Don Johnson was mentioned 3 times in official Divine Light Mission/Élan Vital publications:

There is no doubt he was an high-ranking official of Prem Rawat's Organisations

He has written 4 memoires about his life as a Premie of Prem Rawat's and his mature understanding of Rawat:

Don and Paul have their memories and information they have gathered. In both cases its decades since they were directly involved. Its not as if they studied Rawat's teachings and history in pre-exam sessions before having this talk so there are a few errors and some personal quirks.

Paul is one of those people who had an "out-of-body" experience during the initiation, presumably when the mahatmas (Rajeshwaranand) touched his forehead and squeezed his eyes. For whatever reasons, this is never mwentioned again.

Both Paul and Don speak about feeling that they were "chosen ones"

Paul was in Denver in 1972 and "went to Satsang and you know, people were blissed out. You know I just never felt so much love from strangers before and you know, they were all so happy and seemingly having some secret." This is nearly always the "becoming a premie" story and yet every premie quickly or eventually learns it was an illusion.
Don calls Rawat a tragic figure. Prem Rawat is not tragic figure - a tragic figure possesses noble or heroic qualities but also has a fatal flaw or makes mistakes that ultimately lead to their downfall. There is no evidence whatsoever that Prem Rawat has noble or heroic qualities, quite the reverse. Don may not be a very literary guy and may have misunderstood what it means.
Paul was in Detroit when Mahatma Fakiranand did some furniture repair. Mahatmas were the great souls (Maha='great' Atma(n)='soul') who provided the spiritually evolved conduits for Maharaji's Grace to flow through when you were being revealed the Knowledge. "When Knowledge of God is spread through the whole world, there will be one religion. The Knowledge will be spread through Mahatmas, because, without these great souls, it cannot be done Prem Rawat. This was another one of the links in the incredible backstory of Divine Light Mission that would break and be forgotten and, in fact, without them it hasn't been done except in the eyes of premies.
Paul recalls The Holy Family an integral link in the Guru Maharaj Ji/Divine Light Mission/Perfect Master conceptual universe. Those early adopter influential premies who mostly received Knowledge in India spread their "experience" of the glory of the Holy Family members with almost as much personal fervour as they spoke of "experiencing" Guru Maharaj Ji's Divinity, experiencing not believing. This was another one of the chapters in the Divine Light Mission story that would be removed. Everything following can be explained by the Festinger Effect. As each part of the DLM Perfect Master backstory was dropped, revised or excused a true believer had to overcome the cognitive dissonance caused by the failure. Eventually anything goes.
Don talks about a very prestigious Beverley Hills Anti-Defamation law firm that has Prem Rawat as a client and is threatening possible documentary movie makers with potential law suits if they go any further.
Don talks about the "downsizing" of Elan Vital which at that time (the early 1980s) was still generally known as Divine Light Mission. The corporation Divine Light Mission Inc became ELAN VITAL INC on 17th February 1983. The downsizing occurred over a period of months.
Paul talks about the Legitimacy Project which was announced to the premies in October 2004 and Paul misidentifies this with earlier attempts to make Rawat respectable. Premies had always badgered civic leadera for Keys to the City and other worthless awards for Rawat and his joy in these should have been a guide to the direction in which his wishes actually ran. In 1974, Mishler et al, announced to the press that Guru Maharaj Ji was now a "Humanitarian Leader" and his formerly maditating, singing and dancing worshippers were now Part of the Mainstream," sensible citizens dedicated to charity work. Only people living in a DLM bubble could come up with this insane scenario. All attmepts at de-mythologising Guru Maharaj Ji ended with Paul and hundreds of others leaving the ashrams and forcing Rawat to go back to the basics to save his bacon (literally and figuratively) and kick off years of celebration .
Don recalls getting rid of the Merry Jesters. In fact, they were the Holy Jesters starring Gurucharanand on lead vocals and started the late trend to extreme devotional Hindu flavoured "Bhajanish" music around 1980.
They discuss the renaming of DLM to Elan Vital and they're hazy about the dates but they remember burning all the old books, tapes, photos, the Krishna Crown lala all that stuff
They brainstorm and come up with the explanation: the Original Premies still believe he's God Incarnate but they have tp pretend he's a not very successful Global Ambassador for the Guinness Book of Records because that's the only way "to bring this message to everybody." Though the question has to be, what f**king message?

Don Johnson and Paul Drescher podcast

Welcome to living a conscious life podcast where we explore and discuss the importance of finding more peace, wholeness and freedom in our lives. I'm Don Johnson your host, an American living in Scotland. Being conscious means being awake, being present when we're present. We can pay more attention to what's happening within us and around us. We can make better choices and be more effective at whatever we're doing. Living a conscious life is about bringing more self-awareness into our lives. Let's get into it. My guest today is Paul Drescher and I want to introduce Paul to you and just read you a couple of things about who he is and his background. So Paul Drescher was initiated into the cult of Guru Maharaj Ji and Divine Light Mission in May 1972 at the age of 18. He lived in the Detroit ashram for three years and was there for the infamous Cream Pie incident in August 1973. I remember it well. He left the ashram in May 1976 cold turkey having no further contact with Divine Light Mission after that.

He went to college, moved to California where he became licensed in real estate then securities and then tax prep and for over 30 years had a tax and financial advisory practice. He retired eight years ago. For the last 12 years. He served as the director the Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival. He has studied filmmaking in the Sundance Institute's collab program and has been a producer of several short and feature films including the soon to be released "One of the Good Ones." You got to tell us about that a little bit later Paul and you can find him on Facebook and Instagram as Paul BrightGuy. Paul, welcome to Living a Conscious Life the podcast. (Thank you Don. Great to be here. Great to make your acquaintance.)

Don: Yeah I know it's been great chatting with you and getting to know you because I didn't know you back in the day. Um, so it's fabulous to uh to be here with you and and to uh, talk about a common experience that we both have and uh, you've got a very fascinating, uh background having started very young uh in this thing, I mean and of course when I say young, 18 to me is quite young um, I was 21 and I also want to give acknowledgement to the children Of Premies who were raised, you know from the time they were a little kid. They have a unique experience that is I think unbelievable and very difficult once they start to untangle. You know, you and me, a little bit later in life, you know, we're lucky or perhaps, you know but nevertheless, um welcome and maybe you could just you know, talk to us a little bit about your whatever three. four years, you know deep down the rabbit hole and how it was for you and how you came to kind of unplug, you know after you know, only three four years.

Paul: Yeah. Well uh, there's a lot to unpack there Don and um, you know I'll try to break it up into chunks so that we can you know, have some back and forth here But um, you know, I was looking for truth uh, I was looking for meaning in my life, you know having been raised in a you know middle class or upper middle class family and you know drenched in materialism and you know superficial religion. Um, I'm I'm Jewish. I've run the Santa Cruz Jewish film festival so, you know, I just never connected with um, the conservative uh upbringing that I had. I left Judaism, you know as soon as I could after my Bar Mitzvah and uh, it took me decades to get back to that but in between uh, you know, I discovered uh before I graduated from high school, um the 14 year old Perfect Master Guru Maharaj Ji. I was out in Denver and his picture would poster was on every fucking uh lamppost in town. And you know, I went to Satsang and you know, people were blissed out. You know I just never felt so much love from strangers before and you know, they were all so happy and seemingly having some secret. The secret Knowledge that made their life so much better and whatever they had, I wanted. The story was a little incredible, 14 year old Incarnation of God come to bring peace on earth.

But uh, you know if uh if all these young people were so happy and seemingly have found truth, well, you know I I was an open-minded guy. I want to give it a try. And so, you know, I received Knowledge in May of 1972 at the age of 18 from Mahatma Rajeshwar and had a profound out-of-body experience during my initiation and I had no explanation for that. I mean I, I merged with light. I left my body. I was in another world.

There was infinite peace and love, you know for probably only about two seconds and my mind went "Wow" and back in my body and um, what uh how could that happen? This was more profound than any psychedelic drug I'd ever taken and there were no drugs involved so, uh, with no other explanation, I bought the story. This was the Incarnation of God come to bring peace on earth and you know here I was looking for meaning and doing something meaningful in my life. What greater purpose in life and to help the Messiah bring about uh, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. So I you know, I I threw myself into it whole hog.

Peace on Earth

I uh went to India in 1973 on the uh jumbo jets with uh 2,000 or so other uh Western, uh devotees or Premies, uh, Yeah, you know, uh yep, never met guru. I mean I stood in line to kiss Guru Maharaj Ji's feet I don't know how many times, including in India uh, but then came back and uh had a very uh brief time at the University of Michigan, but I was just not into studying uh in college when you know this uh, so revolutionary important change was happening on earth where you know the Messiah was here.

The most important thing for me to do was to help the Messiah, right? So, uh, you know, I joined the ashram in Detroit and um, I lived in the Detroit ashram for about three years, three years or so and uh interesting, uh, you know just working menial jobs, uh, you know up at 6 00 am to sing devotional songs Arti, meditate for an hour, go to my job. I had this menial job driving a delivery truck, dry cleaning and then working in a shoe warehouse and uh, you know, my paycheck was made out to Divine Light Mission so I didn't even get credit for social security. I I saw nothing from my paycheck and you know beans and rice and dahl living in vegetarian ascetic, monastic life in this house with another, you know, eight or ten other people and um, you know, uh, it was uh it was it was a devotional life.

I was a, I was a a monk in plain clothes working a regular job, but um you know, I thought I was contributing in some way to bringing about peace on earth and it took a while before I became disillusioned and and began to see the cracks and the fraud in this whole narrative that I'd been given

Don: I want to hear about that in just a moment. I, you know I'm smiling because your story is my story is the story of thousands of other people, right? You know, we saw the (tens of thousands), you know, we saw,we saw the opportunity, were looking for truth and there was all this love and there was the innocent, you know, 14 year old boy. I mean what could be wrong with this picture? You know, it was all magical and you know there were magical stories about how he became the Perfect Master that were floating all over the place that now I know were not the way that it really was according to eyewitnesses and so on and so forth, but your story my story. Yeah, you're in Detroit. I was in Boston, you know, I too I wanted to be part of this movement and I thought "Well hell, I'm I'm getting in at ground zero. I must be one of the chosen ones." So I feel special and this is part of the mystique, right? Uh, the the the belief the belief gets created that you're one of the chosen ones. Wow. So potent, isn't it? So how did you untangle like, you know, you said you went cold turkey so just how was that what happened?

Paul: It was uh, it's rather a uh a lengthy exit quite honestly because, um, I was very dissatisfied in the ashram in Detroit, um, I mean I was always a top straight A student um and, you know, I had creative aspirations uh won awards for my film making in high school and I felt that uh, my talents and what I had to offer was not being fully utilized. I was just being basically treated like a slave laborer and and somehow that was, you know a lesson in humility, okay and um, but ultimately I began to see uh that there were secrets um being kept from me and that the management and the ashram and in and in the higher-ups were hiding stuff from us and, um, you know, there were stories circulating um about guru, Guru Maharaj Ji and of course, you know in 1974? is it? uh, or 70? When did he get married? What do you remember? What year it was? (They converse) Was like maybe 73 or 4 maybe? 74? So I think 74. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was spring of 74. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Maybe the summer so anyway somewhere in there 73.

And and they break up the Holy Family, which somebody's got to make a movie about this. I mean the the (Yeah, we're hoping And we we're trying but it's we're trying uphill struggle. It's an uphill struggles, right?) They got a a bevy of uh, high-powered lawyers to make sure the story doesn't get out there.

Don: Yeah, let's let's let's bookmark that come back. Let's come back Yeah, let's let's come back to that. But how you left? Yeah.

Paul: Yeah, uh, and of course I was in Detroit for the uh, infamous pie incident where uh Pat Halley, uh hit Guru Maharaj Ji in the face with a pie in August of 73, Yeah and and then Mahatma Fakiranand took out revenge and um cracked his skull open with an upholstery hammer that he stole from our garage. Escaped to Chicago and then was um given a free exit from the country. Uh, uh without any prosecution or any consequence to him personally.

Uh, so, you know, all right, that was explained as this guy's just a fanatic, you know, uh, operating independently, you know out of his, uh, you know extreme devotion. You know, so all along we're making excuses (Hold on) excuses for this horrendous behavior. Yeah.

Don: Yeah, let me let me insert just a thought here before you finish your story. So just for the listeners um, and for those of us that were there at the time. We, that's what we heard. Fakiranand was uh portrayed to be a nut job and he was an intense guy. He gave, you know, he showed me the techniques in November of 72. I thought he was about as fanatical as you could get. I mean that was I didn't know that many, you know, Indian Mahatmas, but he, I thought this guy is really devoted and he hammered on people in the Knowledge Session to give as much as money as they could to to Maharaji and so on and so on. But anyway, (that's correct). So back to you.

Paul: Yeah, so anyway, uh, so that was I guess, uh the first, uh big uh lie or secret, uh that you know, and the other question the breakup of the Holy Family. Well, if this is real, is really God, I mean how is it that? The family is breaking up over, you know, who who's the Messiah? Uh, I mean it was a little screwy and of course tabloids made hay of this briefly, uh, but we didn't get the newspapers or watch TV and we discounted everything that the the media was reporting because we knew we had received Knowledge. We had had the vision. They didn't, they were just you know uh again tabloid operators and you know looking for uh, their uh soap opera story, which this had all the elements of a soap opera and and then some, uh you know, so anyway there was an accumulation of these incidents uh doubts and um incongruities um hidden deceptions and hypocrisies. It just built up over time and here I was slaving away, my life is, you know, what should have been the uh really, um building area that, you know, a critical period in my life, 18 to 22, when you know, you really explore and learn and find out what it is who you are, what you want to do with your life. I mean it was here I was just slaving away, you know, um as a subordinate in this spiritual closet that began to have these… I began to have doubts about.

Holy Family

Anyway so I complained and um about three years in they said okay. Well, we'll send you to, we'll send you to Houston. There you can have a management position. Great, you know, I want more responsibility. I wanted to pursue you know use my talents and abilities So I you know, they flipped me on a plane to Houston. I land in Houston and uh, there's no management position for me there. They were just shuffling me off to shut me up and get me farther away from, I don't know, my family. I don't know so I had to get another menial job in Houston. Now. I've uh Yeah, do you want me to go into the whole exit story here or just well this broad brush?

Don: Yeah, no, just the highlights like just, you know, like what what what was the final straw and that you know kind of moved you out of what I get was at the Houston ashram. Was that the last stomping ground?

I pulled a couple of pranks in the Houston ashram. (Oh, yeah) I didn't win me any friends there and then they sent me down to uh, San Antonio uh for what was then the City of Love and Light two floors of this, uh old hotel in downtown San Antonio which was an experiment, the Divine Light Mission had this experiment for people looking to join the ashram or feeling maybe they don't belong in the ashram and (yeah) to figure it out if they should leave so I was there for a couple of months and that's where I left the ashram.

I, you know, I started talking to my parents again and uh May of 76 they sent me a plane ticket. I flew back to Michigan and never had anything to do with uh, Divine Light Mission again until, until recently um, you know the last, I don't know five five years or so ten years maybe, uh reconnecting with ex-Premies and you know discovering the Prem Rawat Bio website and learning so much about what was happening behind the scenes and hearing the stories of other Premies, other devotees. (Yeah) It was so inspirational to me because for so many years I felt completely alone. I couldn't talk to anybody about this. I was ashamed that I'd lost four years to this con man uh, (Yeah) profound initiation that took me decades to understand what happened to me so (Yeah) it was traumatic. It was traumatic in in a number of ways. You know spiritual fraud of course um is deeply traumatic because here I I believe that the Guru Maharaji Ji was the Incarnation of God and it turned out that uh, God was a liar and a fraud. Well, if God is a liar and a fraud then, you know, where do you put your uh faith? What do you believe in?

Is it really true then that the only thing in life is materialism. There is no spiritual meaning behind any of this? It's all just for personal, uh, you know aggrandizement and wealth accumulation. Really? Were my parents right? It's just we live in a material world and that's all there is. So for 30 years, I was a spiritual cynic and I had wanted nothing to do with anything spiritual or religious. You know that was a trauma and then making sense of this. Okay. Uh, he's a fraud. I got conned but there's still meaning in life. There's still a deeper uh meaning and you know, it's interesting in all the Guru Maharaj Ji speeches the one word you almost never hear, I'd never heard it from come out of his mouth, is compassion and empathy. That's not in the lexicon, you know, it's very much a self-centered uh philosophy, a feel-good philosophy with this uh Revered Leader at the top who can do no wrong

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Paul is incorrect. Guru Maharaj Ji regularly used the word 'compassion.' He spoke about His Compassion for the Premies, His Mercy for the Premies. He told them how to worship and glorify Him for His Compassion in prayer. e.g. "My ego will haunt me. My confusion will pursue me to do everything else but I know that your Grace can pursue me to do what you want me to do. Your compassion and your love can destroy the greatest darkness, can destroy the greatest length of evil that man has ever known. One blink, one little finger, one little sight you know and you can do it. And yet, who am I to even ask you? Please do it to me. But I know that you have the compassion to maybe somehow listen to me, someday, somehow. Will you please, you know, find it in your heart, if you ever do, Guru Maharaj Ji to just save me from this world. Take my mind away. Take me and put me into your feet where you really are."

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and and therefore gives license to people, so long as they remain faithful, to basically uh act out for their own self gratification, you know, and uh, you know, it's a very um, it's very self-centered philosophy with this uh paradox of the All-Powerful uh All-Knowing uh Leader at the top who can never be questioned and who can do no wrong.

Don: Yeah You know your your comment about compassion really struck me in the sense that I don't remember hearing that word. Nope.

Paul: Look at look up search for it through his speeches. Exactly I I think you'd be hard-pressed to find it. Maybe maybe once in a hundred speeches.

Don: Yeah Well, I I I totally get it and you know an example for our listeners and there may be some people who aren't familiar with all of his shenanigans and which I think we should highlight a few of the big ones the main ones, spiritual fraud is probably the big one, but there's others, you know, there's a whole list but interestingly for people that don't know, like, so when I was the President of Elan Vital in '83 or '84 from the 80 to 83 or 4. uh, there were about, I'm guessing maybe, 50 instructors in the U.S. and maybe more around the world. I don't remember the exact number but the way that when that decision was made to downsize Elan Vital when he was going to when he moved from Miami to back to Malibu, the ashrams were closed. The staff at Elan Vital, which I was part of, was shut down except for me and my assistant who eventually became my wife. She answered Maharaji's mail at the time, wrote little notes on his behalf la la la but the way that the ashrams were, ashram Premies were treated was horrific, just closed, just thrown out. They were, had they dealt some people had credit card bills stuck to their name, on and on it goes.

The instructors, the instructors who when you became an instructor you believed you were dedicating your life to Maharaji forever. It wasn't like a one-year gig. It was the belief, the mindset was, this is a life now commitment. I'm now giving myself to him and these were people and I knew all of them that were very dedicated, very devoted, gave everything they had to the job. You're traveling around the world by yourself and this and that and the other thing anyway. When when it came to the end of the road, they got a phone call from Michael Donner saying "It's over. There's no more instructor. You're not an instructor anymore and the deal was you get a one-way ticket to some any place that you want. That's it, nothing, no message from Guru Maharaj Ji. No, thank you. No compassion, no nothing. Done like that. Cut off like you didn't exist. So there's your, there's a good example of lack of empathy, lack of compassion. Treating people like cogs in a machine and when they're done, you just get a new one. Get new, get new people. (Throwing them out like trash.) Now exactly, so um some of the, shall we, so there's so many places to go here Paul. Where do I go next? (Your call Don, pick a question) Gosh. Oh my goodness. I don't know there's just so much to to say but let's uh, let's have some fun with it.

So um so you got on the Prem Bio website or the ex-premie.org and and uh, I guess Donner and Dettmers, you know, their letters. Donner and Dettmers, for people that don't know these guys, Michael Dettmers was Prem's right hand man. He set up his legal and financial affairs in the late 70s. He took over from Bob Mishler and then Dettmers, you know, set up a construct so that they were, everything was legitimized in terms of businesses and and finance and tax, you know, all this stuff and then Michael Donner was like kind of a peer to that.

Well, not quite a peer. He was sort of under Dettmers because it was basically Maharaji, Dettmers and then there was Donner and a whole bunch of other people and I reported into Dettmers so I wasn't quite there, but nevertheless, so these two guys had a lot of personal contact with Prem. They were quote X-rated unquote. I guess that means they could, what does that mean actually? (I guess X-rated means top secret) top secret (so they saw what they heard) Yeah, (and this and this X circle of X) Yeah (did not leave that circle) exactly, so except when the uh God bless the internet when the internet came out and I guess there were a couple of people that we should give credit to, whether it's Joe Whalen or John Bronze or people who ever started, Tom Gubler, who started these websites. Then Michael Dettmers and Donner posted uh their personal experiences with Prem and we read some things on there that probably confirmed what we might have intuited or thought but seeing it in black and white. I don't know about you, but my head spun around.

Paul: No, absolutely when I, when I started reading some of these stories that I was completely unaware of from higher ups, people with personal experience, people cleaning up the uh empty bottles of Cognac, uh testifying to the uh, you know him going to bed drunk every night um for a period of time, um the affairs, uh and um

Don: the Mistress. The affairs, the the premies that were recruited by Michael Dettmers to have personal, uh, intimate liaisons with Prem Rawat (Paul: and then also these women used and thrown away like trash.) Yeah, exactly. No. Again, no no empathy, no compassion just used used and tossed aside. So this is, this is, this is the mind-blowing stuff, right? So and people that you and I know that we probably lived in the ashram with are still very loyal to Prem Rawat and they know all this stuff uh about how he behaved and you know, I uh try to get my head around that and I can't, I I don't, I don't get it except for the fact that I understand when you have a belief about something, everything gets filtered through the belief and until you let your belief go, you rationalize and it's okay because he's the one, he can, how does that work Paul? How does it? How do we how do we make how do we make sense of this?

Paul: Uh, there's a very powerful psychological phenomenon or uh called, uh cognitive dissonance (Yeah) and um, it's a cognitive bias I think, that is, you know, when you see something that disrupts your framing of the world, your world view and belief system, uh, the natural human instinct is to deny that. Because, especially when you've incorporated that belief system into your identity, um, and that was what's so difficult about leaving the ashram, leaving any cult is that you've incorporated this belief system into your identity and then uh when you uh rejected and you're in a way rejecting yourself. That is who you were or who you are and you have to rebuild this identity uh in uh in another way um, and um again with with it something that is spiritual and deep where that foundation itself has been shaken or destroyed uh, I mean it it's and especially when you can't really talk about it with other people unless they've been through the same thing. I mean my parents didn't understand, my family didn't understand uh, so it was it was really a very um harsh uh return to the real world. I think for me and for anybody leaving a cult.

Don: What what gets me is well many things get me about this but one thing that gets me is the fact that I asked myself why would I? So originally the idea was, you know, Maharaji you used to talk about the definition of guru: Gu and ru from "darkness to light" so I'm thinking "Okay a guide can take me from where I am to the other side" or it's like you need a guide to get take you through the the mountain passes. Somebody that's been there before that was the that was the story like well "You need a guide because you've never been there before." Like, okay, that makes sense logically la la la right? And then when I hear all this stuff about Him I'm thinking like okay, wait a minute. So He's getting intoxicated at a, heavily intoxicated at a young age, let's say he's 17, 18, 19 20, into the 20s and so on and you know and when I spoke to Hans Rawat, his eldest son Hans, would say when he got drunk, he was a mean drunk. He wasn't a nice happy drunk. He would yell at people, yell at his staff, yell at his wife, yell at his kids. So, you know, you hear this stuff and I go, "Okay. So why would I need a person like that in my life?" Particularly to follow. I don't have friends like that. So why would I bow down to somebody who is unhinged, you know and let's face it. I mean when you anesthetize yourself day after day after day after day. You have to raise the question. What kind of trauma is being covered up and I don't know but I could guess

Paul: um It took again decades for me to try to figure out how He could have pulled this off from the age of eight and there's there's I'd love to hear more about the uh the founding when he uh was uh given the job of to succeed his father, uh as leader of the Divine Light Mission and quote unquote Perfect Master um because you know, I I I don't have that inside information but I do understand that he is a human being and for him to be able to manage the hypocrisy of lying to millions of people and pretending that he is God Incarnate, Perfect Master, blah blah blah I mean that he he knew at a certain point, maybe he would, maybe at the age of eight he actually believed that he was uh, somehow endowed because he'd been treated like a God, you know, uh from the day he was born, he was revered as the son of a holy man, but at a certain point and and whether it was you know uh as a teenager or a young adult at some point he realizes, "You know what, I'm lying." How do I rationalize this? How do I and his way of dealing with it was because was to become uh, a drunk uh that you know, he would go on stage and perform you know every day or very frequently and and you know, he'd have his speech, uh platitudes and uh, you know indoctrination. Very coy. (Yeah) I'll talk about myself in the third person, Guru Maharaj Ji this, Guru Maharaj Ji that. You know kind of offload uh the uh the self aggrandizement and you know, I am God, never come out and said it in three words, "I am God" but that was the underlying message and and so (Yeah) you know, when you lead that kind of uh deceitful life uh alcohol is a good way to uh make it all disappear at least at least during your drunkenness.

Don: Yeah. Yeah. No well said, you know, you talked about how he became the Perfect Master. Let's just talk about that for a minute um, I've I've read uh some pieces that were put out on the one of the websites from a former major Donor who had a conversation with Gurucharanand at one point and Gurucharanand told the story to him about how Prem became Perfect Master, which was basically uh Mata Ji, the mother and some of the other brothers, were in one room arguing about who would be the next Perfect Master and generally speaking it went to the eldest son. That would have been Bal Bhagwan Ji, right? So there's a contingent over there, but then there was another contingent of younger Mahatmas, Sampuranand, Gurucharanand, maybe Mahavir, maybe Bihari Singh, maybe a few others and they on the on their own decided that they were going to put Prem on the stage and they marched him out there before the other group could interfere and by that time it was too late and there you go. And then when you look at the history, it kind of makes sense because you can see that those three or four men were around him ever since - Bihari Singh got into a little bit of trouble at one point, I think because he maybe switched sides for a while - but the loyalty that Prem gave to Sampuranand, who became the Director of DLM in India, Gurucharanand was always the top dog, Mahavir was always around. So there you go. So to your point a young boy gets anointed, he's in school at the time so he plays the role of like "I'm a school boy" but then he comes home everybody's worshiping him. So imagine the psychology of that as it as you build your psyche as you grow, as a your brain develops believing that you're Superhuman.

Paul: It's a messed up story and a messed up family. (loud laughter) I could use a more colorful word.

Don: Oh, no. Yeah, you could. You could and you know, and the tragedy is it's still a messed up family. You know the way that Hans Rawat was treated at his brother by Prem Rawat and he talks about how they were sexually abused. He called his father out on it. His father admitted it said it was common in India. La la la I'm sorry. You know, he apologized. I'm sorry. I you know, I didn't realize it at the time. Wow, well, maybe because you were stoned, maybe because you were drunk, maybe because you were full of yourself but still you you abuse the privacy of a child. Imagine, you've had kids. I've had kids. Have you had you have kids? (Yeah Yeah, I have a boy) right? I don't I mean I remember when my when my children grew up they had a bedroom and the door was closed. There was only one thing that I could do if I wanted to go in that bedroom was the knock on the door. I never opened that door and just went in. I, there was this, I just believe that a human being has a right to privacy. A child, an adult, it doesn't matter but Hans did not have that luxury, you know, uh, he Prem adopted every western value except uh respect for another person and the privacy of their um, uh private parts. You could say it never would cross my mind to harm a child or sexually abuse a child for amusement that comes out of a sick mind and you could say "Oh, well, it's common in India." Uh doesn't make it right and certainly it doesn't make it legal in this country, uh, and in most of the western world, uh sexual abuse of a child is illegal and punishable and you and you'll go to prison for it and you won't be treated well in prison for it either. No, and and you're right and in the state of Florida if if these allegations were brought up years ago He would have been in jail. Yeah, the Perfect Master, because he he broke the laws of a state that has very specific laws about children and the age and adults behavior with those children.

so it's you know, it's it's a it's a tragic thing. You know, it's he's a tragic … I think Prem Rawat is a tragic figure and uh it's just a sad state and I my heart goes out to people like Hans and anybody that was uh had to deal with this. It's just it's just tragic. So, yeah All right. Well, anyway, so, um, yeah Um, so do you think Prem Rawat meditates an hour each day as he as he instructs all his followers Paul?

Paul: I I doubt that Prem Rawat meditates more than 10, 15 seconds at a time if at all, um, he is driven by uh an enormous ego uh and completely unrestrained, um, you know His executive function is without bounds it appears um and no, he's a he's the biggest hypocrite that I've ever met. I've never met him in person, but certainly from what he speaks and what he does that I doubt I could find a greater uh disparity between uh, uh saying and doing uh. You know saying all these wonderful platitudes about you know life valuing life and enjoying life and making the most of life and and then behaving in such a way that uh is so disrespectful uh of other human beings

Don: Yeah, and yet he's got this giant PR machine out there uh pumping out things like well the you know the The GGuinness Book of World Records now is in under his belt for the most people at a book launch or something He's got the thing in the prisons. He's got the Words of Peace. He's got the uh the school thing uh and all this and I'm looking at that I'm going oh my God, he's just creating this this machine so that when he dies, he's got this mechanism run by his loyal children uh who know what happened but are turning a blind eye um to that and there's this mechanism set up to continue the "Teachings" and and so on.

Paul: Yeah, he he said it wasn't a religion, but he's created a religion and um, you know it is for his benefit. Yet somehow he manages to maintain the non-profit status. Um, I I I wish the IRS would uh dig deeper into that (yeah) but um, it's uh again, that's just one one more of the big lie

But you know, he's got a big machine and he's got deep pockets and you know, we know this, you said something earlier that there was a possibility of a documentary being done and there still is a possibility of documentaries being done. There's multiple things that are still out there in play, but the one that got kind of off the ground um was uh shut down by a Beverly Hills law firm hired by Prem Rawat with a big slap letter to the documentarian uh warning him about what might happen if they went ahead with this film. So and you know and people that saw my previous podcast know that a podcast that I was going to go on, was the host, was threatened with a letter from the very prestigious Anti-Defamation law firm hired by Prem Rawat to shut her down and as a consequence that podcast never got off the ground. So he uh has the funds to censor.

Paul: Oh and does so without restraint. Now you were around when the whole Legitimacy Project began, weren't you?

Don: I Don't know what that is.

Paul: Oh, it was a Legitimacy Project began in the 80s where they they did the twist. Okay, so he's you know, it was back and forth for a little while, Perfect Master not Perfect Master, Lord of the Universe not Lord of the Universe and then the these (Yeah) you know, uh the business-minded people said you know what we got to change the story here because we're not getting people with the Lord of the Universe.

Don: Oh, I was around I was around. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I I wasn't sure what you meant. Yeah.

Paul: Yeah so, you know that the administration of Divine Light Mission went on this quest to change the image, change the narrative and that's when they change it and Divine Light Mission Inc became ELAN VITAL INC. They renamed the organization um uh on the original founding paperwork is still Divine Light Mission um, so that you know, they didn't, they didn't start over wholesale they just did a superficial makeover to change the image and change the branding

Don: and got rid of all the old books, tapes, photos, the Krishna Crown lala all that stuff

Paul: They told everybody to burn it Man, there was everything. I guess there was a big misunderstanding.

Don: There was no more Merry Jesters, uh all that kind of stuff But so so here's the question Paul. So if that so at the time we were told that he was the Perfect Master now then, uh, you know the nameGuru Maharaj Ji got shortened to Maharaji right and then at some point He became Prem Rawat. I don't know that must have been in the 90s.

I wasn't or late 90s I don't know when that happened, but nevertheless, so now he's a global peace ambassador and author so does that mean that he's not the Perfect Master anymore? But that's hypocritical because we believed he was the Perfect Master. He told us he was the Perfect Master but so now he's the Global. Whoa, what's going on there? Who is he?

Paul: You know, I have not. I don't no longer have the confidence of people who are still involved and so, uh, I think if you dig deep that uh, there's there's been a a regeneration of this whole "We're special" the uh of the original devotees. Okay. We know he's the God incarnate. We know he's a Perfect Master, but we gotta - the rest of people. They can't accept that so we have to tone it down for everybody else in order to bring this message to everybody. That's what I think is going on. (Uh-huh) because again, this is a way for people to rationalize. (Yeah, Yeah) the cognitive dissonance (right) that that you know, okay Perfect Master not Perfect Master uh Guru Maharaj Ji not Guru Maharaj Ji. Uh, oh, I get it.

We're special. We know and of course then, you know, we can spend you know three thousand or five thousand dollars for a week in a tent in Amaroo and line up and kiss his feet because we're the privileged ones right? (Right) We know the truth

Don: And you know what he said somebody that was uh in 2023 I believe this was somebody at Amaroo told me that they sent me some screenshots of some of the things his statements of, you know, very grandiose stuff but one of the the thing that really struck me was he emphasized, he said it's not just enough to stay in touch or to do meditation. The most important thing is, you ready? Obey the Master, obedience to the Master. Same same story that's been going on since the 70s. He's still saying it. Oh my God!

Paul: Uh, I mean the directives are a little looser no longer, you know, uh poverty chastity and obedience, uh, he let go of that um, you know, tithing or contributing. I mean everybody's expected to give money and now they can give it tax deductibly to uh the foundation which pays all of his travel expenses, um for spreading this wonderful world Word of of Peace uh and now what does it take for somebody to see that this is a racket? I mean, I I don't know. I mean, I don't know for 50 years. (I don't know)I doubt they're changing now

No, I well, you know the I think the the core, the hardcore group is just keeps sort of shrinking, you know, and and the hardcore group is pretty gray haired. So a hardcore group is going to be dying off pretty soon um where it goes after that who the heck knows but So if we agree that Prem Rawat committed spiritual fraud, what should his punishment be? If we were if we were, you know, the judges, I don't know. Well, I I wrote him a letter a few years ago um Which of course went unanswered? um saying you know, uh that You know, I was a victim along with tens of thousands of other ashram Premies of this great spiritual fraud and you know he took our money under false pretenses Yeah, um, that's fraud But unfortunately the statute of limitations has passed so I can't sue to get that money back.

Um, you know, there is And but and when I did find out I'd been defrauded I was too ashamed to do anything about it or talk to anybody about it But if he actually wanted to come clean I mean, we are the guys that made him a millionaire from our wages, slave wages in the 1970s and 1980s so under these fraudulent, uh pretenses. So first of all, he needs to pay everybody back who gave him money during those 20 years of the of the main fraud when he was God Incarnate Perfect Master and you know, uh but he's never gonna do that I know,

Don: But it's it's it's fun to imagine like what what should or could be done, you know, what and we know that it won't be done, but you know, you, me, other people are speaking out putting a voice to this You know in a perfect world maybe a film will be done. I don't know ,um, maybe a book will be written. Uh, maybe somebody will speak up who hasn't spoken up because there's so many people that are got their lips buttoned up out there and I know a lot of them and I'd love to call you out by name, but I won't, uh, and you know the truth about Prem Rawat and for some reason you just go along with it. It's really pretty sad.

Paul: It's pathetic. I don't know how somebody can live with themselves.

Don: Uh beats me going along with this lie and this well, you know, they get front row seats, you know, they get to go to a little dinner party. They get served up some, well, I don't know if they're going to get the calf that was massaged by the woman whose job it was to just massage the calf you heard about this in Amaroo, right? (Yeah) right. So I don't know if they get to eat some of that massaged beef, maybe they do and they're like well, it's just worth it, you know, to to do all this um but uh, anyway, you know, but you know, here's the thing. The good thing is, you know you recovered, you built yourself a wonderful career. I mean I recovered it took me time. I sold women's shoes. I was you know I was selling vacuum cleaners door to door after I left my position as president of Elan Vital. I was I was in ritual humiliation for a number of years which just took my big spiritual ego that I had been fed and just poked it full of holes and beat me down and, you know, I became like a normal human being. It took a while, you know, to get over the fact that I was in the cult of the Perfect Master