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.

Live This Moment

This Visions International short film was sold on a Video CD distributed at Elan Vital "events" and was produced in 1996. The visuals are of a canoe being paddled down a golden river with many reflections and refractions of light while Prem Rawat emotes over a "reflective" piano and strings soundtrack. Rawat's voice over continues for the whole seven minutes. A transcript cannot do justice to his unique delivery and voice. Rawat must be at least heard to gain some understanding of him and how despite the millions of dollars donated by his 1970's followers and spent on 30 years' efforts in "propagation", the numbers of his followers today are far fewer than they were 40 years ago. The concise overt version of his message is trite "the purpose of life is to enjoy it" but the subtext is that he is the giver of the gift. Ironically, Prem Rawat flabbily obese as he is and who doesn't even open his own car doors could never paddle such a canoe.
Click here to hear an .mp3 audio of the soundtrack.

"I don't know how many times people have actually heard it said life is a gift and yet everything that we do, everything that happens, we don't always see it that way. We hear that life is precious but in the daily routine of people, people, people everywhere. In the daily routine of trying to cope, maybe we forget. And every morning that that alarm clock has to go off to wake us up. And every morning in our minds our daily routine going through we know, we know what's going to happen. We know what we want to happen. We know I must go to the bus stop. I must get my car. I must go to my office. I must go my shop. I must go ... and all these musts that we place in front of our existence."

"This river of existence and it's gliding by and there are people who've got their hands in the water saying "Faster, I need to go faster" Why are you speeding up? Don't you know what's waiting for you at the end of this visit? It's obvious. But they want to accelerate it and time will not let them accelerate it. Time is a wonderful thing, it goes by really fast, it goes by really slow but it doesn't let you go faster than it or slower than it. You're caught, caught on this little boat and it is sailing down and it won't go any faster than it has to and it won't go any slower than it has to. And it makes this passage. The destination of this journey is not at the end, it's now. It's within. The purpose of this journey is not to go from point A to point B but it is to enjoy every fractional moment between those two points."

"The simple innocence of life. To wake up in the morning and be happy, for absolutely no reason at all. That's simple innocence. To be alive and to be glad to be alive. To be conscious, to be conscious of enjoyment. To be conscious of now. That is when the journey begins to be beautiful. That's when you begin to understand what simplicity is. That's when you begin to understand that this is a gift. A gift. Live this moment, every moment as consciously as you can and enjoy it. The point of it is to enjoy."

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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.