Prem Rawat (Prem Pal Singh Rawat) whose devotees call him Maharaji (meaning Ultimate Ruler) first came to attention in the West as Guru Maharaj Ji - the self-proclaimed Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe ridiculed in the media as a fat, squeaky-voiced God boy. He had inherited his titles and position as the Satguru, The True Revealer of Light and Spiritual Master of the Divine Light Mission, India (Divya Sandesh Parishad) when his father died in 1966. His father, Hans Rawat, was a successful Indian guru, self titled HRH (His Royal Highness) Yogiraj Param Sant Satgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj. As a child the youngest Rawat son was informally called Sant Ji, more formally Balyogeshwar ("Born King of the Yogis") and even more formally Param Sant Satgurudev Shri Sant Ji Maharaj. In the West Rawat dropped these more verbose titles in the early 1980's and instructed his followers to call him Maharaji. He has also changed the names of his organisations many times: Divine Light Mission (DLM), World Welfare Association (WWA), World Peace Corps (WPC) and Divine United Organisation (DUO) became Elan Vital in the early 1980's and in 2001 The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) was created and from 2010 his major orgs are Words Of Peace Global (WOPG) registered in Holland, Words of Peace International (WOPI) in the USA, HDSK (Human Development through Self Knowledge) in Great Britain and Raj Vidya Kender (Royal Knowledge Society) in India. He no longer claims to be an Incarnation of God but an internationally famous humanitarian leader and teacher of peace. He's neither.
Vic Marsh is a long term Australian premie, former community co-ordinator, various Divine
Light Mission administration roles, an initiator, an actor, a poet and a robust defender of Prem Rawat's status and credibility. I remember him as a friendly and competent State Secretary in Brisbane in 1974 and an arrogant
and fussy initiator circa 1978.
He was appointed Queensland State Secretary in 1973 an appointment recorded in the first Australian Divine Light Mission magazine, Divine News, volume 1, number 1, August 1973. In 1974 he was the national director of World Welfare Association and completed a tour of Australian communities. In an interview in the Golden Age of January 1975 he reported that "DUO was waking up in austrlia ... that Project Love is going through ... premies are waking up to the incredible gift of living in the divine community. That it is actually going to provide for all our needs, that it is actually going to be a beacon for the rest of the community. That we are already living in the kingdom of heaven." It was shortly after this that the the ashrams closed and the community imploded. By June WWA was no more and he was demoted to South Australian DUO Director once "in office, the South Australian community could reach heights in 1975 untouched since that first gay frolic (Guru Puja) in 1973." By March 1976 he was stll in Adelaide where he introduced the Aspirant program, and outlined the steps leading up to an aspirant becoming an initiated premie.
In June 1976 he reported on his feelings about the DLM Autumn Conference:
"I've had a really good time. There really is a way, a process that
this Knowledge seems to be able to put us through, where if we put our heads together long enough it turns into one head, into one heart. The more we mix with other people within the environment of Knowledge, within that
process of discovering what is true and real about oneself, and what is false or just learned, then the more really beautifully we emerge with a common understanding that each person's particular qualities, each person's
individuality has something to contribute. Our individuality doesn't have to completely dissolve itself - we don't have to merge with each other, we have to merge with what is real within us, which is the same in everybody.
It's like our differences are illuminated from within. And then when the whole thing is put together that's when we have a real group strength. It's when I have confidence in what is stable and secure within myself, and
have confidence in the process of my own growth and in my ability to contribute that I'm really open to the group needs. This conference has been a fantastic experience of being in the one family, just waking up to my own
life and watching everyone else wake up to theirs. "
- Vic Marsh, Adelaide Community Director.
In January 1979 his article, "The Secret and Open Pictures of God", was printed in the US Divine Times magazine. It is a very personal review of the November, 1978 Hans Jayanti Festival at Kissimmee, Florida. He recalls the sky pranaming to Rawat (or Guru Maharaj Ji as Rawat then called himself) and the "measured, full majesty of his dance, the power and authority in his every movement," which "lifted us higher and held us there as he continued to dance." He really admired the way Maharaji used his jeep to push over some initiators' tents, "He is so free."
The high point of his premie career was probably when he was the M. C. at Maharaj Ji's birthday party held on the 10th December, 1979 at the Miami Beach Convention Centre. His article about this
event was titled: "Birthday Party of the Yuga." His prose could hardly get any more purple if he was Dame Barbara Cartland:
"When he left the stage it was like my life was leaving me, and I could feel that the reason why we love Maharaj Ji is because he is our heart. We aren't made complete and perfect,
and all the emotions and feelings we try to put in place of that perfect love are futile and stop-gap measures, hopelessly inadequate to fill that emptiness of separation from him."
Mahatma Jagdeo was the thespian hit of the night playing a nasty king in a handle-bar moustache. It wasn't reported if he played the King of Paedophilia with a harem of cute children.
However, like most of his premie peers, Vic actually finds practising Rawat's "Knowledge" a bore. As he wrote in his article
"From Sydney To Miami" in the In View magazine of the Summer of 1989:
"I couldn't deny, however, that I had reached a point - a familiar point in my life - where I was feeling that something more had to happen.."
Realistically though Marsh knows that he'll soon lose the brief high of seeing his Master: "I trust that, should I start to lose consciousness again. Should that smoky, amnesiac pall re-capture my brain for the nth time, I might hear his call."...
On Wednesday, April 21, 2004 Queensland's major newspaper, The Courier-Mail published a story titled "Maharaji's inner peace in a tent doesn't come cheap" by Hedley Thomas. In it "Devotee Victor Marsh, of Ocean Shores near Byron Bay, said he discovered inner peace by appreciating Maharaji's message and techniques." He was quoted more extensively in the Saturday, 24 April story, "Peace At A Price": "He knows how to tune us in and help us connect with the experience that's in our heart." That's certainly pretty dull and boring compared to Vic's description of the sky bowing down and kissing Rawat's feet in 1979. "He helps me find my way back to a place inside that nourishes me and makes me feel taken care of," Marsh says.
But Vic didn't take kindly to press articles criticising his Supreme Master and sent Thomas an extremely snide and nasty email which was distributed throughout the premie community. It was water off a duck's back to Thomas who went on to write a Walkley Award story about problems in the State Hospital system and will probably never have to write minor stories about small-time gurus like Rawat ever again.
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"Guru goes to ground after security scare" Mr Arlidge said fears for the Maharaji's safety were "real" in the wake of allegations of fraud and other criminal activity and a protest outside the convention compound by former followers John Macgregor and Neville Ackland. Ackland on Wednesday staged a failed bid to use his rented truck to batter his way into a convention to denounce the spiritual leader. "I am one of hundreds of ex-premies of the Maharaji who came to realise he is nothing more than a fraud and fat cat who is living in the lap of luxury at the expense of his followers," Mr Ackland said. "It's all about surrender," he said of the Maharaji's teachings. "Unfortunately that includes surrendering your money." The Maharaji, who has refused to give media interviews for 18 years, was yesterday unavailable for comment. |
Vic Marsh is more than just a gay premie with a chip on his shoulder and a Ph.D. He is also a POET and his poetry certainly bears comparison with the poetry of his Master Prem Pal Singh Rawat. His poems can only be truly appreciated in all their awfulness when spoken by the author who is also a trained actor. Fortunately there is a short Windows Video file of just such a reading available here (it is 35 megabytes). Enjoy! Here are transcripts of three of those poems written in honour of Vic's Master and Beloved, Prem Rawat or Maharaji - the Ultimate Ruler - as he prefers to be called:
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Pilgrimage
I hear of those who go on pilgrimage |
God Sex
They're arguing about the sex of God |
Your smile blooms |
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Prem Rawat's "Knowledge" has three parts: regularly listening to his speeches, doing voluntary work for organisations serving him or donating money and daily meditation correctly practicing the four techniques he recommends. The techniques are so simple it's hard to see how they could be practiced incorrectly. First technique ("Divine Light") involves sticking your thumb and middle finger on your eyeballs (NB: with eyes closed) and your index finger between your eyebrows. Second technique: ("Heavenly Music") poking your thumbs into your ears and listening. Third technique: ("Holy Name") thinking about your breathing (NB: continue to breathe). Fourth technique: ("Nectar") curling your tongue backwards and tasting. Rawat's father taught slightly different techniques but either way it's difficult to see how these could produce the benefits claimed for them especially as Rawat claims His Knowledge is the only method of attaining real happiness and love in this life.
You can never tell how people will develop. Here are some photos from the 1970's