Bob Mishler, President of Divine Light Mission. A Complete Fool?

At first, Mishler seemed to have been a reasonable admistrator apart from allowing the disastrous Millenium '73 fiasco to go ahead. However, until the very end, when he was fired for demanding the guru halve his spending, Mishler displayed no insight into the situation. He continued to promote the Knowledge as if it really had some spiritual power and had raised the premies onto a new level of consciousness and they build a new world order. He could see the guru himself had zilch consciousness and he also knew the guru never meditated. He knew that the reality of life in Divine Light Mission HQ was not all celibate Love and Light and made some sensible decisions and admitted to some problems. He chastised the premies for their exaggeration, hype and magical expectations that were common in DLM and for the lack of financial support being given.

He promoted the bizarre idea that he could give some interviews, say the Mission had changed into basically a meaningful charitable enterprise and was "part of the mainstream", downgrade the guru's role while keeping him on as an undivine leader, openly admit the Mission had grown on false promises and exaggeration, downplay the Indian rituals and people would believe this nonsense. He also seemed to believe his own fantasy and announced this in DLM magazines so the premies could pay lipservice. This had a disastrous effect on membership though it took some time and in late 1976 Rawat quite rightly fired him.

While in Australia, Mishler spoke at a DUO conference and stressed the need for meditation which puts you in harmony with God and makes you a servant of the life-force and is an actual shift in consciousness:

this movement is the movement from one era to the next. It's an actual shift in human consciousness and that change in human consciousness is called the Divine Light movement. And those of us who are making that leap, it's not like we can get to the edge and hang there. You've got to make that jump. You've got to make that leap of consciousness yourself. If you don't do it, there's no way you're going to fool anybody. You're not going to be able to go out and say all the right words to everyone, because there's a feeling that gets conveyed as well. That feeling comes in an expression of clarity and understanding.

In March 1975, Mishler brought Michael Dettmers to Denver from Canada to put DLM's finances in order as most of the $600,000 debt incurred in the Astrodome debacle was still owed. Mishler's role in pressuring a naive heiress to give her fortune to Divine Light Mission was revealed in a Canadian court along with embarrassing insider information about Rawat's spending of 60% of DLM funds on himself. On April 1st, Rawat's mother announced to the press that she and the Indian DLM administrators had "removed him as spiritual leader and renounced all responsibility for his despicable decline from vegetarianism, celibacy, abstinence from alcohol and other austerities." He was part of the group that accompanied Rawat to India in May 1975 where Rawat failed in his legal bid to gain control of the Indian Divine Light Mission, Divya Sandesh Parishad, that his father had created. There Mishler appeared as Marolyn Rawat's "father" in the Rawat boys' double wedding in India. Further deception occurred when Rawat's entourage returned to the US claiming the visit had been a great success. The truth behind this is revealed in Soul Rush by Sophia Collier the Divine Light Mission journalist who recorded the interview.

In 1979 Mishler recalled that by mid 1975 he "couldn't agree with what the guru was doing" and that sometime in the next 6 months Rawat had agreed to publicly deny that he was God. However, there is no corroborative evidence in their available published statements during this time. Quite the reverse. On July 23 Rawat publicly spoke of the Perfect Masters' omnipotence and during the following 6 months he continued his normal style of speech-making, interspersing occasional "humble" statements with numerous vainglorious ones. In South America in July, in Germany in August, in Australia in October and in the USA in November, Rawat dressed as Krishna. The 'Peace Bomb' speech was reprinted in the November 8 Divine Times magazine. In the Sydney Opera House Mishler, while harping on the difficulties of practising Knowledge, spoke of Rawat as God incarnate. (see quote below) There were no photos of Rawat dressed as Krishna in the Divine Times from January 1976 until June 1977.

Mishler accompanied Rawat to Australia in October 1975. In his "satsang" at the Sydney Opera House on 19 October 1975 he repeated what he said in 1974 that the things Rawat "says goes right by us". He reiterated that practising Knowledge is difficult. "It's difficult to persevere". He discussed Rawat's apocalyptic rant at Montrose in 1972 and reassured the crowd:

"things are so bad in this world that if God is really, truly our father, our creator; and he's watching and we're all his children; and things have got to the point where we have the capacity to literally, to completely annihilate life on this planet, don't you think that if he's the father, he's going to do something about it? Isn't he going to take some measure to make sure that that's not going to happen? And in fact, Guru Maharaj Ji stated at the time that he already has. There is a power that's holding back the force of destruction, that's ready to destroy all human creation. And that power is here in this world."

In a conference with Australian administrators his remarks were revealing: "And so really it takes a lot of effort" & "And over the past couple of years Guru Maharaj Ji has done just about everything to break down every conception about what is the outward model of behaviour for being a devotee." Translated this means Rawat's behaviour was so greedy, unfilial, materialistic and superficial that he was not a role model for his devotees. Mishler still claimed to believe that the purpose of Knowledge was experiencing Truth and obtaining liberation but, though personal effort was required, it all depended upon Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace.

At the end of 1975 the administrators of Divine Light Mission began a series workshops on the theme of understanding. Rawat used the word regularly but examining his available speeches from the last half of 1975 shows he meant it in his normal way, that premies should understand that they should obey him, worship him and dedicate their lives to him through satsang, service and meditation. In his speech on 7th December titled 'Understanding' Rawat spoke of the 5 very important things: darshan, satsang, service and meditation and the understanding of what we are doing here which is by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace we have really experienced the Truth within inside of us.

The workshops began a period of turmoil and upheaval in Divine Light Mission as people examined their beliefs and their experience and compared them with the guru's promises. Mishler wrote a message to premies published in the January 1976 Divine Times. Despite his doubts and private concerns about Rawat's behaviour he extolled Rawat's vision, foresight, patience and guidance in his public message. Most of the top administrators in Denver were in relationships even though they were supposedly celibate in the ashram and once honest and open discussion began about their real experience of life and Knowledge, people left the ashram and Divine Light Mission in droves and DLM and Rawat suffered a major fall in income.

Bob Mishler 1976After the terrible publicity over the fiasco of Millenium '73 a decision was made by Mishler and his fellow administrators that the best way to present Maharaji was as a "humanitarian leader" and the instructions to premies and the public relations campaign began. Newspaper articles were reporting Public Relations Director Joe Anctil's claims that they were throwing out portrayals of Rawat as "the one, perfect manifestation and channel of divinity in this age." Mishler claimed Rawat had agreed to these changes. This was truly bizarre as Rawat had been promoted as the boy God, the Lord of the Universe, the Lord of Universal Peace, who proclaimed he had come to rule the world with more power than any Perfect Master before him. While premies were obedient and changed the way they spoke about Rawat publicly (while not changing their beliefs) the media were, understandably, not so obedient. As Bob Mackenzie had written "The 16 year-old guru Maharaj Ji has decided he is God, I understand. That is not a bad job for a 16 year-old kid, except that there's no chance for advancement." There also is no possiblility of an acceptable and reasonable demotion.

In this interview with a Denver journalist in May 1976 Mishler attempts to explain the changes in Divine Light Mission in the most positive way. Membership was falling so he explained the Mission was no longer proselytising but working with the current membership of which only 8 to 10,000 of the 50,000 initiated had maintained any activity in DLM, to raise their consciousness. He was very respectful of Rawat stating his teaching and guidance was central to DLM but he ignored the obvious question: how does God incarnate morph into a humanitarian leader? It is illuminating to compare Rawat's proposed itinerary with his actual activities. Man proposes but if God is lazy or funds are not available what can you do?

Mishler and Jos Lammers accompanied Rawat on a European tour in May 1976 and Bob rang Denver talking about the pain of growth though he did not mention Rawat's shopping expeditions trailed by a loyal court of premies to pay for the watches and other paraphernalia he coveted. Mishler quoted Rawat saying "when he goes to the United Nations it won't be just for a tour. It will be to really show people that now that we have detente we also have to detente with our own being." Rawat has been to the United Nations building to accept an award for donating money to a water in the third world program. He has also rented a room to make a speech in the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok but the possibility of Rawat being asked to address the United Nations is just too ridiculous.

Michael Dettmers recalled that from his arrival in Denver to late 1976 Mishler spent most of his time with Rawat only coming to Denver once or twice a month but that he and Rawat fully concurred with the 1976 changes that were developing in IHQ in Denver. Dettmers realized that relations between them were strained when he joined the European tour. Mishler said that although Rawat had agreed with changes beforehand he was very unhappy once they began. DLM were facing an IRS audit and legal advice was that the enormous percentage of DLM funds spent by Rawat personally was illegal. Their lawyer "was afraid that DLM may be perceived by the IRS, not as a church, but more like a scam set up to benefit a private individual. He frankly told me that he did not see how we could survive the audit which was now only a few months away." It was this legal advice, especially that the Malibu estate was unjustifiable, that caused Mishler to inform Rawat that the Malibu residence would have to be sold. Dettmer's recall of the Denver meeting differs somewhat from Lammer's though they can be reconciled. Mishler was out and Dettmers became Rawat's personal manager and IHQ was disbanded.

As late as 24th September Mishler co-signed a letter to the international DUO's describing Rawat's 30 hour visit to Denver on the 18th/19th as accomplishing a great deal and that there would be no cutback of essential DLM programs. No mention was made of the refusal of Rawat to cut back his expenditure or allow his personal allowance to be halved from $500 a day or his firing all the DLM administrators and their re-hiring the next day after further "discussion" with Mishler. Even then, despite everything that had happened in the preceding years, Mishler pranamed and kissed Rawat's feet.

In Andrea Cagan's sleazy "biography" Prem Rawat is quoted as asking Eileen (Mishler) whether Bob Mishler ever meditated and being told he claimed to meditate 24 hours a day but never actually sat down to do the "techniques" in "formal meditation". This is typical of the ad hominem attacks on anyone criticising Prem Rawat and as both the Mishlers died tragically in 1979 they cannot refute the slurs - not that most people consider never meditating being a slur on your character. Ironically it is the very thing that Mishler and others of his close assistants said about Rawat - he never meditated. Many followers knew Mishler as a hard-working, responsible person so this, provides a reason that premies will accept. Mishler didn't meditate so he "got in his mind." It is an explanation that is meaningless to non-devotees. In retrospect, Mishler would have shown far more discrimination and intelligence if he had stopped meditating and while the amount of meditation he did is not known, he did eventually leave Divine Light Mission and after the Jonestown tragedy Mishler and John Hand Jr attempted to alert the public to the dangers of "Rawatism" and Rawat's character through newspaper interviews:

There is also a recording and transcript of Mishler speaking in a radio interview in February 1979 which is very informative and a recording and transcript of a telephone conversation with some concerned "de-programmed" former premies.

In the end Mishler's attempts to change the Mission into an organisation with integrity proved fruitless and Rawat seeing his position being undermined fired him. He should have attempted to inform followers of Rawat's drunkeness and hypocrisy earlier though how he could have done this is not clear as this message could not have been publicised through Divine Light Mission channels. After the Jonestown massacre Mishler went to the media and tried to alert people to the dangers inherent in Divine Light Mission's control by a selfish, debauched young man. However, the chances of the sybaritic, ordinary and unimaginative Rawat creating a small scale apocalypse were zilch. Unfortunately Mishler indulged in the same revisionism that Rawat's followers have continued, he rewrote his own involvement in DLM as Rawat's chief administrator as an heroic struggle for truth where the published evidence shows Mishler publicly extolling Rawat until his role was terminated. He was in an invidious situation and unfortunately he died tragically but at least he left a body of evidence about Rawat's private persona which has been confirmed by Michael Dettmers and Mike Donner and Mike Finch who remained loyal to their "Perfect Master" for years thereafter.

It is quite enlightening to compare Mishler's recorded interview which exudes intelligence and integrity to Rawat's stoned or drunk "satsang" of the same period.

The information in this article was based on the following sources.

Divine Light Mission publications:

Newspapers:

Rennie Davis and Bob Mishler Newspaper stories often mentioned Mishler or quoted him trying to explain Rawat's 'lilas' eg "this illness is going to make Guru Maharaj Ji more human to people," "The significance of this event is not to be measured in the number of people who attend" or spouting nonsense such as "This is just warming up … world peace is inevitable."

Mishler was named as one of the conspirators attempting to get heiress Darby McLean to sign over her inheritance to Divine Light Mission.

He was blamed by Rawat's family for preventing them seeing the young Prem, little did they know.

DLM's leader and administrators apparently believed that they could just say that they were no longer going to say Prem Rawat was the "Lord of the Universe" and hard nosed reporters would accept this as meaningful even though premies were still bowing down to his photos.

Mishler tried to explain the changes in DLM in late 1976 in a positive way though he claimed he had already decided to leave DLM.

Mishler goes to the media after Jonestown:

Books:



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