Maharaji's Ashrams - Monasteries for Young Hippies
In 1996, Professor Ron Geaves recalled the day 27 years before in India when he realized the Glory and Divinity of Prem Rawat aka Maharaji:
"In a second I understood all the actions of my life to that point. My heart knew that from then on everything was going to be fine because I was home. I cried the most beautiful tears of my life and prayed that I would never be cast adrift in the world alone again. I returned to England with Sandy at the end of 1969 intent on establishing an ashram as a centre to tell everyone about Maharaji and Knowledge."
Actually Ronny's dreams of the poverty, celibacy and constant humble blissful happiness in an ashram didn't come to fruition, at least not for him.
An ashram was a place to live in Guru Maharaj Ji's (Prem Rawat) shelter, in "the perfect freedom of His service". On a more mundane level, it was a communal house populated by a group of Maharaji's followers who had taken vows of poverty, chastity, vegetarianism and obedience, similar to a co-ed monastery or convent though the sexes were separated where possible. All money was pooled, the minimum required to sustain life was kept and the rest was divided, 50% sent directly to Prem Rawat to support his luxurious lifestyle and 50% passed on to Divine Light Mission administrators to support the Mission's activities and a major part of that went to Rawat as well.
Rawat often spoke about the ashram in his public speeches and wrote the rules for life in the ashram.
All activities were regimented and scheduled as defined in the Ashram Code with a maximum of 6 hours 45 minutes sleep a night.
This was the opposite to Rawat's own lifestyle as his wife discussed which featured long sessions of playing pinball with lots of incredibly loud music for hours, days spent making up nasty practical jokes, was always late for meetings and was very lazy with drunkeness, dope smoking and meat eating and when he drove his luxury cars he drove very fast. Life there was full of crazy people getting drunk and stoned and spaced out:
But sometimes things get really spaced out in Guru Maharaj Ji's own residence. And it's very painful when it really starts manifesting, when things are so obvious. Because maybe it started out with a beautiful program, everybody's together, everybody's really in a beautiful place, making effort, really trying to re-dedicate our life. And then slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly we just kind of get further and further away. And then these really crazy things start happening. In Maharaj Ji's own home. Really very unconscious things. - Durga Ji Rawat, Kissimmee Florida, on November 10, 1978
That was only the beginning. It wasn't long before Prem Rawat's Malibu Ashram cum Palace was a hotbed of sin, fast cars, drugs, sex, pinball and rock 'n roll and that was just the guru Himself. Where the Master goes the devotees must follow but where they couldn't follow was buying all those expensive goodies. Conspicuous luxury and Nouveau Riche bad taste spending were for Prem Rawat only.
The ashrams provided the personnel required to organise Divine Light Mission activities and the finances to support those organisers. The ashram premies also provided the inspirational core of the nightly satsang meetings that was the main source of recruitment for new members and the inspiration for the current members to maintain interest and continue to meditate, to do service (ie volunteer labour) and financially support Rawat himself and the Divine Light Mission organisation. Throughout the 1970's the ashrams provided over 50% of Divine Light Mission funds.
Maeve Price in The Divine Light Mission as a social organization reports:
From the small beginning of one mahatma in London and a handful of premies, the mission grew, with up to half a dozen mahatmas at any one time giving knowledge, the establishment of Divine Information Centres in most major towns and cities and the setting up of about forty ashrams (designated premie households) throughout Britain by the end of 1973. (9) Ashrams played an important part in the mission's structure. Here premies had chosen to live in small communal households, under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. In practice they were under the direct supervision of head office and acted as cadres for the whole movement. A large membership had grown up very rapidly but the organizers had no clear idea where to lead the following, nor did they have the financial resources to maintain so many full-time workers. (13)
The Divine Light Mission Ashram System Had Ongoing Problems
* 'Bhang' is a Hindi word for various intoxicating narcotics derived from the plant cannabis sattiva. (OED) The word is commonly used to describe a beverage laced with hashish (cannabis resin), such as "Bhang lassi", a drink of watered-down yoghurt laced with the drug).