selfish and venal and believes he is entitled to every possible worldly luxury and is not bound by any ethical principles or
behavioural constraints.
Gallwey told the New York Times that "I spent two months meditating in India, and I returned believing beyond a reasonable doubt that Guru Maharaj ji was the lord on the planet again". Gallwey was also a pretty good bullshitter though certainly not in Rawat's league. Sure he had "such powers of concentration that he can receive service from the strongest opponent one foot behind the service line, with a half-volley", sure. Sure he had "devised an underhand serve which bounces off at almost a 90 degree angle to the flight of the ball", sure. These outrageous boasts were never demonstrated on court. He also reported that meditation had made him celibate. Meditation "is more blissful than orgasm" and "the urge just isn't coming" so neither was he which makes one wonder why he got married and how his wife felt.
Gallwey is one of Rawat's major revisionist apologists and was one of the stars of the 2001 Elan Vital Video 'Passages' that was only available to Rawat's followers and seems to have been produced to provide a false revisionist history, and a positive explanation, of some aspects of Rawat's career. The basic premise of Passages was that it was Rawat's followers who mistakenly thought that Indian culture was a necessary part of Rawat's Knowledge and that the excesses of his followers in the 1970's happened despite his attempts to remove these rituals that were the only reason Rawat wasn't recognised as the great teacher and Master of Peace that he is and was. Gallwey taught that Rawat's followers projected "those ideas onto him" which "made it difficult to see him as he was" and that they loved "my quote religion, my Maharaji religion" not their "actual recognition" though he doesn't actually say where that led but I presume he was alluding to the dramatic decrease in numbers of Rawat's followers in the 1980's.
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(Narrator - 'Passages' video) But he was becoming increasingly aware of the need to separate Knowledge from it's Indian cultural packaging. Too many things that were simply a part of Indian culture had been considered incorrectly by Westerners to be an integral part of what Maharaji was offering. |
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Gallwey provided a spectacular endorsement in this video where he said that Rawat's unique gift to reveal "the most important part of my existence as a human being" was
"unparallelled in human history to make that a reality for an entire globe". And that's not projecting "those ideas onto him" which "made it difficult to see him as he was" but his "actual
recognition".
Gallwey has made enough money to be a neighbour of Rawat's in millionaire's Malibu and often joins him on Rawat's tennis court. How does Gallwey view Rawat these days as they shoot the breeze on the court? Gallwey has shown true creativity in explaining Rawat's behaviour and "teaching" in a positive light no matter how long it takes him. In his 2001 book The Inner Game of Work, Gallwey devotes a chapter to his Master and God in a Bod, his "Executive Friend". Needless to say he did not name his "friend" or give any details of his success or his work but he did call him a "genius in his field." Gallwey does not specify what Rawat's field is. If Rawat's purpose is to fly around the world then he is a success but if his real purpose and his stated purpose are the same, ie to bring his father's "Knowledge" and peace to the world, then he has been a miserable failure.
He proudly writes on his web-site of his involvement in Rawat's "trainings": "In the last half of 1999 I helped facilitate over 50 workshop days with teams, and joined forces with Dr. Valerio Pascotto to do what I believe is pioneering work in the field of people learning to work effectively together. "However this "pioneering work" provided no impetus to Rawat's mission. Valerio Pascotto is the brother-in-law of Linda Pascotto.
In 2004 Gallwey went from delusion to deception when he provided an
introduction to a speech Rawat made in a rented hall (the historic Sanders Theatre) at his alma mater, Harvard University, which Rawat's followers advertise as Rawat being invited to speak at Harvard something which is done
only to respected leaders in government, academia and distinguished alumni (and comedians for graduation speeches). Gallwey wrote: "I credit Harvard for opening the doors of my mind, and I credit Prem Rawat for opening
the door to my heart of hearts. In a very practical way he has allowed me to access the deepest feelings of peace, of fulfillment, of freedom. Free of any external catalyst. And for me, as Robert Frost put it simply, this
has made all the difference."
Gallwey provided endorsements of Rawat on the Voice For Peace website which was set up to detail Rawat's wonderful contributions to society and was rapidly removed from the internet when it became obvious that these contributions were non-existent or embarrassing. (Voice of Peace website, downloaded on 10th December, 2006 archived on the Wayback Machine).
Oz in the Astrodome, The New York Times, 9th December, 1973:
"Tim Galloway, 35, is a California tennis pro who was once ranked seventh nationally, and who graduated from Harvard in 1960. In 1971, he heard that Guru Maharaj ji was speaking in Carmel. "I went because he was a 13-year-old from India with six million followers, and I wanted to see a saint," Galloway said. "When he said, 'I can show you. God,' I concluded he was either a fraud or a prophet. But what if it were true? I canceled a day of classes and followed him to L.A. He was answering questions in a group, and I asked him by what authority he spoke. He said, "If this knowledge fully satisfies you, you will know by what authority I gave it, and if it does not satisfy you, you will know that what I gave you was not pure water or that you were not really thirsty."
Galloway took the knowledge and felt peace. "I wasn't worried about whether I was giving a good lesson or what my girl friend thought of me," he said. "Then I spent two months meditating in India, and I returned believing beyond a reasonable doubt that Guru Maharaj ji was the lord on the planet again. He had so many opportunities to present a more convincing image, but I could never catch him pretending. The first time I saw his devotees put garlands of flowers over his head. If he'd wanted to present a convincing image, he would have thanked them and worn the garlands, but instead he brushed them aside. I could have done better myself.
"All Americans are trained to see through con artists. Harvard trained me to tear down every belief and construct and see the irrationality of it. But what to think of a kid who gicks up a can of shaving cream and starts squirting people with it? And I'm supposed to think he's the perfect master? But he's merely saying, 'If tbat puts you off, how much do you really want this knowledge?'"
Now Galloway lives in an ashram and has written a book called "The Inner Game of Tennis." He practices celibacy, which he calls Aquarian Age birth control. "Like anybody," he said, "when the urge came I looked for ways to satisfy it, but the urge just isn't coming. It's not a conscious effort; I just don't feel the need. In an ashram, there are 20 or 30 people; if they were all going to bed with each other, it would be havoc. You stop wanting to; there's a higher desire. There was that moment, but it's only a moment. Meditation is permanent; it's more blissful than orgasm."
Blissing Out in Houston The New York Review of Books, 1973:
" I drive to Hobby with a thirty-four-year-old premie tennis pro who has been national hard court champion of the United States, and was captain of the Harvard Tennis Team in 1960. Tim Galloway is a handsome, thoughtful, gentle man with cornflower blue eyes. He immediately launches into an explanation of how Divine Knowledge has totally transformed his game of tennis. The Guru's meditation technique, he says, has given him such powers of concentration that he can receive service from the strongest opponent one foot behind the service line, with a half-volley.
'It totally reverses the Big Game,' he says modestly. 'There I am already in mid court, so I easily beat the server to net, and the next shot is a put away. The whole principle of meditation is to slow down inner time. People think too much when they play, they're always talking to themselves, the ego is telling the unconscious nervous system what to do. The point is to obliterate the difference between the teller and the doer, make the ego and the unconscious one. I've also devised an underhand serve which bounces off at almost a 90 degree angle to the flight of the ball ...' Tim Galloway's book, Inner Tennis, which he wrote after receiving Knowledge, will be published by Random House this spring.
I ask Galloway how he had come to believe Maharaj Ji was God.
'When I first heard him my only approach was to say to myself, He's either the real thing or a con artist.' Well the first times I saw him he just did too bad a job as a con artist. A good con artist wouldn't wear a gold wrist watch or give such stupid answers. When I was staying with him in India I once asked him how much time I should spend on work and how much on meditation and he just said get up an hour earlier and go to bed an hour later, hardly a profound answer. I decided that if he was doing such a bad job of being a holy man he simply had to be genuine.'
'Did it ever occur to you that he might be a bad con man?'
'Then how could he have six million followers?' the tennis pro replied."
Ten years ago, when Maharaj Ji was only 13 years old, W. Timothy Gallwey of Los Angeles heard him speak. Gallwey, then 33 and later to be
celebrated for his books ("The Inner Game of Tennis," "The inner Game of Golf?' and others), remembers "feeling that a boy would not easily be able to deceive me and might even have something more to offer than philosophy."
"I trusted Maharaj Ji's sincerity and asked for his Knowledge because doing so required nothing of me that violated my integrity?" he says. "Surprisingly, exactly as I needed them less, my external pursuits became easier
for me and I flourished inside and out. I realized that I had been given a gift of inestimable value - one that could make me truly free." |
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"And so we projected those ideas onto him and that that was a problem, it made it difficult to see him as he was and to really see
Knowledge as it was and I think that has been one of his greatest challenges is to preserve the real recognition that people were having in their hearts for both him and as they experienced it for Knowledge." |
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"He undertook the challenge to get rid of the, the fluff, the, the conceptions that might have attracted people that in fact some people loved more than they loved the real thing and that left people with a choice. Do I love my quote religion, my Maharaji religion or do I love my actual recognition, my actual understanding of what I've seen and experienced and some people said 'No, I'll take my religion, thank you very much' (snigger, snigger, snigger) God (under his breath) and some said this is real enough for me that I'm gonna ss stay with it." |
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In 1995 and 1996 Maharaji began team trainings for people who were helping with his work. He wanted to bring in some accountability and for people to learn how to work together. He also wanted
to cut out the sense of hierarchy. I was one of the facilitators. I'd been in the training field for twenty years at the time and saw how intuitive Maharaji was about how to do a training. Very few ideas were presented.
Tasks would be given to people, and the tasks would not allow for positional importance or expertise because they were too simple. People had to think for themselves and be able to justify their proposals to the rest of the
team. If anybody disagreed with the proposal, they could object, but they would have to give clear grounds for their objection. The one who made the proposal would then have to answer the objection for the work to go
forward. It brought out the best and the worst in people, so that they had a chance to look at both. He had a lot of trust that if people could be more conscious and they worked together, there was nothing they couldn't do.
Probably the most common thing that people said coming out that training, even though it was teamwork training, was, "I've found my voice."
Tim Gallwey, author, corporate consultant
from A Voice For Peace 1995 (www.avoiceforpeace.net)
Maharaji has always seemed to me to believe strongly in the power of the individual, but also in the responsibility of the individual to respond to what was happening and not to either depend on government or blame
government. I saw this in his response to the tsunami in Asia and the Katrina hurricane in the US. He wondered what individuals were doing to help. He wanted to help through his Foundation, and he very much wanted to make
sure all his students were okay, but he also encouraged anyone who wanted to help to volunteer their time.
Tim Gallwey, author, corporate consultant
from A Voice For Peace 2005 (www.avoiceforpeace.net)
Man Of Peace website
"Prem Rawat does not speak from prepared notes. He speaks from his heart. And he speaks to that part of us which understands and recognizes truth as something that it has already always known. As a writer
and lecturer, I travel in the realm of ideas. As a result of listening to Prem Rawat's expressions, I now know that wherever I travel-in thought or in geography-that there is a home within me. A home that,
instead of the complexity of thought, the simplicity of peace resides."
- W. Timothy Gallwey
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Basically because I didn't know how to tell if he was real or not real I asked him, I said "How can I really know by what authority you say what you say." Because he spoke so matter of factly about the
truth, about Knowledge, about the possibility of knowing and he said uh I remember asking him, I said when I was in the Navy the guy who had the authority could say which way to steer the ship, he had 4 stripes and if the
guy with 3 stripes told you what to do you wouldn't do it, you wouldn't steer the ship that way, just the guy with 4 stripes and he just laughed, he said "It's a little more difficult, I don't wear stripes" and he laughed,
for actually quite a while and then he uh he said "But here's what you can do" I remember this almost word for word, he said "You can listen to what I have to say about this Knowledge, you can listen to what others who have
received this Knowledge have to say about it and after listening to them you feel in your heart it's something that you want then ask me for it and I'll give it to you. If after receiving it you find that it satisfies the
deepest longing in your heart then you will know what I gave you was pure water." Then he said "And if on the other hand it doesn't satisfy the deepest longing in your heart then you will know that what I gave you was not
pure water or that you were not really thirsty." So my little brain went click, click click and I said "Wow, the whole thing about who he is, whether I can trust him or not depends on one thing, what happens to the longing
in my heart and only I could be the judge of that."
