A Cult Crusade Against Its Children - Élan Vital attacks John MacGregor
They were sure their Guru and God would bring in the Golden Age and so that's what they called the magazine they hawked around Sydney streets in the early 70's wearing their funny little homemade badges.
But this group of Australian anti-Establishment hippies wearing tie-dyed clothes and singing songs like:
"We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord
And they'll know we are brothers, by our love, by our love"
evolved into a group wearing and hiring "suits", expensive solicitors and worm-tongued barristers to wage a crusade against their former brothers and sisters who had lost their faith in the controversial, self-styled Perfect Master.
Prem Rawat wants you to forget he was ever the youngest, most ridiculed of the wave of Indian gurus who came to the West in the 60s and 70s saying they were coming to do good. Like Rajneesh and others, Guru Maharaj Ji did well, very well. He'd like you to believe that he is an extremely wealthy Malibu millionaire who just happens to be able to offer a practical pathway to inner peace and have his past kept just a footnote in Time magazine archives as an ice-cream loving childish Perfect Master. But on the Internet there is a group of disillusioned (or as he says, disgruntled) ex-followers with integrity and courage who won't let him forget.
PR CultSpeak: "Some people found it was not for them and moved on.
Sadly, not all people are able to take responsibility for their own life choices."
Plain English: The great majority of people who become involved in Élan Vital become disillusioned with its promises and practices and leave.
The organisation can do nothing about this but if you make public statements about the reasons for your disillusionment
we'll try to dismiss you with demeaning spin control.
But if a journalist leaves and uses his skills to have critical articles about the cult and it's Leader and their suspicious financial structures published in Australia's mainstream press then they'll take any opportunity and use any means to discredit him.
On the left we have Prem Rawat (2004) who has lots of money (he has just sold his $US6,000,000 yacht) and a team of solicitors who have already cost him close to $200,000 on this one case.
(Photo taken by professional photographer and digitally enhanced, it is forbidden to take a camera into any premises where Rawat is appearing).
On the right, John MacGregor, alone and probably about to be bankrupted. (Photo taken by a mate in the backyard.)
In late 2003 MacGregor was leaked Ivory's Rock Conference Centre (a business controlled by Prem Rawat through complex international business structures) computer documents. His response to this was naive and even foolish at times and while the end legal result is still to be determined much information is already available in the Public Domain.
I believe that much of Élan Vital's response has been deceitful and on this site I will try to reveal the rotten heart at the top level management of the organization that takes advantage of the great majority of the decent people who are its members.