Vol. XX-No. 259 * News-Chronicle (Las Virgenes ed.) (Thousand Oaks, California) · Thu, Apr 3, 1975 · Page 1 * 16 pages * 10c

By Bob Pool

I went to the mountain top Wednesday to see god.

But he wasn't home And nobody's certain where he's coming back, either.

God, of course, is Maharaj Ji - a 17-year-old guru who is considered god by some six million followers.

Home for the guru is a heavenly place of tennis courts and corrals and acres of unspoiled coastal hillsides surrounding a serenely plush $400,000 Malibu mansion purchased by Maharaj Ji last November.

The trouble is that the place is more plush than it is serene - at least in the Maharaj Ji's mother's view.

Wednesday, she announced in New Delhi, India, that she was disowning her son because he had strayed off the spiritual path.

So Wednesday afternoon I took an asphalt path past the "do not enter" sign down the hill from the guru's house to see for myself just how far the lad had strayed.

Back in India, mom had complained that her son had fallen into a lifestyle that doesn't fit in with the "high ideals of purity" a good guru needs, so the mansion sounded like an interesting place.

The estate is located astride a hilltop 13 miles due south of Westlake Village and from his mansion the guru can gaze down on Zuma Beach and much of the rest of Malibu. Because visitors can reach the holy compound only after meandering their way up a half-mile mile driveway, the guru has a good view of new arrivals.

The Maharaj may also be protected by pearly gates of his own, although I never got close enough to check: a Volkswagen-driving disciple headed me off halfway up the hill.

The guru, he said, wasn't in.

"When is he expected back?" I asked.

"He isn't expected back," the disciple replied.

"You mean he isn't coming back home?" I responded.

"I mean we don't know when to expect him back," the disciple explained.

The guru, he added, left a week ago for a festival in Miami, where he probably still is - unless he is en route to India for a family reunion.

I was eager to ask if the guru is really a playboy and the disciples seem to sense my interest.

"There isn't a spokesman at the house," he smiled. "You might be able to contact the Divine Light Mission in Los Angeles."

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Drats.

If mom's correct, the "despicable, non-spiritual" Malibu mansion would have been a fun place to visit.

Now right off the bat, let me say that I don't mean to poke fun at the guru. As a matter of fact, the last guy who did also poked upon the perfect master's face and was reportedly rewarded with a beating that left him wearing a steel plate in his skull.

The Maharaj took over the 14-year-old Divine Light Mission in 1966 when his father died and his mother proclaimed the boy the head of the movement.

Until recently, the youth's mother was the patron of the mission and her photo graced the walls of American mission centers.

But a year ago, the guru married his 24-year-old secretary and this year the pair became the parents of a daughter, Prem Lata.

The guru meanwhile, reportedly ordered his mother's mission picture replaced with one of his wife.

While mom's mad, other mission leaders have reportedly grown nervous about the guru's lifestyle.

By buying the Malibu mnsion, the movement is said to have fallen more than $300,000 in debt and has taken to operating a non-stop fund-raising drive to support the perfect master's perfect lifestyle.

Michael D. Garson, a Denver financial analyst who served until February as the mission financial director, says the guru buys what he wants when he wants it.

"The material wishes of the guru, which take out 60 per cent of the income, are the most important thing in the mission," Garson said a month ago.

"When the girl wants something, be it a $30,000 car or a new house, he gets it."

Bills from Millennium '73 - the movement's 1973 festival at Houston's Astrodome - went unpaid until mission equipment and files were repossessed, according to Garson.

Besides the Malibu mansion - which was purchased when crowds of chanting supporters drove the guru and his disciples out of a borrowed Pacific Palisades house last fall - the Maharaj owns a home in Denver, eight sports cars, expensive clothes, watches and assorted stereo equipment.

"It takes a lot of money to keep a guru," Garson says.

It also takes a lot to keep the gurus personal staff of an estimated 572 persons.

If the Maharaj Ji's mother is successful in cutting her son off from the mission and its money, the guru may not last long in Malibu.

As mom put it Wednesday in New Delhi, she is "no longer in any way responsible for his activities and is not associated with his (missions) in any way."