The End of Elan Vital and the Termination of Maharaji -> 2010

I wanted to write about this event to the background of the Doors playing "This is the End." That would have been right for the end of Divine Light Mission. For the end of Elan Vital and Maharaji a recital by one of those old gay English actors lisping "This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper" seems appropriate.

Maharaji was not murdered, he was made redundant, terminated, finished, disappeared and, where possible, removed from the internet and, Rawat hoped, from history. Maharaji never actually existed, 'Maharaji' was a role Prem Rawat played on stage. All that Prem Rawat, formerly known as Maharaji, had to do was order his minions to cancel all their websites glorifying 'Maharaji', phase out the "Prem Rawat also known as Maharaji" quotes and pass the word down through the First Class intranet system or a phone tree in less digitised countries: 'Maharaji' is out, "Prem Rawat" is now his name, wholly. The official version is on Wikipedia:

The Elan Vital organization in the United Kingdom changed its name to HDSK (Human Development through Self Knowledge) at the end of 2009.[6] [7] In April 2010, the Elan Vital website announced that Elan Vital had stopped collecting donations and would cease operations in 2010, to be succeeded by entities such as Words of Peace International, Inc., a new US 501(c)(3) organization "closely aligned with Words of Peace Global (WOPG), the international charitable foundation that promotes Maharaji [4]

For some years 'Maharaji' was used for activities relating to the premies and activities seeking more converts while Prem Rawat was used for activities seeking acknowledgement and respect from the media and the public. Maharaji, however, was not succeeding in gaining new followers in North America, Europe or more sophisticated social classes elsewhere. The Boomer premies were now 60 years or older. They might have money but were not a group to inspire 'propagation'. They were not shining as Rawat claimed they'd been in 1973. This dilution of the brand was achieving nothing and was counter-productive. Whether planned or ad-hoc a phasing out of 'Maharaji' began.

Prem Rawat's 1982-83 volte-face was a severe blow to his finances and the size of his audience and it took the rest of the decade to achieve some stability though his largest Western audience was half of the 20,000 or more he attracted in the 1978 and 79 Hans Jayanti festivals. It could be argued that from 1990 Elan Vital was basically a Vanity Project where the core of his early 1970s boomer "premies" provided him with enough money to organise to live in luxury and spend part of every year flying around the world to wherever he could attract a large enough audience to listen to his speech. These speeches were enough to keep that aging core of 10 or 15,000 PwKs * energised to provide enough volunteer labour and finances to keep the show rolling while never actually achieving their stated role of attracting a new cohort of more followers.

The Inspire Electronic Magazine was an electronic newsletter published by the Prem Rawat Foundation on their website from 2004 to 2010. It usually contained a brief report of a recent speech by Maharaji or a short edited section of one of Maharaji's recent speeches which was also available on subscription. It was published by the Prem Rawat Foundation but until late 2007 all the speeches were by 'Maharaji'. In late 2007 'Maharaji' was replaced by "Prem Rawat."

He was Guru Maharaj Ji for 17 years. He was Maharaj Ji for 17 years



















Notes:

  1. "www.elanvital.org". Archived from the original on 2010-02-21.

  2. "Elan Vital FAQs - About Elan Vital, Inc". Archived from the original on 2006-09-02.

  3. "1016818-HDSK". Charity Commission. 31 December 2009. Retrieved 22 February 2010.

PwKs = "People with Knowledge," formerly 'premies'