"When a lot of the mahatmas came to the West they brought with them immeasurable amount of concepts and it kinda went wild and there was no stopping it. The backlash of that I had to directly bear because people would ask me point blank these questions, "Are you this, are you that, you know, what is this, what is that?" Whereas, a event or a question and answer session was very informative for people because the questions were being dealt with, it slowly changed to where you were trying to lay down groundwork of what you are not or what you don't do, what you aren't you shouldn't expect will happen."

Nobody dared to ask Rawat what these "mahatma concepts" were. Everybody in the room knew that it was Rawat himself who had publicly claimed to be an incarnation of God, had publicly claimed he would bringpeace to the world and demanded to be supplied with every possible luxury which was why he was being asked difficult questions.

"Well in a way that went on for an extremely long time and this is my key of bringing the history here. That people were very open to Knowledge, that people were very open to me and I really don't think that I have ever felt that that has changed. That people are still very open and when they listen and what they hear they're just as fascinated by it as they were when I was a little boy talking about the same stuff. So that's the good news, the bad news is that the concepts have really gotten us buried in a hole to this day where we're still having to defend ourselves, which I find pathetic, having to defend ourselves and say, "No these things are not true."

Rawat, himself, has been the main impediment to successful recruitment but this is something he cannot admit.

"So we cannot afford to perpetuate any concepts. Knowledge works, look you mean, let's face it, Knowledge works. The Master when given that right environment does his thing and it's great. It all works. Whatever we forge for the future we have to remember where we came from and we have to remember most importantly how incredibly dangerous, incredibly dangerous this stuff is. Shooting your mouth off is not innocent by any stretch of the imagination."

Rawat has consistently extolled his "Knowledge". However it "works" about as well as any minor cult religion. The great majority of people in the West who have tried it have rejected it because it doesn't work.

"What you say in your fuzzy feeling, you know what I mean fuzzy feeling when you're feeling nice and oh oooh so inspired, can be deadly dangerous. What you say cannot have any tolerance for mistakes. What do you think? Does this part of the history make any sense and why I'm bringing this up cause I see you in the same shoes. There's a lot more of you than there were of them. Comprende? Just playing Russian Roulette with a lot more guns. Your chances go up. I don't want to be in those shoes."

I'm not sure what is more offensive in this clip. His shallow derision of his followers' inspiration or his paranoid ranting that any mistaken comment by them is somehow dangerous. Élan Vital members do volunteer labour which they call 'service'. Élan Vital, whose members are mainly nice, peace-loving, middle-class people has probably spent more of it's members' time involved in 'security' that any comparable organisation in the world because of the "Master's" paranoia.

"But if you're gonna have doubts about it, if you and doubts sometimes comes you know even trying to compare other persons' experience "Oh well that person must have better experience than me." That that throws the doubt in there. It's over."

I'm sure, if only for myself, that thinking "that person must have better experience than me" was what kept doubts at bay. There definitely were people who enjoyed their practise of "Knowledge" more than I did, who were more committed and devoted and who were inspiring to me. Without that sort of comparison and belief Rawat would have even fewer followers, many have told me that their experience isn't as good as it should be because they don't practise enough.

"cause if you're not then you're gonna sit halfway half-baked between the belief system and what Knowledge means. Until that happens the history can never really be cleared up cause it still lives in that error, the shade of darkness still looms."

Rawat is putting the people here into a triple bind. He demands they transcend the belief system they have about Knowledge and speak only from their actual experience while they know that his accusations that the failure of his mission is due to false concepts spread by his for mer Indian followers (the mahatmas deserted him en masse in 1974) and themselves and that if not for this need for him to answer these pathetic questions (he's not allowed journalists to do real interviews since 1974) people would still be responding to him with openness and fascination is bullshit.

"Right now there is something to the tone of 60,000 aspirants waiting for Knowledge. Should that number grow? Yes. How will it grow? It will grow if we become ready to respond."

One of the defining features of the premie community is their acceptance of anything Prem Rawat says. In 2000 there may well have been 60,000 aspirants but over 95% of them would have been in India, the second most populous country in the world where gurus are part of the normal religious background, a country where 10 million people can congregate for a religious festival. There was a period in the 1990s where Élan Vital prepared itself to respond to this future growth creating an organisation stucture in which most of the committed premies had titles and future responsibilities and numerous command structures, templates and formats were discussed and decided upon in interminable tele-conferences. Eventually the chimeral structure collapsed under the weight of First Class internet messages and lack of any aspirants.

"Have you forgotten that once you didn't have Knowledge either? And of all the journeys of up and ups and downs and doubts that you have gone somehow that could have been minimised or eliminated wouldn't that be nice? That when you after you received Knowledge that you would have had the strength not to get caught up in doubts but to be clear and continue to practice and enjoy and enjoy and enjoy and enjoy and enjoy."

Prem Rawat portrays a completely different picture of his followers' lives here in the relative privacy of a small group of his most devoted followers than the rosy picture he portrays in his public speeches. But even here where he is honest about the reality of their lives he contrasts the reality of their past lives with the fantasy of ongoing enjoyment in a never to be attained future.

"I I like I'm not I'm not really trying to say here what you should say and you shouldn't say I'm trying just bring out some understanding this time around because a long time ago I did say to people "Please don't say anything" and it was really a stop-gap measure and I'm revisiting that whole scene and I'm saying OK it is time to be actively involved and let's have this training and in this training what I'm trying to do is not put words in your mouth but try to give you some understanding so that you will understand there is no necessity to go out and say things that are bfsst"

Wouldn't 30 years of meditation and obedience be more than enough to teach these people, his most dedicated followers, not to say 'bfsst' but to talk sensibly, openly and truthfully. Any silly claims that may have been made in 1970 or 1971 had been well and truly forgotten by the mid 1970's by which time premies were avidly studying everything Prem Rawat said and those people who didn't conform to the Divine Light Mission 'party line' had either left or peer pressure had them keeping their "crazy ideas" to themselves.

"Let me make a card, let me make a brochure, let me make a video, let me make a disk, let me put up a web site. Let me say whatever I feel like today."

Those Rawats, they sure got rhythm and bliss. But then doesn't Rawat keep raving on about how this Knowledge is all about the heart, about feeling but yet he wants everything his devotees say about this "Knowledge", his "Knowledge", controlled by his mind.

"Also remembering, also remembering that it is the Master that needs to be connected to this person, right? and the Master's message that needs to be connected to this person, how much of yourself do you interject in that?"

"I don't know if you can present Knowledge as a course. Here watch 15 videos, it'll take 5 months and then you will be ready. This is much more of a personal journey. We can not start abdicating that responsibility by making it a course."

Prem Rawat was absolutely correct. "Knowledge" cannot be presented as a course on 15 videos, it takes more than 15 DVDs and it is "the Keys". The Keys is a course on DVDs that is just a repackaging of parts of his old speeches with fancy logos in a discreet folder. Élan Vital communities throughout the developed world were charged amounts to be raised by donations based upon their numbers and their country's GNP for the production and distribution costs.

"This is awakening the heart, quenching the thirst, connections that have been broken for so many years to re-establish those connections with the heart, with the thirst, with the want, the fulfillment. So how mechanical can you make a process like that?"

There's most of Prem Rawat's cliches of the last few years wrapped up in a few seconds. How mechanical? Pretty mechanical. People are introduced via watching TV or a DVD while anything personal is replaced by premies quoting material published by Élan Vital. The course to receive Knowledge is on a set of DVDs that must be watched in strict order. You "receive Knowledge" by watching a DVD. The only personal non-mechanical contact with Prem Rawat is filing past him as he sits on a throne and bowing or kissing his feet.

"You know and it's a it's a curious little history because there was a time where people would introduce Knowledge to other people and it was wild, it was absolutely, incredibly wild, I spoke 48 languages, in those days, walk on the wa, walking on water, no problem."

One of his ongoing criticisms is that his early followers claimed he could speak many languages though it was a claim that would provoke ridicule every time the young Rawat or Guru Maharaj Ji as he called himself would speak in the West as he had a very poor command of English, the only language apart from his native Hindi that he could speak. After 30 or 40 years his English is still obviously a second language and he's still complaining that his devotees sabotaged his mission to bring peace to the world by saying he speaks 24 or 34 or 48 languages. He is such a chump he can't even remember how many languages it is that he doesn't speak. Not only couldn't he walk on water, he couldn't even swim.

"And an introduction of Knowledge was not based upon Knowledge not based upon those factors it was based upon 'Let me see if I can dazzle you because if I can dazzle you I got your attention'."

Naturally, there is very little documentary evidence of what premies said in the 1970's to new people though there is much documentary evidence that no-one tried to dazzle people with outrageous promises more than Rawat. However, what little there is and the memories of thousands of people who are no longer followers of Prem Rawat refutes this statement. Certainly, there was youthful enthusiasm, certainly premies said Prem Rawat was the Lord of the Universe. They learnt that title from the films and magazines that Divine Light Mission produced under the direction of the young Prem Rawat and his family and from hearing him speak in person. They claimed it was the Divine Light that was revealed by Guru Maharaj Ji that dazzled them oh and his glowing, glorious face and his feet.

"So then came a time when I said 'Please you know do me a favour don't say anything just pass on a video or something.'

It was a little more than a simple request. It was a direct order and so in the early 1980's premies ("lovers") of Prem Rawat were instructed to destroy all the documents, tapes and videos thay had of Guru Maharaj Ji and the ashrams ("monasteries") where poeple had lived for up to a decade dedicating their lives and finances to Prem Rawat were closed without any compensation being paid and the satsangs ("nightly public meetings") in which premies spoke of their experience of their lives while practising Knowledge were terminated.

"And I feel that the time has come where if we can have a broad spectrum of material that is available to people to pass on that it will severely curtail their fantastic imaginations and they will tend to synchronise their tend to"

In 2000 most of Prem Rawat's followers had 30 years of meditation and for nearly 15 years he had been the sole voice in Élan Vital. They have listened to his speeches at least weekly during that time and yet they can still not be relied upon to tell the truth as he sees it. Their "fantastic imaginations" cannot be curbed but if he can just get them parroting the "material".

"One thing I was mentioning to someone, I said if we could bring, marry, merge, mix the enthusiasm of the 70s with the understanding of today and the technology of today, marry the two together, we'll come out way ahead of the game. (applause)"

The lack of enthusiasm in the applause reveals what a forlorn hope it is. In the 70's the great majority of premies were young and relatively innocent but most importantly they were telling people what they thought was the truth: that "Guru Maharaj Ji, though he looked like a fat brat and could barely speak English, was the incarnation of God, The Lord of the Universe and he was revealing the Knowledge of God and allowing his devotees to live with his Grace transforming their lives through the practise of 'Knowledge'".

"Master will give you an opportunity to do something and provide you more support than you can possibly imagine to accomplish it."

Nearly 15 years have passed since 2000, still hasn't been accomplished!

"You have to have infinite patience, get it, cause you're gonna make that effort and nothing is gonna happen and you're gonna make that effort and nothing is gonna happen and you're gonna make that effort and nothing is gonna happen and you're gonna make that effort and nothing is gonna happen and nothing is gonna happen and."

then KABLAM! But 15 years have passed since 2000, still haven't heard the KABLAM!

"If they want it they will have it, if they don't want it fine. I'm not forcing it. This is not a religion."

My goodness what a relief. I had visions of roving teams of instructors chasing people down in the streets and sticking their fingers in your eyes, their thumbs in your ears, shouting out "You must concentrate on your breath and poke your tongue backwards but only gently!" while waving their arms up and down a few times in front of their chests and running off with "An hour a day, preferably in the mornings. Go forth and be peaceful or else!"

"When it is my ball, why do I need you?"

"That's what this is all about. It has never been done you know you really have to appreciate it has never been done. What we are about to do has never been done."

Twenty years have passed since 2000, still hasn't been done, never will be done by Prem Rawat.

"I hope you get something out of it and I hope you remember something of it and I hope, most importantly it helps you. I think uh I think it's exciting if even a little bit of what we have discussed and talked about comes true it'll be more than any any fantasy fulfilled."

The hopes that Prem Rawat placed into the Training Sessions were not fulfilled. Propagation continued at extremely low levels and some of his long term followers became so disgusted when they saw Prem Rawat up close for extended periods of time that they apostasised which is why this information is available on the internet.